#AND DIES IN THE GLOW OF HIS CANDLESTICKS! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

littlefreya · 3 years ago

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I need this fluff in my life and so the heck do you!!

Getting matching PJs for you, Hen AND Kal!!

If my bestie needs fluff, I must comply!

Summary: Halloween is your favourite holiday, and frankly, it's quite an obsession of yours. However, seeing Henry and you just started dating, you are rather insecure and afraid of what he might think of you if he finds out...

Pairing: Henry Cavill x Reader (no description of body type or ethnicity)

Words: 1.3k

Themes: PG13, gooey fluff, insecurity, a new relationship, romance.

A/N: Not beta'd. Since it's an almost spooky season, I took the liberty of making this about Halloween 🎃 Special thanks to @agniavateira and @the-soot-sprite, who always encourage me to keep writing. Please comment and reblog if you enjoyed 🖤

🦇🎃👻 Spooky Season 👻🎃🦇

Halloween always held a special place in your heart.

Every year as August kissed the sun goodbye and the first chill breeze of September drifted over your cheeks, the hunt for unique and creepy decorations would begin. There was no greater joy than turning your humble little pad into a haunted mansion and spending time with friends watching your favourite spooky films.

That is... Until Henry came along...

It wasn't that you didn't care for Halloween anymore. Quite the contrary, you couldn't wait for Autumn! For the first time in your life, you were about to share this special occasion with a boyfriend.

However, as days grew colder and the leaves on the tree outside your window fell golden to the ground, instead of feeling thrilled, you grew dreadfully insecure.

By October, you snuffed any mention of Halloween away. Fearing Henry would think your fixation was foolish, no decorations were purchased nor hung on your walls. And even when Henry randomly mentioned 'trick or treating', you heard yourself mutter, "who wants to go out on Halloween anyway? That's lame kids' stuff..."

And so... your obsession was buried under heaps of insecurity until the burning wick of your candle dwindled and died.

On the night of Hollows Eve, all you wanted to do was go home and lay snuggled on the sofa with Henry until the night was over. You decided to spend that time together not celebrating Halloween.

Heading home from work, you kept your eyes vacant, not daring a glimpse at the children and teenagers who ran about in their costumes. You convinced yourself you didn't care for it anymore, when deep inside, you couldn't help but feel a needle in your heart every time you passed through a glowing jack o' lantern who leered at you from a neighbour's doorstep.

"Henry, I am home!"

You declared as you finally unlocked the door.

Oddly, the light was off.

"Umm... Henry where..."

A flash of bright blue light blinded your sight, followed by a rumbling thunder that boomed angrily in your ears.

Confused and unable to see anything, you sought for the light switch in the dark when another lightening painted the house in pale icy shades. This time, the thunder accompanied a low, growly evil laughter with a familiar timbre.

"We've been expecting you..."

Still in the dark, you heard someone click his fingers. At the little snap, a dozen little glowing tears of light lit your apartment in a dim orange glow.

Still hazy from the abrupt change, you rubbed your eyes and took a better look before a loud gasp of wonder escaped your lips. When you left home for work this morning, your apartment still looked like a mundane IKEA catalogue. The last thing you expected was to return to one of the dungeons hidden in Dracula's castle.

Instead of naked white walls, you faced pitted bricks of grey stone cloaked by cobwebs and a dozen antique-looking candlesticks holding tall lamps that were made to look like candles. Smoke-wafting caldron stood upon the table, surrounded by plump pumpkins and several trays abundant with an assortment of sweets, including cookies that were made to look like green zombie fingers, bats and evil skulls.

Astonished, you turned in your spot with your mouth agape, uncertain what to focus on first. Even the once-flat ceiling was remodelled as a blanket of pillowy clouds replaced the surface. Stringed flapping rubber bats hung from the top, and as you peered down, you spotted bloodied footprints all over the floor.

"I thought the place could use a bit of redecoration..."

Stepping from the corner, Henry finally appeared, donning a furry werewolf onesie and pointy rubber ears covered with shaggy grey hair. His beard was overgrown, the rounded tip of his nose tinted black, and the piercing sapphires that glanced at you so proudly were rimmed by black as well.

In a passing thought, you mused that it was unfair that he wore eyeliner better than any other woman you knew!

You opened your mouth to speak, but before you managed a word, Henry pointed a finger in the air, "wait, that's not all!" He chimed, "Kal, to me!"

Prancing through the corridor, the chunky bear-of-a-dog rapped with a playful greeting bark. Just like his master, the four-legged pal was wearing a matching furry onesie.

The pointy rubber ears covered his own, although there was no need for them. You wanted to laugh at the silliness of the situation, but once you breathed, you sensed the unmistakable sting in your eyes, and soon your sight became blurry.

As Henry’s noticed your glossy eyes, his brow creased with concern. Rushing towards you, he grasped your forearms and lowered his head to get a better look at your face.

"My love? What’s wrong?”

Tears kissed your cheeks but only for a moment. The back of your hand swept them away before you sprang a smile between quivering lips. “You did this?” You swayed your gaze across the room to gesture, “all of this for me?”

Henry’s concern faded into a soft grin. Tenderly, he leaned in to kiss your brow, his hands squeezing your forearms slightly firmer, “of course I did.”

Kal barked at his response, which made Henry instantly correct, “well, Kal, the ‘were-bear’ helped too.”

The dog barked again, tapping his paw on the floor in protest.

“And…. the art department of Netflix,” Henry mumbled quickly.

Cheeks still damp, you giggled and knelt, planting a tender kiss on Kal’s snoot. “Thank you, Kal.”

Henry’s glance warmed your neck, admiration filling his heart as he saw you - his girl, tearing in childlike joy. It had only been six months, though secretly, he already knew; he could spend a lifetime bringing a smile to your face, and just as this thought resonated in his mind, he remembered he hadn’t even finished unveiling all his surprise.

“Hang on. There is more!” He called and rushed to fetch a small bag hidden behind the sofa.

Smiling with anticipation, you peered inside, pleasantly surprised to find another werewolf onesie to match his and Kal's, so now the three of you can wear matching pyjamas.

“Only werewolves get to join Halloween celebrations this year…”

“Shouldn’t you bite me first in order to turn me?” You suggested with a quirk of an eyebrow while fishing the outfit from the bag.

“The night is young…” Henry responded and then leaned in. His breath blew hot against your neck as his lips ghosted over the shell of your ear, and with a growl, he uttered, “I plan to do plenty of biting…”

But as he drew back, all whimsical and wickedness faded. Like the ocean kissed by the sun, his eyes sparked, the gleam of the dozen ‘candlelight’ reflecting in it while he offered a deep glance.

“Why did you pretend not to care about it? All your friends told me how much time you spent every year getting ready…” His palm reached your nape, thumb grazing the length of your spine affectionately to reassure you.

You looked away, both ashamed of your pretence but also at what you thought he’d find as a foolish fixation, “I didn’t mean to lie or anything, I was just afraid…”

“Of what?” His thumb further caressed your skin, sensing how the hair stood on the back of your neck.

“I was afraid you’d think I am weird.”

“You are weird,” he exclaimed and shrugged, “that’s why I love you.”

Hearing his words made your heart skip. Once again, the tears tickled your eyes. Inadubly, you mouthed, “thank you” as the words couldn't make their way through your clenching throat.

Henry’s hand moved from your nape to your cheeks and gently so, wiped away your tears. “Now go and change, darling, because like I said, only werewolves can join the celebration.”

Nodding, you snatched the bag from his grasp and hurried to change your outfit. That night and every night since, the 31st of October became the most important date of in the Cavill Household, where each time, both Henry and you sought creative ways to top the last year's celebration.

With the help of Kal, of course!

#henry cavill #henry cavill rpf #henry cavill x reader #henrycavill #henry cavill fanfiction

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limerental · 3 years ago

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ficletober day 16 - steddie future fic

(but finished late and it's already on ao3 here and it's for a fandom i'm not in for a media i haven't really watched i was possessed ok i'm normal) It's ten years later. Steve's a hospice nurse. Eddie's got the virus. It's kind of weird and sad and strange and inevitable. Or something. And not as sad as it sounds. we interrupt our regular programming for whatever the hell this is. content warning for hospitals and death but no MCD beyond ruminating about it. also, disordered eating, illness, yuckiness, and grossness. explicit blowjobs and glow in the dark condoms. etc

One of Steve Harrington's patients dies on a Wednesday morning.

Which isn't unexpected, given he's a nurse at a hospice facility, you know, they're all bound to croak at some point. His job's about making it a little easier, a little quieter. Not saving anybody or saving the world, just easing the pain. It's not like he's head over heels for the job, but it beats his other options. College flunkee who doesn't dare give his rich asshole father the time of day, no matter what job opportunities making nice with him could buy.

Would rather change catheters and wipe old people's diarrhea his whole life than resort to that.

It's hospice. They don't get better. Sometimes they go home a while and come back, but they all die. Losing patients is a breath of relief. Their suffering finally over. His job– making dying seem easy –complete.

So, its not unexpected when he walks in on Wednesday and reads the night shift's notes. That the Turner kid's probably on his way out.

It's not a surprise at all. The guy's been lingering for a week now, barely conscious. He's an AIDs patient, riding the last wave of compounding infections and failed drug cocktails.

Palliative care is a strange sort of thing, like compassionate neglect. It's not a kindness to pump a failing body full of fluids as their organs shutter out one by one. Fluids restricted, no feeding tube, nothing but pain meds and the hush of the ward. Let them die of dehydration instead of drowning.

What's unexpected is walking into Turner's room and finding Eddie fucking Munson sitting in there with him, gripping Turner's hand.

"Munson?" Steve blurts. It's been years. It's been a damn decade, but the guy looks almost the same. Steve's living and working a few towns over from Hawkins and most anyone who meant anything to him there has moved away anyhow, so he's out of the loop in a way that feels nice but also means he's lost track of a lot of people. It's just weird that Munson's still kicking around here when Steve had pegged him for one of those who'd ditch the whole state the second he could.

His hair's a bit different, more mullet than shag and he's got something of a mustache going, but he looks the damn same. A touch of grey at his temples maybe. A wrinkle at the corners of his mouth.

"Jesus," says Munson, looking at him all bug-eyed. "Is that Steve fucking Harrington? In baby blue scrubs? In a hospice ward? In bumfuck Indiana? With a buzzcut?"

"Colonel Mustard in the ballroom with a candlestick," jokes Steve, and Munson keeps gaping at him. Maybe because he just made a dumb joke at his friend's deathbed.

"Geez, I never thought– you a doctor?"

"Nurse."

"Geez," he says again. "You're a sight for sore eyes. I can be here, can't I? They told me he's… you know."

"Yeah, sometimes it takes a while though," Steve says, but by the looks of things as he flips through the chart, scribbling down vitals, it's any time now.

What happens next is what always happens. Not that everybody's death here is the same, but that every patient he's ever had does it eventually.

Die.

Sometimes in a huddle of family, sometimes alone, but usually quietly, slowly, and suddenly. The dying man breathes and breathes and then doesn't.

None of it takes very long in this case.

Munson is sitting with both hands held over one of the Turner kid's when it happen, watching him die with all the somber sort of silence moments like this demand from anyone. He's sitting there more still than Steve ever remembers him being, but then again, it's been a decade. Maybe his theatrics have mellowed out. Maybe he has some normal, adult job now like. In finances.

Steve looks again at Munson, tattooed up his whole neck and wearing a jacket held together by safety pins.

Ok. Maybe a normal, adult job at a biker bar.

"Were you two close?" Steve asks in the quiet as he turns off the noise of the machines.

"No, he– I didn't know him. But there's this support group I'm in, and one of us tries to be there when– well. It was my turn. Or not my turn, my turn, you know, not like it was his turn but it will be. Someday."

"You–" It's like something big and cumbersome gums up inside his chest.

"Yeah," says Munson, shrugging. "Me."

"Shit, man," says Steve, because he's great with handling the dying and increasingly worse with the living, let alone the living dead.

"Yeah, very sad. Woe is me. You wanna swing by my place after your shift and drink some beer about it?"

And they aren't friends exactly, really never were, but Steve figures it's kinda just polite to accept an invitation from somebody you used to know who just roundabout confessed to being riddled with deadly disease. Or something.

And there's a part of him that remembers being eighteen and studying Eddie Munson like an unsolvable puzzle, thinking about him and his knobby weird wrists and long tangle of hair and the ridge of his Adam's apple and his tar-black eyes, sometimes at times he shouldn't have, at times he really really shouldn't have, and then burying all that and doing nothing about it and then a whole decade passing in a blur.

His teenaged self feels very, very far away, and now he knows intimately what happens to people who don't take that leap and be brave and cling to the shit that matters while they still can.

They die alone. Or with strangers sitting next to them, measuring their last vitals.

"Yeah, sure," says Steve.

Can't hurt, he thinks.

Famous last words.

Munson still lives in Hawkins in the same trailer park, but he's prettied his uncle's old trailer up some, a strangely grandma kitsch aesthetic for a man who has several visible gory skull tattoos, one with curled goat horns stamped high on his throat.

He's got a mosquito plant growing in an old sherbert container and a listing aloe. There's tomatoes and jalapenos in buckets and kitty litter containers. A half dozen bamboo windchimes and dangling bells cluster in the rafters of the old porch, and a painted rocking chair sits beside a six foot cactus, its reaching branches segmented into flat, spineless pads hung with leftover tinsel from Christmas, its pot used as a heaping ashtray.

"This is Henry," says Munson. "He's my roommate."

"The cactus?"

"Yeah, man, he's decent company. "

He pats the plant a bit too hard, and a piece falls off. Without comment, he fishes it off the porch and shoves it into a yogurt cup of dirt sitting beside a dozen others.

"I give these suckers away like candy," he says. "Everybody and their grandma loves a free cactus."

"Sure," says Steve, who is fairly certain even a cactus would die a miserable death in his care if he looked at it wrong.

There's a white plastic chair fallen on its side in the overgrown yard, greyed with mildew spots, and Munson tugs it up from the grip of the grass growing through the spokes of its backrest and plops it down beside the rocker on the porch. He swipes off the spider webs and dirt and gestures with spread arms to the shitty chair, bowing like it's a throne.

It's over the top. It's weirdly familiar. Everything else has marched on, has changed, has aged or whatever, but Munson's the same fucking weirdo he was ten years ago.

"Sit down, buddy, stay a while. Though I can't say I'm the greatest host. Don't get paid until Friday, so it's just cheez whiz keeping me goin' mostly. Hell, half of this place might be held together by cheez whiz."

Steve thinks it's probably a joke, that all he's eating is processed cheese, but he wouldn't be surprised. Munson looks sallow and skinny. Not a lick of muscle on him, and he's wearing a pit-stained wifebeater and little denim shorts. Anywhere his skin's not sickly green with fading tattoos, he's so pale it's almost blinding and purple-veined under his red-rimmed eyes, and Steve's not stupid. He does this for a living, watching people hollow down to nothing and then snuff out, and he can see pretty clearly when someone's one foot in the grave. It's not even the virus that does it usually, it's the compounding trauma of it all, the drugs, the loss, the slow starvation both literal and spiritual.

He doesn't even like Munson much, doesn't know him too well and barely did back then, but it's--it's sad. It's heart-breaking.

He wonders if one of Munson's support group is already lined up to sit beside him at the end.

Steve's looking at him rocking in the rocker beside Henry the six foot cactus, little tinsel pieces blowing cheerily in the breeze, and can't even fucking think about it.

"Sit, Harrington, sit, sit," he insists when the silence stretches, and Steve's still standing on the stairs. "You're giving me the willies just staring at me all puppy-dog eyed. I'm not going to keel over tonight. Sit down! Sit!"

Steve sits. The plastic chair groans ominously.

"You've got a lot of plants," he says for want of something to say.

"This? Naw, this ain't anyhing. You should see what I have growing over the ridge in that cornfield."

He's high right now, Steve notices, hard to tell how wide his pupils are with eyes that dark, but he's got this molasses slurred energy to his movement that is unmistakable. Steve gets drug tested too often at work to smoke much these days, and it feels a little desperate to do alone anyway, like an admission that his life's shit enough to need to get high to escape. He thinks like, what do people do when they hang out anymore? What do people say?

"I like your… bell things," says Steve.

"Ah, they're handmade."

"Cool, cool. How's um… life?"

Munson laughs at him. More like cackles, rocking back and forth in the chair slapping his knees.

"I live in my dead uncle's falling down trailer," he wheezes. "I'm thirty whole years old and work washing dishes and have two bucks to my name. I sell coke to high schoolers out of a van. My best friend is a cactus. I'm dying of the virus one day at a time. You know man, it's peachy. How's your life, then? Successful, I bet, Mr. Bigshot. Fancy medical career. Cute little family. Picket fence."

It's Steve's turn to laugh, feeling the surreality of how off base Munson is.

"Naw man," he says shaking his head. "None of that. Life's just…" He shakes his head some more, runs his hand along his buzzed scalp. It still feels weird to skim his hands along soft peachfuzz. "It's lonely, I guess."

Munson makes a face, watching his hands.

"Why'd you buzz it?" he asks, and Steve grins, knowing he'll get a kick out if it.

"Started going bald."

"No shit!"

"Yeah, no shit."

Not too badly yet, but it had felt a little pathetic, watching his hair thin in the mirror and clinging to it as some kind of. Immutable piece of his identity. Some kind of symbol. What it symbolized, he's got no clue, but it's in the past now, it's over and done.

"Your mullet is really showing me up, Munson," Steve says and gets an eyebrow waggle and a dramatic shake of his hair in return.

"Read it and weep, Baldy."

Munson waves at a neighbor walking her dog, and she waves back cheerily. There's a mockingbird yelling out repeating bird calls from somewhere nearby, a pair of wasps flitting about in the eaves of the trailer, and a big, ugly thunderhead cruising the summer sky. The air smells like ozone and cut grass and the tar cooking in the asphalt, and Steve's realizing he doesn't really know how to talk to someone who's dying but not actively.

Not that it's always a death sentence. The virus.

There's plenty of treatments now, experimental and otherwise. No cure yet but maybe soon. Steve's seen it enough times to know the virus doesn't really discriminate either. It takes gay and straight the same way in the end.

He wonders about Munson. Is he–? But then, it's none of his business really. Still, he remembers being eighteen and thinking he'd like to bite down on the white pudge of Eddie Munson's inner thigh and chew on the taut tendon there like a chicken wing. And yeah, he thinks that's still as messed up as it was then. And he still wants to, probably.

"You heard from the kids lately?" Munson asks. It surprises him.

"Hardly kids anymore," says Steve. "You haven't?"

"Not really," he says, nabbing a Zippo from one of Henry's branches to light a cigarette. "Not in a while."

It surprises him. He figured, out of all of them, Munson had the biggest chance of keeping up with at least some of them. Half because he always acted like he'd stay a kid forever himself. Peter Pan to their lost boys.

"They're OK, I think," he says. "Moved on. It's been a while for me too."

Munson looks at him, and his big eyes are all sad and wet. Or he's just really high.

