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tamingthemuseTitle: Random Pages from the Histories, III
Fandom: Original Fiction
Prompt: Hovel
Warnings: Language, Sex
Rating: R
Summary: When wishes collide… (or to be terribly cliché about it, be careful what you wish for).
Word Count: 3,917
Author’s Note:This particular piece is something I’ve toyed with for a while, mostly because I ache for the character of Xavier in his unrequited passion for Sylvie. This assuages some of my guilt over that. In terms of the storyline in the trilogy, this piece takes place between the piece I posted for Mens Rea and the piece I posted for Woolly. Chronologically, however, this piece ends about 20 years before the Mens Rea piece, and that would not be obvious to anyone who hasn’t read the books. (Kind of like when I read meredevachon’s SPN fics since I don’t watch the show.)
Finally, for backstory: Xavier is approximately 27 years older than Sylvie. He’s a contemporary of her father’s and, eventually, becomes a good friend of her father’s (before the beginning of this piece). Occupationally, he’s a professional mediator - not the typical lawyer-mediator you might think of. He’s more like a mediator you might find on ATS. Sylvie’s entire life from age 3 is dominated by a mediated relationship between herself and The Church with Xavier serving as mediator. The man who hires him to do this is named Jonah. I think that’s all you have to know for this one. I hope you enjoy it. Sorry the notes are longer than the story!
Previous Randomness:
Random Pages from the Histories, I
Random Pages from the Histories, II
Random Pages from the Histories, III
When the door to the library closed, I looked up from my book and smiled at the intruder.
“Sylvie. This is an unexpected pleasure. Do you need something?”
Shaking her head, she took the seat across from the desk where my feet rested. “No, not specifically.” An impish look lit her eyes and seemed to polarize the air around us. “I was just a little bored, a little homesick. If you’re busy…” She nodded in the direction of the book as her words faded.
“Not at all.” I snapped the cover closed and took my feet off of the desk. “Would you like to go somewhere? Into town perhaps and do a bit of shopping?” An idea came to me then. “How about a ride? You’ve only seen the vineyard from the road, and there are spaces here I think would suit you.”
Her eyes brightened even further at the suggestion, and she clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, that would be lovely.” She stood and looked at the short shift she was wearing. “But I need to change…”
I laughed and stood as well. “Go ahead. There’s no timetable, and I’ll ask Paulette to fix us a hamper while you’re getting ready. Just meet me in the kitchen.”
A few minutes later, I took the basket from Paulette and led Sylvie out the kitchen door and through my mother’s gardens toward the stable. Paulette’s look of amusement was not lost on me, but I didn’t think Sylvie noticed. Whatever my parents and the staff thought of this strange creature I’d brought to visit didn’t concern me. All I cared about was that she was here… here in France with me and not leaving anytime soon. She needed rest. I needed her nearness. What the future would bring, it would bring.
I nodded to Claude absently when we entered the dark coolness of the stables. It took a moment to readjust my eyes, having left the bright sun outside the wooden doors, but soon I could see. The basket was left near the door, and I led Sylvie down the aisle between the stalls so she could choose a mount. It had occurred to me to suggest the old black. He was even-tempered and gentle with new riders, and I knew she would have an easy time with him. Instead, I gave in to temptation and allowed her to choose. Although she looked at every horse carefully, Sylvie’s eyes continued to stray back to Angelique, a beauty of a grey just four years old and a personal favorite of mine. Timidly, she met my gaze.
“May I, Xavier?”
“Certainly, and a fine choice you’ve made. Sylvie Solon, meet Angelique.” And to the horse, “Angelique, take care of this rider. She is unlike any you have ever carried before today or will ever carry afterwards.” Sylvie giggled at my gallantry, a lovely girlish sound, and I called to Claude.
While the old hand readied Angelique, I retrieved Brute, my own stallion, too seldom ridden because he refused all riders except for myself and I was so rarely at home. A few sweet words, a few soothing strokes, and he was ready for the saddle. All told, it took us little more than an hour from the time Sylvie came into the library before we were riding slowly down the first of the timeworn paths toward the orchard.
Angelique was, typically, an angel with Sylvie straddling her. From time to time, I looked over my shoulder to reassure myself, and each time I did, Sylvie flashed a wide smile. I tried not to notice the slim denims and oversized navy wool sweater, tried not to notice how they emphasized both her curves and her slightness. And I intentionally avoided looking at her hair. When the wind picked up and tossed it about her face, she looked like some sort of otherworldly being, some ethereal source of light and hope. It was excruciating; so, perhaps I did notice a bit after all.
As we entered the first rows of vines, I heard Sylvie catch her breath, and I pulled sharply on Brute’s reins. The paths were wide enough now to ride two abreast, and I wanted to be able to talk to her as we ambled. In response to her reaction, I smiled. “It is impressive, isn’t it?” When she nodded, I decided on a confession. “Even though I was born and raised here, it still impresses me. I wanted nothing to do with all of this, still don’t really, but I can’t deny the sheer force of the land and seeing the men out here working.”
