Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was stupid and possessive, but Merilwen was pretty sure that she was allowed stupid and possessive at this point.

They were expecting to see Liliana’s forces in the morning. What they were going to do about that was up in the air, as most of their plans were, but they at least knew what to expect. The usual Clonebert army, some amount of mercenary forces, Liliana at the helm, and Katie Pearlhead as her right-hand man.

Just the thought set Merilwen’s teeth on edge. She dug them deeper into Dob’s neck until he whimpered, leaving behind a bite mark when she let him free. She ran her tongue over the indentations and she could feel it when Dob swallowed.

“Meril,” he whispered and she pulled back to meet his eyes. His cheeks were flushed and his neck was littered with bruises and bites, splotches of emerald and deep basil against his usual green hue. He searched for something on her face and she licked her lower lip, far more focused on the marks she was sucking into his skin. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” she lied, well aware of how unconvincing she was as she raised her hand to frame his neck.

They were tucked away in Merilwen’s corner of the Joyful Damnation, some old storeroom or another that she had commandeered as a bedroom. Considering she didn’t really sleep and kept her possessions light, she kept rotating through nooks and crannies that she found to trance or just hide from people in. Corazón had less-than-subtly offered her more permanent rooms, but it was a little funny whenever he stumbled across her bedding or hammock in some random room he hadn’t thought about in a few weeks. The Joyful Damnation wasn’t an enormous ship, but when you had a crew of five, it was pretty easy to get lost in the underbelly of the ship.

Merilwen had a pile of blankets with a few pillows on the ground at the moment, her hammock strung up over it to keep her personal belongings away from the ground with a lamp flickering on a wooden crate. She was leaning against her pillows, Dob looking enormous as he sat in her lap and loomed over her. If it was anyone else, he might have seemed threatening, but it was hard to be intimidated by his height when his eyes sparkled like that in the lamplight.

“Oh yeah, because it’s so normal for you to shove me down in a bed and cover me in hickies. This is something we do on the regular.” Even around the airy quality of his voice, the sarcasm was dripping. She pressed her thumb into one of the hickies, admiring the subtle flush of heat, and Dob gave a shaky breath. At the lack of response, he prodded, “You sure this isn’t about seeing Katie tomorrow?”

She increased the pressure so that his skin discolored around her thumb, enough for Dob to squirm and start batting at her wrist. She relented, her hand sliding down to catch the collar of his shirt, and she considered ripping it away to start decorating his chest next. Dob’s hand followed hers, wrapping around her wrist, and she met his gaze again.

“I just wanted to see you like this,” Merilwen said, doing her best to dance around the question. Dob gave her an unimpressed look, reminding her as always that she was exceptionally uncharismatic compared to her friends. “What?”

“Merilwen,” he said simply and she crumpled.

He wasn’t wrong. She was being weird, she knew she was going into this. Stupid, possessive, and weird. As much as Dob was hers, they weren’t usually like this. Their unique little bond was formed by soft touches and quiet whispers at night while they shared a bed, not by Merilwen sinking her teeth into Dob’s skin and marking him as hers.

It wasn’t unheard of, not entirely, but they both knew the trend in when and why she got like this. Dob just liked it too much to pry and ruin the moment.

Until now, apparently.

“She needs to know that some people can see value in the things she felt the need to throw away,” Merilwen said. Dob gave her a fond but exasperated look at the intensity creeping into her tone.

“I mean, I’m kind of the one who nuked our relationship.”

“Katie’s not the only one who’s gonna be there,” Merilwen reminded him, her hand sliding up to his neck again. Dob’s face didn’t shift but he leaned into it, just enough for Merilwen to notice. “I wouldn’t want Liliana anywhere near you anyway, but she’s quite stupid for never taking a second look.”

“And Egbert’s gonna be there,” Dob added and Merilwen broke into giggles at that, thrown for a loop. “Actually, so many Egberts are gonna be there.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s missing out on!”

“He really doesn’t, does he?” Merilwen tightened her grip, not enough to constrict his airways but enough to make Dob gasp. “Nah, you’re all mine, aren’t you? At least someone here has good taste.”

“Yeah,” Dob breathed, looking at her a bit like she made the sun rise every morning, and a self-satisfied grin crept across her face. “All yours.”

“Might need a few more bite marks to get the point across to everyone else though,” Merilwen mused, only half-joking, and Dob batted his eyelashes at her.

“Or a handprint.”

She let out a startled laugh. “I am not choking you hard enough to leave a bruise, holy shit, that’s so dangerous.”

Dob groaned and she slid her hand around to the back of his neck, tangling her fingers in the hairs at his nape. “No more dangerous than fighting an army of dragonborn, an evil sorceress, and my ex-fiancée, surely.”

“At least I’m not the one doing it to you.”

“No, you’re just covering me in hickies so that Katie gets mad at me and tries to kill me first.”

As was so frequent for her, Merilwen had no real response to that and opted to kiss him instead. Dob leaned into it, tilting his head to deepen the kiss, and Merilwen scritched her nails against his skin. He melted against her, slipping his arms under hers to wrap around her chest, and she let her lips drift to travel along his jaw. Despite all his prodding, he bared his neck to her so that she could suck another bruise right below his ear. As she nipped at the spot, teasing the delicate skin between her teeth, he dug his fingers into the back of her shirt. She pulled back for a moment and shifted her hands to his shoulders, then flipped them over so that Dob was against the bedding. He blinked up at her with moony eyes, grabbing her face with both hands and tugging her back down to rub their noses together.

“You’re mine,” she whispered, straddling his waist, and he giggled.

“Yeah,” he agreed, utterly smitten. “I know.”

She sat up, resting her hands on his chest, and his hands fell to her waist. He looked up at her as if no one else mattered in the world.

“Good.” She caved to her base instincts and started tugging his shirt off, eyeing up the unmarked skin there. “Let’s get back to making sure everyone else is aware.”