Steve doesn't know what he's doing here, not really. It feels like a fragment of another life. One where he's Eddie Munson's old buddy, catching up after years apart, and it's a Wednesdsy in July with evening creeping in and he's got most of his shit together and knows what he's doing with his life.

"You want me to go pick us up some food?" Steve asks, clearing his throat, and doesn't ask you been eating, man?

"If you're paying, I'll pick it up."

"You're trashed."

"Driven worse," Munson shrugs, and he's up, keys slinging around his fingers before Steve can protest. "I'll go to Skeeter's down the road. Gimme your wallet."

He makes grabby hands, and Steve, the idiot, slaps his worn wallet into his waiting palm.

"Just as easy as that?" he says, guffawing. "Give the broke, ailing druggie trailer trash your credit card?"

Steve just kinda figures Munson's decent. It's been a while, but he can't have changed too drastically and he seemed decent back then too. Steve thinks of Munson sitting quietly beside a dying stranger this morning and thinks maybe that's not something someone would do if they were a bad person, but hell, he could be wrong.

Maybe stealing someone's credit card when you're flat broke with some very expensive drugs the only thing keeping you alive has nothing to do with being a good or bad person. Maybe Steve's just kind of an idiot.

"Get a lava cake too," he says. "My treat."

"You're a decent guy, Nurse Harrington," says Munson. "Not too bright, but you're decent."

"I could be waiting to rob you blind."

"Oh," he coos like one would at a pig-tailed toddler. He taps with a long finger against Steve's forehead. "Lights are all on but no one's home. Good luck scrounging anything up in there. Like I said. Cheese whiz."

The beat up van squeals away into the settling evening.

The mosquitos have stormed out in force as dusk sets in, Munson's scrawny little plant not quite enough to hold back the hordes, so Steve lets himself into the trailer, hoping maybe because Munson said that stuff about scrounging around that he's not overstepping a boundary.

Munson wasn't lying about the cheese whiz.

Not that it's being used like glue to hold together bits of crumbling infrastructure or caulked along the baseboards or whatever but that a siingular can of the stuff, plus some assorted condiments and a weirdly fuzzy pickle floating in a half empty jar of brine, are the only things in the fridge. Plus, a handful of Budweisers in the door.

The trailer otherwise is atrociously cluttered, a loose spill of eclectic detritus. Dirty laundry and crusty dishes and a whole lot of loose cassette tapes and dog-eared books with wizards and unicorns on the covers. Prayer flags strung across the ceiling and posters slathered on the walls. A privacy bead curtain to the back bedroom. Some illicit drug paraphernalia intermingling with pill bottles.

He picks one up to read the label and recognizes it, then starts picking out all the little bottles from the clutter and setting them together on top of the magazines on the coffee table.

He's got most of the full ones arranged together when Munson busts through the door with a doggy bag.

"If you want some real fun drugs, I've got some in the back," he says. "Those aren't really any good to snort."

"Sorry, sorry," says Steve, pulling his hands away.

"No, you're fine. I do have a system but it's a bit. Chaotic. Probably would make a good little nurse like you cringe."

"Some of these are expired," says Steve. "Are you taking them? What's your viral load?"

"Buy a fella a drink first, golly!" Munson presses his hand to his chest in mock offense. "You don't have to mother hen me. I'm a big boy. I've had this thing for years, and it hasn't got me yet."

"Sorry," Steve says again.

They go back out onto the porch with dinner and some cold beers. Two dozen wings and a thing of large fries. Munson plugs in an electric bug zapper, immediately glowing and crackling with vanquished mosquitoes and moths and craneflies.

Skeeter's is a dive bar, but their wings are still as damn good as Steve remembers. Eating wings is messy as shit, and Munson forgot napkins but drags out some bandanas from some musty drawer in his trailer. After a while, they both get tired of playing polite and wipe their mouths with the back of their hands and gnaw shamelessly on the gristle of spent bones they drop to the weathered porch.

It's full night and it's summer and it doesn't quite feel like real life. Munson lights a cigarette, and the ember of it hovers like a glowing eye in the crook of his fingers, pulsating.

The flickering orange of the streetlight doesn't quite reach onto the shadow of the porch, and Steve looks at Munson leaning in the rocker with his legs sprawled out and thinks about his unrealized boyhood fantasy. Of slumping on his knees between the guy's legs and–

It's not hard to imagine that maybe it's still '86, and Steve's burning up with energy that has nowhere to go, untethered from whoever he used to be with no real way forward. Still pretty sure there is a way forward, a tomorrow, a next chapter where something good happens. Something not awful at least. No more monsters, no more bloodshed, just– a life. Love. Something fulfilling and peaceful enough and–

He slips down off the shitty chair and onto his knees on the porch. It hurts like a punch up through his joints. He's not even thirty, and he's old as shit and not even happy and well-adjusted. He wants to whine about it, scream about it. Munson's thirty, and he might not make thirty-five. He wants to scream. He wants to–

"Munson," he says, because the guy's got his head tipped sideways with the cigarette dangling on his lips, looking at him like he's insane. "Muns– Eddie," he says. "Eddie, is it chill if I– I don't know. I've always wanted to– Can I– you got condoms?"

"Steve," says Eddie and touches his buzzed head with his fingertips like he's checking if he's real. "Steve, did you really just ask if it's chill to suck my dick?"

"Yeah. I guess."

It's weird. It's like a dream. Eddie gets a condom and shimmies his shorts down his bony, weird legs and drops back in the rocking chair. Steve's been sitting there on his heels the whole time he scrounged through his trailer. Like a pet, waiting.

"Are you even gay?" Eddie asks.

"Are you?"

"I've got the virus, Steve-o."

"So? Lots of people do. It's not a gay disease. It's not the act of a vengeful God. There's nothing wrong with being gay. There's nothing wrong with either of us."

He kisses Eddie on the inside of his thigh just past his knee when he says it and the skin is so soft under the firm touch of his lips that he regrets how bad his fresh shave is going to burn.

"That's very sweet, Steve. Real cute. But you're sucking some random guy's dick in a trailer park, and I'm high enough that I'm feeling kinda nervous with Henry watching. There are a few things wrong with us."

"Don't be nervous," Steve says and smooths both palms down his bare legs.

"Sweet as sugar, I'm telling you."

The hair on his legs is fine, barely there, but Eddie's pubic hair is coarse and thick and Steve's not too sure he's showered recently. Which should be gross really, should be a lot of things, but it mostly makes Steve want to pick him up by the scruff of his neck like a kitten and wash him off under the trickle of the kitchen sink.

He hasn't really sucked a dick before, just thought about it a lot and he's watched a few pornos. It seems straight-forward enough. Eddie's penis is right there and not really that hard yet, nestled snug against his balls in coarse hair. He's uncut, a little shine of fluid hanging at the blunt tip pushing beneath the hood of his foreskin, and it seems like it would fit pretty decent against the roof of his mouth. It's cute even. A little tough to see in the faint light, so Steve plants his palms on Eddie's knees and spreads him wider to look.

He bends close enough that Eddie must feel his breath. In his old fantasies, he lapped at him in slow licks like a dog, savoring the taste.

Eddie flicks him in the center of the forehead.

"Condom, you ding-dong."

"Right, yeah, right."

Munson pulls at himself, a harsh, weird tugging in a way that hardens him up fast. Steve skirts his fingers along the back of Eddie's knuckles as he does it. It's fast enough that the condom goes on smooth in no time, and then Steve's fingers curl to take his place. Latex shifts under his grip, dulls the heat but not the weight of it, and Eddie sighs and shifts up and the rocker tips back.

Steve puts his mouth over his covered erection and tastes rubber, mostly. It doesn't fit as nice in his mouth as it would have flaccid, but he rubs the head back and forth against the ridge behind his teeth and a little further. Real careful.

"What's gotten into you anyway? Jesus."

Maybe Munson's sobering up. Steve looks up at him through his lashes, and Eddie swears a colorful string of really made up cursewords and then bites his own fingers to keep quiet.

It's barely 10PM. There's kids living nearby probably. Little old ladies. Or maybe there's worse stuff someone could hear past dark in a neighborhood like this one.

Steve takes Eddie's dick most of the way down his throat.

"You into death, Harrington?" Eddie gasps. "You into like. Dying people. You never looked once at me before. You into finishing the job? Because you are literally killing me right now."

Steve pulls off.

"It's not like that," he says. "I looked at you all the time. Before this. I wanted to do all kinds of stuff."

"Oh," says Eddie. "Like what stuff?"

"Like this."

Steve leans past his stiff dick into the shadow of his gaunt pelvis and presses his mouth against the crook of his thigh. It's as doughy and soft as he imagined, probably fish-belly white too beyond the wiry hair, and Steve opens his mouth and bites. Eddie rocks up, the tendon in his teeth flexing into a taut cord and his cock jumps hard against Steve's cheek.

"Holy Christ, you're a fucking weirdo," Eddie chokes out.

It makes Steve feel a little dizzy, like he's seeing double vision. His decade old fantasy of biting at some vital, thrumming, secret part of wild-eyed, crazy-haired, full of life Eddie Munson blurring with the Eddie who's cast in shadow on a warped porch, pantsless, bare ass on his rocker, sauce-stained wife beater shrugged up his little pudge of a belly, bright yellow condom glowing in the dark.

"I don't know why I wanted to do that so bad," Steve says, muffled as he kisses up Eddie's twitching belly. He twists his fingers around the base of his dick and rubs up and down a few times just to watch Munson arch his back against the chair. "Hey, the condom glows in the dark."

"You just noticed?"

"Looks a little radioactive."

"That's only how it looks in movies."

"You sure?"

"This place is not a place of honor," Eddie gasps, rolling his hips up against Steve's hand.

"Huh?"

"It's… nevermind. You're a weirdo, Steve Harrington. You're a real weirdo."

"Is this what dirty talk for losers is like?"

Eddie skims his buzzed hair with both hands. He holds them there and tugs his head up, looking. The orange streetlight glow catches in his black eyes and hides the dark bags under them, accentuates the groove of wrinkles at the frown of his lips. He's damn pretty. Steve wants to lap him clean and chew on him some more.

"Guys like me are shunned for a reason, you know. I'm worse than a freak now. I'm a ticking time bomb. I could take anyone who gets close enough to love me down with them."

"Oh I love you now?" Steve jokes, and Eddie doesn't laugh. He's sober.

"It's dangerous, Steve. You should stop."

"Are you telling me to stop?"

"No. I'm saying you should want to."

"I don't want to."

He wraps his lips back around Eddie's dick.

With his eyes open, he can blurrily watch the bright yellow glow of the condom dim and brighten as he moves. The light looks sickly against Eddie's soft belly and thighs. Steve thinks danger.

He wants to ask if he knows who gave it to him, but knows that's rude and also not very sexy. They're probably dead now. It's not a very sexy thought at all, but Steve pushes the heel of his hand against the front of his jeans and rocks into it. He's not sure what comes next in his old fantasy. Suckle at Eddie Munson's inner thigh and then– And then, he–

Like all his dreams, they evaporate into thin air before the end. He still doesn't know what he wants to do with his life. He still can't get a handle on what he even likes. Does he like nursing people through the very end of their lives? Is it just a thing he fell into by chance and keeps doing because he doesn't have any clue what else there is?

If he'd been braver ten years ago and actually got to sucking Eddie's dick when his knees still worked perfectly and nobody was sick, what would have happened? Would it have been just once, a quickie, a satisfying good time but that's it, that's that? Would they have have had some gross whirlwind romance, caught up in each other, acting like lovebirds, overflowing, sticky-sweet and disgusting? Would they have been lovers, calling each other baby and sweetheart and pookie, standing against a world that goddamn hated them like nothing else, but all of it a little more tolerable and meaningful together, maybe? Would they have crashed and burned, Steve too indecisive and scattered, Eddie too wild child and unstable and hungry for the whole world, for fame and sex and drugs and all of it boiling up and ending quick and bright and permanent?

None of that would have passed his mind back then. He'd only seen people die blood and messy and sudden, not slow and inevitable with a little breath of relief.

"Steve," sighs Eddie, fingers digging into his scalp like he's trying to grip at his hair. "Steve, Steve, Steve."

Steve hollows his cheeks and tries to make it good for him. He really hopes it's good for him even it never happens again. Not like. For truly morbid reasons, but he supposes that's always possible too. That Eddie just dies. That he conks out and snuffs it.

It sucks. It makes him pull harder with suction at the dick in his mouth, moving his tongue with more determined purpose, laving along the latex-covered condom. He imagines the yellow glow staining his cheeks and tongue and hands. He wants it to. It's silly.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," swears Eddie and bucks his hips and goes taut, riding out the wave of an orgasm. Steve feels it as a warm weight pulsing against the skin of the condom held against his tongue. It's weird not to taste it, feel it. He rubs his palm against his own cock trapped in his jeans, and it only takes a second before he's coming off too. Maybe it's been a while. He leans his forehead against Eddie's bare thigh and gasps his way through it.

Eddie pushes him back and pinches the condom off and ties it, flinging it away somewhere out into the grass. Steve wonders how safe or sanitary that is but doesn't comment. He doesn't think wandering stray dogs or raccoons can get HIV. Probably. It's maybe just as gross as anything else about Eddie's life.

"You good?" Eddie asks and cradles his head in his hand. His dick's gone limp and small and spent against his pale thigh.

"Lava cake," says Steve. His lips feel dry from the latex and the lava cake is still sitting at the bottom of the doggy bag and the porch is covered in scattered chicken bones and Steve's knees hurt something awful.

"It'll be cold. Just a big brownie."

"Still chocolate," he says. "I don't care."

"You're really weird," says Eddie. "If I haven't said it before."

"Life's weird," he says. Eddie Munson's eyes shine.

"Yeah," says Eddie, fishing the bag of lava cake off the porch, still pantsless and sweaty. "Yeah, you're damn right about that.

They eat chocolate cake together with the bugzapper zinging overhead and a dog barking somewhere over the horizon and the streetlight glow haloing their bent heads. They lick chocolate from their fingers and then each other's fingers.

It's July. It's past midnight in a nowhere trailer park in bumfuck Indiana. It's ten years ago and it's the future.

Maybe five years on, Steve's holding Eddie Munson's hand while he finally dies after weeks, months, years of wasting away to nothing.

Or maybe not.

#steddie #i didn't like. intend to write this the image of thigh chewing just gripped me so tight i couldn't... not #i still don't know what stranger things is about #i did enough of a deep dive to get the character voices down #sowwy #also someone was already rude to me on ao3 about this fic it's a new record #i waltz into a fandom late with starbucks and get booed out #i'm not tagging this too intensely either it's embarrassing someone should feel embarrassed for me #my fic #ficletober 2022 #sort of

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laurelsofhighever · 4 years ago

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Almost two years after civil war nearly tore Ferelden apart, Alistair has settled into his role as king despite the cost of the victory. Having come to Orlais to lead trade talks with Empress Celene and representatives from the Free Marches, he hopes to build a stronger future for his people. But grief and guilt still haunt him, the expectations placed on his shoulders cut deep, and to top it all off, there's a stranger in the Winter Palace with the power to shatter his world once again.

SPOILERS FOR THE FALCON AND THE ROSE

She tumbled into the light. Her stomach lurched as if in a dream of falling and then her lungs sensed air and instinct overtook her in great, sawing gulps of it, like she was breaching the surface of the ocean after being held under. The flush of panic beneath her skin paused the tally of her other senses, but slowly the scents of rain and earth rose up to meet her, the sigh of wind against her face and the cold of mud under the claw of her fingernails. After so long, the onslaught of sensation bloomed sparks of colour beneath her eyelids. When she tried to open them, the world reeled and fell behind a red haze of too-quick movement, gravity firm against her back and cool earth pressed under her cheek.

“Rest easy, child. It will take some time to adjust to the world again.”

The familiarity of the voice, wry and cracked with age, spurred her into motion. Shivering, she rolled onto her side and turned her head up into the rain. Fat drops prickled her forehead, forcing her to blink, while grass poked at the back of her neck with every heaving gasp she drew for breath. The sky was white. Not green, not dark and swirling with currents of strange energy, but the blank white of a low cloud heavy with water, of a typical miserable day in the waking world that made travellers turn up their collars and drove wildlife to huddle away in whatever shelter they could.

Distracted, she opened her arms wide and laughed until the sound turned into sobbing.

And then a tendril of emerald energy flickered through the air above her head and dread froze her where she lay. The possibility that she was mired in illusion, that this glimpse of freedom might be ripped from her grasp like a curtain pulled back on an empty theatre, churned in her stomach and brought another wave of dizziness crashing down upon her head. It could not be. Without yet knowing if she would stand to face whatever was coming for her this time, she followed the flare of magic back to the rip in the Veil that had allowed her to cross, lifting her head past the ache growing in her bones to see an old woman in the worn, patched clothing of a beggar, her arms raised and wreathed in ropes of blinding bright energy that fed into the slippery green scar of the Fade. It shrank, twisting and snapping like a wild animal trying to free its ropes, until finally with a crack, a flash, and an afterimage that glowed on the back of her eyes, it disappeared entirely.

The roar of it grew stronger by its absence. Trees shivered around the ring of the hill, the susurration of their leaves like an incoming sea. She lay next to Flemeth within a ring of stones patchy with moss, with the acrid odour of a damp fire nearby, too beaten down by the weather to offer either light or warmth.

From neck to foot, her armour clanked with her shivering, even after her saviour barked a command to the flames to leap from their sulking places under the wet logs. As she dragged herself across the sodden ground to the wash of heat over her face, her senses righted still further and nagged her about her surroundings, the familiarity in the stones. She dismissed it. Her hands warmed as she knelt and thrust them towards the fire, but that only sparked another worry; somewhere along the way she had dropped her charm, the pink-petalled rose that had guided her, guarded her, through her wanderings. A bush of the same pale flowers hunkered a little way beyond the circle, but it only held her gaze for a moment before her eye caught on a more distant shape, the solid form of a castle behind the haze of rain, with the dim shadow of a settlement beneath it.

“This is Harrowhill,” she realised, her own voice out loud grating against her ears. Her heart clenched. Two and a half leagues off, her home waited, along with the life she had left behind. She could have walked there within a day, if she pushed herself.

A blanket folded around her shoulders in the same instant that another spoken word to the fire made it leap higher still.

“How do you feel?” Flemeth asked.

Rosslyn looked up into the gleaming yellow eyes. Her body had yet to catalogue the full inventory of hurts that had been done to it, but even in the moment as she pondered the question, more made themselves known. Her throat stung like she had been drinking seawater and the cold shiver in her limbs had turned into full shakes that shot pain through the length of her muscles, while about her, the world spun on more axes than it should. Groaning, she squeezed her eyes shut and turned to face straight ahead in the hopes it would quell the nausea, but the pounding in her head only worsened, and it brought into focus the face of a man slumped across the other side of the fire, whom until that moment she had mistaken for a bedroll.

“Who is that?”

Flemeth followed the direction of her gaze. “A criminal. It matters not.”

