Chapter 32
Previously:
“Mother is with him. I lost my sister, I don’t want to lose my mother, too. Harker hurt her, how much worse could a vampire hurt her?”
Now Quincy really digs his fingers into Arthur’s clothing, the fear of losing his mother even more than he already did with what the fae did to her gnawing at him, and even worse, the fear that he could be like that.
He wants Darcy’s drac.
He wants Darcy.
He remembers the feeling of holding on to her during the vision quest. Repeatedly. He trusted her. He remembered her when he was in his grandfather’s hall.
His queen. His fire. His safety from any ice in his heart.
He held on to John, too, but John needs his distance. It drives Quincy to only more desperation.
He wants his Cycy and his darling! He wants them to hold him!
But one is missing and one is only more emotionally cut off without his girl. He knows he’s rebounding on Arthur, maybe even on Radu, but he can’t stop himself, doesn’t even want to stop himself. Puppy, he said it, not good at being alone.
~
“If he’s the family-beating kind, I’ll find out. …Hopefully while surviving the experience. But… but I don’t think he is… I know I’m not you, I’m not good with social stuff, and I totally misjudged Gregory, but… but it just doesn’t feel right, it doesn’t fit with what I’ve seen of Vlad.”
Feeling Quincy’s tight grip, he gives him a concerned look. “Can I hug you back? You look like you could use a hug…”
~
How bad must it be if even Arthur notices?
“I could use one from Darcy… and, sorry, you’re my boyfriend, that should be okay, too. I’m not good with being hugged. Mind you, not as bad as John, but not good either…
“Do you think Radu would be okay hugging me, or is all touch a problem? If John is okay hugging people, maybe Radu is too? I should test that… maybe if he’d hug me, he’d be okay protecting me and Mother if my father is that kind of man after all. And now I feel like I’m rambling, bloody hell, I hate when I do that, but it always happens when I don’t feel sure, which I also hate… Great, that’s probably fae! Argh!”
Quincy’s voice trails up and down with his emotions, anger and hated powerlessness and, if he would admit to it, fear tumbling over each other. He has the idiotic sensation of his drac tumbling down the hill at the beach like he did a week ago.
~
Arthur rests his hands on Quincy’s sides and gives him a not-quite-hug, pressing himself close to him more than pressing Quincy to himself, hopes that that’s maybe a working compromise.
“Yes, you should test that- probably carefully. Why are you and John not good at being hugged? And is there anything I can do to help? Not with the hugging, with you not feeling sure.”
~
“I don’t like being taken care of, don’t like giving somebody power of me.
“With John, it’s because he never had autonomy over his own body, not with how he was raised, so now he’s overly vigilant over every little bit of being touched. It’s part of being respected as a man. Hugging him feels to him as if you are emasculating him, as if you don’t respect his masculinity.”
Wrapping his legs around Arthur, too, so he can pull him tight, Quincy chuckles, more because his emotions are so all over the place than because he’s amused.
“So in the end, it makes both of us feel weak and powerless, and I might be a queen and he a stag, but we both have male egos.”
“I guess I don’t?” Arthur muses with that obvious look that he’s on the trail of some realisation. “I like being hugged. It makes me feel like someone cares and I’m not alone. I suppose that’s more important to me than looking like some tough guy.”
“We all have our issues, and you were pushed and shoved all your life to be that tough guy, but never got any love. John was loved by his mother, I think, but never was allowed to be strong. You both are running from what your fathers did to you.” Looking to the side with a groan Quincy adds: “Same here.”
~
Arthur snorts at that. “So true. My father sure wanted me to be all… cold and tough and uncaring. Which, I guess tells us… extremes aren’t good for us?” he wonders, then snickers. “Not that it makes them any better fathers, but if you swapped us all around, we might’ve been better off… Your father probably wouldn’t’ve minded me, and you probably could’ve handled John’s father, and John might not have done too bad with mine… Though I wouldn’t want to meet any of us that got raised like that…”
~
“Gross!”
This feels like better emotions, just a thought running free, some social speculation, and, ugh, Arthur is probably right.
“Harker would have adored you! And I can’t really decide if I or John would have been the worse monster with your father, dreamscape murderer or fae power freak… Then again, John wouldn’t have survived with your father, he would have killed him.”
Quincy regrets saying it a moment after he did. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought that up again.”
Arthur sighs and tucks his head under Quincy’s chin. “My father is awful. …Maybe I should sicc Radu on him, too…” He chuckles bitterly. “And I was kind of imagining in this scenario that John would be born with a boy body and you a girl body… But that’d be really weird for you, too, even if you’d probably have an easier time pretending?”
“How about absolutely not?!”
The thought of being in a girl’s body has Quincy shake himself and make several grossed-out sounds.
