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sollucets · 1 year

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ocean eyes, vii

previous parts

in which ocean eyes begins to earn a sam/david tag; the trials and tribulations of touch-based healing magic.

usual caveats for ocean eyes; named and described characters all around (including the bois) including ivy (they/them) & aster (he/they/she).

on ao3, or full chapter under the cut

💜

"Work giving you trouble?"

That's an invitation if David's ever heard one, but still...

David would sigh if it wouldn't look deranged to Sam. This doesn't suit him. "Yeah," he says decisively. "It's a pain in the ass."

Sam snorts out a little laugh, then gets out of his chair and circles the desk to stand behind David. This kind of behavior usually pisses him off -- he's gotten used to Aster constantly snooping on his screens because it's them, but it's not something he forgives from other people. He's about to just explain it to Sam when the other man leans down, close to David's left shoulder, to peer at the worksheet.

And somehow, with that rustle of fabric loud in the sudden closeness, David forgets to say anything at all.

"Oh, hey, I recognize that," Sam says with a little laugh. "I think we used the same diagrams back in freshman year. Your textbook’s probably newer than mine was, though. How's it treating you?"

David is very close to nodding off into his laptop when the knock comes. He's up and moving before his brain catches up, body on full alert. If he'd been a little more lucid, he would've tried to move slower, for the sake of Ivy and his mate asleep just feet away.

As it is, though, the sun's been down for hours and he isn't expecting company. David stalks to the door, quiet as he can, and waits in the hallway. Listens.

For a second, there's nothing, not even a breath. David holds his own, listening closer.

People move more than that; little shuffling steps, breathing. From here, through a door, he wouldn't be able to hear a heartbeat anyway, but that's the point. If someone's there, they're silent as the dead. David squares his jaw, considers his options.

Then -- the sound of fabric shifting, the little tap-tappy noises of a phone keyboard. A familiar voice humming in thought.

David pulls the door open. "Sam," he says, doing his best to keep his tone at least neutral. It isn't the other man's fault he's a paranoid bastard. "I wasn't expecting you."

Sam stands in his doorway with a surprised expression. He's dressed more formally than David's used to for him, in a black button-up and pants that aren't jeans, and he does indeed have his phone in his left hand. "I wasn't expecting to come either," he says apologetically. "I just got done early and thought I might could catch Ivy. I did text ahead. Aster didn't get the message?"

That'd probably explain it. He did hear their phone vibrating from its place trapped under their ass about an hour ago and had elected to ignore it in favor of letting them sleep. "They didn't," he says aloud, shrugging. "Come in."

Sam's mouth twists. "Don't feel obliged. I'd've usually waited to get a response, but I was already in the car over. If you don't want extra company I can take off."

David levels him with one of his best glares, and says, pointedly, "Come in. Just keep your voice down."

Raising both eyebrows, Sam nevertheless follows him inside. David watches him close the door, unlace his dress shoes and set them on the rack all with barely a sound. Vampires.

When they go into the living room and Sam spots their mates, David also watches his expression go the kind of gooey that Aster's does watching cat videos. He'd make fun, but it'd be hypocritical.

After all, when he'd come home to find Ivy sleeping shifted, their giant black wolf form stretched across 75% of the couch and 100% of Aster's lap, he's sure his face had done something embarrassing too. David can count on one hand the number of times he's seen Ivy's wolf form; he knows full well it wasn't for him that they'd shifted, but the honor had hit him anyway.

(And Aster always looks cute when they sleep, fucked up hair and mouth open and all.)

Sam catches David's eye once he's mastered his face, and David tilts his chin in the direction of his office. As quietly as he can, he grabs his laptop from where he'd dropped it and leads Sam into the other room.

When the door closes, Sam gives him a crooked little smile. It exposes a hint of white, flashing fang. "Sorry again for imposing."

"Shut up," David says, on reflex. "You're fine."

"Ivy's been on that job," Sam continues, head cocked. "I haven't seen them since last week, and I wasn't meant to today, but Vincent's apparently back now, and he took the meeting off my hands." There's a small sigh. "Bastard might've given me some advance warning, but I'm grateful enough."

