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Dear Diary,
Bossman seems to have Ideas. Have been helpfully choking him when he puts foot in mouth. Excellent technique, v. sound. Am sure Ancient One would approve. Hubcap bitterly grumpy. His biting method failed to inspire results.
Still most useful artifact~!
*
The Sanctum Sanctorum, at times, can be bewildering. The mansion itself is sentient, to some extent, with a penchant for secrecy much like its master. Trying to find a room you don't have permission to enter? Good luck - you'll be dumped on the front doorstep before you can say, "Whoa, is that wall moving?!"
Creating a new room is a task in-and-of-itself, though Strange is having an odd sort of fun doing it. It's on the third floor, right down the hallway not an arm's span away from the doors leading to his Loft. He stands in the center of it currently, wreathed in Mystic power that causes his hair to waft about. His hands, once outstretched, are returning to his sides as he whispers the ending Word to his incantation. Rubbing his palms on his vest, he glances around and gives a thoughtful nod.
It's a tea room, small and comfortable, lined with darkwood paneling. The table and seats are low, meant for kneeling rather than sitting, though he wouldn't blame anyone for attempting to sit cross-legged, perhaps, if they aren't used to mediating. In a clever touch, sections of the wall are illusioned to act as windows, in the Asian style - multiple small squares with opaque glass that allow filtered sunlight to shine in. No tea set, just yet - he'll let her decide what to bring in as well as decorate with.
A small smile curves his lips as he glances over his shoulder. Time to show her.
The wards swish away from their master, where he leans against the wall beside the new door, and off to find Wanda, where she is in the Sanctum. The message they bear: "Come see, Miss Maximoff - third floor." Teasing Zzzzip on that title, of course.
*
The redolent scents that float out from the loft, detectable only in the occasional upwelling of a current of air through the sanctum or the absence of it, when one steps through a doorway to a place rendered in must and heavy leather wrappings. It's not as though she embalms the room in her own fragrance much of the time. Door left ajar by a smidgen to permit the free exchange of air and conversation leaves a seeping presence, scents unfamiliar at all to New York. Even here might lack the components, staggering and imaginative, gleaned from the slopes of Mount Wundagore. Some of them survive the travels and travails undertaken by one of its native daughters.
Those very few leaves and powders selectively dropped into hot water thus produce a miasma of beguiling fragrances that tend to rouse memories from the deep, and ease cares and anxieties by proximity. There will be a cost for that: intense dreams painted in Pollockian technicolour splatters.
She already paid the price for this neck-deep serenity, the additions hard to measure. Maybe it had something to do with the candle. Possibly that new scratch waiting to heal beyond an angry red line under her knee. For the moment, she floats in the bathtub a place such as this must have — and if not, a laundry tub will work.
Basking in the heady fog pouring off the surface of her bath, only the occasional stirring of a spell reinvigorates the heat to keep one S. Strange from becoming a pauper to the New York power companies and utilities. Her unfocused eyes match the occasional mermaid fan of her fingers, and she nips her inner lip at the corner. The odd splash and slide of flesh on the inner enamel of the tub — or fiberglass — create odd noises to join the casting.
The wards might complain at interruption, and the sudden jolt upright when the message interrupts her reverie. He might hear the yelp: high, clear, piercing.
Then a splash.
And, potentially, a ward having a sliver of soap tossed at it. Wait less than five minutes, she emerges, her soaked hair pinned up like an ice cream cone and a short robe wrapped around her body, belted off tightly, towel hugged to her face. She is barefooted, her toenails painted a bright metallic shade of purple. Scarpering to the landing, she says, "Yes? Doctor?"
*
He can't help the snort of a laugh that makes his shoulders jump up. Strange has never heard her squeak quite like that before. What on earth was she up to…?
His answer comes wrapped in a bathrobe and towel with wet curls all pulled up off her shoulders. He looks her up and down once as she approaches and then pushes off the wall to meet her before she can reach the doorway or glance in.
