Fic: Kiss it Better [Slow & Steady Series]

[jade_dragoness]

So nearly two hours into day 6 there's more fic. Curse you, DDOS attacks! *shakes tiny fist*

Title: Kiss It Better
Author: J.D. aka jade_dragoness
Series: Slow and Steady, Story #5
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Harry Dresden/John Marcone
Spoilers: None; set pre ‘Changes’
Summary: Harry is hurt and Butters isn’t available to help.
Word Count: 2,300
Disclaimer: Never ever will be mine. *sadness*
A/N: Thank you so much beachkid for the beta. Part of the ‘Slow and Steady’ Series. Feedback is hugely welcomed.
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Sequel to: The Weather Outside is Frightful
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Ouch. Ouch. Freaking bastards. Ouch. Oh, my arm was dripping blood again. Dammit. And ouch.

Those were my thoughts as I slowly limped out of the woods of Wolf Lake Park and into the more cultivated area of Forsynthe Park.

Not for the first time I was fervently glad that I had tattooed protective spells into my leather duster. If I hadn’t, or if i simply hadn’t been wearing it, I’d have been more holey than Swiss cheese right now.

I was pretty upset about being nearly killed, but in all honestly, I was more upset that it had been normal vanilla mortals that had gotten so close to succeeding where monsters of various sorts had failed. Yes, I know. It was arrogant of me. But I honestly hadn’t thought that they’d bring homemade pipe bombs packed with shrapnel to this fight! Up until now, they’d just stuck to guns.

My head ached.

“My lord, there is a payphone close by!”

I blinked at Toot-toot who’d I’d sent to find me the nearest phone. I wondered when he’d gotten back.

“Thanks Toot,” I said when I could focus past the pain, and kept slowly moving forward. I said slurred, “You and the Guard did good tonight. We got those wyldfae away in time.”

Instead of looking proud at the praise, his usual reaction to those words from me, Toot-toot just looked worried.

Stars and stones, did I look that bad? Well, there was nothing I could do about it until I got to that phone and called for Murphy. Or Butters. Wait. Was he still out of town at that polka fest? I couldn’t remember right now.

Ouch. Stupid, vigilante bastards. Ouch, now my head was really throbbing.

“No one got hurt, right?” I asked, as I focused on putting one foot in front of the other. I could feel blood dripping from my left arm. I hoped it wasn’t an injury to my hand. It was banged up enough as it was. “You guys got away in time?”

“Yes, Za-Lord,” said Toot-toot, as he flew in front of me to show me the way to the phone. “Alize and Hawthorne were the only ones in the way of the explosion, and you protected them from the bane.”

I nodded, and instantly regretted that move as my neck protested painfully. I remembered that much. When the pipe bomb had been thrown at me, there’d been a couple of the smaller faeries of the Za-Lord’s Guard standing nearby. I’d barely had time to fling the edges of my duster around them and protect my head when the bomb exploded. I hadn’t had the time to bring up my shield. The concussive force had knocked me out for a minute.

Several other fairy lights join me and Toot-toot as we walked. Soon I was surrounded by a multi-colored cloud of lights as the wyldfae of the woods joined in with fairies that made up the Za-Lord’s Guard.

“Good,” I said slowly. “Can‘t let the little guys get hurt.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Toot.

The lights around me grew closer until I could feel tiny hands touching my face, my lips, and the delicate skin under my eyes. I could feel fairies settle into my hair and couple landed in my ears. They shouted encouragement in their tiny voices for me to keep walking. But I was starting to get woozy, and the fairy lights were becoming more disorienting than helpful.

I’d managed to make it to the dimly lit parking lot when my legs gave out. I sank to my knees. Startled, most of the fairies flew off me. The ones that were Guard members stayed close.

“My lord!” shouted Toot-toot. His alarmed voice was joined by all the smaller voices of the Guard. All that noise made the pain worse.

“Head hurts too much,” I mumbled. “Concussion, I think. Coat can‘t keep out kinetic forces too well. Got to fix that. Bomb was too close.”

