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‘Beato had her quirks’ was a polite way of phrasing the entire ocean of the woman’s eccentricities. It wasn’t a problem, not in the slightest, it was just...surprising, sometimes. As she’d slipped that ring on his finger, he was thinking of…. ahem , well, what would happen the following night. The thought of him groggily opening his eyes every morning, only to find her curled up against him reading Murder on the Links never flashed through his mind.
Not that it was anything he would ever complain about, not in the slightest! He just never thought that Beatrice, proud, arrogant , Beatrice, was ever the type to melt into physical contact, her body becoming so relaxed that he’d thought she’d fallen asleep. Or that she was the kind of person who would seek out contact like a heat-seeking missile, winding her warm body around his when his mind was still heavy with sleep. He’d braced himself for sudden hugs, or tight grips, when he’d first married.
It was a welcome surprise, just not when he felt like he was about to get a cold. He’d honed the skill of knowing an imminent illness from a decade in the public-school system, could spot that the pressure building up behind his nose was from some disease hours before his ears lost the ability to pop. What he was feeling now, even as he’d just woken up, was very much that feeling of an incoming runny nose.When he moves to wriggle out from her embrace, the lukewarm air bites hard at his exposed back. Great .
More importantly, Beato was here, within arm’s reach.
“Beato? Have you been feeling sick lately?”
“Mmm? No.” She yawns, lips peeling back to reveal sharpened canines before slowly disentangling herself from him, back arching almost like a cat before she slips out of bed, feet shuffling a second later into slippers. There’s a sort of elegance to her movements that turns her from groggy blonde with tangled hair to something almost ethereal. He’s not sure if it’s the morning light, or weariness, but he always watches her get ready for the day, watches her cuddle up to him in bed, splash face with water, etcetera.
“Is there some way you can get rid of a cold with magic?”
“Hoh?” There must have been some tremor or stuffiness in his voice, because she pauses in the middle of putting on chapstick, choosing to slowly drape herself on the bed instead of change into actual clothes. “Are you not feeling well, Battleeeer?”
There’s a softness to the tease, accented by the sharp ice of her hands that she lays on his forehead- she’d only been out of bed for a couple minutes, how the hell did her hands get that cold?-but she thankfully yanks them back when he flinches. “You’re warm,” she says, glancing over his body, probably hoping to catch any physical symptoms. “Probably one of those magic-immune strains going around. I’ve heard the Chiesters had it.”
He groans and slides back under the covers as he hears the wooden sound of her dresser opening, and rummaging around for a moment or two. There’s a pause , and he can only imagine it’s her taking a somber glance in his direction.
“Kiyahahaha, not even taking the chance to watch me change? Passing up the opportunity the oogle your wife’s lovely, humongous-” There’s that gentle edge to her voice, silently goading him to take the bait and make some sort of equally embarrassing, snarky comeback, but he pulls the blankets around his ears a second too fast to hear the full sentence. He pulls the blankets tighter around himself as he groans and mulls the situation over in his head. If he got it from the Chiesters, that probably meant it was contagious. Even though not moving from their shared bed for the next three or so days was tempting, that would only mean she would get sick.
Neither of them speak before Battler pokes his head under the soft, warm blankets out to catch the shift from her almost ever-present rival mode to something softer. Her body shifts the weight on the bed as she sits down on the edge, fingers grasping for something on the nightstand before he gets an almost pleading glance.
“Mmm, are you really not feeling that well?”
She looks almost...disappointed as her eyes linger over the comb in her hands. It’s a beautiful thing, the handle engraved with gilded butterflies, and...ah, that was why. Virgilia had gotten it for her as a wedding gift, had enchanted the prongs to detangle her long, flowing hair without pulling on it. It had become part of their routine. Before walking out, he would always sit himself behind her, close enough he could feel the heat of her skin, and brush her hair before braiding it in her elaborate hairstyle. No matter how rushed they were, it was always something the two of them had made time for.
“I promise I’ll go back to doing that when I get better,” he mutters.
She gives him a small smile back.
