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“Well, you know I’ve never tried it, but fire and ice at once… it’d just be water, wouldn’t it?” Brelyna tapped her quill on the edge of the desk, keeping her voice low to avoid the ire of Urag. There were enough students stuffed into the cramped stone room that a little unnecessary noise went blissfully unnoticed; a mercy as usually even so much as a sigh was grounds for banishment.
“Not really; when you cast it at someone it’s just two opposite waves of destruction. Magic fire isn’t fire.” Tsabhi let her eyes drift to the book open but ignored on her lap, lip curling at the thought of actually getting on task. “Magic fire only knows how to burn, magic ice only knows how to freeze. You can’t use ice magic in a drink.” It was dangerous to ingest, just like it was dangerous to touch— because it was destruction magic, not ice.
“But you can use fire to light a torch.”
“Fire is pretty much universally designed to do one thing.”
“Not very Alterationist of you.” Brelyna shrugged her shoulders at a certain angle until one of them cracked: another offensive noise conveniently covered by the small assembly in the library, driven there by the blizzard outside.
“Feels like we’ve been here for hours, doesn’t it?” Tsabhi asked thoughtfully, not particularly meaning anything by it.
“I think it’s the longest you’ve ever stayed in the College.” Brelyna grinned and… well yes. It was. Rumarin got more and more tense the longer they stayed, and it wasn’t as if she was particularly keen on spending long stretches in the coldest city in the province. “Where’s your surly friend, speaking of how long you’ve been here?”
Surly was one way to say it, sure. “The Hearth, I guess. He likes the food better down there and was probably snowed in.” He’d get bored and make his way back soon, blizzard or no.
“We have plenty of food up here.” Brelyna leaned forward to rest her chin on her palm.
“He’s less than fond of the… atmosphere.”
“But he sleeps in your room with you.” She frowned, because of course he did. What else would he do, rent a room in the inn and wait to be picked up? “I didn’t mean anything by it,” she said, then seemed to take a moment to consider it. “Or maybe I did. What is it with you two?”
“... what is it?”
“You know. You’ve been joined at the hip since any of us have known you. He spends time up here even though he flagrantly hates it, and you spend less time than you’d like to accommodate him.” Yes, that was all true; of course she might’ve squeezed a few more hours out of the College than she tended to, but what was the point if Ru was miserable the whole time? He could insist that they never go back, but why would he when he knew she had friends there?
“...yes.”
“That’s not an answer, Tsabhi.”
“I haven’t heard a question.” Not a… real one, anyway, that she could answer.
Brelyna leaned back, apparently taking a moment to confirm that no, Tsabhi wasn’t being obtuse and really didn’t grasp what exactly Brelyna wanted from her. “Are you and him… gods, Tsabhi, I’ll be honest. I have thirty septims on secretly married. ”
“Married?” It slipped out of her mouth before she could absorb it, loud enough that the entire room fell silent as Urag stood and stared out for a moment, in warning.
“Onmund picked related but of course he did; J’zargo seems to be winning with just weird,” she whispered with a wicked grin. Tsabhi was still reeling a few sentences back, her mind bizarrely fixated on— well. It was a little… certainly they behaved sort of— the interpretation, anyway, wasn’t entirely out of the water. Ru slept next to her, cooked for her, she shared personal space with him like she hadn’t done with anyone since Cyrodiil… “That look says secretly married,” Brelyna mused with a grin.
Cold hands jolted whatever was left of coherent thought out of her head, for multiple reasons; the foremost being that the storm hadn’t blown her companion into the Sea of Ghosts. “Secretly married to who?” Rumarin asked, immediately tucking his blizzard-weary palms under her arms for warmth. Before she could properly react— to anything happening— Urag found them all to air his grievances about the noise and the snow that Rumarin had trekked in from outside. Tsabhi was only too happy to abandon the library altogether and disappear into her room for the evening, at the librarian’s request.
The knowing look on Brelyna’s face as they parted ways in the main hall spoke volumes and Tsabhi was disturbed to find that she still couldn’t even begin to formulate a response.
. . . . .
The morning came and it was… normal. Rumarin woke up late and she stayed in bed so he could sleep; he went and got them both breakfast after she tersely told him she didn’t want to see anybody; she lit their fire and they ate between little snippets of meaningless conversation, before gathering their things to set off back into the province as soon as possible.
“Was it the Sea of Ghosts before Winterhold, or because of it?” he asked as they made their way out of town, sticking close to her as if he were going to leech body heat from a foot away.
