sterngaze | open post

[ All-in-all, the longest part of the way back is convincing the moth to do it. It's not a creature that excels in planning, nor in considering long-term rewards, and its relationship with Cardan hinges strongly on Cardan's ability to bribe it into compliance. Making it understand that he will give it alcohol after they get back is a trial and a half. He has all but resigned himself to the necessity of finding ragwort to magic into horses instead... which is, of course, when it finally deigns to stretch out its wings and allow them to mount its fuzzy back.

From there, it's the same dizzying ascent and descent through the skies.

Once they are on solid ground again, Cardan takes one look at Liem, frowns, and demands to take over the meetings instead. He's not so daft that he cannot handle some merchants, surely, and in his current state, Liem is liable to scare away any visitors. Besides, does Liem really wish to look upon Gusairne's unsightly visage in his current state?

Of course not.

Surely he would prefer to put himself to bed instead.

Cardan hasn't had much sleep, either. What he does have are endless reserves of spite for the house seneschal, and servants who will bring him coffee, and cream, and sugar, and he manages to harness enough of the above to get through the night. That morning, when he slips into bed, it's the second day in a row that he does not bother with clothing, though he's expecting marginally better results this time around.

Not that either of them have much energy left for fucking.

Still, Cardan will reach one long arm over the chasm that is their bed and curl warm fingers against Liem's side before he drifts off.

It's a promise, or maybe a warning: he doesn't intend to go without touch again. ]

[Liem expected the ride through the skies on their trip home to wake him back up — and it does, after a fashion. Listening to Cardan attempt to convince the moth to carry them back nearly makes him succumb to laughter — though he restrains himself for Cardan's sake — and the dizzying climb has a similarly nerve-tightening effect on him as it did on their flight to the woods to begin with. He's certainly not in any danger of dozing off before they land.

But his wakefulness doesn't stop his brain from feeling like it's full of bees, or his thoughts from struggling to form as though through syrup, and he suspects this is more obvious than he'd like. If it's apparent enough for Cardan to insist on taking over his obligations for the night, he'd rather not show his face to any of the people he's meant to be seeing. In any case, he's curious what kind of results his husband will get when left to his own devices.

So he retires to their rooms for a much-need bath and a change of clothes. (He sneaks a trip to his study, but he's there for less than an hour before his attention starts to wander badly enough that even he admits he'd better just go to bed.) By the time Cardan joins him, Liem is completely dead to the world.

Though he does rouse enough to turn toward the warmth of his fingers and cover Cardan's hand with his own.

The following nights vanish under a welter of activity. A distant cousin of Iago's arrives without warning to stay for the week, and keeping the Duchess both entertained and out of mischief is a full-time job. Even with Cardan's assistance, Liem feels almost as exhausted by the end of that week as he had the night before she arrived.

It does not make for a fruitful atmosphere for getting to know his husband any more intimately.

But life goes on, as it must. The Duchess does finally consent to depart, and Liem has the opportunity to catch up on some of the work he'd neglected during her stay. He also has the opportunity to attend a dinner hosted by a neighbouring count, and this time, his husband is welcome to accompany him.

Obviously, as at any good vampire dinner, the food on the table isn't considered to be the main course, but when the "entertainment" portion of the evening begins, he finds himself glad of the excuse to slip away with his decidedly non-blood-drinking spouse. A little after-dinner drink has never gone amiss, but he's far too married to enjoy even a private vein with anyone now, more's the pity. And privacy does not seem to be the popular consideration of the night.

Well, he knows this manor well enough to find his own. There's a parlour across the house that's too small to see any use at an event of this size, and at this point in the night, no one will miss them if they vanish to make use of it. He guides Cardan unfailingly there, fingers twined furtively with his warm ones, so they can make their own entertainment.]

[ Cardan would have been glad for most any excuse to leave once the blood feast starts. It’s not that he’s squeamish about public sex – nor most acts of public violence – but looking around to see nothing but blood-stained fangs and writhing mortal bodies makes him hyper-aware of the warm reserves of blood contained in his own body. He’s certain he’s delicious, but he rather prefers not to feel like a meal on a platter.

Attending these things with Liem is both better and worse. In this particular case, it’s decidedly worse, at least up until the point his husband takes Cardan’s hand and leads them out. Cardan follows, curious about the determined way Liem plunges them into the depths of the manor – only realizing his intent once the crowd thins out around them.

