Chapter 22
Previously: Obsidian: Ash and Moonbeams – Chapter 21
With a deep sigh, Darcy nods. It’s so nice to be taken care of and supported like this. It makes her think of Quincy and how he would hold her and ask her questions. Calidear is good to her like Quincy would be.
Just another reason that she needs to be good for him.
“You are right. He hates paperwork. But he’s doing it anyway, no matter if he’s baroness-consort or heir, but maybe it makes a difference because then I can announce to all the world that he’s my man. He is, I want him to, I just… clearly don’t know what to ask. How to ask?”
Like Quincy… Oh, oh, that might work! “But you are really good at this. You and Quincy can figure this out together and then you can tell me what I’m doing wrong. What I have to ask John to give me so I can love him properly.”
~
More like sit that man down and point out to him what he’s doing wrong, but yeah- clearly not how the puppy brain operates, so Caliban nods instead.
“It’s a plan. Let’s get you your man number… four? Am I counting right? Husband Quincy, villain Radu, needs-a-fix John, and me. Or are you collecting that mage, what’s his name, too?”
~
“What? Arthur? No! I’d never! That would be mean to him! He’s all scared of so much as the word sex. And I’m me!” The thought is so absurd that she’s shaking herself until she realises what else he said and smacks him. “Also, John doesn’t need a fix and he was there before Quincy, so if anything he’s number one… Oh, and now I kind of need to think, was Quincy or Radu first? I met them so close to each other. Hm, I had my second date with Radu before Quincy came to the castle. So there, John, Radu, Quincy, and yes, my dearest monster!”
Covering his chest with kisses, she chirps at him: “I’ll figure it out! And if I’m being silly, Quincy will figure it out and then I’ll love you properly!”
~
Knew it, he thinks, amused at her defence of John (who clearly does need a fix, if he loves her but hasn’t managed to get her secure in that through, apparently, lack of communication.)
Wait.
“…Did you say the mage is scared of the word ‘sex’?”
How the fuck is that… a thing?
~
She doesn’t want to be mean to Arthur and embarrass him, but also, it’s true and Caliban will live with them, he needs to know what he shouldn’t say in front of Arthur.
“I had to make Quincy promise to not make any of his quips in front of Arthur. Well, not out loud, him and John and I do lots of those with Quincy’s telepathy and John’s daydream power. But we can’t say any of that where Arthur could hear, or even just see a bit more kissing. He always goes all pale and green and uncomfortable. It’s really bad.”
~
“But… he’s a mage.” Alright, Caliban doesn’t really know how Midgardian mages work, but the idea of a mage who is scared of sex is just possibly the most mind-bending thing he’s ever heard.
~
Huh? Darcy has the distinct sense that she’s not getting something here.
“Calidear, can you explain this to me? What does magic have to do with Arthur being scared of sex and girls who might so much as give him a considering look for being part of my staff?”
Thinking it over again, she shakes her head because, no, the other mage she’s known, sort of, didn’t really fit either.
“When I had to seduce his father in the silly fae vision thingie it was more like a physical need, too. The man was like clockwork, boring if anything.”
~
Caliban feels his eyebrows rise because that sounds like a story that’s going to keep keeping him not-bored, but one thing after the other.
“Well, I don’t know how you do magic on Midgard, but… magic and sex go together? Not all magic is sex and not all sex is magic, but there’s still significant overlap. A mage being scared of so much as the mention of sex is like… if you were scared of the sight of blood, or something.”
~
“… I don’t think Arthur’s going to want to hear anything about Asgard magic. That’s sad, he is so curious normally. He loves magic. And really, best I can tell, that’s the only good thing he got from his father.” Grinding her teeth and scoffing again because, ugh, now she has the worst sort of memory of the man’s blood in her mouth, and for once, no, she doesn’t like it, Darcy ends up grinning despite that. “I killed him in the vision thingie and I told Arthur that if I ever see him, I’ll bite him real bad. Even Arthur didn’t object to that.”
