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A shriek of rage and flailing limbs jerk Nathaniel from his slumber. He grunts as a slim arm juts into his ribs, rolls away with a hiss of pain.
The low light seeping in through his windows illuminates his troubled bedmate. Pale, blonde hair lays askew across her sun-kissed face, the points of her long ears twitching as Elven words shudder from her lips; the meanings he learned long ago, though he's never let her know, not when he'd have to explain why.
"Velanna," he soothes, a cautious hand reaching out over her rigid body. Slowly, oh so slowly, he lowers his hand until the muscles of her arm flutter against his palm. He's gentle: he doesn't want to wake her; only to reassure her through whatever desolate paths her sleeping mind walks in the Fade. If he does wake her, it will earn him a strangling hold in the blankets while she pants like a wild animal and regains her wits.
Peace comes in fractions: a slow breath here, an unclenched fist there, the trickling of tears catching in her golden lashes. He pulls his hand back as she sits up with a sob, waiting patiently in the darkness.
When she lays back against the pillows, curling into a ball, he speaks.
"Can't sleep?"
She shakes her head, then whimpers out a pitiful no, so broken and beaten compared to her usual bravado.
"Me neither," he says, voice low and hushed. She hates acknowledging that he's seen her like this, hates even more knowing that she woke him to it. So they pretend, on the nights when the memories crash all around her.
"I'm cold," she whispers, teeth chattering around the words. Her tremble hasn't abated either, the bed shivering with the force.
"Come here," he beckons, wrapping his arm around her when she curves into him. "Better?" he asks after a long, silent moment of holding her.
Her hair tickles his nose as she nods, the scent of ozone and pine that always accompanies her stronger as she melts into him.
"I don't understand why you're always so warm, 'ma'shem," she whines, though there's no bite to it: she's always thankful for his heat. He chuckles, the sound vibrating between them, both at her attitude and at her endearment. He doesn't remember when the word—once harsh and dripping with disdain—softened into one of endearment. But he wouldn't trade it for the sweetest love ballads in the world.
"And I don't understand why you're always so cold," he parries, sliding his hand up and down the constellations of goosebumps mapped on her skin.
He knows that the pain won't leave her tonight; that the tears will keep dripping down onto the mattress as she clutches him. Tomorrow, her patience will be thin, her tongue sharp like knives.
Tonight? Tonight she is his, heart and soul. Even if she doesn't realize that he knows it. Even when she denies it's true at every opportunity.
"Ar lath ma," she whispers, the words light as feathers against his skin.
He pretends he doesn't understand those as well.