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“Chrom, the latch.”
“Oh, right.”
Robin could immediately feel the color returning to her face as the two of them caught their breath, the heavy door now sealing them away from the brutal Feroxi blizzard outside. The fireplace on the opposite side of the hall glowed with light and warmth, replacing the sounds of the howling gales outside with a pleasant crinkle and occasional pop.
It was quiet inside. Just a second ago the two of them had needed to shout to communicate, but Robin spoke at just above a whisper now. “We need to dry off before we do anything else. Let’s go sit by the fire.”
Chrom nodded, sending bits of snow tumbling out of his hair and down to the floor, and Robin was seized by a sudden desire to ruffle her hand through it. Partly it was out of pursuit of the same sensory satisfaction she’d found in shaking the snow out of bushes or low-hanging branches, but the other part was rooted in an impulse that was much more difficult to satisfy.
She wanted to touch Chrom. Robin wanted to run her hand through his hair, or hold his hand, or lean against him in the familiar way that she’d seen couples do.
It wasn’t even about kissing, or anything further than that. When Robin had first woken up she’d retained vague memories of how to be a person, so she was familiar with relationships as a concept, but until they reached Ylisstol and she’d seen a young couple dancing together in the marketplace, waltzing to a tune only they could hear, she hadn’t realized just how desperately she wanted that for herself.
And so she couldn’t run her hand through Chrom’s hair, because if she did she would want to do it again. And if she did it again, she might make a habit of it. And if she made a habit of it, then Chrom might find out about this pathetic desire of hers. Robin couldn’t risk their friendship like that.
She settled for brushing a clump of snow off his shoulder instead. There were layers upon layers of fur between them; it was far less intimate an action.
“You’re so covered in snow that people might not recognize you,” Robin said.
“That’s just as well. I don’t want anyone bending over backwards for us,” he said, looking around.
Robin smiled. That was just like Chrom; refusing to play the prince card even if it would cut his troubles by half. Princes were another thing she’d known of in the abstract before meeting him, knowledge that survived her amnesia. A prim and proper noble, refined, well-educated; a man who would one day rule a nation.
Chrom was… some of those things. Robin giggled to herself as she followed him around a dining table and over to the hearth. She preferred this kind of prince far more.
He sat down on the stone near the hearth, close enough that the warmth from the fire was pleasant rather than scalding. Robin gave her own coat a shake, sending bits of snow scattering to the floor where they instantly melted on the hot surface. She could feel the heat beginning to make its way through the layers of her clothing.
“Sit down, Robin,” Chrom said while patting a spot on the stone next to him, leaving Robin to analyze the distance between him and where he’d indicated she should sit, and whether it meant anything. It was close, but it wasn’t too close. Not close enough for them to touch shoulders or lean against each other.
She sighed as she pushed the unhealthy thoughts to the back of her mind. She needed to stop overanalyzing her relationship with Chrom, especially when it was late and they just needed to get to bed.
Sitting in the spot he indicated, relief flowed through her as her legs got their first proper rest after hours of hard work. She and Chrom both began shedding their outer layers, letting the heat of the fire more easily seep into their bodies.
After they finished and left their snow-encrusted winter coats on the floor in a heap, Robin paused to appreciate the silence. This quiet inn room, this fireplace next to Chrom, this space where none of her duties or responsibilities would come to hunt her down… It felt different than a normal evening, in a calming sort of way. It existed in the hours between days.
“How are you feeling, Robin?”
She met his eyes, and found his smile immediately reflect on her own face as his words brought her up from her trance. Regardless of if they were sitting against each other or not, Robin knew that she was appreciated here. Wanted here.
“Like I could sleep for an entire day,” she said.
Chrom laughed. It was a rare sound, and Robin did her best to take it in. There wasn’t always a lot to laugh about when they were leading the Shepherds, but when the two of them were together, unbound by their duty, the moments when they would laugh together grew more frequent. Robin held those memories close; to her they felt like snapshots of what the rest of her life could be like, once they ended this war.
“We might be in trouble tomorrow morning then, because I feel the same,” he joked. “Should we ask the proprietress to wake us?”
“Let’s not go that far. I’m sure we’ll both wake when the sun comes up,” Robin said. “Besides, some extra sleep shouldn’t hurt. So long as we don’t actually sleep the whole day away, we should still be able to meet Anna tomorrow.”
“Right,” said Chrom.
Their conversation died back out, and Chrom turned his gaze to the fire, transfixed as Robin had been moments earlier. She wondered what he might be ruminating on, or if Chrom ever ruminated at all. Did he have the same thoughts and worries about their relationship that she did? Did his eyes ever catch on a triangle of exposed skin, slick with sweat, through the collar of a shirt like hers just had? Did he ever wish the two of them could sit closer together?
Did Chrom want Robin to want him, the same way Robin wanted Chrom to want her?
In the moments after opening the door to their room, several hours’ worth of panicked contingency-making had passed inside Robin’s mind.
