Fic: tantum hominem

[csi_sanders1129]

Title: tantum hominem
Chapters: 1/1
Author: csi_sanders1129
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Romance.
Ratings: M
Word Count: 6651
Pairings/Characters: Diarmuid/The Mute, Brother Geraldus
Synopsis: In which it is absolutely not a miracle that keeps the mute soldier alive on the beach.
Comments: I've been working on this all year and it is finally done! Plays fast and loose with demon lore and relic lore. Characters are not mine, comments and kudos are awesome!

You go back.

Not going back was never an option. For you, the second the last of Sir Raymond’s men – the few who’d survived the battle on the beach – had taken their leave, you knew you had to go back. Geraldus protests, of course, because there’s the relic to think of, after all, and that’s the whole reason you’re in the situation you’re in to begin with – and it very well could all be a trap, he argues, the soldiers lying in wait for what was left of your group to do something incredibly stupid, like daring to return to shore. And, Geraldus logically insists, the mute soldier has to be dead. He hasn’t moved in several moments now, slumped forward on his knees on the shoreline, and surely, he’d be up and moving by now if he still had the capacity to do so.

All that makes you think, though, is that he’s injured and in need of aid. And how could you deny the man - your friend, your protector – that, after everything he’s done for you?

“We go back,” you demand, the satchel containing the relic clutched tightly in your hand, brandished threateningly over the open water, “Or I throw the damned rock to the bottom of the sea.”

Geraldus glowers, the same way he has on the other occasions that you’ve dared to challenge him, and lunges for the bag, but you’re swifter and dodge out of reach, just barely. The boat sways alarmingly.

“If you two fools sink this boat, we’re all sunk right along with her,” the grizzled old captain warns in smooth Gaelic, “Now sit down, the both of you, and row - before I throw you out myself!”

You both sit down, and you row back to shore.

You are the first one out, struggling through the shallows to get to his side. You see faint traces of blood washing out with the waves and for a moment you’re overcome with a sense that you’ve done this all before – found the man washed up on the beach, bleeding and near dead. You’d saved him then, maybe you can save him now, as well. But dread hits you hard when you spot one of those damned spiked arrows lying just a few feet away from him. “No,” you beg, you plead, you pray, “No, no, please.” His body is dead weight, but you manage to roll him onto his back, fully prepared to see a grievous wound in the man’s stomach, expecting to see cuts and bruises and breaks and other wounds of battle. As much as you hope you’re wrong, you do not expect to find your friend still alive.

“We must go,” Geraldus demands, pulling at your arm, “We shall pray for him. He served the Lord well.”

But the things you expect to see, you do not. There is no open, ugly, brutal wound like the one that had been inflicted upon Brother Ciarán just last night – there is only a scar over where one must have been, the skin new and pink and fresh. You know him well enough to know it is not a scar he had before. There are no bruises, no cuts, no visible broken bones. When a hand reaches out to you, lands lightly on your face to wipe away your tears, there are no bloodied knuckles, and you cover it with your own hand. The thing you did not expect, however, proves to be the one thing you do find, because your friend is looking up at you, his tired brown eyes searching yours. You’re sure that he sees the harried mixture of confusion and awe because this has to be a miracle.

The rock must have granted you this miracle.

He’s alive.

***

It is quite possibly the furthest thing from a miracle, actually.

Mostly, it’s your own sheer force of will that stubbornly keeps you there, because it would be exponentially easier to leave this all behind.

Beyond that, though, is raw power. This vessel has endured a lot in the many, many years you’ve had it – and it’s harder and harder to put it back together these days. The scars are proof enough of that. But, you’ve grown rather fond of it – you like this body and would rather not have to deal with the trouble involved in finding a suitable replacement. And you’ve got this one just the way you like it, too, strong enough on its own that you very rarely actually have to rely on your other abilities, quick and alert and well-suited to the weapons of the humans. So, you fight to fix it yet again.

But damn, is it hard to do.

Despite the fact that you’ve long since stopped being surprised by the wickedly creative contraptions humans have come up with for the sole purpose of harming each other in ever newer, ever more eventful ways, that spiked arrow is brutal. Any normal human would have been long dead from the damage that damned arrow caused. You’d seen it during the Crusades, in Zara and in Constantinople, and you’d seen it just last night, when the herbalist had been disemboweled with Raymond de Merville’s favorite toy. Now, it’s wreaked havoc on the vulnerable viscera of your body and it’s taken most of your energy to deal with the damage it left behind when you’d pulled it free (thankfully without your intestines attached to it) and thrown it as far from you as you could manage.

