SUMMARY: What happened during Wink and Lorelei's twenty minutes of "'us' time" at the Troll Market in "Once Upon A Time," Chapter 40: I Know Him So Well.
A/N - Non-English languages (except for Troll) are in Italics. German translations are at the very bottom (before the "Review" button). The opening section and the closing section of this short will be quotes from chapter 40 of LA Knight's story, in order to better set the scene - those parts will also be in Italics. There may also be a couple of things alluding to or quoted from When You're Gone part 1, which is chapter 37 of LA Knight's story. You'll want to have read All's Fair In Love, War, And Drinking (chapter 1 of this fic) before you read this short here, otherwise some parts won't make sense.
(Dis)Claimer: Lorelei = mine & LA Knight's. Everyone & everything else = their respective owners', including the Hellboy-movies-and-comics crew. Copyright infringement not intended.
Enjoy! :)
The Elf whapped his oldest friend on the shoulder. "Wink."
The troll dropped Lorelei's hand as if he'd been burned. "My prince."
Grasping for patience - or perhaps the self-control not to laugh, as his friend's embarrassment was both obvious and amusing - the Elf prince repeated, "Meet me at the cordwainer's in twenty minutes. You know the one; the leprechaun's establishment." To ensure that the details of his command had penetrated the ridiculous fog of romance surrounding the pair, the prince reiterated, "Twenty minutes. The cordwainer's."
"You do not wish me to accompany you now?"
Knowing he was being a bit cruel - and considering that he loved Wink as a brother, the prince also knew he was entitled to inflict such fraternal torments - Nuada replied in a mock-mournful voice, "No, my friend. I fear you have fallen into an ancient and inescapable trap and now other, far more beguiling things than your sworn duty to your liege lord have ensnared your attention."
Wink scowled at him when Lorelei laughed.
Over his shoulder as he walked away, Nuada added, "Enjoy your lady's charms, my friend."
The troll glowered after his prince and friend, knowing the Elven warrior was teasing him. A gentle hand on the rough hide of his arm brought his attention back to cream-pale skin, eyes like dragon's gold, and lips as red as garnets. One slender obsidian brow winged upward. "Twenty minutes. Think we can manage to have a simple conversation and a drink in that time? Or do you intend to follow after him and break my maiden heart?"
Wink's eye widened as Lorelei, with a single scorching look that turned the troll's blood to molten gold, beckoned him toward a tavern he vaguely recognized as the Black Manticore. The massive troll, one of the greatest warriors in Faerie, followed after the slender rhinemaiden like a lovesick puppy.
Once they had their drinks in hand, Lorelei stood on her tiptoes and gestured for Wink to bring his ear closer to her. The troll obliged.
"Out that door," she murmured, voice like water whispering over the smooth stones of a river, and indicating a door at the other end of the tavern's common room with a nod in its direction, "is a flight of wide, stone stairs that curves up and to the right, to the upper level of the Market." That sly, fox-like smile of hers that Wink always found so charming blossomed on her red mouth as she said softly, "I know of an out-of-the-way nook up there with a fantastic view over Little Budapest."
The Rhine daughter gently grasped Wink's comparatively huge mechanical hand with her own slender one, and with no effort at all, pulled the troll warrior along with her, his heart beating at such a pace that if someone could have heard it they might have thought to compose a song to the rhythm.
"Hier," said Lorelei, upon reaching their destination. "Willkommen in meiner Winkel, mein lieber Wink," she said, with a bright and inviting smile that made Wink feel warm all over. The troll and the rhinemaiden made themselves comfortable on the stone floor of the nook, overlooking the district of the Troll Market known as Little Budapest. New York City - and the continent of North America in general - had plenty of "Little Somewheres." There was Little Italy, Little Tokyo, many cities had a China Town, and New Orleans had its French Quarter, but here in the Troll Market, under the Brooklyn Bridge, was Little Budapest. The scents of goulash and halászlé wound their way up to the odd pair from some of the shops below, and the various lights of different brightness and colors that dotted the whole market here and there cast a charming glow on the scene, as they sipped their drinks.
