#the jantlers saga is complete...

[suttttton]

My Deer Boy

Martin hits a deer with his car. Then things get weird. (Written for @febuwhump day 1: Head Wound) (content warnings: car accidents, serious injuries, torture) ao3 link in source!

I. Jon

It isn’t safe here.

Jon can hear it, can feel it buzzing in the air around him. His heart is pounding fast, a stuttering beat of danger danger danger. He needs to get away, to flee to where he knows there’s safety and food. The ground is rumbling beneath him, a predator approaching quickly, too quickly, and he needs to run.

But he doesn’t know what the right direction to run is because he can’t see. So instead he’s just standing here, trying to blink away the sudden pain of too-bright light piercing through the twilight darkness. Blink, blink, blink, but nothing comes back into focus.

He can’t stay here. It could be upon him at any moment.

He bolts.

And then—

The air is filled with an awful shrieking.

And then—

Something pounces on Jon, colliding with him, hard and fast and big, and his feet are no longer on the ground, and it hurts.

And then

—darkness.

II. Martin

“Fuck!”

The deer comes out of nowhere, jumping in front of his car much too close for Martin to stop or swerve out of its path. He slams on the brakes, trying to avoid it, but there isn’t anything he can do.

There’s a sickening crunch, and then the car is stopped, and everything is silent, and all Martin can do is stare straight ahead, chest heaving.

Crunch.

He forces himself to get out of the car. He isn’t quite unhurt—his neck is sore from the sudden crashing halt—but he knows he got off lucky. The deer could have come through his windshield, could have maimed or even killed him. As it is, the worst damage he’ll sustain is fighting with the insurance company to get his front bumper fixed.

The deer is almost certainly dead.

Oh god.

He finds it lying in the ditch several feet away. It’s a buck, lying limply on its side, neck slightly twisted. Martin feels sick to his stomach. Why did it have to jump out in front of him? He didn’t want to be responsible for its death! It—

It’s still breathing.

His heart stutters and he takes a step closer, watching its ribcage intently. He swore he saw movement there, but it could have been a trick of the light. Maybe—

But there it is again! Rise-fall-rise. Its breathing is slow and not quite even, but it’s definitely there. He didn’t kill it.

Not yet, at least.

Before Martin can think too hard about what he’s doing, he’s picking the deer up. He tries extremely hard not to jostle it too badly as he loads it into the back of his little van. He knows the worst thing you can do for a person after a traumatic injury is move them, but he doesn’t really have another option, does he?

He gets back into the front seat, and sends thanks to whatever god might be listening when the engine sputters to life. He pulls the car back out onto the road, ignoring his sudden, horrible vision of the buck waking up and proceeding to flip out while Martin is driving. Then, as quickly and carefully as he can, he drives to Gerry and Tim’s house.

III. Gerry

Gerry is about to go to bed when he sees Martin’s car pull up in the driveway, and he opens the door before Martin can knock. He doesn’t want to risk the noise waking Tim.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. Not the most polite greeting, but it’s late and he’s tired, and Martin has shown up entirely unannounced.

“I need to talk to Tim,” Martin says.

Gerry crosses his arms and raises his eyebrows. “You realize that Tim works the dawn shift, right? He’s sleeping.”

“It’s an emergency,” Martin says. And, yeah, he does sound quite a bit… frazzled.

“What is it?”

“I hit a deer! It, it just jumped out in front of my car, and—It’s still breathing, but I think it’s really badly hurt, and I wanted to ask Tim to look at it.”

Gerry holds up his hands. “Two things. One: You realize that Tim is a people doctor, right?”

“Yes, but I figured he could at least—”

“Two,” Gerry interrupts. “Why did you put the deer in your car?”

“What else was I going to do? I don’t just happen to have a, a deer transport vehicle lying around.”

“You’re going to get a wasting disease.”

“No, I won’t,” Martin says. “Can I please talk to Tim?”

“No,” Gerry says. “You need to take this deer to—I don’t know—an animal rehab center. Tim won’t know how to treat a deer.”

“I don’t know if it will last that long,” Martin says, and he’s looking at Gerry with those wide, sad eyes.

Gerry sighs. “How about this: I know stabilize. I can stabilize the thing, and then you can find an animal doctor to fix it. Alright?”

“Okay,” Martin says. “That—that makes sense.”