David knows, mostly via Ivy telling Aster who told him, that Vincent's been gone for some time to care for his newly-Turned partner, with Sam picking up the extra work his absence made for the Clan. As a result of that double workload, Sam's schedule for the last month or so has been brutal. David's barely seen him, not that he's been particularly expecting to or anything. "They've both been knocked out since I got home," David explains, leaning his hip against his desk and setting his laptop down. "You could probably wake them. I'm sure they'd be glad to see you."

"I'd never," says Sam, that mouth pulling down into a frown on one side. "Ivy barely has a sleep schedule as is. I'm sure they'll be up soon, anyway."

"Suit yourself," David tells him, shrugging one shoulder. "You're welcome to hang around until they wake. You can have anything you want out of the kitchen."

The Vampire is about the only person David knows who he'd actually make that offer to, now that he thinks about it. No one else in his immediate circle of acquaintances can be trusted in there, but Sam doesn't need to eat anyway and is both polite enough and possessed of enough common sense to know that the offer is genuine but has limits. It's refreshing.

Predictably, Sam shakes his head. "Thank you kindly, but I'm alright." That frown deepens for a moment. "If you're sure, then--"

Well, there is such a thing as too much politeness. David leans forward a little; not quite into Sam's space, they're not standing close enough, but enough to equalize their heights and make pointed, direct eye contact. "I said you're welcome here. Stop second-guessing it."

Sam blinks a couple times, those odd silver eyes round, then laughs softly. "Alright, alright, message received."

David nods at him in acknowledgement, then moves behind his desk and takes a seat. His office is the only room in the house he'd flat refused to let Aster participate in decorating; as a result, it's all shades of black and white and clean lines that help David focus. There is one other chair, but it doesn't get a ton of use. Aster usually sits with or on him when they're in here. "I'm gonna get some work done," he tells Sam. "Let me know if you need something."

No, it's not good host behavior, but David has never been a good host. He just successfully pretends to be, now and again.

Sam shrugs, pulls out his phone, and sits down in the other office chair. "I'll keep it down."

Turning his attention back to his laptop, David pulls up his self-assigned homework again. Maybe he'll have an easier time with it in here, without the distraction of the TV screen or Aster or Ivy. It's from the textbook most of the posts on Healing had recommended, an anatomical cross-section of the arm that he's meant to label from memory.

He's read the section multiple times, and took handwritten notes, but the actual knowledge keeps flying out of his head whenever he looks at the diagram, the order of the names scrambling each time. It's painfully frustrating.

It's already occurred to him to ask Sam, of course. It had the second he'd put his laptop down. But Sam's busy enough as is, and David's sure he's probably sick of teaching even Vincent, who's his best friend. He won't want to deal with David's even clumsier attempts as well, surely.

"Did I do anything in particular to deserve that look?" asks Sam wryly, and with a jolt David realizes that he's been staring past the laptop and directly at the Vampire for the last few minutes.

"No," David says immediately, and then, "Sorry."

"Your face'll get stuck like that,'' Sam tells him, with the cadence of someone in on a joke. He must say it a lot. After a moment, he adds, more tentative, "Work giving you trouble?"

That's an invitation if David's ever heard one, but still...

David would sigh if it wouldn't look deranged to Sam. This doesn't suit him. "Yeah," he says decisively. "It's a pain in the ass."

And somehow, with that rustle of fabric loud in the sudden closeness, David forgets to say anything at all.

"Oh, hey, I recognize that," Sam says with a little laugh. "I think we used the same diagrams back in freshman year. Your textbook’s probably newer than mine was, though. How's it treating you?" His voice is low still, in deference to the sleeping wolf in the living room, and also very close to David's ear. David is unsure why he needs to notice that.

"Like shit."

Sam moves a bit further away, but only to brace a hand on the desk to David's side and keep looking. They're still awfully close. "I always thought the illustrations were pretty clear."

David scowls. "The illustration is fine."

"Memorization, then?" asks Sam. He sounds far too knowing for David's tastes. "That's usually how they have them do the theory part."

"That's how it says to do it, yeah."

Humming the way he'd done outside the door, Sam stares down at David's screen a little longer. "It is important to learn anatomy," he says, sounding a little distracted. "And I get you're doing it on your own, so you mostly don't have a choice. But you're not gonna get too far like this."

"I'm doing fine," snaps David, before he can stop himself.

Sam raises an unimpressed eyebrow. "How many carpals in your wrist?"

"Eight," David tells him, increasingly irritated with that knowing tone.

