#dw despite appearances the gift is not 'buy my silence / for 8000 gold a month i will stop'

[sovonight]

a gift | xan/radri

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It is early in the morning, and the light in the inn's room is dim. Radri opens her bleary eyes to find Xan already awake and sitting up in bed beside her, flipping through his spellbook by the light of a candle on the side table. Rather than turn the other way and go back to sleep, she sits up herself, joining him in quiet preparation for the day ahead. Opening her journal on her lap, Radri unfolds the maps she has collected of the surrounding area, and begins to plan out their journey. Xan's turning of pages settles into the background of her thoughts, periodic and soothing, its rhythm interrupted only once for Xan to give her a glance of acknowledgement, brief but fond.

As her gaze passes over one of the taverns on the map, the sight of its name brings a small smile to her lips, and her fingers are drawn to the homemade amulet around her neck: Imoen's gift to her. Xan had been surprised and somewhat intrigued to declare that indeed, the necklace carried a protective enchantment from the fragments that had been crafted into it, although how the magical properties survived despite not being properly repaired, he could not say.

"Xan, when is your birthday?" Radri asks, now that the thought is in her head. Xan glances up from his spellbook, thinks for a moment, then returns to his work with a slight shrug.

"As chance would have it, it is today," Xan says, as idly as though he were commenting on the weather. For a moment, she thinks this must be an uncharacteristic jest, but the longer she regards him, the more convinced she is that he is, indeed, serious.

"Today?!" Radri exclaims, at which Xan sends her a startled look of confusion. "Why didn't you tell me earlier? Oh, now I have no time to prepare!"

The maps must go—or, no, perhaps they should stay. She could take him somewhere. But would he even like that? Is there even anywhere to go? What in the world is there to show someone who has been traveling the land much longer than she has? How could she possibly find it, when even after their travels thus far, she still remains on the inside just a sheltered child of Candlekeep?

"Radri," Xan says, his calm voice interrupting her panicked thoughts, "There is no need to prepare anything. It is a day like any other; I am content to let it pass without acknowledgement."

"No, no, I have to think," Radri says, and then it comes to her. "Wait. Yes! Here, you will decide where we go today."

She pushes her maps into the little valley of the blankets between them, with a bright, relieved smile. Xan stares at her, then at the haphazard pile of maps.

"Ah. The gift of responsibility. I suppose I should first declare that I will endeavor not to get all of us killed," Xan says, and sighs, reaching not for the maps, but for the journal still on her lap, which lies open to her latest entry. "We were in the middle of some winding quest, correct? We may as well see it through."

"What? No! I'm not putting you in charge to finish quests," Radri says, flipping the journal closed and pushing it aside to emphasize her point, "What do you want to do today?"

"It is hard to say," Xan says, sending her a flat look and a raised brow, "You already took "let it pass without acknowledgement" off the table."

She would let it pass, but… he already asks so little of her, and gives her so much. There is no sense of obligation there, he has made that clear, but what she wants is not so much to repay him as it is to express all the emotion in her heart. Her love, her gratitude, normally locked behind her paltry words—here is a chance, and yet, how can she celebrate him if he insists he needs nothing?

"Isn't there anything, anything at all that you wish for? To take a day's break in peace and quiet, or to study your craft without thinking about what it will be useful for in a quest, or…" As her words trail off into his silence, Radri sighs, her shoulders falling as she looks away. "Never mind. If there is truly nothing that you desire, then today will be a day like any other."

She pulls the pile of maps back into her lap, tidying them back into her journal. Perhaps they will just finish that aforementioned quest today, and if so, she already knows where to go. The quiet page-turning of earlier does not resume however, and a moment later, Xan's silence is broken with a sigh.

"If you are determined to grant me something, then I ask for a kiss," Xan says.

"Just a kiss?" Radri asks, confused. "Are you certain? You don't want something less… mundane?"

"There is nothing mundane about it," he says.

When she meets his eye, he is sincere. She would have preferred a gift that took some effort from her—perhaps then, it would feel like enough—but if this is all he wishes, then it will be so. Radri places her journal to the side; she crosses the little valley in the blankets between them, and closes her eyes, waiting for him to claim his kiss.

"Ah," Xan says, interrupting her wait, "But I must receive the kiss from you, otherwise it will not be a fitting gift."

She freezes. Come to think of it, Xan has always initiated every kiss they've shared.

"I… I…" Radri finds herself stammering, suddenly helpless to do anything but stare into his gray eyes. There had been a twinkle there, a glimmering wink of light—but in a heartbeat, it is gone.

"Or, I need nothing," Xan says, with a slight shrug. "A day like any other."

