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“There’s no way!” Chilchuck yells, and Marcille blinks at him, eyes wide.
For a moment, it’s silent—for a moment, her brain struggles to catch up to the moment laid bare in front of her—and she watches how he looks around like he doesn’t want anyone to overhear them, the tips of his ears red. Cute, she thinks, despite herself, even when the image of him as a tallman is still haunting her. Cute, cute, cute.
“Why not?” she pouts then, when he’s finally looking at her again, head tilted back, back, back, so he can look her in the eyes. There’s the urge inside of her ribcage to crouch or bend down for him, but he probably wouldn’t like that. Hmm. So difficult. “It’s cold. Aren’t you cold, as well?”
He visibly grits his teeth, and by now, his cheeks are flushing, too, his brows knit together tight. “Halflings run pretty hot.”
And that’s well and good for him, but it truly doesn’t help her. Marcille huffs; crosses her arms, frowning at him until he flicks his gaze to the right, somewhere around her elbow. “Come onnn,” she whines, and Chilchuck groans, rubbing the back of his head.
The thing is: it’s uncharacteristically cold on this floor of the dungeon at the moment, and for the past few nights, Marcille had hardly been able to fall asleep because of it, no matter how much she curled up into a ball. The thing is: when she pondered whether or not to slip into someone’s sleeping bag with them in sleep deprivation, he’d been the first person that came to mind, and upon further reflection, the only one she could stand to sleep next to.
Laios, no way. Too big, too cramped, too weird. Senshi, nuh-uh. He smells weird. And Izutsumi would have been okay—maybe even her first choice over Chilchuck, since she’s a girl as well—but she doesn’t actually have her own sleeping bag and rotates sleeping with each one of them, and she apparently doesn’t like sleeping next to Marcille because it makes her dream weird. Boo.
So, yes, it can only be Chilchuck, but here he is, refusing. So mean.
“You still don’t get it, do you…” he mutters, annoyed, before his head snaps back up to face her, jabbing his index finger in her direction. “I’m a man, too, you moron! I’m not some safe person! You can’t do that to me!”
That makes something jolt in Marcille’s gut, and she wrinkles her nose. “Do what to you? It’s just sleeping! I’m not going to do anything weird.”
For a moment, he looks like he’s going to yell, face still red—perhaps in anger, she notices now—but instead, a strangled groan slips out of him. Instead, he fists his hands into his hair and tugs and paces a small circle, grumbling under his breath in a language she doesn’t understand.
“You’re so…! It’s not about you doing anything!”
“Then what is it about?!”
“I’m a man! You can’t sleep next to me!”
They’re both catching their breaths now, and Chilchuck keeps glancing off to the side where the others are, undoubtedly staring at them. Not like Marcille cares—it’s just sleeping! Why is he suddenly making such a big deal out of this!—and she doesn’t know why he does, either. They usually argue all the time, anyway; it’s not like this is anything new for the others. This is just a regular Tuesday. Well, except for it being cold, that is.
And his face is still so, so red. He really must be angry with her.
“I already did,” Marcille pouts, after taking a deep breath to keep her voice down. “In the Golden City. You let me sleep next to you then.”
Chilchuck buries his face in his hands, groaning. “First off, I didn’t let you do anything, you just went ahead on your own! Second, that’s—different. That bed was huge! We weren’t…” And then she doesn’t make out how he finishes that sentence, because his voice dips low, low, low, goes quiet until she can’t hear it anymore.
“What?”
“Touching!” he yells, head snapping back up to look at her again. Red, red, red. “We weren’t touching! There, are you happy?”
Oh. Oh. Something flutters in Marcille’s ribcage, just a little bit, even when this is a decidedly unromantic situation. Who would have thought…
“My, my,” she teases, letting herself get absorbed in a fun fantasy for just a moment, giggling, twirling a strand of hair around her finger. “Chilchuck, are you having dirty thoughts about me…?”
