"No." She could give a more nuanced answer--Byerly might under some conditions, but doesn't know how. Flint would if he needed to use it or if the lack of it somehow irritated him enough. Stark would design an entirely knew bucketless self-winding mechanism or eliminate the need for water entirely. But that's not important and, "Thinking about them is not conducive to relaxing." She tips a dry smile up at him, leaning back into the curve of his arm.
"She left us some food as well, so we won't need to go back to the village until tomorrow." She strokes a fingertip down the center of Rosana's little head, following the line of darker fur. "I might do very little today. What do you think of that?"
He laughs, first--"A thousand apologies, darling, you're right--" and gives a firmer rub to her back as if somehow to clear the unwelcome thought straight out of her. The thing of being home is that it's like being at sea, where there's none but those you brought aboard to think of, and very little beyond. Chores are daily necessities, steps you've got to take to keep yourself alive and the house in order. Neighbors are all well and good for while you're away, but you don't have to see them whenever you step into the corridor. Why ruin that?
"And I think it's an excellent idea, that. Doing very little. If you were talking to be and not Rosana--but she'd agree with me anyways."
"She would entirely agree," Yseult shows the corner of her smile to at Darras before turning far enough to catch his eye, "But I was talking to you." She reaches up to rest knuckles against his chest.
"I might go back to bed for a little while, and then we could eat outside in the sun. Maybe do some reading." The lean of her shoulder indicates the shelves of books on the opposite wall, novels and chronicles and poetry and science, dozens of volumes she's read and dozens more she hasn't, rather than the reports quietly accumulating in her magical notebook. "The laundry will wait a day. Will you join me? Or are you itching to get to work?" His enthusiasm for mending thatch and scrubbing floors is remembered well and fondly.
"Hmmm." He lifts her hand and presses a kiss to the back of it--once, and then a second time for good measure. "No sleep for me, not yet. I'll have a look at the roof," predictable, yes, and he kisses her hand a third time as if to stop her from making some comment about it, "and then I'll join you for lunch in the sun. Think I can stand being read to for a bit. How's that sound?"
This is half to Rosana, who gives a yawn so large her whiskers bristle. She, at least, will clearly nap with Yseult.
"Like a fair compromise," Yseult pronounces it, even if Rosana is less convinced. She brushes fingertips across Darras's lips and uncurls legs from the windowsill, sliding to her feet in the narrow space in front of him. A kiss is pressed to his cheek as she steps past. "Be careful on the roof."
She is true to her plan, curling up in their bed atop the covers but with the spare quilt pulled up to her shoulder, Rosana making herself comfortable at Yseult's feet. She is still asleep when he comes in from his chores but rouses after a few minutes, combing a hand through loose hair and wrapping an arm around Darras from behind as he washes up. Lunch is a low-effort tray of sliced bread and cheese with some preserves and cider from the cellar carried out onto a blanket in the grass, along with a book of Nevarran folktales. The sun is warm but soft, the sky dappled with clouds, the span of taller grass between them and the cliff's edge riffled by the breeze.
"I think the sun is brighter here," Darras remarks between stories. Though it was good to see to the roof first thing, he ought to have joined Yseult in her nap. The work and the travel hadn't felt tiring, not during, but now that he's been laying in the sun and in the grass, and now that he's well-fed, and listening to a collection of the pleasantest sounds in the world--the sound of Yseult's voice, the distant waves, the wind ruffling the grass--now he could quite fall asleep, though he hasn't, not yet.
He stretches, arms reached overhead, fingers flexed. Rosana had come out with them and had chosen a spot for her second nap on Darras' chest. Annoyed by the interruption, she holds on to his shirtfront with her claws, which makes him laugh and drop his stretch lest he annoy her any more.
"Maybe it is." Yseult's agreement is easy. Everything feels easy here, like this. The knit of the worn-soft blanket against her calf, the sun already baking pleasantly into her bones. She is propped up on a rolled blanket facing Darras, her crossed ankles stretched out past his head, bare heels in the grass. She lays down the book on her stomach to reach over and pet the cat on his.
"When we're here all the time we'll have to read stories about blizzards and remember that winter we spent in the Vinmarks, so that we appreciate it."
Eyes half-closed, Darras sees the shadow and shape of Yseult's hand. He doesn't lift his own to stop her in any way as his grin sprawls slowly across his face.
"I don't want to remember the Vinmarks or read stories about blizzards. I can remember it all very well and I'd tell them to you from memory but I don't want to think of any of it. I want to lay here and enjoy the sun and never think of ice again. You've got to agree with me."
