Who: Caius and Reagan Where: Home in Black Cove When: Evening, Tuesday November 28 Status: Complete
It had only been a couple of days with Caius back home, but Reagan had been doing her best to give him space as not to overwhelm him and make him regret his decision. The shop had been busy with holiday shoppers since Thanksgiving, so that had certainly helped. Reagan was working longer hours, as was Caius, so they weren’t on top of each other at home. It made the last two evenings a bit nicer, being able to have dinner together and talk and go through Brianna McCarthy’s grimoire. She had taken the book to her mother’s after work today, dodging questions about how it had come into their possession. After she’d left her parents home, Reagan stopped at the market and then drove home.
Caius wasn’t there when she pulled into the driveway, but Reagan figured he was still at work so she didn’t think much of it. Instead, she changed into a comfortable pair of yoga pants and a sweater and got started on dinner. With a glass of wine by her side, she began to chop the mushrooms and onions for the garlic pork chops she had marinating. It was nice to be able to cook for two again. Nice to be able to climb into bed with him at the end of the day. Reagan was still determined to find those missing grimoire pages, but having Caius back home made their situation a bit more bearable.
Reagan had just poured some more wine into her glass when she heard Caius’s car out front. Without giving it much thought, she pulled another glass from the cabinet and filled it for him, aware that he might need it after spending another day working for his father.
Caius had wanted a drink when he’d walked into the Back Porch, and he’d ended up with some fascinating information, but no alcohol. He thought briefly about stopping somewhere else just to pick up a bottle to bring home, but talked himself out of it. Since he’d been living with Reagan, he’d made an effort to cut back on his drinking anyway. He needed to focus, to fix the problem, not keep drowning his sorrows in liquor. So he went home. Which did indeed feel more like ‘home’ than his own house. It was a strange feeling since Reagan’s house was so technically unfamiliar, but he thought it had a lot to do with having her company.
The smell of food cooking when he walked inside didn’t hurt either, and Caius breathed deep as he locked the door behind himself. He headed for the kitchen after hanging up his coat and dropping his bag and shoes near the door. He had burning questions about what had happened between them and Caden Lucas, but that unpleasantness could wait for a few minutes at least. “Hello,” he greeted as he approached Reagan. It still felt a little awkward to do, but he put his hand on her waist and leaned in to kiss her cheek.
Reagan knew Caius well enough to recognize that the greeting was a bit stilted, but he was trying, so Reagan didn't put much thought into it. "Hi," she said, giving him a small smile before picking up his wine to offer it to him. "For you, if you want it. Or need it. I got home later than I planned, but dinner shouldn't take too long." She wanted to talk to him about the grimoire, but Reagan didn't want to bombard him with that topic as soon as he walked through the door. "How was work today?" Reagan knew this time of year was incredibly busy for Caius, given Anthony's company controlled practically everything in town. It was only going to get worse through Christmas.
Caius let out a small huff and a murmured ‘thanks’ as he took the wine. Leave it to his semi-stranger-wife to know what he needed even before he walked through the door. Taking a big swallow to start out with, Caius moved around to settle onto one of the stools on the other side of the counter. He pulled his tie off and started unbuttoning his outer shirt. He didn’t want to rush into badness either, but now that Reagan was in front of him, he couldn’t stop picturing that raging asshole hitting her. “Work was busy, fairly stressful,” he answered, watching her face. “So I stopped by a bar for a quick drink and had an interesting encounter ... I’m hoping you’ll enlighten me. One of the Lucas brothers assaulted you?” The last part came out a bit incredulous, and Caius’s brow furrowed. He couldn’t not believe it, it just didn’t fit with what he knew of Reagan so far.
That took Reagan a little by surprise and it probably showed on her face before her expression smoothed out into calm indifference. She probably should have told Caius about that entire encounter, just in case he ran into Caden Lucas, but it had simply slipped her mind, replaced by more important things for her to worry about. And Caden hadn't bothered her since. As far as she and Gavin Lucas were concerned, it was over and done with. "I suppose that's what happened," Reagan said. She turned to pour some olive oil into the pan on the stove, needing something to do with her hands while she spoke. "The Back Porch doesn't really seem like your kind of bar, so I didn't think to tell you about it. I'm sorry." She glanced at Caius as she scooped up the onions and mushrooms to place in the pan. "I performed a spell for the Lucases. Caden didn't like the outcome, so he came here, took me by surprise and knocked me around a bit. And then you came home. I imagine he showed you what you did?"
