[Puck/Meghan Chase] - [Iron Fey] - [The Rogue's Fever]
Title: The Rogue's Fever
Fandom: Iron Fey
Character/Pairing: Puck/Meghan Chase
Prompt List: Wanderlust
Prompt: Tintagel
Rating: PG13 (swears)
Word Count: 2501
Author's Notes: Very much a first draft still; it got eaten halfway through writing it and tI had to rewrite parts of it. Dx
Summary: Puck, Ash, and Meghan make it to a castle to take shelter. But something goes a little wrong...
Chillsorrow Manor was a maze of passageways where cold seeped through the nearly-dead trees and frozen stones of the castle walls like a vice, like something living on its own. The little group had arrived to find the place deserted, though it wasn't until Ash and Puck had completed a thorough search of the inside that anyone relaxed. Sometimes Grimalkin would blink out of existence for minutes at a time, and Meghan was left with nothing to do but wait in the drawing room of the cold castle, her breath rising in wisps of hot, smoky air.
Eventually the cat had said that he would be gone for the remainder of the night, as something else demanded his attention.
"That can't be a good thing." Ash muttered, coming back from his inspection of the remaining rooms of the upstairs just as Puck resurfaced from the basement.
"You never realize how big basements are from the outside." Puck grinned, poking his red head of hair up through a door leading into the cellars. "For instance, I never would have guessed that a stoic, upstanding family of Winter sidhe would have these," here he held out a bowl, "just lingering in their stores, waiting to be eaten."
Meghan glanced into the bowl warily, too many times the victim of one of Robbie's jokes at school to look at anything he held without some caution. But these things didn't look too bad, not like they could hurt anyone. They just seemed like pea pods, except that they were colored a red-purple and flecked with hints of orange, almost giving them a fruity tint.
"Summerpod." Ash commented dryly, inspecting the contents of the bowl. "And you mean to eat it?"
"Well, duh, ice boy." Puck rolled his eyes. "It's a delicacy. A Seelie delicacy, too, I might add, but I guess someone," he raised an eyebrow significantly at Ash and winked at Meghan, "had to bring it over here. Anyway, after nearly getting roasted alive by a very angry Iron faery, I think I'm ready for a treat."
He grinned and popped one of the pods into his mouth. "What about you, princess? Feeling adventurous?"
Meghan took one of the pods cautiously. Nothing bad seemed to be happening to Puck, and she was already kinda intrigued. She'd been majorly freaked out by this castle at first; the cold seemed to seep into her body, even though she wore layers and layers of clothing to guard against it and even though Puck had enticed some of the fallen logs in the hearth to catch fire, the warmth barely made its way to her skin.
"What does it do?" She asked, a little suspicious. "I thought you told me not to eat things given to me by faeries."
Puck stuck his tongue out. "Aww hey, it's not like I'm going to give you something that'll hurt you, princess. Oberon would have my head. Well, technically, he'd kill me for letting you go this far into Tir Na Nog and then he'd have my head, but details." He took a breath. "All that this will do is keep you a little warmer than you are now."
He winked.
Meghan should have known enough about Puck, enough about him as Robbie to know that when he winked something dangerous and probably regrettable was going to happen, but she was cold enough that she decided to chance it.
Without giving herself a chance for a second thought, she tossed the pod into her mouth and bit down.
At first, she didn't taste anything, just felt the warm ooze of the liquid inside the pod spilling out. She noticed that Ash was watching her with guarded eyes, as though he were wary of her now. Meghan was going to ask what his problem was when the taste of the summerpod sank in.
It was like a thousand feasts erupted in her mouth at once, so fruity and intoxicating that she couldn't help but laugh at how amazing it felt. Her tongue was almost on fire with all the different sensations and she giggled as the flavors changed from sweet to tangy to salty as the pod's juices spread across her tongue.
When the laughter at last subsided, Meghan was oddly disappointed. She felt pleasantly warm, as Puck had promised but her mouth felt empty, like it was lacking something, like it knew that it was not going to experience a whirlwind of different flavors like that again for a while. Almost reflexively, her eyes strayed to the bowl of summerpods that Puck still held.
"You see?" Puck stuck his tongue out at the Winter prince. "At least one of us knows how to have a good time. Besides, I think we have earned this, a good night's sleep, and more."
"More?" Ash whispered. "What do you mean?"
Meghan bit her lip. More sounded like a good idea. A very good idea, actually.
"Well," Puck stretched. "Think about it. We just defeated an Iron faery. I almost got burnt to crispy little cinders and we've been on the run from the Summer Court to the equally dangerous, if not more smelly, Winter Court. It's time for a little relaxation, ice boy, so try not to spoil our fun."
