Chapter Eleven #2
He pressed his knee to Zyr’s properly, studying Zyr’s tail, barb retracted, and offered his hand out, palm up. “My ankle’s busy hanging out with my thigh. I can offer my wrist as a substitute.”
Zyr swallowed hard and wrapped his tail around Robin’s wrist. The unsteadiness of his next exhale would have been beautiful, in other circumstances.
“I didn’t expect to ever be this close to you again,” Zyr explained, studying the curl of brilliant blue on tan skin.
“And I enjoy having you close. Which is, perhaps, the best answer I can give you. My life is mostly white noise, of late. When we met, I had only just recognized what that portends for a fae, and struggling to feel particularly disturbed by the end of my own existence. But I heard you. I wanted to hear you. You were … fun.”
“Fun.” He didn’t doubt Zyr. Just, not really one of the common descriptors for Robin, was all. Pedantic prick, sure.
“Clever and sharp and pushy, when my world had grown directionless, blurred, unchallenging. When I couldn’t think, you made the world quiet and dark. Important. You are important, Robin. And what is important to me, I treasure.”
This time, when Robin thought, ‘oh that’s a lot’ it came quietly, without the stillness of before. The reasons eased the tight fist around Robin’s throat some. It gave him something he could understand.
“That’s how I got into hockey,” Robin admitted, studying Zyr sideways.
“Not on the same level. Back when I first started watching, games were sometimes the only thing to haul my ass out of bed. Didn’t have my diagnosis, didn’t know what was wrong with me, and I don’t like people or crowds.
Or noise. But games are fun. Sharp and messy and real, loud, a lot of people that feed the energy.
Your throat hurts afterwards, you’ll probably catch a cold, but worth it.
Jan and I got season tickets for the last ten years. ”
“Jan?”
“My great-aunt. Legal mom, now. She raised me, and when I turned eighteen, she adopted me. Let her pick my name, and my middle name was her father’s.”
“You were not always a Robin.” Zyr’s tail was restless against Robin’s wrist. Like this, quiet, he could feel each flex of muscles under scales.
“Nah. One of my old names was a reference, though. And she calls me Birdie. But, hockey. Getting into it.” Robin’s fingers curled in, brushing over the shimmering scales lightly.
“It’s not a sport intrinsically tied to my personhood, and I don’t go yanking hockey players around.
But it helped pull me out of a dark place in my own head. ”
“Yes, then. Being near you is like hockey for me.” Zyr glanced up at last, so that Zyr could see the flashes of lightning in his eyes. “The team you cheer for, they’re one of many. But they’re also the only team that matters. Better, more interesting, than all the others.”
Robin caught the tip of Zyr’s tail between his fingers, curling them around it.
It was weird. Totally weird. A tail, and instead of spiraling over it, he watched the line of his nail trace over the seam of fine scales.
Zyr’s hold tightened at the touch, and he pressed back against Robin’s fingertips.
“Got it. That makes sense.” As much sense as it could make, anyway.
“I didn’t ignore what you and Everil said about obsession for dragons.
Beithir. For whatever that’s worth. I defined it through a human lens, and didn’t realize I was doing the same thing I get on other people for.
That’s on me and unfair to you. I’m sorry for putting that on you. ”
Another hesitation from the beithir. Robin didn’t blame him, considering how Robin had reacted the last time they were anything like open.
“You terrify me,” Zyr said at last. “As a beithir. As myself. We each put what we are into this. Unfair or no.”
Forward and awkward and thought Robin’s brittle knife edges were something special.
But no reassurances, which was comforting in a strange way.
Robin smiled faintly down at the tail, tapping it with a fingertip, pushing in turn.
Did Zyr do it on purpose? Or was the tail movement a reflex? Or both, like a cat.
Like another fucking hand, per Antonio.
“You and Everil have that in common. Explain?” Masochistic Robin. Asking questions he knew the answers to.
Too much. Unclear. Erratic emotions he needed to take extra steps to cope with.
“Not as he does. The opposite, perhaps. Aisling’s pup was right to kill his former bond. I’m glad of it.”
“Nimai brought it on himself.”
