From being an Abandoned who had rarely left the Hollowed Grounds, to embracing the call of adventure, to dying and being reborn first as an Ascended and then as an Ancient, Maea has gone through quite the amount of changes in her life. One thing remains common, though, in her attempts to find out just where she belongs; she’s always had a craving for knowledge which has brought her to so many places and to meet so many people here in Caido. We can’t wait to see what else is in store for her!
Congratulations, Maea!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
Skinning and hosting by the epically talented Kaons, and functionality fanciness by the coding magic of Neowulf. If you ever see either of them around, make sure to show them some love!
"It's like they just expected it all to disappear once the sun came up." Remi grumped under his breath as he and Ronin continued to wade through trash left on the beach. Some of it was harmless and organic—fruit cores, sticks used for roasting things, bones—but there were also bags and soiled blankets, shoes, and bottles.
It was easy enough to use his telekineses to round up the trash and bring it close enough to stuff in a bag, but that wasn't the point. Leaning down and picking up a canteen that was almost entirely full still, Remi unscrewed the top and sniffed. It smelled like gasoline and 18 types of liquors all melding together. Exhaling his repulsion, he looked over towards Ronin with a grin, shaking the bottle in his hands.
"Dare you to take a drink of it." He challenged, tossing the bottle towards the Star.
who's got their claws in you my friend?
into your heart i'll b e a t again
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Ronin was in no state to be out and about trawling the beaches with his husband, but really, when had that stopped him? His wounds were healing but his bruises were in a full rainbow of colours, and he’d never have made it half this far across the sand without help. Luckily, he had help - the fluffy grey cloud he rode upon made short work of the travel, and he held a helpful rake out to corral the trash in Remi’s direction.
”Maybe they thought it was like the bodies in the Hollowed Grounds,” he said, sitting up as the Alchemist tossed the canteen his way, clumsily catching it in his hands. ”Oh?” he snorted, opening it back up to take a sniff. ”Only if you promise to kiss me afterw— holy fuck that’s strong.” Laughing, the hunter looked about to keel over, but he wasn’t one to be shown up.
Once he thought he could see again, Ronin did take a gulp of the mysterious liquor in the canteen (in for a penny and all that), before promptly spluttering and coughing at the taste.
"Gods Ronin I didn't think you actually would!" Remi protested, although he absolutely had and was expecting precisely this response from his husband. Snorting merrily at the look crossing Ronin's face, Remi scrunched his nose and took a few steps back as if to say that no, he wouldn't kiss Ronin after that. Not just yet, anyway.
"Right, your turn then." He said casually, meaning in truth or dare.
Waiting for his challenge, Remi continued to stuff random LongNight artifacts into the bags they were pulling along. No doubt sooner or later they'd find something obscene, but so far the clutter had been rather tame—mystery liquor aside.
who's got their claws in you my friend?
into your heart i'll b e a t again
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
07-13-2020, 08:18 PM (This post was last modified: 07-13-2020, 08:18 PM by Ronin.)
”Liar - you knew I would,” Ronin croaked, trying to stop his throat from feeling like it was on fire with limited success. He was still coughing as he tossed the canteen into his own bag of rubbish, floating along after his husband and using his rake to flick sand in his direction with a grin. ”Oh, is it a game now?” Sounding a little more human this time, Ronin scooped up a few broken bottles and added them to the bag.
He narrowed his eyes playfully, obviously feeling entitled to his kiss after such an ordeal, but given that it was his turn he supposed he could wait. ”Alright,” he said. ”Truth time. When did you realise you were gay?” Nothing like a little bit of past-delving while they strolled - or flew, in his case.
Hissing at the sand as if he wasn't already entirely covered with it, Remi shot his husband a glare as he kicked out at his rake.
"I'd say it was a competition, but I don't think you're quite up to that." Remi replied with a roguish smile, bobbing his eyebrows before using his magic to pick up a cushion that he absolutely wasn't about to touch with his bare hands.
Glancing over his shoulder and raising his eyebrows in anticipation of Ronin's question, Remi blushed slightly in a way that was uncharacteristic of the man he was now, as his past was called up. "Well.." He hummed, nibbling at the inside of his lip as memories flit before his eyes. "Because we moved around a lot...I did not have many other children to speak with. So...I never knew that other boys did not have crushes on each other the way that I did." Remi began with a shrug. "And of course with my mother gone and just my father around, I had no one to ask. It was one of the whores at a brothel my father frequented who helped me realize.." This was said with no small amount of bashfulness as Remi kept his gaze trained on the trash he was picking up.
