song, art, buckle my heart
Hearts for Gala. Hearts for Gala! Always, hearts for Gala.
Gala Mila Mayes, the charming archivist hailing from Kislev, is not an overt, histrionic person, who ensnares onlookers with her inescapable wile and charm.
Her face, covered in beauty marks (that is to say, just dotted, judiciously, in all the right places, or even just one), does not wink and contort to win the hero and at once offer herself, the winsomely seductive prize. Not only does she not want to do that, she doesn't know how.
Gala is clumsy. Gala is goofy. Gala is even just a little bit hopeless.
(And here's the secret: so, for the positive count of all those things, is Bart.)
But Gala has hearts hidden all over her, from the crown of her head to the boots of her shoes, on thigh holsters and turtleneck bodysuits and sweetpea necklines and all manner of other stealthily sexual things.
The most prominent one, to be spied at a glance, is the heart outlining the crucial fastener of her belt. A thin and decaying patina of bronze, which used to stray more rose gold but has begun to be idyllically forgotten just as such, carefully secures the slim circle of leather that also happens to cinch the comically capacious coat she wears.
Why shouldn't she have a heart-shaped belt buckle?
Well, maybe because it makes Bart's knees buckle, and Gala hates ever to cause anyone any pain.
(Not wanton. Not willful. Not wild. Only...well-behaved.)
Eye-catching, she is, even if she'd best prefer that eyes stay off of her, without hardly any exception.
And again, remember: just as Gala is not forward, neither is Bart a wild man. Well, okay, maybe he's a little bit of a wild man. Unpredictable. Uncontrollable. He's certainly not reserved.
Though Gala makes him nervous, cautious, even a bit timid and small, he never loses his quintessential Desert Orca charm. If such a thing could ever truly be said to exist.
So when he asks, begs, humbly requests of Gala that he might remove her most unquaintly endearing accessory, he is rather...ungainly.
She's already seated in front of him, upper half supported by straight-locked elbows above flat-palmed hands, with her knees pulled up protectively in front of her. Just naturally, from the way she sits, held back and minimized, Bart starts to loom over her.
Gala may be small, slight of frame, petite and petticoated, but she's not delicate. Hasn't been for several years, if she ever was. Instead, more like a hardy plant, a shrub with thick protective layers of leaves.
Bart is tall and lean-limbed and antic. He could do anything at any time.
For a moment, of course, he doesn't catch this posturing, but then he does, and decides to rearrange himself to sit cross-legged instead.
Gala looks at Bart. Bart looks at Gala.
It's enough wondering about who they aren't and who they are. What they're doing, now, should take precedence.
"Can I kiss you, Gala?"
"I, ah...yes. It's alright, Bart."
He pulls her closer by hooking his hands into the creases of her folded knees, fingers and thumb dimpling into her calves and thighs. She slides softly across the fine-textured rug covering the wooden floor of the room in the inn until the toes of her boots just touch the rippling line of muscle on Bart's lower legs.
Then Bart moves his hands, skipping rear end in favor of gentle guide along hips, and waits for Gala to wrap secure holds around his elbows.
It takes so long. It takes so much slipping permission. But the best things are always that way.
(Not that Bart has never wanted to sneak a cheeky grab at Gala's bottom, specifically without permission, just once in his rascal's life, but it's an intrusive thought more than it is any kind of earnest desire, and he'd never do it. He promises. He swears!)
The kiss is one of a series, starting long and slow with lips slotted like two puzzle pieces, cookie cutters, interlocking chrysanthemums and dovetails. They try to center it, but inevitably fail, with corners meeting middles and middles falling open.
That's one, and then there are a few more, some deeper and some shallower. When they finally pull back, Gala instinctively puts a finger to the bridge of her nose, even as her blinks are slow and her movements are distracted.
Bart stares at her, at the spaces and lines, at the reframing of her face when her glasses come this close.
"I should probably take these off, huh?"
But before she can, Bart's fingertips have closed over hers atop the temples, as he not-so-gently requests, "No, Gala, let me!"
"Bart..."
She says it just to say it, just to see how soft the syllable can be. If he knows that or if he doesn't, he's hardly paying attention; he's lifting off the wire and lenses and narrowly avoiding getting a miniature screw stuck in her hair.
