Work Text:
Hunter hasn’t been sleeping well.
I mean, none of them have been, if the pitter patter of Luz’s footsteps crossing the hall into her mother’s room was any sort of give away, although Gus and Amity seemed to be having the most success thus far. They’re good at exhausting themselves into relatively peaceful nights, and Hunter can’t help but feel a little jealous because it seemed no matter how tired he was, nothing was sufficient enough to drag him into the world of unconsciousness. He’s just been so wrapped up in his head about so many things. Overwhelming thoughts of protect, protect, protect, scenes of his uncle – of Belos – splattering against the wall into a blackened puddle of tar replaying in his mind, and that sharp, paralyzing fear over a new realm about which they were all completely and utterly helpless to… when the sun went down and the moon came up, it all swarmed him without rest.
So without rest he went.
Mind you, Hunter had never been an easy sleeper to begin with. Back when he was the Golden Guard, he didn’t often manage to get a break from his duties, and when he did, most weren’t dedicated to rest unless it was absolutely necessary (like, actual life-or-death necessary). He chose instead to spend his waking hours with a hooked nose buried in leather-bound books on wild magic and curses (and, towards the end of his time at the castle, anthologies on floriography) or training in the courtyard. If he did sleep, he was often plagued by dreams of wet soil caking underneath his fingertips and an upturned sensation in his gut reminiscent of falling… or maybe pulling…? He hadn’t understood them at the time. After Belos’ mind, though…
He thinks he knows.
Regardless, when they arrive in the human realm after the disaster that was the Day of Unity, Hunter decides, not for the first time, that sleep isn’t for him. Instead, he falls into the familiarity of his old habits and begins pouring himself into research. Maps of the town, the state, the country, the world… anything he can get his hands on, he does. He puts his only reliable skill to use by familiarizing himself with his surroundings, listing all immediate threats within the vicinity – the Gravesfield Historical Society is apparently one of them, though he hasn’t been told why yet, and so is the fried chicken place on the corner of the main drag – and categorizing everything he comes across in the Noceda household. After a week, he’s already well versed in human geography, different fruits and vegetables, modes of transportation (he’s decided he’s not a fan of being temporarily digested by these ‘cars’ and ‘busses’ until they spit him back up at their destination – walking is much safer), flowers common to the state, and he knows every street in town backwards and forwards. He’s also working his way through the history of the Proto-Indo Europeans because that might be relevant some day in the future, and then who will be there if not him to have an answer?
Also, side note, he’s positively exhausted.
The others notice, obviously. They’ve all latched onto different things in an attempt to cope with the suddenness of their arrival. Gus has his fascination with human engineering and memorabilia, Luz has the portal, Amity has Luz, Willow has Camila’s garden and that old photographing device, but it’s evident that they’re all struggling still. Who wouldn’t be? They’d been displaced from their home in the most horrible circumstances possible with no conceivable way to get back and no way of knowing if their families were okay.
In hindsight, Hunter thinks, mayyyybe working himself into the ground might not have been the way to go about things. And in the end, it’s Willow who gives him the nudge he needs to slow down.
It’s sometime into the second week of their arrival, deep into the evening, and the majority of the others are already asleep. Hunter notes that for the tragedy of it all, he actually quite likes the quiet of the human realm at night (“The trees are green and the nights are quiet-“ fuck, he hates that of all the things that could have been a lie, that wasn’t one of them). Maybe that’s just because they’re in a small neighborhood on the edge of town, or maybe all of this strange new place is like that. If what he’s read up on the large urban centers are true, though, he figures it probably isn’t.
But this quiet… it isn’t so bad.
When he’s sure the others are settled after an hour and a half of listening intently for shifting breathing patterns, Hunter slips out of the mattress from the space he shares downstairs with Gus and toes quietly up the steps in his socked feet. He doesn’t wake Flapjack, who’s fast asleep in a nest of hand towels and hoodies with Clover and Emmeline in the corner of the room. Just smiles softly at them when he slips by. In that same quiet, he feels his way to the kitchen with a palm against the wall, quietly pours himself a glass of water, and migrates from there to scan the bookshelf in Camila’s living room for his next scholarly endeavor. Perhaps something a little more visual for the evening… ah! An Anthology of Ancient Architecture: The Roman Empire. Sounds suitable enough, and who knows, it could be relevant information in the future. So he cracks open the spine of his book and settles into the couch with the lamp on to read about aqueducts.
It’s chillier than usual that night. The kitchen window is closed, but the one in the living room is cracked just enough to let in a summery breeze. Luz must’ve missed that one during her bedtime ritual of going around the house and checking all the doors and windows. Camila does it too, usually, but she’d been working late that day. It seemed humans were not immune to exhaustion either. The breeze is nice, though. Hunter runs warm, so the cool air is a welcome companion against blazing skin, and it’s easy for him to pick up noises outside of the house like this instead of through muted glass. His ears twitch at every rustling shrub, every gripe of tires on gravel, every groan of the old oak tree out back.
Like this, he can keep watch.
He’s not certain how much time has passed by the time he gets several passages into the second chapter, but it’s then that a pair of light footsteps begin to echo quietly down the stairwell, the sound softened by wool socks. He already knows by process of elimination who it is. Gus walks faster, Luz doesn’t wear socks in the house, Amity is soundless, Camila has heavier footsteps, and Vee doesn’t even walk – she slithers.
So he’s ready when the light of his lamp illuminates a head of coal black curls and olive eyes.
Willow doesn’t start when she sees him. In fact, it seems she was expecting him, given the soft expression on her face. Hunter feels like he’s been caught doing something against the law for some reason, but that instinctive fear slips away when she smiles at him. Funny how quickly she is to soothe.
Her voice is raspy from sleep when she whispers to him.
“Hi.”
He swallows.
“Hi.”
“Mind if I join you?” She asks sheepishly, and Hunter shakes his head (perhaps a little too enthusiastically). He shuffles over to the side a bit to make room for her.
“N-not at all. Please.”
