chef_chocobro | The Progressively Less Abandoned but Still Creepy Mansion; Monday Evening [10/02].

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The Progressively Less Abandoned but Still Creepy Mansion; Monday Evening [10/02].

While Ignis knew he could just send Liliana's steward out for what he needed for dinner that evening, he much preferred to fetch them himself. He liked to have that personal hand in making sure everything he'd selected met his standards, and to be able to sway the course if, for whatever reason, they failed to do so. Besides, in defiance of the part of him that would be quite content existing further in her thrall, he felt it would be good for him to go out and get some...fresh air. Clear his head a little, after last night and some breakfast (well, brunch, really), and focus on what had been the entire purpose of his phone call last night.

(Well, not the entire purpose. At its core, he'd mostly just wanted to hear her voice again, and everything else that came with it had just been...ancillary.)

But with ingredients and supplies now in hand, he returned to the mansion and the kitchen that would now eke a smile out of him just by him existing in it, and got to work, laying out what he'd need to prepare a squid ink pasta, with some fresh bread and a request for a nice pinot gris from Liliana's own cellars.

[[ for the necronerd whose progressively less abandoned but still creepy mansion has been so shamelessly modded, por favor ]]

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Pure stubbornness. There was no good reason to defy that right-thinking part of himself, other than pure stubbornness. What did clearing his head accomplish other than making him happy to once more be back within the scent of her perfume and sound of her voice?

Well...other than get them ingredients for dinner. Obviously.

In his absence (which she barely even noticed, honest, stop looking at her like that, you don't know her, you don't know her life), she had also gotten set up in the kitchen, once more claiming a section of the countertop, that left him plenty of room to work but remained close enough for ~~mischief~~ easy conversation. She was dressed fairly casually, and under her gold headdress, her hair was pulled back in a profusion of loose, tumbling curls. "The pinot is chilling," she said as she picked up the book by her side. "Though I've poured us a sparkling Syrah to enjoy now - something a bit darker to contrast with the Pinot and..." She winked at him, certain he'd understand even if he couldn't see "...to fit in better with the imminent discussion."

Necronerd indeed.

Well, they did say, too much of a good thing....and Ignis would hardly want to wear out his welcome well before they even got to, quite literally, the main course...

"An excellent choice," he complimented approvingly, finding the glass easily and lifting it to first appreciate it by nose, by bouquet, before doing so by taste, to have just a bit to start him out and hold him over before rolling up his sleeves to get started on the bread. "May the meal that follows prove to be as fitting a companion for such lively discourse, as well."

They said a lot of things, didn't they? The question was whether or not Liliana listened.

"I have no doubt it will be," she said, already eyeing the assembled ingredients to determine which would be worth stealing during his preparations.

A moment of quiet, of thought, before she offered, "Already, it reminds me of evenings in Widdershins Hall, arguing theory over dinner, sometimes leaving partway through to run into the Sedgemoor to find this pest or that herb to lay a debate to rest..."

"And we've barely even just begun," Ignis noted. Well, in regards to this particular section of the day that had started around this time last night.

"A good comparison, I hope?" he ventured, perhaps a bit more than eager to unravel a little bit more of this scholarly, academic thread of Liliana's past that he'd been noticing glimpses of here and there, yet another enthralling facet of her that sparked his curiosity into that growing hunger for more.

"A very good one," she said, leaning back to take a sip of her Syrah. "Perhaps some of the best years of my life. Strixhaven is the most elite university in the Multiverse, founded by five dragons who realized that only through disciplined study would magic be safe in mortal hands. So, centuries ago...six--no seven, by now...over seven centuries ago they created the five Colleges to explore the dichotomies on mana that most intrigued them, and gave the university itself the mission to 'discover and preserve magical knowledge, disseminate that knowledge from one generation to the next, promote the free and open study of magic in all its forms, and enhance the lives of people throughout Arcavios through the use of magic,'" she quoted from memory. "I'm not the first Planeswalker to have ever secretly enrolled as a student there and I sincerely doubt I'll be the last."

She chuckled slightly. "It's funny, how after war and death and bloodshed, several years focused on grades and finals and winning games against your classmates can be so relaxing, but also feel so important. As if getting all of your lab reports in before the professor closes his door is on par with life-and-death."

