Performing? Of half the mind to shout it back at her for good measure, he stared at her, wide-eyed and mouth ajar all beneath a deeper frown. Like he’d been given an unprov0ked handful across the face. Something sunk in him, took a tumble off where it’d been teetering at the edge. That residue of denial, maybe, the last of the salt in a binding circle.

A gust moved through the clearing outside. The shape of the yurt was a dark cavern about them, wavering as the lamplight flame flickered. Like it was closing in. Through it, she kept explaining and he couldn’t but watch. Struck to silence.

It remained absolute. Anger wilted from his face at her turned back, replaced by something that was less than any singular feeling. Was it anything, really? Tired, maybe. A shift of grief in it when she spoke his name. Asked him something. The same as once before, mere moment ago, but amended. What did he want?

From her. Made it difficult. He allowed the pause it’s space, a disarmed grief upon him as his eye left her, cast down. Never had he argued with anyone like this before, where any grievance was so— misunderstood. Like he was something encrypted and occult, a knot and a puzzle. Was he?

The faults were twice-fold. And he needed to get out.

“ I don’t know, Farren. “ But I do want things. He spoke honestly, tempered to calmer tone. Rough for how low it was, but not cold. That wasn’t how his fire burned and never would be. For a second he felt as if he wouldn’t speak again, but chose to anyway against the instinct that told him to not try.

“ You resent my assessment of you, then call my expression of anger a performance. Why was it so— “ Face screwed up with aggrieved incomprehension. “ Unfathomable that shouting was what I needed? That it’s all me and what yet lives in my chest. “ He tapped his heart firm with an index, a flare of anger in the gesture and his face. But it didn’t expand, fizzling out. Too weak.

“ We don’t truly know each other. And I understand I’ve never really— Spoken of myself. “ Not to you, anyway.

“ We require different things and clearly have very different definitions as for what is necessary. Or what constitutes a welcome. An embrace. “

Standing by. Being made fun of. Barbed affections.

He couldn’t help it, the resentment. Towards something she probably just was as person, fundamentally. Venom beaded up and the words left him against all better judgement.

“ Do you need me to describe them to you? “ Pronounced, meticulous. Then gathered speed, brows rising like he'd been struck with genius.

" Maybe we can make little lists and compare! "
 
Farren watched him, unable to stop the sardonic smirk that tugged at her mouth at his final words— lists and comparisons, like their grief could be catalogued. Like his pain had an invoice and hers a receipt. How easy it all would be if they were good with such numbers.

That kind of dark-edged humor should have cut her. But it didn’t, at least not like she thought it would. Not like the rest. Instead, she crossed her arms and leaned against the single vanity, the edge biting cold against where her tunic fell to her bare thighs. She watched him, sitting in this tangled mess of her feelings, chewing through them and forcing herself to try and see him for the first time again.

See him as a culmination of who he was outside of her own mirrored design of him. Yes, it was still Aarno in that reflection, but the sunlight would have to cease the beam of artificial light, its glare having blinded her to the real person he was trying to show her. Not hollowed out by her expectations. Not gilded in fantasy. That man now didn't seem like a stranger, but she realized she would have to stop reaching for the flat pane of glass if she wanted to actually hold his hand and bask in his real light.

She followed the sharp lines of his face in the lamplight, the wild rise and fall of his chest still heaving faintly with spent anger. The bruised weight under his eyes. The weathered hands that had held her like something precious only hours ago.

"I think...it's because I never imagined you could shout at me." She chewed through that answer, unclear to herself if it was because she thought herself immune, or him incapable of directing it towards her. But she nodded along with his words. Acquiescing beneath their judgement.

“We are different, yes.” A breath. “By more than halves. Or full measures."

She gave a faint, tired shrug. “But different doesn’t have to be a bad thing. And you're right... perhaps we truly don't know each other. And I should have spent more time asking."

Farren wanted that, even these ugly parts. They weren't ugly, not to her. "Do you think..." hesitant for the raw shaping of the words, trying to commit herself to vulnerability, despite all the wounds in her flesh and those thus given, "we could come to a place where we can try again? Because I would like to get to know you, if you'd let me."