“Before, although I’m sure Korir would love something so dramatic.”
He snorted, casting a wary look at a passing guard as if they’d be stopped for a little irreverence. “I’m sure we could find something to name after him; maybe a nice venereal disease.”
She laughed in spite of her mood, rushing along the path to leave the town proper. It was always a relief to get out, despite her fondness for the others; she was an elf and a mage travelling with another elf who was well capable of magic, and so there were only certain areas in the ruins that she could sit unharassed. It wasn’t so much that she was afraid of a group of snarling, snapping Stormcloaks, but she’d be imprisoned after burning them alive even if they did throw nuts and berries at her.
It didn’t take them long at all to lose sight of the ramshackle ruins, and even less time to lose track of exactly where they were going. She didn’t have a particular destination in mind— maybe Falkreath? Further south, anyway; she hated blizzards, and the air tasted like one well down the path to the Rift.
“Uh oh. The frown usually means we have to stop in Windhelm,” Rumarin said, casting quick looks at her while trying to concentrate on traversing the snow. She hadn’t realised she was already frowning.
“No, just trying to decide what to waste our time on.” It didn’t help that her mood was making it difficult to focus on anything but how tall he was beside her. If I die out here because I was too busy gaping at him, I’m going to come back long enough to kill Brelyna, she thought ferociously.
Luckily, as it usually did, Skyrim made the decision for her in the form of two burly bandits— human and orc— and an Ohmes-raht making their winding way through the snow, wrapped in various chunks of clothing and armour that may have once been cohesive outfits before time and rough treatment reduced them to some sort of warmth jigsaw puzzle. The real trouble, however, was the large warhammer, the dual swords, and the daggers, strapped to the back and hips of the oddball wanderers.
She huffed darkly, reaching out to grab for the back of Rumarin’s shirt. “Well, don’t they look friendly,” he said wryly, obediently falling back into step beside her. “You know you’d almost think the bandits wouldn’t be as well fed as they are. How many people honestly take these one-off paths? Surely not enough with the supplies to bulk them up like that.”
She pressed the flat of her palm against the middle of his back, silently urging to him avert his eyes in case they were lucky and the approaching group were just badly dressed adventurers. She was struck by a sudden embarrassment at how keenly she felt him moving as he walked. Brelyna’s face materialised in her mind again and— and she resisted the urge to groan furiously, because they were about to be attacked and it was still all she could think about. “Are you asking me if bandits shop for groceries?” she asked, trying to ignore the feeling of the muscles moving in his back. He liked to pretend like wielding an ephemeral sword was very little effort on his part, but it was demonstrably untrue.
“Just imagine their own private little markets, though. How would they establish an economy with all the robbing?” He looked up too soon and locked eyes with the Khajiit: their luck ran out very sharply, because the cat nudged the human next to them and both bandits jerked their heads up to glower. Of course they looked like easy pickings, and so the group took it at face value and drew their weapons.
All the same, they still felt a little too easy for Tsabhi’s taste. A little thrill of fear worked up her back as she pulled away from Rumarin, summoning flame to her palms. He brought his sword into existence with an absent little flourish and— he’d always done it like that, she knew, but she’d never really noted how much she liked it. Like him, it was self-conscious but an action very firmly done in spite of self-consciousness.
They dove into the fight coming at them, Rumarin ducking around the warhammer that was being swung with an admittedly deft hand; which he complained about loudly. He always drew the short straw of dealing with tanks, as the only one with a semi-traditional weapon— and she annoyed herself by watching him out of the corner of her eye.
“I’m a foot and a half taller than you, this is sad,” he laughed, ducking around another hammer swing. “And I’m a fifth level enemy at best. I’m embarrassed for you.” She’d never really— consciously, mind you— noticed how much he moved around during a fight. It suited him, from a purely strategic perspective; his weapon was both light and ephemeral, so against a warhammer the smartest move was to step deftly out of the way until an opening presented itself.
And it looked very good. She could say that. She could be objectively pleased that her companion was an interesting fighter, and that he looked sturdy and purposeful in his movement. She could do it too— and she did, because there was an orc with two swords swinging towards her.
“Am I distracting you?” he snarled, gracelessly fumbling forward. She curled her lip, heating her hand. Rumarin was conflicting and bothering her, but not so much as having her train of thought interrupted.
