#i ship it so much

LIVE

[[A/N: This originally started as just a one shot idea, but it slowly evolved into re-writing Portia’s chapter where you find the secret dungeon beneath the palace. It started getting….a bit long, so I figured for the sake of digestion I’d break it up into smaller-ish pieces. I’m also still toying with perspective. Being a D&D DM I’m used to narrating in present tense, and the game has you in first person present tense (which I normally H A T E). Normally I do third person omnicient, but I feel like something is lost when you don’t get Kit’s internal dialogue while he narrates. I’d love to get your thoughts!]]

“Ohhhhhhhhh, I love you bed.” Half of my own words came out as an unintelligible mumble, following my immediate faceplant into the bed of the guest room. Silk sheets and a feather soft comforter smashed against my cheeks and, even with half of my body still dangling off of the side of mattress, I was pretty sure if I shut my eyes I would pass out. With the least amount of effort humanly possible, I peeled my boots off and kicked them backwards where they landed in separate thumps somewhere in the moonlit darkness behind me. I floundered against the bed, wriggling my arms like noodles until they freed themselves from the sleeves of my jacket. I grabbed at the hem of my tunic and tried to tug it over my head and while simultaneously sliding my trousers off, but I gave up once I realized it would take more energy to complete than I had left in the tank. In some form of half disrobement from my remaining garments I crawled the rest of the way onto the bed, grabbed onto one edge of the blanket, and rolled like a log until I was firmly bound in a silky soft cocoon. Finally falling still, I sighed a long, long, long, long, long sigh of relief.
I could get used to this, I’d thought. The luxury and the fancy things. It beat sharing a room built for one with two, sometimes three other people back at the shop. Not that I didn’t have the utmost love and respect for my master, Emrys, as well as the other two magicians, Asra and Rigel. And it definitely wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate having a roof of *any* kind over my head, cramped or otherwise. But a guy needed his solitude every now and then to achieve maximum beauty sleep. At least…*part* of me thought I could get used to it. I have to imagine *everyone* feels that way their first few times being fed warm, full course meals three times a day, bathing in a private bath, and sleeping on the tangible equivalent of clouds. But part of me, try as I might, couldn’t get over how excessive it all felt. I got by just fine on my own before *without* any of that stuff. And for a long ass time at that. Hell, I got by with stale loaves of stolen bread and a potato sack stuffed with smaller sacks of moldy rice for a pillow for a good half of my life vagrant life. What’s more…I knew I wasn’t the *only* one in Vesuvia that had been living off the lint in their pocket. For a long, long while the people living in that Palace were referred to only as ‘fuckin assholes’ because of just how many of us were displaced and without homes or food. But once I was there…it wasn’t so cut and dry. Maybe Emrys and the Countess are gonna find ways to do good things with all that money and power I thought was just being hoarded up here. I’ve only known the Countess for a little bit (honestly, I thought Emrys had only just met her, too, but the way they’ve been looking at each other, there’s no way they just met) but she don’t seem like the type to just sit on her cash while her people suffer.
And I mean…Portia thinks higher of her. Portia might have more pixie like energy in her little finger than 10 dudes have in their whole bodies combined, but…if someone like her thinks highly of somebody, then they’ve gotta be worth it.
===
Despite the irregularly high levels of comfort I’d found in the giant four poster bed I was contently burrito’d on top of, I found myself getting next to no sleep. Every time I tried to shut my eyes my mind would fill with the image of a faceless mouth with way too many teeth and the chest rattling boom of thunder. I ain’t a scaredy cat, but Procurator Volta’s house, and…kinda the Procurator herself, too…were freakin’ weird. And that was *before* the mirror. Something shady was going on in there. Something dark. I needed to track down Emrys and run it by him. See what he thought about it. He usually knew what to do. And then there was the whole…I dunno what you’d call it. Almost kiss? Was that what was about to happen? I mean…I ain’t ever been kissed before, but when someone is giving you those eyes and they start to lean in…what else could it have been? Maybe she was about to reveal herself as a vampire and she was just coming in to pop two straws into my neck for a mid-afternoon refresher. Cause I mean…why, in this crazy messed up world, would someone like her wanna kiss someone like me?
I was in some form of a half awake, half asleep daze when I heard a voice at my door. “Wakey wakey~ it’s your favourite Portia!” I stared with dead, half lidded eyes at the blue fabric of the bed’s canopy. How could anyone have that much energy first thing in the morning? I should have figured by then that Portia was a morning person.
“Nooooooooo,” I groaned as I rolled over, planting my face down in my pillow. “It’s too early.”
“It’s past 10, Kit!”
“Gimme like…five mo—ten more minutes. I gotta just…shut my eyes for a bit.”
“Are you decent?” she shouted through the crack in the door, her voice a chipper, sing-songy sound. “Better put some pants on ‘cause I’m coming iiiiiin!”