Gerry pats his shoulder as he steps past him, strolling across the lawn to Martin’s car. He doesn’t wait for Martin before he pulls the back hatch open, braced for the deer to leap out at him, antlers-first.

But there isn’t a deer in Martin’s car at all.

Instead, there’s an unconscious man.

Gerry stares in shocked silence for a few moments until Martin catches up. He waits for Martin to register the man before he says, keeping his voice as calm and steady as possible, “Martin, what the hell is this?”

“I—I—I—I don’t—”

“Did you turn the deer into a human so that Tim would heal it?” Gerry asks.

“What? No! I-I would never—And even if I would, that’s very advanced transformation, so I couldn’t—”

“I didn’t think so.” Gerry’s heart is pounding now, fast. He swallows. “But if you didn’t transform it, that means it must have transformed itself, which means—”

“Fae,” Martin finishes, pale.

Gerry nods. He swallows again. “Let’s go wake Tim.”

IV. Tim

Tim decides to deal with the Fae in the master bathroom. It’s large enough for his purposes, and easy to clean. Most importantly, it’s far from the living room, where he’s instructed Martin and Gerry to stay. They won’t be able to hear much of what happens here.

He ties the Fae tightly to a chair with flexible wires of cold iron, specifically designed for this purpose. Then he examines the extent of its injuries. Broken arm. Shattered hip. Worst of all is a brain bleed that would definitely be fatal without medical intervention.

He supposes that was its plan. Jump in front of Martin’s car, obtain fatal injuries, and claim a life debt against Martin.

Anger bubbles in Tim’s chest, and he heals the worst of the brain bleed. The thing will still feel concussed when it wakes, but now it will be able to wake. Which is good, because Tim very much wants to talk to it.

It only takes a minute or so. The thing’s eyes snap open wide, and it tries to stand up, struggling for a moment against the unforgiving wires and its brutal injuries. It lets out a cry of pain before collapsing back against the chair, looking at Tim with wide eyes.

Tim knows well enough what Fae expressions of pain look like, and it isn’t the kind of vulnerable displays that humans put on. It’s just trying to manipulate him, to ply him with pity. It won’t work.

“Alright, Fae,” Tim says, making sure that it can see the iron fireplace poker he holds in his hand. “Whatever you thought you were going to do with your cute little plan is over. I healed the worst of your wounds, so Martin does not owe you a life debt. You’re going to swear to me that you will leave us alone and bring us no harm. Then you can leave.”

The Fae doesn’t respond. It looks at him, blinking like it doesn’t understand his words.

“I’m more than willing to do whatever it takes to convince you,” Tim says, and he brings the poker down hard on the Fae’s injured arm, right where he knows it will be most painful.

The Fae screams, curling up into itself as much as possible. It pants for a few moments, getting its breath back.

“I’m waiting,” Tim says, unimpressed.

“I’m not a Fae,” it says in a small voice, and Tim could almost laugh.

Instead, he hits it again, this time aiming for its ruined hip. “I’m not actually an idiot,” he says, raising his voice to be heard over its whimpering. It’s crying now, tears flowing freely down its cheeks. It truly looks a pathetic sight, looking up at him with wide, wet brown eyes.

Tim rolls his eyes. “You won’t find any sympathy with me, I’m afraid,” he says, raising the rod to strike again.

The Fae quickly says, “I won’t bother you! Please. Let me go. You won’t see me again.”

Tim smiles. “Say, ‘I swear on my essence and my position in the Fae Court that I won’t harm or otherwise bother you, Gerard Keay, or Martin Blackwood, nor will I send any other force to do so.’”

The Fae repeats the phrase in a shaky voice. It’s still crying.

When it has sworn to do them no harm, Tim cuts away its bonds. He assumes that it will teleport away as soon as possible, go lick its wounds somewhere more comfortable. Curiously, it doesn’t. It stays very still, trembling and clearly struggling to control its breathing.

Then Tim pulls away the wires, and his heart drops. There are lacerations where the wire dug into flesh, but the bubbling burns Tim had expected are nowhere to be seen.

Tim looks up sharply, meeting the thing’s eyes. This time, he really looks. He should see some kind of malice there, a hostile intelligence.

Instead, all he sees is pure, innocent terror.

