Chapter Text
“Are you sure you should be carrying all that?”
Leline huffed and rolled her eyes. “It’s just a few stitches, Virgil. I’m fine.”
“It was more than a few…” Virgil said doubtfully.
Leline shook her head. Virgil was going to have to get used to her fighting style, or he was going to worry himself into an aneurysm. She hefted the sealed wooden crate that her sister had asked her to pick up at the docks, tossing it up a bit and catching it just to prove she could. Her left arm complained dreadfully, but she refused to let it show on her face.
“Thirteen is a few where I’m from, sweetheart. And it’s not like this crate is all that heavy. I bet even you could carry it no problem.”
No response. Leline worried she might have teased him too much. Though it had been a few months since they’d gotten back together, and they were a lot more open and honest with each other now, every once in a while one of them crossed a line that they didn’t know was there. Leline had even crossed a few that Virgil didn’t know were there. And then it was one step backwards, and back to patching things up.
But when she stopped walking and turned back, Virgil didn’t look upset. He was smiling, and looking a little flustered.
“What is it?” Leline asked, tilting her head.
“You, um… you called me ‘sweetheart.’”
Leline’s face grew hot. “Um, yeah. Actually, I’ve been thinking about you like that for a while. Do you mind?”
Virgil came closer… just as close as he could. Even with the wooden crate wedged in between them, Leline could swear she could feel Virgil’s heartbeat. Or, maybe it was her own. Virgil’s dark eyes seemed to fill her mind as he smiled up at her. He reached out to either side of the crate and slowly ran his fingertips along her wrists. His hands were warm, even warmer than they had been when he stitched her wound up yesterday. They rested gently on top of hers, making her skin tingle. He leaned forward, over the crate, and before she realized what she was doing, she had done the same. His hair brushed against hers as their noses almost touched. Leline’s focus drifted down from Virgil’s eyes to his lips. They were just… right there…
“I don’t mind at all,” Virgil murmured. “In fact, I like it very much.”
They couldn’t quite manage a kiss with the crate in the way. Leline bit her lip in frustration. He was just so tantalizingly close…
“Would you mind if I called you something too?” he asked.
Leline’s heart thudded against her ribs with the force of a dragon taking flight. Her fingers trembled under Virgil’s steady grip. “What…” she began, her mouth suddenly dry, “what… would you like to call me?”
Virgil’s smile grew wider, his eyes gazing so deeply into hers that she thought she might drown in them.
“I think I’ll call you…”
He snatched the crate out of her hands and pranced backwards with a laugh.
“Sucker!”
“Hey!” Leline chased after him as he sprinted up the path back towards the woods. “Give that back, you bastard!”
“Not happening!” he called back. “You need to take better care of yourself!”
He couldn’t outrun her, but he could outmaneuver her. Every time she got in front of him, he twisted and dodged so that she couldn’t so much as touch the crate.
“Give that back!”
“No!”
“Virgil, I can handle it!”
“You’re letting me carry it the rest of the way!”
“No, I’m not!”
“Leave it alone!”
“No!”
“Leave it, or I’ll write to your mother.”
Leline froze. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Virgil smirked at her. “Try me.”
Defeated, Leline scowled and folded her arms. Then she put her arms back down again when that made the scratch she got in yesterday’s little scuffle begin to smart.
“Fine,” she huffed.
“That’s more like it.” Virgil adjusted his grip on the crate and began walking back up the path. “Come on, your sister’s waiting for us.”
“I’m gonna tell her you tricked me,” Leline sulked.
“Then, I guess I’m getting fed to a dragon,” Virgil replied, unphased. “I’m still right.”
---
They carried the crate to where Mirabak was waiting near the dragon pool. Where, not only was Mirabak completely unsympathetic when she heard that she’d been tricked by a human male, she actually had the nerve to take Virgil’s side when he told her his motives.
“He’s right, sis. You need to take better care of yourself. Thirteen stitches is a lot, especially if they get pulled.”
“I told you,” said Virgil, looking entirely more smug than he had a right to.
Mirabak paid no heed Leline’s growls and sighs as she pried open the heavy crate with her bare hands. Leline couldn’t make heads or tails of the disassembled machinery inside, but Mira looked happy with her delivery. She took it back inside her secluded cabin, where she was working on her newest invention, and ignored Leline and Virgil entirely.
Virgil was sitting on a fallen log. Though their errand was over, they had nowhere else to be, and the woods were very nice this time of year. He patted an empty space next to him, and she sat down. But she made a show of being very reluctant to do so.
“Come on,” said Virgil. “No one forced you to make a scene. Why do you have to be so stubborn, anyway?”
Leline shrugged. “I don’t want people to think I’m a weakling.”
“You don’t give a damn what people think,” Virgil pointed out. “Plus, you can lift a cow over your head, so why should you?”
“I don’t want you to think I’m a weakling,” she muttered.
Virgil grew serious and quiet. He reached over and took her hand.
“Lelli, I would never think that,” he said softly. “You are the strongest person I know. You saved my life yesterday, and more times than I can count.”
Leline took a deep breath and tried to swallow around the lump forming in her throat. “Virgil… you’ve already seen me at my weakest. That’s not… that’s not how I want you to think of me.”
“It’s not,” Virgil promised. “Darling, you’ve seen me as my worst self, too. Is that how you think of me?”
He touched her cheek until she turned to face him, then beckoned her down so that he could kiss her. She obliged, letting his warmth run from her lips down to her heart, where it spread across her whole body.
“No,” Leline whispered. She could never think of him as anything but the brave, kind, intelligent man that he was now. That time he was referring to was long gone, and it would never come between them again.
“Good,” Virgil replied, squeezing her hand. “Because I love you. You are a beautiful, passionate, courageous person. That doesn’t stop when you need me to help you. Okay?”
“Okay.” Leline still had that lump in her throat, but it was different now. The stinging in her eyes came with a broad smile that she couldn’t have wiped away if she wanted to.
Virgil took in her expression with a bemused smile of his own. “What is it?”
“You called me ‘darling.’”
Virgil blushed. Before he could say anything, Leline bent down to kiss him again.
“Get your own cabin, you two!” yelled Mirabak from the window.