It’s lucky that you are not a normal human.

And then you just lay there, content in the knowledge that at least the little monk should be well away from here by now. You lay there, hearing your own blood pumping wildly as it tries to balance itself back out, hearing the broken bones of your hip, your ribs, your fingers pop and crack back into place and heal over. You feel muscles strengthen where they’d been strained, skin knit itself back together where it was torn open. The stench of spilled blood dissolves into the sea and then finally you can breathe again.

Then, suddenly, you feel hands on you, and before you can force your body to drum up whatever little reserves of strength you have left to fight off this new threat, you recognize the feel of them and allow yourself to be pushed over onto your back. The water the tide brings in is cold on your skin and it refreshes you just a little. You open your eyes to find Diarmuid kneeling over you with tears in his eyes.

He wasn’t supposed to come back for you.

But here he is.

And you can’t help but reach out for him, to try to comfort him, to wipe away his tears and assure him that you really are still here, even though it means something is going to have to give because you definitely should not have survived this. You know him well enough to know exactly what it is the little monk is thinking when he sees you, when he sees the lack of a fatal wound in spite of the discarded arrow a few feet away.

But it is absolutely not a miracle that keeps you there with him.

Before you can do anything, though – whether that’s resigning yourself to your broken vow and telling him everything he deserves to know after all the things he’s done for you or whether that’s continuing your silent streak and trying to ignore the implication of a wound that should have killed you – you sense that something is wrong. You can’t figure out quite what it is, at first, as most of your energy is gone, but your senses are still sharp. Your eyes dart around frantically for the source of this new feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach. And, there – nearly hidden from view at the point where the beach meets the forest terrain, the last of de Merville’s men are lurking. You spot it at the last possible second, the archer and the arrow, already fired, and you see that its path tracks directly to Diarmuid.

On instinct, you reach out, grabbing the projectile out of the air mere inches before it would have made contact with the boy.

Enraged and unwilling to let this continued threat stand, you force yourself up off the ground to unsteady feet, fully prepared to cross the expanse of beach between you and them and end this even as a second shot takes out the boat captain with skilled precision.

Something stops you before you can take more than one staggering step in that direction, though - a gentle hand gripping at your arm, a gentle voice begging you to stop. And you wish you could. But once he figures out what you are, he’ll wish he never found you on the beach in Kilmannán, he’ll wish he never came back for you on this one. As long as he’s safe, though, you can live with that.

“Diarmuid,” you rasp out his name, your voice hoarse and rough from years of disuse. Then, your only request, a quiet, desperate, “Forgive me.”

He gapes at you, at your words, and you risk the time it takes to pull him in close to you, holding tightly, just for a second, reveling in this last chance at contact before you walk away from him. The thing that walks back to him after this will be something else entirely and you’re sure it won’t be something he’ll welcome.

It hurts, pulling your true self out of whatever depths it has cocooned itself into in its long dormancy, but you don’t have the energy left to fight this fight without that buried power. Your eyes are the first thing to change, turning infernal and black as your vision grows ever sharper, the rest of your senses strengthening, as well. Then come more physical changes – claws, long and lethal, extend from your fingers; you grin a truly wicked snarl of a grin when you feel fangs settle in your mouth. Your wings tear a scream from you as they break through at your shoulder blades, unfurling slowly and spread, impressively large and just as black as your eyes.

The men are already running by then.

They won’t get far.

***

You’re still in awe – over the talking, you haven’t quite gotten around to wrapping your brain around the wings just yet.

Focused as you are on watching him, Geraldus startles you when he grabs at your arm, panic clear on his face. He tries to pull you away, or pull the relic away, at least. “We must go! He is a monster!”

But you’re not afraid. Not of him – you never have been and you aren’t now. You try to pull free from the Cistercian’s solid grip on your arm, unable to tear your eyes away from the sight of the not so mute man across the sand as he battles the last of de Merville’s men. “He is not a monster,” you automatically defend - how could he be?

