kingdomsofrain | tfln open post

[ How they avoid one another. How well it suits them both, she thinks, or had thought: he, rankling, and she, disquieted by this marriage and all the factors that forced them together.

She has been kind, for what else can she do for this stranger, this useless youngest, cast into exile here with her? Give him space, let him live his days in whatever peace he finds - even if it comes at the bottom of a bottle. She needs nothing from him. Expects nothing. (Poor creature. Useless even to his wife. Let him seek oblivion if he requires.)

While he drowns in liquor, she buries herself in books. She seeks nothing and no-one beyond her own little library.

So. This message, interrupting the quieter hours of the evening normally devoted to their respective drowning and burying is...odd.

Crass.

...A little amusing. ]

Are you particularly adept at it when drunk?

Or do I possess some unsuspected appeal to the inebriated eye?

[ He didn't—

He certainly hadn't meant to...

As if he would offer her any such thing. As if she would deign to accept any such thing. As if he has any interest in seeing her now, or ever. Better to stay apart from her and every other rube in this so-quaint countryside. Better to keep his own company, and Wallace's, and no one else's.

And what was that about... Supposing that he's drunk? How dare she feign to know intimately his degrees of inebriation! As if she could measure his coherence from a mere line of a text. As if she's certain, so certain he's drunk off his damned ass every minute of the day.

Oh, wait, no, he'd. That's right he'd. Said he was... It doesn't matter. She's still rubbing his drinking in his face, ha ha so very clever, what novel ammunition she's chosen. ]

Ha ha.

Didn't mean to send it,

For my eyes only.

Please.

I know you'd take no interest.

Well, the message is sent, and seen. There is no 'unspilling the milk', isn't that the saying?

No, I take no interest - in kissing. Not you, nor any one else.

I am a cold woman, it's true.

[...]

But I take interest in unique opportunities.

We need't DWELL in the milk, either.

Christ.

No kissing, no - oh I'm afraid Im going to be indelicate - fucking, you've made this all perfctly clear. Can't imagine what 'unique opportunities' you WOULD like.

'Take interest' ha ha I bet.

[ ... ]

I don't see what your temperature has to do with anything.

[ She's cold. Who wouldn't be cold here? The wind howling all around and no one worth knowing in sight. He might as well die here; nobody would know. Christ, she's cold, good for her, how exceptional. ]

[ What?

What -

He -?

Is he angry that she relieved him of -? That she -

She can't manage a coherent thought. Can only stare in surprise at his message, at the...wounded tone of it. It hadn't been a rejection, certainly. She hadn't meant...

Or perhaps she had.

It isn't him, though. He's unobjectionable, abstractly. It's her. It's only her, and how hollow she feels. How hollow she ever feels.

And, yes, the jerk away from bedding a stranger.

Fucking a stranger. ]

Not my temperature. My temperament.

[...]

~~If I insulted you in refusing your bed, I~~

[ "I'm sorry". She says it so often. Thinks it, each time she sees him.

How sorry she is, for him. For her. For this.

And now, for this small injury to his pride.

It changes nothing, of course.

But she is sorry. ]

I thought it best.

[ Why is she... responding still? She should have stopped ages ago. Should have stopped before she started. As if there's anything here for her to win.

She must be bored. Or toying with him. Done churning her butter for the day, ha ha.

He's tired of her. Her and her meaningless apologies. Her and this fuckforsaken countryside existence. There are... too many years left for enduring this. Better not to count, or think, or hold sober for any length of time. ]

TEMPERAMENT. Of courS. How foolish of me.

You don't need to tell ME the story. You thought it best. 'Best.' Everyone thinks it best. One look is all it takes.

Well I can't say I wouldn't do the same in your shoes. I'VE seen my facE.

Go back to your butter.

[ Oh.

What can she say to him? That she doesn't find his face objectionable? That, in another life, another time, perhaps she might have appreciated his form?

That would only give him false hope. She doesn't think he ought to hope.

It's for the best.

