"Gordon. It's a five-star hotel. I've been gone for ten minutes."
Her tone is exquisitely pained. Simultaneously, she manages to convey her exasperation, her amusement and her disbelief that he's managed to completely strip the hotel room of available linens, shove the mattress off its box spring and onto the floor, and construct an airy white structure that nearly reaches the vaulted ceiling and encompasses both the TV and the mini-bar. The lights have been dimmed. The sun is setting outside, liquid gold melting over the Vienna skyline. The view is obscured by the bulk of the fort in the middle.
Admittedly, as blanket forts go, it's impressive.
And Gordon knows it, too, and pokes his head out of the entrance, curtained in Egyptian cotton sheets, grinning like a fool. "Like I haven't done this in every single five-star hotel I've ever stayed at."
She's still got a cashmere stole wrapped around her shoulders, white satin gloves up to her armpits. She's still dripping diamonds and with her hair twisted into a crown of braids and shimmering Swarovski. Her dress is not just a dress, but a gown, a cascading confection of teal chiffon. Her shoes are killing her. With a sigh, she carefully steps out of them, rolls her feet in their silk stockings against the coolness of the floor.
His tux has already carpeted the path into the hastily constructed fort. If the fort is a surprise, this isn't. Penelope's finally started to get used to the fact that Gordon can't cross a private threshold without starting to strip out of whatever he's wearing and littering the path behind him with discarded clothing. A pair of wingtip shoes have been flung all the way across the room.
"Gordon. I'm tired," she protests. She certainly doesn't whine, because a Lady does no such thing, but there's a plaintive, pleading note in her voice. "I wanted to get undressed and go to bed."
The gap in the sheets pulls open wider and there's utterly no sympathy in his grin. The mattress is wedged between the bottom of the bed and the stand upon which the television sits. There's a bend in the middle of it, the top half propped up against the bed, and he's heaped every pillow in the room into a veritable nest. He's still wearing a pristine white shirt, undone at the collar and cuffs, but above goldfish-patterned boxers. He's lost the shoes but kept the socks, and these are held up by rainbow garters. Penelope is briefly distracted by his calves. "Well, the bed's in here. C'mon, Pen."
"This is childish."
"Hell yeah."
"Oh…" Further protest dies a noble death, gives into a long, yawning sigh. The fabric of her skirt whispers as she drops into a crouch, scoots herself into the held open door of the fort. "You're an absolute peasant."
"My family's worth like a trillion dollars."
"And alarmingly you still manage to be a peasant," Penelope snipes. There's some negotiation required, but she manages to shuffle past him and kneel on the bare mattress, rearranging the mound of pillows to accommodate her skirt. There's a surprising amount of headroom, and Gordon's got the TV turned on, tuned to the menu, filling the small space with soft jazz and a rainbow of shifting gradients, calming blues and purples and greens.
Gordon primly pulls the sheets closed, and makes some architectural adjustments to the interior buttressing; mostly transplanted chairs from around the room. Penelope busies herself peeling the gloves off her arms and removing her jewelry; earrings, a tiara, a heavy collar of platinum and diamonds. The mini-bar is just within reach and she deposits her jewelery in a heavy rocks glass, even as Gordon finishes his inspection and drops onto the mattress next to her, sighs in that impossibly contented way he has. "Cozy," he proclaims, proud and cheerful.
"Mmm. Unzip me."
"That is literally the only thing I've been looking forward to this entire trip." And he does it with the appropriate relish, with a slow, deliberate draw of the zipper down the length of her bodice, stopping respectfully at the small of her back, though she's wearing a cream coloured slip beneath the gown. "Good?" he asks over her shoulder.
Maybe she surprises him, leaning back against his chest, taking a deep, relaxing breath against the loosened bodice of her dress, rolling her shoulders against him. He certainly doesn't act surprised and his arms loop around her waist for a brief, affectionate squeeze. "Much better," she murmurs, as his cheek brushes hers. "But don't kiss me, I'm caked in makeup."
