It squeezes around her heart strings, pulls mercilessly at them. Her heartbeat feels thunderous in her chest.
She leaves a kiss on his shoulder, her lips touching skin being the only sound in the room for a while. It really does feel like a bubble now - a bubble of silence, or a bubble like what Silence produces.
She's going to stubbornly forget all about this fight. About the Silences cast, contrasting with the screams of Astarion's pain. She's going to forget Cazador, because it's what he deserves: nothing. Nothing at all.
"Here, let's take care of this," she says, cutting the silence short, and reaches for a little bowl set near the tub. "Keep your head tipped back for me, love."
When did she become so used to giving him petnames? The dam keeping her affections in check has burst, and it feels so...so natural to call him that. All those things.
She shakes away the last dregs of embarrassment about petnames, and scoops water into the bowl, pouring it over his hair. A baptism, of sort. At the very least, she will make sure there is no more dried blood in those white locks.
He'd started the whole petnames thing, of course, but that had been a matter of keeping distance. 'Darling', 'dear', 'sweetheart', 'love', things he'd called his marks, ways of trying to ignore who they were as people and substituting only a grim string of circumstantial similarities.
All fools doomed because they stopped, they listened, they let him draw them in.
Something he'll never have to do again, never.
When Hermione says those things, it's the exact opposite. It's her way of sinking past the superficial, and the meaning shifts. The words have weight, now, layered over him as he tips his head back to allow her to do as she pleases. Slowly, the blood drains away, the metallic tang swallowed by the scent of the soaps and oils nearby.
"...I want you to appreciate that I'm entirely capable of doing this myself, you know."
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no subject
She leaves a kiss on his shoulder, her lips touching skin being the only sound in the room for a while. It really does feel like a bubble now - a bubble of silence, or a bubble like what Silence produces.
She's going to stubbornly forget all about this fight. About the Silences cast, contrasting with the screams of Astarion's pain. She's going to forget Cazador, because it's what he deserves: nothing. Nothing at all.
"Here, let's take care of this," she says, cutting the silence short, and reaches for a little bowl set near the tub. "Keep your head tipped back for me, love."
When did she become so used to giving him petnames? The dam keeping her affections in check has burst, and it feels so...so natural to call him that. All those things.
She shakes away the last dregs of embarrassment about petnames, and scoops water into the bowl, pouring it over his hair. A baptism, of sort. At the very least, she will make sure there is no more dried blood in those white locks.
no subject
All fools doomed because they stopped, they listened, they let him draw them in.
Something he'll never have to do again, never.
When Hermione says those things, it's the exact opposite. It's her way of sinking past the superficial, and the meaning shifts. The words have weight, now, layered over him as he tips his head back to allow her to do as she pleases. Slowly, the blood drains away, the metallic tang swallowed by the scent of the soaps and oils nearby.
"...I want you to appreciate that I'm entirely capable of doing this myself, you know."
no subject
She sets the bowl down on the stool, and leans in against him to whisper: "It's called pampering. I'm spoiling you."