Toot-toot flew closer to me until he was right in front of my eyes. I blinked at him.

“Stay here, my lord,” he said firmly. “I will bring help!” With a loud buzz of his dragonfly wings he shot off into the night.

“Okay, go tell ‘em, Lassie. Timmy has fallen down the well again,” I managed, a little too late. Toot-toot was already out of sight.

The wyldfae who I had startled off me came back, lighting down upon me until I was coated with them again. I blinked at them and tried to make my thoughts follow some sort of order. But it was hard. I wished that I could concentrate enough to get the pain under control, but it was like trying to hold smoke. It slipped away from me every time I tried. So instead, I stayed in place like I’d been told and listened to the words of gratitude being spoken against my skin by all the wyldfae of the woods.

It wasn’t often that I fought humans to protect the inhuman. But this had been a situation where some people who’d known about magic, known that there were monsters out in the dark, had decided to fight back. And while I cheered on the idea of people protecting themselves from supernatural dangers, the targets they’d chosen for their attacks had been the weakest of the fae.

Dewdrop faeries, pixies, brownies, wyldfae with barely any power. Wyldfae who were so small they weren’t any kind of threat. Hell, Mister - my cat - was more dangerous than they were. These human vigilantes had declared war on those wyldfae and began killing them. I had to step in. Which is how I’d gotten a bomb in my face for my troubles.

I really shouldn’t have been surprised. I’d already been shot at.

I didn’t know how much time I spent sitting on the asphalt of the parking lot. But it was long enough that the number of fairies around me to have doubled and more of them kept flying out of the sky. They were too many for them to have all come from the park. Some had to have come from the streets of Chicago.

I was so lit up I could have called in ships from the sea. And Chicago was next to a lake, not an ocean.

I don’t know how long I waited. Later, I would be happy that it had been a hot summer night. If it had been winter, I could have frozen to death or at least ended up with a nasty case of frostbite. But however long I sat there, after a while a familiar looking dark sedan turned into the parking lot.

The brightness of the headlights made me wince in pain. At the sight of the car, practically all the fairies flew back into the safety of the trees.

“You should go too,” I told the remaining Guard. They reluctantly flew off, except for two stubborn lights of purple and orange. They were the ones I’d saved from the iron shrapnel, Alize and Hawthrone. Those two remained against my neck as two small spots of warmth and light. They were actually pretty reassuring. Even if they wouldn’t be able to do anything if whoever was in the car wanted to kill me.

The passenger side door opened and Toot-toot quickly flew out towards me. Almost as fast, Marcone came out, a furious look to his green eyes that made me want to cringe. Aw hell.

Of course, Toot-toot had found Marcone. I groaned, and the pain in my head grew stronger. Ouch.

“Dresden, how badly are you injured?” Marcone asked, as he stopped by kneeling down at my side. His assessing glance took in the blood on my hand and the dazed look in my eyes. His eyes narrowed in a way that promised nothing good for whoever had put that expression on his face.

Then I remembered that I was the one responsible. Oops.

“Just a concussion,” I mumbled, my words slurring a little. “Not too bad.”

“Concussion?” he asked sharply. Instantly his hands went to my head, quickly and efficiently checking.

The look on his face when his fingers came back stained with my blood would come back to me later, something to think about. He was so worried, so angry, I found it impossible to tell myself that he was faking those it. It was just too raw. Whatever he felt for me, those emotions were real. For months I’ve known that he wants more from me than a casual acquaintance, and here, suffering from the concussive effects of an explosion with thoughts made of cotton, I found myself actually believing that he wasn’t just playing some game, or wasn’t just trying out another way to control me.

Exactly how hard had my bell been rung?

“Was from a bomb,” I explained, my speech still slow.

Marcone didn’t look any happier at that.

“A pipe bomb,” I clarified. That didn’t help either, Marcone just looked like he was going to kill someone.

When Hendricks appeared next to us, I nearly jumped. I hadn’t seen him get out of the car. “MTBI?” Hendricks asked.

I just blinked at him in confusion.

