Even as clever as he is, Gale doesn't realize what Harley is doing at first. She would be as lovely dressed as a beggar as she would be as a queen, so it's no matter to him when she decides to adorn herself so ostentatiously.
It doesn't occur to them until they're already in the market, when he notices two people he thinks he might recognize from Blackstaff whispering behind their hands as they peek at him. He slows and unconsciously hunches his shoulders in to make himself smaller. He feels like some giant is holding a magnifying glass above him, focusing the rays of the sun right on him. Or maybe that's just the burning of his cheeks. Before he can suggest that they turn around and run home, Harley positions herself between him and his spectators, shining like an angler fish's lure -- come closer and get bitten, if you dare.
The onlookers decide they don't dare, and move on.
Harley watches them retreat from the corner of her eye and doesn't relax until they slip out of sight. She tightens her hold on his arm, refusing to let him shrink in on himself.
"Oh, look!" She gasps in delight at a cart of luxury goods and darts over for a closer look. Her fingers brush over a bolt of delicate fabric that shifts from stormy gray and glimmering purple in the light. "You need something made from this!"
As always, she is his lighthouse, guiding him through the storms in his
head. The urge to run home and hide, to bury himself in astral illusions,
isn't entirely gone, but it is lessened, and he smiles at her, happy to
follow her over to the vendor selling fabrics.
"Do I?" he asks, eyebrows raising. It's not that he's opposed, precisely.
Gale usually wears well made clothes, but when they have any flair, it's
more subtle, like embroidery along hems. "Where would I wear it? Seems a
bit thin for a housecoat. If we go to the market with me dressed in that,
you'd have to add bells and flashing lights to your ensemble if you want to
keep shielding me."
She unrolls a length off the bolt and drapes it over his shoulder. The fabric is finely woven and soft as a cloud. She bites her lip at the sight of him. There's that look in her eyes again.
"You need this," she repeats. It's entirely self indulgent. She doesn't expect to let him out of the bedroom whenever he wears this.
It feels a little silly, being draped in fineries when his hair and beard desperately need to be trimmed, but with Harley, it's a fun sort of silly. "I'll wear a coat made of poison oak if it will keep you looking at me like that," he replies, grinning. She makes him feel handsome again. She makes him feel wanted. Even if he'll only ever wear it at home, it can be a house coat fit for a king.
"Now, what will we pick out for you, to go with it?" He doesn't have a keen eye for fashion, but enjoys looking at the colors, feeling the fabric textures. He holds up a deep, rich sapphire velvet that compliments her eyes and makes her look even more like a marble statue. "Bit hot out still, for velvet." He holds up the next fabric, powder blue and pale pink diamonds. "Harlequin pattern is a bit on the nose, hm?" The last fabric he picks up is a silk damask that shines like it might literally be woven from gold. He drapes it over her shoulder, as she had done for him, but just shrugs. The problem is, he thinks she looks equally beautiful in every one of them. "Alas, a sense for fashion never numbered amongst my considerable skills."
He is handsome, she does want him, and they both look very silly with one of them scruffy and one of them overdressed draping each other in fabric at the market.
She touches the silk carefully and admires the gleaming threads. Now that their fabric choices are close together, the combination makes her think of sun and storm clouds.
"Gale." She takes both his hands and sinks to her knee. "It's been a week."
Gale's eyebrows lift, but he's not exactly surprised. She had been
proposing to him before they had even admitted any romantic feelings, so it
was only a matter of time before she asked again. Her choice in location is
unexpected — she'd gone from shielding him to dressing attention — but what
is Harley if not a paradox.
"Has it already been a week? It feels like but a moment, when I would spend
eternity by your side." He may not be over the top on the same way that she
is, but never let it be said that he doesn't have a sense of showmanship.
He takes back one of his hands so that he can reach inside his pocket and
produce a little box with a flourish. "I suppose that means it's time that
I give you this..."
His knees hit the dust harder than he'd like — he'll be feeling that
tomorrow — but he laughs anyway. "Now, you don't even know what manner of
trinket is inside the box yet! Perhaps you'll allow me a moment for it's
presentation?"