At that point he only grins and laces his fingers more tightly with Liem’s.

A week. A full week of nothing more than half a dozen hastily stolen kisses, lingering glances from across dining tables, and dull conversation about the Duchess’s favourite hunting dogs. Sometimes, Cardan wonders if he isn’t in a fairy tale – one where the handsome, wicked villain inevitably gets punished with a taste of his own villainy. But that hardly explains why Liem (also handsome, decidedly less wicked) is suffering also.

Regardless, Cardan is all too happy to remediate past wrongs. The parlour door hardly has time to shut behind them before Cardan presses his husband against it and proceeds to put his hands all over him, determined to sneak under his beautifully tailored suit as soon as possible. ]

I am, [ he promises – rather laconically, considering that he’s speaking in-between frantic kisses, ] going to ruin you.

[Admittedly, a full week of unintended celibacy right after he finally got a proper taste of his husband has made Liem more than a little distracted. He's wanted Cardan's hands on him again for the entirety of the Duchess's visit, when circumstances could not possibly have been less favourable; now that they have no demands on their time, he cannot think of anything that he wants more, and that has affected his priorities.

It means that as they leave the sounds of revelry behind them and the manor around them goes quiet, he is much more intent on navigating the halls than on paying attention to the servants they pass, and the glance he gives the parlour as they enter is equally cursory. He sees no one within; he hears no breathing but that of the man next to him. By the time the door has closed behind them, his thoughts have already turned to warm hands and that impatient mouth.]

Oh, good.

[He murmurs as he's pressed back against the dark wood, his fingers tangling in Cardan's collar, sliding over the hot skin of his neck and jaw as he chases those kisses, careless of petty concerns like breathing. A shiver of keen-edged desire lances straight down to his cock. Good; he wants Cardan to ruin him. He's full to the brim with frustrated need, and he wants to feel wrung dry.]

[ Cardan’s own initial examination of the parlour hit only on the one thing he cares about: its lack of other guests. And though he is loath to pull himself away from Liem’s hands, from his mouth, he also knows what he wants to do next. Typically Cardan doesn’t plot out his trysts – much – but the past few days have given him more than enough time to think about it. In lurid, excruciating detail; at dinner, at outings, while consolidating menu lists. Sometimes first thing in the evening, upon rolling over to find Liem’s side of the bed long abandoned in favour of his office.

So.

He is going to sink to his knees. His palms drag down Liem’s sides; Cardan will mouth at the fly of his trousers, warm breath ghosting over fine fabric, even as his hands pin Liem’s slim hips against the door. For a short moment Cardan relishes the feel of him, the scent of him, swallowing down his impatience long enough to tease both of them, still–

He doesn’t hear the silent movement of well-oiled hinges; his first indication that something is off is a slightly misplaced foot on a creaky floor board. Even then, he only scowls and twists to look over his shoulder, expecting to find a guest but spotting the drab colours of a servant’s uniform instead. Was there another door–?

That's the last thing he thinks before pain blooms in his shoulder, sudden and unexpected. He only barely registers it before she’s already moving, fast, and there is the glint of something in her hands–

And all he can really think, through the haze of shock-pain-lust, is that he really, truly doesn’t deserve this. ]

[Liem's eyes follow Cardan down, hungrily, as he sinks to his knees. How could they not? The smell of blood still lingers in his thoughts from the feast they left behind, and the warmth of his hands, his mouth through the barrier of fine clothes is tantalizing. He resists the urge to squirm against the hands pinning his hips to the door — for now. For now, he just—

Hears a small noise, here in the room with them. His gaze flicks up to find a human figure in servant's garb, and it's this incongruity — that any servant would appear so soundlessly, in a room where servants have no business currently being — that makes his heart clench even before her arm moves to send a blade spinning towards them.

Alarm snaps him away from the door with violent haste.

He circles Cardan in a few short steps, details flaring like lightning strikes through his awareness: the glint of blades in her hands, the un-servant-like economy of her movements, the sharp note in the air cutting through Cardan's usual scent. Somehow it takes him the space of another quick, stalking-cat step toward her to register that she must have been sent here specifically to kill them, and the understanding sends an unpleasant thrill through him.

His hands, poised and open between him and the assassin, flex very slightly.]

