[Palanquins might be dignified, but the protest she'd put up would be anything but.]
'A little cold,' he says.
[That little grumbled huff is all she adds before lapsing into quiet, listening intently while he gifts her with a story, another sliver of the life he led put in her careful palms. These little moments he gives her are treasure. It's not hard to picture an infamously deadly mountain in the place of his childhood home, though she doubts a peak like Kechu or Sagarmatha could match the scale of 'the House of the Four Winds'. Picturing Calhir as small and bristling in a blizzard is a much harder image to conjure.]
I'm guessing you learned to like playing in the snow?
[Relaxing into the tighter hold, she shoots him an amused look, his cheeky comment getting answered with a waggish one.]
[Definitely an alarming statement. His definition of rambunctious with solid ground beneath them is already concerning enough. She tightens her claim on his arm, leaning her rib cage into the proceedings like that adds any extra weight — or more likely, protection — to the gesture.]
What kind of terror were you raising?
[Any hope of holding on to a fun, kittenish tone is bled right out of her as her mind fills in more details than his words offer, and her face colors deeper than what the cold inspired. Mouthing 'Twice—?' to herself, she slumps, sinking in his hold, turning away and burying her face in the fur-lining of her cloak and her own snow-damp hair.]
Can't you let me get away with teasing you every once in awhile?
[ He feels the grip, the protectiveness in it, even though he's describing a past now gone. A mixed feeling, because it does chafe at his pride, and yet... that openness with her emotions is much of what he loves about her. He can think of little he'd regret more than if she learned to hide what she was feeling to spare him. ]
Drift diving, avalanche racing...
[ The names of games invented by maniacs or very bored children, for sure.
...the wilting reaction to his retort would be concerning if it wasn't so funny. He barely said anything and she did all the rest. He cuts off a laugh. ]
Sorry, sorry. Your imagination ran right away with that one, didn't it?
[Or the descriptors for suicidal dares! Even if she didn't grow up with heavy snowfall and mountain peaks, she knows avalanches by sheer destructive reputation. The past may be the past, but the idea of him playing some ill-considered game of chicken with a ruthless consequence of gravity makes her stomach turn.]
That's not something you're planning on repeating, right?
[There is a restlessness in the question, likely put there by a highlight reel playing in her head of the average, everyday sort of cavalier things he does. No need to add a rematch with Mother Nature.
The look she shoots him as that laugh cuts off could almost pretend at being scathing, if not for the plain embarrassment accompanying it, or the pout.]
I'm not going that stir-crazy. And you need an audience for feats of daring.
[ The red-tinged face that turns to him to stubbornly deny the obvious almost sets him laughing again, and he has to look away to preserve what remains of her dignity. Only for a moment, though; once he's fought it back he decides he wants to see more of that expression after all, and he turns to lift her up so that they're face-to-face. ]
[There is no salvaging her dignity at this juncture, especially not with him picking her up like she weighs nothing, forcing her face-to-face with him. Her still cold fingers scrabble free of her sleeves to catch his arms in protest, and she tries to avoid meeting his eyes, looking stubbornly away at one of the heavy woven tapestries hung over the windows, red-faced and stubborn. But it's not nearly as hostile as the decent impression of a startled, puffed up cat she is doing calls for.]
... ruinous. [She tucks her chin back against her shoulder, mumbling:] It's well-established my stamina is finite.
Ruinous? Does it feel that bad? Being at that point of exhaustion? Going beyond?
[ Serious, curious, almost innocently asked. For being the one who'd be doing the ruining in question. And he is curious, just what the shape of her enjoyment is and what limits he needs to respect... but he's not unaware that earnestly asking her to expand on the topic when she's getting embarrassed will probably embarrass her more. The misfortune of having too cute a pout. ]
[That barrage of questions make her hands tighten, and pull a discontent litany of muffled noises out of her. For someone who loves her, he is such a bully, too quick to corner her with his curiosity when she is so flustered she wants to squirm right out of his hands. And for what? To get her to describe what being that spent and overstimulated feels like? To hear her say it sometimes already aches in best worst way, enough to make her cry in relief? To admit the muscles in her thighs will tremble the next day in the least opportune moment and remind her of him viscerally? To build onto his already too healthy ego?]
