“Not the sugaring,” Shrike admitted, passing him another slice. “But the hunting and curing, aye.”
Wren appeared far more impressed by this than Shrike thought warranted, but it pleased him nonetheless to know his labours were appreciated. Wren’s wonder never failed to amaze Shrike in turn. To share his spoils with him seemed to redouble the joy he found in them. It satisfied something within him he hadn’t realized he wanted. And now that he had it, he wished to gather it close and guard it against all who would dare attempt to steal it away.
Yet as matters stood, even with a second helping of eggs and venison in him, he hardly felt equal to the task. Though the hunger had receded for the moment, the bone-deep ache remained. His shoulders in particular seemed determined to punish him for climbing down into the larder and carrying the flank out of it. He bit back another groan, his hand rising unbidden to rub the ache. His eyes fell shut against the throbbing in his skull.
Then another hand alighted on his shoulder.
Shrike opened his eyes just enough to see Wren had sat down on the bed beside him. He sighed in relief as Wren kneaded the knots out of his muscles. He let his own hand fall from his shoulder and slumped forward to rest with his elbows on his knees and his head bent. When he untied the lacings at the neck of his tunic, Wren took the hint and delved beneath his raiments to reach down Shrike’s aching back and better alleviate his suffering. The familiar touch warmed Shrike’s heart as well as his skin. To have Wren so near to him, to feel the heat of his body and inhale the scent of his hard-labouring sweat, to know the hands that graced his flesh were as tender as they were strong and held as much affection for him as he felt in turn, brought an immeasurable relief he’d never before imagined.
The relief proved short-lived as Wren withdrew his hand.
Shrike raised his head to find Wren had stood up and walked away entirely. He opened his mouth to question this, but his tongue stilled as he watched Wren approach the hollowed stump and turn its copper handle. Hot spring water gushed from the pipes into the hollow. The rising steam coiled in the air above it and dissipated in the shafts of sunlight streaming in through the windows. Just seeing it released some of the tension in Shrike’s shoulders. Despite his pains, a smile came to his lips, a fraction of the thanks he felt Wren deserved for contriving such a notion as this.
“I daresay you’d have thought of it yourself, if you weren’t in such a state,” said Wren, which confused Shrike for a moment before he realized his silent thanks must have slipped off his tongue after all.
Wren returned to his side and slipped his hands beneath Shrike’s tunic once more—this time to lift it over Shrike’s head. Shrike raised his arms to allow him to pull it off, though it cost him considerable effort to do so. It took Wren far longer than usual to divest Shrike of his clothes, half due to Shrike’s leaden limbs, and half, Shrike suspected, due to Wren’s insistence upon handling him as gently as possible. No tearing of laces or ripping of seams, as so many of their other, more urgent encounters had entailed.
By the time Wren had set aside Shrike’s tunic and hose on the bed, the copper tap had half-filled the hollow stump. Shrike’s body sinking down into it sufficed to bring the water up past his chest. He groaned as he leaned back against the smooth-polished wood, stretching his legs out beneath the water and his arms across the rim above. The warm current stirred up by his slipping into the tub swirled around his aching limbs. He let his eyes fall shut with a sigh.
Then the water rippled anew, disturbed by something beyond him.
Shrike blinked his eyes open to behold Wren divested of his myriad layers and on the brink of stepping into the tub himself.
A lackadaisical grin spread across Shrike’s face. Ripples rose to the rim as Wren straddled him, the water rendering him weightless. His arms twined around Shrike’s shoulders and his soft fingertips kneaded through knotted muscle. Shrike tilted his face so their lips might meet, and still more interesting things occurred beneath the surface that allowed him, for a few blissful moments, to forget all his aches.
Afterward, Shrike found himself fit only to stand still whilst Wren rubbed him dry with a linen towel, then crawl back into his bed. Wren lay beside him, dressed again, though bereft of his coat and boots.
“Good of you to look after me,” Shrike muttered as Wren’s warm bulk nestled against his own. “Great deal of trouble.”
“Nonsense,” Wren replied. “You’re much easier to look after than any of my university mates were in their cups—or on the mornings after.”
Shrike chuckled.
Wren brought his sketch-book into bed with them, and the rhythmic scrap of pencil across parchment soon soothed Shrike down into something like sleep.
~
Monday dawned bright with golden sunshine turning green through the newly-unfurled leaves of the forest canopy.
“I’ll be all right,” Shrike told Wren—not for the first time since they’d woken.
Wren didn’t appear convinced. “Don’t forget the laudanum. Is there no way you might recall me to Blackthorn if you find you have need of me?”
Shrike couldn’t think of anything at the moment—though that might have been due to the dull throbbing pain that had plagued him throughout the past few days and only seemed to grow worse with the bright dawn. Still, “It’s only a day. I’ll survive a few hours alone.”
Yet when Wren at last tore himself away from Shrike’s side, Shrike didn’t remain alone for long.
At first Shrike turned to his work-bench as a distraction from his discomfort. Sitting at it proved easy enough. But when he attempted to tool another leather oak-leaf, the strike of the mallet shot twin bolts of agony up his arms to stab his budding antlers. His vision flashed white, then spotted black. Both mallet and leather fell from his hands as he clutched the rim of his work-bench to keep from collapsing. When his sight returned some moments later he staggered upright and groped his way back to his bed. His brow continued to throb with the echoes of the blow, and so the sleep he returned to left him fading in and out of consciousness.
Soft footsteps interrupted his uneasy slumber. Too soft for Wren, who, though he had a light tread for a mortal, still thudded his boot-heels into the ground with every stride in a manner that carried throughout the forest. These present footsteps, by contrast, proved almost too soft for even Shrike’s keen ears to hear. And yet he heard them. Which meant whoever made them wished him to hear.
“Nell,” Shrike muttered without opening his eyes.
He could hear the smile in her voice as she replied, “Aren’t you a sight.”
Shrike didn’t feel the need to dignify that remark with anything more than a groan.
Nell laughed, but lower and more gently than she was wont. “How do you like them?”
