It's not just you. And yes, please, to the marshmallow.
[Did you know that they had marshmallows in 1897? They sure did. There was a marshmallow revolution of sorts, they started making them with gelatin instead of mallow plant sap and it was quite a Big Deal.
But anyway.
She turns her head, nuzzling her face into the mass of sweater and shirt covering his back, and then gradually untangles without ever quite letting go, so that she can move around and stand at his side instead of behind him.]
Several, if we're treating ourselves. I think we can stand to treat ourselves, can't we?
[The embrace has worked its magic, anyway. They have a plan of action, even if it is sort of a spooky-vague, short-term plan, and Dave feels less like a ghost haunting the house and more like SHSL Boyfriend, all making hot chocolate for them at midnight, look how domestic she's got him. He bumps her lightly with his bony hip.]
I'm always treating myself, 'round here.
[He thinks about it, then tries to insinuate himself even closer, somehow, warm and embarrassed even as he pours and marshmallows their mugs.]
The implication's that you're a treat. Just thought I'd put that up here on the counter with all the rest of this gooey sweet shit, where we both can see it.
[She loves this boy. God, she loves this boy so much, this unexpected boy from a world away and a century ahead of her time who stumbled into her life and flushed red when she touched a hand to his face, who defends her and listens to her and tried to save her from a death she'd earned but never deserved — who, of all the gifts she's ever been given, offered her the very most precious of all: the freedom to grow and the automatic support of whatever directions she might choose, and the outstretched hand to help her to her feet and open doors that she'd always otherwise found closed.
She couldn't possibly love him more than she does, not more deeply and not more fiercely.
For all that she doesn't want to be here, there's a small part of her that accepts she'd rather be here than anywhere else, if this is where Dave is going to have to be.]
I'm very sweet, you know. And I'd be more than happy to prove that again...if you should like to kiss me and remind yourself, that is.
[It's been a year and a half. He lives with her. They're (give or take a couple weeks on either end--thanks for nothing, Ruby City) engaged to be married. Why is he STILL BLUSHING.]
Are you casting aspersions on my powers of recall, Meridiana.
[Doesn't stop him from leaning right on over, an arm threaded loosely around her waist, for a kiss, though. Just to make sure.
Just because she asked. There's not a thing he wouldn't give, if she asked. He wants her to have the world, because then she'd have everything that makes her happy in it.]
Well, what do you know. You're right. Truly scrumptious.
[It's a relief, though, to have that rich fleeting moment of his mouth against hers and his arm at her waist. It's something they both needed right now, a ray of sunlight in a storm, a spot of goodness in the valley of their fears and doubts.]
Come now, let me get one of the mugs, and you take the other. One each, that's only fair, isn't it?
[And that will leave them each a hand to stay holding on to the other. That's what she really means, and it's for the best.]
[Without letting go right away, he turns to silently count the number of marshmallows in each mug, fingers moving quickly as he tallies them up. It takes a second, and then he takes the mug with one fewer marshmallow. #chivalry.]
And when we're done with the reading, we can do slumber party stuff. Like, curl our hair and talk about boys. I always wanted to talk about boys.
[This is a joke. On the other hand, good lord but Ruby City has a lot of boys to talk about.]
Curled, is it? Would you like yours done up in rings, like G.G.'s?
[It's intentional, the way she borrows the nickname Dave had used for Giorno — gentler somehow than bringing him up directly, thanks to the inherent humor in hearing Dave's vocabulary and phrasing in her sweet dulcet tones.
Even mourning can be made funny when poor despairing Meridiana is lamenting the death of sweet noble Mr. D-Pops, after all.]
...Really, though, I'd like that. Sitting up with you, doing slumber party things. That was the first time we played Never Have I Ever, remember? And you all had to teach me how to play, when I didn't know.
[She laughs a little, under her breath.]
I felt so out of sorts, at first! I was so sure it'd be simply mortifying, talking of things we'd never done when I was so certain that I wouldn't have done any of them, coming from London instead of the present day like the rest of you.
[Dave glances hair-wards for a moment (it's late, it's flopping across his forehead more than he lets it during the day) and chuckles, his usual more-breath-than-voice laughter. His hair is probably too short to curl, but they can try.]
Didn't it turn out you did more of those things than me? Or we were about equal or something. I remember thinking something like, thank fuck, we're in this together.
