Archive of Our Own

‘Help! Help! Eddie, come quick!’

Eddie scrambles out from beneath the tavern’s iron stove, nearly hitting his head on the way. Not stopping, he rolls to his feet and drops his wrench onto the closest counter. Then he sprints for the kitchen door.

He bursts onto the main floor. It’s early in the afternoon, so there are no patrons around yet, but the staff have already started opening the curtains and taking the chairs down from the tables. A woven basket of candles sits on top of the bar, waiting to be distributed.

‘Over here!’

Eddie’s eyes snap to the entranceway. ‘Sausage!’

His son’s hair stands up in every which direction. He’s twitching frantically, trying to keep the limp figure slumped on his shoulder from slipping to the floor.

‘I found him on the shore,’ he shouts. ‘He must have gotten swept in with the tide. Maybe he went overboard in the storm?’

Eddie’s only listening with half an ear. He grabs a dish towel to wipe his hands on. Dodging a crate of candle holders and a sack of raw onions, he makes it to Sausage just in time to catch the stranger before he flops onto the wooden planks.

It’s a human, judging by the ears. He’s wearing a watermelon-coloured shirt with yellow flowers on it, short pants and an undershirt. The drenched fabric of the latter clings to his chest, revealing several neat rows of ribs. He reeks of brine and ozone. His clammy skin is icy to the touch.

‘If he really went overboard during the storm, that means he’s been out there for at least five hours,’ Eddie says. ‘He’s not gonna make it.’

He shouldn’t even be alive right now.

Sausage’s eyes widen. ‘No,’ he gasps. ‘No! Hold him.’

He pushes the stranger at Eddie, who cradles the motionless body in his arms. The man’s head rolls into the curve of his elbow.

His face is gaunt, his cheeks sunken. The dark violet shadows under his eyes stand out starkly against his pale skin and fair hair, and his lips are as white as if they were drawn with limestone chalk. On the insides of his wrists, his veins shimmer in blue and purple. Eddie’s brows furrow. Before getting swept out to sea, this man must not have seen the sun in a very long time.

There’s no telling how old he may be. He’s definitely not a child, but there’s something delicate about him. Or maybe that’s just Eddie’s protective instinct acting up; his insides ache at the sight of this much scrawniness.

Sausage barges out of the kitchen with a stack of towels in his arms. ‘I’ve told the hands to put water on the stove. All of the water. We’ll run him a bath real quick, that’ll warm him up.’

Eddie waits until his son meets his gaze before speaking. ‘He’s not shivering.’

He knows Sausage knows what that means. They live in a tropical climate now, where severe hypothermia is rare, but they’ve seen enough of it on their travels, and in their former home country. There’s nothing to be done at this stage, except to bed the stranger down and make his last few moments as comfortable and painless as possible, until exhaustion drags him into the afterlife.

Eddie expects Sausage to deflate. For his agitation to quiet and the borderline panic to recede. Maybe he would even withdraw and get lost in his own head for a bit, which seems to have been happening more and more in the last few months.

Instead, he clenches his fists and stomps his foot. ‘No,’ he growls, eyes narrowing. It’s directed at the stranger. ‘You are not.’

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a vial filled with a liquid in blush pink, like blood dissolved in water. Eddie startles.

‘Sausage!’

Healing potions are rare. Only a handful of witches and crafters in the whole world are capable of brewing something so powerful. Each drop is a precious resource the value of which can’t be measured in diamonds. Eddie always slept easier knowing Sausage had it.

Sausage uses his teeth to yank the stopper out of the vial and for the first time, Eddie considers his son’s body language. He’s turned fully towards the stranger, all of his attention firmly on him. Something fierce burns in his gaze.

Oh.

Sausage grabs the man by the fringe and pulls his head back, jamming a thumb into his mouth and forcing his teeth apart.

‘Wait, wait,’ Eddie yelps. ‘You can’t give it to him like that, he’ll choke.’

Sausage blinks. ‘The floor. Put him on the floor.’

He dribbles a bit of potion over two of his fingers. It coats them like liquid honey. He shoves them into the man’s mouth. ‘Don’t you dare die on me. Don’t you dare. Madre, Santa, save him. I beg of you.’