Sylvie was shaking her head. “I can’t believe you gave all of this up.”
“But I didn’t! I come home whenever I feel like it, and Pierre will never be able to shut me out of things entirely. If I truly wanted to be here, I could be. Farming isn’t for me, Sylvie, but I can see its appeal for others when I’m out here surrounded by the vines.”
We approached an intersection in the acres of grapes, and I headed to the left, away from the house and toward a neighboring copse of elms. There was a stream in a clearing there I knew Sylvie would love. Initially, she followed me as I headed southwest, but I soon heard her laugh again. Then she was beside me, urging Angelique forward until she had passed and was outpacing me by a great deal. Brute could overtake them, I knew, but I didn’t really want him to. With Sylvie in front of me, concentrating on keeping the grey underneath her, I could watch her without fear of being caught. Nudging Brute slightly, I pushed him into a canter, content to follow for the time being.
In front of me, Sylvie’s slender form posted beautifully astride Angelique, and the wind came to call her hair into blissful flight at the same time. My heart caught in my throat, and it was difficult to answer when she turned to me a few minutes later. We were almost upon the trees.
“I thought you were leading, Xavier! Where do I go now?”
“A little to your left there’s a path into the woods. Just follow that… but you might want to slow down a bit.”
We rode the rest of the way in silence. The path would lead her directly to the stream, and I slowed Brute to a walk again. I no longer wanted to show her the clearing. I wanted to come upon her in it. Somehow, I knew she would look as if she’d always dwelt in that space, and I wanted to see her already there as if she had. I was not disappointed. When I slid at last from my beast’s back and unhooked the hamper from the saddle, Sylvie was stretched beneath an elm, idly holding Angelique’s reins while the horse drank from the stream. Sylvie’s eyes were closed, but she heard me approaching, heard Brute snort and sniff at the air. I led him to the stream, dropping his reins, and sitting the hamper on the ground as I did.
“You can let go her reins,” I said to Sylvie. “She won’t wander. Angelique knows this area well as does Brute. I told you you’d chosen well.”
My only answer was a brief nod. Then Sylvie laid Angelique’s reins on the ground and sat up abruptly. She looked at me with those blue-green eyes, serious and intent, and I felt myself blush under the scrutiny.
“Yes?” I managed at last.
She smiled briefly. “Nothing, Xavier. Just… thank you for bringing me here. It’s lovely.”
I nodded in return. “I thought you would like it… had hoped you would like it.” The corner of a red handkerchief caught my eye as it poked out of the hamper. “Hungry?”
“Famished!” She rose to her knees and helped me unload Paulette’s treasures. Crisp apples from the orchard. A pair of pears. Fresh brown bread. “There’s bound to be cheese in here somewhere,” she said as we continued to dig, and there was. A fine brie cut into a sharp wedge was suddenly in her hand as I pulled the last of the items from the hamper’s depths… a Chateau de l’Oeillet burgundy and two crystal stems. At those Sylvie arched a brow. “Crystal in a picnic basket?”
“We are picnicking in the middle of a vineyard and a damned fine one at that!”
“So you’re telling me crystal in the hamper is commonplace?”
I could tell she was teasing me, and the feeling that produced was pleasant. I grinned and nodded, and all at once her face was full of wonder. I sat the bottle down and took a moment to balance the stems on the uneven ground as well as balance my mind. “Why are you suddenly looking at me like that?”
“Because I’ve never seen you like you were just then.”
“Sylvie, you’ve known me since you were fifteen. You’ve seen me just about every way there is to see me by now.”
Only she hadn’t, and both of us knew it.
“Not like that,” she protested. “You were… unburdened. Lighthearted. I know the rarity of the emotion, because I almost never see my father look that way either. It surprised me, that’s all.”
“Well, if that’s all, then we should eat. You’re famished, and I’m…”
“Well, that’s not entirely all…”
I risked another look at her then. Something in her voice… could she possibly know? She sat staring at me as she had earlier, her legs crossed beneath her and the sweater looking like some older, larger sibling’s hand-me-down. I happened to know it was actually stolen from her father’s wardrobe, but that was beside the point. Her hair, all of it unbound, floated around her head and down to the ground behind her, its rich honey color sparkling in the afternoon sunlight filtering through the trees. She was so very… alive… and everything around her was when she was there. Even me. I met the aquamarine eyes fully and cleared my throat.
“There’s more?”
Sylvie nodded. “It suits you, having a look of being unburdened does.” She clenched her fists and shook her head a little. “That’s not quite it. What I mean to say is that you look very… appealing when you smile like that. Usually, when you smile, your mouth and your eyes are saying different things. Just then, they were in harmony. I like that in you, wish I saw it more often.”
I had to move us away from this territory. Had to. Soon, I would begin to tell her things, tell her how I felt, and there would be no recovery from that. I had to make a game of it… now. I tossed an apple her way and said as I did, “Thank you. I think that’s the kindest thing I’ve heard in a while. Perhaps I should come home more often. Something about the air here…”
“Xavier, I know.”