It just— it feels like—
[Like Heaven is sparing her blushes in his place as a droplet of melted snow slides down the nape of her neck and down between her shoulder blades, setting off a shiver and a trio of kitten sneezes.]
...you're cute even when you're sneezing in my face.
[ Unfair. She was turned away. Mostly. But feeling her shiver like that... he does feel a twinge of guilt. He played with her too long. ]
I said I could at least keep you warm and I didn't. [ He shakes his head, remorseful. Exaggerated but not false. ] Time for bed.
[ ...it would be nice if he carried her over bridal style, same as he brought her in, but when she's already in his hands and it's all of fifteen feet to the bed... she's getting carried over like the cat she resembles. He flips the cover back with his tail and sets her down...
Then doffs his top and climbs right in on top of her. Still otherwise clothed so it seems like this is just his idea of the quickest way to warm her up. And he's probably not wrong, overall, but a few more bit of melting slush drip from his plumage, dripping down onto her. ]
[There's a slightly stuffy, 'Sorry,' issued from where she hastily buried her face in her shoulder, a few seconds too late to catch herself, and just a few moments before he carts her off towards the bed. Her legs kick a little in transit, treading air until he deposits her on the mattress. Time for bed, like he said.
Not that she has long to even attempt to wriggle out of her damp outer layers or the thick boots she was kitted out with when Calhir decides to settle right on top of her, like an extra large chicken trying to nest. She starts to argue with his proclamation to stay just like that and warm up, when slush dribbles off of his feathers and hits the thinner, bare skin of her neck, making her squeak at the sharp, sudden cold. A second bit striking her jaw sets her wriggling and squirming, struggling to get some distance before a third hits, hands pressing up against against his chest.]
[ ...a rumble passes through him when her hands press up on him, discontent that it's turning him on more than he expected to be, even as he realizes the problem and rises up slightly, giving her room to move and grabbing the corner of the blanket to dab the melt from her face. ]
Sorry. Do you want to move down?
[ The drip is coming off his shoulders and 'hair', so if she's just under his chest she should be fine! A little suffocating, maybe, but it's... not like she should be entirely unused to that position, at this point. ]
[Wedging herself up, she turns her cheek into the soft blanket and his care, welcoming the removal of the melted snow from her skin. Her legs are too firmly pinned to remedy half her complaints, but while one hand stays firmly where she was pressing at his chest, the other withdraws, going to the fastener at her collarbone, hidden in the fur.]
But I don't think I need my cloak and boots in bed...
[ His turn to be a little embarrassed. Was he so hasty out of concern for her sneezing, or was he just that eager to get in bed with her? Up further, on his knees, lifting the blanket like a tent. He reaches, feeling his way down her legs to the boots - a perhaps not strictly necessary approach, but then he does want to feel how damp her bottoms are and do away with those, too, if it's too much. But first the boots come off. ]
[The further he feels down her legs, the more obvious the snow depth outside becomes, measured in progressively worse off fabric starting from low on her thigh. The thick riding boots apparently have kept her from actually feeling how wet and cold the legs of her trousers got below the knee. Until they're pulled off, of course, and then she experiences it for herself, hissing softly at the feel against her skin.]
[ Plenty of room for her to scoot out on her own, at this point, but he obliges, shifting to kneel at her side, a hand settled at hers in case she wants any help, a small frown emerging at the hissing sound she made. The other runs through his feathers, trying to cast out those insidious ice crystals that were attacking her. ]
I'll come wait for you there, next time.
