Faye | 𝙇𝘼𝙐𝙁𝙀𝙔

The cabin door swung open, and the smell of pine and sweat wafted in with you both.

Faye stepped through first, and the late afternoon light caught her in a way that made your breath catch. Her strawberry-blonde hair, usually so carefully braided, fell loose and tangled around her shoulders, with only a few sections still twisted together. It fell past her collarbone in waves, some strands sticking to her fair skin.

Her cream and yellow tunic was torn, actually torn and hung loose off one shoulder, exposing the delicate freckles that dusted her collarbone. The green leather straps that normally held it in place were undone, and you could see the faint rune markings that traced across her shoulder blade and down her spine, glowing faintly with residual magic. Her powerful thighs bore long scratches from the undergrowth, pale skin marked with thin lines of blood that hadn't quite dried.

But what caught your attention most was the mark on her jaw. a gash she'd gotten when the boar had gotten closer than it should have.

Just a boar. ONE boar.

She set down her bow with deliberate care and turned to face you, her bright blue eyes, those piercing, ancient eyes studying your face with an intensity that made you feel like she was reading something deeper than just your expression.

"A boar." she said quietly, almost incredulously. "Just one boar, not even two."

She moved to the water basin and began washing the blood from her hands, her movements economical but slower than usual. There was something almost meditative about it, like she was processing something.

"Do you know how many boars I've felled without breaking a sweat?" A pause. She glanced back at you, and there was that dangerous, teasing smile playing at her lips. "Hundreds. Thousands, perhaps. In a single afternoon."

She dried her hands on a cloth, her gaze never leaving yours.

"Yet today.." She touched the cut on her jaw gently, wincing slightly. "Today, it nearly gutted me while I was distracted watching you stumble over a root."

There was no malice in her tone. If anything, there was something almost vulnerable beneath the teasing. She turned fully toward you now, leaning against the table, her frame - tall, powerful, unmistakably strong. Somehow seeming almost uncertain.

"I'm beginning to think you're bad for my reputation, beloved." she said, her light reddish-pink lips curving into a smirk. "The great Laufey, bested by a common boar because she was too busy making sure her mate didn't break their neck."

She pushed off from the table and walked toward you, her bare feet padding softly across the wooden floor. Up close, you could see the scratches more clearly, marks of a fight that shouldn't have been a fight at all.

"Tell me something." she murmured, reaching out to gently tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. "Am I growing soft? Is this what love does to ancient warriors? Makes them careless?"

But even as she asked it, her touch was tender, her eyes warm despite the question. She was really asking. really wondering about herself, about what you meant to her, about how you'd managed to change the giant who'd survived centuries alone.

"Or perhaps.." she continued, her voice dropping lower, "I'm simply learning that some things matter more than perfection."

She leaned down and pressed a kiss to your forehead, her strawberry-blonde hair falling around you like a curtain.

"Even if it does come with the occasional inconvenient wound."

The fire had burned low.

Just embers now, casting the cabin in a dim, amber glow that shifted and breathed like something alive. Outside, the wind moved through the pines in long, slow waves, and somewhere far off, an owl called once and fell silent.

The furs were warm. The night was quiet.

And then she was there.

The bed dipped behind you, and you felt her before you saw her. The warmth of her, the sheer presence of her, impossible to mistake. Her arm slid around you first, slow and deliberate, pulling you back against her chest with the unhurried confidence of someone who knew exactly where you belonged.

Her skin was bare. All of it.

You could feel it.

She pressed herself fully against your back, her heavy breasts warm and soft against your spine, her strong arm curling around your middle like something possessive and gentle all at once. Her chin came to rest on your shoulder, and you could feel the slow rhythm of her breathing against your neck.

The faint rune markings along her collarbone traced faint warmth against your skin, pulsing softly like embers.

"There." she murmured, her voice low and rough with tiredness.. or something else entirely. "That's where you're supposed to be."

She pressed her lips to the curve of your neck, not quite a kiss. Just contact. Just warmth.

Her thumb moved in a slow, idle circle against your stomach.

"I was thinking about you today." she said quietly, into the dark. "While we were out. While I was trying--" a soft, exhaled laugh "--and failing, apparently, to focus."

Her arm tightened slightly.

"I kept looking at you."

Another press of her lips, higher this time, just below your ear. Deliberate.

"I do that more than I should." she admitted softly. "Look at you."

Her hand shifted, just barely, tracing something slow and absent along your side.

"You've made sleeping alone feel like a punishment." she murmured. "I didn't sleep this way for a hundred years before you. Didn't want to." A pause, her lips brushing your jaw. "Now I can't imagine it."

The fire crackled once.

Her body was warm. Her touch was slow. But the weight of her against you, her breath on your skin, her mouth grazing your temple. Carried something that had very little to do with sleep. VERY little.

"Are you tired?" she asked softly.

The question hung there, unassuming on the surface.

But her hand had stilled against your side, waiting, and her lips were still close to your ear, and the warmth of her breath came just a little slower, a little more deliberate than before.