[It felt good, offering his overwhelming inexperience with "normality" as something he could share with her. Dave hadn't even had time to feel self-conscious about his messed-up computer game life, when it turned out he had more in common with her than most could have thought.
His eyebrows rise slightly.]
You know, that's something we could do, too. We got a big house, we could throw a massive sleepover and get everyone to play Never Have I Ever with us.
[In removing his arm from her waist, he rubs her back and then lets his knuckles brush down her arm until he's holding her hand, so they never once lose that contact.]
Oh, that would be fun...and not just the games, but the having guests over for the night, as well. It'd be nice, sometime, to have the house full up again.
[She says "again", because what she's thinking of isn't really the house they've claimed here in the city, but rather of the one they left behind in Kalos — big, roomy, and full of life, where people leave for reasons other than murder and there's always a tomorrow waiting on the other side of an evening.
Once he's got her hand, she gives him a little tug, leading him away from the stove and toward wherever they're going to set up shop once they go fetch her cards — the kitchen table, maybe, but possibly somewhere in the comfort of one of the other rooms too. Couches. Coffee tables. Decadance.]
I think for tonight I'm just as happy to have you all to myself, though. And —
[She hesitates a second, just one, before venturing softly: ]
...Once it's sunrise, then the night is over. Isn't it?
[Tautologically, yes, that's exactly what it means. But what she's really geting at is, once sunrise hits, then they're safe — from another week, another Thursday night, another close brush with prowling death.]
[Couches are good. Couches create more opportunities for unabashed snuggling, and also for lighting a fire if they want, and putting candles everywhere, not just for visibility but for atmosphere. Dave's got one that smells like apple pie. He's excited about it.]
Yeah.
[He's glad to go where she takes him. Loves it. Trusts it, more than he can trust anything else, in any world. Meridiana loves him. It's all he needs to believe in.]
And we can watch the sky change. And the sun come up, if the sky stops shitflaking on us.
[He puts his mug down on the coffee table, then looks up at her, a happy note caught in his unconcealed eyes before it tries to creep onto his face.]
[It's strange and so familiar, this little dance they're engaged in just now — the daydreaming together, the looking toward a lighter future to escape the darkness of the present, the clinging and idling and conjuring up fantasies forged in love. Once she would've been afraid of this, because there have been too many times in her past when the castles built up in the air came crashing down around her, crumbling to dust with the onslaught of a harsher reality.
But she's not afraid of this. Since the beginning, Dave has proved himself time and again — or, knowing Dave, time and time and time and time and time and time and time and again — to be different than anything she's ever known.
(Noblemen live in castles, and have spares to flee to when one turns to dust. Knights defend castles, and fight for their loved ones inside them.)
She sets her mug down as well, next to his, and she knows she ought to keep the two of them on track with their plans, but it's so much easier to just walk into his arms and press herself close against his warmth instead, so she does.]
Perhaps lunch and supper in bed, as well. If we're feeling so extravagant — and why shouldn't we?
...It's a fine thought to hold fast to, for now. That there are good things waiting for us on the other side of the morning.
'Course there are. And that's one morning closer to Second Christmas.
[Which is like second breakfast, but with fewer Hobbits, more presents, and no judgey Sean Bean to ruin the fun. Or steal the ring. Fucker best not be stealing any mamahecking rings around Dave come Second Christmas.
He links his hands together behind her back, swaying his weight slowly from foot to foot, glad for the way she fits into him no matter where they are, no matter what they weather (or what the weather, for that matter). He's content, for the moment, to hold her and be held, and to look at the two mugs together on the coffee table, marshmallows melting into fluff, steam rising side by side.
Click. He pretends he's Cam Jansen, taking pictures with his brain, then rubs his face into her hair like a cat hungry for pets.]
And there's good stuff waiting for us right now, but we gotta go get your cards first, and maybe the extra blankets, and I'd pick you up and carry you except I'm still not as buff as Silver, do you still love me and my noodle arms. Meridiaaannaaaa.
Mmm. Perhaps we ought to spare your noodle arms and make our way there with your dancing feet, instead.
[Given that, with the way they're standing together, they're frankly just one balloon's-width of Room For Jesus™ away from being the cutest couple at the middle school dance, as it is.
She makes the first move, though, swaying them a little more emphatically in the direction of their room, fully certain he'll follow along. Funny, isn't it, how it feels so natural to lead half the time, when once she would've believed that following prettily was all she would ever be capable of doing.]