She smiles easily a second time. There’s a red fleece blanket draped across her shoulders, but even then, he knows she’s wearing Camila’s old nightgown underneath. It’s white like caster sugar and bleached Titan bone and he has to physically restrain himself from allowing his eyes to catch on the cute little ribbon at the center of her breastbone because Amity said it was rude to stare. They hadn’t had the chance to hit the town for clothes yet, relying mainly on the hand-me-downs Camila had acquired from some of her co-workers whose kids had recently gone away to something called ‘college’, but Hunter knows that this one is Camila’s. He knows because Luz had told him. She’d also told him her mom used to wear it when she was young – that she grew out of it but couldn’t bear to throw away – and Willow was the only one it fit. Camila had been delighted.
Watching it billow around Willow’s calves as she settles onto the couch next to him, Hunter kind of feels delighted too.
“Whatcha readin’?” Willow asks quietly, pulling the blanket taut around her shoulders and perching her chin where her hands cross at her chest. She looks like Flapjack when he bundles Hunter’s cloak up in a temporary nest to sleep in. It’s unbearably cute.
Hunter scrambles to make words happen with his clumsy mouth.
“Oh, um – It’s a collection on ancient human architecture. I was looking at these –“ He shifts closer. Just to show her the pictures, of course. “I think they’re called ‘ah-cue-ducks’? I’ll have to check on the pronunciation with Luz later, but they’re really quite fascinating – it’s an ancient system used by the Romans to transport water into their cities and towns to make it accessible to the public, even if they’re far away from the source!”
Tone it down, he thinks desperately, Oh my Titan, tone it down, tone it down, tone it-
“That is fascinating!” Willow agrees, interested eyes skimming the pages. “Think of how much easier it would be for farmers to grow crops with direct access to water. You can maintain a self-sustaining city if you can supply your own food. Not to mention all the increase in trade during the harvest season, so you’ve basically already got the foundation of commerce and an economy on hand.”
Hnnnnnngh.
Flushing, Hunter nods, beaming stupidly wide. “Y-yeah! Those were my thoughts exactly.”
Her eyes crinkle at him and he hardly knows what to do with himself.
She doesn’t say anything else after that, and Hunter's mouth glues itself shut from how aware of her presence he’s become, but he finds he doesn’t need to make conversation. Instead, they read together in the quiet for a while, Willow peeking over Hunter’s shoulder and him pretending to catch up to turn the page when she’s finished. She traces flat stones and marbled columns with her fingertips, following the flow of water as it trickles down the page in paper rivers.
He’s not sure he’s ever known someone so intertwined with touch before Willow. Her body is a mouthpiece to emotions in a way he’s unfamiliar with, growing up in a place where secrecy was paramount and he wore more than just the mask on his face. Belos never gave away what he felt or thought from so much as a twitch of his bony hand or a quirk of his thin white lips. His brand of stillness used to make Hunter’s neck prickle uncomfortably, never certain where he stood unless he was told, and the other coven heads were much the same. Willow, though… he doesn’t have to guess with her. It seems she’s always moving, spinning white-hot streaks of emerald into the air to brighten up the primroses, coiling gentle fingertips around the limp leaves of some mournful looking plant with loving looks, scrunching in on herself when she’s sleepy, softly squishing into the space of her friends like an anchor without even realizing it – not that any of them ever push her away. She’s too comfortable, too right in how she slots herself beside you, like you never knew a time when she wasn’t there, and Hunter’s coming to learn that it is a wondrous thing to be touched by Willow Park.
But then there are these odd moments when she… stills, almost. When her ivy eyes glaze over like frost on a lake, moons away from the ground beneath their feet. When she turns her face away, shying behind the ebony tassels of her braids. When she looks… sad. But then she catches someone close and the trance cracks like an arrow into porcelain, reassuring smile pushing through the spiderwebbing shards in much the way water bubbles up when you scoop sand out of a bank by the sea.
He wonders which one is the real mask… the coloured glass smile, or the velvet curtain? Unless maybe… maybe, somehow, she’s both. It can be hard to reconcile so many versions of one person as the same, but…
Willow is different like that.
They get through the chapter before Willow finally turns, cheek resting on the back of the couch, and just… looks at him. The book slides forward in Hunter’s lap a little, but he doesn’t think to fix it. Not when she’s looking at him like that. Like she’d rather read him than the words on the page. She has to look up at him most of the time anyways, which is frightening in its own right for how prettily she does it, but she looks especially doe-eyed at night. It scares him how that makes him feel.
“What’s going on with you?” She says at last, a quiet query in the dark.
He chuckles nervously. “What do you mean?” It takes everything in him not to turn away from her gaze, to turn away from honesty. It would be so easy, he thinks, to pretend he could. At least, it used to be. When did it get so hard to ignore?
Instead, he turns towards her, stretching an arm onto the back of the couch and linking his hands together to lean against them, cheek squishing. The book slides forward a little more. It feels kind of… intimate, talking like this, alone, together in the dark, sharing a space. All the others are asleep somewhere in the house – the girls upstairs, Gus in the basement. Willow’s cot sits upstairs, too, empty as it is right now, even though he and Gus had been adamant they could share the mattress downstairs so she could join them. But she’d declined with an appreciative laugh. She looked out for Gus, Hunter noticed, even in ways that others might not think to see. Reaching for things off the top shelf to put on the counter mid-conversation for him before he even entered the kitchen, sharing her blankets with him whenever they were in the living room together, insisting he have his own space that isn’t too far away from someone sleeping within arms reach in case he wakes up, afraid, but not alone. Half the time she’s already downstairs with them when Hunter wakes, excitedly sharing all the strange human things she’d seen earlier on her walk with Camila to the grocery store while Gus hangs on every word, scribbling furiously into a notebook. She looks out for a lot of them. All of them.
Willow hums. “You don’t sleep.”
She looks out for Hunter now too, apparently.
“I know nobody is sleeping properly – not right now,” she goes on, sheepish, “but you most of all. I hear you come upstairs when you think everybody is gone to bed. You don’t go back down ‘til morning.”
She doesn’t ask him why. It’s probably obvious to her what the answer to that is. She’s observant in a way that he’s yet to master, attentive to people in the ways that, Hunter thinks, are probably more important than height and hair colour and eye colour and whether you’re left-handed or right-handed. It’s strange, being observed by somebody like that, especially since it makes him feel all weird and confused. It should bother him, to be known, but… but he also… kind of likes it? If it were anybody else, he can’t help but think, he’d hate to be scrutinized – but there’s something kind of… warm-feeling, and paralyzing, and exhilarating about somebody you respect and admire and care about looking at you and being able to understand things about you that you’d otherwise never tell anybody else, and in a way that doesn’t feel like an interrogation or an obligation or anything else other than “Hello."
