#mordrian

*** “You’ll not sit here with that wet head of yours,” Morgan scolded, curling her forearms protectively over the open book in her lap. Adrian rolled his eyes but obeyed, drifting to the empty end of the lounge and sitting on the arm of it, his back turned to her.

They sat in the comfortable silence of each other’s company, Morgan lazily poring over the text in front of her. He breathed deeply, and she listened to the soft, warm hiss of pyromancy coming to life as Adrian dealt with his hair.

“What are you reading that you’re so protective of?”

“Sestinas,” she supplied.

“You’re reading poems? For pleasure, or?”

He already had some idea of the answer, he just wanted her reasoning. The necromancer looked at the repeating words, tapping her finger to the rhythm of their lines. She could not possibly explain the connection, but her mind continued circling back to one thing: a banshee’s song, the sound through which they cast their necromancy. A taste of old, forbidden music that unmade the divine breaths holding all life together.

“They feel like a banshee’s wail.”

He hummed a sound of intrigued acknowledgement, accepting her explanation but not having anything to add, sniffing. They had long discussed the difference between how the two of them perceived magic, and she found his ability to differentiate forces of magic through smell as perplexing as he found her ability to hear it. As she finished her page the noise of pyromancy stuttered. Confused, she stopped reading.

“Ihhkgxt–uhh!”

“Bless you,” she said reflexively. The man across from her murmured a thanks.

She accepted the sneeze as explanation for his pause but her mind didn’t quite let go of it. He’d sneezed a bit over dinner, and she’d chalked it up to the tower being in need of dusting. But now, he’d just washed, and yet he was still going.

He started a conversation before she could interrogate the thought further.

“I’d kill for a tournament or something to open up, just to break up the monotony,” He said, one hand hovering over his wet hair. He took in another slow, deliberate inhale through his mouth, then a faint whooshing noise and a glow of heat radiated from his palm once more.

“Do you hear yourself?” Morgan asked him, flipping to another page in her book but not really reading it anymore. “All the time you’re running around, and then the moment it’s calm you complain?”

Adrian paused drying his hair to look over his shoulder at her, bringing the same hand he’d been casting pyromancy with to brush a knuckle under his nose for a moment. He was smiling, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“It’s less the monotony and more that once it’s monotonous everyone else has their own end in mind for me.” He straightened to stare forward again, one half of the smoking jacket he was robed in falling loose, hastily corrected.

Ah. So that’s what this was really about.

“Whose end are you concerned about?”

For a few moments only his breath and the sound of pyromancy answered her, then fell silent when his breathing stuttered. Nothing came of it.

“I think Vesta is grooming me to be her assistant,” he said at last, thumbing a piece of his hair to check if it was dry. Satisfied it was, he pulled the smoking jacket tighter over his shoulders as he slid off the arm of the lounge to the cushion and scooched, sitting beside her.

“A council seat’s assistant?” She paused as she saw his face falter, a fist coming up to his nose.

“EhhkGXxt–eeuhh! Ugh, yes.” He sniffed, his hand not quite falling away as he continued. “She keeps throwing tasks at me. Though they do pay well.”

When she didn’t respond he looked at her to see if she was still listening. She arched her brows, very pointedly flicking her eyes to the fist at his septum.

“Sorry,” he chuckled, moving his fist, rubbing the side of one nostril with a knuckle. “You know I can’t stop once I—IhhkhGXT–eeuh! Snf. Once I start.”

Morgan raised an eyebrow.

“And what made you start, dare I wonder?”

His knuckle moved to the tip of his nose, grinding there, like the sensation was moving and he was being forced to follow it.

“I haven’t quite figured that out yet.”

Morgan shut the book in her lap with finality, looking down her nose at him. His breath trembled, the knuckle at the tip of his nose darted to his septum and pressed harder.

“If there’s no apparent cause,” she began, stopping when she realized she couldn’t finish the sentence before he—

“HihkGXT’SHhiew!”

He put himself back together a little too quickly, reluctantly bringing his hand away from his face, letting it dangle over his knee. He watched her expectantly, waiting for her to finish.

“You were saying?” No, he was daring her.