"Hmmmmm, right now yes," Yseult hums her partial agreement, "But imagine once we've been here for years. Sun like this almost every day. Warm all the time. We'll start taking it for granted. Become people who think the few weeks of winter here are too hard and cold."
She leaves off petting Rosana and instead sneaks her hand up under the hem of his shirt, tickling at his abdomen like the icy fingers of a winter wind.
"I already am one of those people. If I could be warm all the time," and the octave shift on that last word is because of the touch of Yseult's hand on his bare skin. Darras breaks into a startled laugh and grabs instinctively for her wrist--and he tenses, and moves, and Rosana (extremely inconvenienced) kicks off and dashes off a few paces. She settles at the corner of the blanket and begins to lick furiously at one of her forepaws, smoothing over the damage done by their rudeness.
Darras, meanwhile, is locked in combat. He keeps his grip on Yseult's wrist and tries to use it to pull her down so she'll collapse on him. Unfortunately it keeps her fingers cold and tickling against him, but sacrifices have to be made.
Cool fingers skip past his navel before her wrist is caught and Yseult is tugged, laughing, book quickly put aside to safety as she tumbles over.
"You are warm all the time," she argues, getting a knee beneath her, "Like a giant heating stone." It's not a complaint, though fingers drum teasingly against his stomach. "Well, you'll have plenty of time to soak up sun while we're here. Once I stop blocking your light--" she says, making as if to draw back from over him but clearly expecting to be stopped.
"And and and," is Yseult's laughing protest. Her struggle is token, not enough to disrupt her mimicry of his cadence. She twists her wrist free of his grip but coils her arm back around his, pinning it between their chests. "So greedy, maybe I don't want you to speak with me for the rest of today at least."
Laughing, too, Darras keeps her close. She's allowing it, yeah, could likely twist free if she wanted to, but there's effort exerted on his part which counts for something. Rosana is still busily washing herself, and gives them an unimpressed look from her corner of the blanket. That's all right, this isn't about her.
"You couldn't stand it if I didn't speak to you all day. Or, you could stand it, 'cos you can stand anything, my brave beautiful wife, but you wouldn't like it. You'd miss the sound of my voice. Admit it. Admit it!"
"Is this meant to make me miss it?" It's difficult to scoff and laugh at once, but Yseult nearly manages. She pulls against his hold, but without employing any of the tricks that might help make up for their difference in strength.
"I would cherish the peace and quiet!" she lies, before at last conceding: "Alright, alright! I would miss the sound of your voice. Maybe not for just one day," she can't quite resist the immediate backpedal, "But after that."
He abruptly relinquishes his hold and collapses back. One hand he lets fall to his chest, clutching at his heart. The other he lets flop onto his brow in profoundest despair.
"I go without hearing your voice for one day, I'm weaker than one of Rosana's kittens. I'm bereft. A ship without a sail, a boat without an oar, and so bored I might as well lay down and die. Where you would cherish the peace and quiet."
Yseult sits back to observe this pose with a shake of her head. "You used to survive perfectly well despite going months on end without hearing my voice," she reminds, knees squeezing his sides and knuckles pressing ticklingly into the bottom of his ribcage. "I think you'd live."
She stops poking and sets hands on his chest, no real weight leaned onto them--he's meant to still be healing, after all--and rubs fingertips into the cotton of his shirt. For a moment there's a pause, a shift in the air like she might turn suddenly serious, but then she smiles instead. "I'll remind you of this moment when we're here together every day for years and you grow sick of me."
He grins, and--a little bit of tension had crept into him--the normal sort, first, that comes of being tickled--and then a little more at the direction this conversation, pleasant though it is, might turn--but then it doesn't, and her hands are resting still upon him, and Darras relaxes that much more as he grins up at her.
The sunlight in Antiva is always more golden than it is in Kirkwall. Or maybe that's romance talking. Even if that's so, the sunlight is golden now, and makes a kind of halo around Yseult's head, shocks her hair with strands of copper and warmth. Darras puts his hands on top of hers, pressing her palms into his chest.
"That'll never happen, but you can remind me all the same. I'll like to hear you talking." He rubs his thumbs against the backs of her hands, the peaks and valleys of her knuckles and the fine bones under her freckled skin. "I used to survive, and maybe I survived well, but I wouldn't say perfectly. And I could put off the anguish knowing it would end. Remember when we were here and you didn't speak to me for a day and a half? That was torment. And over nothing."
"For good reason," Yseult disagrees, with a mock-dark look, "You know what you did." As she says it, her hair tumbles loose over a shoulder, riffled by the breeze, ruining the effect. It doesn't last long anyway, her expression softening into something warm but weighted. She lifts fingers to tangle with his.