Hunter releases a breath.
“…Yeah.” He manages eventually, voice quiet and rough. He tries glancing away from her, but she’s just… not someone he can look away from for long. Not like this. “I never – I don’t think I’ve…”
He trails off. Something about it is hard to put to words alone.
But… he isn’t alone.
“I haven’t been sleeping well either.” Willow whispers between them, like it’s a conspiracy, and he can’t help but crack a smile at her when she ducks to hide her mouth momentarily behind folds of fleece. Her eyes crinkle cheerfully despite obvious exhaustion.
“No?” He laughs, and she just barely shakes her head. Her curls are loose from their braids for once, damp from her shower earlier, and they coil around her throat and cheeks and fingers, even the back of the couch, like spilled ink and crow feathers. Hunter wants to coil them around his fingers instead.
“It’s not like I’m not grateful for how kind and accommodating Ms. Camila has been,” Willow goes on quietly, “but we’re in an entirely different world. And…” her smile is guilty. “I miss my bed.”
Hunter nods.
He gets it, sort of.
“…I’ve never been a good sleeper.” He admits aloud in a whisper of a voice. Willow watches him, her eyes gentle, so he goes on. “I don’t think I ever have been? I didn’t… I’m not used to long hours of rest at a time, let alone consecutively. I spent so much time trying to prove myself that I was too busy taking on extra patrols or training or researching to actually give sleep much… thought, I guess.”
He swallows, faltering, and something in his face must show that because Willow reaches out a hand from within the confines of the blanket she’s bundled herself up in to rest gently beside his elbow on the back of the couch, barely brushing their skin together. Just a quiet touch. A hairs breadth away, a fingertip. It’s so light, he’s not even sure if he’s imagining it or not, but her hands are cold, and he can feel them through the fabric of his pajamas, so either she’s real or he’s just gotten embarrassingly familiar with imagining her next to him.
He fixates on the sensation. It makes him want to continue. “And when I – when I did, when I… do. Sleep, that is. I get these… dreams, sometimes? They’re not… nightmares, I don’t think, not like nightmares are supposed to be.” He huffs. “They’re not much of anything actually. Just – a feeling? But it’s – it’s not a good feeling. And to sit down and close my eyes and try to go unconscious when there’s just so much wrong right now is…”
He doesn’t have to finish.
Willow withdraws her touch and tucks her chilled hand back into the blanket (so she runs cold… huh), nuzzling deeper into the fleece. She allows him silence after saying so much, more than he’s ever thought to share, more than anybody has ever even thought to ask him before. The quiet is… nice, this way? Without expectation maybe? She just looks at him. Looks and looks and looks. He likes the way she looks.
And as though she senses he’s stepped outside of his comfort zone enough for that moment, she looks away for a moment.
“…My comforter at home has a bee embroidered into the corner.” She says at last, softly, and it startles a surprised laugh out of him that’s loud enough to make him cover his mouth out of embarrassment, ears alight with scarlet hues. She grins bashfully up at him, cheeks tinting like pink peonies. “I miss it. It was round. I liked the shape.”
He can picture it. A fat little bee, the size of his thumbnail, pressed into a well-loved quilt. Maybe something a grandmother made her, or something she picked out herself when she was old enough to decorate her own room. He wonders what shade her walls are painted at home. Yellow? Green? Pink?
Startling him from that train of thought, she tilts her head into the couch cushion until some of her curls begin to slip down the back like black water. “What colour was your bedspread? In the castle, I mean.” She asks.
Hunter huffs a laugh. “Green. Well, I mean, the sheet was green. The blanket was red, and the pillows were blue.” His ears warm at her widening smile. “Although now that I think of it, it wasn’t exactly… colour coordinated. I suppose I was too preoccupied to focus on interior decorating. It was kind of awful.”
“Hey, green is a pretty colour.” Willow defends sleepily, and Hunter stifles another laugh. How does she keep making him do that? “It looks great with everything and I stand by that.”
“Everything? I think Darius would actually burst a blood vessel if he heard you say that, but please, do continue.”
“Darius can take his monochromatic purple outfit and park it in a cauldron where the rest of the abominations belong.”
Okay, this time he can’t swallow his mirth to save his life, and Hunter nearly chokes on a snort with how violently surprise knocks him in the chest at her words. He can only imagine the horrified look on Darius’ face at the suggestion, and that just makes him struggle to stay quiet even more. Willow grins up at him.
“I bet if he spruced up his fancy cape with a little green it would really add some flair. They’re complimentary colours! He could totally work it into the whole ‘big bad abomination witch’ vibe.” Her eyes widen in realization and she starts giggling. “Spruced! Get it? Spruced!”
They fall into hushed fits of bewildered laughter, desperate to keep quiet lest they rouse the rest of the house awake, but every time one of them goes to shush the other, they start all over again. It’s the exhaustion – it has to be, Hunter thinks as he wipes literal tears from his eyes at their ridiculousness, there’s no other explanation for it. He’s never felt so silly before. He kind of likes that too.
He likes a lot of the ways Willow makes him feel.
Slowly, the laughter fades, and they sit breathlessly in the quiet together. Hunter sighs, smile turning bittersweet.
“I never slept well there either. Even if the sheets were green.” He chuckles, amused. “I mean, you could never be sure someone wouldn’t try to threaten your life. Had to be vigilant.”
He freezes suddenly.
Maybe… maybe that’s what this is.
Maybe he’s still feeding old habits. Maybe he’s just… trying to protect. Trying to protect the house, the people in it. Trying to protect what little good he’s caught hold of in his claws. Everyone goes to sleep eventually, he knows that, but if he does, too, then who's supposed to look out for them? He can’t help it. Knowing that, though, he feels a little more at ease, like he knows his reflection in the mirror a little better than before, recognizes himself. How does she get him to do that? Talk?
His brow furrows suddenly.
