"Minx," he accuses. Gale lets his eyes drift closed and exhales a slow,
calming breath. His hands grip her hips tight, and it's hard to tell if
he's trying to keep her still or hold her close. "You do that every day.
You are the sun breaking through storm clouds, do you know that?"
When he opens his eyes again, they are adoring... and hungry. He shifts his
hips against hers just once, allowing himself this small indulgence. It's a
bad idea, but when has that actually stopped him? "That doesn't mean I
don't want to wear your thighs as a circlet and prove my oral prowess in
more than just pontificating."
A flush of excitement colors her cheeks and lights up her eyes. Her lips curve into an eager smile.
"Seems like I'm not the only minx in this relationship," she quips. She arches against him with a little wiggle. "Obviously I'm not gonna say no to such a delicious offer."
Technically, it's only potentially unsafe. There are a lot of variables he isn't sure about. Is it the physical stimulation the destabilizes the orb? Is it the strong emotions? Some combination of the two? Could he touch her without blowing them all into the astral plane? If touch is entirely off the table, what about mage hand? Intimacy isn't just sex, and sex isn't just climax, as she said, and ordinarily he would be eager to try to discover those lines. Experimentation is one of the most appealing bedroom endeavors.
The only thing stopping him is fear, and even though he's not willing to admit it, it's not just fear of destroying Waterdeep and everyone in it.
But he can't be content with nothing. "Will you show me your tattoos? All... of them?" He flushes a little, which is silly, because it's not like he hadn't just made a filthier suggestion. There's more to intimacy than sex, though. "And tell me about them? If you want to. I wouldn't impose if it's unpleasant. It's just..." He's been looking, glimpses here and there when fabric shifts to reveal the edge of mysterious ink. "I'm curious." His greatest virtue and his worst vice.
"I'm not safe," she counters. She has her own questions and theories about the specific limits of his condition, and salacious ideas on how they can map out those boundaries.
Some other day. Gale insists on an impending doom, but Harley is not so quick to give in to grim fates.
She untangles herself from him, sits back on her heels and pulls off her top. Tattoos stand in stark contrast against her pale skin, and for the first time he can see the ones below her collarbone and low across her stomach. The garment is tossed aside without a glance as she stands, turns away-- two more tattoos on her shoulder and lower back. She pushes her short pants off her hips and shimmies them down her thighs, stepping out of them and toward the bed.
She pauses with one knee on the mattress, actually noticing the pages scattered around for the first time. She looks back at him over her shoulder with a cheeky smile.
"Gale!" She has the same tone of perfomative scandal and giggly delight that she takes on whenever she finds a sexy magic book in his library. "Have you been annotating me?"
"It's different." It's always different when he's burying himself in noble suffering.
Harley discards her top with absolutely no hesitation, and that's a marvel on its own, though not nearly so much as what follows. He looks away on instinct, remembers that he doesn't have to, then turns his gaze back to her.
He laughs, because she can always get him to laugh no matter the circumstances. "Of course I had to take notes, how else would I remember everything I wanted to discuss? You laugh now, but you'll have to read through all of them later." He pushes himself up off the floor, his knees still protesting from spending so long in one position on the bed. "Besides, I didn't annotate you. But... I could?" Gale's eyes take on a mischievous glint. Her skin is covered in ink, after all, its own sort of story. Magic helps him clear everything from the bed except the pen and ink, which he's sure not to spill as he climbs onto his bed with her.
Harley reclines against his pillows like a queen in repose, arranging herself in the most enticing pose she can think of. She holds a beckoning hand toward him.
"Yes," she agrees easily, immediately. He can do anything he likes to her body and she'd thank him for it.
He takes her hand and settles in beside her. It's probably for the best
that he's still clothed, or his will might falter. As promised, he studies
her, though his gaze is beatific. He dips down to kiss her, and if it hints
at what kind of lover he would be if they were able, then she could expect
him to be passionate, unhurried, and thorough.
He kisses a line to her cheek then her jaw before straightening. Pen in
hand, he carefully draws an asterisk beside the 'rotten' tattoo. He takes
her wrist and draws the matching asterisk for this footnote, then writes,
'citation needed.' "I've always found this claim objectionable."
Her hands slide over his broad shoulders as he kisses her, and she briefly gets lost in fantasies of what else he might do. Her fingers flex as she struggles against herself not to pull him in, to not beg for more.
