Who: Reagan and Caius When: night, Thursday, June 14th Where: home Status: complete
It was a little jarring to look at the clock in his car after Caius dropped off Adrian at home. He expected it to be the middle of the night for some reason, but it was still a decent enough hour. The ritual just felt like it had taken hours upon hours and it hadn’t. He was relieved it was over, however, and he was very happy to pull back into his own driveway at Black Cove and park in the garage. Caius just sat there for a few minutes, centering himself and taking some deep breaths before he gathered his bag of supplies and climbed out of the car.
He was rumpled and bloody, his throat bruised from Adrian’s fingers and his voice raspy, and gods, he was tired. The high from a successful magical endeavor had worn off, and Caius was starting to feel the effects of the backlash, a growing headache forming behind his eyes. He knew Reagan would still be awake and she would notice these things, and he already wanted some of her magic medicine from the cabinet. He couldn’t very well show up to the fundraiser tomorrow evening looking like someone had tried to choke him, after all.
Caius walked into the house and let the bag drop onto the kitchen table, heading to the fridge first to get a bottle of water. He would’ve called out to Reagan, but he was pretty sure his voice wouldn’t get that loud at the moment. She could probably feel him anyway.
Reagan knew what Caius had gone off to do that night and it had taken every ounce of her willpower not to insist that she go with him. She knew he could handle things but that didn't mean she wouldn't worry. So Reagan settled herself with some wine and a hot bath and when she finished with that, she went into her workroom to reconnect a little with her own magic, wanting to see the improvement in the earth magic she had taken for herself.
Reagan was wholly immersed in it when she heard the garage door open. Caius was home. Wanting to see for herself that he was all right, Reagan washed her hands and then left her workroom, heading for the kitchen where she could hear him moving around. When she caught sight of him from the doorway, Reagan frowned. He looked like he had been through hell and back.
"Is he still alive?" she asked, arching a dark brow. If Caius looked this terrible, what did Adrian Moretti look like?
Caius turned as he nudged the fridge closed and stepped in closer to Reagan as he opened his water bottle. “Yes,” he said, his voice still a bit hoarse. Caius dipped in to give her a soft, brief kiss hello, then pulled back to take a long drink. “He almost wasn’t, though.” He lifted his chin and brushed the bruised part of his neck with his fingertips. “His monster didn’t want to be leashed, but I won in the end.” Caius’s lips twitched upward a tiny bit. He’d explained to Reagan what his plan was, but they both knew that things could go awry, and there’d been a good chance he could’ve come home a failure. A failure with a body to bury, most likely. He was glad it hadn’t gone that way, for all of their sakes.
Reagan studied the bruising around his neck with a frown. It reminded her of when he had come home bleeding from his shoulder after Sebastian McCarthy had tried to kill him. Of course there was concern, but there was also pride. Caius wasn't going to be taken down by a centuries old witch or a wendigo. His power was always arousing to her. Even when he came home rumpled and bloody, he got her blood pumping. But right now, she needed to focus on getting him better. "Go sit down," she instructed simply, taking his hand to kiss his fingertips. "I'll go get something to take care of the bruises. Are you experiencing any backlash? Do you need some painkillers?"
His wife wasn’t the most gentle nurturing woman in the world by far, but when Caius had been through an ordeal, he loved the soft ways she touched him, the caretaking she always did. He nodded a bit, his fingers curling around hers as his thumb brushed her bottom lip. “A headache is really ramping up,” he confirmed. “Thank you, love.” Caius kissed her cheek before he let go and headed into the living room. As he sat down on the couch, he realized that his joints were starting to ache too. It had been a big expenditure of magic, so he was sure he was in for an uncomfortable night, even with Reagan’s painkillers. Caius drank a bit more water, then leaned his head back and closed his eyes to wait for her.
Reagan had most of her ready-made remedies upstairs, so she left Caius to relax as she hurried to gather them. Given the kind of dark magic he'd had to perform, she knew her creams and salves wouldn't take all of the pain away but hopefully it would be enough to help him heal a bit faster than he would have otherwise. She could only imagine what people might think if he showed up to the PPPD fundraiser with bruises around his neck. With a few bottles in hand, Reagan returned to the living room and sat down on the edge of the coffee table, facing Caius. "To help your headache," she said, popping open the lid of her pain killers to shake a few into her hand before offering them to Caius. "After I'm done I think you should go upstairs and sit in a hot bath for a while. Try to stave off any muscle pain that you might get."
He opened his eyes when Reagan returned, and sat up a bit as she offered him the pills. Caius accepted them and washed them down eagerly. He knew they likely wouldn’t take all the pain away, backlash was a bitch that way, but every little bit helped. “You’re probably right,” he murmured, his free hand settling on her knee. “I feel it in my joints already. Would you like to join me?” Even when he was feeling shitty, he loved Reagan’s -- and only Reagan’s -- company. Caius had a low tolerance for people in general, and it only got lower when he didn’t feel well, but he never minded having Reagan around. She soothed him just as much as her salves and potions.