Ash arched a brow. "This is fun?"
"Have you forgotten how fun works?" Puck chided. "Look, Meghan's got the right idea."
As if on cue, Meghan laughed. And then laughed. And laughed.
"Somehow, I don't think that that's what you meant." Ash muttered as Puck's eyebrows knit into an expression of concern.
"Damn. Princess, are you okay?"
Meghan had had another summerpod, and then another, and one agfter that for good measure. She couldn't remember if there were more after that or not, but what she did know was that she felt as though her mouth had disconnected from the rest of her body, like the laughing sound were something different, something that wasn't a part of her even though she could still feel her mouth moving to make the words. It was like everything was being blotted out by the noise; she knew that Ash and Puck were talking, but the words that they said were impossible to make out.
"How many did you let her have?" Ash shot at Puck, his eyes dark and calculating.
"I don't know! A couple?" Puck had his hands on Meghan's shoulders, trying to steady her. "Can you hear me, princess? Hey! Come on, Meg."
The winter prince sighed. "One would have been enough. She's only human, Goodfellow."
"She's Oberon's daughter. That makes her fey. Oh damn!" Puck had to think fast to catch Meghan before she hit the floor; as it was, his hands wrapped around hr waist, trying to pull her up to a standing position, but her feet would not find purchase beneath her. Still, she kept laughing and laughing, as though her incapacitation was all a big joke.
"You don't even remember how much these affect humans, do you?" Ash asked him calmly, despite the fact that Puck still held a girl being wracked by giggles. "You've been in the human world so long."
Meghan felt herself panicking, felt that she was going to lose it soon, verge over from happiness into hysteria. Her eyes grew wide as the height of the emotion grew nearer and tears pricked at her eyes. All she knew was that someone was holding her strangely, that gravity bore down on her at all the wrong angles, and then she was asleep.
Puck held her close until at last her breathing settled into something more like its normal tempo.
Ash, though, was fixing him with a knowing look.
"Don't. Just don't say it, okay?" Puck seethed, still cradling his princess. "And help me get her somewhere she can sleep this off."
-o-
Fever and waking dream were nothing new to him.
Puck paced through the manor like a wisp of smoke, trying to find a window to climb his way out of. He wasn't sure where he was going, wasn't sure if he wanted to be anywhere. The summerpod still sang through his veins a little bit, making him want to fight and launch himself of rooftops at the same time, but it was tempered by something deeper.
He ran a hand over his dagger hand, over the flesh that was still slightly shiny, one of the spots where Ironhorse's fire had burnt into him. His right foot hurt to walk on still, though he'd done a good job of hiding it around Ash (he didn't want his enemy knowing his weak points, after all), and everywhere he just ached. Being caged and then having three fights all in quick succession was starting to wear him out. If he weren't more or less immortal already, he would have started to think that he was getting old.
Still, the fever licked at him, burnt along the insides of his bones. He'd never felt iron like that before, up that close, and it made him shiver. Something was definitely wrong in the Nevernever and if he'd had his chocie, as thought as he looked out one of the upper windows and onto the frozen gardens below, he would never have walked Meghan into this.
But, as it stood, things were probably only going to get a lot worse.
-o-
"For what it's worth," he worried his bottom lip, his voice soft, "I'm sorry."
Meghan's forehead burnt, and Puck wondered if the summerpod was making her dream in overdrive, making her brain run so fast that it was making her whole body overheat. He gently pressed towels to her wrists, ushered the chill breeze coming from a crack in one of the walls to try and cool her down. Her face was by turns slack and contorted in pain; and while he tried to remain removed from the situation, impartial and able to take care of her, respond coolly, he was finding it more and more difficult to pull off.
Because the fact was, if he'd just been a little more careful about watching her, she wouldn't be like this. Meghan wouldn't be stuck in a bed, sweating and shivering depending on what temperature ran out, and she wouldn't be wincing in her sleep like she was in pain.
He hadn't even noticed when Ash came in.
The winter prince sat in a chair on the other side of the bed, checking Meghan's forehead for her temperature. "You treat her too much like you."
Puck started, shocked for a moment but then his face settling into a familiar mocking expression. "Excuse me, your royal iciness, but I wasn't asking for your evaluation of me as her guardian."
"If you had, my statement would have been a lot less kind." Ash responded coolly. "I mean, you still don't realize how very different she is from you, from all of us."