She sighs dreamily when his lips move along her jaw, her gaze is full of want and adoration as she watches him take up the pen. Knowing Gale, she expects he might write lines of poetry or elegant sigils-- Ah, right. He is a pedantic nerd, above all else.
The laughter rings out of her hard enough to make her curl into herself. And yes, it makes her breasts jiggle too. She is breasting boobily in his bed.
Gale can hardly think of a more glorious sight. It's not just that she's alluring (though, gods, he does notice that), it's that she is so happy and open. He's not sure if he's ever seen her look so unguarded. He can't help but laugh too.
"You're not rotten," he says. It comes out a little harder than he intended, because it has long been bothering him that she ever thought herself so rotten to warrant inking it into her flesh, "Personally, I'd say more 'fermented'. Bubbly, occasionally sour, and you make me feel downright drunk at times."
He says it so fervently that she can't even crack a joke about it. A lovely flush colors her cheeks and she looks down at the writing on her wrist.
"Okay," she says, feeling stupid that she isn't better with words in the moment. She moves to kiss him again but hesitates before making contact. "Any other notes?"
"I'll always have more to say about you," he replies ardently, and somehow he manages not to be as cheesy as he could be.
In fact, he has a lot of notes. She wasn't wrong about his inclination to cover every hateful thought committed to her skin with poetry and protection sigils. So many of her tattoos seem to revolve around being owned and he hates it, but he understands it, and that makes him want to erase it more.
But it's not his place, either. It's her body, her memories, and he'll only help where his help is wanted.
"But, believe it or not, I enjoy the kissing more than the annotating."
She smiles, just a breath a way from kissing him again, and pulls away to recline again. She stretches her moon-pale limbs and arches her back entirely for Gale's benefit.
"There isn't much of a story behind most of my ink. I'll still tell you anything you want to know, but." She reaches up to tap a finger once against the tip of his nose. Boop! "You have to kiss the tattoo before I say a single word about it."
When she pulls back, he follows, drawn like a magnet, but stops short, grinning. "You drive a hard bargain," he replies, in a way that suggests it's probably not the bargain that's hard.
He drifts lower, his mouth always close enough to bare skin that his breath tickles, but he finally places a kiss down on that mermaid tattoo. "This one covers something else up, doesn't it?"
She had to talk about it, him, eventually. Might as well be while she's fully naked. Maybe the absurdity will keep this from getting too fraught.
Harley hums a soft confirmation and traces the mermaid's tail with a fingertip.
"The letter J. He called himself the Joker." Her voice is quiet and even, and her eyes carefully track his expression. "I couldn't get rid of it, so I made it into a little friend."
What an ironic name. Or perhaps not, when one considers the nature of the Joker in a lot of card games as the arbiter of chaos. Joker, jester, harlequin -- it's certainly all starting to paint a thematic picture. His features go stony and he frowns, eyebrows furrowing, wishing he was better at keeping such things hidden.
"Well, I like the mermaid." He traces the lines of the tattoo, and with a little illusion magic, she seems to flick her tailfin. "You don't have to talk about any of this if you don't want to. I don't want to hurt you."
"Old wounds can still ache if they're prodded," he replies. He thinks of all the missing pages in her journal and wonders whether she's as settled with the past as she claims, or too afraid to reset the bone. He wouldn't blame her either way.
Gale turns this information over in his mind. He never wanted tattoos, but if Mystra had asked him to put ink in his skin instead of a hole in his ear, he would have leapt to do it. "Would you want them gone, or covered, given the opportunity? Or do you prefer keeping them?
She blinks in surprise, and looks herself over. The question had never really occurred to her, in that way. The glamour ring made it easy to ignore, a trauma to resolve another day.
"Some I'd keep, some I'd erase or get something else instead." Harley turns her arm and considers her mermaid. "She can stay. You know what to do to find out about each one."
She tips her head and peers up at him through her lashes. "Do you think they make me ugly?"
"Gods, no! I didn't mean to imply that at all, I'm so sorry," he says with
a tinge of panic. Gale sits back a little, feeling as though he's lost the
right to her space. He reaches up to fiddle with his earring, pressing it
between his thumb and forefinger until he can feel the points digging into
skin. It's an old habit, done unconsciously.
