#oc fae

~*~

“Ugh,” you groaned as you slowly sat up, rubbing the back of your head. Somehow, the feeling reminded you of a hangover, as if you had been out drinking, even though you knew that couldn’t have been it. Yet, there you were, shivering with a deep-rooted nausea that settled in your skull that you couldn’t quite shake off.

Eloryn was quick to be at your side, leaning forward. Initially, it seemed as if he wanted to say something, but he never completed that thought, leaving his mouth agape for longer than he meant to. In his mind, he wanted to ask just how much you remembered, and perhaps explain what he had done, but the idea fizzled away. It was best to keep you sheltered from the nuances of the fae world, at least for now, while he could still control the threats.

Even if they were progressing.

“Hey, you,” he started, his voice sounding a little hoarse as he thought of what to tell you otherwise. “You passed out… how are you feeling?”

If you remembered being hagridden, then he’d explain what that was to you. If you didn’t, then he could get away with keeping you blissfully unaware.

You grunted as you tried to sit up once more, but like before, your body felt heavy. Your mind tried to give the odd feeling a reason, searching for anything that stuck. “I feel awful…” you admitted. “Did I experience too much magic too quickly?”

Eloryn’s eyes lit up. “Oh, you remember the shimmer?” he asked, not answering your question right away.

“Yeah,” you replied, giving him an acknowledging nod, wincing slightly from the motion. “We, um, walked around that nature reserve, didn’t we? And you showed me how magic glitters. And then… we… then…”

You trailed off, unable to finish what you had seen.

Taking advantage of your confusion, Eloryn moved to keep you steady, even if you insisted on sitting up again. He was too far gone in his overly protective mode, seeing any possible action, even if it was your own, as a potential problem. For the time being, he had to help you recover from hag sickness and then move onwards with finding out what exactly was going on back in the fae realm, and to do that, he needed to make sure that you were in good shape before another problem hit.

“Yeah, that’s right,” he murmured for the time being, cupping your face with his palm, using his thumb to smooth along your cheekbone. “Perhaps I should be more careful next time. Maybe it overwhelmed you,” then with a pause, he tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, sensing a good opportunity to bend the truth a little. “Doing it too quickly was what hurt you initially - I don’t want to make you feel sick again.”

He couldn’t help but want to twist things a little. It was in his nature as a fae to do so, even if he admittedly did despise that part about his culture. He wanted to be honest to you, deep down, but it was conflicting given the circumstances, when everything you came across currently wanted to harm you.

Your brows, however, knitted in slight confusion. “N-no,” you stammered. “It was pretty. I liked that part. I think it was something else…”

Rather than reacting negatively to your refusal, though, Eloryn couldn’t help but catch one detail in particular. The admission pleasantly surprising him.

You liked something he did?

“It was pretty,” you carefully continued. “I want to see more of it.”

“You do?” he finally replied.

You nodded. “Yes. Sometime.”

A broad smile swept over his lips, and he moved to slowly press you back down into the bed. “Then of course, I’ll be happy to show you more,” he promised, brushing the back of his hand across your face. “Sometime,” he repeated, mirroring your exact longing cadence before clearing his throat. “But before that, you should get some more rest. Sleep everything that’s happened away. That’ll fix you right up, my lovely. Promise.”

That’s where you started to feel slightly uneasy, however. You didn’t like that he seemed to know more than you did. You also didn’t feel right about disclosing what you remembered, having a strange feeling about how he was acting, even if you knew that deep down, he wouldn’t hurt you.

If he wanted to, given that he was from another unrealm and unseen by the human population otherwise, then he would have done so already… right?

“I think I have had enough rest, haven’t I?” you gently protested.

You then tried to speak again, but you were suddenly overcome with a strange pull that demanded you close your eyes. It was unlike anything you had felt before, and the sensation felt almost insidious and unnerving, anchoring you in the bed. If Eloryn had been more honest with you, then he would have informed you that hag sickness can at times manifest as unexplained exhaustion, because the science behind their existence was to feed off of your life essence as you dreamed, but you were left in the dark about it.

Something else in the back of your mind lingered, too.

That you were neglecting your regular life.

You had your normal friendships.

Your family.

Even work.

(But Eloryn had taken over most of the time you would otherwise dedicate to the little things.)

Whatever else there was seemed strangely irrelevant by now.

All you wanted to do was sleep.

And as you slowly started to recall the events in fragments, Eloryn began to explain what had happened to you out of his own accord, rather than to keep you completely unaware. Initially, he thought it might be better to keep you further away from impish and fiendish things from his realm, but after the encounter with the mimic and the hag alike, he realised that he was being selfish in doing so. He did so as best as he could, too—localising everything into human terms—justifying why you needed to go through as much rest as you did.

How being hagridden as a human being was not something he knew how to handle, because the last documented case of such a thing happening was far before his time, back when humans and fae both lived side by side together. He had no real scope of reference for what to do correctly, and therefore, it was just safer to recover in complete isolation. Impish magic could reflect onto other people, after all. It was contagious in its aftermath, and it wouldn’t just be his life on the line if you were to expose others to a world that the fae realm worked so hard to conceal.

Sure, it did result in a near obsessive overseeing of your well-being, but it was for a good cause. Or so he claimed.

