au: the crowd, so dense that you almost couldn't breathe for the crushing force of it, was alive with the spark of revolution and it made his blood sing; and when he spotted the pretty little face, half-hidden behind banners and flags, he elbowed his way through to her, needing to soak up the fire in her eyes as she shouted the chants and threw her head back laughing as history was made.
hurt/comfort: her eyes were dull today, the dullest he'd seen them ever look, and as she stared into the rippling water of the stream where her reflection disappeared in the movement, he reached down to take her cold little hand in his and stand in the silence with her.
fluff: in the weak blue light of the early morning when she awoke and found three winter roses neatly tied with twine on the floor outside her door, the jump of her heart and the warmth in her cheeks were enough to make her feel like a pretty maiden girl in the old songs.
smut: sometimes it was stifling in the room behind forge, sweating under his furs when he put his mouth where she was the hottest, where she pulsed and clenched and ached for his tongue, for his fingers, for anything he would give her, melting under him; sometimes it was freezing with her back up against the stone wall of the stables, their chilled, stiff fingers grabbing at thick wool, clutching at dark hair as cold lips tasted and nipped at her neck while his cock thrust up into her, forcing fog from her lungs; they were hot and cold, they were fire and ice.
friendship: it was his milady that made her shove him into the soiled hay piles behind the horses and it was her shrieks of laughter that made him spring up and grab her round the waist to plop her down face-first in that same spot.
romance: the queen had asked him to escort her lady sister to the grand feast (he was a knight, after all, no matter how unfit or lowborn for the title he may be) and when she opened her door, when she stepped out in a simple, fitted gown of grey with loose hair sitting prettily around her bare shoulders, the pink in her cheeks and her soft, shy eyes made his hands shake as he took her arm in his and led the way to the dining hall.
angst: the ghost of her was in the small blades he forged, in the dark wild hair of a guest at the inn, in the toothy grins and skinny elbows of the children running up and down the stairs, in the grey eyes he'd see every night when he closed his own, and it made him sick with guilt for wishing he'd never come across her, had never come to know the angry, lost little girl.