Original Bad Form: Sapien Saga. *COMPLETE* +Epilogue

[starpollen]

8 hours ago, VioletGarden said:

I just love it omg😍 I'm waiting for some Draven's sneezes too

Funny you should say that...

While at work today when I was meant to be doing something else entirely... I finished it.   Hope you enjoy!

---   ---   ---

Part 6 - Love
36 months

Turn about’s fair play. 

---   ---   ---

 

“I want to play a game.”

One of Draven’s dark brows arched, obsidian eyes flicking to azure blue. “Oh?” The older hunter took a sip of scalding, bitter coffee before reaching again for the holster he’d been oiling.  The butter-soft leather had needed a thorough scraping and cleaning after the zombies they’d hacked up; another nut-job Frankenstein wanna-be who thought he could raise his own personal army of rotting bags of skin for no goddamned reason. 

Typical Friday night.

During the take-down, Alyc had shifted into a towering creature with skin that resembled turtle shell, impervious to the scrabbling nails and clacking teeth of the horde.  Together they’d decapitated and torched the writhing bodies before flushing out Frank and tossing him onto the pile as it burned.

Now it was Saturday morning and – back to its shorter, softer self – the kid’s mountain lake eyes were wide with excitement, its mouth stretched in a goofy grin.  “Yeah. I saw it on YouTube today and I wanna try it with you.”

“What is it?” Try as he might, he couldn’t quite keep his low, rumbling voice neutral. Anytime they were at home like this - or out shopping or at a restaurant or running errands together - he knew his voice took on a deeper, softer quality when he spoke to Alyc. 

As the smaller shifter prattled on about some influencer’s channel where they pulled all kinds of pranks and stunts for reactions and ratings, pale hands winging through the air like birds, Draven’s dark eyes could only focus on Alyc’s dusky lips. 

What had begun between them as protector-prey when he’d first taken the shapeshifter from his trap had morphed into a strange but satisfying partnership. Alyc had insisted early on that it could help with Draven’s business – hired assassin for all things sapien – and, surprisingly, the kid was really good at it. 

Not only could Alyc shift into some usefully lethal forms to take down their prey, it could also do the things that Draven wasn’t great at: reconnaissance, infiltration, connections.  Sneaky spy stuff.  Draven was more a punch-it-shoot-it-stab-it kind of guy, but Alyc could weasel its way into conversations with people, could shift into bland human forms and get in and out of places to observe, to track, to corner. And so – because this thing between them worked so well – Draven hadn’t bothered to point out the irony: that his new partner was a shifter-sapien whom the dark hunter had been hired to kill in the first place.  

They still hadn’t figured out who wanted Alyc dead, but after 9 months passed with no further communication through the proxy channels - and no attempts on the kid’s life from any of Draven’s… colleagues… - the older man had relaxed. A bit.  Even now, over 2-and-a-half years later, he still kept many of the insane rules and security measures in place to keep Alyc alive – here, safe – but he was starting to believe that it hadn’t been personal. That the mysterious client had only wanted a shifter dead, not this shifter dead.

The idea of Alyc dead did things to Draven’s chest that made him need to rip flesh apart with his bare hands and shred internal organs with his teeth while roaring his soul to the stars.

Draven had taken his - HIS - shifter home with him that first day, had bafflingly, clumsily nursed Alyc through the monster of a cold, and… when the younger being had woken one morning clear-eyed and congestion-free… it stayed.  Draven had sent word back through the proxies that the creature had escaped, that he was too busy to waste time trying to track it down again. 

He’d kept the kid under lock and key for the next 3 months, vigilant, the two of them tip-toeing around each other as the relationship began to form. Protector turned to partner, trust turned to friendship, attraction turned to lust. As time went on, feelings had taken deeper root.  Draven even caught himself using endearments - pet names - when Alyc did something particularly ‘Alyc’-like: kid, baby, hon… love. 

And now, as that mesmerizing mouth continued to bend and curve around words, Draven became aware that what they had was turning into something more.

And he wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

The older hunter had loved, long ago, and the loss of it had brought more blood and pain than he had thought he’d be able to survive.  It had burned away nearly every scrap of his soul and left him with a vast, black emptiness rimmed by roiling rage and suffocating hate. 

It wasn’t until a snarky, scrawny, silken-skinned shifter sneezed its way into Draven’s life that he’d started the painful, scrabbling climb out of that dark pit.

He didn’t think he would survive it a second time.

“So, what do you think?”

“Huh?” Draven blinked.

Alyc was looking at him with grinning expectation, bouncing, radiating excitement.

He blew out a duck-lipped breath. “Sorry, kid.  I have no idea what you just said.”  Setting the holster back down on the battered dining table, he turned his big body toward his shifter, the wooden chair creaking under his weight.

