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!
"There is no need to apologise. I am glad you were home," Finn says softly, and it's never been more true. Much as he hadn't expected the wine, his shirt, the underwear, Tobi's presence has achieved the wholly positive outcome of distracting away the stormclouds threatening to muddle his thoughts for the evening. He's about to reach for his glass of wine to offer it out to the doctor when he finds her on her feet and with something else in mind, Finn's lips parting to ask what it might be when she's quite suddenly in his lap.
Or at least mostly in his lap. And even Finn, with his limited ability to read social cues, can't get this one wrong. He swallows hard, pink flushing across his cheek and up to the tips of his ears, and he feels the back of the couch pressing into his back as he's forced to look up at Tobi. And gods, but she looks gorgeous right now. Carefree, smiling, relaxed...
And unfortunately not all that sober. "I couldn't take advantage of you," he says quietly, almost hating himself for it.
"No, you couldn't." Tobi agrees in a whispered sing-song voice as her shoulders shrug. The bunching of her arms has Finn's shirt rising higher on her hips, the misaligned buttons puckering all the more as her thighs nestle against his and she sinks fully into his lap. Heat whispers outward, pooling in the balls of her feet and warming the back of her throat as she beams down at Finn.
'I'm really glad you're home.' She says sweetly, adjusting herself against him both for her own benefit as well as his (so she thinks). The movement has her inhaling sharply as lazy fireworks of arousal begin to pulse in her belly. Tilting her head and leaning forward, Tobi aims soft kisses for the side of Finn's neck as her hands leave the back of the couch to tousle in his curls.
11-17-2021, 06:35 PM (This post was last modified: 11-17-2021, 06:54 PM by Finn.)
sleep doesn't help if it's your soul that's tired
The buttons are right in his eyeline, and obviously Finn can't stop himself from being distracted by them (and the curves straining against them); further to the point, he's got no idea where his hands are supposed to go, especially as Tobi sinks down properly into his lap. She's warm and she smells like wine and sort of like his cologne, which should be weird but it isn't, and almost automatically, one of his arms slips around her waist to steady her.
"I am glad to be home," he says automatically, even though he doesn't really mean it. Or rather, he does mean it, but also it's not necessarily a good thing because of the repercussions from Cian, but then again Tobi is shifting in his lap and what does it matter.
His eyes close against the kisses she drops against his jawline, Finn inhaling slowly as if trying to remind himself why he's absolutely not going to reciprocate. "Tobi," he says slowly, blinking his eyes open and smiling across at her. "You have almost finished a whole bottle of wine."
The wine has made Tobi's bones feel a bit lose in her skin, such that Finn's arm around her feels like the most wonderful bit of stability. Humming into the contact and against the Spyglass's neck, Tobi continues to trickle kisses in a haphazard pattern down his jawline and then back up again.
"I know." She giggles softly in agreement, pausing long enough to flutter butterfly kisses lightly against Finn's cheek. "I can't remember the last time I did that." Tobi adds, her fingers stretching out into his hair so that her nails could lightly graze his scalp. Pulling in a breath that's full of heat and want, the doctor nuzzles her lips toward Finn's ear as she presses her torso more fully against him. 'Finn?' She whispers, her lips caressing the shell of his ear, her body both tense and yet pliable where it meets his.
Finn can't remember the last time she's done that either, and it's like exquisite torture to have her draped over him. The intrusion into his personal space isn't panic inducing any more so much as it's testing his self-restraint, and as Tobi splays across his lap with her lips against his ear, it's all Finn can do to keep his hands to himself. "Perhaps we should stick to half a bottle from now on?" he suggests, mainly because he has nothing else he can say without it sounding... wrong.
Then again, he'd recite the sequence of Pi if it would tell the growing tightness in his pants to quit it. "Yes?" he murmurs automatically when she speaks his name, the Spyglass turning his head a bit to try and see Tobi better. Whether that's a good idea or not remains a mystery for now.
"Mmmmm, well if you had been here, it probably would have only been half." Tobi retorts, sounding playfully argumentative even as she continues her delicate torture.
The spreading warmth that Finn's presence inspires feels like warm water swallowing her up, and his arm around her like some sort of weighted force keeping her from drifting away. One of her hands drops from his curls to wrap around his shoulders, as her cheek presses against his. The world shifts and spins wonderfully as if the pair of them are inside a music box that someone has just opened.
Whispering something that might have been I love you, or I want you, or Can I have some more wine? Tobi smiles to herself as rose petals of love and utter contentment bloom in her chest. Curling protectively around the feeling, Tobi nuzzles herself all the closer to the Spyglass before placing one sleepy kiss against his throat and promptly falling asleep.
"Oh. I'm sorry," Finn says, as if it is somehow his fault that Tobi has decided to drink over half a bottle of wine, despite not having been around to know about it even an hour before. Still, it appears that the conversation is destined to end at that point, and whatever the doctor slurs into his ear, Finn is regrettably not privy to it. Instead he can merely sit for a minute or two, frustrated and aroused and confused and pinned by her dead weight, before a huff of almost laughter shudders out of him.
Carefully keeping her cradled against his chest, Finn will manage to get to his feet to carry Tobi away to the bedroom. From there he manages to tuck her into bed, nearly has a panic attack purely out of relief, and confines himself to a freezing shower before going any further.
Eventually, though, Finn does go to bed as well, and as dawn reaches its fingers in through the windows, it will be onto a Spyglass sleeping very soundly indeed. For how long, exactly, is up to Tobi.
