WARNING: The following drabble has a scene that may make readers uncomfortable. What happens is Kee makes Lae scared and uncomfortable after he starts to make unwanted sexual advances towards her. His thoughts are also demeaning and questionable as well as violent and probably abusive.
The college was not his favorite place. It was in the coldest region of Skyrim, the halls and dorms were packed with shady mages, and Laelette was always out.
More often than not the moment she and he finished breakfast she was dragged out of his grasp by a handful of handsy mages that made the argonian want to stab something. This typically lead to him skulking back into her dorm room that he guarded like a demented hell hound with scales. If he wasn't huddled under three layers of fur lined blankets looking at the pictures in her personal library, then he was giving threatening glares to men that seemed to thing waiting for his breton in her room for whatever reason was a smart idea.
He knew what men thought about while waiting for women in their rooms. He's been tasked with killing those women or men before. He's one of those men now, and he'd be damned if he left some other bastard try an lure Laelette away from him.
So that was how he spent months on end. Waiting for Laelette to come get him for dinner, sleeping, breakfast, then waiting like the loyal dog he is.
It was painfully boring, and insanely nerve wracking.
Some days, when he felt a particular bout of cabin fever, he would slink out of their shared room to walk the dark corners of the college.
Most days he avoided interacting with the students. It had been made clear none liked the mute argonian that followed his conjurer like a pale shadow, but he didn't like them so it was mutual. However, the Orc librarian wasn't all that bad. Sometimes he would look at the books littered about the library, not really reading, but the action was soothing.
Occationally he would stick to Laelette through the day, glaring at those that got to close. It was how he came to understand Laelette was not as welcome to a lot of the teachers and older students as much as he was only tolerated because Laelette held his collar.
Laelette was as much a conundrum to the collage as he was. For even without the rune collar that had closed off her magika her best and only skill was conjuring weapons. Primarily the bow and arrow.
It did something to Xal-Kee, watching the delicate noble woman wield the ranged weapon, sparing with mages who thought she could be taken down with a few blasts of fire. Watching her completely untethered, dancing around the attacks from a conventional mage to bash his face in with a magic bow.
Was it wrong that Xal-Kee found that unbearably attractive?
Because it was.
Laelette is easy to catch off guard too. The moment the mock fight was over and people flocked around the two combatants, Kee pushed through the crowd and grabbed Laelette.
She looked up at him with a happy smile.
"Kee, did you see me? Was I good?" she asked, and Kee felt heat spread from where her hand touched his arm and he was lost in tunnel vision.
Suddenly there were too many people. Too many unimportant things trying to talk with her, touch her, get her attention. When the only person she needed to look at was him, all she needed was him. Thats how its been the moment their eyes met when she was brought before him in chains.
Kee hardly heard a thing beyond that point as he grasped at the hand on his arm, and then clutched her shoulder and began to steer her out of the training room.
There were protests, he was sure, but one fierce glare behind him left the hall in silence as he spirited his breton away from these overbearing crowds. He hated seeing her around so many people. It disrupted everything.
Laelette's confused questions fell on deaf ears, Kee was far too focused. They made it back to her room in the blink of an eye. Laelette stumbled onto her bed with a yelp and a shove from the albino argonian before he closed and locked the door with a resounding click.
He leaned against the door and watched her with wide, pale eyes as she lifted her upper body up and turned to peer up at him with concern.
Yes. Yes, look at him, look only at him. He's all she needs. Heat spread through him as he watched her on her bed, his breath came out heavy until he could take no more and lunged at her, his last bit of control snapping after so long. Too long.
Laelette was unsure what brought on the sudden behavior. Kee had always been so very protective of her, down right clingy too if she were honest. But it was nothing she did not enjoy. Being with Kee made her feel safe. He protected her when she couldn't protect herself, and in turn she wanted nothing more than to give back even a fraction of that protection now.
But this Kee. This towering presence over her as he stares at her with clouded eyes as she lays with her back to him where he pushed her on the bed was a Kee she doesn't feel right with.
Something in her left a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach and the silence between them was chilling. She couldn't look away from him, for fear he would do something she was sure he'd regret if he was in the right of mind.
The breton flinched as his pale hand found purchase on her shoulder and turned her so she could face him. But the action was rough and left her still at his mercy as he pinned her to the mattress.
"K-Kee? What are you-is everything ok?" she asked softly, unsure what to do about this strange, scary vision of the argonian.
Pale eyes watched her without an answer, they lowered their gaze and Laelette felt her cheeks flush and eyes go ever wider as she felt his hand follow his gaze. She felt it down her shoulder, on her waist, her thigh, until she felt the strong grip lift her leg by the ankle. She squeaked and shot her hand to her skirts that were ridding up high. Of course she was wearing thick leggings for the cold weather, but it was still highly embarrassing.
However, her own hands didn't get very far as Kee's other hands caught them, sending them over her head in an iron grip she didn't have the strength to break.
The grip on her ankle tightened. She winced.
"Xal-Kee?" her voice high and scared.
Maybe, if he broke her bones so she couldn't walk she'd never leave him alone again. She'd need him to carry her.
Maybe she would be afraid of him a little more, but he could live with that because she couldn't cast him away from her, she'd be too reliant on him. Then they could stay together more, she wouldn't have to be surrounded by all these other people that didn't matter.
He doesn't understand why she would let so many strangers around her in the first place. She didn't even look comfortable around them half the time. It was annoying! So annoying.
She has to know how much it annoyed him, she knew him best, she's the only one that knows him best. Because no one else ever tried.
He heard her bones creak with the strength of his grasp. Her breath hitched painfully.
Looking at her face, her green, green eyes were brimming with tears. Xal-Kee twitched.
He didn't like it when she cried.
He leaned down into her, his hand loosening its grip on her ankle as he lay his head in the crook of her neck and inhaled like a man who had been stuck underwater for too long.
She was tense and wound up under him. With a sudden clear feeling of dread he realized he really has scared her.
He groaned into her shoulder and collapsed on top of her, she made a disgruntled noise when his full weight hit her.
They were quiet again, yet this time the tension was easing from their shoulders and taught muscles were relaxing. Laelette tentatively brought her arms around the argonian's wider frame in a loose hug. Kee's shoulders hitched at her touch before they became lax again and she felt his own arms wrap under her to bring them into a bone crushing embrace.
"Xal-Kee, what's gotten into you? You're scaring me." she murmured. The man simply shook his head before lifting himself off of her. Their eyes caught as they stared each other down with a familiar tension that Laelette has found enveloped them both from time to time.
Where they both see no one else in a room but each other.
She recalled Khepri once telling her to be careful around Kee when this kind of tension arose, but she never really understood why.
A hand reach to cup her cheek, and a thumb brushed away at the tears that fell. Still they kept eye contact.
Until a loud knock broke the two out of whatever spell they were under that caused them to jump.
Laelette made to swing her legs over the side of the bed, only to realize they were still very much trapped between Kee's own. And the argonian did not appear to want to move away any time soon.
There was another series of knocks. Laelette opened her mouth to tell whoever was on the other side that she would be a moment, until all her voice was swallowed up by Kee's mouth pressed against hers so quickly and with such force she fell back onto her bed again, with Kee following right after.
She blinked open her eyes in surprise only to find Kee's own pale blue ones peering down at her with an emotion she had seen countless times in his eyes before. And then it clicked.
Oh...