hello!! from the drunken confession prompts: "You're all I ever wanted. I'm sorry I can't say it sober." with emmrook?
Thank you so much for the prompt for @thedasweekendand thank you for the patience while I wrote it!
Pairing: Emmrook (Emmrich x Rook / Emmrich x Siobhan Ingellvar)
Words: 2,102
Warnings/tags: drinking/being drunk, fluff, slight angst but not really
Swirling his glass in his hands, Emmrich falls into despair.
As a professor and a researcher, that had not been born into any kind of fortune, it is especially important to have the right words at hand; to know whether he needs them to be soothing, enticing or evoking any other kind of feeling.
Words are magic, words are power, words control entire fates, yet words fail him around Rook.
Siobhan Ingellvar.
The name feels like a prayer on his lips, when he murmurs it into the silence of his empty bed, alone in the dark, the only time he truly dares to say it out loud. In those nights, he speaks of longing, he spills desires into the fabrics of his pillows, the one he feels almost escaping into the world when she is around but always pushes back into, only letting them out when nothing but his lovesick heart is there to accompany him.
But he wishes it to be her who hears it. She should hear it. She can never hear it. Emmrich keeps the hold on his tongue and for the first time in years, falls silent. For a considerate amount of time know, he is feeling like a yearning schoolboy, when she steals the eloquence from his lips and dances away, spinning yet another story with his heart.
Tonight this aching heart screams more than ever.
As some of them have left the dining hall to retire to their own chambers, others have stayed. Davrin, Lucanis, Neve and Rook -Her name is Siobhan, say it his mind screams- and himself have chosen to remain for a gregarious evening. Emmrich had thought about leaving after Bellara had bid them goodnight but after hearing Rook voice as she and the others made their way to the sitting area, he had acted on an impulse and sat himself next to them. Words fell easily out of his mouth – none that truly matter anyway- and the others listened attentively and laughed when appropriate, as they took their cards.
Now they are on their third round of wicked grace, Emmrich is failing. The logic of the game is understandable, but the deceit fails him, as the others rook their cards. As a result he looses over and over, drinking more and more. One time he sees Rook having to take a swig and as her sweet mouth sours into a thin line in disappointment, he offers to drink it for her.
A few moments ago he wondered why he keeps sitting with them, as they laugh and joke and win but then he sees Rook smile at him at his offer and suddenly he is ready for five more dreadful rounds just to bask in that sight.
Neve deals the fourth round of cards and Emmrich sighs, his mind swimming with liquor and longing. Out of nowhere a warm hand appears on his shoulder, throwing him a lifeboat in the waves.
“Are you okay, Emmrich?” Rook asks and her voice is so warm and comforting, he wants to kiss her until that warmth seeps into him. Something in him urges him,screams at him, to confess and have her know his feelings but he swallows it down.
“Yes,” he hears himself say, his voice sounding far away and proper, although the edges begin to slur already. He refills his glass and smiles at her worried eyes. “I am in good spirits.”
Neve gives a throaty laugh and both Emmrich and Rook look at her. “Well, that’s one way to put it. Are you ready for another round?”
He nods and takes his cards, while Rook hands falls away but his shoulder feels as if it left a burn.
After the fourth round ends, his mind starts wandering. He is not drowning anymore but gently floating among the waves, his eyes focusing on Siobhan, who jokes and shuffles cards, while her voice is a symphony to his ears. Whenever their eyes meet, his heart begins to race and he glances away, before surely as ever, returning to her once again. As his eyes drink her in, he notices that there is a ink stain on her hand, having extended onto the seam on her arm and Emmrich furrows his brow. She never allows her clothes to stain.
Without thinking he reaches out, grabbing the fabric and knocks a drink over. Staring at his wretched hand
“Oh,” he hears Davrin say and faintly sees him standing up “He’s really drunk.”
“One is always the first,” Lucanis murmurs behind him and offers Neve a towel for a stain that appeared on her leg.
When did this happen?
“I’ll bring him to bed.” Rook says, lifting his arm around her shoulders and suddenly the Room moves as he is hoisted up with surprising strength. He means to protest, he is not a child and certainly not that drunk, but then he feels her hand on his hip, her strong, nimble fingers curling around him, and snaps his mouth shut. Something in him feels wretched to enjoy this so much.
Unceremoniously they stumble out of the dining hall, while he leans heavy on her frame. She is tall, but not as tall as him and if he would dare to he could rest his mouth against her temple and breath his desires through her skull into her brain.
He hears himself talking, about fabrics and ways to clean it properly and thinks about how he could fix this for her, as her smell fills his nose.
Spicy and floral and warm. He wants to come undone in it but he merely waxes about a good cleaner in Nevarra and how he could introduce her, maybe we could go tomorrow? For a moment he revels in the idea. Would they steal away together? Would the fabric cleaner think they are a couple? Would Siobhan deny it or just give one of her world ending smiles? Why is it that his heart yearns for her to say she loves him at a mundane spot in Nevarra just so he could dare to steal the confession from her lips with a kiss and breathe his into her mouth in return?
