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!
"A jealous teenager with the ability to crush my boyfriend-boyfriend with a house if he felt like it," Isla corrects. "Not that I can blame you. I never tried to make you jealous, but I... I suppose I never tried not to, either." It's with a tearful and apologetic smile that she squeezes his hand.
She melts against his side with a grumble of both annoyance and contentment - precisely because of the exact thing she'd just mentioned - and Isla has to stop her fingers from tip-toeing across to see if his physique matches the muscle groups she's only really seen in textbooks. "Mm...? Oh," she says, suddenly delighted at the sight of him, though it's more out of surprise than preference.
"You're still in there," she says, like it's a revelation, and she tucks herself back in at his side. "Tch, you're laying on the compliments thick today. You never met me in the Northaven war," she points out. "For the record, though, no it isn't better. Your body is just the cherry on the top of an already attractive cake. And I can't even taste cake, so you know it must be delicious."
"I bet I can crush him with just one hand, now." Remi adds, unable and unwilling to stop the mischief in his voice. "But maybe not with this one." He says of his right hand, grinning at her.
With a brow raised as if waiting on pins and needles for her reaction (though he is, a bit), Remi chuckles and shrugs helplessly. "I can stop complimenting you if you like. Say something about how I know you've lost your taste because of how you're dressing these days, or something." The mention of the Northaven war has Remi exhaling with feigned thoughtfulness. "Ahh yes. The site of you bloody, running back and forth across the battlefield. No, that absolutely wouldn't be something I'd like." Furrowing his eyebrows at her, Remi finds himself suddenly blushing and feeling very self-conscious.
Dropping the illusion and wondering how it was possible to go from teary to vaguely turned on in such a short amount of time, Remi pulls in a deep breath and reclines slightly on the arm not wrapped around Isla's shoulders. "Well...I don't know what else to say other than that yes, there is obvious sexual tension between us, and gods but if it isn't hard to look at you now without.." Realizing what he was about to say, Remi suddenly frowns and clears his throat.
THE ALCHEMIST
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"No? You'd not crush him with your bad hand just to prove that you don't even need all your fingers to do it? I thought I knew you, Remi," Isla says with a wistful sigh - only to promptly smack him in the side to hear his quip about her dress sense. "My taste is impeccable, Remi Taliesin. If I had a chance to dress you, every woman in Caido would be dribbling at your feet. Alas, you'll just have to remain unharrassed."
Raising her eyebrows, she shrugs at him. "War is always glorified in people's heads," she points out. "It was more being covered in blood and sweat and shit, and telling people they'd be fine when they didn't stand a chance." And if it weren't for the drop in the illusion, Isla might have been drawn back into those memories.
Instead, she lolls her head back as he stutters over the words, offering him an understanding grin. "Without imagining a really good piece of cake?" she guesses. "I know what you mean... though I do have to wonder why you don't want to lick the frosting off other women, Mister Gay But With One Exception."
Pursing his lips together as if rethinking entirely his method of crushing Varus now—why not just one finger?—Remi flinches dramatically as he's struck. "Dribbling?" He wonders, crinkling his nose. "Is that what straight men want?" Frowning and sitting a touch straighter (and had he a collar just now, he might have straightened it for good measure), Remi shakes his head decisively. "Well, I guess I can only be appreciative that you aren't the one dressing me." He says, narrowing his eyes affectionately at her over his shoulder.
"Blood and sweat and shit and lying to the dying? Gods, how could I possibly relate." He mumbles, before growing silent and bashful as Isla continues on without so much as a misstep. "Not the choice of words I would have used." Remi mutters with a nod, feeling as though his ears were suddenly on fire. Clearing his throat and shifting uncomfortably (and also maybe a bit strategically), the alchemist raises his eyebrows and gives Isla a genuinely perplexed shrug. "Well, I did try the once." He reminds her, of his misadventure with Maeve. "And there were women back in Northaven, but...other than you.." Hazarding a glance her way only for it to fall inadvertently to her lips, Remi sips in a self-chastizing breath and looks away. '..it's just you.'
