faderift | (no subject)

Stirring, drowsy, rolling onto her back and stretching her arms high above her on the pillows—Gwenaëlle has the fleeting thought of whatever happened to impotent, nevermind that she knows. The last few nights have been something else entirely, and his damn near constant interest aside he's been almost impossible to sleep with, in and out of bed, never still whether his hands are on her or not.

(Rather more often than not.)

“Thranduil,” she exhales, her hand coming up to his face and contemplating just slowly pushing it away from her—and then frowning, palm against his cheek becoming the back of her hand against his forehead, bleary and tired but alert enough to know the difference between what a furnace a man usually is (he is very useful, come this wintertime) and the beginnings of a fever.

When she sits up, she takes the precaution of holding the bedding against her otherwise bare body before he can decide that's interesting, too. He's been strange lately—erratic in a way she's no context for—and she'd already been a little concerned, but this doesn't feel right. “Have you slept at all?”

“Gwenaëlle,” he replies. “Wife.” She cups his cheek and even this is arousing, this gentle way she is with him, her soft kindnesses all the more joyful for how they show love, and care, and the kind attention they are allowed as a wedded pair. She holds the sheet, and sits up, and a murmured—purred—question as to why she hides herself from his gaze when he already knows her so well is cut off by her question.

The leonine posing and expression is cut as he stops to think.

“No,” he says, after a moment. “No, I had no luck with the Fade.”

Which he needs, for the next step of his plans.

(It's because Gwenaëlle knows perfectly well what kind of an answer she's going to get to how are you feeling if she asks it with her tits out.)

“And when was the last time you slept for more than an hour?” Judging by the way he's tossed and turned beside her, thrown the blankets off to go and do Maker only knows what and then returned before she's even settled properly in his absence, an hour might be an optimistic estimation of Thranduil's ability to sleep for any consecutive amount of time.

Her concern comes more brisk than soft, her frown lingering and her hands turning his face this way and that as she studies him for signs of illness—discerning them more immediately pressing than worrying about whether or not it's catching. If he is ill (more likely every moment) and if it is catching, she's been beside and beneath him long enough to make it a case of shutting the barn doors after the horses have escaped.

“I have been busy,” he sidesteps. “Putting my office back in order, and following leads on several projects.”

He, who is normally like a rock when asleep, an arm about her waist and persuaded to wake or move for nothing more than, as events have proven, either an assassin or dawn’s light. She is clinical in her touches and that bothers him. He wants passion, the look in her eye that means she’s pleased to look upon him. But her hands move his head about and he obeys, slack in her grip and letting her do as she wishes. Beyond that, he does not understand.

“Why?” he asks, but anticipates her answer. “Have I kept you from your rest?”

“Only as long as I'm trying to get it in bed,” she says, dryly, thinking of the number of times now she's dozed off elsewhere during the day, and the increasing temptation of finding somewhere else to sleep at night—it isn't that she doesn't enjoy his attention, but this is beginning to get out of hand.

For a start, the last time a partner managed to exhaust her libido was never, that has never happened, what on earth is going on.

“Thranduil,” she says, more steadily, sliding her thumb along to find the point of his ear in a gesture she intends for soothing, “I don't think you're well.”

"I am sorry. I will stop." He tucks his face into her hand, as sweet and guileless as a fawn in the gesture. He seeks her touch like a flower seeks the sun, and if he is not getting the attention he wants, he will take what he can get.

Between an exhale, hardly minding the touch on his ear, and a shake of his head, careful not to dislodge her, he replies. “No,” he says.

“That is impossible. The Firstborn do not catch mortal illnesses. Why would you think that?” His eyes find hers, and he relaxes back onto the pillows, trapping her hand between the linens and his head.

“You don't sleep, you don't stop, you're much, much warmer than you ought to be,” she protests, following him by necessity when he lies down, her hand beneath his hair. She leans over him, her own hair tumbled over bare shoulders, her drawn expression settling firm at his own objections and how swiftly he brushes aside even the possibility.

He is, she thinks, of no mind to listen to her. There's a Tranquil man in his office who might be more reasonable; more likely to see what she might miss during the day, and if she were to prompt him to report anything he noticed as necessary...

Her mind turns and turns and turns. She sighs, leaning down to press a kiss to his mouth— “I'm worried about you. Give me another explanation.”

Edited 2018-01-21 05:45 (UTC)

He cups the back of her head, keeps her close. His fingers slide into her hair. A few minutes more, only. Then he will let her go, and they will go about their separate lives, in separate paths, only meeting at night. “I stop,” he protests. “I stopped working for you.”

Abandoned his papers to slink after her and sweep her, unsuspecting, into his embrace.

“After we wed,” he offers, “there is usually a period of seclusion. To allow for the husband and wife to—acclimate. Physical desire is new to us, remember, and learning to control the urges takes time. So—a quiet bower, food and drink deposited unseen nearby, and a month or so to shape yourself around your love, and to remember how to behave.”

He smiles, all teeth. “Perhaps I was slow to warm up, and it is only now that the feelings are rising.”

It's a persuasive argument, but she isn't convinced; she's grown used to his ways, the warmth and solidity of his steady presence at her back. He sleeps like the dead most nights, unmoved til morning, and it isn't just him behaving oddly, lately. It's hard not to look at him with lingering worry, though at this nearness she doesn't look at him at all, lashes lowered, a sigh breathed out against his mouth.

“Normally,” she says, ruefully arch, “I'd be flattered that your excuse is just my obvious irresistibility.”

And it isn't as if she isn't, now, or as if she hasn't enjoyed the attention—isn't enjoying it right now, common sense warring with the temptation to just give in and worry later—but one of them has to be clear-headed.

It's just that it's usually him. She's not got quite so much practise as he does.

“You are irresistible,” he counters, the hand moving to the back of her neck. “Has no one told you so?”

He is warm. He changed into his sleeping clothes and has managed to keep them mostly on, and then refastened after, during all afters, but she is right in thinking him warmer than before. Or perhaps the fire is just built better, or the frost receding. A portion of one, a dash of another, she is still overreacting.

“Gwenaëlle,” he says. “We will just lay in bed, if you are worried. For the rest of the time we have. No lovemaking. You will lay here with me, and sleep more if you like it, and you will stop worrying.”

The tranquil, she decides. Lyov, isn't it? She'll speak with him, later; it will ease her mind, and she can relent now. If she's wrong, she's wrong, and if she isn't—which she's sure she isn't—someone will do something about it. Hopefully. With any luck. He is so bloody large, though, what are they going to do if he decides to be as uncooperative with healers as with wife?

“I wish you'd sleep, too,” she says, finally, her thumb against his cheekbone for a moment before she sinks down against him, into his arms. Her own nightgown is...somewhere...discarded earlier in the night, no subsequent barriers to his hands later—their sweat mingled on her skin, tacky. She'll have to sleep, else she's going to doze off when she bathes later and drown.

“Please. Try.”