Plus, now that is some horribly idiotic thoughts and social training, or lack thereof, or wherever that came from on Arthur, but it needs correcting and loudly. Why do people always have to think that just because, yes, he is all over men, he wants to be a woman? Not his flavour of queer! That’s like saying that John must be a molly.
Nope, he won’t have it. Also, not the attack on his male ego, he has one!
“I’m a molly and a top at that, not a woman! Please do not conflate my sexuality with my gender, thank you very much!”
“Um… sorry?” Arthur says. “I didn’t mean to offend you… I did say ‘pretend’… But I’m glad neither of us has to suffer through that,” he adds quickly. “And that John doesn’t have to, anymore, either.”
Still huffing and glaring, Quincy gives Arthur side-eye. Wait, that’s another perfect opening. He can use this. He can push Arthur and make himself feel better for that poke to his ego.
“You better make up for that.”
“Okay,” Arthur says sheepishly. “How do I do that?”
Turning his head slightly, Quincy pokes his cheek.
“Your boyfriend demands a kiss, right here.”
~
Arthur blushes a little- Quincy said the words ‘boyfriend’ and ‘kiss’ in the same sentence to him, after all- but on the cheek, Arthur can do, that’s not scary. In fact, he’s pleased that he can do that for some reason. He leans forward, and puts a kiss on the requested spot. “Better?”
“Yes, better.” Grinning at him with an eyebrow waggle, Quincy asks: “So, feeling any different now that you have kissed your boyfriend for the first time?”
That, of course, makes Arthur blush more. “Um… kind of a little embarrassed but happy, but not really different…?” he offers.
“Glad to hear that kissing me makes you happy. You should do it more often.”
Quincy follows that up by kissing Arthur’s cheek. “But why does it embarrass you?”
“It’s not like I’ve ever kissed anyone on the cheek before… and you put it as ‘kissing your boyfriend’… even if it’s just on the cheek…”
Leaning up to kiss his other cheek, too, Quincy chuckles. “Embarrassed was the last thing on my mind the first time I kissed somebody, so no, I don’t think that counts as an explanation for why you are embarrassed. Maybe you just need to do it a few more times to see that it’s perfectly fine.”
“Maybe you work differently than me,” Arthur offers, but leans forward to mimic Quincy and kiss his other cheek. “Like that?”
“Yes, like that.” Quincy chuckles again, but not in a mean way. He’s smiling, like he’s really enjoying himself, not thinking that Arthur is silly or weird. “And I don’t think we needed you kissing me to learn that we work very differently, honey.”
“That’s true,” Arthur agrees, cuddles down on him, and sighs, momentary levity passing as the weight of the situation settles back over him. “Thank you for being here with me,” he says, heartfelt. “Thank you for deciding to be my boyfriend.”
~
Sighing with all that sweet emotion being so freely given to him, yes yes, he’s aware why and that’s the one fae thing he doesn’t mind, Quincy puts both his hands around Arthur’s face and smiles at him.
“Thank you for keeping my fae side from joining my drac in howling, thank you for all the precious, sweet emotions that I so bitterly need. Thank you for being my boyfriend. You decided on that, too.”
~
“I’m glad to help at least one side of you,” Arthur replies. “And yes, I did- we made a deal and all.” He grins at that, pleased about it for some reason.
~
“It’s alright, Radu seems to be inclined to have our two dracs commiserate together.” Quincy shakes his head, it feels so right that it feels weird again, so he tightens his arms around Arthur and hums to himself for a moment. “Thank you for the deal, thank you for knowing all these things about fae now and helping me with being one, but not like them.”
“You’re way better than them!” Arthur says in staunch support, as he should, good boyfriend. “And I’ll learn everything I need to about them to find Darcy and help you, too!”
“We’re going to find Darcy not just for me. I’m sure she misses you, too.”
It’s true, Quincy knows his Cycy too well, he could flatter himself that she’s pining for him, but really, that wouldn’t be the woman he loves. He’s sure she’s growling and barking for her family, her pack?, wherever she is, whatever the fae are doing to her.
He shouldn’t have gone there, his imagination immediately comes up with too many ways fae could take advantage of his beautiful emotional storm of a wife, and he isn’t entirely sure what scares him more, that they may be doing any of those to her, or that he could come up with it.
Arthur rests his head down on Quincy’s shoulder for a moment. “I miss her, too- we only just really got closer, it feels like. I want to cuddle up in the library and read books with her again!”
“She got John to read books out loud with her; maybe she could coax you, too.”
Focusing back on that, trying his hardest to get his imagination to give him nice images, Quincy suddenly snorts, well that works. “And now I wonder if I’d end up acting things out with Radu. I wonder if Radu acts, he certainly knows his makeup well enough for performing. Maybe he’d do my makeup?”
~
“…He knows makeup?” Arthur asks, surprised- and glad to be distracted from missing Darcy with random information.
