Wanderer (John/Delgar)

It was approaching nightfall within the March before the ranger slowed at all. Delgar stood upon a short outcropping of rock and frowned at an otherwise beautiful sunset. His brown paint gelding stood behind him, favoring two hooves, his back laden with the skins of local wildlife.

The sun forced him to make a choice, and he turned aside into a promising clearing where water would be close and he would not be easily seen from the road. He did not bother pitching a tent, instead he took the burden from his horse and saw him cared for with a good scratch. Then he set to making a small fire behind a concealing rock. It took him a while, for he used no magical tricks, just simple skill learned over his lifetime.

He brewed coffee for one in a small metal tin, and smoked today’s catch of fish upon a flat stone.

Leaving S'ren-ja with a bottle of whiskey and a sprig of columbine earned John more than one odd look from the cane farmers outside the town. He wandered the roads of Reaper's March as the sun began to set, looking for the telltale glow of a campfire to lead him.

There were three failed searches before he finally came across Delgar's small camp, sliding down the rocks to meet him.

Hearing the rocks shift, the ranger was quick to string the bow beside him, not rising from a low crouch to do so. When he saw John, he relaxed the wood again, releasing the tension in the string. Nearby a scruffy fox had taken interest enough to curl up in the ranger’s sleeping bag.

“John...” Delgar said quietly, and laid his bow aside. “I-I didn’t think you..” he stopped talking before he stuttered over his words.

"Would come out here in the dark, looking for you?" John finished the sentence. He lurked at the edge of the firelight, holding something in his hand. "I brought you a little something." He offered up the glass bottle of whiskey, and the flowers. The boquet consisted of columbine, and an assortment of other wildflowers he'd picked up along the road. Bugloss, water hyacinth, the tall, spindly grasses that thrived in the March, a little bruised from being carried hither and yon over the rocky terrain.

Delgar unfolded to stand, not as tall as John, and eyed the things he had brought. Stared at them a long moment even. He reached for the whiskey, still wearing his fingerless gloves despite the heat. “You… you brought me flowers?” It was clear by his tone that he had no idea what to make of that, had never even considered the possibility that John might do so one day. He slowly offered to take the poor bruised things, and took a long moment to stare at them.

John looked hopeful, a small and unsure smile on his face. "I thought you might, like them?" he said. "And the whiskey."

Delgar looked awkwardly at the flowers, but he did take them. He even tried to 'push' one of the drooping broken ones back upright by using the cork on the bottle of whiskey. "I, ah, I don't know what to say. I, ah, appreciate the effort."

John still lingered on the edge of the campsite. "Is it alright if I stay?" he asked.

"What sort of question is that?" Delgar frowned at him a little. "You screwed up. That doesn't mean I don't love you. I'm not about to be a damned woman about it."

John visibly relaxed, a weight lifted off his shoulders. "There are reasons I love you," he said, reaching forward for a hug. "I've been tiptoeing around emotional women for weeks." John sighed.

Delgar let himself be pulled into a hug, further crushing the wild flowers. Thankfully the whiskey was safe. "Yeah? Me too. Part of why I came back. I'm... sorry, I would have brewed more coffee. I didn't know what to think when you left to go back."

Relieved, John put an arm around his husband and stepped into the camp proper. He let Delgar go about his business, finding a place to sit. "It's alright. And, I'm sorry if I worried you. I would have come back immediately, except that I got roped into guarding a flight of stairs for the rest of the evening. The group that attacked us down by the river was a small portion of a larger force that hit the town proper. The injured were carried up to the second floor of the clan house, so Sylvaswift wanted me to keep anyone but healers and guards downstairs."

While there were so many things in what John said that bore the need to comment or question, the ranger just kept coming back to, "He actually cried?" Delgar was stuck on that improbability.

He came to sit beside him after grabbing a second cup from his things, mugs made of some light-weight and tasteless metal, part of a perfect set of such things the ranger had, all forged with a tiny little circled M. Within the pair of mugs he poured the coffee, half each, and with a good strong whiskey splash for them both before he capped it.

John looked very confused, and scratched at his head. "What? Who cried?" John accepted the mug with a grateful smile, and held the mug in his hands to cool.

"The vampire, John. You said he cried."

"Oh! Oh. Yeah...he did." John frowned a little, and sipped at the coffee. It was scalding, and bitter, but he drank it. "So eager to get away from me that he nearly jumped out into the midmorning sun wearing nothing but a bedsheet."

Delgar frowned and settled back to drink at his coffee. "He didn't know a good thing when he saw it." He made a small wry sound in the back of his throat, "After our first night I think I asked you to tie me to a chair because I knew I was in a good place."

John laughed. "Yeah. You did. And then you broke out of it and tried to pick your way out of the room with...what was it? Some little bit of metal. Where did you even get that?"

"The handle from the bathroom cabinet," he said entirely deadpan. But then became more animated, "Yes, I was a crazy son of a bitch too, but that's my point. Maybe I was, but you know, I appreciated you."

John met Delgar's eyes from across the camp, his shoulders hunched and the hot coffee cradled in his hands. "I'm still not sure why, but I'm grateful. You know that I never would have left, without you."

Delgar relaxed a little more then, and stopped making light of anything that brought them together. "Its more what you saw in me. I still don't know why. I mean, lust is one thing, but you could have tossed the crazy back out with the morning trash. And you didn't."

"You weren't crazy, Delgar. You were..." John's eyes drifted to the fire, watching the logs burn. He wondered idly how long it had taken Delgar to find the wood for it out here, where everything seemed to be scrub and twisted mesquite. "Shattered. It's...it's hard to say, exactly. I saw a lot of people go through those cells. Come in, break, leave. Over and over again. It was mathematical. Three days isolation. Five days to break. Four for training and reinforcement. A week, or less, until sold. Every single time. I stopped caring about it, about them.

You fought. And you fought hard. It made me think about me. The man I'd turned into. I didn't like me."

"But you know, I look back at that and think that was when I quit fighting. You wanted out, John. You made a choice I couldn't have. I, still have that little figurine, you know. If you ever wanted it back. I kept it."

"Lily's fox?" John looked surprised. "I didn't know you still had that. No...keep it. I couldn't give it back to her if I wanted to. She's probably been sold by now. She was getting about that age."

Delgar swirled the coffee in his mug, which he stared at and nodded. "Kept it safe in my keepsake. I meant, if you ever wanted it for you. If it ever became special to you, its yours."

"But don't you need it, for Todd?" John nodded at the fuzzy nose of the red fox that peeked out from between the layers of Delgar's bedroll.

"Not... anymore. Remember the ice cave? The fever I had? I made the leap then without it."

A thin, blonde eyebrow rose. "I didn't know that. I just assumed...then, yes. To remember her." John nodded, swallowing. He couldn't even remember her face anymore. Just the color of her hair, and the way she would smile and hug him when he brought her gifts.

"Love you, John."

He nodded again. "Seems that I am a little sentimental."

Delgar leaned over and pulled his saddle bag closer to him. He opened a leather flap and pulled free a small wooden box which he opened. And there among ancient folded letters which long would have gone to dust without magic, he withdrew the tiny fox figurine wrapped in care with a bit of lamb's wool. He offered it toward John on a bed of that wool so he could keep it safe. "It meant a lot to me that you would trust me with something like this."

John put down his coffee for that, reaching out to take the figurine with calloused fingers. He ran a thumb over it, his jaw tightening. The fox was no larger than his thumb, sitting on it's haunches with the bottle-brush of a tail wrapped around it's legs. The artist had painted it with an array of brightly saturated glazes, giving the animal glinting beady eyes and a mischievous smirk. It really did look like Delgar's fox, Todd.

"Thank you," he said.

"Its not always a bad thing to remember where we come from. Love you John."

"I love you, too." He folded the wool padding back around the little figure and wrapped it up with a thread before tucking it safely into his pocket.

"Captain Hawke told me she was considering me for her second in command," he said, moving on. Reaching down, he picked up the cooling tin of coffee and after a thoughtful look at it, drank.

"Going to take it?" He reached forward to pull his smoking fish from the fire. Almost immediately he became the fox's best friend, and the mangy-looking and scarred fox nosed from under the blankets to have a sniff at the fish. The ranger gave in.

"Yeah. I think I might. I mean...I could be good at it. It's not that much different from what I did in Easton, and I thought I did alright there. I'm also a little concerned about Hawke. She's a decent sort, and I think she's got good ideas for what she wants the guard to be. Good leader. I just think that there's going to be people that aren't going to like those changes and she'll end up in trouble."

"Could probably need someone good backing her," Delgar gave John a little smile.

John grunted, smirking. "We both know I'm no fracking paladin."

"And I'm no priest. I'd still get on my knees for you." He gave him a bashful little smirk.

John was swallowing the last of his coffee as Delgar said that, and spluttered into the tin cup. He inhaled, choked, and coughed, bitter spiked coffee splattering down his chin and onto the dirt. "Da-.." he said, not making it through the word before having to cough some more. "Damn it, Delgar," he laughed.

Delgar chuckled and drank more coffee with an 'I win' sort of smugness in those mossy green eyes.

John put down the cup and shook the coffee off of his hands and into the fire. Wiping them dry on his pants, "They already tell me I smell like a wet dog," he said.

"How do they know that is you?"

John shrugged. "Apparently werewolves have a scent." He lifted an arm and frowned at himself. "I don't notice anything. I mean...I bathe regularly."

"Not so potent as all those high elves and their scented soaps and oils," he made a face. "Chases away the wildlife just be being around them for any given time. Rubs off on me."

"Hmm..." John gave Delgar a predatory stare. "Maybe I should rub off on you."

"Because smelling of wolf won't scare the game at all..." he chuckled and set aside his coffee.

John grinned, and rolled to his knees. Moving toward Delgar, he leaned down to kiss his beloved. "You have enough pelts," he said, nuzzling Delgar's neck.

< ... >

John stayed the night, entwined with Delgar in the firelight. In the distant shadows, senche roared and night-birds called as torchbugs flickered like living stars among the rocky hills. The endless droning of insects filled the darkness and the twin moons hung in crescent slivers above them. Sleep claimed John in the small hours of the morning and his arm draped over Delgar's chest, his hand covering the ranger's tattoo. He'd fallen asleep that way, tracing the patterns of ink.

The ranger easily folded to his lover’s demands, and with a smile upon his face. That smile lasted even after he fell asleep, partially beneath John, his hair a soft mess of waves over a folded shirt for a pillow. At some point during the night, the fox settled close enough to rest his head upon Delgar’s ankle and curl into a ball watching John.

Delgar woke in those early hours as he always did, but this morning instead of getting an early start at his trap lines, he remained lazily beneath John’s arm, thinking.

Maybe it was the sound of waking birds, or the cease of cricket song that lifted John from the soft embrace of sleep. Perhaps it was Delgar, and the change in his lover's breathing. Eyes still closed, the fighter's chest lifted and he sighed deeply. John moved his head, tilting his chin to kiss Delgar's shoulder and his arm hugged the ranger close. With his lips still pressed to Delgar's skin, he grunted, inarticulate in the early moments of waking.

Delgar smiled to hear John's grunt and replied, "I love you, too."

John grunted again, mumbling something that sounded like, "Mine," against Delgar's skin and smiling sleepily. He hadn't shaved in a few days, and the rough reddish blonde stubble on his face scratched. Sleep left his short hair tousled and messy, and he opened his eyes just a crack to peer up at Delgar.

To John, his ranger was gorgeous. Lightly built, wiry, with an almost elflike face framed by dark hair. Green eyes the rich, vibrant color of old-forest moss. Lying beside Delgar as the March stirred to life, John memorized his smile.

Delgar shifted a little under John’s arm to roll to his side and face him. One arm jutted upward awkwardly beneath his own head and he hooked his elbow around so he could reach John’s mussy hair and toy with it with his fingertips.

He had to smile, John looking at him like that. “I miss this,” he said.

He picked up his arm as his lover shifted under the blanket, rolling onto his own back. John's eyes closed with a contented groan when Delgar played with his hair. He smiled. "Me, too."

"Have any plans today?"

"I had thought to do a bit of undead hunting. I think instead... I will plan on just spending it with you. Unless you have plans as well."

John lifted his arms up over his head, stretching, the toned muscles of his abdomen flexing. He kept himself in shape, still as conscious of his body as he ever was, though recently it was more out of necessity than vanity. As often as S'ren-ja came under attack, being able to lift a sword and fight was a demand of survival.

"No. Took the day off. I'm all yours," John said, smirking.