[ She smells like ash and blood.

Probably not her own, though there is something subtly wrong in how she moves – fast, unnatural, her bones too mobile beneath the skin. Liem's moving in front of Cardan gives her a half a breath's pause. She seems to evaluate whether he's worth the trouble – as with most assassins, she's far more content being an ambush killer. But he's unarmed, she's decidedly not, and her target is too close to ignore.

So she lunges, anyway. Her arms spread as she does... and then spread more, pulling the skin along her wrists and elbows open. It will shred like tissue paper when touched, revealing mottled, bone-white skin and feathers beneath. Once ripped, the whole thing deforms like a deflated water skin; her face sags at her jawline and then splits entirely, revealing her true features: a down-turned beak, amber owl eyes, and a mass of feathers and hair.

She is also still horrifyingly fast. The stick-thin limbs close in, her shining knives gripped in taloned hands -- one slash across the vampire's throat, and if he dodges that, surely he won't dodge the one thrust into his stomach. What help will his little outstretched hands be, then? Surely none.

And the bleeding princeling behind him will be even easier work. ]

[Even before she attacks, Liem knows the woman is Wrong for a human; her scent is too alien, her movements too strange. The details ping as important, but he has neither the time nor the capacity to puzzle out their meaning. Shortly enough, the answer is made clear to him regardless, though too suddenly for him to process before it’s too late. He’s already moving, human opponent or not.

Because Cardan is still behind him, bleeding — and whatever this woman is, Liem can’t end her life without getting closer.

When she pauses, Liem tenses in his half-crouch; in the next moment, he explodes toward her. His arm snaps up to absorb the momentum of her first swing, contacting flesh with impact that doesn’t just bruise, but — horribly — tears that outer layer entirely. Liem registers the sensation with shock, even as he continues his movement to hook his arm around hers in an attempt to lock her elbow against him.

He’s not just trying to get inside her reach — though as he registers the true length of her arms, the necessity of that does become clearer to him. His momentum carries him directly into her lunge: into her chest, slamming his entire weight up through his head and shoulder — attempting to break her poise and force her back as he tries to wedge his head under her jaw and into the crook of her skin-and-feather-covered neck.

And it carries him into the dagger she thrusts into his stomach, jarring a strangled hiss from his lungs. The blade slides in with the telltale sting of silver, and if nothing else thus far had managed to sink fear into his heart, that alone would have been enough. His free arm snatches at her wrist, intent on denying her the chance to do any worse damage, but his attention on it is still peripheral; fear and hunt-lust spike indistinguishably in his gut, and they’re both snarling for her blood.]

[ Somewhere in the background of this, Cardan has managed to get to his feet. The knife – split from its path by his unexpected turn – had only left a nasty gash. It hurts, and it's bleeding, but he's almost certain he's going to live. In theory, he could probably even help.

In practice, all he can do is stare, frozen, at the two monsters tangling with each other before his eyes.

She’s fey, obviously – just what kind is difficult to tell, but there are as many shapes of fairies as there are stones in a forest. Why she’s here, why now, why murder– those things get shuffled to the background, largely unimportant: ultimately, he knows why. Ultimately, this was always going to happen one day.

It’s Liem who catches him off balance: though he knows, should have known, what his husband is and was, he has neglected to fully engage with it until now. It has been easier to think of Liem as quietly restrained, long-suffering, obedient to Cardan’s many caprices.

“Swift, brutal predator” was hitherto not part of Cardan’s impression. He watches, with mounting horror, the slip of her knife into what must be Liem’s abdomen, smells the hot scent of new blood, hears her aborted, choking screech when he slams into her feathered chest, shattering bone. Liem is lucky; the proximity of teeth to her throat spooks her, aborting her attempt to pull the knife up in a gutting motion. Instead, there is a suggestion of flapping wings; she will claw at him with her feet – razor-sharp talons there, too, burst free of shredded human skin – desperately attempting to gain distance. She is not built for endurance, and she had not expected his speed; this is already going much worse than what she had planned. ]

[Liem hadn’t expected such fragility from a creature capable of moving with such brutal quickness, though perhaps he should have expected her lack of physical resistance, given the delicate and birdlike nature of her form. He feels something snap as he slams into her, notes the change in her balance as she aborts her knife-stroke and claws at him with birdlike talons, abandoning her footing entirely in favour of the support of — wings?

