Work Text:
"Are you alright, love? Can you walk?"
Her soft "mm-hmm" rings like dainty tinkling bells to his ears, a response carried by the cool afternoon breeze that lets him know she will be just fine. The precarious fall that his danger-prone darling had taken just moments prior, twisting an ankle on slippery wet river rocks, had sent her tumbling and him stumbling through the dense reed brush towards her from his vantage point (if Qifrey asked why he had not simply used his sylph shoes to go after her instead of fumbling around, later, he would only purse his lips and huff- having forgotten in the moment that such a thing was an option).
Commotion over with for the moment, Olruggio takes a brief reprieve to catalogue the look of her in his arms. Propped up on one of his knees, leaning against him as he kneels and humming quite contentedly even as his joints protest, she seems perfectly fine for someone who is most certainly in a fair bit of pain (and with a wounded ego, to boot, he would bet).
"Are you-"
He starts, she stops him with the look on her eyes: mischief. Humming again, to herself, faux-innocence laces her being with pretty blue bows in her aura so strongly he thinks he can see it; she shifts herself carefully so that she can wrap her arms around his neck and shoulders, swinging her body around until she is more firmly cradled in his arms. Throwing her head back in one direction, sticking her one wounded foot out as straight as she can manage in the other, and looking up at him, pleased as his brows furrow and he sighs, she only grins.
"..really?"
She only blinks sweetly up at him, grinning, and he practically feel her magic sparkling around him for added effect.
"If you insist. But don't flail about. I don't want to drop you or hurt your ankle worse."
Promising him through the sparkle in her eyes that she will be on her best behavior, she lets him hoist her up as he stands. Exhaling through the exertion (he is not the young man he once was, of course, but he did lug stones around quite frequently; this was one of the boons of that work: being able to lift his lover as she deserved), he takes a moment to simply hold her when he finally stands (magic humming as it helps him along).
Her distracting insistence on gifting him a little peck of a kiss every few breezes certainly makes the flying trek back home take much longer, but he cannot find it within himself to mind, even as his arms begin to ache. If she notices, she spares him his dignity by not commenting, only shifting to try and take some of the strain off of him silently and without malice. When they enter the atelier, depositing her gently (delicately, as if she were made of silk or glass, and giving her a kiss of her own) on their bed in his workshop, she makes amends by waggling her fingers and beckoning him to join her where she lays; massaging the worst of his sore muscles and aching joints from their excursion while he breathes.
Head against the pillows, he turns and stutters on an inhale when she moves again. Catching one of her hands as it drifts, he graces it with a ticklish kiss, quick and sweet, and it makes her laugh in the way that sends fluttering sparks through his heart. Open adoration lights his eyes as he looks to her, seeking hers, the most dazzling fires he knows, and he almost shies away from the love sparkling in her own as she looks at him too.
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She hobbles in, precarious with her one ankle still swollen and sore, as he scratches at the half-finished spells in front of him. Glancing up, frowning at her, he strides over to her to help settle her somewhere nearby, insisting that she should be resting even as she rolls her eyes and groans (she lets him take care of her anyway, but she knows he lets her take care of him in return so really, it all works out).
His crafting continues, idly absorbing his time and attention even as he keeps pace with her occasional interjections of questions and observations and small talk. When she huffs for third time, sitting just slightly too far away from him as he works for her liking, he decides to do something about it. Chuckling fondly, shaking his head, he looks around for what he needs.
Pillows and blankets are snatched from across the room, it was too far away from him or else she would have been perched there before, and set gently in a pile on his chair for later. A cot is brought and folded out beside his desk, then covered with the pillows and blankets of prior: a perfect nest.
She all but crows with sweet victory when she shuffles into her new roost beside his work space, and Olruggio cannot help but laugh at her antics. They settle in for the early evening, him at his desk and her at his side. He offers her his non-dominant hand to hold, which she takes in one of her own eagerly, and rests it on the plush of the cot where she lay, fingers entwined like gentle laces, like sweet tides washing over stone.
Giving her hand a squeeze (it says to her that he is here, that he loves her still and always), he draws the next line of his new theory as she squeezes back (it says to him that she is here, that she loves him still and always).