varka x fem!reader | 2k+ words
synopsis: In which a midnight snack is abandoned in favor of the one thing both of you had been missing all day: each other.
content: fluff, established relationship, late night domesticity with varka, slight hurt/comfort
The bed had gone cold. Not entirely, only on his side.
You discovered it by instinct rather than intention, your hand wandering across the empty sheets before sleep had quite finished releasing its hold upon you. The linen still bore the impression of where he had rested, though the warmth itself had long since left.
You opened your eyes to darkness. It surprised you still, how quickly your thoughts could return to old fears. Not because your husband had given you cause to entertain them. Quite the contrary.
But habit, once taught by years of separation, proved remarkably unwilling to retire. An empty place beside you had once meant seas, battlefields, and letters that crossed half a mainland before reaching your hands. Now it meant...
No, you did not have any reason to think like this anymore. Varka’s expedition days were over, long behind him now, like something almost absurd to still fear in the quiet safety of your shared home.
What danger could there possibly be here?
And yet, you listened. A faint scrape reached you first, mingling with the steady burble of the stream outside your slightly cracked bedroom window, left open, as it always was, because Varka, from the earliest days of your romance, had insisted he needed the sound of running water to sleep. Then came the muted shift of wood against stone, followed by the unmistakable sound of someone attempting, and failing, to set a spoon down with any degree of discretion.
You blinked toward the ceiling.
Surely no one possessed sufficient ambition to prepare food at such an hour.
You slipped carefully from beneath the blankets, pausing only long enough to reach for the candle resting on the bedside table. The match caught after the second strike, a small golden flame blooming into the darkness before settling into a steady glow. Gathering the skirts of your nightgown in one hand, you eased open the bedroom door.
The hallway greeted you with cool air, a welcome relief from the lingering warmth trapped inside your room. Beneath your bare feet, the polished hardwood retained just enough heat from the long day to feel pleasantly warm. Each careful step carried you farther from the bedroom until the wood gave way to the cool stone tiles of the staircase landing, sending a pleasant shiver up your legs.
The scent reached you next: fresh bread, butter just beginning to soften into a glossy sheen, and something sweeter underneath that you could not immediately place, though your mind very helpfully suggested honey, as if it were offering you a reasonable explanation for his behavior at this hour of the night.
When you stepped quietly into the kitchen doorway, you found him standing with his back to you, sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms, messy blond hair falling across the back of his neck as he leaned over the counter with remarkable concentration for someone assembling little more than a midnight snack.
He had just finished cutting generous slices of bread when he sensed you. Judging by the state of the counter, preparing a simple snack appeared to require considerably more bowls, spoons, and general confusion than you had ever thought possible.
When he turned, for one brief, glorious second, he looked exactly like a schoolboy caught stealing pastries from the pantry. For a man who had commanded men without so much as flinching, he possessed an almost comical inability to disguise the fact that he'd been caught.
He gave you a faint look of recognition, then guilt. "...I did not think you'd wake.”
You raised an eyebrow, glancing from him to the cut bread and back again, your gaze moving between them as though trying to decide which required questioning first.
“You ought to have woken me,” you murmured. The words came softer than you'd intended, almost swallowed by the quiet crackle of the hearth and the chorus of crickets drifting through the open kitchen window. The night air slipped easily beneath the thin sleeves of your gown, cool against the warmth that lingered inside the house, and you folded your arms loosely around yourself.
“I know,” he said with a small, softened smile, something in his expression easing as he looked at you. “I didn’t want to disturb your rest. I was making us something to eat," he said, reaching for the pan once more.
"'Us?'" You echoed, feigning offense as you closed the distance between you. "And here I thought you were planning to eat all of this yourself."
A quiet chuckle escaped him as he busied himself with the bread. "I've had time to reconsider."
“Oh?” you repeated, pushing gently at his chest in mock indignation, though you made no real effort to put any real distance between you.
You rested a hip against the counter, watching him with unconcealed curiosity. "By whom?"
He looked back over his shoulder, blue eyes bright in the candlelight. "A rather persistent young woman who wandered into my kitchen and immediately began questioning my methods."
"Our kitchen," you corrected without thinking.
His smile deepened. "Our kitchen."
Warm bread had barely left the pan before your hand drifted toward it, drawn by the smell more than your own patience. You were inches away when his fingers closed gently around your wrist.
“Careful, now, it’s hot,” he warned, far too seriously for someone currently making midnight toast.
“Oh, Great Grand Master,” you said, with a dramatic little lift of your chin, “I assure you I am not quite so fragile as you seem to believe. I will survive.”
"I know you will." His thumb swept once across the inside of your wrist before he let go. "That's hardly the point."
The instant you were free, you reached around him anyway, plucking a corner from the loaf before he could stop you.
He caught the theft out of the corner of his eye.
“You do realize,” he said, shaking his head faintly as you bit into it, “that I was about to offer you that very piece.”