Alyc simply rolled its sapphire eyes, wrinkled its squarish nose, and reached with slender fingers for Draven’s huge, scarred hands.  “I said,” it chirped, gliding around the corner of the table and sliding its legs on either side of Draven’s. The bird-boned body settled into the bigger man’s lap.  “I want. To play. A game.”  Delicate hands skimmed his broad chest, slipping up to cage the older man’s collar bones in long fingers.

Unable to deny his kid anything it wanted – within reasons that had to do with Alyc’s health and safety, mind – Draven nuzzled his face into those soft brown curls, drawing a long breath through his nose.  Obsidian eyes closed, thick, muscular arms draped around the warm, slight body, that blue heart thumping against his own. 

“Okay.”

An hour later Draven found himself sitting in the parking lot of the local high-priced organic grocery store. 

Alyc had insisted that Draven drive them there, then refused to allow him to come inside.  Had threatened Draven within an inch of his life if he set one foot outside the black Hummer. And - even though Alyc’s birth form was small and slight and more vulnerable than Draven’s - the older hunter knew better than to believe for one second that Alyc was in any way incapable of carrying out its threats. 

The kid could shift into a dragon, for krysssakes.

So, Draven had muttered his usual string of curses whenever the kid was being particularly stubborn and irrational, but he couldn’t help the slight lifting of one corner of his mouth.  This was part of what had fascinated him about Alyc on their very first meeting: the tantalizing duality.  Deception and truth.  Defiance and submission.  Strength and weakness.  Violence and vulnerability.  Sitting there in the parking lot, his chest ached with emotion unnamed.

The game ended up being him blindfolded while Alyc made him taste dozens of random things, trying to guess what each one was.  Slender fingers at his mouth had eventually been replaced by hungry lips, the blindfold accompanying them into the bedroom. 

They played the game again on Sunday, this time with Alyc blindfolded.  But the bedroom ending was the same.

And every minute the thought twirled through his head like ribbons, spinning him into dizzy confusion.  

Love?...

---   ---   ---

It started with a prickle.

Just a dry ache in the back of his throat that had Draven reaching more often for the bottled water Alyc kept stocked in their fridge.  It wasn’t even noon on a tired Tuesday and already there were several dead plastic soldiers lined up on the battered kitchen table.

Draven was – as per usual – inspecting and cleaning his massive arsenal of weapons.  He was on week three of a nasty hunt: a siren that had escaped from its cell at the local NHSSI – Non-Human Sapien Study Institute.  This particular creature was male, oddly, which was why it had been held for study instead of exterminated. Sirens relied on particular timbres of their voice to basically hypnotize humans into doing pretty much anything the sapien wanted: hand over money, burn down a building, accept sexual advances, kill their boss... et cetera. This siren had already sung its way into a sensitive posting on a military weapons base and almost managed to spark a nuclear war before it was caught.  Having recently persuaded one of the doctors to switch places with it in the cell, no one knew exactly what nefarious deed it planned to do next.

Draven was going to stop it. Whatever it was. For good.

Alyc wasn’t going to be helping on this case; the shifter had finally agreed to take some culinary classes at the vocational college down the street. Draven had been after Alyc for months to go, knowing that the kid would be in heaven, and the stubborn creature had finally applied for the program.  Alyc had no plans to work in a restaurant – it had too many food allergies to be in a commercial setting – but would be ecstatic about furthering its hobby. Ironically, Draven really could have used the shifter’s spy skills with this one, but there just weren’t enough hours in the day.

So for the last three weeks, weekdays for Alyc meant classes and weekends were for hunting easy targets.  Draven was going out alone on weeknights chasing after the complicated siren.  Having their days and nights mixed up meant that pretty much the only time they had together was between noon and sunset on Tuesdays and Thursdays when Alyc didn’t have class. At sunset the hunter went out stalking and Alyc did his homework in the kitchen. Draven came home by sunrise and they had breakfast before the shifter’s classes. They’d been a little testy with each other due to loneliness, and the older man was itching to put this fucker in the ground so their lives could get back to normal.  It had been a long three weeks.

Now, if only this crap with his throat would stop...

“Kggm,” he cleared it for about the hundredth time that day, gulping down the last swallow from the most recent plastic bottle.  Rising to his impressive height, Draven rolled his shoulders and gave a sharp sniff.  A muzziness was settling in his head, and he briefly pondered taking a quick nap before going out to prowl the underbelly of the city.

“I’m hooooome!” came the energetic call from the front door.

“Hey,” Draven called from the kitchen, reaching into the fridge for yet another bottle.

“Hey, yourself,” Alyc cooed from the doorway, arms laden with groceries.  Whenever the shapeshifter went out alone, it always assumed something other than its birth-form for protection.  The hunter had seen a few dozen forms over the last 2 years, but for some reason his kid always used the stately African American woman when shopping for food.   The result was even more striking because – no matter what form it chose – Alyc always kept its jewel-blue eyes. 

The younger being set 'her' prizes down on the chipped Formica counter, then began unpacking.

“What’d you learn today?” Draven rumbled, taking long pulls from the bottle with the fridge door still open.