"It was rather nice as far as sex education goes I suppose, hearing it all from someone who wasn't embarrassed about it and who obviously knew what they were talking about. They were the ones who taught me to...be with a woman in a way I could make work." Blushing furiously now and determinately not looking at Ronin, the Alchemist cleared his throat.
"How about you? Being bi-sexual, anyways?"
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
”Oi!” Ronin complained through a laugh at the attack on his rake, reaching out to try and prod Remi with it before thinking better of it - he did not know what things it had been in contact with on this beach walk. Dragging in a few errant bits of paper and other glass to scoop up, Ronin couldn’t help but raise a brow - of all things, he hadn’t expected the blushing or the bashfulness. ”I didn’t think it was possible to embarrass you any more,” he murmured, though the warmth in his expression told that it was a pleasant surprise.
Then the question was turned back on him, and Ronin lounged back on his cloud, itching at the scruff on his chin. ”Army barracks,” he said with an easy shrug, slanting a smile in Remi’s direction. ”I was enlisted into the Storm Guard at sixteen - as you’d expect, boys and girls were divided into separate barracks. Spent a lot of our time trying to get a peek at the girls. All that frustration, all those hormones...” He let out a laugh at the memory.
”I don’t know what they expected really, cramming a bunch of lads together like that and not expecting them to experiment.” He shrugged. ”Still, you were the first one I...” Oh great, now it was his turn to blush. ”The first one I let close, in not so many words.”
Swallowing down a response to that (likely the combination of Ronin and the past was all that could make the Alchemist embarrassed these days), he merely mumbled something incoherent under his breath.
Hazarding a look in Ronin's direction as he began to answer, Remi couldn't help but bark out a laugh. He could see plainly in his mind Ronin and all the others pushing and shoving to try and sneak peeks of the girls as they showered or got dressed for bed. Looking through holes in walls or trying to charm their way into playing various kissing games in closets. It was all rather endearing to hear, even if Remi couldn't relate.
Not one to say something so crass as, a holes' a hole or some such, Remi just hummed a soft note under his breath. He wasn't entirely sure what the line between love and sex was, whether or not he might ever be able to be in love with a woman say, despite having no sexual attraction. The opposite applied as well, Remi having only had sex with men he'd had feelings for.
Rather than feeling butterflies at hearing Ronin say so, Remi's expression darkened slightly and he frowned, given he couldn't say the same. Ianto had been his proper first and there had been more than once he nearly ran away with the fox. "Well. Alcohol and rose petals, how could you have said no?" He said, trying to cheer himself and forcing a smile.
who's got their claws in you my friend?
into your heart i'll b e a t again
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
”How indeed?” Ronin smirked, shifting to sit up again to reach for a shirt that someone had abandoned on the beach with his rake. Disposing of it in the bag, he glanced back to Remi only to spot all too well that particular brand of smile on his lips. ”You’re thinking badly of yourself,” he remarked, abandoning his tools for a second so his nimbus could swoop lazily in front of the alchemist.
Reaching out, Ronin cupped his husband’s cheeks, squishing them playfully and giving his head a gentle wobble. ”Stop,” he said, smirking. ”Or at least talk to me about it. We’re past the whole secret shame business, I hope.” Sitting back, he patted the cloud beside him as if offering a seat.
'No, I'm just—" Silenced by Ronin's hands on his cheeks, Remi sighed and leaned into the touch. Ronin was right of course, and though they had done away with secret shame, there were still memories better left in the past. Still, the game was truth or dare, and they were on truth. Hopping up onto the cloud (he always expected it to just...sink down with his weight, but it never did), Remi inspected one of his hands with an intensity that said indeed there were things on his mind.
"Well I suppose as nice as it is to hear that I was your fir—" What Remi was going to say, was As nice as it is to hear that I was your first, you weren't mine, until he realized he had no idea what sort of first Ronin was talking about. Sitting up straighter, his brow arched in a way which mirrored his husband's own usual expression, the Alchemist gave the Star a perplexed stare. "Wait, but...I mean, there was Vanya as far as intimacy and closeness goes, and Loren for..." What Ronin and Loren had done was no secret, but the Alchemist didn't have to like saying the words out loud. "..sex." He forced himself to say. "So, what...was..I?" Remi concluded, trying not to look or sound as incredibly naive as he was currently feeling.
who's got their claws in you my friend?
into your heart i'll b e a t again
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Remi hopped up to join him and Ronin slipped an arm around him automatically, leaning into his warmth and softly pressing a kiss against his temple. Still, as the other man gazed at him with an expression so like his own (when had they begun to subconsciously imitate each other, he wondered?), Ronin realised that there was still some clarity to be had. And that did cause a flush of pink to rise to his cheeks, the hunter clearing his throat and glancing at the suddenly very interesting beach.