Morgan looked at the feather poking out of her book where she’d closed it. It had been a quill once before the writing end broke off, and rather than throw it away she’d started using it as a bookmark. She reached toward it with a finger, testing the fibrous ends, then looked back at the man sitting across from her.

“Did assisting Vesta somehow include herding dogs?”

Adrian laughed, smoothing his hair back.

“No, combing through petitions maybe,” he answered, feigning ignorance to her interrogation.

“Then I can’t imagine why, Adrian,” her fingers pinched decisively onto the feather and withdrew it from the book, “it would be so difficult to figure out.”

“And you’ve figured it out, have you?” He leaned back against the couch, his cheek resting on top of it as he looked at her, smiling.

Morgan set the book of sestinas on the nightstand by her arm of the couch, starting to crawl across the cushions to him with the quill clasped in her fingers. The pyromancer’s smile twitched wider as she came to his side, their knees touching.

“You seem very determined to negotiate with reality as if this is a mystery.”

She stroked one feathery side of the quill along a patch of red scales crawling up his throat, testing the border where dragonskin turned human in fascination. He squirmed a bit, peering at her with a curious indignation but not stopping her.

“It’s a successful,” he paused as she brought the quill to his cheek, “negotiation.”

He went half crosseyed to look at the feather she was twirling against his face, then turned his eyes back to her. His nose twitched, nostrils pulsing, as if the mere anticipation of what she was considering was intolerable.

“Oh,” she purred. “That looks like it tickles.”

He tried to say something but it melted into a small, jerking breath as she pressed the tip of the quill to the rim of one nostril.

“Here, let me help you.” She teased the soft fibers back and forth, and his nostrils flared wide, the afflicted one quivering.

She was curious to see not how much she could force out, but rather how little it would take to provoke it. The latter was far more interesting with a creature like him.

“Morgannh—Hhh!” It was half warning, half question. She pushed the tip of the quill the slightest bit deeper, testing. The soft strands burrowed inward and barely, delicately, brushed the inner wall of his nose.

“Hhih!” His nostrils arched upwards, as if flexing themselves away from the irritant intruding on them. His eyes narrowed with a misty sheen. She tilted the quill, one tiny angle of adjustment, the fibers flicking along the inner rim.

That did it.

He wrenched his head to the side, a little shiver going through him as the tip of the quill pulled free.

“Eeehh–yiih’SSHiewww!” From the stuttered hitch between its inception and release she guessed he’d tried to make it more refined than it ultimately became.

“Bless you,” she offered, smiling coyly, twirling the pinion of the quill in her fingers.

“You say that as if the result surprised you.” He sniffed, swiveling his head back, threading one arm across her side of the couch and lounging there. He was easing himself toward her in tiny, calculated movements, as if he thought she wouldn’t notice him closing in on her.

“Oh? And so sensitive are you now, that you expected it?” She watched the quill spinning between her fingers as if disinterested, in reality anything but.

He smirked, the expression almost a little sheepish. He didn’t answer her right away, blinking water off of his lashes, his hand coming up to push his curled fingers against his septum.

“IghkxXTT–uhh!”

She clicked her tongue, tutting at him. His throat wasn’t going to be intact for very long if he kept stifling that way, but he was still insisting on it.

“Now,” she brandished the quill against his chin the way an instructor wielded a ruler. “How am I to help you if you keep holding it like that?”

His eyes flicked down to the quill tickling his chin, and his nose squirmed for a moment.

“There’s nothing wrong with holding it.”

“But of course there is,” she insisted, petting the tip of his nose with the feathery strands. “How will you get the tickle out?”

His eyelids started to hover a little lower. His nostrils flared open agitatedly at the teasing, as if the tickle was radiating from the tip of his nose to them. He blinked owlishly, eyebrows arched, staring at her in disbelief.

“I might get it out if you would quit provokkhh–Hh!” She dragged the feather down his septum, circling the nostril she hadn’t teased yet.

“Provokinnggh–Hheh!” His lips parted, eyes watery slivers, his nostrils pulsing rapidly.

“I’ve barely touched you,” she breathed, watching the nostril she was stimulating flinch as she moved the quill. “Is this side more sensitive?”