Geraldus’ eyes flash in anger as you disobey him yet again. “… He’s corrupted you, then. That devil has you, boy. There’s something evil in you.”

A devil? Is that what he is?

Surely, not. The demons you’ve read of in your studies at the monastery were nothing like him and so many things seem to pile up against the idea. Why would an inherently evil being help a monastery to thrive? Why would a devil allow holy men to pray for him, or have a cross tattooed on his back, or drink blessed water, or help transport a holy relic known to burn even unworthy mortals? What would the rock do to him were he to touch it? Perhaps he is less of a demon and more of an angel, you consider – a guardian sent to salvage this ill-fated pilgrimage? Angels have wings, too, after all.

“Give me the relic.”

Geraldus is in your face, this time, blocking your view of the mute in the distance. There’s a dangerous look in the other man’s eyes and it suddenly occurs to you that maybe there is a threat to you on this beach, but it’s most definitely not from the potential demon.

“Now, boy, or I’ll take it from you. You aren’t worthy.”

“No,” you say, even as you back away from him, holding tightly to the satchel should he make a grab for it. Geraldus advances and you’re forced to back up another step and another as he keeps after you.

The tide is coming in and it’s brought in a lot of the debris you’d all hastily thrown from the boat in your mad rush to get it out to deeper waters in your doomed escape attempt, and some piece of it settles just behind you as you take yet another retreating step, sending you sprawling to the wet sand.

In an instant, Geraldus is on top of you, one hand curled tightly around your neck, squeezing away your air and your strength along with it, while his other hand tries to pull the bag from your shoulder in yet another attempt to take the relic from you. You struggle valiantly against the solid grip at your throat, but you can’t stop him. You squirm and kick and punch, trying to make contact with something that will stun the man enough to get some air, enough to put up more of a fight. You scratch and claw at any bit of him you can reach, raking your nails along his face hard enough to leave deep, bloody gouges there.

When you narrowly miss reaching an eye in your breathless panic, he swings at you with his free hand, and your ears ring with the force of the blow to your head, leaving you so dazed that your arms drop away for a second.

Using this to his advantage, Geraldus is quick to tighten his grip both on your neck and on the satchel. Your vision starts to fade out and the bag comes loose, but then, suddenly, he’s gone.

Different hands are on you, then, pulling you up to your feet even as you suck in deep, desperate breaths and your head starts to clear. Blearily, you look around – there’s Geraldus some distance away, crumbled in a heap in the wet sand and only just starting to struggle back to his feet; you see that the fight with de Merville’s men is over now, and that your friend has come back to you, though he’s come back rather differently than he left. You see the claws now, along with the deep black of his eyes in place of the usual warm brown and so he’s not an angel, but if he is a demon, he still doesn’t fit your understanding of them because he instantly puts himself between the two of you the second Geraldus staggers forward, behind the shield of his wings.

***

The last man dies screaming, flailing about skewered through the chest with your claws until he chokes out a final bloody death rattle of a breath and you let him drop to join the rest of the men de Merville brought along with him to the beach. A quick check verifies that the only other beating hearts on this beach belong to those you’d left behind at the edge of the waves, though both are beating rather more quickly than usual (you’re willing to bet that it probably has something to do with your current appearance).

It’s finally done.

You’re exhausted and dreading the confrontation you’re sure is to come now that they – now that he – knows what you really are, but you turn around to face it all the same.

You stop dead in your tracks.

Geraldus has Diarmuid pinned to the sandy ground, hands around the little monk’s neck in an effort to strangle the life from him. Diarmuid is putting up a fight, but can’t pry the hands from around his throat long enough to get enough of a breath to allow for some sort of countermove or escape.

You don’t know how this situation came about but you’re going to put an end to it.

You’re across the beach and on them in an instant, pulling Geraldus off of him and throwing him a rather impressive distance away. Diarmuid coughs and gasps in desperate breaths of air as you pull him to his feet, and you’re quick to settle yourself between the boy and Geraldus when he staggers closer.

“Demon,” Geraldus spits at you, full of righteous anger and brazen enough now in the face of an enemy he thinks he knows to think he can fight you. The Cistercian brandishes the cross on his necklace and starts rattling off liturgies in Latin meant to exorcise demons, fully convinced that he can dispel the unholy force within the mute soldier he’d so desperately pleaded for help from so recently.

