#literally this one had me rolling around on my bed like ''ooOoOoUhGgHh.... OOOUGHHHHH"

[sheepwithspecs]

March CarvRhos Ficlet: Only One Bed

|| FFXIV || Rated T || (4/??) ||

Prompt List Here!

This is my favorite one to date. I originally had another idea for it, but that would be much longer than 1,000 words, so I’ve decided to keep it for a oneshot in the future. :3

This was a mistake.

He should not have come, not with the sun vanished below the horizon and the moon’s face obscured by snow clouds. Loose flakes drift past the frosted windowpanes; the fire blazing in the hearth is nowhere near enough to combat the plummeting temperatures. The inn room is bare, devoid of personality—as inn rooms often are—and ill-suited to protect against the freezing cold.

He is uncomfortable, but Coerthan winters are only marginally colder than they were when he was a lad. Although he would rather be back on the sunny shores of Vylbrand, this is nothing he cannot handle.

Rhoswen, on the other hand, is clearly not built for the harsh northern clime.

He wonders if she has ever seen snow before in her life—true snow, not the magicked flurries that rain down upon Limsa during Starlight festivities. She is dressed amply enough for the weather, thick outer garments and snug woolen smallclothes. But all the preparation in the world cannot prevent her from shivering violently, visible from across the room.  Her hands are tucked deeply into the well of her arms as she stands trembling before the hearth, close enough to the naked flame that she is in grave danger of singing her new hose.

“You should have left when you had the chance,” he remarks, not unkindly. “The next airship won’t depart until the snowfall has ceased.” She shakes her head in answer. If not for the stubborn set of her jaw, he might have mistaken the gesture for one of the surges wracking her small frame.  

“I’m fine.”

“You’re freezing to death.”

“Ain’t so,” she scoffs, shuffling even closer to the fire. It’s a miracle the hem of her tunic hasn’t begun to smoke. “There’s more than long-ears in this godsforsaken city,” she chatters, chafing her arms through their long sleeves. “I seen Hyurs walkin’ the streets, same as me. If they can do it, so can I.”

“They only survive because they’re used to the weather,” he points out wearily. “You’d be better off storming the gates of Garlemald.” She scowls at him, but does not offer any counterargument. Her shaking form is answer enough for them both. “Go to bed,” he orders, nodding towards the single bed pushed against the far wall. “The blankets are karakul wool, no doubt. You’ll be warm in no time.”

“Tsk! Ye think I couldn’t work that out for meself?” she huffs, stretching her bare hands towards the flames. “I tried, but that bed’s colder than a black mage’s—”

He should leave. At the very least, he should have been pragmatic enough to use some foresight. There was a warm bed waiting for him at his family home, easily twice the size of the inn room itself. There were hot irons to place at the foot of the bed, a grate tall enough for two grown men to stand abreast, fires that could warm a room much better than this paltry flame.

But he owed her—all things considered—and she was cold, and the room was bare, and it was only for a moment or two, after all—

“For the life of me, I will never understand why you insisted upon trekking all this way,” he grumbles, trying (and failing) to sound petulant. “I’d have returned to Limsa eventually.”

“Ye might not have.” Her voice is flat, but at least she’s stopped shaking the bed with the force of her shivering. Their combined body heat slowly warms the icy blankets, the modest gap between them feeling wider than a chasm. They are as far apart as they can possibly be, her spine flush to the wall, his hip hanging from the strawtick. Even so, it’s close enough that every soft exhale tickles the hollow at the base of his throat. “He might have convinced ye to stay.”

“He couldn’t have. Not in any way that counts.” His knees accidentally collide with her thighs and he jerks back as though burned, his mumbled apology lost beneath the staccato pop of pine logs as they succumb to the heat. “I think he’d like you,” he adds offhandedly. “Truthfully, I think he already does.”

“I threw him out of the tavern once.” She’s oddly quiet, pensive in the wake of the memory. “Can’t remember what he was after, but I do recall thinkin’ to meself that he looked familiar.” There is a pause, stretching thin between them without ever reaching the dangerous breaking point. “You have his eyes.”

“Yes.”

He studies her face in the night, firelight dancing off her rounded cheeks. At some point before his arrival she’d washed the paint from her face, and now he is shocked to find her lashes the color of pale straw. Her mouth seems so small without the wine-dark lipstick. She is small, especially when they are in the same bed like this, when he could so easily encompass her fingers with his own, when he could span the width of her hips with both hands—

“Why did you come?” he asks for what feels like the fiftieth time since stumbling across her in the crozier streets. Each time she’s given him a different variant of the same answer, the two of them dancing around the crux of the matter, hiding in plain sight beneath the tired veneer of arguments and accusations.

She sighs, glaring at him without saying a word. The events of the day have managed to exhaust even her boundless reserves of energy. Slowly, so slowly, he reaches out a single finger, crossing the gap, stroking the back of her hand where it lays on the center of the diamond-patterned quilt. His heart presses against the base of his throat, thrumming in his ears.

“I came because… because I thought ye could be convinced,” she finally relents.

He should leave. He should disentangle himself from the bedclothes, big her a polite farewell, and retreat while there was still some semblance of normalcy between them. While he could still push away the fact that she, Rhoswen Leach, traversed malms of stormy seas and the frozen hellscape of the Highlands, completely dedicated to her single-minded mission. Insane behavior, really, and yet the mere thought puts a skip in his heartbeat all the same.

But the snow is falling heavily now, and the glacial winds are tearing at the shutters. There’s no point in leaving and no vacant rooms, and this one only has the one bed, currently occupied. And he must know, he has to know, because the not-knowing will be what drives him mad in the end.  

“And if I could not be convinced? What then?” She has the audacity to stare at him as though he were the one who’d lost his mind. As though he’d been the one threatening Brume inhabitants and clergymen alike in the search for a dead son with a borrowed name.  

“I’d have still come, regardless.”

And oh, his heart his racing, and hers is, too; he can hear it pattering against her ribcage over the sound of the wind and the fire and his own stuttering thoughts. He’s not sure who leans forward first, but someone does and then her mouth is on his and Fury, her lips are soft. She tastes of salty sea air and sunshine and freedom, she tastes of home, and he vaguely wonders why they haven’t been doing this for ages now, if it was going to feel this right.

“Well.” Her voice is rough, amused, fairly crackling with nervous energy. “That warmed me right up.”

“Then perhaps I should do it again.” She smiles at that, a half-cocked gesture that does well to mask her shyness. A part of him wonders what other expressions he doesn’t notice, ones that hide the fact that should he stray too far from home, she would come to find him, regardless.

“Come with me tomorrow.” The request is given before he can truly consider its implications. “Meet my father… properly, this time.”

“I-I don’t—” Doubts lurk in the shadows of her steely gaze. He should leave now, while one of is still managing to think clearly. “Fine… but only because I’m keepin’ a close eye on ye.” A finger jabs him in the soft part of his chest, even as her arm loops around his neck. She draws him in for a kiss that’s more sloppy, more heated than the last.

“Ye’d best get to work,” she mutters, tugging him even closer. “I don’t think I’m warm enough yet.” The gap between their bodies vanishes, far more quickly than anything the highborn and lowborn of this snowy, passionless city could ever hope to achieve. He should leave before things get out of hand. Before she takes him in hand.

He should… but he doesn’t.