Chapter Text
She looked up from her sewing. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” Tríona announced in a tightly controlled voice: loud enough for Flannán to hear her, quiet enough to not wake the rest of the Pack cloistered on the floor in sleeping bags (Dermot’s idea of a “real reunion”: the no privacy standards of military camping, but in Tríona’s borrowed cottage because none of them had wanted to really experience the real thing again). “You’re not very subtle.”
Flannán turned from the skinning he was working on (an elk he had pulled back earlier), laying down the knife to look at her. “And what is it that you think I’m doing?”
“You’re giving yourself chores until I go to sleep, largely because you’re waiting for me to sleep so I don’t notice you doing your damnedest to avoid it altogether.” Tríona clicked her tongue. “I don’t think I need t’ push for the why, since the servants back at the castle talk about your nightmares. Just...I want to propose a competition, o’ sorts.”
Now she really had his attention, his eye firmly focused on her. “I’m listening.”
“Ten minutes,” she explained. “You lay your head in my lap for ten minutes. If you don’t fall asleep in that time, I leave you alone for the night to brood. If you do fall asleep, but I have to wake you for your nightmares, I will never touch the topic of your sleeplessness again.”
“...what do you get out of it?”
“Well, if I win, I get a healthier you, which frankly is one of my priority goals,” she answered. “I don’t know if you’ve spotted it yet, but I care about you. As a person. Have for a while now.” She was hoping her face was not betraying her as she tried to make this sound like a normal friendship reminder and not a romantic confession. “You gave me fangs I never got to grow myself.” She sat back on the bench, taking off her cloak and folding it into a neat little pillow and placing it on her lap. “Let me try to give back a little bit.”
Flannán eyed her a moment...and then sighed. He walked around the Pack on the floor, then sat on the bench. He took off his cloak, putting it around her (he must’ve noticed her shiver, the bastard) before laying down, putting his head square in her lap.
Instead of looking down at him and thinking too hard about their position, Tríona went back to her sewing, mending one of Lachtna’s tunics. She hummed quietly, focusing on the stitching until her king moved ever so slightly in her lap. Instinctually, she freed up one of her hands, gently running her fingers through his hair with the same love and affection she’d have if Conall was trying to distract her. Realizing what she had done, she justified it quickly to herself, “Flannán is a patient and a friend. The care he needs is less tangible than a sword wound or a bad stomach. I am addressing his wound. That is all.”
What she was absolutely not expecting when she was done with the motion was for Flannán to be absolutely silent and bright ever-loving red before his voice quietly (so quiet she was unsure if she imagined it or not) asked, “Can you do that again?”
Not trusting her voice to fully be able to answer, she hummed in the affirmative, quickly finishing up the mending before pushing it aside. Very gently, Tríona slowly ran her fingers through his hair, tracing a pattern along his scalp. She watched his eye flutter shut and she did her best not to smirk. She kept with that tender method for a moment, careful of the band from his eyepatch or the band that held his hair back. She began to hum quietly again, not with the intention of any magic, but simply to give a noise for his whirling mind to focus on that wasn’t the crackling of the fireplace or the wind from outside.
Tríona lost herself in the motion, watching his face go from red to calm slowly (the moment he seemed to flinch or wince, she would simply change her method). Eventually...his breathing evened out.
Her eyes were focused on him. She gently, slowly, meticulously removed his eyepatch, just so he could be a bit more comfortable. A little furrow came to the space between his eyes and, curiously, she lightly took a finger and smoothed it out gently. It didn’t come back. She kept chasing his nightmares off like this, with small touches and whispered mundane words into the night...until she fell asleep, curled over the table with a hand still in his hair.