#anyway--someone wish the vampire daddies happy wedding

[dyrewrites]

Before Deluca -- I suffer only for you

Lucient hadn’t giggled. Nor had I. But someone had, and as we separated to find its source we found emptiness.

Not an emptiness in our train car, but true emptiness. Brilliant white nothing in all directions. And us in our clothes again, though we hadn’t time to dress—or clothes to dress in, for all our car had vanished in the white.

“Questo per quanto riguarda il bagliore…” I lamented our lack of afterglow—an important part of such delights, and I stand by it—while Lucient slipped in front of me in a protective stance that forced my frown into a smile.

“I am sorry for interrupting, little things,” chipper, the voice from the nothing was chipper and high-pitched. Yet ever so slightly overlapping with a deeper voice, “but you play too long and I have only so much time.”

“I assumed you a witch,” Lucient asked it, “but you’re no witch, are you?”

“No, I am not,” the voice admitted with a slew of giggles that stabbed for their pitch, “but I am here to help. Nathaly sent you. I see her sweet gray colors all over. Delight she is. Delight. As are you. Strange things, you.”

Color flashed with the words, in bright shapes they exploded in all the white and I held Lucient’s waist, him my arms.

Neither of us spoke and the voice continued, “others have been close, snuggly tight, and warm and sweet but not like you. You're fun too. Pretending at being people while you eat them. Such fun. Wish to be more, yes?”

“Treasure, watch what is said,” Lucient warned, pressing tighter against me, “I believe we’re speaking to a faerie.”

“Close!” The white exploded in another wave of colors too vivid as the voice giggled again, “sharp senses on this little thing. So close to answers. Little thing Life can't have and Death doesn't want. Unwitting pawns of dear, dreaded Desire. Close. But not there.”

“I know fae, my love, stories,” I tried for explanation, but I was grasping, rambling, “they're small, with the wings and flowers and crazy visions. And your thoughts of the ship, was the little rock not a fae?”

“Yes, treasure, that was one. They are what they wish, whenever they wish it. And this one just suggested it is more. Something witches worship.”

“Clever little thing has it now,” dimmer the colors, puffing into the white as quick as air from popped balloons, “but don't say, don't say. Speak it and you must owe me more than you can pay.”

My love? I tried silently, hoping that the metric.

Correct, in fact, and Lucient followed suit to answer, I did say there were Gods who would adore what you are.

A God, I sputtered after but said nothing—and wouldn’t quite understand yet, but the correct term is Source, as in a source of magic, in her case the Source of Fae magic.

As the nothing giggled, “you wish a binding, little things. I will provide. Keep you safe, locked in your sweet little bones where none can snatch what you are. But you will pay, yes. Whatever I wish, whenever I wish it. Not today, or next life maybe, but I will come and you will pay. Do you accept my terms?”

All my wonder shriveled in the voice’s terms. I knew a terrible deal when I heard one and spoke to it, “an open invitation to take whatever you want from us?”

“It is their way, treasure,” Lucient soothed, but he kept his defensive posture, “we are lucky it doesn't want us.”

Scoffing, the nothing dripped with darker color, “No no, you are Desire's things. I cannot have you. Only nudge, and I will nudge, protect you from being other's of Desire's. Including your claim, cold little thing,” brighter the dripping color, flowing in fierce falls all around us and continued into the nothing we stood on. “No more control unless control is desired. If you give your promise. Have I your promise?”

Pulling Lucient around to speak into moonlight, I confessed, “I already said yes to you, my love. Twice. Yours always, forever. No matter what we do, I am yours.”

“So perfect,” caressing my cheek, he smiled, “do you want this then?”

A kiss before my answer, “I do.”

“As do I,” he said with another.

And the white around us faded, leaving us back in our car, where a stout elderly woman stood wearing far too many layers of wrinkled cloth in too many colors. She bounced off the couch in a flutter of fabric, something glittering at her back for a breath, and grinned up at us from about knee-height.

“Half there then!” She tittered, “now. Let's see those bones.”

“Quoi,” Lucient asked, while I was dumbstruck by the tiny woman.

Who nodded gravely and spoke to the floor, “it will hurt.” Grinning back up at us, she snapped spindly fingers and everything snapped with. Save her voice, “do scream, if it helps.”

Straps, I felt straps first. On my legs, my stomach and across my shoulders. Wiggling did nothing to move them, but it did provide a light in the sudden dark. All at once it came and all at once I saw how little there was to see.

Shadows too thick to parse surrounded me, and I couldn’t move enough to see what I laid on, but I saw it mirrored beside me. Where my love was strapped, shirtless, to a steel table, his eyes blinking.