Edited 2023-10-02 14:13 (UTC)

"Mmmm." Ignis hummed, thoughtfully, as he listened, and started in on kneading the bread with his reply. "But it does make a certain kind of sense, really. In...most academic settings" he put that emphasis in with great deference to the nature of the one they currently existed on the periphery of on his very island, "there is rigid order, there are correct ways of doing things. There may be discourse and disagreements and dialogues, but they usually exist within rules and restrictions, decorum and expectations, written or otherwise. And theoretically, the same stands for war and death and bloodshed, but, in my experience, theory is a realm strictly for the scholars. In actuality, in actual war and death and bloodshed, it's the first thing to be defenestrated, and there is a chaos there even in the more tactical of battles. So, once the fires of war have faded into ashes and cinder, there is an appeal to something that creates an order for itself and strives to actually adhere to it, in ways that seek to expand our understanding and reach for an improvement to it, rather than tear it down with more hostile intent...

"I'm reminded, a bit," he added, "of when I first started to teach here. My teaching spot was an unexpected gift, if you can fathom it, from Prompto and his sister, a concept that I was incredibly skeptical about at first. But I found, once I started, that the two of them might actually be onto something. At the time, tensions were high between our nation and our enemy; it felt like, and quite frankly was, a bubble on the brink of bursting. But when I was here, I was able to pursue and share knowledge not as a matter of survival, but rather just for the pursuit and sharing of it in and of itself. With likeminded individuals who cared not for backstabbings or resource allocations or spycraft except in that comfortable, theoretical fashion. It was...a refreshing departure."

There was a soft smile, which grew a little crooked as his lifted it toward Liliana. "Though I'm certain," he declared, "you gave enough of your professors enough hell to make them question the validity of such a perspective."

So, once the fires of war have faded into ashes and cinder, there is an appeal to something that creates an order for itself...

Hearing Ignis say that, Liliana made a noise that was...almost a laugh? Some strange kin to one anyway...agreement mixed with understanding mixed with pain. The noise of someone who had stared into the face of blood and death and pain and then hadn't just fallen into the closest thing that could offer order and understanding, but had thrown herself into it. A raw sound, something that had slipped out and then quickly swallowed back.

But when she deliberately spoke, it was only to toss her dark hair and protest, "Sir, I will have you know that I was a Witherbloom prefect."

Swallowed back quickly, yes, but certainly not so quick as to avoid being duly noted, catalogued, and nearly filed away.

And that small smile grew a bit more, just as much for Liliana's words as for the way that toss of her hair stirred up the perfume in the air, even over the yeasty promise of the bread at his fingertips.

"Your point being...?"

"That you are absolutely correct, but they loved me for it," Liliana said, with a laugh that was a real laugh, even if slightly deliberate. A turning away from whatever memories had created the other noise, a choice to focus on her time at Strixhaven and the happiness there.

Perhaps one day, if he managed to ask the right question in the right way at just the right time, she would tell him of the dish that nourished her spirit, the meal they'd been eating in Widdershins Hall the night Liliana Vess remembered how to laugh.

"I thought about staying," she admitted quietly. "Once I had gotten my degree. Becoming an instructor, working towards full professorship. But the Multiverse is vast and I had...things to do."

And should he ever be fortuitous enough to strike that perfect balance, then Ignis would owe that meal and that moment a great deal of gratitude, for what that recovered laughter could now do to his spirit.

"What sorts of things?" he asked, knowing it could be a tumultuous direction to veer, but one he felt worth attempting.

A long moment of quiet as she debated her answer. Not if she would answer, but what and which and how.

"See the Multiverse, for one thing," she said. "Explore it. Learn more."

Another long moment of quiet, her regard heavy upon him. "How we have fallen," she continued, voice soft and carrying the feeling that she was once again quoting something, "Once, we were gods, working our private havoc through planes known and unknown..." She paused to refill her wineglass.

It had been the type of question, really, where Ignis suspected that how Liliana answered would tell him just as much, if not more, than what she answered, and he felt, with those long, careful pauses, that he was not too far off.

And he took his own moment, the kneading of the dough becoming more like shaping it, until he finally set it aside underneath a towel, to then wash his hands to move onto his next task.

