Search for the Darkstar - Interlude: The Offer

Author: DQBunny Title: Search for the Darkstar - Interlude: The Offer

Search for Darkstar
Chapter 11: Who's the Enemy Here? ← Interlude: The Offer → Chapter 12: Adventure Among the Books

Chapter Index

Disclaimer: "Slayers" isn't mine, but belongs to Kanzaka Hajime, Araizumi Rui and those who represent them. I'm just borrowing the characters for a little while and will return them intact. Except for Gourry. He might be squished just a little. This story is set after the manga arc "Knight of Aqualord" and is an alternate take on the TRY season of the anime.
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Interlude: The Offer
For the first time in days, Lina was able to change into pajamas for bed. Like a normal person, she thought as she tossed her clothes in the laundry basket and set it outside the door so the inn staff could clean them. Her tired, aching body longed to stretch out on the bed, but years of discipline took over and she headed for the cloak that she'd heaped on one of the chairs before she took her bath.
She'd thrown a minor fit to get her own room for the night, but she craved the privacy. She needed to think and she couldn't do that with Amelia ranting about the unjustness of what Almayce and Valgaav were doing along with Xelloss destroying a good chunk of Atlas City, Shizuri trying to get more information about why Valgaav was trying to track them and Filia angsting over everything that had happened. When Filia refused to pay for a single room for Lina, she'd given in and paid for it herself. It was that important to her.
Lina sat at the small table in the corner and opened her spellbook to the back, where she had constantly attached pages over the years. With meticulous detail, she wrote down the details surrounding her battle that day with Valgaav and Almayce, the spells used and the effect of the spells on her, her group and those she targeted.
The light weapon that Almayce had is definitely as powerful as the Sword of Light, even moreso in my opinion. What he didn't know is that I've fought the Sword of Light with the Ragna Blade before. Not even then could I fully defeat the Sword of Light and I was only able to crack Gourry's armor. This blade was a lot more difficult to deflect. However, it goes to show Almayce's lack of skill with a sword that I was able to sever a limb the way I did.
The quill hovered over the parchment as the memories came back to Lina. If she had known it was Gourry encased in that head-to-toe sealed armor that Phibrizzo had stuffed him in, she would had never fought him. That fight had been lumped into the category of "stuff to never tell Gourry" regarding his time in captivity. She knew that he wouldn't handle the fact that he nearly killed her very well.
She stared at the last sentence and thought it sounded a little boastful. Lina sighed. It was what it was and there was no use dwelling on it. She was quite sick of reliving that horrible period of her life. Closing the spellbook, Lina set it and her writing equipment aside. She really needed to write a letter back to her family, now that Amelia had done the legwork of opening up postal service between these lands and those within the Mazoku barrier. But exhaustion settled in and she needed sleep, real sleep.
Lina crawled beneath the covers and nearly groaned in pleasure as her body sank into the soft mattress and her head nestled on an equally soft pillow. Nothing in this world was better than a good bed she decided as she turned onto her side and started to sink into slumber.
Groggily, she lifted her head when she heard a knock at the door. I'm going to fireball whoever's at the other end. No, wait, I can't do that. That means I'll lose this bed. Damn it. "Come back in the afternoon," she muttered.
The door opened a crack and someone shifted outside. Then it opened a bit wider. "Lina?" Gourry called out in a hushed voice. "You awake?"
"I'm trying not to be. Go away." Lina turned so that she faced away from the door and sighed in relief when it shut. Wow, Gourry actually took a hint for once.
Moments later, the mattress dipped and Lina rolled over to see Gourry sitting at the foot of the bed. Or not. "Can't you see a girl needs her beauty sleep?"
Gourry cocked his head to one side. "You don't need any beauty sleep."
Lina grabbed the extra pillow and smacked him with it, too tired to do anything worse. "Go away," she ordered again. "Get some sleep. You're the one who had your head cracked open like an egg today."
He gripped the bedpost and started to rise, then sank back down again. "Lina, I've been thinking about something."
