TWENTY-FIVE
FLAVORS |
of the
graceful |
ELLSINORE B.
ALDERTON |
| happy • angry • sad • concerned • scared • anxious • embarrassed • hurt • determined • innocent • betrayed • regret • confused • jealous • traumatized • wary • giddy • flustered • bitchy • content • frustrated • stunned • muggle • family • pyo |
giddy
1981 winter
"You are soaking wet."
Elsie greeted her disapproving husband with a guilty achoo! and continued to stand in the foyer, more puddle than witch.
Clucking his tongue in exasperation, he must have intuited she was entirely too frozen to move, or else gotten sick of watching her remain dripping in place, and unclasped her cloak. "I realise you inhabit a different plane than most of us at times, but you can still catch cold." He dropped the sodden thing on the floor unceremoniously. "An umbrella, is that too much to ask?"
It was late, and it was storming, and Elliot was quite annoyed with her. She felt bad about that, as he could be rather unreasonable about falling ill. But she was fine! She was more than fine, in fact—if she were able to feel any part of her body at all, Elsie would even have said she felt quite tingly. And not in a way that precipitated the loss of limbs, either.
"S-stop being such a w-wet ra-ag," she tried to grin at him—because of her joke with the word wet!—but her teeth were chattering too rapidly with her shivers, so the expression was a bit distorted.
He remained distinctly unimpressed. "You need to get out of those clothes." But Elsie made no movement other than shivering rather convulsively, so he growled something unkind about fanciful nonsense and gathered her to him, albeit somewhat brusquely, to still her quaking.
This pleased her quite a bit as she'd been wanting to snuggle the whole day. Sometimes the force of her attraction to Elliot surprised her, as she always thought she favoured the stockier blokes. But never had stocky made her as weak in the knees as tall and lanky did. Knees that were presently knocking together. And his face, well, she sometimes didn't know how they made it through a conversation without her positively attacking it with her own. In fact, yes, she should certainly kiss him now, a kiss would most definitely warm her up, and so she lifted her face up towards his and leaned forward and—
"Good grief, you're freezing," he muttered, in a not particularly sympathetic tone.
She pouted and deliberately pressed her icy nose to his exposed throat, grinning a little when she heard his stifled yelp. But Elsie could feel his searing warmth even through the icy, soaking layers of her robes, and the teeth-chattering shivers had stopped, so she immediately forgave him for snubbing her proffered kiss.
"I saw the nicest thing today," she announced dreamily, her voice muffled by his chest. "A boy and a girl. A quite irritating boy needling a perfectly sweet girl by the biographies. He was very nearly tugging on her plaits, you know the type. I suppose she must have had enough eventually and flounced off, but then do you know what happened?"
Elliot, rather more preoccupied with removing his waterlogged wife to the bedroom to change, gave a non-committal grunt as he opened the door.
"When I looked back at him, he was staring at her all lovelorn." She sighed happily. "Isn't that adorable?"
Rather than stare at the top of her head as if she were a lunatic, or say as much, he went with, "You're going to catch the wickedest co—" but was interrupted halfway through by her icy lips.
"Do you know what it made me think?" As she was busy pressing kisses all up and down his neck, it would appear she didn't care if he wanted to know or not. "It made me think you were such a bully to me in school because you liked me."
Realising by now that his wife was going to be of no use at all, he set about efficiently stripping her of her chill-inducing garments, in spite of her persistent and admittedly creative hindrances. "I was a grouch to everyone—you're dripping on me."
Undeterred, Elsie stretched up on her tiptoes and kissed the corner of his mouth, smiling slyly. "You liked me."
"You wore ribbons," Elliot said, pushing her face firmly back down and yanking her drenched periwinkle robes ruthlessly over her head, ignoring her squeal. He tossed the squelching bundle behind him on the floor, then dropped to his knees and took hold of one of her legs to remove her boots and socks. He could feel the cold skin break out into gooseflesh in his hands. "I hate ribbons."
Obediently gripping his shoulders with one hand to keep her balance, she bent closer to him. "Oh?" she whispered huskily. "Is that why you ripped them off my wedding g—"
He surged to his feet and kissed her so hard that they toppled back into the wall. Being that it was the first time he'd kissed her properly since she'd walked through the door, in spite of all the affection (and water) she'd been freely dispersing, Elsie let out a pleasurable hum and clung tighter to him, leaving the responsibility of keeping them upright entirely to Elliot.
When they separated some very lengthy moments later, breathing quite hard, he gave her a wry smile and pushed wet curls out of her face. "You're a bit of a floozy when you go for a stroll in the rain."
"Can't be helped," Elsie said innocently, pressing into his chest. "My whole brain's frozen." She kissed the exposed part just above his collar before leaning back a little to see his face. "I'm also," she squinted and looked at her fingers, holding two of them a hairsbreadth apart, "this much drunk."
A look of amused comprehension dawned on his face, and he cocked his head to the side. "Ah, because you're such a little lush."
"One of the girls at the shop is getting married!" she protested, smiling. "We were celebrating."
Elliot made a disbelieving noise and kissed her again before she could object. He looked down at her, clad only from the waist down in a pair of now-sheer knickers with bows on the side and one sock, then laughed a little, shaking his head. "You really are freezing."
"Mmmhmm," she murmured, running her hands up his chest. "Some places more than others." Craning her head up, she took a nibble at his earlobe and smiled beguilingly at him as she began to push him down onto the bed. "Do you think you can warm them up for me?"
"Yeah," he mumbled faintly, reaching to pull her on top of him. "Yeah, I reckon I could try."