“Gnocchi with brown butter, walnuts, and fried sage!” Alyc grinned, gleaming white teeth shining in the burnished brown face.  “And for dessert, coconut panna cotta!”

“Not nuts,” Draven reminded gently, swiping at his mouth with the knuckles holding the bottle. “We’re out of Benadryl.”

Alyc scowled.  “I had it at class,” it bit out stubbornly, plucking specific items from the bags and tucking them into the open fridge.  “I was fine.”

“Kgm,” the older man cleared his throat – again – and took another long swallow.  The water wasn’t helping as much anymore.

“D...?”

One dark brow quirked up in response.  The fridge door swung shut.

“Are… are you okay?”

Another swallow of water.  “Yeah,” he rumbled, leaning a thickly muscled arm on the top of the appliance.  “Why?”

“I dunno,” the shifter’s mountain lake eyes narrowed, searching the hunter’s face.  “Something’s… off.”

Draven finished the bottle with three long gulps, setting the empty plastic container on the counter next to the non-perishables.  “’M just tired, love,” he breathed, wrapping thick arms around his kid.  “This hunt’s taking longer than it should.”

The larger man felt the shiver-shimmer of skin that told him Alyc was shifting back to its birth-form, the body in his arms suddenly smaller and slighter, a mop of brown curls tickling his stubbled chin.  Wiry arms wrapped around his waist, squeezing in a strong, soothing hug. 

“Hmm,” warm breath ghosted his pec. “You should take a nap.”

Draven’s low chuckle rumbled from his broad chest.  “I was thinking the same thing just before you got home.”  Pressing a kiss to the curls, he murmured, “Join me?”

---   ---   ---

The nap hadn’t been such a great idea.

Draven woke just as the sun was setting, blinking at Alyc’s slim form tucked against his side.  The kid was out like a light, would probably sleep for several more hours.  The hunter, however, couldn’t. 

There was a siren to silence.

Dragging his big body from the bed, Draven noticed his dry throat had worsened from slight ache to sharp sore, the muzziness in his head thicker and starting to subtly throb.  His muscles felt as if he’d just finished a grueling workout, achy and tight.

Shaking his head to clear it, the hunter dressed in his customary leather pants, tight t-shirt, and leather jacket.  He strapped weapons to his chest, waist, back, legs, arms - anywhere something deadly could fit - finishing with leather biker gloves and combat boots.  Then, he headed out into the night.

Tracking the male siren took several hours, each step becoming more and more frustrating.  Draven’s body continued to decline, the next betrayal a nose that alternated between stuffy and runny, the liquid sliding down his tender throat forcing him to cough at inopportune moments.

It was one such cough that nearly gave him away, hiding behind a dumpster in a fetid alley as the siren exited the back door of a club.  The cacophony of sound being passed off as ‘music’ pumping from the club’s speakers intensified the fog in Draven’s head and pushed the headache from slight throb to punishing pound.

And then the prickle spread from his throat up into his nose.

Blinking through dry, aching eyes and pinching at the prickle caused the dark hunter to lose the siren in the crowd as he followed it, turning a corner and finding the creature had suddenly vanished.

Draven growled in frustration, rage at his own failure washing through his nerves causing his hands to clench into hard fists.

By the time he finally gave up the hunt, pale pink tendrils were weaving up from the horizon into the periwinkle sky.  Booted feet stomped their way home.

“Good moooooorning!” his kid sang from the kitchen when the front door slammed shut.  The smoky scent of bacon and the sweet aroma of pancakes and syrup wrapped around his head, managing to dissipate the angry cloud just a little.

“Hey,” he rasped, surprised to find his voice thinner than its usual thundering rumble.

Alyc didn’t notice, singing loudly and slightly off-key to some power ballad whining through its laptop speakers.

Shucking the various deadly instruments from the myriad of places on his person, Draven peeled the sweaty leather from his body and stepped into a steaming-hot shower.

The steam, also, wasn’t such a great idea.

After soaping himself from crown to sole, the stuffiness in his head suddenly liquefied, causing his nose to begin a slow drip that turned the prickle into a tickle, then suddenly into a need…

“Hgk-MMp!” he crushed the sneeze between a knuckle and thumb.  It didn’t help his head at all.

Stepping out of the shower, Draven angrily swiped the drops of water from his body with a faded towel, yanking on a pair of soft, washed-too-much sweats.  As if that one sneeze was a spark from a flint, his sinuses continued to burn.  There was now a constant trickle of wetness sliding from behind his eyes to the tip of his nose, threatening to drip.  He used a knuckle to keep wicking it away, incessant sniffs proving ineffective.

Alyc set a plate of mile-high bacon-banana-caramel pancakes in front of the older man, wide mouth beaming.  “Breakfast is served!”

Draven cleared his throat in acknowledgement, “Kgm,” and tucked in.  He kept having to knuckle and sniff, taking tentative sips of scalding coffee the kid had poured into a chipped mug and set next to the plate.  His throat enjoyed none of this.