"Right," says Sam, "and if you were an unempowered doctor, you'd need to have all their shapes and arrangements memorized so you didn't fuck up the whole thing, and the medical textbooks that Healers model after don't bother to change it 'cause it is true it's useful to know." His voice, still soft, has taken on a sort of cadence David usually associates with public speaking. "But we have an unfair advantage on that front, y'know."

Despite himself, David asks, "What do you mean?"

Sam holds out the hand he's not using to lean on the desk to David, wrist up. "Make with your magic like you're gonna heal it."

Ever since starting his probably-ill-fated attempt at learning Healing, David has been thinking increasingly frequently of the first time he'd done it. Sam's bloodied hands over his, both of them shaking, Ash heavy and warm and barely clinging to consciousness in his lap. The way it'd felt like he was tearing something alive out of his own heart, passing it through his blood and out through his fingers into Ash's blood. He tries to remember it every time he passes a particularly dry description of Healing; thinks of the visceral, jagged way the magic had torn out of him as he'd trusted entirely in Sam's word and instincts he hadn't known he had to save his best friend's life.

David hasn't tried to reach for that since then. He knows it was a miracle. He knows there is a proper process to this sort of thing, for the safety of his would-be patients and himself. It's not something he wants to try again without being sure, without having made every possible preparation first. And yet here Sam is, looking at him with guileless silver eyes and offering up his wrist.

"I can't," says David sharply. "You're not even fucking injured, what are you talking about?"

"Sure you can," Sam says easily, breezing past being sworn at without even a blink. Then again, he's Ivy's mate. "You're magicborn; do that exercise they teach you before you learned to shift. Look for your core."

David jerks his head up to stare Sam in the eye, disgruntled. "That is in no way the same thing."

"Oh, and you're so smart now you've learned a whole entire month?" Sam grins at him, still way too smug. "Try it. Just feel for your magic for a second."

Back at age 12, David had been one of the first kids in his age group to successfully shift, and he hasn't done this since. He'd been so proud back then to leave behind a process he'd considered to be both irritating and difficult, too like meditation for twitchy little preteen David's sensibilities.

He glares at Sam, for emphasis, then reaches for the spark. It's different for everyone, apparently, but David's shift has always been a quick burn, an explosion. It's hard to hang onto the moment just before it, to exist in that tiny little space.

But he can do it. It's been a long time since he was twelve.

David catches that spark, holds it in his chest, holds it back. Lets himself get just that close to shifting, then doesn't.

"There you go," says Sam, and David's faintly alarmed to realize it kindles a little proud warmth next to the spark. "Now take that feeling and send it out to me. It's not urgent, don't you go gettin' ahead of yourself, just reach for me."

"What do you mean," grits out David, unable to regulate his tone with most of his attention gone to keeping the shift at bay.

"Like before." Sam's tone loses a bit of its smugness when he references the Inversion. "Just feel for it. Don't picture anything if it's confusing."

David does not resist the urge to roll his eyes at the utter nonspecificity of those instructions, but -- he thinks he gets it. He takes Sam's wrist in his hand, and lets the spark expand and expand and expand till it's a charge all the way down his arm and right up to where they're touching.

Meeting him there is Sam's aura, which he hadn't known he'd recognize until he does, a sort of cool frisson along the edges of his own, enveloping and steady.

"Good," says Sam. "Alright. Focus there, on my wrist, and bear with me a moment."

It's something to do with shifting being so physical, David thinks, that he barely has words to describe how magic untethered from that feels. This is no different. He dutifully focuses all of his attention on where his fingers are circled around Sam’s wrist, lets that charge go with his attention, but without that desperate intention from before, David doesn’t feel like it’s working.

And then Sam gets involved.

It feels like Sam is pulling on him, tugging where they're connected, but nothing is moving, just David's awareness and the criss-cross, cold static of their mixed auras until it's laser-focused on Sam's wrist.

"How many carpals in the wrist?" asks Sam again.

"What are you -- eight," snaps David, and then, without his conscious permission, he feels it. There under his hand, inside the millions of pieces that make up Sam, are the connecting blocks of his wrist, not visible but felt. The shape of them enveloped in David's magic is impossible to describe, like touch but without any physical input, like sight but without anything to relate it to, like and unlike all of the senses he has to compare.

