Chapter 36
Previously: The Rose of Whitby – Chapter 35
Llew stares at the box. She made something for him, now that’s weird, but humans are weird, bloodsuckers are worse. But damn, if she gets any more emotional, and sweet emotions like that, he’ll pop a boner any second now. Wait? Did she just make him feel something? Oh dear, is she flirting at him? How did she know fey go weak in the knees if you actually tease an emotion out of them? That woman, damn! Oh, right, gift, he’ll rub his sister’s nose in that! Hah, a human, no, a bloodsucker, made him a gift! So much for him being impotent, failing to get emotions out of them! He takes the box from Darcy with a wide smile, opens it and blinks- she made him a scarf? With floral decorations? Oh, that is so sweet… and there’s the boner he predicted, whew, sweet emotions of that calibre, what is a fey supposed to do here? He puts the scarf on and grins only wider, thanks her, he’s glad that they can start over. He doesn’t want her to avoid him. Damn, that’s even the truth. He chuckles, she’s doing a number on him here. How about they discuss how they can be friends now over a cup of tea?
Unfortunately, he doesn’t get the chance to enjoy some more of Darcy’s emotions, because her boring father and bloodsucker mother are already in the salon. Though for once, Darcy’s father might not be as boring as usual, there is a lot of emotion going on between him and the bloodsucker, and it gets even more when Darcy steps into the room.
So he makes his exit with some of those pretty words everyone on Midgard is always so hung up about, and slips into the room next door to bask in all that intoxicating emotion without them holding back on his account.
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It takes a little while, and Darcy repeatedly defending her papa for locking her in a room, but Lucy finally agrees with Jackie that yes, he’s hurt that she ran away from them, and she is hurt that he treated Darcy’s dhampirism and her vampirism like a disease for all those years, but they both couldn’t have done it any other way and really, really, Jackie, all these years and you still produce a scalpel out of nowhere to fiddle with when you get nervous? Lucy gets up and walks over to him, hesitates for a moment but then sits down on his lap and takes his hand, leans in for a kiss. Here’s to trying again, to him being her man of science who stops at nothing to get his way. He smiles and agrees: To her being his rose, his shining beacon of feminine wiles and intensity.
~~~~
Darcy tiptoes out of the room as her parents get lost in each other again, only to run into Gregory, who had been eavesdropping. Shocked at that, she’s about to reprimand him when he manages to make her blush by just shrugging and asking when she ate last, that’s a nice neckline she picked. He had to say it like that, but yes, it is a nice neckline, her mother has been trying to make her feel more like a young woman. She ends up flitting her eyes at Gregory, he likes it, right? She’s trying for him after all. With a grin and pulling on his collar he asks if she could help him get rid of being horny, she made him, after all.
Still blushing but, well, it’s part of her duty as his woman and, well, she’s a dhampir, it’s not as if she doesn’t get being horny and yes, she’s hungry so she knows she not feeling very inhibited right now, she bites her lip and pulls him by the hand after her, far away from her mother’s vampire hearing. When she’s still a bit shy because he had to put it so crassly, he turns to his demon form and oh, that smell of his and suddenly she feels so hungry, and it’s her blood anyway, so she sinks her fangs in deeply, giving him what he wanted, but still makes sure to only take the edge of her hunger.
With a whine, he presses her face against his neck, tells her to take more, get rid of her hunger.
Oh, she wants to, but she knows she’ll end up being shy and inhibited if she puts her drac so far from the surface. She’s read more about it, talked to her mother, she knows her drac, her vampire soul influences her… and she realised she likes it. She feels freer, less influenced by all that difficult etiquette, all those human rules that were meant to keep her safe but also hurt, always have hurt her mother apparently. So no, please, she doesn’t want to.
He presses, come on, just a bit more, she knows she wants to, she likes being good for him, too, right? He just doesn’t want her to be hungry.
For a moment, she all but hears a voice in the back of her mind scream at her that it’s all hers, hers, hers, take it! No! She shakes her head, but his large hand is on the back of her head, she can hear the annoyance in his voice, she hates being bad for somebody she cares about so… okay. Biting him again, she drinks until she can’t feel any hunger anymore and yes, her drac feels all sleepy now, and with that she turns shy and vaguely uncomfortable with what just happened. Gregory tries to kiss her and she shies back, getting him to grumble that come on, don’t be like that, in a few weeks they’ll fuck anyway.
That’s too much, she feels really uncomfortable and strangely panicked and then faints at the shock that he would say something like that. When she comes back to, he’s handing her a glass of what he says is juice, she’ll feel better after that, he’s sure. He’s probably right, so she downs it, still glares at him over the rim of the glass, then notices the aftertaste. Is that… her eyes go wide. He gave her alcohol? He knows she doesn’t drink!
With a grin, he tells her she’ll stop being so shy, there, he can solve her problem without her having to be hungry. The glass very nearly shatters as she puts it down hard on the nearest table and marches out of the room. He tried getting her drunk, he… he… what was he thinking?! Tears brim in her eyes and she feels the slight effects of the alcohol, but instead of being relaxed like when her papa tried helping her with it, she feels her anger lashing harder than ever before.
