Chapter 16
Previously: Obsidian: Crystal Heart – Chapter 15
As Quincy starts to hear snippets of Arthur’s thoughts drift past his drac’s ears more reliably than he did when he was hungry, a grin spreads on his face. This is much better, and Arthur needing him to do this, (yes, yes, liking him to, but he’ll take his care with as much self-talk as he can,) disperses the last bit of jittery panic that was sitting deep in his belly.
His queen is ahead, her gorgeous ruby hair illuminated by the gentle moonlight. The moonlight that glints off one of the crossbow bolt’s heads. The moonlight that seems to suddenly form a halo around his queen. The drac that chanced everything for him. Protected him. The halo of gentle moonlight distorts pink to his eyes, pink from the reflection of the drying blood all over his queen.
Oh Divine, why was he ever worried about his heart?
Idiotic crush on his father. That was nothing. Of course, he couldn’t know that. He didn’t know how unmistakable the real feeling is, and he cannot wait to shower his queen with it. In love poems and mindcrafted bites all over her.
~
For a moment, Arthur thinks that his eyes are playing tricks on him, but… no, that’s… that’s flecks of something starting to dance around Quincy, drift in his wake. And no, it didn’t start snowing, it’s just here, though some of the things do look like snowflakes glinting in the moonlight. But also there’s bits of soft glow, like fading sparks, and the vague shapes of darker and more diffuse… somethings. He reaches out a hand to catch some of them, and does feel the faintest brush against his fingers, but they vanish before he can bring them to his face to see what it is in the poor light.
He catches a whiff of scent, though- floral, fey magical scent.
Fey magic… Well, yes, Quincy is part-fey on his mother’s side- but they haven’t really seen him do anything fey so far, have they? At least, Arthur hasn’t, and if the others have, no one told him. And he’s pretty sure they’d tell him. After all, he’s the one to research weird stuff.
And, well, his mother was in a human body at the time Quincy was conceived, and she kind of still is, and who knows what that means for how much of those fey traits Quincy got?
But, well, yes, apparently enough to do the… fey glitter thing? Arthur’s pretty sure Quincy is doing the fey glitter thing, like Llew when he disappears. Except Quincy’s not disappearing, he’s just walking along the road, looking ahead, with these sparkles and drops and glimmers drifting after him, and Arthur thinks Quincy himself might’ve not even noticed.
~
Maybe he should practice? Yes, he’s an actor, he knows the importance of rehearsals, and it has to be perfect for declaring his love to her, and well, he’s sure Arthur won’t mind. Arthur is her friend, after all, and really, Quincy feels like just floating after her and serenading her with every possible romantic monologue he can remember from all the great plays. And some not so great ones that he still felt sounded lovely in that specific passage.
Oh he was so obsessed with love. The idea of love even. He learned so many pieces by heart. He wanted to give his heart an idea of how it must feel, but it truly was a theoretical exercise. Nothing could have prepared him, so he hums to warm up his voice and starts slowly, with the softer ones, with the ones that aren’t really worthy of his queen. He wants to taste the words in his mouth, wants to feel the sensation against his lips of every waxing line to really know which of them would be the wind under his queen’s wings.
~
Arthur can see Quincy talking, but of course he can’t hear him. Also, he’s not sure Quincy is really talking to him, his eyes are still mostly ahead on the road where John and Hannibal are walking.
Maybe Quincy is just talking to… entertain himself? Feel better?
Should he point out the glitter? Arthur’s not sure. Also, it’s not like they can talk about it right now. And Quincy doesn’t seem to be having any further effects from it.
So, with a moment of hesitation, Arthur decides to tell him about it later, when they can hear again, and for now settles into Quincy’s arms, because… because they aren’t safe yet and he has the gruesomeness of removing those bolts from Darcy ahead of himself, but for this moment, it feels like this road is its own little world in the dark and he doesn’t have to worry about any of that.
~
John felt too distracted with just managing to keep walking and not stumbling while keeping Darcy asleep, but luckily they’ve made it to the castle without any further trouble. Thank fuck for small favours. They still have a very hungry dhampir, who might turn wiggly when they try to get the bolts out. Although, he can probably keep her under for that. He’ll accept the potential pouting when she hears about it afterwards, but Arthur needs to gets a chance at healing her without her wiggling and, worst case, enjoying herself.
