sixthiterationlogs | Let us eat quickly-- let us fill ourselves up. {Harvest Feast}

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Let us eat quickly-- let us fill ourselves up. {Harvest Feast}

WHO: Kate Kelly
WHERE: The Inn
WHEN: 24th November
OPEN TO: E V E R Y O N E
WARNINGS: TBA
STATUS: OPEN

Aside from the days when she'd been too drunk or too hungover to get up, Kate's kept a farmer's hours all her life. Even in winter, when the bitterly cold winds that'd come up from the south and make its way through the cracks and holes in her ma's hut, she'd get up, get dressed, do her chores. But lately, it's been harder to extract herself from her bed. Benedict's been sharing her bed more often than not lately, and the chasteness of their interactions does nothing to change how warm and safe she feels. How little she wants to get up, get dressed, go out into the colder spaces of the Inn and do her work.

So, today, she's late getting out of bed - at least, by her standards. She's late getting down the stairs. She's late, so she's hurrying; she lazed in bed, and now she needs to start the fire in the main room. Start the fire, open the shutters, show that the Inn is standing and warm. And welcome, so she moves the -

No, Kate doesn't move the chairs stacked precariously at the front door as a rudimentary alarm of someone, something, coming through, because the chairs are gone. She neither dismisses it as one of the residents not getting the message, nor panics. Instead, she just opens the shutters to let in the dawn light and see if there are footprints, except, no, the snow has mostly cleared. The day is sunny. As welcome as it is, that doesn't help at all. Miss Hoppity jumps down from the foyer's desk to rub her face against Kate's skirt, apparently entirely unconcerned.

Kate eyes the cat for a moment, then approaches the closed doors leading to the main room. Closed, but with light coming through the cracks between door and floor, door and door frame. Cautiously, Kate opens one of the doors and peers in.

Then, she gapes.

The fire is blazing - hot, cheery - but so are the candles. The candles: candles on the unused candlesticks, candles clustered on tables, light up sideboards. Candles bobbing in bowls of water and apples. Candles white, yellow and red, when the village had none. Boughs of wheat, corn, decorate tables and the mantle over the fire, apples and pumpkins and collections of yellow, orange, red flowers seem to be everywhere.

And the food.

Each table is piled high with food. Roasted, baked, cooked on stoves and Kate knows how to cook, she knows how long this would all take, how many people, and it's impossible. What she's seeing is impossible to have done with the resources on hand: even an attempt would have woken up the whole building.

Disbelieving, Kate walks in. For a moment, she's entirely dumbfounded. Miss Hoppity, however, is nothing of the sort. The cat has leapt up onto the sideboard next to Kate and - well, Kate isn't sure what happens next. Just that suddenly there's movement and something large seems to lunge at her. Miss Hoppity yowls and speeds off: Kate screams as she battles something, falling backwards and hitting the floor along with a broken bowl of water, spilled apples and some tiny candles, and her attacker.

Pushing the food-turkey off her, Kate sits up and is, for once, entirely lost for words.

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His eyes immediately flick up the stairs, surprise and no small amount of apprehension coloring his face, before he equally quickly looks down at her.

"I—yes. I would like that," he replies finally, feeling an answering blush of his own rise up to heat his face.

Kate looks quite pretty when she blushes, her eyes made all the greener thanks to the red in her cheeks. Benedict is fairly certain he just looks like a stewed tomato.

But, she seems to want to kiss him anyway, so he's not going to risk her changing her mind by pointing out what he feels is a bizarre idiocy on her part. If she wants to continue to kiss him, then by goodness, he's certainly going to encourage her to do so. He's already starting to get an inkling that Kate knows what she's doing here, or at least, knows far more what she's doing than Benedict does, and he's quite happy to allow her to take the reins and lead him where she wants him to go.

Kate's smile brightens, relief as much as giddiness. She's known that he's far fond of her, all those flowers. That she's special, to him. That he's agreed to share her bed and hold her close. That his hands had pulled her close in, just now, rather than push her away.

But it's nice to hear, that he'd like to kiss her again. That he'd like to go somewhere, with her, private, where they can shut the door and kiss all over again.

