Personal Time - (Fables, M)

[Garnet]

This started out as a self-indulgent little thing for the drabble thread, but then it got juuust long enough to warrant its own post.

I generally prefer The Wolf Among Us to Fables. Although the comic is charming in its own rights, some parts of Bigby and Snow's relationship are booorderline creepy. That said, I needed a situation where they're comfortable enough doing weird stuff to each other and Bigby has an excuse to laze around in giant wolf form. In that respect, comic spoilers apply.

As do warnings for more sentient, talking animal sneezes. I don't know, man. Just... here. Here you go.

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Her whole world existed in a shady, cool space between sleep and waking. Distantly, she was aware of the nebulous quilt of sunlight shifting over her face and legs where it filtered through the oak canopy, directed by whims of the wind. She registered the smell of long, sweet summer grass and the warmth of wolf fur under her cheek. Mostly, she enjoyed the silence.

Snow White loved her roving, unruly pack of half-feral children with more intensity than she thought her heart was ever capable of. But she was also very, very glad for the long afternoons they sometimes spent at the farm, terrorizing her sister and probably every single fable that lived there. Rose had given her a shit-eating grin when she'd showed up to gather her charges, and mentioned something very pointed about personal time. Wink wink. Nudge nudge.

Personal time. She'd struggled not to laugh in her face. Bigby was indeed the one who usually wore the yipping chorus out with long forays into the woods and the wilds, ranging as far as the enchantments in the valley could reach. It was nice to have him all to herself for once. But if Rose thought either of them had energy for more than a long nap in the meadow, she was nuts.

She was content in this daydreaming limbo. Gradually, however, Snow became conscious of a deep roar to the background buzz of insects. Her equilibrium shifted far enough off-balance that she stirred to full wakefulness in the space of a few bleary blinks.

Her husband's side had been serving as her pillow for the better part of the afternoon, she was long accustomed to sleeping through the rhythmic rise and fall. She realized now that the thrum of noise had been his breath deepening, dramatically enough to throw her off balance as his chest hitched. She propped herself up on one arm.

"Bigby?"

He was awake as well. His head was tilted back and jaws parted. They scissored open and shut a few times, uncertain, before he finally sighed out a long and staggered breath, and glanced back at her. His muzzle was still slightly curled on one side, like the beginning of a sneer he couldn't help.

"Sorry. 'd I wake you?"

"I was halfway there already," she got out around a yawn, before sitting up in full and hooking her arms around bent knees. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Thought I was gonna sneeze."

Heat warmed her cheeks, inexplicably endeared. She put out a hand, and Bigby craned back into it automatically, pushing his snout under her palm. She scratched her nails where his fur grew short and soft. Her affections paused, however, when his muzzle crinkled under her fingertips, and the wet black tip of his nose twitched.

"... why do I feel like I'm in the danger zone?" She prompted, amused. She pressed a thumb between his eyes until they cracked groggily open.

"Don't stop," he groaned evasively. "I can turn my head in time."

Snow obliged, graduating from her fingertips to the whole heel of her palm as she rubbed over the bridge of his nose and chased the touch down the midline of his skull. When she could feel the ridge of bone where all of his massive jaw muscles attached, she worked her way back down behind one ear, forever entertained by the variety of blissful noises he made. The scruff of her touch under his chin was where the corners of his mouth finally pulled back in quivery dismay, and he made an odd face.

"Hold that th-- huh! ... that thought for second," he groaned, and straightened his neck. Snow started to lean back on her palms, but on a whim changed her mind and rested back against his side. It expanded like the greatest of bellows as he drew a deep, shuddering breath, and her body rose in turn with his.

"Hhhhhh...! HHHH-H-H...!"

Against her ear, the intake of air into his lungs sounded like the rush of distant thunder. Her shoulders dipped as it soughed back out. The next was shakier, broken by little snags and shallow exhales as he waited for the irritation to peak. Snow had a poor view of his features from this angle -- probably the safest option -- but she could gauge the progression well enough by the cant of his ears and the bow of the tree branches overhead. She felt sure they were about to snap in the force of his inhale, and she seized her fingers tight in his fur as he seemed to hit his capacity. They were going to feel this one all the way down at the farm...