I stopped moving and did not look at her.
“Know what, Sylvie?”
“I know what you’re feeling… what you’ve been feeling since that first real meeting.”
I had to look at her then. When I met her gaze, I wished immediately I hadn’t. There was such naked pain in her eyes, and the pain connected us so I felt what she felt. Sylvie was not without feelings for me, but they were not strong enough that she would leave behind what she’d built with Kincaid. Perhaps they were that strong, but if so, they were the wrong emotions.
“I love you both,” she said simply. There was nothing with which I could respond to that, and I didn’t try. “I love you both, but very differently. I am not my father, and still your pain is too great for me to bear any longer.”
“We shouldn’t have started this conversation.” I continued to diligently set out Paulette’s treats, looking away from her and praying fervently she would stop. She didn’t. Finally, I had to ask the obvious question. “How did you know?”
“Papa told me.”
“Etienne?” That shocked me. “But we’ve not spoken of it, not openly at any rate. When did he tell you?”
“A long time ago, Xavier. He wanted me to be cautious of your feelings, but I kept stumbling over myself trying to do that. I think I hurt you more deeply because I didn’t want you to be hurt. Does that make sense?”
“Very much.”
“I used to think I could make you stop loving me.”
This surprised me, and I had to look at her again. “Magically?” She nodded. “Why didn’t you?”
“I couldn’t find the right spell.”
We both laughed at that, and then the truth came to me quite clearly. “I’m glad. I don’t want to stop loving you. Truthfully, if you offered yourself to me completely, I don’t think I could accept. The burden of what you would give up would be too great. I do wish I could forget this conversation ever took place.”
Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You said that intentionally, didn’t you? You said that, because you knew I could make that happen.”
It was my turn to nod. “I remember what you did with Kincaid.”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t forget the conversation, Xavier.”
“I know. I wouldn’t ask that of you, Sylvie. I’m not asking that of you. If only you could bend the bands of time…”
“…so that we could both forget and go back to the way it was fifteen minutes ago?”
“Yes.”
“My Granny Thalia could have…”
“So could you then.”
“Perhaps, but I wouldn’t know how.”
The only thing I knew at that moment was I had two options. Convince her she could do it and make her do it or else never see her again. I couldn’t be around her knowing for certain she knew my true heart. I simply… couldn’t. Casually, I took a bite from a pear before uncorking the wine. I poured two glasses and handed one to Sylvie. Neither of us spoke again for several minutes. Finally, I ventured a timid, “Do you have to know how?”
She had been sipping the wine when I spoke and almost laughed with her mouth full. “I would think so, Xavier.”
“Seriously, Sylvie. You didn’t know what you could do when you healed Declan O’Leary. Is this so different?”
I was able to look at her again, and she sat pensively considering my question. “I’m not sure,” she said at last, “but it’s possible I could. Would it be all right to eat while I think about it?”
We did eat then, slowly, savoring all the goodness nature’s bounty and cousin Pierre’s hard work had to offer. As Sylvie was kneeling to reload the hamper, her hand stopped near a plant on the ground, and she bent over to inspect it closely. We’d not spoken of our conversation in the past half hour, but I knew she hadn’t forgotten. When she straightened with a bit of the plant in her hand, there was a wide smile on her face.
“Job’s Tears! Xavier, I do think I can manage something to make us both forget.”
I placed the stems, cleaned as well as they could be in the stream, back into the hamper gently. “And it takes that plant?”
“Yes! How lucky we were to be sitting here and how silly of me to overlook it.”
“And how aptly named the weed is,” I commented dryly.
Sylvie’s brow wrinkled a little. “I don’t understand…”
“Job… from the Bible… he was a man who…”
But she was already nodding. “Yes, I remember. I know perfectly well the story of Job. I’d just forgotten you were a Christian. My apologies.”
“None needed,” I said with complete sincerity. “So, what do we do?”
“I think I just have to wish it, wish we forget, with the seeds… seven seeds if I remember correctly. We’ll have to take the flowers apart…” She was already harvesting the seed from one tiny, bell-shaped flower. I sat near her while she set about the laborious task, and soon, seven seeds sat cradled in the warmth of her small hand.
“You just wish it?” I asked.
Sylvie shrugged. “Pretty much. The spell requires water though, running water.”
“The stream.”
“Yes. I place my wish in the seeds and send them into the water.”
I watched her close her eyes, saw her long lashes lying across her cheeks as she placed her will into those seeds, and for just an instant I wished, too… wished she would forget why she couldn’t love me as I loved her, wished she would return that love for a brief moment even if she only later dreamt she’d done so. I didn’t think at all about the consequences, didn’t really think I was wishing on the seeds as she was or that I had the power to have such a wish come true. I simply allowed myself to feel, and I never allowed myself that with regard to Sylvie Solon.