Chrom had paused as well, but shook off his own surprise far sooner than Robin could hers. He made his way into the room, set down the lamp he was carrying on the nightstand, dropped off their bags and coats next to the foot of the bed, and then stood back to inspect it with his hands on his hips.
“Huh.”
“Huh, indeed,” Robin added. “I, um…”
Chrom scanned the room, as if further inspection would help somehow.
“There’s only one bed.”
“Mhm,” Robin said, nodding to the affirmative while her mind still raced on a shot of anxiety. There were only a couple possible ways this could go, and so in a panic she tried to direct it towards one that would compromise her feelings the least. “I’ll take the floor-“
Chrom shot her down immediately. “It’s too cold, Robin. There has to… Let me think of something.”
He knelt down by the foot of the bed, opening their packs to check for anything soft enough to lay on. Spreading out the coats covered enough of the floor, but it didn’t look promising in the comfort department, and with how chilly it was up in this room away from the fireplace, the temperature could be a legitimate concern.
“Wouldn’t you be too cold as well?” she asked, trying not to think about the implication of her question, what might happen should Chrom simply agree with her.
“I can go ask the proprietress for more blankets…” Chrom says, unconvinced by his own words.
Robin agonized over what to say next. There was an obvious choice to get them through the night, and there was an obvious choice to satisfy her unspoken desire to be closer to Chrom, but the fact that these choices were one and the same left her conflicted. She knew she needed to offer to share the bed, but it was only moral to offer it for the first reason.
If only for one night, Robin wished she could abandon her feelings for Chrom. She didn’t want this sleeping arrangement to be tinged by even a hint of ulterior motives; Chrom deserved better from her than that. Though, it would be even worse to condemn him to the hard, chilly floor of the inn; to inflict immense physical discomfort just to spare Robin discomfort on the emotional side.
Ethos outweighed by logos and pathos, Robin swallowed both her pride and embarrassment.
“Chrom, we can just share the bed. It’s not worth the trouble.”
His attention whipped over to her, his eyebrows arching in surprise. “Oh, really? I, uh… That would certainly make this easier,” he said. “I didn’t want to assume that you’d be fine with it.”
He clearly felt awkward, though Robin guessed he wasn’t overthinking this nearly as much as she was. A pang struck Robin as she realized Chrom probably had much less to think about, considering he had no ulterior motives of his own.
Robin feigned nonchalance. “Of course it’s fine. We’re on our own, miles from camp. If we had been traveling through the wilderness instead, we would have had to share a tent in much the same way. It’s not a big deal.”
“Ah, that’s a relief,” Chrom said with a sigh. He turned his attention back down to the floor as he folded the coats back up from the makeshift bedspread he’d set up, practically every trace of anxiety having already exited his body.
He could at least have the decency to worry about it as much as the person he’s going to be sharing the bed with , Robin thought. She hadn’t given Chrom any indication she was uncomfortable though, so she knew it was unfair to expect it from him. And for all she knew, Chrom could be feeling the same exact things she was, and hiding them just as well!
Yeah, sure. Chrom ‘I never really thought of you as a lady,’ of Ylisse, perfectly masking his feelings for a woman he was about to share a bed with, not showing the slightest indication of nerves. Robin discarded the notion with prejudice; entertaining the fleeting hope that her crush was reciprocated was dangerous.
“Right,” Robin mumbled. She walked over to what would become her side of the bed, lost in her mind.
Could this still be about the ‘one of the guys’ thing? As she watched Chrom unlace his boots on the side of the bed, totally unaware of her, the emotional cocktail that had been brewing in her gut took an unpleasant tinge. He would never have acquiesced so easily to sharing a bed with Maribelle, Sumia, or one of the myriad young ladies Robin was sure the court had picked out as suitors for him.
What was it about her that made him treat her differently? When Robin checked herself in the mirror, she looked just as much a woman as any other she knew. She’d been to Maribelle and Lissa’s tea parties, she wore dresses from time to time, and she’d had pretty good table manners after the bear meat that first night. When she first realized she loved Chrom, she’d had hope that maybe he would one day feel the same, but as each successive day passed she only found more and more proof that she was just a friend to him.
There were no signs of burgeoning feelings that she could detect. He’d removed his overshirt and swung his legs up onto the bed without a thought spared for either worry or excitement. Robin would have welcomed both, but she couldn’t help but feel that this was exactly what it would look like if Chrom was sharing a room with Vaike or Lon’qu.
“Robin, are you okay?” he asked, his voice snapping her out of it. She realized her brow had furrowed significantly, and she abruptly attempted to fix the scowl that had accidentally taken form on her face.
“Yeah! Just… lost in thought,” she said. A note of shame fell over her. Those were awful things to have been thinking about her best friend just now. “…I’m sorry.”
Chrom’s comforting smile only made her more ashamed. “Don’t be. Your thoughts are what keep me and the Shepherds alive, so I don’t mind if you get lost in them from time to time.”