I really don't mind it, you know, that you don't carry me like Silver does. I don't want you to be him any more than I'd have him trying to be you. I like you for you...noodle arms and all.
[He does know, and that's important. Dave says it with a comfortable, almost sing-song cadence; it's not bluster to cover up the usual insecurity.
A year and a half can change so much.
He half-dances with her over to their room and hip-checks the door open, because letting go is for squares, and Dave's geometric aesthetic leans more towards lines and circles except when he's literally all hearts about Meridiana.]
Also, if I got too swole, then Silver wouldn't be able to pick up me, and that would be a tragedy. I like our current arrangement. Also, then I'd have to buy all new shirts, and that store in Lumiose still won't let me in.
Which is quite the pity, since it's a lovely store.
[Yeah, you better believe she's gotten herself into there before, generally with the help of Silver and a little bit of creative fibbing, accompanied with her personal poise and recollection of exactly how a haughty royal from Ye Olde Englande acts in the face of someone daring to imply they aren't allowed in somewhere.
Once they're in their room, though, she catches hold of Dave's hand and does a little twirl and spin out to arm's length, which takes her far enough into the room to pluck up her deck of tarot cards and twirl right back again into his arms.]
But I like your shirts as they are, too. They're terribly comfortable, I've found, the few times I've borrowed them.
[She casts her gaze up, offering him a hint of a coy grin. Laundry theft is the best theft, and especially so when it's your girlfriend-soon-to-be-fiancee doing the thefting.]
[Girlfriancée laundry theft is one of those romcom tropes that get Dave every time, and she has to know that. That look says she definitely knows that. He presses his lips together, but his eyes crinkle with unsmiled smiling.]
The few times?
[He curls his arm around her and leans in to kiss her brow, then her nose.]
I'm just saying, what's mine is yours, Miss Meridiana. And, house rule, if you find it lying around the place it's extra yours, and since I'm pretty sure you've tripped over me under the kotatsu a couple times, I guess we can say what's me is yours, too.
[That smile is less unsmiled, now, and more right there and taking over his face.]
And that includes my shirts. For n number times, up to infinity. Forever. Also, they look cuter on you anyway.
It only makes sense, really. If your shirts are mine, then it only stands to reason that what's inside them is mine, too.
[Spoilers: what's inside them is Dave. Dave is hers. Dave, smiling, unwinding, finding solace right along with her on a night that had started out so difficult and lonely for the both of them.
Step by step, she dances and sways them back to the couch and their coffee table, where by now the marshmallows have probably melted into sticky foam and the cocoa has cooled to a pleasant drinking temperature; the proper positioning for a reading would have the two of them on opposite sides of the table, facing each other, but they'll just have to do a variation on that theme because there's still no way she's letting him go, much less having any intention of trying to escape from his arms.]
...When you draw the cards, for the spread, you'll need to hold a question in your mind. Something you — we, really — wish to have answered. Do you have some thought of what that will be...?
[Yeah, no, Dave is going to sit right next to her for maximum cuddle area. She already said it: It's a reading for them more than it is for him. He's just taking on most of the asker role so that she can clear her mind properly.
Speaking of which. He closes his eyes, thinks over the wording of his question, and nods.]
Yeah. Do I tell it to you, or will that be distracting before I draw?
[His eyelids drift half-closed as he draws, pausing before each card to make sure it feels right, that it's the one to which his intuition draws him. He's wondered in the past if that's something that draws Knights and Seers together--a way of seeing the world with the heart, not the head, and not being able to explain for all the words they have. Or maybe it's a Derse dreamer thing.
Or maybe it's just Dave and Meridiana, and the way they fit together more than just arm in arm.
So he draws their ten cards, letting Meridiana place them where they need to be, watching their hands in motion on the table before he speaks.]
What do we need to look for to know what's safe, here.
[Can't just ask the cards, "Help, what do," after all.]
[She reaches for his hand again once the cards are placed, needing only one to do her turning-over, and wanting the two of them to be united through woven fingers while she does it.]
This is a fine spread for a question like that. The first six cards here, in the cross — they're for a clear picture of how things stand for us, at the moment. Then the last four here, they're more...directed. For showing a way forward, if you will.
[She reaches for the card in the center of the cross, the first that Dave laid, and turns it over, leaning over the tabletop a bit to frown at it.]