Reagan sounded so casual about it, but Caius got the sense that calmness was at least partially a cover. He knew he could be wrong about that, not knowing her extremely well, but that was what his instinct told him. Even though he’d dealt with the problem, at least as far as Caden’s memory was concerned, it did make him want to go back and tear off a few more choice bits of the man. Caius knew he and Reagan had had a tumultuous relationship, but he couldn’t imagine he’d ever hit her in any capacity. “No need for apologies,” he murmured, thoughtfully watching her work on the food. “We had other things to tend to. But yes, he did. He wasn’t too pleased to see me, either. What was the spell? And why didn’t I kill him? Seems like I would have.”
She could very easily brush off the conversation, but this was something missing in his memory, and she didn't want to dismiss it just because it wasn't pleasant to remember. A soft laugh got caught in Reagan's throat as the vegetables began to sizzle and she picked up a wooden spatula to push them around in the pan. "You wanted to kill him. You probably would have, but I didn't want our marriage to turn into weekend conjugal visits." With the food cooking now, Reagan set the spatula down and turned to face Caius, leaning back against the counter casually. "They wanted a spell to stop a pregnancy. Gavin's daughter disappeared shortly after, and Caden blamed the magic... blamed me. He thought if he beat me up a bit, I would fix whatever he thought I had broke, but we both know that's not how magic works. I think you scared him enough to keep him from trying to hurt me again." Reagan paused. "What happened at the bar? He didn't attack you, did he?"
So Reagan had stopped him. That sounded more in line with how Caius felt about it now. It was kind of sad that she’d done it to preserve their marriage and they’d ended up here, though. Hopefully breaking this curse on his brain would be easier than staying out of jail. Which Caius was pretty sure he could’ve done if he had killed Caden Lucas, but that wasn’t the point anymore. It was fixed now. At least he’d been able to accomplish that much. His brow quirked up a tiny bit at the story, and he shook his head to answer her last question. “He wanted to, that’s for sure,” Caius said with a low chuckle. He sipped on the wine again. “He just made some threats, tried to wave his dick around. So I uh ... got into his mind and made him tell me what happened. And then made him forget all about it.” He offered Reagan a faint half-smile. “You won’t have to worry about him, at least. In case the fingers weren’t enough.”
Reagan was fairly certain that Caius would have found a way around jail had he succeeded in killing Caden. If not Caius, then Anthony for sure. But that wasn't the point. She didn't want Caius to become a murderer. She wasn't terribly surprised to hear Caden threatened Caius, but she was a little taken aback that Caius had altered Caden's memory of the incident. Or made him forget completely about it. "I wasn't worried about him," Reagan said. She hadn't been, though maybe the assault had left her feeling a little more paranoid about being home alone. But Caius had strengthened the protective wards around her house after the fact, and Reagan hadn't even laid eyes on Caden Lucas since the incident. She wasn't entirely sure he had needed his memory altered, and frankly, Reagan thought it was important for him to remember exactly what had happened, if only to recognize who he should and shouldn't fuck with. But what was done was done. "Do you know if that has any long term side effects? Changing someone's memory?" Reagan asked. "Will it harm people? Will it harm you?"
Maybe it had been impulsive, but Caius hadn’t known about the extra precautions his previous self had taken, and he hadn’t sensed a single drop of remorse in the man for what he’d done, just anger over the retaliation. Caden had looked more than capable of doing it again, or worse. Better safe than sorry, right? He lifted his wine glass again and considered her questions. “I’ve never done it before, so ... I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I didn’t feel any immediate backlash. Just kind of a lowkey headache.” Caius shrugged a shoulder. He supposed he would find out, if anything came around that his pendant hadn’t absorbed. “I couldn’t really give a fuck if it harms him, though. I told him he’s got a healthy respect for both of us now, and that he’s going to start treating women better, so ... maybe I did a service to humanity, who knows.”
