Sweet Little Holdbred Weyrmate

Writers: Bree, Dana
Date Posted: 8th February 2007

Characters: T'voal, Shayla
Description: T'voal admits to Shayla that he 'comforted' Gaiya, and she takes it fairly poorly.
Location: River Bluff Weyr
Date: month 1, day 6 of Turn 4

Hearing the door to their weyr open, Shayla sat up in bed, wrapping the covers more tightly around her shoulders. She yawned, rubbing her eyes tiredly. She hadn't been able to sleep much...it was hard to fall asleep when T'voal wasn't there for warmth and tenderness.

But now he was.

"How's U'val?" the greenrider asked softly when he came into the sleeping room.

"About the same." T'voal tugged his tunic over his head and dropped it into a pile of dirty clothing with a sigh. "We have to talk, Shayla," he continued in a serious voice as he sat down on the edge of the bed.

She looked at him, brow puckered. He almost never used that tone with her. "What's wrong?"

T'voal sighed and ran a hand through his hair, trying to smooth it down.
"Something happened tonight that you might not understand."

"...What happened?"

"I spent the evening with a friend who needed a little comfort," he said gently, knowing that it was best to get it over with as quickly as possible. "I know this is hard for someone who grew up outside the Weyr to understand, though, and I don't want you to find out from someone else and get the wrong impression."

Shayla stared at him--stared at his tousled hair and slightly flushed skin. He was close enough so that she could smell the alcohol on his breath. "Meaning you had sex with her." Her voice was very low as her mind finally began to process what he was saying. When she looked up at him, her expression was unreadable.

"Yes," T'voal replied quietly. "I didn't mean for it to happen, but it did."

She snorted, eyes flashing. "If that's your explanation, it's half-assed."

T'voal tried not to wince. "That's because it _is_ an explanation. Not an excuse."

If it had been an excuse, that would have meant that he felt sorry about what he had done. Her expression hardened. He would have felt sorry, and would have regretted it! Just like she regretted sleeping with K'mai.
She just couldn't embrace the idea of sex the way Weyrbred people did.
And she'd tried to by testing it out with K'mai. But she just couldn't do it. "What do you want me to say, T'voal? Do you want me tell you I don't mind? That this doesn't hurt me? Because you know what? It does hurt."
Shoving the blankets off of her, she stood to put suddenly much-needed space between them. "It hurts a lot."

"I'm sorry," he said simply. "I didn't want to hurt you. But I didn't want to lie to you either, Shayla. Things are different here than they are at the Hold, and sometimes things happen."

She couldn't believe this! "That's a load of scorched crackdust. You know how I feel!"

T'voal sat on the edge of the bed and watched her. "I knew how you'd probably feel," he acknowledged. "You're holdbred. But we'd never really talked about it, and I should have."

"How I'd _probably_ feel? You knew, and it wasn't enough for you, was it?" She glared at him, wanting to swipe that sharding patronizing look off of his face. Shards, it hurt. "You didn't _have_ to have sharding sex with her to comfort her!" Dammit, there were other ways!

The brownrider rubbed at the side of his face and tried not to sigh again.
"I don't know what you want me to say, Shayla. I told you the truth, because I care about you too much to lie. How would you feel if a month went by and you found out _then_ that I'd slept with another woman and never bothered to tell you?"

"That isn't the point! You still did it, even though you knew it would hurt me." Her eyes were starting to burn, but shardit! She would not cry in front of him! "If you cared about me like you say you do, you wouldn't have done it. And you wouldn't be sharding patronizing me. Do _not_
treat me like a child, T'voal!"

He hadn't thought she'd be pleased about it, but he'd never imagined she'd be _this_ upset. Then again, he'd never been involved with a woman who wasn't weyrbred before. It had been easy enough to dismiss the differences when she'd been shy and needy and all he'd had to do was be strong and protective for her. This was something else entirely. "You're not a child, Shayla. You're just... not weyrbred. And sometimes I forget that you don't understand."

He _still_ wasn't listening to her. "No. I understand completely. It's _you_ who doesn't understand." Whirling around, Shayla stalked out of the sleeping room. Blinking hard to keep the tears at bay, she grabbed a shirt off the back of the sofa and threw it on. She just couldn't stay here right now. Not with him smelling like alcohol and sex.

T'voal was left blinking in her wake, looking almost shocked that she'd actually walked away from him. Even as the door slammed behind her, he couldn't quite bring himself to realize that she had actually left.

Maybe he didn't understand his sweet little holdbred weyrmate as well as he thought.

Last updated on the February 9th 2007

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Sweet Little Holdbred Weyrmate