"You didn't have to interrupt your soaking, Wanda," he says first, a note of apology in his tone. He brushes one loose lock away from her face and tucks it behind her ear with a soft smile. "You can go back if you wish — it can wait for another time."
She smells of all sorts of wonderful herbs, floral and earthy alike, along with the generalized warm emitting of moisture that lingers briefly after a hot soaking.
*
"Once interrupted, I might as well finish rather than lie there all day long." Day, night, the hours are somewhat reversed for a young woman who frequently spends the nocturne slaying shadows boiling out from a livid gash struck through the park. Everything falls apart, everything comes to ruin, and she uses blade and spell to force a price of invasion a little sharper and harsher than before.
The rose flush to her cheeks, the creep down her throat, speaks to those long moments spent saturating herself in sensual pleasures. Laced by the Wundagorean oud, she might be her own olfactory enchantment, darker notes placed among something vaguely familiar. Perhaps a hint of amber and the thick resins of a forest, albeit the sort to warrant worshipful priests hauling off bark and lumber by the yard.
"Next time, you interrupt me," she says, and never quite finishes the sentence, leaving it upon their own. She glances to Strange, tipping her head up. Beads of water run down her neck, saturated along her collarbone.
*
"I certainly won't mind doing so," Strange replies as he brings his hand away, albeit with a moment's pause of hesitation. Those water droplets are refracting the ambient light in beautiful prisms against her skin and — whoa, now. The room.
One last attentive once-over and he holds her dark eyes again even as a restrained smile attempts to sneak past his clearly-controlled lips. "I…wanted to show you something," he finally says. How quaint — he actually seems sort of bashful about the whole thing. It shows in the slight reddening on the tips of his ears and how he suddenly fiddles with one of the cuff buttons of his dress shirt. "I created it earlier today. The Sanctum decided to play nice," and he glances up towards the ceiling with a one-eyed squint. As if to acknowledge his comment, the wards swish by, ruffling his hair, and then disappear down through the empty space above the grand staircase to the foyer. He 'hmphs' before glancing back to her. "A sense of humor. I don't know why I included the aspect in the original casting. Well, alright, I do, but it seemed important at the time and it's annoying now. Can you imagine if they were intending to prank us?"
He's babbling now.
*
Shimmering beams, each a universe unto itself, plays upon her neck. The rapturous descent carves a path towards her collarbone, following the narrow ridge of muscle alongside her throat, teased inwards, poached by gravity and acquainted with the niceties of the robe's wicking cotton and the lift of her right shoulder. Her hair bleeds more of them from every earthen tangle, delivered to the darkness of obsidian by the false cooling of flame.
The restrained smile has its arrogance, and she tips her head at Strange. This, the epitaph to self control, can be written on the deposed smile, the slain lift of haunting eyes. A slender finger runs up the bridge of her nose. Wanda cups her hand around her hip. "Was something caused trouble, or is this appeal upon another apparent point of interest?" The accuser against good sense challenges the mastermind of this grand plot, leaving her to breathe a faint sound in the stretching repose between them. That which ruffles Strange's hair deserves to be considered briefly, but they already startled her at her bath and almost took a hex for the trouble. "The aspect in the wards? Personality, you mean? Because it requires something to keep the sanctuary intact?"
*
She's right, in her around-about way: he's babbling. Strange realizes this and offers firstly a little huff of a laugh before he replies,
"Yes, I suppose it would need something more than just a black and white view of things. After all, it's all sort of grey when you get down to it." A beat. "Here, come see."
He retreats a few steps, gesturing for her to follow, and pauses on the opposite side of the newly-formed doorway. He resumes leaning in the same manner that she may have noted when she initially approached: weight on his shoulder, leg crossed at the ankle, arms loosely folded. The Eye of Agamotto hangs about his neck with silent presence. "Take a look," he murmurs, tilting his head in the direction of the room itself.