Suddenly Lorelei's eyes went wide and she smacked her forehead, "Ach! I never did thank you for the flowers that you sent, the last time that you came to Fafner's Cave. That was horribly remiss of me." The river maiden looked at Wink apologetically. "Vielen Dank, they were absolutely lovely. I was-" she was suddenly quite aware of the barest blush that had crept to her face from seeing the grizzled veteran warrior watching her intently as she spoke "-very happy to receive them from you." She smiled at her drink for a moment, but then lifted her head again to look him in the eye, maintaining her general composure despite the flutters in her belly while he looked at her in a way that he had never done before until recently. "Vielen Dank," she said again. "I loved them, they were very beautiful."
"As you are," Wink murmured in a low, deep-voiced growl. The words were out of his mouth before he even knew that he'd said them. But he meant them. It took not even a millisecond for him to decide to just let his words stand for themselves as they were.
As for Lorelei, there was a very subtle expression of being dumbstruck on her aspect. For dumbstruck she was, though not unpleasantly. She had been called beautiful before - countless times - by family, friends, admirers, (even enemies in some situations) and Wink and Nuada were both included in this group. Either one of them at any given time in her whole life had called her "pretty child" or "lovely girl" - or as she grew up, "child" and "girl" were dispensed with, and it was "beautiful Lorelei" or "my fair lass," or other endearments of similar nature - and they both meant it, but that was as far as the meaning went. Even the last time that he'd seen her, Wink had called her "lovely Lorelei" and "fairest river maiden." But this time, just now, was different from all other times put together. There was something new about the way that he said it. Something with such a raw sincerity that it left her speechless... and it also left dozens of little tiny sparks blossoming just under her skin.
"Danke," she said softly, though it felt very inadequate to just give the polite reply, but she really couldn't think of anything else that she could say.
"You're welcome," responded Wink. "I am glad to hear that you enjoyed them, I had hoped that you would." He imagined how the tall river maid might have looked when she got them delivered to her door. Soft blushing and pure white waterlilies, and a few that were vivid crimson, all together in a glass bowl, with some enchanted, lifelike, miniature bejeweled koi swimming about them under the water that they floated in (included at Yang's suggestion). Wink wondered if she might have treated them in a similar (albeit more favorable) way as she had her secret admirer's red rose before she let it fall forgotten to the top of the bar, that night that she'd asked him back to Fafner's Cave for some quiet drink and company. When Lorelei held the waterlilies to her face to breathe in their scent, did she softly brush at their petals with her nose and mouth, the way that she had with the rose? Just imagining her flushed, parted lips gently caressing the fragile petals of the water flowers that he'd sent her had him hoping that she did.
Not hearing his thoughts, but responding to his words, Lorelei nodded with a warm smile, saying, "I did."
The stunning faery woman scooted closer to her old friend of many years, leaning against his side, as he put his arm around her.
They had been in this position before - on hilltops, on rooftops, around roaring fires exchanging stories, in various settings throughout all the years that they'd been acquainted - always as friends. Now there was more. They both knew it, they both felt it. And they both welcomed it.
It has been so long since I felt like this, Wink thought to himself, as he held his drink in his left hand and carefully held the comely rhinemaiden to his side with his right arm, very aware of the warmth of her body soaking into that arm, and of the soft weight of her, resting against him along his side and just below his chest where her head would rest between sips of her drink. So long, he thought. He'd had his share of satisfaction with women in his thousands of years of living, to be sure; but it was a very rare and precious thing to feel for anyone as he did now, like floating and freefalling at the same time, with heat in his veins and thunder in his heart every time that she even looked at him... As she did now, eyes like dragon's gold shimmering with jewelescent sparkles reflecting the lights in the Troll Market from under fringes of long, butterfly-soft black lashes, which fluttered delicately against his leather torso armor when she rested her head back against him again.
"Also... sag mir..." Lorelei started after a minute or two. "What brings you and his royal highness here tonight, so serendipitously?" She asked with a smile that Wink thought was quite fetching indeed. "If it is all the same for you to say, that is," she added. Wink thought for a minute, before he found an answer that he felt fit the situation.
"Peace offerings," he said simply.
"Peace offerings?" Lorelei echoed with a short laugh and a wide smile of interested amusement. "Wirklich? Warum?"
"My prince's mortal lady," was all that Wink said in reply.