"She has faery blood." Puck repeated. "Yeah, she's human a little bit but-"
"Goodfellow." Ash met his eyes. "She is much more human than you think."
-o-
He fell asleep on her night table, pondering.
It wasn't like there weren't enough rooms in Chillsorrow Manor to accomodate all of them; the place was built so that even if Mab and the whole Winter Court chose to come down for a party they could do so without worrying about having enough rooms for all of their guests. The long corridors were lined with rooms, each of them furnished in icy finery.
Meghan's chest rose and fell underneath the covers, lifting the blanket up and down in an even, rhythmic motion. Puck watched the blankets shift, waiting for some sign of consciousness but got none. He was supposed to have woken Ash to take over a few hours ago, he realized, but he wasn't quite ready to leave yet.
Questions burned at him as though each one were a fever, like he were caught in a mess of trees that tore at him as he tried to plod through.
Were they really so different after all?
After sixteen years of having her as his closest companion (and at times compatriot) alone in a land without magic, Puck hadn't realized how much he had assumed that he and Meghan were alike. Well, obviously not completely alike; he understood that she still had some limitations and didn't possess the same kind of power as he did, a faery that had been around for hundreds of years.
And so what if he thought of her more like him rather than a human? She was fey, partly, and they weren't all that different. He'd had a hard time adjusting to the power of the Nevernever after his extended stay in the mortal realm, and he knew it hadn't been a cakewalk for Meghan either. They were alike, he knew that.
But, he sighed as he reached forward to stroke her cheek, still too hot, he couldn't deny that he had overestimated it a little bit. They were the same in some ways, both at odds with the courts, both magical beings too long in the mortal world, both acting too human for their own good. But the difference was still there, at times seeming insurmountable.
Why did he keep trying? The question cut into him like a blade of fame and he rested his head back into the crook of his arm on the table.
A part of him didn't know, wondered why he didn't just give up. He had stories written about him after all; it wasn't as though he could just give all that up and rush off to be with some half-fey girl. It would be too reckless. But then the other part of him spoke up, the part that reveled in fever, and reminded him that he was Puck and that it would be difficult for him not to be reckless.
-o-
Sometime around dawn, Meghan Chase at last woke up, yawning and feeling sore all over, as if she'd just run a marathon. But what surprised her most wasn't her body's incredible weakness, but that on her bedside table was the still-sleeping form of her best friend, a very tired Puck.
Fandom: Iron Fey
Character/Pairing: Puck/Meghan Chase
Prompt List: Wanderlust
Prompt: Tintagel
Rating: PG13 (swears)
Word Count: 2501
Author's Notes: Very much a first draft still; it got eaten halfway through writing it and tI had to rewrite parts of it. Dx
Summary: Puck, Ash, and Meghan make it to a castle to take shelter. But something goes a little wrong...
Chillsorrow Manor was a maze of passageways where cold seeped through the nearly-dead trees and frozen stones of the castle walls like a vice, like something living on its own. The little group had arrived to find the place deserted, though it wasn't until Ash and Puck had completed a thorough search of the inside that anyone relaxed. Sometimes Grimalkin would blink out of existence for minutes at a time, and Meghan was left with nothing to do but wait in the drawing room of the cold castle, her breath rising in wisps of hot, smoky air.
Eventually the cat had said that he would be gone for the remainder of the night, as something else demanded his attention.
"That can't be a good thing." Ash muttered, coming back from his inspection of the remaining rooms of the upstairs just as Puck resurfaced from the basement.
"You never realize how big basements are from the outside." Puck grinned, poking his red head of hair up through a door leading into the cellars. "For instance, I never would have guessed that a stoic, upstanding family of Winter sidhe would have these," here he held out a bowl, "just lingering in their stores, waiting to be eaten."
Meghan glanced into the bowl warily, too many times the victim of one of Robbie's jokes at school to look at anything he held without some caution. But these things didn't look too bad, not like they could hurt anyone. They just seemed like pea pods, except that they were colored a red-purple and flecked with hints of orange, almost giving them a fruity tint.
"Summerpod." Ash commented dryly, inspecting the contents of the bowl. "And you mean to eat it?"
"Well, duh, ice boy." Puck rolled his eyes. "It's a delicacy. A Seelie delicacy, too, I might add, but I guess someone," he raised an eyebrow significantly at Ash and winked at Meghan, "had to bring it over here. Anyway, after nearly getting roasted alive by a very angry Iron faery, I think I'm ready for a treat."
He grinned and popped one of the pods into his mouth. "What about you, princess? Feeling adventurous?"