"You're beautiful. More beautiful every time I see you, in fact." He
reaches for her hand, turns it over so he can kiss her palm. "I was just
curious. I don't have any tattoos, only this wretched mark. I would erase
that in an instant.'
"Let me see it again." Harley moves to sit primly on her knees in front of him. She runs her hands up his thighs and catches the hem of his shirt in her fingers. "Don't make me the only one sitting here with my tits out."
She loves him, she really does, and is generally charmed by the way he can keep a conversation, but he is really not staying on track for the mood she's trying to set.
Gale flinches back at first, his instinct to be embarrassed of being naked in front of anyone, but he eases quickly. As she says, it's only fair. He laughs, and the tension ebbs out of him, the way it always seems to do around Harley. "Of course. Your wish is my command."
He lifts his arms so that she can peel him out of his shirt, wondering if he should offer to take off his pants as well, whether that would be fair, whether that would be too far over a line they cannot cross. It doesn't stop his thoughts from drifting elsewhere, particularly when her bare skin brushes his. Even the barest touch of her fingertips is electric, invigorating every nerve ending. His hands itch with the desire to explore her, so he cups her jaw to keep from reaching for anything else.
Harley slides her hands up his sides to ruck up the fabric and is practically on his lap again after pulling his shirt over his head. She tosses it aside and runs her hands down his back, mapping out the planes of his shoulder blades and the ridge of his spine.
Her gaze is heated and intensely focused as she takes in the sight of him half naked in her arms. The path of her touch continues down until her fingers dip under the waistband of his trousers, and the struggle to stay within appropriate boundaries is clear on her face. She allows herself to briefly palm his ass over his clothes before bringing her hands to rest on the neutral zone of his shoulders.
She turns her face into his palm and licks at his thumb. "Even marked, I love this body." She pushes him back onto the mattress and leans over him, her nipples barely skimming his chest hair. "My favorite person lives in it."
Gale inhales sharply as her hands travel over his skin, then holds his breath when her hands barely dip below the waistline of his pants. He doesn't tell her no, isn't sure whether he'll be able to if she pressed the matter. All he knows is that he is hers, and she may do with him as she wants. All he wants is to be everything she desires, and the fire of frustration that he can't be continues to burn in his core. He runs his thumb over her lower lip, adoring and passionate and fierce. "Gods, you make even self destruction seem tempting, if you hadn't also given me a reason to live again. Paradoxical, I know."
His shoulders hit the bed with a huff of air that turns into a laugh. His grin is soft as taffy as he looks up at her. There is so much he wants to say, but for once, the words simply aren't there in the abundance he's used to. "Consider it yours to to-- well, almost anything with."
She draws his thumb into her mouth and sucks the digit while holding his gaze. She releases his thumb with a wet pop and nudges his legs apart to settle between his thighs.
"You shouldn't give me that kind of power," she scolds with absolutely no conviction, leaning over him again. "Each and every one of my ideas is terribly mean."
Her hands catch his wrists and pin him to bed. A soft and pleasant jail. She dips her head to press heated, open mouthed kisses to his throat. "How close are we to the line?" she murmurs against the flutter of his pulse.
"I might like them anyway." He releases a shuddering breath, letting his eyelids flutter closed. His hands flex in her grasp, but he never tries to break her hold. She's strong enough that he doesn't like his odds even if he really wanted to. Anything that prevents him from casting would ordinarily make him nervous, but even though his heart hammers against his ribs, he finds it thrilling not to be in control. They play a dangerous game, that's true, but let someone else be the one to set the rules this time.
She kisses his throat and he moans, squirming not for escape but in search of more. "Ahh... probably closer than we ought to be." There is an ache high in his chest, but not the sharp stabbing pain of imminent danger. They should absolutely stop, and yet, "But we could probably get a little closer, still."
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"Minx," he accuses. Gale lets his eyes drift closed and exhales a slow, calming breath. His hands grip her hips tight, and it's hard to tell if he's trying to keep her still or hold her close. "You do that every day. You are the sun breaking through storm clouds, do you know that?"
When he opens his eyes again, they are adoring... and hungry. He shifts his hips against hers just once, allowing himself this small indulgence. It's a bad idea, but when has that actually stopped him? "That doesn't mean I don't want to wear your thighs as a circlet and prove my oral prowess in more than just pontificating."
