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The city was quiet this late and it made the sound of her heels against the sidewalk seem only louder, more obnoxious to her own ears. Sherry had returned late from her latest solo quest on the coast and she was tired, but not too tired to take the walk to Lyon’s apartment instead of heading straight home. Light was still burning in his windows and she smiled as she unlocked the front door and slipped out of her shoes; there was no need to make his neighbours hate her even more than they already did because she woke them up in the middle of the night. They were unhappy enough whenever she stayed over and nightmares haunted her sleep, not that they ever said something.
A part of her, she knew, was spiteful and done enough to explain — in vivid detail — to civilians that the job of a guild mage required sacrifices and caused pain. She could understand they did not like to be woken up by the sound of a scream much more than she liked to wake up drenched in cold sweat, but neither Lyon nor her were doing it on purpos e. If anything, they should blame whoever had decided that the walls of the building should be thin, she thought with a huff as she arrived at her destination.
Unlocking Lyon’s apartment door after ringing the doorbell was an old habit, something she barely thought about anymore, as was shrugging off her jacket and putting it on a hanger before turning to look at the ice mage. “I find you uncharacteristically overdressed for this kind of meeting,” Sherry said as she dropped off her bag and her shoes near the door, smoothing the wrinkles out of her shirt and grinning at Lyon and how he stood in the doorframe that led to his living room, arms crossed over his chest and eyebrow cocked. It was a pretty shirt, it made his eyes stand out and she had always had a weakness for his eyes, but why was he wearing a button down shirt with his lounge pants?
He laughed, running a hand through his hair and winking at her. “I thought that maybe, we’d eat some late dinner before you’d drag me off to the bedroom to have your wicked way with me.” His sigh was dramatic, as was the way he bat his eyelashes at her.
“Men with shoulders as tragically messed up like yours do not get to flirt with me,” she responded as she held out her hand to him, letting herself be dragged along to the bedroom, “but — lucky for you, I am here to fix your shoulders. And your biceps, too, don’t think I am blind.”
His back and arms, like hers, always took the worst abuse when it came to his jobs, after having worked first for and then with Lyon, this was a fact she was intimately familiar with. There were many years of shoulder rubs and the like in their past, this was just the logical escalation. God, the thought of how long they had been working together was almost enough to make her feel old, but Sherry would not entertain that line of thought.
He snorted as he switched on the light and let her push him onto the bed, lingering on the edge for a bit as he watched her carefully. “Don’t know what I’d do without you,” he said seriously as he unbuttoned his shirt to shrug it off. “Live in permanent pain?”
“Hm, maybe,” she nodded as she rolled up her sleeves as she knelt down on the bed, “or you’d charm someone else into this?”
He laughed as he tossed his shirt towards his chair. “Don’t think that there’s anyone short of Jura who can match you for grip strength in the guild,” he responded, and she would have chortled in faux jealousy but the image was just too funny. “And Jura, tragic as that is, has defected to Era of all places.”
She snorted as she grabbed the unscented oil from the basket by the bedside. “I do love your relentless optimism that he would be willing to come visit you at such strange times to fix you up, Lyon,” she responded seriously as she nudged him to lay down, assessing the situation with a searching gaze. “Most would think he would be busy.”
“ You aren’t immune to my devilish good looks and habit of bringing back sweets from my trips,” he responded, “maybe he wouldn’t be either.”
Sherry rolled her eyes as she started to work on his shoulders, finding the usual knots in his shoulders that she had come to know so well. Maybe Jenny was right when she said that they would all benefit from proper stretches before entering combat, but sometimes, there was just no time for precautions. “I doubt Jura is as easily swayed as I am,” she said as she dug her fingers into a particularly persistent hardness near his trapezius, “but if you get it to work, more power to you.”
“You might be right,” Lyon agreed easily, “I may have to throw in some new teacups.”
She laughed as her hands continued their work, kneading his muscles and reaching lower and lower until she frowned. “What on earth did you do to your back, Lyon Vastia?” she asked as her hands felt the tension, the knots in his muscles and the general discomfort of his entire being. That his shoulders and arms were in a bad state after long missions, that was something she was used to, but this was a new level of screwed up. And not one she wanted to become the new normal .
He groaned as her fingers dug into a particularly hard spot and lifted his head only a bit. “Slept on the floor,” he admitted with a roguish grin. “For old time’s sake and all.”
She swatted at his shoulder, gently and with love , as she shook her head at him. “I fear you are getting a bit too old for such shenanigans,” she said with a dramatic sigh and located another painful knot in another part of his back.
“My teacher was always fine when she did the same,” he grumbled into his pillow and she laughed as she pressed a tender kiss against his shoulder. He had come a long way since the days when he had barely been able to mention his teacher, and she was glad to see him grow, to see him heal.
“Your teacher may not be the best comparison — you did tell tales of her godlike patience,” she responded as she idly traced his spine with her forefinger, smirking as he shuddered despite himself, laughing quietly when he glared at her and mouthed unfair, Sherry . As if he played fair all the time.
He pouted, she did not have to see his face to know . “Harsh,” he complained, “telling me that my patience is not godlike.”
“Oh love,” she retorted as she bent forward to kiss his ear, “that really is not the hill you should pick to die on.”