Extracting his hand, Sausage goes for more potion. His movements are abrupt and feverish, he’s mumbling prayer, and he seems to have forgotten everything around him. Eddie watches, quiet.

By the time the vial is empty, the stranger looks… less pale. Or maybe the bruises under his eyes have softened.

Breathing hard, Sausage sits back on his heels. Eddie puts an arm around his shoulders.

‘You did what you could. He’s in the Mother’s hands now.’

His son’s jaw tenses. ‘I feel like I haven’t done enough.’

‘The potion will do its work. Give it time.’

The other slumps. Heavily, he leans against Eddie. ‘Wait with me?’

Eddie nods and shifts until he can keep a hold of the stranger as well as Sausage without straining. Then he nudges his son. ‘Tell me about him. I’m curious.’

‘Huh?’

‘He seems to be a good friend.’ Former lover? Current lover? Sausage certainly has his fair share of both. ‘How did you two meet?’

Sausage looks up at him with wide eyes. ‘No, I… I’ve never seen this man before in my life.’

‘He apparently did what he had to do and then just… left. That’s weird, right? He made such a fuss about that human–’

‘He’s been planning this trip for months,’ Robin interrupts Lark. ‘As soon as the guy was stable, there was really no reason why he couldn’t leave.’

Lark’s black ears twitch. ‘He ran up that pier like there was an Enderman behind him or something.’

‘You don’t run from Endermen. You hide.’

‘A horde of zombies, then. And that other guy, the human…,’ Lark trails off, wrapping her arms around herself.

Robin squints at her in the half-dark of the tavern hallway. ‘He was unconscious, wasn’t he?’

Lark’s eyes widen. She slaps a paw over her own mouth.

‘… Lark?’

‘You can’t tell them.’ She grabs Robin by the elbows, her grip so tight her nails dig painfully into her flesh. ‘Promise me. Swear it on the Mother. Not a word to anyone, not even Eddie.’

Alarmed, Robin grasps her in return. ‘Yes, absolutely. What’s going on?’

The other narrows her eyes, then takes a careful look around before leaning in, rising onto her tiptoes to get close to Robin’s ears.

‘I don’t think anybody else saw, but he wasn’t unconscious when Sausage dragged him here. His eyes were open. There was this glow in them, like– like a Phantom in the night.’

‘Gossiping instead of working, are we?’

With matching squeals, the two harengon jump apart. ‘Eddie!’

The man comes up the last few stairs and looms over them, crossing his arms in front of his chest, glowering. There’s no chance he didn’t hear what they were talking about. Robin winces. She kind of wants to run, but doesn’t dare.

Eddie looks from her to Lark and back.

‘Sanctuary’s doors are open to all of those in need of aid, regardless of who they are. They can come here and be welcome, without fear of scrutiny. You know that.’

Robin ducks her head. ‘Yes, Ed–’

‘He’s creepy,’ Lark hisses. ‘We know nothing about him. What if he’s dangerous?’

Eddie’s nose twitches. ‘Let’s reserve judgment for when he’s actually woken up.’

‘What if he’s a spy?’

Robin slaps her arm. ‘Lark!’

‘What? It’s true! You can’t just take in random people without asking questions when an insane king is still after you.’

‘That’s enough,’ says Eddie. The sharpness of his tone immediately quiets the girls. ‘People overhearing are going to take your talk at face value. Don’t spread rumours about someone who’s not even able to defend themselves. Definitely not in front of that someone’s door.’

He points past them and Robin grimaces. Oh, right.

Eddie sighs. ‘If it makes you feel better, I will take care of Sausage’s guest from now on, so the both of you can focus on your actual work again. Deal?’

Lark perks up immediately. ‘Yes!’

She grabs Robin by the arm and pulls her down the stairs.

Eddie stays behind in the hallway, in front of the door to the room they’ve put the stranger in. His palm covers the carved diamond dragon pendant stitched to the front of his apron; proof that he is a master of his craft.

He agrees with Lark. Sausage’s policy of taking anyone in and nursing them back to health without even asking for their name or where they’re from is, at best, unnecessarily reckless. At worst, it’ll get them all killed. But Sausage is their leader and Eddie has chosen, long ago, to trust his son’s decisions.