Then the seeds were in the water, floating downstream, and Sylvie was looking at me strangely, even more strangely than she had earlier. The beauty of youth and health on her cheeks, the depth of her eyes, I looked at her and decided what the hell. If we were going to forget it all anyway…
Leaving the thought unformed, I pulled her to me roughly. For an instant, she trembled against my chest, one hand clutching my shirt as we stood together. I’d often held Sylvie in friendship and in comfort, but I’d never touched her in desire… not even in my dreams. Now, she was crushed to me, and my hands were buried in that extravagant hair. It covered my arms and raised gooseflesh in every place it touched. A moment later, she laughed nervously.
“Why have you never done that before, Xavier? Just taken hold of me like that? I know you’ve wanted to…”
This was the same conversation again only different. The why was Kincaid, or more accurately, Sylvie’s love for that other man. How could she be asking me why now?
The wish.
My wish.
If it were my wish, then I didn’t have long. I squinted into the stream, narrowing my eyes against the sun’s reflection, trying desperately to see the seeds floating on the surface. They were there, close still but already moving with the slow current. I didn’t have nearly the time I wanted…
“Don’t worry about why, Sylvie.” The words came from my mouth, sounded like my own words, but I knew they weren’t. They were a living dream, the manifestation of years of longing and denial. And they would never be spoken again. “I love you.”
“Xavier…”
“Hush, Sylvie. We don’t have a lot of time. I love you. Please just let me say it…” But she interrupted me, her face upturned to look at mine stalling all further speech. Her eyes swam with tears of recognition. I kissed her, ungently and with all the passion I’d carried so long in what I thought was utter secrecy. Her mouth responded to the pressure, and I found her suddenly wrapped around me, arms, legs, and hair. I lifted her easily, and she bent her legs around my waist. I turned and a few steps later, backed her into the gargantuan trunk of an ancient elm. Her breath came in a rush from the impact, but I returned my mouth to hers and gave her no time to recover.
Between the tree and my body, Sylvie had ample support, her slender frame born by my waist, and I reached beneath her sweater. At the first contact of my hands on her bare skin, I felt an electric jolt, and I couldn’t tell if this were due to simple human chemistry or some byproduct of her magic. It didn’t matter. I pushed the sweater over her head, tossed it to the ground, and bent my mouth to her neck. There her pulse pounded, and I felt the rhythm of it beneath my tongue. All the while, Sylvie’s hands grasped at my hair and my shirt, anything with which they could make contact, and her breath came in quick, sweet gasps beside my ear.
Knowing there were only precious moments remaining, I laid her on the ground, pillowing her head on her own sweater – Etienne’s sweater, I remembered, and I felt a pang of guilt – and then I stopped. Sylvie’s eyes flew open immediately.
“What is it, Xavier?”
I shook my head against the confusion already beginning to set in from the spell. What were we doing? I couldn’t remember… and her hands were unbuckling my belt, unzipping my trousers. I ventured a look. Sylvie lay naked beside me on the stream’s bank. When had she taken off her denims? I couldn’t think… and she was reaching for me again, opening her legs, and I was falling into her, utterly lost.
The telephone rang insistently in my head, and I couldn’t understand why I could hear a telephone at all when I was in the copse cradling… there was no one, nothing in my arms. I sat up in the bed and wept. I didn’t know of whom I dreamt or why I wept, but the desolation caused a wrenching from within. Slowly, I turned and picked up the receiver.
“'Allo?”
“Xavier. Sorry to wake you.”
“It’s all right, Cyrus. What can I do for you?” While I waited for his answer, I glanced at the digital clock on the hotel nightstand. Fucking, stinking hovel of a home. Not the family manor in France then. Why did I think I was…? The clock read three in the morning. This had better be good.
“There’s a man I’d like you to meet.”
“Now? You can’t be serious.”
“He’ll be there in an hour. I wanted you to have time to get fresh. He won’t have long, and he isn’t known for his patience with slow thinkers.”
“Is it a good one?”
Cyrus hesitated. That was a first. When he answered, I felt a shiver of foreboding.
“Xavier, I know nothing about the job. What I do know is that this is the sort of job which could make your career.”
“Thanks to you, my career’s already been made, Cyrus.”
“Just hear the man out. I need to go now. Good luck, Xavier.”
“Wait! Does the man have a name, Cyrus?”
“Jonah.”
Cyrus rang off.
In the hotel shower hours later, water pounded my back in rhythm with the thoughts pounding my mind. Steam hung on the air, swirled around my head not unlike the fog inside it. I fought the urge to put my fist through the pristine white tile surrounding me. The job. Always the fucking job. Only this time it had gotten out of hand. If I said yes this time, I was taking on more than I’d ever encountered before. Despite my noted lack of superstition, I couldn’t help the feeling of cold snaking down my spine. I wanted to say no. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I knew I had to say no. Giving in to temptation, I smashed my fist into the unforgiving tile, then cradled my pulsing hand against my chest as I stood under the spray. He wanted an answer tomorrow. I would say yes tomorrow.
Fandom: Original Fiction
Prompt: Hovel
Warnings: Language, Sex
Rating: R
Summary: When wishes collide… (or to be terribly cliché about it, be careful what you wish for).
