Lemon Chiffon Binge. Brownie. (Horizon Tales)
AUTHOR: Shrimp
CHALLENGE: Lemon Chiffon Binge; brownie
WORD COUNT: 8,680
RATING: R (to be safe. lots of things happen in the piece of varying intensities)
NOTES: I binged! So this piece covers a lot of time. It deals with all the "romantic" relationships that Vala as had. The male characters are Hugh, Sans, Emis, and Uther. Some of them have appeared in other pieces I've written and for some this is their debut. The male in the last piece is purposefully left ambiguous but feel free to guess! There's probably a lot of questions that might get raised so feel free to ask anything if something is confusing :) One note though! In "Your Eyes" Emis speaks to Vala in his native tongue... which I didn't feel like inventing so I just used French as a place holder. If you can read French then congrats on hearing his gross "poem".
Roll In The Hay.
Vala breathed deep the dry air of the stable. Beneath the crinkling hay and creaking wood she could hear the horses making their various noises. She rolled onto her side and laid a hand on Hugh’s chest. He smiled and opened a sleepy eye to look at her. She could hear the even, steady beating of his heart against her palm, feel the gentle rise and fall of his subtly muscled chest as he breathed.
“Hi,” he mouthed. Vala laughed and pressed herself closer so she could rest her chin on his shoulder.
“Hi,” she mouthed back, grinning in a way that she felt must make her look like an idiot. She didn’t know why. She was sweaty and sticky, stray pieces of straw coated her body. She was itchy and tired and a little bit sore. Her cheeks were sunburned from riding all day. Her hand still hurt from when she had sparred with Broderick. Somehow none it seemed able to disrupt the peace in the loft above the stables.
As if sensing her thoughts Hugh leaned his face forward and kissed her on the forehead, pushing her bangs aside with his nose as he did so. She laughed and kissed him back twice on the chin. He was still fresh faced and clean shaven, just the opposite of his brother and father, and Vala wondered if that would ever change. She tried to imagine him older with a beard and a hard lined face and a strong sure sense of self. But she liked him this way, and that was strange to admit in and of itself. He was meek and not particularly talented at anything, but he made her smile and didn’t begrudge her the things she liked.
“Let me be the first to say that you are a very good host.”
“Oh, I hear that all the time.”
“Hey!” She squealed as his fingers danced across her ribcage. She shoved off of his chest and he pulled her back, laughing as they twisted and tumbled over each other. She knew it was stupid to be doing this, especially with Hugh Fenerrs, but as they rolled naked and laughing through the hay she found it hard to care. If it was a mistake it felt like maybe it was one worth making.
All Night Long.
He kissed her before she was through the door. She had to step in and close the door while his mouth was attached to hers. It was a different sort of kiss than the last time. This was full of need and desperation and relief. Teeth and tongue all tangled together as his hands pulled her tightly to him. He was bigger than she remembered, but not by much. And he had finally grown a beard. It scratched her face in a not totally unlikeable way. Finally he pulled away, panting hard, and looked at her. He looked at her hair and her face and her body. He looked at her clothes and her hands and her feet. He looked at her as if he couldn’t believe she was standing in front of him.
“I knew you weren’t dead,” he said at last. His black-brown eyes were still the same wide and hopeful sort she remembered from years ago. His similarly colored hair still curled and worn around his ears. He had grown in the two years she had been missing, but not much. She thought she had changed far more than he had.
“What are you doing here, Hugh?” She asked forcefully. Guilt settled in his eyes and he released his hold on her and stepped back. He bit his lip and she saw the broken front tooth that would always represent Hugh more than anything else in her mind. “What makes you think you can invade Hero’s Home?” She had promised Garret and his mother that she would talk to Hugh, try to convince him to leave the castle. It was mind boggling to think that he was actually here to conquer. There had been peace for so long. It seemed impossible that it should all be falling apart around them and all so quickly.
“My father sent me,” he started nervously. “I’m to take and hold the castle.”
“So he’s started a war over… what? More land?” Even after she said it the words sounded nonsensical. “Does he want things to go back to the way they were before the peace?” Uniss had been a divided and war bedraggled country for most of its existence. The peace that had been established a hundred years ago was the best thing that had ever happened to the country. People were full and happy and safe. How could anyone want to go back to a way of life that was so horrific?
“He says he’s destined to be the next barbarian king,” Hugh offered. He seemed uncertain. Vala thought that was a good sign. Roderick Fenerrs was a beast of man who very well might have wanted to return life in Uniss to a barbaric, feuding state. But if Hugh could be reasoned with to join against his father then there would be a chance to put a stop to everything.
“You have to see that’s crazy. What does your brother have to say about this?” Hugh paced over towards the bed. It was Lord and Lady Temen’s bed. It was their room. Vala felt uncomfortable standing in it like this. It didn’t strike her as something that Hugh would have asked for himself. She wondered if it had been pushed upon him by someone else in his troop. She wondered how much of what had happened already was Hugh’s own idea.
“Broderick is elated. He’s always wanted a war or something to test himself in. You know how he is.” Sadly Vala did. She also knew that it was more than likely that Broderick would excel at warfare. That was a father and son team to be wary of. Hugh sat on the edge of the bed and put his face in his heads. Vala approached him and placed a familiar hand on his shoulder. Without thinking he grasped it in one of his own. “Will you spend the night here with me, Vala?”
“Hugh…” She wasn’t sure what to say. The answer should have been no and it should have been simple. But this wasn’t a simple situation. There was more at stake here than taking a tumble with Hugh Fenerrs. There were people in Hero’s Home counting on her, people whose lives were at stake. “If I stay we have to talk about what’s going on.”
“Please don’t make me.” He shook his head despairingly. Vala squeezed his hand. He looked up at her with wide, nervous eyes.
“We can stay up all night just like we used to at Shore Shine when you would come to visit. And we can talk about lots of things too not just the war.” She thought he was going to say no, but Hugh had never been good at saying no to anyone. He nodded his head at her and the look of utter hopelessness and longing in his eyes almost made Vala reconsider. But she had given Garret her word that she would do what she could. So she smiled and sat down on the bed next to him and didn’t push him away when he laid his head across her lap.
The Backseat.
One of Hugh’s tears dripped down his nose and onto her chest. She held his shoulders straight as he sobbed and tried to avoid looking into his eyes. He had washed and shaved and now just sat curled against her crying. Her heart hurt. It felt like she had placed a sheet over the hole that her father’s death had left and now, sitting here with Hugh as he grieved his own father, it felt like she was falling through that hole. She was overwhelmed. Everything around her was swimming in slow motion. She wanted to crawl into bed and sleep forever.
She knew she should call a guard, have Hugh taken away. He was the enemy. He had held her hostage, killed Garret Temen, and led his brother’s troops in war. But everything real, everything that was happening seemed to fall away in the wake of grief.
“Why did you come here?” She heard herself ask.
“I don’t know. I wanted to tell you what had happened.” She shifted, pushing him away and fixing him with a glare.
“Why? Why not your brother or your wife? Why come here? We are enemies.” He flinched when she mentioned his wife. That was good. It helped her to return herself to the moment. To push aside the sympathy that she felt for Hugh.
“Do you doubt me when I tell you that my father is dead?” His voice hitched when he said it. Tears welled in the black depths of his eyes but he fought them back. Vala set her jaw, hoping that there were no tears in her eyes. She needed to be strong, to be a leader. Her throat constricted though and she could not respond. Instead she simply shook her head. “Do you doubt me when I tell you…” he faltered, looking down at his hands before continuing, “that I love you?”
Push it down, she told herself, push it all deep down.
Your Eyes.
The bar was loud with laughter and music and life. It was exactly the kind of atmosphere that Vala needed. Poor light and strong drinks and surrounded by familiar faces. Nights like this at Zuan’s place helped to keep the foreignness she often felt at bay. The isolation. The sense of being an outsider. This was a place full of outsiders, full of people who spent their lives in a strange in between just like Vala. This place was also full of her friends, though, and that was what she appreciated most. Garsé playing her lute in the middle of the room, Zuan and Ekvy talking business in a corner, Sans bartending, and Emis sitting next to her at the bar.
“What?” She asked as she caught the mercenary staring at her. He swirled his wine in his glass and shrugged innocently.
“I was just looking at your eyes.”
“My eyes?” Her tone was suspicious but good natured. Emis had been in the habit of flirting with her since the moment she met him. Vala assumed it was just something he did with every woman he met. She didn’t take it to heart, but the attention was nice sometimes. At the very least it was fun to hear the things he could come up with.
“Oh yes. Your eyes. To look at them is like reading a poem. Surely you have heard this before, yes?” She liked to listen to Emis talk. He had a gravelly voice and his command of the trading tongue was looser than the other people she knew. He spoke with the same cadence of his native tongue, his sentences all arranged in a manner that was more complicated but more personal. Most of the time when she spoke to someone in the trading tongue it was all the same, a blank slate so that origins were made moot. She liked that Emis’ home still lived on his tongue and that he was too stubborn to change. It was arrogance, a cockiness and she enjoyed it.
“What poem?” She played along. Emis smiled at her and took a sip of his wine. He held it in his mouth like she always saw him doing. Once he had swallowed he leaned back against the bar slightly.
“To my shame I do not speak this silly language well enough to recite the poem I am thinking of. It is one from my home. A beautiful poem of flowers and summer and dreams coming true.” Vala laughed. She couldn’t help it. The thought that she would remind anyone of a beautiful poem about delicate, lovely things was amusing.
“Say it in your language,” she managed through her laughter. Emis blinked, seemingly confused for a moment before grinning at her again. He leaned forward and brushed some of her bangs to the side in the delicate way he had that was meant to convey intimacy.