After a while of taking care of you in this way, though—the way you were apprehensive about—Eloryn progressed further with flushing the sickness from your body. The final stage seemed to be purging the hag sickness from your system using a strange tea that he claimed repelled fiendish magic, but again, that strange, distrusting feeling you had days before returned at the mention. Away did go the exhaustion, the inner rot, and the nightmares, but what was left behind seemed to be a perpetual sensation of surreality.

It was an odd taste, too. Something that felt both medicinal, sweet, and also minty, that made you pause from the moment it seeped past your lips. Apparently it did not affect the fae, but it made humans go through all sorts of motions. It made your head swim as you gulped it down, but not in the same residual nauseating way from before. The consistency was closer to a syrup, too, making it hard to force down. Still, you went through with it, because you trusted him and didn’t complain or protest too much when the fae medicine grew weirder too—not even when he started wrapping your forehead, ankles, and wrists in a sticky, clinging cloth that left your skin tingling—claiming it was to drive the blight out.

To his credit, at least after a while, you did eventually start to feel better. Properly. So perhaps Eloryn had good intentions from the very start. Slowly, you grew into better tune with your body, and the feeling of dream-like surreality faded away over time. Your headaches, too, dulled just enough to make existing feel more natural overall. The ache in your limbs wasn’t as heavy either, and you were able to regain your once lost independence.

Even if Eloryn found that during such a time, he preferred it when you were reliant on him.

The problem that was rooted in this started when you felt well enough to reach for your phone, just needing to update both friends and family alike that you were indeed alive, and didn’t drop off the face of the earth.

Eloryn didn’t like that.

He intercepted you as you tried, shutting down the very prospect with a, “I’ll take care of it.”

And for anything else, a, “You don’t need to do anything. I’ve got you.”

Which would have been fine when you were still sick, but you weren’t anymore. Still, even then, when you were annoyed with how restrictive he was being, you didn’t fight him on the matter too much.

It was as if being high on that strange tea had kind of subdued you and made your reactions dull.

That feeling returned, but…

If he knew a lot more about the subject than you did, then perhaps he was trying to prevent something.

Even if it was selfishly, indeed, his own slipping control of the human that he was infatuated with.

~*~

Many days continued to pass since then, and before you knew it, you were completely yourself once more. Gradually getting off of the tea helped considerably. Eloryn, on and off, acknowledged this, forcing himself, even if it physically pained him to do so, to restrain how he was acting prior. No such protection could occur if he coddled you, he realised, which was something he kept repeating in his mind. So as you got better, he too tried.

But then one night, when a new threat emerged, perhaps another fiend that passed by right where you were—when you were asleep, he claimed—any progress he made was just… gone.

Inviting that strange feeling to settle again.

Still, you tried to push past that uneasy feeling. At one point, you reached for his hands slowly, then—threading your fingers in between his own—interlocking the digits and just… testing the waters. Maybe you were misreading it then, but it made sense to you. The fixation, the jealousy, the unwavering protectiveness—he was head over heels for you, wasn’t he? And, if you had to admit it, even despite the unease, you were starting to feel something as well.

At first, too, Eloryn didn’t know how to react to the boldness you were exhibiting with his body going rigid, but he didn’t exactly stop you either.

“Thank you for taking care of me,” you tried to disclose then.

He stared at you for a long and breathless moment, and then eventually, he smiled—genuinely—with warmth reigniting in his eyes; his skin and the overall feeling he felt deep inside.

He leaned in over you after, and you didn’t pull away.

Not even as his breath felt hot and heavy against your skin, not even as his lips pressed a kiss over your own, tasting sweet like honey and something else—mint(?)—making your head spin.

“Of course, my lovely,” he murmured then, tilting his head as he studied you. “But I’d like to better thank you for trusting me instead,” he informed you, watching you become unsteady in the way that you were.

You struggled to sit upright once more, and Eloryn pulled you flush against his chest, wrapping his arms around you to steady you. Just as you thought that it was going to go somewhere else, though, perhaps in a way that would bring you closer, something different occurred entirely.

Dizziness.

Breathlessness.

Your vision swimming, like it did before.

“Ah, you’ll have to forgive me,” he confessed. “It’s for your own good that… you…”

You blinked at him, feeling a sense of betrayal. “You drugged me?” you accused with a faint slur.

He clenched his jaw, sucking on his cheeks, shaking his head. “Not for anything insidious, I assure you,” he insisted. “There’s just something I need to handle first, and I need you to be in a dormant state.”

“You could have told me—” you tried to protest.

“—Sorry,” he cut you off apologetically. “It’s for the best this way. I need you to be… what’s the word? Undetectable.”

You tried to frown at him, but your eyelids were already too heavy.

He then scooped you up in a smooth motion, laying you down back on the bed, where he enjoyed having you the most. All safe and sound and from a close, controllable distance.

It wasn’t his fault—too many things kept happening to you—this was just the aftermath.

Or so he claimed.

“I won’t let anything touch you,” he whispered, vowing to you in a soft murmur. “Not again. Never again.”

And as you fell asleep, he sighed. Heavily. Deeply.

It was time for him to contact his brother, to get an insight as to what on earth exactly was going on back home. To secure the perimeter around you, or to perhaps move altogether.

He breathed out again.

You were supposed to be just his curiosity, that he’d sometimes follow around, that he’d admire from a distance, but what the hag said last time ate away at his mind.

If things were changing just as she had claimed, then he would change too.