Nonsexual acts of Intimacy - Select from the following for my muse to respond to... ♡: Accidentally falling asleep together
sooooooo this was from june but!!!! i did not completely abandon it, it simply took me forever to write it. i hope you dont mind that i did it for zilvurra and gale i also hope that you like it so much you forgot how long you had to wait 👀
thank you to @irondeficienttav who read this so many times and is the best beta reader in the world 💜💜
Zilvurra started a second smaller fire closer to the creek, not interested in spending yet another night finding decreasingly polite ways of asking her companions to get out of her way while she brewed their necessary potions. The day had been one of abundant procurement for ingredients, especially those for concoctions that keep them breathing. Besides, this way she could take care of it in tandem with Gale making dinner.
She hoped that by starting early enough, she could finish before the night grew terribly dark. At least, she might have if they were not in need of nearly of seven different brews.
The project started out enjoyable enough. Shadowheart, well versed in both medicinal magic and enticing gossip, aided Zilvurra for the first couple of hours until she was called to dine. Graciously, she delivered a warm wooden bowl with tonight’s stew to her fellow cleric before dismissing herself to bathe downstream then retire for the night.
Even without direct company, Zilvurra kept entertained with Wyll’s stories and Karlach’s jokes taking place just out of sight.
Judging by the setting sun and the waning voices just around the rock, it must have been over an hour before Zilvurra was approached by another. The camp’s cook himself made his way with heavy footfall, making himself known to her well before he so much as spoke. It may not have been purposeful, though she appreciated it regardless.
“Not fond of rabbit?” Gale situated himself a few feet from her, resting his elbow on his lifted knee with the other tuck below.
Zilvurra did not want to seem eager for his attention, and especially did not want to further boost his ego with how his consideration warmed her chest and cheeks. “Just letting it cool.” She nodded towards the bowl as an attempt to keep her reddening face from his gaze.
Gale raised his own tired face towards the sky, turning to night, a position Zilvurra herself demonstrated routinely during prayer. “I think it has been cooled for quite a while already, if it is not entirely cold now. I could just get you another bowl. One without a cloud of mosquitos surrounding it.”
Not one to waste food - nor snub Gale’s generosity - Zilvurra looked sheepish at this. She picked up the bowl and took a heaping bite, chewing the tough meat through her words. “No, no, still good. The swarm adds flavor.” She insisted, setting the bowl back down. “Just stay here. I might fall asleep in the pot without someone to talk to.”
“I wonder what kind of potion that would make.”
She thought for a moment, trying to find anything to say that might make him laugh. “One to consume my thoughts, perhaps?”
He grinned - a lukewarm reaction but not quite negative all-in-all - before his eyes scoured her work station. “Well, is there anything I can do to help?”
“Oh, um. Well, those bottles,” She pointed towards her freshly washed stash, “need filling. I need to make one more pot while you handle the pouring and the capping, and such. If we work quickly we can be done before the bugs move on from lagomorph to human and human-ish.” With that, her eyes darted to him for a reaction. Instead of a laugh, lackluster or otherwise, her eyes just met his. Though it took a few heartbeats, he eventually pulled his gaze from her strange orange irises further illuminated by the flames.
Zilvurra had spent the past few days reminding Gale of his earlier slip of the tongue in which he referred to their shared flirtations as “what makes us human.” He saw her unease at the statement and quickly followed it up with, “well, you know what I mean.”
She did, in fact, know what he meant. Still, she liked to see whether she could make him squirm just a bit more.
Apparently not, at least in the way she sought to.
Once the brew she had been working on before his approach had finished simmering, Zilvurra stood to pull a second pot from the nearby running water. From there, she gingerly scooped the still-boiling concoction into the cooled iron, and finally returned to sit cross legged before the boiling cauldron.
“I could have helped with that as well. You only gave me the simplest task.” Gale raised an eyebrow towards her. He held one palm over the still surface, feeling for what heat remained. Satisfied with the temperature, he got to work bottling.
Zilvurra took her focus from crystals in the mortar and pestle to raise an eyebrow back at him. “I don’t mean to be… anyway, the task is not exactly hurting for the aid of your wizardly muscles.”
He rolled his eyes the slightest bit, mostly used to her ribbing by this point. “Actually I was going to suggest the use of a mage hand.”
