Karaoke Weekend
Soy #10. 雲もつかむよう with Malt
Story : knights & necromancers
Rating : PG (with mild sexual implications)
Timeframe : 1260
Word Count : 1599
Malt Prompt : Summer Challenge 2010 - stop spoiling my future with your slightly more distant one
My Treat (Falootin) : 雲もつかむよう kumo o tsukamu yoo / like grasping a cloud (wishfull thinking) - Ski and Tristan imagine a future together.
70's & 80's Karaoke - use a song as a prompt - Richard Marx "Hold onto the Nights" (1987)
This was my 4th attempt to come up with anything for the challenge. They all kept getting too far away from the song. But then I saw this prompt on my list and figured there had to be a love song out there that would work. And well, this was utterly appropriate.
“Lady Ski?”
Ski nearly jumped. Barely composed, she turned to face a beaming Tristan. “Captain,” she said, and she could feel the color seeping into her cheeks as her gaze settled on that enormous smile of his. “It is always a pleasant surprise, running into you.”
“Like yesterday?”
“Yes, of course. Yesterday.” It was too much; she had to turn away. She found herself needlessly straightening the items on her desk just to have something to focus on. Since when did she have so much difficulty simply talking to a man? “As a matter of fact, I have been meaning to have words with you about yesterday.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, I think it is certainly most appropriate that my knights do their share of watch duty, and I will have no more of your insistence that it is beneath us.”
“Oh.”
There was a heavy pause that left her with nothing to do but turn back around. “Were you expecting something else?”
“Well, the kiss…” Tristan ran one thick hand awkwardly through his shaggy blonde mane, and the warmth in her cheeks reasserted itself.
“Oh, the kiss!” She threw a hand to her mouth, but it was no use, surely she must be red from ear to ear by now. “Yes,” she said shakily. “I have been thinking about that a great deal as well, and I should like it if you were to do that again. Frequently.”
His lips were on hers and if not for the wall firmly pressed against her back, Ski would have sworn she was flying. Strong hands curled around her hips and held her fast. She wondered at times, both in hope and in fear, if he might find the courage to let them roam over the rest of her.
She pried her lips free, gasping for breath, to meet his eye and find him doing the same. “I know this is as much my doing as yours,” she said, once she’d found enough air, stilling him with a hand to his chest as he made to resume kissing her, “but I think it ought to be established before we find ourselves carried away in the moment that this is as far as it goes.”
Tristan’s lips twisted sadly. “In other words, don’t get my hopes up.”
“I suppose, if that is how you must look at it.” Her attention settled on the heavy beating of his heart against her palm.
“And how do you look at it?”
Ski looked up, met those enormous, plaintive, brown eyes, and sighed. “My hopes are most certainly quite firmly in check,” she lied.
Tristan swept into the room. “I need to tell you something,” burst from him at the same time that she declared, “I have something I need to speak to you about.”
They both broke off with a laugh.
“You first,” said Ski, and she would have had to admit she was a bit relieved at the opportunity for delay.
“No, you,” Tristan insisted. “Really, it’s alright.”
Ski choked for a moment, at a loss for anything safe to say. “I, well, your men,” she said. “I cannot help but notice some of them are distinctly lacking in respectable equipment, I mean the number of holes and patches, not to mention rust, and it had occurred to me that I might put in a request for funds if I were to know how many-”
“I love you,” he blurted, and her rambling speech came to a sudden halt. She stared at him, dumbfounded, a lump in her throat keeping the words from finding her tongue as he tumbled on. “I know what you’re going to say. This is foolish. It’s never going to work. I’m only going to get hurt.” He just kept looking at her with that impossibly broad smile and that twinkle to his eyes, and she couldn’t pull herself away. “And I know all that, I do,” he was saying, but Ski was only half listening, intent instead on watching every movement of his lips, every gesture of his hands. “But it’s not like not saying it is going to change any of it, because it’s still true. And if I don’t say it, I-”
“Enough!”
