She studied him for a long moment, the kind of look that felt like she was weighing considerably more than just the practical merits of the offer.
"You’d need to be shown properly," she said finally. "It isn’t the same as lifting me into a bed. There’s technique to it — pressure, angles, how long to hold a stretch before it does more harm than good. I won’t have you guessing."
"I wouldn’t want you to let me guess."
"Then yes." She said it plainly, without ceremony, already reaching to close the book in her lap like the matter was settled. "This afternoon. I’ll show you what I need, and you’ll listen, and if you do it wrong I will tell you, and you will not take it personally."
"I can work with that," he said, and found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he meant it more than the practical framing of the offer probably should have allowed.
He gave her the morning to finish her reading and himself to settle the nerves that had crept in the moment she’d actually said yes, and by the time early afternoon light slanted warm through the bedroom window, he found himself standing at the foot of the bed while she directed him through the process of getting her settled against a stack of pillows, propped at an angle that let her legs rest fully extended in front of her.
"Sit," she said, gesturing to the space beside her legs. "You’ll need to be close enough to actually do this properly. I promise I won’t bite."
"Good to know the ground rules." He sat where she’d indicated, more aware than he wanted to admit of how close that actually put him.
"Start here." She guided his hands to the muscle along her calf, his palms flat against skin that felt cooler than he expected, the muscle beneath softer, less defined than it should have been on someone who’d once commanded from the front lines of actual battles. "Firm pressure, moving upward, never down. You’re encouraging blood flow, not pushing anything toward the joint that doesn’t want to be there."
He worked slowly, following the shape of her instruction as closely as he could manage, painfully conscious of every place his hands might be doing something wrong. She corrected him twice in the first few minutes — higher, there, hold it longer than that — her voice clipped and clinical in a way that helped, actually, kept the whole thing anchored in practicality rather than whatever else it might have threatened to become.
"You’re overthinking it," she said, after his third small hesitation. "I can feel you deciding whether you’re allowed to press harder before you actually do it. Just do it. I’ll tell you if it’s wrong."
"Trying not to hurt you."
"You won’t, if you listen." A beat, something almost wry creeping into her tone. "You’re remarkably careful for someone who threw himself under a collapsing wall without a second thought."
"Different kind of careful." He found the rhythm she wanted, firm and steady, and felt some of her own tension ease under his hands as he worked higher along her calf toward her knee. "That was instinct. This is deliberate. Deliberate is harder."
She didn’t answer that one right away, and when he glanced up he found her watching him with an expression he hadn’t quite seen from her before — something quieter than her usual assessing look, softer at the edges.
They fell into a rhythm after that, quiet stretching between them that wasn’t uncomfortable so much as full — the small sounds of her breath catching when he found a spot that needed more attention, the occasional murmured correction, the study-quiet hush of afternoon light moving slowly across the floor. He lost track, somewhere in it, of how much time had actually passed, aware only of the steady work of his hands and the particular, careful trust it took for her to let him do this at all.
"There," she said eventually, soft, when he reached a spot just above her knee. "That one’s always the worst of it. You’re doing well."
"High praise."
"Don’t let it go to your head." But there was warmth in it now, unmistakable, nothing like the clipped correction from earlier.
He looked up to say something back and found her already watching him, closer than he’d realized, the space between them having narrowed at some point without either of them tracking exactly when. Her eyes weren’t guarded anymore, not in the way they usually were — something open in them instead, something that matched the warmth still humming quietly under his own ribs since the night before.
Neither of them moved for a moment. Then, slowly, she did — or maybe he did, he wasn’t entirely sure afterward which of them closed the distance first, only that it was closing, her breath close enough now that he could feel it, the two of them tilting toward each other.
[DEVOTION LOGGED: SUSTAINED PHYSICAL CARE — THERAPEUTIC ASSISTANCE][DP AWARDED: +6][SKILL UNLOCKED: STEADY HANDS (PASSIVE) — REDUCES RISK OF ERROR IN PRECISE OR DELICATE ACTIONS]
He nearly groaned out loud at the timing of it, the notification blooming directly across his vision at the exact worst possible half-second, and something in his face must have shown it, because Isolde pulled back half an inch, blinking.
"What," she said, breathless, caught somewhere between amused and annoyed. "What is it, what’s wrong—"
"Nothing’s wrong." He let out a short laugh, more disbelief than humor. "I think I’ve unlocked a new skill."
Isolde stared at him for a beat, processing that, and then — for the first time since he’d met her — actually laughed. Not the faint almost-smile she rationed out so carefully. No, this was something real, startled out of her before she could stop it, her head tipping back against the pillows.
"That is," she said, still laughing. "That is pretty normal now that your mana core is active."
"In my defense, I didn’t ask for it."
"No, I imagine you didn’t." She wiped at her eyes, the laughter settling into something softer, warmer, the charged tension from a moment ago transformed into something easier now instead of gone entirely. "As it develops, skills associated with your core will come to you like you’ve known it all your life.
He nodded. She probably was not aware the type of skill he was referring to. This was a system skill, not one related to his core.
"We should probably stop for today," she said, though she didn’t say it like she entirely meant it.
"Probably," he agreed, and didn’t move either.