Eternal [HS]

Chapter Twenty-One

IT'S STILL DARK OUTSIDE BY THE TIME she wakes in the early hours of the morning.

Before falling asleep, she vaguely remembers him coaxing her out of bed to clean up in the bathroom connecting to his room. He carried her to the clawfoot bathtub, filled it with steaming water, and climbed into it with her.

The whole time, she laid her head on his shoulder and refrained from falling asleep with all of her might, but she couldn't help but nod off while he washed the sweat from her skin with a shower oil that flooded her nostrils with the pleasant scent of almond.

He didn't feel as cold as he usually did with the warmth of the water surrounding them, and she smiled sleepily when she felt him nuzzling his face in the fresh bite mark at the crook of her neck every so often.

After they got out of the bath, it's all a blur. The moments between when he slipped one of his shirts over her head and when she passed out with her head on the pillow are all melded together in her mind, yet the memory of him taking care of her is the most common, overarching theme amongst them all.

Such a jolting juxtaposition to his rough demeanor in bed, he was all soft-spoken words and praises as he rubbed lotion over the bruises he left behind on her and pulled the covers over her before she fell asleep.

The room is darker now than it was four hours ago, lights all dimmed to create a relaxing environment for her to sleep in except for one lamp sitting on his desk across the room.

It's a simple, dark wooden desk with papers scattered every which way across the top of it, but she's more focused on the man sitting in front of it. His shoulders are hunched over, his face looking closely down at the papers, and she's about to pull the covers back to walk over to him, but his head snaps around to look at her, heightened senses having picked up on the bed creaking before she could do anything.

The mattress dips beside her with the weight of him sitting down, and she blinks a couple of times in shock at how swiftly he moved to reach her. Sometimes she forgets what he is and all that he's capable of as a vampire. He just crossed the room fast enough for her to not even see him doing it. One second, he was sitting at the desk, the next, he was sitting on the edge of the bed next to her.

"What time is it?" she asks.

Jo yawns with her face half-buried into the pillow with a small pool of drool on the pillowcase, and she almost becomes embarrassed that he sees how ugly of a sleeper she is, but the soft smile on his face erases any of that.

Whether he knows it or not yet, he loves his adorable, drooling, snoring human. Her arms are wrapped tightly around Rodger, the teddy bear he snuck into her room to get so she wouldn't notice his absence once he got up to sit at his desk. When she first fell asleep, he hadn't meant to cuddle with her. Her arms and legs were wrapped around him from when he carried her back to bed, and she didn't let go, so he laid there with her for a while.

For the time it lasted, he felt a sense of peace and relaxation that he hasn't felt in years, perhaps even a century. Because of how he laid her down on the bed and was tugged down with her, he was lying half on top of her, half off, with his face buried in the crook of her neck.

Their legs were tangled together beneath the sheets, one of his arms thrown across her waist, and she felt so warm.

It wasn't anything like how it felt when he was inside of her, that was overwhelming in the best way imaginable, but a difference to the last person he laid in bed with. Even cuddling with her felt so different from how it has with any of his non-human partners. Whenever they are together, whether it be the near-explosive encounter they had in bed or the benevolent aftermath, it feels like the clashing of fire and ice.