Critical Role Kink Meme (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
criticalkink) wrote2017-03-26 01:12 am
criticalkink) wrote2017-03-26 01:12 am
Critical Role kink meme post #3: Unprompted Kinky Writing
For people to share their kinky writing that doesn't fit a particular meme prompt. (Links can still be shared to the Completed Fills post.)
Re: Caduceus/OMCs, noncon h/c, 2/2
(Anonymous) 2018-12-20 09:59 pm (UTC)(link)Esar and Skrain scrambled off of him as soon as they’d heard the door break, but are still in disarray, with their pants half-buttoned. Barl, badly startled, has finally dropped his spell. Caduceus uses his newfound freedom to roll up into a ball, hugging his knees to his chest to hide himself. He is sore, and he is heartsick, and he is still hard, but most of all he is quite certain that his friends have this fight well in hand without him.
He’s right. Caleb knows better than to throw fire around in such a limited space, with civilians below stairs, so he’s hanging back. Caduceus sees Nott get Esar with two crossbow bolts in a row, one in his heart and one in his liver. Jester obliterates Skrain with an unusually powerful Inflict Wounds. Beau takes Barl down to the floor with her staff and pins him while Fjord brings the falchion down across his neck- like a chef’s knife, Caduceus thinks- and then it’s over. He can feel the spray of blood drying on his face.
Jester throws herself onto her knees next to him the instant the dust settles. Shaking, she alternates between laying healing hands upon him and using her sleeves to wipe away the tears which continuously overflow from her big, blue eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Dueces” she says, sniffling. “There are magic wards on half the city now, and I took me ages to find everyone, and we just weren’t fast enough, and I am so, so sorry.”
He can feel the pain leaving his body, his limbs awakening with fresh energy, and still Jester continues to pour her magic into him, as if she could wash away the memory of what has happened along with the physical traces. Caduceus is very fond of her.
Fjord sighs.
“Jess, couldn’t you have waited a minute? We have three human corpses up here and now there’s not a scratch on Clay. It looks...bad.”
Jester, her eyes swollen and red, still manages to glare at him with righteous rage. “No, I couldn’t have waited, Fjord!” she cries. “I don’t care what it looks like, they hurt him-”
“I’ll speak for you”, comes a new voice from the doorway, and Caduceus looks up to see the innkeeper, a thin older woman. Jan, he thinks her name was. Her eyes are hard and the muscles in her face are taut with anger. “We all knew Skrain was a creep, but I couldn’t do fuck-all about it. He never quite crossed the lines in front of witnesses. Always had his shitty friends to back up his alibis. Scared more than one girl into recanting. Don’t know what he was thinking, jumping someone in here like that. Little idiot just got cocky, I guess.”
She presses coin into Fjord’s hand and turns to make her way back down the stairs. “I’ll fetch the Crownsguard, tell them some version of the truth. You get that child a hot bath on me. As my thanks for clearing out the vermin.”
“I’m older than you” Caduceus says, gathering himself to stand. “I’m not a child”. The words sound petulant even as he says them, and his ears droop in embarrassment as Jan scoffs gently at him.
“Yeah, I know your people son. You’re what, 80? 85? Don’t let him give you that wise elder shit”, she says to Beau and Fjord, and then she troops back down the stairs.
“A bath sounds nice”, Caduceus says, into the silence.
---
By the grace of the goddess, his teammates are able to wrap the legality of the whole thing up and put it away without involving him at all. Once he is clean, damp, and wrapped in a robe and a thick down comforter, Caduceus goes to sit on the stairs. They are the same stairs where the men found him earlier, and he knows that whatever happens above where they turn at a right angle to form the landing is invisible to people below. He sits, and listens. The guards ask, several times, to question the alleged victim. Fjord refuses point blank, in a tone so scrupulously deferential they hardly realize that's what he's doing. Caduceus is unspeakably grateful for his thoughtfulness, for everyone's concern. When he’d come out of the bath earlier (and it had been a long, long bath) he’d found Beau leaning against the wall beside the door like a bodyguard, scowling at passersby.
The blood and bodies are cleared away, and they are assigned new rooms. Caduceus isn’t involved with that either. They are guilt-ridden, all of them, and won’t let him lift a finger, even to make dinner. So he lies in bed, hours earlier than he would usually retire, and does not sleep. Does his best not to think. He can’t make himself pray, not yet.
Eventually, Nott drags her bedroll into his room and dumps it on the floor. She meets his eyes with a defiant glare, as if daring him to comment, and he just pats the bed, inviting her up. She hops onto the mattress and curls up at Caduceus’ feet, back against the wall, for all the world as if he were Caleb. her tiny, ferocious presence is more comforting than he expects it to be, and at some point he drifts off to sleep. He wakes again some time after midnight, to see Nott’s eyes glowing green in the dark, reflecting the dim light of the moon.
“You’re still awake?” he whispers, and she crawls over to him. He throws a blanket over their heads, so they won't disturb Fjord, who was allowed to crash in the room's other bed at some point while Caduceus was asleep.
“Sorry! I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t.”
“I just can’t sleep.”
“Mmm. Thinking about something?”
Her eyes are sad. “You. What you said last time we were here.”
“What did I say?”
“That you were, a virgin.”
“Oh. Yes. That disturbs you?”
“Its just that-" she squirms around under the covers, her breath hot in the small space, and drops her eyes away from his. "Its just that my first time was- like that, like what happened to you. And for a long time I didn’t know that it could be any different, because I didn’t have anything good to compare it to. I don’t want that for you, Mr. Clay. For anyone.”
Caduceus is not terribly surprised to hear this, from the little he knows of her life story. He wonders a little who had changed her frame of reference- Yeza or Caleb? Then he sets his wondering aside, along with a brief flash of (unfair) anger that he now has to soothe her pain when he was the one injured. He knows that this type of injury lives in the body, can already feel the pain of it settling into his bones and nerves. Nott is feeling his terror and helplessness tonight just as surely as if she had been the one in that room.
“You needn’t worry”, he says. “I know what love is.”
She pats his face, her eyes luminous and watery with unshed tears. “Good”, she says. “That’s good.”
Caduceus doesn’t tell her that the idea of being loved like that feels stifling; just another type of violation. He thinks of the type of love she speaks of and feels the phantom sensation of a magic hand pressing him into the floor, human arms caging him in. He has never wanted that kind of love. What makes him feel loved above all else is Nott's presence here with him, ready to kill to keep her family safe. It is Beau at his door, Jester at his side, Fjord guarding his privacy. Caleb's silver thread around them at night. Yasha's quiet support. All the love he needs lies in the tight circle they have drawn around him now, like a herd of bison would guard their calves, horns lowered, to keep the wolves away.
He has been alone for too long, Caduceus Clay. He misses his sisters dearly, misses his parents, misses...at least the concept of Asclepius, the idea of a brother, if not the reality. Misses his certainty that the Wildmother would guide and protect him.
It is good not to be alone.
Nott falls asleep eventually, too exhausted from crying to keep up her self-imposed vigil. Caduceus tucks her in beside him. He does not fall asleep for a long, long time.
Re: Caduceus/OMCs, noncon h/c, 2/2
(Anonymous) 2019-07-15 04:16 pm (UTC)(link)