"How could you fall asleep on a human like... like it's nothing?" Ashton asked Lucy the next morning. They were sitting up on the kitchen table as usual, and Lucy was handing him a plate of elderberries, acorn bread, and half of a roasted cricket. She got herself a bowl of crushed human cereal.

"Niles is very comfortable," Lucy explained. "He's warm and always smells nice. My favorite place is right under his chin or in his shirt pocket. I like to fall asleep to his heart beating. It helps me relax."

That... makes sense, Ashton thought. Lucy was a garden pixie, which meant her dominant senses were scent and sound. Of course, those things about Niles would be the most appealing to her.

"You really should try it sometime, " she suggested. Ashton shook his head immediately, and Lucy laughed.

"Figures," she scoffed. She waved her little spoon at him before turning back to her cereal. "You know, you're going to have to get used to Niles handling you, especially with that broken leg of yours."

Ashton shuddered. "How?" he asked.

Lucy blinked. "How what?"

"How... am I supposed to get used to that?"

Lucy tapped her chin with her spoon, drops of almond milk spilling onto the table. Finally, she pointed the spoon at Ashton again, and he flinched. "Ever heard of exposure therapy?" she asked, her eyes glinting. Ashton shook his head.

"Ah, well, basically, you force yourself to experience the very thing that scares you, over and over again, until it doesn't scare you anymore," Lucy explained. "So, in this case, you could just ask Niles to pick you up or touch you more often until you're no longer afraid of him."

Ashton was horrified. "That sounds like the worst idea I've ever heard," he told her.

She shrugged. "Hey, you can either get all the fear out in one fell swoop by having a couple of intensely scary weeks, or you can avoid Niles every day, never get fully used to him, and drag it all out. The thing is, Niles has to pick you up. That's unavoidable if you're living with humans. Might as well get used to it instead of freaking out every time you see him."

Ashton made a face, and Lucy rolled her eyes at him. "If you hate living with Niles so much, why don't you just tell him where you live so that he can take you home? You're mixed, right? A halfling, maybe? So, my magic isn't going to help you, and healing by human methods is obnoxiously slow."

Ashton froze, and his hand flew up to touch the clan crest on his chest. Lucy raised an eyebrow at him, and he just shook his head. 

"It's... complicated," he finally got out. It was better not to tell Lucy too much about himself or his clan. As much as he liked the pixie, he certainly didn't trust her to not repeat what he said to the Niles human.

Ashton sunk down in his seat and pushed his plate around, barely picking at the food. Lucy frowned at him. "Hey, I worked hard to get that for you. Stop playing around and eat it," she scolded him.

Ashton sighed and tore off a corner of the bread. Lucy munched on the overly sweet human food happily, and Ashton eyed her choice of breakfast with disgust.

Garden pixies mostly drank nectar from flowers, but they harvested, or rather scavenged, whatever seeds, fruits, or vegetables they could find in human gardens. In addition to being bold enough to steal from humans, they were also the only faerie sub-species that was crazy enough to kill and eat ants. 

Woodlands mainly ate grasshoppers and crickets, while water sprites ate minnows, tadpoles, and the occasional frog. Even meadow pixies, the original group that gardens had split from, weren't stupid enough to mess with ants.

Individual ants usually didn't bother faeries, but they were terrifying as a hoard. And they got mad if you killed one of them. But garden pixies were like little demons wrapped up in the tiniest, meanest bodies. Ashton knew of a group of garden pixies who had moved to the meadow near his home, and he had once seen them wage war on an anthill for the eggs. It was not a pretty sight.

Ashton continued to stare at Lucy as she ate her human cereal. Unlike other pixies, she didn't seem to care for faerie food at all, preferring the sweetest human foods that Niles let her get her twitchy little hands on. Ashton hadn't interacted with a lot of pixies, but she was by far the weirdest one he had ever met. 