“Fuck,” Tim says, backing away from the chair, from the—Man? Deer?—as if that will make it better. As if that will take back what he’s just done.

Legs shaking, Tim goes to get Martin.

V. Jon

As soon as the man leaves, Jon tries to get up, but he immediately falls to the ground in a flash of blinding, white-hot pain. He can’t walk. He certainly can’t run. All he can do is lie on the floor, curled up as much as he can.

He hurts.

He doesn’t know what’s going on. He doesn’t know where he is or how he got here. He doesn’t know why he’s been interrogated, tortured. He isn’t Fae. At least, he doesn’t think he is. But he doesn’t recognize the body he’s in, hardly even recognizes the sharp, precise movements of his own mind.

His thoughts feel like static, his heart pounding a nightmare beat. He doesn’t want to be here. He wants to be free, he wants to be safe, he wants the pain to stop.

He digs his fingernails into his face, trying to ground himself. Trying to focus.

The door opens, and Jon lets out a fearful noise, pulling his arms up over his head. As if that would hide him.

“They can understand us, right?” It’s a new voice, this time. Softer.

“Yes,” the original person says.

Jon looks up. “Please let me go,” he says, and his voice trembles. The new person is bigger than the last, could probably hurt him much worse, if they wanted to. “Please, I promise I won’t bother you. I just want to leave.”

The person squats down, closer to his eye-level. “We will let you go, okay? We’re not holding you prisoner.”

Jon sobs. Even if the man is speaking honestly, Jon still can’t walk, couldn’t get out of here even if they held the door wide open. Will they be angry at him, when they realize that?

“I’m sorry we hurt you,” the person continues, their voice slow and gentle. “We thought we were defending ourselves, but that’s not an excuse. I don’t expect you to trust us after that, but I promise we just want to help you.”

“Why am I here?” Jon asks.

The man lets out a breath. “I—ah—I accidentally hit you with my car. You were very badly injured, but Tim is a healer, so I brought you here. We just—I wasn’t expecting you to turn into a human—so—”

Jon absorbs this, piecing it together with his memories of bright lights and loud, dangerous noise. It’s hard to think, with how much he’s aching, but it makes sense, almost. It settles his nerves, a bit, to know that this was all just an accident.

“Do you know how that happened? How you turned into a person?”

Jon shakes his head, preparing to flinch away if the person tries to strike out.

But they just smile reassuringly. “It’s alright. It was probably just a random bit of wild magic. Bad luck.”

Of course. It would be his luck to run afoul of a random wild curse.

“I’m Martin,” the person says. “Is—do you have a name?”

Jon just stares at him. Where would he have gotten a name?

Color rises in Martin’s cheeks. “I—I guess not. Um, do you—want a name?”

Jon’s eyes widen. First he gets hit by a car, then he gets tortured, and now he’s being offered a name? What kind of day is this? He nods.

“Okay,” Martin says. “Um—how about—John? Like, like, John Doe? Wait, no that’s—that’s terrible. Uh, how about Jonathan? Jon.”

Jon.

Jon nods, accepting the name. He feels like he should be buzzing with excitement, fluttering all over Martin, thanking him a thousand times for this gift, but—

Christ, he hurts.

Martin must see something on his face because he says, “You need to be healed. I know you probably don’t want to see Tim again, but I promise he won’t hurt you. He’ll fix you up, and then you can leave. Alright?”

Jon nods. Anything, to get rid of the pain.

“Okay,” Martin says. “Tim!” he calls over his shoulder. “Could you get in here?”

The man from before comes back into the room, staying close to the door, nearly as far as he can get from Jon. He’s no longer holding his heavy rod, and the hardness in his eyes is gone, but Jon can’t help tensing when he sees him.

“It’s okay,” Martin says. He looks at Tim. “You can fix his injuries, right?”

To Jon’s dismay, Tim doesn’t nod and immediately offer him some of his magic. Instead, he sucks his teeth. “It’s… not that simple. With the extent of his injuries, it’ll take several meetings for him to be fully healed. And—with the complications involved in the hip and the brain injury, I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing anything unless he was sedated.”

“Then sedate him,” Martin says. He looks at Jon. “Is that okay with you?”

Jon meets his eyes, kind and gentle, and nods.