[ The best he can offer by way of apology, for making her trudge out like this. ]
[Scooting off the edge of the mattress, she first unfastens her cloak rather than working around it, dropping the mass of fabric and fur onto the edge of the bed, before moving on to divesting herself of the offending pants. It takes a little bit of fiddling through the parts in her outer robes to find the drawstrings, but then it's easy enough to slip them off her hips and kick unceremoniously free of the soggy, cold fabric.]
Not sure that would go over well. The guards are all on edge up there. Not that I can blame them...
[That is just the evidence and aftermath of a years long usurpation and civil war.
Patting down the rest of her clothes, she deems the longest outer layer to be too damp as well, quickly untying it and slipping it off to join the cloak, before smoothing her palms down her hair, checking for anything she needs to wring out. Satisfied there isn't, she crawls back up to settle next to Calhir, tucking her very chilled legs against him to start leeching some of his warmth.]
Takasato did sound curious to meet you, but I think that might have to wait until we're back in Kei.
[ He rumbles a disgruntled acknowledgement. That was why he was quartered down here in the first place. ]
...is there anything I can do for you? While we're here?
[ He should be gathering up those soggy clothes and hanging them by the fire, but it's hard when Youko's warming her poor cold legs against him. And, more selfishly, when she'll have to stay a bit longer if they're slower to dry. He pulls the covers back over her and rubs her calves with his hands, trying to restore them. ]
This doesn't suit someone as warm as you.
[ She's a summer creature in his mind, warm to touch. She just doesn't feel her usual self like this. ]
[At that grousing noise, she shifts so she can settle a hand against his knee, thumbing gently at the scales, considering what he could do. Making him wait around for her like a concubine, bored and ignored, wasn't remotely the goal of setting this up. She had honestly hoped he would enjoy the change of scenery and that by the summit's end she might have been able to introduce him to Takasato — the boy from her world who became Tai Taiho — but the atmosphere in Hakkei Palace is still too tense for suggesting something like that. There is one idea that comes to mind and that she thinks he'd be adept at, but it makes her uncomfortable to imagine issuing real orders to him.]
Do you want me to give you an assignment?
[Picking at the edge of the covers, she lets herself lay back down into the spot he'd placed her originally, pulling the thick comforter with her, watching him and his concentrated efforts with a small smile.]
Mm. You're probably right about that. When it snowed where I grew up — [She slips her free hand out from under the covers, spreading out her pinky and thumb as far from the three middle fingers as she can stretch them.] — it was only about this much in the whole season.
[ As she lies down he scoots back, letting her rest her legs in his lap while he warms them. Bare torso free of the covers, but then, this is still warmer than the outside and that hadn't bothered him.
Does he want an assignment? They've never sought to resolve the issue, as to whether he's formally a servant of hers. A member of her household is a subject, a visiting traveler being hosted by the court is not. And certainly he is a traveler - by his foreign birth, and by his nature, his wings that carry him from anywhere he does not wish to be.
But it's hard to say he's a visitor in spirit. When he shares her bed so often, when the thought of leaving her feels like a lance through the heart. Usually, it simply doesn't matter, because she wasn't born to thinking of herself as a ruler any more than he was used to thinking of himself as ruled.
In a command from her there's always a sense of that comfortable ambiguity eroding. Even when she asks first. But it also isn't as if only the ambiguity is good, and everything he might be defined as is bad. The same urge that had resolved him to follow her here regardless of her arrangements did not want the comfort of being a bedmate only, without responsibilities. ]
I do. But...
Right now... I am glad you asked first.
[ That's all he can really say. Unless one counts trying to blunt the moment with questionable jokes. ]
Better than I should get too bored and terrorize the courtesans.
[Watching him consider it makes her worry her lower lip, wondering if the suggestion would hang sour notes in an otherwise sweet moment of comfort. It has long been important to her that Calhir not be a subject. She has friends and confidants who straddle the divide of that servant-master bond with her and it is done with grace, but a lover doesn't belong there. Honestly, that keeps her from making a real suggestion of putting him up as a consort as readily as his own history does. No one stands beside the ruler, but in keeping these things ambiguous, there is a level of denial.