But the words do nothing. The cross does nothing. They never do.

When he realizes that these things are having no effect on you, Geraldus lunges for something on the ground. At first, you think it’s the relic, spilled from Diarmuid’s torn satchel when you threw Geraldus off of him, but it is not. Geraldus comes up wielding de Merville’s deadly arrow, barreling steadily around you and toward Diarmuid.

Alarmed at this bold move – apparently, if he can’t take you down, he’s willing to try to take Diarmuid, instead – you react faster than you can think through your plan. One hand snaps out to stop him, your razor sharp claws sinking deep into the meat of Geraldus’ shoulder, as you haul him away before he can get close enough to Diarmuid to do anything. The force of the blow knocks him to the ground, where he writhes and screams in pain from his bloody wounds.

You’re already grabbing up the nearest thing you can with your other hand, fully prepared to bring whatever it is down hard on the man’s skull and put an end to all of his pharisaic ramblings and sanctimonious threats.

“Wait!” Diarmuid shouts, though his voice sounds just as bad as yours. He grabs at your arm to stop you from landing the blow and you turn to see a terrified look in his eyes. You can’t fault him for his fear – but you didn’t think seeing that look on his face, directed at you, would hurt quite so much. But, he gestures to the object in your hand, “Wait, look!”

The rock.

You’re holding the rock.

You’re holding the rock and it’s not hurting you.

As a general rule, you’ve avoided being terribly close to the thing this whole journey, even kept your distance from Diarmuid when it was in his possession, half-convinced you’d burst in to flame on contact with the thing, but nothing happens.

So, either the damned rock is nothing but a rock and this pilgrimage has all been pointless…

Or…

Or, you, the literal demon, are somehow just as worthy as Diarmuid to handle it.

You’re reasonably certain it’s the former – chances are the real relic is probably still lying in the field where the herbalist threw it, and it had been the wrong rock picked up from a wide array of possible rocks last night. The lore behind the relic claims that only the pure of heart can handle it and while you’re absolutely willing to believe that’s true of the little monk, it is most definitely not true for you.

Diarmuid, however, seems to have other ideas. “He’s not a monster,” he croaks at Geraldus, and he takes the rock from you. Like before, it does him no harm. Then, surprisingly, he offers it to Geraldus. “But maybe you are. Take it.”

“This is a trick,” Geraldus argues, bewildered that you can both touch the relic without issue when he’s so sure that neither of you are worthy of it. “No! You’ve corrupted it like you corrupt everything that you touch.” He gestures wildly with a bloody hand at Diarmuid, “like you ruined him, turned him to the devil.”

It’s not a comment you take lightly. Diarmuid is the purest thing you’ve ever found and you’ve been around to do a lot of looking. If anything, it was Geraldus that ruined things – dragging them away from their haven at the monastery, into this world of ambushes and betrayals.

But, it doesn’t really matter if Geraldus takes the rock or not, you think. Your claws went deep and the blood flow from the wound on his shoulder hasn’t slowed – he won’t last much longer.

“Leave him,” you propose. There’s nothing to be done for him and the man doesn’t deserve a quick death.

Diarmuid seems to come to the same conclusion regarding the Cistercian’s chances for survival. He nods, somberly, and sets the relic down as close to Geraldus as he dares to get despite protests from the other man.

The two of you turn your backs on him and walk away.

You haven’t gotten far when the storm clouds begin to gather ominously overhead. Thunder rumbles somewhere very far above you. A warning. You don’t look back.

Diarmuid grabs at your arm as you move away from the man and the rock, but he doesn’t turn, either.

A flash, then, too close, close enough to feel the heat of it, to feel the static of it.

Now, the two of you do turn around. Geraldus crossed the short distance to the stone, crawling his way across the wet sand and leaving a blood trail in his wake, you see, and it appears the man finally dared to touch it without them in audience. And, either that lightning strike was the biggest coincidence ever or it really was the relic because the Cistercian is dead now, the stone split in two.

Diarmuid’s grip on your arm tightens as you both process the scene before you and all that it means – that the rock really didn’t hurt either of you.

You walk on.

***

Together, you leave the beach.

