#anyway ilu gabby i tried hard on this one but words are failing me at the moment

[frenchy-and-the-sea]

OC Kiss Week 21 - Switched

Kiss Week technically ended yesterday but I was like partway through this one, so I figured I’d finish it anyway. Featuring @urdnotgrunt’s Sarula, the best bard/cleric that ever did walk the face of Thiele. This is entirely too stupid, I’m so sorry Gabby, I’M SO SORRY. BUT ILU.

~700 words

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Just past the second hour of the morning, Val slipped through the door of her rented room as quietly as she could manage, thinking only of closing as much distance between her and the bed inside as she could. 

By all accounts, she should have guessed this would happen. An invitation to spar from Amon was always a roll of the dice between a rigorous training session and an unintended attempt on her life, and so much more the latter when they'd already spent a few hours in a pub. But he'd accidentally singed a generous portion of her eyebrow off in their escape from the guard that morning, and well, she had been feeling just a little vengeful. 

She crept slowly through the darkened room, shedding boots and gloves and her ash-covered shield into a corner as she went. By the tiny spear of light coming from beneath the door, she could just make out the shape of the bed in front of her, already turned down for the night, its sheets pulled over into a tiny bundle on one side of the mattress. She smiled despite herself. Rona must have escaped Amon's attention and followed Sarula’s much more excellent example up to bed. A thread of fondness, warm as a bonfire, curled up through Val’s chest as she kicked herself free of her arming doublet and finally stole towards the bedside.

She managed to make it almost to lying down before the bundle stirred. 

“Shh,” she whispered as it started to turn, “it’s just me. Dot, Amon and I got into a bit of a friendly scrap. It was less friendly to some of the more flammable buildings nearby. Fire’s out now, though,” she added, at the hazy noise of alarm that drifted up from the blanket mass. That seemed to placate Rona enough that she let herself settle back into bed, muttering something incoherent into the folds of her pillow. Val grinned and tucked in beside her, looping an arm across her back. It didn’t sink like she expected it to, buoyed up on the mountainous pile of blankets that Rona had stolen around herself. Val huffed a little laugh.

“And here I thought you were suited to the cold,” she teased. She slid closer to press a kiss into the curls that she could just see peeking out from between the sheets, then leaned down towards her ear. "You know, if you let me in, I’m sure I could find another way to keep you warm - ”

The figure under her arm suddenly wrenched itself away, scrambling up and over the side of bed with a speed that made Val’s heart twist painfully in her chest. She pushed up onto an elbow, frowning.

“Rona, what -”

It wasn’t Rona. There, frozen on the other side of the bed, was Sarula, wide eyed and flushed a shade almost as dark as their hair. Val felt her insides suddenly shrivel to nothing. 

“Oh,” she said, her voice a full octave too high.

“Yup!” Sarula squeaked, in the same tone. They stared at each other across the bed, stunned into blistering, mortified silence. Little flashes of memory suddenly swept into Val’s mind, traitorously late; a figure too tall, a voice too soft, curls in too-close spirals against her cheek. She opened her mouth to speak, but the words fizzled away like static.

A small eternity passed before she thought to stand. Sputtering something that felt like an apology, Val scrambled up and out of the bed with as much speed as she could muster, snatching up what little of her armor was still within arm’s reach.

“Well,” she managed as she backed towards the door. “I’m just going to, uh, go, now. Find a hole to the Abyss and, y’know, throw myself into it. Sorry, again. Good night."

And then she was gone, fleeing through the door and down the hall to the room that Amon and Dot had disappeared into barely two minutes before. As the door fell shut, a second figure stirred from bed on the other side of the room.

“Well, shit,” said Rona wearily. “We probably should have told her we only rented two rooms this time, huh?”