Chapter 21
Previously: Obsidian: Crystal Heart – Chapter 20
Whoops, that took longer than he thought it would, his gums hurt a bit from the absentminded brushing he kept doing. Well, just means the dracs should really be about done.
Hm? Yeah, that’s definitely one of them getting out of bed, and fast. Did Darcy manage again to do her paw tap dance right on poor Quincy’s bladder? Wouldn’t be the first time John would get to laugh about desperate dhampir running to the bathroom. But nope, that’s Darcy, and aiming right at him. He has just about enough time to rinse his mouth before she, at least, doesn’t jump, no, she climbs up on him and presses a kiss to his lips.
Not that he minds her kissing him, but… wait a second. That’s not the aftertaste of blood, that’s blood she definitely still had in her mouth. It’s not harshly, but he still pushes her back slightly and, oh fuck, is that a mischievous grin? Yes, it is, but only for a moment before she gives him the big puppy eyes, that fucking look she always gives him when he knows she’ll chirp a ‘Love you, want to love you the right way’ at him. And there it is, yes, but now she’s added a: “So here is our promise. We’ll both love you the right way!”
Promise… half a mouthful of blood, promise. John leans sideways to look if he’ll see another mischievous grin, yupp, there is his bro, lounged out on the bed, giving him an eyebrow waggle and wink.
“You two! I’m not fucking marrying the Molly!” But John knows that there’s no bite to his protest, that groan isn’t upset, just given up.
“And I’m not marrying the only man I’ve ever loved as a friend… Well, that would still make you the only man I’ve ever loved, fickle fey heart and all that, you know, darling. But it is my promise that you’ll never be a third wheel, it’s my promise that I’ll kick our fallen angel until she finally scratches whatever she calls a brain together and sees what a hunk of a keeper you are. It’s my promise that you’ll get your blood bond, too.”
Yeah, John’s follow-up groan at that really doesn’t do shit for hiding how touched he is, so he does the best thing he can come up with to get them off the feels track Quincy is trying to get them on here: He walks over and ruffles Quincy’s hair, (to the expected squealing and swatting protest,) and reprimands him for ruining the mood John has in mind for their nightly adventure.
Now that got a reaction, an instant naughty grin, and then Quincy declaring that obviously that can’t be borne, he’ll be the good boy he always is and get bed ready, right now.
“Not falling for that one again, Molly, get your praise fetish from our wolf girl. I refuse to give you boners.” To Quincy’s credit, he doesn’t snark back an ‘again?’ there either, just laments, overly dramatically, his poor lot at being in bed with such a manly man of a sexy hunk and at the same time a world away. Yeah, John’s getting the weirdest kind of used to hearing things like that, but it always makes Darcy nod so enthusiastically and have her snap her fangs at Quincy that he needs to behave. His girl is protecting John’s comfort, and she doesn’t even need to with his bro.
Yeah, fine, fuck, only to himself, he’ll admit it: Evenings like this… yeah, he loves those two. He can’t wait for Quincy to make his promise real and for Darcy to love him the right way. If Quincy says he can make it happen, he will.
Some preemptive rewards might just incentivise him, so John helps Darcy with her hair to speed up the getting-ready-for-bed part, helps her out of her clothes, too. More to make sure she doesn’t rip them again than because he needs to, she’s stopped wearing corsets in the house, and while John misses the bit of cleavage those gave her, well, this way he gets to see her breasts bounce around every day for longer. That’s a plus, too.
But that’s all just foreplay for finally getting to their dreamscape, seriously, since when is he the impatient one here?
Worth it. Totally worth it, though, when he sees his dracs’ faces at the outfits he gave them, and Darcy, obviously, does what his girl always does: stick her face against all the places he made sure to saturate the lingerie with over-the-top smells of both of them.
Quincy giggles and swats at her that she has better ways of sticking her lips places. “Now I have to know, what fun yellow cover have you been sneaking while I wasn’t looking, darling? These are lovely! And you look ever so good in chaps.”
~
Not that Darcy isn’t curious, too, and not as if she doesn’t like to sniff all over Quincy’s hips, but the buttons, there’s a symbol on them and she knows that kind of round, intricate interlacing of lines. That’s a fey symbol!
A fey symbol John put on Quincy’s clothes, not on hers, no, a quick rummage around herself and a sniffing run over to John make sure of that… Okay, after she gets distracted by John being so, so sexy in chaps, her sang du coeur is right! But back to the important part, fey symbol! And also, actually, she didn’t really look before, too focused on her men, but they are standing in a grove. A natural dome of green above them. It’s beautiful. There are night friends sitting on the branches and peeking in from between the trees. The trees that kind of form an… oh, ooh, AH, an aisle!
