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silverskye13 · 2 months ago

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For a hurt/comfort idea, how about the Red King treating Martyn after he gets back from the rooftop escapades with Tanguish? Poor guy is really not used to roof running and was probably all kinds of sore and bruised from the experience.

To say Martyn walked himself down the cells would be an overstatement of his ability, at the current moment. Being tired, hels, being exhausted were feelings he wasn't exactly used to, but was at least familiar with. Every warrior at some point pushes themselves a little too far and pulls a muscle or breaks a bone, and has to spend long hours recovering even after the health potion hits. But damn, the rooftop running was a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Martyn still didn't know how in the hels Tanguish had intended to keep running.

"Just two more streets and it's a straight shot to the Colosseum--"

Bullshit. Just two more streets and Martyn would drop dead, more like. Everything hurt now. Everything. Of course his arms and legs. But also his back, his ribs, his teeth and jaw. Bracing for impact -- and then actually impacting -- had jangled more than just his nerves. Also every time he took a step on his left leg, pain went shooting through his hip. Also his fingernails hurt. His fingernails. From gripping ledges and shit. Gods and saints, he hurt in places he didn't even know you could hurt! The heels of his feet felt bruised.

He was bleeding too -- no stab wounds, thank the gods. But he'd taken a cut to one arm, and a cut near his ribs where a stab had tried its best to be fatal and he twisted. The cuts were the easiest to deal with, oddly enough. He was used to that kind of harm from the Colosseum. Right now they itched, and made his clothes feel gross and sticky. They would sting when he cleaned them later.

Ugh. He didn't want to take a bath. If he sat down in the water, he really didn't think he'd be able to stand up again.

Martyn blinked, a motion that somehow made the back of his head ache. Stress maybe, or just the unharmed parts of his body getting jealous of all the complaining the rest of him was doing. In front of him, his cell door wavered in and out of focus, his tired eyes denying him sight unless he really, really concentrated. Martyn sighed and opened his door. Then he realized he couldn't open his door, because he locked it when he left. He tried in vain to remember the passcode for his key.

He couldn't remember the passcode for his key.

"Bloody hels," Martyn scowled and kicked his door, and yelped when he felt the kick travel all the way up his leg to sink hooks into his hip. He hopped on one foot, waiting for the tenderness to subside, only for his other knee to decide to stop cooperating. With an inglorious shout and tumble, Martyn crumpled to the ground in a heap of sore muscles and bitter bones.

"Bloody hels!" Martyn whined, drawing out the phrase into a howl that, while unhelpful, at least made him feel a little less frustrated. Martyn lay on the ground, taking some solace in the heat radiating up from the floor. It sank through his coat and into his bones, taking some of the edge off his soreness. He knew if he lay here too long, he would get stiff, and standing would become a crippling labor.

He couldn't bring himself to stand.

Martyn had resigned himself to his fate of sleeping in the middle of the hallway, when the tip-tapping of clawed feet pulled at his attention. Martyn didn't have to see Red coming down the hall. He would always recognize those footsteps. The odd incongruence of muffled paw pads and scraping claws was something that could only be his Lord.

Martyn tilted up his head to peer at Red as he came to a stop in front of his door. Martyn and Red's cells were side-by-side, and Red already had his hand resting on his door, long claws keying through the combination lock Martyn had insisted he keep locked when he was out. With the habit of long memorization, Red keyed it in, opened his door--

-- and stopped just as he took one step over the threshold. The long, wolf-like ears twitched and swiveled. He tilted his head, the blinding crown, pulled low over his eyes, glinting in the dim light.

"Am I really breathing that loud?" Martyn asked sardonically.

Red wrinkled his nose in a confused expression and looked down. He couldn't really meet Martyn's gaze with the crown on, but he nearly did.

"Me Hand," Red said, his voice a low rumble, "how come thee to the ground in our hall?"

"Just dropped something, my Lord."

"Aye? And... What be it that you have dropped, me Hand?"

"Myself, mostly."

Red snorted half of a laugh. Then he sniffed, and sniffed again, and asked, "Why do ye smell of blood and..." He gave another long sniff, his nose wrinkling at whatever the smell was. "Be that... roof tiles?"

"You're uncanny, you know that?" Martyn asked. When Red only waited patiently for a response, he added, "That would be because I got in a knife fight on a roof, my Lord."

"Me Hand."

"Yes, m'Lord?"

"Be ye possessed by a particularly knife-fond soul of a pigeon? Or be ye so bored with the errands ye run, that ye must make challenge for yourself?"

"I don't think that question deserves an answer."

"Need ye help, Hand?"

"What? Me? No," Martyn waved a dismissive hand, and even managed not to wince when he did it. "I'm just... Resting. Give me five minutes I'll be up, quick as a wink."

Red gave him a long-suffering sigh. He reached up to his iron crown, gently wrapping claws around it to begin lifting it away from his eyes. The moment his fingers touched the metal, whispering sprang to life in the air around them, and the lights in the hallway reddened. Martyn tried to get his arms underneath himself to shove himself upwards.