“Votre bouche est si belle. Je veux pousser ma verge aussi loin dans votre bouche que je peux.” He ran his thumb around her mouth as he recited the words. Vala didn’t speak his language. The words were simply strange, throaty sounds against the din of the evening. The laugher that had built in her settled and she stared into Emis’ sincere hazel eyes as he spoke. “Ton cou est merveilleux. Je ne peux imaginer ma main autour de l'emballage et de calage pendant que je vous livre en vous encore et encore.” He licked his lips and continued, his hand trailing from her mouth down her chin and along her neck. She got a chill at the contact. “Je veux sucer vos petits seins jusqu'à ce qu'ils soient noir et bleu. Délicieux.” Emis shook his head a little and chuckled deep in his throat. He brought his hand back up to her face and cradled her cheek. “Je voudrais terminer sur votre visage, je pense. Je vous promets que vous souhaitez tout. Tout ce que j'ai fait. Vous me demander pour plus. Ne même pas me lancez pas parler de ce que je ferais à vos serrés, les fesses rondes.”
“That’s… disgusting.” Vala blinked at Sans’ voice. She pulled back from Emis’ touch and looked over her shoulder at the man standing behind the bar and refilling their drinks. He was frowning and looking at Emis as if the man was something that belonged in the gutter. Emis wasn’t giving him the friendliest stare either.
“You understood?” Sans nodded solemnly and Emis scowled for a moment. Vala was curious now. She was surprised, but not shocked, that Sans knew the language. Sans was always discovering new talents that he had previously not known he had. Speaking multiple languages was the least ridiculous of them. “Ah, well, I am only being honest,” Emis said with his easy smile returning. Sans’ cheeks were tinged red as the mercenary merely began laughing. Vala thought it better not to ask him to translate.
Intoxication.
When Vala shoved Emis up against she didn’t know what she expected. She was barely thinking. She was drunk off her ass. She knew she hadn’t expected him to simply grin at her though. Like he knew what she was doing. Like he had been expecting it from her. It made her press her fists further into his shoulders, lifting him ever so slightly off his feet. She might have been imagining it but it seemed like it only made him smile wider.
She frowned, snarled might have been a better term, and held her face close enough that their noses almost touched. She could taste the wine on his breath, tangy and hot. She could smell the oil that slicked back his hair. She could feel him slowly bring his hands to her hips, touching her with fingertips then palms then gripping her tight and hard. Then she blinked and her arms were around his neck instead of fisted in his thin linen shirt and she could feel the warm dampness of the wall on her wrists.
Emis brought his face closer, angled it slightly, and looked into her eyes through thick eyelashes. Waiting, it seemed. Asking, it seemed. She kissed him then hard and deep. Her fingers tangled in the thick dark hair, sliding up from the base of his neck and ruining what he had so perfectly styled. His hands rubbed up and down her back. His dexterous fingers pinpointing each sore and knotted muscle and kneading, knowing just the pressure to cause her to arc into him.
His arms held her and she could feel the brawny definition of his body through his clothes. Emis was a mercenary, a fighter by trade. He was made of wiry strength and sinew. Fast and fierce and flexible she had seen him kill men, slit their throats without breaking a sweat. The scar on his lip felt cold and smooth against her as they kissed. She wondered about the other scars that no doubt littered his body. Some made from errors. Some made from loyalty. Her tongue slid through the gap in his teeth and his body shivered from his toes to his head.
And for a brief, fleeting moment all Vala could think of was Hugh Fenerrs and his broken tooth and the way he would tremble against her whenever she flicked at it while kissing him. Her stomach rolled, heavy and full of too much ale, and her whole body turned cold and clammy. She pulled away, stepped back, and was relieved to feel that he didn’t tug her closer but simply let his arms fall to his sides. She held a hand over her mouth for a second questioning if the push of the memory would make her puke. Emis seemed content to wait for whatever the outcome. She wondered if he was even drunker than she was.
“I can’t,” she said after a long and quiet moment. She glanced over at him but he was only smoothing his hair. He grinned at her when he saw her looking, that sloppy but clearly practiced grin. Inscrutable and frustrating and one of the things she had found most attractive about him. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Emis said with a good natured shrug. To watch him was to watch a performance. Every gesture perfectly defined. No movement truly wasted. She was waxing poetic though and reminded herself that she needed to drink less. “Who you kiss… That is your business, yes? That it is not me… that is sad for us both, but what can be done of it?”
“Can we pretend this never happened?” He was still smiling at her and it was all she could do to look away from that gap. That damned gap that he claimed was a sign of good luck but had only served to conjure memories best left forgotten. But did she really want to sleep with Emis anyway? Or was she just drunk and lonely and confused while he was fun and handsome and there?
“We are business associates, yes? Business associates do what is best for business. People in our line of work cannot risk to be distracted. It will be as if nothing occurred.” Vala felt her body loosen with relief. “But we are also friends, yes? So I must tell you, confess as it were, that I do not think I will be able to cease my flirtations.” He threw up his hands as if leaving the subject to stand between them on its own. “I expect nothing, you know, I never did but I am in the habit of flirting and it is a very hard habit to break. This is acceptable, yes?”
“Yes,” Vala answered with a small smile. Emis smiled too and not the grin of the well trained solider and killer but the tired, content smile of the man beneath the façade. He placed a hand on her shoulder and patted it with light affection. Her mind, already off balance from the drinking, reeled. She never knew what to expect when it came to Emis.
Close Quarters
Sans yelled in surprised when Vala rushed into the cabin without notice. He scrambled to cover himself and it was only too late that she realized what was happening. With burning ears she turned her face and stared diligently at the wall. “I’m sorry,” she apologized quickly, “I should have knocked!” She glanced over at him from the corner of her eye, checking that he had his pants back on, before turning to face him. She could feel the heat in her face but didn’t think it was anything to rival the redness of his cheeks.
“No, no you shouldn’t have to. It’s your boat. I’m sorry. I-“ He had his eyes trained on the floor beneath his feet. He looked like he would have liked nothing more than to disappear. She wasn’t angry. She had told him to move into the cabin on the boat for whenever she wasn’t using it. It was far better an option than being homeless. This was his home and he was allowed to pleasure himself in his home. She wasn’t disgusted either which is what his tone told her he thought she was. He had thought she would be disgusted when he had confessed to having feelings for her beyond friendship too. Sometimes she wondered what prompted so much self-hatred in a person who didn’t deserve any.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen your hands before,” she interrupted. They were unbound from the wraps that he usually wore beneath his gloves. Vala realized that he must not have worn them when he was by himself. A strange thrill of sensation ran up her spine as she looked at them. He had them over his lap, pulling the bottom of his shirt further down over his crotch. The fingers were intertwined and worrying themselves. They looked soft and perfect against the roughspun tunic. He blinked his gaze up to her, confusion piercing the look of shame. He looked back down after a moment but this time he looked at his hands. He gripped them even tighter together.
“Um, you did. That one time. The first time we met. I suppose, well, you saw everything that time.” He paused and looked up at her again. “I was naked in that box.” He tried to smile and make light of the tense air that lay between them. The attempt didn’t do much. The frustration remained, but Vala knew it wasn’t coming from any antagonism on her part. She felt edgy and breathless and it didn’t take long for her to realize that she was aroused. She had walked in on him masturbating and it had lit a fire in her stomach. Across from her Sans seemed to be suffering under her eyes. Humiliation still burned on his cheeks. She wanted to kiss him until his face was red for a different reason. She knew she never could though. She could never even touch him. Her frustration and arousal built.
“What were you thinking about?” She wondered if he could see the way her chest was raising and falling with quickened breaths. Could he see the way she was looking at him? Did he feel the same electric energy between them? She bit the corner of her lip when he looked up at her in surprise. His eyes met hers and his mouth fell open slightly as if he meant to answer and couldn’t conjure a word. She saw longing in his eyes and couldn’t help but think what it must be like for him. He was made the same as any man, after all, and simply placed in life as an outsider. He longed for so many things, a normal life first and foremost among them, but there was something different about it now. Vala could swear she saw desire lurking in the depths of those light brown eyes. A desire that she had seen before. A desire that she was sure was mirrored in her own gray-green gaze. She took a step closer. “Was it me?” He nodded silently at her and looked at his hands.
“Vala…“ She wanted her name in his mouth, but not with his voice tinged with shame the way it was. He was mentally berating himself what he had done. She didn’t want that. Vala knew what she did want though and for the first time it didn’t seem like some foolish distraction or empty thought. She took another step forward and was in front of him. It had been easy enough to push aside the attraction she had felt for him. There could be no resolution due to his unrestrained magic. It was an idle crush that couldn’t develop to more despite his own confessed admiring of her. Standing in front of him, seeing his naked hands, feeling his intentions in the room it suddenly became too much. Vala was aware of a level of attraction, of desire, of need to touch him and be touched by him that she had never known before. She ached. Ached for any form of reciprocation. “I wish I was a normal man.” He looked up at her. His body was tense at the awareness of their close vicinity. “If I could and you would let me… I’d kiss you, Vala. I’d never stop kissing you.”
“You don’t get off just thinking about kissing, do you?” She teased, though if she was being perfectly honest kissing might have been enough. Her chest was tight. His words burned in her ears. A part of her kept thinking: Just do it. Kiss him. What does it matter? It mattered though. She cared too much for him for it not to matter. “My fantasies are never so simple.” Sans’ eyes widened and he gulped down a breath. She watched the bob of his throat greedily. She imagined the feel of it beneath her lips and let out a heavy breath.