But he finally replies and Youko breathes out a sigh she didn't realize she was holding, relief relaxing her that last boneless fingerbreadth into the mattress, limbs going slack. She smiles up at him from her bed backing of red curls, chin ducking just under the corner of the comforter.]
You have a right to choose. I want to preserve that...
[Though she can't help scoffing and nudging him with her foot at the reappearance of his questionable brand of humor.]
They'll drink you under the table and take all your money doing it.
[She murmurs a soft assent, inching further down beneath the covers, steeping in the warmth that trust instills in her. It means something to have that, especially when she is still chipping away daily at the shape they wanted her slotted into.
That embellished performance with all his sighing pulls a laugh out of her.]
Well... I don't struggle to keep pace with your drinking.
As she settles and he feels her tension vanish his focus on warming her lower legs gives way to... curiosity is the wrong word, as much as he's explored her before, but the desire to renew that familiarity, and his hands move up, stroking her thighs. There's still a diligence to it, like he could just sit here and do nothing else for an hour, but his eyes are a little more intent on her than they were. ]
Yes, but you like to underestimate human resilience.
[Is there some crude allusion in that? Almost certainly not, least of all intentionally, but she can't control how it's heard.
The feeling of his hands slipping up from her calves draw little notice until they settle on her thighs, and even then there could be deniability in how soft the hitch of her breath is as he strokes her skin. The way her muscles tense, like she is resisting an impulse to clench her legs together, and the color renewed on her cheekbones as looks back at him from over the lip of the covers, is a far greater tell.]
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[Palanquins might be dignified, but the protest she'd put up would be anything but.]
'A little cold,' he says.
[That little grumbled huff is all she adds before lapsing into quiet, listening intently while he gifts her with a story, another sliver of the life he led put in her careful palms. These little moments he gives her are treasure. It's not hard to picture an infamously deadly mountain in the place of his childhood home, though she doubts a peak like Kechu or Sagarmatha could match the scale of 'the House of the Four Winds'. Picturing Calhir as small and bristling in a blizzard is a much harder image to conjure.]
I'm guessing you learned to like playing in the snow?
[Relaxing into the tighter hold, she shoots him an amused look, his cheeky comment getting answered with a waggish one.]
If left... unattended? Who can say.
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[ A perhaps alarming statement when combined with knowledge of how blase he can be about his physical resilience. ]
I was... rambunctious.
[ ...in other, less innocent senses, he may still be. He raises an eyebrow at her ambivalent response. ]
I didn't realize I was leaving you cold. I promise from now on I'll last twice as long.
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[Definitely an alarming statement. His definition of rambunctious with solid ground beneath them is already concerning enough. She tightens her claim on his arm, leaning her rib cage into the proceedings like that adds any extra weight — or more likely, protection — to the gesture.]
What kind of terror were you raising?
[Any hope of holding on to a fun, kittenish tone is bled right out of her as her mind fills in more details than his words offer, and her face colors deeper than what the cold inspired. Mouthing 'Twice—?' to herself, she slumps, sinking in his hold, turning away and burying her face in the fur-lining of her cloak and her own snow-damp hair.]
Can't you let me get away with teasing you every once in awhile?
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[ He feels the grip, the protectiveness in it, even though he's describing a past now gone. A mixed feeling, because it does chafe at his pride, and yet... that openness with her emotions is much of what he loves about her. He can think of little he'd regret more than if she learned to hide what she was feeling to spare him. ]
Drift diving, avalanche racing...
[ The names of games invented by maniacs or very bored children, for sure.
...the wilting reaction to his retort would be concerning if it wasn't so funny. He barely said anything and she did all the rest. He cuts off a laugh. ]
Sorry, sorry. Your imagination ran right away with that one, didn't it?
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That's not something you're planning on repeating, right?