"Woah hey don't that's not-- you don't have to do that--!"

Martyn pushed up, let out an inglorious wince of a noise when his whole body shrieked its chorus of aches, and promptly fell back over into his side.

Red lifted the crown off of his eyes, pushing it back onto his head where it flattened his long ears uncomfortably. He fixed bright, glowing red eyes on Martyn, bloody tears drifting from his eyes to fizzle I to nothing in the air around his face. The whispering intensified into barks, growls and howls, noises that sat just on the other side of true hearing and made the insides of Martyn's ears itch and burn.

Red looked Martyn over, taking in his harms with a cold, eldritch stare. Red had a demon in him. Something to do with black altars and Hermits on death worlds and sacrifice. When the crown was off, the demon stalked forward, and Martyn could see it now, writhing behind Red's eyes, a caged and hungry thing made of teeth and claws and baleful intent.

"Me hand," Red hummed, his voice a resonant double as the demon barked and growled his words along with him. Martyn marvelled that such an evil thing could shriek behind his Lord's voice, and yet still couldn't lessen the depth of concern and care in Red's tone. "Do not hide your harms from me. Ye ken I would give ye the world if ye only asked it."

With that, Red stooped and gathered Martyn up in his arms. So close to the demon, Martyn felt like his bones were vibrating. He felt like, if he could listen hard enough, he might be able to hear whatever the howling thing whispered when it wasn't gliding along the edges of Red's voice. Curiosity compelled him to ask what the demon thought of him, what it whispered to Red in the dark hours sealed behind the crown. Mindfulness told him he already knew what the demon whispered. It was a suspicious creature born of fear, after all.

It was not the demon that carried Martyn into his Lord's room though, no matter how loudly it barked around Red's eyes. Martyn liked the way the demon made Red look. A long red smear followed his Lord when he moved, trailing him in phosphorescence that reminded him of neon signs leaking their plasma. Sometimes he thought something, and the thoughts would turn into visible sparks that danced and jittered like absentminded lightning, his very essence a long exposure ribboned across the world.

Martyn was so transfixed watching it, he didn't realize Red had brought him to his bed until he was being laid gently on it. Then Red reached up to his crown and lowered it over his eyes again, and with a final barking growl, the demon vanished off Red like it had never been. His Lord diminished before his eyes, small, weary and contained -- but more his Lord than he had been when the demon was awake.

"You're uncanny," Martyn said breathlessly, his voice full of adoration.

"I be only what I must," Red hummed, leaning down to kiss Martyn gently on the forehead. He smelled of blood and winter, and his kiss was cold. "And ye be resting where I can keep ye safe."

"Who's going to hurt me down here?" Martyn chuckled, though he sunk into Red's bed gratefully. He had the softest pillows in hels, of that Martyn was convinced.

"Perchance a stray roof tile may swear vengeance upon thee and thy household for thy offence," Red grinned. He lumbered to a dresser and pulled out a rag and some bandages, and after some feeling around the room, returned with a ewer of water as well. He helped Martyn to sit, and with great care removed his coat and shirt, and began tending to his wounds.

"You're not supposed to do this part," Martyn informed Red. "I'm supposed to take care of you, my Lord."

"Aye, but how will ye take care of me when ye be in pieces?" Red asked patiently. When he finished cleaning the cut on Martyn's arm, he kissed just above the spot. A ritual. Something to seal the healing. "Tend to me as I tend to thee, and if my care be lacking, me Hand, leave me to bleed, as I deserve."

"I would never," Martyn breathed, and he meant it.

Red finished cleaning the cut on his side, and kissed him there too. Martyn squirmed at the closeness of breath somewhere vital. He knew Red would never betray him -- it was not in his Lord's nature -- but the paranoid creature that made Martyn him screamed that he would be so, so easy to kill right now, and Red's claws and teeth were sharp. And, though Red would never dream of harming him while he was vulnerable, he was sure the demon would, if given the chance. The demon had done it before.

The demon was not the one who eased Martyn back into the bed, and drew blankets over him. Nor was it the demon that traced a gentle claw over his arm, drawing patterns and symbols into his skin as he hummed, and soothed Martyn to sleep.

It was Red, his Red, who curled up beside him when finally sleep took him, his head resting gentle on the hollow of Martyn's collar, matching their breaths. It was Red, his Red, who hummed quietly for long hours, and brought him cold compresses when he woke in the night too sore to stay asleep. It was Red, his Red, who kept him safe.

The loyalty of a dog and the master who keeps watch for it, Martyn would think, wry and sardonic, as sleep came for him again. I would rather be a hound than a squire, I think.

#rns ficlets #the barking writer #the red king #hels! martyn #archetypal-archivist #ive been waiting so long for a short to talk about red's demon #i need to write more of these two #love them <3

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