Deals and Drinks and Slightly Depraved Desires (Closed RP for Richard and Camilla)

[chameleonfaust.livejournal.com]

((Backdated to 7/17ish.))



Demon deals were, in the crudest of terms, a shit idea. Literature was strewn with examples; the mortal very rarely got the good end of the stick. And yet...

When the jovial guy with yellow eyes had offered Richard anything, he hadn't hesitated. One word, spoken with a fevered reverence, as if he was summoning some ancient goddess to rise from the incense and dust of her alter and walk among them. One word and it was done. The price was some favor to be done later, but Richard barely heard the terms. He walked out of the Great Hall - he had simply come down for a cup of coffee and maybe some breakfast, never knowing that he'd chosen a seat next to destiny in the form of a very average man - with a spring in his step and a sense of very clear purpose. This was his right. He would have what he wanted. Finally.

The day was spent in a walk around the grounds. Richard saw the world in a new light. He would have her. Finally, she would be his. Not Henry's. Not Charles'. He deserved this every bit as much as anyone else. After everything, she would see. She would realize.

Camilla would come to him. The demon had promised her to him. The terms were not important, the wording was a detail he didn't need to bother with. He'd said 'Camilla' and the demon had smiled - something cold and chilling that made him think of worms on a corpse or the winter's breeze across dead grass - and nodded and that was enough.

Finally making his way back to his room, Richard sat in the chair by the fire with a glass of scotch and a cigarette. Waiting.

Comments

[chameleonfaust.livejournal.com]

Henry was gone. This had to be the demon's influence. Perhaps that was all that was needed? To get the corrupting influence out of the way so that Camilla could finally see clearly? "You shouldn't have to see him." The 'him' referred to was, of course, Henry, though it was unclear and vague enough to refer to Bunny as well. Following Camilla over to the bed, he poured two glasses of scotch and handed her one before sitting next to her.

Richard hid a triumphant grin behind the glass as he took a drink. Of course it would work out. Camilla was here, wasn't she? As his precious goddess turned her focus to him, Richard all but preened. Like a hothouse flower under the sun, he luxuriated under even the simplest of attentions.

"Not much," he admitted with a rueful shrug. "Sadly, classical languages are sorely neglected, here. I've been trying to remind myself of some spells. I think it's a matter of sense memory - my muscles remember the movements, but the incantations aren't coming back." He grimaced and took a drink. "I miss my university, truth be told. I understood Marlowe. This slap-dash Latin is a different story."

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Crossing her legs (a soft swish as she rearranged her school robes over her knees), she turned slightly toward him, listening with every evidence of attention. She sipped her scotch, then answered, "I can't blame you a bit, really. I've never gotten used to wizarding Latin. Medieval Latin's degenerate in its way but it has its own beauty to compensate. So do the romance vernaculars -- Dante's Italian, for example. But wizarding Latin hasn't got any compensations beyond the power it conveys -- the power it teaches you to focus, that is, since the magic isn't even in the words themselves properly. Not that power isn't a considerable compensation ..." She took another sip of her drink. It was very good scotch, and she savored it for a moment before continuing.

"I wonder what Marlowe would have made of it all. He who wrote Faustus -- what would he have made of a place like Hogwarts, where real sorcery's done? Not all tricks and fripperies, either. Curses, some so dire they're called Unforgivable. Except we haven't sold anything for this. It seems people are simply born with it. The way some people are born with money, or looks."

[chameleonfaust.livejournal.com]

As she talked, Richard's mind wandered. Oh, not to other things; rather, to further contemplation of Camilla. The gray of her eyes, the way her porcelain skin seemed to glow in the light of the fire, and the gentle curl of her hair just at her temple. That husky voice that drove him slowly wild, that seemed to creep into his very veins and marry both reason and ecstasy, murmured on and he hung on every soft stroke of sound. Not the words, but the essence behind them.

She spoke of Faustus. He heard 'I love you'.

"He would have seen his deepest dreams and darkest imaginings come true," he said, eyes caressing her. Richard spoke not only of Marlowe's view of Hogwarts, but his own mounting desire and anticipation. Camilla was his fantasy - and his future, now. He was here when Henry had abandoned her, when Charles had become someone to avoid. He was here, and she was with him, now. His, eternally. As it should be.

Taking another drink, he reached over to refill Camilla's glass, adding, "Too bad they don't teach Greek, here." He smiled up at her. "I miss the sound of it."

From her lips most of all. A secret language, almost, in its rarity. Something meant to murmur endearments and promises. Something he would use in bed with Camilla, he was sure. Soon.