"Ohhhhh," responded the Rhine daughter, "Ich verstehe." She held up a finger to her ruby lips, and then turned it so that the opposite side faced out, indicating that she would keep this to herself. Not that she wouldn't anyway. It was a known fact that whatever secrets Lorelei came by, she kept, and that anything told to her in confidence, stayed in confidence. That was one of the more significant reasons why Wink and the royal twins of Bethmoora trusted her, because she had shown herself to be trustworthy.
Somewhere off to the side of them, a very scratchy-sounding tape-player was switched on. The sound-quality of the music coming from it made it sound like it had to have been recorded on the tape-player by standing in proximity to the stereo that was originally playing the song that now filled their little corner of the Market. It sounded like Magyar folk music, but a lot more modern.
"Ich kenne dieses Lied!" Lorelei piped up. Often, whenever she was visiting with her friend Vica, a táltos, the two of them would sing this song together, just having fun. Lorelei started to sing along with the tape-player, with a very valiant-but-ultimately-futile-sounding attempt at a Magyar accent (she couldn't quite wrap her mouth around the ó and é sounds), but it was rivetingly beautiful to hear, all the same, and just soft enough that it wouldn't carry beyond their nook.
"Szeretem az álmok rejtett aranyát,
szeretem a táncok tiszta tavaszát,
szeretem a csönd égi örömét,
szeretem a csókod éjjeli tüzét."
There was a different kind of magic riding the soundwaves of her voice this time, as there had been some nights ago. This time, it was like the exuberance of a warm, whirling puff of air, snatching up leaves and making them dance for joy... Or rather, it was ghosting about Wink's senses and urging him to do so. But with Lorelei having a full conscious hold of herself, here and now, there wasn't such raw power charging it as there had been that recent night before. The troll felt the warmth and the joy of the rhinemaiden's singing, but just barely felt the faint, whispering touch of its magic on any of his physical senses at all.
Yet even that ethereal whisper-light sensation was enough to serve as a reminder to him of that night, and a shiver went through Wink's body at the memory. Absently, his mechanical thumb brushed back and forth over the spot where it rested at the outside of his pretty companion's thigh, and Lorelei, with her naturally highly acute sensitivity to touch, very much felt the troll's inattentive strokes at the side of her leg, but what really held the monopoly on her attention was the web of feelings, like golden flame, around him that her other senses perceived.
The brightest of the strands weaving through his aura was love. She had known for a long time already that he loved her, they were cherished friends, and no matter where circumstance took them when it pulled them apart through the years, somehow it was never that long before it put them back together again - by chance or by fate, neither he, she, nor either of the royal elf twins could figure. But there was a new resonance to this love, more vibrant, and warmer. "Love is friendship that has caught fire," she had read somewhere once, and the Rhine daughter couldn't honestly say that she disagreed with it.
The next runner-up in the contest to outshine each other, after love, was exhilaration, which was followed by desire. The first of these two she could easily identify with, for she felt it in returning measure herself, but that last one posed a very real threat to the solidity of Lorelei's grip on her carefully-held composure.
He desired her. Wink!
The entire effect that it all had together made the river maiden blush and shiver by turns constantly!
Lorelei took another sip of her drink and then looked up at the face of the silver cave troll that had his arm around her. Her heart thudded hard in her chest, and she vaguely wondered if she was still breathing in and out. For the unaccustomed eye - which was primarily the general eye of humanity, elf-kind, and plenty of other so-called "humanoid" races, like Rhine folk - anyone that encountered Wink would take one look at him, see a big hulking scary creature and likely (if they could) run back the direction from whence they'd come, screaming. But to everyone else, who knew what they were seeing, it was a different thing entirely.
Wink was a warrior, and many thousands of years of living a warrior's life had made him brawny and well-formed, with thick, powerful muscles like corded steel evident in his arms, legs, shoulders and chest. Lorelei couldn't say that she knew what he looked like underneath his leather armor, but from the snug fit of it she could guess that his trunk was as well-formed as the rest of him. The silver warrior's grizzled face and body bore the wear and the marks that told of his age and his life - battle scars over his arms and chest, a missing eye, a replaced hand, a broken tusk. The way that Lorelei had it figured, was that if, say, a human were to see Wink on their terms for what he really was, they would probably see something like a viking veteran, with dark silver-gray hair (and an eyepatch, perhaps). Older in years, but still remarkably strong, powerful, and deadly - the kind of being that would give the famed Conan the barbarian a real run for his gold in a fair fight on his best and worst days.
