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fic: what are you that wanting you I should be kept awake, Daine/Numair, M
what are you that wanting you I should be kept awake
Tamora Pierce (Tortall), Daine/Numair. 3,620 words. Mature sexual content, quarreling, makeup sex, magical exhaustion. "I don't give a bloody coin for what the King needed,” she snapped. "You needed, for once, to manage to not half-kill yourself as soon as I leave Corus. Do you not have any instincts at all? Can't you tell when you're going too far?"
Daine let go her grasp on her eagle form as she dropped in through the open window, talons shifting to toes just in time to take her weight as her wings melted back into smooth-skinned shoulderblades. She'd been glad to see their casement open – it was late afternoon, and folk were everywhere, and it had been a long night of trailing nasties for her, and she was tired and moody and really didn't fancy changing back where anyone'd be able to see or bother her.
She was tired, but only the tiredness of hours spent awake – not the grinding tiredness of war, or the terrible exhaustion of divine power, or the soul-weariness that came in the wake of mortal combat. It was fair pleasant, she reflected, to be well enough to feel irritated with her weary state. And it was more pleasant still to be able to slip sideways into her home before dealing with any further responsibilities.
Having shifted back to girl-shape, she reached for the spare chemise that always hung ready by the window – she came home as often without her clothes as with them, these days – and shrugged it on, twisting her tangled curls up into a knot as she did so. She had reports to give to the King, and to Sir Myles of Olau, and she was under orders from Onua to let her know she'd made it home safely, but for now she was alone, and happy about it. She'd found nothing urgent, learned of no disaster imminently poised to sweep down over them all. For now, everything was all right. Everything else could afford to wait a spell.
The room was strangely dark for midday, the sunlight blocked out almost completely by the heavy dark drapes that covered every window save the one left open for her – and that one faced eastward, and so let in very little light so late in the afternoon. Twitching back the curtains to allow the day back into the tower, Daine took a few hesitant steps forward into the vague dimness, feeling like the girl in the story who unlocked the bloody chamber: odd and hesitant and as if she didn't belong there at all. She hadn't always. Only a few months before, these had been Numair's chambers and his alone, and she'd bedded down with the Riders still. But now this was her home, and she didn't take kindly to feeling so wrong-footed in it.
She understood her feelings a bit better when she saw that Numair was stretched out asleep on their bed, collapsed gracelessly on top of the coverlet. Kitten was curled up around the hard angle of his bent knees, her scales a quiet rosy dun color, her breath whistling on the inhale as it always did why she slept heavily. Numiar was too darkly complected to pull off looking pale, but underneath the warm tones of his skin she saw shades of pallid grey.
She knew without needing to hear it what must've happened. He'd drained himself down – gone too far. Idiot mage. One of these days she'd end up killing him for it – if he didn't kill himself first, which looked more and more likely every day.
Stirred by the new presence in the room, Kitten opened her eyes, meeping welcomingly when she saw Daine. The dragonet uncoiled herself and came stretching down to have her scales scratched. Numair made a small noise of protest when she left, but apart from that the exhausted man didn't move.
It was written on his face, in the laxness and inelasticity of the skin around the angles of his nose and cheekbones, in the tension still present in his full mouth even in sleep, in the heavy shadows smudged beneath his eyes. His gangling, overlong limbs were haphazardly disposed, twisted and oddly turned. And either he'd managed to unbind his hair before blacking out, or he'd never managed to bind it back at all, because it was spread out in a dark and tangled aureole around his worn features.
Looking at him, part of her felt like mourning. She got angry instead. Abruptly throwing open all the westward windows before stomping into their workroom and slamming the adjoining door hard, she heard him wake and tumble out of bed, falling with a loud thump to the floor. It sounded painful, even through the intervening layers of oakwood. She told herself that she didn't care. Kit didn't follow her, staying rooted in the bedroom with an expression on her long muzzle that clearly expressed her reluctance to get involved.
A moment later the door burst open in a flurry of black sparks. “Oh – I thought you'd locked it,” Numair said, rather foolishly. His wrinkled white shirt billowed around him, untucked and unbuttoned enough at the neck to allow it to hang off of one of his shoulders like a child's nightshirt.