For some reason, she can hear her heartbeat in her ears as he stares at her, aghast. “Shut up!” he yells, then. His voice goes all hoarse with how loud he is. “Shut up, shut up, shut up! Are you stupid?! I don’t—”
“Um,” Laios says, almost tentatively, like he’s stepping into a field of ready-to-go explosion spells. Marcille is almost surprised that he doesn’t just come barreling in like he usually does, but she supposes this is him barreling in. “Can you guys keep it down?”
With a huff, Chilchuck turns away from her and walks off without even a sideway glance, and she sticks her tongue out at his back. “I was just joking anyway…” she mutters under her breath, to no one in particular. No reason to get so worked up.
“Alright,” Laios says, to no one in particular either, and she grimaces.
And now she’ll be cold yet another night, great. Pouting, Marcille arranges her sleeping bag a bit away from the others, and while that perhaps isn’t smart—it certainly isn’t going to help with the temperature; might just make it worse, even—sometimes a girl needs to have fun. And with have fun, she means pout, obviously. Annoying, selfish bastards. Oh, how she wishes Falin was here… but that thought hurts too much, so she shoves it away.
In the same vein, she lies down with a huff once she’s ready, wiggling into her sleeping back, turning her back to the others, and especially Chilchuck.
What’s his problem, anyway? Yeah, alright, true, a sleeping bag is a tighter fit than the big bed they shared (with Izutsumi, too, curled up on top of Chilchuck, and she remembers watching them for a good long while before she fell asleep, cheek pressed to the back of her hand, watching how his brows kept twitching together at the weight on top of him, cute, cute, cute), but it’s not like that changes that much.
Right?
Wriggling deeper into her sleeping bag—trying her hardest to find at least a little bit of warmth, but she’s shivering, anyway, and it’s all pointless, has been pointless from the start—Marcille tries to imagine sleeping next to Chilchuck, squeezed together into the confines of the sleeping bag. The first image that appears in her head is him behind her, arm wrapped around her waist for convenience and warmth, faintly snoring.
But, no, he’d get her hair into his face. Plus, she could feel it if he got, um… but he wouldn’t… right?
(I’m a man, he’d insisted, over and over again, like she doesn’t know that already. I’m a man, I’m a man, I’m a man, Marcille, you can’t do that to me. Do what? Do what? Is he really…?
No, there’s no way. He’s just always like this, anyway.)
Hm. Okay. So the other way around, maybe? With her curled around him from behind, her arm wrapped around his slim waist instead, the top of his head brushing her chin, hair perhaps brushing her lips? He said halflings run hot, so he’d be nice and warm in her grip, and she could squirm against him and get all comfy and maybe put her hands under his shirt so they’re even warmer, against his skin…
Her eyes snap open. Somewhere behind her, Senshi is snoring, and she’s disoriented for a second. Was she… sleeping? She had to have been; the others are asleep now, and they weren’t when she was last thinking clear thoughts. Well, weird thoughts, actually. Her face is burning, for some reason.
That image still lingers in her head, the image of her curled against Chilchuck’s body, imagining how his hair would smell, maybe, how his stomach would feel under his shirt, and suddenly, Marcille understands what Chilchuck had meant earlier. Everything is heating up, even when she’s still shivering against the cold; her teeth chattering.
Chilchuck… Chilchuck, Chilchuck, Chilchuck…
Was he thinking about things like these, too? Was he imagining how she’d squirm against him, how she’d sigh in her sleep? Was he fearing her pajama shirt would ride up, and he’d feel her skin against his? Was it that which got his face so red, instead of him just being angry at her?
Or is she having outlandish fantasies again for a little bit of escapism in these trying times?
“Hey,” a quiet, raspy voice comes from behind her, all of a sudden. She sucks in a sharp breath and manages not to yell, manages not to squeak, manages not to startle or jump. “Scoot over.”