“Tell me them.” Vala was surprised by the level of command in his voice and by the way it made a shudder run through her. His face was still pink with blush but the tense lines of embarrassment had faded. He stared at her intently and selfishly. She could see his pulse beating beneath his jaw. What would it be like just to run her hands along it and feel its stubble? Her body whined at her. Sans moved his hands from his lap and placed them on either side of his legs while leaning back in his seat. What were they doing? Why were they playing this game? There was no winning. More than likely they would both just leave each other’s presence more frustrated and confused than before.
“I want to show you,” she confessed. She bent at the waist so that they were eye to eye, her hands gripping his knees for balance. He jumped slightly at her touch. His eyes flickering to where her fingers held the fabric of his pants before going back to hers. It was a simple touch, but it meant so much between them. Vala had restrained herself generally from even touching him through the many layers of his clothes in friendly gestures. She couldn’t not touch him anymore. Even if they could never press skin to skin she wanted to be as close as possible to him. Her body craved it. “If I’m careful,” she started but he interrupted her.
“I trust you,” he breathed. Her own breath hitched. Their faces were painfully close.
“If you need me to stop just tell me.” He nodded and shut his eyes, relishing the feeling of her touch.
“Would you sleep here with me tonight?” He asked at length. He was breathless and sounded unsure. She wanted to take him in her arms. She wanted to make him understand that he didn’t have to be hesitant with her. She smiled at him placed a hand on his arm.
“Absolutely.”
Strip Tease.
“Give me your dirty clothes and I’ll put them with the laundry,” Vala instructed. She held out her hand to receive the clothes in question. Sans stared at her, looked down at the clothes he was wearing, and then behind him to the basin she had filled with water for him to bathe in.
“But… I’m wearing my dirty clothes.” She rolled her eyes in good nature and lowered hand to her hip. She watched his eyes dart from the saucy angle of her hip back up to her face. He didn’t seem to feel guilty for having glanced at her in such a way. That was an improvement at least. They had been trying their hands at a relationship for about a month already. It was about time that Sans stopped looking guilty over admiring her.
“I know that. Take them off.”
“With you watching?” He asked, shocked. Vala smiled and shook her head at him.
“Yes!” Sans looked around as if making sure that it was just the two of them. With a hesitant smile he began removing the multiple layers that comprised his outfit. The long coat with its garish buckles and buttons, the full sleeved shirt with the frayed cuffs, the sweat stained undershirt. His boots with the holes in the heels, his pants with the rolled up legs, the thin slim legged pants beneath those. He stood before her in his underwear and linen wraps and held his arms crossed over his chest. “Sans…” She breathed for encouragement. With a small nod he lowered his arms and began the task of removing the wraps from his hands.
His body was still thin. Nothing like the skeleton he had been when she found him but still barely more than skin and bones. If he raised his arms above his head she would have been able to count his ribs. Not a lick of muscle or fat on him. She crossed her arms over chest when he had finished with it all and finally was naked.
“Was that so hard?” She prodded. Sans merely shrugged sheepishly. For him, she supposed, it might have been. But she was grateful he did it for her.
One Night Stand.
Vala groaned and brought the pillow over her head as sun slowly filtered into the bedroom. She head was killing her. Her mouth tasted like old, dry wine. The last thing she remembered was leaving Zuan’s when Sans started his shift. It had been raining. One of those annoying storms that came and went with amazing intensity. She had been walking in the street towards, well she couldn’t remember where she had been headed, and she had been soaked. She felt dry now. Warm. Though not particularly well rested but that was her own fault.
“You are awake, yes?” Vala opened her eyes beneath the pillow and felt a steady sinking in her gut. There was movement next to her. She became aware that she was naked, that this wasn’t her bed, that she could recall meeting Emis in the street at some point in the night.
“Emis?” She questioned even though there was no other person that the voice could’ve belonged to. She could smell his stupid hair oil on the pillow now. It was mixed with the smell of sweat and coffee. Slowly she sat up, careful that the sheet didn’t fall from her chest, and looked to her side. Emis grinned at her and offered her a mug of steaming beverage. She took it into her hands but didn’t drink, still looking at her friend in shock.
“You were expecting another, then? Ah, alas, I am always to be forgotten.”
“Emis, I-“ She started in a mad desperation to explain herself. What could she possibly say though? That she hadn’t meant to sleep with him? That she had gotten too drunk and hadn’t known what she was doing? He held up a hand and she was almost grateful. Her thoughts were too jumbled. She was trying to remember what had led her to this place, Emis’ clean and clutter free room.
“Let me first say that you look lovely this morning. Truly a hangover is no match for your beauty. Now, before you fret too dearly I assure you that despite how it may look nothing occurred last night.” When he noticed that she wasn’t drinking the coffee that he had given he took it back and began to sip on it.
“But…” she struggled to understand. “I’m naked. In your bed.” He shrugged.
“But I am not. I also did not sleep in my bed.” Vala looked down at the sheet she had covering her body. Her cheeks felt hot and she was embarrassed and angry at herself. Her stomach felt sick. “You are hurt, yes?” He inquired, lowering his voice to what was a more comforting and personal tone. “It would not have sat well on my conscience to partake when you were in such a state.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted. She didn’t feel any cuts or bruises. She didn’t think she had been so drunk that she had fallen and hurt herself. Emis shook his head at her. “What?”
“You are hurt from your fight with our disheveled bartending friend, yes?”
“No,” she answered immediately. Emis handed her the coffee mug again. Vala took a sip right away. Emis sighed and lifted himself off the bed. He walked to the door and paused before opening it.
“For someone in your line of work you are a very bad liar.”
Keeping Each Other Warm.
It wasn’t that she was avoiding drinking with the men. It was just that she was exhausted. There had been so much to do around the village even after the battle. There had been the wounded to attend to, the supplies to take stock of, the rooms to be doled out. Vala generally wouldn’t have been in charge of all of that but they had taken losses and she was willing to stretch herself thin. She was finally in a position that bespoke power and authority and she wasn’t about to foul it up by deeming herself to be above certain tasks. She didn’t think the men would understand that it was fatigue and not an overinflated view of herself that kept her away. But for the first time she felt like, maybe, it didn’t matter what men thought about her. The king trusted her, valued her, put her in charge.
Vala smiled as the old, deaf hound pushed the door to the room open. She whined and sniffed at the floor until she was resting her head in Vala’s lap. Rosebud was a good dog. Smart and loyal, but age was catching up with her. She couldn’t hear, could barely see, and her joints were stiff from arthritis. Vala patted her lovingly and the dog’s stump of a tail wagged. Currently Rosebud’s made task was to sleep next to Vala and keep her warm. It might have been all the hound was good for at this point, but the warmth was greatly appreciated by Vala. She had forgotten just how cold Uniss could be.
“Can I come in?” Uther asked from his place in the doorway. He was holding a small pot in one hand and an assortment of papers in the other. Vala nodded and he entered, using his foot to close the door after himself. She spent a lot of time with Uther. A bastard and a woman, they were both considered the misfits of the king’s ragtag assembly. She didn’t mind so much since Uther was kind hearted and calm and generous despite his large and menacing appearance. “I noticed you hadn’t joined in the revelry,” he said as he set the pot and papers on the table Vala had been sitting at and joined her.
“Did you come to convince me?” With one hand she continued to pet Rosebud and with the other she lifted the lid from the pot. Sweet, fragrant steam rose and filled the room with the scent of fruit and honey simmered in wine. “If there’s wine in my room it isn’t likely I’ll join the others.”
“I thought you might want to relax away from everyone.” He shrugged one large shoulder. “Thought maybe I could join you.” Vala raised an eyebrow that did nothing to hide the amused smile.
“Mulled wine does sound nice about now,” she acquiesced. Uther grinned the sloppy, tilted grin that made him seem disingenuous to the untrained eye. Vala flipped over two small, metal cups from the table and dipped them one by one into the pot to fill them. She placed one in front of Uther and the other in front of herself. She swirled it carefully with the tip of her finger, sticking the digit into her mouth to taste the wine.
“I wanted to show you something.” Eagerly Uther took a large gulp of the wine, enough that when he lowered his cup Vala could see that it was mostly empty. Playing the part of good host she grabbed it and refilled it while he sorted through the papers he had brought with him. When she had returned the cup to its place in front of Uther she took a long sip of her own. The warmth was comforting and the wine itself was strong. When she felt it hit her stomach hot tendrils reached out and seemed to loosen all the sore parts of her body. Her mind relaxed. She took a second gulp and realized that she had drained her cup far quicker than she had intended. It just tasted too good. “Look,” he said as he shoved a dog eared piece of paper at her. Vala looked at it.
“I can’t read it.” There were words she couldn’t read, written in the style the common folk used in Uniss. Vala had been born noble and only learned to read and write in the proper style. She had been told that the thrown together writing of the commoners was similar in origin to the flotsam and jetsam style of the trading tongue. While Vala could speak that fluently she had never learned how to read or write like a commoner. “That’s obviously your father though,” she commented. The majority of the page was taken up by a drawing of a man dressed in shining golden armor. Though it lacked any sigil or true feature the point got across well enough. This was a drawing of the king attempting to overthrow Broderick.
“They’re hanging all over town. Will says he’s seen them in other towns and villages too.” Uther was as excited as if the picture had been of him. She wouldn’t have been surprised. He was a prolific warrior who had saved the king and others countless times on the battlefield. While few would have recognized him as George Nottem’s bastard son many would have recognized him as the king’s personal guard. “Look at this one.” He pushed another paper at her and downed his second cup. Vala was going more slowly on this one. She didn’t want to get drunk. It was helping her feel warmer though and that was nice.