He can’t see behind her with the position of his head, too busy grappling with her, adjusting his footing to account for the unexpected shift in her weight, vising his hand around her wrist and squeezing with the intent to crack bone, trying to force her into releasing her grip on the knife in his gut. He’s more worried about that than he is about her feet, although her claws are still scratching the hell out of him, and they’re doing a fantastic job of shredding his suit.

But although he’s in the position to go for her throat, the screen of feathers and deflated human skin makes him hesitate, and as they struggle, he makes a snap decision to pivot instead. The assassin is light, and she’s abandoned her root to the ground; so he half turns, shifting his weight abruptly as he uses the hook of his arm to hurl her bodily by one shoulder, aiming to slam her head-first into the sturdy, ornately-wrought iron grille of the room’s fireplace.]

[ She screams as she hits the grating – an utterly inhuman sound, punctuated by the hiss of burning flesh and hot blood. It’s not just the fire, but the iron itself, and from his vantage point pressed against the wall, Cardan sucks in a breath of involuntary sympathy. She has abandoned her original purpose entirely: all she wants now is to get away, and all of her considerable, vicious strength is aimed at the goal of wrenching herself out of Liem’s brutal grip and far from the fireplace. She’s blinded by blood, but she slashes again, more distraction than attack, even as she throws herself the way she came–

And she spits something at Liem, a sequence of screeches and chitters that snap her bloody, humanoid teeth together.

It takes half a second for Cardan to register what it means. His eyes snap wide open; then he, too, is moving, towards them, against every instinct he has. ]

Stop!

[ He wishes to sound authoritative, but there is more panic than not. Unconsciously, urgently, the shimmer of glamour curls around his voice, pointless as it may be: ] Do not kill her.

[If Liem has any reaction to the woman's scream — either sympathy or satisfaction — as her flesh sizzles against the iron, it doesn't register on his face. He simply adjusts his grip to crowd in on her again, this time intent on snapping the bothersome, twig-like arm still in his hold out of its socket. Every time she struggles it sends hot spikes of pain flaring from the dagger in his gut, and he's tired of trying to fight her for that hand.

But he's focused mainly on keeping the blade from slashing; he isn't as intent on keeping it in him, and when she wrenches away with everything in that strange, alien body, he almost staggers into the mantle as the blade finally comes out.

Well. It doesn't matter; the nice thing about having no real heartbeat is that profuse bleeding is never much of a risk. He gathers himself and pounces after her, pale eyes alight with pain and the promise of murder; this time when he catches her, it's her neck her intends to break. Judging by the stink of blood and panic pouring from her, it won't even be all that difficult.

Cardan's raised voice cuts discordantly through the litany of violence his body has become. It stops him mid-lunge, intent on baiting another swipe from his half-blinded opponent so that this time he can finish what she started.

Even though he stops, his eyes don't stray from the assassin in front of him.]

Convince me quickly, Cardan.

[He doesn't intend to wait long — especially if she attempts to flee before he's been satisfied.]

[ For once in his life, Cardan doesn't quibble with an order. He stops slightly behind Liem again, though his eyes are on the assassin's shaking form, blood and singed feathers and cast-off skin. She, too, seems frozen, one arm still raised to defend against attack, but her breaths are shallow, whistling. Whatever broke in her chest appears to be making itself known. ]

It would tether you to her master.

[ She hisses, and he feels a small dose of satisfaction somewhere along the panic. She had not expected to be understood.

...still, there is no real time to take pleasure in it. He speaks quickly. ]

She spoke a geas, though she should not have the power to bind you. [ If she did, surely she wouldn't have attacked with knives and flesh. ] Not unless she bought it. With her life, for example.

[ At this, the wings flutter, agitated; the assassin opens her mouth, and Cardan barks out a harsh laugh. ]

Oh-- you didn't know. Did you think your master gave you a boon?

[ He can see it all too clearly: Use the geas only when in great peril, and you will have the power to carry it through. Clever, if convoluted: even if she failed in her stated mission, she would succeed in another. ]

Edited (words) 2022-12-09 15:25 (UTC)

[Cardan’s answer makes Liem’s eyes narrow. It is not his custom to start fights that he doesn’t intend to finish. This faerie has attempted to kill him and his husband both; he is willing to tolerate much, but this goes beyond even his capacity for forbearance. After a certain point, being permissive only invites others to take advantage.