To anyone that knew what they were seeing, Wink was every bit as magnificent and impressive as Nuada Silverlance himself, and this was how Lorelei saw him.
Wink had not taken his eye off of the striking faery woman at his side the whole time since they'd situated themselves on the floor of the nook, and he saw her looking over his features now with those bewitching aurulent eyes of hers, soft smile playing over her crimson mouth. He gave her a smile of his own in return, his one eye gleaming, and was rewarded with a light blush that pulled her smile a little wider.
Suddenly Wink got an idea.
The troll warrior narrowed his one good eye at the rhinemaiden, his smile very slowly getting more and more broad, the gleam in his eye becoming brighter and more apparent, as Lorelei's heart started to beat faster and faster from wondering just what might he be thinking - when she gave a sudden squeak as she was lifted up from where she sat and set across his lap, facing the direction of his right. Before she could say anything, Wink spoke. "Easier this way," he said simply.
"What's easier?" she asked automatically in reaction to his statement.
"This," he growled, and with that, he used his flesh-and-blood left hand to gently move aside some of her silky black hair that had fallen across part of her face, and from there he slowly massaged the muscles of her skull through her thick, dark tresses. Lorelei immediately relaxed and her eyes fluttered shut as her startled brain forgot almost everything else but the feeling of Wink's powerful fingers moving through her hair, a cat-like smile curling the corners of her cherry lips upwards. Every now and again she would breathe out a sighed hmm of pleasure, and after a few short moments she opened her eyes again... And there were those hypnotizing glimmers in the golden depths of her eyes again, making the veteran warrior forget that he was even still breathing.
The Rhine daughter leaned into Wink's body with a sigh like a spring breeze kissing the still surface of a lily pond, and rested her head against his massive, muscled chest. Her cheek, as fair as a winter's first frost yet warm as a midsummer rain, made soft, slow, velvet strokes against his skin as it brushed back and forth over his hide and sent little electric shocks sparking in his blood. Wink closed his eye for a moment, inhaling the watery scent of her, and letting out a soft, rumbling sigh of his own. He opened his eye again to see Lorelei's elegant, slender fingers idling over the stitches of his torso armor, tracing the lines and over the buckles, skimming up to the top where his armor just ended right below his chest and then trailing back down again.
It teased at him, the way that she did that. He could not feel her touch through his leather armor, and every time that her fingertips skirted at the edge of it, he silently willed them to move up, up, just a little more. Just a little more so that he could feel it. But they didn't move up, instead they moved to the side of her face that wasn't resting on his burly chest, tucking back a stray tendril of her long ebon locks behind her ear, and Wink's eye suddenly became fixed on that ear, on its delicately pointed tip. The troll knew very well, from experience with elves and other fae women of a pointy-eared nature, just what would happen if he slid his finger over that sensitive, snow-white eartip.
Someday, he thought with an inward grin. Not here, not now, but someday. Wink had known the Rhine daughter for decades already, he could wait a few mere days and weeks more for that. Wink felt the spot on his chest become even warmer where her cheek rested, and wondered if his enchanting companion had sensed the nature of his thoughts and was blushing. He couldn't help an outward smirk at that.
She finally granted him what he'd desired not half a minute ago before his thoughts took this turn, and traced her fingertips over a few of the battle-scars on his chest. When she was a little girl she used to trace over his scars almost tentatively, fascinatedly, barely even touching them at all as troll and elf-prince told her the stories of how they were gotten. Now her touch was solid, admiring, knowing the story behind each one that she traced, a fond, gentle pride in each stroke over them. Lorelei's touch was slow, smooth, and deliberate, as though she wanted to memorize each line that she traced all over again, anew; as though she were drinking in his history and the very essence of who and what he was through her skin - and Wink so wanted for her to never have to stop, to keep feeling that touch and the warm weight of her resting against him.
But Time, it seemed, was once again not standing in Wink's favor.
