(no subject)

[awesome_lilly]

Despite the fact that Lilly insists on actually drawing the curtains in her room, it's still fairly early when Alain wakes, and thus fairly early when she wakes. It's just a bit after that when she convinces Alain to go make coffee, promptly stealing his shirt as soon as he leaves the bedroom so she can go sit out on the balcony and wait for coffee in the morning sun.

Comments

[honest-johns.livejournal.com]

A smile at her, amusement not lessened in the slightest.

He leans against the railing. A sip of coffee, and then he curls his hands around the mug and looks out at the morning lake.

Alain likes mornings.

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly... likes coffee. And Alain. And hey, two out of three ain't bad. She takes another sip of coffee and curls a little more comfortably into her chair. It really is a beautiful morning.

"God, it's early. Freakin' gunslinger alarm clocks."

She doesn't really sound that angry.

[honest-johns.livejournal.com]

Discretion is the better part of valor here. Alain just grins a little.

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly eyes him over the rim of her coffee cup. It may be a baleful eyeing. It may also just be pouty.

[honest-johns.livejournal.com]

Alain just sips his coffee.

With great focus. mmm, coffee.

Not smirking, nope.

[awesome_lilly]

"You can stop that any time, you know."

She's referring to the not'smirking.

[honest-johns.livejournal.com]

"Hmm?"

[awesome_lilly]

"The smirking. Or... I won't give your shirt back!"

It's really surprisingly hard to effectively threaten psychic gunslinger boyfriends.

[honest-johns.livejournal.com]

Alain's face goes appropriately, utterly sober.

Except his eyes, which are still dancing.

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly attempts to scowl. It doesn't so much work.

"Fine, I will eventually give you your shirt back. I suppose if you only wore a necklace for the rest of the day, you might get cold or something."

She glances at him and the silver chain around his neck.

"Of course, I never see you not wearing that. Is it something from Gilead?"

[honest-johns.livejournal.com]

"I've other shirts," he points out.

A sip of coffee.

"Aye. It was my mother's."

Calm. It's a genuine calm, not forced; her death is four years past, and long accepted.

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly smiles, a bit wistfully.

"That's cool, that you have something of hers. Did she give it to you before you went out uh, gunslinging or something?"

[honest-johns.livejournal.com]

His own smile goes a bit crookedly wistful. "No. I started wearing it after she died."

[awesome_lilly]

"Oh, I'm sorry," Lilly says. "I didn't mean to bring up bad topics or anything."

She looks over at him, smiling crookedly.

"It's just... you showed me that bit of Gilead and you're teaching me the letters and it made me think. I don't know anything about Gilead and your life there, not really. But if you don't mind talking about it, I'd like to know."

[honest-johns.livejournal.com]

"Four years gone," he says, with a small reassuring smile. "Nothing to fret over."

He looks faintly surprised, as he thinks over what she's said. Considers it. Part of not talking about something very much is not realizing how little you talk about it. "Nay, I don't mind."

"I don't... what would'ee know?"

[awesome_lilly]

"Um," Lilly says eloquently, and laughs a little.

"What the city was like, I guess. What you did there. Anything works, because really all I know about Gilead is that it's where you're from."

[honest-johns.livejournal.com]

Thoughtful silence, as he sips his coffee. Then a small laugh. "Not sure where to start. Gods. There's so much of it."

More staring at the coffee's surface, not really seeing it. He's thinking.

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly thinks about what she knows of Gilead. There isn't much, really, just bits of things she's heard or seen in the Dreaming or his sending.

"The window, the one you showed me. Was that in a church there or something?"

[honest-johns.livejournal.com]

A smile, remembering.

"My father's study, in his chambers. He had his desk arranged so he could see it while he worked or read. The nicest window in the house -- colored glass like that was expensive, you ken, even more than clear glass, but the old homes had it anyway. Great windows all over the palace, there were."

"This was smaller, and only half colored, but I liked it better because of that. You could see the city and the colors both. Used to sneak in, when I was tiny, to look at it. I'm sure my father knew, but at the time I thought I was tremendously secretive."

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly smiles widely at the idea of Alain as a little boy trying to be sneaky.

"Shiny. What did your parents do? I mean, your dad was a gunslinger too, but what all do gunslingers do when they're not fighting?"

[honest-johns.livejournal.com]

"Oh..." A vague gesture, with the hand not holding coffee. "Whatever's needed, you ken. Diplomats, we were, and envoys. Part of the court, though that always mattered more to the nobles than the gunslingers. The Lord o' Barony was always of the line of Eld -- Roland's father, and his fathers before him, and our fathers at his right hand. Roland after him, in the last years, though by then titles mattered less than ever."

"And a presence for the Affiliation outside Gilead, of course. Traveling to other Baronies, country and city and seat o' the Barony both. Sometimes with the guns stowed and hidden, but mostly visible. Some of the small towns never saw a gunslinger but those riding out so. We stood for the law -- not the tiny everyday enforcement, that was for sheriffs and lawmen, but the larger shape of it, and the great crimes. The peace of the White and the Way of Eld. And the Tower to protect, under it all."

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly nodded slowly, taking Alain's words in. She hadn't really thought that much before about what gunslingers actually did. It sounded like they kept pretty damn busy.

"That's really cool, Alain. The gunslingers were all guys though, right? What did your mother do?"

[honest-johns.livejournal.com]

"All men, yes. Susannah's the first woman born to it I've heard of -- certainly the first trained."

"She was a gunslinger's wife." He shrugs. "A job of its own, say true. She ran the household, and had her own part to play in court and the city. And she and Da always talked about things. He listened to her -- she'd not have stood for aught else. Nor needed to, you ken." A small, remembering grin. Eleanor Johns was a spitfire.

Over the months here, Alain has picked up a good deal of slang and syntax from the bar's other residents, overlaying the rhythms of In-World and All-World. That's sliding away now, unconsciously, until his speech sounds closer to what it was when he first came.

[awesome_lilly]

The changes in Alain's speech and the glimpses of a world utterly different from her own is fascinating to Lilly. Some of the biggest differences aren't in the worlds, though.

"Your mom and dad sound pretty awesome. It must have been shiny, growing up in Gilead with them and Koosh and Roland."

[honest-johns.livejournal.com]

He smiles. There's compassion mixed in -- hers weren't, and he knows it.

"They were. Aye."

Past tense, all of it. But true, all the same.