Satin Secrets
Prompt Request by @opulentshits
Here you go dear! I hope this is what you envisioned!
Prompt: Emmrich helping soothe Rook’s stiff left wrist not long after they started their romance. It’s late at night, both of them are relaxing on Emmrich’s bed before they go to sleep and he’s just massaging their wrist but accidentally let’s slip that he would be willing to do this forever for Rook. Little bit of angst maybe because Emmrich gets insecure but it ends well because Rook is fine with his confession and very happy.
The fade was quiet, calm even, the exact opposite of all tales told by templar and circle mages alike. Certainly it could be a tankerous space but not right now. Not amidst the swell of cinnamon and sugar sweets accompanying the spiced caress of cardamom and nutmeg tea. Two steaming cups of tea next to a slice of cinnamon cake left half eaten on a plate. A kiss of comfort as Rook lay sprawled across plum satin sheets, dozing slightly, licking a whisper of maple from the thumb of her free hand. Eyes sliding to her left she observed sleepily as Emmrich paid diligent attention to her left wrist. Emmrichs detail to attention had caught increased stiffness of her left wrist once more. It truly had not taken any real prodding on his end. An evening of quiet found them sequestered in the comforting privacy of his room.
The gold spectacles Emmrich wore while he read small handwriting and detailed work sat perched low on his nose. He lay on his right side beside her, propped on one elbow, his gaze focused not on her face but on the delicate structure of her forearm. His long fingers, skilled, learned, unmistakably sure moved with a quiet precision, tracing the muscle groups beneath her skin as though reading braille in the shape of her pain.
His thumb pressed gently along the inner line of her forearm, just below the bend of her elbow, seeking out tension like a craftsman testing for cracks in fine wood. When he found a knot of stiffness, he paused, applied just enough pressure to coax it loose, and moved on. Each movement was deliberate, methodical, done with the kind of reverence born from both knowledge and care.
She watched the way his fingers shifted, pressing, rotating, sweeping in small arcs toward her wrist. His palm supported the underside of her arm, stabilizing it with a tenderness that made her breath catch. As he reached the joint, his touch lightened, adjusting the angle with a soft lift, careful not to jolt or pull. He tested the rotation, the range of movement, the way one might test the hinges of a finely made door, not just for function, but for ease, for grace.
“You’ve been overcompensating,” he murmured, mostly to himself, as his thumb circled the tendons just below her palm. “This spot’s overworked. Probably from how you’ve been holding your blade.”
There was no judgment in his tone, only observation, only care.
She didn’t speak. Didn’t need to.
Her breathing slowed, almost imperceptibly, as the tension in her arm began to ease beneath his careful touch. Her fingers, which had been curled slightly toward her palm in unconscious defense, slowly unfurled, one by one, like petals relaxing into sunlight. A small exhale escaped her lips, soft and unguarded, as if her body had decided on its own to trust him. Her eyes stayed half-lidded, not closed, but drifting, focused somewhere far beyond the rafters above them, her thoughts suspended in the rhythm of his hands.
When his thumb found a particularly tender spot just beneath the swell of her wrist, she didn’t flinch. But he felt the way her hand twitched, the way her shoulder gave the barest shift, as though something inside her had momentarily pulled away, then, just as quickly, settled again. Leaned in. He didn’t comment. He only adjusted the pressure, easing his fingers back with a silent apology wrapped in motion. And she answered without words, by staying still, by letting him continue.
By letting him in. A sleepy smile remained on her lips as she watched. “You know, I don’t ever know what I did before you. I feel like I am becoming quite spoiled.”
“I am pleased to hear that,” Emmrich looked up at her with a gentle expression “That is a better outcome than I could have hoped for.” His words were sincere, a smile responding to her soft laugh. He took in the image of Rook lounging amongst his sheets, his duvet creating a tumble of comfort around her.
“Honestly, what am I going to do in the future?” her left cheek pressed into the pillow as she turned her head to face him more fully.
“I would offer this service forever if you’d let me, permanently at your beck and call.” The words slipped free from Emmrichs lips before his thoughts could scan them. He froze, and the tension cut like a knife through the comfort.
Rook's heart plummeted as she watched the panic sour Emmrichs features. His eyes darted around the room like a horse shifting behind the starting gate. “I-well,” his jaw clenched as he, out of character, fumbled desperately for words. “Well, I, that was terribly forward of me, I apologize, that was uncalled for.”