She whirls to look along the full structure and right there, in a moonbeam that’s split by leaves gently swaying in the wind is a, uh, it’s not really an altar… Her eyes grow wide.
Not an altar, but right in the place of an altar there’s a fairytale bed. Not the one from their bedroom in John’s cabin, no, this one is even more elaborate, she thinks. Oh, and when she goes sniffing about it, it smells of them intermixed and of blood and there’s carvings on the side. Pictures of some of their adventures! Um, and pictures of some of the naughty things they get up to on those adventures, too.
Then she hears John’s whistle and she runs before she consciously deciphers that it’s the ‘heel’ one. She just wants to be good for him, listen to his whistles like his good wolf-girl! And when he digs his nails into her neck to hold on to her, she chirps and wiggles happily. Only more so because Quincy is chuckling, apparently only now looking around as well, and tutting at John that he’s up to something.
Of course he is! How could he not? He’s so wonderful, so sweet. Her hidden husband. Oh, husband? So she chirps up at him, at his clearly anticipatory smile:
“You made me a much better church! And a bed for an altar! Am I marrying my hidden husband?”
~
Alright, clearly, Quincy lost any chance of being jealous because John’s smile dissolving into a coughing fit is just precious. Cycy must have gotten something hilariously wrong, but Quincy is here for this drama. For the way John is staring at her. And, ugh, now his telepathy would be really handy! He is curious, godammit!
With what his last vision was, not that it wouldn’t be a good balance, but he didn’t have the time yet to tell his lovelies the details, so John couldn’t know. No, he must be up to something else. Although, marrying in chaps, Quincy is tempted to insist that John really does!
All hilarity aside, support is the name of the game here.
“I can see that you didn’t plan that, darling, but you know, you should think about it. Bit unfair to do all the duties and not get a party for it, hm?”
Aw, if John looks any more emotionally overwhelmed, Quincy might need to shush at his stray instincts. Those deserve to be murdered when it comes to his friend. No, instead, Quincy runs his hands over this gorgeous bit of lingerie he’s wearing here, all refined and poetic next to John looking the very image of a hunk in leather. Oh, but the texture on the silk is shudder-worthy, his darling got so good at this after just a bit of polishing. And the distinct hardness of the cufflinks against the cool softness, ugh, okay, head out of the gutter. He should say something about a detail, John loves comments on details.
So what kind of cufflinks are lingerie in John’s world? Huh, Quincy can’t say he has any idea what he’s looking at. But he can see that he’s looking at something important, with how John is clearly distracting himself from being flustered by way of looking at the inspection. And Cycy’s wiggling held-tight neck to butt, uh huh, those two know something he doesn’t. “Alright lovelies, tell me so I can appreciate it properly! Got to give the maestro the appreciation he’s due. It’s pretty, but what is it?”
“It’s part of who you are!”
Not helpful, Cycy, not one bit, but she’s so excited that Quincy didn’t expect her to be good with her words. Instead, he focuses on John, who, oh la la, is pulling his shirt open. Oh right, he has one of those circles tattooed on his chest! And he said it’s from his vision. Quincy outpost, good work, you managed to spot the obvious, really, you’re prettier than you are smart. Ugh, that should have clicked faster!
But now he’s properly curious! He knows that John’s means ‘protector’ and Darcy’s ‘hidden in plain sight’, which both really are spot on, so what could his possibly be? Beauty? Eloquence? Elegance? Oh, please let it be elegance! Not that he feels he might not ruin that with how close to wiggling along with Cycy he is. Which, passion? His could be passion! He’d like that!
When John laughs and agrees with the last one (tease!) but says it’s none of those, Quincy huffs and gets over there to swat at him.
“Tell me, you brute!”
“It’s why you’re the one getting the wedding setup, sparkler. Ever since you’ve been really in love, you’ve been showing it off, even though I’m not sure you noticed. So no, not passion, your symbol means ‘dedication’.”
Dedication? Him? But he’s a flighty bitch?
No, belay that. The idiot who left his lovelies was a flighty bitch. Quincy refuses to be anything like that absolute rubbish version of himself. No thank you very much. He might be prettier than smart but he’s not utterly brain-dead! What kind of absolute waste of moisturiser would he be to leave his queen? What kind of absolute pre-processed maggot belly ache would he be to leave his darling?
No, not on his watch!
Dedication. Well, yes. Mister Dedication.
That’s him now.
He’s… in love. He found his heart. No, his lovelies found his heart! They guided him through each vision.
Oh… that’s probably it. He was dedicated to his belief that they wouldn’t let him rot in prison. He was dedicated to his belief that his queen is the only one he is willing to hand any emotions to. He was dedicated to stand with her even in the face of death and loss. He was dedicated to his friendship rather than fight a John who won his queen away from him.