“Oh wow. That’s funny,” she said though she wasn’t sure if funny was exactly the word she was looking for. There was more of the writing she couldn’t identify. Below that was another drawing, but not of the king or of Uther. The person wasn’t anyone she recognized immediately. She assumed it must have been just a drawing meant to encompass the notion of the rebellion’s army. It was a smaller, slimmer person than the king had been drawn as and was wearing silver and green. “That looks a bit like the armor your father had made for me.”
“Vala,” Uther said seriously, reaching across but not touching her. “That’s you.”
“What?” She dropped the paper as if it had grown hot and burned her. Uther looked at her with a steady gaze. Vala lowered her eyes back to the paper. It wasn’t her. Uther was just being silly. Sure the armor looked the same and maybe the color of her hair but… why would anyone put her image on something that for the rebellion? Why not any of George’s other sons? Why not any of the heroes of the war? “I don’t understand.”
“The common folk remember when you were the only one who stood against Broderick. You held Shore Shine and gave the refugees a haven. You’re a symbol to them. Of hope. You inspire people, Vala.” Her head felt heavy with emotion. Her brain almost refused to take in what Uther had said. Tentatively he placed his outreached hand on top of one of hers. “You inspire me, Vala.” Her breath caught in her throat and she looked back down at the paper, scared of what she might see in Uther’s eyes or what he might see in hers.
“What does it say?” She ran her free fingers over the writing. Uther pulled his hand back.
“Heroes of the Rebellion.” Vala covered her face with her hands for a moment. She felt dizzy with pride. Her heart was about to explode from her chest. She couldn’t believe any of it. She couldn’t… How long had she waited and wished for something like this? How many nights since she left Uniss had she wondered if what she did had been worth it?
“We should celebrate,” she said as she composed herself. She removed her hands from her face and grabbed her cup. The wine was cooling. She drank it down. She deserved it though. She was a hero of the rebellion and she deserved a warm drink on a cold night.
My, It’s Hot In Here.
Uther was draped over her, the blankets pulled up around his ears so that he appeared just a shock of wild brown hair. He used her shoulder as a pillow and she wondered at how comfortable it could be. His breath was hot and welcome on her chest in the sharp cold of the morning. Beneath the weight of him and the blankets Vala tried to stretch. Her body was sore. Sore from the cold, from sleeping on the ground, from the endless marching and fighting and riding, and newly now the rigorous nights spent with Uther. She tried not to think about the soft bed and warm weather she had left behind in Suttil. The home she had built for her family through blood and sweat and questionable ethics. Why was she constantly leaving everything she had worked for, everything she loved and cherished?
She sighed.
“What’s wrong?” Her companion asked sleepily. He didn’t open his eyes or roll off of her and the movement of his jaw caused his beard to itch her. Mechanically she ran a hand over the scratched skin and then let her fingers twist in the coarse curls on Uther’s chin.
“Just thinking,” she replied, looking down at the top of his head. Somewhere beneath the blankets she could feel his hand wandering, searching for where it wanted to rest. Eventually, and to her surprise, it came to a stop around her wrist and held in a loose, comfortable grip.
“Mm, that does sound terrible.” The tips of her fingers ghosted across the underside of his jaw to the place on his chin where hair no longer grew. The skin scarred and burned and uneven where throat and jaw met. He had had the scar when she met him but that had only been a couple of months ago and it had looked hot and pink and fresh then. She never asked about it and he never volunteered any sort of explanation. He never seemed bothered by it or pulled away when she went to touch.
“You aren’t like anyone I’ve ever been with,” she admitted into the still air that filled her tent. Outside she could hear people waking, trudging as quietly as possible through the renegade campsite. They would have to get up soon. Uther would have to sneak back to his own tent and their day would start. Another march through the cold, wet autumn of Uniss. And it was only getting colder the closer to winter they got. Uther was hot against her though, his body radiating warmth so that her tent was too comfortable to want to leave.
“If I’m going to be honest I’d have to say I’ve never been this way with anyone before.” He propped himself up as he spoke. He held the side of his face in his hand, his elbow supporting it all, and looked at her.
“That sounds like the type of thing you might say to any girl you’ve bedded.”
“Good point,” he laughed and tugged on her wrist, urging her closer to him as he adjusted his body now for wakefulness. Vala shifted onto her side, leaning her head against the bicep of the arm he was using to prop up his head. He released her wrist and laid his arm on her hip, his hand dangling onto her back. “It’s the truth though. It’s sort of like a competition with you.” Uther dipped his head down, brushing his lips against her neck. They were soft, a mere tickling across her skin that made her toes curl.
“But you always lose,” she tried to sound arrogant but worried the tone might have been damaged by her quickening breath. She could feel him smile as he nuzzled into her hair, rubbing against her cheek with his beard, and growling hot into her ear.
“Patience is its own reward. I’ll win eventually.” Uther used his much larger body to roll them both over so that Vala was on her back and he was over her. The blankets fell away in the movement and Vala gasped.
“Cold!” She exclaimed, grabbing at the thick furs and fabrics to cover their bodies again. Above her Uther smiled, lowering himself so that their bodies touched totally.
“Let’s heat things up a bit…”
All Tied Up.
He entered without knocking and something about that sent her nerves on edge. She had been expecting him. She had told him to come. She knew it was ridiculous to feel so on guard from the simple eagerness of his entrance. It was this place-Brigand’s Bend-that had her so out of sorts. Everything had gotten complicated and dark since her arrival here. Dealing with Alden and then Hugh and now holding the castle itself. She was injured and exhausted and feeling overwhelmed. It would be wrong to take it out on Uther, but she already suspected that might be just what was about to happen.
“I worried about you,” he said, the bend in his nose and the bruises under his eyes offset by the simplest, most innocent smile she had seen in a long while.
“You don’t have to.” He crossed the room quickly and held her face gently in his large, calloused hands.
“I know. I missed you.” He kissed her and the passion she felt in the gesture made his comment unnecessary. She leaned into him tentative and wary of the anxiety that had settled at the back of her neck. He held her shoulders as they kissed, parting to breathe for brief moments before beginning all over again. His grip lowered to her back then back around to her ribs and waist. Vala hissed in pain and stepped out of his grip, holding a hand over the injury he had unconsciously touched.
“I got injured when we took the castle,” she informed him. Uther stared at her without trying to mask the concern on his face. “Don’t look at me like that.” She nodded her head towards his broken nose. “You didn’t have that the last time I saw you.”
“Shield to the face.” He shrugged and smiled in the easy, disarming way he had. “Good thing I was already ugly.” Vala shook her head, laughing a little though the action itself caused a dull throb of pain to radiate up her side. She walked over and sat on the edge of the bed, pulling her shirt off in a quick, jerky motion.
“Help me change my bandages?” She asked. Uther nodded and sat down on the bed next to her. She had been about to do this herself when he entered so everything she needed was already laid out and waiting. With more dexterity than she would have expected him to be capable of Uther unwound the blood dappled bandages that were wrapped around her torso. She looked down at the ugly red skin that had been sewed together. Looking at it she knew that it was a worse injury than Uther had sustained. A broken nose wouldn’t have killed him. This might have. “Have you seen your brother?” She asked before he could make any comment about the wound.
“You mean my half-brother the prince?” He asked teasingly. “I had to report to him when I arrived. His head seems a bit bigger than the last time I saw him.” Uther rubbed a salve onto the wound as lightly as he could manage. It hurt. Vala wasn’t going to pretend it didn’t. But it hurt far less than it had been.
“Alden isn’t my biggest fan,” she said through clenched teeth.
“I heard. Though why you’d stick up for Hugh Fenerrs is beyond me. The man’s a coward, a traitor, and a vicious prick.” Vala had never heard Uther speak so heatedly about anything. It was bizarre to her that the topic that would cause it was Hugh Fenerrs. It was even more bizarre to her that Uther might have been taking his brother’s side.
“He was being starved. It had nothing to do with Hugh the person. It was the principle of the matter.” Uther sighed and Vala saw the anger that had bubbled on his face fade away as quickly as it had appeared. He began the task of wrapping the fresh, clean bandages around her.
“You’re right. If we do things like that we’re no better than the barbarians.” She felt guilty and wondered if she had too much sympathy for people that didn’t deserve it. It had always been hard for her to separate the way people were from the way people had been. In all likelihood Hugh was nothing like the boy she had known growing up or even like the man she had encountered during the war. He was a barbarian prince, right hand to his warlord brother, and was probably responsible for as many terrors as Broderick himself. She was disrupted from her thoughts by the feel of Uther’s lips against her cheek. “This is why people look up to you.” He finished tying the wraps around her ribs and leaned away.
The First Time.
“I can’t see you.”
“I can’t see you either.”
In the pitch black of her bedroom Vala could barely hear his voice over the howling wind. The fire had died out and she hadn’t gotten around to reviving it. She held herself but her hands were cold against her skin rather than warm. She held herself anyway.
Everything felt too familiar - the feel of the room, the sound of the weather, the smell of Shore Shine in winter-and it built a heaviness in her belly. It was nostalgia and grief and the accumulation of time. She was home but she was different now and Shore Shine was different too. Dark and cold and void of everything that had made it worthwhile.
He sat down on the bed next to her and she reflexively placed a hand on his back. The fabric of his shirt was worn thin and rough. Beneath it she could feel his skin was as cold as hers. He shivered lightly at her touch and she leaned her head onto his shoulder to provide warmth and comfort and whatever she could.
“Vala… I understand if you don’t want to be with me. You have options better than what I can offer. I don’t… I didn’t come to try to guilt you into being with me. I just… wanted to see you.”
“But you can’t see me.” A weak laugh that rolled through his body. She closed her eyes to the dark and drowned herself in the sound.
“No, I guess I can’t. I don’t know what I wanted.”
“I know what I want.” Vala wrapped her arms around him and pulled him closer. “I want you.” She kissed his ear. “No one else.”