It's a struggle not to say something childish, like 'yay' or 'huzzah'. Instead, she just manages to stumble out, "Good, I'm. I'm glad. Come with me?"

She reaches up to take the hand that's on her face, laces her fingers through his, and leads him up to her room. Their room, increasingly.

It's a heady feeling, seeing her smile widen like that and knowing he's the cause for it. Benedict is not used to pretty girls lighting up when he says something to them, but he thinks he could certainly grow to like it very much.

Kate takes his hand again, lacing her fingers through his, and starts to lead him up the stairs to the room they've been sharing.

Part of him wants to protest, some deeply-ingrained concern for her reputation raising its head and clamoring in the back of his mind, but it's easy to silence that voice, the alcohol he's consumed muting it just as quickly as the look on her face. Besides, he knows the people of the village well enough to know (to hope) that nobody will think any less of either of them for...kissing. Already most of the Inn residents have realized he sleeps in Kate's bed and there's been no fuss about that.

He waffles about closing the door once they slip inside their room, but eventually decides it's for the best, if only to keep some heat in.

"Let me..." he motions towards the brazier, the coals glowing dimly in the ashes, and forces himself to step away from her so he can bank up the fire and add more wood to it so that they don't wind up shivering so badly they bump heads. When that is settled, he turns to look at her again, nervous and hopeful and unsure what to do with his hands.

She's not unaware of reputations: on the contrary, really. But there's been more than one reason why she hasn't taken Benedict's shy courting further until around now. She's not a girl to drop her drawers straight away. She's not making an alliance with a man just for protection, either, sealing it with her body. She's a valuable member of this odd little community, and she can take a man who's been courting her to bed if she so wants to. People have gone to church in less time.

If he hadn't shut the door, Kate would have.

She lets him fuss, uses the time to move over to her chair to untie her boot laces. This, oddly, feels more like taking her clothes off around him than sleeping with him has, even though her feet and calves are still hidden by her black stockings. Boots off, she sits on the bed, and then is in the process of moving back on it when Benedict looks at her again.

He's nervous, and she's nervous, because she's never actually done this before. Taken a man back to her bed, for the express purpose of kissing him. Her meetings with Joe had been stolen from their circumstances, moments of chance. This is... different. Far more deliberate.

Kate takes a breath, and smiles at him.

"C'mon, Benedict," she says, and pats the bed next to her. She's up next to the headboard: there's plenty of room for him.

Benedict's hands flex nervously as he stands and does as he's bid, moving over to the bed feeling somewhat like he's in a daze. He takes the time, as she had, to sit down and untie the laces of his boots, not wanting to get the mud that always cakes the soles onto their blankets, and then slowly, carefully crawls onto the bed properly until he winds up close to the headboard as well, propped up on one elbow so he does not crush her.

This is all a little overwhelming, but he forges on ahead regardless, determined to see this through now that he's been presented the opportunity.

He's twenty-one and the only girl he's ever kissed has been Kate just now; for most of his life, he had assumed he would never find a sweetheart, first because of what he was, and then because he'd been a novitiate monk, but if he has to thank this godforsaken place for one thing, it would be this. Her. The chance to be normal, to find a pretty girl to fluster him, means more to him than he can say. She means more to him than he can say.

He brushes a few stubborn tendrils of hair from her face, his fingertips skimming gently across her skin. "You're so beautiful," he whispers earnestly, a blush high on his cheekbones.

Kate isn't quite sure what to say in the face of this, the face of him. All careful and gazing at her with adoration, as if she's perfect and precious and it's a gift for him to be allowed this close to her, allowed to touch her.

So she blushes, too tongue-tied to reply: you're beautiful, too. Because he is. Tall and lean and golden-eyed, all rolling graceful muscle like a big cat but unspoiled by hauteur or arrogance. Sometimes, she doesn't really know how to handle it. Him. But it feels like the gentle warmth of spring after winter.

Instead of speaking, Kate leans close, reaching out with hand to balance against his chest. It takes her a moment to kiss him, and when she does she starts at the corner of his mouth, light and sweet. One kiss, two kiss; third kiss is firmer, longer, her lips parting against his in an invitation to kiss her back.

