Chương 11: 11. Ren Pats A Dog
Ren found the basket of grooming tools half-hidden under one of the blankets, picked it up, and looked around. "All right, I need somewhere to sit. Come on, there was a stone table in the kitchen." Without ever looking directly at Cú, she led the way through the underground passages back to the keep's kitchen.
She hadn't paid much attention to it the first time they'd been there, what with meeting Ritsu and keeping an eye on Merlin. This time, with mid-afternoon sunlight streaming through the high windows, she noticed it was significantly less dusty than the halls. The flagstone floor had been washed. Some of the remaining rusty pots sat beside the cold hearth, each of them partially scrubbed. Clearly, Ritsu hadn't spent all her time in the fortress reading and daydreaming.
The stone table was massive, standing on two pillar legs. A set of measurements had been chiseled onto one end: both lines denoting length and scoops for volume. No bench had survived the years of neglect, and she immediately saw sitting on the table itself would still force Cú into an uncomfortable position. She frowned, looking around.
"How about here, my lady?" said Cú, pointing at a niche beside the hearth with a built-in seat, or possibly a shelf. Whichever it had been, it would serve, and so she stiffly seated herself.
Cú sat before her, stretching his injured leg out. Ren looked through the basket, minutely inspecting the two brushes, the comb, the rake, the little ribbons, and the vials.
"My lady?" asked Cú after a moment, and she startled. He tilted his head to look up at her, and then pulled out the thong keeping his hair in a tail. "I'm not going to bite you."
"Right." She took up the bigger brush and ran her fingers through his hair. It felt stiff against her fingers, but as she fluffed it apart, she realized it was much thicker than it looked. She wondered when it had last been unbound, and laughed as she realized what a nonsensical question that was. If the stories in her head were correct, this vessel had been created by the magic that had summoned him.
"See?" he said, in response to her laugh. "It's not that bad. Not like some people's hair."
Gently, she began to brush his hair. Nothing obviously magic occurred, but after a moment, Cú's shoulders relaxed fractionally. Slowly, she too began to relax. This really wasn't so bad.
Eventually, still thinking about how he'd been summoned, Ren asked, "You don't remember your other fights with Artoria, do you?"
His shoulders tightened again. "Not…exactly. I know she's good, I know she's dangerous, but I know… I knew I should have had a good chance of beating her. Like some version of me has fought her and won."
"Chance…" murmured Ren, and shook her head.
Cú tilted his head back again, a hard light in his eyes. "Did you know of my other failures against her, my lady?"
Ren shifted position uncomfortably, aware he was judging her and not sure what the right answer was. "Not until you said something. And then I remembered. Before that I knew you were… strong. Almost impossible to kill. That in some of your stories you were the last one standing when the greatest of monsters fell."
"Ah." His shoulders relaxed again and he lowered his head to let her return to her brushing. "I was a little worried that you'd… placed your faith in me for the wrong reasons. That would have pissed me off."
As the bristles moved through Cú's hair, it softened, spreading into dark waves. She moved up to work on his scalp some, wondering what the wrong reasons would have been. But she couldn't bring herself to ask.
Instead she focused on his hair, trying intermittently to will magic to flow into him. She felt nothing—and that was completely untrue. She felt nothing she'd name magic, but his hair was soft under her fingers and his little shifts of position brushed against her legs. She could smell his faintly bestial scent and resisted the desire to bury her nose in his hair to make sure the musk was his.
After a while, she put the brush aside and ran her hands through his hair, thinking about what to do next. Her fingers drifted down to the back of his neck and she absently scratched his skin under his collar.
A shudder ran through him as his head bent further. An intense wave of self-consciousness rushed over Ren and she pulled her hands away quickly. "Um," she began, and then had no idea what to say.
He looked over his shoulder at her and the look in his eyes made her want to run and hide. "You stopped. Don't stop."
"Is… is this helping? Are you getting any mana?" she asked breathlessly.
After a tiny hesitation, he said, "Some. Not much. Not as much as I would via other means." Turning away again, he said, "I'll change my gear. Maybe that will help." As he spoke, his armor flickered and vanished. Except for some arm protection, his torso was entirely bare. "That collar does itch sometimes," he muttered. "The kind of itch you never even notice until there's a chance it might be scratched."
Ren's heart was a drum in her chest as she stared at the muscled back before her. Ritsu had mentioned petting as well as brushing and grooming. But she was afraid of getting closer to him, of getting closer to anybody. And yet she wanted so much—
She'd come here to help. Everything else had to be subordinate to that. The thought flashed in her mind—she'd promised—and then faded, leaving only the certainty that she couldn't let her fear ruin what she'd come to do.
"All right," she said grimly. "Scoot forward." When he'd done so, she dropped off the bench to kneel behind him. After tying the thong back around his hair, she tucked it over his shoulder and once again placed her fingers against his neck. Slowly, gently, she began to scratch.
She took her time, really focusing on her task and trying hard to ignore the shudders and twitches that passed through Cú's frame, and her own reaction to those. She scratched down his spine in long swipes. She ran the pads of her fingers under his shoulder blades before scraping her nails across the same path. She dug her thumbs into knots of tension she detected near the small of his back, traced his ribs with the back of her nails, and leaned into him to rake her nails across the tops of his shoulders.
Eventually, his breathing ragged, he said, "All right, you need to stop now."
Ren paused, flattening her palm against his back as she realized how much she'd been getting into the treatment. Desperately she tried to recall if she'd actually kissed his back or only thought about it.
Just in her head, she decided. "Did that do anything useful?"
He looked back at her again, his eyes hot, and once again he hesitated before answering. "Yeah. Yeah, that's good."
Ren frowned. "I think you're lying." Distractedly, she drew her hand lightly down his back.
The muscles moved under her fingers as he suddenly twisted to pull her around in front of him, curling his previously injured leg under her. Despite his iron grip on her upper arm, his voice was perfectly even as he said, "No. My leg will be healed soon. That's enough for now."
"But you used all that magic for Gáe Bolg," Ren protested.
"We'll talk to Caster and the kid," said Cú. "There's probably some tricks."
"I could—"
"Ren! My lady." He blew out his breath. "I don't like being seduced."
Ren instantly turned beet red, yanking herself away from him with such force that she sprawled backwards. "I wasn't—I wasn't trying to seduce you!"
"I know," he said easily. "And that's also why you have to stop."
All Ren's thoughts of how she had to do what had to be done, how she'd do what she had to in order to help people vanished. "Oh my god," she wailed. She curled up into a little ball with her hands over her head, trying to bury herself and her embarrassment under the flagstones. It couldn't possibly get any worse than this.
Then Cú rose to his feet and picked up her balled up-self, proving her wrong.
"Hey," he said. "You're a strange woman, my lady. Losing it like that because you're able to inspire your warriors."
Slowly Ren unclenched her body, until she hung limply from his hands like a rag doll, staring down at the flagstones, unable to meet his gaze. Shaking her lightly, he said, "Don't ruin my faith in you, okay?" He set her on her feet, tipped up her chin with a firm finger, and returned the chaste kiss she'd given him earlier.
Then he stepped back. "And now, if you don't mind, I'm going to make sure my leg doesn't stiffen up by hunting us down some meat. Only a magus of flowers could think people could live on fruit."
After one more piercing look at her, he dematerialized, leaving Ren alone in the underground kitchen.
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