She quieted her fire and the orc hit the snow face first just as Rumarin found his opening, running the human he’d tired out through with his sword. He caught her looking at him, and he dismissed his weapon with an indifferent little flick. “See? Work smart, not hard— or in my case, employ the lightest amount of jogging possible instead of working.” He was panting, soft white breath visible in the absolutely cursed chill. His hair was a little out of its tie and he was breathing heavier than he probably would have liked, but the sight of him was... relieving.
She couldn’t have begun to really… assign an importance to that statement, which made it obnoxiously meaningless. It wasn’t just a joke that Brelyna thought was funny, and it wasn’t just aimless guessing at significance— this was her and it was him and it was so difficult for no reason. Just as she was about to frown and finally break to tell him what the others had said about them— just to see what he said, as someone who was passingly competent with other people— she abruptly remembered the Ohmes-raht as he reappeared behind Rumarin.
Wuld burst from her chest before she knew what her actual plan was, but her body managed to unconsciously cobble something together— a ward shattered against the blades meant for his back, and Nettlebane was ready in her off-hand to stab directly into the crook of the cat’s shoulder. He died with a gurgle and a wash of blood that slowly melted outwards towards her feet— she took a short step back, lip curled. It took a frankly vile amount of effort to yank her dagger back, but when she was finished she turned with an absurdly prim huff, carefully resheathing Nettlebane. “Forgot the cat,” she said in response to the bloodless elf behind her, fallen on his ass in surprise.
He gave her a long look, up and down, like the guards did whenever she used her Shouts in town. “I’m sorry, what? You’ll have to repeat that, a life was flashing before my eyes,” he said in a voice a few octaves above calm. “I think it was yours, though, the angle was very low. Usually I’m the one close to the pointy bits.”
“I couldn’t have done anything without hitting you.” It all sounded very high and sensible when she said it like that. He brought himself to his shaking legs, still staring at her. “What? I’m fine, it all went fine.”
“Of course, because nothing ever goes wrong when you’re involved. The Dragonborn is well known to be invincible— why, look at Martin Septim, our beloved Emperor, who is alive to this day.” He brushed some snow off of his cloak, trying to straighten himself while also… scolding her?
Something shook loose inside of her so hard that she pressed her hand to her chest for a moment, scowling. He went on, sarcastically praising immortal dead Dragonborns. “And mages!” he said, gesturing outwards. “So many of them were mages, which only contributed to their complete invulnerability to weapons—”
She grabbed him by the front of his shirt and dragged him down to face her squarely. The gesture scared her, she thought; it must’ve because she suddenly felt so uncertain and strange. She pointed at him, the tip of her finger touching his nose. “Martin Septim was a mage.”
He blinked. “What?” It was a good question, because she wasn’t sure where she was going with this either. It was easier to just...know things. She knew so many things.
“He was a Dragonborn mage; Alteration and Destruction, same as me.” Being close to his face was making it hard to… think. She hated it, so he would crouch there until whatever this… thing inside her was just fucked right off.
“Fine, but he’s also dead.” He seemed to be affected by whatever silence was draped over her as well, though his hands were frozen by his sides like she was made of flame. “Can I… stand up, now?”
“No.”
“... no?”
“Not until whatever this is gets resolved.” The panic in his eyes reminded her that he didn’t know anything about what Brelyna had said and her irritation was being… perhaps misplaced. She scowled, dropping him entirely; she could backtrack, of course, but that would hardly solve anything. Rumarin wasn’t… friendly, per say, but his interpersonal skills were there regardless of the performance aspect of them; really, he was the one to ask even if it hadn’t directly affected him.
“Should I know—”
“No. Nothing, nevermind, it’s cold. I’m cold and I want to be warm now.” She winced as she said it because she was a fire mage possessing of particularly warm dragon blood so he knew she was at least partially lying; still, she let him pull her over and bury herself against the uppermost layer on his chest. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and she stood there, judged in silence.
“Is it helping?” he asked in a tone of voice more suited to goading her.
“No,” was her honest answer, because it wasn’t. Neither was waking up with her arm around him or his head on her chest, nor was anything particularly helped when he tried to teach her how to juggle and almost blacked out from laughter a frankly insultingly short amount of time after starting. “Dawnstar,” she decided abruptly.
“It’s not warmer there.” His tone was obnoxiously aware, and she rolled her eyes.
“There’s an inn. Let’s go.” She took a generous step back, and he allowed it, falling into step as she rushed along the path— like getting to Dawnstar quicker would somehow make everything go away.