Her hands grab his thighs and she tips forward to interrupt him again with a fierce kiss. She licks heated promises into his mouth until she runs out of breath. They've definitely caught attention now, especially the merchant of the fabrics they haven't yet paid for.
Harley draws the shimmering fabric up from his shoulders until it drapes over both of them. A secret place for just him and her.
"Okay," she says with breathless anticipation. "Go."
He kisses her back, face absolutely burning up. He's pretty sure he can
feel people staring. The feeling does not go away with the fabric over
their heads, and the sheer fabric allows enough light through for her to
still be able to see his flushed face.
"People probably think us absolutely mad," he points out, but he's
grinning. "Are you sure you don't want to go home for this? I've been
working on a very moving sonnet..." Is he teasing? It's hard to tell.
Harley looks around at the crowd waiting for the show to play out, blurred and shaded through the makeshift curtain, then ducks her head. She studies her hands, pressed to the tops of his thighs, her thumbs stroking little arcs.
"You're not ready," she says. "That's okay. I'll ask next week."
She leans forward again to kiss another promise into his skin.
It's that he really is working on a sonnet, and it's going to be
exceptional.
It's that the crowd is slowly filling him up with panic like sand in an
hourglass, and what happens when all the grains run out?
It's that his last attempt at a romantic gesture brought him to ruin.
It's that he's dying and he's terrified of what that means.
Particularly for her.
As he kisses her, one of his hands finds hers and places the little box
into it. "If things were different, I swear I would do this all better. But
all the same, I want you to have this, a promise of a future together. You
are my lighthouse in the darkness, and I would surely sink without you. I
love you, never doubt that for a moment."
Her fingers curl around the box and her other hand grasps his wrist, her thumb pressing lightly against his pulse.
"I know that," she says between kisses. She presses her forehead against his and breathes him in. "This is perfect, because it's you. It's us. Ours." She tucks the box next to her heart. "Let's go home. I'll make a really bad dinner while you work on your sonnet, and then you can open the box for me and I'll say yes as many times as you want to hear it. Every day, for the rest of our lives."
She takes a moment to bask in their private bubble, before having to burst it. "Also, I gotta hurry up and pay for all this fabric that we've been rolling around in."
He laughs, and it bursts from his lips like he wasn't expecting it either. She always makes him laugh, makes him realize how long he'd gone without doing so before she burst into his life like a shooting star.
"I suppose we had better, before they call the city guard. I'm not keen to begin my criminal record today." He leans in to give her one more lingering kiss, grinning before he's even pulled back again. "Besides, you haven't met my mother yet."
With that, he sweeps the fabric off of their heads, casts prestidigitation to clean the dust off of it (they plan to buy it, but the poor merchant looks near to fits over it, and he feels a little guilty), and rolls it back onto the bolt. There's a bit of a crowd around them, which he tries and fails to ignore. Some of them look a little confused, like they were poised to applaud a successful proposal, but they're not sure whether one happened or not. More than a couple look like they recognize him, and the thought that there will be new gossip about him (he isn't just disgraced, he's gone mad) crawls over him like fire ants. When his breathing starts coming in a little too quickly, he reaches for Harley's hand.
"We'll buy both, the entire bolts. And my apologies for the display, but aren't we all fools in love?" His expression is sweet and boyish, big brown eyes contrite, and it's clear that this is how the young, rebellious Gale probably got out of a lot of trouble both at school and perhaps with the previously mentioned Morena Dekarios. The merchant seems satisfied, whether because they've agreed to buy the merchandise instead of leaving it ruined, or because the spectacle seems to have brought more attention to their stall, doesn't really matter. They even get a discount, for 'the newlyweds', and Gale doesn't point out that it's the price point the merchant was probably prepared to be haggled down to anyway.
