I may not always know what's right, but I know I want you here tonight.
Mallos had thought a lead diplomat’s paperwork was ridiculous. The Chairman of the Council of Originals’ paperwork transgressed that, walking a wobbly line between the deepest realms of insanity and the fieriest pits of hell. It was no fucking wonder this job had drained the life out of everyone who did it. Aura had been smiling and adventurous, once; Gwythr had been a relatively decent person; Tsi had been cheerful and walked with a little bounce in his step.

Maybe it’s affecting me too. It felt like he was carrying a lead coffin on his shoulders all of the time, but it was hard to see what everyone else saw, outwardly. Maybe the life was being sucked out him day by day, and he too would become a Very Boring Person.

He twirled the pen absently between his fingers, trying to focus on the document in front of him instead of the in-tray. Depressingly, new files kept magically appearing there every few minutes. It felt like every time he moved something to the out-tray, ten more things appeared in his in-tray. How demotivating.

The door clicked open. Mallos didn’t look up initially, assuming it was Alvarez with another stack of paperwork or something; he only glanced up when he heard the lock turn. Before bringing children into his home, Mallos had never locked his office. It groaned audibly as the cogs clicked. Croe was just about visible past the piles of paper, slinking across the room with somewhat more movement in her hips than usual. Mallos started to sit back in his chair, but not quite fast enough. The pen slipped from his fingers as she straddled him, her knees pressing into the side of his thighs, her hands…

Later, her words would take some thinking about. Right now, thinking was the last thing on Mallos’ mind. He reacted instinctively, leaning in to kiss her, drawing his hands back from the desk to place them around her waist. The thousand and one issues detailed in the documents towering on his desk fled his mind in an instant. They didn’t exist. Nothing did, except for her. Adrenaline rushed through his veins, pulse quickened, pupils dilated. He kissed her on the jawline, then the neck, eyeing the out-tray over her shoulder.

Not quite reckless enough to push it all off and throw her on the desk.

He sat up straighter, pulling her in closer by the hips, and ignited his magic without really thinking about where he wanted to go. It brought them to, presumably, the first place his subconscious mind had considered: to the orchards half a mile or so out from the house. Mallos owned all of the land in a good seven mile radius of the house itself, including gardens, reserves and agricultural land. He fell back against the grass, his shirt snagging against the root of the avocado tree blooming over them. The golden-amber glow of the oncoming sunset seeped through the leaves, creating a dappled light effect over the ground. The sweet aroma of oranges from another orchard nearby infused the air while birds twittered from the treetops nearby. Mallos noticed none of it, his attention captivated by Croe, blind and deaf to the world beyond her.


It was not until after the sun had set, its golden haze still warming the horizon beneath a sky which was otherwise inky and star-studded, that what she’d said in the office registered. It took several minutes after that before he had regained enough breath to be able to comment on it.

Their clothes had been discarded somewhere out of mind; all except Mallos’ sun-pendant, which had pressed its stylised shape against her chest in much the same way it had when they’d first met. Now, as then, she was sat in his lap with her legs around his waist. He ran one hand through her hair, pulling her a little closer with the other, and kissed her on the neck.

“So,” he grinned into her neck, “what did you do at work that was so naughty?”

Mallos
I've learned enough to know I'm never letting go