“Oh please, how could you overlook that absolute masterpiece of contouring?!” Quincy gives him a look that’s a bit more incredulous than it needs to be, as far as Arthur’s concerned. “I have half a mind to sneak into his room to steal that makeup box!”
Because…. “He was wearing makeup? …What’s contouring?”
~
“Him and me both. What do you think am I doing in the bathroom every morning?”
Now that’s a topic Quincy prefers, finally something he really feels in control of! Turning his head, he indicates his nose, really, maybe the part of his face he likes the least, but he wouldn’t be caught admitting to that, or to his efforts to make it look more delicate. “Here, this little beauty of a colour mix allows me to show off my best parts better than without the extra colour.”
~
“…That’s been a mystery to me until now,” Arthur admits, peers closely to see- oh, yes, that doesn’t look quite like Quincy’s skin colour. “That’s amazing! How do you know what to do? And what does it do? And how does it do it?”
Quincy starts explaining about shading and using colour to emphasise or minimise things, sees Arthur’s interested but uncomprehending look, and declares that he’s going to show Arthur, up they go, and also, his boyfriend needs a makeover and he needs a distraction anyway.
Arthur blinks but gets up, takes his offered hand and walks along with him towards Quincy’s room- but does request that Quincy doesn’t make him look weird or silly. Of course Quincy huffs that he would never! They meet Art in the hall, who clearly heard them and was coming to check on them.
Quincy assures him that they’re just fine, now, unless he wants a makeover, too, they have somewhere to be. That makes Art chuckle- Arthur has learned over the last week that he is rarely offended, and he likes that about Art, smiles at him in agreement that they’re fine. Art waves them on, even says that his wife might just appreciate it, but not today. He’ll return to Mariam and wait for an update from Lucy, who is accompanying Radu and John at the Court.
Arthur’s glad to hear that- Lucy might not be a very old vampire like Radu, but she is a vampire, and Principe, and hasn’t ever seemed very intimidated by either Vlad or Radu.
In Quincy’s room, Quincy sits him down in front of his three-fold mirror and gets out his big make up case. Quincy tsks at the state of Arthur’s hair, too, and gets to work, brushing and styling and dusting colour onto Arthur’s skin, explaining as he goes.
Arthur’s glad for the distraction, and he thinks Quincy is, too, even if Quincy’s work leaves him blinking at what seems like a stranger in the mirror- someone a lot less unobtrusive and ordinary-looking than he’s used to.
His hair is more out of his face, brushed back more, and his cheekbones are looking sharper, and Quincy put black colour around his eyes that somehow makes them look… sharper and darker.
Quincy steps back and nods approvingly at his handiwork, then looks Arthur up and down and declares that now they’ll have to do something about his clothes, too, he’s not wasting all his hard work on Arthur’s face and then have the rest of him look like- he waves a hand- this. Arthur looks down at himself, and asks what’s wrong with what he’s wearing. It’s a perfectly decent suit, but Quincy informs him there’s suits and suits and then goes on telling the house what he wants: Fancier fabrics, and a tighter cut on everything- gets possibly a little carried away on the waistcoat, because Arthur finds himself with one that’s dark blue silk with a black floral pattern embroidered on it that is way, way fancier than anything he’s ever worn before.
But Quincy’s excited, and he thinks the house might be, too, because it adjusts the fit to be snug before Quincy can even say anything. Arthur self-consciously buttons his new and improved jacket of much finer black wool closed over it, but that doesn’t help much when Quincy folds a matching blue silk handkerchief into his pocket to stick out daringly.
Which is when he notices the absence of the notebook holster he gave Arthur for Christmas, which really would improve the line of this outfit- where is it? Doesn’t Arthur like it?
Of course that makes Arthur blush and vehemently deny that- he does like it! A lot! Um, so much that it feels kind of… special and… daring? He’s not sure how to describe it, but Quincy chuckles and asks: “Too manly for you, honey?”
Which… maybe, Arthur has to concede. Of course, Quincy points out that now his outfit is a little daring, and it’s a very good look on him- of course Arthur blushes, but concedes that a holster would fit with that, and asks the house for it, puts it on under the jacket, and looks at himself in Quincy’s standing mirror- definitely feels like he’s looking at a stranger.
A fancy and intimidating stranger.
Putting his hands on Arthur’s shoulders from behind and leaning in close, Quincy grins at the reflection.
“Now that’s a boyfriend I can brag about!”
Arthur blushes more, but, well… “Really?”
He doesn’t think anyone’s ever bragged about him. Well, not true, Gregory used to brag about his smarts… But somehow, that’s very different- maybe because he did it when they were in some kind of fix and daring people with it while Arthur would’ve rather stayed unobtrusive.
