#dnd fics

Gadreel never thought that he had a particularly strong sense of smell growing up. He had thought that his mom always smelled like sunshine and warm bread because she enjoyed her gardening and cooking. He had never wondered why that scent clung to her even after she and mother had spent all day together in the forge, and mother’s skin wafted the scent of hot metal and cooling sweat. It wasn’t until much later that he was told a lot of mages, the utilitarian kind, the less powerful kind, the kind that reached for magic as a tool instead of a part of themselves, often don't consciously know what their magic projects from them. (Waylan read that in one of his many books he snuck back from the ‘big city’ that used to be Gadreel’s home. And Waylan had been somewhere between proud and fearful when he admitted that the smell of fire he exuded was just an extension of the burning he always felt under his skin.) How even after learning this he never wondered or worried why he could smell the magic under his mom’s and Waylan’s skin. How it wouldn’t be until much later he had to contemplate if it was something that was typical of orcs or elves or if it was something inherent to who he was. And how he was too much of a coward to ask Lugh about it. So he never did. He kept it to himself and tried not to let any of the others know.

How sitting out in the fields with Waylan never made him feel like they were getting fresh air because everytime the younger man got worked up or excited all he could breathe was smoke. How when he finally gotten to kiss Waylan, hold him close-- how a hard metal hand and thick rope of scars pressed against his skin, things he had never imagined during the dark nights he fantasized about touching his best friend like this-- he had never realized that the air between them would smell like burning, and that Waylan’s mouth would be open flame, and his skin would taste like ash.

How when Vani was with them she radiated warm sunshine, soft damp earth, wildflowers and sage. And when they went to see her home, even in the dead of winter he knew her magic was allowing her to carry a piece of her kingdom everywhere.

How when he was pushing himself between fragile, bold, timid Lughnasa (his half sibling-- just own it already everyone else already knows) and whatever danger was coming for them next he could smell wine and sweet rum, and touches of something like thick soft grass in a far off foreign meadow. How it made him wonder if Lugh’s magic was desperately latching on to the memories of their home and the toxins they'd tried to use to forget.

How when Ray reached out to him, her hands soothing his hurts in his mind and body, he would be overwhelmed with petricore and seawater. How when she did it in Ketterdam it was like walking along a beach after a gentle rain. But after they had visited Vasselheim, after her stint in the catacombs, and her sword had started to spew dark water-- he had recoiled from her spells. Because then her magic had taken on a horrible odor, a brackish briny rot of a bloated animal whose drowned body had washed up on a beach, left to fester and putrefy on the sand.

And how at first he liked that he knew this part of them, especially given they seemed so unaware of it themselves. And he had thought the longer this... arrangement, alliance, friendship went on he would just get used to it, put it away in the back of his mind. Because smells were something that people could get used to. But magic, he found, was not. He smelled it every time they did something as mundane as cleaning their clothes and changing their eye color (and what a strange privilege to be in any position where doing something like that could be considered commonplace) to ripping a monster from this plane of existence. But what was worse was the way the smells made him feel.

How at the faintest whisper of wine, water, or smoke, his whole body went tense. His fingers would curl around the hilt of whatever weapon was nearest and his eyes would dart around for any possible threats. How even if it was just Lugh weaving an encouraging phrase or Waylan lashing Ray with a flame that they both knew wasn't made to harm her, his body would coil itself tight because when his companions threw magic it was always a draw if they would be using it to play or to fight. Always a coin hanging in the air, filled with the heavy scent of possibility, for just long enough it may turn into a guillotine on the way down.

How he hadn't thought this was weighing on his mind before Jinx came along. Not until there was someone who didn't carry a smell that made the air tingle and hum obtrusively. No. Jinx smelled like old leather and sometimes gutter muck if she had been doing her favorite work of scaling buildings. But her scent could fall to the background. When they were together she was a sanctuary. Nothing about her being pushed in on his senses. She did not exude an aura that forced him to take notice of her, she simply was. And oftentimes, when she felt like it, she simply wasn't too. She had the amazing ability to make herself disappear. Not in the same way that Waylan or Lugh could-- though when she had their help the effect was only compounded. She could just become smaller, quieter, thinner, like existing in this reality had left her so tattered and threadbare that the shadows and cracks between cobblestones welcomed her and let her slip between them far away from prying eyes. He can admit that her being a blindspot, a dead zone, in the sea of magic he had been treading for the past-- two? Three, maybe?-- years is what made him approach her.