Archive of Our Own ^beta

Bodies pulse and writhe even at rest, twitch with ambitions of somnambulism that they cannot grasp. They slump in balance between resistance and obedience, able to be moved only with complaints from forces beyond its will. Micolash felt this with Edgar’s slouching mindlessly on his own, drugged and drooling. T’was for his own good, the sedative syringed under his tongue, Micolash whistled when he slotted the needle between the gap of Edgar’s front bottom teeth. Only he foretold when these beasties would prowl out, nightmare-things unlike the beasts the Hunters chase, instead they prance in limping circlets with viscera filigree and ocular gems, but these gems see not. Rather, they hear, pressing ears to each grain of dirt on the masonry and its grout, soft earth below retching up pulses and words spoken. Edgar would ignore the warning sirens.

So Micolash hid them in a cave of blanket and down stretched on a shattered table, debris and rubble hastily swept ‘neath a bookshelf or lectern or something else and  listened to their hearts go, one much faster than the other. Edgar, for a man of a plain build, weighed more than Micolash expected, pulling on robes and smearing them with drool. Micolash could hear that the creatures were afar, so he sat Edgar up, propping him to sit straddling him with back against the cold stone wall for support. He knew they were rooms away. He knew he could detangle the web of laces and buttons at the front of Edgar’s trousers in silence, touch him without worry - no slickness dripped to squeak against a loose grip, a trace. The Mensis robes, luckily without belt buckle, had nothing to scrape against tile with falling fabric, only cotton and a touch of silk scratching.

Without even spit hastily dripped, no sound loud enough came from Micolash taking them together in one hand, the other clamped over his mouth. Good thing, for the beasts had come between breaths, unable to smell salt nor feel rising heat. But they dragged their ears on the ground, listening for that little whine — if Micolash cannot hold it. Greedy boy, he calls himself in his mind, he hasn’t enough time to play with Edgar and keep the beasties away. He holds his breath.