Or maybe not. The diagram, he thinks, and superimposes that image onto the little bundle of bones cradled within the stream of his magic. He can feel their shapes, the ligaments connecting them, can imagine the way he might easily let his own magic flow into those pathways, the way he might just as easily redirect them and mess it up.

David doesn't know what his face is doing, too focused on holding this state, but it must be something, because Sam laughs softly at him, enough to break his concentration. "Y'see?"

"Fuck," says David in faint surprise as that strange, electric awareness falls away. He feels a little drained, like he’s gone on a decent run or spent some time landscaping. "Yeah, actually."

"It's harder to do on yourself," Sam says, still in that lecture tone of voice, "but so long as you're just looking and not actually trying to heal, you can. You oughta be careful about it, though. A test subject helps. My old roommate used to put up with this kinda shit from me all the time. It really helps to actually put it together and remember how they connect."

"That's so fucking weird," says David.

Sam laughs outright this time, his eyes nearly closing. His teeth are so white. "Ain't it just."

David becomes abruptly aware that he is still sitting there in his desk chair with Sam's wrist in his hand. Aside from those screaming moments on the arena ground, he's never touched Sam. He runs cooler than David's, significantly so, and the veins stick out under his dark skin. David can feel the rise under his thumb, the heartbeat that thuds through it. It's a little fast, he thinks.

He should answer, right?

David's still thinking of a response when Sam's head jerks suddenly to the side, like he's heard something, and a few seconds later David also picks up on footsteps nearing their room. He drops Sam's wrist like it's burned him.

"Sam?" says Ivy, sounding both sleepy and confused outside the door. "Is that you? Are you here?"

"Yeah, darlin'," Sam calls, glancing sidelong at David. David nods his permission, and Sam adds, "Come in."

The door opens, revealing a now-human Ivy in dark sweatpants and a t-shirt, face a little puffy from sleep. "You're here," they say slowly, blinking.

Oh, so they were tired tired.

"Yeah," says Sam, his expression going transparently soft and gentle again.

Ivy crosses the room to him barefoot, completely ignoring David, and holds out both hands towards Sam's face.

Sam, for his part, does not ignore David, sending him another glance that looks a bit closer to nervous.

Ivy wiggles their fingers impatiently.

Apparently unable to resist, Sam leans down enough for Ivy to take his face in their hands and go on tiptoe to kiss his forehead. It's the single most tender thing David has ever seen them do, just a brief press of lips. He feels, suddenly and intensely, like an intruder in his own house.

"Why are you here?" asks Ivy, apparently now content to just stand near Sam and look at him suspiciously. "You weren't supposed to be."

"Change of plans," Sam tells them. His eyes are curled up at the corners still, pinning them with a look of blatant adoration as he reaches out to curl an arm around their waist. "Came to visit."

"Oh." Ivy bumps their head into Sam's side, nuzzling against him. Finally, their eyes catch on David where he's still sitting behind his desk. He waits for the moment of realization, for them to remember who he is and stiffen, or say something to deflect from their obvious display of affection.

They don't do any of that. All they do is stare at him for a long moment in that way they have, where you feel like they're pinning you to a board for dissection.

Usually, David might make a casual remark to dissolve the tension that being caught in Ivy's stare always brings. Something about PDA, maybe. But he keeps it back, the way he has been recently, and just meets their gaze the best he can.

This grows awkward almost immediately, and to David's shock Ivy is the first to look away with a sleepy little frown.

"Should we head home, then?" Sam asks them. "How's Aster?"

Ivy shakes their head. "Still out."

They slept through your giant wolf ass getting up? David thinks wryly, but doesn't say. It would break the gentle, sleepy atmosphere, he tells himself.

"I'll text again to say thank you," Sam says, shrugging. Turning to look at David, he adds, "And thank you, for your time and hospitality."

"Stop that," David says, flatly. "I don't have to repeat myself, do I?"

"I'm being polite, Mr. Shaw," says Sam, with a little quirk of his mouth. "Some of us still do that."

David considers this, then flips him off.

Ivy watches this from Sam's side, quiet, then turns to David and flips him off in return. "Since he won't do it," they say, before dragging Sam out of the room.

"Good night," calls Sam, with a laugh, and doesn't resist.

David stays sitting in his desk chair until Aster appears, sleep-warm and affectionate, and sits on his lap.

The worksheet doesn't get done that night. But it does get done.