You nodded innocently. "Yes."
“So this is theft, then?” he asked, watching you eat it with affectionate disbelief.
You swallowed, trying, and failing, to hide your smile. "It tasted better this way."
He exhaled a quiet laugh, ducking his head as he rubbed the back of his neck in surrender. "You're impossible, you know that?"
You stepped closer, straightening the collar of his shirt where it had folded unevenly, your fingertips brushing the old scar beneath his jaw as naturally as if you'd done it a thousand times before.
"And yet," you said, looking up at him with a smile of your own, "you married me."
He chuckled, flashing a quick, unguarded grin that showed far too much teeth. “I did.”
He said it so matter-of-factly that it made you blush all over.
Outside, moths drifted lazily around the lantern hanging beside the back door, their shadows fluttering now and then across the kitchen floor whenever they crossed the light. The curtains breathed softly with the breeze, bringing with it the scent of warm earth and climbing jasmine from the garden.
Then, the knife and the rest of his half-finished midnight endeavor were forgotten where they lay upon the cutting board as he reached for you without hesitation, reaching for your hands and drawing you gently against him, as though it were the most natural conclusion to the conversation.
You went willingly, your cheek finding its familiar place against the broad plane of his chest, and you heard him let out a slow breath you hadn't realized he'd been holding. One of his arms settled around your waist while the other rested between your shoulder blades, his palm warm through the thin fabric of your gown.
Your eyes drifted shut, and you simply stood there, listening to the steady beat of his heart beneath your ear.
It had always surprised you how quickly the lines of strain disappeared from his face. Only moments ago his shoulders had carried the invisible weight of reports yet to be signed, knights still depending upon him, decisions waiting with the sunrise. Now, beneath your hands, they eased little by little, the tension leaving him so gradually you might have missed it had you not known him as well as you did. Duty asked everything of him. You never did. Perhaps that was why he held you a little tighter.
“It felt like I saw you even less today than usual,” you said after a while. The words slipped out before you had the chance to decide whether you meant to say them aloud. You almost wished they hadn't. They sounded perilously close to a complaint, though they had never been intended as one.
“We both had a rather busy day,” he answered quietly. His voice rumbled through his chest beneath your cheek, low enough that you felt it as much as you heard it. His hand shifted at your waist, his thumb moving back and forth in slow, absent circles against your side with the sort of unconscious tenderness that made your heart ache in the smallest, sweetest way.
You smiled, and he felt it immediately. Even through the layers of linen between you, he could tell by the way your cheek lifted against his shirt, and something inside him settled at the familiar sensation. If he could have preserved that single feeling forever, the certainty that your smile belonged there, against him, he thought he would have.
“I know,” you interrupted before he could continue. You tipped your head back just enough to meet his eyes. “I wasn't meaning to complain.”
You shook your head, a sheepish little smile tugging at your lips.
Then his hand came up to brush a loose strand of hair behind your ear with a tenderness that made your chest tighten all over again.
“I didn't mean for today to slip away from us,” he said, his voice quieter now. “I've had rather more to attend to than I expected since coming home.” He looked at you with unmistakable regret. “I'm sorry.”
You winced sympathetically, and the realization settled between you more heavily than either of you expected. It seemed almost absurd, that, after all those years of counting the months until he came home, an ordinary day's obligations had managed to keep you apart beneath the very same roof. You had to shake your head before the apology could gather any further strength. Reaching up, you absentmindedly smoothed a crease from the front of his shirt again, though there was scarcely one to be found.
"No," you murmured. "That is not what I meant."
Your hand lingered against his chest, feeling the slow rise and fall of his breathing beneath the linen.
"I only meant..." A sheepish smile touched your lips. "I missed you."
His hand settled gently over yours again. "So did I."
Before you quite realized what he intended, he had drawn you back into his arms, your cheek finding its familiar place against his chest as though it had never belonged anywhere else. His hand settled once more at your waist with an ease that spoke of long habit.
The kitchen seemed suddenly too small to contain the quiet happiness of it.
As he guided you in slow, unhurried steps, a quiet hum rose from his chest. It was so low that you felt it before you heard it, the tune vibrating gently beneath your cheek. You recognized it after a moment, an old tavern song forever finding its way into the repertoire of traveling bards. He didn't hum it especially well, and somehow that made it sweeter still.
It felt then like warm summer grass. Lightning bugs in their slow flashing. The night above you was more in you than your breath, the stars always shifting in your chest.
His tankard remained forgotten upon the counter. The toast had long since begun to blacken in the pan and neither of you noticed.
Some things simply ceased to matter when the right person walked into the room.
"Dark summer grass. Lightning bugs in their slow flashing. The night above you was more in you than your breath, the stars always shifting in your chest."
Joanna Klink, from Night Sky in "The Nightfields"
you asked, I delivered: gentleman courteous Varka
I be throwing out these kinds of fics like they're candy
anyways comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated 🥹