You head into the forests, in search of somewhere, anywhere, to settle down as night falls and the chill in the autumn air grows stronger. You haven’t changed back yet – that takes time and energy and some modicum of security to manage – so, between the demon wings and whatever men de Merville might have left back at his camp, you move carefully and quietly to avoid any chance encounters with other humans. You herd Diarmuid this way and that through the woods, and for once he doesn’t act to fill the silence you leave.

Eventually, you find an old, abandoned house. Its thatch roof is gone on one side and there are holes in the wooden walls, but it’s shelter enough for the night. You leave the little monk alone for a moment, long enough to circle it and duck inside before you wave him in, following behind him and shifting awkwardly in order to get your wings through the remnants of the door. There’s not much to the ruined house – the clay floor and a couple of low benches on the side wall are still intact and a crumbling fireplace sits in the middle of the single room.

“What now?” he asks you, shivering from his wet clothes and the evening air. He coughs, rubs at his throat where red marks are beginning to form from Geraldus’ hand. “What do we do now?”

We? Your chest lurches at the thought that you might not have lost him. It occurs to you that he’s still not afraid of you, and that he’s never been afraid of you. He hadn’t been when you’d nearly killed him, when you’d almost had your hands around his neck when you were manic in the forest after the ambush, when any logical person would have been scared of you – he wasn’t. No, you’d been like a beacon of light for him, then, something familiar, something safe in that bloody chaos for him to grab on to.

You’ve seen him scared for you. On so many occasions you’ve seen the worry on his face for you – even at the beginning, when he’d found you on the shores of Kilmannán and nursed you back to health, when, after he’d gotten you settled on a pallet in the monastery, you’d woken up confused and delirious and prepared to attack until he’d calmed you with his endless chatter. Again, two winters back, when you’d been sick with the fever and he’d cared for you again, that same worried look on his face. And then there was this disastrous adventure – you’ve nearly lost count of how many times you’ve seen his concern for you since you left the monastery – when you drank that dead sheep holy water so he wouldn’t have to, when Raymond de Merville first confronted you about your past, when you’d stumbled upon that bastard circling the little monk like a wolf who’d happened upon a lost lamb. After the fight in the Hollows, when you’d been yourself again, you’d caught it then, too, but mostly when you walked away from him to what very likely should have been your death – for him, not for God, not for the others, but for Diarmuid and no one else. He’d been terrified for you, then, so much so that you could barely stand to do it to him, even though it was the best option to keep him safe.

By rights, he should be terrified of you – given what he is (good and pure of heart and damn near holy) and what you are (damned, forsaken, hopeless and heartless no matter what the rock suggests) – but even when he knew what you really were, even when faced with the wings and the claws, you’d seen it, just for a split second, when he’d realized what it was you’d grabbed. Then, you’d been mistaken. You’d thought he was afraid of you, in that moment, but he was afraid that the relic would hurt you, kill you. Even then, it was fear for you and not of you.

“We?” You whisper into the darkness of the old house, when it occurs to you that it’s something you can ask, that you are no longer limited to gestures and looks.

You’ve been keeping your distance, trying not to crowd him in the small space, but Diarmuid reaches out for you and you step closer without question. His fingers barely trace over the edge of a wing and you stay stock still while he inspects these unfamiliar features of yours. His hands move gently over the expanse of unkempt black feathers for what seems like an eternity, smoothing them out so they lay flat again – it feels amazing. If he keeps doing it, you’re liable to fall asleep where you’re standing.

He startles you out of the near trance you’ve fallen into with a question you didn’t expect.

“Will you tell me your name?”

“I don’t remember it,” you admit, working to make your voice sound less raspy, but it doesn’t change much. “I had one, once, a long time ago, but whatever it was, it’s not mine anymore.”

He stops fidgeting with your wings and reaches for your hands, instead. They’re a mess, still caked with mud and blood and sand from the fight on the beach, but your claws are razor sharp and dangerously long. This inspection doesn’t last as long, though, because he’s moving in even closer, pulling you into a relieved embrace, leaving you to mind your claws when you hug him back, just as relieved as he is because you’d thought for sure you were going to lose him in one way or another.

This close, though, it’s clear just how cold he is and after everything you’ve been through since you left the monastery with him, you’re certainly not letting the cold take him from you. Finally breaking the hold, you set about starting a fire with the materials you gathered along the way.

“Is that safe? Someone might see.”