“No,” she said frostily. “I wanted you to come in.”
He looked even more tired now that he was on his feet, and the hand that he rested on the doorframe was white-knuckled with the physical effort necessary to keep him upright. Even with that support, she could see the vertiginous instability that shook him. He looked ready to fall to the floor at any moment. It did nothing to lessen her anger; instead, it burned all the more hotly in her heart, consuming the fuel of her concern.
“Daine,” he said, fuzzy-witted with tiredness and recent sleep, mouth stumbling over individual words and obviously not up to attempting sentences at all. “Are you – when – ?”
“That doesn't matter,” she said, refusing to thaw even a bit under the warmth of his dark eyes. She was really angry, and this was too important to just let slide. “What did you do?”
“What did I – oh, you mean – it was nothing, really. Just a bit of long-distance spellcasting. Distance always makes the drain worse, but Jon needed –“
“I don't give a bloody coin for what the King needed,” she snapped. “You needed, for once, to manage to not half-kill yourself as soon as I leave Corus. Do you not have any instincts at all? Can't you tell when you're going too far?”
A corner of his mouth turned crookedly upwards in a pathetic half-wry grin. “Daine, you do realize there's not much I can do usefully besides going too far?” Gods all bless, but the man was infuriating! He couldn't even fight properly – instead of flaring back when she picked a quarrel, he'd just stand there looking weary and wry and self-mocking.
She needed to be further away from him; withdrawing back into the workroom, she set her hands to mindlessly shuffling the bound parchments and loose papers and bits of odd detritus into slightly tidier piles, waiting to calm down enough to speak to him without shouting. “That's not true,” she managed eventually. “If you would just be sensible about things, and let the King and Alanna know when you get tired, you'd still be able to do all the things that no one else can do without risking your life in the bargain! Somehow I doubt that they want to use you up. You're the most powerful mage in the country – so they've got every good reason to manage and protect you. It's you who's at fault here, and it's not all right.” Her level, reasonable tone lasted her for about a minute, and then she was back to shouting at him again.
Now his temper was beginning to snap and spark up to meet hers. He took a few stumbling steps toward her. “So what would you have me do? Sit at home and wait for you? Stay up here researching treatises while Jon struggles to do the impossible without losing his precious integrity, and Alanna's forced away from her children, and Onua rides out for months at a time chasing down outlaws with the Riders? The war might be over, Daine, but that doesn't do much in the way of making things easier. Or, I know,” he said with a sarcastic curl of his lip, “I can just take up juggling again, and earn us a few extra coppers!”
“Better that than practically killing yourself!”
His face twisted; she couldn't tell if it was with anger or with hurt. When he spoke, his voice was low and bitter and still filled with smoldering upset. “You forget, magelet, that juggling happens to be my accustomed method of self-murder.”
He'd meant it as a blow, and it landed squarely, knocking her off her feet in more ways than the figurative; she sat down heavily at his worktable. She didn't know much about that period in Numair's life, but she'd picked up enough from Onua, and the Lioness, and from Numair himself on the rare occasions when he was feeling talkative about his past, to know that the entire affair had been beyond terrible for him. He'd very nearly died of hunger and cold, and his fear of Carthak and the Emperor Mage – and of whatever it'd been that he'd done there to be arrested as a traitor to the Empire – must've been near untenable to keep him hid under such conditions.
It hurt her to think of him like that – and that hurt made her as tart as if she'd been eating green unripened fruit. “I didn't agree to live with Arram Draper, Numair! Nor would I have, had he asked me.” His eyes widened at that, going very round and very dark. She'd struck her returning blow. Halfheartedly, she wished she'd pulled the punch a bit.
“But you're not there anymore,” she said, more gently this time. “Neither in Carthak nor on the street. You've a home and family now. Why do you still have to be in such a hurry to throw – it – away? I don't want to fly home someday only to find you – ” She couldn't bring herself to say the word.
He sighed and ran a hand through his loose hair. “Daine, I don't know any other way. I've never been any good at normalcy, not even as a boy. Why do you think my parents sent me so far away so young?” His mouth was crooked again with unhappiness and self-pity. “I don't know why I expected you to tolerate living with me when my own mother couldn't manage it.”