CHALLENGE: Lemon Chiffon Binge; brownie
WORD COUNT: 8,680
RATING: R (to be safe. lots of things happen in the piece of varying intensities)
NOTES: I binged! So this piece covers a lot of time. It deals with all the "romantic" relationships that Vala as had. The male characters are Hugh, Sans, Emis, and Uther. Some of them have appeared in other pieces I've written and for some this is their debut. The male in the last piece is purposefully left ambiguous but feel free to guess! There's probably a lot of questions that might get raised so feel free to ask anything if something is confusing :) One note though! In "Your Eyes" Emis speaks to Vala in his native tongue... which I didn't feel like inventing so I just used French as a place holder. If you can read French then congrats on hearing his gross "poem".
Roll In The Hay.
Vala breathed deep the dry air of the stable. Beneath the crinkling hay and creaking wood she could hear the horses making their various noises. She rolled onto her side and laid a hand on Hugh’s chest. He smiled and opened a sleepy eye to look at her. She could hear the even, steady beating of his heart against her palm, feel the gentle rise and fall of his subtly muscled chest as he breathed.
“Hi,” he mouthed. Vala laughed and pressed herself closer so she could rest her chin on his shoulder.
“Hi,” she mouthed back, grinning in a way that she felt must make her look like an idiot. She didn’t know why. She was sweaty and sticky, stray pieces of straw coated her body. She was itchy and tired and a little bit sore. Her cheeks were sunburned from riding all day. Her hand still hurt from when she had sparred with Broderick. Somehow none it seemed able to disrupt the peace in the loft above the stables.
As if sensing her thoughts Hugh leaned his face forward and kissed her on the forehead, pushing her bangs aside with his nose as he did so. She laughed and kissed him back twice on the chin. He was still fresh faced and clean shaven, just the opposite of his brother and father, and Vala wondered if that would ever change. She tried to imagine him older with a beard and a hard lined face and a strong sure sense of self. But she liked him this way, and that was strange to admit in and of itself. He was meek and not particularly talented at anything, but he made her smile and didn’t begrudge her the things she liked.
“Let me be the first to say that you are a very good host.”
“Oh, I hear that all the time.”
“Hey!” She squealed as his fingers danced across her ribcage. She shoved off of his chest and he pulled her back, laughing as they twisted and tumbled over each other. She knew it was stupid to be doing this, especially with Hugh Fenerrs, but as they rolled naked and laughing through the hay she found it hard to care. If it was a mistake it felt like maybe it was one worth making.
All Night Long.
He kissed her before she was through the door. She had to step in and close the door while his mouth was attached to hers. It was a different sort of kiss than the last time. This was full of need and desperation and relief. Teeth and tongue all tangled together as his hands pulled her tightly to him. He was bigger than she remembered, but not by much. And he had finally grown a beard. It scratched her face in a not totally unlikeable way. Finally he pulled away, panting hard, and looked at her. He looked at her hair and her face and her body. He looked at her clothes and her hands and her feet. He looked at her as if he couldn’t believe she was standing in front of him.
“I knew you weren’t dead,” he said at last. His black-brown eyes were still the same wide and hopeful sort she remembered from years ago. His similarly colored hair still curled and worn around his ears. He had grown in the two years she had been missing, but not much. She thought she had changed far more than he had.
“What are you doing here, Hugh?” She asked forcefully. Guilt settled in his eyes and he released his hold on her and stepped back. He bit his lip and she saw the broken front tooth that would always represent Hugh more than anything else in her mind. “What makes you think you can invade Hero’s Home?” She had promised Garret and his mother that she would talk to Hugh, try to convince him to leave the castle. It was mind boggling to think that he was actually here to conquer. There had been peace for so long. It seemed impossible that it should all be falling apart around them and all so quickly.
“My father sent me,” he started nervously. “I’m to take and hold the castle.”
“So he’s started a war over… what? More land?” Even after she said it the words sounded nonsensical. “Does he want things to go back to the way they were before the peace?” Uniss had been a divided and war bedraggled country for most of its existence. The peace that had been established a hundred years ago was the best thing that had ever happened to the country. People were full and happy and safe. How could anyone want to go back to a way of life that was so horrific?
“He says he’s destined to be the next barbarian king,” Hugh offered. He seemed uncertain. Vala thought that was a good sign. Roderick Fenerrs was a beast of man who very well might have wanted to return life in Uniss to a barbaric, feuding state. But if Hugh could be reasoned with to join against his father then there would be a chance to put a stop to everything.
“You have to see that’s crazy. What does your brother have to say about this?” Hugh paced over towards the bed. It was Lord and Lady Temen’s bed. It was their room. Vala felt uncomfortable standing in it like this. It didn’t strike her as something that Hugh would have asked for himself. She wondered if it had been pushed upon him by someone else in his troop. She wondered how much of what had happened already was Hugh’s own idea.
“Broderick is elated. He’s always wanted a war or something to test himself in. You know how he is.” Sadly Vala did. She also knew that it was more than likely that Broderick would excel at warfare. That was a father and son team to be wary of. Hugh sat on the edge of the bed and put his face in his heads. Vala approached him and placed a familiar hand on his shoulder. Without thinking he grasped it in one of his own. “Will you spend the night here with me, Vala?”
“Hugh…” She wasn’t sure what to say. The answer should have been no and it should have been simple. But this wasn’t a simple situation. There was more at stake here than taking a tumble with Hugh Fenerrs. There were people in Hero’s Home counting on her, people whose lives were at stake. “If I stay we have to talk about what’s going on.”
“Please don’t make me.” He shook his head despairingly. Vala squeezed his hand. He looked up at her with wide, nervous eyes.
“We can stay up all night just like we used to at Shore Shine when you would come to visit. And we can talk about lots of things too not just the war.” She thought he was going to say no, but Hugh had never been good at saying no to anyone. He nodded his head at her and the look of utter hopelessness and longing in his eyes almost made Vala reconsider. But she had given Garret her word that she would do what she could. So she smiled and sat down on the bed next to him and didn’t push him away when he laid his head across her lap.
The Backseat.
One of Hugh’s tears dripped down his nose and onto her chest. She held his shoulders straight as he sobbed and tried to avoid looking into his eyes. He had washed and shaved and now just sat curled against her crying. Her heart hurt. It felt like she had placed a sheet over the hole that her father’s death had left and now, sitting here with Hugh as he grieved his own father, it felt like she was falling through that hole. She was overwhelmed. Everything around her was swimming in slow motion. She wanted to crawl into bed and sleep forever.
She knew she should call a guard, have Hugh taken away. He was the enemy. He had held her hostage, killed Garret Temen, and led his brother’s troops in war. But everything real, everything that was happening seemed to fall away in the wake of grief.
“Why did you come here?” She heard herself ask.
“I don’t know. I wanted to tell you what had happened.” She shifted, pushing him away and fixing him with a glare.
“Why? Why not your brother or your wife? Why come here? We are enemies.” He flinched when she mentioned his wife. That was good. It helped her to return herself to the moment. To push aside the sympathy that she felt for Hugh.
“Do you doubt me when I tell you that my father is dead?” His voice hitched when he said it. Tears welled in the black depths of his eyes but he fought them back. Vala set her jaw, hoping that there were no tears in her eyes. She needed to be strong, to be a leader. Her throat constricted though and she could not respond. Instead she simply shook her head. “Do you doubt me when I tell you…” he faltered, looking down at his hands before continuing, “that I love you?”
Push it down, she told herself, push it all deep down.
Your Eyes.
The bar was loud with laughter and music and life. It was exactly the kind of atmosphere that Vala needed. Poor light and strong drinks and surrounded by familiar faces. Nights like this at Zuan’s place helped to keep the foreignness she often felt at bay. The isolation. The sense of being an outsider. This was a place full of outsiders, full of people who spent their lives in a strange in between just like Vala. This place was also full of her friends, though, and that was what she appreciated most. Garsé playing her lute in the middle of the room, Zuan and Ekvy talking business in a corner, Sans bartending, and Emis sitting next to her at the bar.
“What?” She asked as she caught the mercenary staring at her. He swirled his wine in his glass and shrugged innocently.
“I was just looking at your eyes.”
“My eyes?” Her tone was suspicious but good natured. Emis had been in the habit of flirting with her since the moment she met him. Vala assumed it was just something he did with every woman he met. She didn’t take it to heart, but the attention was nice sometimes. At the very least it was fun to hear the things he could come up with.
“Oh yes. Your eyes. To look at them is like reading a poem. Surely you have heard this before, yes?” She liked to listen to Emis talk. He had a gravelly voice and his command of the trading tongue was looser than the other people she knew. He spoke with the same cadence of his native tongue, his sentences all arranged in a manner that was more complicated but more personal. Most of the time when she spoke to someone in the trading tongue it was all the same, a blank slate so that origins were made moot. She liked that Emis’ home still lived on his tongue and that he was too stubborn to change. It was arrogance, a cockiness and she enjoyed it.
“What poem?” She played along. Emis smiled at her and took a sip of his wine. He held it in his mouth like she always saw him doing. Once he had swallowed he leaned back against the bar slightly.
“To my shame I do not speak this silly language well enough to recite the poem I am thinking of. It is one from my home. A beautiful poem of flowers and summer and dreams coming true.” Vala laughed. She couldn’t help it. The thought that she would remind anyone of a beautiful poem about delicate, lovely things was amusing.
“Say it in your language,” she managed through her laughter. Emis blinked, seemingly confused for a moment before grinning at her again. He leaned forward and brushed some of her bangs to the side in the delicate way he had that was meant to convey intimacy.