His eyes stared glassily at nothing from unremarkable, ashen features, mouth agape above a rust-dark line that stretched across the width of his throat.

“You used blood magic.” Sickened, she tried to back away from the corpse, but the effort roiled in her stomach and dimmed her vision at the corners.

“Is that the most of your accusations?” The witch laughed. “This man would have died either way, condemned as he was, but he wished to make amends before his execution, and I needed a source of power. This way, he was of use.”

“You murdered him,” Rosslyn spat. The horizon tilted.

“And rid the world of a murderer to return a champion to it. Are you not glad to be back among the living?”

Still trying to stand, she opened her mouth to respond, but the sway in her ears turned her upside down before the words could form, and in a rush everything slid down into darkness.

When she awoke, it was to a long lance of golden light slanting across the bare beams of a shingle roof above her. Whether it came from a dawning or a westering sun she did not know, and decided did not matter. For a moment she let herself sink back and hover just above unconsciousness as she tried to reconcile the memory of the wet, blustery vision of Harrowhill with the present warm scratch of a wool blanket against her cheek. How Flemeth must have moved her was a mystery for another time; as she collected herself, the images of fevered dreams passed through her mind’s eye, hands pressing her back into a mattress, forcing potions down her throat. Her body ached as if she had been in battle, her breath laboured in her chest, and her blistered mouth screamed for even a drop of water.

Birdsong drifted in through the window. She recognised the trill of a blackbird among the general din, with the distinct purling quality of a late summer boast. Evening, then. The boards above her head were all felled from the same tree, with a collection of whorls in the wood that brought to mind the faces of a dog, and between them spiders had strung webs that now hung thick with dust. She counted them. Every detail was sifted carefully to check for truth, from the bite of her nails into her palms to the tame spit of the hearthfire and the scents of woodsmoke and cooking food.

When she was finally satisfied that the world around her had not been presented as a trick for her mind to follow, she tried to move. Flemeth’s dubious mercy could not be trusted. Someone had taken her armour, her weapons, and stripped her down to a plain shift that rasped against her skin.

Her first attempt failed when the protest in her muscles sent her falling back, panting, but with gritted teeth she changed tack and rolled onto one arm instead of straight up, and from there curled around until her feet planted into the curly strands of a sheepskin rug. Even that taxed her, driving the pulse in her neck and the saw in her breath as if she had already been three rounds in the lists, and it galled to have to settle her hand against her sternum –

Alistair’s necklace had gone. The familiar weight of the chain was not around her neck, the amulet bearing Andraste’s image no longer resting against her collarbone. Panicked, she threw herself upright, already searching the pillow and the floor for a telltale glimpse of silverite, but with barely a wobble of warning, her legs refused to take her weight. She went down hard enough that she had to throw out an arm to stop her skull cracking on the flagstone floor, though it didn’t save the skin of her knees.

“Hang it all,” she snarled, as blood welled from the cuts. Her legs trembled, the muscles atrophied into bare cords beneath the skin.

Before her horrified mind could make sense of the sight, footsteps running from outside marked her time. With another snarl she lunged for a candlestick that had been set on the bedside drawer she had narrowly missed as she went down and held it like a club, though by rights it would barely do more damage than her fists.

The figure who opened the door a moment later stopped on the threshold as she took in Rosslyn’s position crumpled on the floor, her large green eyes wide above the Dalish markings on her cheeks.

“Oh – no! you shouldn’t be out of bed!” She started forward, tucking a bobbed lock of black hair behind one pointed ear.

Rosslyn bared her teeth. “Stay away from me.”

“I’m here to help you,” the elf replied, somewhat hopefully.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “Where am I? The last thing I remember –”

“If your memory’s coming back, that’s good!” But the optimism faded in the face of Rosslyn’s continued hostility. “My name is Merrill, and you’re safe – I was asked to look after you, by Asha’bellanar herself,” she added proudly.

The name stirred something in Rosslyn’s memory, but she didn’t drop the candlestick. Seeing her hands shake, Merrill put up her hands and made her way over to the hearth in slow movements, unhooking the staff slung across her back to lean it against the wall as she crouched in front of the stewpot.

“You must be hungry, it’s been days since you’ve eaten – or years, really,” she said. “I’m not sure what the best way is to measure time in the Fade when you’re physically there. You must have seen some fascinating sights.”

“Years?” The candlestick clattered to the floor.

There was no telling how many. Their surroundings showed the typical interior of a Fereldan homestead, with a levelled stone foundation and walls made from hand-planed timber, a design that had served well for generations but offered no clues for context about where they were, or the state of the world beyond. Rosslyn could well believe Flemeth able to survive unchanged for decades, but thinking on it drew her mind to the terror that perhaps enough time had passed to wither away everything she had left behind. She had seen such things in the Fade, after all, the works of entire ages that rose and fell in in the space it took to draw a single breath. She pushed her head into her hands. Was Ferelden still the same beyond the walls of her prison as when she left it? Had the war ended? And what of Alistair, with whom she had vowed to stand against all hardship? With her body so weakened, she had a slim chance of escaping and finding her way to him. Even if she were still somewhere within the Teyrnir of Highever, the likelihood of being found by her brother’s men or the king’s was outmatched by the possibility of less savoury characters stumbling across her when she would be unable to defend herself.

She looked up through her fingers and her growing panic as Merrill approached with a rough wooden bowl filled with whatever had been in the stewpot. The elf’s anxious smile seemed genuine, and as she offered the bowl with a chunk of dense, crusty bread, Rosslyn breathed deep and decided to take it as such. After all, if any harm was meant to her, she would have woken up in chains instead of a warm, clean house – if at all. Hating how the weight of it made her hands tremble, she took the offered bowl and the bread with a cautious sniff. The rich yellow soup within was thicker than the fine broths served at high table, more like a puréed sauce, with flecks of green herbs throughout and something pale and crumbly scattered over the surface.

“Asha’bellanar… That’s what the Dalish call Flemeth, isn’t it?” she asked cautiously as she dipped the bread into the mix.

“That’s not something most humans know,” Merrill replied, the corners of her mouth ticking upwards in pleased surprise.

Rosslyn shrugged. “Two Dalish came to the palace on Flemeth’s word that we should go to Ostagar. At the time, I didn’t know whether to believe them.”

“That would have been Ethalas and Tamlen.” The elf shifted into the space next to Rosslyn on the sheepskin. “They were from my clan.”

“You sound sad.”

“I haven’t seen any of them since I agreed to follow Asha’bellanar.”

“Did your Keeper send you like she sent them?” Rosslyn asked.

Merrill shook her head and silence fell between them. Not wanting to pry, Rosslyn turned her attention back to the soup, and with it, the unsettlingly bizarre feeling of having food in her hands. The last she had eaten was a ration of hardtack as she was dressed for battle at Ostagar. Since then, she had dreamed of feasts, and rivers of wine where she could drink her fill, but the Fade contained nothing of substance, and eventually even the memory of flavour had been forgotten in her trudge across that endless, empty plain. If not for the need to regain her strength in order to find Alistair and return to her former life, she might have listened to the nausea prowling through her insides and pushed away even this simple dish. As it was, she closed her eyes and brought the mopped chunk of bread to her lips.

The taste exploded on her tongue, salt and sweet and the aroma of the herbs used to season the other ingredients. She recognised the taste of squash and sage, and a gaminess that was almost like goat’s cheese but more pungent, and she had to squeeze her eyes shut. Her stomach heaved.

“Is it that bad?” Merrill cried clapping her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry, Hahren Paivel always did despair of my cooking but I tried to make this exactly as Sylissa always did when the children were sick. I’d hoped –”

But Rosslyn ignored her, already devouring the rest of the bowl. The bread was too much work to chew so she set it aside, but the soup warmed her and went down in gulps to quench the wakened fire of her appetite, and though more than half of it still remained when she sat back, she could feel the life seeping into her body, fleshing her out as if before she had only been a wash on a painter’s canvas. Though she fought against the well of fatigue that came with the relief, she could already feel herself nodding.

“Thank you,” she said to Merrill, who was still hovering nervously. “I could not have asked for a finer first meal.”

“I’m rather glad I didn’t poison you,” came the answer. “I was worried humans might not be able to eat elvhen food.”

“City elves eat the same food as humans,” she pointed out.

“That’s true, I suppose – oh!” Placing one hand on Rosslyn’s arm, she reached around with the other to one of the pouches belted at her waist, and with a delicate clink of metal pulled out an engraved disc on a short silverite chain. “It’s special, isn’t it?” she asked. “I had to take it off you while you were recovering so it didn’t break.”

Rosslyn took it in wary, reverent fingers. “My husband gave it to me to keep safe.” For a moment, all she could do was look into the serene face of Andraste and swallow back her tears. The amulet might be all she had left of him. “Where are we?”

“I’m… not supposed to tell you.”

“I need to get to Denerim as soon as possible, I need to get word to the king that –”

Unless she no longer had a place at court. With the aftermath of a civil war to cause instability, she could hardly imagine the Landsmeet would sit by while their ruler left the throne unsecured, and even before Alistair was thrown into Valesh Aeducan’s path she recalled the veritable parade of young noblewomen who had tried to make an impression on him after his title was recognised. And then there was Anora. When they had marched south she had been in the tower awaiting judgement, with her crowd of supporters grumbling but appeased by the stay of punishment for her involvement with her father. What if –

No. Giving space to such thoughts could only end in self-defeat. Once more centring herself with a breath, she turned to Merrill, the amulet held tight in her fist.

“Tell me everything you know,” she commanded.

The days passed slowly as Rosslyn worked to get her strength back, the walls of her prison slowly expanding to include first the yard where the chickens pecked for grubs, and then the rim of the clearing where Flemeth had brought her, in a dell where the trees grew too tall to admit any view of the landscape beyond. The mixed stands of oak and beech that barred her path let her guess they were somewhere in the northern part of the country, but nothing more certain, and though she looked in every direction, the only column of smoke she found was the one rising from her own chimney, so she could not hope for a nearby settlement, either.

It did not hinder her determination. Once she recovered enough to walk from one side of the clearing to the other without needing to rest, she donned a cloak, strapped Talon to her belt, and pushed through the scrub into the forest, keeping the sun to her left. When she emerged into the clearing again less than an hour later, the commiserating look Merrill offered barely helped calm the flare in her temper.

She tried again, and again, until her attempts and the days blurred together. Whichever direction she chose, her path inevitably led her back to the house, and even when she tied string to the branches as she went, she could not find her way. Ostagar was eighteen months gone, with no news of the court, and as reality slowly worked its way back into Rosslyn’s bones, the pain of Alistair’s absence grew like a canker. It felt too much like defeat to stop trying, however, so she took up her sword forms instead, running through them all until her limbs shook from exhaustion and she turned feverish again.

“You were in the Fade in your physical body, you can’t expect to be springing about like a halla fawn right away,” Merrill chided that night as she checked her temperature with the back of one small hand.

She offered a wry smile. “I’m sorry to undo all of your good work.”

“Not all of it,” Merrill allowed. “The rules of this world don’t apply in the Fade, so your body was sort of… stuck, like a fly getting trapped in tree sap, but when you came back, everything you went through caught up all at once. Or at least, that’s my best guess. Nobody’s walked in the Fade like that since the days of Arlathan, and never for so long.”

“And so is the Golden City blackened with each step you take in my Hall,” Rosslyn quoted.

“What’s that?”

“It’s from the Chant of Light.” Unconvinced she might be by the Maker’s Word, but like any good noble child, Rosslyn had been thoroughly schooled in its teachings. “Tevinter magisters lifted the Veil and stormed the Maker’s city, only to be cursed with the Blight for their trouble.”

“Well… you haven’t been tainted.” Merrill smiled. “That’s a good thing. You just have to be patient.”

“I will not be kept here.”

Too many people needed her, too much might happen if she lingered.

And yet, how could she face Alistair looking as she did now? Her hollowed cheeks stared at her corpselike from her reflection in the water bucket every morning, the shadows of her ribs swelled with every breath, and the armour once made for her rattled on her frame as if she were a child dressing up in her parents’ clothes. If he were to see her, what pity would follow his touch as he traced her suffering? Guilt would plague him, and perhaps revulsion, and the thought of either was like a stab through the heart, though as she lay on her cot in the dark of night refusing the pull of sleep, those were not the only fears that kept her from rest.

Merrill helped. Her endless optimism infected even the bleakest of Rosslyn’s moods, and she had a way of guilting a person after a disagreement that reminded her of the artful silences Nan used to employ whenever Cuno got loose in the kitchen. Without any other company but each other, they spent their days swapping stories as they divvied up the chores of the house, and in doing so Rosslyn discovered she wasn’t the only one in Flemeth’s debt, though her new companion always changed the subject when it brushed too close to the nature of her deal with the witch.

“If we’re to be tools for whatever grand scheme she’s plotting, surely we would be more use not left to rust out here in the back end of nowhere,” she groused one evening as they shared their meal. “I could have gotten word – said something – but instead I’m trapped here doing nothing.” Summer was fading from the trees, the days growing shorter as the verdancy of their surroundings turned to shifting hues of bronze and gold. “Are you sure you can’t try to lift the enchantment she’s put on the clearing?”

With a sympathetic look and considerable patience, Merrill shook her head. “The enchantments she added when we were brought here are older magics than I was ever taught. If I try to unravel the spells without knowing where they start, it might make things worse.”

“I need to go home.”

“You’re lucky to have one,” the elf replied. “My clan won’t take me back. This is all I have.”

Rosslyn glanced to her sharply, but she refused to say more, and they spent the rest of the night in bitter silence.

A jingle of harness through the morning mist a few weeks later gave them the first sign of Flemeth’s arrival. A pair of mismatched cobs plodded into the clearing ahead of a closed wagon that should have been too big to make it through the dense underbrush, and at the reins an old woman sat wrapped in a cloak, completely innocuous except for the golden gleam of her eyes. When she halted the wagon in front of the house, she pulled the scarf from around her face to reveal the cold twist of that ever-present smirk.

“I see your convalescence has not doused your fire,” she said to Rosslyn, who had emerged from the house with Talon resting on her hip.

“I do not care to be kept a prisoner,” she growled in return. “You had no right to keep me here.”

“Didn’t I?” One fine eyebrow arched. “You entered a bargain when I came to you in the Fade. You said you wanted to live, and I told you there would be a price. You might have thanked me for it before you started berating me, or do Couslands no longer keep their word?”

She lifted her chin. “If you want my debt paid then let me pay it and have done. I have people waiting for me.”

“And people whose lives you fear go on without you,” Flemeth retorted. She climbed down from the driver’s seat, unhurried, joints cracking. “I told you once of the wars and deaths that would happen without your leave, but it takes living through death to see the truth of it, wouldn’t you say? You need not worry. I have come to take you for what’s needed.”

“I want to see Alistair.”

The amusement in the old witch’s face turned to ice. “You are in no position to make demands of me, girl. What would you do, go to him only to say that you must leave again?”

Before she could answer with more than a scowl, Merrill joined them, dressed in travelling clothes and with the bag where she kept her few belongings slung over her shoulder.

“Andaran atish’an, Asha’bellanar,” she murmured, bowing low.

“There now,” Flemeth crowed. “Someone with manners. You should ready to leave, we have a long journey ahead of us.”

Shutting up the house took less than an hour. They doused the fire and caught the chickens to take with them, loaded Rosslyn’s armour into the back of the wagon with supplies for the road, and when everything was settled, Flemeth climbed back into the driver’s perch without so much as a backward glance.

“Aren’t you going to tie me up, or put me under a Sleep?” Rosslyn asked, suspicious.

“I have no need,” came the airy reply. “Because I will tell you what you are to do, and after that, you will stay of your own volition.”

“You seem very sure of that.”

Flemeth chuckled. “I am an old, old woman, and I have seen your like before. Honour and duty will serve to bind you just as well as magic, as it did your ancestors.”

Still reluctant, Rosslyn climbed up next to Merrill, who beamed and offered her a pocket of warm bread filled with honey and chopped nuts.

“Well, you didn’t want to be left behind, did you?” she asked. “I’m sure this’ll be exciting.”

For the first few days, the journey took them through disorienting countryside along barely visible trackways, but eventually the ground rose and the forest opened ahead of the cart into the sparse pine slopes of the Frostbacks. With such a landmark, Rosslyn could have cut her way across-country to a settlement and from there on to Denerim, even with the dangerous weather closing in with the end of the year, but as the witch had predicted, she did not. She had learned what was needed of her, the consequences if she deserted, and she had not forced the Nightmare back into the Fade only for the world to shatter around her mere months after she fell into it again.

So she stayed. She watched the scenery from the back of the cart as it mellowed from frowning, snow-capped peaks to the gently undulating plains of southern Orlais, and she made no complaint when she and Merrill were once more shut away, this time in townhouse in the noble quarter of Halamshiral. A few weeks, Flemeth promised, and then she could reclaim her life and its petty entrapments.

The witch herself faded into the background of the house, the puppeteer behind the curtain as preparations were made to infiltrate the palace with the opening of the winter season. Dresses were made, and introductions, and if the servants were hollow-eyed and their hostess too vacant to hold a conversation, Rosslyn chose not to concern herself with it. Blood magic was an evil against which she could not win alone, one that so far hadn’t been turned on her only because Flemeth needed her mind intact. Alistair would not have approved of her silence, her compromise, but she shoved that knowledge to the back of her mind along with all the other choices she would rather forget. Compared to the dead at South Reach, the sacrifices at Lothering, the fate of one overwrought Orlesian noblewoman mattered little.

With Merrill’s help, by the time the First Night Ball arrived she had charmed, bribed, and enchanted her way into one of the guest rooms of the palace itself. From there, she joined the nameless throng into the entrance hall in the plain mask of someone too humble too be noticed, and waited for Morrigan to appear.

It was then she caught the first whispers.

“Have you seen him yet?”

“He has not made his entrance.”

“They say he still mourns.”

“I saw him in Kirkwall last year, a man so handsome should have company to match, even if he is a dog lord.”

“You, cherie? He’s the empress’ prize – why else do you think she would bring him here as her personal guest? She means to have Ferelden.”

“His advisors mean him to have someone, no matter who. Any of us might catch his eye.”

The words made her heart bound behind her ribs. Who else could they be talking about, but Alistair? Flemeth’s smile as she left for the palace made more sense now, the repeated order to keep herself unknown. She lost the rest of what was said by her neighbours through the rushing in her ears. He was supposed to be in Denerim, far away. But not waiting for her; she had seen to that herself.

She was grateful for the mask when he appeared a few moments later at the top of the stairs to the royal wing with her brother in tow. Fergus hunched slightly, his once-wide shoulders gaunt and his strong resemblance to their father only increased with the time and distance they had been apart, but it was Alistair who held her eye. His hair had grown long, half to his shoulders, still the same tawny bronze as ever where it curled slightly around his ears, the strong line of his jaw accented by the trim of a beard. He had been unable to grow one when they had been together, the hairs on his chin had been sparse and patchy and he had pouted every time she teased him about it. As he breathed deep, she wondered if the same were true for the hair on his chest.