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

She held out the glass for him to refill it, smiling her thanks back at him. She'd had a little wine with dinner, too, and between that and this, the world had become a warmer place. "If you miss the sound of it, you haven't been with your friends enough. We have to make up for lost time," she teased, clearly meaning no real reproach, and took a long grateful swallow of the liquor he'd poured for her. "It's warm tonight, isn't it?" A tangential observation, careless, before she resumed the topic he'd suggested to her mind. "Actually, I like it that they don't teach Greek here. If they did, we couldn't use it as we're accustomed to use it among ourselves. They don't deserve it, really."

Democratic ideals of education were rather beyond Camilla.

"I'm not articulating it well," she said absently, her brows drawing together slightly. "I've had a little too much to drink." Even as she said this, she finished off her second glass. "But you know what I mean. <That which is sacred is not to be given unto the barbarians,>," this last in perfectly fluid ancient Greek despite her tipsiness. Then she laughed softly at the circularity of her own argument. The word for barbarians, barbaroi, in itself designated the peoples who did not speak Greek. Her eyes shone, bright with merriment and liquor, inviting him to share the joke -- reinforcing the sense that he numbered among that small select few who could detect such humor, let alone appreciate it.

[chameleonfaust.livejournal.com]

Her laughter was better than alcohol; it flowed, warm and smooth, down his body and pooled in his stomach to radiate the glow in slow, languid waves. Richard grinned, sharing the joke, the secret, the intimacy. <"And we, all, are the keepers of the sacred knowledge."> The 'we' was the word that meant just the two of them, the inevitable partnership that they were beginning. He tipped more Scotch into her glass. "And you're expressing yourself perfectly." What might be described as shy smile flashed across his face. "As always."

At her complaint about the temperature, he chuckled softly and set his glass aside. "Here," he reached gently for her robe, his heart slamming wildly in his chest in delicious anticipation. "Let me help you with that, then. Might as well take it off, if you're over-warm." And so it started. Each second, every gesture, the sound of the words falling from her lips, was something to be cherished. The first of many, the start of a lifetime. He'd dreamed of this moment, just like this. The demon must have known. The day growing later, both slightly tipsy, exchanging thoughts and ideals with the ease of equals. And then an opening from Camilla - maybe just the tilt of her had or a phrase uttered with those storm gray eyes fixed on his - onto which he would seize, manfully, with the full voracity of someone long entitled and long denied.

"We do have time to make up for," he agreed, eyes devouring her face. "I don't want to waste any more of it. Not on any of them." The rabble. The unworthy. Bunny who made her afraid, Henry who used her and left her, and Charles who cheapened her. All the commoners, the barbarians, who did not fully appreciate her glory. Their time was done, now. It was down to him, and to his prize.

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Camilla did register the dual form of the pronoun. We two; but the all after it softened the meaning, turned it from questionably meaningful to grammatically questionable, and so she laughed again, just as softly.

"It's a silly uniform," she said, "to wear robes in the summer over perfectly decent clothes, but then I read the school used to go out of session over the summer, like Hampden in the winter." Her glass still in one hand, she raised the other hand to the neck of her robe, to undo it as best she could. He had already reached to undo it, and their fingers met. Gray eyes widened -- cool, pale as water, and troubled as water too. "Richard?" The touch had something magnetic in it, something curious that kept from drawing her hand away.

(Had she been thinking clearly, she might have remembered just such a current running through the counter that the demon Phil had given her, that little token by which he meant to tempt her. But Camilla had long ago rid herself of that counter, and never gave it another thought.)

The school robe, undone, fell about her shoulders, revealing the thin pale cotton of her blouse taut over skin the summer sun had gilded these past weeks. She ignored it. "It's warm in here because you have a fire going," she said, faintly amused, all the more faintly for the remoteness of it, as though her attention was divided between the conversation and something more gripping. "I guess we can't put it out." Her eyes didn't move in the direction of the fireplace; her gaze was held by his.

[chameleonfaust.livejournal.com]

The surge of triumph was electric. He saw that look. He reveled in it. "Camilla," he breathed. His grip tightened on her marginally, just the slightest curling of his fingers around hers, and Richard leaned in slightly. Lips parted just a little in breathless, glorious anticipation, Richard's eyes held Camilla's with tender possessiveness.

His hand left hers to skim down her shoulder. "No," he chuckled. "Fireplaces here seem to have a mind of their own." Her skin glowed in the candlelight, giving her an other-worldly glow. She was a painting come to life, art and heaven wrapped in mere flesh and blood.