The Four of Pentacles, reversed. That's...hardly surprising, really, to begin with. This first position is about the state of things at the present moment, and the Four of Pentacles is all about control — possessiveness, greed, but also self-protection. It's...needing to be in control of a situation, to find stability. And it's curious, I suppose, because the pentacles are the suit of wealth, but here we are in a city that hasn't any currency at all — and that's been bothering you too, hasn't it?
[Dave fidgets a little, getting more comfortable in his seat, looking at the cards as Meridiana translates their language for him.]
Money's... I was worried, when we first got here especially, because the world... You can't do anything without money. Or things that people want. And we just got here.
[Cash is another form of power he's no longer afraid of having. Or at least, less afraid of having than he is of its lack.
Also, he just freaking likes money, okay? Don't judge him, Pentacles, you don't know his life.]
It's a disadvantage, but I guess it doesn't matter, since the essentials are supposedly free. Which is stupid, but to our benefit right now. Probably.
I think it does matter, though, moreso than it might seem. That's why it's bothering you; it wouldn't be, if it were just nothing.
[She leans toward him a little, bumping shoulders with him before reaching to turn over the second card in the spread.
Once, upon seeing the card she turns over, she might've been surprised or even a little upset. In this spread, at this time, in this place with this question, she's hardly even surprised.]
Of course it'd be the Tower in the next position. If the Four of Pentacles represents the situation we're in at the moment, then this next one represents the problem facing us — the one thing that, if it were resolved, would settle the question you asked in the beginning.
...The Tower is about sudden changes and upheavals. It's about disrupting one's security, upsetting one's stability. It's...a setback. Something we'd had being damaged by forces beyond our control — like the tower being struck by the lightning — and something we'd counted on falling down unexpectedly, leaving us to start from scratch.
I suppose in a way it's a good sign, these first two cards. If it's this accurate so far, it's likely the rest will be as well.
[Dave considers that pseudo-optimism, picks up his hot chocolate for a long sip, puts it back down, and then cozies up to Meridiana even more adhesively, wrapping both arms around her middle so she can use both hands, not unlike how she held him earlier.
He's still chewing the money question over, why it bothers him so much. And he thinks he knows: the fifth week, when the provisions they'd relied on had been poisoned and taken away so easily, because they had no control over it. And further back, Bro and their kitchen full of lethal weaponry and not much else, the years he'd learned to 'forget' food around his room so he could always find something to snack on, just in case.
Greed and control. Maybe Meridiana already made that connection. She knows him well enough. Dave rests his cheek on her crown and sighs a little.]
If this is distracting, elbow me in the pancreas. I'm just trying to prepare my body to get read like hell all over again.
I'm sure I haven't even the slightest idea where your pancreas is, to begin with.
[It tickles a little, the way he snares her with his arms; even now it's always a little strange to feel things that make contact with her midsection, after years of corsets acting like a barricade and months of shame making her loath to think about the things that had been done to her to keep her body alive.
She reaches for the third card, resting her fingers atop it, but doesn't flip it just yet.]
This one will be about the past. Not just strictly things that led up to this moment, but things in the past that may be influencing things in the present — likely this one won't come as too much of a surprise, either.
[Except that she is surprised when she turns over the Queen of Wands, having evidently been steeling herself for something else.]
...Oh.
[She flushes a little, casting her eyes low.]
You're...do you recall this card? How the court cards sometimes mean particular people? This one is me...
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[Did you know that they had marshmallows in 1897? They sure did. There was a marshmallow revolution of sorts, they started making them with gelatin instead of mallow plant sap and it was quite a Big Deal.
But anyway.
She turns her head, nuzzling her face into the mass of sweater and shirt covering his back, and then gradually untangles without ever quite letting go, so that she can move around and stand at his side instead of behind him.]
Several, if we're treating ourselves. I think we can stand to treat ourselves, can't we?
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I'm always treating myself, 'round here.
[He thinks about it, then tries to insinuate himself even closer, somehow, warm and embarrassed even as he pours and marshmallows their mugs.]
The implication's that you're a treat. Just thought I'd put that up here on the counter with all the rest of this gooey sweet shit, where we both can see it.
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[She loves this boy. God, she loves this boy so much, this unexpected boy from a world away and a century ahead of her time who stumbled into her life and flushed red when she touched a hand to his face, who defends her and listens to her and tried to save her from a death she'd earned but never deserved — who, of all the gifts she's ever been given, offered her the very most precious of all: the freedom to grow and the automatic support of whatever directions she might choose, and the outstretched hand to help her to her feet and open doors that she'd always otherwise found closed.
