The bridge was not tall, and the creek was not very deep. The fall itself was nothing remarkable.
But the water was unlike anything she’d ever felt.
The plunge was so cold she could barely stand to open her eyes, it knocked all the breath from her chest. It burned, it pierced, it needled with a thousand pricks.
Erryc’s hands were under her arms, lifting her out of the water quickly. Somehow it was worse than being in the freezing water. Even a slight wind cut bitter slices through her every staggered step.
Burning with cold, Fawn did not have the wherewithal to argue, when Erryc said around chattering teeth, “Th-the t-tavern’s just up ahead. C-come in and dry off.”
Each frozen step was barely any better than the last as they made their way out of the creek up the road.
The tavern was still icy and dark inside, but being out of the wind was enough to feel like she could finally take in a deep enough breath.
As soon as the tavern door swung shut again, Erryc went immediately to the cold hearth, gathering bits of feathers and splinters from the ground under Fawn’s usual table and striking flint into the pile.
Though the wood was dry, the smouldering pile of tinder scraps took a long, slow crawl to catch on the bark. The logs wouldn’t fully burn for at least the better part of an hour.
Some small warmth emitted from the hearth, but it wasn’t enough to permeate the layers of wet clothing. Fawn bent down to blow gently on the young fire, begging it to grow faster.
Erryc shed his cloak and hung it up by the fireplace to dry it out quicker. Then he shucked his boots, tossed them haphazardly towards the fire as well.
Fawn glanced at him between violent shivers, constantly worrying that he was injured from the fall. If not for their current circumstances, she would have avoided looking at him entirely. She had not forgotten his rejection just yet.
However, she forgot to breathe, forgot that she was even cold at all, when she caught sight of him grab a fistful of the back of his shirt, and pull the whole thing off over his head.
The creek might have shocked the drunken gaiety from her, but apparently it hadn’t quenched other thirsts.
Fawn watched, rooted to the spot, as his hands began tugging at the laces of his pants, where the fabric was almost entirely soaked, chunks of snow and ice dripping off of him.
He looked up and met her eyes. Fawn blinked, supposed she ought to offer some normal, reasonable explanation why she’d been slack jawed and staring at him undoing the lacing to his cock, but all she could do was let her teeth chatter.
“You’re soaked,” he said, and let go of the laces.
For a moment, there was only the loss of him taking off his pants, then he moved to her, kneeling down before her. His hands went to the fastenings of her dress. Fawn closed her eyes as hot tears welled up, turning her back to him.
Countless times she had wanted something like this to happen, and yet it was so hollow after his rejection. Her heart was tearing itself into pieces. She ground her teeth together, and swallowed her tears back. He would not know how much she cared. She would not give him that.
Her petticoat came off quickly, the back of her dress opened up as he unlaced the bodice. She tugged at her sleeves and started to shrug out of it, stopping when she realized she would be naked after removing it.
Holding her cold wet dress to her chest, Fawn turned to Erryc, looking over her shoulder up through her eyelashes. She saw the same realization strike him as the icy weight of the water pulled the dress down, slowly peeling off her shoulders as she tried to hold it up.
“I’ll look away.”
Erryc had volunteered a touch too quickly, Fawn thought. There was awkwardness between them, and then there was him not wanting to see her naked even a little. It reaffirmed the realization she’d had at the fountain, that he had pulled away from her. He didn’t want from her what she had wanted from him.
Feeling all too much like a petulant child who’d been denied a treat, she kicked off the icy, soaked garment, leaving it in a puddle on the floor. She sat down in front of the little fire and hugged her knees to herself.
She might have felt self-conscious of her nakedness if she’d still hung her hopes on the daydream that one day he might see her and be so taken by maybe her tits or something that he realized that she had been worth loving all this time, that all this time she’d only needed to find the courage to take that first step.
But Fawn had known all along how silly a hope it was, nothing more than a fantasy. She just hadn’t wanted to believe it. What did it matter now, if she bared her cold and clammy skin to him, with bits of silt and sand still sticking to her?
She supposed she ought to feel equally indignant that he thought she was useful as a deterrent for the other girls with their eyes on him, but right now what stung the most was that she’d gotten so twisted up in their game of make-believe that she’d forgotten it was only that.
“Uh, Fawn? Is it ok with you if I take off my pants? They’re freezing.”
“Yeah, whatever,” she muttered against her knee, deciding to rest her attention in the corner of the hearth. The bronze handle of the fire poker was polished from the many times it had been used to stoke the fire. Colors swirled in the warped metal, Fawn slowly began to understand what she was seeing.
She dropped her eyes back to the floor as soon as Erryc stepped out of his pants and she glimpsed the sheer length and girth of Erryc’s cock swinging between his legs.
