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Vi of Lanestown, Knight-Champion and Queen-Consort to the throne of Piltover, kneeled on her massive side of the bed she shared with her wife, shivering slightly, and contemplated her next move. Opposite her, for once peacefully sleeping after weeks of stress dreams and restless turnings, was her wife, Caitlyn Kiramman. Queen Caitlyn, as the recent transfer of power had made her.
She was snoring softly, more of a whisper than a wheeze, facing away from Vi, cuddled up in the ridiculously fluffy blankets befitting a monarch. All of their blankets. Which meant Vi was currently facing a conundrum.
Did she tough it out and try to sleep rough as she had for years on the road as a knight-errant? Entirely possible, though she knew if Caitlyn woke up in the morning to realize she’d done even so slight an act of selfishness it would bother her for days.
Could she simply lift Caitlyn’s mass of fluff away from the bed’s edge and try to wrap herself around it as though she were trying to wrestle a very soft, very royal bear? Doable, she’d done so before when carrying Caitlyn to bed from her work desk, but after the soul-crushing week of negotiations with Noxus and Demacia over the Piltovan aid going to the peoples of both nations at war, she was determined to see that Caitlyn got at least one good night’s sleep after days without interruption.
Gingerly, Vi reached out to gently tug one of the looser-looking linens from atop the soft mound known as Mt. Kiramman only to feel an iron grip on the other end and hear, in that meandering tone of someone with most of their brain still off and most of their face mushed into a pillow, “‘m th' queen. Blank’ts ‘re queen size. All f’ll. Go ‘way.”
It took every ounce of bearing for Vi not to laugh out loud at the woozy response her efforts had earned her. If she’d told any of those hawkish Noxus ambassadors or Demacian envoys that half-asleep order had come from the very same steely-eyed goddess who’d told each of them in no uncertain terms that Piltover would not be allowing agrarian villages on their borders to starve while the two nations’ armies killed each other, she was certain several would die of shock.
Given that they’d all left the evening prior to no doubt return to their masters kicking and screaming about Piltovan interference in their precious war, no such luck would find her. Still, her problem remained, and, with a sigh, Vi quietly stood up and walked away from the bed, taking only a moment to slip on the equally fluffy rabbit-eared slippers she’d received as a ‘token’ of her monarch’s appreciation—a declaration she’d visibly watched Caitlyn struggle through with a straight face—before stepping out into the halls of Castle Pilt in search of material aid in her own plight.
Even months after the whirlwind romance between Princess and briefly Princess Regent Caitlyn and her disbelieving self had finally established itself into marriage, she still felt a deep-seated sense of non-belonging and social vertigo when walking in the private royal quarters of the castle.
As a knight, she’d come to know much of the castle like the back of her hand. How tall the outer battlements were at any place along them, how tall ladders would need to be to reach them during a siege, how long it took to reach the throne room from both her quarters in the barracks and the stables. She could find her way to the armory blindfolded and deaf if she needed to.
To have been elevated and not only allowed but expected to travel the vaunted passages meant only for the royal family of which she was now terrifyingly a part of, that still felt odd, despite Caitlyn’s insistence that her place was by her side no matter the circumstances of her birth.
It also meant that she had next to no idea where the royal blanket storage chamber, or whatever lofty title the linen closet she sought had been dubbed, was. Would it be guarded? Did thieves go after things like silk blankets?
What she found after wandering through vestibule after library after vestibule was a small, unadorned white door with the words EXTRA LINENS written across the surface in simple but elegant black ink. More importantly, standing haggardly in front of it in sleeping clothes with a small candle, was King-Consort Tobias Kiramman.
As soon as she properly saw his face, instinct kicked in.
“My liege!?” Vi blurted out, sotto vocce but suddenly enough she worried she might startle him. Instead, the salt-and-pepper hair man turned to her smoothly with a warm, if tired, smile.
“Good evening Violet. Or morning. Hard to tell this deep in the castle.” He said sleepily over a yawn. “I’ve been fighting for skylights for years, but Sandra or Marshal Grayson always pull the ‘security risk’ card.”
Deer in the carriage lamps, Vi nodded slowly. “Err, as you say, my lord?”
“For pity’s sake Vi, it’s the middle of the night and we’re both half asleep wearing slippers shaped like forest creatures, call me Tobias.” The king said with amusement and exhaustion. Vi looked down, and sure enough, the king wore slippers nearly identical to her own but with little triangular fox ears rather than the floppy rabbit ears hers bore. “Now, follow me and we’ll put those tree trunk arms of yours to use.”
He opened the door before them before she could reply with more than a blush, placing the candle on a holder just inside. In the wavering orange light Vi saw shelves of blankets, sheets, pillow cases, and quilts, neatly organized and clean. The king heaped an armload onto Vi’s hands, then another, without a word.
“Sound asleep, then?” He finally asked rhetorically as he went.
“...what do y-” Vi began slowly.
“Caitlyn. She’s sound asleep, possibly for the first time in weeks, in many parts thanks to your presence in her life, and, like mother like daughter, when a Kiramman matriarch sleeps well, she also sleeps very possessively. Which would explain your being here as succinctly as it does mine; my daughter is hogging the covers and rather than wake her, you came to get yourself more. Is that right?” He swept out of the door once all his selections sat on Vi’s forearms, beckoning her to follow.
“Y-yes si-Tobias. You mean that… her majesty does the same thing?” Vi realized she had the beginnings of a very goofy smile on her face, but at this point the evening was too far gone for her to care very much.
Tobias laughed as he took his half of the blankets off Vi’s pile. “Of course she does. Vi, dear, I had that room added in the first year of our marriage as a convenience. And I hope you’ll permit me the admission of how relieved I am to see you truly care so much for Caitlyn as to find yourself here with me when the both of us should be asleep, rather than employing the much simpler solution to wake her.”
Vi had no words to say to that, shrugging embarrassedly.
He looked her up and down, the fatherly warmth suddenly pitched off in favor of a kingly seriousness she rarely ever saw from him. “Welcome to the family, Vi. She is in your care.”
With that, he retrieved his candle and was gone.
In the dark that was suddenly not so dark at all and the quiet that was immediately not as empty, Vi turned to make her return walk back to her bedroom, feeling a bit more at home.
She found Caitlyn just as she’d left her, tall thin frame taking up a fifth of the bed’s width but all of it’s blankets, and, placing an indulgent kiss on her wife’s forehead, heart melting at the smile that worked its way onto Caitlyn’s sleeping features, and bedded herself down with her newly acquired nesting items.
The next morning, her toes were warm, and so was her soul.