“…How come you were up?” He asks quietly. It’s not accusing. More of a gentle prod than anything else, really. He’s had to learn how to make his words gentle, these last few months, to sand down the grit and jagged edges of his teeth and the sounds around them. He’s used to sharp tongues and biting reprimands, not… this. But he doesn’t want to hurt anybody by accident. Not his friends.
Not Willow.
Her eyes are far away when she answers, fixed on a stray thread of the sofa backing between them and avoiding his gaze for some reason. The distance is unexpected.
She doesn’t… usually do that.
“Sleep is fussy.” She says quietly. Her smile is frail as she curls the thread around her fingertip. “That’s all.”
Words jumble around his mouth in all the wrong order. He wants to make her laugh like she did for him, to close that funny, one-sided distance between them, because nighttime suits her, yes, in a different way from day – darkness draws out the midnight in her hair like the way the sun kisses all those wood-chipped freckles on her cheeks – but moonlight catches on her sadness like a sweater on a doornail, sudden and surprising. She dislodges it from her face with just as much efficiency, too.
He wonders how she’d feel if he told her what a comforting weight she would be if she let herself be caught for once.
“What kind of fussy?” He whispers in reply, afraid to break the quiet and spook her off. Her lashes flutter.
“Mm. Silly-fussy.”
He huffs a fond laugh despite himself. Stubborn little thing.
He must be doing something right, though, because her gaze flits towards him and away. His continued attentions seem to surprise her, though he can’t imagine why. Why give it to anything else in her company?
She hesitates a little before speaking, voice soft, and it strikes Hunter that maybe her eyes aren’t the only doe-like quality to her. How odd that one witch should contain so many colourful facets, like a kaleidoscope.
“Sometimes when I was little,” she starts, “I used to wake up in the middle of the night and get…” she pauses, working her bottom lip between her teeth (stop it. Stop it stop it stop it stop it-) “…overwhelmed? It got worse as I got older. Stress, I guess.” She says quietly, and then it’s not the bee he’s seeing, but a little Willow – wild curls, doe eyes, grass blood on her skirts – breathless with fear even in the comfort of her own home, wrapped up in her comforter and squeezing the little embroidered bee for help, and something inside of him aches. Titan, it aches and aches and aches.
He wonders what it would’ve been like to meet her when she was small. Would she have liked him?
“Not much helped. Even if I had a really good day, it could still happen at night. School was…” her expression turns a shade melancholy. “…tough at the time. I think that had a lot to do with it.”
Hunter tries to catch her eyes.
“What did you do?” He asked softly. “To make it go away?”
Meeting his gaze, she smiles. It’s sleepy and soft and that makes him hurt, too, but it’s a good kind of hurt this time because she doesn’t look sad anymore. She leans in towards him a little bit, eyes twinkling.
“On nights when it was really bad,” she begins in a whisper, like she’s sharing some great secret with him (and really, to Hunter, she is), “I’d go out and get my dads, and they’d lie down with me until I fell back asleep.”
Hunter blinks.
“Oh. Huh. Skinship.” He ponders aloud, and Willow giggles breathlessly at him. It takes his heart (galderstone, not heart, Titan, he was still adjusting to that) seven entire seconds to right itself. Red in the cheeks, Hunter coughs. “That’s it? Did that… make the feeling go away?”
Willow hums noncommittedly. “It made it easier to manage. And eventually as I got older, I learned how to cope with it on my own. It doesn’t happen as often now. But every few months or so, I wake up.” She pauses for a moment before adding in a voice so softly, it might as well have been a dream, like her fingertip against his elbow. “…I miss them when I’m away.”
Oh.
“…Did you… wake up? Tonight?” Hunter whispers.
Willow doesn’t answer him this time. She just twirls and twirls that little stray thread between the fingers peeking out of fleece, so Hunter tries again. He’s found he doesn’t have to force the gentle words so much when they’re for her.
“Is that why you were up?”
“…Heard you come upstairs.” Willow says softly instead. It’s obvious she’s starting to doze now, lashes fluttering. There’s something weirdly endearing about the way she visibly fights to stay awake despite it, like he’s worth staying up for. Her eyes have fallen almost completely shut by the time she remembers to continue, and Hunter can’t help a bewildered smile at her. “Thought you might get lonely.”
His chest pings. Get a hold of yourself, man. “I spent most of my time alone before you guys, you know. I think I can handle a few minutes by myself.” He jokes.
Willow just hums again. She does that a lot when she’s sleepy, it seems.
“Doesn’t mean you have to.” She murmurs.
And, well. What is he supposed to say to that? The truth? I didn’t used to mind being alone, but now that I’ve seen what it’s like to be everything but, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it? I want you with me the way I want to live, hopeful and reaching? If you were to stand up and leave me right now, I think I would start to cry?
Nothing, apparently. Willow takes his silence as reason to continue,
“You need sleep. So come back to bed.”
Hunter’s mouth sets. “I’ve gone days without sleep before. I can go a few more.”
“Then come with me.”
“Come – come with – what?”
“Come up to bed with me.”
…Now he’s definitely lost.
Maybe it’s just because she’d been talking about sleeping next to her dads as a little girl, he doesn’t know, but – but it sounds like she’s asking him to come up and do the same with her. As in, get in the same bed and lie next to each other. As in, place their bodies horizontally side by side. As in, skinship. With Willow.
Hunter coughs. Maybe those borrowed lungs are faulty after all.
“You mean like – like, um – like what, exactly?” he croaks, because what the fuck.
“You’re afraid to sleep.” Willow says simply into the space between them, and had anyone else said it, he probably would’ve bristled and thrown a sharp reply back in their face, because nobody accuses the Golden Guard of something as trivial as fear. But Willow… she doesn’t say it like an insult. She says it like a fact. Like it’s normal, like he’s normal, like she’s reading a passage about water and columns and by-gone civilizations from a book.
“…Yes.” He says quietly, “I am.”
“So,” She emphasizes gently, “When I’m scared to sleep, I get somebody to sleep next to. Gus and I do it all the time. You’re scared to sleep, so maybe you can sleep next to me. If it would help.”
“I – I don’t know.” Hunter chokes out, flushing. “I’ve never… I’ve never slept next to anybody before. Coven scouts don’t… set up their sleeping bags together when they go on expeditions.”
