#oopth

this became a monster and I’m sorry i can’t cut this under a read more sobs

your ask came in twice so I’m gonna do a clownery one after this

for now here’s drama

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It wasn't difficult to find things to be annoyed at Sylvanas about. They weren't exactly the most compatible pair, but Jaina liked to believe that she'd been very generous with her tolerance since they'd been married.

‘Tolerating’ Sylvanas, though, proved to be a greater feat of patience than Jaina had first anticipated.

She knew that the Warchief would go to some extremes just to annoy her. She expected it; if the warnings she'd received from Vereesa and Alleria about their sister's wicked sense of humour and refusal to surrender were anything to go by.

In short — Jaina fully expected Sylvanas to annoy the living shit out of her.

What she hadn't expected was how...painfully tolerable Sylvanas as being. Frankly, it annoyed her more to know that Sylvanas was barely making any effort of acknowledging her existence at all.

They shared a chamber for appearances' sake, but Sylvanas was a rare one for the bedroom. Jaina was grateful in some sense, though there was still a strange and niggling sensation of loneliness in the cold nights.

Despite her cutting tongue in the war room and desert drawl through audiences, Sylvanas was otherwise...pleasant.

Not sharp. Not cruel. Not unnecessarily vicious in her treatment of Jaina or anyone else, for that matter.

Not exactly present, either.

If anything, the thing that galled Jaina the most about her wife was how absent Sylvanas was.

One night, they sat together. Each at their respective desks within the adjoining study; desks that were pushed together and such that they were facing one another. Sylvanas was in her line of sight no matter how low she dipped her head to scrawl in her ledgers.

It was a rare night to see them together at such an hour, but tax season and temperamental harvests meant brokering new levies and negotiating relief efforts for farmers situated in more barren lands.

The Warchief was perched in her seat, face was impassive as ever as she leafed through reports and signed each one with an idle scratch of her quill. She was leaned back in her seat, stretching out enough to sprawl somewhat languorously across it.

She must have stretched out her legs as well, because Jaina felt them cross at the ankles beneath the desks.

Then they nudged against a foot.

Jaina arched a brow and moved her feet aside, pursing her lips.

Sylvanas' face did not move; she kept signing her papers.

Then her feet tapped against Jaina's ankle.

Unwilling to feed the irritation brewing in her belly, Jaina crossed her own and tucked them primly beneath her seat.

She kept her attention on the report at hand, though the scratching of her quill became a touch more pointed.

Sylvanas took in a breath and shifted in her seat, bracing an elbow against the armrest. Her black-tipped nails began to tap against the wood; sharp, punctuated beats that made Jaina's ears ache and jaw set. It went on for a moment, though each passing second felt like an agony of time stretched between them.

"Stop that!" Jaina snapped, setting her quill down with a slap. "You're making my ears hurt."

Sylvanas arched a brow and curled her hand into a fist obligingly. She said nothing in return, only returned to skimming reports. But the sound of each flick of parchment suddenly seemed just as grating to Jaina's ears; the scrape of each page and the warble of it in the air as they settled.

“Must you make so much noise when you read?” she ground out, glaring beneath her lashes at Sylvanas.

“It’s just paper,” Sylvanas replied, turning a page, eyes trained indifferently on the deep set of red ink on parchment. “If you must work in silence, you’re free to leave. The libraries were renovated for your leisure.”

“I wouldn’t need to move if you would just stop.”

An ear flicked at her mildly. “I can’t stop paper from making noise. If you have such trouble working in close quarters, then it might be wise to reconsider the clauses of our marriage.”

"You're doing this on purpose," she accused, huffing as she rose to her feet, pushing away from the desk indignantly. She began shuffling her papers together brusquely, stacking them into a haphazard pile in her arms. "If you're going to act like a child, I'll work in the library."

"Childish behaviour, indeed," Sylvanas drawled, eyeing her with something that was equally bright and steely. "I'm not the one between us throwing a tantrum at the slightest inconvenience."

"I'm trying to work," Jaina hissed, glaring viciously. "I can't work around you."

Lazily, Sylvanas replied, "You apparently can't stand me regardless."  She straightened upright in her seat as she set her reports aside. "You find my very presence infuriating. Clearly."

Jaina paused, blinking incredulously at the Warchief. "I don't — that's not —!"

"Don't bother wasting your breath, Proudmoore," she said, mouth twisting into something wry. "I have no qualms with your hate. Despise me if you like." She shrugged and began rearranging the stack of parchments at her elbow, shuffling papers between her hands again. "Whatever helps you sleep at night."

A boulder of something cold and sobering settled in the depths of her belly. Jaina swallowed back the taste of bile in her throat and stared at Sylvanas as she found wherewithal to speak. "You think I hate you for fun?"

Again, Sylvanas shrugged. "We must all have our hobbies, I suppose."

“I don’t hate you for fun,” Jaina insisted. “Of course you would think that. You think the worst of all of us. You just always — gods, you —”

“— apparently infuriate you to the point of fluster,” Sylvanas intoned.

Jaina slammed her reports back down onto the table. It didn’t matter that it made her all the more petulant. “You’re never here!” she burst out. “You can’t infuriate me because you’re never around. You’re never in the room, and you barely find the effort to even pretend I exist outside of the council meetings.”

She could feel her cheeks burning from the heat of her fury, felt it coiling in her fists curled tightly at her sides.

Was it fury at that point or shame?

Sylvanas regarded her for a long, tenuous moment. “Is that all?”

Is that all?

“Do I need more?”

“You could have just said that you wanted company,” Sylvanas mumbled, fussing with her reports. She stacked them and restacked them, tapping them against the table without there being need.

Nervous. Was the Dark Lady nervous?

“Is that what this is about? You think I’m not paying enough attention to you?”

“You’re not paying any attention to me,” Jaina retorted. She wasn’t sure if it was bitterness or longing in her voice.

Sylvanas made a perplexed frown, tapping her papers against the desk one last time and setting them aside. “I can’t read your mind, Jaina,” she said mildly. “It’s not exactly easy to tell if you want my attentions or resent them.”

Folding her arms defensively, Jaina replied in a brisk tone, “I’m not expecting you to read my damn mind. I just expect you to at least pretend that we can be civil. Even if it’s just for show.”

“Haven’t I been civil?” Sylvanas asked quietly. “Do you want me to play at affection?” The roll of the word on her tongue made Jaina’s cheek heat unexpectedly. “Should I touch you, caress you; kiss you, for the sake of appearances?”

Jaina swallowed back the frog in her throat. Still, she croaked, “We’re married. We should at least learn to tolerate one another if we’re going to stay married.”

“And how would you propose we do that?”

Huffing in frustration, she ran a hand through her hair, unravelling the already wild mane from her shoulders. “I don’t know. Talk, maybe.”

“We have precious little in common to share idle conversation.”

Jaina sighed in annoyance. “Do you have a better idea?”

Sylvanas said nothing. Only rounded the desks and grasped Jaina’s face.

The next thing she knew, she was being kissed.

It was a good kiss, as far as kisses went. Sylvanas’ lips were cool, colder than living flesh, but soft and fuller than expected. It was a good kiss, but a short kiss, and before Jaina could really think to do anything more than blink, it was over.

There was a pause; only an instant, but it was enough for her to stare up at burning red eyes in shock, but she couldn’t find the will to pull away.

Sylvanas released her face and stepped back awkwardly. “I should go.”