Meghan took one of the pods cautiously. Nothing bad seemed to be happening to Puck, and she was already kinda intrigued. She'd been majorly freaked out by this castle at first; the cold seemed to seep into her body, even though she wore layers and layers of clothing to guard against it and even though Puck had enticed some of the fallen logs in the hearth to catch fire, the warmth barely made its way to her skin.
"What does it do?" She asked, a little suspicious. "I thought you told me not to eat things given to me by faeries."
Puck stuck his tongue out. "Aww hey, it's not like I'm going to give you something that'll hurt you, princess. Oberon would have my head. Well, technically, he'd kill me for letting you go this far into Tir Na Nog and then he'd have my head, but details." He took a breath. "All that this will do is keep you a little warmer than you are now."
He winked.
Meghan should have known enough about Puck, enough about him as Robbie to know that when he winked something dangerous and probably regrettable was going to happen, but she was cold enough that she decided to chance it.
Without giving herself a chance for a second thought, she tossed the pod into her mouth and bit down.
At first, she didn't taste anything, just felt the warm ooze of the liquid inside the pod spilling out. She noticed that Ash was watching her with guarded eyes, as though he were wary of her now. Meghan was going to ask what his problem was when the taste of the summerpod sank in.
It was like a thousand feasts erupted in her mouth at once, so fruity and intoxicating that she couldn't help but laugh at how amazing it felt. Her tongue was almost on fire with all the different sensations and she giggled as the flavors changed from sweet to tangy to salty as the pod's juices spread across her tongue.
When the laughter at last subsided, Meghan was oddly disappointed. She felt pleasantly warm, as Puck had promised but her mouth felt empty, like it was lacking something, like it knew that it was not going to experience a whirlwind of different flavors like that again for a while. Almost reflexively, her eyes strayed to the bowl of summerpods that Puck still held.
"You see?" Puck stuck his tongue out at the Winter prince. "At least one of us knows how to have a good time. Besides, I think we have earned this, a good night's sleep, and more."
"More?" Ash whispered. "What do you mean?"
Meghan bit her lip. More sounded like a good idea. A very good idea, actually.
"Well," Puck stretched. "Think about it. We just defeated an Iron faery. I almost got burnt to crispy little cinders and we've been on the run from the Summer Court to the equally dangerous, if not more smelly, Winter Court. It's time for a little relaxation, ice boy, so try not to spoil our fun."
Ash arched a brow. "This is fun?"
"Have you forgotten how fun works?" Puck chided. "Look, Meghan's got the right idea."
As if on cue, Meghan laughed. And then laughed. And laughed.
"Somehow, I don't think that that's what you meant." Ash muttered as Puck's eyebrows knit into an expression of concern.
"Damn. Princess, are you okay?"
Meghan had had another summerpod, and then another, and one agfter that for good measure. She couldn't remember if there were more after that or not, but what she did know was that she felt as though her mouth had disconnected from the rest of her body, like the laughing sound were something different, something that wasn't a part of her even though she could still feel her mouth moving to make the words. It was like everything was being blotted out by the noise; she knew that Ash and Puck were talking, but the words that they said were impossible to make out.
"How many did you let her have?" Ash shot at Puck, his eyes dark and calculating.
"I don't know! A couple?" Puck had his hands on Meghan's shoulders, trying to steady her. "Can you hear me, princess? Hey! Come on, Meg."
The winter prince sighed. "One would have been enough. She's only human, Goodfellow."
"She's Oberon's daughter. That makes her fey. Oh damn!" Puck had to think fast to catch Meghan before she hit the floor; as it was, his hands wrapped around hr waist, trying to pull her up to a standing position, but her feet would not find purchase beneath her. Still, she kept laughing and laughing, as though her incapacitation was all a big joke.
"You don't even remember how much these affect humans, do you?" Ash asked him calmly, despite the fact that Puck still held a girl being wracked by giggles. "You've been in the human world so long."
Meghan felt herself panicking, felt that she was going to lose it soon, verge over from happiness into hysteria. Her eyes grew wide as the height of the emotion grew nearer and tears pricked at her eyes. All she knew was that someone was holding her strangely, that gravity bore down on her at all the wrong angles, and then she was asleep.
Puck held her close until at last her breathing settled into something more like its normal tempo.
Ash, though, was fixing him with a knowing look.
"Don't. Just don't say it, okay?" Puck seethed, still cradling his princess. "And help me get her somewhere she can sleep this off."
-o-
Fever and waking dream were nothing new to him.
