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He's covered in blood, clothes tacky to his skin when the rain starts.
The fight's almost over, just a few stragglers who are either trying run or trying to play dead, face down in the mud with their fallen friends on top of them. But the breathing gives them away. It always gives them away.
He stands in the slowly softening earth and waits, hands coiling around the hilt, adrenaline still rolling off of him in waves.
She's around, somewhere above him, waiting for him to get it out of his system or at least to scratch the itch for now, and he's close to finished. Seere hovers by the edge of the forest for either of the adults to return to camp. Arioch's mouth already dripping red and when he catches her from the corner of his eye, she grins at him, waving an arm that isn't attached to a body.
He shakes his head, doesn't know to which one of them, and instead closes his eyes and waits. He can be incredibly still, if he wants to. Their old servants never appreciated it, not that they would tell him, but he heard whispers sometimes.
He listens.
Rain hitting mud, his own shallow breathing, the rustle of wind through far off trees. His partner's heartbeat, a constant barely there thrum in his tongue.
He hears a gasp of air and stalks to the corpse pile, staring down at the solider, lifting his leg and pushing the man's face down into the mud. There's a struggle, the pile of bodies shifts with his efforts, but Caim is unyielding.
'Excessive, even for you.'
He doesn't turn to look for her. He might lose his balance if he did and then where would they be.
'No arterial spray, no caved-in skull, just pathetic blubbering.' He doesn't know why she still bothers to judge him. 'Whether I am or not is none of your concern.' And then a moment later, 'What are you getting out of this?'
Another dead imperial is just as good a reason as any. And this one finally stops trying to escape the weight he pulled on to his back. Caim lifts his leg and steps back, boots slick. He feels weirdly tired. Must be the weather. Or his partner's exhaustion. It bleeds through sometimes, despite mutual best efforts to keep the more physical separation from each other.
He hears another intake of air to his right, another imperial trying the same trick trying to scramble away now that he's seen what Caim's done to his friend. Caim walks, doesn't bother running, no reason to, to the man crawling in the mud.
If just holding him under was excessive then-
He stomps down on the man's helmet, the scream muffled by the mud, and then he does it again and again and again until there's no more screaming.
'Really?'
But now he doesn't even have to turn to try and find her. The beat of her wings creates wind strong enough to drag his clothes against his body, to really let the rain sink into his skin.
She settles, he just catches her do it, the way her body sags, claws digging, sinking into the mud.
'Let's go. Before you catch your death.'
One man army dying from a head cold. The Imperials would have a laugh at least. One last great gift from him.
'Very generous.'
He climbs up her wing and settles into his usual spot between thirty second and thirty-fifth vertebrae and sheaths his sword. He chances leaning forward, flat against her once she takes off again, cold wind and rain ensuring he's plastered to her now, no way around it.
But she doesn't seem to mind. She used to, used to gripe about the filth, the way the blood would drip off of him and soak into her scales. Now she seems to like his warm body against hers.
'Don't flatter yourself.'
Of course not.
There's no point bothering with camp, because it's still raining and still windy, and between the lot of them, a golem and two elementals don't really have to worry about the weather and even if a fairy can get sick he's sure it's easy to warm it up comparative to his partner who is the size of a house.
There's a cave not far from here that she could fit into. Empty from the last time they passed by the area, and Caim spent the better part of an hour clearing it out. Imperials are so lazy they don't even bother making camp. How does his army ever lose to them?
They settle at the edge, her tail winding around a tree, maybe out of reflex, and the loud splintering of wood echoes for miles. She breathes into the cave, the heat rushing up to meet his face once the fire settles and she shakes in a way that can only mean 'get off of me, you fool.' He slides down as gracefully as he can what with the rain and not landing face first in the mud is as much of a success as any.
She starts a smaller fire for his benefit before moving inside and pressing up against the now heated walls. He gets out of his wet armor and dumps it on the stone by the fire before moving to sit against her, back to belly, and stare at the fire.
To think, Caim of Caerleon would find it so easy to close his eyes and rest by a dragon.
'It's no easy task on my end either, prostrating myself to a human.' But there's no real bite to it.
There's warmth, and a pressure to his front, and that all familiar exhaustion until he realizes her sensations are bleeding through the pact again. He wonders if she feels his tired too, limbs still heavy. But then that's what he gets for not stretching. She snorts and a smile, minute as it is, slides along his face all the same.
This is new.
She doesn't acknowledge him, but then her slow breathing slows even further, so maybe she did just fall asleep. She's shockingly comfortable to sleep against, under scales practically soft to the touch. Between the warmth of the fire and the warmth of her, it's like he's in his childhood home again, nestled between Furiae and Inuart on a cool fall evening.
It's better like this, he thinks. His hair is still damp, and it still feels like every motion is laborious but against her, his sword a show reach away?
He could get used to this.
Or maybe he already has, and that's why he presses even closer to her.
For his rest, of course.
'Of course.'