Also, right now he feels ready to jitter right out of his skin. His wounds sting, the stab wound especially, and every movement the assassin makes threatens to turn into a reason to take her down. The prospect of letting her leave goes against every instinct he has.]

If she dies? [He speaks the question evenly, resisting the urge to snarl it.] Or if she dies by my hand?

[Or by his teeth, presumably. That’s always an option where vampires are concerned.

He doesn’t like the idea of this living bomb slinking away with her finger on the trigger of magic he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t like the idea of her going back to her master to tell him what she’s learned about Cardan’s husband. He doesn’t like the idea of her succumbing to her wounds and bewitching him from afar. He especially doesn’t like the idea of this somehow coming back to bite him if she gets killed by someone else. That would be especially irritating.]

[ Cardan's eyebrows twitch up. It's a difficult question to answer conclusively -- magic is hardly an exact science. Beyond that, the fact that Liem doesn't appear fully convinced is worrisome. The trembling in the bird woman's wings is concerning, too; he doesn't know what Liem will do if she tries to escape. He doesn't know what his husband's wounds are doing to him, whether he's about to end up in a room full of corpses anyway--

He aborts the thought. ]

Perhaps not if it was by mine.

[ He doesn't intend on killing her; he has never killed anyone, and this seems like a fraught place to start. But the threat is cheap enough, and he's sure his reputation for cruelty makes it credible--

She appears to seize this moment to make the decision for them. The mass of stick-like limbs and feathers lurches back, scrabbling towards the back door in a mess of unnatural movement. The pause seems to have given her back some strength and coordination; though she is plainly hurt, she still moves with unnatural speed. If she can only reach it-- ]

[Although his eyes are still trained on the woman before him, Liem has split his attention more than he should. At the sound of Cardan’s reply, a frown tightens his expression for the first time since the assassin had thrown her first blade. When he had asked that question, he had not meant that he thought his husband should get involved—

She bolts.

She bolts, and Liem is just a heartbeat too slow to register whether that movement is aggression or escape, to decide whether he should really let her go, to note the door she’d come through, to move to intercept. He darts after, reaches the door just an instant after she flings it open and hurls herself through — and he’s ready to hurl himself right after her, to run her down until her wounds slow her just enough to land her in his grasp for a final time.

He isn’t thinking about what he’ll do once he catches her; he can figure that out later, probably. If he gets his hands on her again. His only thought is that she’s bought her own death and he intends to deliver what she’s owed, one way or another.

Except.

Except he stops, instead. He catches himself on the doorframe, dragging himself to a halt with a lurch that makes the solid wood creak. And he grips it, white-knuckled, as he stands on the threshold and watches her scrabble through another door and out of sight.]

[ For a few breathless seconds, Cardan thinks it's all for naught. They both move too damnably fast-- by the time he's lifted his hand and gasped Liem's name, she's out the door and Liem is at it. He feels like he's watching a cat pounce after its prey, unable to stop its killing instinct even if it had wanted to.

But Liem does stop. Inexplicably, he stops, though it seems to take him a great deal of effort; or maybe it's going after her that has exhausted him in the first place. Cardan doesn't know and doesn't want to stop to think about it. The tight knot in his stomach isn't resolving either way.

He makes himself step across the room, even though his legs feel suddenly leaden. ]

Please-- [ And even though it's unwise, and he's, frankly, a little terrified, he's going to reach for Liem's shoulder with somewhat tremulous fingers. ] --tell me you're not dying.

[ There is not a hint of irony in the question. ]

[At first, Liem’s grip on the wooden doorframe is all he has to ground his buzzing nerves and his twitching muscles. The stink of burnt flesh and the foreign, enigmatic scent of spilled faerie blood still hang heavy in the air, and he visibly quivers with the desire to stalk through the door and disappear into the labyrinthine dark of the mansion. The fact that the faerie has escaped his sight hasn’t made this desire any less potent; in a way, it has only teased it to higher excitement, added the thrill of a stalk, a real hunt, to the promise of a kill.

It would be best if he could sink his fangs into someone — for his wounds as well as for his nerves. Though the only other person here has shed enough blood tonight already, at least by his reckoning.