THE ALCHEMIST
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"What if they were men dribbling all over you? Would that butter your bread a little more?" Isla inquires. "I bet you go wild when Ronin's looking at you like a prime cut of meat." She also wants to straighten his non-existent collar, Isla smiling to herself still as she gazes out at the curtain of vines. "You couldn't possibly relate," she informs him, sighing dramatically. "At least about the shit part, unless you see that a lot as well."
On the turn of a dime they're back on the tightrope between sexual tension and just tension, Isla smiling sadly and nodding (pretending not to notice his strategic readjustment). "Maybe it's my perfume," she says, and it's lame enough that Isla's laughing before Remi gets the chance - if he even finds it funny. "Oh! What if we just put bags over our heads when we hang out?"
'Have I accidentally made myself look like Ronin?' Remi wonders, feigning befuddlement as he glances down at himself as if expecting to see a hawk tattoo and a different set of scars. "Because this is an awful lot of food metaphors." Cake. Bread and butter. Prime meat. Thinking of Ronin does nothing for his arousal of course, though it does make him feel suitably guilty such that he flushes yet a darker shade of crimson.
"I have had 4 children now." Remi remarks dryly, answering her question about whether or not he could relate to the shit part.
"You don't wear perfume." Unlike Isla, Remi doesn't find it especially funny, not with all the inappropriate thoughts clouding his mind, but he does huff a note of amusement under his breath just the same. "Maybe I could just stay shifted the entire time." He suggests. "Are you any good at charades?"
THE ALCHEMIST
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"Remi, I haven't enjoyed a meal in years now and you've got the audacity to sit here with a full picnic basket, shirtless." Isla raises her eyebrows at him, as if to say that the blame lays firmly on his shoulders. "Besides, I bet you anything that there's bread and butter, meat and cake in that basket."
Humming doubtfully, she gives him that one, she supposes. "I guess having children is something like a battlefield," she admits with a shrug, not that she will ever have that experience. "How do you know?" she asks about the perfume, though she may as well not bother - she knows the predators that lurk in Remi's bones, and their sense of smell is impeccable.
"I do enjoy hanging out with you while you're shifted." While they are both shifted, she nearly says, but that takes them into the weird territory where she needs to get a shift from Remi first. "I am awful at charades. You?"
"Well," Remi begins as if he's about to argue the point, before grinning and visibly deflating to show his defeat. "I wasn't intending on being shirtless. The jungle did that." He adds with a shrug, before thoughtfully conjuring a shirt out of thin air. Pulling his arm away from Isla that he might slip the shirt over his head, he looks at her with a huff. "There."
How did he know? Flaring his nostrils for just a moment, he gives the ascended an imploring look. "Because you're far too practical to bother with putting on something that you can't really smell." Remi says knowingly.
"And here I thought we were going to try and not be awkward about things." Nudging his shoulder into hers with a boyish chuckle, Remi shrugs helplessly. "Though I'll admit that I was going to suggest we both shift as well. But we both know what that entails, and just now I am fairly certain I would not be able to keep my hands to myself." Already the memories of what it was like to have Isla coiled in his lap were growing impossibly vivid to the point where nearly every other thought was don't kiss her. A bite was certainly not the sort of thing he could handle right now.
"I wonder if Ludo would ever make it so that I don't feel anything where you to bite me.."
THE ALCHEMIST
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"Oh? Are we blaming the jungle for most things now?" Isla asks, and although it's definitely a good idea for Remi to be wearing a shirt again, Isla doesn't try to hide the disappointment in her smile as he covers himself up. She does, however, tuck herself right back beneath his arm, because it's been too long and she doesn't know when they'll next have a chance like this.
Opening her mouth to object only to realise that Remi is completely right, Isla instead huffs and narrows her eyes at him. "If I could smell, I would wear perfume," she grumbles. And this time it's Remi to break the ice by making things less awkward, and Isla loves him as much in that moment as she ever has.
