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Language:
English
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Published:
2021-04-17
Updated:
2023-08-26
Words:
52,965
Chapters:
21/?
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609
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dragonfly year

Summary:

"Caduceus walks as quickly as he can back home, and he thinks about flatmates who are at once too much and not enough. He thinks about arms, wrapped tight around his back, and about himself, a bedroom ghost, sitting in a room that’s not entirely his, and won’t ever be."

𓆱

In which Caduceus has started a textiles course, because he needed to get out of a house he hadn't left in years. Because.. he's not sure. He's trying to figure it out. It's a lot though, and friends are hard to come by.
Things change, though, when he meets Beauregard at the library and she offers him a room at the housing co-op she and her friends are setting up. There's connection there, but still... it's a lot. And, still, he's not sure what he's doing away from home at all.

Notes:

Hope you enjoy ^_^
now that its been a bit, here's some things.
fic pinterest board: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/coniferouskiddo/dragonfly-year-/
playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1DwUrBj3Us7Tz2Ipm5GvSY?si=fcd95b6a4e314795
art tag n things for it: https://c-kiddo.tumblr.com/tagged/dragonfly%20year

 

Also im basing the uni in this on scottish universities/art colleges, so i am sorry americans.. it is different from how your colleges/unis work.. i still dont understand them despite trying :')

 

---

also Please Note: if you dont respect that caduceus is aroace/erase that he is, this fic is not for you. go away please !!

Chapter 1: Long Morning and Too-Short Shower

Chapter Text

It’s the light beneath the curtain that stirs him, the dawn chorus that wakes him. Birdsong, morning and a stressful dream, already forgotten by the time he gets around to thinking about it. All that lingers is a faint feeling of wrongness. He just breathes for a while, blinking at the curtains.

It’s alright, Ma’s voice says.

Caduceus rolls over in bed, onto his back, and rubs at his tired eyes. As usual, at least one part of his body hurts — being folded up in a slightly too small bed doesn’t do much good for already sore joints. Today his shoulder pops loudly as he moves and he freezes, waits for hot, hot pain. None comes, though… Good. That’s good.

He reaches his phone after a moment, finds it set on the windowsill, and clicks the screen on — three texts from Belle. 

 

01:11

i howled at the moon

 

01:11

its so big and im in the front garden right now with the moths

 

01:14

next time u are home howl at the moon with me !!

 

 

He smiles, warm beneath his ribs, and replies:

 

05:52

Of course I will :-)

 

 

Caduceus sets his phone down and sighs, exhales a whistle-y breath at the white ceiling. 

Today he’s going to take a proper shower, wash his hair (a little itchy) and everything. It’s really about time… and perhaps a little overdue. He’s starting to get a little funky-smelling. 

Showers take a lot of effort is the thing. Lots of energy and time to get dried off. It’s worth it, though, to be all silky and smell faintly of sandalwood glycerin soap. 

Tea comes first though. 

So, slowly he gets out of bed, in a way that feels a lot more like a series of steps instead of one smooth motion. But eventually he’s up and setting the kettle to reheat the water inside, searching for a nice green tea in the semidarkness. (Good for a slow waking-up.)

He makes his bed and rolls out his yoga mat. Leaves the tea to steep and drinks it as he sits in half-lotus, tail tucked around his knees. 

 

(Full-lotus is a little risky these days, even if he technically can do it. Better to be safe than sorry. Better be safe than… ending up in A&E.)

(Like when he’d partially dislocated his hip not long after moving in, and his flatmates hadn’t been too pleased about trying to pop his hip back into place when he couldn’t manage it alone. It worked but… that was a lot. That was… really embarrassing.)

 

He shakes his head to get rid of the thought. 

Focus on the earthiness of the tea, he reminds himself, on the wholeness of a cup cradled between palms, on the floor rising to meet him.

Ground… Ground… Ground.

Maybe he’ll just do a quick sequence, a gentle sun salutation. His spine makes a noise like a xylophone as he stands — pretty impressive. He laughs to himself, stretches.