Tristan crumbled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have-”
“I love you too.” The words tumbled out, and she hastily snapped her mouth shut, surprised that she’d finally managed to find her voice at all. Tristan’s jaw hung open, his face lit anew. “That is…what I really wished to tell you,” Ski wasn’t sure if she was defending herself or just throwing more words into the void, but it was true; she’d wanted to say it for days now. “I love you too.”
“This,” said Ski, lying naked and breathless in Tristan’s arms. “This is as far as it goes.”
Tristan laughed and pulled her in tighter. The straw beneath them crackled with the shifting of their weight. “You won’t hear me complaining.”
“No,” she laid a firm hand over the one slowly working its way up her side. “I mean this one time.”
Tristan’s mouth nuzzled the back of her neck, and she bit her lip against the urge to roll to face him and kiss him back. “You are one cold, cold woman, my dear.”
“Tristan…”
“Why so cruel?” His lips traveled down along her spine, drawing a shiver from her, and his hand slid from hers to continue its path along her ribs. “You’d punish us both. You can’t possibly tell me you really don’t want to do this again.”
She did roll over at that, dislodging lips and hands from her body, and coming to face those wide dark eyes to which it was always so hard to say these things. “Nothing would make me happier than to hold onto this moment forever. But we both know it cannot last and we would only be deluding ourselves-”
“Ah, ah.” He laid a finger across her lips with a smirk. “Not deluding, simply enjoying it while it does last.”
“It is bad enough that the whole fort already knows of our affair,” said Ski. “You simply cannot start lavishing gifts on me. I am not some common girl to be wooed with a few well-timed trinkets. I am heir to a council seat and my mother is not about to accept a soldier as my suitor.”
Every word of it stung her, but as she watched Tristan, looking to gauge his reaction, it would seem as if he hadn’t heard a thing.
“Even if she knew how happy I make you?” he offered after a moment, turning the rejected ring over slowly in his hands.
“This is not about my happiness.”
Tristan sniffed. “She lets you turn them down left and right. How can you be so sure?”
Ski sighed. She still could not erase the memory of her mother’s face when she’d confronted her about Rune, not that she was about to offer that as explanation. “Trust me,” she said. “This is about marriage, not love. The two have little to do with one another.”
Tristan stuffed the ring in a pocket and fixed her with a sharp look. “Then why,” he said, “didn’t you marry that prince of yours years ago?”
Ski’s jaw fell. “How did you-?”
“You thought I didn’t know about him, huh? Well, your sister told me.”
Ski sighed, relieved. Lyssa didn’t know half the story. “I refused Terrel because…Can we not talk about this?”
They were in her bed, tangled together between the sheets, no more need to go creeping about in haylofts and hiding from the world. Ski watched, all but holding her breath, as Tristan trailed a hand over her moonlit flesh.
“You’re never going to say yes to any of them, are you?” he mused.
“Tristan…”
“Are you?” There was laughter in his voice, though she thought the question might still be a sincere one.
“Eventually I must.”
“You could still have me,” he said. “Even after you say yes.”
“You are suggesting I marry another and keep my true love as a plaything on the side?”
Tristan’s body heaved against her in a shrug. “Think about it,” he said, his hand playfully teasing its way up around the underside of her breast. “Everybody wins.”
“Except perhaps the fool I wed.”
“Who needs him?” Tristan laughed.
Ski sighed. “And what would you do? Skulk about the palace for the rest of your days, ready to hop in and out of my bed? I’ll put you in no such position.”
“But-”
“Whatever happened to not deluding ourselves and simply enjoying this while It lasts?”
“As if you’re any more ready to end this than I am.”
Ski pulled the chain from the neck of her dress to look at her ring. Tristan draped an arm around her shoulders as she turned the gold band this way and that between her fingers.
“What are you thinking?” he said, softly.
“I am thinking,” she said, watching the lamplight flicker across the surface of the ring, “that I have never been more afraid in my life.”
She wasn’t sure what she expected, if he would try to reassure her or laugh it off. What she got was silence.
“I have also never been so happy before,” she said, dropping the ring to twine her fingers through his. She gave his hand a squeeze and then a kiss. “This is right,” she said. “Somehow we’ve always known, it’s always been right.”
Tristan squeezed her back and smiled. “We’ll just have to make everyone else see, won’t we?”
