He sighed, then smiled in spite of himself. “Fine, I’ll stop misdirecting my annoyance.”
“Or, here’s a thought, you could direct it at one of those games–” Fawn mimed throwing something, and the alcohol tipped her sense of balance all at once. She caught a hand againsthis arm, steadying herself. She let go just as quickly, sensing that if she kept holding on, she might tip bodily into him, and spill all her feelings over him.
Erryc fell quiet, unease melting from his expression.
“Actually, it’s cleared out by the fountain,” Fawn suggested, pointing to the end of town the crowd had started at earlier in the night, now nearly empty, as everyone had moved their attentions to drinking and games. Dozens of candles floated in the icy water, a tradition once meant to keep the fountain from freezing over.
Erryc sighed, but nodded and started moving towards it. “We can light some candles too, if you want.”
The edge of the fountain was covered with candles as well, wax melting down over the edges. They lit their wicks off the various little flames still burning away, and wedged their candles in with the others.
“Oh, my feet. I should have worn my better shoes tonight,” she moaned as Erryc took the last bit of free space on the fountain’s rim for a seat. He planted one foot firmly on the ground, and patted his thigh.
Fawn couldn’t help but grin. He didn’t need to insist.
His hands were around her waist before she even sat down, pulling her into his lap. She leaned heavily against his body, finally shameless.
This was a wonderful place to sit and view the mountain, she thought, the buzz of alcohol making the starlit night gorgeous against the nearly black silhouette of the land’s jagged edge, scraping the clouds.
One might mistake the Chasm, at a distance, for being a single mountain, shrouded by the snowy canopy of the Whispering Woods. Upon nearing it, however, it became clear that some greater force of nature had cleaved the mountainrather neatly in half. It was always beautiful, but the snowflakes sweeping past it, covered the two in a blanket of calm.
“I’m sorry you’re out a lot later than you usually are,” Erryc murmured, his breath warm against her ear.
“No, don’t be. I’ve never been invited to one of these.”
“You could come just to be here,” he pointed out. “You don’t have to be invited.”
“No, it’s more than that,” Fawn insisted as she straddled one of the orc’s thick thighs he had spread out across the ledge. “You see me when others don’t.”
“Fawn, you’re not invisible. You’re—” he stopped, swallowing, considering his words a moment before he said with quiet conviction, “You’re very pretty.”
She waved a hand, unimpressed.
Plenty had called her pretty, and all they had done was make her want to shrink back and disappear. She needed to make him understand, it wasn’t about how many heads she turned.
“No, I mean, you make me feel included. You bring me into conversations when I’ve spent too much time inside my own head. You go out of your way to make sure I don’t just stay in the corner.”
“I... hope that’s not a bad thing,” he said slowly. “I realize you probably pick the corner because you want some time to yourself. I wouldn’t want to leave anyone out though.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” she nodded, but couldn’t help but to recede back into herself a little as his words solidified a doubt in her mind.
He would just look to make sure anyone didn’t make a wallflower of themselves, because that was the kind of person he was. She couldn’t just assume he was being nice to her any differently than he would with someone else.
But he noticed the almost imperceptible change, the slight dip in her voice, the brief tug downwards at the corners of hermouth. He touched her arm, watching her far off stare. “What’s on your mind?”
Her eyes dropped to the space between their bodies, the way she was already draped across his lap. She laid a hand over his, then a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.
“Wow, your hands are sooooo much bigger than mine,” she said, half in mockery of the woman who had flirted with him before, half in giddy tipsiness. It was so much easier to blatantly flirt, to say something so exaggeratedly enamored that she couldn’t possibly mean it, when she was drunk. Truly, she was jealous of that woman. Fawn knew herself well, and she would never have the courage to be so bold as to declare her affection for Erryc.
To do that was simply to give him the opportunity to reject her, however gently he did it.
He said nothing, only held his hand out for her. Fawn traced a finger up and down his hand, exploring the lines of his palm.
His handwasso much bigger than hers. He was so much larger than herself that of course everyone’s eye immediately went to him first. He towered over people, made himself heard every night in the crowded tavern, could hold everyone’s attention in the palm of his hand.
Her attention wandered elsewhere, shifting between his thighs. Normally when she stared at the loose fitting fabric of his pants, she was trying to interpret the folds for some kind of hint.
There was more than a hint present, an interested bulge cutting a half hard shape down his other pant leg.