His bleary eyes flicked to her, his face too contorted with the urge to make any expression. He made a small, frustrated sound in his throat. Trying to help it along, she increased the pressure on the quill, letting it just barely poke inside—

“Eiih’sSHh–Ahh!” He sneezed before either of them could react, gasping as his head snapping forward forced the feathery end of the quill deep inside his nose.

Oh. That was entirely too much.

He shuddered, lungs heaving in air. Realizing what was happening she tried to withdraw the quill quickly.

“Ehh–haAH!” His voice inflected strongly, desperately through the hitch as the quill dragged out of his nose, intensifying the sensation.

“HeaAH’SSHHIEW!” He lurched with the violence of it.

Spray misted her arm as she hadn’t moved fast enough, and she quietly decided to spare him the embarrassment of mentioning it. The pyromancer straightened himself, his eyes beading with tears as he glowered at her.

“How long are you going to toy with me?” he asked, his voice breathy. He batted her hand away in annoyance, twisting to move away from her.

“At least until you stop—”

“HiihkGHIXXT–eeuhhh!”

“—doing that.” She cringed at the sound of it ripping through his throat.

He couldn’t answer her, already breathing in for another. The quill had set off some sort of chain reaction with the cold brewing in his nose.

“Yeehgh’sSSHieewww!”

A strong chain reaction.

“Are you alright?” She wanted to move closer to soothe him but he’d already fled from her. At the question he turned to peer at her through watery eyes.

“Give me aa–aaahh!” His shoulders rose as he took in a deep, shivering breath. “Aiih’sSHHieeww! Snf! A minute!”

The necromancer’s lips thinned and she pinched her fingers tightly over the pinion of the quill still in her fingers. She had only meant to coax him into admitting what was wrong and perhaps play with him a bit in the process, but she was rather regretting her choice of tactics.

“I think it’s turneddh! Dhiih! Iiiehh’sSHHieww! Turned into a fit.” His fist came up to his face and he pushed the back of it against the tip of his nose enduringly, trying to quell the itch.

Morgan looked down at the quill in her fingers and frowned, the fibers damp and ruined. “You’ve gone and sneezed all over it.”

“I can’t imaginnnh—Yihh’sSHHieww!” He sneezed against the back of his hand, scrubbing at his nose with it. “I can’t imagine whose fault that is.”

At least he was listening to her and had stopped stifling.

“Yours, obviously.” She set the quill down on the nearby end table beside her book, wondering if it was even worth bothering wiping it down.

“Right,” he chuckled, a little bitter from his stinging pride. “Because you don’t enjoy torturing me at all.”

His eyes darted up and down, piercing, knowing. Her cheeks flushed.

“In small doses,” she admitted.

The knuckles raking themselves across his nose stilled, a satisfied expression briefly flickering over his face. His fist moved and he kept it pressed against his septum, as if he didn’t trust it was safe to remove it. His sleeve slipped down his arm and Morgan looked at the scales peeking from under it, and the ones she’d teased earlier along his throat. For a brief moment, seeing him grapple with a problem as mundane as the common cold, she felt oddly certain of his humanity.

He snuffled a little too loudly, groaned in disgust for a moment, and then his breath started to catch again.

“Bleeding roots, onn—Nhhuh! One more!” He cursed, his lungs filling.

His humanity was an oddly endearing thing.

“Hyeeggh’sSHHhieww! Ugh!” He drooped forward, planting his chin in his hands, eyelids starting to flutter lower. He rarely got enough sleep, but normally you couldn’t tell except for the dark circles under his eyes and the ability to nap through the world’s most turbulent carriage rides.

His spine was going to be screaming at him if he kept hunching over like a grendelkin.

“Adrian.”

“Hmm?”

“Come here.” She crooked a finger at him and pressed her thighs together, smoothing her nightwear over them.

He didn’t even look up, sniffling, an awkward little smile tugged the corners of his mouth.

“I’m congested.”

Like she couldn’t hear it? The necromancer rolled her eyes.

“You’ve contaminated me already, you might as well come closer.” Morgan patted her thighs insistently. He looked suspiciously at her lap like he expected it to lunge at him.

“I’ll not tease you anymore,” she promised.