She loved him so much it hurt.
“Thank you, Chrom,” she said, forcing out a smile and stopping herself from apologizing a second time.
He threw back the covers in invitation. “Now, shall we get some rest? I have it on good authority that a lady needs her beauty sleep.”
Robin let out a snort. “The prince could probably do with some himself.”
Chrom laughed, and Robin unlaced her boots and doffed another layer as she tried to stamp out the tiny embers of hope that had just flared up when Chrom had implied he might actually see her as a woman after all.
The sheets felt cold against her skin as she moved up onto the bed properly, but her whole right side burned anyway as she became painfully aware of Chrom’s close proximity to her. Robin sighed an anguished sigh. It was going to be impossible to sleep like this.
“I’m going to put out the lamp now,” she said, reaching for the nightstand.
Chrom shifted, and Robin could feel every centimeter of his movement through the deformation of the sheets and rustle of the blanket. They weren’t even touching, and yet this felt more intimate than anything Robin had experienced with another person.
“Ready,” Chrom said. Robin turned the knob on the side of the lamp, and the flame slowly died out.
The burning sensation remained as the room went dark. She couldn’t see him anymore, but she could still hear his breathing and feel the indent he made on the sheets, and she could not excise the traitorous part of her body that still ached for physical touch despite all the emotional distress the desire brought her.
She would have to just lay here, one side of her burning up from yearning while the other side shivered in the cold. Less than a foot from the man she loved, and yet still utterly alone.
Robin wasn’t sure how many minutes had passed before Chrom spoke again, but she had grown no closer to sleep.
“Are you cold, Robin?”
“I’m fine,” she said, because she didn’t know what else she could say.
Another shift of the sheets. “You’re shivering.”
And what did he propose to do about it? Robin wanted to shout at him.
“We’re in Ferox in the winter,” she said, playing it off. “It’s to be expected.”
“I… That doesn’t seem safe,” Chrom said.
Robin pushed herself back up to a sitting position, squinting as she tried to find their bags. “I can put my coat back on-“
An unexpected touch on her back sent a jolt through her body, and she gasped in surprise.
“Oop, sorry,” Chrom said. “I didn’t mean to scare you, I just- I wanted to offer…”
Robin’s heart rate had reached a record high, beating even faster than it did during battle.
“Offer what?” she said. She didn’t need to ask, of course; Robin could perfectly map out the rest of this conversation in her head. She just didn’t know what else to do.
“…It would be warmer if we were closer together,” he said. Finally, there was a hint of uncertainty in his voice, the worry that Robin had been looking for in him since they walked into this room together. “I apologize if the suggestion makes you uncomfortable.”
Robin sighed. Now that it was there, she realized it didn’t actually make her feel any better.
“It’s fine. This is probably the right thing to do, anyway,” she said, unable to bring herself to refuse.
After laying back down, she inched herself across the bed and closer to Chrom. The electric sensation across her skin grew even more intense as her body sensed how close together they were. She kept her hands clasped up by her chest, unsure of what to do with them, and stayed stiff as a board.
It was definitely warmer over here. Chrom must have had a higher running temperature than she did, since even the spots of the sheets and blanket that he’d been touching a second ago offered warmth that abated Robin’s chills.
“We probably would have had to do this in the tent, too,” Chrom said.
He had a point there. “Yeah… I’m glad we came here though. The fireplace was nice.”
“And the peace and quiet,” said Chrom. Robin felt the mattress move as he nodded his head.
“That too.”
They fell silent for a moment. Robin held her breath, letting herself listen to Chrom’s for a second. With the snow falling gently outside, and all the other patrons of the inn asleep, she could hear her own heartbeat, still beating a mile a minute.
Chrom was first to break it once again. “If you move just a little bit closer, we can share the pillow.”
If they moved any closer, then they would be right up against each other. Full contact; virtually indistinguishable from husband and wife. That was what she wanted, right? Robin had so few memories of physical contact with other people that she could probably recount every instance in order. She had no memories of a partner, and though her days with the Shepherds were full of laughter and good company, her nights were spent alone.
She thought about the happy couple she’d seen in Ylisstol, and how they probably slept right up against each other as well. That was what Robin wanted, right?
She moved closer to Chrom, finally bridging the gap and letting a wave of relief wash over her touch-starved skin. Trying to settle in, she adjusted herself to better fit against his side. Her bare foot lay against his calf. Chrom had moved his left arm to let her closer, and now her head rested on top of it. If Robin turned on her side, she could throw an arm over him, hug him as tight as she could, and complete this farce; make them look just like the married couple did in her imagination.
It wasn’t real, of course. Robin was happy to know what it would feel like now, but she had to accept that it wasn’t real. As Chrom snored next to her, she packaged her dreams of domesticity and pushed them as far back into the depths of her heart as she could manage. And eventually, sleep took her too.