And then it was gone. The tension seeped back out of him in the form of a long, gusting sigh that fluttered the grasses, and she heard an audible thump as his jaw hit the ground, projecting frustration.

"Fuck."

It was a small wonder that the kids didn't have filthier mouths.

Snow pushed herself up to her knees, and kneel-walked to resettle beside his head, with her back against the tree. "Alright," she sighed fondly. "I'm taking pity on you. C'mere." She patted her thigh, inviting him to rest his head in her lap. He nosed his way into it more hesitantly than usual, perhaps owing to the slight, unrelieved crease just between his eyes. She was about to make it much worse. "Hold still," she warned, before selecting her smallest finger to trace around the very edge of his left nostril.

Bigby gave an immediate, flustered snort as his lips drew back from his teeth, expression hazy. "You've got a real..." He wrinkled his muzzle and flashed a lick across it in discomfort. "... a real mean streak, Snow, you know that?"

"You married me. No take-backsies."

"Never." He groaned, and made an effort to hold still, shifting his weight to better prevent the instinctive flinch away from her fingertips.

"It'll be worth it," she soothed. When he was settled, she put one hand behind his ears and scratched into the soft fur there, while the other resumed stroking tiny, feathery figure eights across the rims of both nostrils. Large and reactive, they registering her touch with a series of tiny tics as she irritated each with the pad of her fingertip. At least his nose felt cool and damp, as reassuring a sign of his good health as any.

"You don't seem sick."

"I'm not," he agreed, eyes half-squinted to wet slivers of gold, though his expression wasn't progressing to that same level of slack-jawed desperation it held before. "Just something tickling my nose. Besides you."

She smiled. "Guilty. Is this working?" She hummed, as a finger stroked gingerly into the velveteen fuzz of his split upper lip. That prompted an immediate, involuntary snarl of distress, every fang sharp and shining. Snow kept up, hopeful and unafraid, but his expression slowly relaxed in spite of it, as he rolled her a bleary look.

"Kind of? It's..." He scrunched his snout and gave into another explosive, gusting snort that felt hot against her palm. Her stomach clenched with a queer stirring of delight. "Hgh, sorry. It's just going to make me do that."

The cause-and-effect of gently playing with his nose was a little exhilarating, and it was an effort to force her fingertips away from delving her touch deeper into the channels of either nostril. Bigby would put up with damned near anything she wanted to do to him, and wag his tail the whole time, but she didn't want to actually hurt him with a too-hard jab or the nick of her nail against the soft lining. Instead, she cupped his chin in both hands and kissed the top of his nose, like a preemptive apology. It pulsed warmly under her lips.

"Let me try something else." She scratched the soft cup of one ear to distract him as her hand skimmed over the vegetation nearby. Most had been flattened beneath plenty of foot and paw traffic to the popular lounging spot, but there was a long, slender stalk of speargrass within reach that she plucked free. Snow White smoothed the blade of it thoughtfully, as Bigby looked on with an expression of watery dread. "This okay?"

"I... yeah. You're gonna want to brace for impact, though. That thing looks... effective."

Snow bit her lip and adjusted her weight just slightly in the cradle of the oak roots. His head suddenly felt very heavy on her legs. "Duly noted. Just try not to send me flying all the way back to the house."

Gingerly, she slipped the stiff point of it into the cavern of one nostril, flared open wide enough that the stalk didn't even touch the sides. She ventured as deeply as she dared without hurting him, before veering the tip to one side and letting it caress the sensitive tissue. Bigby's reaction was dramatic, and immediate.

"Huh--!" A helpless huff of breath left him as the soft lines of his snout rucked tightly together, forming a flurry of tiny wrinkles. "Huh--!"