Her own breath sawed in her throat as he descended into the crowd, the cold marble of the balustrade beneath her palm holding her upright during the interminable moment when he passed within fifteen feet of where she stood, completely unaware of her existence. Of course she followed him. She watched him make smiles at the nobles, yearned towards him like a weed towards the sun, reading the tense line of his shoulders and the way his mirth didn’t quite meet his eyes, the whole time aching with the tear between what she had done and what she still had left to do.

And then he looked at her. The glance was brief, a flash like the sun on a shard of glass as it searched the room, but it stopped her breath nonetheless. Only when he turned away again and moved into the ballroom did the tingle fade from her limbs, and by then her purpose had reasserted itself.

Draw attention to yourself and they will know you for a cuckoo, Flemeth had told her. They will not show mercy, and I will not help you.

Alistair’s presence raised the stakes. Before, she might have been able to stick to her borrowed identity if she were caught, but with the threat of recognition came the knowledge that Ferelden would share in whatever punishment Celene thought up for her if she did not succeed.

She could not allow it.

At least growing up as a reluctant court flower had taught her how to be invisible in a room full of nobles. When the castellan announced her name she crossed the floor in the perfect attitude of courtly grace, unable to entirely quell the hope that he would see her, though the hesitation as she glanced to the dais cost her a stern glance from Celene. Others more worthy remained to be greeted, after all. Alistair did not spare her even that much.

If I had to choose between you and Ferelden… I don’t know if I could make that choice. The words, spoken a lifetime ago as if they were yesterday, reared in her mind as the night wore on, hours passing with Morrigan still absent, with Alistair at the centre of the room twisting like a flame on a dark night on the arm of so many eager women that bile rose in the back of her throat. The touch of his eyes burned her with every accidental glance, but she was just another face in the crowd, as alone as when she had awoken at Ostagar and found the other side of her bed empty. The thought had yet to pass when someone knocked into her.

“Oh! Do excuse me.” The familiarity of the voice shook Rosslyn from the bitter line of her thoughts, but not quickly enough to note the flash of red hair as the stranger rose and caught her by the wrist.

“Consider it forgotten,” she muttered quickly, already turning away.

“No please, I insist. I must –” Leliana’s gasp cut off the rest of the words, the mask in her hand rising in a graceful arc to cover the slip.

Against her better judgement, Rosslyn turned. Sharp blue eyes peered up at her, still wide with shock.

“It is you.”

She reached for Leliana’s arm. “You have mistaken me, my lady,” she said, deliberately. “Please, forget the offence, my mind was distracted and I failed to see where I was going.”

“He has seen you,” the other woman pressed.

Hope – wild hope like the thundering of horses – roared in her ears, but only for an instant. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“I would not wish to accuse an old friend of lying, nor indeed a new acquaintance,” Leliana retorted, threatening with a steady look, while around them people with their eyes on the nearby dancers no doubt listened with interest.

“It would be an unfortunate thing to do in the middle of a crowd,” Rosslyn agreed.

They wove through the press of bodies to a darker corner where the heat and sweat of the dancing didn’t reach so strongly, with pleasant smiles on their faces to deflect the attention of anyone looking for court intrigue. Rosslyn took a glass of wine from the tray of a passing server, needing the fortification of the alcohol as much as the cover it provided.

“Now, what shall I tell him?” Leliana asked when they were finally out of earshot.

“Nothing,” she replied, after a casual sip. “He can’t know I’m here.”

“If you knew…”

“Promise me you won’t tell him,” she interrupted.

But Leliana stood her ground, a fierce light of loyalty in her eyes that nevertheless remained hidden from those around them. “Will you?”

“You used to have faith in me,” Rosslyn muttered eventually, after a moment of scrutiny. She received a calculating look before the gaze skittered away to the warmer light in the middle of the room.

“Very well, I promise I will not tell him who you are.”

They parted. The relief that swelled, the sense of betrayal that came with it, followed Rosslyn back into the crowd like a dog at her heels. Any glamour she had seen in the spectacle around her had tarnished, and now only the need to not let the night go wasted kept her from stalking out of the ball entirely. She needed Morrigan to be here, distracted, and then perhaps when she had done what was needed she might seek out Leliana again, and then –

The music died away. The castellan’s staff rapped sharply against the polished floor. She stiffened, breath held as a dark-haired woman glided through the double doors at the far end of the room, and as those around her crowded forward to get a better look at the empress’ favourite curiosity, she edged in the other direction, her eyes darting to the palace guard dotted in alcoves around the walls. But it wasn’t an Orlesian who stepped out in front of her to bar her path.

“My lady, your presence has been requested,” Morrence said.

And now, her plans shattered into ruin at her feet, she stood in the cold night air with Alistair’s hand on her cheek, his breath warm against her skin, and her heart all but thrashing loose of her ribcage to be closer still. Moonlight washed the colour from his eyes but she recognised their intensity, bold as the sun as he drank her in. She should have known better than to think she could have ever hidden from him.

“Rosslyn…” He breathed it, strangled and desperate.

She could not say anything at all, only squeeze her eyes shut and lean into the palm resting against her face, and hold back tears when he brought his forehead down to hers. He smelled of leather and sweat and smoke.

“Rosslyn. I – this isn’t real.” He swallowed. “I’m dreaming.”

“No,” she managed, trembling. “I’m real. It’s me.”

“What –” A helpless, hysterical giggle breached his lips. “How?”

She sighed, shook her head, pressed her hand against the back of his so he wouldn’t stop touching her. “It’s a long story.”

At that, he pulled back to search her face, a line drawn between his brows as he brushed a thumb over the corner of her mouth. Her heart fluttered, but instead of leaning in his gaze drifted back towards the ballroom, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips

“You can tell me all about it,” he promised, plucking up her hand to place a kiss against her knuckles. “We’ll have all the time in the world.”

“Alistair, what are you –?”

He stepped backwards, still with their fingers linked as if she would follow after him. “You’re alive,” he said, still with that note of disbelief in his voice. “Celene might not be happy about it but that’s no reason not to tell everyone, right?”

The night-time chill sank around her again as she dropped her gaze, pulled her hand away.

“I can’t.”

Tension crept into his shoulders, and through the silence that reached between them was brief, it left a bitter taste on Rosslyn’s tongue.

“Why not?” he asked, too quiet.

“I told you. I was sent here to pay a debt, and until I do nobody can know who I am.”

“But…” And then he stopped, glanced back to the ballroom again, and licked his lips as cconfusion hardened into something worse. “Was that supposed to include me? Would you have told me at all if I hadn’t brought you out here?”

Unable to bear the hurt in his expression and unable to lie, she turned back to the balustrade and laid her hands flat against the frosty stone. “I didn’t know you would be here. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“That’s your excuse?” he demanded.

“Alistair –”

“You’ve been alive all this time and you didn’t think I would want to know? Do you even know why I’m here, why they’re all gathering around me like blightwolves?”

“Of course I do,” she snapped. “But what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just walk up to you and unmask myself in front of everyone!”

“Why not? It’s been two years, Rosslyn.” His voice cracked. “I mourned you. Andraste help me, there was a funeral – your brother sobbed like an infant because the last person he had left in the world died and I couldn’t comfort him because it was my fault for not keeping you safe.” As if of their own accord, his feet took a halting half-step towards her, broken off when he realised what he was doing. “I’ve had to go on and try to rule Ferelden by myself when we promised we’d do it together, and all this time you’ve been – what, swanning about playing hide and seek in Orlais? Has it been fun? Have you enjoyed watching me suffer from across the border?”

She stared at him, refusing to flinch. When they had first met, she might have risen to his anger, snarled back and bitten deep just to have the final word, but facing him now with all the hope for what their reunion might have been crumbling under her feet like a cliff into the sea, she found exhaustion quenching the fire of her battle-blood.

“I was in the Fade,” she told him without inflection. “When I fought the Nightmare the rift closed behind me and I couldn’t get back.” The featureless plain, the shadows of demons hounding her steps, greedy for the life in her veins – she pushed the memories to the back of her mind.

“But you’re here. Now. Which means you must have gotten out somehow – how long ago was that?”

“Three months,” she admitted. “Maybe four.”

“Four months.”

“Don’t you think I would have sent word if I could?” She had passed waystations, merchant caravans, outposts of militia who had all refused to believe her identity or even give her the charity of pen and paper.

“Clearly I don’t – you’ve only told me now because I forced it out of you!”

“Keep your voice down,” she hissed. “I could have let you just walk away and forget about me but I didn’t. Maybe I should have.”

Alistair rocked backwards at the acidity in her tone, his expression tightening in a way that let her know the blow had struck, that it couldn’t be taken back.

“You aren’t who I thought you were,” he muttered at last. “The Rosslyn Cousland I knew wouldn’t skulk around some foreign ballroom like a Crow, and she wouldn’t have tried to hide from me. I would have liked to know the woman I loved was standing twenty feet from me while I was getting pawed at and drooled over like a butcher’s bone, but I guess that wasn’t her.”

Pride would not let him see her fall. She breathed, steady with one hand on the balustrade, the moonlight on her back and the faint cadence of the orchestra surging in to fill the gap left by the silence. Loved. Past tense. It would not have mattered anyway. Perhaps this had been part of Flemeth’s plan all along, an added spur of cruelty to keep the mind of her pawn on the task at hand and not running loose with the proverbial bit between her teeth.

“You have no right to stand in judgement of me,” she told him. “Believe what you want. It does not change my purpose here.”

Spine straight in the manner of the queen she had once so briefly been, she set the court mask back in place over her eyes and tied the knots so it would not slip again, and then kept beyond the reach of Alistair’s arms as she headed back towards the light of the ballroom, so he could not reach for her. Whatever fairytale she had expected for their reunion, her heart splintered at the reality, a sapling under the blow of an axe. She still had a duty, and she would do it, as she had been taught since childhood as a Cousland born. Beyond that lay a crevasse she could not have imagined would have yawned so far. Alistair had loved her. And then she had died.

#dragon age #dragon age: origins #dragon age origins #da:o #alistair theirin #king alistair #alistair x warden #alistair x cousland #king alistair theirin #rosslyn cousland #f!cousland #cousland #the falcon and the rose

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andillwriteyouatragedy · 5 years ago

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for your prompts maybe - miniseries eddie and richie in a storm or a flood or hurricane?? trapped together and maybe huddling for warmth or something??

Two hours ago, most of the Losers had just left Eddie’s apartment. It was while waving goodbye to Stan and Patty, the last to drive away, that Richie had noticed the dark clouds outside and turned on his television set to learn that a nasty storm was coming their way.

Richie whistles, leaning his head out Eddie’s kitchen window, while Eddie nervously sits himself on the edge of the coffee table in front of his television.

“Look at how fast it’s moving,” Eddie says. He has to resist the urge to lean in and grip the set with white knuckles. Behind him, he hears the window slide shut, then lock; after a moment, Richie’s hand comes to settle on his shoulder, then the back of his neck. He digs his fingertips in, and Eddie sighs, hanging his head.

“It’s going to be alright,” Richie tells him. “It’s just a storm. We can get up to all sorts of stuff in a storm.”

Eddie huffs a laugh, shoving his glasses up into his hair so he can scrub the back of his wrist against his eyes. He sighs, then wipes his palm flat down his face before clutching his throat. Tipping his head back, he makes eye contact with Richie.

“It’ll be okay,” Richie says again. He pulls Eddie’s glasses free of the tangles of his hair and slips them back into place.

“Should I call and make sure everyone got home okay?” Eddie asks.

“When there’s been enough time for them to get home,” Richie says, “you can do anything you want.”

Eddie breaks their eye contact to look down at the television again when the screen flashes. Frowning, he watches the stormfront move on the set just as a distant crack of thunder sounds, rattling him down to his bone marrow.

“I don’t think you should drive home in this,” Eddie says. Richie crouches beside him and takes Eddie’s chin in his hand, turning his face down so their eyes can meet.

“This is home,” Richie tells him firmly. Eddie’s chest tightens impossibly quickly, hearing something like that from Richie, out of nowhere; he thinks Richie can see it in his face, because he adds, “And, plus, I have no intention of leaving you here. I thought we had a date tonight.”

Eddie glances to the window again. Richie lets him, for a moment, before he uses his hold on his chin to tug his attention back down.

“I really don’t think we should be going out in this, Ri—”

“No, God, no,” Richie cuts him off, “I didn’t mean— No, I meant we should just have our date here.”

Eddie relaxes, feeling a little bit of the tension leech out of him. Richie smiles, and Eddie even feels better after that, knowing he’s not alone here, and that Richie isn’t angry with him, and that everything will probably, logically, be okay.

Thunder crashes again, making him jump and tense up again. Richie stands, kissing his cheek on the way up.

“Let’s see what I can scrounge up for food,” Richie says. Outside, the small, rapid patterings that bring the beginning of a storm start to sound, and Eddie’s skin crawls.

“I’m going to find candles,” Eddie tells him, shoving up from the coffee table.

He has more than candles in the emergency kit in his hall closet, but he tries not to dig it out all that often, so there’s no reason for Richie to know that. Eddie slides it out from the back of the closet and snaps it open, peering inside. For a moment, he can’t decide what to take, so he just drags the whole thing into the hallway.

“Packing up and heading out?” Richie asks. Eddie lifts his head to find Richie in the hall in front of him, holding— something. He offers the bag out to Eddie and asks, “Want a pretzel?”

“This is our emergency kit,” Eddie tells him, waving the pretzels off. He grabs the heavy kit by the handle again and drags it down to his living room.

“What, to revive us if one of us dies?” Richie asks. Eddie smiles, laying the kit on its side, snapping it open. “Oh, my God, Eds.”

“It doesn’t hurt to be prepared,” Eddie says defensively over his shoulder. He pulls a few of his candles out from underneath one of the first aid kits, passing them off for Richie to hold in the crook of his arm.

“Hey, Spaghetti Man, I’m gonna drop something,” Richie tells him, while Eddie’s still rooting for the matchbooks. Eddie’s only just lifted his head to reply when the lights flicker. They go in and out once, twice, and then stay on, but Eddie’s blood’s already turned to ice.

He feels frozen, crouched there on the floor of his living room, until Richie nudges him again. Terrified, heart pounding, he lifts his head so they can make eye contact.

“Hey,” Richie says, voice gone soft and genuine now. Eddie hides his face behind his hand, mortified when the backs of his eyes begin to burn, but Richie brushes his hand away easily, tips his face up to meet his eyes again. “You’re going to be okay, Eds.”

“But what if the building gets— I don’t know, what if it gets struck by lightning?” Eddie asks him, hand shaking. “Or if it floods, or— What if your house floods? Or it catches on fire, or— God, what if Bill’s—”

“Whoa, hey, no no no,” Richie interrupts him. He pulls Eddie to his feet and into a tight hug, letting him bury his face in Richie’s chest. He hides his face there instead, closing his eyes tight against the flickering lights and the rain darkening the entire world outside. Richie strokes his back slowly, up and down. “Everything’s going to be okay, Eddie, I swear. The odds of something bad happening are so astronomically low, and the odds of something good happening are so astronomically high—”

“What do you mean?” Eddie asks.

Richie withdraws a bit, separating them just enough that he can cup Eddie’s face in his. After a moment, he leans in and kisses him. He doesn’t deepen the kiss at all, but he presses in hard, tips his face and grips Eddie tight, and Eddie starts to shake. He reaches up and wraps his fingers around Richie’s wrist, tilting his head. Richie makes a little sound, just catching his breath, and Eddie pushes in even closer, feeling like he wanted to climb under Richie’s skin.

When they pull apart, Richie cups Eddie’s chin in his hand and grins. “I mean, what’s a better way to spend a rainy night in than—”

A bolt of lightning illuminates Eddie’s apartment for one heart-stopping moment before the lights whine and all go out at once. Eddie can feel his spine stiffen before he can stop it.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Richie tells him. They can both hear the whine from the hallway as the building’s backup generators kick on. He knows that the hall must be bathed in blue light but, here in his apartment, all there is is darkness. “I’ve got your candles right behind me here. Did you find the matchbooks?”

Eddie nods. When Richie releases him, though, he still has a brief moment of panic where his breath catches.

“I’m right here,” Richie says. There’s another beat before Richie comes back to him, his hand landing on Eddie’s shoulder. “Right here. I got the candles for you, honey, give your matches here.”

Hand shaking, Eddie pushes the matchbook into Richie’s palm. There’s still blackness everywhere for another long moment before the match strikes and catches, illuminating Richie’s face with a dim orange glow. When he lights the candle, there’s enough light to see the whole of him by. Eddie grabs one of his candlesticks from the bookshelves beside the television for Richie to set the candle in.

“I told you we were gonna have our date here,” Richie reminds him. “What’s better than a candlelit evening at home, right, sweetheart?”

Eddie’s chest feels tight again, heart pounding. He can’t help but smile, tipping his face down. Another match strikes, and Richie sets up a second candle beside the first. His warm hand takes Eddie’s face and tips it closer. After a moment where all Eddie can see is Richie’s shadowed face in the flickering candlelight, Richie kisses him again.

“Do you think everyone got home okay?” Eddie asks, when they separate. Richie huffs a laugh.

“I think so,” Richie tells him. “They all had more than enough time to get home, baby. They would’ve come back here if they needed to.” Eddie hesitates, long enough that Richie adds, “Everything’s okay, I promise. What would make you feel better, hm?”

Eddie shakes his head. His heart’s still pounding, but he feels better for being able to see Richie, at least.

“Why don’t you come with me?” Richie suggests. “It’s a little chilly out here, I’d rather be somewhere nice and warm with you.”

Eddie yelps when Richie hauls him up and off his feet, throwing him over his shoulder. He grabs the candles with the hand not wrapped around Eddie’s waist, holding him secure. Even with all the blood rushing to Eddie’s head, he finds it in himself to wind his arm around Richie’s chest, burying his face in the small of his back.

“Hey, what’re you doing back there?” Richie asks, hauling him off down the hallway. Eddie slips his hand down the back of Richie’s pants, slipping his fingers just past his belt. Richie’s footsteps stutter, and he laughs. “Hey, you watch it—”

“What do you mean?” Eddie asks.

“I mean—” Richie starts, but he cuts off when Eddie smacks him on the ass. Eddie’s laughing already before Richie is, indignantly exclaiming, “Hey—”

“You’re the one who kidnapped me,” Eddie reminds him. Richie kicks his bedroom door open.

“Is it a kidnapping if you come willingly?” Richie asks. Eddie hears the clatter of the candlesticks hitting his bedside table before Richie flings him backwards onto the bed, bouncing on the mattress. “Where’s all your extra blankets?”

“Top shelf in the hall closet,” Eddie says.

“You okay if I steal the candles for a sec?” Richie asks.

Eddie nods, and Richie kisses him on each cheek before vanishing into the hall with the candlelight. There’s not even enough time for Eddie to start being nervous in the darkness again before Richie’s coming jogging back in, blankets stacked in a pile so high they spill from his arms over the top of his head.

