Chapter Text
"Haven't you heard? Get home ye silly woman, the PM's issued a lockdown order."
"What??"
Molly looked up at the TV bolted to the wall in the corner. Stay at home order now in effect for the following counties - Her eyes scanned the oddly spelled names until finally a familiar one scrolled across the bottom of the screen. Claighe.
"Oh shit."
Where was King? He'd been up the hill when she'd left that morning, tending the sheep as usual. He'd mumbled something about fixing someone's fence later in the day. God, he could be at any of the farms scattered around Claighe. "Anybody seen my husband?" she asked loudly of the half empty pub as she fished her phone out of her bag and started dialing.
"I t'ot I saw him once, turned out it were just a raccoon in meh garbage bins."
"Shut up Dave." The phone dialed once and a familiar voice on the other end brought a sigh of relief as Molly frantically started rattling off questions: Are you okay? Who are you with? You have to shelter in place, don't try to come home. I'm going to get your father the crazy man is up on the hill somewhere -
Pod's deep drawling voice shushed her immediately. He had the same admirable skill his father had, the ability to cut through his mother's rambling tirades with just one slow word. "Ma, stop. I'm fine. I'm at my dorm and we've got everyt'in we need, the school was ready for this."
"Are you sure? Honey you can call your cousins, they live so far out in the woods maybe you could - "
"Is t'at Pod?" Dave leaned toward her, redfaced and glassy eyed. "Dylan mah boy," he yelled, "R'ember what I taught ye when 'ta zombies start comin', all ye gotta do is outrun the bastard next 'ta ye so get with a slow kid - "
Molly slapped him away and turned her back as he made a clumsy grab for the phone. "Honey please promise me you'll call your great aunt if you - "
"Mum, stop. Go find Da and get home. Gaol agam ort."
"God, yeah, okay. Love you too sweetie. Be careful."
Dave snorted loudly and made another unsuccessful grab for his mug as Glenda snatched it out of his hand. "Ahhh shite, King's gonna kill that woman b'fore ta weekend." He turned unsteadily on his barstool and half slumped across the bar. "Glennie I'm too peshed to go home, you got a room fer me up ta stairs?"
"Crawl home Dave MacDale, I don't care where you lock down but you're not doin' it here. Get!"
He turned to Molly as she was dialing again and gave her his best pleading face.
"Sorry buddy, you're on your own."
"King where are you?? The entire country's gone into mandatory lockdown, you need to come home."
The long silence on the other end made her hold the phone away from her face to see if the call had been disconnected. King was known to hang up on her with very little provocation, usually when she was being too loud for his nerves or too chaotic for his temperament on any given day. Speaking too fast. Speaking too much. Speaking at all. It never made her mad, but this was important. "Thomas Alastair James McClary don't you hang up on me!"
"I'm here, Mol."
"Oh." She paused, concentrating on lowering her voice a few notches and slowing down. She could see him in her head, probably wincing with a frown so deep it tilted his dark brows and made him cock his head to one side like a dog hearing a whistle coming from an indistinct place. "Sorry but you have to come home right now."
There was a long silence, then King's deep gravelly voice asked, almost too quietly to be heard over the wind howling in the background, "What's happened."
"The virus - you know, that thing that's been going around for months now? The coronavirus? Claighe is on mandatory lockdown, we all have to self quarantine."
Another long pause, then "Mol, have you forgotten I live like that already?"
"Yes but I don't. I've been around people in town, I was just at the pub, oh - oh god - " Realization sank in and took her heart down with it. "Oh shit King, we need to stay separate."
"Okay."
"We need to - wait, what? You're okay with that??"
There was a deep sound on the other end of the line, soft and low, and she knew he was laughing at her. Goddamn that man. "Settle y'rself Mol. I fucked yer head inta the bedrails last night or have ye forgotten?"
Oh yeah...they'd definitely shared any germs they might have had between them. "Alright, yeah, okay you're right. So we need to shelter in together."
"Go to the cabin."
"What? Why the cabin? You come down to the house."
"Call Ella and Pod, see they're alright. Then get your arse to the cabin an' start makin me dinner."
"I already called Pod and I'm about to check on Ella and excuse me what??"
"Yeh heard me."
Click.