His girl is a weirdo, a very masochistic weirdo, but she’s safe, and that’s all that counts.
Walking into the stables and finally not having to focus on setting a foot in front of the other, he turns to see how Arthur and Quincy are holding up.
The fuck?
No, not the carrying Arthur around. That’s pretty much what he hoped would happen, that should have calmed their molly right down if Arthur lets him take care of him that much, but, is he seeing things? Nope, nope he isn’t and that’s… fuck, he needs to get that visual right, that’s three, no, four different glitter particle effects intermixed. Llew looks like a dull roman candle sputtering out compared to what that fabulous fuck of a guy is pulling there. And he better not formulate it like that out loud or he won’t survive the smugness of his bro, but still, what’s going on?
Not that he can ask, his ears are still impersonating ship horns. It probably isn’t a problem, Arthur would have done something about it, and he doesn’t think Molly’s aware. Okay, one dhampir at a time.
He gestures for Quincy to set Arthur down and instead get Darcy down. Much as he hates admitting it, John doesn’t trust that he can get a good hold of her as long as she’s up on Hannibal’s back, he’s not tall enough. Their beanpole is.
~
In the light of the stable, Arthur can see the glitter better, but it’s still several different kinds. The ones he couldn’t see so well in the dark look like iridescent motes now- a sort of gemstone sort of glitter?
Anyway, he goes to thank Hannibal with a pat for his help while Quincy and John get Darcy down. If petting Hannibal’s nose also serves to steady his nerves for what they’ll have to do now, well, all the better.
~
After Quincy pulls his queen gently and as steady as he and John can manage down from her current transport, he wonders for a moment where to now. Then his drac informs him that his darling already thought of that, and also is thinking hard at him in hopes to make himself heard. Yes, his queen is good at choosing men. Not just himself, but also their darling.
So he sets off to their bathroom, the bathtub definitely is a good idea when you have to cut pieces out of somebody, and no, Quincy refuses to leave… He won’t look, though. He can’t look, but he needs to hold her hand!
~
Arthur takes the minute to pull off Hannibal’s tack and just throw it over an empty stall door for now, gives him a last pet and assures him he’ll be back while opening Hannibal’s stall for him, and then leaves his horse to close his own door after himself while he catches up with Quincy and John in a quick dash over to the castle.
When he sees that Quincy is taking Darcy to her bathroom rather than settling her on her bed, he swallows, but… the bathroom definitely will be much easier to clean, yes.
~
Rather than crouching awkwardly on the outside, John climbs into the bathtub and sits down, lets Quincy hand Darcy in so he can settle her between his legs, make her as comfortable as he can. Then he exchanges a look with Quincy, they’ve done this before, back the last time John had to keep Darcy asleep. It’s not that long ago, but he feels far more confident, far more in tune with the man. And he trusts Arthur with the healing, but he knows he’s the only one who has the stomach for cutting his girl open to get the bolts out. He keeps thinking his plan at their Molly until he can see him nod. Go green, but nod.
So here he is, asking the house for a knife, a sterile one, and he wonders if it’s one from Jack’s room as he gets handed a scalpel, but that’s not the important part here. He can do this. He has to do this, and he can see the way Quincy is cradling Darcy’s hand tight between both of his, squeezes his eyes shut, but still, there’s the sense of their powers mixing. The way he felt before when they handed Darcy’s mind gently back and forth between each other.
He trusts Quincy to be able to hold her longer than a mere minute now, he can feel the way she slips out of his mental grasp but doesn’t wake. So, with a long exhale, he puts his concentration were he needs it, towards starting to cut the dress away from the holes, and then through her skin and into her flesh, until he feels the resistance against his repeated tugs on the bolts give.
Thankfully, the bolts aren’t barbed, at least that, he doesn’t need to worry about. Now just to keep doing this, and also feeding Darcy when Quincy hands her mind back to him. He can manage to stick his wrist between her lips and hold her mind. Yes, they just need to find a rhythm between all of them.