“Take this, please, honey,” Richie tells him. Eddie takes the candles from him and sets them back on the nightstand. A single drop of wax falls from one candlestick, and Eddie inhales sharply, yanking his hand back from the candles.

“Damn it,” Eddie hisses.

“Oh, baby, c’mere,” Richie coos. He sits on the edge of the bed beside Eddie, taking his hand carefully in both of his own. With one soft brush of his hand, he swipes the wax away; in its place, he kisses Eddie’s skin softly. Eddie laughs breathlessly.

“That’s much better,” he says, “thank you.”

“Mm,” Richie hums. He pulls away from Eddie to grab the blankets he’d retrieved from the hallway.

“What’re you doing with that?” Eddie asks. Richie spreads out blanket after blanket in bed; after those, he tugs Eddie’s spare pillows out from under his bed and props them up against the headboard, too.

“I’m keeping you warm,” Richie answers. He shucks his belt and pants so he can climb into bed beside Eddie comfortably, pulling him into his arms. Lightning fills the room again, briefly illuminating them both in blinding white light. The thunder that follows makes Eddie shake. “Oh, hey, baby, c’mere.”

Eddie tucks his head underneath Richie’s chin, wrapping his arm around his waist. Richie kisses the very top of his head. With his heart racing, Eddie asks, “Will you stay over here tonight?”

“In this weather?” Richie asks. “I have no plans to leave.” Richie tips Eddie’s chin up so he can kiss him again, nice and slow. Eddie can feel him start to smile just before they separate. “And with you here with me, honey, you couldn’t pay me to go.”

Eddie grins, and doesn’t even get to answer before Richie kisses him again. In the warm nest of blankets that Richie’s made for them in bed, candlelight flickering against the dark and pounding rain outside. The storm’s so loud that Eddie can hardly hear anything but that and Richie’s heart, when he rests his head back on his chest.

“I’m gonna keep you safe,” Richie murmurs to him. He smiles against Eddie’s temple when he kisses him there once, then twice. “No storm’s gonna get you while I’m here.”

Eddie pinches his side, laughing when Richie yelps, squirming into him. The two of them settle deeper into the bed, and Eddie yawns, relaxes. “Thank you.”

“Mm,” Richie murmurs, “thank you.”

comment on this story on ao3!!

#answered #anonymous #it 1990 #it miniseries #it #miniseries richie tozier #miniseries eddie kaspbrak #miniseries reddie #eddie kaspbrak #richie tozier #reddie #reddie fanfic #it fanfic #it fanfiction #it fic #my fanfiction #my fanfic tag #my fic #my fanfic

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doctorslippery · 5 years ago

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As you enter the Salty Swordfish Tavern, the air is filled with hushed whispers and the chatter of sailors and cutthroats. Roll a D20 to determine which rumor you overhear...

1-2: 'Ey, did you hear about poor old Tom Gobbard, the fisherman? Apparently he was out fishin’ a fortnight ago, and he reeled in something that…wasn’t a fish. He’s over there in the corner, still gibbering uncontrollably, if ye’ want to ask him about it.

3-4: I have it on good authority that a mysterious ship pulled into harbor just five days ago. Apparently, there’s not a living soul onboard. The captain and crew have simply vanished. The town watch investigated, and the entire ship was empty…except for a rather large box in the cargo hold. The ship is still sitting in the harbor. No one’s been brave enough to open the box.

5-6: Did you hear that Captain Norkus died just last week? It’s true! Word is that he tripped on his own deck and snapped his neck. His family paid a LOT of money to have him resurrected, and they’re trying to keep it a secret. It’s just…ever since he was raised from the dead he’s been…different. It’s hard to put your finger on it, but he's definitely been givin' ME the creeps.

7-8: Sit back, lad, I’ve got a story for you. Back in my youth, I sailed on a trader’s ship. We got blown off course, and made land on a green island, lush with vines and fruit trees. We thought we’d load up on fruit for the journey, but it wasn’t long before the island…started moving. We rushed back to the ship and I’ve never found the isle since.

9-10: You want to speak of strange isles? Well, when I was a lad my crew and I found a rocky isle many miles north. It was a tiny isle, lonely and bare, save for a solitary, black tower. We considered exploring the tower, but thought better of it when the sun went down and the tower began to…sing. We loved our lives, so we boarded the ship and fled!

11-12: The ghost ship is real, I’ve seen it! Head northwest of here, and, if the moon is full, you’ll see a glowing, purple pirate ship with ragged sails, floating just a mile’s distance away. No matter how close you sail, the ghost ship stays just out of reach…

13-14: You want to hear something funny? There’s a tiny town on the east coast where everyone has the same name! I mean it, EVERYONE. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, everyone in town goes by the name ‘Goxus.’ Come to think of it, they all speak with the same sort of…distracted tone of voice, too. Kind of odd, now that I think of it. Anyway, they’ve never cheated me so I suppose I’ll keep doin’ business with ‘em.

15-16: Yes, this is Wicker the Parrot. I found him perched outside my window this morning. Can’t understand why his tail feathers have gone white, though…and where’s his master? This parrot used to talk nonstop, but now he only repeats one phrase… “Stay away from the Weeping Pool.” What do y’think that means?

17-18: There’s a fishing village to the west where they don’t seem to like strangers, much. I was lost and needed an inn, so I convinced them to let me stay the evening. I wish I’d have just moved on. One evening, late at night, I awoke to the sound of soft chanting outside my window. I pulled back the curtain and saw everyone in town down by the shore, holding an infant high in the air. As I watched, three ugly, blue-skinned women climbed out of the sea and onto the land. I closed the curtain and went back to bed. Wouldn’t recommend staying there!

19-20: If you’re sailing off to the west, keep an eye out. I’ve been hearing reports that there’s a big black storm brewing off the western coast. Strange thing, though, is that the storm has been building for several days, and the black clouds won’t blow away. Even stranger…some folks have been sayin’ that if you look at the black storm clouds just right, they look like faces…

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myheartjamie-claire · 5 years ago

Text

📚Excerpt From

Outlander

Diana Gabaldon📚

•

The heavy door squeaked on its hinges, and I was alone with Jamie. Alone and afraid, and very, very doubtful about what I proposed to do.

I stood at the foot of the bed, watching him for a moment. The room was dimly lit by the glow of the brazier and by two enormous candlesticks, each nearly three feet tall, that stood on the table at the side of the room. He was naked, and the faint light seemed to accentuate the hollows left by the wasting fever. The multicolored bruise over the ribs stained the skin like a spreading fungus.

A dying man takes on a faint greenish tinge. At first just a touch at the edge of the jaw, this pallor spreads gradually, over the face and down the chest as the force of life begins to ebb. I had seen it many times. A few times, I had seen that deadly progress arrested and reversed, the skin flush with blood once more, and the man live. More often…I shook myself vigorously and turned away.

I brought my hand out of the folds of my robe and laid on the table the objects I had collected in a surreptitious visit to Brother Ambrose’s darkened workshop. A vial of spirits of ammonia. A packet of dried lavender. Another of valerian. A small metal incense burner, shaped like an open blossom. Two pellets of opium, sweet scented and sticky with resin. And a knife.

The room was close and stuffy with smoke from the brazier. The only window was covered with a heavy tapestry, one showing the execution of Saint Sebastian. I eyed the saint’s upturned face and arrow-punctured torso, wondering afresh at the mentality of the person who had chosen this particular decoration for a sickroom.

Indifferently rendered as it was, the tapestry was of heavy silk and wool, and excluded all but the strongest drafts. I lifted the lower edge and flapped it, urging the charcoal smoke out through the stone arch.

The cold, damp air that streamed in was refreshing, and did something to calm the throbbing that had started in my temples as I stared into the reflecting water, remembering.

There was a faint moan behind me, and Jamie stirred in the draft. Good. He was not deeply unconscious, then.

Letting the tapestry fall back over the window, I next took up the incense burner. I fixed one of the opium pellets on the spike and lighted it with one of the wax tapers for the candlesticks. I placed it on the small table near Jamie’s head, careful not to inhale the sickly fumes myself.

There was not much time. I must finish my preparations quickly, before the opium smoke drove him too far under to be roused.

I unlaced the front of my robe and rubbed my body quickly with handfuls of the lavender and valerian. It was a pleasant, spicy smell, distinctive and richly evocative. A smell that, to me, conjured the shade of the man who wore its perfume, and the shade of the man behind him; shades that evoked confusing images of present terror and lost love. A smell that, to Jamie, must recall the hours of pain and rage spent wrapped in its waves. I rubbed the last of it vigorously between my palms and dropped the fragrant shreds on the floor.

With a deep breath for courage, I picked up the vial of ammoniacal spirits. I stood by the bed a moment holding it, looking down at the gaunt, stubbled face. At most he might last a day; at the least, only a few more hours.

“All right, you bloody Scottish bastard,” I said softly. “Let’s see how stubborn you really are.” I lifted the injured hand, dripping, from the water and set the soaking dish aside.

I opened the vial and waved it closely under his nose. He snorted and tried to turn his head away, but didn’t open his eyes. I dug my fingers into the hair on the back of his head to prevent his turning away, and brought the vial back to his face. He shook his head slowly, swinging it from side to side like an ox roused from slumber, and his eyes came open just a crack.

“Not done yet, Fraser,” I whispered in his ear, trying as best I could to catch the rhythm of Randall’s clipped consonants.

Jamie moaned and hunched his shoulders. I grasped him by both shoulders and shook him roughly. His skin was so hot I nearly let go.

“Wake up, you Scottish bastard! I’m not done with you yet!” He began to struggle up onto his elbows with a pitiful effort at obedience that nearly broke my heart. His head was still shaking back and forth, and the cracked lips were muttering something that sounded like “please not yet” over and over again.

Strength failing, he rolled to one side and collapsed facedown on the pillow again. The room was beginning to fill with opium smoke and I felt mildly dizzy.

I gritted my teeth and plunged my hand between his buttocks, gripping one curving round. He screamed, a high breathy sound, and rolled painfully sideways, curling into a ball with his hands clasped between his legs.

I had spent the hour in my chamber, hovering over my pool of reflection, conjuring memories. Of Black Jack Randall and of Frank, his six-times-great-grandson. Such very different men, but with such startling physical similarities.

It tore me to think of Frank, to recall his face and voice, his mannerisms, his style of lovemaking. I had tried to obliterate him from my mind, once my choice was made in the circle of stone, but he was always there, a shadowy figure in the recesses of my mind.

I felt sick with betrayal of him, but in the extremity I had forced my mind to clear as Geilie had shown me, concentrating on the flame of the candle, breathing the astringency of the herbs, calming myself until I could bring him from the shadows, see the lines of his face, feel once more the touch of his hand without weeping.

There was another man in the shadows, with the same hands, the same face. Eyes filled with the candle flame, I had brought him forward, too, listening, watching, seeing the likenesses and the differences, building a—a what? A simulacrum, a persona, an impression, a masquerade.

A shaded face, a whispered voice, and a loving touch that I might bring to deceive a mind adrift in delirium. And I left my chamber at last, with a prayer for the soul of the witch Geillis Duncan.

Jamie was on his back now, writhing slightly against the pain of his wounds. His eyes were fixed and staring, with no sign of recognition.

I caressed him in the way I knew so well, tracing the line of his ribs from breastbone to back, lightly as Frank would have done, pressing hard on the aching bruise, as I was sure the other would have. I leaned forward and ran

my tongue slowly around his ear, tasting and probing, and whispered, “Fight me! Fight back, you filthy scut!”

His muscles tightened and his jaw clenched, but he continued to stare upward. No choice, then. I would have to use the knife after all. I knew the risk I was taking in this, but better to kill him myself, I thought, than to sit quietly by and let him die.

I took the knife from the table and drew it firmly across his chest, along the path of the freshly healed scar. He gasped with the shock of it, and arched his back. Seizing a towel, I scrubbed it briskly over the wound. Before I could falter, I forced myself to run my fingers over his chest, scooping up a gout of blood which I rubbed savagely over his lips. There was one phrase that I didn’t have to invent, having heard it myself. Bending low over him, I whispered, “Now kiss me.”

I was not at all prepared for it. He hurled me half across the room as he came up off the bed. I staggered and fell against the table, making the giant candlesticks sway. The shadows darted and swung as the wicks flared and went out.

The edge of the table had struck me hard across the back, but I recovered in time to dodge away as he lunged for me. With an inarticulate growl, he came after me, hands outstretched.

He was both faster and stronger than I expected, though he staggered awkwardly, bumping into things. He cornered me for a moment between the brazier and the table, and I could hear his breath rasping harshly in his throat as he grabbed for me.

He smashed his left hand toward my face; had his strength and reflexes been anything like normal, the blow would have killed me. Instead, I jerked to one side, and his fist glanced off my forehead, knocking me to the floor, mildly stunned.

I crawled under the table. Reaching for me, he lost his balance and fell against the brazier. Glowing coals scattered across the stone floor of the chamber.

He howled as his knee crunched heavily into a patch of hot coal. I seized a pillow from the bed and beat out a smoldering nest of sparks in the trailing bedcover. Preoccupied with this, I didn’t notice his approach, until a solid clout across the head knocked me sprawling.

The cot overturned as I tried to pull myself up with a hand on the frame. I lay sheltering behind it for a moment, trying to get my senses back. I could hear Jamie hunting me in the semidarkness, breath rasping between incoherent phrases of Gaelic cursing. Suddenly he caught sight of me and flung himself over the bed, eyes mad in the dim light.

It is difficult to describe in detail what happened next, if only because everything happened a number of times, and the times all overlap in my memory. It seems as though Jamie’s burning hands closed on my neck only once, but that once went on forever. In fact, it happened dozens of times. Each time I managed to break his grip and throw him off, to retreat once more, dodging and ducking around the wrecked furniture. And once again he would follow, a man pulled by rage from the edge of death, swearing and sobbing, staggering and flailing wildly.

Deprived of the sheltering brazier, the coals died quickly, leaving the room black as pitch and peopled with demons. In the last flickers of light, I saw him crouched against the wall, maned in fire and mantled in blood, penis stiff against the matted hair of his belly, eyes blue murder in a skull-white face. A Viking berserker. Like the Northern devils who burst from their dragon-ships into the mists of the ancient Scottish coast, to kill and plunder and burn.

Men who would kill with the last ounce of their strength. Who would use that last strength to rape and sow their violent seed in the bellies of the conquered. The tiny incense burner gave no light, but the sickly smell of opium clogged my lungs. Though the coals were out, I saw lights in the darkness, colored lights that floated at the edge of my vision.

Movement was becoming harder; I felt as though I were wading through water thigh-deep, pursued by monstrous fish. I lifted my knees high, running in slow motion, feeling the water splash against my face.

I shook off the dream, to realize that there was in fact wetness on my face and hands. Not tears, but blood, and the sweat of the nightmare creature I grappled with in the dark.

Sweat. There was something I should remember about sweat, but I couldn’t recall it. A hand tightened on my upper arm and I pulled away, a slick film left on my skin.

Around and around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel. But something was wrong, it was the weasel chasing me, a weasel with sharp white teeth that pierced my forearm. I hit out at it and the teeth let go, but the claws…around and around the mulberry bush…

The demon had me up against the wall; I could feel stone behind my head and stone beneath my grasping fingers, and a stone-hard body pressing hard against me, bony knee between my own, stone and bone, between my own…legs, more stony hardness…ah. A softness amidst the hardness of life, pleasant coolness in the heat, comfort in the midst of woe…

We fell locked together to the floor, rolling over and over, tangled in the folds of the fallen tapestry, washed in the drafts of cold air from the window. The mists of madness began to recede.

We bashed into some piece of furniture and both lay still. Jamie’s hands were locked on my breasts, fingers digging bruisingly into the flesh.

I felt the plop of dampness on my face, sweat or tears, I couldn’t tell, but opened my eyes to see. Jamie was looking down at me, face blank in the moony light, eyes wide, unfocused. His hands relaxed. One finger gently traced the outline of my breast, from slope to tip, over and over. His hand moved to cup the breast, fingers spread like a starfish, soft as the grip of a nursing child.

“M-mother?” he said. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. It was the high, pure voice of a young boy. “Mother?”

The cold air laved us, whirling the unhealthy smoke away in a drift of snowflakes. I reached up and laid the palm of my hand along his cold cheek.

“Jamie, love,” I said, whispering through a bruised throat, “Come then, come lay your head, man.” The mask trembled then and broke, and I held the big body hard against me, the two of us shaking with the force of his sobbing.

It was, by considerable good luck, the unflappable Brother William who found us in the morning. I woke groggily to the sound of the door opening, and snapped to full consciousness when I heard him clear his throat emphatically before saying “Good morning to ye,” in his soft Yorkshire drawl.

The heavy weight on my chest was Jamie. His hair had dried in bronze streaks and whorled over my breasts like the petals of a Chinese chrysanthemum. The cheek pressed against my sternum was warm and slightly sticky with sweat, but the back and arms I could touch were as cold as my thighs, chilled by the winter air gusting in on us.

Daylight streaming through the uncurtained window revealed the full extent of the wreckage I had only dimly realized the night before; smashed furniture and crockery littered the room, and the massive paired candlesticks lay like fallen logs in the midst of a tangle of torn hangings and scattered bedclothes.

From the pattern of indentations impressing itself painfully into my back, I thought I must be lying on the indifferently executed tapestry of St. Sebastian the Human Pincushion; no great loss to the monastery, if so.

Brother William stood motionless in the doorway, jug and basin in hand. With great precision, he fixed his eyes on Jamie’s left eyebrow and inquired, “And how do you feel this morning?”

There was a rather long pause, during which Jamie considerately remained in place, blanketing most of me from view. At last, in the hoarse tones of one to whom a revelation has been vouchsafed, he replied, “Hungry.”

“Oh, good,” said Brother William, still staring hard at the eyebrow, “I’ll go and tell Brother Josef.” The door closed soundlessly behind him.

“Nice of you not to move,” I remarked. “I shouldn’t like us to be responsible for giving Brother William impure thoughts.”

Dense blue eyes stared down at me. “Aye, well,” he said judiciously, “a view of my arse is no going to corrupt anyone’s Holy Orders; not in its present condition. Yours, though…” He paused to clear his throat.

“What about mine?” I demanded.

The bright head lowered slowly to plant a kiss on my shoulder. “Yours,” he said, “would compromise a bishop.”

“Mmmphm.” I was, I felt, getting rather good at Scottish noises myself. “Be that as it may, perhaps you should move now. I don’t suppose even Brother William’s tact is infinite.”

Jamie lowered his head next to mine with some care, laying it on a fold of tapestry, from which he peered sideways at me. “I dinna know how much of last night I dreamed and how much was real.” His hand unconsciously strayed to the scratch across his chest. “But if half what I thought happened really happened, I should be dead now.”

“You’re not. I looked.” With some hesitation, I asked, “Do you want to be?”

He smiled slowly, eyes half-closing. “No, Sassenach, I don’t.”