"Fine time for you to begin thinking. Did ramming your head into a stone wall knock a few brains back into place?" she retorted and gave up on sleeping. It appeared as if she wasn't going to be getting any rest until she dealt with this. Lina pushed herself into a sitting position. "This better be good."
"Well, I was wondering something." For the first time, Lina saw that Gourry was holding the Sword of Light, or rather its hilt. "What do you plan to do when we find these weapons?"
It was a good question. Lina drew her knees up and hugged her legs. "The only thing I can think to do with the right now is destroy them. Or, at least one of them. You know as much as...wait, let me rephrase that," she commented, knowing his sieve-like memory. "We don't know much about the weapons. We know the limits of the Sword of Light."
"We do?" Gourry gave her a surprised look and Lina cursed to herself.
"Well, just what I've seen of you using it, the time I channeled the Giga Slave into it, so on and so forth," she hastily added. "From what Almayce was saying, all the weapons are needed to summon Darkstar. If we can destroy one of the weapons, it might be enough to stop this."
"I see." Gourry stared at the sword in his hands and appeared to be mulling things over. After a moment, he thrust the hilt at her. "Take the sword, Lina."
Her eyes lit up and she grabbed it. She clung to it, holding it close like a valued piece of treasure. "You're giving me the Sword of Light? Gourry, I could kiss you!"
"I don't want you to have it. I want you to destroy it."
Lina dropped the sword. "What?"
Gourry fidgeted a little, but his gaze on her was steady. "Maybe it'll stop all this, if we destroy the Sword of Light. We already have it and..."
"No!" Lina screeched. She lunged forward and grabbed his shirt. "No, no, no, jellyfish brains! We've gone to too much trouble just to get this sword back." She shook him. "Besides, we need the Sword of Light."
"Wh...why?" Gourry babbled as his head bobbled back and forth.
Lina let him go and sat back on her haunches. She couldn't help but be touched by the offer, but she was also angry that he would consider it. "Bait, jellyfish. As long as we have the Sword of Light, either Almayce, Valgaav or both will be coming after us. I don't see Valgaav leaving us alone to begin with, but I don't want Almayce to figure out a way to summon Darkstar. Not to mention there's Xelloss." She grabbed the sword hilt, tossed it at him. "Keep the sword."
Gourry worried his lip as he picked it up and saw the circles under Lina's eyes. Even though she'd destroyed Almayce's weapon using the Ragna Blade, it'd left her drained. He knew that if that hadn't work, she'd be forced to use Airlord's power. He remembered her exhaustion after using her high-powered spells to fight off Filia, then the woman... What was her name? Oh, Oren. Oren had told them that when a person used the god's power, it ate away at their life force. You idiot. You need to keep the sword so she doesn't have to resort to using that power.
"Gourry?" Lina tilted her head to one side slightly. "What's with the weird look?"
"Huh?" he startled, then managed a smile. "Oh, nothing." He reached forward and ruffled her hair. He'd intended to just wish her a good night and head back to his room, but somehow his hands snaked their way around her and pulled her to him. He closed his eyes and held her as tightly as possible as the worry swamped through him.
"Hey, hey, what gives?" Lina pressed a hand to his chest and pushed away enough so she could look up at him. She saw his worried eyes and managed a smile in return. "Silly jellyfish," she said affectionately. "Don't be so worried. You've said it yourself, we've gotten ourselves into worse messes than this and we've come out okay. Save the angst for those who can pull it off, like Zel." Lina pulled away and schooled her features in what she considered to be her best Zelgadiss face. "I'm Zelgadiss Greywords," she said pitching her voice as low as possible. "I want coffee, a book and let me angst in peace."
Now Gourry was laughing. "You sound a lot like him!"
Pleased with herself, Lina winked. It really was a bad imitation, she thought, but it had done the job. "Now, let me get some sleep before I kick you into the next town."
