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softersinned-arc · 2 years

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@balldwin said: [ TUG ]: the sender tugs the receiver close against them by resting a hand against the small of their back, pulling them flush against their body.

She wakes at the first blush of morning, a sliver of the sky visible from a gap in the curtains and glowing a pale violet. It catches her off guard some mornings, when she wakes here, and if she asked him to move the bed he certainly would, but the moments afforded to her now are precious and rare, and she guards them. She remains still for a long moment, listening for a change in his heartbeat, and when she hears none she turns, slowly, slowly, to face him, taking care not to disturb his rest.

The older she gets, she’s been promised, the deeper she’ll sleep; as it is now even the subtlest change in the light can wake her. Some part of it is, no doubt, the natural consequence of a long period of adjustment. Even as a warmblood, Astoria loved mornings, and she woke early even on the days she could sleep in. And she would climb quietly out of bed and tiptoe in bare feet across the floor of her bedroom to the balcony, where she would sit, balanced carefully on the railing, her knees drawn to her chest and her arms around her legs and her hair loose as she watched the sun climb and color ripple through the sky.

A few of the habits of her first life have remained with her—the way she holds her breath as she settles again, watching him for any sign of change, is one of them. But Baldwin sleeps, and after several minutes she relaxes.

It’s not the first time she’s woken in his bed; she doubts it will be the last. Last night, as she has half a dozen other times, she leaned in his doorway and waited, a crooked smile playing at her lips, her curls damp but drying behind her, wearing a nightgown and nothing else. The woman he had been entertaining, perhaps expecting to stay the night, had stared back at her with open hostility; she looked to Baldwin, obviously expecting some sort of defense, but he’d only laughed under his breath and stood to gather her clothes. Astoria had noted with some pleasure that they were nearby, no doubt left there in anticipation of her arrival.

(She’d excused herself when he arrived home with her, feeling agitated and ill at the thought of hearing what she knew would follow, and had gone out to hunt, asking the woman to attend to her to have a bath prepared in two hours’ time. He didn’t keep her as a prisoner or demand to know of her comings and goings, and so she took her time, savored the hunt. Perhaps she should have anticipated it but instinct drove her to seek out something, anything that reminded her of his scent, of saddle leather and fire, and it took her out of the city, towards the woods where a pair of highwaymen had settled in for the night. For near an hour she watched them, made noise only to stoke their growing fear. The savagery of their wounds would suggest an animal attack of some kind; she left them with enough blood in their bodies not to prompt suspicions that the attack was the work of wearh and came home with her cheeks flushed and blood soaking the front of her dress, hidden beneath the cloak she kept held closed around her.)

(She heard the movement on the second floor slow when she entered and she smiled in spite of herself—she had felt his eyes on her through the window when she left and she could feel his awareness of her now, could practically hear the sharp intake of breath when the sweet perfume of blackberries and plums, colored by the heady scent of blood, reached him. As he could no doubt smell when she reached the top of the steps, deliberately taking her time and allowing the wood to creak beneath her feet. As he could no doubt smell when she unwrapped the small bar of white soap and began to wash the blood and dirt from her skin and hair.)

And when the unwelcome guest was gone, shown out by the same woman who had drawn Astoria her bath, Astoria climbed into the bed beside him without a word and settled in to sleep, pressed close against him, determined to overwrite his lover’s scent with her own. He’d been amused by her jealousy and possessiveness, as he always was, and welcomed it.

It’s something softer that directs her now. The sliver of light takes on a warmer tone as the sun climbs slowly higher and she settles her gaze on his sleeping face. These days it’s easier to understand what it is she feels for him—desire, certainly, and hunger, and need, and she understands all of this well enough without much thought, though the intensity of what she feels leaves her breathless at times. But there is something else, something that overrides even desire, something warmer. She thinks of the mornings in Henry’s court that she woke alongside Iain and remembers thinking that she understood love and she realizes now that what she felt then was a pale and poor imitation, and that she was a fool to believe she understood much of anything.

