Work Text:
“You’re afraid of the thunder, aren’t you?” Stark accuses playfully.
“And you’re not?” Fern shoots back. “You’re a coward when it comes to everything else, after all.”
“Alright, alright, I’m sorry,” he replies, raising his hands in surrender.
Crack!
Fern flinches and tries to wrap her blanket tighter around herself. Hopefully it will not keep up all night and she will be able to salvage some rest, enough to survive tomorrow at least.
After a moment, Stark rises with a noisy sigh, then makes his way toward her.
“What exactly are you doing?” Fern asks as she looks up at him.
“Like you said, I am a coward,” Stark says in lieu of an answer as he settles himself on the floor of the cave next to her. “So I know that the best thing when you’re scared is to have someone there with you, so that you’re not alone.” He then shoots her one of his signature smiles that always seem to radiate warmth and positivity.
“I see…” she replies, a bit caught off guard by the thoughtfulness of the gesture.
They sit there together quietly for a little while. It is sort of nice having him close by, she supposes but Fern still cannot help how her body reacts at every crack of thunder, every flash of lightning. She shuts her eyes tight to try to clear her mind of the dark thoughts and memories running through, but that's almost worse, so she just stares at the stony floor of the cave, hoping that the storm runs its course soon.
She can feel Stark’s gaze on her and bites her lip. She doesn’t want him to think of her as a helpless child.
He seems to sense her unease and faces forward toward the fire instead.
“You know,” he breaks the silence in a low voice, just barely heard over the latest rumbling of the storm, “I used to get scared during storms too.”
Fern glances at him out of the corner of her eye.
“I’d have trouble sleeping during them when I was a kid,” he continues.
Fern turns her head a fraction to watch him closer, curious about the wistful smile on his face as he stares at the flames.
“And then?”
Stark turns to look at her and Fern’s eyes widen as she becomes aware of the fact that she had leaned closer toward him in her curiosity without realizing. But now it would be even more embarrassing and awkward if she were to move further away.
She turns her head and clears her throat. “So what changed?”
“My older brother knew I had trouble and on stormy nights, so long as he wasn’t away, he’d make a point to come check on me. Usually he would tell me a story to help take my mind off it. Stories of heroes, like Himmel, and as a rare treat, some of his own heroics - though I’d have to practically beg for those.”
Fern watches as his gaze falls and the smile grows a little faint.
“He was the best brother I could have asked for,” Stark says quietly. “I just wish I’d told him that.”
His words and the emotion in his voice unexpectedly tug at Fern’s heart and she tears her gaze away again. Her view of the fire grows blurry.
“Oh - crap. Sorry!”
Surprised by the sudden apology, Fern looks quickly back at Stark. “For what?”
He simply stares at her for a moment. “I…didn’t mean to make you cry...”
Fern’s eyes grow wide again and she flushes at the exposure. “I -”
She had just barely teared up, so she didn't expect him to notice. But he had noticed and now she can feel his eyes trained on the single tear running down her cheek. A part of her feels like she needs to hide it, explain it away, make some excuse -
But -
“I’d offer you my shoulder,” he then says with a small smile as he glances toward the fire again, “but I don’t wanna be too presumptuous.”
The gesture has emotion welling up in her again. Fern swallows, pressing her wavering lips together.
She wordlessly scoots herself the small distance that had remained between them and hesitates only a brief moment before leaning her head over onto his shoulder. It's sturdy and still, like she knew it would be. Her nostrils fill with the woodsy scent on his jacket and she feels calmer already.
More and more tears gather in her eyes until the fire becomes just a shapeless orange glow.
It’s a simple thing, nothing grand or magical. But the comfort it brings is overwhelming - and with it, she feels this urge to reach out, and connect.
“The night I lost my parents,” she says in a shaky, hushed tone, “there was a storm.”
Fern bites her lip as a new wave of emotion hits her. Normally she wouldn’t dare to be so open. Even with her mistress she still struggles with that at times, and on rare occasions it can serve as a wall between them.
But Stark somehow always seems to knock that wall down, whether it be with a few short words, a warm smile, or a simple gesture like this one.
Fern can feel him stiffen against her, and slump as he sighs.
“Oh, Fern…”
At the sound of her name, she blinks through the tears and shifts her head against his shoulder to better see him. She spots his hand rise and remain poised in the air for a while before he settles it against his leg again.
“I’m such a jerk..." says Stark. "I shouldn’t’ve teased you. I -”
“You didn’t know.”
Despite her glassy eyes, Fern's lips pull into a small smile. Her gaze remains on his hand and she wonders what he might have done with it to try to comfort her.
A renewed sense of peace fills her as she turns her attention to the steady rise and fall of Stark’s torso, and matches her breathing to the same rhythm. Her eyelids grow heavy and her head sinks further into his shoulder.
“Stark?”
She decides, at least this once, to forego the honorifics.
“Yeah?”
“Will you… tell me a story?”
“A story, huh? Sure. Let me think, what story…”
“Your favorite,” Fern adds quietly before she closes her eyes.
“Oh! I remember! You’re gonna like this one. Stoltz versus the -”
Fern’s lips form a sleepy smile. Even with her eyes closed she can imagine quite clearly the look of excitement on his face. She focuses on his voice, his words, and allows them to carry her off to sleep, the storm raging just outside their refuge all but forgotten.
Frieren awakes after a blissful night of sleep with a satisfied grin on her face. She always sleeps well during a storm.
But something isn’t quite right, she realizes as she sleepily rubs at her eyes. She opens them a fraction and peers around the dim cave.
Normally Fern would pounce on her the moment she showed the barest signs of consciousness.
‘Come on, Mistress Frieren. You should have been awake a while ago, and your breakfast’s gone cold already.’
Or something along those lines.
Frieren slowly sits up and turns her head, wondering if maybe Fern and Stark left to gather for breakfast and just hadn’t yet returned. But she is surprised when she then spots them against the wall behind her.
Sleeping. Rather close to one another.
So close, in fact, that there’s no visible space between them and Fern’s head drooped onto Stark’s shoulder, while his head was leaning slightly against hers.
Just what happened while she slept?
Frieren smiles as she forces off her blanket and resolves to getting breakfast started on her own.
She’ll have to investigate later. For now, the pair looks simply too peaceful and too precious to disturb.