The door to his room snaps him out of the thought.
“Ah-” he says, disappointment flooding him. “We have arrived.”
There is a tug and the door opens. In a blink there are inside his room and he hears Manfred hissing something.
“Can you get us a bucket and maybe some water?” he hears Siobhan say and then another hiss as Manfred disappears.
“Where is your bedroom?” Siobhan asks and when he points to the place where his hidden bedroom is, she drags him there.
“We really shouldn't” he slurs and is unsure what he means himself.
“We should.” Her voice leaves no room for discussion. “Open it please.”
So he does. Once inside she lets out a stunned woah and he smiles brightly at her. The room is more modest than he could afford but similar to his one at home. He aches at the word. Home. If only he could show her, would she be as amazed as now?
She ignores the books and the various artifacts, leads him away from the fireplace, over the woven rug and onto his soft bed. There he topples him over and he loses balance, falling onto his bed.
Siobhan stands before him, painted in warm ember colors by the firelight, making her freckles come alive.
You’re beautiful, he thinks and she giggles.
“Well you too, man that drank so much he forgot to be shy.” There is amusement in her voice, but no malice. No. She is never malicious.
Then she bows down and starts touching his boots. With a motion that is less elegant than he would have liked, he props himself up on his elbows. “What-”
“Shhh…” she says soothingly. “It’s only the boots and the vest, so you can sleep. Nothing more.”
He stares at her, his mind awfully blank at the way that she unclasps hooks and unties laces with ease. When his shoes are gone, she changes her position and kneels between his spread legs, fingers flying to open his button. When he stills her hands, she looks up at him again.
“What,” he whispers, “are you doing, Siobhan?”
Her eyes flutter shut at her name and a sigh curls from her mouth. “Say that again,” she begs and he does.
“Siobhan. Beautiful, most unknowingly cruel Siobhan, in what spell have you captured me?”
Instead of answering, she takes his face in her hands and says, “Why do you never say this sober?”
“Because I am a fool,” he whispers, brushing a loose strand of hair from her face. “You are all I ever wanted and I cannot speak those words sober, because I am terrified.”
She stills, questioning eyes and brushing thumbs and then she half sighs, half laughs as she says: “I would like to kiss you now, but you are drunk. So you must wait until tomorrow.”
Emmrich feels like being lit on fire. “Kiss me now,” he pleads, the ache in his heart throbbing with a feverish haze. Siobhan lifts herself up and presses a lingering kiss to his cheek. The following whisper on his skin feels like a soothing balm. “Tomorrow, I will kiss your lips and whatever else you desire. Tonight, you sleep, beloved.”
It is a heavy word but tonight it feels like it makes him float. A boyish, drunken grin pools around his lips and he complies with her, just so tomorrow comes faster.
When his vest and boots are gone, he himself removes his cummerbund and folds it as even as he is able to manage, before letting him being guided underneath his soft covers. Siobhan tugs him in, pressing the fabric close around him and he lets his eyes slip close.
The worlds is spinning and Emmrich groans.
When he feels her knuckles brush his face, he leans into the touch, trying and succeeding to find steadiness in her.
There is another question that is edging around his consciousness, one that is so bold and earnest that its tearing down the already porous, crumbling wall. Opening his eyes, he fears that his heart will break if she leaves him now, with only ghosts of memories and his own yearning to keep him company.
“Will you stay? Please?” It sounds more like a whimper and he winces.
There is no silence, no hesitation, only simplicity in her honesty.
“Yes,” she says, pawns off her shoes and crawls over him to sit next to him. She puts a pillow on her lap and pats it and Emmrich crawls onto it, resting his head. Siobhans hands tangle in his hair, caressing his skin with tender care. “Would you like a story?”
For some reason, she always knows what he needs, no matter how buried his desires are and he finds himself agreeing. It has been a long time since he allowed himself to feel small again.
“Do you know the story of the cicada that wanted to go to a masquerade?”
“No. What is is about?” he murmurs, trying to imagine it against the waves in his head.
“Well… It began once upon a time but not so very long ago…” she begins and soon is weaving a story around him, cradling him in soothing warmth. Despite the turning of the room and the nausea building in his stomach, he feels himself relax. When Manfred arrives with water and a bucket – “Where were you so long, little one?”- he barely registers Siobhan slipping some down his throat before he is allowed to rest again.
Hands brush over his cheek and he cracks his eye open again, looking up to see her looming over him. She smiles and continues.
Emmrich can see the story now, a cicada hopping and dressing up, running away with a mask made out of a peacocks feathers to a most lavish ball and while she describes it to him most vividly, he wonders about the fabric again. Why was there ink on her sleeve?
“And then the cricket said-”
“What happened to your sleeve?”
She huffs. “That is not what the cricket said, Emmrich.”
“What did it say?”
“You should sleep.”
“What did the cricket say about the ink?”
“She wrote you a love letter. And if you sleep now, she is going to give it to you tomorrow.”
Tomorrow. He nods and lets himself sink deeper into the approaching waves of sleep.
He could not wait for tomorrow and all of its pleasures to arrive.