After breakfast, Alyc skipped off to class and Draven washed the dishes.  His big, scarred hands mired in soapy, syrupy water, he had to turn and press his nose into a muscled shoulder when the ticklish dripping forced another sneeze.

“Hk’nGSHt!”

Ugh, and now the drips had been sprayed down his arm. 

Stepping away, the large hunter ripped a paper towel from the dispenser and quickly dried his hands, grabbing a second square to roughly wipe his nose and arm clean.

This was beyond annoying.

When dishes were dry and counters wiped and everything neatly put away, Draven tried to get a little sleep, but the prickles and the aches denied it.  Hoping to reach exhaustion, he dragged the coffee table to the side for a workout.  Planks, crunches, free weights, push-ups, and pull-ups on the bar he’d installed in the hallway ceiling left him unusually breathless, coughs dragging roughly through the hot sharp sore that was his throat. More paper towels were needed as the drips from his nose edged closer to runs.  More sneezes pinched down.

And sleep never came.

By the time Alyc breezed its way through the door a few minutes after 4:00, Draven was hunched over the battered kitchen table, cleaning a gun that didn’t need cleaning, stubbornly swallowing back the coughs and scraping his raw nose with another rough paper towel.

The shifter pranced past toward the kitchen… then stopped.  Turned.  Razor azure orbs raked the older man from shaved head to trim waist.  Draven could guess what the kid saw: his nose felt like he’d scraped it down some broken asphalt.

“You’re sick.”

The hunter’s obsidian eyes glanced up, lips thinned into stubborn lines.  “No.”  But that one word betrayed him, hoarse and weak, followed by a pain-spiked attempt to clear his ragged throat.  “Kgmm.”

Ice blue chips stared into glassy obsidian.

“I don’t get sick.”  Even he could hear how those raspy words frizzled with lies.  But he continued the stare-down.  He knew where this was headed.

“Oh, no you don’t,” the younger being crossed its arms over its slim chest, brows angling down to roof the sapphire glare.  “You’re not pulling this I’m-a-bad-assed hunter-who’s-indestructible crap.  Remember the time that fucking djinn stabbed you in the thigh and managed to nick your femoral artery?”

Draven did remember.  He’d been so focused on destroying the djinn’s host object – which isn’t always a brass lamp, despite Hollywood propaganda – that he hadn’t noticed the blood pouring into his boot until his vision started strobing black, collapsing just after flinging the leather-bound tome into the basement furnace and causing the sapien to disintegrate.

Alyc had absolutely fucking lost it.  The last thing Draven had heard was the shifter’s panicked screams echoing through his darkening skull.  It was one of the few times he’d woken up in the ER of the NHSSI being pumped full of genetically enhanced fluids in a kaleidoscope of colors.

“And what about the time a freaky scientist injected you with that super virus that ate up all the water in your blood and you got so dehydrated they had to completely change out and filter all your pints through dialysis? For nine fucking days.”

Ugh. That had been particularly unpleasant. But he’d survived.  

“’M fine, kid,” he murmured, lowering his gaze back to the weapon in his hands.  Unfortunately, he couldn’t help the necessary sniff to pull back a drip, a sniff that sounded dangerously wet.

“If you go out there tonight and hunt sick, something even worse could happen!”

“Siren won’t off himself.”

“I’m coming.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You can’t stop me!”

“Yes, I can.”

And - because Draven had stopped it, had kept Alyc in his apartment when the little shit had tried to sneak away a few times those first couple of weeks - wiry arms were flung into the air with utter frustration.  “I don’t even with you right now!...” The shifter punched words at the wall, stalking into the kitchen with muttered curses that sounded suspiciously like Draven's own rantings when the stubborn kid defied his orders.

The hunter smirked.  Turn about’s fair play.

For the next two hours the younger being ranted and cajoled and threatened and pleaded with Draven to drink some juice, take some pills, take a nap, use the soft lotioned tissues instead of rough paper towels, anything to simply acknowledge the symptoms of his burgeoning cold.  Draven ignored it. If he admitted to it, that would make it real.  And he'd be damned if this fucker got away again. Every weapon was once more meticulously inspected and cleaned, surveillance footage monitored, the hunter preparing for his nightly foray.

When Draven stood dressed in his customary leather-clad armor, loaded with extensive weaponry, Alyc blocked the door.

“No,” it hissed, limbs vibrating with fury. “You are not going out tonight.” Gone was the playful creature of the weekend.  This was pissed shapeshifter squared.

“Have to, kid,” the older man frowned, feeling more than a little guilty for putting Alyc through this.  His nose added insult to injury by flaring with an unavoidable tickle, “H’Mgpt!” that he crushed between a knuckle and thumb, followed by a brief, chesty cough.

A long finger pointed. “THAT.  That right there. That says you can’t go tonight.  God, D, be reasonable, you don--”

“I’ll finish it,” Draven clamped large, gentle hands on Alyc’s upper arms, physically setting the shifter aside and opening the door.  “Fucker dies tonight.  Then I’ll be done, and you can fuss all you want.”

