Love and Bounty

Chapter Eight: His Company

After Hrolf played poems and melodies to the somewhat prickly lizard woman—and returned the lute to the displeased bard downstairs—the air around them shifted for the better. He and Deeja maintained a respectful distance, and though her guard persisted, the tension waned from her shoulders over a bottle of... What was in that robust and thin-necked bottle, anyway?

Hrolf asked the question aloud without meaning to, right as Deeja was in the middle of a long swig. "Argonian Bloodwine," she said, wiping a droplet of the crimson liquor from her lip with her thumb. The way she flicked her tongue to catch the droplet made his neck flush. "It doesn't have blood in it, by the way."

"Aye..." he mumbled. "I didn't think it did." He then gave his best grin and said: "You strike me as a woman with higher standards than that."

That got what sounded like a pity laugh out of the wine-guzzling reptilian in spite of her tinted cheeks. "You're a bad flatterer." Her lips curled into a wry smirk. "You should stick to music."

Hrolf scoffed and crossed his arms tight with some banter of his own: "Well excuse me for holding you in high regard—captain of the Blackbloods."

Deeja rolled her eyes as she took another swig from the bottle. "Oh please," she groaned. "Argonian Bloodwine isn't even that uncommon in Imperial lands. Are you just that uncultured?"

The confident Nord snickered. She didn't want to know the extent of his misadventures with alcohol. "Trust me, I've put my lips to many bottles that I shouldn't have. Ever heard of Kyne's Kiss?"

Deeja blinked. Must've been a 'no'.

"Well, they call it that for a reason. That stuff knocked me flat on my back for nearly two nights." Just the memory of it was starting to make the room spin. "It was some of the best mead I've ever had, though."

The unimpressed Argonian cocked her brow. "So you've taken that poison into your body, but you've never heard of Argonian Bloodwine?"

Hrolf shook his head. "Never. I assumed it was some fancy stuff from Black Marsh." His breath hitched in his throat as he caught the assumption too late. Bad move. "I-I mean, I shouldn't assume you're from there. There's plenty of Argonians from other parts of Tamriel, aye?"

Deeja narrowed her eyes to slits and took a judgmental sip of her bloodwine. "I am from there," she uttered. Her harsh gaze simmered into a dour, downcast look as her spitted pupils trailed to the bottle in her grasp. "But this isn't from there. It's the best I can get, though. Argonian ale is too rare in Skyrim."

...damn it. Look what you did, Hrolf—you idiot. He couldn't shake the feeling that he had just torn open old wounds of hers. Even the gentle swishes of her tail ceased as the appendage coiled around her leg and gently squeezed. She needed a distraction from whatever she might have been thinking about, but what could he do?

Wait, of course!

"Can I try some?" he asked with all of the grace of a hammer through glass. "The bloodwine, I mean."

That snapped Deeja right out of her funk, her eyes widening and slitted pupils rounding out with surprise. "I-I've already drank from this bottle," she stammered, her voice barely louder than a murmur.

The drastic shift in her demeanor caught Hrolf off guard. The way the tip of her tail twitched and flicked arrhythmically, her snout bowed and her gaze averted, made her look almost...

Cute.

"O-Oh... Right..." Hrolf muttered.

The silence that followed was deafening. He should have known that she wouldn't want to share a bottle with someone she barely knows.