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Teagan has been spending a lot of time making sure that no one murders Jack while he's visiting with the higher-ups of the various societies, and Sigrun spends time at the firehouse, so they're spending a little less time together than... well, let's say than ideal. Less than they used to when they just fucked around in Vermont, anyway.
This is the price of like, responsibility and shit.
Anyway, Sigrun coming home from the firehouse means Teagan prepares. Because for all of their usual brusque standoffishness with people other than their family and their lovers, they do pour all of themselves into spoiling the people that they care about. Downtime has clean blankets, clean towels, all the accouterments for scrubbing up if such is necessary, cold mead in a bucket of ice, and expensive take-out sushi. Teagan's hedonism comes in sensory contrast -- hot bath, cold food, for example.
Also there are flowers. Roses, to be precise. Because doting time is doting time. And now? Time to be invisible, and wait.
The benefit of the schedule she keeps is that when she's home, she's home. Barring some sort of citywide emergency where even reserve ladders are called and therefore additional bodies needed? This time is well and truly wholly her own. It's made her tremendously productive in her downtime. Now that she's nominally in a role of field command, and capable of giving orders and requisitioning resources for projects? She's more or less grabbed everyone by the ears on the command level and made them all get behind a public arsenal. Not a Summer arsenal. Not an elite arsenal reserved for the great and the good. A public arsenal. With armor and weapons for everyone who cares to learn how to use it.
She's poured piles of her own money, and weeks of her free time into the project, and the growing forest of spear shafts and racks of swords awaiting sharpening speak to the work she's undertaken. The row upon row of t-stands hanging with breastplates, helmets, and mail reaches into the dozens. It's like Sigrun was going to Fashion Week in 860 Reyjkavik. But she's faced her last freehold level threat with pressed arms. Let everyone who wants a piece of the Freehold recognize what it can bring to its defense.
That project is only recently nearing the point where its end is in sight. So her day off is very much well earned. When she finally steps through into the Hollow and kicks off her boots, she makes a straight line for the cold mead. Much needed. She pops the stopper and tilts the bottle back for three good swallows before letting out a burp and a content sigh.
That could have been the hollow knowing it's Sigrun, though. Easy guess. The roses give her pause. She squints, probably wondering who she's interrupting. Still squinting at the roses, she tilts the bottle back for another two gulps. Better make it four.
There are two ways you can play it, when your girlfriend of years appears nonplussed about the presence of roses. One, you can get a lil hurt or just appear out of nowhere like normal, or two, you can pad barefoot behind her, quietly pick up one of the roses that she walked past while she's chugging mead, and then sneak over to the edge of the hot spring, sling yourself along the back edge of it, and pick up a piece of sushi.
Then, wearing boxers and a tank top (because of course, plus, it really works for the comedy bit here), leaning on one elbow, one knee cocked up, draped like a masculine hero on a romance cover, you can allow yourself to become visible, holding the rose by the bottom of its stem so you can sniff at it delicately, and then say, in your lowest, most obviously sexy voice:
"Oh, hello. I didn't see you there."
Interrupted mid quaff, Teagan is remarkably lucky they don't wind up wearing mead spray. Sigrun's cheeks do puff out as she rapidly lowers the bottle, eyes going wide with surprise. And then she gets a gander of the rose, and who is holding it, and figures out those were intended for her the whole time, and her pupils get big as saucers. She looks down at the rose, then back to Teagan, then just throws her arms around Teagan's neck and hugs them tight.
It is a safe bet people don't often get Sigrun flowers.
Well, that's ... close to the desired result, at least. It's not a result that Teagan is sad to get, to be certain. There's a small, startled noise in the back of their throat, and then they scoop Sigrun up off the floor, their long-muscled arms wrapping around her and hoisting her so they can carry her over to blanketland and curl her up in their lap, at least for now. The rose gets dropped on the edge of the blanket pit.
