AU - MAGNI & LAKSHMI

[mahalakshmi]

if you'll be my light, i'll be your shelter

i. first meeting | a non existent engagement and a hasty marriage ii. a tempertantrum in a thunderstorm | sticks and stones may break my bone but words will leave me with crippling anxiety (and a headcold) iii. a kindness of intimacies | nsfw, sometimes, love is like falling into an icy lake iv. just like the battle of troy, there is nothing subtle here | when the world conspires to consistently make you insecure about your wife.

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[mahalakshmi]

She curls around her face with her hand, as she leans in, cupping her head, wanting so badly to sink down with her like this. Comfortably close and alone. Drape about her like she so often did, feel their skin as close as possible, know at long last the only comfort she has imagined these long days: hearing Magni's heart beat steady below her ear.

( There isn't much stopping her, truth be told, just that this belly has made it a sure thing that if she falls over it takes a good deal of effort to get back up again. )

Rather she looks down at her, it might just be the next best thing. "My Ishq, so do you." More than once, for all they might be understood beyond their own quarters, Magni was ever the more even tempered one of them.

[villieldr]

A smile, at that. A smile that doubtless betrays her exhaustion, how much of a toll these weeks of uncertainty and separation have been. Her lips are chapped, she is thinner, and there are dark circles under her eyes, but she braces herself and pushes up to stand. She feels the need to bathe and eat and rest and all of those things seem like nigh-impossible hurdles at the moment, now that they are just the two of them. In truth she would sooner just lean against Lakshmi and stay there for hours.

"I must smell terrible," she says quietly, not self conscious so much as faintly apologetic, with a breath of laughter in it.

[mahalakshmi]

She looks so terribly warn, so terribly exhausted. How it pulls, tight inside her chest. It was better - better than being tormented nightly by images of her face, pallid with death, her blue eyes drowned away. Despite the weight of her belly, how hard it is to bend and twist, she leans down, to kiss her soundly. Pressing her lips against hers to chase the sound of her laughter.

"You smell like you, and I am glad for it." But not pleasant, some faint tang of sea on still mattered in her hair, mingled with the sweat and salt of her own body, grief like in how it seemed to hang close. "Come, they will have sorted our quarters by now. You can bathe. Have clean clothes. Our bed again." Have me to hold, and I you, and we need not part from one another for many hours.

The bed she had refused to leave but had let no one else come into until she knew her Magni had lived.

[villieldr]

"I hope someone saw to calling the doctor," she says by way of quiet agreement. They are all of them bruised and battered and stiff, and would benefit from medical inspection, just to know that no damage will be lingering. Krogstad was strong, but he was still an older man, and though he was already a dark grey, now his hair was more run through with silver. And then—

"I need to see to sending help to our people. There's work to do." A reminder to herself. She can't rest, not yet. Bathing and resting would have to wait, though her body feels like it might come apart at the prospect of needing to do more. She just wants to hold her Rani close, inhale the scent of her, feel the kicks of their baby under her palm.

[mahalakshmi]

"There is, and right now, you share it with us. No doubt your mother has already sent word for them, and sent them to your men." She takes Magni's hands in her own and beckons her up by way of a little tug. "You can give the rest of your orders in the bath."

A coaxing compromise, she hopes, as she beckons her closer, nearer. "You made it, you are here now, let us look after the rest." Her mountain was going to crumble if she pushed herself too much further, harder, could feel that rumbling earthquake below the surface.

[villieldr]

Standing is harder than it has any right to be, and where she would normally stand with no difficulty, now Magni has to pause and ease herself up as her muscles protest the work. Her Rani hardly needs to prompt her closer, she is already moving so, nodding her understanding. She couldn't do everything, and recovering was important - she needed to be there for her wife, her little one, all their people. She just wishes that it felt less like giving in, to let herself relax when so much had happened and so many had perished in the storm.

"I might—" her jaw works uncomfortably. "I might have nightmares. I want you with me, but you need to sleep," for her own health, for the baby, and Magni can't in good conscience beg Lakshmi to sleep by her side with how disturbing her dreams have been. I need to be stronger than this.

[mahalakshmi]

Lakshmi shakes her head in dismissal of the idea that Magni would even be apart from her for a second from here on out. Recovery or otherwise.

"I need to sleep, it is true, and I can only have it when you are with me." She lifts both her hands, sliding against her cheeks, cupping her face. "Only now can I rest, now that I have you again."

She leans up, standing all the way on her tiptoes that half makes her topple from being out of balance from her far too big belly. But not to go far, only to kiss her forehead soundly. "We will face your dreams, together. And when you wake, I will be there to tell you where you are."

With me, with me, with me.

[villieldr]

As the risk of toppling comes, Magni braces her hands against Lakshmi's sides to make sure she is steady, and leans down to make the kiss easier, leaning into the contact hungrily.

For long moments she is silent, not sure how to speak without her voice betraying her, without making the weakness all too apparent, hands holding tightly onto Lakshmi.

"I missed you." Miserable with it, her voice finally cracking.