Molly Elizabeth Thompkin McClary, Bhanrigh of Claighe, wife of the surly-ass king and mother of the absent prince, stood in the doorway of the little hut at the top of the sliabh and sighed. It wasn't a forlorn sound, though in the empty echo of the wood slat walls it definitely sounded a bit defeated. No, it was more of a Here we go again type of sound, full of melancholy and wistful memory. The ghosts of this place were stubborn, not that she'd ever truly cared to try exorcizing them. The first time she'd set foot in this cabin had been at the start of a massive snowstorm that had put herself and the hostile sheepherder who owned it behind closed doors together for six days and changed both of their lives forever.
Well, hers anyway. Not much had really changed for King, he still roamed the hills just as wild and free as he ever had. He slept up here whenever it suited him, came down to spend a day or two with her at the house when it pleased him, and went about his business with the sheep and the local farms as he wished.
Except now he was a husband and a father, and there was a phone in the pocket of his kilt with his queen and his heir on quickdial. And it had all started right here, in this tiny hovel with a bed the size of a camping cot and no electricity...and now they were about to be holed up together again, this time for longer. Fortunately they could move between the two houses.
But King wanted to be here.
She'd gotten pregnant at some point during that first lock-in. Pod. God, that boy. Away at university in Glasgow now. At least he was near his relatives, the Auchinlecks might be rowdy heathens but they took care of their own and Pod fit right in with the noisy lot of them. He had a place to go nearby if the school started sending people home. Ella was with her mother in Cornwall, as safe and secure as anyone could be at the moment.
Nothing to worry about. Just the end of the world as we know it...and there was no better place in the world for her to be than right here, on a remote hill in the highlands, with a man who could survive in seclusion for the rest of eternity if eternity called for it. But he'd chosen to spend this particular bit of seclusion with her, and that felt remarkably like the little twinge of honor most people feel when a particularly standoffish pet suddenly decides to curl up on your lap.
He'd picked her over his beloved isolation.
That was something, even now.
King had requested dinner - if request could be interpreted from his gruff demand. Molly felt a smile tickling. King didn't often make requests, he just showed up at roughly dinnertime and plonked his big self down at the table, usually half finished and ready to head back out the door before she even came out of the kitchen with the whiskey. But sometimes...well, often really, he would pull her into his lap as she passed his chair and settle her roughly on his knee to grab a grope under her sweater or slide a big hand up her thigh, and then the sheep and the pigs and whatever local farm needed whatever repairs done before sundown would be forgotten until he'd had his way with her.
Because of this little hut. She couldn't hate the place, even after all these years. She'd once entertained fantasies of it collapsing into a dusty heap during a particularly gusty bout of wind while King was out on the hill somewhere...but every time she trudged up the mountain to spend an afternoon with him or to tidy the old place while he worked, she found herself growing more and more fond of it until now she considered it something of a vacation retreat. Rustic, yes - primitive, absolutely. But so was King, and god how she loved that man. This cabin was part of him. He didn't invite her up here often, she certainly wasn't going to decline now.
She dropped her overnight bag on the table and started the long arduous process of unbuttoning her heavy coat. Dinner wasn't going to make itself, and there was going to be a hungry King kicking that creaky door open before long with something dead and in need of seasoning slung over his shoulder. Best get busy firing up the cranky old flametop stove and yanking something out of the garden to go with whatever he would be bringing in.
King McClary didn't like to wait.
::BANG::
Molly jumped in spite of herself when the door flew open and King stepped in, standing to full height after ducking to enter without hitting his head on the top of the doorframe, making her suck in her breath a little bit at the sight of him. It had been eighteen years and he still made her choke nearly every time he made an entrance like that, all dirty and ragged and looking every bit like the half wild wraith she knew he was. He shrugged something off his shoulder and it hit the floor with a thud, then he raised his head and looked across the cabin at her.
Those earthy green eyes were maybe the only part of his face that wasn't dark with dirt, the muddy smudges across his forehead and cheekbones meeting his dark beard like Celtic warpaint.
If she'd been chilled by the cold up to that point, she was certainly feeling distinctly warm now. But this was Molly, and there was yapping to be done first.
"Good god King, what have you been doing, fighting off the British?" Her nature had always been to jump up and start scrubbing at his face with the hem of whatever she was wearing, pausing only long enough to decide whether the recipient of the spitwash was willing enough to allow it - and now was no exception. She pulled up the bottom of the towel that she'd wrapped around her waist as a makeshift apron and reached for his chin. King narrowed his eyes at her, but didn't move away when she started scrubbing. "If you're channeling one of your ancestors I hope to god it's not Thomas the third, please tell me you haven't been getting weird with the livestock."
