꧁ʙᴏʀɴ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴜʀᴘʟᴇ꧂

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 89

꧁✧✧✧꧂

𝕽egulus hums serenely, smiling when lean arms snake around his lower torso from behind.

Without a second thought, his hand drops from his damp tendrils, grasping hold of the temperature dial and twisting the shockingly cold setting to a steamy hot. The change is much appreciated, the soft sigh and nestle of a sleepy face between the stiff blades of his shoulders proof.

He's all systems go for his second shampoo, but disregards the dewy bottles aligned in perfect order inside the niche, finding no downsides to dallying a while. Wasting the castle's hot water is no crime for him to be convicted of, especially considering the rather generous funding his parents provide each term. Besides nothing could ever be classed as waste when involving his girlfriend.

Girlfriend. That still never fails to make his knees weak and his belly house countless of the fluttery winged buggers he's spent the first flush of the wintry morning giving a piece of his mind. And it's not just the grand title in itself, it's also who it belongs to that makes it special, makes it exciting.

"You didn't wake me up"

The tense squares of his slope, overworked muscles liquifying as a result of her languid tones spoken right into his bedew skin. He's not awfully keen on tattoos, the permanent ink more his rebellious older brother's idea of art expression and living it up. But what he'd do to have her every whisper, every fierce word, every sweet syllable breathed into his skin inscribed on his body to world without end.

Regulus likes to think they're already there, ballads impressed in an invisible ink that's magic and power and an oath he swears to stand by. Showing his true allegiance, his undying devotion the ugly skull and writhing snake hungers for. He's not been feeling his dark mark, because he's been feeling her stronger, deeper. It has no attention to feed off.

His hands come to rest over the top of hers, now looped under his arms and planted flat against the upper fringes of his pectorals. After blinking away the water threatening to run into his eyes, he explains,

"It's snowed quite a bit. And you looked so warm and cosy cocooned in bed, I couldn't bear to drag you out"

"Warming charms exist" Romie grumbles, eyes remaining shut when he carefully spins himself around to face her, retorting,

"So does Frostbite"

Either he's won with his valuable, stressed point, or the hour is far too early to plunge into stubborn debates, because Romie stays silent, simply sticking out her chin to rest down against his dripping chest. She looks so somnolent, so comatose still that Regulus stabs a guess there had been some out of bed dragging anyway, cutting short the nice coming round period to join him.

He smooths back her hair, dark and soaking from the roaring water gushing over them both at once, flattening to her spine the long ends like a sheet of pure silk. When he picks up his shampoo and squirts a fair amount onto the palm of his hand, Romie speaks again. It's necessary, to distract herself from the ungodly things the divine minty smell flooding their well lived in bathroom sparks up a wild incentive to do.