Mountain lake eyes pooled with fearful, unshed tears.  “P-promise?”

“Yeah, love,” Draven dropped a quick kiss to the crown of brown curls.  “Be back soon.”

He lied.

It wasn’t soon.

Hours passed pounding the pavement, stalking and tracking the siren from club to club all over the city, and – just because the gods hated him – it started to rain.  And not a warm rain, either, but icy sleet that slipped down his neck and under the collar of his jacket. His cell went off a few times - Alyc trying to check in - but he ignored it. He knew the kid would beg him to come home, but - despite feeling worse by the minute - he was closing on his target.  

By the time he finally cornered the siren in the dingy men’s room of yet another club, Draven was a fucking mess: shivering, nose running, head throbbing, throat screaming, chest aching, croupy coughs and head-splitting sneezes...  His ‘Alyc emergency’ bandana was uselessly sodden.

But he took that motherfucker down.  

Like a boss.

Leaving the corpse in a puddle on the floor, Draven stumbled home.  The freezing drizzle washed away most of the blood as he slogged back to his Hummer, and he mused that having this shitty cold probably saved his life: his ears were too clogged to accurately register the hypnotic tones weaving through the air from the sapien’s treacherous throat.

Parking the Hummer in the underground garage of their building, the tired man trudged towards the elevator, not even fighting as the near-constant prickle flared in his cold-ridden tissues. “Hh’EESHtt!-uh… sdff… Kgm-kggm.”… more chesty coughs ....  “ah’YEIISSHtt!-ah … sddf.” Draven had to resort to using the hem of his damp t-shirt to pinch away the drips.

He coughed his way down the hallway to their apartment, lungs crackling with congestion. The door whipped open before he could even put the key in the lock. “Ohmygodcomehere…” Smaller hands yanked his big body inside, nimble fingers plucking each weapon and flinging them on the table, the couch, the floor.

“Careful,” the taller man chuckled, ducking his face into an elbow for another wet “heh-EEIISSHHtt!-ah” that misted them both.

“You crazy--” his jacket was jerked off “--stupid--” hurled down “--stubborn--” damp t-shirt peeled up “--cocky--” leather pants stripped down “--shit-for-brains--” a warm towel rubbed over every inch of his chilled skin “--MOTHERFUCKING ASS!”  Alyc shoved the older man against the wall, pressing hard against the broad chest.  “Don’t you ever do that to me again!” Wiry arms wrapped tight around his thick neck, a trembling face pushed into the hollow of his throat. “God, D, you didn’t even answer your phone!  I thought--”

“’M sorry, baby,” Draven rasped, voice vanishing in shredded squeaks.  He fought against a cough, wrapping long arms around the quivering creature. “It’s over now.”

“You’re done?” lips feathered against his collar bone. “It’s dead?”

Draven nodded against the soft curls.

“Good.”  His shifter gave one final, desperate squeeze before it jerked back, fingers digging into the hunter’s biceps and shoving the man towards the bedroom. “Get in there.  Now.”

Settling his big body into the soft mattress with a groan, Draven’s black eyes tracked his kid as it flitted about gathering up an arsenal of a different sort: bottles and boxes of medicine, tissues, tea, chest rub, humidifier, soup, thermometer, extra blanket, cough drops…

Pulling two lotioned tissues from the box on the nightstand with a soft whisk, the older man dropped every guard and let the tickle have its way with him.  “Hh-EESHHt!-oo … hh’HHh… ehh?h’TSSCHhiu!-uhhn.” Tucking his much-abused nose into the soothing squares, he gave a long, relieved blow.

Alyc dropped to the edge of the bed at Draven’s hip, “Bless you.”  A whirl of emotions was spinning across its face.  Anger. Fear. Sorrow. Frustration. Annoyance. Guilt.  When the dust settled, though, the one thing pouring from those summer sky eyes was love.

Pure.  Simple.  Love.

And Draven realized, with a stuttering heartbeat, that he felt it. He really fucking did. And he needed to say it. Out loud.

“I love you, Alyc.”

Sunrise broke over that beloved face: jewel-blue eyes, square nose, mop of brown curls, smattering of freckles. A cool hand cupped his too-warm cheek. 

“I love you, too, D.”

-Fin

 

Edited August 30, 2021 by starpollen

[darkness-is-the-light]

Aww, I love the role reversal. This was absolutely wonderful. Thank you for writing it in the first place, and then finishing it after so long. 

[starpollen]

Just when I thought I was done with these two... Alyc wanted to talk.  So here it is. 

Also, writing telepaths is hard.  Really f-ing hard. 

Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk.

---   ---   ---

Epilogue

Alyc almost couldn’t believe it.  First, that Draven was even sick at all; in the two-and-a-half years they’d spent together the shifter had never seen the man so much as sniffle.  Something about enhanced DNA and regenerative abilities that had been spliced into him at the NHSSI. 