Girlfriend In Lap accomplished, they hold on to her tightly, just cradling her close for a long, long moment. One hand soothes down her spine, the other arm just... folds her in close. Their nose buries in her hair, and they draw in a deep breath through their nose. Words can happen in a minute. Now? Now is Girlfriend in Lap.
She eases up on the hug as she's being carried, makes a point of finishing of her mead bottle before they reach their destination, and tosses the empty into the cushions to appease whatever lurks beneath the cushion dermis. Once she's comfortably situated in Teagan's lap, she nuzzles her head against their nose and plucks the rose up from where it's been dropped and pulls it in against her chest like a brand new treasure, leaning against Teagan a little more insistently. Then she takes in a deep breath and lets out a cleansing sigh.
"I was wondering who I was interrupting," she finally explains of her general reaction to everything.
Soft laughter in the back of their throat, and they just... cuddle her in. One hand runs down the length of her arm, down to her hip, smoothing over her. These are familiar lines, familiar shapes, and their touch is both familiar and exploring. The snuggling of the rose makes them smile, a lopsided thing that nevertheless comes with silvering along the tops of their ears and their cheekbones.
"If that's the case," Teagan answers quietly, "then clearly I've been slacking. You shouldn't be expecting that the flowers aren't for you." A kiss to the top of her head, her hairline, her temple. "You interrupt no one. This is all for my beautiful, clever, devoted, hard-working girl."
"Oh, I always say not to bother. It's a waste of money-- but of course, you'll have stolen them --and then they just die in a week, anyway. And some expectations just never changed, I guess. I went from being a plain girl nobody bought flowers for because nobody cared to, and then turned into the kind of woman you don't buy flowers for because she can snap your neck with her thighs." Sigrun doesn't quite mope about it, but she's also not not moping about it. Still, she sniffs the rose briefly and then holds it up for Teagan to sniff as well. In case they forgot what it smelled like in the past forty seconds.
"Anyway. It's awful sweet, Teagan, thank you." She straightens up a bit so as to reward Teagan with a proper kiss. One that's chilly and tinged with fermented honey and mulling spice.
"I did steal them, from a corporate place," because Teagan has a certain ethos. Their fingers trace along the side of her face, down the side of her throat. "Mmm," they noise as she talks. "I think maybe being as old as I am, and as many things as... just don't exist anymore that used to, for me, the idea that things will... stop being... is no reason to not enjoy it now." Another little series of kisses peppering her forehead, her hairline. One for her nose. They take a sniff of the rose, their smile widening a little.
"There is a reason, my beloved, why when I tell you all of the reasons that I love you, I rarely talk about your appearance at all." The hand petting down her side stops to pat her butt familiarly. "Though dying between your thighs would be high on my list of 'best ways to go.'"
That smile goes a little lopsided this time. Neither one of them is good at taking compliments. "You deserve it." The taste of her mouth, mead and Sigrun together, has them chasing her for a second kiss when the first one breaks.
"I know," Sigrun agrees, "and it's not like I'm shy of speaking of my insecurities with you. I just wanted to explain why I was being... all. Weird." Sigrun produces her snips from her pocket leatherman, clips the rose down, and works the step into her hair braids. The large mounds of braided 'roses' now have a literal one in amongst them.
The dying between her thighs comment does make her blush, predictably. "Five to eight seconds at a go, yes yes." She pats Teagan's arm affectionately, with only the slightest hint of a tease behind it. "Shall I take all of this as a request to stay in the hollow tonight? Should I change out of my city clothes?"
That is what Sigrun calls non-anachronistic clothing. Her city clothes. Hick.
"Mmmhmm." Teagan listens, and pets, and nuzzles at her. "I know, and I appreciate it. The trust that you give me is a gift, Significant." The capable, confident, porcelain-perfect Valkyrie is what everyone else gets (most everyone else, anyway). Teagan gets the fragile bits of Sigrun, and that? That, the Darkling loves. This is a secret, and it's theirs.
