The Horror and the Wild

XIII. Change of Heart

Owen woke up to the soft smell of flowers and burnt sugar that always clung to Cillian. The smell was stronger than usual, and Owen slowly became aware that the tiny druid was deep asleep with his head resting on Owen's shoulder. His raven curls caught the early morning sun through the window, glowing like they were on fire. He had one hand pressed to his lips and the other clung to Owen's shirt. Owen briefly wished he could wake up like that more often, but then realised how unlikely and terrible an idea that truly was and quickly rescinded the thought.

Carefully, so as not to wake him, Owen gently extricated his shirt from Cillian's grip. Then he focused on slowly easing the druid off his shoulder. Once he'd gotten free without waking Cillian, Owen reluctantly got up from his warm bed. He thought about the previous night as he gathered his clothes and made his way to the bathroom.

He'd never imagined Cillian could be so vulnerable. It just seemed so incongruous with everything else Owen knew about him.

Everything about the previous night sat uneasy in Owen's mind as he ran a warm bath for himself. From Cillian being uncharacteristically insecure to literally crying at something Leo had said to his spontaneous song to their conversation in the dark, nothing added up into anything Owen could make sense of.

More than that, all the recent deaths seemed to be weighing a lot heavier on Cillian than it was on him. Which surprised him, given how he'd never seen anyone die before and how calm and collected Cillian always seemed to be. For Cillian to be so bothered by the murders made Owen wonder why he didn't feel similarly. But he supposed the murders outside Cillian's apartment might've made things a little more personal for the druid. Or maybe there was just more to it that Cillian wasn't telling him, as usual.

Climbing into the bath, Owen wondered about the song Cillian had picked last minute. It had been beautiful in a devastating sort of way, and Owen got the feeling that it had meant a lot more to Cillian than just sounding pretty. But why had he picked it? It was clearly about losing a lover, or at least being lonely during the holidays. But the latter was something Cillian had been rather adamant that he didn't care about.

Owen tried to conjure a mental image of Cillian's rings as he washed his hair, attempting to remember if any of them had looked like an engagement ring or a wedding band. Though, he doubted Cillian would've kept wearing it if the relationship was over, assuming it had gotten that far to begin with. The logical thing to do would just be to ask about it. But Cillian and straight answers were like oil and water.

Sighing, he finished washing off and got dressed for Mass. The strange and convoluted nature of the druid wasn't worth dwelling on. He just had to hope he'd washed up thoroughly enough that nobody would notice Cillian's scent on him and ask uncomfortable questions. Brushing his teeth Owen tried not to think about how natural it had felt to wake up with a witch in his bed.

The problem with trying not to think about something, of course, was that it suddenly became all your brain wanted to focus on. Don't think about the druid could only end in his brain latching onto the druid rather than the absence of. It was maddening, and even accidentally cracking his skull on the low attic ceiling did little to distract from his inner turmoil.