He was silent for a while, but it was too good to last. “Did you suffer some blunt force head trauma that I missed?” he asked conversationally, and she sneered. “I mean, if you have I think I should know now so I can, I don’t know… keep you awake, apply pressure, call a healer—”
She turned, giving him a look.
“... maybe use a scarf to tie the two halves of your head together, or grab a bucket to catch your brain in as it dribbles out…”
Don’t dignify it with a response, she thought firmly, but… she was very close to laughing that time.
“Get proper mourning gear, really. I always thought I was too young to be a widow but if all else fails I think I could really pull it off— what?” She stopped dead on widow, her jaw snapping together like a wolf on a bone.
“Is that how you see us?” She hadn’t meant to sound so accusatory, and evidently he hadn’t expected a reaction at all.
He licked his lips, looking around hopefully as if another traveller would interrupt this moment; she kept her eyes on him, determined now to see this thing through. “What, the...the widow thing?” She nodded shortly, once, and said nothing even as he squirmed. “Uh… are you asking me if I’m...?” He stopped, rather than finishing the sentence in one clean cut. If he wanted it to be messy, then fine. She stayed quiet, rather than relieving him of the burden of using his words. “You know...”
“I don’t.” She didn’t blink, wishing though that she could enjoy the agonizing way he reached up to hang onto the back of his neck like he was trying to keep his head on.
“Interested,” he gave it an inflection like he wanted it to sound like a joke, a silly thing between them; he only sounded queasy, though, and she winced in return because… yes. That. “In you,” he added unnecessarily.
“Are you?” She had to ask herself why she was still talking to him like he’d murdered someone in front of her, but it was the only way she could avoid sounding as nervous as he did.
“Wow.” He looked at her as if to say can you believe this, but the effect was lost because he was also talking about her. “All right… just like that?” She nodded. “Right out in the open?” Again, a nod. “Well you’re not what we modest folk call subtle, are you?”
“Answer the question.” Please, she didn’t add, because he would absolutely worm his way out of talking if he knew that she was only doing this because she was hopelessly fucking lost.
He stared at her for a few moments, as if putting it off would somehow make her forget that she’d asked. As it became increasingly apparent that she was willing to freeze them both to death on the untouched white tundras of Winterhold to hear him answer first, he huffed in what passed for annoyance. “Fine, yes, what of it?” Her whole body tensed, which was...an odd reaction. Honestly she wasn’t sure what she’d wanted from him when she’d asked, only that she thought knowing would somehow relieve the turmoil in her gut. A worshipper of the Woodland Man should have known better. “Oh don’t get weird about it, I’ve managed this long without making it a thing. You’ll barely notice.”
“Wait.” He was really reeling ahead of her in this conversation that she wasn’t sure if she regretted starting, because suddenly there was an immense pressure on her chest and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to smile or cry. “Wait, how long?”
“You know, you really shouldn’t listen to me when I talk. No one else does, and that’s worked out just fine for me so far.” That wasn’t the first time he’s said so, although it’d never been so serious before. “Honestly sometimes I just open my mouth and let words come out on their own because I’m too lazy to think before I speak.”
“Rumarin, are you winding your way down to an answer to the question?” she tried to sound a little gentler, wincing again because it seemed she was incapable of doing so.
He tried the silence angle again, but eventually relented. “I don’t know, a while? I mean I’m a prude but I’m not dead. I see you every day.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“That’s fishing, I don’t have to answer that.”
“Fishing?” She hated sounded as stupid as she did, but he’d wound back and struck cleanly upon a particular area in which she had no experience or knowledge. It also didn’t help that it felt like her pulse was thrumming in her ears, overly warm despite the abject cold.
“For compliments! You’re pretty and smart and I just deal with that in silence usually, when you’re not asking me a hundred questions about it.” It was apparently his turn to sound like he was accusing her of something despite the total lack of blame in their situation. She almost laughed: she’d never been described as pretty before, never even really thought about it. There were some objectively unsettling aspects to her general person that others had pointed out to her before—the daedric tattoos, the unapologetic lack of social graces, something about the way she looked at people (vague, but a repeat comment)—but she’d never heard pretty before. “If we could just go back to not talking about it, that would do wonders for my self-esteem.”