Second, that D had said I love you.

From having shared a bed since about 4 months into their… friendship? partnership? relationship... whatever -ship this was, Alyc had pieced together enough about the older man’s past to be fairly sure that ‘L’ word wasn’t in his vocabulary.  D wouldn’t talk about it.  But between sleep-mumbled mutterings, bouts of insomnia on certain dates, and not a few sweat-soaked-gasping nightmares that Alyc could get the gist of through their telepathic link... the shifter had figured out a lot. 

The bad-assed hunter had been hurting, badly - sick in his soul - when Alyc first encountered him, and the shapeshifter had vowed to itself to help this man heal. It’d been working on that for 2 years. 

Not that Alyc was a saint.  When that cage had dropped and the younger sapien had caught a glimpse of the stony black-eyed hunter through the bars - that fucking amulet tauntingly draped around his neck - it had immediately begun telepathically manipulating the situation any way it could to get out. 

Yes, Alyc had shamelessly rifled through all the filing cabinets in Draven’s mind and orchestrated nearly every part of the exchange that followed. That flashing image of its blanket-wrapped form had been particularly brilliant.  Alyc’s only goal had been freedom, believing it could slip away from the hunter’s clutches as soon as it got out of the cage. 

But it hadn’t taken into account how devotedly protective the hunter would become once he decided that Alyc was his. 

And Alyc definitely hadn’t counted on falling in love with the man.

Things had turned out very differently than anything the younger sapien could have ever imagined, but Alyc wouldn’t change a single minute of their last two-and-a-half years together. 

Well, maybe the cross-bolt through its wing. That, it could have lived without.

The link between their minds was now a constant background hum, like keeping your pinky linked with a lover’s while browsing the mall. Alyc didn’t go past the wall separating Draven’s private and public thoughts, simply brushing his mind now and again, gauging. Through the link, the shifter was able to feel a lot more than the hunter knew it could, more than D was able to feel. Alyc suspected early on that the older man might have a little latent ability - had to have it to be able to detect the link at all, let alone reach for it on his own - but Alyc was a full-blown telepath.  It could ‘hear’ nearly all of D’s public thoughts if it wanted to, could bash through the private wall if provoked.  But most telepaths avoided ‘eavesdropping’ in other people’s heads - it's hard enough handling your own brain, sometimes - and Alyc was no exception. 

But, boy was it fun to push feelings down the link and watch them drive the older man crazy. Like when it sneezed. 

The shifter intended to find out more about that.  Eventually.

Alyc gazed down at the sick man’s face while he slept: full lips parted to breathe, normally dusky skin pale except for the crimson flush to that bent nose.  Draven had broken it at least twice since Alyc had known him, and gods knew how many times before.

Which probably accounted for the bear-screaming-while-using-a-chainsaw snoring that was currently rattling the walls of their bedroom. Broken nose + head-clogging congestion = high risk of apnea.  So Alyc wouldn’t be sleeping tonight.  It’d sit with a slim back against the headboard, watching over its D. 

Yes, it was probably being a little paranoid. Whatever.

This morning, before Draven had crashed - hard - Alyc had finally managed to get the hunter to do all the normal ‘sick things:’ eat soup to boost his strength, drink hot tea to calm the shivers, suck on a lozenge to comfort his throat, have his temperature taken to monitor his fever, swallow medicine to subdue the aches, even let the shifter rub pungent gel into his broad chest to soothe lungs gone sore from coughing. The bigger man hadn’t uttered a syllable of complaint, likely still feeling guilty about letting Alyc think something terrible had happened to him during the hunt. 

Although… the kid had a sneaky suspicion that Draven secretly enjoyed being fussed over.  

When they’d come home from the ER after the djinn incident, Draven had allowed Alyc to be a sapien crutch getting him from the car to the couch, had let the shifter baby him for the five days it had taken for the muscles in his thigh to knit together enough to stand without assistance.  Alyc admitted that it had used the link a lot during those days: checking on the hunter’s pain levels, monitoring when he was hungry or thirsty or needed medication.  The younger being had plied D with juice blends and high-protein meals, turned the kitchen practically upside down implementing a diet to build muscle and restore blood loss. 

The man hadn’t peeped about any of it. Not once. 

At first, Alyc had suspected guilt then, too, but… a few hours after being deposited on said couch, Draven had started to ask for things. 

Draven never asked for things.

They were inconspicuous things at first: water, his laptop, an extra pillow… then Alyc himself. 

 

“Come here,” the big man said, one long arm stretched out.  When the shifter was close enough, Draven pulled it down next to him and tucked the smaller being close to his big body with a shuddering sigh.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” D buried his nose in the crook of Alyc’s neck and rumbled, “... just want you for a while.”

 

Not that Alyc had minded.  When D had collapsed in that basement and the shifter saw how much blood was saturating his pant leg, it had been convinced the man was dead.  Nobody could lose that much blood and survive. 