*
"More. Magic is not black and white, nor its users. Better the construction has layers of nuance," Wanda murmurs, sounding a touch doubtful of herself. Her fingers stray habitually to the belt wrapped around her waist, tugging at the ends to assure the bow hasn't come close to loosening on her jaunt down the stairs. "Best it not try to tease us." A precaution spoken against the devious spells in case they hear or the sentient forms in the area eavesdrop, she gives fair warning there will be no quarter or mercy.
Dabbing at the back of her damp neck with her hand, she follows Strange through the doorway and gazes up at the lintel. Habit, as much as determining all the ins and outs of a room. It helps that the doctor shows the way; knows his construction, surely, there must be less to fear.
Less is not nothing.
Since he has given no indication of how to look past him while he's positioned as casual as a postmodern statue, Wanda decides to simply put her hands on his shoulders and peer over him. Any guests inside will only see her brow and wide, honey-brown eyes, a pile of dark hair, and her headband spying past the Strange fence line. The Eye of Agamotto now has a blind view of cotton and her wet skin.
For a minute, silence.
Another minute.
Transian: "Oh my."
*
Hopefully it's a good thing? Whatever she said?
He cranes his face back to watch her expressions and Strange decides that it sounded like surprise rather than a curse.
"Well — what do you think?" he asks, even as he turns to take in the room with partially-new eyes over his shoulders, where her fingers rest and dig a little into his muscles in her rise to tippy-toes. "I left it for you to decorate. The style is clearly Asian in influence. You can do what you want though…it's for you."
The last bit is said with a clear decrease in volume, with a thread of hopeful shyness through it unheard from the Sorcerer Supreme in nearly a decade. His steel-blue eyes rest on her, waiting for her response with what could be bated breath.
*
He turns and pulls away from Wanda, naturally, considering her hands are anchored at the top of his shoulders. Pulling back either would drag her into that sacred space or require her forfeiture of position. Hand withdrawn, her fingers skim across the sorcerer's chest, angling towards his hip, remaining there for a moment and falling away slack.
Clearly Asian, that much is plain in the balance of stark materials and hard lines juxtaposed over such translucent walls in the light. Familiarity but not; she has never seen Japan, though knows a little of its designs. Chinoserie and Japonais stylings are all the rage in a few areas, ebbing and flowing. Nothing like this though.
Her canine sinks into her lower lip, and she murmurs, "Me?" The dumbfounded response is probably answer enough for all his hopes and worries and fears, compressing them into a ball that gets served back at his court as fast as Rod Laver on grass at Wimbledon.
"I don't… what do I say? No one has… This… Me?"
The simple truth, there. Presents aren't things given to children on the run.
Gifts always come with glass-covered strings.
Bated breath meets a softening look, a touch of worry fed by the daemon named paranoia whispering in her ear on her shoulder. "You will still come in here too?"
It also suggests banishment.
*
"Yes, for you," he says, his eyes momentarily following her gaze beyond his shoulder. There's a light giddiness to his voice now and it's mirrored in the smile that twinkles in his eyes. "I thought that you might — "
And he pauses, hearing the ghost of plaintive uncertainty in her question. Strange looks down at her, brows quirked in confusion momentarily before they smooth out in time with his lips forming the rounding of silent understanding.
Of course. He hadn't considered that she had been hunted for many years. She had even needed to share a space and blanket with her brother while he had never needed to share more than a tent with Victor in Boy Scouts. She has never truly had a space to call her own.
"Of course, Wanda," he replies quietly, placing a hand on either one of her biceps with friendly pressure. He gives them a gently-reassuring squeeze along with a half-smile. "It's your tea room — and your rules," the good Doctor adds, "but I'd be delighted to join you for tea any time. You just say when."
*
He might think back, in the privacy of meditation elsewhere, what he said. What triggered the change, leading to a fork in the path less taken through trees tumbling with their autumnal finery and pines redolent with a scent. Whether somewhere, in that string of few sentences, Strange's own pride or arrogance somehow woke up a sleeping — giant is too big a word, for someone smaller than he.
The hand on his shoulder pulls. The hand on his hip pulls, for that matter. Half in a dance, they rotate by sheer momentum as she pushes him to the wall beside the door, the safest of places.