King didn't say a word, but then he rarely ever did. He stood silently until she stopped, his eyes on her the whole time, and when she stepped back and frowned at him he grabbed her before she could formulate a protest.
That didn't stop her from catching up a moment later, though.
"No no NO, you're filthy, stop! The world is going up in flames and you're covered in - what is this? - what - is this pigshit?? Oh for fucks sake King!" She braced her hands against his chest and tried to hold him at arms' length, but he wasn't having it.
"Quiet woman."
"No I'm not going to be quiet, turn me loose right now and what is that?!" He loosened his grip on her just enough for her to stumble back, staring in disgust at the thing he'd dropped by the door. "Is that a badger?!"
King turned to shrug out of his coat and Molly stopped mid rant, eyes going wide when she saw his shirtless chest and stomach covered in the same dark mud that was streaked across his face. He moved past her and left her standing there at the door, gaping in frustrated shock at either the state of him or of the animal on the floor. He wasn't sure which and he didn't much care. Frustrated shock seemed to be the goofy woman's default setting.
"T'was the one killin' chickens."
"Okay, good, you got him finally. But why do you look like that scene in Shawshank Redemption?"
King got the reference but didn't acknowledge it. He'd spent half the afternoon crawling on his belly through the underbrush stalking that damn beast and he was hungry. "Where's dinner?"
"You brought home a badger, King. I'm not cooking a badger."
The big man grinned, waving toward the door as he headed for the warmth of the fireplace and started stripping out of his muddy leather work kilt and boots. "There's a chicken hangin' in the shed."
"I'm not getting it. You know I don't touch dead things. And you do know what's going on, right? I mean, you do realize the freaking Prime Minister has issued a mandatory lockdown, right?"
King sat down on his chair in front of the hearth and tugged off first one huge heavy boot, dropping it with a thud, and then the other before turning around to look at her with one eye squinted shut. "So?"
"So? So?? It means we're stuck on this mountain for the foreseeable future, King - as in no going anywhere, this is it, we're up here until someone tells us we can come down and Pod is in Glasgow and - "
He was scowling so hard Molly felt like he had to be giving himself a fearsome headache. "Pod's fine, I dare any fuckin' zombie to try 'an take a bite outta him. Tough stringy bastard."
"What?! Zombie?? Who said anything about any fucking zombies?! And that's my son you're calling a stringy bastard!"
"Our son. And he is a stringy bastard. If there's a siege on the school they best just arm him an' get behind him."
Molly could feel that her mouth was open, knew it had been for quite some time now, but she couldn't bring herself to close it for some reason. And then she saw it. King had turned away from her to stoke the fire and when a shower of red sparks flew up toward his face, he tilted his head to one side to shield his eyes.
He was grinning.
That was when she realized he was also very naked.
Well, socks. He still had his socks on. Other than that he was just as God had made him, and there was no questioning God's choice in materials for this particular model of human were of superior quality. Or whatever King McClary was. The human part had always been highly debatable. She watched him reach into the fire barehanded to turn the log and sighed with absolute resignation when he clapped his hands together to shake the soot off them and stood to full height again.
It was always a little overwhelming, that part. The unfurling. He was the tallest human she'd ever seen, and the years had added a bit of bulk to his oversized frame that sat so damn well on him. So so damn well. He'd been a bit on the slight side when she'd first met him, but nearly two decades of happily eating everything she baked in her neverending quest to win every damn ribbon the Womens Institute had to offer at the yearly village faire had packed a respectable amount of weight onto those sturdy bones of his. He'd always been easy on the eyes. Age had only made it that much easier.
The resignation in her sigh was absolutely about what she knew was coming next, and the simple fact that she knew she wasn't going to do a damn thing to resist it.
King was going to seduce her in that way that was so uniquely his.
"You gettin' mah supper yet?"
Yep, there it was.
"Nope."
He tilted his head but never broke eye contact. He'd gotten better at that over the years, to the point where sometimes he unnerved her when he refused to look away. Countless staredowns had ended very badly for her.
"Guess we're havin' the second option then."
"Which is - ?"
"Well I'm no eatin' the fucken badger."
Molly frowned in confusion. Second option? There was nothing to eat in the cabin except the chicken that was hanging in the shed. What the hell was he -
His eyes dropped to somewhere around the buckle of her belt.
Oh.
"You're filthy."