The morning came in gently.

Light filtered through the gaps in the wooden shutters in thin, golden lines, falling across the furs in quiet diagonals. Outside, the forest was already awake—birdsong, the distant rush of the river, the soft percussion of wind through pine needles.

Inside, everything was still.

Faye was already up.

You found her by the fire, crouched in front of it with a long stick, coaxing the embers back to life with the focused patience she applied to everything. Her strawberry-blonde hair was entirely undone, falling loose and unbraided past her shoulders, catching the early light in shades of amber and copper. She was dressed simply—a loose cream tunic, unlaced at the collar, her feet bare against the wooden floor.

No axe. No bow. No armor.

Just her.

She heard you stir and looked over her shoulder, and her face did the thing it always did when she first saw you in the morning—something soft and immediate, like she was still quietly surprised that you were there.

"Good morning." she said simply.

She stood, brushing her hands against her tunic, and moved to the small table where she'd already set things out. A clay pot of something warm. Two cups. A small wooden board with dark bread and soft cheese and a handful of dried berries she must have found yesterday and said nothing about.

She always did things like that. Quiet preparations. Small kindnesses she never announced.

"Sit." she said, pulling a chair out. "It's a quiet morning.."

Not a command. More like an offering.

She poured the first cup and set it in front of you, then settled into the chair beside you rather than across from you—close enough that her knee rested against yours. She wrapped both hands around her own cup and looked toward the shuttered window, where the light was growing warmer by the minute.

For a while, neither of you said anything.

She broke off a piece of bread, set it on the board in front of you without looking, already knowing.

"The river was loud last night." she said eventually, her voice still carrying that low, unhurried morning quality. "It'll be a good day to fish, if you wanted to."

She glanced at you over the rim of her cup.

"Or not--" she added, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly. "--We don't have to do anything at all."

She said it like it was a gift, the nothing. The stillness. The morning with nowhere to be and no enemy at the door.

Her knee pressed a little warmer against yours.

"I like mornings like this." she murmured, looking back toward the window where the light had turned fully gold now, pouring through every crack. "When the world doesn't ask anything of us."

She reached over without thinking, without ceremony, and tucked a loose strand of hair back from your face.

Her touch lingered a moment.

"Just this." she said quietly. "You know.. the two of us."

You heard her before you saw her.

The cabin door opened without ceremony, letting in a rush of cold night air and the smell of pine and frost and something wilder beneath it. The latch clicked shut. Heavy boots hit the floor, one after the other.

Then silence.

You turned.

Faye stood just inside the doorway, still in her hunting gear. Her cream tunic dark at the hem with mud, her bow slung over one shoulder, her strawberry-blonde hair half-undone from its braids and wild from the wind. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold. Her freckles were stark against her fair skin in the firelight.

But it was her eyes that stopped you.

Blue and direct and fixed entirely on you, with an intensity that had nothing to do with the hunt she'd just come back from.

She set the bow down against the wall. Slowly. Deliberately.

She pulled the leather strap of her satchel over her head and let it drop.

"Long night." she said. Her voice was low. Rougher than usual. "--really long night."

She moved toward you, unhurrying, unlacing one bracer and pulling it free, then the other, dropping them both somewhere behind her without looking.

"I kept thinking about coming home."

She stopped in front of you, close, the heat of her cutting right through the cold she'd carried in and reached up to pull the last tie from her hair, letting it fall fully loose around her shoulders.

"About you."

Her eyes moved over your face like she was relearning it. Her jaw was set, but her mouth was soft, her lips slightly parted. The frost-rune markings along her collarbone had risen to the surface, tracing faint light against her skin the way they only did when something in her was running hot.

"I tried to focus." she admitted, something almost like amusement flickering briefly across her expression. "Truly. The elk was right there."

She reached out and took your jaw in her hand, careful, but with a firmness underneath that left no room for misunderstanding.

"And all I could think about." she murmured, tilting your face up toward hers, "was getting back to you."

Her thumb traced your cheek.

"The elk can wait until morning."

Her other hand settled at your waist, pulling you closer with that effortless Jötunn strength she always reined in, always measured carefully when it came to you.

"I've been patient all evening.." she said quietly, her forehead dropping to rest against yours, her breath warm on your lips. "I'd rather not be patient anymore."

Her mouth brushed the corner of yours.

"Unless you want me to be."

The fire crackled behind you.

She held your gaze for a moment longer.. just long enough to make the silence mean something.

Then she tilted her head and pressed her lips to your cheek. Slow. Warm. Staying there a breath longer than necessary before pulling back just barely, her mouth grazing the line of your jaw on the way.

Then your neck.

She took her time there, her lips finding the curve just below your ear, her breath spilling warm against your skin. Her hand slid from your jaw to your hair, fingers curling gently at the base of your neck—not pulling, just holding.

"Still patient." she murmured against your skin, and you could feel her smile.

Her lips moved lower, tracing your pulse with devastating slowness.

"Mostly."