His face was gaunt and shadowed with illness and fatigue, but peaceful, the lines around his mouth smoothed out and the blue eyes clear. “But I’m damned close to it, want to or not. The only reason I think I’m not dying now is that I’m hungry. I wouldna be hungry if I were about to die, do ye think? Seems a waste.” One eye closed altogether, but the other stayed half-open, fixed on my face with a quizzical expression.

“You can’t stand up?”

He considered carefully. “If my life depended on it, I might possibly lift my head again. But stand up? No.”

With a sigh, I wriggled out from under him and righted the bed before trying to lever him into a vertical position. He managed to stand for only a few seconds before his eyes rolled back and he fell across the bed. I groped frantically for the pulse in his neck, and found it, slow and strong, just below the three-cornered scar at the base of his throat. Simple exhaustion. After a month of imprisonment and a week of intense physical and mental stress, starvation, injury, sickness and high fever, even that vigorous frame had finally come to the end of its resources.

“The heart of a lion,” I said, shaking my head, “and the head of an ox. Too bad you haven’t also got the hide of a rhinoceros.” I touched a freshly bloodied weal on his shoulder.

He opened one eye. “What’s a rhinoceros?”

“I thought you were unconscious!”

“I was. I am. My head’s spinning like a top.”

I drew a blanket up over him. “What you need now are food and rest.”

“What you need now,” he said, “are clothes.” And shutting the eye again, he fell promptly asleep.

{End of Excerpt}📖📚

#caitriona balfe #sam heughan #dragonfly in amber #jamie fraser #books #outlander #diana gabaldon #outlander season 5 #bibliophile #excerpt #sassenach #claire fraser

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diddlesanddoodles · 5 years ago

Text

DUMPLING ch 38

“Now, my dear,” Maevis said, as he laid out several large candlesticks as tall as a human. “Your first lesson will be a simple one: I want you to keep these candles lit.”

The morning was brisk and as the sun began to peak over the castle’s rooftops, the frost on the ground was beginning to thaw, but it still crunched under her shoes. Maevis had brought her to the kitchen camp rather than the library as he felt it would be better for her to learn how to better control her flames away from a room full of material that was known to be very flammable. He set up a small area in the corner to be out of the way of Farris and the others.

Breakfast was done and over and they were now onto prepping for luncheon, which was always marked with a sudden increase in activity. Farris was in top form, barking out orders and demanding updates on how one task or another was progressing. Kol, though bruised and battered, was at his station as though nothing were amiss, but Quinn seemed more agitated and wasn’t his cheerful self. At one point Kol yelled at his fellow baker, “Fer fuck sake’s Quinn, it’s just a bruise! I ain’t gonna drop dead ‘er nothin’.”

All of this served as a backdrop to her first magic lesson.

In front of her, Maevis had dug shallow holes into the cold ground, into which he inserted a candle. Much in the same way he had with the dagger the day before, he pinched the wicks between his fingers and said something under his breath. The cotton strings glowed a dim blue and he repeated this with each one until all five were done.

“I’ve placed a charm on each candle,” he explained. “With each becoming incrementally stronger. So, if you would try to light this one here, Nenani, we shall begin.”

Nenani adjusted her scarf, throwing the excess length over her shoulder and walked up to the first candle. She held her hands out, focusing on the tip of the wick, and pulled her magic out from the fire opal amulet. It pulled out easily enough and flames twirled around her fingers and then around the wick. The cotton wick took her magic held a happy little ball of mage fire...

...which promptly extinguished itself.

Nenani made an annoyed sound of surprise and above her, Maevis chuckled. “This time, try giving it a little more oomph. All right? Now, once again.”

And so the drill went on for the next half hour. Every time the wick was lit, it only stayed lit for a few seconds before burning out. Maevis explained that the greatest property of mage fire was its use in dispelling of charms and spells and the deflecting of magic. Over time, her mage fire would eat away at his charm and once it was gone, the wick would stay lit. Her goal was to use her mage fire to burn away his spell and light the candles one by one. It took an hour for her to light the first two candles and as she stepped up to begin working on the third, she was beginning to feel the exhaustion.

“This exercise will also help with your stamina,” Maevis said. “That and control are the two most important things for anyone learning the arcane arts needs to master. And for you especially.”

“This...this is a lot harder than I thought it would be,” Nenani admitted, looking at the third candle with a vague reluctance. “Without the amulet it’s so much easier.”

He gave her a pitying smile.

“It only seems easier because the pathways are open wide and unobstructed,” Maevis explained. “Which is where the danger lies. Think of that amulet as a dam controlling the flow of a river. Though it hold much of your power back, it is absolutely vital in controlling the flow. Until you have mastered it yourself.”

After another failed attempt, she made an unhappy noise of frustration and kicked at the grass.

“Do not worry,” he said to her. “You’re doing beautifully, Nenani. Come now, once more.”

Nenani privately named the third candle ‘Bastard’ since the word flashed repeatedly in her head every time she attempted and failed to keep the wick lit. Somewhere around the twentieth attempt, she became frustrated with the whole exercise and held her concentration longer than before and began to ‘push’ more of her magic out. Her arms shook, but as she approached the threshold where she normally would have stopped to take a breather or to start again, she pressed on. Maevis was saying something, but she couldn’t spare any of her focus to listen. The candle began to tremble and she thought that perhaps she was breaking the charm down and gave it one last heaving push and…

“Nenani, careful now. You might...”

There was a very loud pop and the space where Bastard the candle use to be was empty, save for a few spare drops of wax and then far behind them there was a surprised shout and a curse.

“Seven fucking hells!”

“What the...ye alright, Quinn?”

“What the fuck was...i-is that a candle?”

Kol started laughing loudly. Nenani and Maevis shared a worried look and turned to peer back towards the cook camp.

“OI!” Quinn yelled in their direction, holding something in one hand as the other rubbed his head. Presumably where Bastard the candle had struck him. “IS THIS YER’S?”

“Well. Not the goal of today’s lesson,” Maevis said thoughtfully. “But an impressive distance, I must say.”

“Sorry, Quinn!” she called back to the baker through cupped hands. “It was an accident!”

“I hope ye ain’t needin’ it back, lass,” Quinn told her. “’Cause this fucker goin’ into the fire!”

She looked at Maevis. “Will regular fire burn it with your charm still on it?”

Maevis suppressed a small grin. “Nope.”

“Okay,” she called back to Quinn, grinning. “You can have it!”

Quinn turned and tossed the candle into the fire with a curse and went went about his work. Nenani and Maevis waited a few moments and then Kol began to laugh again.

“What?” Quinn demanded.

“It ain’t meltin’,” Kol said. “Look there!”

“Huh?” Quinn paused to bent down and peer into the fire.

“The candle,” Kol laughed. “It ain’t meltin’. It’s just sittin’ there.”

Quinn’s blond head whirled to glare in their direction. “This thing ain’t gonna explode or nothin’ is it, Maevis?”

Once the bakers were assured that Bastard the candle was not going to explode, Maevis had her move onto the fourth one. She immediately decided to name it Fucker. And it indeed lived up to its name as she tried again and again to keep the wick lit and time and time again, the spell breathed the flame out.

She growled and mumbled something uncharitable under her breath. Flopping down onto the ground to rest, she glared at the candle and repeated its name in her head over and over. Lolly might faint from shock at her saying any curse words, but she was free to think whatever she wanted in her head and Nenani took full advantage, recalling every curse and swear she had ever heard anyone in the kitchens so much as mutter.

“Now, it may help to visualize what it is you are doing,” Maevis suggested. “Picture it in your mind, the charm being burned away.”

“...okay,” she said, easing back to her feet and taking a restorative breathe and released it as a sigh. As she tried to do as he had suggested, she held in her mind the image of the candle burning clearly and cleanly, the flame never going out. Raising her hands, she pulled out her fire and set the wick to burning and pushed more magic at it to keep it lit. Inside her head, she imagined the charm wearing away and the flame staying lit. But as the image stayed fixed in her head, the imaginary flame grew bigger and smoke began to spill out of it as the candle below began to melt. The smoke swirled and take shape. A hand, a foot, a torso, and then finally the stag skull mask. In her mind, the candle was no longer there and instead, there stood Aidus. Red eyed and looming over her.

Hate pulsed inside her chest and still holding the image of Aidus in her mind, she pushed her magic at the charmed wick one more time. There was a crack and shards of blue fell away from the candle as the charm shattered and dissipated.

“Bravo, my girl!” Maevis cheered. “Very well done!”

She looked at the happily burning candle, slightly winded, and grinned. “I...I did it.”

“Yes, you did,” Maevis said proudly. He put a hand to her back and leaned down close to her, one hand pointing to the last candle. “Now, let us see how you do with this last one, my dear.”

With a little more confidence than before, she walked up to the last candle and gave it a name. The wick became a stag skull in her mind and she held out her hand, palm to the sky. A ball of mage fire flickered to life, round and swaying gently, but when she visualize the smoke mage in her mind, the flame began to jerk and hiss. She pushed the angry fire at the candle and there was a pop and the spell fell apart like broken glass. The wick was lit and after a moment, settled once more into a round ball of happy fire. The wax began to melt and dribble lazily down the sides of the candle.

Maevis was silent for a moment and looked down at Nenani, appearing a little disconcerted. He began to say something, but whatever he was about to say was lost as he gave a startled cry of surprise as Nenani abruptly crumbled onto the ground. “Oh! Nenani, are you alright?”

Gloved hands pulled her off the frozen ground and brought her close to his face.

“I’m fine,” she said, breathing hard. “I just...felt a little...light headed...all of a sudden...”

Maevis sighed in relief. “Ah. Yes, well. If you ever feel like you need a rest at any point during these lessons, please do not hesitate to tell me. We are in no hurry and it wouldn’t do at all to overtax you when you’re still learning.” He studied her for a moment. “I think that shall do for you first lesson. Tomorrow perhaps we’ll...”

His words died on his lips as his face fell, eyes narrowing as they darted to the side. The fingers around her curled in protectively. She gripped his thumb and called out to him, disquieted by the sudden change. “Maevis?”

Instead of answering her, however, the magician carefully eased himself back to his feet and turned towards the cook camp with purposeful strides. Shifting his hold on Nenani so that he had a better hold of her, Maevis made a beeline for the tent just as Farris exited. He was reading a piece of parchment and looked up as Maevis approached. He raised an eyebrow at the magician inquisitively.

“Everythin’ goin’ fine out there Maevis?” he asked mildly.

“Farris,” Maevis said, voice low and rigid. “Could I trouble you for a jar? One with a stopper. A metal one if you have it.”

The kitchen master eyed Maevis for a moment in confusion at the odd tone, but he nodded. Sensing well enough that something was amiss. “Aye. I’ll go fetch one.”

“I would appreciate it,” Maevis said with a nod. “Very much.”

Nenani opened her mouth to ask Maevis what was going on, but one of his hands rose up and covered her as though trying to hide her from sight. “Shhh...”

“Will this do?” Farris asked, stepping from the tent and offering a wide mouth jar.

“Yes,” Maevis replied and Nenani felt him pull her away from him. “If you would take her, please.”

Nenani was traded between the giant’s hands and now sitting on Farris’s hold, she got a proper look at Maevis. His expression was a hard and almost angry as he popped the lid off the jar and slowly turned his head back towards where they had been having their magic lesson. Seeming to sense something was off, Farris stepped back several paces and waved at Saen and Avery to do the same.

Maevis abruptly whirled around, free hand flying up into the air and a ball of blue light formed in his palm. He began to chant something unintelligible and quick as the blue orb split apart into many smaller beads of light that swirled around in the air a few dozen feet away. They began to form a sort of ring, but then at the center of the frenzy there was a flash of gold light and Nenani could heard wind-chimes and a small voice cry out in panic.

The ring of blue lights pulled the gold orb towards Maevis as his chanting became more fervent and the whole mass of light, gold and blue alike, were pulled into the jar. The stopper was pushed in forcefully and Maevis cried out in triumph.

“Ah ha! Got you!”

Maevis held the jar up to his face, but to Nenani’s eyes, it appeared to be empty.

“What the seven hells was that all about?” Saen asked.

“Is it that fuckin’ Mage again?” Farris growled.

“No,” Maevis replied, squinting at the empty jar. “No, I don’t believe so. I had thought I sensed something earlier, but...well. Frankly, I haven’t a clue as to what it is, but whatever the origins, it’s contained now. I will take it back to my study and secure it on the off chance it is related to the Mage.” The magician turned to Farris. “Nenani’s done with her lesson for today. Would you have any objections with my leaving her with you, Farris?”

“Not ‘a one,” Farris replied, suddenly smirking down at her and jostling her lightly. “Besides, got somethin’ new fer ‘er to learn.”

Maevis nodded and took his leave and the jar with him. After making a quick trip around the camp to make sure everything was moving along to his liking, Farris took Nenani into the tent and set her in her usual spot atop the table. He dug through a small chest and pulled out a small pot with a wax seal, long broken, and was now being held closed with a piece of twine.

“Take a sniff ‘a that and tell me ye smell,” he said, pulling the broke wax seal off. Obediently, Nenani bent down over the pot and sniffed.

“Peppermint,” she said, rubbing her nose and tuning away to sneeze.

“This is a burn salve,” Farris explained. “Also works fer rashes and sores. Anything that makes ye skin turn red.”

She glared up at Farris.

“Are you teaching me this because you think I’ll end up burning someone?” she asked, not entirely able to mask the hurt in her voice. The giant eyed her as he leaned forward, resting his arm on the table, the other at his hip.

“Yer a walkin’ ball a’ fire now, lass,” he told her flatly. “And still learnin’ to control it. Won’t be a question of if but when ye burn something or someone ye didn’t mean’ta.”

She did not like that answer and looking at the little pot, her frowned deepened. A large finger swept in and caught her chin, pulling her attention back to him.

“Ah, don’t be gettin’ all pissy on me now, lil’un,” Farris said with a slight warning to his tone. “Ain’t no one perfect and we all make mistakes. Good intentions or naught. Yer old enough now to be able to understand that.”

“I guess,” she replied, dejectedly. “I just...”

“Ye could be tryin’ yer best and still mess up. Might be as bad burnin’ someone or as small as smackin’ Quinn over the head with a candle.”

Despite herself, she giggled.

“Hm,” he said hummed thoughtfully, releasing her chin and regarding her silently for a moment. “Still sore over what Lord Fancy Britches said about ye, are ye?”

After a moment, she nodded. “Yes.”

“Just remember what Yale told ye, lass. Ain’t one of us down here that’d let that happen. Understand me? That marker don’t have Lord anyone’s seal on it. It’s got the King’s and mine. Even if yer a Princess, that lil’ thing still matters. Yer still my ward.”

She nodded, reaching up and running a finger over the cold metal.

“Good. Now do me a favor and don’t worry about what some pox faced, velted arse Lord of who-gives-a-damn has to say about ye.”

Nenani could not help but break out into a smile and she laughed.

“So, ye wanna be learnin’ all this still then?”

“Yes,” she replied, eyes bright and Farris grinned.

“Alright then.”

………………………………………………….

The burn salve was a two part process involving several various oil infusions that were then mixed in a specific amount and added to melted beewax with a small amount of rose water and left to cool in easy to use pots. All the flowers were dried, having been collected during spring and stored into large sacks. Yellow rose petals, chamomile blossoms, lavender buds, calendula petals, hypercium flowers, and of course peppermint.

“Yaesha normally makes these, but they get used up so fast during the summer, I started makin’ my own fer the boys. Helps with sunburns,” Farris explained, opening each of the bags of dried flowers and letting Nenani inspect each one. “Gjerk turns into a fuckin’ boiled fish whenever he stays in the sun fer more than a few moments. And Kol and Quinn go through a pot each a month dependin’ on how careless they are.”

He portioned out several jars with oil and instructed her how to measure out the appropriate amount of each flower to put into each jar for the amount of oil. As she poured the last bucketful of rose petals into the jar Nenani regarded Farris curiously. “Is this the same stuff you put on my eyes when I was sick?”

“Aye,” he replied with a grin. “It is. Might’ve been what saved ye from going blind. That’er yer magic. Suppose being a fire mage might make ye a bit more well prepared to fight off the red reap.”

“You think so?”

“Bah, who knows,” he replied. “I don’t know shit about magic. That’s Maevis’s area ‘a expertise.”

Yale popped his head into the tent, frowning and looking annoyed. “Uh...Farris?”

“What is it?” Farris asked as he closed the lid on the last of the infusions.

Yale opened his mouth and seemed to have trouble finding the appropriate words. “So...there’s a...um...some folks out here. Wantin’ to speak with the Dumplin’.”

“What? Who?” Farris asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

“Humans,” Yale replied. “They’re from the Hill Tribe and...I think one of ‘em might be one a’ the elders.”

“What?” Farris asked. Nenani could see a single vein on his temple throb. “Why’re they back here and what th’ fuck do they want with the lass?”

“...they wouldn’t tell me. The scruffy one’s a right arse.”

Farris jerked his head, scowling. “Stay with her, Yale. I’ll deal with it.”

“Aye,” Yale said, pushing into the tent as Farris marched out. Leaning back against the table with his arms crossed, Yale looked down at Nenani. “Ye got mighty popular all of a sudden, Dumplin’.”

She tugged on her sleeves nervously. “Why would someone from the Hill tribes want to see me?”

“Probably heard ye were a Princess,” Yale said with a shrug. She groaned, letting her head fall back as she stared at the ceiling and an impish grin spread across Yale’s face. “Sorry, Dumplin’. That’s just the sort ‘a stuff folks do around lord and ladies and the like; throw themselves at ‘em. Hopin’ fer a favor or two. Ye might have t’start holding court soon to hear all their requests, eh?”

Nenani gave Yale a flat look. “They should go throw themselves at someone who could actually do something. Unless they need an enchanted candle lit or some heartburn tonic, I can’t help them.”

He laughed, but the sound of Farris hollering drew their focus to the outside. They both strained their ears as Farris spoke with the newcomers and no one seemed to be in a good mood.

“Just what do all of ye think yer doin’ here? If ye want an audience with the King, yer in the wrong place.”

“We are not here to speak with the King,” came another voice, unfamiliar and not sounding at all intimidated by Farris. “We are here to pay homage to our Princess. We have it on good authority that she is here.”

“Well ye ain’t seein’ ‘er.”

“And just what gives you the right to deny us, giant?”

“The same right that gives me the authority t’throw all yer sorry arses out the gate.”

“If your or any of your fellows so much as touch any of our company we will not hesitate to defend ourselves.”

Farris snorted dismissivly. “Does Warrick know yer here? ‘Cause I’m bettin’ he didn’t authorize ye lil’fuckers to come and waste my time. Now did he?”

“Warrick does not speak for all of us...”

“Clearly.”

“Now, giant. Will you let us speak with Her Grace or...”

“Like I said, boy. Ye ain’t seein’ her.”

“Oh for pete’s sake, you two squabble worse than my granddaughters,” said another voice, feminine and much older.

“Nonna, wait –!”

“Oi! Get away from there woman!”

“Don’t you lay a finger on her!”

“Wave that toothpick at me some more and I’ll bend it th’ fuck in half!”

