Work Text:
As soon as the door to their shared room at the Paramount was shut behind them, Doxley spared a moment to engage the flimsy, insubstantial lock, and Illien collapsed onto his bed with a low groan, his rusty springs creaking in protest under the weight of his armour. He hunched over, elbows braced on his knees and face in his palms, fingers searching upwards like the twisting tendrils of seaweed seeking out the warmth of the sun to tangle tightly in his hair. "Boy," he murmured, sounding more tired than she had heard him in a while. "What a day."
Doxley ached too. Beneath her armour, her skin felt seared and charred, and the tips of her fingers shook with fading adrenaline. It had been a long day, a long and tiresome day, and all she wanted to do was fall face-first into her bed and not wake till morning when the warbling birds and the white-bright sunlight and the hustle and bustle from the tavern downstairs forced her awake. Instead, she crossed to where Illien was still hunched over himself at the end of the bed- he looked so small after the events of the day, but Illien was never small, and the thought made her seethe as it crossed her mind before she shook her head to banish it- and tapped him on the shoulder. "Ill, let me see,"
"Hm?" Illien lifted his head and blinked blearily at her, half-asleep already, sitting up and wearing his armour, his greatsword still sheathed across his back. "What's up?"
"Your hands," she urged, trying not to bark it like an order. "Let me see your hands."
"Oh," Illien blinked and forced himself upright with a pained wince, something in the motion making a muscle pop where it shouldn't. He uncurled his hands from where he had brought them down to rest in his lap and laid them, palms up, on his knees. "I'm alright. They don't hurt so much anymore."
Pursing her lips, Doxley crouched down in front of Illien, anchored between his knees, and took his hands in hers. Her body protested at the motion after the rough treatment of the day, the strenuous activities and the violent battles, but she pushed it all aside to inspect Illien's palms. It was as she suspected while fighting beside him in the caves, the grimace on his face as he clenched his teeth while fighting beside her, the acrid stench of burning flesh hitting her nostrils and making her flinch with the intensity, the proximity, the freshness.
Illien's cerulean skin was blistered and raw, his long digits burned and charred from where he had gripped the hilt of his sword despite the metal being magically enchanted to scorch his skin with every moment of contact. His skin was red, red and angry, and when she gently glided her own fingers across their length, he hissed and tried to pull away, but she tightened her grip on his wrist and kept him in place so she could complete her inspection. Though it would do her no good, she felt a burst of outrage at the thought of Ace, her condescending warning of steady now, her disapproving frown when the mephit observed Illien as he hissed in pain when it ignited his armour, the laughter behind her eyes as she said word of advice, watch your twitchy fingers and Illien had thinned his lips and taken it with as much grace as he was capable of and as she peered down at her brothers wrecked hands, trembling ever-so-slightly in her grip as he was finally hit by the events of the day and the constant surge of adrenaline began to leave his system, just like her own hands were feeling shakey for the same reason, the skin covered in burns and blisters and fresh scars, she wanted to hunt Ace down and teach her a lesson, Bison be damned.
She glanced back up to see Illien watching her. There was something in his face that said he knew exactly what she had been thinking of, and he probably did. "I really am alright," he assured. "It doesn't even hurt anymore."
"Liar," she said lightly as she finally released him and began to riffle through her pack. Illien, through a sudden bout of common sense, kept his hands where she left them without needing to be told. "You had a shitty day today."
"What gave you that idea?" Illien said dryly. She didn't have to see him to imagine the look on his face and she bit her lip to keep from smiling. "Was it when the blink dog threw me off the cliff? When T.C. yelled at me like a child about the goblins? When a couple of fucking mephits tried to set me on fire? Or was it when the fucking bear-!"
"Owlbear," Doxley corrected even though that was so not the point. "It was only half of a bear."
"It was half a bear too many if you ask me," Illien grumbled. "My armour is ruined, I got yelled at by three separate people, and I think that even my bruises have bruises. I'm ready for this day to be over. I'm so tired."