Well, that wouldn’t do, but she had to be very careful about moving forward. This was more delicate than accidentally quizzing Rumarin on his dead mentor or asking questions that prompted that very clever sidestep around the topic of his parents. She could cause new hurt instead of stumbling upon the old, so for once she struggled to flex the muscle that handled tact. She reached for his hands and lightly tucked them under her arms to warm them. “I’d like to keep talking about it.”
“Where did all this even come from? I think we should talk about how weird you’re being instead and forget I said anything.” He seemed not to know what to do with his hands, which was a question with a fairly straightforward answer considering that he usually just let his fingers warm up. Now he flexed them awkwardly, like touching her was too awkward to bear.
“Brelyna,” she admitted finally. “Her and the others were placing bets on what our relationship was. J’zargo said we were weird—”
“Well I don’t think you’re just supposed to say it out loud like that, but yes.”
“—Onmund said we were related—”
“Two different kinds of elf, visually distinct by about a foot and a half, but all right.”
“...and Brelyna had thirty septims riding on us being secretly married.” She tried to keep her face neutral to avoid inadvertently looking displeased at the notion, but found herself laughing in surprise at the face he made.
“I mean...I guess you could read it that way…” He seemed just as stunned in retrospect as she’d been. Nothing had felt unusual or particularly intimate at the time, but picturing not acting as they usually did anymore for the sake of appearances felt unbearably lonely.
Maybe that was something she could say out loud, if she decided to be sensible at some point.
“Good to know that it was the mages’ fault, anyway. I usually just assume that and everyone frowns at me like I’m being unfair, so it’s very validating to have an actual reason this time.” His hands finally relaxed as he seemed to come to some conclusion in his head. Not for the first time, she wished she could just pick his brain a little; for once it’d be nice to just know outright what he was thinking.
“I’m a mage,” she reminded him. She reminded him a lot, and he always had the same answer.
“You don’t count.”
“Is it because I’m pretty?” she asked before she could stop herself. Her woefully underworked tact muscle once again failed her. He was already red from cold so she couldn’t tell if he was blushing, but he definitely seemed embarrassed.
“I can’t decide if I don’t have a good reason to say no at this point , or if i genuinely believe that. Maybe it’s absolutely rank favouritism and I’m biased, or maybe you’re just a better mage than literally everyone in Skyrim.”
“Why not both?” She liked the idea of both immensely, for reasons that were becoming increasingly clear to her. Of course she was the best, but Rumarin saying it felt validating in a real, meaningful way. What he thought of her mattered.
“Well if the Dragonborn says it, it must be true.” His smile is furtive and plastered on, and she took a moment to wish she was better at guiding the conversation. She wasn’t purposely trying to mislead him. “And with that, we never have to mention it again and can continue our walk into the snowy middle of nowhere.”
She didn’t move, and he groaned lightly. “You haven’t asked me.”
“I wasn’t going to. If I don’t ask then I don’t have to know.” She supposed it was something else they had in common, except he had the good sense to not want her answer at all if it wasn’t going to solve anything; and how could it? It seemed they were both woefully ill equipped to handle the name of their relationship, which was probably why they’d gone so long with him sleeping half on top of her every night and never talking about it.
“You seemed upset to not have an answer,” she offered delicately. She couldn’t just not reciprocate now; that would indicate that she didn’t which wasn’t true.
“If I have it I’m either embarrassed or I make things very weird between myself and the only real tie to Skyrim I have.” Her head darted up at that and he made a face. “See? Now that I’ve said something I can’t stop. I’d say a witch cursed me to always say the dumbest thing I can think of, but if I’m going to start pointing fingers at a perfectly nice hag I’d like to redirect the blame for being shoddy with magic.”
“You’re not bad at magic, Ru. People who are bad at magic don’t improvise novice level spellcasting without any prior knowledge or available materials.” In truth he seemed to only hang on to the bad at magic gripe out of habit; he’d never said so, but she knew he was pleased about his ward. She’d noticed him casting it on and off, once he’d figured out how to do it without being attacked. For the first few days after he’d learned it, she’d specifically asked him to cast it for her just because she was so proud of him.
“Well then the hag can have the picky eating.” He truly was an expert at changing the subject, except he was up against someone whose religion it was to be nosy. She could stay on topic infinitely. “Look, I’m cold. You used that one earlier, right?”
“I did,” she admitted. “Not that you let me hang onto it.”
“Well, congratulations, I’m a hypocrite. Let’s go somewhere warmer than here.” She let herself frown a moment, a true last resort against someone who was very good at weathering any real mood swings she had, let alone one she was trying to fake. He wasn’t wrong though...every moment they spent standing in the snow was another nerve ending that lost contact with her brain.