Reagan thought about Gavin, and the brief conversation the two of them had. If he found out his brother's memory had been fucked with, what would happen then? Would he assume it was Reagan or Caius? Reagan couldn't be sure, but she also couldn't spend her time worrying about it. If it became a problem, she would deal with it then. "I'm not so much worried about him as I am you," she admitted. "It's a powerful thing, what you can do now. I don't want some intense backlash sneaking up on you. Planting suggestions is one thing but altering someone's mind completely..." Reagan trailed off, well aware that she didn't need to lecture him on magic. He knew what the potential consequences could be. "I should have told you about what happened," she said before turning back to the stove to check on the mushrooms. "Those kind of encounters can't be terribly pleasant."
Caius didn’t want to be caught unawares by some horrible backlash either, but he wasn’t terribly concerned about it. It wasn’t a power he planned on abusing, and his father hadn’t given any indication that he should prepare for any unusual amount of backlash. Not that Anthony was always completely forthcoming about everything, but still. He watched Reagan turn around, his gaze drifting over her slowly. It hadn’t occurred to him to blame Reagan at all for not telling him, they’d been so preoccupied, and the Porch wasn’t his type of bar. But he still appreciated her saying so. “It’s okay, we’ve had other things to deal with,” he told Reagan with a touch of amusement in his tone. “Anything else like that I should know about, though?”
They definitely had more important things to deal with than to worry about Caden Lucas, and Caius didn't sound put out by what had happened at the Porch, so Reagan opted not to put much more thought into it. His question prompted her to glance over her shoulder at him, a smile playing at her lips. "No, you haven't removed anyone else's appendages as far as I know. At least not for me." Reagan pushed the food around in the pan for a moment before turning off the heat to get the pork chops in the pan and into the oven. She thought about telling him about the fog, and the Obscurities, but then wondered how important it was that he actually know about it now. He would get his memories back eventually. "Anything else is just possessive, jealousy stuff that happened a long time ago and isn't really worth mentioning at this point."
Caius gave a dark chuckle at the first bit and lifted his glass again. “They didn’t look like important fingers anyway,” he murmured. He had absolutely no regrets about what his former self had done -- he still thought that Caden had gotten off light. But now Caius had taken care of the problem completely, and he felt settled that he’d protected his woman well. Because that was who Reagan was in the past and was quickly becoming in the present. “Good to hear I didn’t leave a lot of loose ends hanging around,” he said then. The old jealousy issues were something he only knew vaguely about, things he’d gathered from digging through his own social media history and emails and such, so Reagan was right, they weren’t worth mentioning. Belatedly, he added, “Can I help with anything? It all smells amazing.”
Reagan couldn't help but smile a little at his comment about Caden's fingers. It was probably morbid to find it amusing, but so what. The guy was an asshole, and she didn't care for a second what Caden had done to him. Granted, she hadn't been thrilled about having those fingers in her sink, and then freezer, but sacrifices had to be made from time to time. "You never leave loose ends hanging around," Reagan reminded him. "Not those kind of loose ends, anyway." She took the handle of the pan and slid it into the oven to get the pork chops cooking. With that done, Reagan wiped her hands with a dish towel and turned back to Caius. "No help needed. It just needs to cook now." She set the dish towel down and walked over to the island where he sat, resting her elbows casually on the counter as she studied him. "I went to see my mother today. She thinks a spell in our family grimoire may help find the missing pages of Baron's. It's a blood spell, but I can do it."
A weird bit of pride bloomed in Caius’s chest at that observation. He liked being that kind of person, one who didn’t leave loose ends. It made him feel like his father. Thorough, efficient, not to be trifled with, on top of things. Powerful. It was the kind of man Caius strived to be, more or less. Or at least that was the vision of himself he had in his head, and it was nice to hear that his full self was the same. Caius leaned in a bit closer to Reagan when she joined him at the island, resting his arms on the counter and idly stroking the stem of his wine glass. He arched a dark brow at Reagan’s words, feeling a flicker of hope that he quickly pushed down. “Are you sure?” he asked. “I know blood magic is more my wheelhouse ...”