"Yes ma'am," he replied, but didn't move. Instead, his gaze fell on her lips and her heart started to beat a little faster.
"Say, Lina?"
"Hmm?"
"Did you mean what you said back then?"
She frowned at him. "I've said a lot of things in the past, jellyfish. Be specific."
"When the Elder wanted the Sword of Light. You said I was yours."
She flushed, having forgotten that specific part of the conversation. Trust Gourry to remember the things that are probably best forgotten. Lina shrugged. "It's not a big deal or anything. It's just.... I.... Well, you see..."
He enjoyed seeing her so possessive. "That's OK," he said happily. "You're mine too."
Her cheeks went scarlet. "Huh? No, wait, I think you've got it..." Before she could manage anything after that, he leaned over and was kissing her deeply. Once the shock ebbed away, she whimpered a little, then slipped her arms around his neck. She put energy that she didn't even know she had into returning his kisses as her hands tangled with his hair. His hands moved through her hair, wrapping the strands around his fingers.
They broke apart when the need for air grew too great. He lightly kissed her forehead and she tilted her head up, as she pulled him closer, kissing him with as much passion as she could. His hands wandered from her hair and skimmed down her back, the featherlight touch raising goose pimples along her skin. Parts of her body started to grow even more sensitive as he moved from her lips and began kissing his way down her neck to her collarbone. When his tongue nipped out and laved the spot where her neck and shoulders joined, she nearly shot off the bed.
Oh, I want him to...I'm not sure what. I wonder if it would sound wrong if I asked him to touch...no, don't even go in that direction!
She didn't have to vocalize it. One of his hands gently made its way across her ribcage, then up until it was in new territory they hadn't explored before. Oh wow...this feels good. The thought lazily made its way through her foggy mind as she pressed herself closer to him for a moment, followed by a second one that reminded her that perhaps this wasn't the best time to be experimenting with something like this.
She gently pulled away and saw that his eyes had gone liquid with desire. She felt as groggy as she'd been when he'd initially come into her room and knew now that it was for a different reason. She wondered if her eyes had the same look as his.
She knew she needed to go ahead and send him back to his own room, but then his hand gently squeezed her breast and her capacity to think immediately diminished. Half-amused, she glanced down at where he kneaded her flesh through the thin cloth of her pajamas. "I thought you said there wasn't much there."
His hand stilled. "Do you want me to stop?"
"No." In response, she jerked on his shirt and crushed her lips to his. His eyes widened with surprise before enthusiastically returning it. Lina scooted closer to him, then straddled his hips. Even through the layers of blankets and clothing, she could still feel the hardness that signaled his attraction to her. She broke the kiss, gave Gourry a saucy grin. "I guess that this..." she rocked her hips slightly against him, "proves that even a flat-chested kid like me can be attractive. Of course, you're the one who calls me flat-chested. I preferred to say perfectly proportioned in a very petite package."
"Well, I suppose there's just one way to find out," Gourry replied cheerfully and proceeded to do the last thing that Lina thought he would do. He reached for the buttons on her pajamas and started to undo them.
"Now, now, wait a minute!" She started to bat his hands away. "I didn't say you could take off my clothes!"
"I'm not taking off your clothes! I'm just going to look to see if you have any breasts."
"You know damn well I have breasts! What did you think you were fondling just a minute ago?"
He didn't say anything, but instead parted her pajama top. Their eyes met and she lifted her chin stubbornly while at the same time thrusting what assets that she did have forward at him. His gaze lowered slowly to her breasts and she was pleased when he sucked in his breath slightly. No, they weren't Sylphiel's, Amelia's, Shizuri's or even Filia's, but Lina was willing to bet a good amount of money that they were the first Gourry had seen in a situation like this.
He stared at them so hard that she thought she heard the gears in his brain struggle to work. After a moment, he experimentally smoothed his hand over one of her breasts, then slowly drew it out, pinching her nipple between his fingers. The resulting jolt of sensation shot straight to her groin and her little gasp of pleasure surprised both of them. He repeated it again, with a bit surer hand and grinned at the response he got from her.
