2
No sooner than she’d suggested it, Fawn regretted saying it out loud. Her cheeks flushed so hot she felt heat rush up her ears and neck, and all the way down her back.
But he had already asked her for a kiss.
Fawn swallowed, looking at his mouth. His ever present smile was gone, but she was already set on this path.
“J-just um, so it doesn’t look like it’s the first time we’ve done it when she comes in,”
she added quickly, staring at Erryc’s hand still tense on the door handle. “Old ladies are discerning like that.”
She wished he would just laugh and roll his eyes at her, tell her she was being ridiculous. Surely no one would have insight on whether it was the first, the second, or the hundredth time they’d kissed.
“Oh. Yeah. Uh, good thinking,”
he nodded, releasing the door handle. He stood there for a moment, his hands flexing at his sides.
The moment drew long between them.
“Um. Do you need me to stand on a box, or…?”
Fawn mumbled, looking around the room. There was a barrel that might have made her just a bit taller than him if she stood on it. Maybe she could kneel on it.
“That won’t be necessary,”
he said. He seemed to steady something within himself, holding her gaze with an uneasy expression that no doubt matched her own.
Erryc took a step towards her, closing the distance between them in one motion. The sheer crampedness of the room multiplied tenfold as he stepped into her space. Fawn didn’t even realize she moved backwards at all, some knee-jerk attempt to keep a polite distance between them as she usually did.
The storage shelves met her hips, her back, her shoulders. Her hands found one of the wood shelves to grip and try to steady herself.
Though there had never been an occasion that she fainted dead away from her heart pounding so much, Fawn felt this was a likely contender for the first.
She swallowed.
She wanted this. She just was afraid of it as much as she wanted it. She never imagined that it could happen, and that was why it had been easy to want as much as she had, never voicing the desire from her little corner table. But faced with the possibility, it seemed very likely that if she pressed her mouth to his, something in her would untwist, and all of the thoughts she’d had about him over the years might come spilling out.
Erryc didn’t feel that way about her. He had, of course, kissed her cheek before, among several other tavern regulars during holiday revelries, and that had been enough to send her home warm all over.
She wasn’t prepared for this, but somehow she doubted she ever would be.
It was just a kiss.
She had been kissed before. Perhaps not by someone so…
Fawn’s head tipped all the way back to look up at him.
Erryc looked just as nervous as her, his hands in tight fists at his sides, his mouth set in an uncertain line, framed by his tusks.
It was that moment she realized she had been gnawing into her lower lip. She couldn’t help but let out a laugh in spite of herself.
She touched her hand to his, and he loosened his grip, letting her curl a hand around a couple of his fingers.
Fawn tugged him into her space. She let him crowd her against the shelf, easing him in an inch at a time, until there was barely room to breathe.
Erryc’s fingertips drifted up her sides, keeping her steady as he leaned down to her. He cupped her face, and the breath was promptly stolen from her. Her lips parted, a sharp inhale when his forehead touched hers and their lips met.
Perhaps she expected a peck, a mere momentary meeting of mouths. What Erryc gave her was so much more.
His kiss was tender as he was, soft as a breath against her skin, as he held her face as carefully as he’d hold a bird. His tusks grazed her cheeks, smooth and blunt, as his lips moved against hers. To have him touch her like this was something else entirely. The heat that seemed to live in her cheeks whenever she was around him traveled further, spreading through her chest, low in her belly, deep in her nethers. It bloomed into a force unruly and needy.
“Mmf,”
Fawn gasped, as he caught her lip between his teeth, tugging it gently. The sensation of his gentle drag over the place she’d worried raw made her back arch away from the shelf, pushing into him. Her ribs brushed his, and she put her hands on the broad expanse of his chest, to keep herself from falling into him even more. She might not come back if she did.
Erryc pulled back immediately. “Did I hurt you?”
“No, no. That was…”
she gazed up at him for a long moment, unable to think of words when her entire vision was taken up with his long eyelashes and deep brown eyes holding hers.
She forgot she had meant to say anything at all, lost in his gaze.
The sound of a glass breaking startled their attention to the door. Erryc let go of her, stepping back.
Clearly Fawn wasn’t the only one affected– Erryc’s face was flushed a deeper green, his chest heaving with his breath.
“I, uh, think we’ve got it. I think that was good. I mean it was. It was good. It was convincing. And believable. Right? Right,”
he stumbled to say, his voice cracking on his question. He ran a hand through his floppy hair and looked away. “The front. I oughta check the front. I’ll be, uh, over there.”
He pointed, as if he hadn’t been clear enough.
Fawn nodded vigorously until Erryc ducked out the storage room door again. Her knees finally gave out, and she slid onto the nearest crate. Her heartbeat was so loud it left her body ringing.
She was supposed to do that again, with an audience?
Dazed, Fawn stood and pushed open the door, following him out.
“Another one, barkeep,”
one of the patrons called, raising his broken glass and waving it to show just how empty it was.
His companion was unimpressed. “No, look at him. He’s too red in the face, you ought to cut him off. No more ale, you hear?”
“That’s no way to measure if someone's had enough. Take Fawn for example, she’s always a naturally rosy color,”
the drunker one said.
“Around him, sure,”
the other patron scoffed, belligerently enough that Erryc paid his words no mind, though it made the red in Fawn’s face renew with a vigor.