The hand on his shoulder doesn’t come as a surprise, nor even do the jitters that Cardan also seems to be afflicted with. Liem’s grip on the doorframe eases from its brutal intensity. He turns his head to look back at his husband, trying to shove the escaped assassin out of his mind for the moment.

He is not, however, expecting the question that accompanies Cardan’s touch. He blinks, and — before he can think to stop it — a broad, amused grin flashes over his expression.]

From a knife wound? No.

[He shouldn’t be so cavalier about it, but he’s just too wound up. What vampire had ever died from being stabbed in the gut? Only the woefully uninformed would expect to be able to kill a vampire with nothing more than some silver daggers.

But he does finally let go of the doorframe, and the smile vanishes just as quickly as it appeared, replaced with an intent look that he rakes over his husband as he touches careful fingertips to his jaw.]

You’ve lost some blood though, haven’t you. Where are you hurt?

Edited (grammar) 2022-12-09 22:06 (UTC)

[ The grin earns Liem a glare, though there is no real rancour in it; regardless of how silly Liem might have thought he's being, Cardan is only-- relieved. So much so that it makes him feel slightly weak-kneed now that the immediate danger is over. Later he's going to have questions, like where were you hiding all this violence and since when is a knife wound a minor inconvenience, but for now, it seems pointless to question good news.

He'll pull his hand away to close it into a fist, alarmed at its trembling. Worried that he may not be able to control it as well as he should. They aren't out of the woods yet, and the thought of dealing with... everything else... is exhausting. But what recourse is there?

Cool fingers touch his face, and he blinks, focusing with some effort back on his spouse's face. ]

I will be fine.

[ The gash at his shoulder is deeper than he's used to, but it's at least familiar enough -- and though his jacket is sticky with blood, it can probably wait. It hurts, but-- he's used to that too.

They have more urgent things to worry about. ]

We should leave.

[ He doesn't fancy explaining a room full of feathers and blood to whoever decides to fuck here next. ]

Edited 2022-12-10 01:27 (UTC)

[It would be astonishingly hypocritical of Liem to cast doubt on Cardan after so roundly waving off the idea that a dagger injury might threaten his life, particularly as he knows Cardan cannot lie, so — although his fingers linger for another hungry moment against Cardan's cheek — his expression becomes slightly less urgent.]

Then we will.

[He does finally drop his arm, sighing and glancing back at the room and then down at his ruined suit with the same expression he'd often worn in the last week, while planning events around the visiting Duchess. He'd come here hoping for a quiet place to have an unhurried fuck, and he has, once again, instead been handed a problem to solve.

He'd rather not be caught here in the midst of the room's mess, of course, but just as pressingly, he does not want to reappear in front of the host or his guests looking and smelling like he's just been in a fight. The state of his clothes is dire enough that he wouldn't be able to explain it away even if Cardan wasn't bleeding all over his jacket right next to him; if they're seen by pretty much anyone, everybody will want to find out what happened.]

Hopefully most of the others will still be occupied, but I suppose we'd best leave through the side door. I don't care to be the subject of the next bit of hot parlour room gossip.

[He frowns as he looks at the door they came through. They might avoid running into any other guests if they slip out through the servants' door, but avoiding the staff will be close to impossible. And it is very bad manners to be caught mesmerizing another house's servants, even if it's just to make them forget they saw something strange. He mutters,]

What a mess.

[ Cardan will concede on all points except one: after the night he's had, he could not give a single care to the affront of bewitching servants. Besides, the glamour he throws up around them will not make the staff forget: it simply directs the servant gazes away from where they are walking -- the difference between a deflection and a lie, given shape. Even so, there are some close calls and some hasty, strategic retreats. It's funny: any other time, ducking around corners and hiding in shadows would have sounded like great fun, particularly with his oh-so-serious husband in tow.

Tonight, it only forces him to admit that he may have oversold his resilience. By the time they arrive at Iago's estate, the anxiety keeping him distracted has worn off enough that he's hurting, and in a way that's more keen than he's used to. Keeping the strain out of his gait becomes difficult; eventually, he will give up. What's the point, anyway, if no one is to see him?

Liem seems to be doing just fine, which is particularly irritating.

The shimmer of glamour drops immediately once the heavy doors close behind them. Cardan himself waits a little longer -- first, he will stalk over to the liquor cabinet and, not bothering with a glass, lay waste to half a bottle of wine.