“That’s a shame.” Willow sighs sympathetically, stifling a yawn.
“It… it is?”
“It would probably boost morale… build trust … conserve body heat… save space… increase quality of sleep. All kinds of benefits.”
“Oh. Those are… actually all really good reasons.”
“Of course, it’s also just… nice.” She says. Her voice has turned bashful, and Hunter swallows the stone in his throat.
“It’s just… nice?”
Willow opens her eyes and laughs. “It’s just nice.” She repeats, looking fond. “That’s also why I do it, at least.”
Hunter swallows.
“Not – not just when you’re scared?”
“Not just when I’m scared.” Willow agrees. “Sometimes sharing your space with somebody can be very relaxing. You’ve seen Luz and Amity do it all the time, or Luz and her mom. You do the same with Gus, too, sometimes. I don’t think you’ve noticed it yet though.”
“…Huh. I guess I have.” He admits. “I… never really thought about it like that.”
Hunter straightens when Willow suddenly unfurls the blanket from her shoulders and stretches, nose scrunching cutely as she squishes and pats her cheeks to keep herself awake. Totally unrelated, but Hunter may be dying of a very sudden and deadly illness now. His expiration date has clearly been surpassed, and he doesn’t even mean the numerous accounts of attempted murder.
Willow shakes herself a final time before opening her eyes and scooping the blanket back up into her arms, brushing down the folds of her nightgown. She stumbles a little upon standing (and Hunter may or may not hover his arms behind her in case she falls when she does) before turning and offering her hand to him, palm up.
“Come on, then.” She says sleepily. She wiggles her fingers and kind of makes a grabby hands gesture towards him. “Time for bed.”
Hunter, mirroring his own reaction the moment she’d first entered the room, swallows thickly.
If there’s one thing he’s also learned since coming here – something a little more pressing than roads and maps and threats and bus schedules – it’s that since he’s met her, Willow Park has slowly been wrapping him around her fingers like the curls at her throat. Whether or not she realizes this, Hunter genuinely has no clue.
Wordlessly, Hunter closes the book half hanging off his lap, long forgotten in favour of green eyes and inky curls, and he sets it aside on the coffee table for tomorrow. Willow uses her magic to cut the light to the lamp and pull the open window shut with a satisfying click of the lock (so she noticed it too). Then he takes her hand as though in a daze, and she leads him to the steps without letting go. He can’t feel how cold she is through the leather of his gloves. Something about that saddens him for some reason.
“Where to?” Willow whispers to him suddenly when they reach the crossroads in the hall, nudging his arm. Hunter gives a start.
“Hm?”
“Cot or mattress?” She asks patiently.
Oh. He gets to pick?
Well – there are a couple of factors to consider here. For one, the mattress is certainly more comfortable, and a bit bigger, but he’s also been sharing the basement with Gus. He doesn’t want to accidentally wake him by tripping over himself in front of Willow if he’s finally getting some decent sleep. On the other hand, even though the cot isn’t too tough to sleep on, it is significantly smaller. It’s only the size of a single (that’s something else he’d learned this week – the different hierarchy of beds: twin, single, double, queen, king). That means it’s a little snug for the both of them to fit in. Though it is a decent size, all things considered… enough that Luz and Amity were able to fit on it together when they first set it up and went to test the weight bearing. Turns out it’s a pretty sturdy piece of furniture (this, they discovered after Gus flopped backwards on top of the two of them, prompting squeals and laughter). But it’s also in the room where all the girls are sleeping, and he doesn’t know if he can handle that.
“…Mattress?”
Willow nods sleepily.
“M’kay.” She leads him carefully down the steps of the basement, her steps slow and quiet. Gus is sound asleep still, curled up tightly at the very edge of the couch where Hunter’s mattress is set up, looking every bit as small as he really is. Normally, his presence and his personality fill out the rest of him – but when he’s quiet like this, it’s painfully obvious that he’s still only young.
When they cross the room, Willow kneels and starts to fix the sheets, swaying once or twice from obvious exhaustion. Hunter takes over and helps her adjust the pillows when she accidentally stumbles and rights herself with wide eyes, pink in the face. Then she slips the blanket from her shoulders off and splays it over the bed with the others before down-turning the covers.
“Here-“ she starts, fixing the sleeves of her nightgown. They’re still a little big on her. Enough that sometimes, when she’s not paying attention, they slip and slip and slip. She always fixes them before he can really get a good long look at the little spots he’s positive have been stamped into her skin like a postcard. It’s been a subconscious mission of his to see them up close ever since. “-you can get comfy first. Okay?”
Hunter squeaks.
“O-okay.”
Slowly, his toes off his socks and slides onto the mattress. It’s still warm from when he’d laid on it for a while earlier, heat trapped beneath the blankets, and something about that makes his ears burn fiercely. He fiddles with the neckline of his sleep shirt just for something to do.
He had pajamas on already, of course – he always put on a pair before everybody went to bed for the sake of keeping up appearances – but he hadn’t actually slept in them properly yet. The pants are from some lanky cousin three times removed or something, donated from when Camila sent word out to her extended (in every sense of the word) family upon their arrival two weeks ago in search of some old clothes. The shirt, on the other hand, is from Camila’s room, but it clearly belonged to someone of a much larger, more masculine stature.
Hunter doesn’t have to ask who that was. The look Luz has on her face sometimes when he wears it and the noticeably empty half of Camila’s queen-sized bed says enough.
Some cues even Hunter doesn’t miss.
He’s a little taller than the mattress allows for laying in comfortably, but that’s an easy enough fix when he bends his knees slightly and settles up a bit higher into the pillow. Honestly, looking at it from here, there’s still a decent amount of room left in his opinion. Certainly enough for another body to fit. In fact, he starts to feel a little giddy at this little experiment they’re conducting, and when he gets settled onto his side, he lifts the covers in anticipation of Willow sliding in next to him. There’s an inherent domesticity to the gesture that makes his ears burn. He’s too embarrassed to back out at the sudden realization, though, because he’s nothing if not polite and Titan be damned if he’s not going to be a proper gentlewitch.