The slope of his nose drives her to distraction. The curve of his cheekbones could make her mad. One morning she found herself so enamored with the freckles on his forearm that she idly began to count them. Yet another morning she searched out the shadows cast by his eyelashes. The sound of his heartbeat, his breath, his blood is a song—and as a witch she heard blood singing to her all the time but as a wearh the only blood that sings is his, slow and sonorous. She used to imagine she heard God in the water around her but this sound is infinitely sweeter than God’s voice could ever be.

You sound like autumn, she’d told him once, finally finding the words to describe it and delivering them with absolute wonder, like the last thunderstorm before snow. It had been her favorite sound, and she had been certain that after death, she’d never hear it again. That first time she recognized it she cried, leaving streaks of pink down her face that he swept away with his thumb,

She listens now, and she watches the way his face glows in the warming light. When he wakes she’ll have to share him with the world: he will be a de Clermont again, and everyone and everything will demand his attention. He’ll find the woman she drove away last night, or someone new, to tease out that jealousy again. Or perhaps he’ll focus the staggering weight of his attention on her and revel in the way he can throw her off-balance, like no one else. No; she hadn’t been in love, then, even when she and Iain laid tangled together and made promises they had no hope of being able to keep. She had been infatuated, but it hadn’t been love.

This—so profound a physical sensation it leaves her weak at the knees, so deep that it reaches into her body and makes a home in her bones—this is love, and it is incomparable. He is incomparable. And when he wakes she will do what she must and share him with the world, and bite her tongue when the urge to tell him that she loves him so much she doesn’t know how she can bear it, to have all of that love inside of her, begins to overwhelm. But in these moments he belongs to her, and only her. He is Mars at rest, fierce even in his slumber like a sleeping lion, and beautiful. She thinks of the artists she loved as a girl, the sculptor her grandfather patronized and the way he could coax the shape of a face beneath a veil from a block of stone, and she thinks that even the most delicately detailed of his creations ugly and crude in comparison.

She’s about to try and chase another hour’s sleep when his eyes open. The first thing he sees when he wakes is her face, her hair a mess around her and her features framed by that same sliver of light by which she’s been admiring him. Mars gazing upon Duellona, the god at rest beginning to stir. The corners of his mouth quirk upward and the sight makes her breath catch in her throat.

Someday she’ll tell him everything. Today the words are nowhere to be found, though she lets her lips part as if she hopes they’ll come out all the same—but no words suffice when she wants to tell him that he is her heart and her ribs and her lungs. Baldwin rolls onto his side and tucks an arm under his head as he does, his other hand coming up to take her chin and his thumb stroking a slow and tortuous line along the curve of her lower lip. When her breathing is sufficiently ragged and her cheeks are flushed with pink, he releases her, lets his hand skate over her arm and down to her side before he settles it at the small of her back.

Gently, he pulls her closer, as close as he can, until they’re chest to chest and she’s staring up at him with wide dark eyes, her pupils blown so wide there’s barely a ring of honey gold left around them. And then he rolls onto his back again and draws her with him, so that her head comes to rest on his chest; he moves his hand again to catch hers and he rests both against his sternum, and when she looks up at him again his eyes are closed as if he intends to fall back asleep. She hooks her leg over his, settles comfortably against him, and he lets out a quiet huff of laughter.

She could try to speak now, but she thinks it would shatter the peace around them, and so instead she remains silent. She falls asleep again minutes later, with her ear pressed to his chest and her fingers laced into his, and the sound of autumn storms filling her head.

#balldwin #i. here's the truth from my red lips. ( answers )#iii. the rest of you (the best of you) belongs to me. ( baldwin x astoria )#(tonight on repeat: passaggio by ludovico einaudi and also the sound of me weeping)#(took slightly longer than i would have liked because i got caught in a google spiral on the history of sleepwear)#(apparently medievals slept naked except for head coverings if the illustrations from the period are anything to go by)#(though by the late renaissance / early baroque periods the wealthy had designated sleeping clothes)#(i really think historical fiction makes the right call every time costume designers throw in wildly anachronistic dressing gowns & robes)#(anyway. god. do you ever have to take several very deep breaths and try not to sob because they just love each other so fucking much)#((tvd voice) 'are you watching me sleep?' i'm gazing. 'it's creepy.' it's romantic!)#(do you think he actually fell back asleep or was he taking his turn to be awake & very aware of the person in his bed)

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