A Much Needed Break

Garrett was starting to hate Arlon. Or rather, his cock was well past the point of hating Arlon, and the rest of him was just catching up.

Honestly, after two full months of chastity, that was to be expected. What he had not been expecting was for the damn cage to interfere with his work.

Even though the clinic had been open for nearly three months, it was only in the past few weeks that folks had finally started coming. He'd known it was going to be a battle. King Lionel had given Garrett his blessing (and a sizable grant on top of that) to open the public health facility, but the people of Stratham had proven stubborn. Humans have a hard time trusting wizards, and an even harder time trusting orc-kin, but he had been disappointed all the same when the first few weeks passed by without a single person coming through his door.

Then winter rolled in, and the fever came riding on its back. Last year's had been a bad one, but this year's was worse. More resilient. Longer lasting. Those struck by it wasted away over weeks as the fever burned them from the inside out.

That was when Garrett saw his first uptick in attendance. The poor and desperate came because they had nowhere else to go. And he had helped them as best as he could, even if that just meant giving them a warm place to find Quietus. It gave him a chance to see the effects of the fever up close, yet in the early days, he lost more than he saved.

The disease had no care of who it took. It struck the lowest beggar to the richest aristocrat without prejudice. It swept through the slums and court alike, and the city's worst fears were confirmed when King Lionel took sick. It was a long three weeks as the city waited with baited breath to see if he would pull through, and the day he succumbed, the entire city wailed as their beloved king joined his queen in Quietus.

Then the fever struck his son, Thermilious, and a very different kind of fear gripped the city. If the thirteen-year-old crown prince died, gods forbid, it would have left Streatham without a regent. So, with no other options, and an entire city watching him, the royal physician had swallowed his pride and came to the Crux, begging for help.

A lucky thing, too. Thermilious had been holding on by a frayed thread, but Garrett managed to create a spell to dampen his fever and pull him out of death's grip. Garrett spent weeks at the young prince's bedside, helping him struggle through a slow recovery.

But recover, he did. Thermilious survived, and the coronation took place the same day as his father's funeral. After his father was buried and the crown heavy on his head, Thermilious' first act as king was to appoint Garrett the role of royal physician, publicly replacing and rebuking the man who had failed his father.

It had been a shocking declaration. Some of the powerful noble families had spoken their dissent - loudly at first - until the young king had asked if they would have preferred he had died with his father. All outcry stopped quickly after that.

Talk throughout the city, however, was harder to quell. A half-orc in such a highly esteemed position was unheard of, but Garrett had agreed, and in doing so, gained an additional grant from the Crown that allowed him to hire two non-magical physicians and seven nurses to help him at the clinic. A fortunate thing too, because after the news got out that the man who stood at the sick bed of royalty had a health facility that anyone could go to, the doors to the clinic were blown wide open.

As winter raged on, the fever seemed like, maybe, just maybe, it was starting to level out. Even so, there were more than enough cases to keep him, Danica and Ravi busy. Tonight had been the first night they'd had an empty bed. Three weeks prior, they'd all been filled, and they'd had to resort to triage to weed out the more severe cases. The rest were sent home with tinctures and instructed to stay home, or return if their fever worsened or the rash appeared.

The stress of the long shifts combined with his... growing frustrations were doing nothing to help is concentration. It wasn't until he was giving a pelvic examination to a woman he suspected had a cyst on her ovaries that he realized he needed to get this fucking spell over with already. There was already enough gossip about the half-breed royal physician, and he didn't need the "perverted wizard" talk adding to it. That was rhetoric that didn't need to be circulated any more than it always was, and he was doing the best he could under the circumstances, damnit!

He could have asked Bridgette to take it off, but that felt like cheating. Whenever they did conjuration, both Arlon and his wife kept a copy of his key. After him and Bri had moved out of the Crux and into Straetham proper, it became necessary. There were times that Garrett couldn't get back to the Crux for weeks at a time, and someone had to unlock him every few days to clean his cage. Bri was always happy to oblige, especially because she got to tease him to insanity before locking him back up again.

Honestly, after two months of this, it's a miracle he was able to function as well as he could. But even an experienced wizard can reach a breaking point, and Garret was at his.