Hands and arms mostly free, I reached for his.

As he reached for mine.

And the tiny woman hopped up between us to yank us close enough, allowing us to hold hands as she spoke, “hold tight, little things, you must feel every part.”

“Every part of wh—cazzo perché,” my question was cut as I was cut, and inflicted with Lucient’s cries as he was cut.

While the woman, the faerie that was also a God, remained between us...fingers quite active. Dancing through the air, she seemed to control the vivid rainbow of colors slicing into our skin. It sliced and sliced, and I was able to look down and watch as my flesh peeled away. Then the muscle, down to the bone.

Where it stopped.

As Lucient and I wept and wailed for the pain, the faerie spoke again, heard too easily through it, “This forever love you desire is for one another alone?”

“Oui, for my treasure alone,” Lucient said through teeth.

As I did, “Sì, for my dream and only him.”

Those rainbows returned, drilling into the bones of my ribs as the little woman asked more, “If one sought to harm your other?”

“They wouldn’t live beyond the thought of it,” Lucient growled.

And I insisted they’d see what I was seeing, “Vedrebbero le loro fottute viscere.”

“Are you willing to suffer,” more drilling, spreading the rainbow color through bone, every move mirrored on Lucient, as the little woman’s voice remained grave and steady, “ache and cease to be if needed for the other?”

Lucient howled, begging her to get on with it, “Oui, insupportable créature, continue!”

“Si, have already,” I gasped, losing breath for every rough stab of color, “would again,” squeezing Lucient’s hand ever tighter, sure to meet his eyes, I promised, “I’d endure hell itself for my love.”

“My perfect treas—” He tried to coo and the color stabbed ever-harder, urging a rare curse, “merde, comment y a-t-il plus!”

The color it popped and exploded inside us in an agonizing crescendo while the little woman giggled, “We’re done, little things.”

As all else she had done, our move from steel tables to soft couch cushions was instantaneous.

Clothed again, neither of us could help checking for scars. Lucient peeking into my shirt and I into his. There were no scars...but there was light. A soft glow in rainbow hue.

“It glows for you only, and only when you want,” the little woman explained, standing on a table next to us. “How do the little things feel?”

Accepting a cool, weary face on my chest, I muttered, “Tired of being called little.”

“Oui,” he agreed.

She giggled, “well, to me all of you are.” Spinning with her arms out, she addressed everything, “all of this. So very little. How do you feel?”

“Itchy,” I answered, accepting Lucient’s fingers gently scratching for me.

The woman nodded, “That's Death making a face, but it will stop. Any pain?”

“Oui,” Lucient shivered, “deep and stabbing.”

“Life whining,” the woman explained, “they will calm.”

“Heat as well,” I added, suddenly hotter than even I was used to, but it wasn’t the same sort of heat, “sweet and spreading through my veins...my love?”

“Oui, mon amour,” a closer hold, a soft kiss, “sweet as your bite.”

Another hop from the little woman, “Desire approves. Excellent. It will hold then, you're bound forever. Deeper than any claim,” leaning closer to us, her grin forced us to the other side of the couch, “unbreakable even in death. Complete destruction cannot disrupt your bond and the closeness...the loss of control without each other? It is lesser, but not erased. I nudge, I can't alter.”

“Mon amour,” I teased with kisses to his fingers.

And he took mine to do the same, “Mm, amore mio.”

“Oh, oh, oh,” she bounced, “the little things want a ceremony? A party? I can manage such delight, should yo—”

“No, thank you, uh…” I hadn’t heard a name, had none to use.

So she gave one, tittering for it, “It may call me Oona.”

“Oona, grazie, but no,” gazing into moonlight, I couldn’t look away, “we will handle the celebration.”

Nor could he, “mm, si, amore mio...we will.”

“Warmth, yes,” Oona giggled, “more and more you will feel.” Spinning again, she puffed the room with color, “easing, blurring. The others will see you still, but until those marks heal you are blurred from all little things. Real and not. Enjoy while you're able.” Appearing on Lucient’s lap, as he was on mine, she forced our eyes to her and took the grave tone she held during the cutting, “and remember...you owe this one. You owe this one a lot.”

When she puffed away, we were left with questions, of course. Questions we would ask eventually, but we were also left with an abundance of warmth and an undercurrent of agony. So we remained on that couch, ever tighter and unable to stop smiling even as weariness caught up and begged us to sleep.

“All mine,” Lucient breathed onto my neck, hands digging to hug me.

I kissed the top of his head and whispered back, “as you are mine, husband.”

Oona has yet to collect on her payment, dear reader, while I have yet to decide how to feel about that...

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