You admit it is risky. For one thing, the rest of de Merville’s camp can’t be too far away and by now they have to be looking for their missing leader, their missing soldiers, the missing monks they were supposed to be escorting. For another, you don’t really relish the idea of making Diarmuid watch you kill anyone unfortunate enough to come investigate the smoke at the abandoned shack, he’s seen more than enough of that from you over the last few days. And, should enough people happen upon you, when you’re like this, that could pose a problem if you can’t contain them all in time.

Looking at the little monk, though, where he’s shivering from the heavy water-logged wool of his monk’s robes, looking paler than usual, you know it’s not really a choice. “I’ll know if anyone gets too close,” you assure him, and while he doesn’t seem entirely convinced, he nods his acceptance. It doesn’t take long to get the fire going and you both strip out of your wet clothes and leave them to dry along the weathered fireplace.

He finds a threadbare blanket hidden under one of the benches along the wall and together, the two of you settle in near the warmth of the fire.

***

“What do we do now?” You ask again, in spite of your sore throat, your aching head, the way your whole body hurts. It’s quite some time later, when the light is nearly gone and the fire is nearly out – but neither of you has managed any sleep yet. He’s curled in close behind you, and you revel in the feel of his breath on the back of your neck, in the rise and fall of his bare chest against your bare back, the soft feathers of his wings caging the both of you in to keep the warmth of your bodies trapped within. You can’t believe you still have him. After the beach, after the arrow, you’d been so sure you’d lost him, too, on top of everything else this journey stole from you. It occurs to you that this, here, now, with him, it’s the first time you’ve felt safe since you left the monastery.

“What do you want to do?”

You sigh. You have no idea, but you’re sure of one thing – “We can’t go back, can we? To the monastery.” You’re not even sure you could stand to – knowing that Ciarán and Cathal and Rua wouldn’t be going back with you – or that they’d even take you back if they knew that you lost the relic, that you’d sided with a demon over the Cistercian and that there isn’t a scenario you can think of where you wouldn’t make that same choice all over again.

“No,” he agrees, “I don’t think so.” He’s quiet for a long while after that, but you’re quite used to that. “Whatever happens next,” he starts, but it sounds like he has to force out whatever his next words are, and you feel him tighten his grip, almost imperceptibly, “do you want me with you?”

You shift in his arms, turning to face him. You have so many questions, and maybe he’ll even answer some of them, but the only one you have right now is: “Is that what you want? To leave?”

“Never,” he admits, the single word so resolute that you don’t dare doubt it, “but if you want me to, I will.”

You absolutely don’t want that, no matter what he is, so you tell him. “Wherever we go, I want you there. Always.”

He sighs in relief and leans his forehead against yours, and you revel in the feelings of safety and warmth and… love. It’s not a new feeling. Judging by the look in his eyes – even if they are still infernally black and not their normal warm brown, it’s still there, plain as day – it might not be a new feeling for him, either.

“…Would it be wrong of me to want to kiss you?” You ask, unsure whether or not this is a boundary you can press, if you’re allowed to ask things like that. His eyes widen in surprise at your question, searching yours for something, and you’re sure you’ve made a mistake, done something you shouldn’t have, until the looks in his eyes softens. It’s not the fact that he’s a man that gives you pause – you’ve seen that before, when, occasionally, the older monks would take up with each other. It’s only that you don’t know the rules here, the effect what he is can have on you. Would that count as some sort of temptation? Would it damn you to love a demon? You’re not entirely sure you could stop yourself even if it did.

“Wrong? No,” he assures you, “but you deserve much better than me.”

You disagree. Your upbringing at the monastery shielded you from a lot of the dangers of the real world. Sure, there had been the clans to look out for, the hardships of living off the land – droughts and storms and scarcity – but betrayals and political intrigue had been in short supply in Kilmannán. This pilgrimage opened your eyes to the world outside and very little of it proved to be in a positive light. The one thing that you could rely on was him – and after all you’ve been through together, you doubt there’s another being on the planet you could trust as much as you do the man before you, wings or no, and you relay as much to him.

He’s quiet for a long moment before he concedes, closing the meager distance between the two of you for a kiss that is barely a kiss at all, just a gentle press of lips to lips that lasts only a second before he backs off. His hands frame your face as carefully as they can when they still brandish deadly claws. It’s clear he’s afraid of hurting you, but you aren’t afraid of him.

