manifesting baam trying and failing (?) to flirt with khun in season 4
baam is just miffed he thinks his (admittedly bad) pickup lines don't work on khun, but khun thinks it's endearing anyway, so mission failed successfully??
i love them a normal amount 🙂 (<- says one of the people least normal about khunbam)
Guysss this marks one year since I first read TOG and started being obsessed with khunbam 🥹
Tower of God and all its characters belong to SIU
Art belongs to me :)
It was a slow day, and Dick was finally getting around to reorganizing his herbs after Tim and Cass had gone through them. He loved his little siblings, he really did, but Tim’s organizational system could only be comprehended by him, and Cass had a bad habit of not cleaning up after herself. His last client had hobbled home to finish resting her once-broken ankle, the house call to the new mother and baby was over in early morning, and he had all the time to rearrange his cupboard.
The door creaked, and a shift of fresh air tugged at his hair, accompanied by heavy, bold footsteps.
Well. Dick stared at the array of herbs spread around him and sighed. Maybe he should invite Jason over, his little brother wouldn’t be able to help himself from organizing Dick’s stuff. “I’m coming,” Dick called out, levering himself off the floor and clearing a path to the front with a snap of his fingers.
Three sets of footsteps and no greeting, so Dick wasn’t expecting anyone from the village. He lived a little further into the woods—closer to the plants he needed and the wild call of nature he used to replenish his magic—but most of his clients came from the village. They were familiar and friendly.
He sensed the spark of wild magic a second before he saw the scowls on their faces. Werewolves.
“Hello,” he said pleasantly. “What can I do for you today?”
The one in the lead, silver hair bound tightly in a braid, bared her teeth at him. It would’ve been a lot more intimidating if she wasn’t a teenager. “You can come with us, mage,” she sneered, “We require your services.”
There was a chill down his spine, easily brushed off. Everyone and their pet wanted a collared mage—the trouble was putting the collar on them in the first place. Someone like Dick, who’d honed their magic for years? It would be easier to put a leash on a werewolf.
Healing and killing were two sides of the same coin, after all.
“Are you injured? Is someone in your pack injured?” Dick asked, still pleasant as he sent out a testing probe. Three werewolves here, three more skulking at his back window, two outside the front door. No more in the immediate vicinity, but their pack had be close by for a show of force this large.
The posturing werewolf snapped her teeth. “We have enough wolves to take you down,” she threatened, “Either you come with us quietly, or we’ll drag you behind us.”
Dick let his smile drop. “Well,” he said in the tone of voice he used whenever he found Tim and Damian fighting, “That’s rude.”
On his little brothers, it could barely quiet a vehement argument. On the wolves, it sent them skittering a step back, hackles raised.
“You’re coming with us,” the wolf said, but her voice wavered, her gaze locked on his hands as he rested them on the table.
The door behind them swung open. In the distance, they could hear growls and curses. “You should probably not threaten a mage in their own home,” Dick chided lightly, and flicked his fingers.
The wolf’s eyes widened to pale blue saucers, but she couldn’t get out more than a half-strangled, “Wait—” before they were spun out and the door slammed shut behind them.
Dick exhaled slowly, and let the sparks of magic recede back under his skin. Then he stepped back, over the piles of unsorted jars, and picked up his satchel.
~#~
The curse is a nasty, sunken, barbed thing. Half of it is hidden, which means that Dick spends more of his magic than is wise before he realizes the scope of the thing, realizes he can’t just yank the thing out.
Under his hands, the wolf is screaming. He does his best to tune it out.
The surge of magic battling magic is enough to keep any interference away, so Dick settles into the slower, longer, more meticulous path of prying the curse out, tendril by tendril. It fights his attempts to destroy it as he goes, so he has to expend even more magic on containing it until he can get the whole thing out.
It’s tedious, draining work. It’s gone firmly dark by the time he finishes sliding the last piece out, and the twist it takes to compress the curse into a tiny speck and shred it to whispers nearly makes him stagger. His magic reserves have gone distressingly low.
Dick abruptly remembers where he is. The camp around him is full of wolf growling, loud and agitated. His patient is passed out, skin gray and clammy and looking ten times worse than when Dick started. The cuts—the cuts are bleeding freely, red and thick.
He needs to leave. He has just enough magic to put on a show of force if needed, and he needs every last sliver to bluff his way out. He cannot be caught here. Not by a pack that’s already expressed interest in putting a collar around his neck.
The boy is bleeding. He will die, werewolf healing or not. Dick can sense the corruption the curse wrecked, magic gone but its effects lingering. If he heals this, it’ll take every scrap of magic he has left.
It’s a choice that’s not a choice. Dick’s a healer. He can’t go against his nature.
Dick breathes in and breathes out, and lets his magic pour out.
Heart and lungs and kidney and liver, a thousand tears in muscle where the wolf tried to fight the curse, blood loss and weakened bone and a hundred small damages. The cuts, large and bloody, slowly knitted together under his trembling fingers. Too slowly.