“Can’t you see it? This is a glimpse at the man underneath your shyness. Look at those pretty eyes and you showing off that, yes, you keep a cool head in a crisis.” With another grin, Quincy turns his head and kisses Arthur’s cheek. “Well, until after the crisis, when you let your boyfriend have all those pent up, precious emotions. Oh yes, boyfriend material through and through. I like it! I like it a lot.”
He rests his chin on Arthur’s shoulder, eyes wandering over his work appreciatively.
Arthur studies his image in the mirror again. “…It still doesn’t really feel like me. But, um… thank you for your hard work? And I suppose… I mean, I suppose I wouldn’t mind being that guy,” he admits, taps at the person in the mirror’s glass. Quincy definitely didn’t make him look silly.
“If you want to be him, want to be yourself, let me help you believe in it. I trusted you, Darcy trusted you. Would we do that if this wasn’t who you really are but can’t see because of where you came from? Who you listened to?” Letting go to stand next to him rather than behind him, Quincy smiles encouragingly as he takes Arthur’s hand.
Arthur thinks that over. “We said earlier how I didn’t want to be a tough guy… But that’s not a tough guy look, is it? That… that could be a me who’s strong without being the kind of person my father wanted me to be…”
With a snicker, Quincy runs his thumb over Arthur’s hand. “Oh honey, definitely not a tough guy. I went for driven scholar, eccentric professor, confident mage, with your look. You don’t tough things out, you think them through, and this is showing that off. It’s showing that you are strong,” Quincy pauses, thinks about it, then smiles, “for the people you care about, not for yourself or the power.”
Arthur smiles back, feels it slow but deep on his face. “Yes, that’s the kind of strong I want to be! Thank you for… giving me a look for it?” he offers, because that’s not something he thinks he could’ve come up with himself.
~
“Privilege of having a fabulous boyfriend like me! Ooh, I can’t wait to show you off to John and Radu!” Grinning even wider, Quincy takes one more turn around Arthur. “Yes, yes, perfect, our smart tactician. I do social, John is in charge of anything that needs punching, and once we have Darcy back, the leader is in the house. Now I just need to come up with something for Moonshine. Oh, I know, politics, perfect, no more boring noble work for John and me, he can have that all to himself! Hah!”
Arthur chuckles. “You’ve got it all planned out, huh? And what does Mariam get to do?”
“I’ve had girl time with her for a week, frankly, probably boss Radu around and make John question if he really should be ogling her.”
“…I can see her boss Radu around,” Arthur concedes.
Eyebrows rising, Quincy lounges out on his sofa to enjoy the view. “Well, hear hear, realised that obviously I’m right about Moonshine?”
Arthur sits back down on the chair in front of Quincy’s vanity- straddles it backwards and props his arms on the chair back and his chin on his arms as he thinks. “Well… not entirely, maybe. But… well, I was all antagonistic at him and he even got a bit hissy about it, but he still didn’t hurt me at all. That means he’s not as dangerous as I thought.”
Wagging his finger, Quincy disagrees. “He didn’t really get hissy about the antagonism, he got hissy at thinking you’d called him a Lugat, that was the word, right?”
Arthur nods. “Yes, that was it… and, you’re right. Um, that makes a difference, right? I mean, I still apparently insulted him, but actually by accident…”
“And what did he do when he realised you didn’t do it on purpose?”
“Uh… nothing?” Arthur offers. “Except, I guess, explain why he was insulted. Which is because he doesn’t kill people to eat them. Which kind of makes it sound like he actually likes people?” he wonders.
Once more wagging his finger, Quincy smiles. “He did that adorably old-fashioned ‘apologising while bowing to you’ thing. And oh yes, Moonshine definitely likes people, he must have been so flustered when Cycy stood him up for the date. So many people he had to thank for their time and send away, the old romantic.”
Arthur blinks. “Right… he even apologized. How weird. And you really think there were lots of people involved? And that he’d be flustered? …I can’t imagine him flustered…”
“’I really think’? Honey, he was telling me the whole production earlier! Life music, dinner, private theatre performance, he didn’t spare any expense, and then she doesn’t show up!”
The thought of having been the cause for that has Quincy giggle again, it’s just so strange how different that night went for both of them and how much they both felt terrible about it in very different ways.
“…That is a lot of lengths to go to. And stuff Darcy likes…” Arthur sighs. “Did she also do a drac bonding thing with him? Or how did he go from wanting to use her to actually caring?”
“You do realise they spent hours with each other? They talked and danced and,” Quincy hesitates because how can he even say this without freaking Arthur out, but it’s such an important part of their connection, so he goes for the drac metaphor after all, “their dracs recognised a matched set of needs in each other that I believe had Darcy’s drac reach out to his so much that he had no chance but to realise that her love is real, and if there is one thing Moonshine needs, it’s being loved.”
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