Story : knights & necromancers
Rating : PG (with mild sexual implications)
Timeframe : 1260
Word Count : 1599
Malt Prompt : Summer Challenge 2010 - stop spoiling my future with your slightly more distant one
My Treat (Falootin) : 雲もつかむよう kumo o tsukamu yoo / like grasping a cloud (wishfull thinking) - Ski and Tristan imagine a future together.
70's & 80's Karaoke - use a song as a prompt - Richard Marx "Hold onto the Nights" (1987)
This was my 4th attempt to come up with anything for the challenge. They all kept getting too far away from the song. But then I saw this prompt on my list and figured there had to be a love song out there that would work. And well, this was utterly appropriate.
“Lady Ski?”
Ski nearly jumped. Barely composed, she turned to face a beaming Tristan. “Captain,” she said, and she could feel the color seeping into her cheeks as her gaze settled on that enormous smile of his. “It is always a pleasant surprise, running into you.”
“Like yesterday?”
“Yes, of course. Yesterday.” It was too much; she had to turn away. She found herself needlessly straightening the items on her desk just to have something to focus on. Since when did she have so much difficulty simply talking to a man? “As a matter of fact, I have been meaning to have words with you about yesterday.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, I think it is certainly most appropriate that my knights do their share of watch duty, and I will have no more of your insistence that it is beneath us.”
“Oh.”
There was a heavy pause that left her with nothing to do but turn back around. “Were you expecting something else?”
“Well, the kiss…” Tristan ran one thick hand awkwardly through his shaggy blonde mane, and the warmth in her cheeks reasserted itself.
“Oh, the kiss!” She threw a hand to her mouth, but it was no use, surely she must be red from ear to ear by now. “Yes,” she said shakily. “I have been thinking about that a great deal as well, and I should like it if you were to do that again. Frequently.”
His lips were on hers and if not for the wall firmly pressed against her back, Ski would have sworn she was flying. Strong hands curled around her hips and held her fast. She wondered at times, both in hope and in fear, if he might find the courage to let them roam over the rest of her.
She pried her lips free, gasping for breath, to meet his eye and find him doing the same. “I know this is as much my doing as yours,” she said, once she’d found enough air, stilling him with a hand to his chest as he made to resume kissing her, “but I think it ought to be established before we find ourselves carried away in the moment that this is as far as it goes.”
Tristan’s lips twisted sadly. “In other words, don’t get my hopes up.”
“I suppose, if that is how you must look at it.” Her attention settled on the heavy beating of his heart against her palm.
“And how do you look at it?”
Ski looked up, met those enormous, plaintive, brown eyes, and sighed. “My hopes are most certainly quite firmly in check,” she lied.
Tristan swept into the room. “I need to tell you something,” burst from him at the same time that she declared, “I have something I need to speak to you about.”
They both broke off with a laugh.
“You first,” said Ski, and she would have had to admit she was a bit relieved at the opportunity for delay.
“No, you,” Tristan insisted. “Really, it’s alright.”
Ski choked for a moment, at a loss for anything safe to say. “I, well, your men,” she said. “I cannot help but notice some of them are distinctly lacking in respectable equipment, I mean the number of holes and patches, not to mention rust, and it had occurred to me that I might put in a request for funds if I were to know how many-”
“I love you,” he blurted, and her rambling speech came to a sudden halt. She stared at him, dumbfounded, a lump in her throat keeping the words from finding her tongue as he tumbled on. “I know what you’re going to say. This is foolish. It’s never going to work. I’m only going to get hurt.” He just kept looking at her with that impossibly broad smile and that twinkle to his eyes, and she couldn’t pull herself away. “And I know all that, I do,” he was saying, but Ski was only half listening, intent instead on watching every movement of his lips, every gesture of his hands. “But it’s not like not saying it is going to change any of it, because it’s still true. And if I don’t say it, I-”
“Enough!”
Tristan crumbled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have-”
“I love you too.” The words tumbled out, and she hastily snapped her mouth shut, surprised that she’d finally managed to find her voice at all. Tristan’s jaw hung open, his face lit anew. “That is…what I really wished to tell you,” Ski wasn’t sure if she was defending herself or just throwing more words into the void, but it was true; she’d wanted to say it for days now. “I love you too.”
