hidonredux
patreon
Rounditure
🕑 Added 2021-01-14 10:39:09 +0000 UTCWriting by my lovely wife Re-Phage:
“Are you ready, Ayrrenn? All dressed?” Warren asked as he approached her at the head of the stairs, halfway through putting his shirt on.
The small dwarf tried to look down the steps towards the ground floor of her home but struggled to see anything over the rounditure of her more noticeable assets. It was dark as well, with the only light available flickering on the end of the candlestick clasped in her hand. She turned to look up at him, defeated yet smiling. “Aye. Be careful with me, all right? I’m tender right now.”
“Come now, I always am.” He told her. He had to lean down quite a ways to scoop her up into his arms, but he did so with thoroughly practised grace.
Warren considered himself fortunate that he had a lover who was not only waist height to his impressively tall stature, but that she fit nice and snugly into his arms when he carried her down the stairs. He went one step at a time, deliberate and steady, his socked feet touching only the slats of wood that he knew never creaked in the middle of the night.
“Ye sure no one else is awake?” She mumbled, squished in as she was while also attempting to illuminate his way down at the same time.
In more normal circumstances they would be sleeping in her bedroom on the ground floor, but she and Warren had company staying with them (this included a sound sensitive toddler) that for one height related reason or another could not fit up in the guest room on the second floor, so she and Warren had switched bedrooms with them. Ayrrenn didn’t mind, not really, but it did make getting down the stairs a trial that required the strong arms of her boyfriend instead.
He seemed to pause and stand up straighter, sniffing the air a little. “… No, everyone’s in their room. I’d know if someone was missing.” Warren reassured her.
Ayrrenn relaxed as Warren carried her the rest of the way towards the couch, then placed her down gently so she could stretch out against the cushions. She sighed in satisfaction; curling her toes in their soft-knit pink wool casing and watching him tend to the fireplace in the living room. He bargained with flint and tinder just long enough to rouse the drowsing embers from earlier in the evening back into begrudging flame and sat down again next to her, lifting her feet into his lap.
Almost subconsciously Ayrrenn’s hands went to rest on her belly, so large and swollen that she had to sit up a little to look at him. “Ahh, that’s so much better. Nice and warm. I cannae take these long autumns at this size, I’d rather be big and sweating than big and freezing me teats off.”
Warren curled a hand around the tips of Ayrrenn’s toes on one foot – the little piggies did indeed feel like ice. “When you’re ready to sleep I’ll change forms. My winter coat’s started coming in and its thick enough to help keep you warm.” He offered.
“That’s kind of ye.” Usually he was pretty hesitant to suggest something like that, so she appreciated the offer. Still, Ayrrenn wrinkled her nose a little as her back gave out and she had to lie back down against the armrest again. “Ughhh. Warren, ye’re a doctor, aye?”
“Yeah, sort of.” Technically, his medical licence probably didn’t extend to Azeroth, but he decided not to tell her that. “Why?”
“How much longer until the birth? I cannae possibly get any bigger than this… right?”
Warren hesitated before saying anything. With Ayrrenn watching him in the dim firelight he could feel her expectation in her dark blue eyes. “Oh. Oh… oh, Ayrrenn. Um. How do I say this… if dwarves are anything like humans, and I think the two in the flesh are very similar, not getting into the historical angles of your species and purportedly mine, in this world… um.”
She pouted at him. “What? What is it?”
“You’ve only just entered the third trimester. You still have some months to go. Now, don’t worry I won’t be going anywhere. I’ll always be around to help you out.”
Ayrrenn seemed perplexed but she blushed a little too. “I just figured at this size and all that the bairns were almost done.” She admitted.
“I could be wrong. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
The two of them sat there in silence for a few moments, the only movements in the dark the steady rise and fall of Ayrrenn’s middle as she took in quiet but somewhat laboured breaths, and Warren gently stroking her leg covered in her lace nightdress. Then, all of a sudden, he rose again and lifted her into his arms just enough to co-opt her spot on the couch and settle her into his lap.
Ayrrenn smiled as he leaned in a little closer for what she assumed was a kiss so she struggled up to him as well, but he stopped at about halfway and sniffed again.
“Mm, you do smell good though.”
She allowed herself a little chuckle. “Oh aye?”
“Mhm. Like… baby powder, sunshine, the herbs from the shampoo in your hair and… something else. Can’t place it but I love it. You have that new mom smell to you, Ayrrenn.” He told her before bridging the gap between them and kissing her sweetly on the lips.
Ayrrenn broke away quickly enough to burst out giggling at such a silly compliment, turning her head and pushing him away. It was at this point the wee babs inside of her began to box away at her kidneys again so they clearly thought their father was being silly too. Warren grinned at her, pleased to see she still had some buttons he had yet to push.
She slapped a hand over her mouth though when her unmitigated laughter in the dead of night triggered the wailing of a baby in the room down the hallway, along with the sleepy, annoyed mumbling of indecipherable draenei language. Ayrrenn’s blue eyes went wide. Oh no! She’d woken the baby up!
Warren rose from his seat effortlessly with her in his arms. There wasn’t time enough to put the fireplace out again, but it had a grating and would die down by daybreak.
“We weren’t here.” He said to her in a soft tone and practically ninja’d his way around the furniture and back up the stairs again without making a single sound.
Three more months. Just three more months to go until she could see her feet again.
