Chapter Text
When the soldier reached for you, every muscle in your body locked up.
You only knew two things.
The first was that you could not fight the man without putting Duke in further danger. This was complicated by the absolute repulsion that the thought of his touch set rolling though you.
The second thing you knew was that Duke would rather die than let this man take advantage of you, and that meant you were six seconds away from being fugitives running from the law while a dead man hung from his head in the drywall of the room that you had just convinced Duke to let you paint a pleasing shade of cream.
So as he stepped forward to come to your defense, you gritted your metaphorical teeth and put yourself between the two of them.
“That is enough!” You threw a glance to Duke out of the corner of your eye. “Leave us.”
His ears immediately turned downward and pressed against his skull, green eyes going wide as he flinched back.
You hated yourself at that moment, but Duke had to stay alive even if this incident caused him pain.
“Go!”
He stumbled back from you and ducked into the kitchen; leaving you alone with a soldier from the city.
If it weren't for Duke's safety being at stake you would have beaten him to death with the butt of his own sword.
You took a deep breath and reminded yourself that the actions you were about to take would keep Duke safe. They were necessary even if they made your stomach curdle and your self hatred deepen to an unfathomable black hole.
“I apologize for that, I gave a rolling order to protect me, you can never be too sure around these parts.” You could never be too sure when people like this fucking soilder would show up.
He still looked at you with far too much hunger in his eyes, it made your skin crawl just to have him standing in Duke's home.
“You should be careful about giving those orders, clearly that thing hasn’t been disciplined properly on when to speak.” He licked his lips. “Perhaps I should take the liberty of reinforcing proper behavior into that beast.”
You had been trying to stay calm, but he had just called Duke a thing.
You did not succeed in staying calm.
“I think that how I discipline my property is none of your business.” Calling Duke your property made you taste bile.
The soldier's eyes went wide in shock.
“I didn't mean to be rude-”
“And yet since you stepped in my door you have been nothing but rude.” You remained eerily unshakable, never changing your expression even though it was clear you were furious. “You come to my home, threaten to burn down my farm and now you have the audacity to lay hands on my belongings! Are you an officer or a criminal!” You narrowed your eyes.
He cowed away from you in shock, the tiny twitch in your face had showed a glimpse of something dangerous roiling behind your eyes.
“I am not sure you should be in my house anymore, you need to get out and take those others you brought with you when you leave my property, I don’t need you loitering around.” You opened the door with a sliver of the anger that was boiling up inside of you, ushering him out onto the porch. “Have a nice day, sir.”
You slammed the door behind him and watched through the curtains as he made his way off of your property.
It was only when you saw all three of them disappear down the road that you finally gave in to what your entire body was screaming at you to do.
“Duke!” You turned so fast you almost tripped on your own feet and sprinted toward the kitchen. “Duke? Are you okay?”
As soon as you stepped into the room you were taken off of your feet by a suffocating embrace. Duke was a lot larger than you, tall enough that he had to duck through the doorways of his own home, his hugs almost always took you off of your feet.
Being wrapped up in his arms made you feel like the most protected person in the world, something warm always bloomed under your breastbone as you clung to him and Dukes scent of fresh bread and earth always made the tension drain from where it normally sat knotted at the base of your neck.
Or at least it did when he wasn’t shaking like a leaf.
“Duke?” You pulled away as much as he would let you, just far enough to cradle his head in your hands. “Duke are you alright? What’s happening?”
He was pale, and his breathing had gone heavy and ragged, his ears flicking in distress.
“I can’t go back, I can’t go back I can’t go back! They-They’re gonna find me.” His wide shoulders were shaking uncontrollably. “They’re gonna find me and they’re gonna take me back to the pit.”
Your heart plummeted. Duke almost never mentioned his time in the pit, and when he did the look in his eyes got impossibly far away. He had only told you the basics of what he had been made to do, and even those were impossible to equate with the gentle man that you had grown to love.
“And now they’ll find you too!” His eyes were glassy, unfocused.
The sight of him in so much pain was breaking your heart.
“Because of me-”
You wrapped your arms around his neck and leaned into him completely, pressing his head into your shoulder so that he could effectively block out the world.
“No, no, don't say that.” He smelled like wheatgrass and sweat from hauling goods to the market. “It’s okay.”
He clutched at you tighter and tried to get closer, attempting to hide himself agaisnt your neck.
“I barely got away last time, if they come back, I don’t know if they’ll make that mistake again!” He fell to his knees and brought you with him. “This is all my fault! I should’ve-I should’ve just stayed there and been a good pet!”
“No Duke, none of this is your fault!”
“I’m some lowlife less-than-nothing! I can’t even give you anything or take you anywhere because of this world!”
“DUKE!” You wrenched yourself away from him and stepped back.