That was the game, after all. Hold out for three months or until he just couldn't anymore. With the weeks he's had, he was sure his wife was just waiting for him to call a stop. Bridgette had always been perceptive.

So it didn't surprise him that when he made it home from the clinic that night (late again), she took one look at him and asked, "Time to go to the Crux?"

"Sure is."

Bridgette chuckled and set her mortar and pestle on the table before going to the hearth. She scooped him a bowl of stew over rice and set it at the table. "Eat first."

Garrett dropped his mask at the door and countered, "Bath first."

"Wait until the Crux," she said. "You said yourself you thought the virus was spreading through breath, so if you were carrying it home from the clinic, I would have gotten it weeks ago."

"Bri-"

"Hush." It was an order, but a gentle one. "I'm fine. And I'm sure I owe it in large to how careful my husband is while he's at work."

She wasn't wrong. He wore a mask every second he was in the clinic. Changed clothes before he came home. Even so, he went over to the wash basin and scrubbed his hands all the same. He couldn't help it. Worrying came natural to him. Especially after how close she had gotten last winter when she'd taken sick. Where his constitution was lined in steel, hers was thin as paper.

When he finally sat, Bridgette came up behind him, her fingers squeezing his shoulders. Even if her ability to fight off illness was weak, the rest of her certainly wasn't. Her fingers dug into his tight muscles with enough strength to make him groan. He relaxed under her, the chair creaking under his weight.

Bridgette didn't let up until he was limp under her hands. "You're taking tomorrow off." It wasn't a request. Garrett nodded - he'd already made the arrangements. "Good." She pulled his head back to kiss him, her long silver hair brushing his cheek. "Eat," she said again.

He smiled tiredly up at her before he picked up his spoon and did as told. Bridgette sat across from him and picked up her steaming mug before taking a sip. "Do you want to talk about today?"

On the bad news days he usually didn't, but today had been a day to celebrate. "We cleared ten beds," he said. "All of them survived. Three of them had even developed the rash, but we managed to fight it back. And I got to deal with something other than the fever today." A rare treat anymore. Granted, the woman also had the fever, but she had been improving on that front. "I thought it was her appendix at first, but the pain was coming from lower. I think it may have been an ovarian cyst."

Bridgette winced. "Sounds delightful."

Garrett chuckled and said, "It seemed to be a mild one, thankfully. It wasn't pleasant, but she's fine."

"Well, thank the gods for ovarian cysts, I suppose. At least it broke your day up."

He gave a bark of a laugh and felt more of the tension bleed from his shoulders. That twisted sense of humor had startled him out of a bad mood more than once, and he was grateful for it tonight. Not every day this week had been so good.

Bridgette gave a small smile over the rim of her mug. "I'm glad that Quietus is finally getting full," she said. "About godsdamned time."

"Cheers to that," he muttered and raised his mug before taking a long drink of water. He scooped another spoonful of stew into his mouth, and was finally present enough to taste it. Hearty with onions, potatoes and carrots broken up with a few savory chunks of meat. It was seasoned with pepper and the fresh rosemary Bridgette had been growing in the glasshouse. It was exactly what he needed.

"I finished another batch of tincture," she added. "I'm hoping it'll be enough to get you through the rest of winter."

"Thank you," he said. "It's been working miracles." Bridgette was a hell of an apothecary, and her most recent tincture recipe was the only thing that could even touch the more severe cases of the fever outside of magic.

"I'll be lucky if my basil plant survives," she said, though Garrett knew she was joking. The damn thing was taking over the entire southeast corner of the glass house. "Not to mention, the price of that ginger root made my hair curl."

"Good thing you found a way to grow it here," Garrett said. They'd bought that root from an eastern trader years ago, and the fact that Bri couldn't let the price go had become an inside joke after all this time. Garrett was convinced that stupid tuber had earned it's weight in gold six times over.

"Good thing," Bridgette agreed smugly.

She let him finish his dinner in silence, and once he had cleared away the dishes, Bridgette was waiting with their cloaks. He took them from her and helped her shrug into hers before pulling his own over his shoulders. When it was time to go, he opened the door for her, and she made sure the lock latched behind them.

