"I don't do that" Jochy sighed. "Hell, even if I wanted to, I couldn't. I ain't no damn vampire. Doesn't work that way." Or, well, he didn't want it to work that way."

"This is definitely mine. It's like I got ears again and can hear and see. Just need to get my bearings."

"You used to be a vampire," Cara pointed out. But she backed off on ribbing him. "Are you sure you don't want us to untie you?" she asked. "We're going to have to eventually. I'm not carrying you home."

She looked to Meg. "So, then should I get the tea?"

Morgana got up from her bench. "I will get tea; you can get him out of those ropes." From the way her mouth twisted into a tight, smug smile, she was dying to make a comment about tying up Jochy. Instead she bustled about the tea, calling over her shoulder, "Just stay down a bit. That's quite a lump of hide missing there."

"I used to be a lot of things" Jochy admitted. "Trying to settle on being something more decent than I used to. Yer ain't never gonna let me live down all the shit I told you, right?" The grin he aimed at Cara was a small and personal one.

"And don't worry Morgana, I ain't planning to move. Honestly, right now I'm trying not to think of anything below the neck, and not moving really helps with that." People who knew him well would easily pick up on the tenseness in his tone, he wasn't at all as relaxed as he wanted to pretend.

"This feels really weird."

Cara smiled back at Jochy, and reached down to untie the first of the knots.Then she paused. "Wait," she said. "Why should I let you out of this this easily?" she asked quietly, running a hand through his hair while Meg was turned the other way. "I take mine as bitter as you can possibly brew it!" she called over her shoulder.

Morgana made a point of keeping her back to them during tea-making, even to developing a crab-like sidelong-shuffle between the shelves and the water on the hearth. "Give me a moment to scab those over and you retie him up as you like," she said. "Goodness knows it's what it takes to keep that boy anywhere . . . "

"Because I possibly could make them unknot themselves now if I tried?" Jochy batted his lashes at her, but the tense smile had stayed. "Have some mercy. I've just got half skinned from the feel of things, I ain't up for any strenuous exercise." Did he sound embarrassed?

Just a little bit. If there was someone that could make him feel that way it was Morgana. She knew too much. Had seen too much.

Knew what a shit he had been.

"See, this is why I've stayed away from women" he teased, so they both could hear. "They conspire against me, the lot of them."

"I wasn't suggesting any strenuous exercise. Not right now," she said. She raked his hair back away from his forehead, and kissed his temples. "You like being the victim," she told him nicely, before she began untying. "It's not use. He's not going to be any fun about it."

"If I were him, I wouldn't feel like much fun either," Morgana said simply. She set a mug of tea on the edge of the table for Jochy. "Yours will have to stew a while," she said to Cara. "Need a hand hauling him up?"

"Like being the victim..." Jochy pondered that while she untied. Maybe she was right. He got off on it and hated it at the same time. Life was too bloody complicated. "Maybe it's better to be the victim than the other way around" he admitted after a moment.

He wasn't sure if he liked that, but... he wasn't sure what he liked right now. His world was his own skin, and right now that was smarting.

"We can handle..." Jochy let Cara help him up, trying not to make the snub to Morgana too obvious.

Unfortunately the movement made him swear quite loudly.