His mouth went dry and he wondered what it would feel like to kiss her right there, over her heart. He lowered his head, skimming his mouth over her breast until she gasped and made little needy sounds that fueled his own desire. After paying close attention to one breast, he moved to the other, his hand massaging the one breast his mouth had just left. She whimpered now, had her hands threaded through his hair once again as she held his head close to her.
Instinct had her slipping her hands beneath his shirt and skimming them up his chest until she located two hard little nubs. She lightly scraped her thumbs over them and grinned when he gasped and lifted his head to stare at her, stunned.
"I didn't tell you to stop," she commented lightly.
"I didn't expect you to do that though!"
"Oh? You didn't like it?"
He went red. "Of course I liked it."
"Oh, good." She pushed his shirt until he helped her remove it. Then she leaned forward and lightly brushed her tongue against one of his nipples. This time, he was the one who whimpered and his hips automatically jerked as she gave his chest the same throughout attention that he'd given hers. Then she lightly kissed her way up his chest, nipped at his throat, then worked her way up his jaw until their lips met once more.
As they kissed, he shifted them until she was on her back and he lay partially on top of her. One of his legs was in-between hers and his erection pressed against her thigh. For a moment, it startled her and nearly snapped her back to reality - a reality where they really shouldn't be doing this, not right now. Even so, she couldn't bring herself to call an end to this. For the first time since everything with Filia...or really, everything with Hureika began, Lina felt that her problems had been pushed somewhere to the back of her mind. There was no worrying about trying to save the world, about how to deal with Almayce, Valgaav, the Elder and Council at the Flarelord Temple, about making sure she pleased her sister, about ensuring the safety of those within her party. For now, it was just her and Gourry and the freedom to be completely themselves and who they were when they were with each other.
Although, she decided, this was a new facet of their relationship that had plenty of possibilities.
His hand was skimming her body again, this time lingering close around the waistband of her pajama pants. She had a sudden flash of his hand touching her in a place that she had explored herself only a few times, usually armed with fantasies about him. She moaned as she visualized this, her legs splaying open wider in anticipation.
He hesitated when she tilted her head back, then slipped his hand beneath the waistband of her pants. She seemed to be enjoying what he was doing so far. He knew the very basics of what they were doing, and knew his own body better than he knew hers. Perhaps the same things that brought him pleasure would do the same to her.
Her breath hitched as his fingers brushed over the short, wiry curls at the apex of her thighs, then encountered wetness. Slowly, he separated her folds, carefully mapping out the area with his fingers when one of them slipped over a hard nub that caused her to jerk her hips and gasp his name. He immediately lifted his head and saw that her head was thrown back, her hands gripping the sheets. He grinned. Bull's eye.
He went to work, using two fingers to manipulate that one little nub, his eyes locked on her face as she made helpless little cries and strangled noises that sounded like his name. Feeling bolder, he shifted his hand and her eyes opened, suddenly clear.
"You stop that," she gasped, "and I am so frying your ass."
"Just wait," he told her and continued his exploration. She angrily bucked her hips. It felt good with his fingers tracing the different parts of her body, but she wanted him back where he was before.
The movement caused his fingers to immediately find what he was looking for and one of them slid into her. Whatever she'd been about to yell at him was suddenly choked off with a strangled, "oh!" Pleased, he worked a second finger inside, found her extremely wet and knew that it was for him and when the time came for them to fully join.
But for now, he thrust his fingers into her and she spread her legs out as wide as possible, her body trembling as he slowly moved his fingers in and out of her. The flat of his hand hit the one part of her that made her whimper, craving more stimulating. Her hands clenched as her body moved faster beneath his touch. Her eyes snapped open as she went tense, crying out helplessly as she reached her orgasm. Seeing her this way, flushed and absolutely beautiful, had him dropping his head to her shoulder, shuddering as he struggled to maintain control over his own body.