It was about a half an hour's walk to the Crux from their house just outside of the market. The past few days had been frigid - too cold to even snow other than the crystalline, powdery flakes that shined like glitter in the sunlight. Tonight, their breath billowed in clouds in front of them, the moon huge and bright in the frozen sky.

Garrett barely felt it, but after only a few minutes, Bridgette started to shiver. He put an arm around her shoulders and she grabbed his hand as she wedged against his side. Her other arm slid behind his back, her cold hand pressing against the small of his back.

He shivered as her touch slid down, fingers wedging under the hem of his trousers to grab his ass. Heat throbbed in his groin, and he raised an eyebrow at her.

"What?" Wicked pleasure quirked the corner of her lips. "My hands are cold."

"Mhmm."

She smirked up at him and tightened her grip, digging her nails in just enough to mark his tough skin. "You know that Arlon's going to make you beg."

"Oh, I know."

"He was hoping to get three months out of you with this conjuration," Bri pointed out, like he wasn't already painfully, distractedly aware of that. "That's a whole month you're going to have to make up to us."

Garrett bit back a groan as Bridgette's fingers trailed lower, sliding down the cleft of his ass. They passed a man heading the opposite direction with his hood pulled low, but Garrett schooled his face to careful neutrality all the same. "Do you think you can handle that?"

"I can handle it," he promised. Gods he craved it. He was wound tight as a bowstring, and the only people who could force him to loosen back up were his wife and Arlon.

"We'll see," Bridgette said as her finger pushed against the pucker of his ass.

His back snapped ramrod straight as a chill that had nothing to do with the cold shot up his spine. Shadows covered her face, but he could feel Bridgette's smile all the same. Even though they continued their walk in silence, Bridgette's fingers were anything but quiet.

When they were the only ones left on the chilly road, she pulled his cloak off. She waited a few steps before she pulled up the front of his shirt. It went over his head, keeping his arms covered while exposing the grey skin of his chest. The frosty air felt good. After spending the first five decades of his life in the high peaks, he never quite lost his tolerance to the cold.

Her fingers unbuttoned his trousers one by one as they neared the Crux. By the time they reached the drawbridge, she had pulled his caged cock free, letting the metal chill against his sensitive skin. Garrett let out a low groan, but before he could step across the drawbridge, Bri grabbed his long braid and pulled him to an abrupt stop. She pressed a soft kiss against his cheek.

"You better come correct." The brush of her lips against his skin sent gooseflesh tingling down his arms. "Arlon's not going to let you out unless you're on your best behavior."

It was no empty threat. Arlon was strict with him.

"Yes, Mistress." Now that they were at the Crux, he switched to the honorific automatically. That was what they'd negotiated when him and Bri had moved out. As soon as he entered the courtyard, he belonged to them.

They stepped over the drawbridge as Garrett stripped his shirt the rest of the way off. His shoes came off across the courtyard. His trousers followed at the door. Bri followed behind him to pick them up, bundling them under her arm.

The main doors were already closed for the night, but Bri touched his naked shoulder as she passed him. Garrett knelt obediently, letting his knees fall against the cold stone as he lowered his head. Bri clanked the metal knocker.

The hatch opened a moment later, and a set of honey colored eyes peered out at them. "Evening, Alix," Bri said pleasantly.

"Wondered if we'd be seeing you two soon." The metal lock clicked, and the doors groaned open.

Of course Crux wizards gossip. With him and Bri coming and going as they did, there would always be talk, and Alix looked a little smug too smug to be innocent of it. Hell, there were probably bets riding on this particular conjuration. Garrett wondered how much coin he'd just won the young wizard. "The grandmaster's still in his office."

Bridgette gave Garrett's braid a tug to get him moving. "Have a good night Alix."

"You, too."

Garrett could almost feel Alix's gaze boring into his back as they passed. Embarrassment made the pulse roar in his ears. He kept his head lowered like he could hide from it, but that was the curse of being so damn big. There was no easy way to hide for someone like him.

Bridgette kept him at a crawl all the way to Arlon's office. Light poured from the crack in the door, and when Bridgette widened the gap, Arlon looked up from his desk. He was wearing the spectacles that he claimed he didn't need, but he yanked them off when he realized who it was.