But Draven had.  Alyc had forced its body to shift to the size of Andre the Giant and grown a pair of wings - yeah, fucking wings - to fly the hunter to the ER in less than 2 minutes.  

Because Alyc couldn’t stand the idea of a world without Draven in it.

Today, the sick man had slept nearly all the time, waking only briefly for soup and juice and pills before tumbling back into exhausted sleep.  The kind of sleep sick bodies do when they've been deprived of rest and relief for too many hours beforehand.  Night had fallen, and the moon hung like a pearl in the ocean-dark sky as the younger being gazed at it, making lists and plans in its mind about things like calling in sick for tomorrow’s class, what ingredients they already had for more soup, was there a container in the freezer they’d forgotten about?... 

The snoring stuttered, the massive body on the bed shifting onto its side with a snorting snuffle. Alyc thought it would resume, but instead D started coughing, knees pulling up towards the spasming chest.  Immediately, the shifter’s hand started rubbing that broad back, searing heat coming off the dark skin in waves. 

“It’s okay, D,” Alyc murmured soothingly, reaching for the link and immediately feeling the hot-sick-miserable thrumming through the bigger man’s body.  “I’m here.”  

Draven’s hazy thoughts buzzed back. Alyc knew Draven didn’t know they did that. It kept that part a secret.

…ughsick.can’tbreathe… hurts… thirsty

When the coughing ended, D lifted himself up on one elbow. “... wa-t’r…” he croaked.

Alyc already had a cold bottle ready, uncapped, pressing it into the big hand. Tilting his head, Draven emptied it in gulping swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing with each long pull.  He looked haggard in the moonlight, sleep-mussed and slightly sweaty. Didn’t bother opening his eyes.

The times the telepath had skimmed D’s brain over the years it had found the hunter’s thoughts controlled, lucid, methodical. 

Tonight, however, sleep and sickness and fever were muddling them all up, coming in jumbled flashes that were not exactly coherent.

Fuckfeelsgood… ice water, throat fire, numb… 

When the water was gone, Alyc asked, “More?”

The slow shake of a dark head ‘no.’

...can’tbreathe, nose full… dripping

Wordlessly, Alyc switched out the empty bottle for a handful of tissues.

Steepling both hands around the white mass, the hunter tucked his nose in it and blew gustily, shoulders curving with the effort.  A flood of congestion soaked the paper, and Alyc had a vague thought that maybe he should get Draven’s stack of black bandanas from the sock drawer… that bent red nose was taking a beating.

ngpressuretoofull.notdone

When one knot of tissues was soaked, Alyc handed over a fresh pile, and the process repeated itself.  After blow number 3, the bigger man’s shoulders caved into the mattress for another harsh coughing jag, chest burbling with congestion.  The shifter’s hand moved up the quaking back to gently massage the back of D’s corded neck. 

head.chest.hurrttsss.

“Shh, it’s okay.  You’re okay.”

Finishing the fit with a groan, Draven lay panting for a minute, then hauled his aching body up and settled his head in Alyc’s lap, one long arm wrapping around its thighs and pushing his face into the smaller being’s stomach.

“...feel ligke shit...”  

hot.headhurts.Alycccc

“I know,” Alyc murmured softly. “I know you do, baby.” The shifter put both palms against the sides of the hunter’s head just above his ears, the heels of his hands pressing into Draven's throbbing temples and massaging gently.  He was burning up. “Can I check your temperature?”

hot.hurtsAlyc.helpsssyesss

Shaved head nodded against the slim waist, turning slightly so that Alyc could slip the thermometer between his lips. Draven huffed uncomfortably while they waited, nose too blocked to breathe but closed lips trying to hold the instrument in place.  

air.air.can’tbreathe.breathe.hurry

After a beep, Alyc pulled the stick up to read the numbers. “102.1.  Not good, baby.”

hot.hurtss

“...kkggh.” not quite a cough.

“Let’s get some more medicine in you, then you can go back to sleep.”

sleeeeeeppleeeease.sotired.

The big man shifted back up onto one elbow, still not bothering to open his eyes as Alyc pressed some pills into his hand followed by a still-warm mug of tea.  The last time the shifter had been sick, Draven had bought this electric coaster thing that kept mugs of tea warm on the nightstand. D was always doing stuff like that: bringing things home that ‘his kid’ would like, would make it more comfortable, happy. 

Draven passed the mug over, empty, and settled back into the shifter’s lap with a ragged huff.  Alyc was glad it had gotten more fluids into the sick man's system.  Slender hands stroked the bare head from temple to shoulder and back, feeling the fever-heat scorching the dark skin.

Alychelps… feeeelsgooood.don’tstop

Alyc kept stroking, head and neck and shoulders. For a few minutes there was only the hum of the humidifier and Draven’s whistling breaths. The thoughts went quiet, the hunter's big body growing heavy.   

