Defensive Magic
Chapter 36: Burrow In

WINTER TERM - January 27th

I woke to the sound of crunching.

Whisper was chewing on animal crackers, muzzle hovering over the pillow beside my ear. Crumbs clung to his jowls. Gross. But also kind of cute. Mostly gross.

I couldn’t really move. It was late morning. Aries’s room was bright, sunwarmed despite the season. And Aries lay draped with his head on my chest, slack jawed, breath damp and easy. A line of cold drool running down the side of my ribs. The sleep-dead weight of him pinned me to the mattress. I should have minded.

I didn’t.

I’d never really been into this kind of thing- cuddling, sharing pillows, the sticky press of skin on skin. I mean, it’s not like Ianthe was exactly the warm-and-fuzzy type, even in the days back when I still sought out her touch. But Aries?

He clung to me in sleep like he was trying to burrow his way under my skin.

There wasn’t enough space for it, not in this bed. He’d started the night close and only dug in closer. So much so, that on the bare part of the mattress, Whisper had climbed up in the middle of the night to stake out his own territory as well. Puppy spine stretched long against my hip.

Aries had only wanted me to hold him. And I woke, arms still clasped across his back. Still holding on.

I might have been stuck. I had nowhere better to be.

But at least right then, I didn’t want to get up.

It was a better view than I’d ever had through the scrying glass anyway. There was his lips, soft, kiss-swollen. His breath was warm and steady against my collarbone. His heartbeat pressed so close it could have been my own, so stubbornly mortal. And yeah, his dick prodded into my thigh - but even that was its own quiet comfort.

For some unfair reason, he loved me harder than anyone should.

Whisper grumbled, getting antsy. He fidgeted on the other side of the mattress. Nails scratching into the sheets. I was going to have to take him out soon. But at least then I didn’t have to be the one to wake Aries.

“You watching me sleep again?” he slurred.

Well, I was…

“You’re cute when your mouth doesn’t get in the way,” I said.

He stretched and groaned, arching his back, like he wanted to make sure I noticed. Then, he leaned up on his elbows to meet me nose-to-nose, eyes still heavy with sleep. “I think you like my mouth,” he said, his grin a little too smug.

I snorted. Maybe I did.

“You doing okay?” he asked as though he wasn’t the one who’d needed to be held through the night. I knew why— I might have teared up a little. I wasn’t crying.

“I’m fine. Things just got a little intense,” I said. “Not a bad thing.”

I’d asked for his teeth and I’d gotten them. The hot press of his mouth ran so counter to Ianthe’s, that even his bite felt like a balm.

I was so gone on him.

Of course, Aries was going to be a little bit insufferable. Not to me. No. I’m pretty sure that I liked how stupid in love with me he was right then.

It was going to wear off.

But for now, he was wearing my sweater from last night. Black wool, a little long on him. It was like nothing he owned and mine enough to tear something tender open in my chest. He smiled to himself, stealing glances, as Whisper raced underfoot as we walked to the dining hall.

And there, I caught him staring at me from over his breakfast sandwich, eyes too bright. Noodle, Aisling, and now Ripley withheld comments, at least at first. But even Ripley, who knew us least, could clearly sense a shift. Aries was back to talking animatedly at Noodle about a book none of the rest of us had read, while Whisper, on the floor between Aries and Noodle, stretched his paws up on the lip of the table to beg for pieces of sausage.

I could snap at Whisper for begging, but it wouldn’t make a difference if Aries was just going to feed him bits of sausage from his fork. I ended up saving the scolding for later when he stole a croissant off someone’s plate the next table over and darted under Aries’s chair with it. This is why I so rarely get to bring him anywhere…

“It’s really not that big a deal, Zeph.” Aries swung his legs to the side of the chair where Whisper was tearing into the croissant.

“He’ll be farting the rest of the day eating all this stuff,” I muttered.

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Aisling started laughing from the other side of the table.

“I didn’t know familiars could get gassy,” Noodle said.

Neither did I. I managed to swipe back the croissant and used it to coax Whisper out to where I could heave him up onto my lap. He was still so much a puppy. He was about the size and heft of a toddler though I had a sneaking suspicion that the days I could keep just picking him up this way were numbered.

I’d hoped Aisling might jump in right then to say Whim also had a slew of G.I. issues, but even then I was pretty sure her ghostly raccoon-bird familiar even at her worst never took flaming shits on the rug.