Zyr nodded once, still watching their hands. “The Winter King would have apologized by now. For how you felt or the words he used. He would have begged instruction, asked how to do better. He’s been taught to see himself as the architect of others’ unhappiness.
“I haven’t apologized, because an apology requires an intention to change one’s behavior.
I’m not sorry for the way I feel. Nor do I wish I had been less honest with you.
I certainly don’t imagine that I have the ability to determine what you feel.
No more than you’re to blame for my feelings for you. ”
Zyr managed a short, unhappy laugh, shaking his head.
“See? Such a sales pitch. ‘I’m not sorry, and I’ve no intention to change for you.
’ That’s what terrifies me. That I want so strongly to please you, but I’m not someone who pleases anyone.
That I’m desperate for the regard, the attention, of someone who, understandably, finds the intensity of my need unsettling.
” Zyr looked away from the curl of his tail and Robin’s wrist, jaw set.
“It makes me read too much into too little. And that isn’t fair to you. ”
Robin blinked. And blinked again.
He’d been expecting something along the lines of ‘your mood swings and how you react to things have me worried about pissing you off into Declan’s void.’ The usual. And, once again, Zyr came in from left field.
Okay. Right. This he could handle. Other people’s crises were always easier to deal with than his own, fucked up as that was.
“I’ve got a lot of thoughts about that.” Robin tapped Zyr’s tail gently with his thumb, and tried to make his next words just as gentle.
“Nothing bad. You said you liked the quiet and the dark. Will you put your head on my shoulder and close your eyes while I ramble at you?” A beat, and an echo of the day before in his quiet, “please.”
For a moment, it looked like Zyr might refuse. Silence and a hard swallow, his eyes fixed on the ground before those broad shoulders relaxed.
“Of course, Raven-Robin.” Relief there, just that before he turned to rest his head against Robin’s shoulder. Sighed in gratitude as he closed his eyes. “Thank you.”
Raven-Robin.
Robin let out a slow, carefully steady breath, ignored his own relief at the nickname. The sign things were on the mend. He took his glasses off and pressed his forehead to the top of Zyr’s head, careful of the horns. His free hand, he curled lightly through the hair at the base of Zyr’s neck.
“What you saw was my aversion to being handed a blank check.” The smile neither of them saw was thin, tight.
“Jan says I remember myself being worse than I actually was, back before my diagnosis and treatment. She’s got her nostalgia glasses on.
I used to think that breaking things—hurting people—was fun.
Because I was hurting. Because I wanted to stop existing.
And, fuck, breaking things can feel so good when you’re in pain. ”
“I’m familiar with the desire,” Zyr murmured, almost too soft to hear. “It’s a difficult urge to ignore.”
“Yeah, and me with a personality disorder not known for helping with impulse control. Ten years ago, I might’ve told you I need to keep a book of my choosing for every day I stayed with you when it came up in the kitchen.
Just to see if you would. I would’ve felt bad about it later, maybe, but…
” Robin shrugged the shoulder Zyr wasn’t resting on.
“I’ve worked really hard on myself. I don’t think that way anymore.
But I know what kind of fucked up mind games I can play, and I’m good at them.
I just refuse to now. It’s not worth hurting people. ”
Slow strokes of long fingers through blond hair, Robin’s voice soft and even. Unwavering. Zyr breathed with him and stayed quiet. Patient.
“I like you, Zyr. You have my regard. And my attention. I wouldn’t have frozen up if I didn’t care.
When it clicked what, exactly, upstairs meant to you, and that I was on equal footing with that, I had too many thoughts.
I didn’t want to take advantage of what you trusted me with, or of you.
All that on top of ‘why the fuck me’ that we talked about.
” Robin tugged, gentle, at tail and hair both.
“If you want to change, I support you. If you don’t, I support that too.
But it wasn’t you you that sent my thoughts in a twist. Not really. ”
“There are doors in this library I haven’t opened for you,” Zyr murmured, once it became clear Robin had said his piece.
“Some of my treasures are hungry, and they would drink your soul like wine. It would please them to be fed. Grant me access I lack. Understanding I desire. But those doors remain locked, because my treasures do not rule me. You are permitted within my heart, but you don’t own it.