"If only I had kept the jaguar shift, we could have just explored the jungle together," she laments, peering up at him. "I think Ludo is as likely to make your blood acid when I bite you," she admits. "Besides, even if you don't feel anything, I still will..." And she has a feeling that will feel even worse. "Maybe we can just arrange to meet when I've got something stored up."
"Why shouldn't we?" Remi quips back with an easy shrug. He certainly didn't feel like blaming Isla, and though his tears had stopped for the timing being, that didn't mean he felt like blaming himself. There's still skin contact of course as Isla tucks in at his side again, so it hardly matters whether or not he's wearing a shirt, but it does help. For the time being.
"We still could." Remi says, though he knows that isn't the point. "You are probably right...and..." With a low chuckle, he shakes his head bashfully before glancing down at her, reminding his fingers to stop tracing little circles against her arm. "Sometimes I forget. I think because your mouth and hands are busy doing things, and when it's over the feeling passes for you in a way it...doesn't always with me." Physically, anyway.
"Mmm, that would be nice. I don't think I've anything new to show you. Or...well, nothing you'd like, anyway." Wraiths were intentionally the sorts of things people avoided, which is why it was a shift Remi so rarely slipped into.
THE ALCHEMIST
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"I... you know, that's a good point. Can we blame the jungle for the fact that it took so long for us to have a conversation? And for making the war happen, and for having things be so stupid and awkward all the time?" Now that she's started, Isla is finding that not only is it easy to blame the jungle for all of her woes - it feels good, too.
"Mm... I suppose we could. But I think I'd like to run into you on purpose and do some exploring. I love that I bumped into you, Remi, but this still feels very new, and very..." She shakes her head. "I think we have a lot of healing to do, you know?" As he proves, when he continues.
"It would be nice to be able to do something about it," she agrees nonetheless, before nudging against him playfully. "And even if you've got nothing new to show me, luckily I'd be there to spend time with you, not to preen over your shifts."
'Absolutely we can.' Remi agrees enthusiastically. Reaching around to swipe at the basket, the alchemist pulls out an uneaten sandwich and hurls it into the vines. "That is for my fingers and making my handwriting look like shit." He bellows, grinning, before offering the Remedy the other half of the sandwich should she care to attack the jungle as well.
Biting at the inside of his lip, Remi nods reflectively at the aptness of Isla's words. "Yeah." He agrees, slouching slightly under the weight of the realization. Her nudge has him groaning dramatically as he gazes down at her, shaking his head with feigned disapproval. "Well...is there anything you think we should get out of the way now? Boundaries, or things we should get in the open if this is going to work...?"
THE ALCHEMIST
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Blinking her surprise, it takes a second for Isla to realise what Remi is doing, but it's with chaotic delight on her face that she accepts the other half of the sandwich. "And that is for setting my Infirmary on fire and not telling me who did it!" she shouts, hurling it away through the vines. "So go fuck yourself, jungle!" Clearing her throat, she glances coyly up at Remi. "Do you think there are crocodiles down there that will enjoy those?"
Is there anything they need to establish? Gods, lots, probably, and Isla lets out a shivery sort of sigh as she thinks. "Well... I love you, and I just want to kiss your face and it's not even in a sexual way, but I won't because I know it won't go anywhere good. I think... unless it's important, maybe we keep war talk off the table? I don't mean like never bring it up, but more like... we both know it's happening. I don't need a constant reminder."
'Oh probably.' Remi hums thoughtfully, before peering down into the mist. " Or real jaguars.' He suggests with a cheeky smile that dimples just one of his cheeks.
Her admission has his fingers tensing against her arm, and it's a very careful breath that Remi forces himself to exhale. "Mm." He hums around a gulp, nodding stiffly as he very intentionally keeps his eyes off of her. "I agree. I can't even look at you for more than a second without remembering what it was like to kiss you." Remi says through lips suddenly gone quite dry. "I"m not trying to be rude." He mumbles, glancing down at her quickly.
"About the war...can I tell you something that you'll promise to keep to yourself? Despite being queen?" Honestly asked, he'd understand if the answer was no. The smart answer would probably be no.
THE ALCHEMIST
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