“It’s strange, isn’t it? That he got a living familiar and you got a dead one,” Ripley said to Aisling. “You used the same summoning ritual, right?”

Aisling shrugged. “Death-less? Death-touched? Kelyn said it was more about summoning a spooky kind of familiar.”

Ripley eyed her like he was still considering what that meant but reached a hand across the table and held it just before Whisper. Whisper sniffed his hand and rubbed his big square head up into it, soaking up the attention wherever he could get it.

Ripley tentatively scritched behind his ears and Whisper relaxed with happy grumbles eye-lids heavy. “He’s friendlier than I would have expected,” Ripley said. “Considering…”

“Considering what?” Aisling asked.

Ripley glanced between her and me. She really didn’t have to make the poor guy say it. So, I intervened. “Considering how I am. A real bastard, when I want to be.”

Aisling frowned. Whisper, on my lap, peered up at me, tongue lolling from his muzzle. It was just the two of them at first, but Aries, Noodle, and Ripley noticed too, eyes all falling on me.

It wasn’t deserved either. It wasn’t like I’d said anything untrue.

“You’re not-” Aisling started. Reconsidered. “You’re selective. You don’t let everyone in. You choose people more carefully. It means when you do, it matters.”

Aries’s arm fell across my shoulders, too quick. I tensed, hackles raised. If he noticed, he didn’t stop. Just rubbed circles through the wool of my jacket, like this was something he could fix. This shouldn’t have been anything, but Aisling was making it into more than it had to be.

“You chose me,” Aisling said. “You didn’t have to, but you did anyway.”

I grit my teeth. I didn’t know what to do with this kind of softness. Especially when it was coming from everywhere all at once. Aisling gazed from across the table, too warm, too sharp, utterly terrifying. It was because of her that Whisper was rubbing his ear into my sternum. That Aries was leaning into my side, heavy.

“Zeph,” he sighed. Had she said nothing, he wouldn’t have noticed. Damn it, Aisling. His brown eyes caught. She’d pointed out a crack in me and now, he could see it too.

He rubbed harder like the rough edges could warn down by his hands alone. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, as though he thought he should. What was there to say really? No word came. He rammed his head into my neck instead.

They were being ridiculous. Aisling, Whisper, Aries. It was making Noodle and Ripley uneasy. I was uneasy.

“Don’t let the brooding fool you,” Aisling said, glancing to Ripley. “Zeph’s a gooey mess underneath all that.”

Aries breathed out a laugh, still close enough I could feel the stutter of his breath more that I could hear it. I shoved him off, smirking. I’m fine. Really.

Aisling took the hint and chose mercy, leaning back in her chair to say to Ripley, “Whisper’s not Zeph. He’s still his own creature. Just like how Whim’s not me.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Ripley said.

“She’s warmed up to you because you can see her. She doesn’t even particularly like Zeph yet.”

“I know she’s not you. It’s only that she’s like you. You can get that, right? I doubt I’ve ever met anyone else that would have summoned a thing like her,” Ripley said with enough sincerity that, over his shoulder, Noodle mock-gagged.

Aisling pretended not to notice. Instead she said, “Yeah, okay. Say you’re right… what do you think you’d summon?”

Ripley didn’t have an answer. Aisling didn’t guess at one, though Noodle did. Fish bones. I think he’d meant it to be an insult, but Ripley actually speculated on it thoughtfully. Aisling even joined in. Funny to say, but maybe it was a fitting familiar for him. Aries grabbed my elbow mid-conversation to ask, “What do you think mine would be?”

“I couldn’t guess Whisper. How am I supposed to guess yours?” I said.

It was the wrong answer. I realized it after I’d said it. Any weird animal would have been better, so I scrambled.

“A white rabbit.” It was the first animal that came to me. “I don’t know why. It just… fits.”

Better. But he wanted more. I wanted to give him more. “You’d have the same racing heart. It’d be soft– softer than Whisper anyway. And it would probably try to punch anyone who underestimated it.”

“I don’t punch just anyone,” he muttered. But it was enough.

I thought of it later too. Rabbit.Aries. Rabbit. Thoughts that didn’t quite feel all my own. Too interested. Too hungry. The wolf was there. It was always there now. Like it had already made some kind of connection I couldn’t quite see yet.

Rabbit. Aries. More sensation than thought.

A hazy feeling. Like softness I could catch in my teeth.

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