Tobi sleeps soundlessly, as the drunk are wont to do, and when she cracks her eyes open it's to a room full of golden light, a dry mouth, and a pounding head. Giving herself a moment to orient herself—she's laying nearly diagonal across the bed, with her feet over Finn's ankles and her upper body twisted awkwardly away from him—the doctor does her best to extract herself from the sheets that she might slink out of their? her? whatever, bedroom to find some water and an aspirin.
Glancing into the living room (the wine glasses and bottle having already been cleaned up), memories of the night before slowly begin to surface, and it's with a grimace of amusement and regret that Tobi vaguely recalls Finn coming home and the shenanigans which followed. Swallowing down a small pill and wondering if water had ever been so refreshing before as it was now, the doctor tries to tiptoe her way back to bed, praying silently she hadn't woken Finn up.
Tobi is lucky and not - she sort of makes it without waking Finn up, in that he doesn't awaken properly when she slinks back into bed. He does stir, though, the Spyglass shifting beneath the blankets towards the nearest source of warmth, which just so happens to be the doctor. So it's Tobi's turn to feel awkward now (or not, probably, since she's not Finn), as he moves to act as big spoon in their strange sort-of-relationship, one arm slipping around her while the other buries itself beneath the pillows.
Exhaling softly, he noses into her dark hair and seems as if he's going to drop straight back off to sleep. Alas, Finn is too smart for his own good, and so of course he's tuned in to anything strange or different. "Oh," he says suddenly, starting to extract himself. "I'm sorry. I didn't realise..."
11-17-2021, 07:56 PM (This post was last modified: 11-17-2021, 07:56 PM by October.)
she sees angels in the architecture
Honestly, it's strange in a way that makes Tobi freeze and also grin widely enough to make her cheeks hurt, to feel Finn's unconscious spooning. Biting her bottom lip as if her joy might spill out and ruin the moment, the doctor tries to make herself as pliable in the Spyglass's arms as she can. Adjusting herself in subtle ways to fit against him, Tobi's soft sigh of relief comes just a moment too soon, as Finn begins to rouse and pull away.
"Oh, no, you don't—" Tobi begins to say, turning her head over her shoulder to try and face him without moving out of his arms. 'Unless you want to, but...' How two perfectly accomplished individuals could be so awkward with one another was absurd, and yet here they were. Knowing she owed Finn an apology but wanting to wait and see if he might settle back around her, or if perhaps his distancing of himself was an indication of just how big of an apology he was owed, Tobi sort of tenses and holds her breath.
"Mm...?" Finn is already trying to awkwardly disentangle himself from the doctor, though the sound of her voice has him pausing. "I didn't mean... I just wasn't sure if..." His own idiocy is exhausting at this point, and whilst the Spyglass is an intelligent man, he's by no means firing on all cyclinders at this time of the morning, and even his own anxiety can't win the fight against how good Tobi felt the last time she was in his arms.
And so he settles back around her as best he's able, nestling beneath the blankets once more and closing his eyes. Sleep doesn't quite want to grab him, though, and Finn forces himself to relax before he speaks. "Good morning," he says softly. "How is your head?"
"Oh no, I...I mean, you feel.." I like when your arms around me Finn. "..warm, and.." Tobi stutters stupidly, before forcing herself to shut up and simply melt into the arms that have remained around her. Snuggling down and exhaling softly, the doctor's eyes wander over one of Finn's hands and the part of his arm that she can see, glad he couldn't see the scarlet blush rising on her cheeks.
"Morning." She replies with a smile in her voice. "It...hurts." Gently, and with all the hesitation of one who has fucked up, one of Tobi's fingers comes to softly stroke against Finn's, before trying to ply his fingers apart that hers might fill the spaces between them. "I'm sorry about last night. Its been so long since I had nothing to do, but then you came home and it was such a nice surprise, and.." Memories of fluttering her eyelashes against his cheek and posturing herself in his lap wearing his t-shirt, pulse behind her eyes as she presses them guiltily closed. "I'm sorry if anything I did made you feel uncomfortable." She manages at last, wondering how many steps back in their relationship she'd pushed them.
A nasty part of Finn's mind remembers dozens of other occasions where hands have forced apart his fingers to pin them in place, and he has to give himself a gentle twist against habit to relax beneath Tobi's touch, to coax his pulse to slow back into something sleepy and content. Luckily, it's not too difficult, not with the familiarity of the room all around and the memories of all the good things that have happened so close to the surface.
"Mm... you did drink almost an entire bottle of wine," he agrees, and he's about to give her a list of things that might help with a hangover when she continues. "I... well. It didn't make me feel uncomfortable. Or rather... it did but not in any way that is your fault." Discomfort from an erection that neither of them could have accounted for can't entirely be blamed on Tobi. "It was a nice distraction."
11-17-2021, 08:45 PM (This post was last modified: 11-17-2021, 08:45 PM by October.)
she sees angels in the architecture
Wrapping her fingers around his and wishing she didn't feel so strangely awkward about wanting to reach forward and kiss his fingertips—or indeed any part of him—she forces herself to be content for the moment. About to breathe a sigh of relief, Tobi finds that sigh pinned between her teeth as Finn clarifies. Or...sort of clarifies.
'I'm sorry Finn.' She repeats. "You know I never try to make you feel uncomfortable.." Assuming he meant emotionally uncomfortable of course, though she'd have felt just as bad to know she'd managed to blue-balls him. Despite how it ruined how incredibly comfortable she was, Tobi forces her chin over her shoulder as far as it would go, that she might be able to catch at least a glimpse of Finn. "Is there anything we need to talk about? From last night?" A blanket apology was one thing, but if there was something specific she'd done that had upset Finn, better they get it out in the open now rather than letting things fester.