That sunlight casts him bronze, like a handsome statue come to molten life, and she lets him press her hands down until she can feel his heart beating behind the carved planes of his chest. I could put off the anguish knowing it would end, he says, and the direction the conversation might turn is hanging there again at her back, what-ifs piling on shoulders too heavily to keep ignoring. Her head drops first, and then she slides back to set her cheek on his chest, arms folding, one bare foot hooking around his shin.
"Surely it's no crime to enjoy talking about," and here he teeters on a second infraction--his next words possibly damning him to endure silence once more, but, at the last moment he chooses instead the broader, "someone you love."
He tucks his chin against the top of her head, grinning at his cleverness--and at the sheer pleasure of having Yseult laid close to him like this. Their hands are trapped between them but there isn't anything uncomfortable in it. There is nothing better.
"If you stopped talking to me, I'd still hear you whenever I dreamed of you. Which is often. I'm not saying I'd get over it, but I'd at least have that."
Despite his silly threat and the cheeky grin she can sense, Yseult is teetering on the edge of seriousness still. She's had too many recent opportunities to fear never hearing his voice again and, perhaps worse she's realized, to think on what the reverse could mean for Darras. More than a few of her sleepless nights in late summer were spent rewriting the letter she's always kept in a drawer for him against that possibility, but all the drafts ended up ash in the office hearth. There's an even older version that's lived in the linen chest here, pocketed when she unpacked their things earlier, but the intervening months haven't given her any more idea how to say the things she needs said.
Eyes shut, she listens to Darras's heart beneath her ear, and all at once feels again the sun on her back, the breeze tickling at her hair, grass beneath a toe. It's ridiculous to be maudlin in the midday sun, alive and well and lazing on their lawn. She focuses on the rising heat of the day, the buzz of insects in the tall grass, the distant crash of waves at the base of the cliff, lets the drone of it fill her mind and pour out of it again like air through a bellows.
She sits up and with one improbably sinuous motion tugs her blouse up and off. Her chemise beneath is worn thin and soft with age, all but translucent in the sun. She reaches for his shirt buttons and cocks her brows. "Tell me more about these dreams."
The whole of her is haloed now in the light. It comes in through the thin fabric, outlining the shape of her body beneath it. She might be thinking beyond the moment, ages in some dark future, but Darras is here and now and there is nothing that would make him leave this moment. His skin buzzes where her fingers are, and the feeling spreads all through him. He wants very much to reach for her. He resists the urge, unwilling to do anything that might break that contact or change the sight of her poised above him, just like that. Anything might ruin the moment.
"Funny enough," he says, deliberately casual, "many of them start very much like this. The worst ones end like this."
Yseult's brows do some further angling at this answer, and the slant of her mouth shifts, a smile tugging at its corners at odds with the querying look she's otherwise adopting. She thumbs buttons open in quick succession, giving his shirt a freeing upwards tug to get at the last few. As precariously balanced as it might have been a moment ago, there's nothing that feels delicate about her mood now--her weight rests steadily across his hips, knees planted in the blanket beneath them, hands sure, the humor in her expression steady and intent obvious.
"You're very lucky, that even your worst dreams are so good."
It's warm in the sun, warm in the grass on their cliff, warm under Yseult, but Darras' skin still prickles. He grins up at her. It's only years of experience that keeps him together enough to manage that. Anyone else wouldn't stand a chance, not when he's barely managing.
"I know. I've told you before, haven't I? About how lucky I am."
"Once or twice." Yseult's smile is warm too and so are her hands as she lays them on his bare chest, palm over the place he was wounded at Val Chevin though there's nothing left to see of it now. She bends to press her first kiss over the spot all the same. They are both lucky. She doesn't linger on it.
Later, she dozes with her head on his chest, letting the sun lull her back to sleep. She laughs as Darras insists on pouring wine into mouth instead of handing over the bottle, wetting fingers in the trickle that spills down her throat and flicking it at him. She cards fingers through his hair as he reads with his head in her lap. She relights the oven and slices bread while he fries salt pork. She stitches up a tear in a shirt while he tunes his guitar. She falls asleep with his breath soft against the back of her neck. Another day passes, two, three. They shop in the village, check the perimeter fence, take the sail boat out for an afternoon and eat their catch on the beach as the sun sets. They read, and fall asleep in front of the fire, and spar on the lawn, and debate whether they ought to buy goats someday, and wake each morning in their narrow bed.
It fixes more than it doesn't. But Yseult still wakes one night hours before dawn and pulls on her dressing gown to sit and write in the orange light of the barely-glowing embers.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2022-01-19 03:10 am (UTC)"She left us some food as well, so we won't need to go back to the village until tomorrow." She strokes a fingertip down the center of Rosana's little head, following the line of darker fur. "I might do very little today. What do you think of that?"