The realm of witches, for the most part, was a mirror of Rokkenjima, albeit one with...additions. The basic layout of the island was a perfect match, but the floor plan of the buildings tended to deviate in the same way putting off a task for the next day tended to turn into months of procrastination. The basic rooms were there with all their bells and whistles, but he doubted that the original Rokkenjima mansion had previously-unheard-of subterranean rooms dedicated to things that only a witch would find interesting. The smoking room, or the hearth room with a constantly flickering fire, more couches than the room really needed, and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves packed so tightly that only magic or a hammer could jam a book back into its former position.
The original Beato had apparently made it because she’d liked warm, cozy places to curl up and read. At her passing, the island, and with it the room, had passed to him. He’d not dared change it. The noisier servants never really touch the room, aside from perhaps Mammon, who greets him with a flick of her eyes upwards at the sight of the territory lord with an armful of blankets, recovered enough from waking up that setting up a place to nap wasn’t as hellish as it could’ve been.
“Common cold,” he explains, tossing the pile of sheets onto the couch closest to the fire as she conspicuously begins hovering a good distance away from him. It only takes a moment to rearrange the sheets to something comfortable, and only a moment more to find one of the books he’d halfway finished on a table somewhere, pick it up, and read.
As the morning goes on, he’s pretty sure his nose goes from stuffy to runny, and the nearby tissue box goes similarly goes from full to half-empty. He’s mostly just glad the worst symptoms hit him now, instead of when his face was smushed up against Beato’s body.
Who, speaking of, had just figured out where he had exiled himself in voluntary quarantine, though perhaps figuring wasn’t the right word. Figuring required some amount of brainpower to deduce that Battler was probably in the library, instead of just treating it as the default Place Where Battler Tends To Be During The Day. Which it was.
“Baaaaaaattler,” she’d called gently, in that almost sing-song voice that almost announced trouble, parading through the hearth room looking for him. When their eyes meet, he notices a steaming bowl of something in her hands. Soup, not cooked by her from the looks of it. It’s gently placed on the nearby table as she whips out a spoon, gently scooping a mouthful, and offering it to his lips. “Are you feeling better? Ready to let me spoil you?”
“Beato-Beato, you’re going to get sick.” He still takes the spoon, even if he’s not feeling that hungry.
“Siiick? Isn’t the phrase ‘in sickness and in health’? Isn’t it the duty of a faithful wife to at least look after you?” There’s something in her eyes, the kind of strange fire he only sees when she’s above him, vulnerable and-
Aaaand this was a power dynamic thing.
“Beato.”
“Mmm?”
“Are you okay? You’re acting weird.” Technically, almost everything she did could be shoved under the banner of weird, but compared to earlier, it was a tad...off.
“Ah, uh, Beato. Didn’t we go over this already? I’m sick. You shouldn’t be...” he gestures at her as she kneels down, leaning a hand on her cheek, her face emanating that aura that foretold of some long, weird rant in the near future.
“Are you saying you don’t know this scenario? Where the normally powerful man gets sick, and presto! has to be cared foooor? And the cute love interest ends up caring for them and making their affection meter go up? Didn’t you like that one visual novel I found a month ago where that happens?” Beato had ‘found’ a number of visual novels, yes, but many of them were personal recommendations from Gaap. The same Gaap with…... interesting taste in literature.
“Was that the absurdly complicated one?” He rubs his temples as Beato gives him a small smile.
“You’re going to need to be more specific. It was the mystery one! With the maid and convoluted romance system.” She pauses for a second to glance at him, eyes half-closed and fingers trying to relieve the pressure on his forehead. “...Headache?”
He gives a small groan and ducks more of his body under the covers.
“Natsuhi has some headache remedies. Give me a moment.” Her voice is barely a whisper now, a far cry from the loud, boisterous conversation of a moment ago. Her departure, dissolving into hundreds of butterflies, is even quieter.
He’s half-asleep when he catches her sneaking back in, a cup of tea in her hands, a couple pills balanced on the saucer. She holds it out to him, her eyes drifting to the floor. Pause.
“How many pills do I need to take here?” He asks, taking the cup to his lips.
“Just one. Twice a day.”
“Ah. And, uh...” he pauses for a second, taking her in. “Are you okay?”
Her body tenses, every muscle in her body giving that deer-in-the-headlights look as she slowly moves to glance at his face. “Am I pestering you? Virgilia said I shouldn’t bug you.” Her eyes wander back to the kitchen for a millisecond. Ah. Probably some lecture while she was making tea.