And anyhow, he's drunk. See the errors in spelling? See his disjointed remarks? This is bitter intoxication. Best not to discuss this, when tomorrow he might recall and feel ashamed.

She hurt his pride. She doesn't want to shame him, too.

What to do, then? Well, what would it hurt for her to keep him company? Until Wallace appears, perhaps. How lonely he must be, if he's messaging her. (Asking for kisses. Lamenting her frigidity. Steeping in this melancholy. And - yes - pitying himself. With cause.) It would be a kindness, to give him her presence for a while. What would it hurt to offer friendly warmth?

(What does he mean, everyone thinks it best?

No, she -

No, she can imagine.

Manhattan was unkind to her. Perhaps it was an unwelcoming place for him, as well. He isn't handsome. He isn't pleasant. He's cold, too.) ]

The butter is long done, I'm afraid.

~~You seem lonely. May I -~~

~~Would you like me to keep you comp-~~

[...]

I find I am lonely this evening.

Would you object to my company?

[ This isn't.

She doesn't—?

Damn the woman.

This is a joke. All her moping about, and still she's perfectly capable ofcutting deception, he knew it. ]

WhT.

Never been lonely before. Youu. Ha.

[ Oh, but what if... ]

Interested after all, are you/?

[ Oh. No. No that was a mistake, he can't let her think he meant that, fuck's sake. ]

Ha ha no, I i know better.

[ It's better not to answer...oh, any of that. Better not to admit she is lonely, and terribly so, lest he think she blames him.

Better not to acknowledge the rest, or how it drew a faint smile from her. Exasperated, yes, but a smile nonetheless. But - what must he be thinking, to have said that? What hope stirred in his intoxicated brain, what need reared?

A swiping grasp for affection?

Oh, she knows that feeling. That longing for anything, anyone, just to quiet the ache.

And the sudden recoil, yes, she knows that, too. The grasp become a slap, a refusal of any hand reaching back.

She can't help him.

Companionship, though. She can give that.

So, without further response, she takes her book and wanders to Brom's study, a place fallen to disuse - where she has noticed Treavor seems to take some preference in loitering. Finds him there, of course, of course, and she lingers for a moment in the doorway only watching him. Only thinking that his presence in this room is less objectionable than its former master's.

Her approach is cautious, learned not from this husband's responses, but from those of the last: an effort not to startle. To let him gradually become aware - and to avoid any violence. A flung glass, a thrown book. A snarl. A fist.

Right to his side, her head canted and brow knit to lines, and a light hand brushing his shoulder.

(And, still, that resonance: I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. In every action, in the twist in her breast, in the prick at the corners of her eyes.

Maybe he couldn't have had better. But surely, he deserves more than this funereal house, and its cold mistress.

This half-corpse of a wife.) ]

[ She doesn’t answer, and the phone doesn’t buzz, and he huffs the thing facedown beside him. Maybe, maybe accidentally elbows it onto the floor, but who’s counting, these things happen, he doesn’t need it anyway. Doesn’t have pressing business with anyone (or any business with anyone ha ha very cute). Certainly doesn’t need… what was it. What he’d been doing. Who he’d been— The woman, doesn’t need her sanctimonious trilling.

Her temperatures.

Senseless woman. He scoffs, takes another drink, and drifts onto another.

He’s fallen abstract this way, glass in hand, when he thinks there’s a presence. A sound. A— No, that’s a… hand upon him? Some touch against his shoulder?

That’s not… Wallace?

Fuck’s name, who would even be approaching him in this place, no one knows him here no one lives around here and the servants avoid him like the plague. (Like his wife avoids him, ha ha, but she’s no true wife and fuck knows he’s no true husband.)

He starts to turn, thinking to catch sight of the intruder. Manages to jar his head awkwardly and fine that…

Oh. That’s the woman. The dour, unknowable woman who by the way he does not want to know and has no interest in seeing, what is she doing here, doesn’t she know to leave this study (whose study is it even meant to be, well, who cares) alone? This is where he’s supposed to be capable of drinking alone, only wasn’t it just inevitable that they’d find him here, interrupt him in his sole remaining pleasure? He should have known his quiet couldn’t last.