His eyes were full of unshed tears, from your new position you could see that his whole body was trembling and his tail was lashing behind him in agitation.
He fell silent as soon as you ripped yourself away from him.
“Don’t you ever say that about yourself. You think you’ve given me nothing?” Your voice was soft; Duke hated yelling, and even though you were a moment from breaking, you would not shout at him. “Duke, you’ve given me everything.” You took the tiniest step forward, coming just close enough so that he could reach out for you if he wanted. “I love you Duke, I love you.”
His head turned downward.
“Why? Why do you stay with me like this, why do you love me like this? Aren’t I a burden?”
Your own tears surprised you. Seeing such a strong man crumple in front of you shattered your heart into a thousand pieces; but, even if it was in peices, each and every bit of your heart belonged to Duke.
“No.” You wiped your face on the sleeves of the shirt he had given you. “You’re not and you never have been.” You reached forward to touch his face, but stopped when he flinched away from your hand. “You matter, Duke.” Your voice was breaking with emotion. “I care about you so much.”
He slowly, mercifully looked up at you. His eyes impossibly wide.
You hovered there for a moment, on a razor wire and holding your breath.
“I’ve been waiting my whole life for someone to tell me that.” One of his hands came up to rest on your waist, gently tugging you forward until he could rest his head against your breastbone. “I love you, and I won’t let anything happen to you.”
"Of course." Your voice shuddered into a whisper.
You kissed him then, because there wasn’t much else to say.
Duke was a fantastic cook, you could get by with making a few simple meals but nothing you had ever done held a candle to the magic of his food.
You always looked forward to dinner, so it was a definite red flag when you didn’t come running at the first scent of whatever masterpiece he was making in the kitchen.
Instead you sat exactly where you were, on the floor of the room that he had given to you, pouring over the pages of the book that had started it all.
“Hello? Are ya in here?”
You gave a vague wave of recognition in the direction of the door and continued to look over the latest sketches that you had copied from the delicate pages of the original parchment.
“Are ya coming down for dinner?”
“Hmmm? Oh yeah, of course, just let me put these away.” You slowly got up and hissed, your back cracking from being in a hunched position for a prolonged amount of time (yes you could sit in a chair but you worked better on the floor, okay?).
Duke came over, looking concerned until you gave him a lazy smile and pulled him into a soft kiss that left his lips blushed a pleasant pink. You had to stand on your tip-toes to do it, but you didn't mind one bit when you got that kind of reaction out of him. After kissing him and observing your reward with an appropriately self-satisfied grin, you bent to the layers of papers on the floor and began shuffling them into stacks.
“What is all this anyway?” Duke bent down with you and carefully picked up one of the pieces of paper in his huge hands. “It looks like a bunch of circles.”
You sighed and gently took the paper. Most of the drawings had been done freehand, and you had never realized how hard a simple circle was to draw until you were required to draw a couple hundred of them. You wished you had a compass to assist with that particular frustration.
“They are a bunch of circles, but they’re magic circles.” You pointed out the lines intertwining each other over the center of the circle, some of them in recognizable patterns and others overlapping so many times they turned to a toddlers interpretation of spagetii, or maybe Jackson Pollocks interpretation of a toddler.
“Here are the ley lines that conduct the magic of the user, and where they intersect with the circle indicates when a confluence happens. Essentially it’s like morse code, each time they cross the main circle the lines cause pulses that dictate-” You looked up and realized that Duke's eyes had glazed over and his mouth had fallen open in confusion.
You cleared your throat in embarrassment. Magic was exciting and new; you may have gotten a bit carried away.
“Sorry, magic doesn’t exist in my world, so I find it very fascinating.” You slipped the papers into a drawer, acutely aware of Dukes (slightly amazed) gaze on you the entire time. You looked up and raised your eyebrows slightly at him. "I didn't fry your brain did I? I think I smell burning." You leaned against the desk and gave him a teasing smile.
“It's alright." He flushed and looked away from you when he realized you had caught him staring. "Is that why you’ve been studying it? Because you find it interesting?”
“It started out that way-” You reached out and took one of his hands in yours. It was such a strong hand, rough and scarred from work in the fields, with calluses over every pad of his fingers and thick mats of old scar tissue over his knuckles. They certainly looked rough, but they made masterpieces when he was baking in the kitchen, and when he held you with them your heart felt bright and hot in your chest. “-but then those soldiers showed up a few days ago.”
His expression dropped, his ears drooping down with a sadness you hadn't meant to cause him.
“O-oh, you’re thinkin’ about gettin’ back to your own world.” He seemed to be resigned to that reality, but he couldn't be more wrong about your recent work with magic.
“No.” You pressed your cheek against the back of his hand. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”
There was tension between the two of you, you could taste his disbelief as much as you could see it on his face.
He had always been an open book to you, but now...you felt like you were reading his mind.