She even liked wearing human-style clothing, which Ashton really didn't understand at all. Niles made the clothes for her, and Ashton couldn't help but be impressed by the designs for the shirts, which didn't seem to limit Lucy's flight mobility. Most faeries just went around shirtless in warm weather, but Lucy didn't. Yet another thing that Ashton didn't understand about this pixie.

Niles made clothes for Ashton, too, but they were the soft, loose style that woodlands were used to. Ashton was grateful that Niles had gotten the design right, and he wondered what woodlands had taught the human. He was also relieved that Niles never forced him to wear a shirt. The bandages around his chest had been bad enough.

But now that he thought about it, Niles had started making tiny faerie jackets since the weather had started getting cooler. Ashton wondered if Niles would make him wear those when they went outside, but he tried not to worry about it yet. 

A jacket might not be such a bad idea, anyway, given how much weight he had lost during captivity. It wasn't uncommon for woodlands faeries to wear shirts or jackets in the colder winter months, but Ashton usually didn't need to because of his sprite blood. Living underwater meant that sprites handled cold temperatures very well.

A tiny hand suddenly appeared in his face, snapping its fingers. Ashton jerked back and frowned at Lucy, who looked satisfied to finally have his attention back on her.

"Anyway, you should try the exposure therapy thing," she said, effectively snapping him out of his thoughts. "But, at the end of the day, I don't really care what you do. You're not my patient."

***

Niles took the two faeries out to the garden later that morning. He and Lucy sat by the pond while Ashton lay asleep on a blanket nearby, stretched out on his stomach with the sun warming his scarred back and the breeze tugging at his soft, wavy hair. 

Lucy leaned over Niles' shoulder to get a better look at the phone in his hand. "What are you doing?" she wanted to know.

Niles glanced at her and tilted his phone up so she could see it better. "Just ordering some groceries," he replied.

Lucy fluttered into his face. "You're getting groceries delivered?" she asked incredulously.

"Well, yeah," Niles said defensively, waving her away. He knew where this was going. Lucy normally approved of doing things the easier way, but she always got upset with Niles when he let himself get so consumed by work that he didn't leave the house or clinic. 

"It's not like I can bring Ashton to the store with me," he explained. "And I can't leave him home alone with his broken leg."

Lucy stared at him. "When's the last time you left the house, anyway?" she wanted to know.

Niles thought about it. "Umm, a couple of weeks ago?" He hazarded. "When I took Ashton to the doctor to get his stitches out."

"No, you idiot," Lucy clarified. "I mean to run errands? Do things for yourself? See your friends? Go to the gym? Play soccer?"

"Oh... umm... not since Ashton has been here," Niles admitted. "And I... haven't really seen anybody, either, I guess... I don't want to leave Ashton on his own. It's not safe."

"Oh, gosh, its worse than I thought," Lucy muttered. "Louder, she said, "Well, go to the gym and the grocery store today, then. I think Ashton and I can hold down the fort just fine while you're gone."

Niles head shot up. "I can't just abandon my patient like that," he protested.

"He doesn't like you anyway," Lucy argued. "Besides, I'm sure he'll breathe easier with you out of the house. Let him have a break from humans."

Niles opened his mouth to disagree with her and then blinked. "Oh," he said. "You're right."

"Of course I'm right; I'm always right," Lucy asserted matter-of-factly. "Don't you worry. I'll take care of our skittish woodlands friend."

***

Back in the house and awake from his nap, Ashton was resting quietly in his carrier when Lucy flew in and kicked at him to get his attention.

He turned over to frown at her, and she grinned. "Guess what, woodlands?" she said. "Niles is gone! Now we can really have some fun!"

Ashton wondered if he had heard right. "Niles is... gone?" he asked hesitantly. 

He had thought it odd when Niles had placed his carrier back on the ground instead of the office desk after their time in the garden, but he didn't question it. Who was he to tell the human what he could and couldn't do with him? Niles had said something about going somewhere, but Ashton hadn't recognized the words that he used, so he just ignored him and pretended to be asleep.

"Yup!" Lucy affirmed, plopping down on the desk with a grin. "We've got the whole place to ourselves. What do you want to do first?"