Word Count: 3,917
Author’s Note:This particular piece is something I’ve toyed with for a while, mostly because I ache for the character of Xavier in his unrequited passion for Sylvie. This assuages some of my guilt over that. In terms of the storyline in the trilogy, this piece takes place between the piece I posted for Mens Rea and the piece I posted for Woolly. Chronologically, however, this piece ends about 20 years before the Mens Rea piece, and that would not be obvious to anyone who hasn’t read the books. (Kind of like when I read meredevachon’s SPN fics since I don’t watch the show.)
Finally, for backstory: Xavier is approximately 27 years older than Sylvie. He’s a contemporary of her father’s and, eventually, becomes a good friend of her father’s (before the beginning of this piece). Occupationally, he’s a professional mediator - not the typical lawyer-mediator you might think of. He’s more like a mediator you might find on ATS. Sylvie’s entire life from age 3 is dominated by a mediated relationship between herself and The Church with Xavier serving as mediator. The man who hires him to do this is named Jonah. I think that’s all you have to know for this one. I hope you enjoy it. Sorry the notes are longer than the story!
Previous Randomness:
Random Pages from the Histories, I
Random Pages from the Histories, II
Random Pages from the Histories, III
When the door to the library closed, I looked up from my book and smiled at the intruder.
“Sylvie. This is an unexpected pleasure. Do you need something?”
Shaking her head, she took the seat across from the desk where my feet rested. “No, not specifically.” An impish look lit her eyes and seemed to polarize the air around us. “I was just a little bored, a little homesick. If you’re busy…” She nodded in the direction of the book as her words faded.
“Not at all.” I snapped the cover closed and took my feet off of the desk. “Would you like to go somewhere? Into town perhaps and do a bit of shopping?” An idea came to me then. “How about a ride? You’ve only seen the vineyard from the road, and there are spaces here I think would suit you.”
Her eyes brightened even further at the suggestion, and she clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, that would be lovely.” She stood and looked at the short shift she was wearing. “But I need to change…”
I laughed and stood as well. “Go ahead. There’s no timetable, and I’ll ask Paulette to fix us a hamper while you’re getting ready. Just meet me in the kitchen.”
A few minutes later, I took the basket from Paulette and led Sylvie out the kitchen door and through my mother’s gardens toward the stable. Paulette’s look of amusement was not lost on me, but I didn’t think Sylvie noticed. Whatever my parents and the staff thought of this strange creature I’d brought to visit didn’t concern me. All I cared about was that she was here… here in France with me and not leaving anytime soon. She needed rest. I needed her nearness. What the future would bring, it would bring.
I nodded to Claude absently when we entered the dark coolness of the stables. It took a moment to readjust my eyes, having left the bright sun outside the wooden doors, but soon I could see. The basket was left near the door, and I led Sylvie down the aisle between the stalls so she could choose a mount. It had occurred to me to suggest the old black. He was even-tempered and gentle with new riders, and I knew she would have an easy time with him. Instead, I gave in to temptation and allowed her to choose. Although she looked at every horse carefully, Sylvie’s eyes continued to stray back to Angelique, a beauty of a grey just four years old and a personal favorite of mine. Timidly, she met my gaze.
“May I, Xavier?”
“Certainly, and a fine choice you’ve made. Sylvie Solon, meet Angelique.” And to the horse, “Angelique, take care of this rider. She is unlike any you have ever carried before today or will ever carry afterwards.” Sylvie giggled at my gallantry, a lovely girlish sound, and I called to Claude.
While the old hand readied Angelique, I retrieved Brute, my own stallion, too seldom ridden because he refused all riders except for myself and I was so rarely at home. A few sweet words, a few soothing strokes, and he was ready for the saddle. All told, it took us little more than an hour from the time Sylvie came into the library before we were riding slowly down the first of the timeworn paths toward the orchard.
Angelique was, typically, an angel with Sylvie straddling her. From time to time, I looked over my shoulder to reassure myself, and each time I did, Sylvie flashed a wide smile. I tried not to notice the slim denims and oversized navy wool sweater, tried not to notice how they emphasized both her curves and her slightness. And I intentionally avoided looking at her hair. When the wind picked up and tossed it about her face, she looked like some sort of otherworldly being, some ethereal source of light and hope. It was excruciating; so, perhaps I did notice a bit after all.
As we entered the first rows of vines, I heard Sylvie catch her breath, and I pulled sharply on Brute’s reins. The paths were wide enough now to ride two abreast, and I wanted to be able to talk to her as we ambled. In response to her reaction, I smiled. “It is impressive, isn’t it?” When she nodded, I decided on a confession. “Even though I was born and raised here, it still impresses me. I wanted nothing to do with all of this, still don’t really, but I can’t deny the sheer force of the land and seeing the men out here working.”
Sylvie was shaking her head. “I can’t believe you gave all of this up.”
“But I didn’t! I come home whenever I feel like it, and Pierre will never be able to shut me out of things entirely. If I truly wanted to be here, I could be. Farming isn’t for me, Sylvie, but I can see its appeal for others when I’m out here surrounded by the vines.”
