They can't help but snipe at each other, occasionally exchanging barbed words like other lovers exchange flowers or romantic texts. There are those too, but he learned long ago that Bela is not the sort of person who likes words. She likes deeds and jewelry when he can't show. You always talk, you never show. She makes him work for it, tangling her hands in his hair. He wants to take care of her, she encourages him to take care of himself. And even when they exchanges words and barbs, when he gets urges he looks across at her and knows she has the exact same thoughts. They take it out in the sheets - she teaches him to like silk and he teaches her the miracles of sleeping until the afternoon unless he has court or she has work. Their safewords are magical terms and she doesn't look at him adoringly, rather when she lays his head against his chest he feels like he found a part of himself that's missing. It won't last, he keeps telling himself that. He ignores his heart clenching in his chest and his stomach rolling when he says that as she laughs, as she teases, as she rakes his back and he wraps his hands around her. They are rough each competing to be in charge. Somewhere in the tearing off their clothes, in the fights, in the fight that is their relationship he learns to value himself and he would like to think that he is showing her that she has value too. They could run together and while he might rip her apart on the way to the finish line that race it's worth it.
