by GR Griffin
His unsettling stare was finally broken, Lezard blinking rapidly several times in quick succession. "You think me unfeeling?" He asked, giving her an unhappy look. She nodded, watching the way his eyes narrowed, the amethyst burning with emotion. "You are wrong Lenneth."
"Am I?" She challenged, and watched the way the flames flickered. He was angry, his hand forming a fist that he pounded on the table's top. She wasn't the only one to jump at that sound. Richelle, newly emerged from the kitchen, and carrying a tray laden down with lamb and some side dishes, nearly fell over in reaction. Lezard had hardly noticed, banging his fist once more on the table.
"You are!" He insisted, his voice louder than it had been since they had been seated at this table. "I..."
Aware of Richelle's fascinated gaze, Lenneth meaningfully jerked her head in that direction. Lezard didn't lose his anger, but he calmed down enough to acknowledge the tavern woman. Richelle seemed disappointed, the woman clearly having hoped to overhear more.
"Here you go." Richelle said warmly, maintaining a pretense of having born witness to nothing that had been said between Lenneth and Lezard. "Some fresh lamb and some ale to wash it all down with." She hurriedly set down the plates, along with two tankards of the tavern's brew, before stepping back with an expectant look on her face.
"Thank you Richelle." Lezard said in a dismissive tone. He made not one move towards the food, his gaze back on Lenneth.
"Yes, thank you."
"It's no problem at all." Richelle smiled. "You have anything else you need, just give a holler and I'll be right over." She sauntered off, but did not go that far, Richelle purposefully choosing to busy herself by wiping down the tables nearest to theirs. It was almost laughable how much the woman wanted to eavesdrop on them, but Lenneth couldn't so much as smile. Not with Lezard barely restraining his glare.
"I am not some indifferent monster." Lezard began, his voice as a low a whisper as he could make it. "I have real feelings, real desires. I want, and just as strongly as I want, I can be hurt too."
"I have hurt you." Lenneth noted, anguish filling her in response. "I never meant to....truly I didn't..."
"But you have Lenneth." Lezard told her. "You hurt me with your thinking, with the insistence that I could be so indifferent towards you and what is expected of us both. Lenneth..." He started to reach for her hand, then changed his mind. "If I did not care, do you honestly think we would be here now? That we would not be back at the castle, in bed enjoying one another's bodies?"
Again that unwanted heat was in her, Lenneth sure she was turning red in response to what he was saying. Lezard gave her an unhappy smile in response, his expression almost bitter then.
"If I did not care about you, or for you, it would have been easy to bed you. To ignore your feelings and apprehensions, and just take what I desired from you." Another unhappy look. "It is as you so eloquently pointed out, my right as your husband after all." She flinched at that, and this time Lezard did touch her hand. "But Lenneth? I do not want it to happen like that. I want so much more from you than just a marriage of convenience...I want a partner, an equal to share my life with." He was lacing their fingers together, Lezard lifting her hand so that he could brush kisses over the back of it. Lenneth shivered in response, her eyes locked on his.
"The desire I have for you is no cold thing. It's warm and alive, and capable of burning us both. I think you'll never properly understand how much it hurt to step away from you, but it hurt a thousand times worse to know you did not desire me back. If I was unfeeling, I could have ignore your feelings on the matter. But how could I look at you, how could I touch you with the knowledge that you did not want to do such a thing with me? It was not a night that lived up to my expectations, it was better."
"Better?" Lenneth managed to ask, her voice as low as his was. "How could that possibly be true?"
"I spent it with you. Yes.." He quickly said, to stave off her protests. "Neither one of us behaved in the expected manner. But it was special. You let down your guard around me, you relaxed enough to share stories with me. We enjoyed that time, or at least I did..."
"I admit it was not unpleasant, the hours we spent together." She was rewarded with another kiss grazing across her knuckles, the look in Lezard's eyes softening by degrees. She liked that look a whole lot more than his glares, though she was still puzzled by what he was telling her. Unable to trust completely that he had been satisfied with how they had spent the first night of their marriage, perhaps there was nothing he could truly say to reassure her otherwise.
"I've never spent a night like that with a woman before." Lezard continued. "It was an intimacy of a different kind. I was relaxed around you, with no pressures or expectations. You were easy to talk with, more so than you had been the days leading up to our wedding. What gave you me that night, is a gift I value....and one I hope I haven't lost."
He had given her a lot to think about, angles Lenneth hadn't been able to consider while she had been in such emotional distress. She still suffered with the love that had afflicted her, nearly every thought and emotion somehow derived from the need for it. That wasn't just limited to heart break, hope was influenced to, Lenneth daring to think from his words, that maybe just maybe she did matter more to Lezard than either one of them had expected.
She couldn't managed a true smile, her lips curving instead in a shy expressing of her ease. "I would like more nights like that." She confessed to him, and the last of Lezard's tension seemed to melt.
"Then we shall have them." Another kiss on her hand to seal the promise between them, before Lezard allowed them to pull apart. He didn't immediately reach for the food, instead holding her gaze with his own. "Thank you, Lenneth. For giving me a chance..."
"It is I who should be thanking you." Lenneth murmured in response. "For being so understanding. For not pressuring me for more than I can give at this time." She nervously touched fingers to the pendant, feeling the sapphire warmed by her skin. "And for putting up with me, with my outbursts and feelings..."
"You are human now Lenneth. And no human is perfect when it comes to what they feel."
"Human...." She repeated, lowering her gaze to the plates set out between them. But the food held little appeal to her, Lenneth thinking on Lezard's words. On the hard truth of them. She was no longer a Valkyrie, no longer a minor deity that had little time for complex emotions. To be a human meant so much more than just a vastly shortened life span. It meant for good or for bad, to feel, to experience the full spectrum of emotions from the happy ones, to the vile such as hate. Lenneth was already experiencing just a taste of the feelings she was now capable of, heart sick and angsting one moment, to grasping onto slivers of hope the next. These feelings were not something she would have chosen for herself, but Lenneth was anything but a creature that could not adapt.