He reaches for her hand and she immediately falls into his orbit. Their fingers link together and she gives an anchoring squeeze. Her free hand explores the tendons and fine bones of his wrist. Her body presses against his side and she tucks her face against the side of his neck. It's a disgusting picture of smitten newlyweds to the audience, but she's putting herself between him and the world. Trying to fill as much of his senses as possible with only her. A quiet, solid anchor for him to hold onto.
Harley feels her heart go buttery soft at the sweet face he gives the merchant, and knows she can never ever let Gale know. There won't be any hope of her winning any argument if he knows how fast that would work on her.
She's shielding him, he knows, but he begins to wonder whether this entire shopping trip wasn't also an attempt to reacclimate him to the world. Now that he knows how brilliant she is, he's starting to see how her actions that might have once seemed capricious are in fact calculated. She wouldn't bring him here thoughtlessly, he thinks, feeling like a caged animal being slowly reintroduced to the wilderness.
"Surely that's not the only thing you wanted to see in the market? There's an entire merchant caravan's worth of wares to consider, and I want you to look to your heart's content." It's only a little performative. Not the part where he wants her to be happy, just the part where he's unbothered by the crowds. But he wants to show her that he can be brave, that he can improve. He doesn't want to skitter back into his cage just yet. "Besides, who knows what books they might have? Or very nice paper and ink."
There is a mysterious box with a mysterious item tucked in her cleavage this very moment, which she won't get to see until they get home, and now he wants to stay out.
Very well. The only way she can fight his lust for books is with other books. She reaches into her bag and pulls out the book of bedroom magic.
"Maybe I'm ready to go somewhere private and look at you to my heart's content." She waggles her eyebrows just in case he isn't picking up on such a subtle cue.
He laughs louder than he means to, and looks at her with equal parts love and hunger, shaking his head all the while. "Gods, we're going to end up in Horkle's Gossip Cauldron, I hope you know."
They get the book and the bolts of fabric tucked away in her bag of holding, and he offers her his elbow again. "We'll compromise and take the long way home. I want to buy you flowers. Besides, don't you know that the wait makes the cake taste sweeter?" He doesn't waggle his eyebrows, but his expression is nonetheless lascivious.
"Then we should make sure Horkle has plenty of good things to write about," she quips before darting in for another kiss. She hopes the broadsheets mention his gorgeous soft eyes and the way he laughs, but probably the best case scenario is that they don't write anything too ridiculous about her tattoos.
She takes his elbow when offered and looks at him a little stunned. She bites her lip on a shy smile. "You want to buy me flowers," she echoes quietly. Nobody has gone out of their way to buy her flowers before, and certainly not for no particular reason.
"You don't like flowers?" He had put a couple of hyacinths cut from outside the tower into the bow when he'd given her the gift that kicked off their romance, but he had never considered whether she liked flowers. Maybe she finds it too sad that they're destined to die soon (probably not that, because she's still here with him). Maybe she's allergic. Gale has always liked flowers, and since people generally don't think to buy them for men (and goddesses are more inclined to accept offerings than buy gifts anyway), he tends to buy them for himself from time to time.
Even though the flowers are in question, he starts leading them on their path that will take them past the florist. "I could buy you chocolates instead," he offers.
"I love flowers," she's quick to correct. "I love that you want to give me flowers. That's not--" She swallows and blinks away the storm of feelings. "It's new."
His smile is soft and even though they're still in the midst of a crowd, those puppy eyes are just for her. "I should have bought them for you sooner then. I'll buy you flowers every day, if you like, just to celebrate the honor of being in your company." He leans in to give her a quick kiss on the cheek, a bit clumsy as they're still walking. "What are your favorites?"
"Hyacinths. I always liked the way they smelled," he replies. It hadn't
hurt that purple hyacinths in particular symbolize asking for forgiveness,
and he had been worried at the time that he had upset her somehow.
This time, he buys her blue hyacinths paired with white ranunculus from his
favorite florist. He doesn't even make her listen to the flower symbolism
behind it while they walk towards home.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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It doesn't occur to them until they're already in the market, when he notices two people he thinks he might recognize from Blackstaff whispering behind their hands as they peek at him. He slows and unconsciously hunches his shoulders in to make himself smaller. He feels like some giant is holding a magnifying glass above him, focusing the rays of the sun right on him. Or maybe that's just the burning of his cheeks. Before he can suggest that they turn around and run home, Harley positions herself between him and his spectators, shining like an angler fish's lure -- come closer and get bitten, if you dare.