"If you're attached to that kit you best take it off now." He made a generalized gesture indicating her clothes, then turned his back to her again and knelt down in front of the fire to dunk a rag into the open kettle that was starting to steam above it. Molly immediately started stripping - she knew hesitation would only result in yet another shirt being torn and everything else being ruined by...whatever that stuff on him was.
She had maybe forty-five seconds before he finished scrubbing his face with that rag and came after her. The King of Claighe didn't operate on any discernible timeframe, but once he'd issued even the vaguest of warnings it was simply general knowledge from that point on that you had until he was finished doing whatever he was doing, and then your time was up.
The Queen had long since learned to respect the hell out of that particular timeframe. Too many shirts had lost buttons for her to ever discount it.
There are few things in the realm of human comprehension that defy definition to the point where no word, established or made up, can accurately describe them. One is the devastating cocktail of emotions a woman feels during that agonizing few seconds in between feeling her child slip from her body and hearing its first cry. Another is the heartbeat of a moment upon waking when a person can't discern dream from reality.
The third, for Molly at least, was the breathless second in between King's hands clutching her backside and feeling him slide into her.
It was ecstatic, electric, exhilarating, painful, blissful - a thousand things in one moment, one little fraction of time when he and she ceased being individual entities and became they. And it still never failed to knock the breath right out of her lungs.
And the pictures off the wall.
Coronawho?
King had long ago lost his aversion to kissing, though sometimes he did more biting than nuzzling and the roughness had never truly been gentled out of him. Molly had learned through sheer necessity that matching his intensity was easier than protesting his manhandling, but sometimes - like this time - she kept up without putting any real decision to it. Maybe it was the stress of weeks spent worrying about her son, her stepdaughter, her man...what would happen to them in the months to come if this thing didn't get under control soon? What about the world in general? She and King and the children could weather a lot up here on this hill, away from civilization...but for how long? If King was alone he could probably just revert to the wild and be the last man standing at the end of everything, but he wasn't alone anymore, he had her and Pod and Ella to worry about. She almost felt guilty about connecting her life to his and bringing this burden to his doorstep.
Maybe it was that. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was something else that had nothing to do with the end of the world. She didn't believe the end was coming anyway - humanity was far too wily for that, too smart, too clever and stubborn and brilliant to just go to its knees in front of something as primitive as a fucking germ.
No, it wasn't any of that. It was entirely the animal attraction that she and King had, had always had, and it was driving them to tear into each other with all the urgency and abandon that they'd shared during that first week together while the blizzard roared around them.
The rickety little shack creaked and groaned as they pushed and moaned and rubbed and strained against each other, listening to their heavy labored breathing as it swayed worrisomely in the howling wind that whipped across the sliabh. The two bodies twisted together on the stone hearth housed souls that were exactly like the timber and rock that had kept the house from falling in on itself for more than a hundred years. Because they, like the house itself, were strong on their own...but damn near indestructible when put together.
Molly looked up sleepily at King; the hard floor under her back was uncomfortable as always, but she couldn't bring herself to care much about it. King was stretched out beside her, propped up on one elbow, one hand laying heavily across her bare stomach. He looked like he always did - ridiculously handsome, impressively rugged, dangerously unreadable, painfully fuckable...even with half the sliabh's dirt clinging to his skin. He had put her on her back and kept her there, thrusting hard until he was done, then let her push him over to take the top and ride him until she couldn't even gasp the single syllable of his name without choking on it. He dragged one big hand up her belly to her chest and cupped a palm over her breast while she watched his face.
He'd never cared much for being looked at, but somehow being looked at by this woman made him feel something other than irritated.
Something warm.
Something slightly electric.
Something undeniably hard.
"You're slackin' woman."
Molly's eyes widened, those lovely china blue eyes that he'd always thought looked like they'd been picked from the patch of little blue flowers the sheep liked to eat, right there at the crest where he'd first stampeded them through her work site. The one pair of eyes he didn't mind being on him.
"Slacking? That was slacking? I beg your parden your majesty but that was not slacking. That was olympic level masterpiece coitus superbus and if you don't think so then I don't know where you were for the last twenty minutes but it certainly wasn't here - "
He took the hand off her breast and clamped it over her mouth.
"Mah supper."
"Oh."
And then he was up on his knees and shifting down toward her legs, stopping to bury his face in that soft warm place between her thighs before lifting them to settle them over his shoulders. "I said there were but two options for eatin' and tha badger weren't one o' them."