Slowly, a little grudgingly as if his desire for it offended him, he lowered himself down to lay his head in her lap. He started to sniffle from the shifting congestion, and she brushed his hair out of his face, affectionately playing with a few strands of it. He began to relax under the touch, the tension in his neck slackened and he let his head droop fully into the pillow of her thighs. She felt something warm and wet start on her skin, hearing him sniffle around it, and she refused to call attention to it. As he fidgeted trying to get comfortable he found it anyway.

“Oh, damn it,” he muttered, noticing the wet spot on her thighs.

Morgan bit the inside of her cheek. She wanted badly, very badly, to tease him about using her as a human tissue, but she had promised not to. She also wasn’t sure his ego would survive it without breaking the delicate equilibrium required to let her comfort him.

“I don’t mind,” she said, brushing her fingernails over his scalp to soothe him. He pushed one side of his nose shut with a knuckle and snuffled, trying to keep it from dripping on her.

For a while they sat that way, she alternated between stroking his hair and massaging his scalp, the tension slowly bleeding out of him with each pass of her fingers. His shoulders wiggled as he brought himself closer, little by little threading his arms across her legs until he lay completely languid in her lap.

When his breathing evened aside from the occasional sniffle, Morgan decided he looked relaxed enough she could keep him from weaseling out of questions.

“How long have you felt poorly?”

The pyromancer sighed, the breath snagging partway and dragging a small, irritated cough out of him.

“I was fine before this afternoon,” he insisted.

Morgan raised both eyebrows but bit the tip of her tongue to keep from saying anything. His concept of ‘fine’ ranged anywhere from a bloodied nose to a flight in dragonshape through a hailstorm. Luckily he didn’t wait for her to pry before continuing.

“The little… fits I do, I kept having them on and off all day but they were short.”

“Short.” She laid the back of her hand against his cheek, testing the warmth but finding it inconclusive. “Until?”

He nuzzled his head into her lap, an attempt to discreetly hide his forehead against her thigh. Damn him.

“Until I stepped into Vesta’s officc–Hhh! Office!”

The nuzzling turned into him rubbing his cold-sensitive nose into one of her thighs, back and forth. After a moment he lifted his head to direct the sneeze away from her, gasping.

“Hhyiih’SSHhieww!”

Morgan considered that as she waited for him to get comfortable again, politely ignoring the little wet streaks he was leaving on her legs as he rubbed his dripping, twitching nose on her. A pyromancer’s office with warm, dry air teasing his sinuses, maybe a bit of smoke. She couldn’t imagine it going well with how explosive the response to the quill had been. After a few moments his head stilled, an exasperated little breath coming out of him before he spoke.

“At one point I had to ask her to repeat herself at least twice.”

“Because you were distracted?”

“Because I sneezed o-ohh! Snnf! Once and then keptt–hhh!” He brought a fist up to his nose and pushed into his septum, lip curling, lashes fluttering rapidly. “Kept sne–eeh! Sneezing when she talkeddh–ihh!”

“Hiih–ghhhih!” He twisted so that the back of his head was laid against her legs, the angle letting her watch as his nostrils flared wide against his knuckles.

“Go on. Get it out.” Morgan encouraged, her hands hovering to wait until he was done.

Whether to obey her or not his eyes clamped shut and he lurched upwards.

“HhyeEGH’SHHhieewww! Hihh! Yiieeh’sSHHieeww! Hh’sSHhieww! Ughh, that itched!” He groaned, collapsing back into her lap.

The necromancer waited patiently for him to settle, his cheek rubbing into the fabric of her nightgown as he got comfortable again. His knees bent and drew up as if he were trying to curl more of himself up into her lap. With him distracted she combed her fingers into his bangs and was able to briefly, strategically brush them across his forehead. Warm. Uncomfortably so. And he would’ve hid it from her the rest of the night.

“Hold still for me,” Morgan told him softly, her hand tenderly cupping his heated temple.

Surprisingly he didn’t protest, murmuring irritably under his breath but doing as she asked.

The fae at the Court of The Long Table were fond of cryomancy, not out of heritage, but because it proved useful to keep their prey from bleeding to death beneath the savagery of golden forks and carving knives. Under her former mistress’ orders, Morgan too had learned this unsavory talent.

For once she could use it to ease suffering rather than prolong it.