@Aarno
 
Last edited:

Full measures. He nodded, sharp. As for the rest—

His frown didn’t relent, keeping through the bits of surprise and wonder that washed over him. Doused the rest of the fire and left but an ember, smoking and faintly flickering with latent heat. Red.

Try again? A strange sensation bloomed in his stomach, sinking the bottom off it. Like indecision, dread or maybe indigestion. And his chest felt crowded, heart and lungs full and empty at the same time, clasped in a deathgrip of the ribs. What the fuck was this?

He swallowed, wiping a hand over his deadpan face. Stroked it to the back of his neck and rubbed at it, found it tense. Blew out a breath.

“ I need to piss. “

In a swift turn, he walked out.
 
"Aarn-" The name faltered on her lips, half-realized before she could stop herself, tempering that desire to follow. Her hand, outstretched, hovered a beat longer before it wilted to her side, watching the flap of the yurt sigh closed behind him, the weighted air fleeing on his heels.

That was fine. If he wanted to leave, he could leave. She was hardly one to judge him for his need to escape— eight above knew she had been half a breath from running herself.

“Right,” she muttered while rubbing the heels of her palms over her eyes with a humorless huff of laughter. “Romance.”

A little lost, Farren looked around, her eyes catching on the abandoned clove oil bottle she had tossed earlier. A saddened expression overtook her as she picked it up, the remnant of something that had started so sweet.

Her gaze drifted to the bed, where the brush still lay, and her fingers twitched with the memory of combing through his hair, giving him simple pleasure in the preening and untangling of knots. How intimately mundane it had been to care for him in that way. It had been easy, and natural, and it had been theirs.

Something about that struck her then, absurd and precious all at once for the wanting agony of it.

Would she ever get to do that again?

The thought cracked something open. And with nothing else to be strong for now that she was left behind— the wall she’d built crumpled like faulty stone, and suddenly she was clutching that bottle to her chest like an anchor as all the grief she had poured and poured into the fractures between them came flooding back.

Farren tipped her head back, trying to keep the tears at bay, as if gravity might spare her this last humiliation.

But just like all rains returned to cleanse the earth, they came anyway. Hot, steady tracks burned her cheeks. Her breath stuttered, but the tears were endless despite the will to keep her pieces together.

It was too much. His expressions, the look of disdain she thought she'd seen, the disappointment. They haunted her. She would have rather he fucking stabbed her than ever look at her like that again.

It left her with this tangle of questioned worth, bitter anger at her own failures, and despite it all, that damned longing.

Her mind tore through the bramble of every word, every step, every touch between them. The soft smiles by firelight grew claws. The quiet looks bared teeth.

So what came now?

She wiped her cheeks with the heel of her hand, sniffed hard, and stared at the bed, the clove bottle still clenched in her palm.

Oh.

There was no other place for Aarno to sleep. It was either in here or outside.

Farren wasn't going to assume they'd still share a bed after that display. And wouldn't force him to endure her proximity like that any longer than he desired to. But Farren knew how much walking they had done today. Thought about his knee. The ache in his bones. The bruising heat of what they’d shared before they'd stumbled in its aftermath.

The bed was his then. The pelts underfoot were soft, and this would not be her first time sleeping on the floor.

She moved to her pack and dumped the clove bottle inside, then sifted through it until her fingers closed around the smooth weight of the topical liniment oil Syr Josai had given her, who had assured her that it was nothing Aarno wasn't used to for his knee.

Farren placed it gingerly on the bed for him.

Even if he didn’t come back.

Even if he did.

She lingered there for a moment, gaze sweeping the tent like she didn’t quite know where else to go. Then her eyes found the vanity— her bells right where she'd left them.

Her fingers reached for the one she always did.

Cool metal met her skin, and its faint pulse felt like a balm. The relief of it rippling through her, for she could shed this aching shape and breathe again, even if only for a night.

The change came quietly. The soft chiming of a bell as her form unraveled and reknit. Silver fire flared and danced into a familiar shape.

Farren the wolf stood where the woman had been.