The flap to the tent pushed open down near the floor and a small old human woman dressed in a gray cloak with white hair pulled back into a bushy ponytail, stepped through, a carved walking stick in her hand. She looked up at Yale with gray blue eyes and she blinked at him curiously. “Oh. Hello, young man. My apologies for bursting in so rudely, but I was hoping for a chance to meet my grandniece if it pleases you.”

Yale gaped at the woman in confusion and he flicked an uncertain gaze back at the tent flap then to Nenani and then back to the old woman. “Uh...ah, well...um.”

Nenani crept over to the edge of the table and peered down. Her eyes met those of the old woman and upon spying her, the woman’s face broke out into a wide smile. Despite her clear age, she had all her teeth and like her hair, they were a bright white. “Oh! Oh my stars, there you are my girl!”

Nenani looked to Yale, confused, who returned the look and shrugged.

“Well?” said the old woman to Yale expectantly. “I’m an old woman, son. And I may look like a witch, but I certainly ain’t flying no where. So be a dear and help me up.”

“Oh...uh, sure,” Yale said, bending down obediently and setting both his hands down on the ground. The old woman shuffled over and sat herself down onto his palms. Very slowly, he raised her up to the table and waited patiently for her to shuffle off again.

“Alright, let’s see this girl child,” said the woman, reaching out with a thin bony hand to cup Nenani’s chin and turn her face this way and that, studying and humming to herself. “Well. You’re a Daelg, that’s for sure. No mistaking that wild brush of hair. Oh, you look so much like him when he was a little scamp.”

“Huh?” Nenani asked when the woman released her face. Her hands were shockingly cold. “Like who?”

“Why, Hayron you silly thing! Your dear father,” said the woman with a wide smile, her eyes sparkling. She tapped Nenani on the nose with a thin finger. “You have his nose.”

“I...do?” she asked, feeling very confused. She rubbed her nose.

“And what is this?” Nonna asked, plucking up the amulet and she grinned knowingly at Nenani. “Well, I suppose given your mother’s heritage, it’s hardly surprising you would have the gift as well.” Nenani pulled the amulet from the woman’s hands and stepped back, feeling unsure about her. The old woman regarded her with a warm smile. “Dearie me. You haven’t a clue who I am do you?”

Nenani shook her head. “No. Sorry.”

“Never mind all that. Can’t be helped. I suppose there’s a great many more things you don’t know as well, but that all can wait. Call me Nonna, dear,” she said, or rather insisted. “I am your great aunt. Your grandfather Haiyer’s sister.”

…………………………….

“How did ye hear she’d be down this way?” Yale asked, looking at Nonna, but periodically glancing to the tent flap. There was a great commotion outside and they could hear the panicked voices of several humans and some of the staff laughing. Nenani could have sworn she heard Saen say, “...wouldn’t mind addin’ a few of ye to the stew...” followed by a raucous round of laughter from the others.

“From the guards posted near the village, of course,” Nonna replied, either ignoring or not hearing all that was going on outside. She had made herself comfortable on a stack of books, her walking stick laid across her lap. “Wonderful lads the lot of them, but they gossip like hens. Couldn’t keep a secret to save their skins.”

There was a sudden shout from outside the tent and Farris pushed his way in, looking quite fearsome and irritated as he looked around the floor. “Where’d that old bat go?”

“Oh, no need for insults now, Farris,” Nonna said, waving a hand at him from atop the table. “I’m plenty old, but I ain’t no bat.”

Farris looked up and upon seeing Nonna on the table, he leveled a fierce glare at Yale who shrank back with a helpless shrug. “What? She’s just a lil’ old lady, boss.”

He turned is ire then to the old woman and, seeing Nenani standing only a few feet away, reached out and swept her off the table. Nonna watched with a disproving eye and huffed. “Not so much as an ‘If you please?’”

Farris set his baffled ward firmly in the crook of his arm, his hand curling around her feet. “There are protocols in place fer ye lil’ fuckers to have yer say and ye need t’see Rheil or Donal about it. Not sneakin’ in through the back door and disruptin’ my kitchen,” Farris told her, returning her disapproval with a huff of his own. “I have a right mind to toss ye lot into a crate and ship ye all back t’the Hill Tribe and let Warrick deal with ye.”

She waved dismissively at him.

“Warrick has plenty to do all on his own without you helping him along none, thank you,” Nonna replied nonchalantly. Nenani was a more than a little surprised at how easily she spoke to Farris. Even other giants shrank back from his ire when he was truly and proper mad. “But I do realize we have made a muddle of this and put you all out of sorts and for that I do apologize. But when you hear that your late brother’s granddaughter is alive after all this time and so very close...well, you can’t rightly give two shits about proper channels and protocols. I wanted to meet my grandniece and I wasn’t going to wait for an invitation.”

“Yer grandniece?” Farris echoed dubiously.

“That’s right. Her grandfather, Captain Haiyer, was my younger brother,” Nonna explained. “And her father and uncle are my nephews. And if you still doubt me...”

Nonna trailed off and reached behind her head and undid the ribbon tying her hair back and the whole mess of her thick white hair poofed into a wild bushy mane, tendrils falling about her face and obscuring her eyes. Farris and Yale looked between Nenani and the old woman and it was painfully obvious they were related. The hair did not lie. Nenani stared at the woman in mute fascination, unconsciously reaching up to feel her own bushy locks.

Yale snorted, turning his head and tried to disguise his amusement in a fake cough.

Nonna brushed aside her hair and smiled in sympathy at Nenani. “I’m afraid all Daelg women suffer from this curse. My daughter had it and my granddaughters have it and so do you. And should you ever have a daughter of your own, be ready for her to have it as well. Of course none of the men in the family have any problems. Heads of full luscious locks well into their eighties, not a problem to be seen. The lucky sods.”

Farris snorted with a lopsided smirk and begrudgingly nodded to the woman. He sat Nenani back down onto the table, rubbing a finger across her hair and chuckled when she batted at him. “Fine, then,” he said to Nonna. “I believe ye. But ye seem t’know my name and I haven’t a clue who ye are.”

“Oh phooey. Everyone in the village knows who you are, Farris. No mistaking you at all. Though, I suppose you wouldn’t know my name or face,” she conceded with a mild smile. “You always drop off your waifs and strays with us so late at night when I tend to be asleep. Never was one to hold late hours, I like my sleep. But I’m one of those who help settle in those you bring us. Everyone calls me Nonna.”

Farris tiled his head and gestured vaguely behind him. “Well, Nonna, ye may want to go talk some sense into yer mates out there. My boys’ have ‘em rounded up, but that lil’ fella with the sword is askin’ fer a right arse kickin’ and I have it in my mind to go ahead and let Bart get on with it.”

Nonna sighed. “That stupid boy. Always itchin’ fer fight he can’t hope to win. He’s harmless, understand. More hot air than anything and couldn’t swing that sword to cut his bread.” For her age, Nonna was quite spry and demonstrated it by easily hopping down off the of book stack. After securing her hair back, she looked up at Farris with a long suffering sigh. “Well, no matter how badly they’re behaving, I suppose it would rude for me to let you cook them. It would be a bit hard to explain to Warrick why his squire’s been turned into a pie.”

Farris grinned darkly and offered her a hand up. “Don’t think Warrick would need much an explanation if he let that one be his squire. I’m sure he’d understand perfectly well.” He laughed. “Might even thank me fer it.”

“Farris, my good man, you have no idea.”

BONUS ART:

#DUMPLING #Giant/tiny #g/t fantasy story #magic #Nenani #Maevis #Farris #Yale #Quinn #Kol #Nonna #fantasy giant #g/t #bonus art

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gwenore · 5 years ago

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The Demon’s Opera house. Chapter 5.

Summary chapter 5: Christine trying to make her way in the darkness of the abandon chapel with the demon she cannot see watching her.

---

Christine fell to her knees after having cried the demon’s name out into the cold dark which enveloped her, pleading with him to not leave her.

She was so cold… so cold.

Her hand then graced against smooth marble, her fingertips gracing against the features of the angel.

Wrapping her fingers around it she picked up the mask, cradling it close to herself as he stood up slowly. She pondered about trying to go back up… but that path was no doubt closed. He was not going to let her go…

Trembling through every limb she started to move forward. She did not know where she was going… she just… could not just stay. She could not see her hand before herself, barely daring to put one foot before the other.

Her fingers felt something and Christine jumped as the sound of piano keys clinging, which was jarringly loud in this abyss. Jumping back clutching her hand to her chest attempting to calm herself.

So… that was the giant organ. That gave her some idea of where she was at the very least. Searching further she found the chair and sat herself down, softly playing on the keys, listening to it.

She had taken lessons… when her father was still alive… but that was so many years ago. Her musical education had all but stopped when he died. Only singing she continued…

She continued on, but it was difficult… the piano was nothing like this and then she could see the keys.

The mask were placed next to her on the chair and she was happy of the sound. It was one thing to be blind in this place, but to also be deaf…

Christine could not imagine the terror.

Finally she let her hands rest upon the keys, it had hardly been something that could be recognized as anything other than a child playing pressing down the ivory keys to make sound.

She glanced around but there were no sign of those red glowing eyes.

“Are you listening?” she asked, but then let out a long sigh.

There was tempting just to sit by the organ… perhaps just staying there… but… how long was he going to leave here her. Slowly she stood up, picking up the mask as she wandered from the organ in a straight line, which she assumed would be down the aisle in this ancient chapel.

She let out a small sound of pain as her knee caught… something. She cursed this darkness under her breath as she reached down to figure out what it was she had stumbled into, praying it was not going to be the bones of people long since departed.

No such horror met her finger tips as they glided over smooth carved wood.

Puzzled she reached down further feeling something soft… silk? Christine hand moved further upwards, over the silken surface. It was covering something soft… a mattress? A bed. This was a bed.

Christine’s brows furrowed a bit. Did demons sleep? She had thought such a human need beyond them.

She was exhausted, and ignoring all dangers she climbed up on the bed, collapsing upon it. It was cold like everything in this abyss but she managed to find a way under the silken blanket, taking it around herself.

Christine could feel how her eyes closed, not that it changed much as the world around her was just as dark as when her eyes were open. She hated this unrelenting dark.

Her hand still cradled that mask, clutching it to her breast as if it was a comfort.

Consciousness drained out of her as she despite the terror that she had gone through this night fell into a sleep void of dreams.

Somewhere above her, resting on the ledge of what had been the roof of the chapel had two blazing red eyes been following the singer stumble through the darkness.

Having observed her fingers move over the keys of his organ, literally blindly tapping at them as if that would lure him out of where he was hiding. It very nearly had. How he had wanted to guide those hands over the instrument that he knew so well… to teach her as she had her back against his…

Feeling those gentle locks move against the nape of his neck…

It seemed that despite knowing the truth… that she like everyone else could not bare to look at him… he could not keep from getting these fanciful thoughts. What good were they but thrust a blade of agony through his heart knowing that it could not be true.

Slowly he lowered himself down, his feet soundlessly touching the stone floor. He slowly slinked closer to the bed, his head curiously cocked as he saw the pale skin of her face against the black silk of his sheets…

It was like seeing her floating in a pool of black water…

She was so defenseless.

A shaking breath drew between his lips, to see that mask he had created cradled against her chest.

He closed his eyes, remembering the sensations of her fingers caressing his cheek ever so softly.

“Christine… please forgive me… I did not mean to hurt you…”

His pleading voice did not reach her, she did not know he was there… except for somewhere deep in that slumber she felt a warmth and gave a soft sigh at the release from the cold world around her.

Slowly he walked around the bed, observing her all the time.

She was so defenseless… sleeping when a demon were so close… how foolish was she? And yet…

Had a sight been so inviting to him. So filled with silent beauty?

She would never be able to love something like him… resting the knee on the bed, slowly. If Christine felt an added weight to the bed, she made no sign of it.

So he moved further, standing over her on all four, yet she continued sleeping.

“Christine…”

Her name made its way unbidden past his lips, but even her name could not stir her. The serpent like tail curled around itself as he had to fight it reaching out and wrapping around her to tie her close to him.

Slowly allowing himself to lay beside her, her back towards his chest. He did not dare touch her… fearing what might happen if he did.

Christine in her deep sleep had no concern for the battle within him, caring only for the warmth which were close to her as she turned towards him, resting her head against his shoulder, part of her golden hair across his throat. Softer than silk…

He was frozen like the statue he had stolen the face from in order to hide his hideousness from her.

A smile come upon her face as she slipped even further down into the dark pool of sleep.

How he wished that she could look like that if she knew he was there… to feel at ease… to feel safe… to not be so terrified.

Tears ran down his cheeks as he continued to watch her as a demon watching over a sleeping angel… not being allowed to touch her for should she know he was there she would no doubt escape from him.

“Christine…” he whispered again. “Just sleep… I will watch over you… I promise…”

And like that… the demon fell asleep, a gentle calmness falling over him like a heavy blanket, feeling the true bliss of sleep for the first time in his wretched life.

---

Christine woke up to the sound of soft music playing, utterly pleasing and she smiled, before she realized where she was as she sat up with a start, clutching that silken blanket close to her chest.

There were some light in the old chapel now, mostly around that organ where the demon sat playing. He did not stop his hands even as he glanced over his shoulder towards her for but a moment before he turned his attention to the keys again. He had taken back the mask, once again hiding his face from her.

She could not deny that her heart was pounding with fear… yet… she had slept the night and as he said… there were no harm which had come to her.

Glancing at the small table close to the bed there was even a small candle flickering, clearly intended for her.

She pondered for a moment what she should do… he had said that he would not allow her to leave this place… even if she had briefly managed to convince him… before she had removed the mask.

It was clear she was not forgiven for that, her heart aching slightly as she remembered the hurt in those red eyes as she could not help but to fear what she stood before. No doubt an expression he was sadly far too familiar with…

Christine looked down at her fingers running over that black silk.

She kept thinking of him as a demon… but was he not also a man? A man who had never been shown any kindness or mercy. Feared and hated for what he was… like any man he was not asked to be born…

The sins which everyone condemned him for… they were not his own.

And someone… demon or man, who had never known kindness… how can one expect them to know how to show it? Kindness, mercy and compassion… these had to be learned as much as everything else…

Slowly she moved her body to sit on the edge of the bed. Even though he did not look back at her, she knew he was aware of every movement that she made.

Standing up she took the candlestick, moving towards him, having to remember to have courage to show that he was not alone.

Moving up beside him, keeping on his left as she watched how his hands moved with such skills over the ivory keys. Is was as if this was second nature for him, even as one of his hands were slightly ashen in color and tipped with long claws.

It was absolutely mesmerizing to watch. She always had such good memories of seeing her father play. Though a violinist, he enjoyed to play on the piano where they lived. Even her father was not as skilled as this demon though.

A memory came upon her which formed into a idea. It seemed that it was music which laid closest to this creature’s heart. A way to reach him that words could not.

“Will you move over a bit?” she asked a low and soft tone. The demon stopped slightly, glancing over at her, she seeing the confusion in his eyes, before he slowly moved to the edge of the small bench, taking up his playing again, again without speaking a word.

“Thank you…” she whispered softly as she sat beside him. Due to the size of the bench she felt the demon’s body against of her own. Though his playing did not change, she felt how his breath was more strained as if he forced himself to control it.

Gently… almost as if to test his reaction she reached her hands forward and gently starting to play beside him, sitting on his left playing the dark low tones, to his stronger lighter ones.

She saw how his eyes returned to her hands again and again.

“Your left… move it one key down…”

It was the first words that he had spoken to her since he shouted at her.

“Like this?” she questioned as she moved her hand as he instructed. He nodded slowly having returned to his own playing.

Christine played along until her fingers ached so she stopped, resting her hands in her lap. He continued to playing for a few moments more before he stopped glancing over at her, his eyes questioning her why she wasn’t playing.

“My fingers, not as practiced as yours,” she was still uncertain about meeting his gaze, rubbing her own fingers.

The demon held his hand out to her, indicating to place her hands there and she did as he wanted, him rubbing her fingers gently caressing them. Christine looked at him with astonished look in her eyes, feeling that heat sinking into her fingers and soothing the muscles.

“I was not aware that you played…” he murmured softly as he continued to caress her fingers, rubbing his finger over them.

“I don’t… not really… but I am sure you heard that…” she shrugged her shoulders.

“I have heard people daring calling themselves professional piano players with far less sense of rhythm…” he grumbled.

“You are talking about the Englishman who came into audition two weeks ago? Yes I heard they were going to hire him… but then the oddest thing happened… he said he burned himself on our piano to the point of scolding himself severely, couldn’t play with the blisters on his hands. Meg was certain he got drunk and just laid his hands on a stove top…” Christine paused as she looked at the demon who did his best not to meet her eyes.

“That was you?!” she gasped.

“Oh no. I contend that it was his fault alone. Had he simply been able to play, it would not have come to pass,” he said after some pause.

Christine let out a gasp before standing up from the chair backing away.

“You scalded a man’s fingers to the point he can no longer play because you did not like his music?” she asked.

“Would you be able to sing with that buffoon who could not play in tune? The new one leaves a lot to be desired, but at least he can play… somewhat…” he let almost a defeated sigh. Christine stared in shock at what he was telling her.

Then her mind wandered. How people spoke of the opera house. The demon’s opera house. That it was cursed due to the number of accidents…

“Accidents…” the word slipped past Christine’s lips.

“Hmm…?” he cocked his head towards her.

“Those… those were not accidents were they?” her voice trembled slightly. His nature could not keep the grin from coming across his face.

“In a big opera house accidents do happen. Especially too people who are careless. And a sign of carelessness is also seen in how they play or sing. If someone is sloppy then, they are sloppy always. And to those people… accidents do happen,” he then started to play again.

Christine shook her head, raising her head towards her head.

“People have been hurt!” she then exclaimed.

“Oh… I assure you… things were far worse when my father was in charge,” he seemed to have little interest in the conversation, more concerned with his playing. Christine’s breath got caught in her throat.

“Your father?” she stuttered forth.

“This theater was built because of him. I must admit I do not know the details. I think the architect sold his soul. I believe that is why there are angels everywhere. A means of protection? Didn’t quite work out for him…” Erik shrugged.

“The architect… who hung himself on opening night…” Christine had heard that tale so many times.

“Hmm… I do not think it was a hanging of his own free will… but again, he tried to back out of the deal that had been made would be my guess. Most likely with what the demon had in store for his sister,” Erik’s hands glided over the keys.

“His sister… the primadonna… your… mother…” the pieces fell together in Christine’s mind.

“Indeed. What a dreadful fate which befell her. Still… as they are… not on the mortal coil anymore, a lot… warmer where they are, the opera house… is mine,” he said, the thoughts churning in his mind. “I have just not take possession of it.”

“What do you mean about those words?” Christine stepped a bit closer.

“It is my birthright after all… I have started to wonder if I should make the fools who run it realize that…” it was clear the thought was not new… but now it had returned stronger.

If the theater was truly his… then could he not make both their dreams come true… to have her in the lead of something he had written… how beautiful would that not be.