The flower in her hair makes them smile, a lazy, real thing that has no put-upon nature to it whatsoever. "Mmmhmm," they agree, their teeth closing on the apple of her cheek in a playful bite, just a second in passing. "Yes. You should take this as a request to stay in the hollow tonight." A kiss where they just bit, and a pat on her ass again. "Change away."
Their tone implies: I sure won't complain about watching that.
Sigrun gives Teagan another kiss, this one more lingering and more playful both, followed up by a warmer peck to the corner of their mouth. "Granted." That promise given, she pushes back up to her feet and gets some distance so she can begin peeling out of her firehouse duds. It's not onerous. Jeans, a t-shirt, a sports bra, sensible boyshorts for skivvies, and good wool socks. But it's all about as welcome on her body as a burlap sack, generally speaking. And once it's all removed, she begins to sort through her homespun offerings that are on hand, selecting items to suit the planned evening.
Her chemises are mostly all the same, save those she's done up special for court celebrations and feast days. So she slips one of those on like a thin lampshade, smooths it down, and continues plucking out items. A rust colored underskirt, a fur lined overskirt, leather backed. It belts around her waist, leaving an opening at the front, and her legs and backside covered and warm. (Perfect for sitting in snow. Likely what they were designed for in the way back when.). With boudoire sensibility, she belts on a waistlet corset that does more to put the girls on luminescent display than store them away for daily chores.
Plucking out her rose from her hair, she bites it between her teeth and begins to take down her hair. That this keeps her arms back and over her head for an extended period din that waistlet is probably not a coincidence.
This is a display they adore. Teagan hops up for a moment and goes to fetch both the mead bucket and the food. They love sushi, and they also don't cook, so spending a bunch of (probably Sigrun's) money on sushi is probably both a break from their usual diet of carbs and fried things and greasy meat and cheese and something that's kinda ... date-night and maybe a lil sexy? They're trying, anyway. Things brought back, they return to their previous lounging just in time for the firehouse clothes to be off and the clothing that makes Sigrun look like Sigrun to be put on.
Temporarily, anyway.
They crack open a mead -- not a Yuengling, a mead! -- and take a lazy swallow of it; their broken-mirror eyes reflect back bits and fractions of Sigrun's hair, her body, her clothing. There's little that escapes their notice. And when she holds that rose in her mouth and tends her hair, with her arms up over her head and luminous boobs under the lampshade chemise?
One hand holds the mead, the other idly adjusts their boxers with a total lack of shame, their lazy, adoring grin breaking the mirror-dark liquid surface of their skin.
It genuinely takes Sigrun a good deal of time to unwind her braids from their rose knots, and then unwind each braid until her hair falls free in rivers of rippling gold. There's a reason she tends to only take her hair down to wash it. And to spend time with Teagan. A shield maiden taking out her battle braids is a statement of safety. I do not anticipate having to shed blood in your company, and I know you are capable of protecting me should that need arise. And once her hair is well and properly down, she takes another pair of minutes to brush it out with a horse hair paddle brush, easing the jagged waves of the braids into her natural curls. It puts a glistening sheen to her hair, to boot. Sparkles and glimmers trickle away with each brushing as flecks of her drift off on the breeze. Even her brittle ends breaking off are pretty.
That done, she shrugs on her crimson winter cloak with its fur collar, clips it about her shoulders, and finally heads back towards Teagan, bare feet and calves still quite luminous and visible within the split in her skirts. She slips back into their lap, gently insisting that the bottle become hers, and then slides her hand around the back of their waist, trailing fingertips against the small of their back. Her chill lips brush up the side of her throat as she begins to sing softly near Teagan's ear. In Icelandic, maybe. Maybe Faroese? One of those. And as she sings, she lifts the bottle back to Teagan's lips.