“Don't be an idiot,” she said, flint-hard and frost-cold. She recognized this mood of his, and she was in no temper herself to deal with it. “I can tolerate living with you well enough, so long's you actually stay living. And as far as toleration goes, I don't see as that toleration keeps me back from trying to keep you sane and whole. Or was I supposed to tolerate you into a grave?”
“Your grammar's slipping,” he observed.
She wished that her human teeth were sharp enough to make biting him worthwhile. Carnivorous animal forms tempted her, but she did her level best to keep to words rather than claws. This was a two-legger trouble; she'd best resolve it like one. “Don't dodge what I'm saying by criticizing how I said it, Numair. That's a coward's way and you know it. And bad grammar won't make it less true.”
Numair spread his hands out in front of himself, looking down at the broad palms and long fingers with a peculiar expression on his dark face. “But then what else am I good for?” he said softly. “It can't all be this fraught for normal – for everyone else. It's can't be; I don't believe it.”
Looking at him, Daine let her anger go. It wasn't going to do either of them any good at this point. Momentarily she longed for her ma's simple anger, or for the quick-forgotten passions of the People that erupted and raged and then were gone. Trust her to pick a mate who was more complicated than he was worth! Numair could be terrifying when he allowed himself to get well and truly angry, but more often he'd press himself down into melancholy, or turn his anger inward and set to savaging himself. He was very good at causing himself pain; he didn't have a particular need for her to help him along with it.
“Numair,” she said, frustrated and helpless, “the war has to be over someday.”
He was trembling now, mouth set with strain and weariness. She shook her head at him, still irritated but unable to watch him fall, and roughly kicked a chair over toward him. Usually, he'd've caught it with a tendril of power, but his reserves were evidently too low for that; the chair clattered sideways to the floor, and he had to stoop awkwardly to right it before finally giving in to gravity and letting his long body fold up underneath him. “What do you mean by that?” he asked her. His voice sounded choked, somehow stifled.
“I mean – it was one thing when we truly were at war. When someone had to understand the spells and fight the krakens and deal with enemy sorcerers, and there was no one else to do it but you. I'll not say that I was greatly pleased with affairs, but it made sense. You're the only one of you we've got.”
He shot her a weak smile, turning cynical at the edges. “Yes, and aren't you glad?”
“I am at that. More than one of you would be the end of my sanity, at the very least. The war ended months ago, Numair. We won. And as amazed as I am that you didn't ever manage to kill yourself in winning, we have both survived this long. So why are we still living like this? It's not needful anymore.”
“I'm sorry,” he told her heavily. “I've been terribly unfair to you. You deserve so much better than this.”
“Please don't,” she said, almost begging. “Please. All I want is for us to be happy for a while. I love you. Don't tell me you're sorry. Just be all right.”
He said nothing in answer, but instead summoned the energy to cross the room to her. It was clear as glass that he was still having troubles with dizziness; she stood hastily and reached out a hand to steady and help him. He took it, using it to pull her close enough to catch her up into a tight embrace. His mouth was warm against hers when he kissed her.
The kiss he gave her was a weary one, worn down, seeking comfort and reassurance as much as it offered passion. The kiss she gave him in answer was more urgent, heavy with heat. He made a small stifled sound of surprised pleasure, and his hands grasped convulsively at her shoulders.
He had enough height on her as to be near-ridiculous – there was very nearly a foot's difference between them - but she was at the moment much steadier on her shorter legs, and so when she pushed them both back down he yielded to her until he lay sprawled supine against the untidy desk and she half-knelt above him, resting her head against his chest. She could hear his heartbeat.
Reaching up, he pulled her chemise over her back in one fluid moment, and as her arms rose above her head to let it fall away she felt again a remembered sensation of wide-winged flight. His kisses always did make her go fanciful in the head.
“We might do better to take this to bed,” he said, gasping under the insistent touch of her mouth and hands.
Raising her head to meet his gaze, Daine cocked an eyebrow at him. “You really want to stop now?” she said, and then tugged the tip of the finger he'd been using to trace the shape of her lower lip into her mouth.