She couldn't possibly love him more than she does, not more deeply and not more fiercely.
For all that she doesn't want to be here, there's a small part of her that accepts she'd rather be here than anywhere else, if this is where Dave is going to have to be.]
I'm very sweet, you know. And I'd be more than happy to prove that again...if you should like to kiss me and remind yourself, that is.
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Are you casting aspersions on my powers of recall, Meridiana.
[Doesn't stop him from leaning right on over, an arm threaded loosely around her waist, for a kiss, though. Just to make sure.
Just because she asked. There's not a thing he wouldn't give, if she asked. He wants her to have the world, because then she'd have everything that makes her happy in it.]
Well, what do you know. You're right. Truly scrumptious.
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[It's a relief, though, to have that rich fleeting moment of his mouth against hers and his arm at her waist. It's something they both needed right now, a ray of sunlight in a storm, a spot of goodness in the valley of their fears and doubts.]
Come now, let me get one of the mugs, and you take the other. One each, that's only fair, isn't it?
[And that will leave them each a hand to stay holding on to the other. That's what she really means, and it's for the best.]
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[Without letting go right away, he turns to silently count the number of marshmallows in each mug, fingers moving quickly as he tallies them up. It takes a second, and then he takes the mug with one fewer marshmallow. #chivalry.]
And when we're done with the reading, we can do slumber party stuff. Like, curl our hair and talk about boys. I always wanted to talk about boys.
[This is a joke. On the other hand, good lord but Ruby City has a lot of boys to talk about.]
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[It's intentional, the way she borrows the nickname Dave had used for Giorno — gentler somehow than bringing him up directly, thanks to the inherent humor in hearing Dave's vocabulary and phrasing in her sweet dulcet tones.
Even mourning can be made funny when poor despairing Meridiana is lamenting the death of sweet noble Mr. D-Pops, after all.]
...Really, though, I'd like that. Sitting up with you, doing slumber party things. That was the first time we played Never Have I Ever, remember? And you all had to teach me how to play, when I didn't know.
[She laughs a little, under her breath.]
I felt so out of sorts, at first! I was so sure it'd be simply mortifying, talking of things we'd never done when I was so certain that I wouldn't have done any of them, coming from London instead of the present day like the rest of you.
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Didn't it turn out you did more of those things than me? Or we were about equal or something. I remember thinking something like, thank fuck, we're in this together.
[It felt good, offering his overwhelming inexperience with "normality" as something he could share with her. Dave hadn't even had time to feel self-conscious about his messed-up computer game life, when it turned out he had more in common with her than most could have thought.
His eyebrows rise slightly.]
You know, that's something we could do, too. We got a big house, we could throw a massive sleepover and get everyone to play Never Have I Ever with us.
[In removing his arm from her waist, he rubs her back and then lets his knuckles brush down her arm until he's holding her hand, so they never once lose that contact.]
It's bound to be enlightening.
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[She says "again", because what she's thinking of isn't really the house they've claimed here in the city, but rather of the one they left behind in Kalos — big, roomy, and full of life, where people leave for reasons other than murder and there's always a tomorrow waiting on the other side of an evening.
Once he's got her hand, she gives him a little tug, leading him away from the stove and toward wherever they're going to set up shop once they go fetch her cards — the kitchen table, maybe, but possibly somewhere in the comfort of one of the other rooms too. Couches. Coffee tables. Decadance.]
I think for tonight I'm just as happy to have you all to myself, though. And —
[She hesitates a second, just one, before venturing softly: ]
...Once it's sunrise, then the night is over. Isn't it?
[Tautologically, yes, that's exactly what it means. But what she's really geting at is, once sunrise hits, then they're safe — from another week, another Thursday night, another close brush with prowling death.]
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Yeah.
[He's glad to go where she takes him. Loves it. Trusts it, more than he can trust anything else, in any world. Meridiana loves him. It's all he needs to believe in.]
And we can watch the sky change. And the sun come up, if the sky stops shitflaking on us.
[He puts his mug down on the coffee table, then looks up at her, a happy note caught in his unconcealed eyes before it tries to creep onto his face.]
Breakfast in bed.
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But she's not afraid of this. Since the beginning, Dave has proved himself time and again — or, knowing Dave, time and time and time and time and time and time and time and again — to be different than anything she's ever known.