This is a gesture Teagan can be certain she has done a thousand thousand times before now. It's all too easy and too familiar. But this may well be the first time she's meant it.
He wasn't really sure about the level of dressing up, but like... who are they to complain? This is one of the absolutely sexiest displays they have ever seen, if not the sexiest. They lean back on one elbow, watching her brush out her hair -- her light plays across his skin, bringing out the strange whorls and itinerant sparkles of the back of an old mirror. They value in her all of the things that she is in herself, the things that have nothing to do with Odin, that have nothing to do with what Old One-Eyed Fuckface made of her, but when she's putting on a display like this?
Fuck yes, they're going to watch. Fuck yes, they're going to enjoy it, in every sense, without shame.
Then? She approaches, and they're frozen. They've eaten a bite of sushi while watching her, maybe two, they're not paying attention. But that? It all stops even existing the moment she starts walking toward them. Their lips part, the tip upward of their face toward her is, if not worshipful, at least something that lives in the same neighborhood as that emotion.
She slips into their lap and they just... let her take the bottle, let her take over. At first it's something important is happening, and then it's oh, this is happening, and they tremble once, profoundly, in her hands, a shudder running up their spine. The song they don't understand in their ears, the Valkyrie bringing mead to their lips, and they tip their head back, drinking from the horn she offers, their broken-mirror eyes glittering sharply, their body singing like a live wire.
The song has one of those old melodies that come from working oars and having lots of drums on hand. It's percussive, and has a very steady beat to it, but there's a very definite yearning to the song. The yearning that sends people sailing over horizons for better crop land, better plunder, better trade, room to live.
After that first slow offering of drink, Sigrun sets the bottle aside, reaching instead for a morsel of the sushi. She doctors up a piece, and still singing, brings it to Teagan's lips with one hand cupped beneath the other. Her fingertip follows the morsel between Teagan's lips, and she draws it gently downward and she withdraws it, pouting out Teagan's lower lip in the process.
She pauses singing briefly to take gentle hold of Teagan's earlobe with her teeth, her left arm sliding back around Teagan's waist as her right begins feeling about between the two of them to see what all that fuss is about. Apparently if Teagan wants drink, Sigrun is providing it. And if they want food, Sigrun is providing it. And if they want her other attention as well, well. Sigrun is providing it. There may be a pattern forming.
But through it all, Sigrun continues the melody. The words are gone now, since she's literally nipping Teagan's ear, and a quiet hum is more than sufficient to keep the song going and probably Teagan's hairs standing on end. And then her hand, chilled from the weather outside and the mead bottles she's been nursing.
The singing continues.
A lot of the time, Teagan is, let's say, bossy. They like it that way, and a lot of their partners do, too. Here, as in almost everything else, Sigrun is Teagan's exception. While it may be obvious what they want, and while Sigrun may be focused on giving Teagan what they want, there's a difference between that and, well. Being the one setting the pace, the agenda, all of it. A small, stuttering breath catches in the back of their throat as she brings sushi to their lips: long before her hands go anywhere near anything but their face, Teagan is... delightfully overwhelmed.
Mead, sushi, and then her hand sliding between their bodies: the combination brings forth a sharp sound, a gasp resolving into a groan. The difference between their sort of half-interested, boy those are nice boobs on my woman and the completely invested help there's a Valkyrie on my lap reactions are... unsubtle. Their hands find places to burrow in her clothing, looking for skin to touch. They'll negotiate what they're touching in a moment, but right now? They just want her skin, and their warm, long fingers go questing under her fur-lined skirt for anything they can find their way to touch.
She murmurs her song, shivers run through them from their ear down their spine, and they turn their face into hers, kissing her cheek, playing down to her jawline. Whatever they can kiss, whispering in the breaks, "you're mine." There's something so primally possessive in the words, something as profound as Sigrun lifting the horn to his lips. It's all the want and wanton desire in them in two syllables.