He’s scowling when he looks at her, vision unfixed, seeing her image and yes her image doubling over itself and was she touching him, well what does she want? ]

What is this?

[ He seems well beyond the margins of sobriety; unfocused. She knows the look of it well enough. She saw it so often, that prelude to snarling. The precursor to -

Well.

Treavor isn't that way, and doesn't deserve such memories crowding her, though they resound in this dreadful room. Though they press in on her until she thinks perhaps she'll turn, and Brom will be there. An unsteady stagger, a heavy hand. A flash of teeth. But.

Treavor has only been...well. Yes, inexact word to suggest, but gentle. An unkind comment here and there, to be sure, but thus far, hasn't he been harmless? (And doesn't he have the right to level those comments? Isn't this marriage a work of misery?)

There's no need to think he'll do worse than glower.

So, her answer comes with a gentle press of her hand. ]

A hope for companionship on a lonely evening.

[ Here, she tilts the book she holds, giving a sure-to-be blurred glimpse of its cover. ]

I could read to you, if you like. Or keep my silence - it doesn't matter.

[ Let those words sink in, let him process through the drunken crawl of his thoughts. Sure to be sluggish, sure to be fractured and drifting.

How hard it was to make Brom focus on anything at all, on those late nights. ]

May I stay?

Edited 2019-11-30 04:49 (UTC)

[ Wait.

A.

Moment.

He knows a woman’s touch against his shoulder. (Not often, and never without pay, but that isn’t the point here.) (Never mind also that this woman doesn’t fuck him, she has made that clear and he has made his knowledge of that fact clear.) Knows the meaning of that firm press - well, why else would she dare to enter this room?- as if she doesn’t find him so thoroughly repulsive after all, or as if his unsightliness doesn’t matter.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe she doesn’t care what she sees. Maybe that comes of living on a farm, maybe surviving day after day of cows and pigs and horse shit means taking what you can if you need a quick poke.

He’s looking at her still. Sort of looking at her still, through a haze of swimming impressions. ]

Mm, ‘reading.’

Clever girl, aren’t you?

[ He should… put his glass down. Can’t fuck her with a glass in his hand. Probably. Too bad for her her husband-not-husband’s so uncoordinated right now, no fucking with a glass for her.

He’s moving to set the glass down when he realizes oh, oh, there’s still wine in the glass, he should take care of that wine, make certain it doesn’t slip away. So. He drinks it; there it goes. Well done, Treavor. Well done. ]

'Reading.'

[ Odd look, that. Odd set of movements, as though he's come to some sort of conclusion.

Well, perhaps he decided to gather himself and go to bed: see him seem to be collecting himself? It wouldn't be the worst idea just now, for her to help him to bed. It's late, and he's mangled.

Poor creature.

Katrina entertains another blistering stab of guilt - but that ebbs. But it vanishes like smoke when he speaks, words scattered in between finishing off his wine.

Does he...

Certainly, he can't think she's illiterate? Is that what he's insinuating?

Oh, he's made no secret of his disdain for the country, for its simple folk and, yes, livestock - and truly, there are a number of farmers in the county who can't read. But she comes from wealth, and was raised for just this - ha - sort of upward marriage. Of course she can read.

She has a library. He...hasn't he seen it?

Her consternation clear, her hand resting still against him for lack of better purpose, she glances at her book - and then back at him. ]

Yes. If you like.

[ I know how, she almost adds. But surely, it goes without saying. But surely, such insistence would be desperate, would be petulant? ]

I thought you might let me entertain you so.

[ The glass is on the end table now, set down perhaps a bit too hard, but that’s of no account, but he’s scooting in his chair to better see her, and… Yes, he’s moving a hand toward her face. Her cheek. Like you do when women, when anyone decides to turn scenes intimate.

Only maybe he misses her face by a bit.