Encouraged, she pressed the grass blade a little deeper as his nose tilted up, scratching the point back and forth until his eyes were spilling over with tears of irritation and the leaves overhead began to shake. She steadied his neck with the opposite hand, twisted into the thick fur. His whole body was rigid save for the heaving intake of each breath, gaining volume by the beat as he geared towards a sneeze. Even when he made to turn his snout up and away from her, she chased it as far as her arm could stretch, worrying the stem in place until she was certain it wouldn't back off again at the last moment. A final, soft twist between her thumb and forefinger seemed to put him at critical mass, as his chest swelled so deeply it pressed her back, pinned against the tree. She let go of the stimulus an instant before he whipped his head aside and finally sneezed.

"--HH'RRDSSSSCHHHHOO!"

His whole body lurched with the force of it, earning a soft oof from Snow as he jostled against her. She couldn't see much beyond a whirl of oak leaves and meadow grass kicked up in the blast, along with her own hair whipping loose of its ponytail. She pushed it out of the way, then steadied an arm around his chest as he heaved with another series of preparatory breaths. He leaned back into her.

"S... sor--," he tried to groan an apology, around the bunching snout and snarl of teeth. She rubbed a hand between his shoulders, amused. For being so bluntly unapologetic about his nature to everyone else, sometimes he got embarrassed about the most brutish and basic of his instincts in front of her, even now.

"You're fine, let it out."

"--HHHUHSSSZSHHHHOOO!!"

Somewhere across the field, a flight of birds suddenly erupted from the woods as the trees there swayed and creaked. She didn't want to admit it, but now Snow really was glad they weren't anywhere near the house, or even pointed in its direction. She wondered if the Three Little Pigs had once been so unlucky.

Fortunately, that sneeze seemed to have cleared most of the itch from his nose, leaving space only for a few shallow, wavery breaths and a much less disastrous, "Huh... HUHFFSHHOO!" that sent a shudder from his ears to his tail.

Bigby collapsed back across her legs with a bone-deep noise of relief afterwards, nose twitching with tiny aftershocks and running freely.

"Good god, Bigby, Gesundheit!" She huffed in surprise, catching his head in her arms.

"Fucking hell," he croaked. "Have I mentioned that I love you?"

"Every day," she assured, ruffing the thick pelt of his neck firmly before applying a gentler touch to the tracts of wetness beneath each eye. "But dear, you are not a lap dog. Get off."

Bigby grunted deeply, but shifted enough that she could reposition her legs, and lean aside to where his human clothes had been folded some hours earlier. He watched her with a sleepy, almost post-coital expression as she tugged a handkerchief from his back pocket, then patted her thighs again.

"Okay."

He put his chin back down, gently, and squinted his eyes shut as she cleaned him up with a few blotting passes of the cloth.

"Mm, thanks. You're way too fucking good to me."

"Putting grass in your nose is among my many wifely duties and talents," Snow laughed, then bent to kiss the smooth dome of his skull. Bigby rolled onto his side, head still in her lap to expose his throat for scratching. Fully aware of the hidden message of vulnerability and trust in this gesture, Snow ran her fingers from chin to chest.

"Hey," he sighed, "Most people run the other way the second my nose starts twitching. Even as a man."

"Well," she mused, glancing past at the long furrow of field blasted down to the sod from the force of his sneeze. "Not without good reason."

"Point."

"Anyway," she said after a long beat of consideration, feeling a blush heat to her cheeks. He'd notice that soon enough, better to be forward with it. "I might have enjoyed it a little."

Bigby opened an eye at her, thoughtful. "... yeah?" To her relief, he didn't seem to think she was kidding. They had spent enough years together, she supposed, to be able to divine the subtlest shades of each other's sarcasm and bad jokes. "Which part?"

"I haven't figured that out yet," she admitted. "I think it's... the excitement of seeing you lose control of yourself, without being angry or anyone being in danger."

"That's exciting?" Bigby mused, not mocking exactly, but genuinely bewildered as he rolled onto his back this time. She scratched the soft fur of his jaw.

"You're a giant wolf that can flatten a couple hectares of woodland with a sneeze, dear. Perspective."

"Right," he admitted, and licked his nose. She knew what came of laying on his back for too long, and perhaps so did he. She kept a hand on his jaw as he knocked that whole idea around in his head, until his chest rose with a breath and he jerked suddenly, vigorously upwards.

"Huh....--HPFSSHSH!"