“This,” said Ski, lying naked and breathless in Tristan’s arms. “This is as far as it goes.”
Tristan laughed and pulled her in tighter. The straw beneath them crackled with the shifting of their weight. “You won’t hear me complaining.”
“No,” she laid a firm hand over the one slowly working its way up her side. “I mean this one time.”
Tristan’s mouth nuzzled the back of her neck, and she bit her lip against the urge to roll to face him and kiss him back. “You are one cold, cold woman, my dear.”
“Tristan…”
“Why so cruel?” His lips traveled down along her spine, drawing a shiver from her, and his hand slid from hers to continue its path along her ribs. “You’d punish us both. You can’t possibly tell me you really don’t want to do this again.”
She did roll over at that, dislodging lips and hands from her body, and coming to face those wide dark eyes to which it was always so hard to say these things. “Nothing would make me happier than to hold onto this moment forever. But we both know it cannot last and we would only be deluding ourselves-”
“Ah, ah.” He laid a finger across her lips with a smirk. “Not deluding, simply enjoying it while it does last.”
“It is bad enough that the whole fort already knows of our affair,” said Ski. “You simply cannot start lavishing gifts on me. I am not some common girl to be wooed with a few well-timed trinkets. I am heir to a council seat and my mother is not about to accept a soldier as my suitor.”
Every word of it stung her, but as she watched Tristan, looking to gauge his reaction, it would seem as if he hadn’t heard a thing.
“Even if she knew how happy I make you?” he offered after a moment, turning the rejected ring over slowly in his hands.
“This is not about my happiness.”
Tristan sniffed. “She lets you turn them down left and right. How can you be so sure?”
Ski sighed. She still could not erase the memory of her mother’s face when she’d confronted her about Rune, not that she was about to offer that as explanation. “Trust me,” she said. “This is about marriage, not love. The two have little to do with one another.”
Tristan stuffed the ring in a pocket and fixed her with a sharp look. “Then why,” he said, “didn’t you marry that prince of yours years ago?”
Ski’s jaw fell. “How did you-?”
“You thought I didn’t know about him, huh? Well, your sister told me.”
Ski sighed, relieved. Lyssa didn’t know half the story. “I refused Terrel because…Can we not talk about this?”
They were in her bed, tangled together between the sheets, no more need to go creeping about in haylofts and hiding from the world. Ski watched, all but holding her breath, as Tristan trailed a hand over her moonlit flesh.
“You’re never going to say yes to any of them, are you?” he mused.
“Tristan…”
“Are you?” There was laughter in his voice, though she thought the question might still be a sincere one.
“Eventually I must.”
“You could still have me,” he said. “Even after you say yes.”
“You are suggesting I marry another and keep my true love as a plaything on the side?”
Tristan’s body heaved against her in a shrug. “Think about it,” he said, his hand playfully teasing its way up around the underside of her breast. “Everybody wins.”
“Except perhaps the fool I wed.”
“Who needs him?” Tristan laughed.
Ski sighed. “And what would you do? Skulk about the palace for the rest of your days, ready to hop in and out of my bed? I’ll put you in no such position.”
“But-”
“Whatever happened to not deluding ourselves and simply enjoying this while It lasts?”
“As if you’re any more ready to end this than I am.”
Ski pulled the chain from the neck of her dress to look at her ring. Tristan draped an arm around her shoulders as she turned the gold band this way and that between her fingers.
“What are you thinking?” he said, softly.
“I am thinking,” she said, watching the lamplight flicker across the surface of the ring, “that I have never been more afraid in my life.”
She wasn’t sure what she expected, if he would try to reassure her or laugh it off. What she got was silence.
“I have also never been so happy before,” she said, dropping the ring to twine her fingers through his. She gave his hand a squeeze and then a kiss. “This is right,” she said. “Somehow we’ve always known, it’s always been right.”
Tristan squeezed her back and smiled. “We’ll just have to make everyone else see, won’t we?”