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English
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Published:
2014-11-23
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537
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1/1
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16
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Dry Run

Summary:

The Queen of Faerie wants to get rid of a guest who has outstayed his welcome.

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Advisory: It's not actually as alarming as some of the tags make it sound! Non-sexual bondage, implications of the painful effects that the canonical metamorphosis might have on the human body, references to sexual harassment, dehumanising language.

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For Rune, who suggested that Queen of Faerie/Tam Lin would be scary. This is as close as I managed to get.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

She blindfolds him using broadcloth rather than a glamour. She's not quite sure why. It just seems right somehow, and it is her business to take note of such promptings. But she uses a spell to take off his clothes and bind him: she wouldn’t inflict that duty on the lowest of her waiting-women. They’ve suffered enough. He’s a perfect nuisance, a biting gnat: he follows them about, falling deliberately into step with them in the corridors; he makes unseemly remarks, and when they are met with proper indignation pouts that he was only trying to be friendly; he sits too close to them in the great hall and demands their attention, even if they’re working, reading or speaking to someone else.  

The lascivious smile playing around his mouth is—disgusting. He thinks he’s going to enjoy himself. She looks through his skin, sees the blood coursing and careening around—how fast it travels in these ephemeral creatures; it is fascinating, in a horrible sort of way—collecting, gathering and engorging—just there. Oh yes. He definitely thinks he’s going to enjoy himself. Well, maybe he will.

It’s just a dry run. Well, she hopes it will be dry. To see what this bag of blood and guts can support. It would be vexing if he were to burst, or implode, or burn to a flitter. There would be the mess, of course, but more than that, everything would be out of whack for—oh—days. She thinks of the horrible crawly seasick feeling when the Counterpoise is misaligned, and shudders. It’s why she can’t just let him go, much as she’d like to. Just have someone take him to the lower gate and boot him out. She did that once, back in her green youth, her salad days. What a to-do that was. To the best of her knowledge that one’s still running about, prophesying at people and composing those horrible clanky rhymes. She wishes she didn’t have to pick them up in the first place: but they will keep sleeping under certain trees or toppling off their mounts onto certain bushes or stones. She didn’t design the system, after all; she only operates it.

This time, though, she has a plan to get rid of the pest while keeping the Counterpoise in order. She will stage a rescue. She hopes the girl is up to it. She seems moderately fine-mettled, as far as they go, but then, so did some of the others. Her counsellors have assured her it will work: the females, they said, thirst to give their larvae names, and only the males have names. In return for saving him, he will give her tadpole his name. How very peculiar they are. She herself does not have a name, she supposes, but she is Queen. She doesn’t need one.

He is starting to wriggle impatiently under his bonds.  What first? she thinks. Conventional ferocity—yes, a bear or a lion, tooth and claw. Then a slimy newt and smooth dry viper, to test a different sort of courage. And finally, something—completely different, the horror of animate life turned to insensate energy.

She moves her index finger almost imperceptibly. He jerks and screams.

Notes:

This fic takes a hint from Child 39D that Tam might not be very scrupulous, to say the least, about soliciting sexual consent.