~
Caliban shifts a little to sprawl out more comfortably, raises his eyebrows at her. “Okay, you want to tell me what sort of vision thingie that was? Sounds like you’ve no fondness for your mage’s dad, so why would he object to you biting the man?”
~
As if her life was good at short version. Not as if she ever gets a break, but she supposes she can quickly talk about the fae vision quest thing. And about Arthur being silly on some instances. Rolling her eyes because she is very, very sure that Arthur won’t ever hear about her being grumpy like that, she lets herself groan.
“‘Can we not with the killing’, is what he always says. Empathy silliness. So much of it. I mean, fine, I kind of know that it’s him rebelling against that meanie father of his who named him Arthur because he wants him to take over the British Isles. Silly, little man with an ego so blown up I would have complained about him being a boring villain in my books.”
Bleh, she wouldn’t want to read that one. No flair at all to the man! She likes her villains with, um, she guesses she likes them sexier. In any case, Calidear asked her about the vision thingie.
“So anyway, we live in a fae castle and we kind of one day just start having those visions. Winter trial? I think Llew said something winter and we made sure they couldn’t see Quincy’s symbol when he had his. But anyway, so it’s this thing where you have to do better than a supposed other version of yourself or something. For me, Arthur’s meanie father had trapped my drac away from me and threatened that he’d hurt Arthur if I don’t obey. So I played the wifey until the idiot,” she giggles at using Quincy’s word, but it fits so well, “thought that I fell for his strong, traditional guy charm or whatever he thinks he has. He gave me my drac back as a wedding gift and I bit him ‘till he stopped breathing and went to rescue Arthur. Tada, won my winter trial.”
~
“Oh shit, you got to do fae trials?” He pops his head up to look at her better in the dim light. “But you’re not fae? Just from living in the place? That’s wild. …What does that even do for you? I know they’re a major thing for a fae, really important for their growing up and what have you, but what effect do those have on a non-fae?”
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“Realising that my body is just that. If I can let Arthur’s father fuck me to get to murdering him, why should it hurt when the demon does it?” She remembers that sense of freedom, that sense of looking through her drac’s eyes and just seeing a dress rather than herself. “This human shape, it’s just a costume, it doesn’t matter what happens to my body. It’s not me. It’s a tool.”
But there’s limits even to that freedom. “A tool that’s so often faulty. Not woman enough for John. Not man enough for Quincy. And they still love me, but I hate not being better. This silly tool of mine doesn’t want to behave, doesn’t want to change as much as I need it to. And now it’s too weak to carry you.” She’s pouting and hugging her drac before it thinks she’s scolding it.
~
“Yeah, I guess it makes sense for a shapeshifter to be a little less…” he chuckles, “married to their physical form. But awww, puppy.” He ruffles her hair. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, huh? You’re a puppy, you still have growing and learning to do. Can’t expect yourself to just know everything right off the bat, can you?”
~
He’s so big and solid under her while being so sweet, so sweet it makes her cry.
“Thank you. Thank you for not posturing with me. Thank you for taking care of me. Thank you for letting me try to be good for you. I like being your puppy, like it lots.”
In fact, it feels more true if she feels closer to her drac, so she changes to her wolf form, even though that means her crying turns into making whiny noises. It’s not bad crying, she doesn’t mind crying, especially not from feeling so… now she nearly said loved, but that would be wishful thinking. No, appreciated and protected. Primarily protected and cared for. Like her men stuck together into one when she needs it the most.
~
Scratching his fingers deep and hard into her fur is easier than doing it with long hair, so that’s definitely something to be said for her wolf form.
“You’re welcome. This isn’t really much like me,” he muses. He feels so… settled. “Not usually one for taking care of anyone but myself. Or not posturing. You’re just really relaxing to be around. Just too cute and fun and fierce.”
Maybe it’s the hundred-and-fifty days of boredom by himself. Yeah, probably those have something to do with it.
In combination with her being very relaxing to be around.
