frission: ( n ) a shiver of pleasure .
uncommon words / accepting. / @rakkoran
As the front door creaks open under her palm, Riven is lit in contrast : behind her, cool moonlight spills in through the threshold. Ahead of her, the fire stirs warmly, casting everything in sharp relief against the walls. Atreus sits by the table in front of the fire, his features obscured, though as she enters his head turns, just slightly, the flames highlighting his jaw, the turn of his eye, and Riven pauses like a guilty child.
She isn’t sure why.
The flames were low enough to obscure certain harsher realities. She is thankful, and shakes off the strange guilt like the unwelcome guest that it is as she nudges the door shut behind her, locking the night away. Were the fire well fed, it would be more apparent that her cheeks are pale, lifeless with exhaustion. She was soaked through to the bone, not by torrential rain but a slow, miserable dribble, the kind that stirred up a choking fog and left a sheen to her skin, left her hair clinging in loose, wet strands around her shoulders. Her palms were sore, and raw.
“ …You’re still awake, ” Riven says quietly, a tired rasp to her voice. She shrugs the cloak off her shoulders and hooks it by the door.
“ Asa and Shava were worried. I promised them I wouldn’t sleep until you returned, ” Atreus replies. Riven searches for any hint of scorn in his voice, but she finds none ─ and then again, why she searches for scorn in the first place, like she is waiting, daring him to turn some sharp edge on her… it wasn’t fair.
“ You didn’t have to, ” Riven murmurs like an apology. Atreus rises from his seat slowly, turning to regard her in full, and Riven’s footsteps carry her a few paces forward to meet him halfway before she stalls in place, averting her eyes. The flames cast a warm glow over the high points of her cheeks, and throw Atreus into obscurity. “ I was just… working. ”
Riven was no slave to the country of Ionia. The work was long and unforgiving by no ones hand other than her own ; she worked until she bled, and without complaint, for lack of any other answer. Work was easy to understand. So was pain, as a consequence.
And then Atreus hums a low acknowledgment, looking at her in a way that makes her certain the pallor of her cheeks and the darkness of her eyes is apparent to him, and reaches for her. His hand finds the slope of her jaw, his thumb straying near the corner of her mouth.
This is impossible to understand.
“ You’re bleeding, ” he says. He tilts her head just so, an impassive, impossible to read look in his eyes. Her skin stings, just by her lower lip, and distantly she recalls some debris or other catching her there. She had dragged her sleeve across her mouth and ignored it. And now ─ now Atreus’s touch is like a still - glowing coal to her skin. The cold and the ache in her bones feel worse off for it, bolstered by the reminder that warmth existed, and she breathes a quiet, shuddery inhale.
That warmth sends a shiver down her spine, prickling up the back of her neck. Riven reacts with the jerky, unsure sort of movement accompanied by shock. Her cold hand rests on Atreus’s wrist, and she rocks a half-step back.
“ It’s a scratch, ” she says. “ An accident. ” Atreus lowers his hand slowly. Riven withdraws her own more quickly. “ Asa’s been teaching you how to worry. ”
Atreus breathes an exhale that distantly resembles a laugh. Before she can speak again, or tactlessly make her exit, he turns and points to the seat he was occupying previously. “ Sit by the fire. ” Normally, she might bristle, but Atreus does not sound unkind. He turns away and begins receding towards the back of the house, moving careful so as to not aggravate the floorboards and wake Asa and Shava.
“ Where are you going ? ” Riven blurts out. She does not move to the fire. She doesn’t move anywhere: she stands, caught, the lingering heat searing a ghost of his touch to her cheek, her jaw, the corner of her mouth.
“ To find you a blanket, ” he says, half turning back to her. “ And water, for tea, since that seems to be the Ionian answer for everything. ”
The corner of Riven’s mouth twitches upwards, despite herself. She hugs her arms to her chest and feels the wet of her clothing cling to her, the chill settling back in. “ Okay, ” she says quietly.
Atreus’s footsteps fade away, and the warmth goes with him.
