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

[chef_chocobro]

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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[chef_chocobro]

"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?"

[deathsmajesty]

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."

[chef_chocobro]

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?

[deathsmajesty]

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.

[chef_chocobro]

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.

[deathsmajesty]

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."

[chef_chocobro]

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."

[deathsmajesty]

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.

[chef_chocobro]

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?"

[deathsmajesty]

"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?"

[chef_chocobro]

"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."

[deathsmajesty]

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.

[chef_chocobro]

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."

[deathsmajesty]

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.

[chef_chocobro]

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.

[deathsmajesty]

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."