Mayhap he imagines Wanda will bolt past him into the space and dance about? She could. The possibility in some other dimension is there. A path not taken at all.
The one less taken moves in a damp blur of cotton flapping about her arms, wrists freed as they lock behind his neck. Her robe going this way and that, damp hair tumbling down from the pile held in check by her garnet headband and bouncing off bare skin, dry shirt, wet-stained collar.
Sometimes there are not words. Sometimes words are imperfect. In those cases the only sufficient language comes from the oldest forms shared by humanity, a common collective, indisputably clearer than confounding verbs and phrases concealing true intent.
Wanda jumps up onto her toes, wobbling, leaning into him and pushing him to that much more stable surface behind him, and kisses him with none of the reserve she's ever demonstrated in the past. Bruising force, something to remember in the morning — or night — but there all the same.
*
Strange has one moment's warning — a spark in her dark eyes — and then he's stumbling about, a lead out of control in a dance that has him stumbling to avoid stepping on her toes with his indoor boots. There's time for a stuttered, "Wanda, what — MMMFFF!"
Drop another dollar into the Mmmfff Jar.
Air knocked from his lungs by impact to the wall feathers against her lips as they seal to his. Her weight half-hangs from his neck. The coolness of the water in her curls is soaking through his dress shirt, molding the material in places to his skin, and his hands move to rest on her hips. It's the safest place in the moment!
He inhales audibly through his nose and then pulls back from her kissing. It's not a huge retreat, by any means — he has but an inch or two between the back of his skull and the darkwood wall — and he looks down at her with raised eyebrows of pleasant surprise.
"You're welcome," he says in a tone roughened and rounded with amusement.
*
The rough stumble is only a turn. Gravitation to a wall. Tied by the bow of a hellcat in need of more reasonable meals on a regular schedule, the embrace of her arms slim and devoid for once of gloves or leather or a rough cotton sleeve. Instead there is only the warm touch of fair skin, plumped and softened by the bath, still placed with the oils of that natural concoction. A natural hue, truth told.
His retreat to the wall, for Strange seems rarely the sort to do that, is marked with amusement in amber-brown eyes, little visible through her dark lashes. "Not suitable thanks?" she asks, the sound of her voice a little thick, curled upon the tongue, a fine wine decanted so slowly.
They can decide the balance of it afterwards. She loiters there a little longer, mouth still warm with the taste of his. The shared closeness brings a favoured, grateful heat for one aware suddenly of the incumbent chill. Warmth that she craves, without knowing it. Curled up at his side in the night, even when she lies face down, she tends to gravitate into his radiant, formed heat-aura, snug under the blankets.
For now, she steps away, lending him a pause in time. Strange is given his sovereignty, adding another inch or three or six between them.
"Am I to be set straight? Explore or stay as we have?"
*
He licks at his lips, testing whether or not they'll be lightly bruised come tomorrow, as he watches her retreat. The lack of her heated hands on his skin, and especially the places where her dampened hair bled moisture into his shirt, are noted in the sudden encroachment of chill.
"Set straight?" Strange asks, his own voice as smooth and thick as honey. "I think you'll catch a cold if we stay here. You'll need to put some warmer clothing on."
Perfectly logical words at odds with the glimmer in his light eyes, in the shadowed intentions at the quirked corner of his lip.
"And you don't need to thank me," he adds as motherly-schooled manners kick him in the back of the brain. "It was a gift."
*
Perfectly logical words indeed to ask, a perfectly normal response, to offer. Wanda cants a look deeper into the room, trained upon the corners not yet appreciated except in a short blur of a turn. The finer details will need to be explored. She barely knows the first thing to decorating a chamber other than tidying up after herself, much less what to place here or there, a foray more intimidating than crawling through a tight tunnel hauling a rope because Pietro is too big to do it.
"I've none clean," she answers off-handed, peering the more on tiptoe to see the direction the windows open. If there are windows.
Then she sets herself slightly to the angle away from them, and pulls him back by the arms. "We have not done this correctly, have we?"