“No. No, I don't – Mithros, Mynoss, and Shakith, Daine, do that again -” and then he stopped talking, trading in coherent speech for more inarticulate sounds as she drove a line of strong kisses down the length of his neck.
When she reached the hollow of his throat she gently set her teeth into his skin, biting down and holding. He froze and drew in a long and shaky breath before relaxing pliantly back into her hold, surrendering beneath her. He was too worn down to have energy left to spend in making love to her; she meant to make love to him.
She loved his body. It was dear and familiar and odd and strange, and beautiful in a way that belonged entirely to him. His face was flushed now, the red blood rising in his cheek to usurp the wan greyness of exhaustion. She pressed herself against him, sinuous, gripping his broad shoulders as she held him close. “Magelet,” he said, breathless and quiet, and her mouth curved into a grin as she kissed his clavicle.
“It's not fair that you're so much more dressed than me,” she said, and before he could reply she'd sat up and was reaching for the fastenings of his breeched. In a moment she had them undone.
Now she was on her knees above him. His eyes were closed, his long lashes sweeping dark against his cheek, and his head was turned to one side. She brushed his loose hair away from the arc of his neck, leaving it exposed. He was beautiful; she wanted him desperately.
He opened his eyes and looked up at her. “Please,” he said, and the warm dark timbre of his voice ran through her in a bolt of pleasure. She made no answer, but kissed his mouth in a lingering promise.
Shifting all her weight back onto her legs, she bent down, reaching one hand between their lower bodies to guide him into herself as she sank down. His eyes flew open to lock on hers, huge dark pupils blown wide so that they completely engulfed the dark iris and made them lambent in the half-light.
She pulled him furiously down into deep and wild oceans. And when they surfaced together and lay entwined on the now completely disarranged worktable, her leg wrapped around his waist and his hand tangled in her curls, she took sated inventory of him.
His eyes were lidded and sleepy, but underneath the afterglow of sexual pleasure she could tell that he alight with fervent awareness and intellect. His face openly wore the power that formed such an essential part of him. Power of magecraft, for certain, but also power of mind and heart and will. It was the look she most loved on his face, when all his masks and veils fell away and you could tell just from looking at him who and what he was. But the lurking weakness and exhaustion that still mingled with his bright intensity made it impossible for her to forget just how low he must've drained himself. She pulled back; his hands trailed down her arms, unwilling to lose contact.
“It's all right,” she told him. “But I think you really meant it about the bed. Come on.”
Looping his arm around her shoulders, she maneuvered his lanky stork's legs around the hazards of chair legs, doorframes, and a very patient-looking dragonet. At last they tumbled down into bed together, and she laughed into his hair as she tried to extricate herself from the tangled position he'd ended up in. Hopefully he'd fall asleep again, and maybe she'd be able to join him. She felt fair tired herself, after all that.
“I'll try harder,” he said seriously, reaching up a large hand to cup her cheek.
Suddenly serious herself, she took note of the determined set of his jaw – and, with an inward twinge of resignation, of the mercurial gleam that still haunted the depths of his eyes. “I know you will,” she told him, “but I'm just as sure that it won't do much good. You've too many bad habits, Numair Salmalin. Self-sacrifice is only the worst.”
He looked at her bleakly. “What else can I do?”
“Nothing more than try, darling. And remember that things are different, now that we've got each other.”
His index finger traced the shape of her lower lip. “You're right,” he told her. “You don't know how right you are.”
Kit came jumping up to join them, her claws clinging to the quilt almost hard enough to tear it. She'd have to give her a lecture about it, Daine thought – when she didn't feel so sleepy and comfortable. Kitten curled into the curve of her bent legs, warm and familiar, and went to sleep with a small noise of dragonish happiness. Once they'd settled themselves, and Daine had pulled their soft blankets into a proper nest, Numair was already asleep, lips slightly parted and breathing deep and steady.
She thought: he was what he was, formed by time and need and other, harder, lessons. It would never make her love him less, though it might yet be the end of her sanity. And yet – she'd always knew she was half-mad to be with him. She just didn't care as much about sanity as she'd used to.