~
They can’t talk about how to do this, since they’re all still deafened, but Arthur finds they don’t need to. John takes the initiative on cutting out the bolts, for which Arthur is grateful, and Darcy doesn’t wake up, which he’s going to credit to Quincy. All of that means that he can rest his hand on Darcy’s shoulder, and add his healing to hers the moment John pulls a bolt free, can take some of the strain off of her blood reserves. And when, after a handful of bolts, John feeds her, Arthur simply moves his hand to John’s arm, and keeps him healed.
It takes concentration, and it’s unpleasant, but between all of them, this isn’t actually difficult to do.
~
Quincy makes sure that his idiot of a dedicated hunk doesn’t overdo it, he pauses him, sticks his own wrist between Darcy’s lips, (and really, she’s not awake but her body knows how to feed itself fully automatically.) He has some blood to spare, so he tells Arthur, well, by way of pushing his hand back gently, to also rest for a moment.
As long as he only looks at Darcy’s face, he doesn’t feel too bad about what they are doing. He doesn’t need to see any of the gore, and to his dhampir brain, all that smell of blood isn’t actually unpleasant. That doesn’t even feel strange after the last few weeks, and he’s glad for that.
Still, he is humming. Not that he can hear it, but the vibration itself is soothing, and he remembers how he and Darcy hummed back at each other, let each other feel the vibration, the emotions flowing between them. He can’t wait for his queen to return to him. He needs her, and she is the first person where that thought doesn’t make him hiss.
Yes, that’s what it means to love, he thinks.
~
And that’s the last one. Fucking finally.
And by ‘last one’, he means last thing stuck in his girl, because he got the last bolt out a while back, but John remembered the time Darcy told him all chirpy about the duel she fought and how her papa had to get the bullets out of her.
There, yeah, he is so fucking ready to wash his fingers and never touch a tweezer again. Done, he’s fucking done.
So he’s glad when his bro takes over there and starts cleaning Darcy up. She should be allowed to lie down comfortably in bed, but if they get her over there now, she’ll leave a worse bloodstain than she normally does after an evening date with the two of them. John’s not too worried about her waking up, so he gets out of the bathtub and piles the bolts and bullets into a bucket before getting over to the washbasin.
The way Quincy is twirling his finger in the air at Arthur makes him snort. Yeah, he better turn around or he’ll get a broadside of naked Darcy and he somehow thinks Arthur is the one in the room who would mind the most. Yeah, that’s the kind of small problems he feels he can still handle. He’s tired.
He was so fucking worried for his dhampirs, but they are both safe. He… he killed for them. And maybe he should feel more about that, but he thinks he’s too emotionally exhausted. He was so wired, so tense, so running on his hammering blood, that he’s crashing hard now.
He’ll deal with any moral considerations or such tomorrow. For right now, he just wants to get into fucking bed and feel Darcy pressed into himself… Fine, and feel the way that Quincy’s hands are just about not brushing against him where he is hugging Darcy from the other side.
~
Darcy is all healed up, and Quincy is clearly moving to take care of her. And John looks very exhausted. Arthur does agree with Quincy’s gesture- Darcy needs cleaning up, but that’s for the people she’s, well, sharing nights with, he doesn’t have her, well, permission to see her like that. Also, he would probably die of blushing and embarrassment and freaking out and all. It’s not an emergency anymore.
And while he really does want to know what happened, he still can’t hear, and everyone’s exhausted, and it’s late. So he nods a good night to Quincy, and dares to offer John a pat on the shoulder in good bye before he heads out to look after his horse. And cuddle with him a bit. He’s feeling… surprisingly not-wrecked. Walking back with Quincy holding him did a lot to soothe him, and since John did the gruesome parts of getting things out of Darcy, he could focus on the constructive side of healing things. And that felt good.
They’ll be okay, he thinks while he curls up under his blankets with Katharina. They worked together and they’ll figure this hunter situation out and they’ll be okay. And the whistling in his ears is starting to get quieter, so hopefully, by the time he wakes up in the morning, he’ll be able to hear again. Or maybe John will pull him into the dreamscape, if he’s not too tired.