Huh… that feels so unlike him for a second, but only until he looks at his lovelies and no, no, he wants it to feel like him. He wants to be dedicated to his heart. And he doesn’t have one without them. Cycy, their raging river. John, their thunder stormfront. Yes, it’s right where those lighting strikes hit the water that he feels most alive.
Yes, he’ll be dedicated to them. And that means he knows what to do!
Letting go of the cufflinks, he feels a wide grin spread on his face. John is going to punch him for this.
“The answer is ‘Yes, I do’. To both of you. So how about we get to the honeymoon?”
Oh yes, that got that grunt that totally is a played-over ‘eep’ from John, always a bit faster at catching on than Darcy when it comes to social games. And that’s all Quincy wanted before he lets out his laughter, because, hell, is his heart overflowing with it.
Sure, it’s a tease, but… but if there was such a thing as friend marriage, hell yes, Quincy would marry the hell out of that hunk, that keeper, that utterly breathtaking man he gets to love Cycy together with!
But he doesn’t want him to be uncomfortable, no, he loves him too much for teasing too hard, so instead he smiles and walks over to take Darcy’s hands but addresses John:
“This is your reward for me, isn’t it? Before I will let myself be utterly spoiled by you, darling, I just want to say one thing. Well, maybe more if I think of more, but one thing first. The last vision. Darcy had picked you over me. I was just in time to crash your wedding. I wanted to do nothing more than strangle that utter idiot. When, not if, don’t you dare even question it, when Cycy marries you, I want to have been there from the very first step. I want to see your smile, I want to carry your rings, I want to throw you a terrible bachelor party and plan an extravagant honeymoon.”
Reaching to take one of John’s hands, Quincy sighs for a moment, not because he’s feeling anything but jubilant, no, just because his heart feels so right. “She’s my queen, your culver, but she’s our Darcy. There’s no love without all of us. I know you’re the monogamous type and I actually think so am I, but… you are my friend and I never want to be your rival. I want to make you happy. That’s what I meant with the ‘Yes, I do’. Yes, I do want to marry Darcy, I am going to cry the moment you start this dream, but I want to see you marry her, too. So this is just part one, okay, bro?”
And there’s his backup, Cycy is stomping her foot and trying to wrap herself around both of them. “Sang du coeur is going to make me love you the right way and then I’m going to marry you so hard! I want to love you the right way! I want to marry you! I want to have your puppies! Even if you have to make them with that Mariam…”
Oh Divine, can Quincy ever see how jealous she is! And he has to say, he’s very glad that Cycy is a fallen angel, not a woman, he really doesn’t think she could have found his heart if she was, but he also very, very much doesn’t want to be with somebody pregnant, ew! More importantly, that was a heartfelt declaration, and that he agrees with. So he winks.
“Better your puppies than mine. I’m bad at hitting that hole anyway.”
There, that pulled John out of the overwhelmed. Quincy knows full well how deeply touched their manly man is, (even without the night friend gallery having started up singing in animal voices,) he doesn’t need to make it so harsh that John might cry. He knows that’s a big no-no for him. Although, maybe at some point Quincy should kick him to get there. But not at this wedding. Maybe on whatever he expects John to throw for the next one. One where the altar isn’t an obvious love nest and they’re all wearing what’s one step away from dungeon wear. Although, for all he knows, that’s just hidden underneath. In either case, next wedding, he wants a bigger spectacle than just the three of them!
But not now, now he wants his lovelies, now he wants John to be the captain of this ship and thereby being in charge of the ceremony. Now he wants to be irreverent and naughty and just live with abandon. This isn’t about gravitas and commitments. No, this is a celebration of love the old fashioned way. With excess and laughter and entangling bodies and hearts in carnal dedication to each other’s orgasms and enjoyment.
Not fucking the pain away! Not being a tool! Not extracting what he wants from his strays!
No, there’s nothing ‘just’ about their wedding. And he’s going to keep calling it their wedding because yes, he’s the one kissing Darcy (first), he’s the one improvising dedications to her (first), he’s the one using a claw to cut her a red ring on her finger, but he very much insists that she promises to both of them. He very much insists that John kisses her second, that John improvises dedications second.
And yes, he very much insists that it’s not him fucking her first!
That idiot version of himself who let his lovelies get away from him can seethe in whatever hell it believes in. He’s better! So much better! Better than the one who let Darcy die to Radu, too! He wouldn’t be alone with her! No, he would have John to protect them both! He’s not the one who ended up in prison either! He’s so much better than that one, he can’t even fathom it. Get himself in prison and worry his lovelies sick? Over his not tragically beautiful corpse!
No, he’s better than all of them and as much as he adores the dream John built them, no, he wants out of the dreamscape! He makes John wake them up because the dreamscape is perfect in so many aspects but one! He can’t get John into a full double dhampir emotional bite there! It’s just not the same impact and he has to pour his heart into his lovelies!