It’s Chilchuck. Chilchuck is standing behind her, nudging at the back of her head with his foot, Chilchuck, who’d been so adamant on not sharing the sleeping bag with her. Marcille stares at the ground in front of her for a moment more, deciding that she’s delirious with how tired she is, deciding that he’s not actually there. But the fantasy is nice. Just like the fantasy of…
“Marcille.”
This time, she does jump, a strangled noise slipping out of her. Jolts upright on the bed, twists around to look over her shoulder. With her movements, the sleeping bag has twisted around her until it’s choking her, squeezing the air out of her, because she suddenly can’t breathe right.
He’s actually there. She has to squint to get her eyes used to the darkness, but he’s actually there, standing with his hands on his hips, and half-lying-half-sitting on the ground like she is, she actually has to look up just a little to be able to look him in the eyes. It’s a very different angle than the one she’s used to—like this, she can’t see the top of his head, or how round his eyes go when he looks up, up, up to look her into the eyes. Like this, she can see the line of his jaw, the jut of his chin when he grits his teeth.
“Dummy,” he says, but somehow, there’s no real heat in his tone. No, he looks… sheepish, almost. Might just be the dark, however. “What are you just sitting there for?”
She’s dumbfounded. She’s dreaming, isn’t she? She must be, but the cold air feels so real on her skin, and another violent shiver rushes through her, causing Chilchuck to click his tongue and shake his head. Again, almost boilingly, she wants to know what he smells like. Wants to have him closer, closer, closer.
Geez, she’s definitely delirious with how tired she is. “Ummm?”
He rolls his eyes, huffing out an annoyed breath like she’s stupid, and somehow, it makes a warm-hot shiver run down her spine. Somehow, it always does.
“You wanted me to sleep next to you,” he says, glancing away from her, tone almost accusing. It’s dark, of course, and Marcille’s eyes aren’t used to it, but she thinks his face is flushed. Her fingertips feel weirdly numb, her mouth dry.
“Right,” she says, finally snapping out of it—and it takes a moment of struggling to untwist her sleeping bag, to get it lying normal again, Chilchuck snickering next to her, grinning teasingly like he always does when she shoots him a glare. “Right, right, right.”
She’s staring at him when she scoots over, pressing herself into the very edge of her sleeping bag, like she’s scared he’ll disappear if she doesn’t, like she’s scared this will turn out to have been a dream, after all. Maybe she is.
But he doesn’t disappear, instead grumbles under his breath—voice going rough, getting stuck under her skin, even when she doesn’t understand what he’s saying—and crouches down to struggle into the sleeping bag next to her. He was right; it’s unavoidable to touch each other. With every twist of his body, his limbs brush hers, first his legs, then his shoulder, then his arm, then his back. He turns away from her.
“Um.”
Chilchuck groans. “Do what you need to do.”
Happily, mind feeling like warm syrup or something of the like, Marcille snuggles into him. And he is warm. She snakes both her arms around him and buries her face in his hair with a happy sigh, thinking she’ll probably be quite a bit embarrassed about this tomorrow, but right now, it’s hard to care, and she doesn’t know if that’s because of how tired she is or because of something else.
He makes another noise. She wants to put her hands under his shirt. It’d just be so comfy. You can’t do that to me, he’d said.
“Chilchuck,” she mumbles, tongue heavy. She can’t keep her eyes open, even when she wants to, even when she wants to consciously feel him against her for as long as she can manage. It’s so warm. So nice. “Chilchuck… thank youuu…”
He clicks his tongue again. Shivers when she does slip a hand under his shirt, and his stomach is fuzzy against her palm. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Go to sleep, or I’ll stick my finger in your ear.”
And like he’s put a spell on her, she does.
(He’s in his own sleeping bag, squeezed in next to Izutsumi, deep asleep still from the looks of it, when she wakes up, and for a moment her heart sinks like lead, but it’s warm, warm, warm, and the space next to her still smells like him, and she can still feel the ghost-prickling of his stomach under her palm.
Huh, she thinks. Not a dream.)