 

—

 

The bathroom is cramped and cluttered with bottles and towels and toilet-roll tubes that haven’t been thrown in the recycling yet. He’d put a plant (lavender) on the windowsill once, but it was quickly knocked over so now it lives in his room, in it’s glued-together pot.

The shower isn’t tall enough. That’s fine, Caduceus supposes, eyeing at it again as he scrubs suds into his hair. At least it works. Even if he has to stoop low to properly rinse his hair. 

Sometimes he just sits down in the stall and feels like a sardine in a tin, sort of.

 

He’s humming and swaying and scrubbing behind his ears when there’s a horrible banging on the door. Caduceus startles, nearly losing his balance, catching himself against the tile. He doesn’t fall, thank the gods — that’d be… that would be really not good at all.

He stops the water and stands in the cold, fur dripping. “Yeah?” he calls.

“It’s six in the fucking morning,” a tired voice grumbles.

“Uh… I’m sorry,” Caduceus replies. He’s still all sudsy. “I’ll be done soon.”

There’s a sigh, footsteps and the slam of a door, further away. Caduceus waits a moment before huffing in annoyance and turning the water back on.

Oh dear.

He’s been testing their patience — not on purpose. Still, he is. He notices it in the sudden quiet, hears it in the sighs when he’s cooking and standing in the way of the cabinets. He’s not sure exactly why, or what he did to make it like that. 

Maybe he’ll offer to make dinner later. Or cinnamon biscuits, to try make it better. Maybe. 

Maybe they just aren’t getting enough sleep, with all the late-night drinking in the living-room. Maybe if he could remember their names…

Morgan is the one with brown skin and grey eyes, maybe. Jay is the half-orc… or… the half-elf with ginger hair dyed brown. Uh… then what is— 

His throats all tight. He scrubs his face until it isn’t.

 

—

 

Afterwards Caduceus sits in his room and listens to a talkative family of sparrows in the trees by the window. His fur’s still slightly damp in places so he waits on the edge of the bed, dressed in shorts and wrapped in a blanket, waits for water to boil for his porridge. 

Because he doesn’t want to be too loud he doesn’t use his hairdryer. Instead he drapes his towel around his shoulders and lets his hair drip and drip and drip.

He pours water over rolled oats and lets them sit, cooling as they do. 

While he waits he hums, the same tune over and over, and tries on a soft bralette, sewn by hand. It’s got barely any structure, just elastic around the ribs, which is good, is comfortable. The sage-green cotton is a little damp from touching his wet hair but he leaves it on because outside looks cold through the frosted window — sky wide open, mist still rising as the sun wakes up. 

Better to dress in layers. 

So he pulls on a white-ish t-shirt with long sleeves and two buttons down the front, and tucks it into his good loose trousers, the colour of pine needles. And then he’s forgotten his knee braces and leggings and socks so he has to take them off again. 

Maybe just focus on making breakfast… Yeah.

Caduceus eats his porridge with a wooden spoon, carved by Calliope, taught by Pa. He stirs in peanut butter and berries, cold after spending the night by the window, cracked open slightly. (Really nice.) He drinks more tea, reuses the teabag. 

He gets dressed, in the right order this time. And then it’s still only 07:22. No class for a while. And, now that he thinks about it, maybe it was a little early for breakfast. He was on autopilot though, meditating and showering and making tea and not checking the time, and everything. 

Now he’s not sure what to do.

 

—

 

8:30 comes quicker than Caduceus had expected. He’s sitting on the floor, adding another section of embroidery to his dragonfly silk when his alarm goes off — strange repetitive chimes, not-real sounding. 

He gets up with a groan, knees clicking and cracking. Not pleased… 

He folds the silk, sets it on the bed and runs his fingers along the messy embroidered lines, like veins, roots or rivers. 

“Alright,” he says to himself. “Time to go.” 

He picks up his bag, then the other —a canvas tote that sits on his shoulder, covered with painted bugs thanks to Clarabelle— that holds his sketchbook, and heads out.

He waves polite good-mornings to his flatmates as he goes. They wave back half-heartedly.

That’s okay.