I changed a lot about Talrega's setting and how they live, so this no longer fits anywhere.

Flickering candlelight on a gray tent wall.
A stack of dented armor, hastily discarded.
A bare shoulder, a wisp of red hair through his fingers.

Haar always woke before he saw her face.

Home, he thought, scratching the back of his head. She had insisted, despite what happened. Do you still want that wyvern courier service? she’d asked, her armor still bloody from war. In the bleary transition from sleep, he couldn’t remember what he’d said. But he was napping in a cave in the Talrega wood, and Shiharam’s house—now Jill’s—was a short walk down a familiar trail. He rubbed his good eye with the heel of a hand. She would be worried, he decided, which was motivation enough to drag himself home. But the dreams taunted him, as the small house came into view. More memory than dream; reminders of things he shouldn’t know.

The soft spot at her neck, a pulse against his lips.
Small, calloused hands on his biceps, shoulders, face.
The sigh of his name, deep in her throat.

He fumbled the key in the lock. The house was foreign during sleeping hours, the main room cavernous as the door swung open. It took several moments for his vision to adjust, but he knew one thing for certain—it was too late for Jill to be seated at the table, writing by moonlight.

“Welcome back,” she said, without looking up.

Haar couldn’t see her face, shielded by a curtain of unfastened hair. But he spied her yellow nightgown, the skirt stretched over a propped-up knee. Her fringe was mussed, like she’d already attempted sleep. He approached the table slowly, scratching beneath a shoulder plate.

“What’s all this?” he asked.

“Finances.” She didn’t look at him. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Most people have a snack or read something boring. You’re running numbers?”

The strip of moonlight didn’t reach Jill’s face. But he saw enough—the strained nightgown over a propped knee, the hand that fingered a lacy collar. He averted his gaze from the shadow that lay beneath that stretched collar.

She avoided him, too, in the lazy scrawl of her writing, how she took a long time to read a simple receipt. He watched, waiting, uncertain what for. Jill ticked the tip of her quill down a row of numbers, counting or adding or feigning both, leaving a smudge of black ink beside each row. Haar waited a beat, as if anything would change, then turned for his room. He sighed, unbuckling the belt of his hipguards.

He longed for sleep, dreams or not, the embrace of a feather mattress. But the angry scratch of wood against wood disrupted the waking reverie, a chair forcefully pushed back from a table. Magnified in the silence, startling the unfastened belt from his hands.

“Captain!”

The outburst nearly masked the armor’s crash to the floor—Captain—throwing him into memory, of the last time she had called him that.

“Captain, I—”
“Come on, Jill. Are you gonna stop with that now?”

Her hands were pressed to the table, jaw clenched. Lacy collar askew, perhaps permanently, in how often she tugged at that lace. She stood up straight, hastily patting down her fringe as if he cared how it looked.

Haar gathered the belt off the floor, willing his startled heart to settle. “I need to get this armor off,” he said, nudging the door open to pass into the bedroom.

A fluttering touch on his shoulder blade, tracing the old scar to the base of his spine. “I remember this,” she murmured, breath warm on his back. Holding his breath when lips grazed the scar, leaning into the hands on his hips.

Jill filled the open doorway. Just standing, watching his same old routine—one piece of armor at a time, from his body to a pile on the floor. He’d long stopped using the wardrobe, weary of opening those same doors every single day. It was easier not to.

He glanced over a shoulder. “Why did you want me here?”

She crossed into the room. Jill had barely looked at him in the weeks since their return, not even when they talked business or the rare shared meal. Now, she crouched behind him, tugging the strap of a shinguard.

“What are you doing?” he asked, as she unfastened the buckle. Her hands were on his armor, safe in the layers that separated their skin, unburdening his leg of all that weight. “This isn’t necessary.”

She delicately set the shinguard on the pile, like it had any sense of order. He stared at the abandoned wardrobe as she moved to the other leg, one buckle, then the other. He suppressed a shudder when her hands grazed his calf, when he felt the floor shift when she leaned over for that pile.

He wouldn’t let her touch his feet; he shifted away when she went for the bootguard, shaking his head like she thought to question why. “Stand up,” he said, more like a command than he’d intended.

Jill smoothed down the nightgown as she stood. “I—” she paused, adjusted that wayward collar. “I didn’t want to come back here alone.”

“Is that all?” Haar crossed his arms. “You could’ve asked anyone for that.”

“I don’t want just anyone!”

He stared at her jaw, remembering, realizing how close she stood. She was frowning, again, that frown when she was trying not to yell or cry. He could never tell the difference; sometimes it was both at once. He stared at her face, from eyes to mouth and back. Why not? he had said, when she'd asked him to come home. When she’d sought him out, sore and bloody, limping as she pushed past their allies.

Jill didn’t flinch when he cradled her jaw. Comfortable in his palm, feeling that soft skin behind the ear.

“I meant what I said that night,” she whispered.

He stroked her cheek. “So did I.”

He wouldn’t make the first move. He’d told himself that much, that he wouldn’t force himself on her, no matter what he’d felt when pulling her away from the Daein army. Not even when they shared a tent, sleeping on opposite sides, nor when he turned away to undress in front of her, unashamed.
She reached for him first, after he'd been asked to ascend the Tower.
“I can’t make any promises,” he said, “but I don’t intend to die in there.”
Sitting on the floor of their shared tent, face to face, not making promises.
Jill touched his wrist. “Captain, I—”

He hadn't known how flimsy that nightgown was, not until she fell into him. Arms around his waist, face in his shoulder. The uncertainty of whose heart pounding between them, or the likelihood of both.

“I asked you to come home with me,” Jill said. “What do you think that means?”

He rubbed her shoulder, feeling that old scar beneath the thin fabric. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“No one knew what would happen in that Tower. I couldn’t...”

She stood straight to face him. He had felt the same, of course, but was powerless. Powerless still, as a strand of hair fell into her eyes, as she chewed her bottom lip. Jill’s hands at his waist, balling his shirt in her fists.

“Haar.” It was still strange without the title. “I- I couldn’t lose you, too. Not you.”

He tucked the wayward strand of hair behind her ear. Her fists uncurled, uncertain, as they rested on his hips. She closed her eyes as he pushed back her fringe, brushing his lips on her forehead. Her skin was softer than he remembered, or it was just clean, purged of the blood and grime of war. Something like normal, as he kissed the bridge of her nose. Or an unspoken promise, as he kissed her cheekbone.

She sighed when he kissed her lips, as his arms wrapped around her shoulders, her nails digging into his hips. He swallowed the gasp of surprise, hands roaming from her hair to her shoulders, sliding down the arms that locked so firmly around him.

“Jill.” The nails dug in harder, and he winced. “Hang on.”

Silence, save the sound of her breathing, warm on his mouth.

He held her elbows, willing her not to run. “I want to do things right,” he said. “I won’t just screw around with you.”

Jill met his eye. “Is that what you thought?”

“Honestly, I wasn’t sure.”

She trailed one hand up his side and back down. He suppressed a shiver.

“I guess that was pretty stupid,” he added.

Jill started to shake her head, then stopped. “No, you’re right.”

Haar smirked. “You really know how to make a man feel good about himself.”

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