She couldn’t keep him outside forever, anyway.
. . . . .
They headed to Windhelm which was an unhappy compromise that put them further south than before but ultimately no warmer and no more pleasant than Winterhold with regards to raging Stormcloaks. Luckily Rolff’s frost-bitten corpse had been found at an abandoned daedric shrine in the mountains, mysteriously (so mysteriously), and in celebration of that fact and in no way as recompense or reward, the Cornerclub had officially noted Tsabhira and Rumarin as one of the few guests allowed to rent beds.
Bed. Singular.
It wasn’t that Ambarys had only allowed a single rental, although with the amount of displaced people in the Grey Quarter she wouldn’t have been surprised. They just hadn’t ever thought to rent more than one, to the point where it hadn’t been offered as an option by the time they wound their way there. So it was bed, singular.
And Rumarin was being extremely normal about it, to the point where he wrapped back around and was being completely unhinged. Normal tended to mean that he was asleep well before her and long after her, and in blissful unconsciousness was unselfconsciously sprawled out because, as he’d explained once, his gangly Altmer limbs barely registered her as a pillow in the bed. It was how they woke curled up for warmth, despite his abject mortification at the idea of even people thinking of him as someone who wanted to be touched.
Now he was tottering on the edge of the bed, stiff as a Thalmor diplomat at a Nord birthday party and obviously awake. Embarrassingly, obviously awake, despite the special pains he was taking to breathe slowly and evenly. “Are you going to do this all night?” she asked, emboldened by the fact that despite the ruckus downstairs it was still as dark as the Evergloam in their quiet little corner.
“Sleep? Ideally.” It was only contrarian; he even rolled over to face her, demonstrating his objective wakefulness. “It’d be easier if you weren’t glaring a hole in the back of my head.”
“I think I know exactly what will make it easier, for the both of us,” she said, even though it was a lie and she wasn’t entirely sure that she wasn’t about to make a huge mistake for absolutely no reason. She wasn’t usually the impulsive type but suffice it to say that all of this was well outside of her regular operations, and when the tried and true methods (in this case, ignoring the problem) failed, it was time for some drastic experimentation.
She pushed him back by his shoulder so he was flat on his back and kissed him.
She almost giggled into it immediately, because she was apparently exploring new and exciting territory in the seemingly endless depths of the Altmer skill for being uncomfortable. The only reason it was funny instead of troubling was because at the same time she seemed to have inflicted him with almost arthritic rigidity, his fingers were white knuckling the back of her tunic and in his own distant, stunned way he was kissing her back.
When she finally pulled away, he was just staring at her. She couldn’t see him well, but his expression was better suited for someone who was laying neatly underneath a bear rather than a Bosmer. “There. Now can we please act like normal people again?”
He was quiet for an almost unnerving amount of time, his hand still twisted in her clothes enough to comfort her that her impulse was at least reciprocated. “Is that what you were doing before? Silly me, I thought we were doing dragon in an elf’s body and jester in a clown’s body bit,” he said finally, the joke landing awkwardly through the embarrassment.
“A fair assessment, but I would like the weird levels to balance properly again so I can sleep.”
“Noted.” He falls silent but blessedly limp, so she lays back against him and closes her eyes. It hasn’t gotten less awkward, but they tread bearable. She even held perfectly still as he awkwardly reached out for her back, just...touching her. It was a good couple of minutes before she realised that he wanted her to turn and lacked her gumption. She rolled again, more awake than she’d wanted to give the impression of. “Something else?”
He kissed her, deeply and better than before. Surely in just such a way that it was illegal in Alinor, because gods forbid that any Thalmor even learn that it was possible to be so loose and unbound by puritannical zeal. She was almost self-conscious suddenly, very aware that in the grand scheme of her life this was kiss the second, overtaken by the silly moment just moments prior. When he pulled back, she noticed his head turn despite the fact that they can’t see one another. “There. I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep knowing you thought that other kiss was the best I could do.”
There are a million things she ought to say about how much she liked that even if it did unnerve her, how she might like to try it again in a room where they can bear witness to each other’s humiliation, or how stupid they were for letting this just fester for so long if they could have been kissing the entire time and based on observable data, no one would have noticed anything different (except hopefully Onmund who would then realise they weren’t related).
“Noted,” she echoed faintly.