“Emmrich?’ Rook asked softly, all traces of sleep disappearing “What's wrong? Why are you so distressed?” she sat up, pulling her hand from his fingers which now started to tremble. Alarm bells ringing in her mind.
Emmrich sat up as well looking everywhere but at her.Emmrich sat up as well, spine taut like a wire drawn too tight. His hands braced against his knees, fingers clenching into white-knuckled fists. Still, he couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t bear to.
“It was a stupid thing to say,” he said quietly, too quietly, his voice splintering at the edges. “It wasn’t fair to you. I do this. I always do this. Say too much, feel too much, too soon, and then people… people look at me like I’ve grown an extra head, or like I’ve dropped them in a cage and locked the door.” His shoulders hunched further, folding in on himself like he could make the weight in his chest smaller just by compressing his body.
“I just” He laughed, but it was hollow, guttural, painful. “I can’t ever seem to pace myself like others. I don’t know how to just... drift. Float. Be casual.” He spat the word like it burned. “And the worst part is I know it. I see the look when it starts to go wrong. That flicker of discomfort. That moment they realize they didn’t sign up for someone like me. So I try not to say anything, not to be anything” hands trembling.
He finally turned his face toward her, eyes shining and broken glass with just one too many cracks. “But it still slips out. Like tonight. I open my mouth, and everything ruins itself.”
Rook didn’t speak yet, but he could feel the silence around her, searching.
“I don’t expect you to stay,” he said, almost too fast, a frantic whisper. “I wouldn’t blame you if you left right now. I mean, who says things like that? ‘Permanently at your beck and call’? Gods, I sound obsessed.” He swallowed, hard. “You deserve someone who’s not this... heavy. Not this desperate to be kept.”
He laughed again, shorter this time, bitterer. “It’s pathetic. I am pathetic.”
He scrubbed a hand down his face, harsh and self-punishing. “I’m sorry. You don’t need this. You didn’t ask for this. I just, fuck, I can’t shut it off. I try so hard and it’s never enough. I just wanted” his voice cracked. “I just wanted to matter.”
Emmrich's breath hitched as he tried to rein himself in, but the flood had already started. The dam had broken and now everything, everything he’d tried to keep buried was rising, black and choking, from the pit of his stomach.
“I knew I shouldn’t have said anything,” he whispered, his voice gone hoarse with self-loathing. “I felt it coming, and I still let it happen. Like a fucking child who can’t control himself. Like if I just give enough, offer enough, love enough” He cut himself off, teeth clenching so hard the muscle in his jaw twitched.
“But it’s always the same, isn’t it?” he breathed, hands now trembling violently in his lap. “I get carried away, and then they leave. Every time. And every time I think maybe if I’m just... less. Quieter. Easier to hold without it hurting. Maybe then someone’ll stay.”
His face twisted as he laughed again, sharp, wet, ugly. “But I can’t. I don’t know how to be less. I feel like my chest is like a wildfire, burning me from the inside out, and everyone else is just... lukewarm. Like they’ve figured out how to keep it all manageable, but II fucking scorch. And people don’t want to burn, Rook.”
His name for her was so soft it almost broke, almost an apology in itself.
“I see it happening every time. The moment they realize I want too much. That I’d die for them and it’s only been a few weeks. That I can’t sleep unless I know they’re safe. That I memorize the way they breathe just in case I need to recognize it in the dark. I see them recoil when they realize how deep it goes for me, how fast.” His voice cracked again, and this time the tears reached the surface.
“I swear I try to hide it, to hold back, but it spills out of me anyway. Like it did just now. And I know you heard it. I know you felt it. The weight of it. The need.” His chest rose and fell with shallow, frantic breaths. “It’s too much. I’m too much. You’re going to realize it any second now, and I just”
He clenched his fists again, so hard his knuckles went bloodless. “I don’t think I can survive it. Not again. I can’t do it again, Rook.”
His voice dropped to a whisper, and there was something in it, something so small and fragile it was barely human.
“I’d rather rip it out of me than watch it chase you away.”
His hands had gone slack, limp in his lap, like even they had given up trying to hold him together. His breath shook with every inhale now, pulled through clenched teeth like each one cost him something. His shoulders trembled.
“You’re not saying anything,” he said, barely audible. “That’s... that’s usually when it happens. That silence, like they’re just realizing what they’ve gotten into. That look of guilt, or pity. Or both.”