He lets the hand on his chest push him back to lie down properly, leaving Kate leaning over him, her negligent weight pinning him down and her hair sliding over her shoulders to brush against his neck and cheek as she dips down to kiss him.

He's sure his response is clumsy and uncoordinated, but it's eager nonetheless, his hands carefully lifting to settle lightly on her sides. Her corset is stiff beneath the bodice of the blouse she wears, hiding the curve of her waist that he's grown all too used to feeling beside him in the dark, but it still feels shockingly intimate to have his hands on her like this, his grip on her waist keeping her in place so she won't slip out of his arms and stop kissing him.

Much to his embarrassment, he starts to rumble deep in his chest, a low vibration that he doesn't even realize he's doing until he feels it vibrating up in his throat.

Breaking away from her kiss, he looks away, blushing. "Sorry..."

Heady with wine and desire, it takes her a moment to realise what he's referring to. That he doesn't want to stop, that he's not saying, sorry, I can't continue, but that he's apologising for something else. The-

"Oh. Are you purring?" Kate asks, confused but delighted all at once.

Somewhere, she knows, that's not a what a normal man does. That the rumbles that tinge his sleeping breath and faint snores, that this is something odd. Too cat-like to be metaphorical.

She can't quite bring herself to be concerned at the present, though. He's kissing her. She's kissing him. They are on her bed, and no one will disturb them, and they can just kiss and kiss and why is he concerned about purring?

She's too drunk to really work it out.

She calls it purring and he can't help how his blush just deepens, his shoulders hunching a little as he continues to look away. Most girls he knows would understand why he's purring, and would probably look askance at him, titillated but also a little unsettled by the reminder that he's warriorborn.

"Sorry," he whispers again, feeling foolish for apologizing but needing to nonetheless.

Kate doesn't know what he is. He doesn't even know if she knows about the warriorborn, he's never built up the courage to ask her if she's familiar with his kind, if they exist where she's from or if it's just a Spire thing.

Gwen, he knows, would despair of him for hiding away part of his true self, or whatever nonsense she'd call it. She would expect him to be forthright about it all, never mind that Gwen has never had to be afraid of how people would react to her in her life, made safe by her pretty face and her powerful family alike. Benedict has not had quite as much luck. He doesn't think Kate would shun him, necessarily, but he's afraid that she wouldn't look at him with quite the same fond adoration in her face as she does now if she knew the truth, and so he's kept quiet.

This purring thing is really blowing his cover.

Well, that won't do at all.

Kate frowns and then moves, straddling his waist and leaning in. Her hands are braced either side of him, and her hair spills down. She'd blush at the move, at her boldness, but in her haze, it seems like the most reasonable and logical thing in the world.

"Benedict," Kate says. "Look at me."

It's a quiet command, never as rough as an order but just a simple statement of fact. He will look at her, for she's said that he should and that's what will happen.

"Why are you hidin'?"

If he weren't quite so mortified by his traitorous body and its insistence on purring, Benedict might be much more flustered by having Kate decide to straddle his waist as she is. As it stands, he's focusing more on his own embarrassment than whatever impropriety their positioning presents, and when she orders him to look at her, he does. No hesitation.

He bites his lip, blunt human teeth not damaging the skin at all.

"You don't find it...odd?" he asks, his voice tentative as his hands settle back on her waist again, his fingers very nearly touching around the span of her.

She really is so small, so fragile. He oughtn't take advantage of her as he does, but he can't help himself. She's lovely, and she likes him, and perhaps he's allowed this one happiness in this horrible place.

She sighs, tilting her head down a little. Her eyes don't close, but their direction falls, running from his eyes down to nose, mouth, neck. Back up to mouth.

He's driving her to distraction, Benedict is. All eager, earnest kisses, and now apologising and hesitant even as his hands back to her waist. Large hands, long hands, but even as she can feel through her corset their width, she doesn't feel small or breakable. She feels precious, and something about his reactions to her make her feel strong. In control.

Still, it's a struggle not to just lean in and start kissing him again, occupying his mouth so he doesn't ask confusing questions.

"Well," Kate says, summoning up her willpower from somewhere. "Yes, I suppose it is. You sound a bit like that in your sleep, too, sometimes. All rumbly. It's. It's kind of comfortin', I guess."

