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Nesta wakes up to an empty bed, and her heart jumps to her throat. She swallow the drumbeat threatening to tear her voice-box.
"Elide?" It is so quiet, as if she's too scared to break the silence, lest it shatter the pretense that everything is okay.
Her wife hears her anyway, hobbling through the door and sitting down on the bed, as gently as if she had been floating.
"What is it mi cielo?" She brushes a stray, tangled lock behind Nesta's ear. "Is everything okay?"
"I—" She swallows, feeling silly for jumping to the worst kind of conclusions. "I just had a bad dream."
Before she can blink the small woman is pulling them together, chest to chest, heart to heart.
"We are safe." She whispers, and Nesta feels it like relief on her skin. "We are together." It dances across her mind like sugar. "We are alive." She can take a deep breath, two. "You will find your way back to me." The words bring her home.
"Thank you." It will never be enough but some days it is all she has.
"Want to order maritozzi and we can make some tea and put on a movie?"
"I'll make the tea if you order and pick the movie?" Her grey eyes, burning with enough intensity to hide the faint blue that sometimes shone through, catch on her wife's dark gaze and it almost brings her to her knees. "I love you."
"I love you." Simple. A fact she is willing to repeat a thousand times a day.
Elide disappears into the lounge and she shuffles to the kitchen, clicking the kettle and pulling mugs from the overhead cabinets. The kitchen, a gentle duck-egg blue, calms her in a way not much else can. She loves to spend time in here, sitting on the counter and sipping coffee. Kneading bread while Elide chats about her day. Pulling cookies out of the oven and swatting away the curious hands trying to sneak a bite, or ten. Even this simple task, stirring sugar into tea, pulls her back to the present, grounds her to the exact time of day, month, year.
Small arms creep around her waist, a body settling into the curve of her back. "Almost done?"
"Just pouring your blasphemous milk."
A poke at her side makes her turn, capturing that angular face between her palms. "It's okay you have enough redeeming qualities that I can over look this one flaw."
Elide's eyes narrow and all the honeyed flecks disappear. Nesta tries in vain to stop her lips from twitching.
"There is not a single flawed thing about me Nesta Lochan."
"You’re spending too much time with Aelin, Elide Archeron" She flicks her nose.
"Take back what you said about me being flawed!" Another poke, this time just above her belly button.
She can't hold in the giggle. Elide raises a brow. Nesta is in trouble.
"Now Krigare," She's already holding up her hands in an effort to protect herself, "Let's be reasonable about this."
"Seven years together and I never knew of this spot," Her grin is feral with excitement.
"How about we don't test it out?" She is pulling at strings, hopeless tangled strings.
Elide's fingers come down and Nesta shrieks as she is tickled into gasping white noise. She has no strength to bat her wife away so she just collapses to the cool kitchen floor submitting to the torture of those dizzyingly fast hands, catching all her weak spots.
"Are you going to admonish my tea order again, oh dear one?"
"NO!" She wheezes. "Please stop!"
The fingers still immediately, and in their place come feather light kisses.
"You okay?" Elide leans over her, midnight hair falling like a curtain past their faces.
"Besides no longer having the ability to breathe, or feel anything except intense tingling on my skin." She frowns, "I'm fine."
"Oh good," Her wife beams, “Then you can give me a massage while we watch our movie.”
Nesta softens immediately, lifting Elide gently and setting them both in a sitting position on the floor. "Is your ankle bad today?"
"It is a five," She shrugs. Nesta gauges it's more like a seven. "But a good massage from my favourite person will take it right down to a three."
"You are a terrible charmer." But she is already scooping the small human into her arms and marching them to the lounge.
After making sure she is settled, nestled in blankets and pillows and the snacks within reach, she goes back to the kitchen to retrieve the tea.
Soon enough they're both sitting comfortably on the couch, Elide's feet resting on a pillow in Nesta's lap; deft supple fingers kneading at the tight, twisted skin and bone of the ankle.
The opening credits to The Proposal run across the screen. Elide holds a cream-filled roll to her mouth, and she takes a large bite.
They laugh; she wipes cream from the side of her lip, and inhales sharply as her wife licks it from her finger.
"Behave."
"Don't I always?" The retort is full of cheek. It makes the room glow.
Sandra Bullock comes on screen.
Nesta looks at her wife, already giggling at the movie they'd watched a thousand times, and she smiles into the world. The world smiles back.