She padded across the yurt to the foot of the bed, claws muffled by the thick pelts underpaw. Her nose twitched, her ears flicking at the soft creaks of the tent, the distant hush of the wind against canvas, and the voices floating still in the night.

She turned once. Then twice.

And curled into herself with a tired sigh, tail draped over her nose, a single black shape in a dim tent— waiting.

It took longer than she would admit, but eventually, she closed her eyes and tried not to listen for the sound of returning footsteps. Their cadence the same beat of her bruised heart.

@Aarno
 
He stood at the edge of the woods with his cock in his hand, the other braced against the trunk of a pine by his side. No shoes — He’d realized that the moment he’d exited the damn yurt and felt all the rough and the soft of the ground underfoot. The cold of the small layer of snow.

What a fucking sight he must’ve struck, properly blazing through the camp, ignoring everyone and everything, beelining for whatever looked dark and remote. Small graces that none tried to talk to him, clever and instinctive people as they were, for he may well have been inspired to shout anew. Fuck off. All of you. I fucking loathe it here.

And maybe that was true. But he had definitely enjoyed things too. It was easier to admit when he was just staring down, colder and emptier, rewinding through it all. A heat welled up in his eyes and he hated how it felt.

“ Fuck. Me. Fuck. “ He brushed a palm over his face, tried at the edges that grief, or maybe remorse, twisted to shape. Tried to exorcise them in a deeper breath and couldn’t quite decide whether it worked. Another pained exhale left him steaming into the night air, just as the fucking piss he’d truly had to get out of him.

But that was done now. And he couldn’t just stand here forever, lest he fancied losing more than his temper, his good graces, his— whatever they’d been to each other. His skin was already hurting from the unforgiving air, that soothing first shock of the chill replaced by a prickling. There wasn’t but to go back or brave explaining all to someone he didn’t know, but whom had surely heard all of it. They had been properly shouting towards the end.

Fuck that. I’d rather cut my own throat.

Without properly feeling it, hands numb, he fumbled himself back into his braies and turned.


*​


He’d lingered a moment longer and purely for his own sake. To gather composure, to close up what’d cracked, colder for it in every sense of the word. The way in opened in a measured brush of the arm and still he felt it too swift. Too harsh for how it broke the silence in the yurt, which he entered sure and steady like he owned it. A wrathful spirit come back to what was his to haunt, expressionless and ice to the touch.

What the fuck—

The sight that welcomed him sent a jolt through his stomach. From her, a mere dark heap on the floor, to the empty bed with— something like a gift on it. Who the fuck was this for, exactly? Whose comfort? Disgust and the weakest anger bubbled through him, drawing his face and shoulders taut as he moved further in.

Fragrant water splished as he dipped his hands in the basin. Linen unfolded and rustled, until being let down back on the vanity, careless and weary. The mattress and the pelts on the bedclothes huffed as he sat down, or rather, let himself fall to a seat. Sharp movements as he pulled the laces open on his hose and wrenched them off, one after another.

What the fuck was she thinking, that’d he’d just—

He took up the box and tossed it on the floor. Climbed on further into the bed and made himself perfectly horizontal on one side of it, halfway beneath a covering, settling into the comfort that wasn’t there. Silence that no longer felt like anything. Just— empty. Not with an emptiness that was natural, but heavy and loud with unspoken words. His eyes were blank as he laid in it, tense with sentences that he kept tearing apart for how they didn’t satisfy both the core sentiment in his chest and the sense of propriety that cohabited with it. Standards.

He didn’t know how long it was before he spoke. But eventually, he did. Not the whole range of what he wanted to say, but what felt appropriate. A reduction of it all.

“ Are you— “ Firm and steady, sure she could yet hear him. “ Truly, more comfortable on the floor? Because if not— “

With conviction.

" It's not like you can't fit up here. "
 
Her ears twitched at the sound of the yurt flap shifting, heart skittering to life in a sudden, all too-alive rhythm. But Farren resisted moving or opening her eyes. Working to steady her breaths into long, slow pulls to sell the lie of sleep— if only so she wouldn't startle him. If only to keep the peace.

She listened instead.