Puck paced through the manor like a wisp of smoke, trying to find a window to climb his way out of. He wasn't sure where he was going, wasn't sure if he wanted to be anywhere. The summerpod still sang through his veins a little bit, making him want to fight and launch himself of rooftops at the same time, but it was tempered by something deeper.
He ran a hand over his dagger hand, over the flesh that was still slightly shiny, one of the spots where Ironhorse's fire had burnt into him. His right foot hurt to walk on still, though he'd done a good job of hiding it around Ash (he didn't want his enemy knowing his weak points, after all), and everywhere he just ached. Being caged and then having three fights all in quick succession was starting to wear him out. If he weren't more or less immortal already, he would have started to think that he was getting old.
Still, the fever licked at him, burnt along the insides of his bones. He'd never felt iron like that before, up that close, and it made him shiver. Something was definitely wrong in the Nevernever and if he'd had his chocie, as thought as he looked out one of the upper windows and onto the frozen gardens below, he would never have walked Meghan into this.
But, as it stood, things were probably only going to get a lot worse.
-o-
"For what it's worth," he worried his bottom lip, his voice soft, "I'm sorry."
Meghan's forehead burnt, and Puck wondered if the summerpod was making her dream in overdrive, making her brain run so fast that it was making her whole body overheat. He gently pressed towels to her wrists, ushered the chill breeze coming from a crack in one of the walls to try and cool her down. Her face was by turns slack and contorted in pain; and while he tried to remain removed from the situation, impartial and able to take care of her, respond coolly, he was finding it more and more difficult to pull off.
Because the fact was, if he'd just been a little more careful about watching her, she wouldn't be like this. Meghan wouldn't be stuck in a bed, sweating and shivering depending on what temperature ran out, and she wouldn't be wincing in her sleep like she was in pain.
He hadn't even noticed when Ash came in.
The winter prince sat in a chair on the other side of the bed, checking Meghan's forehead for her temperature. "You treat her too much like you."
Puck started, shocked for a moment but then his face settling into a familiar mocking expression. "Excuse me, your royal iciness, but I wasn't asking for your evaluation of me as her guardian."
"If you had, my statement would have been a lot less kind." Ash responded coolly. "I mean, you still don't realize how very different she is from you, from all of us."
"She has faery blood." Puck repeated. "Yeah, she's human a little bit but-"
"Goodfellow." Ash met his eyes. "She is much more human than you think."
-o-
He fell asleep on her night table, pondering.
It wasn't like there weren't enough rooms in Chillsorrow Manor to accomodate all of them; the place was built so that even if Mab and the whole Winter Court chose to come down for a party they could do so without worrying about having enough rooms for all of their guests. The long corridors were lined with rooms, each of them furnished in icy finery.
Meghan's chest rose and fell underneath the covers, lifting the blanket up and down in an even, rhythmic motion. Puck watched the blankets shift, waiting for some sign of consciousness but got none. He was supposed to have woken Ash to take over a few hours ago, he realized, but he wasn't quite ready to leave yet.
Questions burned at him as though each one were a fever, like he were caught in a mess of trees that tore at him as he tried to plod through.
Were they really so different after all?
After sixteen years of having her as his closest companion (and at times compatriot) alone in a land without magic, Puck hadn't realized how much he had assumed that he and Meghan were alike. Well, obviously not completely alike; he understood that she still had some limitations and didn't possess the same kind of power as he did, a faery that had been around for hundreds of years.
And so what if he thought of her more like him rather than a human? She was fey, partly, and they weren't all that different. He'd had a hard time adjusting to the power of the Nevernever after his extended stay in the mortal realm, and he knew it hadn't been a cakewalk for Meghan either. They were alike, he knew that.
But, he sighed as he reached forward to stroke her cheek, still too hot, he couldn't deny that he had overestimated it a little bit. They were the same in some ways, both at odds with the courts, both magical beings too long in the mortal world, both acting too human for their own good. But the difference was still there, at times seeming insurmountable.
Why did he keep trying? The question cut into him like a blade of fame and he rested his head back into the crook of his arm on the table.
A part of him didn't know, wondered why he didn't just give up. He had stories written about him after all; it wasn't as though he could just give all that up and rush off to be with some half-fey girl. It would be too reckless. But then the other part of him spoke up, the part that reveled in fever, and reminded him that he was Puck and that it would be difficult for him not to be reckless.
-o-
Sometime around dawn, Meghan Chase at last woke up, yawning and feeling sore all over, as if she'd just run a marathon. But what surprised her most wasn't her body's incredible weakness, but that on her bedside table was the still-sleeping form of her best friend, a very tired Puck.