“How? I don’t exactly have an anesthesiologist on call,” Tim replies. “We’d need to go to the hospital, and that will come with questions. Questions like: ‘What do you mean the deer turned into a person?’ And ‘Don’t you think we should run tests to make sure it isn’t a Fae in disguise?’”

“I don’t think he would enjoy a hospital anyway,” Martin says. He’s silent for a few moments. “I could make a sleeping powder? Would that work?”

“It’s not ideal,” Tim says. “But I guess it’s better than nothing.”

“Great,” Martin says. “Um—Would it hurt to move him somewhere a little more comfortable?”

“I’m not sure there’s much that would make his injuries worse, at this point.”

“Right. Okay, I’ll figure it out. Do you mind getting some water heated for me?”

“No problem,” Tim says, and then leaves.

Jon finds himself relaxing. He doesn’t have much of a reason to trust Martin, or any of these people, but he can’t help himself. There’s something about Martin that just seems so genuinely concerned. It’s impossible not to feel safe in his presence.

“Do you mind if I pick you up?” Marin says. “I’ll try to be gentle, but it might hurt a bit.”

“It’s fine,” Jon says.

Then Martin is lifting him like he doesn’t weigh a thing. (Which is accurate, he supposes. This form is much, much lighter than Jon is used to.) It puts a bit of pressure on Jon’s bad hip, and he grunts in pain, and Martin says, “Sorry, sorry,” and hurries to deposit him on the bed in the next room.

It’s soft. Much more comfortable than the hard tile floor.

“That’s better,” Martin says. “I’ll be right back. The sleeping powder won’t take long to make.”

He’s being honest—Martin comes back within five minutes—but those few silent minutes seem to stretch on and on and on, Jon unable to do anything but lay as still as possible, trying to ignore the constantly pulsing pain. He’s relieved when Martin returns and hands him a steaming mug.

“Drink the whole thing,” Martin instructs him, so Jon does as he asks. It tastes good, and seems to fill him with warmth. He closes his eyes once, twice.

After the third time, he doesn’t open them again.

VI. Martin

Jon wakes up about two-thirds of the way back to Martin’s house. He raises his head and looks around, blinking drowsily. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t seem particularly confused about the whole riding-in-a-car thing.

“How do you feel?” Martin asks.

“Better,” Jon mumbles, yawning and leaning his head back against the window.

“That’s good,” Martin says. “Um. We decided that you should probably stay with me? At least until your treatments are finished. Is that—Are you okay with that? It’ll be about two weeks, I think.”

Jon nods. “That’s fine.”

Martin doesn’t have a guest bedroom, but he gives Jon the bedroom. It’ll be better for his recovery, not having to sleep on Martin’s old, cramped couch. Jon is still quite drowsy from the sleeping powder, so he’s fast asleep before Martin even leaves the room.

And then, faster than Martin thought possible, Jon becomes part of Martin’s daily routine.

Every morning, Martin makes breakfast, and Jon watches his every move with apt curiosity. Every evening, they drive back to Tim’s house and Tim gives Jon another treatment. He starts bringing Jon with him on shopping trips, takes him out for coffee and sandwiches, even takes him ice skating one sunny afternoon towards the end of his recovery period (letting Jon lean on him the entire time, lest he slip and fall and undo all of Tim’s work).

He doesn’t know if Jon is thinking about the future beyond his treatments, but Martin is. He spends an afternoon trying to find a master-level transformationist who could reverse Jon’s curse, but it quickly becomes clear that such services would be unattainably expensive.

If they can’t turn Jon back into his true form, that means Jon is stuck with them for the long haul. Which means Martin needs to figure out how to help him carve out space for himself in human society. He tries to think of jobs that would work for a person who so recently was not a person at all. More importantly, he starts looking into breaking his lease, doing cursory searches for places with two bedrooms and reasonable rent.

He also starts looking into education options. Jon instinctively knows far more about human life than make sense for a deer, which Martin assumes was just part of the transformation, but he doesn’t know how to read, doesn’t know math beyond basic arithmetic, doesn’t know a thing about history or sociology or any of the sciences. Somehow, Martin doesn’t think Jon would be happy staying ignorant of such important bits of human knowledge.

Then comes the day when Tim pronounces Jon completely healed, and Martin takes Jon out for a celebratory dinner. He watches Jon smiling, his expression finally devoid of any kind of pain, and decides that talk of the future can wait until tomorrow morning.