Her curls tumbled over his face as she kissed him again.
Tamora Pierce (Tortall), Daine/Numair. 3,620 words. Mature sexual content, quarreling, makeup sex, magical exhaustion. "I don't give a bloody coin for what the King needed,” she snapped. "You needed, for once, to manage to not half-kill yourself as soon as I leave Corus. Do you not have any instincts at all? Can't you tell when you're going too far?"
Daine let go her grasp on her eagle form as she dropped in through the open window, talons shifting to toes just in time to take her weight as her wings melted back into smooth-skinned shoulderblades. She'd been glad to see their casement open – it was late afternoon, and folk were everywhere, and it had been a long night of trailing nasties for her, and she was tired and moody and really didn't fancy changing back where anyone'd be able to see or bother her.
She was tired, but only the tiredness of hours spent awake – not the grinding tiredness of war, or the terrible exhaustion of divine power, or the soul-weariness that came in the wake of mortal combat. It was fair pleasant, she reflected, to be well enough to feel irritated with her weary state. And it was more pleasant still to be able to slip sideways into her home before dealing with any further responsibilities.
Having shifted back to girl-shape, she reached for the spare chemise that always hung ready by the window – she came home as often without her clothes as with them, these days – and shrugged it on, twisting her tangled curls up into a knot as she did so. She had reports to give to the King, and to Sir Myles of Olau, and she was under orders from Onua to let her know she'd made it home safely, but for now she was alone, and happy about it. She'd found nothing urgent, learned of no disaster imminently poised to sweep down over them all. For now, everything was all right. Everything else could afford to wait a spell.
The room was strangely dark for midday, the sunlight blocked out almost completely by the heavy dark drapes that covered every window save the one left open for her – and that one faced eastward, and so let in very little light so late in the afternoon. Twitching back the curtains to allow the day back into the tower, Daine took a few hesitant steps forward into the vague dimness, feeling like the girl in the story who unlocked the bloody chamber: odd and hesitant and as if she didn't belong there at all. She hadn't always. Only a few months before, these had been Numair's chambers and his alone, and she'd bedded down with the Riders still. But now this was her home, and she didn't take kindly to feeling so wrong-footed in it.
She understood her feelings a bit better when she saw that Numair was stretched out asleep on their bed, collapsed gracelessly on top of the coverlet. Kitten was curled up around the hard angle of his bent knees, her scales a quiet rosy dun color, her breath whistling on the inhale as it always did why she slept heavily. Numiar was too darkly complected to pull off looking pale, but underneath the warm tones of his skin she saw shades of pallid grey.
She knew without needing to hear it what must've happened. He'd drained himself down – gone too far. Idiot mage. One of these days she'd end up killing him for it – if he didn't kill himself first, which looked more and more likely every day.
Stirred by the new presence in the room, Kitten opened her eyes, meeping welcomingly when she saw Daine. The dragonet uncoiled herself and came stretching down to have her scales scratched. Numair made a small noise of protest when she left, but apart from that the exhausted man didn't move.
It was written on his face, in the laxness and inelasticity of the skin around the angles of his nose and cheekbones, in the tension still present in his full mouth even in sleep, in the heavy shadows smudged beneath his eyes. His gangling, overlong limbs were haphazardly disposed, twisted and oddly turned. And either he'd managed to unbind his hair before blacking out, or he'd never managed to bind it back at all, because it was spread out in a dark and tangled aureole around his worn features.
Looking at him, part of her felt like mourning. She got angry instead. Abruptly throwing open all the westward windows before stomping into their workroom and slamming the adjoining door hard, she heard him wake and tumble out of bed, falling with a loud thump to the floor. It sounded painful, even through the intervening layers of oakwood. She told herself that she didn't care. Kit didn't follow her, staying rooted in the bedroom with an expression on her long muzzle that clearly expressed her reluctance to get involved.
A moment later the door burst open in a flurry of black sparks. “Oh – I thought you'd locked it,” Numair said, rather foolishly. His wrinkled white shirt billowed around him, untucked and unbuttoned enough at the neck to allow it to hang off of one of his shoulders like a child's nightshirt.