“Let’s see if you can walk a straight line first,”
Erryc sighed, taking the cup’s handle from the man.
“C’mon, pour me another,”
he called, even as he started to slide from his seat, clutching the counter as he wobbled to stand.
Fawn slipped into one of the seats at the bar unobtrusively. She reached into the common dish of hazelnuts, plucking up a couple to chew on while she waited. It wasn’t the first time someone had pointed out Fawn’s horrible ruddiness. Any hint of guilt or nerves or fluster announced itself to the room while she tried to shrink back. She’d always been self conscious of how it showed so clearly on her skin, and she’d never been able to train herself out of it.
The tavern door opened again as they were all watching the man stumble his way through a straight line, and a familiar older woman came in, carrying a large woven basket, steam still wafting out of the cloth folds covering the top.
Oona brushed some of the snow off the shoulders of her cloak. “Good day, Erryc! I have tomorrow’s rolls. They’re hot out of the oven, so they should keep well enough overnight.”
“Oona! What an unexpected visit,”
Erryc said a little too loudly, catching Fawn’s eye.
She felt her cheeks flush with heat, as if their ruse had already been found out.
Oona paused at the counter. “Did you forget? I’m not running the bakery tomorrow. I’m spending the holiday with my daughter.”
“Oh, right. I had my days mixed up,”
he nodded, drying his hands off on his apron. “Uh, just give me a second, Fawn, I’ll be right back.”
Fawn stared at Erryc, still a foot taller than her even up on the barstool. Her eyes darted between him and Oona for a heartrending second. She had hoped for a little more time to prepare herself, but it seemed now was the moment.
Fawn planted a hand on the counter and stood on the rungs of her barstool. Erryc’s eyes met hers, and the world seemed to stop for a moment.
She couldn’t do it.
Fawn pecked his cheek and sank back into her chair sheepishly. It was still the boldest thing she’d ever done in her life.
Erryc nodded, a hint of darker green gracing his cheeks again, as he nodded and went to take the basket from Oona. Fawn tried not to catch Erryc’s eye. She could just imagine him saying, ‘that wasn’t what we rehearsed.’
The older woman had an amused look on her face, pursing her lips as if she was holding herself back from asking what that was about.
Worst of all, Fawn knew that expression. It felt familiar, like she had worn it herself many times, accompanied by shaking her head and rolling her eyes at each new foolish girl who had flung herself at Erryc in some bizarre attempt at winning his affection.
Gods, that’s what she looked like, probably.
As soon as Oona left, Fawn was going to leave as well. She needed a week or two of sitting at home, contemplating living utterly alone in the woods, only the local wandering yakgoats to embarrass herself in front of, before she could talk to Erryc properly after this. After time had dulled the sharp edges of today’s memory, maybe she could think about being friends with him again.
Fawn counted out three more hazelnuts, chewing through them slowly before she let herself slink away from the counter and to go hide in her corner.
Rather anticlimactic, she thought to herself. Especially for the last time you’ll ever kiss him.
It was such a sobering thought, she didn’t even react when Erryc put an arm around her again, redirecting her path to tug her to his side. Her body met his, and Oona raised an eyebrow at them.
Oh, we’re still doing this? Fawn nearly asked, but thankfully kept the words from tumbling out. This time, she was going to follow his lead, she decided, and simply nod along with the conversation.
“I’m sure I’ll see you both at the festival tonight, lovebirds?”
Oona asked as she re-tied her cloak’s fastenings, and the pair of them froze.
“Oh. Perhaps. I hadn’t thought to ask Fawn if she was free tonight,”
Erryc said, and turned to her with an apologetic look. “Uh, you wouldn’t happen to be–”
“I am. Of course. It’s a date,”
she added quickly.
In an attempt to be convincing, she leaned into the embrace, hoping they looked like a real couple. She put a hand on his stomach, just a bit lower than her chin. She would have put it on his chest but it seemed a little awkward like this.
Then she felt something move, like a twitch against her side, Fawn held still. It wouldn’t be the first time he had put a baby bird or a squirrel in his apron pocket and forgotten about it.
Oona gave a little chuckle, and Fawn wondered how forced it was as the old woman left, the door swinging shut behind her.
Erryc separated from Fawn quickly, immediately turning to the messy table beside them, gathering up the tankards with one hand and adjusting his apron with the other.
“I don’t know why I bother procuring glasses. They keep breaking,”
he sighed, scooping up an errant shard of glass and dropping it into his apron pocket. “I’m… sorry you keep getting roped into things with me.”
“It’s fine. I mean, you’re buying.”
He ran a hand through his hair, and it did that thing where it flopped back over his forehead that made little moth-wing flutters in her stomach.
“I need a few minutes to sort things out in the back before we go. I need to close down the kitchen, send the barflies home, and uh…”
he said, and Fawn waved him off.
“Take your time, do what you need to. I’m always content to sit here for a while.”
He made an expression somewhere between a smile and a self-effacing grimace. “I won’t be very long.”
“I’m not timing you,”
she called after him as he disappeared into the back room again. A stirring like feathers and other fluttery things began low in her stomach, and Fawn swallowed against it. She tried to insist to herself, it wasn’t truly a date, it was just a favor between friends.