In the morning, when Martin goes to the bedroom to call Jon to breakfast, he nearly screams in surprise. He rears back, both hands collapsed over his mouth, breath coming far too quickly. Then he stops. Forces himself to calm down. Buries the sinking feeling of disappointment in his chest. This is a good thing. Martin is happy.

Jon is a deer again, and that’s… good.

“Jon,” Martin calls, loudly, not wanting to risk being gored if Jon wakes in a panic.

Jon opens his eyes slowly, and then startles to full wakefulness, apparently registering the whole “once-again-a-deer” thing. He begins to move, so slowly Martin would almost describe the process as “delicate,” stepping off of Martin bed and onto the floor.

“I’ll just—uh—get out of your way,” Martin says, starting off down the hall. He can hear the clip-clip-clip of hooves behind him.

“Do—do you want breakfast, before you go?” Martin asks, and there’s a bit of a manic note in his voice as he turns around to face the literal deer in his house. He’s not as big as Martin expects, but there’s a slender stateliness about him. His antlers look very regal, Martin can’t help thinking, and then he lets out a wild giggle because there’s a deer in his house.

Jon tilts his head, and then looks toward the back door, to the forest beyond it.

“Right, I bet you just want to leave,” Martin says. He goes to the door and opens it, and Jon clip-clip-clips his way over. “Bye,” Martin says, ignoring the bolt of grief twisting in his stomach. He isn’t losing anything. This is good.

Jon bows his head towards Martin, and then he takes four ginger steps outside, and then he’s gone, racing toward the boundary of the forest in flying bounds.

Martin tries not to miss him.

VII. Jon

Jon returns to his life, but it isn’t the same.

Or, it is the same, but Jon isn’t. He has a name, and more than a name. He has knowledge now that he doesn’t know what to do with, that he can hardly hold in his deer-shaped mind.

Jon understands now what happened to him. The forest gives gifts, sometimes. Gifts that are desperately needed. Gifts that could save a life. A temporary transformation, a human form so that a human doctor could heal him. Long enough for his injuries to heal completely so he could step back into his old life as easily as if he’d never left.

Except Jon can’t bring himself to leave the forest around Martin’s house.

At least, not more than he has to. It’s winter, so he has to wander far for forage. His thoughts, though, such as he has in his too-slow, too-quick deer mind, always stay with Martin.

Sometimes, in the weeks that follow, he sees Martin watching him, and he feels the urge to flee. Sometimes he gives in to the urge, but other times, he raises his head and watches Martin back. He wonders if Martin knows it’s him. He wonders if Martin cares.

He wonders if Martin—

But that’s a dangerous thought, the one thing that Jon can’t let himself think.

He tells himself that he’s happy just to see Martin.

He tells himself a lot of things.

***

Then one morning, Jon wakes up with hands and feet and a runny nose, and he knows that this, too, is a gift from the forest. Another blessing, this one more permanent. An answer to the agonized question that Jon hadn’t really even known he was asking.

He feels—

—happy exhilarated terrified—

—but he doesn’t let himself think too hard about it. He has things to do, important things.

On four legs, Jon runs to the nearest village. On two legs, he finds a flower shop. There is exactly enough money in his pocket for a small bouquet, and he carries it gently as he walks the two miles to Martin’s cottage.

He knocks on the door, quickly trying to smooth down his hair, knowing that it’s a futile effort, that he looks like he has been rolling around in the forest all day. He hopes Martin will be happy to see him. He hopes the forest wouldn’t give him this gift if Martin didn’t feel—

Martin opens the door, and every thought in Jon’s head freezes.

“Jon?” Martin says, eyebrows furrowed.

Before he can lose his nerve, Jon holds out the flowers. “These are for you.”

Martin takes them. ““What—? How—?”

“Will you go on a date with me?”

Martin blinks. “I—Jon how are you here?”

“I’ll tell you later, just—Please answer the question. Do you want to go on a date with me?”

Martin laughs then, and it’s clear from the tone of it, from the look in his eyes that he’s still painfully confused, but it’s a lovely sound anyway.

Then he says, “Yes, Jon, of—of course I do.”

And Jon has a million things he wants to say, but Martin has already moved on, is back to asking his questions. So he reaches for Martin’s hand and gives it a squeeze and says, smiling, “I missed you.”