The onlookers decide they don't dare, and move on.
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"Oh, look!" She gasps in delight at a cart of luxury goods and darts over for a closer look. Her fingers brush over a bolt of delicate fabric that shifts from stormy gray and glimmering purple in the light. "You need something made from this!"
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As always, she is his lighthouse, guiding him through the storms in his head. The urge to run home and hide, to bury himself in astral illusions, isn't entirely gone, but it is lessened, and he smiles at her, happy to follow her over to the vendor selling fabrics.
"Do I?" he asks, eyebrows raising. It's not that he's opposed, precisely. Gale usually wears well made clothes, but when they have any flair, it's more subtle, like embroidery along hems. "Where would I wear it? Seems a bit thin for a housecoat. If we go to the market with me dressed in that, you'd have to add bells and flashing lights to your ensemble if you want to keep shielding me."
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"You need this," she repeats. It's entirely self indulgent. She doesn't expect to let him out of the bedroom whenever he wears this.
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"Now, what will we pick out for you, to go with it?" He doesn't have a keen eye for fashion, but enjoys looking at the colors, feeling the fabric textures. He holds up a deep, rich sapphire velvet that compliments her eyes and makes her look even more like a marble statue. "Bit hot out still, for velvet." He holds up the next fabric, powder blue and pale pink diamonds. "Harlequin pattern is a bit on the nose, hm?" The last fabric he picks up is a silk damask that shines like it might literally be woven from gold. He drapes it over her shoulder, as she had done for him, but just shrugs. The problem is, he thinks she looks equally beautiful in every one of them. "Alas, a sense for fashion never numbered amongst my considerable skills."
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She touches the silk carefully and admires the gleaming threads. Now that their fabric choices are close together, the combination makes her think of sun and storm clouds.
"Gale." She takes both his hands and sinks to her knee. "It's been a week."
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Gale's eyebrows lift, but he's not exactly surprised. She had been proposing to him before they had even admitted any romantic feelings, so it was only a matter of time before she asked again. Her choice in location is unexpected — she'd gone from shielding him to dressing attention — but what is Harley if not a paradox.
"Has it already been a week? It feels like but a moment, when I would spend eternity by your side." He may not be over the top on the same way that she is, but never let it be said that he doesn't have a sense of showmanship. He takes back one of his hands so that he can reach inside his pocket and produce a little box with a flourish. "I suppose that means it's time that I give you this..."
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She says it way too loud and now anyone in hearing range is definitely looking at them.
"Gale!" She laughs and pulls him down to the ground with her.
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His knees hit the dust harder than he'd like — he'll be feeling that tomorrow — but he laughs anyway. "Now, you don't even know what manner of trinket is inside the box yet! Perhaps you'll allow me a moment for it's presentation?"
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Harley draws the shimmering fabric up from his shoulders until it drapes over both of them. A secret place for just him and her.
"Okay," she says with breathless anticipation. "Go."
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He kisses her back, face absolutely burning up. He's pretty sure he can feel people staring. The feeling does not go away with the fabric over their heads, and the sheer fabric allows enough light through for her to still be able to see his flushed face.
"People probably think us absolutely mad," he points out, but he's grinning. "Are you sure you don't want to go home for this? I've been working on a very moving sonnet..." Is he teasing? It's hard to tell.
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"You're not ready," she says. "That's okay. I'll ask next week."
She leans forward again to kiss another promise into his skin.
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"It's not that."
It's that he really is working on a sonnet, and it's going to be exceptional. It's that the crowd is slowly filling him up with panic like sand in an hourglass, and what happens when all the grains run out? It's that his last attempt at a romantic gesture brought him to ruin. It's that he's dying and he's terrified of what that means. Particularly for her.