"If you'll have me," Sigrun agrees as she breaks her nibbling of Teagan's earlobe to lean her head back and bare her throat and collarbones to Teagan's kisses. Her left hand, keeping her balanced at Teagan's back, slides upwards to curl her fingers into Teagan's mussy hair. And here we have hit upon the secret solidarity agreement among the Valkyrjar. Only do what they're willing to ask for. And so long as you keep yourselves in public, even absolute assholes tend to have their limits.
With the side benefit of making alone time with the girls a whole lot more entertaining.
But what was a defense mechanism Sigrun is quite deliberately making into a game. Teagan seems in store to receive everything they could ever dream of tonight.
All the taciturn Darkling need do is open their mouth and with their speaky words request it. Sigrun probably felt very clever about this when the idea came to her.
The fact that she's giggling amid the kisses at her throat suggests that is so, certainly. She's definitely enjoying this more than a little.
They laugh at that, a husky little thing, and kiss her jawline, her throat, down to her collarbone. Their lips trail along her collarbone to its center, and they pause there, nuzzling instead of kissing. They take a deep breath in, letting it slowly out, and then kiss up the front of her throat, breathing words into her luminous skin. "If I'll have you?" Teagan asks, and repeats it with soft incredulity once more. "If I'll have you?"
"Oh, my love," and their fingers finally find the hem of her chemise, the exposed portions of her legs, sliding over her skin, just to touch. Nothing more than skin hunger at the moment, even though there's hunger in their tone. "I want nothing more than you. Ever." Their lips part again, and it seems like they might have been about to go on, to say something else, but she giggles, and they nip at her jawline.
"What are you laughing at, hmm?" Their fingers curl up her thighs to the subtle conjunction of leg and hip, the swell of her hipbone underneath her perfect skin.
Sigrun leans a little further back to unclasp her fur cloak. Teagan may well have wondered at the level of dressing up Sigrun was doing, but when the supple fur lining skates around their upper body and the cool press of weighted fur and leather is answered by the insulating warmth of the wool above it, it begins to make sense. Sigrun drapes it around their shoulders and in doing so welcomes Teagan into her cloak's interior, even rising from their lap briefly to make it so.
With her cloak surrendered, Sigrun pauses to slip her shoulder out of he chemise, peeling her left arm out of the sleeve carefully, leaving it draping rather like a wing down her back. She repeats the process with her right arm, and appearing precisely like one of those drawings in German books from the 18th century, she once more steps in close to Teagan.
This time, as she's settling down onto Teagan's lap, she gathers up enough of her chemise to make her resettling much more interesting. She very delicately and deliberately places her chemise down in a gathered bundle atop her thighs and turns her head to the side and down to regard Teagan's face from quite up close indeed.
"I laugh at nothing, but I laugh for love and love only tonight." Sigrun all but swears that, her lips curling into a bold smirk. At the universe, that smirk. Not at Teagan.
Because anything that gets between her love and Sigrun tonight? She will not be laughing at. She will be murdering it.
"You could have me, you know." Sigrun suggests this, meaning in every way and also that one too. It's not a shy look, that. It's bold. Possibly even challenging. "You've just yet to come with terms."
The weight of the cloak around their shoulders, when it settles, brings with it a sigh that leads into a slow, sharp intake of breath. The sensory input and the emotional weight of it -- something that Matters to Teagan in ways they don't have the words for -- have their hands grabbing at her even as she briefly removes herself. The sound in the back of their throat redoubles, and curls upward. Need. Want. Mine.
But the moment she starts disrobing in another show? Their attention just... follows her. They drift along in her wake, delighted and washed over by her presence, drinking in her light. Their skin suffuses itself with glittering black-skin reflection of the light she casts, and their eyes cast prismatic scatters back across her.