Humming, Doxley found what she was looking for and shuffled on her knees over to Illien with the little jar and a rolled-up length of off-white bandage in her hands. "When I'm finished with this, you can rest."
Frowning, Illien caught sight of the items she was carrying and tried to pull away. Doxley rolled her eyes and caught his wrist again. "Don't waste that stuff, Dox. We don't have a lot of it. I just need to rest up and I'll be alright by the morning."
"Not by tomorrow you won't be. Besides, what's the point of having this stuff if we're not going to use it when it's needed?" Doxley unscrewed the lid from the jar and dug her fingers into the shimmery, viscous gel. "We can always get more."
Illien was silent as she spread the gel across his palms and fingers as gently as she could, wincing now and then when she touched a bubbled blister or a white strip of burned skin, but grit his teeth and bared it, just like they were taught, just like he always did. When she was done, she wiped her hands on her pants and threw the jar in the direction of the open maw of her pack, where it landed with a satisfying sound. She carefully unwound the bandage and began to wrap it carefully around his hands, over the wrist, across the length of his palm, and between the fingers. The work was soothing in its mindless repetition. The two of them had patched up each other's wounds more often than they could count, learning how to tend to wounds and patch up injuries on each other for practice until they were perfect, both in and out of the battlefield.
She was snapped from her thoughts when Illien sighed above her, and she peered through her eyebrows at him as his eyes followed the movement of her hands, the flexing of her fingers. He cracked a feeble-looking smile when he caught her looking. "You were great today," he said. "I just followed your lead but the blink dogs? The Chum? Both great ideas."
"Oh yeah?" Doxley mused. "Even though the Chum brought an owlbear and throwing the blink dogs made you take a tumble off the cliff?"
That gave Illien pause, thinking. After a moment, he huffed a tired laugh and shrugged. "It all worked out in the end, didn't it?"
Task completed, Doxley tucked the bandages away and stood, grunting at the pain that shot through her aching knees. She braced herself on Illien's shoulders, who raised a hand to hold her elbow as she stretched out her foot and waited for the muscle to release and the cramp to ease. He wasn't the only one who would benefit from a good night's sleep. "Take off your armour," she ordered. "I'm going to go downstairs, and see if I can rustle up some dinner."
"Alright," Illien agreed, moving to stand on aching limbs. "Let me-"
Sighing, Doxley put her hand on Illien's shoulder and forced him down until he was lying flat on his back on the bed. It was a redundant effort, considering he would have to get up to remove his armour before he could actually get some sleep, but the indignant frown on his face was worth it. "Stay," she waggled her finger at him and grinned when he huffed and rolled his eyes. "I'm not the one who had a bear breathing down my neck today, so I'll go and bring you something back."
To her relief, Illien did elect to stay. He must have been more tired than he was willing to say. As the door shut behind her, she heard him mutter, "Did it have to be a bear? It could have been anything, and it was a bear! What the fuck!"
Grinning to herself, Doxley pounded down the stairs, the dilapidated wooden frame trembling and creaking under her bulk, and made a bee-line to the kitchens. She paid a little extra for a meal outside of the designated hours- a triple serving of potato skins and cheese curds, as always- but she was willing to pay it. She wouldn't tell him so, but Doxley's heart had been in her throat when she had watched Illien go flying off the side of the plateau with the blink dog chewing on his gauntlet. When the mephits had started laughing and pointing at him and he began to sweat as his armour turned red-hot and seared his skin, she wanted to shove him behind her and bare her teeth like a shark in retaliation. When the owlbear sauntered into the cave and Illien's eyes had gone wide with unbridled fear and he had taken off running, she wanted to grab him by the hand and take him away, away, away to somewhere safe and quiet, anywhere that would take that look of terror out of his eyes, to forget the way his blood had run cold and his skin had gone pale as the owlbear roared.
"Oh, Doxley! Over here!" An irritatingly familiar voice called, and she turned with a sigh to see Kayt, T.C. and Morna seated together at a table, sharing a bottle of brandy. Kayt was grinning and waving at her, unphased by the blood and dirt that covered her skin. The other patrons barely spared her a glance; apparently, appearances such as hers were common in Brokhollow. "Come sit with us!"