You counter before he can decide that it was a mistake, but he stops you. “Do you… did you want to kiss me?” You wonder, unsure if he only went along with it for your benefit. “Do you care for me the way I care for you?”

He closes his eyes, “More than you could ever know.”

“Then kiss me. For real. You won’t break me.”

“In the morning,” he promises. “The fangs will be gone by then.”

You concede the point, you’d forgotten the fangs - they look quite sharp.

“In the morning, then,” you agree, settling in as close as you can to him.

***

Putting the wings away is always the hardest part of shifting back. This time, though, it seems even more difficult than you remember. Maybe because it's been so long since you've last had need of them. The eyes, the fangs, the claws, those all comply easily enough once you start the change, but the wings put up such a fight as they fold back into your body. It hurts, and by the time you finally do manage to get them to cooperate, you're even more exhausted than you already were. By the time you wake, it's long passed morning, long passed midday, even, and you're alarmed when you find that Diarmuid is no longer safely wrapped up in your arms. You can't blame him, you suppose, with how long it's taken you to get yourself under control, but the fear at finding him absent spurs you to move and you jolt upright, eyes scanning desperately for the little monk even as your body very intensely protests your actions. You feel the echoes of every injury you’ve taken in the last few days all at once but you fight through it all the same because you can’t lose him now. However, that adrenaline rush of panic that got you up abruptly fades when you see him. He’s sitting against the wall by the fire with a small pile of edible plants and berries that he must have scavenged from the woods nearby and while you're not thrilled he went out there alone, unprotected, you weren't exactly in a position to argue the point.

"You're awake," he rasps, his voice sounding even more wrecked than your perpetually raspy voice now. You can see the bruises much more clearly in the light of day – four dark marks on one side of his swollen neck from Geraldus’ fingers and a single darker mark on the other where a thumb had held pressure; scratches where Diarmuid had tried to pry the hand away. There’s another bruise just over one eye from a vicious punch and you can see the blood red of burst blood vessels in the white of that eye. You wish the relic had been a little less swift in Geraldus’ death than the lightning had allowed.

Diarmuid crosses the room to sit at your side, where he pulls you into a tight hug, this time without the wings infringing upon it or the claws an unhelpful obstacle.

You accept it gratefully, holding him against you until you feel the tickle of something against your chest. You pull back to see that tied about his neck by a piece of cloth, likely ripped from his robes, are several slate black feathers, much too large to have come from any bird. They must have fallen free when he'd examined your wings last night and he must have gathered them up while you were sleeping. They stand out in stark contrast to the pale skin of his bare chest and you reach out to touch them.

"Is that okay?" He asks, a hint of nervousness in his voice.

All you can do is nod.

Something of yours on him? If he wants to wear that kind of mark, you're certainly not going to complain.

"Can I kiss you again?"

He’s confident in the request this time, not wary like he’d been last night. You offer another nod.

You let him set the pace, unwilling to take anything he’s not willing to give. You let him pull you in close again, you let him press his lips to yours, you let him press himself to you as much as he can and he fits so nicely there. He settles in your lap, while you press kisses all along his jaw and neck, pulling quiet little noises out of him that do nothing to encourage you to stop but everything to encourage you to do it more. You’re both very aware that he’s never done this before. It’s been so long for you that you can’t actually recall exactly how long it’s been. His hands are the first to wander, even if they don't know exactly what they're doing, and yours move to guide the way.

"You're sure you want this, want me?" You ask, because you still can't quite bring yourself to believe it. "You know what I am now, how can you still-"

He kisses you again to stop you, "I don't care if you're a demon, I don't care if you're an angel. I don't care if you're human,” Diarmuid assures you, “I just care that I'm yours, that you're mine. After all of this, I just care that we're together."

You don’t know what to say to that, not for a long moment, but finally the words come and they’re the easiest ones to say since you started talking again. “I don’t know that I am any of those things anymore,” you tell him, stealing a swift kiss, “– but I am certainly yours.”

Note:

Spent a stupid amount of time googling 13th century Ireland attitudes toward homosexuality for this. Also spent a lot of time googling feather symbolism - meanings for black feathers make Diarmuid's feather charm more adorable.