We approached an intersection in the acres of grapes, and I headed to the left, away from the house and toward a neighboring copse of elms. There was a stream in a clearing there I knew Sylvie would love. Initially, she followed me as I headed southwest, but I soon heard her laugh again. Then she was beside me, urging Angelique forward until she had passed and was outpacing me by a great deal. Brute could overtake them, I knew, but I didn’t really want him to. With Sylvie in front of me, concentrating on keeping the grey underneath her, I could watch her without fear of being caught. Nudging Brute slightly, I pushed him into a canter, content to follow for the time being.
In front of me, Sylvie’s slender form posted beautifully astride Angelique, and the wind came to call her hair into blissful flight at the same time. My heart caught in my throat, and it was difficult to answer when she turned to me a few minutes later. We were almost upon the trees.
“I thought you were leading, Xavier! Where do I go now?”
“A little to your left there’s a path into the woods. Just follow that… but you might want to slow down a bit.”
We rode the rest of the way in silence. The path would lead her directly to the stream, and I slowed Brute to a walk again. I no longer wanted to show her the clearing. I wanted to come upon her in it. Somehow, I knew she would look as if she’d always dwelt in that space, and I wanted to see her already there as if she had. I was not disappointed. When I slid at last from my beast’s back and unhooked the hamper from the saddle, Sylvie was stretched beneath an elm, idly holding Angelique’s reins while the horse drank from the stream. Sylvie’s eyes were closed, but she heard me approaching, heard Brute snort and sniff at the air. I led him to the stream, dropping his reins, and sitting the hamper on the ground as I did.
“You can let go her reins,” I said to Sylvie. “She won’t wander. Angelique knows this area well as does Brute. I told you you’d chosen well.”
My only answer was a brief nod. Then Sylvie laid Angelique’s reins on the ground and sat up abruptly. She looked at me with those blue-green eyes, serious and intent, and I felt myself blush under the scrutiny.
“Yes?” I managed at last.
She smiled briefly. “Nothing, Xavier. Just… thank you for bringing me here. It’s lovely.”
I nodded in return. “I thought you would like it… had hoped you would like it.” The corner of a red handkerchief caught my eye as it poked out of the hamper. “Hungry?”
“Famished!” She rose to her knees and helped me unload Paulette’s treasures. Crisp apples from the orchard. A pair of pears. Fresh brown bread. “There’s bound to be cheese in here somewhere,” she said as we continued to dig, and there was. A fine brie cut into a sharp wedge was suddenly in her hand as I pulled the last of the items from the hamper’s depths… a Chateau de l’Oeillet burgundy and two crystal stems. At those Sylvie arched a brow. “Crystal in a picnic basket?”
“We are picnicking in the middle of a vineyard and a damned fine one at that!”
“So you’re telling me crystal in the hamper is commonplace?”
I could tell she was teasing me, and the feeling that produced was pleasant. I grinned and nodded, and all at once her face was full of wonder. I sat the bottle down and took a moment to balance the stems on the uneven ground as well as balance my mind. “Why are you suddenly looking at me like that?”
“Because I’ve never seen you like you were just then.”
“Sylvie, you’ve known me since you were fifteen. You’ve seen me just about every way there is to see me by now.”
Only she hadn’t, and both of us knew it.
“Not like that,” she protested. “You were… unburdened. Lighthearted. I know the rarity of the emotion, because I almost never see my father look that way either. It surprised me, that’s all.”
“Well, if that’s all, then we should eat. You’re famished, and I’m…”
“Well, that’s not entirely all…”
I risked another look at her then. Something in her voice… could she possibly know? She sat staring at me as she had earlier, her legs crossed beneath her and the sweater looking like some older, larger sibling’s hand-me-down. I happened to know it was actually stolen from her father’s wardrobe, but that was beside the point. Her hair, all of it unbound, floated around her head and down to the ground behind her, its rich honey color sparkling in the afternoon sunlight filtering through the trees. She was so very… alive… and everything around her was when she was there. Even me. I met the aquamarine eyes fully and cleared my throat.
“There’s more?”
Sylvie nodded. “It suits you, having a look of being unburdened does.” She clenched her fists and shook her head a little. “That’s not quite it. What I mean to say is that you look very… appealing when you smile like that. Usually, when you smile, your mouth and your eyes are saying different things. Just then, they were in harmony. I like that in you, wish I saw it more often.”
I had to move us away from this territory. Had to. Soon, I would begin to tell her things, tell her how I felt, and there would be no recovery from that. I had to make a game of it… now. I tossed an apple her way and said as I did, “Thank you. I think that’s the kindest thing I’ve heard in a while. Perhaps I should come home more often. Something about the air here…”
“Xavier, I know.”
I stopped moving and did not look at her.
“Know what, Sylvie?”
“I know what you’re feeling… what you’ve been feeling since that first real meeting.”
