Celeste gave Fitz an apologetic look that she didn’t entirely mean and kept a hand on Reeve’s elbow as she led him out of the tavern. He didn’t tip over, but he didn’t do a very good job of getting to the door either. Empyrea help him, he certainly tried, but still ran into the wall. He seemed to barely feel it, though the wall might have groaned.
Once they made it out into the cool night air, the noise and brightness of the tavern shut away, Reeve took a deep breath and straightened. Celeste thought he might have recovered, poking himself in an eye but successfully running a hand through his chestnut waves nonetheless. She released him, and into the darkness they began through Briarwyke’s circle to the North Road, but it only took about three steps before one of the jagged cobbles sent him staggering almost to the ground.
“You don’t have a lot of experience with ale, do you?”
“It tastes, uh, not good. I don’t drink it,” he said, pinched his eyes shut, and then hiccupped again.
“But you did tonight.”
He shook his head and made little disagreeable noises that set Celeste to laughing quietly under her breath. Then he took off sideways, and despite her attempt to help, he knocked them both to the ground. “Oh, no, sorry, sorry, you gotta be more careful,” he said, perhaps to her, perhaps to himself. He was fumbling to help her up and stuttering out apologies, but none of it was working. “I think you’re gonna have to carry me home.”
Well, she certainly couldn’t do that, but before she could balk at the suggestion, she was struck by what he’d said.Home.
She sat there on the ground, grinning back at how helpless he’d become. “I don’t think I can carry you.”
In another attempt to give her help she didn’t need, Reeve’s hands landed on Celeste’s waist. She inhaled sharply under his touch, but he didn’t seem to notice.
She supposed if he wasn’t going to notice, then she wouldn’t either, difficult as it was with his fingers tickling at her hips as he fumbled to pull her closer. “Reeve, if you wait here, I can try to coax Earlylyte into the village, and then he can carry you back.”
“Oh, no, no, no, you don’t—not that. I’m ‘sposed to. I’ll do the carrying.” His grip on her tightened, and he hoisted her upward.
She squealed, tossed over his shoulder like a wyvern’s femur. “Reeve! What in the Abyss are you doing?”
“You’re taking me home, I thought?” Reeve staggered with her extra weight but seemed to be getting the hang of the whole walking thing.
“This isyoutakingme,” she said, stifling laughter as her stomach bumped against his shoulder.
“Mmm, same thing.” He continued down North Road, wrapping an arm tightly around her legs. “Don’t drop me, ‘kay?”
She truly giggled then, relaxing against him. “I’ll do my best. I guess even if you’re drunk, you’re still as strong as two Earlylytes.”
“Thanks!”
Celeste was trapped, but she couldn’t complain. She’d had two ales herself, and with the stress of the crowd behind them as the Dew Drop’s torch faded into the distance, a contented sleepiness took her. They were headed home.
Home.
Reeve’s arm was tight around her knees, he was drunkenly humming into the night air, and she wasbeing picked up and carried away.Her insides went all mushy, churned slightly by his staggered steps, and then he almost fell again, which made her dinner topple over.
But he only askedherto be more careful, which made her giggle harder. When he righted himself, he shifted his hold, shouldering her hip up against his head and wrapping his hands around her thighs. That cut Celeste’s laughter off, replaced with a burning in her face that traveled swiftly through the entirety of her body to settle both comfortably and not between her legs.
By all the jumping and singing crickets!
His hand only needed to slide a few inches northward to have her absolutely writhing with frustration—or bliss, she supposed, depending on where his fingers ended up. As she bounced along, the threat of both only intensified. She would have told him to stop teasing and just get on with it, but he clearly had no idea what he was doing so deep under the ale’s influence. All Celeste could do was shift her weight along with how he staggered to keep them both upright and endure the mostly delightful torture of where his thumb almost was until they made it back to the temple.
Reeve triumphantly carried her up the portico’s stairs, set her down in the darkened antechamber, and all too sincerely breathed a heady, “Thank you,” over her face.
There was no use in pointing out that he had done all the carrying, and instead she just assisted in maneuvering him through the temple. After Reeve stopped to do some indiscriminate hand movements toward the desecrated altar and drunkenly request courage from Valcord for reasons Celeste couldn’t identify, they took to the stairs. There was more laughter and at least one dangerous moment when Plum swept by, but she eventually succeeded in delivering the big, drunken knight into his bed chamber.
Moonlight streamed in through the blue stained glass, the night clear of clouds. Though dark, the room was much less daunting without the noxscura lurking in each of its corners.
Reeve pulled off his baldric and pushed his sword into Celeste’s hands. “Try not to touch the handle for too long.” Then he fell onto the bed.
She hugged the scabbard tightly, watching his chest rise and fall, arms splayed out to either side. He might have been big and burly and a holy knight too, but why did he also have to be so cute?
“Don’t even think about it.”
Celeste gasped, Sid’s voice slightly muffled against her chest. “Think about what?”