“Okay okay, alright, geeze, hang on….” I began to unroll myself from the silky, soft tortilla until it finally released me from its plush clutches and—“oh shi—” rolled off the side of the bed. Both my forehead and nose throbbed simultaneously with a sudden dull thud of pain. “…….owwwww.”
“….Kit? Are you okay?” I heard Portia ask. Pepi meowed and pawed at the door as if echoing her sentiments.
With the expediency of a particularly slow snail, I crawled the rest of the way to the door, reached up, and pulled it open. The moment it swung free, the cold brass knob slipped out of my fingers and my arm flopped back to the white and gold rug beneath me. “Good morning.” The words were a sleep deprived mumble, but at least I said them.
“Kit?” I heard a hesitant giggle in Portia’s tone as she knelt down beside my prone form. “What are you doing on the floor?”
“Questioning the validity of my existence.”
“Is that why your pants are halfway off, too?”
“That’s the nihilism.” I said in response, which earned an exasperated raspberry from my head-servant-turned-detective partner in the murder investigation.
“Awwwh, cute T-rexes!”
“Wha?”
“Your underoos!”
My eyes widened to the size of unusually large dinner plates. I immediately rolled over, turning far enough so I can see her, “!!!!”, before she and I are both promptly startled backwards as our noses nearly bumped against each other. “Wha-pff-er-ah-wh,” I stammered out as I toppled ass over tea kettle. I was immediately thankful that I didn’t take Emrys’ Aunt up on that haircut, ‘cause with it all hanging in my face I could safely keep Portia from seeing what has to be, with my pasty skin, cheeks as red as….well…you know, something really red. Cherries maybe? I parted the afforementioned mess of red hair to peek at Portia on the other side of it, expecting to see her in mid giggle from the near miss. Needless to say, when she wasn’t, I was…I dunno. Her cheeks looked as bright and warm as mine felt. Heat swelled in my chest and I was immediately reminded again of that moment in Mazelinka’s house the day before. The colours of my stupid mini fireworks still reflected in her storm cloud coloured eyes. Her hands holding onto mine with the spiritual vibration of someone that wanted to take me away on an adventure and never come back. The magnetism as we moved closer to one another. I subconsciously reached and brushed my fingers across my lips, remembering how close they had gotten to hers, or maybe it was hers to mine if I was even remembering it correctly. The moment scattered like dandelion puffs in the wind the moment Mazelinka returned, though, and we hadn’t really talked about it since. Had she been thinking about it? *I* had.
With the memory of our closeness still swirling in the back of my mind I sat, unable to look away from her there, just out of arm’s reach from me. I felt the overwhelming urge to just…be closer to her.
I was drawn out of my stupor the moment I felt a pair of paws start to climb up my back, which seemed to have the same effect on Portia. She chuckled and crawled forward to pull the small feline from my back. In a flash, I looked away so fast I might’ve given myself a concussion cause…I was kinda eye level with…ya know.
“Come here, Pepi. Kit and I have work to do!”
“Prrrt?” The small cat sounded off as Portia scooped her off of my back and set her on the ground. While she busied herself with her cat, I squirmed against the ground to try and pull my trousers the rest of the way up before she catalogue the rest of the reptiles printed on my undershorts. I was just getting to my feet when Portia unexpectedly entered my space again, pushing a steaming mug into my hand. Whatever it was, it was so strong that just the smell of it was starting to wake me up.
She beamed from ear to ear with that unique sparkle of hers. “Come on, drink up! We’ve got leads to follow up on!”
I rolled my eyes before taking a si—”ooh—ahh–ee—ah—hot!”
“You gotta blow on it, silly!”
I started doing just that while Portia began making rounds around the room, grabbing my personal effects. Likely so I wouldn’t have an excuse to stall anymore. “I mean…what’s the rush, though? It ain’t like the Count’s gonna get any deader,” I asked, going for another sip but bailing as it burned the tip of my lips. “And it seems like Nadia’s on board with the idea that your brother isn’t the one behind it.”
“That doesn’t mean the rest of Vesuvia is, though. Not to mention the Courtiers,” she looked at me with a pensive, wary expression and I instantly realized how much of a jackass I just seemed like for dragging my feet. “They *all* claim they saw him that night and that he’s the one that set the Count’s room on fire. Even if milady spoke on his behalf, the Courtiers would still force it to go to a trial and…I mean if they’re willing to lie about him now, then I doubt they’d just lay down when it came to proving whether he was innocent or guilty.”
“No no, yeah, no I get it. Sorry. Lemme just…put some clothes on.” I set the mug down on the night stand, not enthused about the concept of burning my tongue again, and began slipping into my clothes. I noticed Portia’s attention enjoying the spectacle of me hopping around from one foot to the other, wiggling them into my boots. There was a little smile at the corner of her lips that distracted me for a moment—which she noticed, because of course she did. I smile, or try to, anyway, and yank a chunk of my hair back into a messy ponytail. “Alright,” I say as I tugged on my jacket and grabbed the still steaming hot mug.
“Drink that on the way,” she said, beckoning me towards the door. “We have a secret dungeon to find!” Her energy was present in every inch of her body as her smile broadened and brightened with the promise of a new adventure. Bouncing on her heels, she grabbed my free hand, gave me a disarming wink, and tugged me out of the room.