Of course he follows her down the corridor towards her room, and no, she doesn’t want to talk! No, it’s not okay! No, she’s not making too big of a deal out of it! She slams the door in front of his nose and is glad when he doesn’t just teleport through it.
A little while later, she knocks at Arthur’s door, swaying slightly, and the red on her cheeks is only partially because of how embarrassed she is.
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Arthur’s first thought on answering his door and finding Darcy there all red in the face is worrying that now he’ll need to heal Gregory, too, from too much… well, whatever vampires and dhampirs do with people they like.
But, no, Darcy looks unsteady and her eyes glassy, like… like she’s drunk? Or trying not to cry? Or both?
That’s not much better than being asked to heal people for embarrassing reasons, but he hastily asks her to come in.
She does, and asks him if, please, please, can he heal this? And she says Gregory tried to get her drunk and that she didn’t know it was alcohol, and she doesn’t want this, please!
Arthur feels a pulse of outrage- Gregory did what?! And of course he tries to heal her immediately, but… but the spell fades right away, doesn’t seem to find anything to… grab onto, for a better word.
He tries, he really does, but he has to tell her that no, he can’t heal this. Darcy hangs her head and apologizes in a small voice for having bothered him for nothing and then slinks off.
Arthur watches her go, bites his lip- he doesn’t like seeing her so… upset. And he’s not the one who understands people, or knows anything about relationships, and he doesn’t think it’s his place to stick his nose into Gregory’s and Darcy’s (or anyone else’s, of course), but… But he does know that sometimes, Gregory has dumb ideas, and he means well but it’s still a dumb idea.
And he doesn’t think Darcy looks like she’s going to stand up for herself and give Gregory a proper piece of her mind. So Arthur resolves that he’ll have to do it for her.
Except Gregory’s nowhere to be found for the rest of the evening. The next time Arthur sees him is at breakfast the next morning, and so his initial flare of outrage has had time to cool down, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t ask Gregory what the hell he was thinking.
Gregory mumbles that he didn’t mean anything by it. He didn’t mean any harm.
Arthur’s glad to hear that, but he still prods until Gregory promises that he’ll apologize to Darcy when she comes down. When she hasn’t done that even hours later, way past her normal breakfast time, Arthur finds Gregory… well, not exactly hiding out, since he’s curled up in a sunbeam on a chair in the solar in his cat form, but still- exasperated, he all but shouts at him to go talk to his fiancée!
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When Gregory knocks on her door, Darcy is reluctant to let him in, makes him promise not to try to distract her away from the topic or just to give her wet eyes until she can’t keep her anger up. He promises, but seeing her sit at her desk, all prim and reserved, makes him shrink, falling exactly into the pitying routine she didn’t want him to do.
Nevertheless, she knows what she wanted to say, she knows why she is angry: He ignored what she said, he pushed her until she did what he wanted her to do, and when her warning then came true, he first complained, then tried to drug her into behaving like he wants her to! Where is she even supposed to start with why that is wrong?
He mumbles again that he didn’t mean it like that. Now he feels horrible, she’s clearly upset, all he wanted to do was help her overcome social convention…
With a sigh, she looks at him and reaches inside of herself. She still doesn’t exactly know what she is doing but she reaches for her inner strength, for a conviction that she can do more. It must have worked, she can see out of the corner of her eye that her mirror image has vanished, and she feels like the world around her is just a little bit more fragile to her touch. But more importantly, she can feel her drac lifting its head. She’s not alone in this, she can trust her drac, and that sense of having an ally, of having a part of herself she loves, helps to make her more secure. Can he please let her decide what’s freedom? What she’s comfortable with? Can he please not just assume there is something wrong with her when she isn’t rebellious by his definition? Can he please not make assumptions how her hunger feels to her?
He only shrinks further at that, mumbles that he didn’t mean to change her, he’s sorry, he doesn’t want to be like that.
Sighing once more, she shakes her head, she started changing when he was only Pretty, she’s learning how she is, who she is out here, what it means to be a dhampir. Can he please give her time; let her find her own path?
He nods eagerly, promises that of course he’ll do that. Also, he knows she got her pink riding dress ruined the last time she was out to help those tenants with finding their lost sheep, so since she was angry yesterday, he went and got her a new one, are they good now?
For a moment she doesn’t know what to say to that. Does he think she’ll forget everything if he just throws a gift at her? Then again, she has really started to like that dress, that impossibly bold dress with its masculine colour, so yes, she is delighted to have a new one, and Gregory looks so pitiable, so lost with what to do with the serious discussion, so she smiles. Okay, it’s in the stories, she knows how this goes, she knows it’s her duty to heal her man, to make him grow and better himself. Yes, yes, they’re okay now. At least that’s what she says out loud, and then tells herself she’ll forget how uncomfortable she was yesterday; it will be alright… it has to be.