Morgan twitched her pinkie and popped the knuckle. A small, glasslike tinkling sound filled her ears as she willed the burst of cryomancy against his temple. Cool wisps of fog curled up around her fingers, the outer edges of her palm, chilling the flesh. His eyes fluttered shut and his neck twisted to bring his forehead under the cooling touch.

“Better?” she asked him, rubbing her thumb in idle circles above his eyebrow.

“Yes,” he breathed, a bit of tension crinkling the corners of his eyes as he sniffled. “But I can smell it.”

“You smell all magic.”

“Yes, but itt–tiihh!”

Oh. Her fingers lifted up away from him, thin white coils of fog following the motion.

“It ticklesss! Hhih!” He instinctively turned his head away into her legs, glistening nostrils flaring.

“Yeegh’mMFSHhh! Hh’mMFSSHHh!”

Her knees jerked at the burst of warm moisture, surprising enough cryomancy fled from her focus entirely, the summoned mist dissipating from her palm.

He froze and didn’t so much as sniffle, mortified by what he had just done. Her immediate impulse was to search for something to clean her thighs with, instead she was quick to splay her fingers over his back, stroking up and down his spine.

“It’s alright,” she affectionately squeezed one of his shoulders and fought very hard not to smile. “I’d rather you got it out.”

She did not quite manage to hide her amusement at the absurdity of soothing a man who could vaporize the room before he had an aneurysm over a simple bodily function. Unfortunately, he detected it. He thrashed a bit under her hold on him, but the fight was half-hearted.

“The longer this goes on the more I want to throw myself out the window,” the pyromancer growled. He shifted his head away from the part of her lap he’d just sneezed into, the back of his skull pressing into her stomach.

“You are being ridiculous.” Morgan quietly hoped he wouldn’t sneeze into such an intimate area.

“Not one spell. Not one spell I can get through!” he continued, his voice crackling as it raised. He sputtered, curling inward with a quick, clipped trio of coughs.

The necromancer blinked, forgetting about rubbing his back for a moment. Without having any concept of sensing magic through smell she hadn’t considered it, but if the cold had made him sensitive enough…

“Is that why you had so much trouble in Vesta’s office?”

His jaw tightened and his cheeks flushed, and she didn’t think it had anything to do with the fever.

“Adrian,” she called softly, but he still wouldn’t answer her. Morgan sighed, leaning forward until tresses of silver hair draped curtains around him. “I sincerely doubt a cold has in any way wounded your reputation.”

She watched his face. Slit pupils sat dully behind their glassy frames, watching where a lock of her hair was brushing the back of his hand.

“Long term, maybe not.” He lifted a pointer finger to twirl it through a silver ribbon of her hair, the muscles of his face softening as he did so. “Only humiliated me while the councilwoman holding the Pyromancy Seat made it clear what trajectory she was ready to offer.”

The necromancer felt her throat tighten with tension.

“This is what you were talking about earlier? About other people having their own ends in mind for you?”

The pyromancer nodded limply in her lap. The motion disturbed the fluid in his sinuses and he snuffled against dripping congestion, starting to rub the side of his nose against her nightgown. She barely registered the fact he was about to sneeze again as her mind whirled.

“Hihh-yiISHheuhh!” His head rocked and he misted her leg, too tired to do anything else but succumb to the reflex.

Council seats did not summon any acquaintance they shared a discipline with to assist with their duties to the Concordat. They had secretaries. They had trusted agents. They had relationships and favors with spirits, fae, any number of creatures.

And it was entirely possible the Pyromancy Seat had decided Adrian was good for more than an occasional draconic favor in her back pocket.

“If Vesta is grooming you, testing you,” she felt him tense underneath her fingers, “then the trajectory she ultimately has in mind for you is—”

“Her replacement,” Adrian finished grimly.

A mixture of pride and concern prickled in Morgan’s chest. It seemed entirely right to her that the man she had chosen would move up in the world, but she had no idea where moving up would place either of them.

Or if it would make him happy.

“And would you, if she nominated you?”

He didn’t answer, the finger he’d been twirling through her hair on and off went slack. They both flinched at the ominous clanging of a grandfather clock striking the hour.

“I don’t know.”

His eyelids were starting to droop, he pressed the tip of his nose into her thigh, lazily rubbing it.