Then, from her hair, her bandana. The knot had been tied loosely, the better not to stretch and strain the fabric, so Bart tries to stay mindful of that as he shimmies it off her head. There's nothing Gala can do but wait and blush, being trimmed and presented like a plant in a pot, of all things.
Her mind begins to wander: like a decorative shrub, carved into the countryside of an expansive Aveh castle's gardens. The plant, which drinks so thirstily of all rain and water, struggling to survive in the desert, to strive for a productive life making many new buds and leaves.
And, from the balcony of the castle, the prince who has made it his sacred duty to tend to this plant, of all the plants in the garden, all the special and more brightly-colored bulbs and petals.
Bart has chosen her, simple Gala, out of all the people in the entire planet. She has not been reincarnated, not been chosen for any type of ancient honor (unless you considered keeping Nisan's archives to be a position like that, which Gala sometimes did and which Bart, secretly, did by extension, his appreciation for history only threatening to grown), not guaranteed for anything at all. But Bart has chosen her.
Bart finally finishes with the bandana and the glasses and moves his hands, rough on her neck just by virtue of all his miscellaneous and inexplicable calluses - some rope burns, yes, but not all - as he settles them into the intimate area of her collar.
Gala gazes up at him through the haze of eyelashes and unaided eyes. Sometimes it even feels wrong to be doted on like this - not wrong in a sinful way, but unjust somehow. As if she sacrifices her ability to thrive when yielded to a caretaker.
But it's not so. It's never been so. And Bart needs a caretaker, too.
"Is that it?" she says then, surprisingly herself with her own boldness. Bart nearly jumps in place.
"Of course not! I can--"
And then he stops. What can he do?
Well, he can do what he asked for. Gala, though more than content to stay curled up in Bart's lap, hasn't forgotten that his original request had been to disrobe her more fully than this.
But she stays as she is, because she doesn't care to leave, and the heels of Bart's hands, so used to finding the actual location of her shoulders beneath the jutting silhouette of her coat, slide over the ribbed material of her bodysuit's sleeves, in disbelief at the reality of her.
"I trust you, Bart," Gala says - again, perhaps, just to say it. Just to feel it. Just to know it, and have it be true.
His right eye grins at her like only a Fatima's eye (really, only a Bart's eye) can. One more kiss. Noses nestled together.
Then he sets her back on the carpet, solid and upright but drooping slightly in her subconscious disappointment (not to say separation anxiety). Gala's hands yet cling to one of Bart's, and he adds the other, before removing it on an impulse to cradle her cheek.
Has she always been this beautiful? Is he really only just noticing it now?
Well. Obviously he's always known it, because so would anyone with half a brain, and he does have at least half one. You know, he promises and he swears.
Even if he is taking off her pants, Bart has no intention of telling Gala to spread her legs. Instead, what he means to do is reach for the belt buckle, trace its outline with his finger, and hold the point and dimple of the heart in opposite finger and thumb while his other hand uncinches and unhooks the prong itself.
All of this preamble, just to do that. But Bart places his hands on Gala's waist again, pressing a kiss to the corner of her mouth on a subtle trajectory to be aligned with the beauty mark below her eye. (If she had another, he'd kiss that one too.)
Gala blushes, not because she's embarrassed but because she is content. Yes, each kiss leaves her wanting, but it's a pleasant sort of wanting, less tingly and more soothing, as fulfilled and discreet as the wind in the trees when the forest is silent.
Bart pulls off the length of the belt, testing its heft and bend in his hands. Even gives an experimental thwack to his hand, ensuring that no beautiful green ladies are harmed in the process. Gala should roll her eyes, but she doesn't. However ridiculous, it's just his way.
But he does catch her looking at him, observing his nonsensical actions. He does snort, pretending for a moment that it was all a great sham on a fabulous and magnificent purpose, and toss the belt aside, before hastily tidying it into a neat spool that won't quite lie flat on the floor due to the buckle's unique shape.
"Well," Bart says, signaling and preparing to make a proclamation, "they do say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. It looks like the way to a woman's heart is through her stomach too, except she wears it on the outside."
For that, Gala feels she probably should slap him, or at least thwack him lightly on the head for a taste of his own medecine. He's giving her that not-so-sheepish grin that finally admits to a sizable shard of confidence that she does love him wholeheartedly and hopelessly, just as he is hopelessly overbearing and bluff, far too clumsy ever to earn a wholly elegant affair, even just for the evening, with dear Miss Gala.