Her purpose is laid bare as she tries to lure Strange back outside for a moment, even if she is mindful the robe is trying to slide from her shoulder and the arrangement of their gifts is somehow not quite right. Memory treks, hiccupping, and she stumbles slightly on the floor before catching herself. Foot back, bent towards him, the look is mirth rather than mortification. Mostly. An effort of will, that.
"Is the custom about carrying used here? I think it is, and I stopped you from trying." Her eyes seek his. "Americans and English, you pick up the person and carry them inside?"
Let's see him chew on that.
*
'None clean?' What a tart little comment out of her. Strange's smile deepens - then fades slightly as puzzlement once more asserts itself.
"I'm sorry, done what now?" He laughs even as he's drawn backwards into the hallway once more and tilts his head a little as he listens to her attempt to explain what she means.
Oh. OH.
A sudden drawback, a little shake of the head to dispel his astonishment, and then another deeper laugh. "I think you're referencing when people move into a new home together. The man would carry the woman across the threshold, sure," he shrugs lightly.
*
"Odd. I have heard of a custom of jumping over brooms, too. That makes less sense than this." Wanda puzzles over that fact for merely a moment, and then shrugs her shoulders in kind. If he will not be concerned, she shall not either. "Your traditions aren't familiar." No more to be said on that front.
Let them both decide on it.
"Then I suppose I venture forth to find a towel and my coat, to review this gift." The surest way to flee the situation is by diversion!
*
Strange shakes his head again, smiling to himself, even as they both leave the tea room, Wanda before him.
"You could always wear one of my bathrobes," he murmurs, eyes on the swaying of her hips before him. "They're…fairly warm, I think."
*
"There can be ways to be certain. I shall have to try one. This was not a good choice." Wanda waves her hand over the cotton selection of her own, suitable for coverage but lacking in the estimable qualities of a decent terrycloth or a very much questionable faux-silk, a satin or a lacy overwrought thing that would make the Victorians nod in approval for how much it concealed — namely, everything from Yonkers to Albany.
"I should like to explore that room properly. With you. Here I've gone and spoiled your demonstration with it. There seems to be a fair bit of that." She considers her bare feet a moment. "I'm sorry. That was probably not what you intended."
*
"I have a good number of colors if you have any preference," Strange replies even as he watches the flow of her hand from over her shoulder. The robe hangs on the very edges of her biceps, revealing so much of that lovely lightly-tan skin through the dark curls that still glisten with withheld water. He finds himself biting at his bottom lip even as they reach the doors to the Loft.
In a rather quick move lead by a barring outstretched arm, he places himself between her and the doorway to the stairs. The whole procession is brought to a halt. "Wanda, honestly." The tone is gentled by his hand reaching to take the fingers closest to him and bringing them to his lips for a sweet lingering kiss on the back knuckles. "I intended for you to use it and enjoy it. As I mentioned, I'm happy to join you as often as you want for tea, reading, meditation — whatever you wish. It is your tea room, after all."
*
That bitten bottom lip is her trademark as much as the man wearing the title sorcerer supreme. So they share a few things. She can hand wave that. So she practically mistook a wedding custom for something normal. Check the other way. And stealing one another's clothes, purely the norms for a couple still feeling out where and what they are to one another.
Wanda doesn't quite so much flounce. She wouldn't ever flounce. It stands to reason she does not know how. Her stride halts when eh flings his arm out, and drives her to her heel, pulling in a breath. Not anticipating a fight, per se, but the old habits are there ready to serve in fight or flight. Her nose wrinkles and her brow lines in thought when Strange takes her hand, leaving them once again in a very different sort of waltz around the thorn bush. "It felt like I spoiled something. Not as planned. Did I?" The question comes with its customary point-blank honesty. Even if she is flushing lightly pink at her cheeks, tell no one.
"It… would be good for private activities in a quiet space. No one entering unexpectedly." Wards! "Where we can savour things." A pause follows. "That is the right word. To enjoy them at length. To do it deeply. And well."
