Embers - Chapter Eleven (Patreon)

Hi folks! I'm posting this from my parents', so I hope the wifi stands up to it!! Another fluffy chapter, but I hope you enjoy seeing our boy opening up a bit more and learning to be ok with being vulnerable. Featuring Celia too, our niece.

Also it's way longer than I wanted it to be, but when the muse insists, you know? It's 2353 words, no warnings, sfw. 

Next week, it's Murder Mystery Dinner evening!!  

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Morning crept through a chink in the curtains and flashed gently off the glinting scales on his bare torso. 

Mikaeïl lay fast asleep, his lips gently parted, exposing the points of his canines to you as you stared in wonder at him. Perfectly naked, though the sheet was draped rather artistically across his hips, he looked like a temple statue, his torso pale as marble until it seemed to catch fire with those coppery scales. 

He didn’t stir until after nine, and you were perfectly happy to doze with your head on his shoulder. He hadn’t shifted back to his usual form after the exertions of the night before; his hands were still clawed, and the scales rippled up his arms to his elbows. He shuffled slightly and tugged you closer to his chilly body and you grumbled. “You only want me because I’m warm,” you grumped. 

“Not true,” he slurred sleepily, nuzzling at your neck. 

“Mostly true?”

“I can’t deny that I like how warm you are,” he said, blinking groggily. “But you’re gorgeous and funny and talented. And I don’t think I’ll ever forget the way you came so beautifully for me last night…”

You blushed at that and buried your face at his chest. Surprisingly, Mikaeïl turned out to be ticklish and you nearly got a spined elbow in your face for that. 

Later as you sat at the table in his conservatory while he cooked eggs for the both of you, your phone buzzed and you saw the message preview from your brother. ‘Hey, I’m so sorry but can you take care of Celia tonight?’

You opened it and bounced a reply back. ‘I had plans with Mikaeïl this weekend… what’s up?’

‘Work’ he replied. ‘They need someone to cover the late shift’

Knowing he needed the money, you sighed just as Mikaeïl came over with a cup of tea in his now ordinary-looking hand. “Everything alright?” he asked, setting it down on the table and pushing it towards you. “Different blend this time,” he added while he waited for you to reply. 

“It’s my brother,” you said. “He wants me to take care of Celia this afternoon and tonight. He’s got called in to cover a late shift at work.”

“That’s alright,” Mikaeïl smiled, reaching up and stroking your hair affectionately just above your ear. “Would she like to stay here? I’ve got plenty of spare rooms. We could have pizza and a movie and a sleepover or something?”

Unexpectedly, tears filled your eyes and you hugged him. 

When your brother dropped her off, you saw the way Mikaeïl weighed him with his gaze. Your brother was taller and broader than you by a long way, and had the rough edges that made him good at his job with the police force, but there was a familial similarity between you. Celia barrelled out of the car a moment later and flung herself at you, and you spat a feather out of your mouth as the little half-siren flapped about excitedly. The moment she saw Mikaeïl, however, she went quiet and still, and looked a bit anxious. Glancing back at him, you realised that he’d slipped back behind his glacially cool mask again. 

“Mikaeïl, this is my brother, Jon. Celia you’ve already met, I think.”

“Briefly,” he said, shaking your brother’s hand before crouching down to be at Celia’s eye level. “It’s nice to see you again, Celia. I suppose it might be strange for you to be here without your flute…” she shrugged and he smiled. “Well, you know where the music room is if you feel like going there.” He glanced up at you and added, “We thought we might have a go at making some pizzas for supper tonight. Would you like to help us with that?”

“Making them?” she asked, her eyes going wide, as if she’d never considered the possibility that you could make your own pizza. She probably hadn’t, to be fair.

“Mmhmm,” he smiled. “We’ve already got the bases. You can put whatever you like on top.”

She perked up a bit at that and offered him a wary smile, and your brother chuckled. “I can see she’ll be in good hands tonight. Not too much sugar afterwards though?” he said and you nodded. 