Only maybe his missed attempt swipes below her jaw and falls against her chest.

Well, whatever. That’s what she came for, isn’t it?

He doesn’t even like her.

Doesn’t like the look of her or what she’s meant to be.

That never matters. It’s a fuck, nothing more. He doesn’t even have to remember it come morning, if he wants.

…He probably won’t remember much about it, no matter what he wants. ]

You know it’s very lonely here.

[ He takes an unsteady glance over her, largely failing to take in any of her features. ]

I’ve done worse. You, though? Poor girl. Pitiless life.

[ And there’s a slack smirk, half-daft, half-knowing. ]

Yes, I believe I’ll read with you after all.

[ A hand coming at her. Missing her face, or it was ever aiming for her face, it lands on her -

On.

Her.

And she goes still and tense, head drawn back and lips parted in shock. And she stares at his hand. And she stares at him.

Did she do something, say something, to invite this? (Touching him? Expressing her own loneliness? Being too kind?)

For a moment, she thinks, somehow, she mistranslated the word 'read' from Dutch to English. That can be the only explanation for. This. (And true, thinking of what led him from 'no fucking' to 'I'll read with you' and his hand on her bodice is so much less upsetting than thinking of the things he's saying.

Poor girl. Pitiless life. Lonely, very lonely here.) ]

Oh -

[ Her hand removes now from his shoulder, hovers above his ill-placed pawing, and then gingerly, she pries herself out of his grasp. Holds his hand in her own, unsure what to do with it now.

Presses the book into it. ]

Here. Here, this one.

[ Perhaps if...she simply doesn't acknowledge it, it will go away. Whatever this 'it' might be. ]

[ Fuck’s he supposed to do with this?

There’s a book in his hand. Why is there a book in his hand, certainly he didn’t ask for this? Where would it even have come from, or oh, the woman, the wench had been holding something like this, and she….

She isn’t touching him any more.

Touched his shoulder touched his hand and now he has a fuckforsaken book instead.

And she— She put him off. Of course. He should have known. Ought to have expected. The reading was a front the entire time! Telling him she would ‘read’ with him - which everybody must know means fucking! Treavor’s certain of this fact right now - in order to pull away and… and…

And make him look like an ass most likely. Well, joke’s on her, because he can do that just fine on his own.

He flings the book aside. Or. More like manages to chuck it half a foot in front of the chair. Maybe not even as far as that because maybe that dull thud was the book landing on his boot.

Reading.

Treavor jerks back, favoring the woman’s general direction with a snarl. ]

I see your game.

You might as well poison me.

[ Is she trying to…? It’s unusual that she’s in here, certainly. Should he call for Wallace? Should he demand the woman leave? Should he get up and… No, standing sounds nauseating, and there are too damned many decisions to be made, it’s too much to think about, and he slumps back in the chair, sullen. ]

I hope you’ve enjoyed yourself.

[ Oh.

These defeated gestures. The toss of the book, the half-hearted snarl, his thrown condemnations and.

He misunderstood her. He thought - Well, he must have. And perhaps she can see how he might have come to that conclusion, from his wine-addled perspective.

But this, this is why she avoids him. This bitterness, this sullenness, this self-pity: all of it well-deserved. All of these condemnations apt. How his life has become a work of misery, useless and worthless save that he is male. (And he thought her kindness was a change of heart, an attempt to warm him - well. In that way.) Her presence is only ever a reminder, only ever a taunt.

Poor creature, and this another blow to the pride she was trying to spare.

Cautious once more, she reaches out. Hesitates, because look what touching him earned a moment ago.

Tests his name. ]

Treavor.

[ She tries not to say it. He didn't like it the first time. But perhaps it will summon him back from this sulk, and towards friendly grace. ]

Please. There isn't any game. I only wanted to sit with you a while.

[ She summons up her courage, eases the back of her hand against his cheek: a gentle touch, an effort to soothe. She can give that, can't she, to someone so mired in despair and confusion?

(It's what would soothe her, isn't it?) ]

I'm sorry.