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Date: 2022-01-20 01:53 am (UTC)"And I think it's an excellent idea, that. Doing very little. If you were talking to be and not Rosana--but she'd agree with me anyways."
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Date: 2022-01-27 02:41 am (UTC)"I might go back to bed for a little while, and then we could eat outside in the sun. Maybe do some reading." The lean of her shoulder indicates the shelves of books on the opposite wall, novels and chronicles and poetry and science, dozens of volumes she's read and dozens more she hasn't, rather than the reports quietly accumulating in her magical notebook. "The laundry will wait a day. Will you join me? Or are you itching to get to work?" His enthusiasm for mending thatch and scrubbing floors is remembered well and fondly.
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Date: 2022-01-30 12:09 am (UTC)This is half to Rosana, who gives a yawn so large her whiskers bristle. She, at least, will clearly nap with Yseult.
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Date: 2022-01-30 04:20 am (UTC)She is true to her plan, curling up in their bed atop the covers but with the spare quilt pulled up to her shoulder, Rosana making herself comfortable at Yseult's feet. She is still asleep when he comes in from his chores but rouses after a few minutes, combing a hand through loose hair and wrapping an arm around Darras from behind as he washes up. Lunch is a low-effort tray of sliced bread and cheese with some preserves and cider from the cellar carried out onto a blanket in the grass, along with a book of Nevarran folktales. The sun is warm but soft, the sky dappled with clouds, the span of taller grass between them and the cliff's edge riffled by the breeze.
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Date: 2022-02-01 04:09 am (UTC)He stretches, arms reached overhead, fingers flexed. Rosana had come out with them and had chosen a spot for her second nap on Darras' chest. Annoyed by the interruption, she holds on to his shirtfront with her claws, which makes him laugh and drop his stretch lest he annoy her any more.
"Brighter, and warmer."
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Date: 2022-02-01 11:32 pm (UTC)"When we're here all the time we'll have to read stories about blizzards and remember that winter we spent in the Vinmarks, so that we appreciate it."
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Date: 2022-02-03 04:46 am (UTC)"I don't want to remember the Vinmarks or read stories about blizzards. I can remember it all very well and I'd tell them to you from memory but I don't want to think of any of it. I want to lay here and enjoy the sun and never think of ice again. You've got to agree with me."
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Date: 2022-02-04 01:15 am (UTC)She leaves off petting Rosana and instead sneaks her hand up under the hem of his shirt, tickling at his abdomen like the icy fingers of a winter wind.
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Date: 2022-02-05 12:45 am (UTC)Darras, meanwhile, is locked in combat. He keeps his grip on Yseult's wrist and tries to use it to pull her down so she'll collapse on him. Unfortunately it keeps her fingers cold and tickling against him, but sacrifices have to be made.
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Date: 2022-02-06 04:41 am (UTC)"You are warm all the time," she argues, getting a knee beneath her, "Like a giant heating stone." It's not a complaint, though fingers drum teasingly against his stomach. "Well, you'll have plenty of time to soak up sun while we're here. Once I stop blocking your light--" she says, making as if to draw back from over him but clearly expecting to be stopped.
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Date: 2022-02-07 12:18 am (UTC)He grabs more firmly hold of her wrist and hooks his other arm around her shoulders so that he can easily hold her down against him.
"I want the sun and I want you and if you dare to move and deprive me of one of those, won't speak to you for the rest of today at least."
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Date: 2022-02-07 01:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-09 01:18 am (UTC)Laughing, too, Darras keeps her close. She's allowing it, yeah, could likely twist free if she wanted to, but there's effort exerted on his part which counts for something. Rosana is still busily washing herself, and gives them an unimpressed look from her corner of the blanket. That's all right, this isn't about her.
"You couldn't stand it if I didn't speak to you all day. Or, you could stand it, 'cos you can stand anything, my brave beautiful wife, but you wouldn't like it. You'd miss the sound of my voice. Admit it. Admit it!"
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Date: 2022-02-25 03:41 am (UTC)"I would cherish the peace and quiet!" she lies, before at last conceding: "Alright, alright! I would miss the sound of your voice. Maybe not for just one day," she can't quite resist the immediate backpedal, "But after that."
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Date: 2022-02-25 04:53 am (UTC)He abruptly relinquishes his hold and collapses back. One hand he lets fall to his chest, clutching at his heart. The other he lets flop onto his brow in profoundest despair.
"I go without hearing your voice for one day, I'm weaker than one of Rosana's kittens. I'm bereft. A ship without a sail, a boat without an oar, and so bored I might as well lay down and die. Where you would cherish the peace and quiet."