“Take care,” you said, giving him a quick hug. He bowed his head once and climbed back into his truck after handing Celia’s bag to you and giving her a farewell hug and asking her to behave herself. 

Celia trailed you inside, but didn’t seem to settle. She kept looking warily at Mikaeïl, and the more often it happened, the more distressed Mikaeïl seemed to get. Not that it really showed, but there were little cracks in that porcelain mask of his that seemed larger to your trained eyes now than they ever had before. 

He ground his teeth and looked a little panicked. Then he blinked and smiled slightly. “Celia?” he asked in a quiet, gentle voice. “Do you like magic tricks?”

“Yeah…?” she said cautiously from her seat beside you in the conservatory full of plants. 

“Do you know what a sparkler is?” he asked, going over to a kitchen drawer. You watched him curiously but didn’t intervene. He had captivated her attention completely. 

“Yes,” she said. “We have them at Halloween.”

“That’s right. I know it’s not Halloween now, but I have some. Would you like me to show you a trick with one?”

“Like a magician’s trick?” she asked, unimpressed. 

He shook his head. “No. I’m going to use real magic. You want to know a secret first?”

She nodded immediately. 

“Well, you’ll have to promise not to tell anyone unless I say you can… Can you keep a secret?”

Celia’s eyes widened and she nodded again. 

“Alright,” he said, and knelt down again, lowering his head to show her his horns. “You see these?” he said, tapping one and she stepped warily closer. “You know what they are?”

“Horns,” she said, patronisingly. 

“Indeed,” he chuckled, still with his head bowed. “And which creatures have horns?”

She thought for a moment. “Frankie does,” she said. “But you don’t have sheep feet.”

Both of you snorted at that and Mikaeïl bit his lips for a moment. “No,” he said, still smiling. “I don’t. Can you think of any other creatures who have horns?”

Again, she thought about it. “Tieflings have horns, and minotaurs, and… uh… some lizards do. There’s a lizardfolk girl in my class who has little horns but they’re yellow not red.”

“What about a dragon?” he said quietly and she gasped. 

“Yes! But… You’re not a dragon…”

“How about if I told you I can change my shape,” he said. “Like a werewolf can shift between wolf and man…”

“You’re a weredragon?!” she giggled, clapping her hands. “Can you only change on the full moon?”

Mikaeïl shook his head and sat back a little bit, still down on one knee, but more crouched now and resting his elbow on his knee. “No,” he said. “I can shift whenever I like, but it’s very painful because becoming such a big creature takes a lot of effort. But that wasn’t why I wanted to tell you what I am. What can dragons do that most others can’t?”

“Fly?” A reasonable guess. 

“That’s right, but what else can they do. It’s related to that sparkler I mentioned…”

She went very still and her eyes got even wider. “Can you breathe fire?”

“I can,” he said, “But only as a dragon. When I’m like this though, I can still control it. Shall I show you?”

He stood and got out the box of sparklers from the back of a low drawer and held one between finger and thumb. With a click of his fingers, the sparkler lit and began to crackle and fizz. Celia laughed at the simple trick, but when he raised his other hand and began to gesture, she gasped again. The little sputtering sparks flew away from the stick and began to dance around the room. Somehow he kept the reaction going and they popped and danced all the way around the room until they finally fizzled out. 

“Do it again!” she cackled immediately. 

That set the tone for much of the afternoon. Mikaeïl became almost another part of the family to her, listening to her stories about her music and the things that fascinated her, even though they couldn’t have been of any interest to him whatsoever. 

Pizza making was probably a mistake, given that you ended up with olives on the ceiling and flour all over the floor by the end of it, but she had a grand time and only made it halfway through the cartoon movie she chose from Mikaeïl’s online TV subscription before she collapsed in a snoring pile of feathers between you on the sofa. 

“Let’s get her up to bed,” he smiled, and you nodded. 

You led a very sleepy child up and helped her wash her face and brush her teeth before tucking her and her little stuffed minotaur into bed for the night. “I’m just at the end of the corridor,” you said, “So if you need me, you can find me, but I hope you sleep well.”