“Votre bouche est si belle. Je veux pousser ma verge aussi loin dans votre bouche que je peux.” He ran his thumb around her mouth as he recited the words. Vala didn’t speak his language. The words were simply strange, throaty sounds against the din of the evening. The laugher that had built in her settled and she stared into Emis’ sincere hazel eyes as he spoke. “Ton cou est merveilleux. Je ne peux imaginer ma main autour de l'emballage et de calage pendant que je vous livre en vous encore et encore.” He licked his lips and continued, his hand trailing from her mouth down her chin and along her neck. She got a chill at the contact. “Je veux sucer vos petits seins jusqu'à ce qu'ils soient noir et bleu. Délicieux.” Emis shook his head a little and chuckled deep in his throat. He brought his hand back up to her face and cradled her cheek. “Je voudrais terminer sur votre visage, je pense. Je vous promets que vous souhaitez tout. Tout ce que j'ai fait. Vous me demander pour plus. Ne même pas me lancez pas parler de ce que je ferais à vos serrés, les fesses rondes.”
“That’s… disgusting.” Vala blinked at Sans’ voice. She pulled back from Emis’ touch and looked over her shoulder at the man standing behind the bar and refilling their drinks. He was frowning and looking at Emis as if the man was something that belonged in the gutter. Emis wasn’t giving him the friendliest stare either.
“You understood?” Sans nodded solemnly and Emis scowled for a moment. Vala was curious now. She was surprised, but not shocked, that Sans knew the language. Sans was always discovering new talents that he had previously not known he had. Speaking multiple languages was the least ridiculous of them. “Ah, well, I am only being honest,” Emis said with his easy smile returning. Sans’ cheeks were tinged red as the mercenary merely began laughing. Vala thought it better not to ask him to translate.
Intoxication.
When Vala shoved Emis up against she didn’t know what she expected. She was barely thinking. She was drunk off her ass. She knew she hadn’t expected him to simply grin at her though. Like he knew what she was doing. Like he had been expecting it from her. It made her press her fists further into his shoulders, lifting him ever so slightly off his feet. She might have been imagining it but it seemed like it only made him smile wider.
She frowned, snarled might have been a better term, and held her face close enough that their noses almost touched. She could taste the wine on his breath, tangy and hot. She could smell the oil that slicked back his hair. She could feel him slowly bring his hands to her hips, touching her with fingertips then palms then gripping her tight and hard. Then she blinked and her arms were around his neck instead of fisted in his thin linen shirt and she could feel the warm dampness of the wall on her wrists.
Emis brought his face closer, angled it slightly, and looked into her eyes through thick eyelashes. Waiting, it seemed. Asking, it seemed. She kissed him then hard and deep. Her fingers tangled in the thick dark hair, sliding up from the base of his neck and ruining what he had so perfectly styled. His hands rubbed up and down her back. His dexterous fingers pinpointing each sore and knotted muscle and kneading, knowing just the pressure to cause her to arc into him.
His arms held her and she could feel the brawny definition of his body through his clothes. Emis was a mercenary, a fighter by trade. He was made of wiry strength and sinew. Fast and fierce and flexible she had seen him kill men, slit their throats without breaking a sweat. The scar on his lip felt cold and smooth against her as they kissed. She wondered about the other scars that no doubt littered his body. Some made from errors. Some made from loyalty. Her tongue slid through the gap in his teeth and his body shivered from his toes to his head.
And for a brief, fleeting moment all Vala could think of was Hugh Fenerrs and his broken tooth and the way he would tremble against her whenever she flicked at it while kissing him. Her stomach rolled, heavy and full of too much ale, and her whole body turned cold and clammy. She pulled away, stepped back, and was relieved to feel that he didn’t tug her closer but simply let his arms fall to his sides. She held a hand over her mouth for a second questioning if the push of the memory would make her puke. Emis seemed content to wait for whatever the outcome. She wondered if he was even drunker than she was.
“I can’t,” she said after a long and quiet moment. She glanced over at him but he was only smoothing his hair. He grinned at her when he saw her looking, that sloppy but clearly practiced grin. Inscrutable and frustrating and one of the things she had found most attractive about him. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Emis said with a good natured shrug. To watch him was to watch a performance. Every gesture perfectly defined. No movement truly wasted. She was waxing poetic though and reminded herself that she needed to drink less. “Who you kiss… That is your business, yes? That it is not me… that is sad for us both, but what can be done of it?”
“Can we pretend this never happened?” He was still smiling at her and it was all she could do to look away from that gap. That damned gap that he claimed was a sign of good luck but had only served to conjure memories best left forgotten. But did she really want to sleep with Emis anyway? Or was she just drunk and lonely and confused while he was fun and handsome and there?
“We are business associates, yes? Business associates do what is best for business. People in our line of work cannot risk to be distracted. It will be as if nothing occurred.” Vala felt her body loosen with relief. “But we are also friends, yes? So I must tell you, confess as it were, that I do not think I will be able to cease my flirtations.” He threw up his hands as if leaving the subject to stand between them on its own. “I expect nothing, you know, I never did but I am in the habit of flirting and it is a very hard habit to break. This is acceptable, yes?”
“Yes,” Vala answered with a small smile. Emis smiled too and not the grin of the well trained solider and killer but the tired, content smile of the man beneath the façade. He placed a hand on her shoulder and patted it with light affection. Her mind, already off balance from the drinking, reeled. She never knew what to expect when it came to Emis.
Close Quarters
Sans yelled in surprised when Vala rushed into the cabin without notice. He scrambled to cover himself and it was only too late that she realized what was happening. With burning ears she turned her face and stared diligently at the wall. “I’m sorry,” she apologized quickly, “I should have knocked!” She glanced over at him from the corner of her eye, checking that he had his pants back on, before turning to face him. She could feel the heat in her face but didn’t think it was anything to rival the redness of his cheeks.
“No, no you shouldn’t have to. It’s your boat. I’m sorry. I-“ He had his eyes trained on the floor beneath his feet. He looked like he would have liked nothing more than to disappear. She wasn’t angry. She had told him to move into the cabin on the boat for whenever she wasn’t using it. It was far better an option than being homeless. This was his home and he was allowed to pleasure himself in his home. She wasn’t disgusted either which is what his tone told her he thought she was. He had thought she would be disgusted when he had confessed to having feelings for her beyond friendship too. Sometimes she wondered what prompted so much self-hatred in a person who didn’t deserve any.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen your hands before,” she interrupted. They were unbound from the wraps that he usually wore beneath his gloves. Vala realized that he must not have worn them when he was by himself. A strange thrill of sensation ran up her spine as she looked at them. He had them over his lap, pulling the bottom of his shirt further down over his crotch. The fingers were intertwined and worrying themselves. They looked soft and perfect against the roughspun tunic. He blinked his gaze up to her, confusion piercing the look of shame. He looked back down after a moment but this time he looked at his hands. He gripped them even tighter together.
“Um, you did. That one time. The first time we met. I suppose, well, you saw everything that time.” He paused and looked up at her again. “I was naked in that box.” He tried to smile and make light of the tense air that lay between them. The attempt didn’t do much. The frustration remained, but Vala knew it wasn’t coming from any antagonism on her part. She felt edgy and breathless and it didn’t take long for her to realize that she was aroused. She had walked in on him masturbating and it had lit a fire in her stomach. Across from her Sans seemed to be suffering under her eyes. Humiliation still burned on his cheeks. She wanted to kiss him until his face was red for a different reason. She knew she never could though. She could never even touch him. Her frustration and arousal built.
“What were you thinking about?” She wondered if he could see the way her chest was raising and falling with quickened breaths. Could he see the way she was looking at him? Did he feel the same electric energy between them? She bit the corner of her lip when he looked up at her in surprise. His eyes met hers and his mouth fell open slightly as if he meant to answer and couldn’t conjure a word. She saw longing in his eyes and couldn’t help but think what it must be like for him. He was made the same as any man, after all, and simply placed in life as an outsider. He longed for so many things, a normal life first and foremost among them, but there was something different about it now. Vala could swear she saw desire lurking in the depths of those light brown eyes. A desire that she had seen before. A desire that she was sure was mirrored in her own gray-green gaze. She took a step closer. “Was it me?” He nodded silently at her and looked at his hands.
“Vala…“ She wanted her name in his mouth, but not with his voice tinged with shame the way it was. He was mentally berating himself what he had done. She didn’t want that. Vala knew what she did want though and for the first time it didn’t seem like some foolish distraction or empty thought. She took another step forward and was in front of him. It had been easy enough to push aside the attraction she had felt for him. There could be no resolution due to his unrestrained magic. It was an idle crush that couldn’t develop to more despite his own confessed admiring of her. Standing in front of him, seeing his naked hands, feeling his intentions in the room it suddenly became too much. Vala was aware of a level of attraction, of desire, of need to touch him and be touched by him that she had never known before. She ached. Ached for any form of reciprocation. “I wish I was a normal man.” He looked up at her. His body was tense at the awareness of their close vicinity. “If I could and you would let me… I’d kiss you, Vala. I’d never stop kissing you.”
“You don’t get off just thinking about kissing, do you?” She teased, though if she was being perfectly honest kissing might have been enough. Her chest was tight. His words burned in her ears. A part of her kept thinking: Just do it. Kiss him. What does it matter? It mattered though. She cared too much for him for it not to matter. “My fantasies are never so simple.” Sans’ eyes widened and he gulped down a breath. She watched the bob of his throat greedily. She imagined the feel of it beneath her lips and let out a heavy breath.
