The Creepy-on-the-Outside, Not-Abandoned-on-the-Inside Mansion in the Woods; Tuesday [04/16].

[chef_chocobro]

It was well into the morning, well past the time that Ignis would usually be strolling into Luke's to start ordering the staff around to help him get the ingredients to work on the day's specials, and he was still very much in bed, and not at all fussed about it. The weekend had been a whirlwind and it had been a gauntlet of keeping himself calm and composed through a great deal of hurdles and a fair amount of uncomfortable situations that he tried to...well, if not make the best of, at least survive through, and he might just be perfectly content to just stay here with Liliana and make up for all the time they'd lost due to the various moving parts of their unexpected progeny.

Besides, he hadn't slept too terribly well. Quite possibly not at all, his hands idly drifting through Liliana's hair as she curled up next him (for the comfort of the position and the lulling tempo of a heartbeat, of course, and no other reasons, perish the thought), with the darkness that usually surrounded him now filled with the reminiscence of Irrim's gift. How could he sleep, with all that to replay in his head, again and again? He supposed they might graciously leak into dreams, as well, but when Ignis had dreams, they weren't exactly good ones, and it seemed like too much of a risk to chance it.

Nothing a little coffee later couldn't fix, if they ever decided to leave the bed, or, really, not even that, as the steward could just bring some, confirming even more that there truly was very little reason to leave this spot, this moment.

[[ and for the brazenly modded sleeping necromancer beside him, of course ]]

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[deathsmajesty]

Hey, now. There was one other reason for Liliana to be curled up next to him, wrapping herself around his body like morning glories around a trellis. Ignis was very warm and this was the perfect position for prime body heat theft. Times like these, when Ignis brushed her hair back to trace designs on her shoulders with his fingers, her skin was nearly the same temperature as his, though cooled rapidly once he drew away to do ridiculous things like 'get up' and 'greet the day'.

So yes, also perfect warmth harvesting position, but definitely not snuggling, no matter how it might look to anyone else, her arm draped across his torso, her cheek pillowed against his chest, one leg curled around his, making soft happy noises as he stroked her hair, the ones she only ever made half-asleep when she was only conscious enough to be aware of sensation and not her ridiculous pride.

"Mmm," she mumbled, eyes still closed, lips moving over his skin. "You're still here."

Surely just talking about him being present with her in their bed, rather than having gotten up to train or ready himself for his shift or whatever other terrible pursuit of productivity he might engage in that took him away from her.

"Glad."

[chef_chocobro]

"Mmmm." Just a soft, gentle hum of agreement, at first although he failed to comprehend what Beefslab had to do with anything, fingers now paying a little more attention to skin and shoulders, now that Liliana was awake, or slowly building up to being so, anyway.

"It's been a long weekend," he then murmured back. "It's important to take time if one hopes to recover sufficiently..."

[deathsmajesty]

As Liliana sighs and works towards removing that from her vocabulary, too.

"Mmmm," she murmured, holding him tighter. "Mine..." Her breathing evened out as she dozed off again, falling back into true sleep for another ten or so minutes before stirring back to consciousness once more. "Very long," she agreed, picking up that conversational thread with no real recognition that any time had passed.

Look, he'd just said it had been a long weekend, okay? She was a very sleepy necromancer.

"How're you doing after...all of it?"

[chef_chocobro]

"Yours," Ignis agreed, softly, and with a faint smile to match, even though he'd spent more than enough of his life sleeping in close quarters to other bodies to recognize that distinct release that indicated a slip back into slumbering. And that was fine. As Liliana slid into more sleep, he could just tap from the multitude of new resources available to him to construct a vision in his minds' eye of exactly what that looked like and linger there until she stirred again. Despite the fact that the exercise seemed to also seemed to create a dull ache behind his actual eyes, laced with a little bit of a familiar burning fire. He paid it no mind; old wounds igniting felt like a negligible price to pay.

"Better now," he said, in what was truly a substantial understatement. "Mostly just glad it's over with, and that we had that talk when we did. And you? How are you...feeling?"

[deathsmajesty]

"Also better," she said. "Overall, I'm...not quite sure. It was a very great deal and I am having trouble..." she frowned, trying to put words to vague, dissatisfied emotions. "I was clearly proven right this weekend, about my general disinterest in having children. And I would have been...disturbed, I think, to have children showing up that declared me the pinnacle of sainted motherhood or the like. But at the same time...I didn't like it. I am not feeling pleased to have been so correct, or for knowing myself so well, or discovering that even with children I continued to live out my life exactly the way I wished. And those things should make me happy. Or at least provide a general feeling of satisfaction. But I do not. And I dislike that. I am...almost disappointed in those other selves and that is not a feeling that sits well with me."