He turns away from the door. Then he pauses, walks back and nudges it open to let a sliver of light fall through.

The human is still sleeping. His blond hair fans out across the pillows and the colour has returned to his cheeks.

Eddie shuts the door. As he heads for the stairs, though, he feels it again: a freezing gust of wind hitting the back of his neck, like the exhale of a frost giant. An icy claw, trailing down his spine.

True to his word, Eddie takes over checking on their patient. He drops by the tavern four times a day: once just after sunrise, while the rest of Sanctuary is still peeling themselves out of their blanket cocoons. Then a second time around midday, followed by a quick visit in the afternoon and one in the evening before he retires to bed himself.

So far, the human has done nothing more interesting than twitch in his sleep. Not that that’s surprising; healing potions take time to work their magic. He’ll wake up soon enough.

Reaching the top of the stairs on the second day, Eddie stops dead in the hallway.

‘Bubbles?’

The dog paces in front of the door, staring at the handle with her shoulders raised, fangs bared and glinting. At Eddie’s voice, she jumps almost a foot in the air.

‘What are you doing here, girl?’

Bubbles snarls at the door, then runs off, bumping Eddie’s leg on the way past.

He doesn’t find her up there again, but from then on out, she avoids the tavern like the plague.

The human’s wounds look ghastly underneath his bandages. The first time Eddie inspects them, on the evening after the man woke up, he almost tears up.

One long, jagged cut spirals from under the sole of the man’s foot to the curve of his hipbone, as if some sort of underwater creeping vine got a hold of him. Or a squid with its tentacles, or another kind of sea monster.

If that weren’t enough, there are puncture wounds, too. They form a neat line in the middle of the purplish-black patches, where the flesh is open and oozing blood. A handful of them look worse than others; the skin probably got torn while the man struggled for his life.

Eddie’s stomach twists. He’s not as well-versed in human physiology as he is in that of the harengon, but he’s seen wounds aplenty since he joined Sausage in Sanctuary. Looking at this human, one thing is for certain: he shouldn’t have survived this kind of damage. Especially not out in the freezing waves.

‘You were lucky,’ he tells the stranger named Oli, meeting his eyes. They’re quite pretty; brown like a leaf-covered forest floor with flecks of moss green sprinkled around the outer rim of his irises.

‘Very, inhumanly lucky.’

‘You’ll never have to make it through something like that again,’ Oli says, his words echoing loud in the hallway. The light from the window illuminates his face and bandage-wrapped body; the fierce set of his brow. ‘I’ll do everything in my power to stop them.’

Eddie opens his mouth for a rebuttal – he’d much rather see Oli far away from the demons haunting his past – but the words get stuck in his throat, because with every ragged, angry exhale, the shadows behind the human start to move.

Tendrils of darkness snake along the walls and the floor, becoming tangible right in front of Eddie’s eyes. Like vines from a rose bush, armed with sharpened thorns, they curl around Oli’s feet. A hissing sound echoes from everywhere and nowhere at once, like a great big beast ready to raze the city to the ground.

‘Kings, gods,’ Oli spits, his voice booming like thunder. ‘Whomever tries, they won’t get past me.’

The walls shake. Goosebumps rise on Eddie’s skin. He gasps, blinks – and it’s all gone; a trick of the bright afternoon light.

Eddie can’t keep his eyes off Oli, after that.

He perpetually finds himself scanning the corners around him for jerking black tentacles and vibrating shadows. His ears rotate on their own at every unexpected sound. Of course, now that he’s looking for it, nothing happens. Nothing at all. The whole moment might as well have been a hallucination. Instead, Eddie notices something else: the shivering.

Whenever Eddie grasps his hand to help him up, Oli trembles like a leaf. His fingers flutter ceaselessly across the bedding, or the hem of his colourful shirt, or the sides of his instruments. Even his breath seems to hitch, at times.

Eddie spoke with the tavern staff the very evening he saw it first, made them turn up the heating. But the shivers don’t subside. Now, clinging to Eddie’s hands with thin, icy fingers, in steely resolve to get to the bathtub, tremors still run along Oli’s limbs, like a whole swarm of bees crawling right under his skin.