He finally looked at her, and it was a terrible thing, the kind of look that didn’t beg so much as brace for the hit. Eyes red-rimmed and shining with unshed grief he hadn’t earned yet but had already accepted. “I know what I am,” he said. “I know how I come off. Intense. Needy. Like I can’t exist unless someone’s there to anchor me.” He laughed, dry and sharp. “And the worst part is, I try not to be. I stay up at night going over every word I said, wondering if it was too much. Rehearsing what not to say the next day. Telling myself to be cooler, simpler, more normal.”
His voice dropped, ragged. “But then someone’s kind. Someone’s kind, and I forget. And it spills out. I start building a life around their presence before they’ve even decided to stay.”
He looked away again, eyes locked on some far point beyond the walls, as if he could disappear into it. “I don’t mean to. It’s not manipulation. It’s not a game. I, just my brain starts imagining little things. How their mornings look. How they liked their tea prepared. Their favorite bath salts. What they might need without asking. How to make the hard days easier. How I could fit myself around the edges of them like I’m meant to be there.”
He let out a slow, shaky breath, like it hurt just to admit it.
“It’s not about possession or control. It’s about devotion. It's about doing everything I can to be something good for someone. And I know it’s terrifying. I know it’s overwhelming. People don’t want someone who gets consumed like that. They want space. Mystery. Balance.”
He laughed again, this time softer, but no less bitter. “And I’m not balanced, Rook. I never have been. I don’t know how to do anything halfway.” He went quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was barely there. “And if that’s too much for you... I’ll understand. Just tell me now. Please. Don't make me wait for the slow fade. Don’t make me watch you unlearn the way you looked at me.”
The silence hung there for a moment. Not cold, not cruel but unbearable all the same. Emmrich sat in it, breathing like he’d run a mile through smoke, chest heaving, hands trembling. Then something shifted.
His eyes flicked up and caught the softness in Rook’s face, the stunned stillness that hadn’t yet turned away from him and it hit him. All at once. Like waking from a fever and finding himself naked in the street. “Oh Maker,” he whispered, voice flat and horrified. “What did I just do?” His whole body went rigid. His hands flew to his face like he could hide the words he'd thrown out into the air, like he could scrape them back out of existence.
“Shit. No,no, no, that’s not” He stood abruptly, as if the floor beneath him had burned him, stumbling back a step like he could outrun the moment. His palms pressed into his temples, hair gripped tight between his fingers. “I didn’t mean to say all that. I didn’t. Rook, I wasn’t trying to trap you in that mess, I wasn’t trying to dump all of that on you, I just,fuck.” he swore for the third time that evening.
His voice broke again, but this time not from grief. From shame. Raw and sour and clinging. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” His hands dropped, limp at his sides. “I talk like I’ve swallowed some goddamn tragic monologue and I can’t stop. I don’t know how to shut up when it matters. You were just trying to care and I turned it into some humiliating therapy session.”
He turned away from her fully, facing the far wall like it could absolve him. “That wasn’t fair to you. Any of it. You didn’t ask for my history or my hurricane of feelings or whatever the hell that was.” His throat bobbed. “And now I’ve made things weird. Great. Perfect. Textbook Emmrich.”
He wrapped his arms around himself, tight, like he was trying to disappear into his own ribs. “I ruined it, didn’t I? You were... you were looking at me like I was something good. And now I’m just... pathetic.”
Rook sat in silence as Emmrich spoke, patiently waiting. When he finally paused, she asked evenly, “Do I get to say something? Decide my own feelings? Or shall I let you decide them for me?”
She watched as his mouth opened, then closed again more than once before rising to her feet. Standing on his bed, she gained just enough height to look down at him. Her hands found the edges of his jaw, cradling his face like bookends on an invisible shelf. Not that he owned any. If he crammed one more volume onto the shelves downstairs, she was sure they’d collapse under the strain.
Her gaze locked onto his, steady and searching, like peering through a scrying glass, hunting for answers just out of mortal reach.
“Do I look like I’m running? Have I packed my clothes, my socks, my boots, and fled like a startled halla? Is my lip trembling like a child caught sneaking sweets before supper? Or like a little one crying for papa to banish the monsters beneath her bed? Have I flinched from your touch like someone burned by a too-hot supper plate? Or like someone who just tasted soured milk? Do you see any of that?”