Don’t fear, overmuch, what you might get away with, Raven-Robin. It is not more than I choose to allow.”
Zyr wouldn’t let Robin burn his world down in a fit of pique, no matter how slim the chance.
It wasn’t that Robin enjoyed destruction anymore. Or that he wanted to lash out. It was the knowledge that he could that twisted his stomach to knots.
He still could, but there were restrictions, now.
Fuck. Thank fuck.
“Good. Both in not letting my soul get sipped and blocking full access in general.” Robin leaned against him, tail warm around his wrist and lower arm, and didn’t pull away.
“If you do or say something that upsets me, I’ll tell you.
I might not tell you tactfully, but you won’t wonder if I’m pissed.
Me needing to process is like shelving these books.
Stuff got a little messy, but not broken, and I needed to reorganize things.
Because I don’t want to fuck up massively.
That’s just how I do it. I’m not gonna change that either. ”
“I don’t mind harsh words or a need to think.
After we spoke…” Zyr went quiet, sighing against Robin’s shoulder.
“If I was upset, I saw that as my own failing, not yours. I thought it best to keep my distance, in case you found my presence unsettling. You’re a human, alone with an unseelie.
I, too, have the capacity to inflict damage. ”
“I don’t think you’d put a mark on me I didn’t ask for.
” The words came out too damn fond. But what did Robin expect?
They sat curled against each other in a massive library, a tail in his hand, both of them speaking quietly on feelings and fears and thoughts.
Robin was fragile. He knew that. Brittle, like a knife made of glass
“Demand,” Zyr answered. “You don’t ask. But, otherwise, yes. You’re correct.”
A rumble like a storm, rolling and low, sounded from deep in Zyr’s chest. Robin felt it in his fingers, his shoulder, the same as he heard a smile in Zyr’s words, an answer to his own.
“I warned you I was bossy. Even if you don’t like to ask for things, you didn’t seem to mind.” Robin huffed a near silent laugh, tugging gently at Zyr’s hair again.
“I’m not adverse to making requests of you, Raven-Robin, when welcome.”
As an exception, Zyr had said.
“We good, Zyr?” Robin asked, voice quiet. “Because I’m going through the feelings wheel right now, and I keep coming back to ‘intimate.’ It’d be weird if we weren’t good.”
“I would hate to be weird,” Zyr murmured, all quiet, dry humor.
“We are faring significantly better than an obsessed beithir and the clever, pushy bird he's obsessed with should be.” His near laugh was more rueful than it was amused.
“I believe any of these books would advise you to flee into the storm in your nightgown.”
Robin laughed too, in the whisper of space between them.
“There's far better things to do in a nightgown than run to where wolves are waiting.” Robin mulled over Zyr’s words for probably not long enough before commenting on them. “How do you think we should be faring? No wrong answer.”
Zyr shivered under his touch, curling in closer.
“I don’t know,” Zyr’s admitted, shivering as Robin traced the shell of his ear. His voice trembled, too.
Robin should pull his hand away. And he did, sort of. He carded his fingers back into Zyr’s hair; that had to count for something.
“Take however long you need.”
Another shiver, the tip of Zyr’s tail tracing over Robin’s palm. Even then, Robin didn’t remove his hand. Just touched, though he didn’t tease too much further. Not even a scratch at his scalp.
(But fuck, he wanted to.)
“I’m not in the habit of tolerating people around me, let alone wanting them close,” Zyr said, low, breath hitching. “You are, as I said, singular. It’s difficult to have expectations for that which is without precedent.”
“Fair enough. Can’t say I ever expected to continue cuddling up to a dude after he said he was obsessed with me,” Robin said with another faint, twisting smile.
“Especially not while planning to overthrow a government and reorganizing his McCarth and Roberts collections he messed up for me. Firsts all around.”
The beithir laughed quietly. Just a huff of sound, amused, before he tensed. His tail tightened again, then went lax, holding on only by virtue of the number of coils around Robin’s wrist.
“I have guests,” Zyr said, through gritted teeth. “You’re welcome to join me.”
Oh for fuck’s sake.
“If it’s the cat-sith, I’ll skin him myself,” Robin muttered. “Yeah, sure, I’ll join you.”