#dkfjghdkjh i hope this works for you! there's not much actual reading in it but

[azems-familiar]

20. cuddles while reading to each other.

Lelesu/Hythlodaeus, set in her normal comboverse in the immediate aftermath of Ultima Thule!

-

Hythlodaeus is definitely not supposed to be in bed with her.

Sharlayan’s chirurgeons take their jobs very seriously, especially when their patients are the Warriors of Light, who have so recently saved the star. Lelesu has been under their care for a little over a week now, though she spent the first few days of that time unconscious - and Corrain still is, from what little she’s managed to find out about him. No one wants to tell her just how bad his condition is, afraid of worrying her too much or afraid she’ll try to drag herself out of bed to go see him (she’s considered it, admittedly), but she’s listened to Hades and G’raha quietly discussing him with Artoirel, when they thought she was asleep, and she knows even Hades doesn’t know if he’ll wake up. It isn’t just the injuries that’ve left him nearly dead, but something more, some burden on his mind and soul that’s left him in a coma, and all they can do is wait.

She wants to go see her best friend, badly, but her glasses are still broken from Zenos - not only is her injured eye still swaddled in bandages (they saved the eye, according to the chirurgeons, but they don’t think they could save her vision), but without a replacement set of glasses what she can see is fuzzy and useless once it’s more than six inches from her face. And just because she didn’t take a scythe to the spine doesn’t mean she wasn’t badly injured by all the fighting either, so- for now she’ll behave, if only because she doesn’t think she could make it to Corrain’s room without collapsing.

Hythlodaeus has hardly left her side since they returned from Ultima Thule, apparently. He’d managed to convince the hospital administration to bring a cot in for him, and she knows the only times he’s left since have been when Hades has managed to convince him to go refresh himself at the Annex. Now that she’s awake, she appreciates the company; she’s tired and uncomfortable and bored.

And this is why Hythlodaeus has brought a veritable mountain of books back to the room from the Annex. He’d crawled into the bed with her about an hour ago, helped her find a comfortable position curled up against his chest that didn’t irritate her injuries, and cracked open a cheesy romance novel he’d apparently found in G’raha’s room. It’s certainly not high art, but he’s just as confused and amused by the cliches and the….questionable erotica as she is, and he turns reading it into a little performance that has her desperately trying to muffle her laughter in his robe (the last thing she wants is for one of the chirurgeons to come check on them, drawn by the sound). His arm is warm and heavy around her shoulders, and she can feel the steady rise-and-fall of his chest beneath her cheek, the quiet echo of his heartbeat underlying the words he speaks.

It’s only, really, been a few days since her memories of her life as Seleukos fully returned - a few days since Azem’s summoning invocation and Hydaelyn’s last gift together brought Hythlodaeus back from the Lifestream and gave him a body. She’d gotten close with the shade of him left behind in Amaurot-beneath-the-sea, and even with only vague, half-torn memories she’d loved him that week she and Corrain spent in the past, but now - now that she remembers everything, from their first meeting as young students enrolled at the Akadaemia Anyder to the last words they exchanged in the direct aftermath of the Final Days, it’s like all of the emotions Seleukos would have felt are hitting her at once. Not just the love, but the grief too - for his death to Zodiark, a message delivered by crystal just after Helios’s own sacrifice, a loss she hadn’t had the time to grieve. (Nor the inclination, if she’s honest with herself; she knows now, far too well, how she reacts to loss, and Seleukos had been no better. They’d taken Helios’s Sundering spell to Hydaelyn as he’d asked them to, and then they’d gone home - like Hades asked, but without telling him they were, because they couldn’t stop blaming him for Hythlodaeus’s death - and immersed themself in the bright memories saturating their bedroom until the world splintered into four and ten shards.)

Now that he’s alive again, in a place she can touch him, all Lelesu can think of is that he was gone, just like Haurchefaunt, and it’s…strange, to feel like grieving someone right in front of her. It still hurts. She’s tried not to think too much about it, especially given Corrain’s condition, especially given the fact that just prior to Hythlodaeus’s resurrection she watched her friends sacrifice themselves for her and if she thinks too much about that she might just crack, but it’s hard to avoid when she has so little to occupy herself with.

Hythlodaeus pauses in his reading and looks down at her for a moment, then marks his place and sets the book aside, shifting to rest a hand on her head and gently tug on her curls. “I am here, marigold dear,” he murmurs, and the nickname draws a small smile from her - it’s different from what he’d cheerily called Seleukos, but she appreciates that, she thinks; they’re not quite the same person, after all, even if they are in all the important ways. “I shall not repeat the same errors again - our dearest Emet-Selch has already quite thoroughly taken me to task for them.”

Lelesu huffs a little and reaches over to tangle her fingers in his; he squeezes her hand and smiles warmly down at her, and she finds it in her to return the expression. She shouldn’t be surprised, she thinks, that he knows what she’s thinking about, but it’s still a little shocking that he can read her as easily as he read Seleukos. “I believe you,” she says quietly, then sighs, tugging the hand she’s holding closer so she can lean her face against it. “It’s just…Seleukos never had time to grieve you, and now that I remember their life, I’m getting saddled with all their baggage, too. And- well- Corrain and I did lose you, when Kairos erased your memory. I’ve been trying not to think about it, but-”

Hythlodaeus hums, brushing her hair back from her face. “I am here for you, should you need to reassure yourself,” he promises, all deep sincerity, and leans down to press a gentle kiss to her forehead. “And I am sorry, that I forgot you. ‘Tis truly a miracle that Kairos was able to erase the recollection of one such as you from my soul.”

“Sap,” Lelesu accuses, tucking her face into his hand to try to hide the blush his words bring to her cheeks, and he laughs, a bright, ringing sound that she thinks could never cease to bring a smile to her face.

Things- aren’t completely alright, not yet. Corrain is still locked in slumber, and they don’t know if he’ll wake up; she can’t forget the Scions and their last stands, or the awful memories of the end of her first life, a horror she has yet to process and will probably struggle with for the next few months. But for now- for now, Hythlodaeus is here, and alive, and reading to her, his laughter a salve on the wounds of her soul, and she thinks she can make do with that.