Only long practice stopped Garrett from rolling his eyes. Arlon thought they made him look old, but both Garrett and Bri agreed he looked esteemed. A true Grandmaster of the Crux.

"I brought you a present," Bri said.

Arlon pushed himself to his feet. Even though Garrett was tall, Arlon was taller, and being on his hands and knees in front of the grandmaster never failed to make him tremble. Arlon had a presence to him, one that was on in full force as he moved to lean against the front of his desk. The look he gave Garrett was hungry, like he had been hoping for this, waiting for him to show up and admit defeat.

Garrett was finally ready to. He crawled to the rug in front of Arlon's desk and kneeled so his forehead touched the ground just in front of Arlon's boots. "Please Master, would you unlock my cage?"

Arlon hummed, and when he tapped his shoe, it nudged Garrett's forehead. "You know, when the fever was picking up, I offered you a chance to cut the spell short," he said. "And do you remember what you told me?"

Garrett winced. "I told you that if I couldn't handle a three month conjuration, I may as well give my mastery back."

"Yeah, I remember that too," Arlon said, a distinct smirk in his tone. Those heavy footsteps walked a slow circle around Garrett, and he tried not to tremble even though he could feel Arlon's eyes heating a hole in his back.

"So, let me get this straight," Arlon said at last. "You all but begged me to lock you up, and now you're begging me to release you a month early?"

A shoe appeared under his forehead, nudging his head from the carpet. Garrett slowly raised his eyes to meet his gaze. "Yes, Master."

He flinched when Arlon moved, whip fast, but the grandmaster's calloused fingers only gripped his jaw hard and gave him a little shake. "Why should I do that?"

Garrett shuddered and opened his mouth, but Bri cut him off. "I already heard the ovary cyst story so you don't have to."

For a split-second, Arlon's mask slipped. He pegged her with a look that screamed why are you like this, but Bri just smirked. She'd always liked to throw him off his game.

It was a test not to laugh, but Garrett held it together - barely. "It's been a rough week, Master."

"Apparently." Arlon grabbed his braid and yanked his head back. The jolt of pain snapped Garrett right back into it. "You've got a hell of a conjuration ahead of you tonight, and I'm not sure if two months is enough to get the job done."

Garrett doubted that. He'd spent two months of Bridgette sucking him to attention before forcing him back into his cage. Two months of her fucking him with her favorite phallus and harness. Two months of her using him for her pleasure while he was denied his own. He was more than ready.

"That's a whole month's worth of time that you're robbing from me and your wife," Arlon continued. "Are you prepared to make all that time up to us?"

It was a familiar question. If he said yes, the game continued. If he said no, they checked in and renegotiated. Tonight his answer came quick. "Yes. Master, please, I'll make it up. Every second."

Arlon humed and loosened his grip, letting Garrett's eyes drop back to the floor. The grandmaster's heavy footsteps retreated behind his desk again "We'll see," he said. "I still have some things I need to finish up. Bri, would you take him downstairs and get him ready for us?"

Bridgette's much smaller feet tapped across the stone. She grabbed Arlon's face and pulled him into a heated kiss. Garrett couldn't help but watch, biting back a whimper of need. Seeing them together never failed to heat his blood.

Bri trailed a finger down his chest as she pulled away. "I'll clean him up first," she purred. "We'll meet you downstairs."

Garrett felt her hand grab his braid before she tugged to get him moving. He stayed on his hands and knees and crawled beside Bridgette as she led him out of Arlon's office. This late, the halls of the Crux were empty as Bri led him down the stairs towards the baths.

Garrett held his breath until they emerged into the steam of the baths and found all nine pools abandoned. Relief made his shoulders sag. With every eye in Streatham already watching him, he didn't think he could handle one more set tonight.

Bridgette guided him past the nine steaming pools to the lone ice bath set near the back. This time of year, it was frigid, and he hesitated at the lip of it. Bridgette's hands rested on his shoulders. "I know you're not happy unless you're working, so I thought I'd wring a few emergency spells out of you."

Garrett let out a miserable little groan. He hated that Bridgette was right. Even now, stripped naked and in the heart of the Crux, his mind was still half in the clinic. It would be good to have a few extra fever killers, just in case. He resigned himself and lowered his head.