Lorelei gave a soft, quivering sigh and lifted her head up. Quietly, resignedly (almost dejectedly), she remarked, "We'll be coming to the end of our twentieth minute shortly... And while I would very much like to keep you a while longer," she smiled softly at him, "I respect you too much to incur the ire of Silverlance upon your head on my account... So I will not be selfish." She heaved another sigh, and lifted herself carefully from Wink's lap to stand up, leaving the places that she had been touching him cool and bereft of her warmth. "Don't worry about returning the tankard you ordered your drink with to the tavern-keep, I'll do that for us both." Wink mumbled something unintelligible along the lines of that being a fine idea as he picked himself up off the stone floor of the nook, not really caring about it even as he said it.
When Wink stood fully upright again, he let his eye linger over the beautiful rhinemaiden that he had been happy to call "friend" for so long... and that he was hoping to perhaps call as something more in the future, and she smiled at him warmly as he took her hand is his - so small by comparison - and rumbled, "Until we meet again, my lady." As before, when they'd met up on the ground-level of the Market, his thumb lightly traced a slow half-circle over her pale knuckles.
Lorelei licked her lips, and there was a tiny, hopeful, hesitant shiver in her voice as she asked him, "How soon will that be, mein lieber Wink?"
The silver warrior locked his one good eye with the Rhine daughter's sparkling golden ones, and resolutely he told her, "Upon the soonest opportunity that I am afforded, my dear Lorelei." A warm smile was shared between them, and she gave his hand a small squeeze before her fingers slid from his grasp as he turned to go, grunting a 'farewell' to her.
He had just stepped out of the nook proper and was about to come to the end of the very short, nondescript annex that opened from it to the Market's upper-level, when he heard her call behind him, "Wink, warte!" And he turned around to see her running the few strides that were between them, and with a small leap from her toes, she jumped up and planted a kiss right on his face... Or rather, on his broken tusk, since even though Lorelei was as tall as a fathom, Wink was still at least a good two feet taller than she, which made it a long reach. But what did that matter? She kissed him! Wink was stunned, Lorelei had never kissed him before at all, not even when she was a very small child and would come running up to him or Nuada with her bubbling, childish gestures of endearment! The great hulk of a troll just stood there, dumbstruck, unable to take his eye off of the Germanic siren with her brilliant smile and eyes that shone like summer sunfire on purest gold, the dreamy lights of Little Budapest reflecting sharply off her pointed ivory teeth.
Her smile went just a little wider as she broke him out of his stupor, urging him, "Go!" Wink half-grunted, half-rumbled something to the effect of "oh, right" and turned to go back the way they had come - and from there to the destination where he had promised to rejoin his prince - his great troll heart beating so hard and so fast that he thought it would thunder right out of his chest the whole way there.
Nuada left the little shop and stepped back out into the hustle of the Troll Market at night, where Wink waited for him. The troll looked more than a little out of sorts. There was a faint smudge of wine-red color, stark cerise against the bone-whiteness of his broken tusk. Tensing his jaw and trying to ignore the twinge of embarrassment, Nuada surreptitiously indicated the spot and Wink hastily wiped the cosmetic residue away. When the troll opened his mouth, as if to explain, Nuada held up a staying hand.
"I do not want to know." Forcing the discomfiting image of lush lips brushing against troll tusks from his mind, the prince added, "Ever."
Wink mumbled an acknowledgment that this was probably best, and the pair melted into the crowd of the Market.
A/N - As you can see here, Wink and Lorelei have progressed past the stage of "blooming feelings" that was seen in All's Fair In Love, War, And Drinking and are now feeling a more active kind of chemistry around each other.
- I based "Little Budapest" off the fact that Hellboy II was filmed in Budapest, Hungary, AND there really is a replica of a balcony over a bookstore in Budapest that Guillermo del Toro included into the Troll Market scene because he saw it in the city and liked it so much. I learned about it in the extra features on the DVD.
- The song that Lorelei sings in the nook over Little Budapest is "Szeretem" by NOX, a Hungarian music group, off of their album Örömvölgy. If you can't buy it online or find it on iTunes, you can still see/hear it on YouTube.
TRANSLATIONS
Hier = Here
Willkommen in meiner Winkel = Welcome to my corner/nook
mein lieber Wink = my dear Wink
Vielen Dank = Many thanks (or) Thank you very much
Also... sag mir... = So... tell me...
Wirklich? = Really?
Warum? = Why?
Ich verstehe = I understand/I see/I get it
Ich kenne dieses Lied! = I know this song!
Wink, warte! = Wink, wait!