“No,” she said frostily. “I wanted you to come in.”
He looked even more tired now that he was on his feet, and the hand that he rested on the doorframe was white-knuckled with the physical effort necessary to keep him upright. Even with that support, she could see the vertiginous instability that shook him. He looked ready to fall to the floor at any moment. It did nothing to lessen her anger; instead, it burned all the more hotly in her heart, consuming the fuel of her concern.
“Daine,” he said, fuzzy-witted with tiredness and recent sleep, mouth stumbling over individual words and obviously not up to attempting sentences at all. “Are you – when – ?”
“That doesn't matter,” she said, refusing to thaw even a bit under the warmth of his dark eyes. She was really angry, and this was too important to just let slide. “What did you do?”
“What did I – oh, you mean – it was nothing, really. Just a bit of long-distance spellcasting. Distance always makes the drain worse, but Jon needed –“
“I don't give a bloody coin for what the King needed,” she snapped. “You needed, for once, to manage to not half-kill yourself as soon as I leave Corus. Do you not have any instincts at all? Can't you tell when you're going too far?”
A corner of his mouth turned crookedly upwards in a pathetic half-wry grin. “Daine, you do realize there's not much I can do usefully besides going too far?” Gods all bless, but the man was infuriating! He couldn't even fight properly – instead of flaring back when she picked a quarrel, he'd just stand there looking weary and wry and self-mocking.
She needed to be further away from him; withdrawing back into the workroom, she set her hands to mindlessly shuffling the bound parchments and loose papers and bits of odd detritus into slightly tidier piles, waiting to calm down enough to speak to him without shouting. “That's not true,” she managed eventually. “If you would just be sensible about things, and let the King and Alanna know when you get tired, you'd still be able to do all the things that no one else can do without risking your life in the bargain! Somehow I doubt that they want to use you up. You're the most powerful mage in the country – so they've got every good reason to manage and protect you. It's you who's at fault here, and it's not all right.” Her level, reasonable tone lasted her for about a minute, and then she was back to shouting at him again.
Now his temper was beginning to snap and spark up to meet hers. He took a few stumbling steps toward her. “So what would you have me do? Sit at home and wait for you? Stay up here researching treatises while Jon struggles to do the impossible without losing his precious integrity, and Alanna's forced away from her children, and Onua rides out for months at a time chasing down outlaws with the Riders? The war might be over, Daine, but that doesn't do much in the way of making things easier. Or, I know,” he said with a sarcastic curl of his lip, “I can just take up juggling again, and earn us a few extra coppers!”
“Better that than practically killing yourself!”
His face twisted; she couldn't tell if it was with anger or with hurt. When he spoke, his voice was low and bitter and still filled with smoldering upset. “You forget, magelet, that juggling happens to be my accustomed method of self-murder.”
He'd meant it as a blow, and it landed squarely, knocking her off her feet in more ways than the figurative; she sat down heavily at his worktable. She didn't know much about that period in Numair's life, but she'd picked up enough from Onua, and the Lioness, and from Numair himself on the rare occasions when he was feeling talkative about his past, to know that the entire affair had been beyond terrible for him. He'd very nearly died of hunger and cold, and his fear of Carthak and the Emperor Mage – and of whatever it'd been that he'd done there to be arrested as a traitor to the Empire – must've been near untenable to keep him hid under such conditions.
It hurt her to think of him like that – and that hurt made her as tart as if she'd been eating green unripened fruit. “I didn't agree to live with Arram Draper, Numair! Nor would I have, had he asked me.” His eyes widened at that, going very round and very dark. She'd struck her returning blow. Halfheartedly, she wished she'd pulled the punch a bit.
“But you're not there anymore,” she said, more gently this time. “Neither in Carthak nor on the street. You've a home and family now. Why do you still have to be in such a hurry to throw – it – away? I don't want to fly home someday only to find you – ” She couldn't bring herself to say the word.
He sighed and ran a hand through his loose hair. “Daine, I don't know any other way. I've never been any good at normalcy, not even as a boy. Why do you think my parents sent me so far away so young?” His mouth was crooked again with unhappiness and self-pity. “I don't know why I expected you to tolerate living with me when my own mother couldn't manage it.”