“Tell me them.” Vala was surprised by the level of command in his voice and by the way it made a shudder run through her. His face was still pink with blush but the tense lines of embarrassment had faded. He stared at her intently and selfishly. She could see his pulse beating beneath his jaw. What would it be like just to run her hands along it and feel its stubble? Her body whined at her. Sans moved his hands from his lap and placed them on either side of his legs while leaning back in his seat. What were they doing? Why were they playing this game? There was no winning. More than likely they would both just leave each other’s presence more frustrated and confused than before.
“I want to show you,” she confessed. She bent at the waist so that they were eye to eye, her hands gripping his knees for balance. He jumped slightly at her touch. His eyes flickering to where her fingers held the fabric of his pants before going back to hers. It was a simple touch, but it meant so much between them. Vala had restrained herself generally from even touching him through the many layers of his clothes in friendly gestures. She couldn’t not touch him anymore. Even if they could never press skin to skin she wanted to be as close as possible to him. Her body craved it. “If I’m careful,” she started but he interrupted her.
“I trust you,” he breathed. Her own breath hitched. Their faces were painfully close.
“If you need me to stop just tell me.” He nodded and shut his eyes, relishing the feeling of her touch.
“Would you sleep here with me tonight?” He asked at length. He was breathless and sounded unsure. She wanted to take him in her arms. She wanted to make him understand that he didn’t have to be hesitant with her. She smiled at him placed a hand on his arm.
“Absolutely.”
Strip Tease.
“Give me your dirty clothes and I’ll put them with the laundry,” Vala instructed. She held out her hand to receive the clothes in question. Sans stared at her, looked down at the clothes he was wearing, and then behind him to the basin she had filled with water for him to bathe in.
“But… I’m wearing my dirty clothes.” She rolled her eyes in good nature and lowered hand to her hip. She watched his eyes dart from the saucy angle of her hip back up to her face. He didn’t seem to feel guilty for having glanced at her in such a way. That was an improvement at least. They had been trying their hands at a relationship for about a month already. It was about time that Sans stopped looking guilty over admiring her.
“I know that. Take them off.”
“With you watching?” He asked, shocked. Vala smiled and shook her head at him.
“Yes!” Sans looked around as if making sure that it was just the two of them. With a hesitant smile he began removing the multiple layers that comprised his outfit. The long coat with its garish buckles and buttons, the full sleeved shirt with the frayed cuffs, the sweat stained undershirt. His boots with the holes in the heels, his pants with the rolled up legs, the thin slim legged pants beneath those. He stood before her in his underwear and linen wraps and held his arms crossed over his chest. “Sans…” She breathed for encouragement. With a small nod he lowered his arms and began the task of removing the wraps from his hands.
His body was still thin. Nothing like the skeleton he had been when she found him but still barely more than skin and bones. If he raised his arms above his head she would have been able to count his ribs. Not a lick of muscle or fat on him. She crossed her arms over chest when he had finished with it all and finally was naked.
“Was that so hard?” She prodded. Sans merely shrugged sheepishly. For him, she supposed, it might have been. But she was grateful he did it for her.
One Night Stand.
Vala groaned and brought the pillow over her head as sun slowly filtered into the bedroom. She head was killing her. Her mouth tasted like old, dry wine. The last thing she remembered was leaving Zuan’s when Sans started his shift. It had been raining. One of those annoying storms that came and went with amazing intensity. She had been walking in the street towards, well she couldn’t remember where she had been headed, and she had been soaked. She felt dry now. Warm. Though not particularly well rested but that was her own fault.
“You are awake, yes?” Vala opened her eyes beneath the pillow and felt a steady sinking in her gut. There was movement next to her. She became aware that she was naked, that this wasn’t her bed, that she could recall meeting Emis in the street at some point in the night.
“Emis?” She questioned even though there was no other person that the voice could’ve belonged to. She could smell his stupid hair oil on the pillow now. It was mixed with the smell of sweat and coffee. Slowly she sat up, careful that the sheet didn’t fall from her chest, and looked to her side. Emis grinned at her and offered her a mug of steaming beverage. She took it into her hands but didn’t drink, still looking at her friend in shock.
“You were expecting another, then? Ah, alas, I am always to be forgotten.”
“Emis, I-“ She started in a mad desperation to explain herself. What could she possibly say though? That she hadn’t meant to sleep with him? That she had gotten too drunk and hadn’t known what she was doing? He held up a hand and she was almost grateful. Her thoughts were too jumbled. She was trying to remember what had led her to this place, Emis’ clean and clutter free room.
“Let me first say that you look lovely this morning. Truly a hangover is no match for your beauty. Now, before you fret too dearly I assure you that despite how it may look nothing occurred last night.” When he noticed that she wasn’t drinking the coffee that he had given he took it back and began to sip on it.
“But…” she struggled to understand. “I’m naked. In your bed.” He shrugged.
“But I am not. I also did not sleep in my bed.” Vala looked down at the sheet she had covering her body. Her cheeks felt hot and she was embarrassed and angry at herself. Her stomach felt sick. “You are hurt, yes?” He inquired, lowering his voice to what was a more comforting and personal tone. “It would not have sat well on my conscience to partake when you were in such a state.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted. She didn’t feel any cuts or bruises. She didn’t think she had been so drunk that she had fallen and hurt herself. Emis shook his head at her. “What?”
“You are hurt from your fight with our disheveled bartending friend, yes?”
“No,” she answered immediately. Emis handed her the coffee mug again. Vala took a sip right away. Emis sighed and lifted himself off the bed. He walked to the door and paused before opening it.
“For someone in your line of work you are a very bad liar.”
Keeping Each Other Warm.
It wasn’t that she was avoiding drinking with the men. It was just that she was exhausted. There had been so much to do around the village even after the battle. There had been the wounded to attend to, the supplies to take stock of, the rooms to be doled out. Vala generally wouldn’t have been in charge of all of that but they had taken losses and she was willing to stretch herself thin. She was finally in a position that bespoke power and authority and she wasn’t about to foul it up by deeming herself to be above certain tasks. She didn’t think the men would understand that it was fatigue and not an overinflated view of herself that kept her away. But for the first time she felt like, maybe, it didn’t matter what men thought about her. The king trusted her, valued her, put her in charge.
Vala smiled as the old, deaf hound pushed the door to the room open. She whined and sniffed at the floor until she was resting her head in Vala’s lap. Rosebud was a good dog. Smart and loyal, but age was catching up with her. She couldn’t hear, could barely see, and her joints were stiff from arthritis. Vala patted her lovingly and the dog’s stump of a tail wagged. Currently Rosebud’s made task was to sleep next to Vala and keep her warm. It might have been all the hound was good for at this point, but the warmth was greatly appreciated by Vala. She had forgotten just how cold Uniss could be.
“Can I come in?” Uther asked from his place in the doorway. He was holding a small pot in one hand and an assortment of papers in the other. Vala nodded and he entered, using his foot to close the door after himself. She spent a lot of time with Uther. A bastard and a woman, they were both considered the misfits of the king’s ragtag assembly. She didn’t mind so much since Uther was kind hearted and calm and generous despite his large and menacing appearance. “I noticed you hadn’t joined in the revelry,” he said as he set the pot and papers on the table Vala had been sitting at and joined her.
“Did you come to convince me?” With one hand she continued to pet Rosebud and with the other she lifted the lid from the pot. Sweet, fragrant steam rose and filled the room with the scent of fruit and honey simmered in wine. “If there’s wine in my room it isn’t likely I’ll join the others.”
“I thought you might want to relax away from everyone.” He shrugged one large shoulder. “Thought maybe I could join you.” Vala raised an eyebrow that did nothing to hide the amused smile.
“Mulled wine does sound nice about now,” she acquiesced. Uther grinned the sloppy, tilted grin that made him seem disingenuous to the untrained eye. Vala flipped over two small, metal cups from the table and dipped them one by one into the pot to fill them. She placed one in front of Uther and the other in front of herself. She swirled it carefully with the tip of her finger, sticking the digit into her mouth to taste the wine.
“I wanted to show you something.” Eagerly Uther took a large gulp of the wine, enough that when he lowered his cup Vala could see that it was mostly empty. Playing the part of good host she grabbed it and refilled it while he sorted through the papers he had brought with him. When she had returned the cup to its place in front of Uther she took a long sip of her own. The warmth was comforting and the wine itself was strong. When she felt it hit her stomach hot tendrils reached out and seemed to loosen all the sore parts of her body. Her mind relaxed. She took a second gulp and realized that she had drained her cup far quicker than she had intended. It just tasted too good. “Look,” he said as he shoved a dog eared piece of paper at her. Vala looked at it.
“I can’t read it.” There were words she couldn’t read, written in the style the common folk used in Uniss. Vala had been born noble and only learned to read and write in the proper style. She had been told that the thrown together writing of the commoners was similar in origin to the flotsam and jetsam style of the trading tongue. While Vala could speak that fluently she had never learned how to read or write like a commoner. “That’s obviously your father though,” she commented. The majority of the page was taken up by a drawing of a man dressed in shining golden armor. Though it lacked any sigil or true feature the point got across well enough. This was a drawing of the king attempting to overthrow Broderick.
“They’re hanging all over town. Will says he’s seen them in other towns and villages too.” Uther was as excited as if the picture had been of him. She wouldn’t have been surprised. He was a prolific warrior who had saved the king and others countless times on the battlefield. While few would have recognized him as George Nottem’s bastard son many would have recognized him as the king’s personal guard. “Look at this one.” He pushed another paper at her and downed his second cup. Vala was going more slowly on this one. She didn’t want to get drunk. It was helping her feel warmer though and that was nice.
“Oh wow. That’s funny,” she said though she wasn’t sure if funny was exactly the word she was looking for. There was more of the writing she couldn’t identify. Below that was another drawing, but not of the king or of Uther. The person wasn’t anyone she recognized immediately. She assumed it must have been just a drawing meant to encompass the notion of the rebellion’s army. It was a smaller, slimmer person than the king had been drawn as and was wearing silver and green. “That looks a bit like the armor your father had made for me.”