*
He finds that the hot-blooded idea slinking about his skull suddenly gains life in light of her words. Savor. Indeed, savor. Deeply. Well.
His eyes narrow even as his pupils widen a small but noticeable amount. The steel-blue irises darken in a sense of forewarning.
She must know what she's insinuating?!
Either that or Strange may just be reacting to the amount of skin shown to him frontally now, where her hair is no longer blocking it off from view. Most of her collarbone and the beginnings of the swells of her chest.
"No," he finally says, his gaze landing on her face once again, "You didn't spoil anything." A beat. "And I suggest the deep blue bathrobe. It's quite warm. Master bedroom closet, far left-hand side." He then steps to one side to allow her to travel up into the Loft, if she so chooses.
*
Translation errors are notable between foreign language speakers and English. English is a tricky language, and the multiple meanings of words not always apparent even to those raised to it. (Look at all the they're-their-there errors.)
Strange's reaction does not change anything about Wanda's reaction, other than the slight toss of her wet hair to pull the fallen coils of dark mahogany free from her collar, stopping them from piling up against her neck. The cool tongues of a serpent's kiss at that sensitive bit of skin are not necessary, and the tangled mass plunders her shoulders in a somewhat messy veil.
Reaching over to pull one side of the robe up, that slouched fit lasts about forty seconds before toppling over again. Is everything in this house in collusion with him? It seems so. Strange's sanctum will obey the wishes of its owner, not so much the guests. Even if those wishes are not even known to him.
Her copper-infused skin shines a moment as she pauses near a light, reading his expression and responding in kind. Shimmering amber brown eyes trace up the line of his arm to the damp splotches left unkindly upon his chest by her proximity, noting the way the material goes translucent in a rather intriguing way.
"Thank you." She gestures towards the doorway. "I am not without gratitude. I've simply not…" How to say the obvious he probably already knows? "It is my first time receiving a gift so large. I do not know what to say except thank you." And possibly convening her own list of ideas of what little lies in her power that could possibly constitute a meaningful gift in return, something he might treasure.
Wanda pauses, turning back to the sorcerer. Head lowered doesn't hide the curve of her smile, and she approaches slowly, not quite going upstairs. Stopping just short of him, she reaches for his hand: easy to pull her in, easy to be hugged.
*
"A spoken 'thank you' and knowing that you'll enjoy it is enough, I promise," Strange replies as he takes her hand. Once more, another set of kisses on her knuckles, ones that linger and cool in the wake of his movement to the next delicate bump. "Go on, I'll follow." A tilt of his head towards the Loft. "I've got one last thing to do."
An seemingly-innocent and reasonable-sounding additive statement from the Sorcerer. There's always something clamoring for his attention. Though, this time…it's not about responsibility and all about wanting to appreciate how those hips don't lie from behind once more. Unless — that's a responsibility, isn't it?
*
They gently pivot around a dance, forever exchanging places, sometimes led, sometimes following. Wanda tips her head, and the heavy weight of her damp hair swings to one side. The avalanche runs chestnut off her shoulder, splattering a few drops for good measure onto a wide square sleeve and one or two on the floor.
"I would like to know what inspired you to do it. The idea of it." She will no doubt be spending many an hour levitating in there, diverted from her studies by examining the walls and floor. What a story the sanctum is going to tell.
It already has one about her bath, but neither here nor there.
Instead, she quietly turns and walks up the stairs, bounding up them three at a time, or two when her legs won't carry quite that far. An explosion of activity sends her hurtling into motion, and she catches a riser with her bare instep, and launches herself up. So exciting! The blur of motion into the loft might be a reward, in its way, followed by absence of that heady scent that brings forth memories so strongly.
Meanwhile, the sorceress is left to stare at the abundance of clothes. So many garments, and all of them in finer repair than hers for the most part. She isn't a snoop by nature — okay, she is — but she edges towards the right direction for a big fluffy robe, sliding hangers along as her fingers do the walking to seek out fluffy terrycloth goodness. And then? Someone is wrapping herself up in it and throwing herself on the bed like a cat getting a particularly good scratch.