“Don't be an idiot,” she said, flint-hard and frost-cold. She recognized this mood of his, and she was in no temper herself to deal with it. “I can tolerate living with you well enough, so long's you actually stay living. And as far as toleration goes, I don't see as that toleration keeps me back from trying to keep you sane and whole. Or was I supposed to tolerate you into a grave?”
“Your grammar's slipping,” he observed.
She wished that her human teeth were sharp enough to make biting him worthwhile. Carnivorous animal forms tempted her, but she did her level best to keep to words rather than claws. This was a two-legger trouble; she'd best resolve it like one. “Don't dodge what I'm saying by criticizing how I said it, Numair. That's a coward's way and you know it. And bad grammar won't make it less true.”
Numair spread his hands out in front of himself, looking down at the broad palms and long fingers with a peculiar expression on his dark face. “But then what else am I good for?” he said softly. “It can't all be this fraught for normal – for everyone else. It's can't be; I don't believe it.”
Looking at him, Daine let her anger go. It wasn't going to do either of them any good at this point. Momentarily she longed for her ma's simple anger, or for the quick-forgotten passions of the People that erupted and raged and then were gone. Trust her to pick a mate who was more complicated than he was worth! Numair could be terrifying when he allowed himself to get well and truly angry, but more often he'd press himself down into melancholy, or turn his anger inward and set to savaging himself. He was very good at causing himself pain; he didn't have a particular need for her to help him along with it.
“Numair,” she said, frustrated and helpless, “the war has to be over someday.”
He was trembling now, mouth set with strain and weariness. She shook her head at him, still irritated but unable to watch him fall, and roughly kicked a chair over toward him. Usually, he'd've caught it with a tendril of power, but his reserves were evidently too low for that; the chair clattered sideways to the floor, and he had to stoop awkwardly to right it before finally giving in to gravity and letting his long body fold up underneath him. “What do you mean by that?” he asked her. His voice sounded choked, somehow stifled.
“I mean – it was one thing when we truly were at war. When someone had to understand the spells and fight the krakens and deal with enemy sorcerers, and there was no one else to do it but you. I'll not say that I was greatly pleased with affairs, but it made sense. You're the only one of you we've got.”
He shot her a weak smile, turning cynical at the edges. “Yes, and aren't you glad?”
“I am at that. More than one of you would be the end of my sanity, at the very least. The war ended months ago, Numair. We won. And as amazed as I am that you didn't ever manage to kill yourself in winning, we have both survived this long. So why are we still living like this? It's not needful anymore.”
“I'm sorry,” he told her heavily. “I've been terribly unfair to you. You deserve so much better than this.”
“Please don't,” she said, almost begging. “Please. All I want is for us to be happy for a while. I love you. Don't tell me you're sorry. Just be all right.”
He said nothing in answer, but instead summoned the energy to cross the room to her. It was clear as glass that he was still having troubles with dizziness; she stood hastily and reached out a hand to steady and help him. He took it, using it to pull her close enough to catch her up into a tight embrace. His mouth was warm against hers when he kissed her.
The kiss he gave her was a weary one, worn down, seeking comfort and reassurance as much as it offered passion. The kiss she gave him in answer was more urgent, heavy with heat. He made a small stifled sound of surprised pleasure, and his hands grasped convulsively at her shoulders.
He had enough height on her as to be near-ridiculous – there was very nearly a foot's difference between them - but she was at the moment much steadier on her shorter legs, and so when she pushed them both back down he yielded to her until he lay sprawled supine against the untidy desk and she half-knelt above him, resting her head against his chest. She could hear his heartbeat.
Reaching up, he pulled her chemise over her back in one fluid moment, and as her arms rose above her head to let it fall away she felt again a remembered sensation of wide-winged flight. His kisses always did make her go fanciful in the head.
“We might do better to take this to bed,” he said, gasping under the insistent touch of her mouth and hands.
Raising her head to meet his gaze, Daine cocked an eyebrow at him. “You really want to stop now?” she said, and then tugged the tip of the finger he'd been using to trace the shape of her lower lip into her mouth.