[There is a restlessness in the question, likely put there by a highlight reel playing in her head of the average, everyday sort of cavalier things he does. No need to add a rematch with Mother Nature.
The look she shoots him as that laugh cuts off could almost pretend at being scathing, if not for the plain embarrassment accompanying it, or the pout.]
... no.
[Yes.]
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[ The red-tinged face that turns to him to stubbornly deny the obvious almost sets him laughing again, and he has to look away to preserve what remains of her dignity. Only for a moment, though; once he's fought it back he decides he wants to see more of that expression after all, and he turns to lift her up so that they're face-to-face. ]
Would having a little more of me be so bad?
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... ruinous. [She tucks her chin back against her shoulder, mumbling:] It's well-established my stamina is finite.
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[ Serious, curious, almost innocently asked. For being the one who'd be doing the ruining in question. And he is curious, just what the shape of her enjoyment is and what limits he needs to respect... but he's not unaware that earnestly asking her to expand on the topic when she's getting embarrassed will probably embarrass her more. The misfortune of having too cute a pout. ]
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It just— it feels like—
[Like Heaven is sparing her blushes in his place as a droplet of melted snow slides down the nape of her neck and down between her shoulder blades, setting off a shiver and a trio of kitten sneezes.]
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...you're cute even when you're sneezing in my face.
[ Unfair. She was turned away. Mostly. But feeling her shiver like that... he does feel a twinge of guilt. He played with her too long. ]
I said I could at least keep you warm and I didn't. [ He shakes his head, remorseful. Exaggerated but not false. ] Time for bed.
[ ...it would be nice if he carried her over bridal style, same as he brought her in, but when she's already in his hands and it's all of fifteen feet to the bed... she's getting carried over like the cat she resembles. He flips the cover back with his tail and sets her down...
Then doffs his top and climbs right in on top of her. Still otherwise clothed so it seems like this is just his idea of the quickest way to warm her up. And he's probably not wrong, overall, but a few more bit of melting slush drip from his plumage, dripping down onto her. ]
Just stay like that and warm up.
[ Very serious about that. ]
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Not that she has long to even attempt to wriggle out of her damp outer layers or the thick boots she was kitted out with when Calhir decides to settle right on top of her, like an extra large chicken trying to nest. She starts to argue with his proclamation to stay just like that and warm up, when slush dribbles off of his feathers and hits the thinner, bare skin of her neck, making her squeak at the sharp, sudden cold. A second bit striking her jaw sets her wriggling and squirming, struggling to get some distance before a third hits, hands pressing up against against his chest.]
Calhir—
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Sorry. Do you want to move down?
[ The drip is coming off his shoulders and 'hair', so if she's just under his chest she should be fine! A little suffocating, maybe, but it's... not like she should be entirely unused to that position, at this point. ]
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[Wedging herself up, she turns her cheek into the soft blanket and his care, welcoming the removal of the melted snow from her skin. Her legs are too firmly pinned to remedy half her complaints, but while one hand stays firmly where she was pressing at his chest, the other withdraws, going to the fastener at her collarbone, hidden in the fur.]
But I don't think I need my cloak and boots in bed...
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[ His turn to be a little embarrassed. Was he so hasty out of concern for her sneezing, or was he just that eager to get in bed with her? Up further, on his knees, lifting the blanket like a tent. He reaches, feeling his way down her legs to the boots - a perhaps not strictly necessary approach, but then he does want to feel how damp her bottoms are and do away with those, too, if it's too much. But first the boots come off. ]
Is the rest too damp?
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Apparently, yes. Let me up?
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I'll come wait for you there, next time.
[ The best he can offer by way of apology, for making her trudge out like this. ]
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Not sure that would go over well. The guards are all on edge up there. Not that I can blame them...
[That is just the evidence and aftermath of a years long usurpation and civil war.