"God," he said softly, voice wondering and filled with reverent awe. "You are so beautiful." Then Richard moved forward, their lips meeting in a gentle kiss.

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

As their lips met, Camilla's only thought was that yes, the room really was too warm, almost stifling; and it seemed to her, hazily, that Richard was helping her to breathe. Passive at first, she found herself deepening the kiss, making of it something less soft, less gentle than it had begun. There was something in it she craved, though she could not tell what, only that it seemed vital, and that identifying it would be beside the point -- would take too long -- all that mattered was the thing itself.

She still held her drink in one hand, and her fingers slackened around it. The glass crashed to the floor; startled, Camilla stiffened and pulled away.

"We shouldn't," she said, eyes wide.

Henry had disappeared, true. Henry had quite possibly left her of his own volition. That didn't matter to Camilla. At the time she'd rejected Richard's proposal of marriage, back in Boston, on the grounds she loved Henry, Henry had been dead, and as far as she'd known then, death was irrevocable.

So she protested now. Yet she remained where she was, still, not rising to leave, not so much as moving out of Richard's reach. She bit her lip, very slightly, her eyes still riveted by his.

[chameleonfaust.livejournal.com]

God, yes. As she responded - as he knew she would, as she must - Richard slid one hand around her slim waist. The cotton shirt clung to her skin like a veil, protecting her modesty, heightening the anticipation. When she broke away he simply grinned at her. This, after all, was what women did. Demurred and protested, all the while wanting the man to demand. To be strong.

<"Yes,"> he murmured in flawless Greek. <"We should.">

His thumb brushed across those full, perfect lips and then moved around to bury itself in her hair. Strong, slim fingers tangled themselves with golden curls and pulled Camilla back to him. His mouth descended onto hers, claiming it for his own. She tasted sweet and tangy, like summer and alcohol and marmalade. Wanting nothing more than to make her fully his, Richard leaned into the kiss, trailing his fingers up and down the small of her back.

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

She did not try to resist. She might have forgotten how. She had never known Richard's notions of what she, Camilla, might want or need; she did not suspect what lesson he might have taken when she'd shown him what Charles had done to her, so many years ago. She only knew that he persisted now, and that she did not object, though part of her mind insisted she should. When he spoke, the words were the right words; when he kissed her, the kiss too felt right.

The right words in the right language. He said they should, and why shouldn't they? He was her friend. She loved him, as she loved all her friends. Had he been at the bacchanal with them, she would have welcomed him then, whether she had the presence of mind to know it or not. This was no different. They had been drinking just now, which was in itself sacred in a way. Her reeling mind cast up a flurry of reasons why she could do what she wanted to do, and what she wanted was this, for no reason she could discern.

She tried to articulate this, brokenly, pulling away for air. She only got as far as "<Love>" -- and every language failed her. Uncertain, she clung to him, and let his touch burn away her doubts.

[chameleonfaust.livejournal.com]

That one word, spoken in her perfect voice, erased any thoughts Richard might have carried that did not center around Camilla. Around the two of them. <"Love,"> he agreed with a wondering sigh, and slowly eased her down onto the bed. His lips found hers again, soft and sweet now that the truth had been revealed. Now that she had accepted him.

His fingers fumbled on her buttons as he tried to divest Camilla of her clothing. The buttons became, in his mind, not just bits of plastic holding together her shirt, but representations of every thing that had ever come between them. They were Charles and his sick, incestuous obsession. His bruising desire that crushed the delicate flower of Camilla's very soul. They were Henry. Perfect Henry. Who had left her; not just this time, but before, in a blaze of gunfire and a sudden blast of noise. Henry who never really understood the treasure he had in Camilla. The buttons were Bunny, and his insidious poison, and Francis, always standing back and watching. They were Julian. They were Hampden, and the money he lacked, and the years that had been ripped from them.

With every second that passed, Richard loathed the buttons more. What they represented infuriated him. Ignited some deeply buried anger. His kisses were harder, now, against her lips, and he shifted to hover over her prone body. He wanted to take her - to take her and posses her and drive out thoughts of all others beside himself. She was his, now. She had been given to him. She was his and he deserved her.

Expelling a sharp growl, Richard ripped the front of Camilla's shirt open. The buttons popped and flew into the dark corners of the room; and, just like that, they were alone. No ghosts haunting them, no twin standing over them. His mouth moved hungrily to taste the skin of her neck even as his hands traced a heated path down her exposed skin. <"You are a goddess, divine. Let me worship you.">