“No. No, I don't – Mithros, Mynoss, and Shakith, Daine, do that again -” and then he stopped talking, trading in coherent speech for more inarticulate sounds as she drove a line of strong kisses down the length of his neck.
When she reached the hollow of his throat she gently set her teeth into his skin, biting down and holding. He froze and drew in a long and shaky breath before relaxing pliantly back into her hold, surrendering beneath her. He was too worn down to have energy left to spend in making love to her; she meant to make love to him.
She loved his body. It was dear and familiar and odd and strange, and beautiful in a way that belonged entirely to him. His face was flushed now, the red blood rising in his cheek to usurp the wan greyness of exhaustion. She pressed herself against him, sinuous, gripping his broad shoulders as she held him close. “Magelet,” he said, breathless and quiet, and her mouth curved into a grin as she kissed his clavicle.
“It's not fair that you're so much more dressed than me,” she said, and before he could reply she'd sat up and was reaching for the fastenings of his breeched. In a moment she had them undone.
Now she was on her knees above him. His eyes were closed, his long lashes sweeping dark against his cheek, and his head was turned to one side. She brushed his loose hair away from the arc of his neck, leaving it exposed. He was beautiful; she wanted him desperately.
He opened his eyes and looked up at her. “Please,” he said, and the warm dark timbre of his voice ran through her in a bolt of pleasure. She made no answer, but kissed his mouth in a lingering promise.
Shifting all her weight back onto her legs, she bent down, reaching one hand between their lower bodies to guide him into herself as she sank down. His eyes flew open to lock on hers, huge dark pupils blown wide so that they completely engulfed the dark iris and made them lambent in the half-light.
She pulled him furiously down into deep and wild oceans. And when they surfaced together and lay entwined on the now completely disarranged worktable, her leg wrapped around his waist and his hand tangled in her curls, she took sated inventory of him.
His eyes were lidded and sleepy, but underneath the afterglow of sexual pleasure she could tell that he alight with fervent awareness and intellect. His face openly wore the power that formed such an essential part of him. Power of magecraft, for certain, but also power of mind and heart and will. It was the look she most loved on his face, when all his masks and veils fell away and you could tell just from looking at him who and what he was. But the lurking weakness and exhaustion that still mingled with his bright intensity made it impossible for her to forget just how low he must've drained himself. She pulled back; his hands trailed down her arms, unwilling to lose contact.
“It's all right,” she told him. “But I think you really meant it about the bed. Come on.”
Looping his arm around her shoulders, she maneuvered his lanky stork's legs around the hazards of chair legs, doorframes, and a very patient-looking dragonet. At last they tumbled down into bed together, and she laughed into his hair as she tried to extricate herself from the tangled position he'd ended up in. Hopefully he'd fall asleep again, and maybe she'd be able to join him. She felt fair tired herself, after all that.
“I'll try harder,” he said seriously, reaching up a large hand to cup her cheek.
Suddenly serious herself, she took note of the determined set of his jaw – and, with an inward twinge of resignation, of the mercurial gleam that still haunted the depths of his eyes. “I know you will,” she told him, “but I'm just as sure that it won't do much good. You've too many bad habits, Numair Salmalin. Self-sacrifice is only the worst.”
He looked at her bleakly. “What else can I do?”
“Nothing more than try, darling. And remember that things are different, now that we've got each other.”
His index finger traced the shape of her lower lip. “You're right,” he told her. “You don't know how right you are.”
Kit came jumping up to join them, her claws clinging to the quilt almost hard enough to tear it. She'd have to give her a lecture about it, Daine thought – when she didn't feel so sleepy and comfortable. Kitten curled into the curve of her bent legs, warm and familiar, and went to sleep with a small noise of dragonish happiness. Once they'd settled themselves, and Daine had pulled their soft blankets into a proper nest, Numair was already asleep, lips slightly parted and breathing deep and steady.
She thought: he was what he was, formed by time and need and other, harder, lessons. It would never make her love him less, though it might yet be the end of her sanity. And yet – she'd always knew she was half-mad to be with him. She just didn't care as much about sanity as she'd used to.
Her curls tumbled over his face as she kissed him again.