He almost lets out a pathetic croak when Willow first lifts her knee onto the mattress, followed by the other, and twists around to sit underneath the covers. The skirt of her nightgown is half hanging off the side, so she scoops it up and flattens it a bit at her side before sliding down to lay on her back next to him, and he instantly retracts his former statement about the space because holy fuck she is right there. RIGHT THERE. She is so much right there that Hunter cannot breathe. She turns onto her side to look at him, cheek and glasses smushed into the pillow and curls loose around her face, and he is just. Gone. Goodbye. C’est la vie. Who’s Hunter? The only guy left in this body is an absolute idiot.
Hunter realizes all at once that he’s still holding the covers up a bit for her to get under, and in doing so, has an arm practically draped across her middle. He quickly lets the blankets fall and wriggles it out of the way in fear of accidentally grazing her, red in the face. She doesn’t seem to mind.
“What, uh - what now?” Hunter whispers, feeling shy and clumsy and entirely too sweaty.
“Well, are you comfy?” Willow asks, giggling, and Hunter isn’t really sure how to answer that because he’s simultaneously the most at ease he’s ever been and alight all over like some kind of rampant bushfire during dry season. Is that supposed to be part of the experience?
His silence prompts her to continue, all patience and – and – affection? “You know, if you’re not comfortable with this, it’s really okay.” She assures him softly, “I can go back upstairs. I think it’s very brave of you for trying at all.”
She’s smiling at him, kind and a little shy herself. He can only tell because the points of her ears are folded back against her curls in little arches. Something about that almost makes him feel a little better, though – the fact that she’s not entirely unfazed, that there is timidity within her at this sudden closeness, too. That maybe he makes her nervous the way she makes him nervous.
All at once, the notion that she might leave is utterly devastating.
“No.” He blurts quickly. He can feel himself turn pink. Tone it down. “N-no, here is – here is fine. These conditions are - a-acceptable.” She looks like she’s smothering laughter now, but it’s almost fond. There’s a soft crinkle to her eyes, a whisper of a smile… that puts him at ease, too.
Shifting slightly, Willow then goes on, “Do you want to change positions, or is this acceptable too?”
…There are? Other ways? To lie down next to someone?
Purely out of scholarly curiosity, Hunter asks,
“What are the other positions? I thought laying down next to someone just meant… physically aligning your body beside them.”
Willow nods sleepily into her pillow. She has a hand curled up in a loose fist underneath her chin, thumb drawing absentminded little circles into the hollow of her throat. It’s very distracting. He’s kind of jealous of her hand. “That’s one way to do it. It depends on your level of comfort with physical-“ she yawns “-contact.”
He swallows thickly. “What’s the… highest level?”
“Luz has a cute human word for it, I think, but I can’t remember it off the top of my head… something to do with cutlery?”
“…Cutlery?”
“Cutlery.” She pauses, thinking, but a frown pulls at her mouth before he can offer any kind of weak guess (it’s honestly more of a pout, though, and that’s far scarier because she already has a pretty mouth when she isn’t doing anything with it, let alone when she does). “Maybe something to do with spoons? Spooners? Sponsors? Shoot, it was the perfect word, too.”
“Maybe you could, um…” Hunter falters, flushing deeply. “…M-maybe you could just... show me...? Then?”
And maybe he’s just delusional from lack of sleep after driving himself insane with exhaustion this last week, but Hunter is almost positive that the tips of Willow’s ears go peony pink in the darkness of their room. He’s always had sharp vision, even in the shadows – it made him an asset on stealth missions (when he could keep his mouth shut long enough to keep up the façade, that is) – and it hasn’t failed him yet, but he reasons that he might still be mistaken. Wishful thinking, surely.
Then for the first time that night, Willow stammers.
“O-oh. Oh! Yeah – yeah, I could do that. Just, um – here, let me -“
She sort of wriggles closer, which is electrifying and terrifying all at once, and it paralyzes Hunter in place as she maneuvers them both until they’re both comfortably on their sides together. Her head pops up before she asks, “Little or big?”
And Hunter has no idea what she’s talking about.
“Uh… what’s the difference?”
She smiles shyly.
“Do you want to be held,” WHAT. “Or do you want to do the holding?”
Flustered, Hunter makes a few choked noises of general confusion at the back of his throat in response. It’s honestly quite mortifying. Thankfully, she shows mercy on his poor, ineloquent soul.
“We’ll try both, then.”
She starts by getting him to turn his back to her, which subsequently means turning his back to the door, and he’s not quite sure how he feels about that. I mean, what if there’s an emergency? An intruder? Some form of danger, waiting to slip in while they sleep, totally unaware? How will he know if he can’t see it? Back in the castle, his bed was centered between the window and doorway, so he had a perfect view of both if he slept on his back with his pillows propped up. Less chances an assassin might sneak in to slit his throat, then, even with the triple lock. The majority of the time, though, he slept facing the door.
The door was the scary thing. Anything could come through there.
But then Willow does something… odd. She snuggles up behind him the way Clover like to push herself into the crook of Willow’s neck, pressed into his back, and he jumps when her forehead comes to rest right between his shoulder blades. One of her curls tickles the back of his neck in a cold kiss. It’s a comforting kind of pressure. Different. Present. She doesn’t wrap an arm across him, maybe because she knows it would probably overwhelm him to be bound at all, but instead rests a hand flat against the middle of his spine. He finds she doesn’t need her arms around him anyways for the effects to settle in, though. Just the weight of her leaning into him from behind is nice. Really nice. Really, really, really nice.
“This one is little, I think.” She says quietly, and he can feel her breath against his spine, and oh my god okay, now he’s hyper aware of it (AHHHHHHHHH).
“…It’s… nice.” He rasps eventually. She wriggles a bit, getting comfy.
“Do you want to stay like this, then?”
He thinks of the comforting pressure and the weight against him, of the assurance of her being there. He could definitely sleep like this, he thinks, with her here next to him, solid and protective and soft and warm. In all the time he’s known her, Willow’s always had his back… not only figuratively, but with literal, physical strength - enough to actually support him, like when he was injured back during the draining spell. She’s protected him before. Shielded him. Looked out for him. And like this, with her at his shoulder blades, pressing into him sleepily…
It really is nice.