Reagan's gaze was steady on his, but her lips twitched. "Just because I don't do it often doesn't mean I don't know how. If it's coming from my family grimoire than I should probably have a go at it first. There are a couple of things I need that I don't have in my supplies, so I'll stop at Nic's shop tomorrow to pick them up." It was Zania's shop too, but Reagan rarely ever said so. And she hadn't spoken to Zania since the love spell disaster. Reaching over, Reagan brushed her fingers through his hair a bit, the urge to touch him too strong to resist now that they were in closer proximity to each other. "So if those pages still exist, we'll find them. And if they don't, we'll try plan B. Or plan C or D, whichever one we'll be at by then." It was one step after another, but they would eventually find one that worked.
Caius was still getting used to all the small touches, but not in an unpleasant way. Sex wasn’t too foreign to him, but loving affection was. He was enjoying the changes so far, however. He lifted his own hand to brush fingers down Reagan’s arm, tilting his head a tiny bit as he studied her. “I have no doubt that you know how, or that you can handle it,” he said, giving her a faint smile. “Just offering if you would prefer not to.” Blood magic was messy, and it came with more potential for nasty backlash. Caius’s scars were proof of that, and he was still a young man. “If I can help in any way, let me know, obviously.” His optimism had taken a blow, but Caius really wanted to believe they would find a solution somewhere.
"Well, I would like for you to be there," Reagan said, if that much wasn't obvious enough. She reached out with her free hand to pick up his wine and take a sip. Hers was on the counter by the stove and honestly, she didn't want to pull away from him just yet. Licking her lip of the taste, she set the glass back down. "I've come to realize that the magic is much more powerful when we perform certain spells together, rather than attempting it on our own. The spell to find Baron's descendant, and then the spell to break the curse. The love spell." She lifted her eyes in a semi-eye roll. "I have a feeling if this spell will help us locate the missing pages, I'll be needing your help, or your blood. Both, probably, if you're willing." Which she knew he would be.
“Of course,” Caius murmured, his answer to cover everything Reagan mentioned. He would be there, he would bleed for it, he would do everything he could do to help. He would also step in and take over if she needed him to. He felt like he would do anything Reagan needed him to now. Caius wasn’t sure if that was coming from getting to know her better, or some deep-seated instinct, or if he was really developing the feelings that he suspected he might be. It probably didn’t matter in the end. If they could fix it, he desperately wanted to. He watched the way she licked her bottom lip, not minding the way she helped herself to his drink at all. It was an intimate gesture that he rather appreciated. “I just hope they weren’t destroyed a long time ago,” he added, almost absently.
"I don't think that they were," Reagan said, her eyes flashing with restrained temper. "It's just a feeling I have. As a witch it physically stings to think about destroying any part of my family's grimoire. It's one thing to take the pages out, it's another to get rid of them completely. Someone must have been worried that our families might get this far in breaking this curse for good, so they hid them. Baron might have been powerful, but we have an advantage now that her bloodline has shunned magic for so long. Brianna McCarthy may be learning now, but it will take her years to get to where we are now. They don't stand a chance." She wanted to tell him that they would break through every fucking layer of this curse, but it didn't feel necessary. She planned on ending this sooner than later. No more games.
There was something incredibly attractive about that fierce look in Reagan’s eyes, and Caius found himself smiling faintly. By every right, she could’ve just ended up a soft, spoiled brat, considering their upbringing, but instead she’d turned into a warrior. No wonder he’d fallen in love with her so hard. “No they don’t,” he agreed, sounding more than settled about that. He doubted the McCarthys would try to stand in their way at all, he just hoped the family in the past hadn’t made it impossible for them to fix this. Caius took another drink from his glass and moved to stand up, brushing one hand lightly down Reagan’s back. “And neither does this curse. We’ll come out stronger in the end. I’m going to change and wash up a bit before dinner, be back down soon.”
Reagan hoped that he meant that because she had seen a defeated look in his eyes before and it had unsettled her. But she was sure he would feel more confident in breaking the curse on his mind once they found the grimoire pages. Reagan nodded when he mentioned going upstairs to change. It might be easier to enjoy dinner now that they had another plan in place. At least that was one thing... they were never without a plan. Some worked, some didn't, but they kept trying. Reagan touched his arm before pushing away from the island counter to reach for her own wine still by the stove. "Take your time," she murmured. There were a couple more things to prep for dinner, so Reagan would stay busy.