He closes the door behind him and says, "I seek no more than simply to sleep beside you tonight. Even if you wanted more, I honestly don't think I could manage it."
"Of course," she agrees. "It's been a very long day."
Keyleth wishes very badly she had the words to tell him that she does want more, even though she doesn't know how much more yet. Or if having it wouldn't destroy her down the road, because she's had time enough to think, which means she's had time enough to dwell on how anything with Vax would ultimately end.
As they sit down on the bed, however, she says, "I want to kiss you. Just once. You kissed me once, so...fair's fair?" She makes herself smile, however weakly.
He, too, gives her a faint smile. "Fair's fair." He closes his eyes, and bends his head slightly, to make the angle easy for her.
During both of Keyleth's previous two kisses, she was too shocked to even pay attention to what it felt like. Now, she is very aware of the warm, rough lips against her own, hot breath all around them, the excitement that ran through her body even at being this close to Vax. She thinks she hears his breath hitch, and suddenly she needs to touch him, just a little more.
Her fingers hover over bare skin, but she still fears what feeling that could do to her, and her hands instead land on his back. Still up on his shoulders, firmly above where she burned him earlier that day. Even that radiates heat, and she can feel the shifting of his body under them. Keyleth has never in her entire life been so aware of someone's body pressed against hers, not even when she's been trying to tear into theirs as a literal animal.
She can't stop herself from thinking about it, really. What it would be like to do this with their bodies bare. Where her hands might wander to, then. Where his might. It's enough to send the heat running between her legs, make them want to squirm against the mattress.
When she had initially put him off in Whitestone, Keyleth wasn't even sure she could want Vax physically, the way he presumably wanted her. But by the time they returned to Emon, well, she'd found her answer to that question alone between her sheets in the night.
Uncertain how long she can hold on without becoming too overwhelmed with this new, powerful want, Keyleth yanks herself away from him. "I'm sorry," she says, even though she's not sure just what she's sorry for.
"Don't be," he whispers. "Not for anything."
"That's...very nice of you to say," she says, because it is.
She may not be thinking about anything in particular, but apparently Vax is, because he says, "If anything, it's my fault. We should never have gone down there. I should've realized they weren't going to offer any deal worth taking."
Keyleth's first impulse is to agree with those words. But she finds herself pausing and thinking for a moment, then saying, "I suppose...we couldn't have known for sure what they would do."
And because of everyone, he's the one who seemed the least pissed off at her over it, she says, "It worries me, though, what Percy said. About how I talked to them. Because, you know, if I'm going to become my people's leader-provided we all survive this, anyway..." And then she has to stop, a hysterical sob tearing itself out of her throat.
Her hands have sunk into the bed; Vax oh so carefully places his own over one of them. "If we do," he says, "you'll be a good leader. As long as you work to improve, you'll be better in the future than you were today. And today, I don't think it made much difference to anything practically. So if you did make a mistake, this was the best time to make it."
"If I can learn from it," she says. She's known that well, that mistakes can be okay if she can learn from them. Except right now, how exactly she's supposed to do better in the future is eluding her.
"There's time," says Vax, maybe hearing her doubt. "Tonight's probably not when you're going to figure that out."
That only makes sense, but Keyleth still has to repeat it in her head twice before it takes, and the other thoughts dissipate. "Thank you" she breathes, allowing herself to sag down, and a moment later his arms are right there around her.
"Anytime," he murmurs back, and there's so much love in his voice she both wants to bask in it forever and can barely stand it. "We should get to sleep."
With them both already in their sleepwear, all they have to do is turn themselves under. When Keyleth does so first, Vax slips down, clearly wanting to tuck himself against her chest, then looks up at her, asking permission. Keyleth just takes hold of him and pulls him into place, leaving her hands resting in his hair and under his shoulder as one of his finds her back, and the other folds itself up near enough to her heart he must be able to feel it beating.
It's the hands she's left most aware of. It's strange, really, those hands. She's seen them wield his daggers so many time, deal deaths as bloody and intimate and those dealt by Grog, while also as cold and ruthless as those dealt by Percy. She's also seen them be gentle while comforting his sister, among others. Tonight, she's felt them be so warm and tender for her, and she's becoming all too aware lately of what else they could potentially do to her.
But her eyes also stray down and over, to where his shirt may still cover his back, but she doesn't think she'll ever not know where the scarring she's left on him is. "Is it still hurting?" she whispers. "Are you all right like this, now?"
"I could die happy here," Vax murmurs in response, so softly he might even hope she doesn't hear, and he might just be able to feel her heart throb with the tenderness that wells up in it.
So could I, she thinks, though she can't bring herself to say it out loud. Not yet.
It's not very nice to be happy right now, of course. Not with the ruin and death that lies all around outside their walls, and they themselves having to leave their home in the morning, having failed so much in the last couple of days. It feels almost absurd, to lie here in the bedroom that still looks like it has since she first claimed it as her own, when it feels like the world is being destroyed.
Yet Vax's breath has evened out, and having him there fills Keyleth with a kind of peace she never knew before. Listening to it, she knows, will eventually get her to the sleep she might have otherwise struggled to find tonight, even as inside her, triggered by him, so many things are continuing to wake up.