He massages her in comfortable silence for a while. Notices that he's enjoying it and not particularly drawn to anything more, right now. 

"You should probably sleep soon," he says eventually. "I - would enjoy falling asleep holding you, but I have a Ring of Sustenance so I will inevitably wake up two hours later and then my body will be so confused." 

"I used to have that problem. Maybe soon I'll have it again. Do you want a massage too -"

"Yes, that would be lovely." 

Then she'll trade him!

Leareth does his best to relax into it, mostly not having thoughts, barely thinking at all about Gate-security or shielding on the palace or whatnot. He makes appreciative noises. Without really thinking about it, he lets his personal shields down again, not all the way but enough to project some not-quite-verbal appreciative communication her way. 

Awwww. 

Eventually she will in fact need to sleep but she feels like that was progress? Probably? She will kiss him good night.

Leareth thinks it was progress too. 

He kisses her back, and then arranges himself snuggling her such that he can extract himself without waking her once she falls asleep. 

Which she does, eventually. 

She stops shielding entirely when she's asleep, and has vague dreams about him, and about public executions, and about Iomedae, who shows up differently in her dreams than she looked to Leareth, when they spoke.

Leareth sits at the small writing-desk in his bedroom, working. He glances frequently at the stars through the skylight, and eavesdrops on her dreams; he can't recall ever doing that before, it's fascinating. 

Eventually, a couple of hours before dawn, he crawls back into the bed with her, carefully snuggles up without waking her, and goes to sleep as well. 

Then they'll wake up about the same time. Her shields snap back up, and then she lies very still for a couple of minutes, and then she looks over to see if he's awake.

He's getting there, drifting into lighter sleep, but not quite awake yet. 

(Leareth's shields do not budge at all in his sleep.) 

Damn, that's useful, how does he manage that. - probably a magic item. She'll hang out quietly until he wakes up, thinking. 

That went - okay? Not amazing, he didn't have a sudden revelation that now he trusts her and feels safe around her, and it feels like maybe there's something she could've done better so he would've felt at ease instead of frustrated and disoriented, but - they'll get there, they'll have a really functional marriage which also probably includes lots of interesting sex once he has warmed up to it. He is thinking of her as - with him for the long haul, to become immortal. She is pretty sure she doesn't want a method that involves murdering people, like he suggested that his did, but - there are other ways, right, there's whatever Aroden once had -

- she doesn't feel actively excited about living forever as his wife saving the world, more grimly determined, but probably several parts of it will be exciting. 

She is still super jealous of the pharaoh of Osirion and also dislikes him as a person just a tiny bit because of the offering Leareth girls as a present even though this is stupid and petty and she has literally herself done things much worse than that.

When Leareth wakes up he does so all at once, and also goes still for thirty seconds or so, in his case because he's checking his surroundings with mage-sight and Thoughtsensing.

Then he rolls toward her, smiling. "Good morning." 

"Good morning!"

He stretches and then hugs her, appreciating that she seems happy to wake up next to him too. "Did you sleep well?" 

"I did. Your bed is indeed nicer. - I used to have a nice bed. It's just the recent financial irresponsibility." 

She starts preparing her spells.

"So irresponsible of you, to become a cleric of Iomedae, receive mysterious visions, and try to save Cheliax." He kisses her. "We should get ready now. Do you want to have breakfast here, or once we Gate to Absalom?" 

"Absalom, if you know a place."

"I have a list of a few places, though I have not had breakfast at any of them before, I just visited briefly so I would have the Gate-location for it." He checks which restaurant on the list is nearest the illusion-cinema he wants to take her to. 

A restaurant quite near there can be found; Parmida knew the local restaurant scene quite well.

Perfect. Leareth gets dressed. It seems silly and not even really polite to turn his back for Carissa to get dressed, so he enjoys looking at her instead. 

"I did a little bit of it with magic," she says, doing up the laces on the dress with magic. "In case you are wondering how the children will turn out instead of just looking for fun."

"- I was not wondering that before but now I am."

When she's ready, and once he's finished praying for his spells, Leareth offers her his arm. "You have probably not been through a Velgarth Gate before, have you?" 

"No... thought about going to Velgarth invisibly while the big one evacuating Haven was up but I decided it was a stupid plan."

Leareth shivers. "I am very glad you did not! Probably it would have been fine if you had just done it briefly, since no one was killed, in the end; we had evacuated the entire Palace for it, but I nearly died. Technically did die, I had Contingent Resurrection set up for it."