His vision is going black. Dick fights it, fights it with every breath. As long as he can remain upright when it’s done, as long as he can walk out—he’s proved his fighting capabilities, as long as he gives them no reason to doubt him—
Dick’s head swims. When he forces himself back to consciousness, he’s half-collapsed against the bed. He uses the movement to examine the wounds, as though that was his intention all along, his heart pounding loud and sluggish. They’re almost closed.
Something pops in his ears and the growling disappears to a low buzzing.
He does one last check for any lingering damage as pink, waxy skin unfurls across the wounds. There are some minor injuries left, but the werewolf can heal those on his own as soon as he’s gotten some food.
It’s time for him to go.
Dick curls shaking hands on the edge of the bed and allows himself one breath before he lets go. Everything is curiously muffled, muffled and ringing, and when he drags his head up, he can see the alpha on the other side of the bed.
Mouth moving. He’s saying something. Dick can’t hear him.
He takes a step back, away from the bed, away from the alpha—he needs to get out, needs to watch for a path, needs to avoid being cornered because all he has is dregs and it’s not enough to scare off a bear.
His head aches, like someone took a hammer to it.
Dick needs to leave. Now. Only he’s not sure he can turn without everything spinning. The ground feels like it’s roiling under his feet.
He blinks, and the alpha is suddenly much closer. Dick stumbles back another step in surprise. His stomach turns over, but there’s nothing in it. He worked too long and without food.
Dick has to get out. He has to—everything inside him is screaming danger—he can’t stay, they want to keep him, he needs to leave—
Something wet touches his lips. Dick raises a hand, feeling like he’s moving underwater, and wipes it across his mouth.
It comes away red.
It’s the last thing he remembers seeing.
~#~
No one can get to Grant, no one can even touch him with all the magic swirling around the mage, and Slade is forced to stand there, a few steps away, and watch his firstborn scream under the onslaught.
Nothing works to stop it. Not words, not weapons, not every magic-dampening sigil they’ve ever collected. Slade can do nothing but wait.
Grant stops screaming. His wounds run red and red and red. Slade’s claws are fully extended—he will tear the mage from limb to limb if it’s the last thing he does. He just needs an opening.
Slade doesn’t know how long before the magic falters. It’s just a second, but the second is enough to register how much worse Grant looks, like the mage is draining his life away. By the gods and the moon, they should’ve left it alone. At least Slade would’ve been able to hold his son while he died. At least he wouldn’t be in so much pain.
The magic swirls back before anyone can attack, and the pack paces restlessly along the perimeter. Everyone’s expressions are twisted in grief and fury.
The mage will not leave here alive. That much Slade swears.
The magic is…quieting almost. Like it’s slowly winding down. Still impenetrable—Rose tries and fails to get past it, but the shimmer is receding. Slade stares at Grant, half-dreading that his son is already dead.
But Grant’s chest still rises and falls. The amount of blood loss is…shrinking. The wounds seem to be closing over. In fact, when Slade darts a glance at his son’s face, Grant appears to be getting better.
His skin is no longer ashen, his breaths are fuller, and as the magic recedes, Slade steps forward, stuck in an incredulous daze. Grant looks better. Grant looks like he’s healing.
Slade pays no attention to the mage’s movements, his gaze fixed on the miracle in front of him.
The magic dies down to nothing but flickers, and Slade can finally touch his son again. Grant is warm and alive and healthy under his fingers, and Slade lets out a shuddering gasp.
“Thank you,” he says hoarsely, lifting his gaze to the mage. He doesn’t know what the man did, but Grant is alive, Grant is healed, Grant is safe. “I don’t know how I can ever repay you—”
The mage looks terrible. His skin is waxy and gray, his eyes sunken, his frame curled in on himself. He’s trembling, and his breaths keep breaking. As Slade watches, the mage takes a step back and nearly trips on flat ground.
“Hello?” Slade calls out slowly, tension creeping back in. “Hello, can you hear me?”
The mage looks at him blankly.
Slade rounds the bed, casting one last glance at Grant—alive, healthy, alive—before inching closer to the mage, who looks as worse as Grant had at the start. Slade doesn’t know a whole lot about mages and magic, but he doesn’t think this is a good thing.
“Can you hear me?” Slade repeats, before he notices the red creeping down from the mage’s ears. The mage’s expression has gone unfocused. There’s red creeping out of his nose too, blood smearing across his lips, and the mage raises a hand to wipe it off.
He blinks down at the blood on his hand. And then he crumples.
Slade is close enough to lunge and catch him before he cracks his head open on the ground, and the mage is alarmingly light. “What’s the matter with him?” Slade growls as the pack presses in, all concerned murmurs.
Villain manages to fight his way to the front. “Magic overuse,” he diagnoses after taking in the mage’s—too weak—pulse and examining his face. “He’s drained himself nearly dry.”
Slade looks back at Grant, sleeping peacefully on the cot, and down at the mage, who appears to be two and a half steps from death’s door.
“Will he recover?” he can hear himself ask. Slade was willing to do near anything for his son’s health, but to use a life to restore life? That kind of sacrifice, from someone not pack—
“He should. Time, and rest, and enough food. Come, he’s too cold, he needs to be kept warm.”