I had to look at her then. When I met her gaze, I wished immediately I hadn’t. There was such naked pain in her eyes, and the pain connected us so I felt what she felt. Sylvie was not without feelings for me, but they were not strong enough that she would leave behind what she’d built with Kincaid. Perhaps they were that strong, but if so, they were the wrong emotions.
“I love you both,” she said simply. There was nothing with which I could respond to that, and I didn’t try. “I love you both, but very differently. I am not my father, and still your pain is too great for me to bear any longer.”
“We shouldn’t have started this conversation.” I continued to diligently set out Paulette’s treats, looking away from her and praying fervently she would stop. She didn’t. Finally, I had to ask the obvious question. “How did you know?”
“Papa told me.”
“Etienne?” That shocked me. “But we’ve not spoken of it, not openly at any rate. When did he tell you?”
“A long time ago, Xavier. He wanted me to be cautious of your feelings, but I kept stumbling over myself trying to do that. I think I hurt you more deeply because I didn’t want you to be hurt. Does that make sense?”
“Very much.”
“I used to think I could make you stop loving me.”
This surprised me, and I had to look at her again. “Magically?” She nodded. “Why didn’t you?”
“I couldn’t find the right spell.”
We both laughed at that, and then the truth came to me quite clearly. “I’m glad. I don’t want to stop loving you. Truthfully, if you offered yourself to me completely, I don’t think I could accept. The burden of what you would give up would be too great. I do wish I could forget this conversation ever took place.”
Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You said that intentionally, didn’t you? You said that, because you knew I could make that happen.”
It was my turn to nod. “I remember what you did with Kincaid.”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t forget the conversation, Xavier.”
“I know. I wouldn’t ask that of you, Sylvie. I’m not asking that of you. If only you could bend the bands of time…”
“…so that we could both forget and go back to the way it was fifteen minutes ago?”
“Yes.”
“My Granny Thalia could have…”
“So could you then.”
“Perhaps, but I wouldn’t know how.”
The only thing I knew at that moment was I had two options. Convince her she could do it and make her do it or else never see her again. I couldn’t be around her knowing for certain she knew my true heart. I simply… couldn’t. Casually, I took a bite from a pear before uncorking the wine. I poured two glasses and handed one to Sylvie. Neither of us spoke again for several minutes. Finally, I ventured a timid, “Do you have to know how?”
She had been sipping the wine when I spoke and almost laughed with her mouth full. “I would think so, Xavier.”
“Seriously, Sylvie. You didn’t know what you could do when you healed Declan O’Leary. Is this so different?”
I was able to look at her again, and she sat pensively considering my question. “I’m not sure,” she said at last, “but it’s possible I could. Would it be all right to eat while I think about it?”
We did eat then, slowly, savoring all the goodness nature’s bounty and cousin Pierre’s hard work had to offer. As Sylvie was kneeling to reload the hamper, her hand stopped near a plant on the ground, and she bent over to inspect it closely. We’d not spoken of our conversation in the past half hour, but I knew she hadn’t forgotten. When she straightened with a bit of the plant in her hand, there was a wide smile on her face.
“Job’s Tears! Xavier, I do think I can manage something to make us both forget.”
I placed the stems, cleaned as well as they could be in the stream, back into the hamper gently. “And it takes that plant?”
“Yes! How lucky we were to be sitting here and how silly of me to overlook it.”
“And how aptly named the weed is,” I commented dryly.
Sylvie’s brow wrinkled a little. “I don’t understand…”
“Job… from the Bible… he was a man who…”
But she was already nodding. “Yes, I remember. I know perfectly well the story of Job. I’d just forgotten you were a Christian. My apologies.”
“None needed,” I said with complete sincerity. “So, what do we do?”
“I think I just have to wish it, wish we forget, with the seeds… seven seeds if I remember correctly. We’ll have to take the flowers apart…” She was already harvesting the seed from one tiny, bell-shaped flower. I sat near her while she set about the laborious task, and soon, seven seeds sat cradled in the warmth of her small hand.
“You just wish it?” I asked.
Sylvie shrugged. “Pretty much. The spell requires water though, running water.”
“The stream.”
“Yes. I place my wish in the seeds and send them into the water.”
I watched her close her eyes, saw her long lashes lying across her cheeks as she placed her will into those seeds, and for just an instant I wished, too… wished she would forget why she couldn’t love me as I loved her, wished she would return that love for a brief moment even if she only later dreamt she’d done so. I didn’t think at all about the consequences, didn’t really think I was wishing on the seeds as she was or that I had the power to have such a wish come true. I simply allowed myself to feel, and I never allowed myself that with regard to Sylvie Solon.
Then the seeds were in the water, floating downstream, and Sylvie was looking at me strangely, even more strangely than she had earlier. The beauty of youth and health on her cheeks, the depth of her eyes, I looked at her and decided what the hell. If we were going to forget it all anyway…
Leaving the thought unformed, I pulled her to me roughly. For an instant, she trembled against my chest, one hand clutching my shirt as we stood together. I’d often held Sylvie in friendship and in comfort, but I’d never touched her in desire… not even in my dreams. Now, she was crushed to me, and my hands were buried in that extravagant hair. It covered my arms and raised gooseflesh in every place it touched. A moment later, she laughed nervously.