Ashton clenched his blankets in his fists. Niles' presence had been such a constant the last month and a half that he didn't know how he felt about his sudden absence. It was a weird mixture of relieved and unsettled. It was nice to not have to flinch every time he heard a sound, thinking it was the human coming to check on him. But he also couldn't shake the foreboding feeling that something bad would happen if Niles wasn't there to handle it.

Lucy cocked her head at his hesitancy. "What's wrong?" she wanted to know.

"When... will he be back?" Ashton asked. 

The pixie tapped her chin, thinking. "Probably a couple hours," she guessed. "I told him to run a few errands and go to the gym."

"Gym?" Ashton echoed.

"Gym," Lucy nodded. "Humans go to buildings called gyms to exercise and stay healthy. Niles usually goes a few times a week, and he has a group of friends that he plays soccer with on the weekend."

Ashton's head was spinning. "Soccer?"

"It's a game," Lucy explained patiently. "You run around on a field and try to kick a ball into the other team's goal."

Ashton nodded, and Lucy returned to her earlier question. "So, what do you want to do?" Her eyes lit up. "We should do something that Niles never lets us do!"

"There's stuff Niles doesn't let us do?" Ashton was confused and concerned. The only thing Niles had asked of him was to not climb down from furniture. And that was only until his leg was healed. 

Have I been breaking rules I didn't know about? he wondered anxiously. 

"Well... not really. But he doesn't like it when I drink coffee. We should do that." Her eyes gleamed. "I love coffee."

Ashton sank down. "I don't want to do anything that would make Niles mad," he mumbled.

Lucy rolled her eyes. "Niles doesn't get mad," she corrected, but then she paused. "Well, actually, Niles doesn't get mad at faeries." She paused again. "Oh, dang, actually, he gets mad at me a lot. But it's more like annoyed, not mad, mad."

She took a breath and noticed Ashton's fearful face. "Wait, wait, it's ok," she backpedaled. "There's nothing you could do to make him mad at you. I promise."

Ashton pulled his blanket around his shoulders and took a deep breath to calm himself. He liked the scent of the laundry detergent that Niles used to clean his blankets. Niles' clothes always smelled like it, too.

"Ok," Lucy held a hand up. "How about this. I'll drink coffee, and you just come hang out with me. Does that work?"

Ashton considered it and then nodded slowly. Niles had never said anything to him about not drinking coffee. But he wouldn't anyway, just to be safe.

They headed to the kitchen, and Lucy got lunch for them. She kept eyeing the coffee maker, though she told Ashton that she wouldn't have any until after lunch. 

"Having food in your stomach slows down the effect," she explained to Ashton. "Probably. I figure Niles will be less mad at me if I at least pretend to drink coffee responsibly."

After lunch, Ashton sat at the table and watched Lucy busy herself with the huge coffee maker. For someone so small, she was awfully adept at using it, and she had a tiny mug in front of her in minutes.

She breathed in the scent of it and sighed, and Ashton leaned over curiously to sniff at it, too. "It's sweet," he said in surprise. "The stuff that Niles drinks always smells bitter."

Lucy took a big swig from her mug and nodded. "Yeah, Niles drinks it black," she explained. "No sugar, no creamer, no nothing. It's so gross. Honestly, if he could figure out a way to safely inject coffee into his veins, he probably would. Man's got no taste. Only sheer willpower and an intense need to stay awake to do all his doctor-y and research stuff."

She held up her mug. "This right here, though— now this is where it's at. You add a whole packet of sugar and a little bit of oat milk and bam! Perfect cup of coffee."

Ashton stared at her as she downed the whole mug and got herself another. Before long, her wings were a buzzing blur, and she was hopping from one foot to the next, eyes darting around the room.

"Umm, are you ok?" Ashton asked nervously. 

She looked at him and grinned. "Are you kidding me? I've never felt better!"

She zipped away, and Ashton watched her zoom around the kitchen, completely dumbfounded. She seemed to be having a great time, so he sat there quietly, trying not to feel jealous that she could fly around so freely while he was stuck on the kitchen table.