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"Seems like I'm not the only minx in this relationship," she quips. She arches against him with a little wiggle. "Obviously I'm not gonna say no to such a delicious offer."
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Technically, it's only potentially unsafe. There are a lot of variables he isn't sure about. Is it the physical stimulation the destabilizes the orb? Is it the strong emotions? Some combination of the two? Could he touch her without blowing them all into the astral plane? If touch is entirely off the table, what about mage hand? Intimacy isn't just sex, and sex isn't just climax, as she said, and ordinarily he would be eager to try to discover those lines. Experimentation is one of the most appealing bedroom endeavors.
The only thing stopping him is fear, and even though he's not willing to admit it, it's not just fear of destroying Waterdeep and everyone in it.
But he can't be content with nothing. "Will you show me your tattoos? All... of them?" He flushes a little, which is silly, because it's not like he hadn't just made a filthier suggestion. There's more to intimacy than sex, though. "And tell me about them? If you want to. I wouldn't impose if it's unpleasant. It's just..." He's been looking, glimpses here and there when fabric shifts to reveal the edge of mysterious ink. "I'm curious." His greatest virtue and his worst vice.
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Some other day. Gale insists on an impending doom, but Harley is not so quick to give in to grim fates.
She untangles herself from him, sits back on her heels and pulls off her top. Tattoos stand in stark contrast against her pale skin, and for the first time he can see the ones below her collarbone and low across her stomach. The garment is tossed aside without a glance as she stands, turns away-- two more tattoos on her shoulder and lower back. She pushes her short pants off her hips and shimmies them down her thighs, stepping out of them and toward the bed.
She pauses with one knee on the mattress, actually noticing the pages scattered around for the first time. She looks back at him over her shoulder with a cheeky smile.
"Gale!" She has the same tone of perfomative scandal and giggly delight that she takes on whenever she finds a sexy magic book in his library. "Have you been annotating me?"
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Harley discards her top with absolutely no hesitation, and that's a marvel on its own, though not nearly so much as what follows. He looks away on instinct, remembers that he doesn't have to, then turns his gaze back to her.
He laughs, because she can always get him to laugh no matter the circumstances. "Of course I had to take notes, how else would I remember everything I wanted to discuss? You laugh now, but you'll have to read through all of them later." He pushes himself up off the floor, his knees still protesting from spending so long in one position on the bed. "Besides, I didn't annotate you. But... I could?" Gale's eyes take on a mischievous glint. Her skin is covered in ink, after all, its own sort of story. Magic helps him clear everything from the bed except the pen and ink, which he's sure not to spill as he climbs onto his bed with her.
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"Yes," she agrees easily, immediately. He can do anything he likes to her body and she'd thank him for it.
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He takes her hand and settles in beside her. It's probably for the best that he's still clothed, or his will might falter. As promised, he studies her, though his gaze is beatific. He dips down to kiss her, and if it hints at what kind of lover he would be if they were able, then she could expect him to be passionate, unhurried, and thorough.
He kisses a line to her cheek then her jaw before straightening. Pen in hand, he carefully draws an asterisk beside the 'rotten' tattoo. He takes her wrist and draws the matching asterisk for this footnote, then writes, 'citation needed.' "I've always found this claim objectionable."
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She sighs dreamily when his lips move along her jaw, her gaze is full of want and adoration as she watches him take up the pen. Knowing Gale, she expects he might write lines of poetry or elegant sigils-- Ah, right. He is a pedantic nerd, above all else.
The laughter rings out of her hard enough to make her curl into herself. And yes, it makes her breasts jiggle too. She is breasting boobily in his bed.
"I like that one!"
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"You're not rotten," he says. It comes out a little harder than he intended, because it has long been bothering him that she ever thought herself so rotten to warrant inking it into her flesh, "Personally, I'd say more 'fermented'. Bubbly, occasionally sour, and you make me feel downright drunk at times."
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"Okay," she says, feeling stupid that she isn't better with words in the moment. She moves to kiss him again but hesitates before making contact. "Any other notes?"
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In fact, he has a lot of notes. She wasn't wrong about his inclination to cover every hateful thought committed to her skin with poetry and protection sigils. So many of her tattoos seem to revolve around being owned and he hates it, but he understands it, and that makes him want to erase it more.
But it's not his place, either. It's her body, her memories, and he'll only help where his help is wanted.
