Happy Birthday, Miss Rogue...

[pokerplayereyes]

It wasn't much.

What had taken longer than anything was the table, low to the ground and lit with candles. It wasn't much of a dinner, but Ned had occasionally cooked in the Watch House and it wasn't bad. It wasn't food he had on his mind anyway

Comments

[un_gloved]

Rogue smiled, just barely managing to keep her fingers from twisting in the skirt of the green linen dress she'd fished out of the box, and knew she was blushing but wasn't sure how much of it was visible beneath the blindfold.

"After this kind of effort, we'll be doin' no such thing, Mr. Coates. A girl hardly knows what t'do with herself."

Honestly it had startled her at first, sat with a strange, frenetic weight somewhere under her heart. She'd done the blind fold thing before, an exercise of trust. Or not a blindfold, exactly. She'd been temporarily blind. The feeling was similar.

But not the same, and that was important. She was choosing to give up her sight, and Ned's breath was warm against her skin, and she shivered when his lips touched her and a faint braising of goosebumps raced along her arms.

[pokerplayereyes]

"Lance Corporal," corrected Ned, leaning against her from behind. He reached up and brushed his fingers over the dollar coin still hanging in the hollow of her throat.

He reached up and tugged open the knot on the back of the blindfold. He wasn't sure when he'd started thinking of the hut as half her home too.

"Happy birthday darlin'."

[un_gloved]

"L.C.," she conceded, teasingly, but it trailed off as he pulled the scarf away, voice already half-breath from the touch of his fingers around her neck.

"Oh," she said quietly, "Ned. This is- oh," she said again, turning back and lifting one hand to slide over his chest, but only half back because she couldn't turn fully away from the table.

"Sugar, you didn't have to..."

[pokerplayereyes]

"Yeah, I did," he said quietly, brushing a kiss against the skin behind her ear. "It isn't much. Cold stuff. And I'm a Copper, so it's probably not edible, but...Happy Birthday, darlin'."