And when she realized he discarded the linement she brought, she sighed internally at his stubbornness— he would feel that in the morning. Oh well.

The weight of him shifted in the bed, and Farren was prepared to settle back in and count his breaths like sheep until his voice broke the quiet. Addressing her as if he believed her awake.

It made her entire body tense up, like she had been caught in a great deception— almost like... he knew her well enough to know she couldn't have fallen asleep until he returned? The lamplight had gone out sometime while she pretended to sleep, but the dark made his voice feel closer, softer. Less thorns in their garden. It caught in her fur like smoke.

Her head lifted, ears swiveling toward the bed.

Aarno said:
" It's not like you can't fit up here. "
Click to expand...

That spurred her to rise, slinking within shadows like the void between stars. Silently, she rested her chin on the edge of the bed. Watching him with those moon-silver eyes, pupil-less and unblinking in the dark. Her gaze searched his face, tracing the swell beneath his eyes. The exhaustion worn raw that felt a twin to her own.

Soft peeling whines slipped from her chest. Half was in concern for him, and half in uncertainty that she would be genuinely welcomed at his side.

@Aarno
 
It was enough to inspire a stir. He remained grave, watching the darkness rise and lay its head on the softest bedclothes. Met its eyes. How it wouldn’t take the offer, hesitating.

He wouldn’t. A struggle to relax rippled through him as he let his head fall slack on the pillow. Letting her go from beneath his stare that’d examine her no more, not implore, not put weight. No expectation.

Weary and softer for it, he tapped the empty space on the sheets by him with the palm of his hand.
 
The mattress dipped under her as she leapt up beside him, the dense weight of her wolf form sinking easily into the space he had left for her. For a beat, she lingered, snout brushing his wrist before she gently nudged beneath his hand. Pressed her head beneath the crook of his arm and curled against the length of him, the shape of forgiveness drawn in the spiral of her large body tucked at his side.

She folded her paws beneath her belly and, after a moment’s hesitation, giving him the chance to push her away and praying his mercy, settled her heavy muzzle to rest on his chest. The sigh she released was long and full, a breath that dragged her anxiety out with it and left it behind in the dark.

His hand rested atop her head, and under that warmth, she felt herself unspool.

The wolf licked her teeth and gave a great yawn, watching him through half-lidded eyes. This form would listen. This wordless shape could be the buffer to let him speak, if he wanted.

For now, with their fragile armistice between them, Farren found, helplessly, foolishly, almost fondly, she hoped he at least thought she was soft to pet.

@Aarno
 
He let his eyes drift shut when the mattress jolted beneath the great shape he’d invited upon it. The rustling and the shift of the clothes, a shiver of fur that was warm and ticklish against his chilled skin. She settled terribly close, closer than the sight of her just seconds before could’ve ever promised. He didn’t move away or flinch, malleable against her shape that’d sink down and over.

His breath drew in, deep, and let out in a huff. Just content. For how he’d not had to fight her, to not speak again and give reason for why he had to. It was better this way.

His hand stroked back on the top of her head, the softest fur. Just the once, before remaining at rest behind those large, lupine ears. Triangles of silk, ever alert, that’d shimmer in the lamplight when he cracked his eyes open. Just to glance at her on the sly, mapping the dark shape of her.

Suppose it was rather— adorable. Had he not felt so damn sad for what'd wrought it.

His free hand reached out for the lamp on the bedside, snuffed it out with a pinch. The resulting blackness was almost absolute and he didn't wait for his eyes to adjust, pressing them shut and shifting beneath the weight of her. Gently, like out of fear of rousing a sleeping bedfellow.

Good night. He didn't speak it. But perhaps it'd be understood regardless.
 
Sleep had been heavy and dreamless, as if Farren had been dropped into the old belly of the earth and buried in dark comfort. Her breath came deep and shallow— and in slow increments, her body remembered how to wake. But in quickening thoughts, she noted stark differences between last night and now. A long human exhale ghosted the hollow of a chest, and Farren realized it was her own, caught in the quiet space where her breath met his skin.

