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[thegreatestproject]

"This is Eliot. Your High King gives you leave to speak."

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[thegreatestproject]

Eliot's attire, at least today, looked more like hers than someone from Earth's. He wore a long tunic held with a sash at the waist, over a pair of slim-tailored trousers that flared out just so over his shoes. He'd gained a respectable affinity for Fillorian-style clothes during his time there, and the wardrobe he'd requested from the fairies was an even split between Fillory and Earth.

He stretched himself out on the blanket, waited for her to start, and instead found himself studying the expression on her face.

"You look like I should've brought something to drink." Or like she wanted to open up one of those wine bottles, but he wasn't going to impose.

[cobaltsoul]

At that, Beau got to her feet and grabbed the jug and the tankard, pouring as she returned. Dropping back down on the blanket, the monk took a big gulp of the brackish liquid and then held the tankard out to Eliot. "We're gonna have to share," she said. "It's cheap ale. Tastes like shit but does the job."

Someone might have a slight bit of a drinking issue.

[thegreatestproject]

Eliot accepted the tankard, but peered into it with a doubtful look.

"Oh... beer from a shared container..." Another second's consideration, and he gingerly passed it back toward her. "You know what, I'm good. But knock yourself out. I don't judge anyone for drinking alone."

[cobaltsoul]

"I ain't fucking sick, you asshole," Beau snapped. "You got a fucking problem with sharing ale with me?"

It was too easy for her to put off talking about her real problem with this new target. And she actually did feel a bit offended.

[thegreatestproject]

Eliot's eyes popped a little. He hadn't expected that strong of a response — but then, he hadn't needed to be High King for a couple of months now. He'd kind of stopped keeping an eye on the snark.

Next he'd get to find out whether he'd done her a personal offense or committed some kind of cultural faux pas in the traditions of wherever she was from. For right this second, plain honesty seemed like the only play.

"I'm — sorry. I'm not used to sharing a cup with someone I'm not swapping spit with... and I don't actually like beer that much."

[cobaltsoul]

"If I'd had two tankards, I'd have given you your own but I only got the one. Next time don't take an offered drink and look at it like someone vomited in it. You're making a big fucking deal out of nothing; like I said, I ain't sick. Just pissed off." Beau picked the tankard up and slammed it back before filling it again.

At least she didn't try to force him to drink some to assuage her anger. No, she was going to keep a hold of that for a bit longer. Maybe it'll get her to actually talk about shit.

[thegreatestproject]

Being accused of making a big deal of it, while she was the one getting snappy, had Eliot thinking that she was maybe projecting a bit — he also had enough social awareness to realize pointing that out at this stage was a bad idea.

"Still not judging." For drinking alone, or for... whatever she'd actually called him here to talk about.

"Magic can really fuck up your day, under the right circumstances. Even for magicians."

[cobaltsoul]

"How about two months? That was how long ago this was." And yeah, she was just now starting to find a way past it. Beau took another gulp of ale. "So... you know how there are spells that charm people.. and spells that make people really fucking pissed off, right. You ever heard of one that does both at the same time? Cause I always thought charm spells overrode whatever other emotion was going on, which was why they get used in combat to turn enemy into ally and shit."

[thegreatestproject]

Ooh, shit, mental manipulation. Forget days or months, that could fuck up your entire year.

"Mind control can be flexible." Which was a very-long-and-technical-explanation-short way of saying, sure — that was possible. "And complicated. I've never heard, specifically, of a spell to make someone friendly and angry at the same time."

Saying it out loud back to her, he started wondering why anyone would want to do that in the first place.

[cobaltsoul]

"...how about horny as fuck and angry as hell?" Beau took a swig of the ale and focused her gaze at a spot on the blanket in front of her.

"So...there's this woman here. Don't know her name, don't fucking care to know it. We had an, uh, encounter. I was angry already when she walked up to me and I just...kept getting angrier. And hornier. Wanting to fuck her but also wanting to hurt her. I think she did something to me."

[thegreatestproject]

Eliot had a feeling as fuck and as hell described a lot of Beau's emotions.

"That's possible." But.

"It's also possible it was something in the environment. Not too long ago, there was that fog outside that made people wanna bang. Plus all the different types of plants that give off sex pollen."

[cobaltsoul]

"I was in the Treetop Tavern. Had been there for a couple hours already before she came up to me. Everything was fine until then." Eliot's mention of pollen brought to mind the woman's god awful perfume. "Bitch wore this heavy, noxious perfume that was like sickeningly sweet smelling. Fucking invaded my senses. Anyway, what caused it don't really matter in the end."

Another swig of ale was needed for some liquid courage. "I kept getting angrier and that made me hirnier and then I got angry that it was making me horny. Like stuck in a loop. Bitch kept pushing my buttons and I wanted to beat the shit out of her, told her too. She pretty much said she'd rather fuck me than fight me. Told her to get lost and then... Fuck if I know how we ended up going at it in like the alley behind the bar. I dragged her out there to kick her ass, decked her too, and then..."

Beau growled and took another drink. "But that doesn't matter. It doesn't fucking matter. I've had fucked up hookups before. It's just..." She sighed and the tension in her body sagged, her head dropped a bit. "How... Are we responsible for what we do when influenced by whatever magically fucks us up, like with me?"

[thegreatestproject]

Eliot shook his head, started to say no, and then...

Well. It wasn't always as simple as that.

"I got mind-controlled once. It — wasn't exactly like that, and I'll spare you the details, but... I know what it's like to look back and remember not being in control of your own decisions. And no: it's not your fault that someone or something hijacked your sex drive. But if there's some part of it that's eating you up, it might take more than a giant mug of ale to get past it."

[cobaltsoul]

"I wish it was that simple," Beau muttered, pouring more ale into her tankard. A bit sloshed over the rim as there was an uncharacteristic unsteadiness in the monk's hands that had nothing to do with the booze she'd been drinking.

"It doesn't even bother me that some magic charm effect forced my sex drive through the roof. It's... it's... how I fucked her... w-what I did in the middle of it that's the issue," she said, stumbling through the words, muscled tensing and her eyes once more focused on the blanket instead of Eliot. "I'm not okay with this... not okay with me and this is going to screw with my relationship, with my woman, if I can't figure out how to deal with it. It's already screwing with our-- fuck, Eliot, I'm scared that I might do the same thing to her. I... can't talk to Glinda about it, cause I don't want her to look at me differently."

A shaky breath was taken in and Beau threw back the tankard, literally draining it sloppily in one go. Empty tankard dropped onto the blanket, Beau put her face in her hands and rubbed it a couple times. "I... uh..." Just say it, you fucking asshole. Say it. Fucking say it, she told herself, though putting it to voice was one of the hardest things she'd ever done.

"I... ripped her shirt open and... and then later... in the middle of-- I..." Her shoulders hunched forward as though bracing for an expected blow, a subconcious show of utter shame. "I punched her in the face. In anger. In retaliation. To hurt her." Then Beau's voice broke on her next words. "And it felt good to me."

[thegreatestproject]

Oh.

As Beau had gone on talking, Eliot had slowly transitioned from stretched out on the blanket to sitting upright. Never mind the part about Glinda being, apparently, her woman, he'd deal with absorbing that on his own time.

This was more than a magic question — but Eliot felt equipped to deal with this even more than the magic part. He knew how few limits there were on the twists and turns sex could take. Pummeling someone or being pummeled might not be his thing, but it was hardly unheard of.

It also generally took a lot of negotiation. But that was getting ahead of things.

"Does it still feel good when you think about it?"

First question. Was it something she thought she would want to do again?

[cobaltsoul]

"Gods, no!" Beau hunched forward more, almost curling into herself. "It makes me feel fucking disgusting. In the moment, when it happened it felt good but then when we were done and I, like, dropped her on the ground like a discarded piece of fucking trash... It took a couple seconds, but I freaked out, cause it was wrong, and I ran the fuck away." Literally jumped off the aerial bridges between the lofty buildings and jumped branch to branch straight to the ground. She hadn't talked to Gaila since and quickly disappeared the moment she even glimpsed the green-skinned woman in the castle. Some might call her a coward for that, but Beau tended to run away from things she either couldn't or wouldn't handle. This was chief on her list in the Feywild.

"Like... I'm a violent person. I know that. I like fighting. I like hurting people I don't like... but not like that. All she did was scratch me hard enough to draw blood." Beau gestured to her shoulder where the claw marks were almost healed. Had she bothered to take care of the scratch properly after it happened, she wouldn't even bear the faintest mark at this point. "I've been scratched badly during sex before. I've even been slapped around a bit and I've been fine. Nothing like what I did has happened before."

[thegreatestproject]

"Because you were never under that kind of influence before."

The question she'd asked about responsibility made a hell of a lot more sense now. But that didn't make the answer any simpler.

"It's still a thing you did. You might have to face that with whoever this was, even if she was the one pushing you to it." And that might be unfair — Eliot wasn't in the habit of sugarcoating this type of thing. Luckily, he could also offer her a bit of genuine hope.

"But if it makes you sick to think about doing it again, or to someone else? That can be what matters. You did something you regret..." He shrugged. This was the best way he could sum it up: "...you don't have to hate yourself if you know you didn't really want it."

[cobaltsoul]

The fact that Gaila hadn't come after her afterward or that she apparently hadn't told anyone what happened wasn't lost on Beau. She wasn't sure what to think of it. Did the fucking woman actually like being punched mid-sex or had the monk put a sufficient amount of fear into her that she decided it was better to stay away. Beau wasn't sure doing something like apologizing to her would help; it would just invite shit from the woman, though the monk rightfully deserved it. Mostly, Beau simply didn't want to be in a position where she could be affected by whatever had turned her into the angry hornball she'd been. She was terrified she'd do this again. Period. In any circumstance.

"...except I do. In the heat of the moment, I did want to do it. I might have been influenced, but it was still a choice I made." And that was the real issue here. "She might have made the emotions, but I made the action to express them. I am the one that couldn't hold my fucking temper in the one place it shouldn't ever exist. W-what if I do it again?"

[thegreatestproject]

Eliot had to struggle through a moment of inner self-doubt. Maybe he was less qualified to talk about this than he'd thought. He only had so much of a grip on his own issues...

He was also feeling more than a touch of responsibility. There were dozens of other people in the castle, and Beau had chosen to trust him. He couldn't just back out.

Okay. What if she did do it again? What would happen then?

"Then — you'll feel shitty again. So if you don't do it again, you get to not feel worse than you do right now. You just... gotta remember that the next time you think you might want to. If there ever is a next time."

It wasn't dissimilar to a speech he'd given himself in his own head, a few dozen times before. Usually he'd done it in the middle of a post-cocaine hangover — never over hitting people. Still. Eliot found he could kind of relate.

"If that sounds easier said than done, that's cause it usually is. But it's not impossible."

[cobaltsoul]

Beau fell silent, taking Eliot's words in and turning them over in her mind. Was not doing it again simply a matter of willpower, of just not giving in to the anger? She had such a hard time with her temper and the discipline the monks had tried to teach her never really stuck. She was an impulsive woman of action - stopping and evaluating something in the heat of the moment, to think with her mind and not her fists was something she struggled with. She knew it... but she also knew until this encounter, she'd never had that kind of problem with it.

Maybe the magic had ramped things up so much she would never be able to control it. Maybe without that heightened emotion like that, she wouldn't be out of her own discipline level. On the other hand, maybe she was a horrible person that didn't deserve to have anything resembling happiness for being a fucking brute. Beau sighed; she wasn't getting anywhere with that kind of thinking. Not all of it.

"Yeah, sounds like real fucking hard. I mean... I've already made excuses and shit to either stay away from Glinda or just not get - ah - intimate when I'm even the slightest irritated. Problem is... I get irritated really easy. I feel like I'm... fucking overcompensating - overcorrecting - in my attempt to not be like that again. And it is messing with things, you know... when you wanna and you should but you can't really trust yourself so you don't when you probably should. My witch knows something is wrong and she knows it's a personal thing I'm working through, but that's it. I'm fucking grateful she ain't prying, cause I can't... I just can't, Eliot."