Patting down the rest of her clothes, she deems the longest outer layer to be too damp as well, quickly untying it and slipping it off to join the cloak, before smoothing her palms down her hair, checking for anything she needs to wring out. Satisfied there isn't, she crawls back up to settle next to Calhir, tucking her very chilled legs against him to start leeching some of his warmth.]
Takasato did sound curious to meet you, but I think that might have to wait until we're back in Kei.
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...is there anything I can do for you? While we're here?
[ He should be gathering up those soggy clothes and hanging them by the fire, but it's hard when Youko's warming her poor cold legs against him. And, more selfishly, when she'll have to stay a bit longer if they're slower to dry. He pulls the covers back over her and rubs her calves with his hands, trying to restore them. ]
This doesn't suit someone as warm as you.
[ She's a summer creature in his mind, warm to touch. She just doesn't feel her usual self like this. ]
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Do you want me to give you an assignment?
[Picking at the edge of the covers, she lets herself lay back down into the spot he'd placed her originally, pulling the thick comforter with her, watching him and his concentrated efforts with a small smile.]
Mm. You're probably right about that. When it snowed where I grew up — [She slips her free hand out from under the covers, spreading out her pinky and thumb as far from the three middle fingers as she can stretch them.] — it was only about this much in the whole season.
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Does he want an assignment? They've never sought to resolve the issue, as to whether he's formally a servant of hers. A member of her household is a subject, a visiting traveler being hosted by the court is not. And certainly he is a traveler - by his foreign birth, and by his nature, his wings that carry him from anywhere he does not wish to be.
But it's hard to say he's a visitor in spirit. When he shares her bed so often, when the thought of leaving her feels like a lance through the heart. Usually, it simply doesn't matter, because she wasn't born to thinking of herself as a ruler any more than he was used to thinking of himself as ruled.
In a command from her there's always a sense of that comfortable ambiguity eroding. Even when she asks first. But it also isn't as if only the ambiguity is good, and everything he might be defined as is bad. The same urge that had resolved him to follow her here regardless of her arrangements did not want the comfort of being a bedmate only, without responsibilities. ]
I do. But...
Right now... I am glad you asked first.
[ That's all he can really say. Unless one counts trying to blunt the moment with questionable jokes. ]
Better than I should get too bored and terrorize the courtesans.
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But he finally replies and Youko breathes out a sigh she didn't realize she was holding, relief relaxing her that last boneless fingerbreadth into the mattress, limbs going slack. She smiles up at him from her bed backing of red curls, chin ducking just under the corner of the comforter.]
You have a right to choose. I want to preserve that...
[Though she can't help scoffing and nudging him with her foot at the reappearance of his questionable brand of humor.]
They'll drink you under the table and take all your money doing it.
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[ Said warmly; not a retort that her wants don't matter but an acknowledgment of the trust he has in her.
Enough to joke even when she's poking at his vaunted constitution. He sighs, all exaggerated dismay and wounded pride. ]
I'll never understand how you can have such respect for my stamina but none for my stomach.
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That embellished performance with all his sighing pulls a laugh out of her.]
Well... I don't struggle to keep pace with your drinking.
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[ That's his story and he's sticking to it.
As she settles and he feels her tension vanish his focus on warming her lower legs gives way to... curiosity is the wrong word, as much as he's explored her before, but the desire to renew that familiarity, and his hands move up, stroking her thighs. There's still a diligence to it, like he could just sit here and do nothing else for an hour, but his eyes are a little more intent on her than they were. ]
Feeling warmer?
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[Is there some crude allusion in that? Almost certainly not, least of all intentionally, but she can't control how it's heard.
The feeling of his hands slipping up from her calves draw little notice until they settle on her thighs, and even then there could be deniability in how soft the hitch of her breath is as he strokes her skin. The way her muscles tense, like she is resisting an impulse to clench her legs together, and the color renewed on her cheekbones as looks back at him from over the lip of the covers, is a far greater tell.]
Sort of. Starting to get there.
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