“I’m learning magic because you swore to protect me.” You laced your fingers through his and smiled at how gently he held your hands. “To be honest, you could protect me, I know how strong you are.” You brushed kisses against each of his fingertips. “But I don’t want you to have to protect me.”
He smelled like sage and earth, sun-warm flour and clean sweat.
“I want these hands to hold mine and bake bread, I want you to be free of what you’ve been running from all this time.” You looked up. “I don’t want to see them with blood on them, not ever.”
His eyes widened in surprise.
“You’re so gentle, Duke. It’s against your nature to fight.” Your hands came up to cradle his face. “So if you have to do it I’ll be at your side, I’ll rip them apart before they can touch us.”
A shiver ran through his body at your words.
You wondered if you had scared him.
“Are ya- are ya awake?”
You struggled to open your eyes and focus on the words that were seeping into your consciousness.
“Duke?”
He was standing in the doorway to your room, despite how many times you asked, he never allowed you to sleep with him in his bed. What would you give for the privilege of waking up beside him? Some vital organs, probably.
“Is everything alright? What’s happening.” You panicked and started to sit up, worried that the soldiers were back somehow.
“It-it’s nothin’. You should go back to sleep.”
He started to swing your door shut and you lunged out of bed in order to stop him.
“Wait, hold on just a second!” You jammed your foot in the door to stop it from closing and faced him as best as you could with the threads of sleep still clinging to you behind your eyelids. “You can’t just tell me nothings wrong after waking me up like that, what happened?”
His ears were pressed flat against his head and his hands were shaking, he did not look okay to you.
“Duke?”
“I had a bad dream, that’s all.” He turned to leave the room.
“Duke, wait!”
He paused, hovering just outside of the door like a deer in the headlights.
You sighed.
“Come here big guy.” You opened your arms to him and he crept over to you bed, head down. As soon as he was close enough you reeled him in, hugging him as tight as you could manage. you carefully led him into your room, tugging on his forearms until the backs of your knees were touching the edge of your mattress.
You fell back into the bed and took him with you.
He caught himself over you, eyes wide and ears still pressed back against his head.
“I’m sorry, did I hurt ya?”
You hummed and nuzzled into his cheek, pressing tiny kisses onto every pane of his face that you could reach.
“Not even a little, I was the one that pulled you down.”
He had a delicious pink blush on his cheeks.
“O-oh.”
“Come here, lay with me.”
It took some tugging, words of encouragement, and a lot more kisses, but you eventually got him situated in the bed, half draped over you so that the tiny mattress could accommodate both of you.
“Maybe we should change locations.” You grinned at him, stroking a hand over his wide back. “This bed is a little small for the two of us.”
“M’sorry.” His head was pillowed in your chest, the blush brighter than before and climbing so high up his neck it vanished into his hair.
You frowned, gently scratching around his horns.
“It’s not your fault.” You pressed a kiss against his forehead. “I kind of like it, you’re big and warm and you make me feel safe.”
“I-I do?”
“Yes, I hope I make you feel safe too.”
He hid his face farther into the crook of your neck.
You had to hold back a chuckle as his stubble rasped against your skin, but when he had settled you carefully rested your cheek atop his head, taking care to avoid his horns and sensitive ears.
“Will you tell me what happened?”
“I don’t- I don’t know.”
“Take your time.”
You lay there for a few minutes, fingers running through his hair and breaths synchronized.
“I dreamt that- I dreamt those soldiers came back.”
You frowned, but didn’t say anything.
“This time, you couldn't stop them, they came into the house and they came for me.” His body shuddered. “Th-then I had to fight, I fought as hard as I could, I swear I did! But they-'' he cut himself off, trembling.
“Duke?” One of his hands twined around your waist and he took a deep breath along the column of your throat.
“You smell like lilacs.”
You smiled fondly at him, not that he could see it from where he was nuzzling farther into your hold.
“Yes, I suspect that is from the lilacs I picked today for the kitchen table.”
His nose twitched against the sensitive skin of your neck, but he didn’t respond.
“Don’t think that distracted me from the point at hand though.” You pressed a kiss to his temple. “I’ll wait until you’re ready.”
You lay there together for another ten minutes in peaceful silence before he finally spoke again, so soft that you almost didn’t hear it.
“They hurt you.”
Your fingers paused where they were stroking over his back.
“They hurt you so badly, and all I could do was sit there and w-watch.”
You leaned your cheek against his head, your eyes narrow as you stared at the dark hallway through the open door.
“That won’t happen.” You felt his arms tighten around you, and you suddenly realized your grasp on him had become downright crushing. You couldn't bring yourself to loosen the hold, soaking in the warm press of his body against yours, viceral and real. “We won’t ever let that happen to either of us.”
Death danm the one that tried to take him from you, because whatever fate the underworld held for them would be far sweeter than the one they would have at your hands.