AU - MAGNI & LAKSHMI

[mahalakshmi]

if you'll be my light, i'll be your shelter

i. first meeting | a non existent engagement and a hasty marriage ii. a tempertantrum in a thunderstorm | sticks and stones may break my bone but words will leave me with crippling anxiety (and a headcold) iii. a kindness of intimacies | nsfw, sometimes, love is like falling into an icy lake iv. just like the battle of troy, there is nothing subtle here | when the world conspires to consistently make you insecure about your wife.

Comments

[villieldr]

Magni nods her understanding, though— her mouth twists unhappily, like she should have grasped all this sooner, understood it better. Their marriage, their union, it had not been a matter of love and adoration. It had been pragmatism, an arrangement between their families, and perhaps she had... not seen all that she should have done.

"You're right."

Quiet, voice rasping a little, and she leans down to rest her forehead against Lakshmi's shoulder, hands dropping away from her face so instead she can wrap her arms around Lakshmi's waist. Hell with the dirt, she just wants to hold her close.

"They're your meetings to attend." She suspects, now it's been said, that they always should have been. Was that the expectation that she had failed to grasp? It makes sense. It feels— absurd, a shortcoming, not to have considered it sooner. Perhaps her head has been too full of too many things. "I— feel foolish."

[mahalakshmi]

Lakshmi nods, silent, wrapping her arms around her in return. Sliding against her hair, her back. Holding onto her tightly.

"I was the fool. Not you. I made an assumption that hurt us both because I was frustrated."

She in returns burrows her face against Magni's hair. It is palatable the comfort she feels in her closeness. Rolling over her like a river, washing down and clearing it away. Til she was no more than a smooth pebble, and not the bundle of barbs she had been before.

There was a wonder in that, how Magni could soothe her so wholly in a matter of minutes when it usually required what Jhalkari had done to work it out of her. "Can you ever forgive me?"

[villieldr]

Magni's arms steady around Lakshmi's waist, and then she hoists her up easily. Moving so that she can take them out of the hallway and into their chamber, rather than her barging into Lakshmi's, and bringing her wife back into that shared space. Keeps Lakshmi held up easily with one arm as the other hand opens the door and she steps the both in.

Silent, for a moment, as she sets Lakshmi down and kneels down in front of her, gently taking both her hands. "We're both learning. We are... forging a new path. I forgive you, and I— I hope you can forgive me. And that... that when we make mistakes we can talk about it, and— and learn together."

Still kneeling, she looks up at Lakshmi. "I don't— can you sleep in here, tonight?"

[mahalakshmi]

She so loves when Magni does that - makes her feel so precious, so particular with her, that she barely wants to detangle from her when Magni drops Lakshmi back down.

Happily, she finds, she does not have to. Because that question had but one answer, she swoops down and kisses her for the first time in weeks. Doing so soundly, almost tearfully, happily. "Of course, of course. I have hated having you gone."

[villieldr]

There are prayers of thanks she might offer later, when she does not need to pour all her focus and her energy into Lakshmi.

She's so relieved with the kiss, but— "Careful, your lip."

Her arms wrap tightly around Lakshmi, and she is so relieved she could almost laugh. "I hope your dog has been worth this," she murmurs between kisses, hugging Lakshmi closer.

[mahalakshmi]

She laughs, brightly into kissing her.

Which is a mistake for exactly the reason Magni warns her about - "ow." is the soft little mutter of regret that she barely feels.

"He has. I think I would have snapped at someone else if not for him. He is a good companion for me, he soothes me when you are not there."

Exactly as Magni intended, no doubt. "I should get cleaned up." she says, eventually, without doing anything about it.

[villieldr]

"We're only just at each others sides again," she protests, a very undignified whine, though she looks at Lakshmi with a sort of nervousness born of them re-learning each other. And she presses her forehead to Lakshmi's chest, staying determinedly.

[mahalakshmi]

It sounds practically petulant. Endearingly so, that Magni - Magni still wanted to be near her, not just after their argument, but messy, dirt smeared and sweat cooling on her skin in the lighter air inside the heavy stone walls of the keep that made everything always colder.

A smile plays, and rather than answer that, her hands moves. She supposes, Magni has never seen her in her own clothes, which is to say those from before she became of Talonhold. She makes sure most times to dress as her position dictates.

But she knew what she preferred for riding. The wrap of her saree to form pants. The way her kurta by contrast was tight to her upper body.

That - to all the layers of talonhold, these northern's rightly need for their weather. She right now, does not. So little in fact that when she decides upon it, it's over as quick as that. Bold enough, sure enough that the door is open behind them and they are half in the corridor but she barely considers it when she yanks off her top and pulls at one knot -

And suddenly there is nothing between her and Magni but skin, and a pool of fabric at her feet. Her top balled up and tossed at Magni's head.

"You were saying?"

She turns, slinking into her room, waiting, watching and the wink is probably too much, when she ventures it over her shoulder in the backwards glance when she reaches for the pins that hold up her hair. She figures, Magni can figure out the rest quickly enough.

[villieldr]

"Uh." Quiet, swallowed awkwardly as she stares after Lakshmi. She gathers up the material, lips parted as she looks after her wife. How does she breathe, how does she grasp all of this? How does she get her head around the fact that Lakshmi just nonchalantly winked at her, that she can take in the curves of her that she's missed so much these past weeks?

Saree in hand, she strides after her, kicking the door shut with her foot. Staring at her, seemingly at a lost. It feels so simple, and she wants her so badly and yet it seems impossible that Lakshmi has undressed before her, that she wants her, and there is a moment of hesitation as her gaze drops and she bites her lip.

"I'm—" Nervous, I missed you, what if—

But that wink and that smile. Magni moves towards Lakshmi in long strides one hand anchoring at her neck and tangling into her hair, the other at Lakshmi's waist as she pulls her closer, and leans down to bite at Lakshmi's lip, before her tongue presses against her lip.