It would be nice to relax and play somewhere fun and safe, and talk with everyone there.
~
She feels adrift, her drac floating next to her. Maybe that should feel nice, but her heart is beating so slowly that she has to check if she’s alive for several long moments by holding her breath. It doesn’t do much, but she can do it, so she guesses she is alive.
Is that good?
She supposes that’s good.
Doesn’t her drac normally like that? But right now it’s just floating, paws not settled on anything, just alone.
Alone?
Like when she lost Radu, when they ripped him out of her heart. When they told her she couldn’t have him. Tears start forming at the edge of her eyes, her drac’s eyes, she can’t distinguish, and everything is just floating untethered misery.
Why though?
Something feels strange about this because… because Radu has been gone from her mind for longer and her men have consoled her, have made her happy again.
She looks at her drac. It’s so… directionless. Not leaning any which direction.
Oh.
Oh!
OH!
Gregory!
Gregory is gone from her mind!
She can’t tell at all in which direction he is. Can’t reach at all and try to catch even a glimpse of his thoughts.
Gone!
Her drac is still untethered and directionless and her heart wants to tell her that she is feeling miserable and lost, but… but that’s, um, she blushes, but really, it is, so yes, that’s bullshit!
She’s free of Gregory!
Oh night, please let that mean the hunters didn’t only come for her and Quincy!
Finally opening her eyes and turning her attention outwards to the world that would be so much lovelier without Gregory, Darcy realises that her emotions’ insistence that she should feel terrible is doubly silly.
She’s in her bathtub, warm water running over her skin, followed by a not-so-gentle hand, slim fingers, soft skin: Sang du Coeur! He’s safe!
At some point during her fight, her drac must have taken over, she can’t remember how she won against the hunting dhampir, but they are home and he doesn’t smell hurt. No, not at all. She stretches upward to get a direct sniff at him and something about the way he immediately cups his hand on her cheek and smiles at her makes her pupils dilate and her drac paddle where it is floating to get closer after all.
His lips are moving but she can’t hear him. Somehow she has two chirping bats stuck in her ears that block everything out. She politely asks them to leave, she’d like to know what her Sang du Coeur is saying. Only because she hates words doesn’t mean that he does. She’s learned that. But somehow, no, the chirping doesn’t want to stop, and when she reaches up to take the bats out of her ears, they aren’t there.
That’s not fair!
She just knows that her sang du coeur is trying to tell her something important. And words are important to him, he must feel so left out. No, she doesn’t want him to feel like that! Tears begin to stream and instantly, he brushes them away.
Not just him. She can see him laugh when John forcefully shoulders him to the side so he has enough space to put one of his hands on her other cheek and wipe at her tears. She still can’t hear them, but she knows how the words look. She knows that Quincy is telling her: ‘Hush,’ and John: ‘Proud of you.’
Proud? Why is he proud of her? Oh, oh, of course, for protecting Quincy! She beams and leans her face into their hands. She did good for them, and even though her drac is still helplessly floating around inside her, it stops paddling against the air. Being good for her men is all she wants.
But she can’t stop crying and she feels so tired, so very tired.
She’s still crying when John carries her to bed, despite both her men doting on her. They don’t need words to reassure her. She doesn’t like words anyway. But all kisses and wonderful touch somehow can’t take away her heart’s attempt of being so heavy that it could anchour her drac down.
Darcy has tried to reassure them, but her men give each other such worried looks over her head where they sandwich her between them. And that feels so, so nice. Like a love cocoon. For some reason, she again thinks of Radu. Yes, love… but then she is whisked to John’s dreamscape and the association is gone with her sense of smell.
~
Quincy is going to shriek yet! The Divine found the worst way yet to frustrate him. Taking away his words! Ugh, this is torture! Especially right when he needs them to let his queen know what her valour unlocked.
It takes all his self-restraint, what little he has, really, to not fall over his own words when they are all finally back in John’s dreamscape. He has to be able to be heard here!
Just, now he has her hands in his and his mouth is already open and… they get bloody stuck because Darcy’s eyes are on his, focused completely on him, and all the words he wanted to say, all the grand love declarations, all the beautiful, eloquent serenations turn into a sudden sob and need to pull her in close.
