Royesland [Full]

[TrashRabbit]

Tom made a distinct brand of distressed Tom noises as she attempted to comfort him, paltry as 'that's rough buddy' was. he crosses the library in three swift long legged and collapses himself into the plush read arm chair, knees draped over the arms, "Fuck. I'm too gay for this!"

 

[theunearthlyfool]

Nicola​

Guilty as she felt for her pathetic attempt at consoling him, Nicola barely suppressed a snort of ugly laughter at his dramatic exclamation. How he ever managed to catch a man like Cathal when he’s this much of a fucking disaster, I will never understand, she thought with a shake of her head.

“Okay, but are you too gay to do magic?” Nicola crossed her arms. “Because I thought you wanted to see this, and I bet it’ll take your mind off him for awhile.”

 

[TrashRabbit]

"I need a minute, but yes," he said. And he staid put until he was less frazzled with himself. He roused himself finally when Nicolla, sparring him no time to brood, asked him to fetch up another item out of the apothecary. He was soon at her elbow again like the most earnest of apprentices.

 

[wickedlittlecritta]

Cathal sighed softly and made his way down the stairs and into the kitchen. He returned the bowl to its proper place and asked Molly, "Everything look good?"

 

[theunearthlyfool]

Nicola
​

“Take your time,” Nicola said, and she meant it. Tom was having a Bad Time™, and although she wanted to get Jackie sorted, she wasn’t a complete asshole. But once he was up, she shoved the safety gear at him and put him to work. “We’re burning daylight, I want to get Jackie her hands back by the end of the day.”

Despite her single-minded focus, she still explained each and every step to Tom as she went. Nicola loved to learn but had never considered herself the teaching type; it was more that she liked showing off how much she knew. But she answered his questions and was thorough in describing what she was doing and why, and secretly had to admit she quite enjoyed getting to boss him around hang out with him like this.

--

Molly​

Molly had watched Tom careen around the kitchen with amusement, but said nothing. She really wasn't sure what to make of him: in her mind, there was a big disconnect between the extremely powerful wizard who’d turned a faerie king into a human being and the flustered, awkward, memory-less punk she’d just watched embarrass himself terribly in front of his boyfriend and best mate.

By the time Cathal returned to the kitchen, she’d finished peeling the potatoes and was wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. “Looks great,” she said, grinning at him as she offered the bowl of peeled spuds. “He seems nice!”

 

[wickedlittlecritta]

"I'm not sure nice is the word I'd use," Cathal said, taking the potatoes and getting them in to boil on the stove. "He's a bit of a bastard, but he's my bastard, and I love him."

 

[theunearthlyfool]

Molly
​

His remark got a good laugh out of her. “Fair enough. Although bastards can be nice, too, sometimes. In their own way,” Molly said, thinking of someone else. “Anyway, you’re very sweet. Anything else I can help with?”

 

[Nimbus]

Apollo saw a thumbswidth of Lockette at the door. He heard her ask how she could help him. He wasn't too far away from the door, yet her voice sounded distant. His head jerked up at her face. She was very, very tall. The two foxes inside his head remembered why they were fighting not so long ago.

A large enough well is a decent substitute for the town fountain, a small fearful voice reminded him.

"There's a big tree," He explained, helpfully.
" A felled one. In the big field by the forest. I need to know if its wood is-"

Something flinty dark blurred in his peripheral vision. The wizardling lost his capacity to form words for a few seconds. He grabbed at scraps of letters to arrange them into something less awkward than silence.

"floaty."

Pol held up a hand. He tried again.

"Floating. Floatable."

Ugh no. One more time?

"You know, if it can swim?"

Wait. One of the words in that sentence was wrong.

"Or at least not sink?"

Pol shot a wincey "Help, I am incompetent at words" glance at Quill.

Quill stage whispered, "I believe you said you wanted to inspect its seaworthiness?"

SEAWORTHY. Shipworthy. Boatable. Right.

Pol drew in a breath of green-fragrant air, puffing up his chest.

"I am going to build a boat. I need to know. I heard you have skill in carpentry. I came to see if the wood from the felled tree is worth forming the hull of this boat. And to buy it, if so."

 

[CelticSol]

Lockette Kenway​

Lockette slowly blinks three times, then says, "... Do you know what kind of wood the tree is made of? There are lots of felled trees around here."

 

[TrashRabbit]

"Most wood usually floats?" Riley whispered, almost to herself in confusion.

 

[CelticSol]

Lockette Kenway​

"You're absolutely right, but some wood rots really fast in fresh water."