~
Bath, he said he wanted a bath, and she’ll definitely find him a nice one when they go on their date, but she can help a little bit now. She wants to. She wants to reward him and show him that it’s okay to relax. After all, she gets that so much. No masks. Just yourself. It’s so nice to have somebody like that.
Scooting up a bit so she knows where she started, she begins to lick him clean.
~
Caliban makes a rumbling noise of pleased amusement at feeling tongue against his skin.
And then he yawns.
Fuck, he’s just so… relaxed. Bone-deep. So he decides: “Going to go back to sleep, puppy. Good talk, thanks. Tongue bath feels nice, too. See you later.”
She makes a wolf chuffing noise of what he’s going to take for agreement, same with the lick to his chin, and then he lets himself drift off again.
~
She wishes she could curl up on him and sleep. She knows the only reason she can’t feel it is because there’s no earth here. She has to be exhausted. But it’s no good. And she doesn’t want to worry him. She trusts in her family, her swarm. They’ll find her… Find her before the nasty things she’s read happen when you don’t sleep set in. They have to.
Of course, when it happens in the stories, it’s humans and it’s not that long. But she’s looked at Papa’s medical texts, too. She knows that was a bit naughty, but he has so many books in his room at the castle. And even better, he has files about some patients. He works too much. But it’s something her papa wrote, she likes reading his handwriting and his thoughts.
Just… she remembers the patient her papa administered drugs to, so they could sleep. Could sleep before it kills them.
She can’t die. No she can’t! It was in one of Quincy’s trials, she would be weak, she can’t be weak. No, she needs to grow into this Fenris wolf, or otherwise… What if Calidear thinks she’s not good enough of a monster for him, either?
She doesn’t want to be bad.
But there’s nothing she can do. Not about being unable to sleep.
What she can do is go back to her friends and help them and bring more things for her own nest. Make Calidear more comfortable. Be good for him.
She wants to. It’s something she can do to keep making herself feel that everything is going great!
~
At some point, Caliban wakes up enough to turn over, and ends up with his face against some unfamiliar, soft object.
His first thought is “pillow, nice”, and it takes him a few moments of falling almost back asleep before he remembers why there’s not supposed to be a pillow. So he pushes up, blinks- it’s still dark, only the reddish volcano light illuminating things, though the coldness to the air makes him think dawn isn’t so far off, now. And yes, that seems to be a pillow next to his head. A crude one, not entirely square or round.
A poke tells him it’s stuffed with something fibrous and much softer than the straw he’s found to keep himself off the ground, and the fabric covering it feels delicate. It’s not from his clothes, so it’s probably from Darcy’s?
Looking around the rocky nook, he can’t see or hear her anywhere, so he shoves the pillow under his head and goes back to dozing- fuck, that’s nice.
He wonders vaguely what else she’s going to rustle up. She seems very determined to improve his comfort levels.
Which is… so odd.
Has anyone actually, ever, cared about that?
He decides that those are thoughts that are far too deep and complicated for when he’s half asleep and the most comfortable he’s been in months.
~
Hold it steady, hold it steady.
Riding a spider is so much fun, but also, not something Darcy is very good at, especially not when she doesn’t have a hand free because she’s trying really hard not to let Caliban’s breakfast drop or touch anything. The spider silk bowl is helping lots with keeping the ash in the air off it, but while it holds its own form, it does bend when touched, so definitely not holding anything but the sticks she used for roasting breakfast.
Well, the second batch of breakfast. The first one didn’t work out so well. Nothing new there.
Especially not with her clearly being tired, no matter that she can’t really feel it. She’s just a little bit jittery. But that’s okay. She can deal with it. What she can’t deal with would be being bad for Caliban, and she so hopes to be back before he spots the curtains and plates she organized for their little nest.
Looking up, no, he’s not moving outside yet, is it dawn? She can’t tell with the weird light here, but she thinks her friend is getting tired, so probably morning. In other words, it ought to be okay to sing.