[chef_chocobro]

"Yours is a name," Ignis proposed, mused, guessed, really, but even if he wasn't hitting the mark this time, he didn't feel he was too far off from it, "that carries with it a certain expectation, a certain...standard of excellence, that is not being met. And there's little to nothing you can do to change that. That must be incredibly disheartening, even if it is something you don't necessarily care much about..."

[deathsmajesty]

"Something of that nature, yes," Liliana said, slowly nodding. "I may say that I am unfit for motherhood, but that is more in my temperament and overall desire, not capabilities. And yet, that's not how it feels. It's like watching someone do a spectacularly poor job at something and realizing that person is me. And then wondering if I, myself, would do better."

Further frowning and burrowing into him. For the warmth, of course. "I feel obscurely guilty, as if I were the one letting these children down, which is, frankly, preposterous, but also not an emotion I am used to indulging and I am not at all best pleased with it."

Well, no. She was used to her guilt being for specific and discreet incidents. This was new guilt, and therefore still very uncomfortable to carry.

Glancing up at him, her frown changed slightly and she lifted a hand to rub a small circle between his eyes. "Are you quite all right, 'Nys?"

[chef_chocobro]

There was a small wince, as the lifted hand he expected to land somewhere like his cheek wound up much higher. "I'm alright," he said. "Just a bit of a headache."

And there was a hesitation, a compulsion to just leave it at that, but he pushed past it with the decision to elaborate after all.

"Irrim shared with me some images," he explained, "before she left. I am just...unaccustomed, to the visual stimulation, I believe."

[deathsmajesty]

Liliana started pushing herself upright. "She did? Are you all right? Why?"

Dammit, she'd told the girl not to use telepathy to mess with Ignis' head!

[chef_chocobro]

"No, it's alright," said Ignis, reaching his hand out gently for Liliana's arm as she drew away, maybe to also gently coax her back, as well. And if his words, his actions, didn't convince her, then perhaps to soft, almost wistful smile on his face would.

"She did it as a way to say thank you. To share with me things I missed."

And if that didn't convince her still...

His hand lifted from her arm, to find her face.

"Mostly images of you, my 'Iana. I can hardly fault her anything for giving me that."

[deathsmajesty]

"Of me?" After the first second of confusion, she could follow the logic, yes.

And his smile...there were many things she would do to get Ignis to smile like that, and few of them so wholesome.

I do so love to look at you.
I just wish I could look back...

She settled against him once more, her hand massaging his forehead. "You...were very good with her. Good with both of them. I appreciate that. Goodness knows you had your own concerns and yet, you took great care with them." Her hand did slip then, to cup his face, to guide it to hers. "I know you will say it is simply what you were trained for and that's true enough, but...you did not have to. But you did. And I can still appreciate that. And you."

And then she kissed him, to make up for where words fell short.

[chef_chocobro]

Well, Ignis was going to lightly dismiss it all by chalking it up to old habits rather than training, but he was very uninterested in arguing the point. Because she was there and she was kissing her, and he wrapped his arms around her to pull her in to kiss her back, and the only thing he was interested in was getting completely, utterly lost in that.

This weekend truly had been far too long.

[deathsmajesty]

It seemed Liliana was inclined to agree. Because after their kiss had finally drawn to a close (though it had been a lengthy, lingering thing, the kind that had encouraged hands to wander bodies to shift closer), Liliana felt the need to inform him, "My bed was very cold and lonely the other night."

Yes, she understood the decision and even reluctantly agreed with it, but that didn't mean she couldn't let him know how terribly she had suffered in his absence.

[chef_chocobro]

"And mine," Ignis added, as he drew his hand away from where it had all but tangled itself in Liliana's hair, to brush it back behind her ear and trail his fingers along her jaw, then to the corner of her mouth, to match the touch of it to her sharp but subtle smile, now tattoed on his mind and mirrored on his own lips, "was far too warm. As well as a apt reminder that leaving your side is always a deeply rregrettable decision."

[deathsmajesty]

That earned him another kiss, the kind that started questioning the necessity of further conversation, though it ended before it could answer it, too. "I'm glad you're coming to realize that," she told him, voice surprisingly prim considering the way she'd just been kissing him a moment ago. "Do you remember, back in the beginning of our relationship, how you used to leave me deliberately? Pull yourself away from me to go elsewhere and do other things as if that could possibly keep you safe from me." She chuckled, low and dark.

Surely that would be enough to distract him from the off-hand upgrade, from dalliance to relationship.