“You-you’re not bothering me.”
There’s that look from her again, some sort of augmented thousand-mile gaze that almost seems to bore right through him, as if his heart was mere glass.
“I’d ask you to repeat that in red, but I doubt you could,” she sighs, dropping to the floor, her back to the couch. Arms curled in on her legs. “Do I annoy you?”
“No, you don’t. You just...” His mind blanks, and he pops a pill into his mouth, swallowing it with a mouthful of tea. “I’m ill and tired right now, and you’re a bit...rambunctious for me right now.”
“...I see.” Closed eyes, a deep breath as her shoulders sink a little, rising once again to a more confident posture. “Do you want me to leave?”
There’s a quiet yearning in her eyes as he puts down the cup. “Right now, I just need sleep.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” she says, a soft smile on her face.
“I guess I didn’t, huh?”
“I suppose your answer can be anything I please, in that case.”
“No arguments here, ihihihi.”
As she rises, she dusts herself off and shoots him an awkward wink. “I’ll try and keep quiet. Tell me if I need to do anything.”
As she sits herself down on a nearby chair, sinking into the fabric as she skims through one of the books she’d picked out, he whispers a faint “Thanks, Beato.” He’s not sure if she hears it, but she smiles all the same before he burrows under the covers to nap.
When he wakes up, he first thinks the room being caked in gold and moving was some sort of weird fever dream. At a closer look, he spots it: instead of gold leaf, every surface near him is cloaked in shimmering golden butterflies lazily resting everywhere, their wings occasionally beating between open and closed.
He’d never quite gotten close enough to her in this form to see, but their bodies pulse to the tune of some unheard rhythm, their golden auras almost imperceptibly flickering from bright to dull just like the beat of a heart.
They fly from his touch as he moves his body from its rest, but a couple remain, their bodies resting where the blanket had slipped from cocooning him to merely covering his chest.
A smile brushes his lips as he gently tries to brush them off his clothes.
“C’mon now. If my wife found so many strange characters like this hanging around my crotch, my marriage would be ruined,” he teases as the remaining butterflies on his clothes take wing, flying about like a shimmer of gold dust as he pulls the blanket around himself again. Like a swarm of pigeons, the second he settles himself back in with a book, they swarm him again, coating the blanket.
They stay there, almost motionless as he flips through the pages. It’s not a mystery novel, but she still sits there as he reads.
One of the bigger ones lights upon the book as he turns to the last page, her wings obscuring at least half the text as they slowly fan open-closed-open.
“H-hey there.” He offers her a hand, palm-up in front of her to climb onto. Her feet-almost like little kitten paws-tentatively test his fingers for stability as she slowly clambers on, her wings splaying in all directions as he moves perhaps a smidge too quickly.
“Ack, sorry Beato.” Her form like this was a lot more delicate compared to what he was used to. There was none of that loud, in-your-face laughter that he loved, or that weird tenaciousness to life. Instead, it was replaced by spindly legs, cumbersome wings, a body that he could crush with a single hand.
She stops moving when she senses his gaze, letting his eyes gently wander on her wings.
Slowly, he moves his hand back to the couch to let her dismount, but a sudden burst of movement flying right at his face makes him flinch. He doesn’t catch when the blur of motion begins, but he can tell when it ends, with something on his cheek, clambering for purchase.
“Beato! W-what are you?” Her body rights itself, at least from what he can see, her wing whacking him in the eye as she moves down to his chin, her body...he can’t see it, but he can feel it. Something feather-light tickling his lips. And judging by her position…..ah. A proboscis? That would mean….ah, useless, useless! It was pure sadism, to kiss him like this without a chance for him to counterattack with his own lips! The kind of assault that demanded payback in full the next time he was able to provide it!
As it turns out, the next time he’s able to is a total of a week later, after he navigates the minefield of tissues and discarded blankets to drop a bowl of soup at her blanket-covered feet. She groans, writhing for a second before popping her head out from under the covers.
Gently, he brushes the bangs, plastered with sweat to her face, aside as he kisses her on the too-warm forehead.
“Mmmph,” she murmurs, stabbing the spoon into the bowl as she drinks.
“I love you too, Beato.”