*
Strange's eyebrows rise as he smiles to show a full set of teeth and then laughs. Not much time at all to appreciate those hips! They disappear around the corner of the top of the stairs in a whisk of bathrobe that grants him a fleeting view of long legs. The thump-thump-thump of her feet across the Loft's wooden flooring is heard; he ascends the steps and reaches the main level in time to see another flash of bathrobe and lingering fingers on the door disappear into the master bedroom.
On its stand just outside the double doors, the crimson Cloak flutters, like a bird wanting attention. The good Doctor pauses, granting it an eyebrow and glance, to see the collar do an odd wiggling motion. "Yes, no worries, we're fine," he whispers to the garment before entering the bedroom. Both doors swing open, granting him presence as well as presence, and the smile he shows is crooked in shape and in communicated ideas. Look at her sprawl in the cobalt-blue robe. Such delightfully-arranged contentment.
"It's a good color on you," he murmurs as he steps around the bed to stand near her feet, hands folded behind his back.
*
Naughty Cloak, betraying its guests! Of course it would, happily flickering and flapping about with all the secrets of the household, like some demented chatelaine to match Agamotto's very grumpy butler. Downton Abbey has nothing on Bleecker Mansion, or Up/Sanctum, Down/Sanctum.
Wanda might be caught with a bare foot in the air, hands buried under the abundance of pillows that still confounds her to this very minute. With her back arched and the rolling about constricting her in the oversized robe, at least for her somewhat more diminutive stature, she looks exactly as a large cat being kittenish should. Never mind her curved stomach is slightly visible, or that her back is being scoured softly by the cloth. Go ahead and pet. Expect to come back with a savaged stump. Even her amber eyes, slitted in mute raptures, are full of a demonic purpose and fire shared between womankind and catkind.
"—red often is. Blue? This blue…" She rolls a little, hip up, and scissors her legs to flip over onto her stomach mostly. It's a bit of a needless show, which makes it profoundly enjoyable for her. Sprawling in a heap on the bed is so strangely luxurious, she will milk the moment a little longer.
"Whatever you call this particular blue. It is the best shade then. The personal type of blue I will wear, and it alone." No, there's no innuendo in that statement at all.
*
He won't disagree that he does enjoy seeing her in red. Scarlet-red, in fact, that hue that drowns cold judgment in the strums of primal interest with all the subtly of an injected narcotic. There's something about a woman in red. But — it really is a good color on her, this blue. It brings the golden skin tones out, deepens the colors in her hair and highlights any chestnut strands throughout it.
"I have no idea what you'd call this particular shade of blue," Strange replies, his tone indicating that he's answering mostly out of polite manners while his brain is off doing gymnastics of another sort. "You can borrow it for as long as you want." That shade of blue. No, wait, the bathrobe. He means that bathrobe.
Turning around, he sees that the closet doors are still open and smirks. Might as well join her, he supposes? A glance over his shoulder towards her as his hand lingers on the hanger of his personal robe, the one lined in black silk and outwardly hued in claret. "If you'll give me a moment, I can wipe down with a washcloth and then we can have tea in your tea room?"
*
Scarlet red, that shade of heart's blood and the storm on Jupiter, the eldest stars and the frisson of passion. Emblem of good luck in the Far East, the sacred hue of Rome and many other peoples, how it flies into the mind. Blue and scarlet and violet, they are the only shades she wears aside from black. A good thing, one hopes, to keep to that spectrum.
Nodding to his suggestion, Wanda opens her drowsy eyes slightly more and focuses upon Strange in his distracted state. Point for her. "I intend to. Less borrow. Long-term lease." Or permanently claimed until he realizes he's not getting it back. Blue. Robe. Things of that nature.
Her mouth curves lightly. "The water is still hot. A simple enough charm. It should still be good, though mind the ephoris bloom." A nod is given. "The oil can be a bit heady the first time." The smile she wears is incandescent, lounging on the very edge of doom for them both. "Tea, and then yes. This new room of ours."