Then:

prickle.   nnno.    don’twanna.goway

Alyc’s face wrinkled in confusion for a minute.  Then, Draven’s breath hitched. “Hyeh-hiih?...”

prickleitch.burn.gonnasneeze.burnpressureneeeeed...

Alyc was ready, a stack of tissues in his palm. “Here, tissues,” he placed his hand at the hunter’s eye-level, feeling the muscles in Draven’s back twitching with each stuttering inhale.  But instead of taking them himself, the big man arched his neck and nuzzled his nose into the smaller being’s hand.

neeedsneeezegonnasneeze.mess.tissuesthere...

“Hh!-hehhh?” hot breath punched Alyc’s wrist.  “HEH!...Hk’gSHHt!-hhhh!-aHSSHhtch!-oo”  Wetness exploded through the paper into its palm, Draven’s arm clenching reflexively around its legs. 

“Bless--”

owhead.    burnsss.sneezeagain…

The hunter sucked a wheezy inhale. “heeEEe-eh’GEIISSHtt! -ah … sddffll… sdflffl”  Draven groaned, low and miserable.

“Bless you, D.” 

burngonereliefbetter.nosefullgonnadrown…

Switching out the wet tissues for dry, the younger being gently urged, “Blow.”

Draven did, broad chest inhaling deep and pushing out in long gurgling flows.  Warm, slick fluid flooded the shifter’s paper-clad palm, emptying the clogged head just a little.

reliefbetterlessfull...good.  bestill.still.

If the guy wasn’t so god-awful sick, Alyc would be laughing at these bleary, fever-fractured thoughts. Instead, they made something crack open in the slim chest; its big bad hunter was vulnerable and needy, sick and hurting and exhausted. 

ITS hunter...

Smaller fingers gently pinched and wiped those raw nostrils clean, balling up the mess and using the outside of the tissue-knot to swipe at a glistening spot on the sick man’s chin. An ache had settled in that slim chest, a need to soothe, to calm, to fix.  To make it better.

“Sleep, baby.  I’m here.”

...loveAlyc… 

“I know,” Alyc pressed a soft kiss to the shaved crown, cool palms stroking in skiffs of over boiling oceans of skin. Draven’s mind was fading, slipping back into exhausted sleep. 

...loveAlyc.loveAlyc.love.love.lo-...

“I love you, too.”

 

Edited August 31, 2021 by starpollen

[EveP]

💙

[Blackraspberrycheesecake]

That was awesome. 

[AngelEyes]

This wonderful. Love the ending!

[starpollen]

I'm still considering whether to start a new part of the Saga with different characters.  Any ideas?  I was toying with the idea of a Siren and... I don't know what pairing.    But I'm open to suggestions?

[brownsasha11]

This was such a wonderful surprise to see the conclusion and Draven is now sick🥰. The twist at the end where we get insight how Alec manipulation the initial encounter but love won in the end. I also want to say that your writing his so descriptive and nuance and I love it. Each character is unique and well thought out.

 

PS I miss Tommy and Hayley.I have read that series so much and no pressure look for to a pleasant surprise🤗 appreciative reader. Hope you are well

[brownsasha11]

On 11/25/2021 at 7:04 AM, starpollen said:

I'm still considering whether to start a new part of the Saga with different characters.  Any ideas?  I was toying with the idea of a Siren and... I don't know what pairing.    But I'm open to suggestions?

Looking forward to the continuation. I nominate Siren and an adventurer

[Kolen]

On 11/25/2021 at 7:04 AM, starpollen said:

I'm still considering whether to start a new part of the Saga with different characters.  Any ideas?  I was toying with the idea of a Siren and... I don't know what pairing.    But I'm open to suggestions?

Hm.. A siren with a werewolf? Because the wolf has such sensitive hearing.. 😏

Perhaps this Siren with some sort of cyborg thing.. 🤷🏼‍♂️

[Kolen]

Also, this story is so inspiring to me, I love the whole concept. I'm just super sad I didn't notice it earlier on, but then again, if I had, I wouldn't have gotten to read it all.

Before discovering this, actually, I had an idea (I wrote it down somewhere) about two hybrid creatures..

[starpollen]

6 hours ago, Kolen said:

Also, this story is so inspiring to me, I love the whole concept. I'm just super sad I didn't notice it earlier on, but then again, if I had, I wouldn't have gotten to read it all.

Before discovering this, actually, I had an idea (I wrote it down somewhere) about two hybrid creatures..

Aww thanks honey! 😊

6 hours ago, Kolen said:

Hm.. A siren with a werewolf? Because the wolf has such sensitive hearing.. 😏

Perhaps this Siren with some sort of cyborg thing.. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Originally I was considering a Siren with some sort of creature with a hearing impairment - like Draven’s amulet that allowed him to resist Alyc at first - so maybe your cyborg idea would fit!… 🤩

I’ve got a couple of other plot bunnies scurrying around that I may get to first, but thank you for this idea!

[thesneezyowl]

I am totally here for a new part of the saga!!!