She… she did it. She found his heart. And she’s a woman and how does that make any sense?!
Hasn’t he said for weeks that he won’t ever be able to return her love?
This entire constellation to make her love complete between him and John, no, he can’t bring it down! No, he… he cares for John, too.
Why is his heart always so destructive?!
He… he wants to yell at the Divine in triumph. Wants to declare that he isn’t aromantic after all. Just really bad at falling in love. And isn’t that just it? Isn’t being in love with her as bad as was having a crush on his own father?
His darling is right there. Standing right in his personal space, already patting his shoulder because he must think this is about the horror of the day. Quincy is crying and, of course, that would bring his darling, that wonderful hunk of a keeper, down protectively on him.
His bro. His only friend. He can’t do this to him!
But… what can he do? Now that he suddenly found his heart, it hurts as much as not having it before.
Even here in the dreamscape, now that he lets himself feel it. All of it, with Darcy right in his arms. It’s so big and unfamiliar and scary… So much so that he finds himself slipping down to his knees, dragging his Cycy along with him, and looking up at her is like staring at the sun directly. Like standing too close to an open flame. Irresistible in a deep instinctual way that makes no sense if you try to think about it.
He called her his flame before. She’s not a light to hold against the grey of the world, she’s the inferno to burn it down to its ground, and he can hear the icy whisper at the back of his mind to dance in the ashes. To wield the fire and conquer.
No!
No, that is what his grandfather would do! He knows it. He knows that whisper must be something fey in him. He hates it. He’s scared of it… scared… Like he was when he fell in love with Cycy.
Not a weapon to burn down the world. No, standing too close to an open flame because it keeps the cold away. Keeps him safe from the ice that really is all the greyness of the world driving him towards those hated, frozen whispers in his mind.
It’s okay if she protects him.
Oh, a woman never could protect him. She wasn’t a woman when he fell in love. She was his fallen angel blazing with all the fury of the Divine. Angels aren’t women, aren’t men, just as she is.
Now it makes sense, he’s not in love with a woman, he never could be, he’s in love with an angel, a drac, a flame.
“My fallen angel. My flaming protector. My Divine.”
It’s still not quite what he wants to express, but the emotion in his chest is still so very much too large. It feels impossible to fully comprehend, but maybe he can express it in stages. Talk himself and his lovelies through it.
Yes, his lovelies, not just Cycy. He refuses to not make his darling a part of this, because… because he himself was always the first to celebrate platonic love. All love is precious. All love seemed out of reach to him.
But here he is, crying at the immensity of his love and his immediate fear of it pushing John away. He hunted and longed for romantic love for years, and still he hesitated at the very moment he could have selfishly claimed it all for himself. No, he wants more.
He can give more!
The grey world and the Divine couldn’t keep his heart down, it only took an inferno, a raging river to unlock it, and Cycy wouldn’t be a raging river without her personal thunderstorm!
He reaches to take one of John’s hands and smiles as the hunk doesn’t even flinch away, although he does start looking very flustered a moment later when Quincy finally finds his words and cannot stop them even if he tried.
“I love you. I love you, Cycy. I love you, John. I love your girl. I love your borne. It took my heart being in danger of stopping for me to open my eyes and see all of you. Cycy, I can see your flame, see your soul, see your drac, and I love it. John, I can see your heart, your soul, your roiling clouds of protectiveness, and I love all of that.”
“I was so scared and hurt that I’d never know love but here I am, loving you both. Loving you so differently, I didn’t realise love came in such different sensations. I didn’t know how it feels to love a friend, John. I had to feel how it feels to love a raging river to understand it. You are right, the colours bleed out of the stars and the sky and the moon itself when your girl slashes her wolf-claws across all fears.”
“Cycy, my Divinity, my drac, my fallen angel. I love you. Let us dance in the circle of emotions that eluded both of us before. But let us remember that it is your dedicated protector, your first hidden husband who makes you the wolf-girl that burned my heart into submission to your love. I cannot and never want to replace him. His steady love is what lifts you to the heavens for me to be able to truly glimpse your flame. We are his dracs. There is no love without us loving him, too.”
~