"I can join you," Reagan said, focused now on getting Caius cleaned up as much as she could. He would probably have a rough night ahead of him, but he knew that going into this. All Reagan could do was try to ease some of the impending discomfort as much as she could. Unscrewing the lid to one of the creams she had brought downstairs, Reagan dipped two fingertips into it to start applying it to the bruises already forming on his throat. "Tell me how it went," she said. "What did it feel like?" Reagan had been fascinated by what Caius planned to do with Adrian Moretti and she was growing increasingly regretful that she hadn't insisted on being there to at least watch.
Caius had been prepared for backlash, and he knew it would be pretty heavy, considering what he was doing. He hadn’t expected to get strangled though, even for a moment. One of Caius’s eyes twitched in a tiny wince as Reagan started dabbing him with stuff, but it was cool and nice and she didn’t dab too hard. “It felt like a lot of work,” he muttered a bit sourly. “It was going smoothly, calling up the circle and setting the fire and making the cuts for the blood. But he started to fight it as I was tracing over his tattoos to take them over. I guess he could feel what I was doing. Or the wendigo could, I don’t know where the separation is there, really.” That rage in Adrian’s shiny eyes and a strong hand around Caius’s throat flashed through his head with disturbing clarity. He hadn’t exactly been scared, but it had been ... unsettling. “I had the Obscurities subdue him when he went for my throat. He was easier to control after that. I finished and wiped his memory of the whole ritual. But it worked, I bound the wendigo. Adrian could feel the difference already. He was happy.”
Reagan realized in a vaguely distant way that Caius didn't really need her to protect him. He had the Obscurities. That didn't stop her from wanting to keep him safe, though, even knowing he could probably handle a lot more darkness than she could. But what if the wendigo inside of Moretti had been stronger? What if the Obscurities hadn't been able to subdue him? It didn't matter now. All that mattered was Caius succeeded and had only walked away with some bruises. "And now he belongs to you and he doesn't even realize it." Reagan's lips twitched into a faint smile as she worked the cream into Caius's skin, knowing the press of Moretti's bruising fingers would fade overnight. She knew her husband well enough to know that being choked probably hurt his pride more than anything else. He was used to being in control and apparently it slipped, even if only for a moment. "I suppose if he's happy, he won't question much. Do you ever think about the one in Blackwater? The actual creature? It has to still be out there..."
“He belongs to us,” Caius corrected in a soft murmur. He’d needed to get his hooks into Adrian Moretti mostly for Regan’s sake, after all. Caius could see the use for him in many other areas, of course, but if Reagan wasn’t in the situation she was in, he wouldn’t have rushed into it so quickly. Maybe he would’ve put Adrian out at the beginning, too. Oh well, it was just another lesson learned. His ego couldn’t hurt too badly about it since Adrian didn’t even remember getting the upper hand. Reagan’s cream was already easing the pain in his neck, and he was grateful for it. “I haven’t thought about it much, no,” he answered his wife’s questions. “Something like that would be more of a liability than it was worth, I would think. It ought to be destroyed.” Caius wasn’t going to be the one to do it, however, he didn’t care that much. Having access to some version of a wendigo that dwelled inside of a man just trying to live his life? There was so much more potential for manipulation and control there.
The wendigo belonged to them. Reagan had no idea if or when they would need to utilize him, but it was always beneficial to have a plan. She still had some inkling of what was ahead for her and this was Caius's way of helping. He was going to go through some rather painful backlash for her and it only intensified Reagan's love for him. "Sometimes I wonder who it was, before it became that thing," Reagan murmured as she started to rub more of the cream on the other side of his throat. "Not that it matters to me, but it has to be ancient at this point. Who knows what else is living in those woods." Reagan's lips twitched briefly as her gaze lifted to his. "I think we'll own this town someday, even if no one realizes it."
Caius had a vague idea of what was in Blackwater Woods, and he was sure he hadn’t even heard of all of it. Shayna Mae’s familiar might know more, but Caius wasn’t terribly inclined to ask him any questions. He met Reagan’s eyes, the corner of his mouth curling upward just a bit. “I think you’re right,” he murmured. He was poised to take over his father’s legacy, and Caius planned to surpass Anthony in every way possible. Adding Reagan’s power into that, the way she was learning to grow it ... The thought of the two of them taking their rightful places on the metaphorical thrones of Point Pleasant made his whole body tingle with anticipation. He didn’t need the attention and adulation, he just needed the power. “My fire queen,” he added softly as he put his hands on Reagan’s knees and leaned forward to kiss her.
Reagan smiled against his lips and then kissed him deeply. It was still surreal at times that they were married and completely devoted to one another when a year ago they hadn't even been together. Now she couldn't imagine being without him and they had come so far since Aguilla, both professionally and magically. Even knowing the darker sides of one another hadn't done much to exintguish their passion. If anything, Reagan thought that darkness only intensified their relationship. "Come on," she murmured, reaching up to brush a hand through his dark hair. "Let's go get you in a tub before that muscle pain gets worse."