But then he also thinks of her with her back to the door, vulnerable to attack without someone watching out for her in turn, and something about that is just simply not acceptable.
“…Back is… to the door.” He mumbles, embarrassed.
She doesn’t laugh, though, or make any sort of jab at him. She just nods without demanding explanation. It makes him want to give one to her, even though he clamps his mouth shut. It feels so trivial, worrying about something like that in a realm where they’re supposed to be safe -
“I could… get on the inside tomorrow night, then? ‘Kay?”
Oh.
His face glows scarlet in the dark. Now he’s glad to be facing away after all.
“…Okay.” He squeaks.
So he turns back towards her, willing his ears to chill out. They’re so close that he can actually see some of the freckles on her nose from here, the ones he’s sure match the set on her shoulders (if he could only catch a proper glimpse of them to confirm their existence – for, uh, educational purposes, obviously). He meets her eyes, crinkled in a jade smile even though she’s not really smiling anymore. They’re just a naturally cheerful shape, Hunter notes. Joyful even at rest. Pretty.
For whatever reason – maybe the darkness, maybe the incredulity of everything that’s happening, maybe the tiredness weighing down his bones – but that familiar shyness he’s grown accustomed to flaring in his cheeks and chest at her proximity doesn’t seem to come over him like usual. He’s not sure why. In its absence, he just… gazes at her for a moment, in the dark and openly. Counting freckles. For some reason, the longer her looks at her, the more Willow burrows her nose and chin into a fistful of blankets, until eventually all he can see are her eyes catching light in the dark as she stares back at him.
“Big?” He questions eventually after another moment. Willow nods.
He lifts the covers for her again when she twists to turn onto her other side, facing away from him and towards the couch. They can see Gus’ head peeking out of the duvet from here. He’s sound asleep still, a little lump of boy beneath the puffy tent of a blue duvet. Then, when Willow settles comfortably on her hip, Hunter tucks the blanket over her shoulders (the sleeves still haven’t slipped again yet) to trap the warmth inside the covers.
He thinks that’s the gist of it when she lets her head fall to the pillow. That this “big, little” thing just refers to the direction in which you face when sleeping next to somebody in close quarters, that it should really just be called “left, right” instead. But then Willow gently reaches for his arm before he can retract it (her hands are still cold to the touch, Titan) and guides it over (Titan) and around her waist (TITAN) before resting it comfortably across her soft stomach. He’s honestly so taken back by how much they’re touching now that it barely registers that she’s scooted back a bit to fit more easily in his arms, and he’s limp as she positions herself in his slack hold. Actually, he’s not even sure he’s breathing at this point. Do grimwalkers even need to breathe? All he can feel is cotton sheets and white chiffon and the whisper of curves underneath his palms and the warm, soft fat of her belly, inviting his touch–
Willow’s voice cuts through his thoughts like the point of a diamond driven through the center of his skull.
“There.“ she whispers sleepily, unintentionally recalling the words in her exhausted state, “Big spoon.”
Ohhhhhh.
Spoons. Spoons. Like how spoons fit together in the kitchen drawer. The spoon in the back is the big spoon, and the spoon in the front is the-
“…Little spoon.” Hunter mumbles aloud. Willow giggles tiredly.
“Better?”
Hunter looks over at the door out of the corner of his eye, close enough to see and hear, then down. Curled up around her like this, it’s like… he shakes the thought away. He can see the entrance. He’ll know if someone comes in, and Gus is within his line of sight too. His back is against the wall, and there are no other ways to get inside behind him, so he isn’t vulnerable to attack. And Willow…
It strikes Hunter suddenly that Willow is actually quite a bit… smaller than him.
Or maybe shorter is the right word. Only, she feels smaller than him like this, even though she’s not small, because she really isn’t. Not truly. She’s round and soft and squishy and strong and her arms and legs dimple cutely – almost like they’re smiling – in a way that his don’t on account of how lean he’s grown over the years. Something about how her whole body radiates joy makes him feel dizzy, but he hadn’t really thought about it before now. Not as more than a passing observation, at least, maybe because she has such a solid presence, or because she’s taller than the others, or because she’s so strong, or maybe just because he’d never thought to take note of it before like this. And yet, when they first met that day at the fair at Hexside and she shook his hand, he’d been forced to hunch down to accommodate her height (and her grip). When she stood next to him, stands next to him, even in her boots, she’s still a head shorter than him – maybe even more than that, he realizes with a sudden dryness to his throat, because she tends to favour boots with cute little heels. Heck, even her hands are half the size of his! He doesn’t know if it’s just the extra year he has on her, but even though she has a fuller figure than the others, she feels delicate somehow in his arms, which is just – that’s crazy, because Willow Park is the strongest witch he’s ever met. He knows that. He’s felt that.
But maybe that isn’t the point. He thinks back to how he’d adjusted his touch when Flapjack first came to him, that first squeeze just a shade too tight, to gripping. It wasn’t as though Flapjack wasn’t a strong palisman, he was just… important to Hunter. Worth gentle touches. Maybe it’s like that now, too, and for whatever reason, something about being wrapped around Willow like this seems to satiate that fearful little tangent in the back of his mind telling him to protect, protect, protect.
Maybe he isn’t golden anymore, but he’s still a guard by nature.
He shuffles a bit closer instinctually at that thought, wrapping himself more firmly around her as though to solidify his protection, and she lets him. She’s really soft.
“Yeah.” He whispers eventually, swallowing. “Yeah, this is – sufficient.”
Satisfied, she slips her glasses off the bridge of her nose and folds them, setting them down on the floor beside the mattress, and though the dark colours them silver, he knows their true hue. He can just see Willow’s lashes start to flutter sleepily at this angle like Clover’s wings. Then she rests her hand on top of Hunter’s where it lays across her stomach, just… holding it there. She doesn’t complain about the leather of his gloves. He almost wishes she would.
“Good.” She murmurs, already dozing. “Now it’s safe for you to sleep. I’ll keep-“ She yawns. “-watch.”
Hunter huffs a quiet laugh, amusement tickling his chest. He highly doubts she’ll be able to stay awake long enough to finish this conversation, let alone keep an eye on the door, but she’s so soft and dozy and it’s just hitting him now that he’s honestly really, really tired, so maybe it wouldn’t hurt to just… close his eyes, too. She went through all the trouble of getting him down here, so he might as well. Just to make sure his captain’s efforts aren’t wasted.