“Possibly. He has several small cuts in his scalp but no other head injuries. It‘s impossible to be certain how much damage he has without an MRI,” Marcone said.

“No hospitals,” I protested once I realized that they were talking about me. “Could kill people.”

Marcone’s mouth flattened unhappily.

“Dr. Shulman?” asked Hendricks.

“Call him. Tell him to be at his clinic in ten minutes.”

Hendricks nodded and walked away a good twenty feet away from me before he pulled out a cell phone.

I patted Marcone’s thigh awkwardly. It was the closest piece of him that I could reach without moving too much. “I‘m okay.”

“What you are is the most stubborn, stupid, foolish, stupid, suicidal and the stupidest human being I‘ve ever met,” hissed Marcone. If he’d had fur it would have been standing up in pure fury, an angry spitting cat.

“That‘s just mean,” I said after a moment to process his words. “Not suicidal.”

“But you don‘t protest me calling you stupid.”

“Brain is scrambled Swiss cheese,” I said. Oops. Didn’t mean to mention the brain damage.

Marcone just shook his head. He got an arm around my waist and helped me up. Toot-toot, who’d been hovering above me, dipped down to land on my shoulder. Marcone then had to take my complete weight when my knees wobbled.

Toot-toot is heavy for a dewdrop fairy, okay?

I focused on him and made an effort to think straight. “Toot-toot, check the woods for Bozo. Got to know where he and the rest of his clowns went.”

“At once, my lord!”

“But be careful,” I said firmly. “Don‘t get too close. Watch were he goes.”

“Yes, my lord!” said Toot, with a salute. And he buzzed up into the air

He didn’t get too far when Marcone called out to him, “Thank you for finding me, Mr. Toot-toot.”

“Anything for the future consort of the Za-Lord,” Toot called back. The tiny voices of Alize and Hawthorne chimed in with their agreement.

Hey… what? I barely had a chance to sputter out a protest before I was bundled into the sedan.

Inside the car, Marcone stripped me out of my coat. He made low growling noises as the metal shrapnel from the bomb fell out of the creases and onto the floor. He didn’t even blink at the two spots of light that sat on my collarbone. Then he pulled a large orange first aid kit from somewhere and began to efficiently clean the long gash on my left arm.

Huh, so that’s where all the blood had been come from. I didn’t even remember when that had happened. Maybe Marcone had had the right idea about getting a doctor to check me out. I wasn’t usually this woolly-headed.

Hendricks had finished his call at some point and had gotten back in the car. I only noticed when I could felt the engine turn over. The low vibrations made my head throb in sympathy.

I closed my eyes. A moment later, Marcone’s warm hand cupped my cheek. His touch felt so good all I did was turn my head into it.

His surprised inhale made me open my eyes again. He stared at me and said, “I‘m upgrading your concussion from mild to severe.”

I blinked then mentally shrugged. Okay, that was as good an excuse as any.

I leaned forward and kissed him.

I caught him off-guard but he recovered quickly. He shifted his grip on me so he was holding my head just right. The pressure of his mouth against mine became insistent and I parted my lips. I got a soft touch of tongue against my own when Alize and Hawthrone started cheering us on in squeaky, happy voices.

It was enough to get me to pull back. The movement made me wince in pain and I could see Marcone visibly restraining himself from following after me when he saw me flinch.

The fairies made disappointed noises. Marcone and I ignored them.

“A very severe concussion,” whispered Marcone. His eyes were dark, hungry and such an intense shade of green. His mouth was wet. It gleamed enticingly.

“Yeah,” I said softly. Marcone’s eyes flickered and the corners of that intriguing mouth slipped down. I had to add, “Talk to me again when I can think straight.”

Marcone’s mouth slowly widened into wicked smile. “Or preferably not, as the case may be.”

It took me until we were pulling into the clinic to get Marcone’s joke. Then I groaned, for once in that night, not from physical pain.

End

Next in the series: First Dates Are Always the Worst if Your Name is Harry Dresden

a/n: Harry and his faeries always makes me grin!