~
Caliban doesn’t think he fell fully back asleep, but he becomes aware he was drifting when, some unspecified time later, he hears an entirely incongruous sound: A song, bright and cheerful.
It’s Darcy, of course, and she sounds confident and on-key in her singing.
He doesn’t catch all the words, but it seems to be something to do with good mornings, and he finds himself smiling as he sits up.
She’s being adorable again.
Now that he takes a better look around, he sees that she’s somehow also constructed some kind of curtain over the top and entrance of the camp. It feels soft, dry, stringy- not like woven fabric, more like some sort of gauze or something.
He pushes it aside to find Darcy riding up to camp on the back of the (one of the?) pincer-spider(s)… looks back at the curtain in his hand, and, ah, he has a suspicion what that stuff is.
~
“Good morning, Calidear!”
It’s so nice to have somebody to chirp that at. Although it’s also really weird. She’s never the first up. Normally John and Quincy have to coax her to get up. For a moment, that makes her feel worried and like she’s missing them all over again. Another night she’s not been with them.
She hates every single one of them, but she has to hold on to her hope and belief that it will only be a few more. It won’t be long. It can’t be. Not with how she can feel the lack of sleep already, and, maybe worse, the way her drac’s paws have lost traction a few times during the night when she didn’t have Caliban to focus on.
Quincy’s blood in her is all but completely gone, she can feel it and it terrifies her.
No, she can’t think of that. Think of taking care of the man she has here, instead!
“I made you breakfast!”
~
Caliban eyes the contraption in her hands. It looks like a sort of… balloon, made out of more spider silk, he assumes, which she’s holding closed over the ends of some sticks while also trying to keep the body of it from touching whatever is presumably on those sticks on the inside.
“When you say ‘made’… Can I assume that involved some sort of cooking process? Because I could really do with some food that was involved in some sort of cooking process.”
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“Lava.” Fine, she does notice she’s blushing anyway, so she might as well fess up to it. “The first batch burned up, sorry. This is the second attempt. I had to wrap the meat and the mushrooms in the watergrass. That was wet enough to help me not have everything just turn to charcoal.”
Looking even more sheepish, she pulls her braid to the front, shows him the singed end. “I should warn you that I never was very good at cooking. It was the best I could come up with. But, um, I made us plates. They’re over there, wrapped in my clothes so they stay clean after I washed them in the stream. The canteen is full again, too.”
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“Oh, I’ll take it,” he assures her, turns to see the bundles of fabric on a boulder a few steps over. “At this point, plates and lava roasted meat and mushrooms qualifies as luxury. Thanks, puppy.”
~
It feels so good, so good, to feel her tail wag hard at his words. She did good!
“Calidear, can you lift me off my friend? I…” For a moment, she hesitates a little bit. He was posturing so hard… But, no, he wouldn’t hold it against her, so she admits to it: “I don’t trust myself fully to climb down gracefully. I’m starting to be a bit jittery.”
~
“Sure,” Caliban says, and gives the spider a nod of acknowledgement before stepping in between its legs to reach Darcy.
He respects these things. Sure, he can kill one easily, they’re fairly fragile, but they’re fast and fierce and rarely alone.
And now they seem to be the puppy’s friends, so.
He wraps his hands around her waist (easy enough, they fit fully around her) and lifts her off.
“What’s got you jittery, puppy?”
~
Relaxing into his touch, Darcy still makes sure to thank her friend and wish her happy dreams, oh, and kiss her babies good sleep from her!
Once she’s sure her friend is well on her way safely, there is still the little bit of discomfort of admitting to the full extent of the problem. If she acknowledges there is a problem, then it makes it more real. She doesn’t like that. But they are monsters together.
“Lack of sleep. I could sleep but didn’t do it much last week with the fae, and now… Time feels weird here. It’s morning, but it feels like it…” Concentrating, she tries to figure out as best she can, going by what she knows of her normal rhythm. “It feels like it should be at least afternoon. And I didn’t sleep at all. Won’t be able to sleep. If… if my swarm takes longer to figure this out… I…”
Now she’s biting her lip, because she doesn’t want to be bad for him, but not saying something when you care is like lying.