“Why have you never done that before, Xavier? Just taken hold of me like that? I know you’ve wanted to…”
This was the same conversation again only different. The why was Kincaid, or more accurately, Sylvie’s love for that other man. How could she be asking me why now?
The wish.
My wish.
If it were my wish, then I didn’t have long. I squinted into the stream, narrowing my eyes against the sun’s reflection, trying desperately to see the seeds floating on the surface. They were there, close still but already moving with the slow current. I didn’t have nearly the time I wanted…
“Don’t worry about why, Sylvie.” The words came from my mouth, sounded like my own words, but I knew they weren’t. They were a living dream, the manifestation of years of longing and denial. And they would never be spoken again. “I love you.”
“Xavier…”
“Hush, Sylvie. We don’t have a lot of time. I love you. Please just let me say it…” But she interrupted me, her face upturned to look at mine stalling all further speech. Her eyes swam with tears of recognition. I kissed her, ungently and with all the passion I’d carried so long in what I thought was utter secrecy. Her mouth responded to the pressure, and I found her suddenly wrapped around me, arms, legs, and hair. I lifted her easily, and she bent her legs around my waist. I turned and a few steps later, backed her into the gargantuan trunk of an ancient elm. Her breath came in a rush from the impact, but I returned my mouth to hers and gave her no time to recover.
Between the tree and my body, Sylvie had ample support, her slender frame born by my waist, and I reached beneath her sweater. At the first contact of my hands on her bare skin, I felt an electric jolt, and I couldn’t tell if this were due to simple human chemistry or some byproduct of her magic. It didn’t matter. I pushed the sweater over her head, tossed it to the ground, and bent my mouth to her neck. There her pulse pounded, and I felt the rhythm of it beneath my tongue. All the while, Sylvie’s hands grasped at my hair and my shirt, anything with which they could make contact, and her breath came in quick, sweet gasps beside my ear.
Knowing there were only precious moments remaining, I laid her on the ground, pillowing her head on her own sweater – Etienne’s sweater, I remembered, and I felt a pang of guilt – and then I stopped. Sylvie’s eyes flew open immediately.
“What is it, Xavier?”
I shook my head against the confusion already beginning to set in from the spell. What were we doing? I couldn’t remember… and her hands were unbuckling my belt, unzipping my trousers. I ventured a look. Sylvie lay naked beside me on the stream’s bank. When had she taken off her denims? I couldn’t think… and she was reaching for me again, opening her legs, and I was falling into her, utterly lost.
The telephone rang insistently in my head, and I couldn’t understand why I could hear a telephone at all when I was in the copse cradling… there was no one, nothing in my arms. I sat up in the bed and wept. I didn’t know of whom I dreamt or why I wept, but the desolation caused a wrenching from within. Slowly, I turned and picked up the receiver.
“'Allo?”
“Xavier. Sorry to wake you.”
“It’s all right, Cyrus. What can I do for you?” While I waited for his answer, I glanced at the digital clock on the hotel nightstand. Fucking, stinking hovel of a home. Not the family manor in France then. Why did I think I was…? The clock read three in the morning. This had better be good.
“There’s a man I’d like you to meet.”
“Now? You can’t be serious.”
“He’ll be there in an hour. I wanted you to have time to get fresh. He won’t have long, and he isn’t known for his patience with slow thinkers.”
“Is it a good one?”
Cyrus hesitated. That was a first. When he answered, I felt a shiver of foreboding.
“Xavier, I know nothing about the job. What I do know is that this is the sort of job which could make your career.”
“Thanks to you, my career’s already been made, Cyrus.”
“Just hear the man out. I need to go now. Good luck, Xavier.”
“Wait! Does the man have a name, Cyrus?”
“Jonah.”
Cyrus rang off.
In the hotel shower hours later, water pounded my back in rhythm with the thoughts pounding my mind. Steam hung on the air, swirled around my head not unlike the fog inside it. I fought the urge to put my fist through the pristine white tile surrounding me. The job. Always the fucking job. Only this time it had gotten out of hand. If I said yes this time, I was taking on more than I’d ever encountered before. Despite my noted lack of superstition, I couldn’t help the feeling of cold snaking down my spine. I wanted to say no. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I knew I had to say no. Giving in to temptation, I smashed my fist into the unforgiving tile, then cradled my pulsing hand against my chest as I stood under the spray. He wanted an answer tomorrow. I would say yes tomorrow.
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Date: 2006-08-06 11:42 am (UTC)That said, I'm thinking of writing up something for backstory and posting it my journal, a canon FAQ maybe. It might help to differentiate between canon and my myriad flights of fancy here and help people here who don't know the backstory. Also, it would give me something to do between prompts and waiting on the semester to start!
Thanks for the compliments, sweetie, I'm glad you liked this one. I do adore Xavier!