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Date: 2022-02-26 03:23 am (UTC)She stops poking and sets hands on his chest, no real weight leaned onto them--he's meant to still be healing, after all--and rubs fingertips into the cotton of his shirt. For a moment there's a pause, a shift in the air like she might turn suddenly serious, but then she smiles instead. "I'll remind you of this moment when we're here together every day for years and you grow sick of me."
no subject
Date: 2022-02-27 01:15 am (UTC)The sunlight in Antiva is always more golden than it is in Kirkwall. Or maybe that's romance talking. Even if that's so, the sunlight is golden now, and makes a kind of halo around Yseult's head, shocks her hair with strands of copper and warmth. Darras puts his hands on top of hers, pressing her palms into his chest.
"That'll never happen, but you can remind me all the same. I'll like to hear you talking." He rubs his thumbs against the backs of her hands, the peaks and valleys of her knuckles and the fine bones under her freckled skin. "I used to survive, and maybe I survived well, but I wouldn't say perfectly. And I could put off the anguish knowing it would end. Remember when we were here and you didn't speak to me for a day and a half? That was torment. And over nothing."
no subject
Date: 2022-02-27 09:38 pm (UTC)That sunlight casts him bronze, like a handsome statue come to molten life, and she lets him press her hands down until she can feel his heart beating behind the carved planes of his chest. I could put off the anguish knowing it would end, he says, and the direction the conversation might turn is hanging there again at her back, what-ifs piling on shoulders too heavily to keep ignoring. Her head drops first, and then she slides back to set her cheek on his chest, arms folding, one bare foot hooking around his shin.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-28 05:22 am (UTC)He tucks his chin against the top of her head, grinning at his cleverness--and at the sheer pleasure of having Yseult laid close to him like this. Their hands are trapped between them but there isn't anything uncomfortable in it. There is nothing better.
"If you stopped talking to me, I'd still hear you whenever I dreamed of you. Which is often. I'm not saying I'd get over it, but I'd at least have that."
no subject
Date: 2022-03-01 01:50 am (UTC)Eyes shut, she listens to Darras's heart beneath her ear, and all at once feels again the sun on her back, the breeze tickling at her hair, grass beneath a toe. It's ridiculous to be maudlin in the midday sun, alive and well and lazing on their lawn. She focuses on the rising heat of the day, the buzz of insects in the tall grass, the distant crash of waves at the base of the cliff, lets the drone of it fill her mind and pour out of it again like air through a bellows.
She sits up and with one improbably sinuous motion tugs her blouse up and off. Her chemise beneath is worn thin and soft with age, all but translucent in the sun. She reaches for his shirt buttons and cocks her brows. "Tell me more about these dreams."
no subject
Date: 2022-03-07 01:19 am (UTC)"Funny enough," he says, deliberately casual, "many of them start very much like this. The worst ones end like this."
no subject
Date: 2022-03-07 04:13 am (UTC)Yseult's brows do some further angling at this answer, and the slant of her mouth shifts, a smile tugging at its corners at odds with the querying look she's otherwise adopting. She thumbs buttons open in quick succession, giving his shirt a freeing upwards tug to get at the last few. As precariously balanced as it might have been a moment ago, there's nothing that feels delicate about her mood now--her weight rests steadily across his hips, knees planted in the blanket beneath them, hands sure, the humor in her expression steady and intent obvious.
"You're very lucky, that even your worst dreams are so good."
no subject
Date: 2022-03-09 04:25 am (UTC)"I know. I've told you before, haven't I? About how lucky I am."
no subject
Date: 2022-03-14 01:50 am (UTC)Later, she dozes with her head on his chest, letting the sun lull her back to sleep. She laughs as Darras insists on pouring wine into mouth instead of handing over the bottle, wetting fingers in the trickle that spills down her throat and flicking it at him. She cards fingers through his hair as he reads with his head in her lap. She relights the oven and slices bread while he fries salt pork. She stitches up a tear in a shirt while he tunes his guitar. She falls asleep with his breath soft against the back of her neck. Another day passes, two, three. They shop in the village, check the perimeter fence, take the sail boat out for an afternoon and eat their catch on the beach as the sun sets. They read, and fall asleep in front of the fire, and spar on the lawn, and debate whether they ought to buy goats someday, and wake each morning in their narrow bed.
It fixes more than it doesn't. But Yseult still wakes one night hours before dawn and pulls on her dressing gown to sit and write in the orange light of the barely-glowing embers.
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From:hello look who it is, it's me
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From:sorry i wrote this in my head and only my head
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