And… when, instead of punching him away, John puts one arm each around him and Cycy there really is nothing else Quincy can do but start crying against John’s neck and show him all the relief, too.
He loves him. Loves him how he thought he couldn’t love a man. And it means so much to him that John treasures it rather than push him away. That John knows that he’ll never be predatory, that he never, absolutely never, will touch him sexually. This isn’t about sex. This is about love. Platonic love. Platonic love just as hard as he loves Cycy romantically, and he wants to pray at both those love altars all night long.
That they do it back and forth between the dreamscape and their bed, their wedding bed, means only more. He can’t feel anymore where Cycy’s loss of self in their love ends and his feeling on top of the world begins and where John’s incredulous comfort and hope blurs into everything, too.
By the end of it, they’re so tired that they don’t even go back to adventuring. They’re just a pile of cuddles with Cycy a conduit between them because, no, he’ll not even touch his darling sensually, no, he knows their boundaries and for once in his life he has absolutely no interest in pushing them. He’s content and that is an emotion nearly as unfamiliar as love.
Now he has both.
Now Quincy knows what real bliss is.
~
6 Jan 1900
Arthur wakes the next morning without any of the clear memories of dreamscape adventures. By the time he’s yawned and sat up in bed, anything he might’ve remembered from normal dreams has vanished, too. It’s a quiet, cold morning that makes him grateful for the good wool clothes the house provides him with, and Katharina’s purring warmth in his arms and on his lap on his walk to and during breakfast.
Fog hovers around the windows and spills in through the kitchen door when he lets his cat out. It would be spooky, if he wasn’t warm inside a castle with dhampirs and what not. He’s more on the side of the spooky things in the fog, these days, he supposes.
Or maybe he always was. Certainly, people in London treated him as such.
Which used to bother him, but only, he considers, because he wanted to have friends. Now that he has some… Well, he isn’t sure, just that his life really has improved a lot from last winter.
And he could even head over to the London house, to his little attic room, could look out the window, down at the familiar view of Severn Street and the jumble of roofs and chimneys of East London.
He considers it for a moment, but then decides he’s got other things to do, and the castle is nice and warm, fires magically crackling in all the rooms they usually use. He’ll see London later, anyway, when they go research in Art’s library.
So he does the circuit through the entrance hall to pick up the paper and the mail. Thankfully, there’s no mention of any massacres found in Whitby that he can see, reading while he walks up to the study. He’s just on his way past Darcy’s room when he finishes, so he makes sure to fold the paper back up quietly.
Not that he’s likely to wake her up, he’s pretty sure he can hear her snoring through the door.
That reminds him of Quincy’s quip about knocking if he doesn’t want to… He doesn’t remember how exactly he put it, but anyway… He assumes that means Quincy and John are also there, as he gathers they’ve been the last little while, and he doesn’t want to wake them, either, if they’re still asleep.
Oddly, he thinks of the night he slept on Darcy’s couch when they got back from London, just after Radu’s first attack. That’s only a few weeks ago, but it feels a lot longer. It was kind of cosy, despite also being awkward. And, huh, no Quincy then, they didn’t even really know him yet.
That is very strange- he’d swear he’s known Quincy for more than a matter of weeks!
He shakes all of these thoughts off, and continues to the study, flipping through the rest of the mail stack.
Only to stop at a thick envelope with the seal of the Order of Galahad on it.
His heart skips, his thoughts startled up like a flock of starlings, it feels like- Gregory. Whom they haven’t seen for days now.
Oh god, what’s he done now?!
Arthur bites his lip- is this a crisis? Can it wait? He turns his head. He’s only a few steps away from Darcy’s door.
He could knock?
But… wouldn’t that be weird? Does he dare? He doesn’t want to disturb the others, or wake them, or bother them needlessly…
On the other hand, he doesn’t really want to face whatever this might be alone, either.
He hovers, awkward, unsure, for a long moment.
He could just look into the envelope.
But what if it’s some bad news? Some new crisis?
He’s being silly, he’s sure. Even if it’s bad, he could knock then. Knowing by himself for a few minutes, or even a few hours, won’t kill him.
He just doesn’t really want to.
He wants someone to back him up, to give him a hug or a pat to the shoulder, if it’s John, if it’s some kind of disaster.
And… and didn’t they say he could come to them if he needed anything? Maybe not in so many words, he doesn’t remember, but at least in behaviour, at least the gist of it?
They’re his friends. He can count on them.
So he bites his lip again, then takes a deep breath, turns around, takes a few resolute steps back and raises his hand to knock- hesitates again, and then makes his knuckles rap on the wood. Not too loud. He hopes. If they’re really still asleep, maybe he doesn’t want to wake them. He’s not sure.
~