Chapter Text
I jerk awake in the armchair, and the gentle wood creaking of Rum's wheel pauses as he also snaps back to the present from that trance-like state he enters. My hounds are already to either side of my chair, looking up at me with big, worried red eyes.
Rum's eyes flicker over me and then the hounds. "Thanatos?" He asks with some distaste.
"Who else?" I grumble, yanking up the blanket that Rum has thrown over me and curling up in my chair. The book I had been ostensibly reading when I fell asleep is on the ground next to me, but I neither have the energy to pick it back up, nor any desire to actually go to bed and be alone right now.
"Your neck is going to hurt in the morning." He warns.
"I'll live."
"And I'll hear about it." He teases, and I glance over to him for the sole purpose of rolling my eyes.
I note the calculating look in his eyes, but he's pointedly quiet as he starts up his spinning again, and the gentle whirring of the wheel fills the air. The warmth of the fire and the gentle white noise of the wheel quickly has me drifting back towards sleep, and I teeter in an in-between place where time stretches and pauses, weightless and serene, aware only of another's presence and someone's occasional snoring. Then Rum's hands are sliding under me, and I curl into him on habit and instinct. I'm slightly more awake when he stands with me in his arms, and I have the distant realization that he planned this.
"Well played, love." I mutter against his neck.
He pauses for a second, almost holding his breath, and I would realize later that he had the thought I should've: that that word invokes the I love you that binds my immortality in a way that sets off his- and normally my- paranoia. When nothing happens in the next heartbeat he relaxes again, an entirely too self-satisfied smile spreading across his face.
He takes a step and smoke wraps around us, and then we stand in our bedroom. A twitch of his fingers pulls the blanket back, and he sits on the bed and then rolls us both in so he's curled around me. I smile and shift more fully towards him to rest my face into the curve of his neck.
"You don't have to stay every time." I mumble sleepily. We both know he will anyway, but I feel compelled to say it.
"There's very little I have to do, dearest." His voice softens and fills with that fathomless warmth that makes my chest ache. "I want to."
Another wave of affection surges through me, and the twinned pain is only a distant echo. Fuck, I do love him. For a split-second, the urge to say as much dominates my mind, wraps around my chest.
The feeling passes, and when I trust myself to speak I let out a relieved breath. "Quit being so cute. You'll get me in trouble with myself." Something not quite severe enough to be tension enters his body, and I don't need to look to know that he's frowning. "What?"
"Surely you've reached that point by now."
"Which point? Disliking that you have feelings for someone?" He hums an affirmative, and I suppress a bitter laugh. "Darling, I was at that point after my first meeting with Thanatos."
"…So long?" Under the confusion, there's the slightest note of awe in his voice.
"I mean, I wasn't gonna jump your bones then, but I couldn't have put a sword through you either. Can't say it was a comforting realization. You?"
He's quiet for long enough that I know he's struggling with what- or how much- to say.
"When I lost Baelfire, I swore that I'd- I'd care," He was going to say something different there, "For no one else until I found him. I didn't want to admit that I'd broken that promise as well."
I frown and shift back enough to look at him. "You can't live like that, Rum."
I might have spent the three decades as what could reasonably be described as a hermit, but I at least had a false sense of family with Vali and then Ezra in that time, and I've had a friend in Cinaed and a few other allies since I was in my apprenticeship. My isolation was partly circumstance, partly paranoia, and partly an inability to prioritize relationships, but the idea of it being intentionally self-inflicted seems so wildly self-destructive that anxiety claws through the back of my mind for what it could- has- done to him.
Rum makes a disgruntled sound. "No, dearest, you can't live like that. I prefer it."
"No, you don't. Just because it feels safe doesn't mean you actually like it."
"How do you know what I feel?" He snaps, pushing himself up and turning half-away from me, sitting hunched over and tense.
"Because you're sitting in my bed looking for a cuddle?" I know that needling him like that will only push him away in moments like this, so I sigh, sit up, and set a hand on his back. I want to say that Baelfire wouldn't want him to live like that, but I actually have no idea how vindictive the boy would be; I know I secretly wished all manner of suffering on Darius when I was younger. Instead I ask, "Was it a promise to him, or to yourself?"
"Does it matter?"
"Sure it does. I've broken a hundred promises to myself."
It's his turn to sigh as he stares blankly down at his hands, and I watch his shoulders slump as if from a physical weight. "How could I dare to be happy again, after what I've done to my own son? He's alone right now and I'm…"
He trails off, and I link my hands around his waist and rest my forehead into the space between his shoulder blades, reflexively attempting to comfort him even as my mind spirals. Baelfire might not be vindictive enough to think like that, but gods know Ian is. It's an angle I'd never really examined to his inevitable anger: that he lost the love of his life, and after I turned my back on him I spent my time finding my own, playing house with the bloody Dark One with a castle and an extended family and a life that my brothers and I could only have dreamed of. Not just that it's Rum I care about, but that I've found any shred of happiness for myself while I left him to suffer alone.
"Ellie?"
Rum's voice snaps me back to the present. I don't know how long we've been sitting in silence, but the vague discomfort in my lower back suggests that I've been in this hunched position for more than a few seconds.
"Sorry." I mumble, brushing his hair aside so I can place a kiss to the base of his neck. "Just lost in thought."