She had shifted sometime in the night. Without memory or intention of doing so. The bell must have settled her back into herself while she slept, and now, instead of Aarno's fingers buried in her fur, their limbs tangled in casual poetry. Her face half-buried in the warmth of his chest, her breath collecting in the soft place between collarbone and throat.

No part of her wished to break this spell they'd spun.

Let the sun rise and the walls collapse first. Let anything come before the necessity of words. Reluctant as she was to face them under the harsher light of day. Content to lie here, and pretend, just a little longer, that morning hadn’t come.

@Aarno
 
He’d slept like the dead. Felt like one waking up too, stiff and with a weight upon him. Strangely hollowed out beneath it, worms crawling in the cavity of his chest. He breathed out carefully at the above, as if afraid his ribs might cave if he dared draw in more air.

It was endlessly warm and soft where himself ended and something else begun, all around. This is a damn good bed. He had to decide it as such, for the lack of aches in his body. As far as bones and joints were concerned, anyway.

Was she still asleep? He glanced down at her shape, different from the one she'd climbed up in, but still and seemingly at peace, too close that he may have read the expression on her face. Suppose it didn't matter, for how so many things felt too damn far gone. So in an inhale he shifted, turning to his side and slipping both his arms around her, embracing their bodies together. Pressed his lips on the top of her head, that unruly mess of hair.

Rested the eyes a moment longer.
 
It was tragic, in the way that that kiss stopped her heart.
And more tragic still for the way it lurched back to life at his bidding.

Stirring with sleep-soft murmurs and half-objections at being moved, his arms closing around her drew a pleasant prickling warmth across her scalp—enough to melt her indignance and send her burrowing closer into the cradle of his chest. Her cheek rubbed against the rough silk of his chest hair, breath catching as her arms slid up along his torso, hands smoothing along the tight pull of his scapulas, and she brushed a languid kiss over the waking thump of his heart. Humming appreciatively at the way her hands fit into all the divots of his strong back.

Eyes still heavy, she blinked them open at last, tracking the faint web of veins in his inner bicep before following the golden spill of morning light that had just begun to filter through the seams of the yurt.

Her lashes fluttered, and her breath sighed out with contentment, lazy and thick with sleep. Now was as good a time as any.

“Mm,” her voice pitched low, for fear of stirring the air. “How are you feeling?”

@Aarno
 
Come question, the inevitable. He didn’t entirely know what it meant, what it was asking, so he let it rest betwixt them. Not out of fear of answering, but for what it’d do once he did, depending which he chose. Either way, it’d be the truth.

“ Like a stone at the bottom of a pond. Looking out. “ He muttered belatedly, adjusting his grip about her in an absent stroke about her back and shoulders. “ I think there’s fish. And clouds, far away. “ Hummed out a breath into her hair and held a little tighter, not bothering to rouse yet. Stare shut away.

“ Yourself? “
 
Farren's sigh feathered with the flavor of remorse. Whatever anger she’d clung to from last night, righteous, and blistering— felt far away now, softened by the safety of his arms and the warmth of his body.

All that remained was the lingering sting of how things were said, no longer the why behind them.

Her fingers drifted to his hair, carding gently through the strands at his nape, like she could soothe something there, whether him, herself, or the ache between them.

She took her time before speaking, brow drawn, voice low and careful with how she placed her words. She had had enough of them misunderstanding each other.

"Like…" A pause. "Like I was skipping stones in that pond.”

She leaned back, solemn and searching, and suddenly needing to see his face.

“Without even asking them first if they wanted to live in the dark with the fish.”

@Aarno
 
He felt her shift, taking distance. Heard her looking — Was no way she wasn’t with words like that. He met the gaze sluggishly, eyeing her in turn.

Perhaps he would’ve felt better if she’d also been angry for the things he’d done. His bullshit letters, the running off, the resentment, the stubbornness and the whinging, the fact that he should’ve shouted to begin with —

“ This isn’t the darkness at the bottom. “ He replied, soft but matter-of-fact, bringing one hand to try her cheek with the backs of fingers. “ But we’ll get there. “

And he believed it. Drew breath carefully, remaining serious as his look drifted towards the end of the bed, looking beyond her.

“ Why did you try and sleep on the floor? “
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom