Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and I don't own this story.
LOUD AND CLEAR! I DO NOT, HAVE NOT AND WILL NOT EVER OWN THIS STORY!
This story is the property of Tang Guangzhen who was kind enough to give me permission to post this here. Any flames about that will be used to fry your ass.
Thank You
Harry woke feeling wonderful, with a warm, small, sweetly female body pressed to his, what had to be a satin nightgown soft and smooth against his mostly-exposed skin, one of her firm-muscled legs entwined with his. He murmured a happy, half-awake "mmmmm," without opening his eyes, or thinking, or any of that party-pooping stuff, and reached up to rub against her and wrap his free arm around her. She snuggled against him, but something…hard and flat was removed from his chest, and she turned away. She didn't move away, but she rolled to her back, hair like a bale of silk thread slithering softly all over him and the area.
"Good morning, my darling," Bob said softly, the affection in his voice gently amused.
Okay, now it was definitely time to open the eyes.
Megare was using the outflung arm Harry had his head on the shoulder of, said arm being wrapped with Bob's, as a headrest; she rested her neck, sort of, on the fleshy parts of their arms where it would be most comfortable for everybody, while frowning at a softly glowing, glassy-dark rectangle she was holding where she could see it, in both hands; it seemed to be performing the function of a viewing screen, but was only about the size of a spiral notebook, and Harry couldn't see it flat on. She wasn't using her hands or a stylus or anything visible to make notations on it, but flickering multicolored light and her intense expression as she stared at it made the fact that she was using some information-providing device, likely of her own invention, obvious. Bob was in dark blue silk pajamas, and between him and Megare in the red satin--Harry would have been hard pressed to say who it was tougher not to jump on, if it hasn't been for the fact that the idea of jumping on Megare in that particular way made his stomach do something disquieting.
Damn, she and Bob flirted all the time, why didn't he get to? 'Cause he was a big wimp about flirting with a woman he had remnants of the auntie sort of feelings for, he supposed. Didn't bother him with Bob. Of course, he'd lusted after Bob as soon as lust had anything to do with his life at all, and longed for his approval and closer contact even before then--but he'd lusted after Megare a bit, too, when he was young. Huh. Maybe it was her, dicking with his head again, making him think he didn't want her. If so, he had no doubt that she at least thought she was doing him a favor. Her honor would not allow their messing about purely for reasons of her own convenience, and she would know it would mean more than that to him.
He sighed and let his head fall again, glad he'd realized who she was before he'd grabbed and squeezed her hips prepatory to kissing her deeply and grinding against her, thus committing himself to learning the intricacies of seppuku out of sheer humiliation. The fact that she wouldn't have minded--would have been affectionately flattered and understanding--didn't help for shit. Sometimes it actually left you with a more substantial sense of self to be slapped in the face, but he could forget about that with Megare. If anybody slapped Harry in the face, Megare would mageburn him/her to the ground, hesitating only long enough to be sure she didn't get in the way of Bob's doing it.
"Uh, hi, guys." He glanced snuffily and blearily around; they were in Megare's large bedroom, decorated in a similar cross between deco and Victorian as the guestroom they'd been using. She'd either swept them with a wave of her hand into her bedroom and then slept elsewhere, for some reason; or, more likely, she'd been intending to sleep there with them, knowing Harry was not up for nookie that evening; but instead, she'd been up all night. The way the three of them were arranged looked a lot like Bob and Harry had been in a pile on their own for at least a while, and Megare had decided it was time to get started on the morning's work--then come in and climbed on top, sliding down into the middle, fetching her sorcerous workpad with her.
"Good morning, sweet Harry," she said, not looking at him. "Hrothbert is to get food, because we should know whether he can eat, and what happens if he does. Hopefully, same sorts of thing that when we do--cellular respiration, adenosine triphosphate, cleaning and regeneration, tissue building, pooping."
"She's right," Bob said dourly, "I may need to be able to take in nutritional supplies and general energy--of what sort, we won't know until I try. Perhaps I'll photosynthesize. I'm not anxious to begin this experiment. It has been six hundred years."
"Oo. Yeah. My sympathies. I recommend a morning coffee and bran muffin. Well, you've been eating in the dreams and liking it--though we didn't dream last night, did we?" Harry suddenly felt frozen. No dreaming? Could they do it now?
"I didn't try," Bob shrugged. "Alcohol seriously disturbs the brainwave patterns of the sleep cycle. It wouldn't have been much use."
"Oh."
"Megare, my dear, let me get to Harry a moment," Bob said, and leaned over her--she shrunk down with her workpad over her face to get out of the way--and kissed Harry's temple and the corner of his eye softly. "I'll be back with a…light breakfast."
"Better make it light," Harry suggested as Bob rose from bed and headed for the door, over the red-and-blue Persian rugs, rubbing his eyes with one hand. "We don't want you exploding or me getting…hey. I don't feel like shit." He hadn't felt like shit before, but he only now realized he ought to.
"Not-so-dead lovely man healed us both, but you must drink water. And pee. Very much pee. Toxins, yes? Very bad."
"Yeah, I get it," Harry sighed, noticing--because she was, without looking up from what she was doing, holding an arm right across his face to point to a crystal pitcher of water on a thick, white, braided cloth mat on the shining mahogany lamptable on his side of the bed, and a cut crystal goblet that matched the pitcher. "You weren't as hung over?"
She lowered her arm. "No. I already did that part," she explained, still occupied with whatever she was holding. "Much pee. Finished half Pyrrdin's notes on shapechanging in 'Glyngowsn'. Bum looks like I was driving bus with it."
"Your butt's had a pretty hard time of it since I showed up, hasn't it?" Harry sat up and discovered that there were other books and monographs and chapbooks and collections of notes tied together with string and other such materials scattered around the foot of the bed. That hadn't kept him from sleeping through her arrival, the stuff's arrival, and Bob's waking up and welcoming both her and the stuff's arrival, because even though the bed was big and deep enough to house a large, active family of raccoons, she'd couldn't have gotten where she'd gotten without some help from someone who was there already.
But the fact that she had so much going on before he'd even got to take a leak or get a coffee seemed to answer the question of whether she'd been up all night. She didn't look worn out; she was probably using a stimulant balancing formula or some other sort of spell-compensation. "What's so urgent?"
"Right now, you drink water, piss 'til your head caves in. Then we eat, then we talk."
Harry blinked. He did feel kinda dehydrated. "O-kay," Harry o-kayed, and turned toward the pitcher and goblet next to the bed. "Where's the imp?"
"He was helpful last night, mostly, give me ideas, listen to mine, shut up when I ask. Now he looks for things to maintain. He is happy to do what he does again, after so long."
"I bet that's one reason he and Bob get along so well," Harry said, and began downing the startlingly cold, fresh, different-tasting water. He smacked his lips and said "Maintain? With a carpentry and plumber's kit?"
"No, with his…self. He makes things…want to be stable. Makes the house happy. It is different. Hrothbert has taught you about house spirits, Harry, how some are industrious with the buildings they live in, more than others. It depends who makes them."
"This one wasn't in the syllabus. I recall no overactive-thyroid wolverine cats with piranha teeth. Feel free to curl up on me again."
"You drink, I curl." She did, enwrapping him in a leg and an arm, propping the magical computerized thingawhatsis on his chest. Her satin gown was a bit large and had crawled around as she moved on the bed, and Bob and Harry, such that it was in danger of leaving her entirely. It was more decorating her than acting as a garment.
Harry sighed. "You're very, very pretty, and I mean that in a highly filial way."
She smiled kindly at him and dropped her face to nuzzle him in the shoulder with the crown of her head. "Drink, Harry, is good for you."
Harry ran his free hand up and down soft skin, silken lengths of hair, fine-grained satin, and--sigh--drank his water. He wondered why the taste brought to mind gaspingly thin air, and glaciers that never really changed, much, overall, the huge kind, like at the poles, like…
"Greetings!" boomed the room. Cruachan caromed out of the dark fireplace, a vertigo-inducing swimming of perspective with teeth, claws, and eyes. His not-fur seemed extra bushy, or maybe his excitement made him especially non-spatially-specific at the moment.
"Good morning," Harry said. "I understand you spent a productive night."
"I rested, aided Wizard Megare, and performed my functions, yes. And you?"
"I lay in a drunken stupor." Megare made a small snorting noise into Harry's soft, curly chest hair. Neither the snort nor the hair were excessive, but it was enough to tickle.
Cruachan said, quite as though it were the expected thing, "Yes, I had noticed that earlier in the evening. Are you now recovered?"
"Bob fixed me up, for which I am forever in his debt, again."
"He fix me up too," Megare said, sitting up; she didn't entirely let go of Harry, leaving their legs wrapped and sitting against him while she rummaged in the stuff scattered around the foot of the bed. He took the opportunity to sneak a peak at her notebook computer or whatever it was.
It sure wasn't a notebook computer. It didn't look like any kind of screen he was familiar with; it looked more like looking into an analysis pattern, or something like that, but again, not like anything he was familiar with. Shapes, colors, and patterns moved in it, in darkness that appeared to be entirely three-dimensional, like looking through a window, not like looking at a movie screen; it had definite depth, and he had the feeling that the type of depth and level of it were an integral part of the information being either recorded, observed, manipulated, or all three. Colors moved in patterns that were sometimes radially or laterally or otherwise symmetrical, or twisted in shapes that followed recognizable paths, but others seemed to follow nothing that could be a method of communication of any kind, and they existed in all intensities of color, in barely any color, specific shapes, no shapes, changing shapes, flowing and changing and vanishing and dancing in roundelays of possible meaning--
He was knocked backward onto the pillows. "Harry! Do not look into my notepad. It could…do things to you."
"It already has," he breathed, and twisted, holding his stomach, his eyes squirming shut.
She grabbed him in her arms. "Easy…breathe…I fix…I fix it…there…I take it away, it is gone…better now?"
"Yes," he breathed, "I think so. It felt like…like my brain was…"
"Your brain has had quite enough excitement lately," Bob said; Harry hadn't even noticed he'd come back in, one hand on a floating cart that Megare didn't seem to be controlling; if Bob wasn't, it must be another invention of hers. "What happened?"
"Wizard Dresden attempted to comprehend Wizard Megare's 'notepad'," Cruachan supplied. "I assume it is a personal device, keyed only to her."
"Yes, Cruachan, very good, is personal keyed to me, no one else must look. Make you sick. I am surprised, Harry. Anyone else, probably…" she looked grim. "I know about strokes, and seizures, and aneurysms."
"You know what they are," Bob said, coming slowly around the bed with the cart in tow, "or you know of such reactions to trying to decipher your…'notepad'?"
"Second one."
"People have died of looking at that that thing? Their brains just…blow up?" That was sure what it had felt like was trying to happen.
"Cascading synaptic failure," she said, shrugging reaching for a plate that held a crepe rolled with fruit and what looked like cream cheese. "They are…gone, before their brains do what I said, then their brains do what I said."
"Megare, shit! You need to put a warning label or something on that thing!"
"No one ever sees it now," she shrugged, "except you. Most people who have seen it look away right now--" she held an arm up and snapped her fingers, "turn green, run for the toilet. But you kept looking, kept trying to understand. Maybe you could," she said speculatively, took a bite of crepe, and finished her thought, managing to talk and chew neatly, "if your brain structure strongly reinforced enough, but human is not. Nobody on earth, with earth brain. Whales, cats, frogs, humans. But you are…different."
"I ain't from earth?"
"No. You are. You are different, as I say. You were from elsewhere you would not be different, you would be from elsewhere. Eat your food. Bob, tu aussi make to stop handing napkins and eat food, tout d'suite. Un petit, lentement. Facile, comme la crêpe. Et ayez le thé, thé délicieux. Light tea with jasmine, tres bien."
"Milady, you're speaking about half French. That's fine, Harry and I have no trouble with the it, but you didn't seem to be doing it on purpose."
"Бог в рае," she sighed, resting her face in her palm. " Дайте мне прочность." Then she held up one of her books in explanation--the handwritten title was clearly in French--and Harry and Bob both nodded in understanding. The reference material she'd been ploughing through and coordinating all night was doubtless in any number of languages in any stage of etymological development. That last bit had been "God in heaven" in Russian, Harry'd caught--swearing was easy to pick up in other languages; it was grammatically simple, emphatic, and got repeated a lot. The second bit had been something like "Give me strength."
As he patted her shoulder in understanding, he sniffed the air again; the flowery tea smell was indeed delightful. He wondered where the jasmine came from in this aerielike--what was he thinking? This was the Mediterranean, the mountains were only called that because they slanted so much--you could grow, or in Megare's case likely buy, almost any flower tea you wanted. And there'd be tons of imports to placate the tourists who were used to their pekoe-cut black, or whatever.
Bob sat down with them, moving some of Megare's stuff and procuring, from a rack at the side of the cart, one of the Japanese-looking lacquered lap trays with unfoldable legs and little tiny fences around the edges (to keep the food from making a break for it), and did so. "Harry, please don't, um, overindulge. I have a notion I may be feeling both our breakfasts, though it's only a notion; there are other bodily processes of yours I've not felt with any degree of great intimacy at all, thank Uhura Mazda; or it may be, as has been the case so far, not in direct proportion."
"Gotcha," Harry said; he wasn't all that hungry right now anyway, after all the water, which he was still washing down; in fact, he was starting to think fondly of toilets himself.
"Cruachan, yours is on the lower shelf of the cart," Bob said, placing items on his tray, and the imp, in the form of a weird undulation of the rug--like the floor seen through a heat haze--approached the cart to enjoy the essence of heavier food, cornbread and butter and whole milk and steak.
"Why does he get the high-power stuff?" Harry wondered, although he knew the answer. It was the sort of food he would have been used to at home, or something approximating it; he would get the most of the essence of organics and intent out of it that he could. He'd been on a mountain full of ruins in Greece for a long time.
"Harry, I love you, but spare us your infantile whining and eat your crepes like a good grown-up," Bob said, trepidatiously attacking one end of his own current fruit-and-cream cheese goodie with a fork, which his ordinarily elegant and graceful fingers didn't seem totally at ease with--he tried several different grips just as Harry watched, before watching the way Megare used her forefinger to push down on the uppermost tine to cleanly cut the mooshy crepe, and copying her. Harry wondered how long they'd been using tableware when Bob had been alive. Either one's belt knife or one's fingers had been the implements of choice when Bob died; some people carried little flatware sets, but it was far from universal. Finger bowls and napkins were used by anyone who could afford anything resembling them. Messy dishes were eaten with bread, mostly. Bob had never been very specific about the exact date of his death, though one could extrapolate a bit from the existence of Bainbridge as (for the time) a thriving commercial center, large and well-connected enough to attract magic-practicing nobility.
Harry grinned and ate his crepes. They were fresh, sweet and in all ways perfect. It would never have occurred to him that Bob could cook, especially since he could hardly seem to handle a fork and cooking implements had been around before eating implements had, and then he remembered that a lot of things around Megare's place seemed to handle themselves. "Did you make these, Bob?"
"Heavens, Harry, I wouldn't inflict my cooking on Megare any more than I'd try to foist yours on her. No, Megare's kitchen is very cooperative. It seems to have a supply of…preserved foodstuffs that can be simply requested and produced on command."
"I have replicator," Megare said, and grinned, though she didn't look up from what she was doing, which was glancing between some big-assed monograph Harry hadn't checked the identity of, and her metal-backed, rectangular window of messy brain death. If she didn't want to be noticed as different even to them, past a certain point--and it was his feeling that she didn't--Harry wondered why she was using it in front of them, then realized that it might really only be a matter of the thing being keyed to Megare. It might work for anyone if properly set--or another might, if the settings were permanent. Wizards invented and used unique items all the time, after all.
He only said "Cool. Can I play with it?"
"You may retrieve food from it. But I come in and find food stacked all over, you will eat every bit, with me standing over you with sharp serving fork. You will not give my lovely lord of Bainbridge the shits, you rude young man. Anyway, it is not replicator really; it does not create food, or take it back; it reconstitutes."
"I figured something like that," Harry said, whapping her knee with his napkin. "I just thought it might be cool to see if I could make it work for a couple of things. Like chocolate chip cookies."
"I have those," she smiled, still not looking up.
"I've heard a great deal about those; we never got around to them in your dreams," Bob said, having just swallowed a bite of crepe that he'd savored almost into liquid before swallowing. "Though the chocolate layer cake was lovely." He had one hand on his flat abdomen, not in distress, but rather as though he was trying to see if he could feel the food going down, or maybe because he could feel his gut waking up and stretching for the first time since, well, since.
Or maybe he was about to fall into two pieces. Damn, damn--don't go there. Eat the crepes. They're good. "Macadamia chocolate chunk, if Megare has them, plain if not. The first one can be for you," he smiled at Bob. "I'll see if it makes 'em hot and gooey. That's good, best kind. You'll faint."
"You are too kind to me, my darling." Bob's return smile showed he wasn't completely fooled as to Harry's state of nervousness, but appreciated Harry's effort all the same.