Eddie’s stomach turns at the mere thought of letting him undress. If he hadn’t insisted on it, Eddie wouldn’t let him anywhere near the water, to avoid another bout of hypothermia if nothing else. But as it stands, Oli is determined, and the only thing Eddie can do is make sure he isn’t exposed to the cold for a second longer than necessary.

Watching the other’s face closely for any sign of discomfort, he divests Oli of his shirt. The undershirt comes off quickly enough, too. The shorts will be more difficult, because they’re covering parts of the bandages on Oli’s bad leg. He’ll have to move it, which might aggravate his injuries.

Eddie shifts closer. ‘Hold onto me.’

Oli’s hands curl around his arms, fingernails digging into his fur. His brown eyes meet Eddie’s, capturing his gaze. His pupils are wide and very dark.

Eddie slides his palms across the human’s flanks, finds the waistband of his shorts and eases them over his hips.

They fall to the floor.

Immediately, Eddie wants to look down, to make sure Oli’s feet aren’t getting tangled in the fabric, but he checks himself. Oli already got twitchy when Eddie wouldn’t leave the room, he’s not about to put any more pressure on him by stealing a glance at something that’s not meant for him.

Keeping his eyes away from Oli’s body, Eddie steers him towards the tub and chair. ‘Your foot goes here,’ he says, patting the latter.

It takes a bit of wriggling, but somehow, Oli manages to land in the water without splashing half of it onto the surrounding floorboards. He’s hissing, skin reddening, but he doesn’t seem to be in pain. Eddie gives him a moment to get used to the temperature, then pulls a chunk of soap from his pocket. It’s his favourite, a gift from Sausage, and already filling the air with the rich fragrances of oak and lavender, even when he’s just holding it.

Eddie tries to use it sparingly, usually. But right now, he doesn’t think twice about submerging it fully into the tub. He lathers up his hands, spreading the scent around, and reaches for the ladle Robin left by the chair.

‘Are you okay with water over your head?’

Oli mumbles his assent and Eddie gets to work untangling the mess of half-blond curls.

‘How clean do you want them?’

‘Yes.’

Well, then. Lips twitching, Eddie gathers the sopping wet strands in one hand. When he slides his fingertips all the way down to the roots, though, to work the soap in, Oli shakes like a willow tree in a winter storm. It’s so much worse than before. Eddie hesitates. Maybe it’d be better to get him out of the bath and bundled up in a blanket. But the water is still so hot…

‘You’re… very sensitive,’ he tries tentatively.

‘I haven’t been touched in a while.’

Eddie frowns. Among the harengon, touch is reserved for kin and the closest of friends. It mingles their scents, forming a distinct association with the colony they belong to. By now, just being in the same room as Sausage, Robin or Lark is enough for Eddie to feel home. Oli, being human, doesn’t have the same sharp nose. Eddie might be currently covering him in the smell of his favourite soap, but to him, it’s just soap.

Oh, no.

There were a few times that his fur brushed Oli’s skin. During bandage changes, or when he helps – actually manhandles – him back into bed. But apart from that, the man really hasn’t gotten much in the way of contact in recent weeks. Eddie’s stomach sinks.

Oli peers over his shoulder, something flickering in his eyes. In the corners, the shadows quiver. But they don’t rise. Abruptly, Eddie realizes that they’re not going to. Not because Oli isn’t afraid of him – which is definitely a good thing – but because Oli trusts him.

Warmth spreads through his chest, followed by guilt. Oli trusts him, so it’s only fair that Eddie would trust him in return. If he weren’t so wrapped in mystery, it’d be an easy choice. But the memories are still vivid in his mind: Sausage’s inexplicable panic, Lark’s observation, Bubbles’ aggression. The creeping sense of foreboding lingering in the air. The wounds that should have been fatal. And, of course, that moment in the hallway.

Eddie runs his palms over the other’s arms as he thinks, keeping his touch light.

Oli’s eyes slip shut. His body loosens as he sinks into Eddie’s hold, malleable as river clay.

In the end, the decision feels far easier than it probably should.

‘There you go, nice and easy,’ Eddie soothes, leaning close, letting the human feel his presence.

Oli exhales softly and finally, finally, his shivering subsides.