“You can die from lack of sleep.”
~
There’s a sort of swooping sense in Caliban’s stomach that takes him a long moment to identify. Worry. Her words worry him, and… What the fuck is that about?
Okay, fine, it’s about losing the only thing that has made this place less tedious.
And maybe the ideas she’s put in his head about improving things even more.
Company. More comfort.
And, okay, fuck, he likes her. It happens rarely enough.
You’d think he’d know better than to be… attached (fuck, he is, isn’t he?) after a day, but here they are.
“Muspellheim days and nights are long because it’s so large,” he explains absently while he carries her over to the cloth-covered plates she mentioned.
He looks her over, and… there are dark circles under her eyes and her features look a little drawn.
“Okay, you’ve mentioned it before, but explain why you can’t sleep to me?”
~
Smelling his worry makes her want to lick his face reassuringly, but also, if he worries, that must mean it’s really a problem. She was so hoping she’s just being emotional from lack of sleep.
“I don’t know why, but the soil of my motherland needs to be in the room for me to be able to sleep. Vampires even need to touch it. Without it, I just toss and turn with no rest. Like… I don’t know, as if there was no bed at all?”
Maybe there are smart vampire scholars who have theories. Things her papa and Arthur would like to read, she’s sure, but she’s neither a scholar nor does she feel smart.
~
Caliban snorts. “What are you, Vanir?” He sets her down carefully next to the flat boulder with the cloth bundles. “That sounds like a weird-ass magical restriction.”
Also a very inconvenient one right at this moment.
“Is there… There’s got to be some way to get around it, right?”
The local wildlife didn’t kill her, falling from the fucking sky didn’t kill her, he didn’t kill her… It can’t be some weird magic quirk that gets her.
Right?
~
First he calls her jotunn, now he asks her if she’s Vanir, not as if she would know. All she can do is helplessly shrug.
“If I were, what would you say is the best way to get around their soil restriction?”
Maybe he’s smart enough to figure something out. Maybe some food will help them think.
“But have breakfast while you think… I don’t know what else to do.”
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“Uh… that was more of a joke, because of the soil thing.” He unwraps one of the plates, to find that it’s a flat piece of rock- slate, he thinks- indeed nicely cleaned.
“And they don’t need home soil to sleep, they only need it to make babies… I think, they’re pretty secretive about all of that. But they’re plants, so it stands to reason.”
The breakfast, it turns out, are pieces of mushroom and meat skewered on wooden sticks, all wrapped in some other plant stuff that must be the watergrass she mentioned and a bit singed around the edges.
But far be it from him to criticise the puppy’s lava cooking adventures, and he makes a low sound as he pulls off the first bite, feels the crackle of a cooked outside, the sweet tang of roasting, even a touch of salt from the crisp, dried watergrass around the outside.
“That’s so much better. Thanks, puppy.”
~
That really, really shouldn’t be the direction her brain goes, but she can feel her drac tilt its head along with her.
“Wait, so you think that maybe there is something with soil I could do about me being barren?”
Really helpful, even if he has any ideas. No, silly, focus on the more acute problem.
After she smiles happily about his praise of her cooking skills. That thought makes her chuckle.
“You might be the first person to ever enjoy something I cooked that much. No wait, not true… I did make something with Mina. And for Christmas we all cooked together.”
The memory stings. Good and bad emotions so tightly intermingled that she really doesn’t have the capacity for that right now. Bad timing, she should really rather just try to get her food into herself. Be sensible.
~
Her question brings him up short. “Uh… I don’t really think so, puppy? Unless you’ve ever shapeshifted into a tree?”
He reaches over with his free hand to ruffle her hair, because she looks… sad. Like her ears would be drooping if she were in wolf form.
~