As he kisses her, one of his hands finds hers and places the little box into it. "If things were different, I swear I would do this all better. But all the same, I want you to have this, a promise of a future together. You are my lighthouse in the darkness, and I would surely sink without you. I love you, never doubt that for a moment."
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"I know that," she says between kisses. She presses her forehead against his and breathes him in. "This is perfect, because it's you. It's us. Ours." She tucks the box next to her heart. "Let's go home. I'll make a really bad dinner while you work on your sonnet, and then you can open the box for me and I'll say yes as many times as you want to hear it. Every day, for the rest of our lives."
She takes a moment to bask in their private bubble, before having to burst it. "Also, I gotta hurry up and pay for all this fabric that we've been rolling around in."
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"I suppose we had better, before they call the city guard. I'm not keen to begin my criminal record today." He leans in to give her one more lingering kiss, grinning before he's even pulled back again. "Besides, you haven't met my mother yet."
With that, he sweeps the fabric off of their heads, casts prestidigitation to clean the dust off of it (they plan to buy it, but the poor merchant looks near to fits over it, and he feels a little guilty), and rolls it back onto the bolt. There's a bit of a crowd around them, which he tries and fails to ignore. Some of them look a little confused, like they were poised to applaud a successful proposal, but they're not sure whether one happened or not. More than a couple look like they recognize him, and the thought that there will be new gossip about him (he isn't just disgraced, he's gone mad) crawls over him like fire ants. When his breathing starts coming in a little too quickly, he reaches for Harley's hand.
"We'll buy both, the entire bolts. And my apologies for the display, but aren't we all fools in love?" His expression is sweet and boyish, big brown eyes contrite, and it's clear that this is how the young, rebellious Gale probably got out of a lot of trouble both at school and perhaps with the previously mentioned Morena Dekarios. The merchant seems satisfied, whether because they've agreed to buy the merchandise instead of leaving it ruined, or because the spectacle seems to have brought more attention to their stall, doesn't really matter. They even get a discount, for 'the newlyweds', and Gale doesn't point out that it's the price point the merchant was probably prepared to be haggled down to anyway.
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Harley feels her heart go buttery soft at the sweet face he gives the merchant, and knows she can never ever let Gale know. There won't be any hope of her winning any argument if he knows how fast that would work on her.
"Let's go home, love."
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"Surely that's not the only thing you wanted to see in the market? There's an entire merchant caravan's worth of wares to consider, and I want you to look to your heart's content." It's only a little performative. Not the part where he wants her to be happy, just the part where he's unbothered by the crowds. But he wants to show her that he can be brave, that he can improve. He doesn't want to skitter back into his cage just yet. "Besides, who knows what books they might have? Or very nice paper and ink."
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Very well. The only way she can fight his lust for books is with other books. She reaches into her bag and pulls out the book of bedroom magic.
"Maybe I'm ready to go somewhere private and look at you to my heart's content." She waggles her eyebrows just in case he isn't picking up on such a subtle cue.
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They get the book and the bolts of fabric tucked away in her bag of holding, and he offers her his elbow again. "We'll compromise and take the long way home. I want to buy you flowers. Besides, don't you know that the wait makes the cake taste sweeter?" He doesn't waggle his eyebrows, but his expression is nonetheless lascivious.
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She takes his elbow when offered and looks at him a little stunned. She bites her lip on a shy smile. "You want to buy me flowers," she echoes quietly. Nobody has gone out of their way to buy her flowers before, and certainly not for no particular reason.
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Even though the flowers are in question, he starts leading them on their path that will take them past the florist. "I could buy you chocolates instead," he offers.
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"What are the ones in front of the house? You gave me those before. That's my favorite now."
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"Hyacinths. I always liked the way they smelled," he replies. It hadn't hurt that purple hyacinths in particular symbolize asking for forgiveness, and he had been worried at the time that he had upset her somehow.
This time, he buys her blue hyacinths paired with white ranunculus from his favorite florist. He doesn't even make her listen to the flower symbolism behind it while they walk towards home.
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