"But, believe it or not, I enjoy the kissing more than the annotating."
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"There isn't much of a story behind most of my ink. I'll still tell you anything you want to know, but." She reaches up to tap a finger once against the tip of his nose. Boop! "You have to kiss the tattoo before I say a single word about it."
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He drifts lower, his mouth always close enough to bare skin that his breath tickles, but he finally places a kiss down on that mermaid tattoo. "This one covers something else up, doesn't it?"
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Harley hums a soft confirmation and traces the mermaid's tail with a fingertip.
"The letter J. He called himself the Joker." Her voice is quiet and even, and her eyes carefully track his expression. "I couldn't get rid of it, so I made it into a little friend."
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What an ironic name. Or perhaps not, when one considers the nature of the Joker in a lot of card games as the arbiter of chaos. Joker, jester, harlequin -- it's certainly all starting to paint a thematic picture. His features go stony and he frowns, eyebrows furrowing, wishing he was better at keeping such things hidden.
"Well, I like the mermaid." He traces the lines of the tattoo, and with a little illusion magic, she seems to flick her tailfin. "You don't have to talk about any of this if you don't want to. I don't want to hurt you."
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"The hurt already happened," she says with a tiny resigned sigh. "I don't mind talking about it except that it makes you so sad."
The distance between them is easy to close. She presses a soft kiss to his temple, and very heroically does not palm him through his trousers.
"Almost all of this," she makes a broad sweeping gesture down the length of her body, "is because of or about him."
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Gale turns this information over in his mind. He never wanted tattoos, but if Mystra had asked him to put ink in his skin instead of a hole in his ear, he would have leapt to do it. "Would you want them gone, or covered, given the opportunity? Or do you prefer keeping them?
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"Some I'd keep, some I'd erase or get something else instead." Harley turns her arm and considers her mermaid. "She can stay. You know what to do to find out about each one."
She tips her head and peers up at him through her lashes. "Do you think they make me ugly?"
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"Gods, no! I didn't mean to imply that at all, I'm so sorry," he says with a tinge of panic. Gale sits back a little, feeling as though he's lost the right to her space. He reaches up to fiddle with his earring, pressing it between his thumb and forefinger until he can feel the points digging into skin. It's an old habit, done unconsciously.
"You're beautiful. More beautiful every time I see you, in fact." He reaches for her hand, turns it over so he can kiss her palm. "I was just curious. I don't have any tattoos, only this wretched mark. I would erase that in an instant.'
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She loves him, she really does, and is generally charmed by the way he can keep a conversation, but he is really not staying on track for the mood she's trying to set.
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He lifts his arms so that she can peel him out of his shirt, wondering if he should offer to take off his pants as well, whether that would be fair, whether that would be too far over a line they cannot cross. It doesn't stop his thoughts from drifting elsewhere, particularly when her bare skin brushes his. Even the barest touch of her fingertips is electric, invigorating every nerve ending. His hands itch with the desire to explore her, so he cups her jaw to keep from reaching for anything else.
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Her gaze is heated and intensely focused as she takes in the sight of him half naked in her arms. The path of her touch continues down until her fingers dip under the waistband of his trousers, and the struggle to stay within appropriate boundaries is clear on her face. She allows herself to briefly palm his ass over his clothes before bringing her hands to rest on the neutral zone of his shoulders.
She turns her face into his palm and licks at his thumb. "Even marked, I love this body." She pushes him back onto the mattress and leans over him, her nipples barely skimming his chest hair. "My favorite person lives in it."
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His shoulders hit the bed with a huff of air that turns into a laugh. His grin is soft as taffy as he looks up at her. There is so much he wants to say, but for once, the words simply aren't there in the abundance he's used to. "Consider it yours to to-- well, almost anything with."
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"You shouldn't give me that kind of power," she scolds with absolutely no conviction, leaning over him again. "Each and every one of my ideas is terribly mean."
Her hands catch his wrists and pin him to bed. A soft and pleasant jail. She dips her head to press heated, open mouthed kisses to his throat. "How close are we to the line?" she murmurs against the flutter of his pulse.
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She kisses his throat and he moans, squirming not for escape but in search of more. "Ahh... probably closer than we ought to be." There is an ache high in his chest, but not the sharp stabbing pain of imminent danger. They should absolutely stop, and yet, "But we could probably get a little closer, still."
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