Then she shrugs.

"I don't know. Should I be worried, darlin'? We're in a strange enough place, but you've seemed as much a man as any of the others."

"I do?" he asks, stricken. "Oh, heavens..."

He peels one hand away from her waist to cover his face with it, holding it there for a moment before scrubbing it back and forth vigorously and then letting it drop down to the side.

"You must think me so strange," he says sheepishly, smiling up at her with his eyebrows drawing close together. "I'm sorry. Purring in my sleep! Oh dear."

She calls him 'darling,' and while it has the ring of a habitual phrase that doesn't mean more than absent friendship, he can't help the warm glow it ignites in his chest, taking up residence beside the smoldering heat that her weight on his torso and her kisses have kindled deep inside him. The view she presents, perched on him as she is, is really quite appealing, and even though he's embarrassed, he finds himself smiling helplessly at her.

"You don't ever have to be afraid of me, Kate," he insists. "Never. I promise."

"I'm not." It's simply enough said, and she lifts one hand to trail fingers over his dear, dear face. She follows his hairline down to his bearded jaw, then brushes his mouth with her finger.

Memorising him, almost.

"Takes a lot for a man to frighten me. And you don't. And," Kate adds, pointedly, as she lowers her face closer, "you been doin' that, and I ain't kicked you out of bed. So. It somethin' I need to worry 'bout, or can you kiss me again?"

It's instinct to purse his lips as she trails her finger over them, kissing her fingertip as he continues to stare up at her, mesmerized by the sight of her backlit with golden light streaming in through the window.

He lifts his hands to cup her face, coaxing her to lean down even more so that he might kiss her again, taking the initiative this time and hoping he's not doing it wrong.

Feeling especially bold, he lets his hands drift back slightly to thread his fingers through her hair, thrilling at the feel of it sliding through his grip as he carefully kisses her again, and again, eventually relaxing enough to start up that rumbling, purring deep in his chest again. This time, he doesn't try to stop himself, just huffs a little self-deprecating laugh and continues.

If he purrs (and he does, he does, it's a low, rumbling, lion's purr), then after a while, she hums. Low, back of the throat; not consistent, but periodic. Particularly when he slides his fingers into her hair, cradling her head against him. Particularly when he tilts his head just so and kisses her like that.

After a few moments, Kate lowers herself fully onto him, her body lying directly on his. It is easier this way, not having to brace against the bed. She can relax into him, as much as her corset allows, and shift to make herself more comfortable. Move her legs (against his) so they aren't coiled in so tight a crouch.

Though that is an issue, isn't it? Where to put her legs now.

But he's kissing her with fervent, enthusiastic adoration, and she doesn't want to try and think about it. She just wants to kiss him back and kiss him again.

So if in the shifting, sliding of limbs, one of her legs winds up between his now, then so be it.

It doesn't occur to Benedict that they perhaps should not let her legs slot between his, that it might not be appropriate — but really, who cares about appropriate anymore, when it's just the two of them in the privacy of their bedroom — or that it might be embarrassing for him later on; he just shifts to make room for her, letting his knees splay wider a little so that she can slip her leg between his and settle high up against his thigh. It brings her closer against him, regardless, the warmth of her body spreading through his chest as she lies atop him, her hair sliding down to curtain them both.

Those low little hums of hers just spur him on, making him want to make her make them again and again. He's not entirely sure how to go about doing that, though, so he tries instead to focus on what he's doing, feeling a little bit better about his inexperience since Kate doesn't seem to mind. The rest can come after, when he's not feeling quite so intoxicated, when he can think through the fog in his brain and the incredible distraction of her lips against his.

He lets his hands fall from her hair to skim over her spine, an aimless petting that has one hand settling at the small of her back, the other sliding along her arm, fingers trailing over her bare skin to find her hand on his chest so he can curl his fingers around her palm. He likes holding her hand, as juvenile as it might seem, likes to feel the bones of her fingers slotted between his as her calluses catch against his.

The kissing is great too, make no mistake, but there's something about the quiet intimacy of her hand warm in his that he keeps coming back to.

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Let us eat quickly-- let us fill ourselves up. {Harvest Feast}

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