“Vala,” Uther said seriously, reaching across but not touching her. “That’s you.”
“What?” She dropped the paper as if it had grown hot and burned her. Uther looked at her with a steady gaze. Vala lowered her eyes back to the paper. It wasn’t her. Uther was just being silly. Sure the armor looked the same and maybe the color of her hair but… why would anyone put her image on something that for the rebellion? Why not any of George’s other sons? Why not any of the heroes of the war? “I don’t understand.”
“The common folk remember when you were the only one who stood against Broderick. You held Shore Shine and gave the refugees a haven. You’re a symbol to them. Of hope. You inspire people, Vala.” Her head felt heavy with emotion. Her brain almost refused to take in what Uther had said. Tentatively he placed his outreached hand on top of one of hers. “You inspire me, Vala.” Her breath caught in her throat and she looked back down at the paper, scared of what she might see in Uther’s eyes or what he might see in hers.
“What does it say?” She ran her free fingers over the writing. Uther pulled his hand back.
“Heroes of the Rebellion.” Vala covered her face with her hands for a moment. She felt dizzy with pride. Her heart was about to explode from her chest. She couldn’t believe any of it. She couldn’t… How long had she waited and wished for something like this? How many nights since she left Uniss had she wondered if what she did had been worth it?
“We should celebrate,” she said as she composed herself. She removed her hands from her face and grabbed her cup. The wine was cooling. She drank it down. She deserved it though. She was a hero of the rebellion and she deserved a warm drink on a cold night.
My, It’s Hot In Here.
Uther was draped over her, the blankets pulled up around his ears so that he appeared just a shock of wild brown hair. He used her shoulder as a pillow and she wondered at how comfortable it could be. His breath was hot and welcome on her chest in the sharp cold of the morning. Beneath the weight of him and the blankets Vala tried to stretch. Her body was sore. Sore from the cold, from sleeping on the ground, from the endless marching and fighting and riding, and newly now the rigorous nights spent with Uther. She tried not to think about the soft bed and warm weather she had left behind in Suttil. The home she had built for her family through blood and sweat and questionable ethics. Why was she constantly leaving everything she had worked for, everything she loved and cherished?
She sighed.
“What’s wrong?” Her companion asked sleepily. He didn’t open his eyes or roll off of her and the movement of his jaw caused his beard to itch her. Mechanically she ran a hand over the scratched skin and then let her fingers twist in the coarse curls on Uther’s chin.
“Just thinking,” she replied, looking down at the top of his head. Somewhere beneath the blankets she could feel his hand wandering, searching for where it wanted to rest. Eventually, and to her surprise, it came to a stop around her wrist and held in a loose, comfortable grip.
“Mm, that does sound terrible.” The tips of her fingers ghosted across the underside of his jaw to the place on his chin where hair no longer grew. The skin scarred and burned and uneven where throat and jaw met. He had had the scar when she met him but that had only been a couple of months ago and it had looked hot and pink and fresh then. She never asked about it and he never volunteered any sort of explanation. He never seemed bothered by it or pulled away when she went to touch.
“You aren’t like anyone I’ve ever been with,” she admitted into the still air that filled her tent. Outside she could hear people waking, trudging as quietly as possible through the renegade campsite. They would have to get up soon. Uther would have to sneak back to his own tent and their day would start. Another march through the cold, wet autumn of Uniss. And it was only getting colder the closer to winter they got. Uther was hot against her though, his body radiating warmth so that her tent was too comfortable to want to leave.
“If I’m going to be honest I’d have to say I’ve never been this way with anyone before.” He propped himself up as he spoke. He held the side of his face in his hand, his elbow supporting it all, and looked at her.
“That sounds like the type of thing you might say to any girl you’ve bedded.”
“Good point,” he laughed and tugged on her wrist, urging her closer to him as he adjusted his body now for wakefulness. Vala shifted onto her side, leaning her head against the bicep of the arm he was using to prop up his head. He released her wrist and laid his arm on her hip, his hand dangling onto her back. “It’s the truth though. It’s sort of like a competition with you.” Uther dipped his head down, brushing his lips against her neck. They were soft, a mere tickling across her skin that made her toes curl.
“But you always lose,” she tried to sound arrogant but worried the tone might have been damaged by her quickening breath. She could feel him smile as he nuzzled into her hair, rubbing against her cheek with his beard, and growling hot into her ear.
“Patience is its own reward. I’ll win eventually.” Uther used his much larger body to roll them both over so that Vala was on her back and he was over her. The blankets fell away in the movement and Vala gasped.
“Cold!” She exclaimed, grabbing at the thick furs and fabrics to cover their bodies again. Above her Uther smiled, lowering himself so that their bodies touched totally.
“Let’s heat things up a bit…”
All Tied Up.
He entered without knocking and something about that sent her nerves on edge. She had been expecting him. She had told him to come. She knew it was ridiculous to feel so on guard from the simple eagerness of his entrance. It was this place-Brigand’s Bend-that had her so out of sorts. Everything had gotten complicated and dark since her arrival here. Dealing with Alden and then Hugh and now holding the castle itself. She was injured and exhausted and feeling overwhelmed. It would be wrong to take it out on Uther, but she already suspected that might be just what was about to happen.
“I worried about you,” he said, the bend in his nose and the bruises under his eyes offset by the simplest, most innocent smile she had seen in a long while.
“You don’t have to.” He crossed the room quickly and held her face gently in his large, calloused hands.
“I know. I missed you.” He kissed her and the passion she felt in the gesture made his comment unnecessary. She leaned into him tentative and wary of the anxiety that had settled at the back of her neck. He held her shoulders as they kissed, parting to breathe for brief moments before beginning all over again. His grip lowered to her back then back around to her ribs and waist. Vala hissed in pain and stepped out of his grip, holding a hand over the injury he had unconsciously touched.
“I got injured when we took the castle,” she informed him. Uther stared at her without trying to mask the concern on his face. “Don’t look at me like that.” She nodded her head towards his broken nose. “You didn’t have that the last time I saw you.”
“Shield to the face.” He shrugged and smiled in the easy, disarming way he had. “Good thing I was already ugly.” Vala shook her head, laughing a little though the action itself caused a dull throb of pain to radiate up her side. She walked over and sat on the edge of the bed, pulling her shirt off in a quick, jerky motion.
“Help me change my bandages?” She asked. Uther nodded and sat down on the bed next to her. She had been about to do this herself when he entered so everything she needed was already laid out and waiting. With more dexterity than she would have expected him to be capable of Uther unwound the blood dappled bandages that were wrapped around her torso. She looked down at the ugly red skin that had been sewed together. Looking at it she knew that it was a worse injury than Uther had sustained. A broken nose wouldn’t have killed him. This might have. “Have you seen your brother?” She asked before he could make any comment about the wound.
“You mean my half-brother the prince?” He asked teasingly. “I had to report to him when I arrived. His head seems a bit bigger than the last time I saw him.” Uther rubbed a salve onto the wound as lightly as he could manage. It hurt. Vala wasn’t going to pretend it didn’t. But it hurt far less than it had been.
“Alden isn’t my biggest fan,” she said through clenched teeth.
“I heard. Though why you’d stick up for Hugh Fenerrs is beyond me. The man’s a coward, a traitor, and a vicious prick.” Vala had never heard Uther speak so heatedly about anything. It was bizarre to her that the topic that would cause it was Hugh Fenerrs. It was even more bizarre to her that Uther might have been taking his brother’s side.
“He was being starved. It had nothing to do with Hugh the person. It was the principle of the matter.” Uther sighed and Vala saw the anger that had bubbled on his face fade away as quickly as it had appeared. He began the task of wrapping the fresh, clean bandages around her.
“You’re right. If we do things like that we’re no better than the barbarians.” She felt guilty and wondered if she had too much sympathy for people that didn’t deserve it. It had always been hard for her to separate the way people were from the way people had been. In all likelihood Hugh was nothing like the boy she had known growing up or even like the man she had encountered during the war. He was a barbarian prince, right hand to his warlord brother, and was probably responsible for as many terrors as Broderick himself. She was disrupted from her thoughts by the feel of Uther’s lips against her cheek. “This is why people look up to you.” He finished tying the wraps around her ribs and leaned away.
The First Time.
“I can’t see you.”
“I can’t see you either.”
In the pitch black of her bedroom Vala could barely hear his voice over the howling wind. The fire had died out and she hadn’t gotten around to reviving it. She held herself but her hands were cold against her skin rather than warm. She held herself anyway.
Everything felt too familiar - the feel of the room, the sound of the weather, the smell of Shore Shine in winter-and it built a heaviness in her belly. It was nostalgia and grief and the accumulation of time. She was home but she was different now and Shore Shine was different too. Dark and cold and void of everything that had made it worthwhile.
He sat down on the bed next to her and she reflexively placed a hand on his back. The fabric of his shirt was worn thin and rough. Beneath it she could feel his skin was as cold as hers. He shivered lightly at her touch and she leaned her head onto his shoulder to provide warmth and comfort and whatever she could.
“Vala… I understand if you don’t want to be with me. You have options better than what I can offer. I don’t… I didn’t come to try to guilt you into being with me. I just… wanted to see you.”
“But you can’t see me.” A weak laugh that rolled through his body. She closed her eyes to the dark and drowned herself in the sound.
“No, I guess I can’t. I don’t know what I wanted.”
“I know what I want.” Vala wrapped her arms around him and pulled him closer. “I want you.” She kissed his ear. “No one else.”