 

[theunearthlyfool]

Nicola
​

They worked on the potion the rest of that afternoon. Cathal had called them to dinner some time ago, but Nicola wouldn’t step away in the middle of a project and Tom happily used this excuse to not go downstairs, either. So it was that, a few hours into the evening, Nicola and Tom completed Jackie’s potion.

Hungry and tired though she was, the excitement of magic sparkled in Nicola’s eyes as she carefully brought the potion downstairs to where the others were hanging out. She’d sworn that she wouldn’t speak to Jackie until she’d broken her curse, and she’d mostly kept that promise. But now it was time to apologize.

While she approached Jackie cautiously- kicking herself over the ‘nice fish’ comment from earlier, as well as basically everything else she’d said to Jackie that morning- she was visibly struggling to contain how proud she was of their hard work. “Hi. Um… I’m sorry for shouting at you earlier. You didn’t deserve that.” She held up the bowl Cathal had taken upstairs that afternoon: in it there was maybe a cup or two of a liquid the soft pink color of the moss-orchid flowers. “And also that I didn’t get my shit together and do this days ago. But it’s done now, so… it works best if you drink all of it.”

 

[CelticSol]

Jacqueline "Jackie" Sapienti​

"Sometimes, I'm a massive bitch and you need to let me explode without comment, Nikki. No need to worry about it. The apology wasn't needed but I appreciate it a lot." Jackie says with a shrug, then adds, "Sorry for exploding."

She looks at the potion, which was a lovely, pussy poppin' pink. She listens carefully to the short instruction Nicola offers, having on more than one occasion mistaken both potion and drug alike and paid the price of her inattentiveness.

She's so ready to have hands again.

But makes a face as she realizes the irony that she has no hands to actually drink the potion.

"Ah, Nicola? You're going to have to hold the potion up for me to drink. I don't have hands."

 

[theunearthlyfool]

Nicola​

“Son of a- oh, I’m a fucking idiot, aren’t I?” If her hands hadn’t been full, Nicola would’ve slapped a hand to her forehead over the extremely obvious point Jackie just made. She blushed, mortified. “No shit, you don’t have hands. I’m- gods large and small, I’m dense. I’m so sorry.”

She stepped closer, the blush remaining in her cheeks as her knees bumped Jackie's. “I was just so excited to get it done that I, uh… forgot, I guess. Um.” Nicola met Jackie’s eyes, then looked away. “I’ll try to do, like, little sips at a time? …Uh, raise your hand if you need me to stop at any point, I guess.” It was an awkward angle, having to hold the bowl in both hands; instead of tipping a glass or mug to Jackie’s lips, as she’d been doing all week when they'd had their meals. “Ready?”

 

[wickedlittlecritta]

Tom was lurking a little behind Nicola as she entered the kitchen in triumph, and Cathal swooped over to take Tom by the hand and steer him into the kitchen.

"You look like you're going to wither away, you beanpole," Cathal told him brightly, and seated Tom at the kitchen table, ignoring his alarmed face to set a plate of salmon and mashed potatoes and bok choy and soda bread down in front of him. He scooped fish sauce out of the little bowl he'd made it in onto a pile by the salmon on Tom's plate. "Eat your greens."

"Uh," said Tom eloquently, looking at the fish like he'd never seen a salmon before. "Okay."

Cathal beamed tremendously at him and flounced off to get butter for the bread. Tom made a distressed face, but no one else was paying him any attention.

 

[theunearthlyfool]

Molly
​

Molly had, in fact, noticed Tom's distressed face, and gave him a smile and two thumbs-up from the other side of the kitchen. It did not help.

 

[CelticSol]

Jacqueline "Jackie" Sapienti​

"Hey, don't talk to my friend like that." Jackie scolds, frowning at the Nicola insulting herself. Nicola comes close to hold the bowl to her, and Jackie notices the colour that crawls into the other woman's face, and smiles in a way she hopes is encouraging but probably somehow still looks a little smug. Nicola asks if she's ready, and without thinking, Jackie says, "I'm an alcoholic, Nikki; just throw it down my throat."

Nicola obliges, and as promised, Jackie chugs it with the composure and ease of someone that's worked very hard at finding solutions to her problems at the bottom of a glass, and finishes the drink within a few seconds despite how much it tastes like licking sour tree sap. She makes a face at the lingering taste, reaching out to a cup of water Cathal had out for Jackie, and -

Jackie touches it.

