Work Text:
He watches as she peels her armour away from her sticky body, thick sludge from their tussle with a particularly aggressive trio of plowhorns having seeped through not just the metal panelling that decorates her chest, but the thick leather layered over her skin as well. Her brows knit together in disdain when she feels just how gooey the material is, and Kotallo can’t help the slight thud of his heart, fluttering against his ribcage with affection for the disgruntled woman before him. As tired shoulders begin to ache and she fumbles with the ties, he pushes himself away from the wall and brings his hand over hers, a silent offer of help that at first, she ignores, determined to get out her armour herself.
Until she catches his eye in the mirror, finding the ever so slight curve of his lips, the inviting tenderness his gaze holds, and slowly, her hands drop to her side, letting his still nimble fingers loosen the leather wrapped so securely over her body, soft exhale parting her lips as she finds herself finally free of the muddied armour, “It’s going to take hours to clean all that.”
“And even more hours to wait for it to dry,” he agrees, following her gaze to the rather tragic pile of armour, nora blue heaped with tenakth yellow, “Not as if you have many, many sets of armour to temporarily replace it.”
Her head tilts whilst she turns to face him, eyeing him suspiciously whilst he meets her eyes with amusement in his own, “Is that sarcasm on your tongue, marshal?”
“All I’m saying is you have a perfectly functional set of tenakth armour,” he brushes a strand of firey red hair out her face, only for his affection to die as his nose wrinkles, “By the ten, you have glue in your hair.”
Aloy groans, fighting the urge to stamp her foot before looking at their ruined garb mournfully, “I think hours was a generous estimate. More like days. Weeks, even.”
“All the more reason to adorn yourself with some blue and yellow, no?” his lips brush the crown of her head, careful to avoid any grime or glue still trapped within her curls. His touch is warm against her back, a gentle nudge towards the steaming bath that threatens to lose it’s warmth the longer they lament on the days of work ahead, “I’m sure there’s worse things to occupy our time than cleaning our armour together.”
She steps into the tub, humming in agreement as the warm water soothes her aching muscles, her mind straying away from the arduous task of scrubbing chemical adhesive off worn leather and towards the company she knows she’ll have, Kotallo sinking into the comically large tub across from her and resting his head back with a quiet sigh of relief, their legs interlocking with one anothers smoothly, “Yes,” she says mildly, as if to conceal the warmth they both know is glowing in her chest, “I suppose there are.”