”Loren was not my first for sex,” he corrected, ruffling his free hand through his hair. The librarian had been his best friend once, and Ronin’s attempt to help him navigate his way through the issues he’d been having had just caused more problems in the long run. But this wasn’t about that. With an awkward smile, he shrugged his shoulders.
”I was always on top. Until you,” he explained, not knowing any other way to really explain it. ”I guess that unrealistic Northwind idea of masculinity stayed with me. You made me feel comfortable enough to not need it.”
If it was rare to see Remi blush nowadays, it was stranger still to see it on Ronin. Not that the Star wasn't capable of such an emotion, he was just...usually so upfront about things that very little coaxed such a state out of him. "I just meant, with a.." Actually, there well could have been men before Loren, Remi really had no idea. Feeling his cheeks heat as well, Remi scrunched his nose and continued to inspect his palm, tracing his thumb along one of the lines that jaggedly crossed the skin.
As Ronin explained, Remi kept silent. It took a few seconds for the information to be filtered through his mind before it was properly understood. Once it was, and the memory of the night on the rug before the fire flashed before Remi's eyes, did he truly understand.
Remi felt his stomach drop and he grew instantly cold.
"You—" He gasped. "—I—" Turning to look at Ronin and swallowing awkwardly with eyes large and round, the Alchemist blinked stupidly a few times before he could find the words. Even then, they weren't much help. "I didn't even warn you!" He all but wheezed. Ronin had asked him how he had wanted to do things, and Remi recalled saying something about flipping a coin. Not having one of course, Remi had just...chosen for them. It hadn't even occurred to him that it might have been Ronin's first time being on the bottom.
"Why the hell didn't you say anything!" Remi suddenly said, swatting at Ronin's shoulder with the back of his hand.
who's got their claws in you my friend?
into your heart i'll b e a t again
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
07-13-2020, 09:43 PM (This post was last modified: 07-13-2020, 09:43 PM by Ronin.)
”So did I,” Ronin countered, though this was absolutely nothing to do with Loren at this moment in time. Flinching dramatically as he was swatted, obviously making a bigger deal of it than necessary given that he was already injured, his smile was at least more relaxed than Remi’s. ”No, you didn’t,” he agreed with a chuckle, ”but I think I got the gist of it in the end.” And right at the beginning. And all the points in between.
Still blushing, but seeming less awkward now that it was out in the open, he dangled one leg off the edge of the cloud and swung it lazily. ”I didn’t say anything because I was enjoying myself,” he confessed, tilting his head back to look up at the sky. ”And I didn’t want to make it into a big deal. You were what and who I wanted, and that hasn’t changed since.”
Groaning and not paying attention to Ronin's pantomimes of injury whatsoever, Remi huffed and let his gaze drag out to sea. His mind slowly pieced together a few implications that resulted from this new information, but of course it was nothing significant. He just felt rather foolish.
"No but... I mean.." Still fumbling over words, Remi just let himself chuckle out his bashfulness. Shoulders slumping as he tried to let go of his tension, he glanced back adoringly at Ronin with another light shake of his head. "Well I'm glad, at least. My first time like that was...not entirely pleasant, at first." He admitted with a shrug. Though at that time he was still so mentally hung up on so many things, it was likely nothing might have made that moment entirely without tension.
"Well if we were keeping score, I should think you won that round." Remi said with a laugh, feeling much more at ease now.
who's got their claws in you my friend?
into your heart i'll b e a t again
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Remi relaxed and Ronin smiled, leaning across to press a kiss against his shoulder, the nimbus lazily drifting around now so he could collect up the bag of beach-garbage and the rake. ”First times are rarely perfect,” he said with an easy shrug, though he was visibly glad to hear the at first tacked on the end there. ”And I suppose you were taught how to pretend to fit in by one of the best, too.” Being schooled by a prostitute probably wasn’t the usual way of things, but by the sound of it Remi had taken what he could get.
With a soft laugh, he nudged Remi with his elbow. ”I don’t know. I think I’m drunk after whatever was in that canteen,” he said, gazing across the beach. ”It’s hard to believe our upbringings were so different,” he murmured. Then, blinking it away, he turned back to Remi. ”Well? Round two, your turn.”