[ His—?

His name jars him. Sets a weight dropping down his throat, settling central in his chest. His jaw tenses, and he feels… Oh, it doesn’t matter. Lost. Sad. Something. (The name didn’t cut. His name didn’t cut to hear. (That shouldn’t. That doesn’t. She’s playing him. Of course.)) It doesn’t matter, and the feeling’s gone when she touches him, because that means something entirely different, doesn’t it!

Oh, she wants to fuck him after all—?!

No she most certainly does not, and he huffs at himself for even beginning to entertain that thought. Please, she’s shown where her interests lie. Don’t lie? Doesn’t matter. He was an ass to let himself believe believe anything. Maybe that was her trap.

Christ. The fodder he’s given her tonight. The cause for ridicule. No doubt he’ll hear about this for weeks to come. Years, maybe; it isn’t as if there’s anything else to talk of in this nowhere existence.

(Her hand set mockingly against him. Who does she think she is? (And why should it hurt, almost, this softness of gesture? Vague notion that slips back below his haze, into forgetting.))

He starts to slap her hand away, manages no more than a heavy lift and fall of his own. Jerks his head backward instead, away from her deprecating touch, and watches in uneven blinking.

What. Is. She. Playing. At?

And what for fuck’s sake had she even said. ]

I don’t want to sit with me for a while.

[ That. Probably makes sense enough.

Whatever. As if this woman deserves his sense. ]

Where’s Wallace?

[ He jerks away as though burned by her touch. As though the very idea of it is hateful. She withdraws her hand, holds it grasped against her sternum, her eyes unfocused and stinging.

Try as she might to soften the many injuries done him, awaiting him, ah, these insults and wreckages of his pride, perhaps she was right to avoid him. This is doing nothing to help, and only worsening...everything.

Perhaps she is a curse, after all. Ever the dismal misfortune of the male sex.

(I don't want to sit with me, he said. She doesn't want to entertain the meaning of that beyond its apparent self-deprecation.)

Quickly, she dashes at her eyes, sniffs, covers the movement by looking over her shoulder as though Wallace might be standing there behind her. (He isn't. If he were, perhaps he might have intervened. Stopped her from further wounding his master.) ]

I don't know. I -

[ Well. Well -

The desperation to repair, to somehow ameliorate, to make amends for this trespass (another in countless trespasses) rises inescapably in her. ]

Do you need something? I could fetch him. Or - He might be asleep.

[ Perhaps Treavor ought to be asleep. He's drunk, isn't he? He's drunk, and rankling, and likely tired. ]

Are you tired? I could help you to your room. [ Hastily: ] To sleep.

[ Another cautious reach of her hand, open, palm-up. An offer of aid. ]

Here?

[ Ha, right and satisfying (also not-so-satisfying), draw away that hand. It feels good (also not-good, also a little twinging) to watch her retreat. To know she won’t be able to say… Come morning she won’t be able to say… Something about how he’d been silly enough to think her touch (she did touch him, didn’t she?) fond.

He starts to open his mouth, meaning to say that Wallace doesn’t sleep, but Treavor doesn’t need to tell her any such thing. She hasn’t earned the information. She doesn’t need to know. Wallace is outside her jurisdiction.

So never mind about that and he starts to forget about that, but the impulse to speak remains, and he’s certain he has something important to get across. After all, if she can shower her words over everything, he might be permitted a few of his own.

He doesn’t care much for this chair. Shifts against it irritably. Who decided this was a suitable chair?

And why is… is that her hand which he sees before him? Again he huffs a ragged sound. ]

No. I don’t have anything for you.

[ A filtering in as he tries to watch her, something she said, something she asked. A… hand extended. An offer, yes, that was it, she wants to go to his room, she said!

…Not for that, she said.

What the fuck else for. All this shoving her way into his rooms, and to what end?

It’s too much to think about.

Instead, he points at her hand, his own finger unsteady. ]

Why.

I know what you do want. Don't want.

Ha.

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