"No," Radri says, "No, I will…"

She's no longer fully conscious of her words, her thoughts bent solely upon the task before her. She leans in towards him, ever so slightly—the first step is, of course, to close the distance—but with what she swears is the trace of a smile at the corners of his lips, he relaxes into the cushions at his back, reclining so that if she wants to meet him, she must come in closer towards him again. In the back of her mind, she registers the sight of his spellbook—it is closed, now, but not carelessly, her old ribbon marks his place—and it rests to the side of his idle, relaxed hand, which now lies open. Open, and available to hold her, to pull her to him—but aside from his steady breaths and the few blinks that interrupt his patient gaze upon her, he does not move, waiting for her.

Her hands find their places to bring her back to him, pressing palm-down into the mattress to either side of his reclined form. Her heart, beating loudly in her chest, would have her believe that she were facing off against some dangerous beast, and not the petal-soft lips of her beloved that rest just five inches away from her own. While he must be fully aware her turmoil, Xan's clear gray eyes betray nothing—and as though knowing they are her last lifeline, he closes them at last, waiting patiently for her kiss.

Radri stares at his closed eyes, his eyelashes, the gentle waves of his hair, and the stray lock that so often escapes it, which brushes a serpentine curve down to his lips.

Five inches… just make them zero.

Four…

Three…

Two…

…Overwhelmed, she buries her face in his shoulder.

"Last I checked, that is not where my mouth resides," comes his idle comment, "As is evidenced by the fact that I am speaking unimpeded."

"I know," Radri says, in what she intends to be a normal response, but which comes out as more of a muffled moan of despair.

She has the sense that he is smiling now, but she refuses to lift her head to see it. His arm shifts against her, the movement felt in the shoulder she has found shelter against, and a caress follows, moving across her hair to the nape of her neck. A kiss is pressed to the top of her head.

"Perhaps this is my gift instead," Xan says. "A quiet morning in which I may delude myself with illusions of your safety."

"You can have that any morning."

"Not any morning," Xan reflects idly, "But I have already done it before, I suppose. I have collected as many as five seconds before our doomed reality makes itself known again."

Hearing that, she has to kiss him. Radri lifts her head up from his shoulder, looking determinedly back down at his lips.

"Now I have a sense of what our enemies experience when they face you, I think," Xan says, with an amused tilt to his brow. As he regards her a while longer, though, the look in his eyes shifts, and his tone is nothing but fond as he murmurs, "Ah, and there is the sight that I have become accustomed to."

It's only when he points it out that she becomes aware of the building warmth in her cheeks. As always, she burns hotter under the compounding effects of his gaze and her own awareness, and Xan sighs, lifting his hand to run his cool fingertips across her cheek in a gentle caress.

"You do not have to force yourself," Xan says. "I consider myself fortunate that you permit me to show you affection in such ways to begin with; it does not need to be returned in kind. Shall we leave this behind, and face the day?"

"Wait," Radri says, a new spark in her thoughts, and she grasps his hand in her own. "May I…?"

Xan's gaze flicks down to their joined hands, then rises to meet hers, understanding in his eyes. He nods, and this time, when he closes his eyes, so does she.

There is a place within, where the troubles Xan lifts from her shoulders escape her being; where the melody he strums across their bond comes to rest once it has sung through her veins; where an echo of his soul rests beside hers, both calm and restless, both troubled and content. He had guided her on how to form the bond, but he had not guided her on how to navigate it. You will know, he'd said—and she does.

She gathers it all. Her love, yes, and her affection, her desire, and her gratitude—but also that which is wordless, including the vivid memory of just a few moments earlier. She wants him to know why she'd frozen, what she had felt, when he had first laid back and closed his eyes and she had gazed at him with such desperate and nervous and hungry affection that it had overwhelmed her and sent her to the shelter of his arms. She would have kissed him a thousand times, if only she could move, if her love were any less, if the look of patient serenity on his face were not so achingly beautiful, if, if, if—

"Estel'amin," she hears, soft and strained from his lips, as though the word had barely escaped being choked in his throat, and Radri's eyes open in an instant to find Xan's gaze clinging to hers in desperation, his gray eyes dark and vulnerable. She releases him, and he reaches up and takes her face into his hands, and she is not so much pulled as she is drawn, meeting his lips with hers. The kiss is tender, as is the next, and the next, until they part, far too soon. But it is only so that Xan may scatter his affection elsewhere upon her, his kisses finding her cheeks, her eyelids, the tip of her nose—

"Xan," Radri says, the syllable edged with laughter, and at last Xan releases her, though the way he gazes at her says he would have continued for some time longer. As she gazes back, however, she realizes something—and as naturally as breathing, she leans back in and presses a simple kiss to his lips.

"There! Your gift, fulfilled at last," Radri declares, lightly flushed and pleased with herself.

"Oh," Xan says, a slightly dazed look still lingering in his eyes, "Of course. That... was the gift, here."

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