(Noblemen live in castles, and have spares to flee to when one turns to dust. Knights defend castles, and fight for their loved ones inside them.)
She sets her mug down as well, next to his, and she knows she ought to keep the two of them on track with their plans, but it's so much easier to just walk into his arms and press herself close against his warmth instead, so she does.]
Perhaps lunch and supper in bed, as well. If we're feeling so extravagant — and why shouldn't we?
...It's a fine thought to hold fast to, for now. That there are good things waiting for us on the other side of the morning.
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[Which is like second breakfast, but with fewer Hobbits, more presents, and no judgey Sean Bean to ruin the fun. Or steal the ring. Fucker best not be stealing any mamahecking rings around Dave come Second Christmas.
He links his hands together behind her back, swaying his weight slowly from foot to foot, glad for the way she fits into him no matter where they are, no matter what they weather (or what the weather, for that matter). He's content, for the moment, to hold her and be held, and to look at the two mugs together on the coffee table, marshmallows melting into fluff, steam rising side by side.
Click. He pretends he's Cam Jansen, taking pictures with his brain, then rubs his face into her hair like a cat hungry for pets.]
And there's good stuff waiting for us right now, but we gotta go get your cards first, and maybe the extra blankets, and I'd pick you up and carry you except I'm still not as buff as Silver, do you still love me and my noodle arms. Meridiaaannaaaa.
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[Given that, with the way they're standing together, they're frankly just one balloon's-width of Room For Jesus™ away from being the cutest couple at the middle school dance, as it is.
She makes the first move, though, swaying them a little more emphatically in the direction of their room, fully certain he'll follow along. Funny, isn't it, how it feels so natural to lead half the time, when once she would've believed that following prettily was all she would ever be capable of doing.]
I really don't mind it, you know, that you don't carry me like Silver does. I don't want you to be him any more than I'd have him trying to be you. I like you for you...noodle arms and all.
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[He does know, and that's important. Dave says it with a comfortable, almost sing-song cadence; it's not bluster to cover up the usual insecurity.
A year and a half can change so much.
He half-dances with her over to their room and hip-checks the door open, because letting go is for squares, and Dave's geometric aesthetic leans more towards lines and circles except when he's literally all hearts about Meridiana.]
Also, if I got too swole, then Silver wouldn't be able to pick up me, and that would be a tragedy. I like our current arrangement. Also, then I'd have to buy all new shirts, and that store in Lumiose still won't let me in.
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[Yeah, you better believe she's gotten herself into there before, generally with the help of Silver and a little bit of creative fibbing, accompanied with her personal poise and recollection of exactly how a haughty royal from Ye Olde Englande acts in the face of someone daring to imply they aren't allowed in somewhere.
Once they're in their room, though, she catches hold of Dave's hand and does a little twirl and spin out to arm's length, which takes her far enough into the room to pluck up her deck of tarot cards and twirl right back again into his arms.]
But I like your shirts as they are, too. They're terribly comfortable, I've found, the few times I've borrowed them.
[She casts her gaze up, offering him a hint of a coy grin. Laundry theft is the best theft, and especially so when it's your girlfriend-soon-to-be-fiancee doing the thefting.]
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The few times?
[He curls his arm around her and leans in to kiss her brow, then her nose.]
I'm just saying, what's mine is yours, Miss Meridiana. And, house rule, if you find it lying around the place it's extra yours, and since I'm pretty sure you've tripped over me under the kotatsu a couple times, I guess we can say what's me is yours, too.
[That smile is less unsmiled, now, and more right there and taking over his face.]
And that includes my shirts. For n number times, up to infinity. Forever. Also, they look cuter on you anyway.
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[Spoilers: what's inside them is Dave. Dave is hers. Dave, smiling, unwinding, finding solace right along with her on a night that had started out so difficult and lonely for the both of them.
Step by step, she dances and sways them back to the couch and their coffee table, where by now the marshmallows have probably melted into sticky foam and the cocoa has cooled to a pleasant drinking temperature; the proper positioning for a reading would have the two of them on opposite sides of the table, facing each other, but they'll just have to do a variation on that theme because there's still no way she's letting him go, much less having any intention of trying to escape from his arms.]
...When you draw the cards, for the spread, you'll need to hold a question in your mind. Something you — we, really — wish to have answered. Do you have some thought of what that will be...?