He sighed as he wiggled on the bed like some sort of serpent. “You’re taking advantage of the boneless,” he complained before a pleased sound escaped him. “That’s where it hurts.”
Stretching her hands and getting more oil, she smiled broadly. It might be late, but there was a lightness to this that drove all exhaustion from her. She would be plenty tired after dinner, she knew that, but for now, she was doing perfectly fine. “Got it,” she said as she returned to her work with renewed vigour, “but you do remind me of a snake right now, and they have bones, Lyon.”
“You’d know, you’ve been with Lamia Scale forever ,” he replied casually before he hissed softly when her fingernails gently scraped over a fresh red mark. “Careful there, please.”
“I have been indeed,” she nodded as she trailed her finger alongside the spot, “long enough to recognise this — lightning spell, right?” He hummed out an agreement and she searched the basket for the right ointment. It spoke volumes about how long they had been doing this job that there was an assortment of all kinds of ointments and other medicine Lyon had collected — and the matching amount that she kept in her bathroom a few streets away. “I got you,” she reassured him as she continued her work, now on his left arm, ever so often gently nudging him to ensure that he was still awake and had not drifted off while she was loosening his muscles. “Almost done.”
This time, his sigh was one of relief and she smirked. “Good,” he said cheerfully as he lifted his head again, “because you look like you need some care as well. Rough mission?”
She groaned as she moved to his other side. “You can say this again and louder this time,” she said with a shudder, “they sent me to the coast and had me drag shipwrecks out of the water. It was . . . not easy.”
His hand reached for her, finding her knee and squeezing it gently. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, “that really wasn’t a good assignment for you. Did you . . . have to go in?”
She nodded, entwining her fingers with his for a moment. “I got the job done, that’s what matters,” she replied as she closed her eyes for a moment — Lyon was always good at grounding her after jobs that had been . . . challenging in some manner that did not just relate to a difficult fight, something she was ever grateful for — before she patted his shoulder. “And you, my good sir, are done,” she said as she sat back.
There was always something to be said about mages who channelled their magic through their hands: they were not prone to fumbling around, they had steady hands and they did what they did with confidence, and thus, Lyon came up from where he had been laying on the bed with near feline grace and he gave her the gentlest shove that had her falling backwards, grinning up at him as she arranged her limbs dramatically. (He was not the only one who could play it up for the entertainment of others, in the end.)
“It appears to me, miss, that you are wearing too many layers for someone who has at least a sore left arm,” he purred as he offered a hand to her.
She laughed as she let him pull her up and busied herself with the ties and buttons of her top, handing it over as soon as she managed to squirm out of it. “The excuses some come up with to get me out of my clothes, shameless ,” she chided cheerily as she piled up her hair in a loose bun atop her head. “Do we still have any of that lavender oil?”
He chuckled as he rummaged around in the little basket and she laughed along as she sunk back into the pillows. As exhausting as her solo assignments could be (and the last one had left her sore in many different ways), she was glad for each time she could let herself fall onto this cloud. “I thought that you might want this,” he said as he lazily drew circles on her bare back, “so I bought a new bottle on my last job.”
She smiled as she shifted around until she was perfectly comfortable as opposed to just comfortable. “You are always so good to me,” she sighed happily as she waited for him to work his magic on her.
“I’ll remind you of that the next time you scream because my hands are cold,” he replied as he poured the oil onto her back, his lukewarm hands brushing over her skin.
“Which is a perfectly valid reason to complain.” She shrugged, feeling the oil shift on her back as she moved. It was no unpleasant feeling, quite the opposite. “Unless the occasional complaint makes me bossy?”
“You have a naturally commanding presence and you are a splendid orator, Sherry dearest,” Lyon said dryly as his hands went to work on her nape. “You aren’t bossy .”
She hummed her assent as her eyes slid shut and she began to feel boneless, much like he had earlier. He was so good at making her feel as if there was no weight to her existence, as if she was just floating, and after having spent too much time hip deep in cold ocean water, this was something she needed. Though to be fair, given her phobia of deep waters, any time she was forced to spend in the ocean was too much, but that was not something she wanted to think about. Instead, she thought of Lyon who was trying so hard to make her feel better — not just because of the assignment but in general. “You do like it when I am commanding, though,” she mumbled into the pillow and smirked to herself as he found the source of a rather persistent ache that radiated deep into her biceps and did away with it. Mother mountain , did she love that man and his very capable hands.
“I’d be a fool not to,” he said and she could hear the wink in his voice. Insufferable man — though she had been encouraging him, had she not? She had a weakness for his ego. “If I wouldn’t, I would lack a right hand as competent as you.”
She chuckled as she shook her head. “You have a way of charming me that most men lack,” she retorted and rolled her eyes — more at herself than at him because he was right. To be told that she was competent was far more exhilarating than being told that she was pretty. The latter was the result of genetics (which had been admittedly generous), the former a result of hard work.
Lyon’s fingers curled against her sides as he leaned forward to kiss her temple, and she almost laughed because she was ticklish there and he knew that. “I picked up takeout earlier because I figured you’d by tonight,” he said conspiratorially, “and I got you your favourite.”
Sherry let out a contented sigh. “You leave me no choice,” she replied, “I’ll have to marry you. Not anytime soon . . . but . . . someday.”