“Night, Willow.”
He knows by her breathing that she’s already close to sleep. Maybe that’s what gives him enough confidence to say it.
“…Thank you.”
The next morning, Hunter is warm.
That in itself is an odd observation to make because normally when Hunter wakes, it’s because he’s been sweating through a nightmare that’s forced him up and out of bed in a horrible lurch of adrenaline, sometimes literally. Heck, he’s come straight out of the bed before, staff in hand with blurred vision until reality settled in. By then, the sweat has long since cooled on his skin and chilled his bones, to the point that he’s even had to take showers in the middle of the night before when it’s been especially bad. Taking momentary stock of himself as he comes to slowly reveals, however, that for some miraculous reason, he still appears to be completely dry.
Dry and warm and coiled around something very, very soft.
His ear twitches at the sound of hushed whispers and cooing somewhere nearby, disrupting what he’s realizing (with no short amount of wonder, dulled as it is by the blurred edges of rest) has been a completely and utterly normal night’s sleep without being roused by wet soil under his fingertips or yanking in his ribs. In fact, he’s so disoriented by this fact that he decides to forgo investigating the sounds altogether in spite of his distant suspicions (the dutiful part of him riots, but the sleepy part of him gives a vague thumbs up from the floor somewhere in there) and tries to fall back into whatever peaceful unconsciousness he’s been blessed with for once. He pulls whatever’s in his arms closer towards him with ease and sighs contentedly at the clean, honeyed scent that fills his lungs, warm and familiar and soothing. He buries his nose into source of the sweet smell. The combined stimuli alone are enough to make him drowsy. In fact, he’s just on the periphery of sleep again before more giggling knocks him off course.
…Aaaaaand now he’s getting irritated.
Grunting, Hunter burrows further into whatever it is he’s latched onto in his sleep, subconsciously chasing after its warmth in an attempt to block out the sound (Titan, what a divine pillow). It’s no use, though – more hushed tones, more whispers, more stifled cooing noises, and for the first time in years, Hunter honestly, sincerely, genuinely just wants to go back to sleep.
Then he hears a small noise. This one is much closer than the other ones, but it’s also far softer in nature, and it doesn’t grate his ears at all. In fact, all other sounds cease in its wake, and the thing in his arms – or rather, Hunter is coming to realize slowly with growing panic that hasn’t quite registered yet, the person in his arms – wriggles a little.
Shifting closer.
Now that his unwilling consciousness is taking over, Hunter begins to take in other things, too. Other sensations, other feelings; downy soft curls frizzing underneath his chin and against his throat… a soft, warm body curved against him… a chiffon nightgown… cotton sheets… a bare shoulder and skin – skin –
Hunter opens his eyes.
He knew there were freckles on her shoulders.
The audience is a far less welcome sight, though.
“Morning~” Luz whispers cheerfully. She’s laying across the floor on her stomach next to the couch, still dressed in her Good Witch Azura pyjamas. Amity lies next to her in a matching set with borrowed sleep shorts, head cushioned in her arms and half asleep still as she glares holes into him, but it looks like they’d been sharing a comic book. Gus is awake too, propped up on some pillows and stretching as he flicks through something on Luz’s phone. He looks entirely too awake and when he catches Hunter’s eyes, his grin is scary.
Nope.
“…I’m going back to sleep.” Hunter grumbles, voice raspy from disuse, and he squeezes his eyes shut before promptly burrowing back into Willow without a second thought as to how it looks without context.
(There’s context, right? The context is enough to explain this, right?)
“Nooooo stay and talk to us-“ Luz whines.
“Yeah, Hunter,“ Gus chimes in casually, and Hunter doesn’t want to open his eyes to see kind of expression he’s wearing right now. “Stay and chat.”
Hunter grunts.
“Can’t. Sleeping. I’m asleep now. This is me sleeping. Goodbye.”
Luz blows a raspberry at him and he deeply considers whether or not the consequences for throwing unsanctioned projectiles in the Noceda household are enough to keep him from taking the nearest object in his fist and launching it directly into Luz’s face. He’s fast – he could outrun her if necessary. The quickest route to the door would mean incapacitating her long enough to get past, and Flapjack is still curled up in the corner, so he’d have to use a blanket to temporarily blind her, but-
Willow shifting in his arms stops that train of thought from leaving the station almost as soon as it comes to him, because using Luz as target practice would also mean having to move, and moving would mean jostling Willow, and that would be a crime worthy of the highest punishment in his (correct) opinion.
Willow shifts again, obviously toeing the line between sleep and consciousness. He doesn’t open his eyes, but Hunter can feel his cheeks begin to burn when she makes a little closed-mouth squeak at the back of her throat, reminiscent of the surprised noise Ghost makes sometimes when startled from a nap.
“Five more minutes…” She mumbles drowsily, and then she actually turns around in Hunter's arms (which he didn’t know they could do – does this still constitute as spooning now? Is it against the rules of skinship? Are there rules of skinship? He’ll have to ask Willow for a rundown of the basics and a proper demonstration of other techniques later), props her head on his bicep like it’s a pillow, and forces the hand around her waist further up her back in a cradle before promptly hitting her figurative snooze button.
He’s dead. That’s the only explanation for this. He’s gone and fucking died at the hands of Willow Park, and he honestly doesn’t even blame her for his murder because god damn, what a way to go.
Hasta la vista, baybee.
Maybe if he keeps his eyes closed and lies very, very still, he can pretend to fall back asleep and enjoy the tortured bliss that is whatever this is where the others won’t bother him. Genius, really – he’s the former Golden Guard after all, master of strategy and teen prodigy of the (also former?) Emperor’s Coven. He’s no amateur to stealth and deception. He’s succeeded in circumstances far direr than these before. It’s a foolproof plan, if he can execute it, which he surely-
“…You do know that we can see how stupid red your face is, right?”
Foiled again.
“You heard the captain,” Hunter grumbles, embarrassed flush deepening. He screws his eyes shut tighter, totally composed.
"Five more minutes.”