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Speaking of which. He closes his eyes, thinks over the wording of his question, and nods.]
Yeah. Do I tell it to you, or will that be distracting before I draw?
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[She starts to outline the positioning on the surface of the coffee table, card by card.]
And then, once they're all laid. Then tell me, and we'll see.
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[His eyelids drift half-closed as he draws, pausing before each card to make sure it feels right, that it's the one to which his intuition draws him. He's wondered in the past if that's something that draws Knights and Seers together--a way of seeing the world with the heart, not the head, and not being able to explain for all the words they have. Or maybe it's a Derse dreamer thing.
Or maybe it's just Dave and Meridiana, and the way they fit together more than just arm in arm.
So he draws their ten cards, letting Meridiana place them where they need to be, watching their hands in motion on the table before he speaks.]
What do we need to look for to know what's safe, here.
[Can't just ask the cards, "Help, what do," after all.]
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This is a fine spread for a question like that. The first six cards here, in the cross — they're for a clear picture of how things stand for us, at the moment. Then the last four here, they're more...directed. For showing a way forward, if you will.
[She reaches for the card in the center of the cross, the first that Dave laid, and turns it over, leaning over the tabletop a bit to frown at it.]
The Four of Pentacles, reversed. That's...hardly surprising, really, to begin with. This first position is about the state of things at the present moment, and the Four of Pentacles is all about control — possessiveness, greed, but also self-protection. It's...needing to be in control of a situation, to find stability. And it's curious, I suppose, because the pentacles are the suit of wealth, but here we are in a city that hasn't any currency at all — and that's been bothering you too, hasn't it?
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[Dave fidgets a little, getting more comfortable in his seat, looking at the cards as Meridiana translates their language for him.]
Money's... I was worried, when we first got here especially, because the world... You can't do anything without money. Or things that people want. And we just got here.
[Cash is another form of power he's no longer afraid of having. Or at least, less afraid of having than he is of its lack.
Also, he just freaking likes money, okay? Don't judge him, Pentacles, you don't know his life.]
It's a disadvantage, but I guess it doesn't matter, since the essentials are supposedly free. Which is stupid, but to our benefit right now. Probably.
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[She leans toward him a little, bumping shoulders with him before reaching to turn over the second card in the spread.
Once, upon seeing the card she turns over, she might've been surprised or even a little upset. In this spread, at this time, in this place with this question, she's hardly even surprised.]
Of course it'd be the Tower in the next position. If the Four of Pentacles represents the situation we're in at the moment, then this next one represents the problem facing us — the one thing that, if it were resolved, would settle the question you asked in the beginning.
...The Tower is about sudden changes and upheavals. It's about disrupting one's security, upsetting one's stability. It's...a setback. Something we'd had being damaged by forces beyond our control — like the tower being struck by the lightning — and something we'd counted on falling down unexpectedly, leaving us to start from scratch.
I suppose in a way it's a good sign, these first two cards. If it's this accurate so far, it's likely the rest will be as well.
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[Dave considers that pseudo-optimism, picks up his hot chocolate for a long sip, puts it back down, and then cozies up to Meridiana even more adhesively, wrapping both arms around her middle so she can use both hands, not unlike how she held him earlier.
He's still chewing the money question over, why it bothers him so much. And he thinks he knows: the fifth week, when the provisions they'd relied on had been poisoned and taken away so easily, because they had no control over it. And further back, Bro and their kitchen full of lethal weaponry and not much else, the years he'd learned to 'forget' food around his room so he could always find something to snack on, just in case.
Greed and control. Maybe Meridiana already made that connection. She knows him well enough. Dave rests his cheek on her crown and sighs a little.]
If this is distracting, elbow me in the pancreas. I'm just trying to prepare my body to get read like hell all over again.
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[It tickles a little, the way he snares her with his arms; even now it's always a little strange to feel things that make contact with her midsection, after years of corsets acting like a barricade and months of shame making her loath to think about the things that had been done to her to keep her body alive.
She reaches for the third card, resting her fingers atop it, but doesn't flip it just yet.]
This one will be about the past. Not just strictly things that led up to this moment, but things in the past that may be influencing things in the present — likely this one won't come as too much of a surprise, either.
[Except that she is surprised when she turns over the Queen of Wands, having evidently been steeling herself for something else.]
...Oh.
[She flushes a little, casting her eyes low.]
You're...do you recall this card? How the court cards sometimes mean particular people? This one is me...
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