Sighing, Doxley made her way over. She didn't sit in the empty seat, not when she had her brother upstairs to return to. "None of us died. I guess that's good, at least."
"Quite," T.C. looked down his nose at her as he sipped at his brandy. She knew people like T.C. in the past and she had broken their noses almost every time. Sparring T.C. would be the first for her. "And how are you and your brother doing? It was a long day."
"It was," Doxely agreed. "We're alright. Probably going to get some sleep now so if you want us, you'll have to come and get us in the morning."
Morna frowned, her big watery eyes looking Doxley up and down. What she was looking for, Doxley didn't know, but she resisted the urge to scowl under her scrutiny. "Already?" she asked. "It's still early."
Glaring, Doxley pushed away from the table. This was a stupid idea. What was she thinking? She should have just ignored them and been on her way. "We've been up since dawn, and while you were off looking at pretty rocks and talking to goblins, we were fighting for our lives. So yeah, we're tired. I didn't know we needed your permission to rest."
"Now, now," T.C. put his hands up placatingly before Morna could speak. "There's no need to be at each other's throats."
"I didn't mean to offend," Morna murmured. Doxley glanced at her, then glanced quickly away. "I just thought that maybe we could share a meal before we retire for the evening."
Doxely sighed, losing all her bite like a defanged leviathan. "Not tonight. Illien's pretty beat and I'm not far behind him. He's probably already asleep."
"I understand," Morna offered her a small smile before returning to staring at the brandy in her glass.
"That was crazy today, wasn't it?" Kayt gushed, grinning at Doxley with enough guileless cheer to stun a horse. "I mean, first a griffin, and then the mephits, and just when I thought it couldn't get any crazier, then there was an owlbear!"
"Yeah, crazy. Right," Doxley quietly began to inch away from the table. "Well, I'm gonna get going..."
"Go on," T.C. waved her off, barely looking at her, too busy concealing the coins they had earned today in various places on her person, some of his twenty-five gold very shiny from where he had hidden them in his sleeve. She wondered if he had hidden them because he was cautious like that, or if he had hidden them from Kayt's curious fingers, who had thankfully diverted her attention from Doxley and was testing Morna's gold coins with her teeth. Morna was watching on silently but Doxley could tell that she was trying not to smile. "I'm sure we'll be more than capable of holding down the fort while the two of you are resting. We'll come to get you if there's trouble afoot."
"Sure, whatever," Doxley said as she shuffled away. "Guess we'll see you tomorrow."
"Bye Doxley!" Kayt called as Doxley retrieved her three servings of steaming potato skins and cheese curds from the kitchens and swiped an abandoned bottle of booze from beside a sleeping human man slumped over the table on her way up the stairs. "Sweet dreams!"
It took her an extra second or two to open the door to the bedroom, her arms laden down with food and drink as they were, and once she was safely back inside the room she shut the door with her hip until the latch slid closed and then locked it with her elbow, knocking it against the pulley until it fell into place. The room was dark, nothing but the faint lantern light to illuminate Illien asleep on his bed, his armour piled up carefully in the corner of the room and his underthings folded neatly at the end of the bed, his pack and his other belongings tucked cautiously under the bedframe. His greatsword was close by, as always, lying on the floorboards beside his bed and always within arms reach, and she knew from experience that if he were to dangle his fingers over the edge of the bed, it would be in his grip in seconds.
There was no point in waking him, not after the day he'd had, not after he had repeatedly expressed how tired he was. She set the food down on the bedside table for him to eat when he woke up in four hours because even cold and congealed, food was food and he would be starving. She popped the cork on her scavenged bottle of booze and got comfortable on her own bed, the rusty springs squeaking under her as she shifted and adjusted, letting her shoulders relax and her muscles ease after the events of the day.
Doxley joined Illien in a evening peaceful slumber, falling asleep just like that with her back against the headboard and the bottle in her hands as she lay above the bedspread, and she didn't even bother to kick off her boots.