She returns to settle across their lap, and they kiss their way across her shoulder. The gesture doesn't seem planned, or anything but a sheer expression of simple, hungry desire. Whatever of her is within range, they want to kiss, to cover with their hands, to possess. They bury their face in the side of her neck for a moment, hands trembling and breath shaky. One of their scarred palms sweeps up her back, under the cascade of her iridescent hair, and knits itself into her tresses at the back of her skull. The other finds its way back to her hip, pulling her in close.
They watch her as she speaks, drawing back to look at her, to reflect to her. Their lips part, their black tongue slips over those parted lips. Teagan smiles when she speaks, understanding the murder and the protection inherent in those words. Knowing her, understanding what she means.
And those latter two sentences? They stop him in his tracks. He freezes beneath her, and the only thing that comes from their throat then is a tiny, broken whine. "I want you," they breathe, when they can manage it. "We talked about marrying in Florida. All of us, but." But you and me. "I want my farm wife, even if only here." When the words come uncorked, they all come spilling out. "I want... " And then the sound they make is a frustrated one. "I want to be the one you call husband. The only one. Whatever you call anyone else, I want that. I want to spoil you. I want you to inherit, if you outlive me." Inherit what, they don't say. She knows. "I want to be the one you think of when you dream of a simple, settled life, when we can lay it all down. I want my farm wife." Even if the world is too dangerous for them to ever see it through. "I want her children." Even if it's impossible to raise them how they'd want. "I want to be the one who always brings you flowers, who lays you down in them. I want you. I want."
To Sigrun's credit, her jaw sets in the face of all of these declarations of want and need and desire. It puts steel into her, it doesn't disarm her. These are not sugary aspirations to Sigrun. They are statements of intent, and quite literal offers of lifelong commitment. And to say that this is something that Sigrun has put a great deal of thought into is putting it mildly.
"I will have a great many expectations and demands of you, Teagan. As husband. If I am to be your goodwife." And while normally that sort of thing forebodes a litany of restrictions, Teagan will hopefully know Sigrun much better than that.
"I will need to know who you are fucking. I will never be surprised in public again. Wives aren't surprised by such things. They are proud of them." Sigrun is being deadly serious, here. And there's an edge to her voice that suggests this is not a time for humor on this point.
"I won't exclude June from wedding me. And I won't exclude her from wedding you, either. I deserve a woman like her in my house, frankly. And she'll deserve to call you husband. And by Freyja if you can take a second wife I can take a second husband if I wish. But you will always be the first. And they'd need to be man enough to ask you to your face, anyway." Which is to say Sigrun imagines no such man exists or isn't already involved in fucking her with Teagan's full awareness.
"What I need from you, Teagan? Is the truth. Always. And about everything. I will never say you lie to me, Teagan, but I will say you have surprised me in unpleasant ways more than a few times. That's going to stop before I involve you in putting children in me. Do you understand? I will put up with that shit for sake of you. But my children deserve better."
"If you sire any children with another woman, I will know why their names aren't Sigrunsdottir. And I will fight with an axe any woman I didn't know about, with a knife any woman whose pregnancy came as a shock to me, and with my sword any woman who has simply dishonored us by denying me a child. And that way, if I die with an axe or a knife in my hand, Teagan? You can live out the rest of your cat-long life without me, alone, wondering if I'd still be alive if your neglected truths hadn't left me holding a dagger."
"I handle the money, the cooking, the house. You will get an allowance from a dowry. Not my money. It will be your money. If at any point I stop being worthy of you, you have the means to leave. The only domestic task I require from you is being present for the children, of which there will be many. So I suppose two tasks. Fucking me fat, and being a good father. That, and the truth. Always. Do that, and you can call a valkyrie a wife."
Proving Sigrun has a genuinely modest understanding of her worth relative to what she's asking here, she does not seem to be treating this as a foregone conclusion. At all.