“I have two Zilvurra hands, I can handle it.” She joked and showed off her palms and the backs of her hands, her freckled forearms on display as well. Her smug smile was quickly interrupted by an oncoming yawn that she stifled with the back of her wrist.
“By all means, suit yourself.” Gale knew she was by no means the strongest person at camp, or even the strongest cleric for that matter, but he could sense this sort of thing was important to her. She did it with such graceful deliberation that she hardly afforded to other chores.
The moonlight shone off the water onto Zilvurra’s grey skin where it mixed with the fire’s gleam, working in tandem to illuminate her properly. Leaning over the cauldron carefully, she dusted the powdered crystals into the pot and watched the flakes settle into the base liquid. She took to stirring the brew thoroughly, her anxious eyes finding their way to Gale every few moments while he carefully filled the bottles.
With each swirl Zilvurra watched the fluid make, she inadvertently soothed her tired eyes from where she knelt. Her body began to sway from side to side while the crickets rubbed their legs together, serenading her with a lullaby.
“Zilvurra!” Gale called to her. It was sudden, a bit louder than he normally spoke. Nonetheless, her darkened eyelids continued to falter. “You cannot actually fall into the pot. Come here.”
He pressed his back against the rock behind him and held out his arm towards her. It might have been for her to grab his hand and stand herself up. Probably so she could walk herself to back her bedroll. She may have completely and utterly misread him.
Zilvurra wanted so very badly not to be wrong, not right then. So, she shifted over to sit on her hip with her legs to the side and pressed herself against his torso.
If Gale had not meant for this, he adapted to the advance remarkably well. It may have been the most natural thing in the world to him, had his quickened heartbeat not given him away.
Her eyes fluttered closed with her cheek against his loose velvet shirt. She felt the rise and fall of his chest paired with a careful motion she assumed was the conjuring of a mage hand. A faint glow suggested as much.
Gale’s own mortal hand found the middle of her back, though not before he gave it a small tap of his pointer finger and softly asked “May I?” She did not know whether she managed to mutter a soft “please” or simply hummed with a lazy nod, although it hardly seemed to matter. In any case, he understood to rest his palm.
For an unidentifiable amount of time, somewhere between fifteen seconds and twenty years, Gale rubbed his thumb up side to side where his hand lay before he himself let out a quiet yawn. In what almost seemed like an attempt to play off his own fatigue, he muttered with his chin set to the top of her hair. “Comfortable?”
Despite her lulling consciousness, Zilvurra managed to muster response to this inquiry. The space from her dazed lips and his ear, however, was too vast for him to hear that response. She let out little more than a weak moan, one he met with a pleased hum. There was no further need for words, he supposed.
Gale considered the orb lying in his chest might have been buzzing against her ear. That she might very well hear the power, the hubris. His shame. He wondered if she could hear anything at all in that moment. She answered, in her own way, with a somewhat sober snore.
He wanted to laugh, though held back to keep from rousing her. Instead, he wrapped his other arm around her, pulled her tighter to his chest, and pressed a brief kiss to her pine perfumed hair.
————-
The sun’s rays had yet to reach the two of them when Zilvurra’s gaze met the orange-pink sky above. The fire must have burned out for hours, the ash resting without a cinder. The cauldron still held what she finished, obviously sufficiently cooled by then, and the pot had been returned to its shallow spot in the water. The mage hand did work just as well, she supposed.
Sitting up from her wizard-pillow, she first noticed a creak in her neck from the awkward position. Next, and more shamefully, she detected a small wet spot on his nice shirt where her face had lay. Promptly she pulled the sleeve for her own top over her thumb and tried to rub it off before Gale could stir awake, to no avail.
His dark eyelashes batted slowly, opening more and more until his focused settled on her guilty face.
“Something to confess?” He croaked amusedly with a stretch of his arms over his head, his back rising and popping in a manner familiar to Zilvurra’s own morning habits.
Between trying to decide whether to be affectionate or teasing, the morning fogginess got the better of her wit and the truth tumbled from her dried lips. “I drooled on you. In my sleep.”
His eyes shut once again, this time with a smug grin and the cross of his arms. “So very much like Tara, I tell you.”