As you left, she wiggled in bed and sat up. “Are you and Mikaeïl like mummy and daddy were?” she asked. 

You felt a tightening in your throat as she brought up your late sister-in-law. She’d been the life and soul of every gathering until she’d fallen ill. “Maybe,” you said cautiously. “I’d like to be, but we haven’t known each other as long as Jon and your mother did.” A moment later you asked, “Do you like him?”

“Yeah,” she mumbled. “He’s scary but I think he’s nice.”

“I’ll tell him you said that,” you laughed and she giggled. “Go on, lights out.”

When you went downstairs again, you found Mikaeïl in the last stages of cleaning up the bomb-site that had been the kitchen. 

“I’m sorry about that,” you said. “I know that wasn’t how you intended to spend our first weekend together.”

He looked up at you then and you saw a strange, tearful expression on his face. 

“Mikaeïl?”

A single tear rolled down his cheek and he set the cloth down that he’d been using to wipe the surface. 

You crossed to him and held him, cupping his cheek in one hand. “What is it?”

“She’s a delight,” he said. “That’s all.”

“That’s not all,” you insisted gently, “But you don’t have to share if you don’t want to.”

His eyes darted to the sofa and he said, “I’ll join you in a minute…” and you backed off, knowing he needed another few moments to himself. The arrival of you in his life had been one huge change for him - he’d told you as much already - and you didn’t mind being patient with him. 

When he did come and sit with you, it was with a whisky in his slightly trembling fingers, and he sat with one leg folded under him in a remarkably childlike pose. You hooked your arm around his shoulders and gently toyed with the hair at the nape of his neck. “Can I take it down?” you asked, tugging slightly at the hair tie. 

He nodded, and a moment later his fiery red hair was falling loose around his shoulders. 

“Thank you for the way you were with her today.”

“She was frightened of me to start with,” he said, staring at a point on the other side of the conservatory wall. Darkness pressed against the windows and you thought vaguely about shutting the blinds, but you didn’t want to move from his side. The length of his thigh was pressed against yours, as if drawing heat and comfort from the contact.

“She’s wary of most people,” you said. “I don’t think it was personal. She likes you now though… she told me so upstairs before I said goodnight.”

“Really?”

“Mmm. You worry too much, Mikaeïl,” you said, thumbing away the creases that lingered between his sharp copper brows. He still hadn’t really articulated quite what was troubling him. 

After a sip of whisky, he said softly, “The ‘me’ that you’ve come to know…” he glanced around the kitchen, “Here, at home… It’s not the ‘me’ I present to the world. I find it difficult to reconcile the two people… you know?”

“I figured,” you said and he turned to look at you. “I mean, when I first met you, I thought you wanted to eat me or something. You looked so cross that I’d held up your day with a question about flute lessons for my niece…”

“I was cross,” he admitted with a chuckle. “And I was late to my lecture because of you.”

“You were?”

“Mmm.”

“I’m sorry.”

He laughed again and his shoulders dropped a good two inches as he relaxed. He surprised you by kissing you, not squarely on the mouth, but delicately, right in the corner. “I’m worried that at the fund-raiser next week… I won’t be the person you’ve come to know. I’m worried that you won’t like ‘Professor Mikaeïl…’” 

You snorted and grabbed his whisky from his hand, setting it down on the low table before swinging into his lap to straddle him. He looked surprised, but pleased. “I’ve heard you being called ‘Kaeïl’ by Frankie, and ‘Mikki’ by Kiriavin, and I’m sure your sister has a few choice names for you as well, judging by what you’ve told me about her. You can be lots of different things to different people, Mikaeïl, but you are this to me,” you said, and you grabbed his horns and kissed him. 

He bucked his hips up slightly into you at that, with his deep, sonorous, happy rumbling echoing in his chest, before holding your waist and then hugging you tightly while he kissed you back. 

When you finally parted, he smiled, eyes glowing and glistening, and said, “I worry too much.” You both laughed at that. 

Chapter Twelve 

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