"And how long was that," he asked, "before your explorations brought you to this particular little corner of it?"

"Weren't you ever told it's rude to ask a lady her age?" Liliana paused to do some quick counting, though her eyes never left his face. "About a hundred and seventy-five years, give or take."

"Rude to ask, yes," Ignis agreed, the faint smile edging into a smirk as he really should have expected that response, "but no one ever said anything about just using deductive reasoning."

But he imagined an awful lot could have happened in those give-or-take hundred and seventy five years, especially considering how much had happened in only just his meager thirty-three...

There was a joke there, about necromancers and robbing graves and cradles, but he couldn't quite work his way around to a satisfactory delivery, nor did he exactly desire to germinate any sort of seed that he was clearly much too young for her.

Besides, he was far more interested in where the question he did ask next would lead.

"And what have you learned in that time?"

It did seem a bit counterproductive to the rest of the evening, didn't it?

"I don't even know how to begin to answer that," Liliana said, chuckling. "Even interpreting your question strictly to the years between leaving Strixhaven and stepping foot on this island, that's still an impossible question."

Since he hadn't quite begun the next task yet, she slid off the counter to take his hands, pressing herself against him as she shifted into a waltz form. "I learned to dance a waltz while the floor itself crumbled beneath my feet," she said, seeing if he'd let her dance him around her kitchen as she spoke. "I learned to use ghosts and spirits as spies to watch the movements of my enemies. I learned to cultivate moonglove flowers and created an entire garden that turned the air to poison once night fell. I learned to steal thoughts and secrets and memories. I learned fleshcraft and statecraft and failed to learn most handicrafts. I learned to hate angels. I learned the history of hundreds of planes and changed the futures of hundreds more. I learned what victory tasted like and I learned defeat." Over and over, she learned defeat. "I learned what it meant to be immortal and nigh-omnipotent, I learned how to put the endless ranks of the dead firmly under my command. I learned how to exert my will, my whims, on worlds that were powerless to resist me, and I learned that nothing burns so deeply is having power beyond comprehension and still being unable to undo what one has done. I learned how it felt to lose it all. I learned what I'd do to gain it back."

Around and around they whirled, until they ended up back at their starting place and she gently let go of his hand. "I learned I will never stop learning, not if I can ever help it. And that is sometimes a wonder and sometimes a misery and that it often leads to pain. But I cannot, will not stop. Because there's always something more to learn and that is a siren song."

Edited 2023-10-02 18:18 (UTC)

The more time he gave the bread before starting on the rest of the meal, the better, so the timing for an answer that involved a bit of an...interactive component couldn't be better, actually, and Ignis had all the time in the world (well, approximately twenty minutes, anyway) to meet that invitation and follow along with it, the cadence of her words and the dizzying magnitude of the depths of her experience providing the rhythm in which to move.

And then they stopped, and what could he possibly have to say to contribute anything meaningful to an answer like that? He was never once to mince words for the mere sake of saying them, but her hand that had found its way to her waist during their dance slid further along to her back, where he could then just pull her in to kiss her.

Words may have failed him, in that moment, but actions always spoke louder, didn't they?

She hadn't learned to kiss in that particular snapshot in time, but she certainly had perfected the ability then. She quite happily raised her face to his, her slender arms curling around his neck, mouth opening in an invitation to deepen it.

The bread had significantly fewer than twenty minutes remaining to rise - and her hands had unwound from his neck and had ended on his hips, pulling them closer to her own - by the time she broke the kiss in order to breathe a bit.

"How in the Blind Eternities did you expect me to answer that question, darling?" she asked, laughing softly as she looked up into his eyes.

And, well, blind eternities were likely all she would find in looking into his eyes, unless her intent was to catch her own reflection mirrored there in his glasses. But he stayed close, leaning in to rest his forehead against Liliana's as his breath caught up with him, as well.

"I didn't know," he admitted, in a murmur, a hand finding its way to her cheek, "which is why I had to ask. I suppose I expected you to be flippant, or coy, to brush it off or to dangle just small, succulent little morsels in front of me, feeding me but one little taste at a time. I certainly didn't expect for you to lay out a vast canvas of highlights all at once. Perhaps I should have..."

And then he leaned in, to kiss her again, something soft and lingering and, especially compared to that last one, incredibly tender and light, with a faint smile there at the end.