Then he will sink into a chair and take what feels like his first full breath in a couple of hours. That hurts too. ]

[Their painstaking journey out of the manor, back home and to Liem’s rooms (their rooms) affords Liem the time to settle somewhat from the nervous excitement that had seized him back in that disused parlour. Gradually the list of concerns made inaccessible by the immediacy of a life-or-death fight filter back into his awareness: the provenance of the assassin, for instance, and the consequences of her escape.

As they near the safety of home and the pain of the stab wound in his gut dulls to a lingering ache, he adds worry about his husband to that list as well. The scent of blood on him has gone from fresh to stale, but he considers the surrender of Cardan’s poise to the strain in his movements to be a bad sign.

His beeline for the liquor cabinet is a bit more ambiguous after the night they’ve had, but he certainly doesn’t view it as a good thing.]

I’m going to send for the doctor.

[By the time Cardan has sat down, the silk at Liem’s neck and the remains of his shredded waistcoat are both undone, and he’s most of the way done with his shirt buttons as well. God knows he could probably just rip the whole tattered, blood-spotted mess open in the state it’s in, but at this point the motions are simply automatic.

As his hands work, he disappears through the bedroom door, leaving it open behind him. His voice floats back out.]

And then, we need to talk.

[ Cardan doesn't protest the call for a doctor; he only watches, expression carefully blank, as Liem's hands work to open his clothing. Despite everything that's happened, it's a welcome enough distraction -- until Liem deprives him of it by walking away.

Liem will get no response to his second statement, either.

He's right, of course. They do need to talk. That doesn't mean Cardan has to look forward to it, and it certainly doesn't mean he's not going to spend the time until the doctor's arrival drinking in morose silence. It takes the edge off, but not sufficiently; he would need something stronger after tonight, or a lot more of what he currently has. His thoughts drift longingly to the little vial of golden powder he had brought from Elfhame and tucked into a bedside drawer. Nevermore would certainly work -- would probably render him insensate and warmly happy all too soon -- but he cannot afford to be that, either.

So he will wait and drink. Once the doctor arrives, he peels out of his blood-stained jacket and shirt, then straddles the chair backwards so his back can be worked on. He tolerates the wound cleaning with stoicism, though his tail is twitchy.

The suturing needles give him more pause. ]

Is this really necessary?

[ At least he has clawed his way back to his usual arrogant tone. ]

[Liem reappears after barely more than a minute, dressed only in slim black trousers and a matching shirt, open at the throat. Tension is nakedly visible in the set of his shoulders and the shape of his mouth; he has to take a moment to force some ease into his countenance before he can send a servant to fetch the house doctor.

While he waits for her to arrive, he sits on the very edge of the couch near Cardan’s seat, with a glass of wine he mostly stares at rather than drinking from.

The woman who answers his summons is small, dark, and human. She strides into the room, absorbs Liem’s brief explanation with just a small click of her tongue, and sets up her things while Liem perches on the couch arm next to Cardan’s chair. He watches unabashedly while she cleans the blood from the wound in his back.

“It is if you want it to heal up quick and clean,” the doctor says briskly as she fits a length of surgical thread to the needle, holding it steady with what seems to be a cross between long-handled tweezers and small-jawed pliers. “Otherwise it’s liable to just tear right back open.”

Liem is eyeing the surgical equipment with a thinning of his mouth. The smell of sizzling, bleeding flesh and burnt feathers comes unbidden to his mind, and his fingers reach automatically in search of Cardan’s hand.]

[ Cardan eyes her with something very close to hatred, but he doesn't protest further. Only: ]

Work quickly, then.

[ He takes one last swig from the bottle, then puts it on the floor and picks a spot on the wallpaper to stare at. He will relax a moment and a deep breath later, if only a little. His expression goes a little slack, his eyes flat.

He does let Liem take his hand.

And then there's nothing to do but breathe through it. Luckily for Cardan, as the needles are steel instead of pure iron, there will be no outright sizzling. Still, it burns; the needle and the forceps leave angry red marks where they touch his skin. His grip on Liem goes from tight to bruising relatively quickly, and he cannot say he remains silent.

But eventually, that, too, will be over.

After some steadying breaths, he'll uncouple his fingers from Liem's and waggle them for his wine glass. ]

If you're not going to drink that, give it to me.

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