The front door opened, and Ashton pricked his ears up. His heart beat faster as he heard human footsteps sound down the hall, but he quickly relaxed when he saw it was only Niles. He was strangely relieved to see the human's familiar face, his black hair half tied back as it usually was when he was in the middle of something.

The human stood frozen in the kitchen doorway, bags in hand, staring shocked as Lucy bounced around the kitchen walls. He glanced at the coffee maker and frowned.

"Hey!" he exclaimed. 

He quickly put the bags on the kitchen counter and held his hand out as if to catch Lucy's blurry form. Before he did, however, he caught sight of Ashton sitting stock still on the kitchen table, and he lowered his hands.

"Lucy, what the heck?" Niles griped instead. "I thought you said you would hold down the fort! Not overdose on coffee!"

Lucy zipped from one shoulder to the next, jabbering in his ears. She was talking so fast that even Ashton couldn't catch what she was saying.

"Oh my gosh," Niles closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I should've known better." He pointed his finger at Lucy. "I'm taking the coffee next time," he warned her.

She started to whine in his ear, but he waved her off and turned to Ashton. "You alright?" he asked anxiously. "She didn't make you drink some, too, did she?"

Ashton shook his head mutely, and Niles looked relieved. "Good. As you can see, it's not good for faeries." He glared at Lucy, who was doing cartwheels in the air around his head. "But she still hasn't figured that out."

Sighing, Niles filled Lucy's mug with some water and pushed it into her hands. "Drink this," he ordered. "We have to try to dilute all that caffeine in your system."

Lucy gulped it down and handed the mug back to Niles. "Go fly a few laps around the house," he told her, and she was off.

Niles walked up to the kitchen table, and Ashton tried not to flinch at his approach. As Niles got closer, however, Ashton couldn't help but cower in his shadow.

"Ash," the human began quietly as he took a seat at the table. "Are you alright?"

Ashton glanced around worriedly for Lucy, but she was singing at the top of her lungs in the living room. He couldn't bring himself to meet Niles' eyes. Was the human angry? Suddenly, Ashton felt his stomach twist into anxious knots. He was so stupid. He never should have let Lucy talk him into letting her drink coffee. Of course he would be in trouble.

The Niles human waited patiently at his silence until Ashton worked up the courage to look at him. Niles was staring off towards the living room, where Lucy was waving at him. He rolled his eyes, but his mouth quirked up in a smile anyway. It made his dimple show, like it always did when he was happy about something. Ashton's shoulders started to relax. Maybe Niles wasn't angry after all.

Niles suddenly glanced down at him, and Ashton instinctually tensed up again. Niles just smiled at him gently. "Did you eat lunch?" he asked, and Ashton nodded.

"Oh, good. We should probably get you to bed, then. We'll go outside again once you wake up, ok?"

Ashton didn't really have anything to say to that, so he stayed quiet as Niles picked him up and brought him back to his carrier in the office. 

"Sleep well, buddy," he said, tucking him in and withdrawing his hand. And then he was gone, probably off to check on Lucy.

Ashton sank down in his blankets, thinking. Lucy had been right. Even though Niles looked annoyed, he didn't seem mad at all. And he had jumped right into taking care of her and Ashton, as he always did. 

I don't understand, Ashton thought. Why doesn't anything bother him? 

He curled up tighter, wondering, and trying to understand why he almost missed the warmth of Niles' fingers around him. 

_______________________________________________________________________

A/N:  I forgot to mention this earlier, but Ashton is often referred to as either a woodlands or a sprite. Both terms are accurate since he's mixed. Lucy usually calls him a woodlands since he smells like one. Niles thinks of him as more of a sprite because he looks like one. 

Also, fun fact, faeries are lactose intolerant, hence the almond milk in Lucy's cereal and the oat milk in her coffee. She doesn't let that stop her when it comes to ice cream, though. She just magicks the cramps away, even though Niles always chides her about how irresponsible that is. 

Thanks for reading and see you in the next part!