It was a tiny sneeze by Bigby standards, more a reflexive snort than anything, but she allowed herself a grin all the same as it stirred the branches overhead and loosed a quick aerosol spray on the air.

"Bless you. Shouldn't have told you that," she acknowledged. "Now you're going to use it to your advantage."

"You bet your ass I am," he said, but righted himself at last and gave his head a vigorous shake. "Every time I get in trouble: ah... ahh...!" He feigned a build-up with eyes half-lidding and mouth falling open.

"Shhh-shh, stop," Snow muffled a laugh, cheeks burning with embarrassed pleasure as she hugged his muzzle closed. "You're a menace."

Bigby chuckled, and licked her cheek. "I'm kidding. Don't want to wear it out, huh? I'll forget about it 'til the next time I catch cold." She bit her lip in agreement, then affection as his fur grew coarser under her touch and his shadow smaller. She closed her eyes to accept the pecking kiss to the brow Bigby gave her before he stood on two legs, and began to climb back into his clothes.

"We've still got an hour or two before the kids are back," he observed as he buttoned up his shirt, looking at her with the gold of his eyes fading last.

"I can't imagine what you're getting at, Mr. Wolf," she snorted, but smiled as she rose. She hooked her hand in his arm when he offered it, and bumping shoulders and hips in lazy companionship, they made their way back to the house.

Edited August 13, 2014 by Garnet

[Anonymouse]

OMGOMG YES MORE. Even though I do prefer TWAU to Fables, the artwork is gorgeous and I have an insatiable need for more Bigby and Snow so I keep reading.

If I had to pick a favorite part, it'd be this:

Against her ear, the intake of air into his lungs sounded like the rush of distant thunder. Her shoulders dipped as it soughed back out. The next was shakier, broken by little snags and shallow exhales as he waited for the irritation to peak. Snow had a poor view of his features from this angle -- probably the safest option -- but she could gauge the progression well enough by the cant of his ears and the bow of the tree branches overhead. She felt sure they were about to snap in the force of his inhale, and she seized her fingers tight in his fur as he seemed to hit his capacity. They were going to feel this one all the way down at the farm...

I love your descriptions of his deep, thunderous breaths. Desperate pre-sneeze breaths are kinda the bomb.

"It'll be worth it," she soothed. When he was settled, she put one hand behind his ears and scratched into the soft fur there, while the other resumed stroking tiny, feathery figure eights across the rims of both nostrils. Large and reactive, they registering her touch with a series of tiny tics as she irritated each with the pad of her fingertip. At least his nose felt cool and damp, as reassuring a sign of his good health as any.

Mmm... you write the best inducing scenes. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that I've probably read that Clintasha inducing scene from that story you wrote ages ago about ten times in the past week. It is just such a work of art. And so is this. It's adorable how Snow keeps petting him and scratching his ears to distract him from the discomfort. :wub:

"S... sor--," he tried to groan an apology, around the bunching snout and snarl of teeth. She rubbed a hand between his shoulders, amused. For being so bluntly unapologetic about his nature to everyone else, sometimes he got embarrassed about the most brutish and basic of his instincts in front of her, even now.

"You're fine, let it out."

Trying to get the apology out

That fit of three was amazing, as was that adorable lying-with-his-head-tipped-back-so-dust-gets-down-his-snoot sneeze. <333

[Mr. Black Cherry Berry Tea]

"They were going to feel this one all the way down at the farm" was like GOLD. Pure, shiny, delightful gold. Loving all the TWOU/Fables stuff here lately, and this one is an excellent addition.

[AppleBlossom]

Oh my gosh! How did I miss this beauty?!

Unff! Your little Drabble had been squealing in happiness and rolling around with each adorable moment!

I'm so glad I read this, sneezy wolf boy is a lot different kind of fun! You write them so well it hurts!

Like a drug, I want more please!

[snuffles]

I'm so glad for extended drabbles! Such a perfect fandom, incredible opportunities, and loveable characters! I just devour everything I can get!

[PuppetMaster64]

This is amazing! it's always nice to see TWAU/Fables stories, and wolf Bigby is adorable