Her voice was quiet but clear, her eyes still searching his face. And he was smart enough to know she wasn’t looking for an answer. She didn’t drop her hands. If anything, her grip softened, thumbs brushing just beneath his cheekbones in a slow, steady rhythm. The kind of touch meant to anchor, not to sway.
“You’re allowed to be afraid,” she said, her voice quieter now. “I am, too. Sometimes.” Her mouth tilted into something like an amused smile, but sincere. “But fear isn’t the same as regret. And I don’t regret this. Not you.” She leaned in just enough for her forehead to rest against his, the contact featherlight. “You don’t have to prove anything to me. Not your worth, not your past. I’m here because I chose to be. And I’ll stay... because I keep choosing you.”
She drew back, only slightly, just enough to look him in the eyes again. “So stop looking at me like I’m a story you’re bracing to watch end badly. I’m not a tragic chapter, Emmrich. I’m still writing this with you.” Rook stayed close, her fingers easing from his face only to fall to her sides, reluctant but measured. The air between them shifted still charged, but quieter now, like the hush of snow beginning to fall. She stepped down from the bed, her bare feet whispering against the floorboards as she moved past him, not away but just enough to breathe.
“I know you carry the worst-case endings in your pocket,” she said over her shoulder, gaze trailing over the balcony sticking out into the Fade.“Like stones. Like they’ll weigh you down just enough to keep you grounded. But careful that they don’t drown you beneath the water” She turned back to him, arms crossing loosely, not as a shield but a pause like punctuation between thoughts. “But I’m not here to be another one of those. Another weight.”
A moment passed. Two.
“I can’t promise I won’t get angry, or that I won’t say the wrong thing now and then. But I will stay when it matters. Even if that looks quiet. Even if I have to remind you more than once.” She met his eyes againsteady, warm, but never demanding. “You don’t have to hold your breath around me.”
For a heartbeat, Emmrich didn’t move. Just stood there, watching her like she was sunlight filtering through a storm he hadn’t realized he’d been walking through for years.Then, slowly, deliberately he stepped forward. No rush, no sudden motion, just a quiet gravity that pulled him toward her. His hand found her wrist first, gentle as if afraid she’d vanish. Then higher, fingers brushing the inside of her arm until his palm settled against her shoulder. His other hand came to rest at her waist, grounding them both.
Rook didn’t move away. She didn’t speak.
When he kissed her, it wasn’t urgent. It wasn’t claiming. It was careful. Like he was learning the shape of something sacred. Like he didn’t want to shatter it by wanting too much too fast. And she met him there, in that quiet kind of closeness. Her hand found the fabric at the front of his shirt and held on, not to pull him closer, but to keep herself from floating too far away.
It wasn’t a kiss that asked questions. It was a kiss that answered them.
Pulling back slightly and looking over her face Emmrich’s hand, warm and steady, lingered at her waist, fingers curling ever so slightly as if testing the reality of her, of this moment. His thumb brushed against the fabric of her shirt, catching the soft rise and fall of her breath. She felt it all in the narrowing space between them: the quiet tension, the unsaid things humming like a wire strung too tight.
Then he leaned in once more.
Not with urgency, but with reverence. His lips found hers with the gentleness of first snowfall, cool, slow, deliberate. The contact was barely there at first, a question asked in the language of touch. His breath mingled with hers, carrying the faintest trace of brown sugar and the chase of his cologne.
His lips were warm, slightly chapped, like he’d spent too long worrying them with his teeth. The texture of them made her breath catch. She tilted her head just enough to deepen it, her hand rising to rest flat against his chest, feeling the stuttering rhythm of his heartbeat beneath her palm. He responded in kind not hungrily, but thoroughly, as if he were memorizing her mouth with the same patience he gave to turning a favorite page. His other hand slipped up her back, fingers splayed, and she could feel every point of contact like it sparked through her bones.
The kiss unfolded in layers. The brush of lips. The faint press and pull. The pause when they both inhaled through their noses at the same time, and then met again more certain now. His nose grazed hers. She felt the scrape of stubble along her jaw. And when she let out the quietest sigh against his mouth, he answered with the softest sound, somewhere low in his throat, like he hadn’t meant to make it.
It wasn’t about passion. Not yet. It was about being seen. Known. Chosen.
And when they finally parted, just barely, his forehead came to rest against hers again. The breath between them was a shared thing. No words. Just warmth.
And a silence that said: I’m still here and I will continue to do so.