Her fingers meet the glass, and it is cool and smooth and luxurious and Jackie doesn't even think of how gross her mouth tastes, only that her fingers are making contact with something, and her fingers are still solid even when she wraps her fingers all around the cup. She crows in victory as she hefts the cup above her head, splashing water on the floor and herself as she does so, but she feels that properly, too, and relishes it even when it soaks her sleeve in a way that would typically make her go batshit.

Jackie throws back the water as if she were taking a shot, slamming the glass on the table with too much force, and spins to Nicola, "I swear, Nicola, you're a goddamned fuckin' angel," And cups Nicola's face in her hands, liking the feeling of that, too, and kisses her fully on the mouth.

It's for only two seconds, and then Jackie spins again, flopping onto Tom, ignoring that Tom doesn't even really know her beyond her being an absolute bitch, "I have hands now - you're done for, pal."

 

[TrashRabbit]

Tom, who thought this all might as well be happening, looked at her solemnly and said, "Congrats." Then attempted to feed her the piece of salmon on his fork- because honestly he wasn't sure if something orange like that should be edible. So technically this was science.

 

[CelticSol]

Jacqueline "Jackie" Sapienti​

"Oh, bribery. I will spare you for now," She says, and eats the salmon. "Cathal... You're fantastic."

 

[wickedlittlecritta]

"Oh, thank you," Cathal said to Jackie. "Don't pawn all your salmon off on her, she can have her own plate," he scolded Tom.

 

[TrashRabbit]

Tom made direct eye contact and fed the now tangible Jackie another bite of salmon. He then glanced at Poor Nicola, who looked like she was going through it.

 

[wickedlittlecritta]

"You like salmon," Cathal said in the exact tone of trying to coerce a fussy child. He also filled up a jar of water and passed it to Nicola, who indeed looked like she was going through it.

 

[CelticSol]

Jacqueline "Jackie" Sapienti​

Jackie accepts another bite from Thomas, then steals the fork - with her HANDS - and plops herself into his lap. She jabs the fork into another bite of salmon, and holds it out to him with an unspoken warning that she can and will force feed him, "Eat it, you PNW bitch."

 

[TrashRabbit]

Tom lets her feed him a bite looking extremely skeptical then shrugs, "Yeah it's good. You win." He shifts so that Jackie is sitting more fully on one of his long legs, this sort of closeness doesn't bother him at all, but he can't even look Cathal god forbid if he touched him... And this, the moment after seeing his first wlw kiss with Jackie in his lap, would forever be the moment that he realized the depths of his gay.

 

[theunearthlyfool]

Although flustered by her close proximity to Jackie, Nicola rolled her eyes at the alcoholic comment before carefully feeding her the potion. As expected, Jackie made a face (Nicola wasn’t one to ‘spoonful of sugar’ her potions). Instinctively she reached for a glass of water on the table- and proceeded to slosh water onto herself and Nicola’s shoes in celebration of being able to pick it up.

Grinning because A) it worked and B) it worked immediately, Nicola stumbled half a step back from Jackie to give her space. The newly corporeal Jackie reached out for Nicola’s face, however, and declared her an angel before kissing her.

Nicola’s thoughts were kind of white noise after that, but on the outside her face was the exact opposite of the look of gay mortification Tom had been wearing on and off all day. At some point the potion bowl left her hands and was replaced with a glass of water, which she didn’t notice until some of the water was gently flicked onto her face by her sister. Having snuck up beside her, Molly wore the most shit-eating of grins as she wiped her wet fingers on her skirt. “Earth to Nicola, come in Nicola. Are you still in there?” she said quietly.

“I…” Nicola squeaked.

“Yeah, okay. You need to eat something too, sit down.” Molly steered her sister to the table, made her sit, and dished a plate of food. Once this was set before her, Nicola began to politely but ravenously dig into her dinner.

“Look at it this way,” Molly said, watching Tom, Jackie, and Cathal squabble over the food, “maybe you don’t have magic, but you still broke a faerie king’s dying curse. And all you had to do was get stuck in a tree! I’d say that’s a pretty productive day, wouldn’t you?”

“Hey, Molly?”

“Yeah?”

“Go away,” Nicola said, eyes fixed to her plate as if afraid of what (or who) she’d see if she looked up. But she was smiling, so Molly knew it was in good humor.

“Okay…” Winking at her, Molly floated back over to where she’d been perched during all the excitement. “Just saying. Let yourself have this moment.”

I am, Nicola thought, eating but tasting only Jackie’s lips on hers.