Gordon pecks her lightly on the cheek anyway, clears his throat. "Yech. Augh nope. Nope! Eww. Aw, Pen, wish you'd worn the cream foundation, I can power through that. This is that mineral powder business, it's like licking a battery. Yeah, your overnight bag's in the corner there. I made sure. I wanna kiss you."
She can't help a laugh at that, but she just settles a little more insistently against his chest, makes no move to reach for her bag, peeking out beneath a pillow at the foot of the bed. "This is a very thoughtfully provisioned fort."
"I'm a thoughtful kinda guy." He shifts slightly, pulls her closer. "Oh, hey, on that note—" He reaches past her, fishes in the heap of pillows and blankets that hem them in, comes up with a miniature bottle of champagne. "Ta da! Is Chez Gordon starting to work its wiles on you?"
"Something like that." Penelope yawns again, pushes herself up and shifts herself to the corner of the mattress to retrieve her overnight bag. She's discarded her shawl and now she wriggles the rest of the way out of her dress, while Gordon goes to work on the champagne bottle. He wrangles with foil and wire while she goes to work with wipes and cleansers, wipes away an hour's worth of work with no small amount of relief. Stripped bare of an elegant evening's accoutrements, Penelope shivers a little in her slinky satin slip, silky, gartered stockings, and retrieves her cashmere wrap.
There's a twist of skin against cork, a grunt, and then a pop of carbonation that nearly has her jump out of her skin. Before the wine can bubble up out of the bottle, Gordon's gone to take a deep, long swig. He grins at her before handing the bottle over. She's a little less elegant about it than he is and drops of wine splash on her bare skin. She shivers.
"Cold, Pen?" Gordon asks, solicitous as always, as she hands the bottle back. He eyeballs the level of liquid inside, then drains the remainder in one go. There's a burp that charitably goes ignored, and he sets it aside, as Penny snuggles back into the divot in the mattress, tucks herself underneath her unfolded shawl.
"Mmm. No, just tired. It's too cozy for me to be cold."
"D'you know, actually, it can get cozier? C'mere."
There's a bit more tactical adjustment, somehow a king-sized mattress has been pretzeled into the sort of shape that results in just barely room for the two of them, with Penelope cuddled up small and soft against Gordon's chest; one of his arms snug around her shoulders, his other hand resting warm and secure on her hip. Several kisses are judiciously distributed, and then they settle against each other, tired, but happy.
He kisses the top of her head and then takes a long, deep breath of the smell of her hair, lets out a deep, satisfied sigh. "God. Mmm. Yeah. Hey, I know I said so like, a thousand times tonight, but you're really just the loveliest goddamn woman I've ever met and I think you're amazing and I could drop dead right this second and I'd die happy."
He's probably only said it about a hundred times, but she cuddles closer against his chest anyway, her fingers toying sleepily with one of the buttons of his shirt. "Mmhm. Well, thank you, darling. For your part, you build a tremendously impressive fort."
She can hear the grin in his voice. "Heh. Well, yeah. You're not the kinda girl who's impressed by five-star-hotels. A guy's gotta improvise."
Penelope fails to stifle a yawn and it's catching, because Gordon yawns next, hugs her a little tighter and murmurs something into her hair. She wants to say something about how she likes lighting best, likes the way the light is soft and golden white, how it's lovely and warm. She wants to tell him that he smells good, like sandalwood and citrus, and that she likes the way his heart sounds in her ear, steady and consistent. She likes the way his hands are strong and gentle, likes the way his socks are held up by straps of rainbow elastic. None of this makes it past the fuzzy edge between waking and sleeping, and she can already hear the way his breathing's softened and evened out, deep and slow.
So instead of saying everything she thinks, drowsy and dozing off as she is, Penelope just reaches up, softly pats his cheek and goes for the sort of heartfelt, straightforward sentiment that Gordon tends to appreciate more than anything else. "Good fort," she murmurs, and then falls asleep with a contented sigh.