It wasn't working. As her body relaxed and went limp under his, he could feel his own body starting to betray him as what happened kept replaying in his mind.
Exhausted, but completely relaxed for the first time in weeks, Lina lifted her head and saw the look of intense concentration on Gourry's face, his eyes closed and breathing labored. "Are you okay?"
"I'm...fine. Give me a minute."
It took her a moment to fully comprehend what was wrong with him, but his erection still pressing against her thigh gave her a good idea as to what the nature of his problem was. Suddenly filled with an immense desire to see him lose control the way that she did, she ran her hands down his chest then taking a deep breath, skimmed her fingers over the bulge in his pants. His head snapped up and she smiled at him, a slow, lazy, mischievous smile as she lightly scratched her fingernails over the cloth.
"Why don't you let me help you with that," she whispered in his ear, feeling bolder by the second. She found the buttons holding his pants together and quickly undid them. It shocked her for a moment when the last button gave way and he spilled, hot and hard, into her hands. She paled for a moment, realizing exactly what part of the anatomy she was holding and that she had never dreamed of doing that before.
The discomfort faded when she looked into his face and saw that his eyes were closed, his arms shaking as he did his best to brace himself above her. She could feel the shudders rippling through him, hear the whimpering moans that he probably didn't realize he was making and suddenly felt more powerful than she'd ever felt when practicing magic. With a wicked smile born of a desire to see him fall to pieces the way that he had done to her minutes earlier, she wrapped her small hand around him and began to stroke.
His hands pressed flat against the mattress and his body rocked against hers as she firmly stroked the flesh that was growing damp with his own wetness and the sweat from her hands. She watched, fascinated as he called her name in a broken voice. Switching her hold on him, she pressed against his chest until he was on his back and she loomed over him. He opened those magnificent eyes for her just as her hand stroked up, then they went blind as her fingers brushed over the tip of his shaft and he exploded.
When the world stopped spinning, Gourry found Lina sitting on her knees beside him, looking down at him with self-satisfaction. Then she glanced at her hand and grimaced. The look on her face was so funny that he found the energy to laugh, just a little.
"That's gross," she muttered and noticed that it just wasn't on her hands, but on her pajamas as well and even down the front of her chest from where her top still gaped open. Even though it was gross and she should had expected it, it didn't stop the pride that she felt for bringing him over the edge, for making him lose himself beneath her hands.
Lina got off the bed and grabbed a clean towel from the washstand. She filled the basin with water and cleaned herself as best as she could. Her pajamas needed to be changed, so she retrieved her spare pair and glared across the room at Gourry. "Close your...oh." A smile tugged at her lips to see him, still in various stages of undress, fast asleep in her bed. She quickly changed and approached him. She really needed to send him to his own room, but a large part of her didn't want him to leave either.
She stood at the foot of the bed, inspecting his body for the first time - the muscular chest honed from years of swordwork, lightly laced with scars from various battles. Her heart beat a little faster as her gaze skimmed down to his now-limp sex and realized it was nothing different from the other men she'd seen naked before. But, she had yet to see it fully aroused. It certainly felt like something when it was in her hands.
Lina tossed a wet towel in Gourry's face. He could clean himself up. She wasn't that comfortable around him yet. She laughed when he sputtered and grabbed the cloth, nearly flinging it back at her. She stuck her tongue at him and whirled around, waiting until he'd cleaned himself up and fixed his clothes. Because she knew him all too well, she lightly commented, "Throw that towel at my back and you'll live to regret it."
When she heard the towel plop onto the nightstand, Lina crawled into bed beside Gourry. They stared at each other, wondering what to do or say next. Over Gourry's shoulder, Lina saw that the sun was climbing higher into the sky. She yawned and settled next to him, lying her head on his chest. He pulled her close and without another word, they fell asleep, leaving the nightmare-ish day they'd had behind them.

Chapter 11: Who's the Enemy Here? ← Interlude: The Offer → Chapter 12: Adventure Among the Books

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