"I clearly have some catching up to do."

And even all that, really, couldn't convey quite what it really was, that caught him, in that sweeping answer. That, at the end of it all, after even so much, she still came out of it with that voracious hunger for more.

Well, she was quite beautiful, you know. And it was nice to be reminded of how much, considering the cost. And also, she'd gotten used to seeing his face, without the glasses. It didn't matter that his eyes were blank from the Lucii magic, they were still his eyes.

"Two hundred years is a lot to catch up on," Liliana noted. Which was true, even if those two hundred years were editorialized. Heavily editorialized. "It would be for anyone, never mind someone who walked the Multiverse."

Cold fingers traced the patrician curve of his lips before she leaned up to brush lips warmed by his own against them once more. "I will admit, though, I'm quite pleased to have defied expectations."

If Liliana thought she could pass those fingers over Ignis' lips without them pursing to kiss them lightly in passing, then there was at least another thing for her to learn, but her lips were a very welcome follow-up, as well.

"Since the very moment I met you," he informed her, "and consistently ever since."

Liliana wasn't about to argue with more kisses, fingertips or not. Which was why she was leaning in to flick her tongue over his lower lip, too.

"How could I be defying expectations before you even knew me enough to have formed any?" Liliana teased.

Ignis couldn't help letting out a soft laugh against her lips.

"Do you really think," he asked, "I'd have ever expected to meet someone like you at a speed-dating event I was dragged to by my roommate?"

"And why wouldn't someone like me be at a speed-dating event?" Liliana asked with a throaty laugh, drawing a line down the column of his throat with a nail. "Or is it less speed-dating events in general and more the kind that your roommate brings you to specifically?"

"Let's just say," Ignis drawled, lifting his chin with the drag of that fingernail, "I didn't go in with the highest of expectations."

Well, if he was just going to bare his throat to her, Liliana really had no choice but to lean in and bite it. Her teeth sank into the sensitive part of his neck, the bite slow and deliberate before she let the skin slide free, and pressed her lips to where the skin was already returning to the proper color.

"You look good wearing my marks," she murmured, finger pushing gently against the spot.

Head tilting back just that little bit more, a sound escaped Ignis, mostly a low, appreciative moan with just a touch of a gasp.

"I'll have to take your word for it," he murmured, hand drifting up to the back of her neck, into the soft curls of her hair.

"But I also suspect..." he said, lowering his head again, as his hand moved to trail a finger forward along her jawline, until it could curl under her chin and gently lift her face toward his. When he then went to kiss her again, he deliberately bypassed her lips entirely to land it against the jawline, where he followed the path his finger had taken until he reached her earlobe. His tongue ushered it in between his teeth for a bite with a slight pull as he pulled away, only far enough to finish is thought in a whisper.

"You'd look even better in mine."

Liliana made a soft, sulky noise when he teased her by moving past her lips, but it quickly transmuted into a sigh of contentment once he began to kiss his way towards her ear. And then his teeth struck, her hands spasming in his shirt, a low shiver racing through her. Though it was his words that hit her hardest, leaving her clinging to him as her knees buckled slightly.

"I'll wear your marks like jewelry..." she promised, this time offering her throat to him.

Gods, it was a good thing he hadn't yet begun on their neal in earnest yet.

"Only the finest," Ignis vowed in return, and, leaning in, wrapped his arms around Liliana to lift her up and back to the spot she'd previously occupied in the counter, except now the was right there against her and making the most of her generous offer by burying himself into it.

Dinner? Bold of Ignis to assume she was aware of anything in the kitchen beyond him. Well, him and the large number of flat surfaces they could take advantage of.

Her nails dug into his back as his mouth claimed her throat, her head lolling backwards as pain-sharpened pleasure unfurled through her bloodstream. Silky black hair fell down her back and brushed against his arms. A moment later, she started to pull at the fabric of his shirt, trying to gather it up into her hands. Skin. She wanted to feel his skin beneath her palms, against her lips, between her thighs. "The kind that linger," she continued in a whisper, barely aware that she was speaking, never mind what she was saying. "So I can feel you for days."

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The Progressively Less Abandoned but Still Creepy Mansion; Monday Evening [10/02].

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