"I am serious, though, Teagan. This isn't pretend. You can't change your mind tomorrow if you say yes tonight. And if you make me your wife and then go against what I'm asking here... I don't know what I'll do, Teagan. I can't ever imagine you would do that to me. But I need to make it clear that if? It would pretty much destroy me. So. If you need to sleep on this, do it. I'll understand."
Perhaps their past non-committal nature -- you know, back when they wanted to die -- has lent some confusion to the situation. Their past mistakes, their cat-like nature. But when Sigrun starts talking? Teagan goes still.
They only stare at her when she starts to talk. They only listen. And perhaps it says something about the past two years of their life that they wince, ever-so-slightly, about her being surprised in public. It's something very close to shame. Their head turns just slightly, as if they're looking over her shoulder, but then they right themself, their face squares back with hers.
Fingers threaded into her hair slowly curl against her scalp, a sort of subtle petting as she talks. Their lips part, as if they might say something, but they don't. They wait.
And at the end, there's a slightly puzzled look which flickers across their face. Eventually, they come up with words. The words start with: "It's never been pretend." The hand on her hip squeezes, just once. Possessively. Reassuringly, maybe. "Never." There's this subtle ache to their voice; the corners of their eyes crinkle up just a little.
"I dream of this. Do you understand? Whoever else we include in this, and yes, June, and yes... " his voice fades. "It has to be you. It has to be you who gets the truth of me. Whoever else does, whoever else might, it has to be you who gets the truth of me." Their lips press against her collarbone, and the way they tip their face up to look at her is openly worshipful, now. "You... " a pause. "I had children I could not enjoy raising. I wasn't meant to be a mother." And especially not with the dead man. But Teagan doesn't stay there. "I dream of giving you my truth. Of... " Of feeling safe enough to let down their guard.
"I don't need to sleep on this, Sigrún Ljósdóttir." No nicknames. No pauses. "Please. Be mine, so I can be yours."
"We should tell the others. I imagine they'll want to be involved in the negotiations." Sigrun is ever the practical one. Nobody will be surprised by this eventuality, not will they be surprised that the two of them wish to be somewhat wed by committee. But it would absolutely be odd to start excluding everyone now, for certain.
But when that's said and the reality of this starts to settle in, that steel in Sigrun begins to recede and her ears begin ringing. She grows visibly pale and grows momentarily faint. She made herself do that. She was terrified the entire time, but the world isn't on fire, nobody is screaming at her, and she's about to be married.
With a bottle of mead in her on an empty stomach. The poor thing.
She rests her forehead on Teagan's shoulder briefly, panting and catching her breath as reality sets back in along with good sense and oxygenated blood. She swallows a very dry throat down and straightens up again to meet Teagan's gaze, wetting her lips with renewed and all too familiar hesitancy.
"I. Forgive me, Teagan. I. Never really. I never considered for a moment what it would mean to you. In that sense. I guess because I never thought there was anything about you that needed validating like that." Genuinely, it seems, Sigrun is only now becoming aware there is a Truth here that is being entrusted. Rather than the person Sigrun loves being ... the person Sigrun loves. "Yeah. Yeah, baby. I want you to be my husband. And the father to my children. I've got the mother stuff down pat. I just need you. Need you, Teagan. Need you, Teagan, in specific and because of the qualities I see in you. To be present. With my children. As their father."
Once they're ready to cross that particular bridge. But it doesn't matter, really, how remote it is or isn't. Sigrun's whole life is lived with a peaceful life as a goal. It's the only thing that keeps her fighting through the war. And all of that being understood, when Sigrun's hand comes to rest against Teagan's cheek, it is not demanding or reproachful the way the stereotypes of such discussions are often portrayed as going. It is fully tender, gentle as a baby's breath, and cool as porcelain. The touch is followed by a soft kiss from her lips.
"I want no other if I can't have you, Teagan. So. Yes, then. Before Freyja and the folk, I say yes to you." Her head lifts back up, her chin set just so. Proud. And she nods once. "Yes. I have done well."
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