“Promise me you won’t!”

Her plea broke through his thoughts.

“And how are you in a position to bargain with me? It should have been mine all along and I certainly have the power to take it!” he was getting agitated, she could hear that.

But what horrors would that not lead too. Her friends… Madam Giry… Meg… they would all be at risk.

So she threw her self at the demon’s feet, her hands resting upon his thighs as she looked up at him. Erik was frozen to the spot, her touch enough to make the burning fire within rage in a way he had never felt it before.

“Please, I will do anything.”

Those words were the most dangerous a human could ever speak to a demon.

“… anything?”

“Yes… I will do anything, just… please, do not do what you are thinking,” Christine pleaded. The demon continued to observe, getting lost in those pleading pools of blue. “Just stay in these shadows… please.”

“As you wish… Christine, but then… you are mine. Your body and soul… it belongs to me,” he sneered. Tears stung in her eyes as she nodded.

“Yes… I belong to you, body and soul… as long as you keep your promise,” she tried her best to keep her voice from breaking. He bowed his head slowly towards her.

“I promise.”

#the demon's opera house #poto fic #poto erik/christine #the phantom of the opera fic #poto demon erik au #demon au

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thedangelos · 5 years ago

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one more year | the whole crew

scotia -> charlie

Scotia can smell the wine on Charlie’s breath and even as they stumble on the uneven sidewalk, it makes him chuckle.

“We’re a block from the car at best, Charlie, are you going to make it?” He teases his boyfriend, tightening his grip on the arm Charlie has around his shoulders.

Charlie retorts something about being perfectly functional all while leaning more into the older man for support and Scotia snickers. He thinks that perhaps Charlie shouldn’t be so endearing to him this way, hammered on the night he’s turned 37, but Scotia can’t help it. This spirit is what he fell for in the first place.

Charlie gives him a look and Scotia immediately knows what’s about to happen. His hands come up to Charlie’s cheeks the moment Charlie turns towards him and just a moment later he’s kissed deeply. It’s sloppy and tastes like pinot noir but laughter bubbles in Scotia’s throat anyway as his back presses against the storefront they were passing.

“You’re crazy, you know that?” He mumbles between their lips, to which Charlie slurs back, “Crazy in love. With you.”

The happiness on Scotia’s lips is smothered with kisses and he thinks to himself, this man is going to keep him young till the very moment he dies. He inhales through his nose so he doesn’t have to break apart from Charlie and indulges the more inebriated man in a form of affection they otherwise wouldn’t have on the streets.

It’s only when their kisses slow and their noses are touching slightly so they can catch their breath that Charlie speaks again, sounding more sober than he has in hours.

“Hey, can you do me a favor?”

“What is it, Charlie?”

“Don’t let Dex plan my parties anymore. I might be getting a little too old for this...”

And Scotia erupts into a complete laugh. “Alright, next year’s on me. Now, let’s go home.”

chris -> will (spy au)

Like any casual Tuesday between them, they’re huddled together, cold, dirty, exhausted and alone. They’ve been hiding out in the very abandoned warehouse where they took shelter hours ago from the Polish mob, trying to find a clearing to escape several times with no avail. And with HQ failing to respond to their extraction calls, it’s become apparent that they’re going to have to get themselves out of this one.

Being still and quiet is pertinent to surviving, so Will raises a brow quite high when he sees Chris rustling through his utilities. His hiss of an inquiry of, “What are you doing?” goes unanswered and he’s left to simply watch Chris unwrap one of his rations before pulling a match from a different pocket.

“Almost forgot,” Chris grumbles as he strikes the match against the sole of his boot and digs it into the ration.

Realization begins to dawn upon Will just as Chris smirks at him, “Happy birthday-”

“Are you completely insane?”

“Completely, yeah,” Chris’s lips grow into a grin. “Come on after all this shit at least acknowledge that you made it one more year to here, hm?”

Will looks into those blue eyes and as they reflect the dull glow of the match, he can remember all the times in their youth when Chris had surprised him. Bought him silly little snacks with candles in them, insisting on celebrating that he was alive and a blessing to him.

“You’re my best friend,” Will could hear the echo of Chris’s voice now from a version of him long gone, “And I’m going to make a big deal of this if I want to.”

He watches Chris wait with bated breath for his partner to accept the gesture of the best version of affection that he could put forth. It’s only after a beat that Will supposes he it would be alright to lean over this one time and blow the match out.

And instantly Chris’s lips are on Will’s, devouring them slowly and painstakingly as they do, blindly no matter where they find themselves on this earth.

“I love you,” Chris whispers huskily between them, and Will hates how much those simple words tug at him, how much they remove him from their current situation. “If we die out here, just remember that I went out loving you, hm?”

callum -> emma

Callum rearranges the candlesticks on the dinner table at least four times before he hears the keys in the door. He flattens a palm over the white table cloth he’d bought for the occasion before glancing at Banjo, who is donning an elegant tuxedo ensemble- also purchased for the night.

“Showtime, girl,” Callum tells the dog, giving her a scratch behind the ears before moving towards the now opening door.

“Hey,” is the greeting Callum musters, and he kicks himself for it just a little. He’d spent hours being precise and careful over dinner, over decor, and over the general set up but hey is all he manages when he’s actually faced with his beautiful girlfriend. It’s his saving grace to know by now that she finds every bit of him charming, even the parts he sees as flaws himself.

She’s quick to notice the mood lighting, the smell of food, and especially, her dog and her laughter alone is enough to make Callum feel like each bit of his efforts were worth it. To be rewarded with a kiss is only a bonus and Callum hums into it, one arm wrapping around her back as his fingers find her hair.

She has to know by now that kissing him this way puts him in a one-track state of mind. That he could have planned a hundred things for her but the moment she traces her palm flat down his chest so, he will only be capable of thinking about taking her out of her clothes and laying her on any surface in the apartment that he can.

“Emma- dinner-” he tries to insist once, but he’s met between their lips with a brisk, “Will still be there in a few minutes.”

“A few minutes?” he raises a sharp brow, and she has to know he can’t resist being provoked like that.

Emma grins at him and just like the first day they ever met, Callum loses himself in it.

lyla -> nils

Lyla has an itinerary. She’ll start with breakfast in bed for Nils at 9 am; then they’ll go to the new digital art museum in town at 11 am; lunch at his favorite pâtisserie at 1 pm; a walk down the annual street fair near their dads’ house- the one with the stall of shirts Nils really likes- at 3:30 pm; a paint and sip except they have to work together on their painting, at 5 pm; dinner reservations at 7:30 pm, and finally a walk in the park at 9:30 pm.

That last part is the important one. Lyla links her arm into Nils’s elbow as they walk slowly, taking in the familiar views before she sits them down by a trickling and illuminated water fountain. She asks him if he had a good day, to which he kisses her forehead and answers that of course, he did. There’s no one else he would rather have gone on so many birthday adventures with.

Lyla grins. She parts her lips to begin the small speech she prepared for this very moment but is interrupted by the buzz of Nils’s phone. They had always been good at disregarding their phones in favor of time for each other- that is until they had a child.

Now, Nils answers his phone readily in the middle of their lovely evening and Lyla is grateful.

“Hi there, is everything okay?” Lyla watches her husband speak to their sitter with a smile curling at the corner of her lips at his confident tone. “Is that Nova I hear back there? It’s a bit past her bedtime, isn’t it? ...Oh, I see.”

Nils lowers his phone so he can put it on speaker and tells his wife in a whisper, “She wants to say good night.”

And Lyla’s heart warms. “Hi, baby,” she coos easily to her three-year-old as Nils echoes a similar greeting. The sound of Nova Ëklund-D’Angelo’s voice brings forth a smile and a tenderness in the two adults that they never thought was possible before. That they would do anything for the little girl in their lives is apparent from the kisses they blow her through the phone and the promises they make of how much they love her and how excited they are to see her again in the morning.

By the time they hang up, Lyla doesn’t care for speeches anymore. She doesn’t care that she’d all but rehearsed the best way to present her idea, or that she had some pretty solid points. She simply takes Nils’s hand as soon as he puts his phone away, looks into his eyes with the unequivocal love of one half of his soul, and tells him, “Let’s have another baby, Nils. I’m ready.”

bristol -> sven

Bristol traces the letters on Sven’s chest. It’s only been a handful of months since the skin has healed but Bristol can hardly remember a time before he could run his gentle touch over the ink in their most vulnerable moments.

His finger rises and falls with the older man’s breaths, ones he’s still trying to catch after the evening they’ve spent entangled together, isolated in their bedroom despite the many invitations they had received to more luxurious celebrations.

“What are you thinking?” Sven breaks the silence between them, fingers traveling through Bristol’s salt and pepper locks.

The younger man doesn’t answer right away. Instead he lifts his nose from the crook of his husband’s neck and leaves light kisses along his jaw. He watches Sven shift to lean more into him and it’s only when his heart flutters to feel that Sven wants him even now, that he speaks.

“I’m so happy, Sven. I’ve never been so happy in my life,” he hums quietly, his sharp blue eyes wandering up to meet the other pair. “I could die right now and that would be perfectly alright with me.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be alright with me,” Sven says almost warningly. He kisses the beginnings of a smirk from Bristol’s mouth and leans up on an elbow to hover over the man he married so surely, so long ago.

“Sven Vogel, you romantic,” Bristol purrs under Sven’s lips, but the older man doesn’t respond. He braces his body over Bristol’s with an intensity they’re both accustomed to by now, a possessive hold that they’ve both thrived in for 10 years and will continue to thrive in for nearly 10 more.

jensen -> august

It starts with a phone call six months prior to August’s 28th birthday.

“Hi, uncle Milo. If you had a minute, I wanted to talk to you about the family vacation this year. Namely the time and location. Hear me out, I’ve got a good reason.”

On the day of, it isn’t easy to keep a straight face when just about every Ëklund in the house knows what Jensen has planned, but it is easy to convince August to get away with just him for the evening. After all, they’d been talking about taking a trip like this since the day they met.

So they stand together at the outskirts of August’s hometown of Kiruna, peering up towards the most beautiful sight either has seen in nature, perhaps besides each other. August leans into the arm around his shoulders even if Jensen is trembling slightly. He plays back with Jensen’s restless fingers as the blue-green lights flicker along their strong features and smiles when a kiss is pressed to his hair, not for the first time. When he finally looks beside himself to see if Jensen is enjoying himself he finds his boyfriend gazing only at him.

“You’re missing the good part,” August teases, pointing towards the sky, though he is grinning at the notion that Jensen would rather spend this time looking at him than the seventh wonder of the world.

Jensen just shakes his head and drops a kiss to August’s cheekbone before he pulls back entirely. He answers August’s raised brow with a gesture that he needs both hands to zip up his coat and August lets his boyfriend be.

He looks back up, expecting to feel Jensen’s arm come back around him in due time. But it doesn’t and instead, he hears Jensen’s voice from a slight distance.

“Every part is the good part when it’s with you, August,” Jensen speaks through a deep breath and when August turns to look at him, the younger man has one knee in the snow. The majestic Northern Lights reflect off the object in Jensen’s hand and he continues, “I thought I was complete before but you’ve changed everything from the very first day we met. You’ve made every second we’ve had together a new adventure and I decided a long time ago that I never want it to stop. So August Ëklund, will you make the happiest man in the world and marry me?”

Jensen dashes off the ground the moment he’s done, laughter bubbling on his lips as his arms come around August. “Can’t wait for your answer, sorry. It’s freezing down there!”

For as nervous as he’d been leading up to the moment, Jensen hugs August close to his body now, kissing his face adoringly, knowing full well what their future holds.

bristol -> linus

It should have been expected that they would end up in such a position after a month and a half apart. Long distance was a bitch- especially long distance with someone that had the touch of a blazing wildfire.

The celebratory hike was Bristol’s idea but the kisses they shared at the summit were Linus’s. Linus’s idea to slip his cold hands under the other man’s shirt and Bristol’s to press his lips to the crook of Linus’s neck to keep from crying out.

It was Linus that pulled them among the orange and yellow leafed trees, but Bristol that tugged at their jeans. Bristol who shivered as he was exposed but Linus who covered Bristol’s back with his chest.

Bristol gripped tightly at the tree first, not caring for the bark that dug into his skin, especially when Linus’s palms came over the backs of his own. Bristol was the one to turn his chin back and bruise Linus’s lips but Linus was the one to use those lips to drop a dark red sign of possession on Bristol’s shoulder.

It was Bristol’s decision to reach back and hold his partner around the back of the neck as he felt his stomach turn. But Linus’s to pick up his pace, loudly so.

Bristol cursed while Linus said the other’s name and their hips stuttered in unison. Birds fled from a nearby perch at the height of the two men’s commotion and the only sound following was that of their labored breaths.

Surely one of them could be credited for their utter lack of self control, but honestly, who was keeping track anymore?

dex -> sven

The wind rustling through Dex D’Angelo’s curls in itself is a treat to behold. More than ever, Sven has no regrets about accidentally dropping Dex’s product behind the sink that morning. From the benches on deck, he watches his partner, who appears to be one with the rope between his hands, pulling with a strength that tightens each muscle in his upper arms.

Sven observes the laser focus in those oceanic eyes as Dex changes directions of the sail overhead, and the half-step he takes as it catches the wind. It’s an art, what he does, a muggle one that Sven would have had no appreciation for at one time in his life. But now, to watch Dex command the waters he waited 40 years to return to bristles each sense in him.

Turning back to the more natural views before him, Sven takes a sip from the glass of wine hanging loosely between his fingers. The oaky flavor is one connected to strong memories for him. As it turns out, Dex had passed on his impeccable tastes onto his daughter, who had selected their favorite drink for her engagement party so many moons ago now.

Sven can taste full-bodied berries and the irreversible changing of tides as a pair of knees comes to frame either side of his body. Looking up he sees Dex’s sun-kissed form, making himself comfortable on the back of the bench and the sight is damn near blinding.

“May I?” Dex’s voice is smooth as he lifts the glass away from Sven’s lips. The latter can only pretend to be offended as he leans back into the warmth of his partner. Dex’s arm, slipping around Sven’s collarbones similar to how he himself is often held in bed, makes the older close his eyes to simply lose himself in the moment.

He vaguely hears the sound of Dex setting the wine glass aside before he feels a warmth breath at his ear.

The whisper of “Happy birthday, my love,” sends a shiver down Sven’s spine and he only opens his eyes at the kisses that are peppered to the side of his face.

In a few hours they will return to their fulfilled and bustling lives, full of friends, family, endless projects and engagements but for now they are simply Dex and Sven, together in ways that can never be comprehended by the average person.

It doesn’t matter the cycles of life it took them to reach this destination, just that all is, as it is supposed to be.

#the way i was like which blog do i post this on and immediately was like WELL MOST OF THE BIRTHDAY DRABBLES ARE ON HERE AND CAROL LOVES DEX #THE MOST SO DEX'S PAGE IT IS LMFAO HERE WE GO LET ME JUST GET /ALL/ THE TAGS OUT OF THE WAY FIRST #c: Scotia Fallon #o: Charlie Vogel #scarlie #c: Chris (Spy AU)#o: Will (Spy AU)#yaxmoor (spy au)#c: Callum D'Angelo #o: Emma Vogel #callemma #c: Lyla St.Clair D'Angelo #o: Nils Eklund Vogel #Angelund #c: Bristol Overgaard #o: Sven Vogel #brisven #o: Linus Eklund #overlund #c: Jensen Fallon #o: August Eklund #augsen #c: Dexter D'Angelo #not us having literally 8 ships but like 55 plots at LEAST and that's only the romantic pairings not including all the friendships and #I'm clearly just a sucker for our characters finding themselves in the SAME situations to see how they react differently lol if the to have #and to hold drabbles didn't make that clear enough lmfao #not me writing you a whole heartfelt birthday message in the tags only to find i hit the tag limit and all of it disappeRED #LMAO SEE YOU ON DISCORD WITH THAT SHIT #my writing #carols birthdrabbles

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storyweaverofgondor · 5 years ago

Note

Trope mash up: 41 + 47 with Misto and Electra?

So, fun little fact about me: writing Romantic Fluff is not my strong suit. *Shrugs* ya learn something new everyday. Well, this little thing was a challenge but i hope you like it!

Quaxo blinked and stared uncertainly at the sight before him.

The isolated little clearing where he practiced his magic had been redecorated in his absence. A crate sat in the center covered by a red cloth. On top of it was what appeared to be two servings of some rather tasty smelling fish and two lit candlesticks that cast a dim glow over the clearing. The ground had been entirely covered in a carpet of red rose petals.

Quite honestly, he wasn't sure how to respond to this.

“Um?”

He spun around in surprise and his eyes widened.

Electra glanced between the setup and him a few times with a dear in the headlights expression “Did you – did you set this up?” she asked at last.

“No!” He flushed and cleared his throat self-consciously. “No. I just came here . . . to practice a bit. I don't know,” he waved his hands helplessly at the clearing “how all this got here.”

“So you didn't send me the note?” she asked uncertainly.

“Note?” Quaxo blinked at her in confusion “What note?”

She silently hand over a piece of paper. He took it and read it over “'10:00. Come alone.'” He read aloud “That's vaguely threatening. And it has a map to the clearing.” He looked over at her “You didn't know how to get here before?”

Electra shook her head, side-eyeing the admittedly romantic set-up “No.” She confessed “How did you know about it?”

Quaxo flushed nervously and looked away “I . . . practice some things here.”

“You mean your magic?” She asked and smiled softly when he stared at her with wide panicked eyes.

“Y-yes.” He stuttered out “How did you know?”

“Remember when you bet Jerrie and Teazer they couldn't break into your house and won? I was watching from the roof across the street.”

He paled and nervously preened the longer white fur on his chest “So you saw me . . . ?”

“Magically Chaos Gremlin proof your house? Yes.” Electra tilted her head and smiled at him “I thought it was very pretty.”

Pretty? He stared at her in surprise, a smile slowly spreading across his face. She thought his magic was pretty!

She had very pretty eyes . . . like liquid gold in the candlelight.

He flushed and looked away quickly, embarrassed “Uh, the fish!” he exclaimed, pointing towards the table. “Would you like to-? I mean, it seems a shame to just let it go to waste?”

Electra gave him an odd look but nodded “Yes, I suppose it would be. It does smell rather nice, doesn't it?”

“Mmm-hmm.” he shifted his weight nervously for a few seconds then waved her on ahead. “Ladies first.”

She chuckled and grinned at him “How gallant.” she purred at him and slipped past.

Yes, gallant. It had absolutely nothing to do with buying himself time to stop blushing at the thought of dining with her by romantic candlelight under the full moon. He could eat a fish and not make more of a fool of himself then he already had. He could do this.

The pair sat across from each other and tucked in. The fish was indeed very good. High quality and delicious. Quaxo nibbled on it distractedly, shooting Electra looks across the makeshift table. The torbie queen looked very pretty in the moon and candlelight and being this close to her gave him butterflies.

“Can I ask you something?” he asked in a sudden bout of courage.

Courage that shriveled up and died when she met his gaze “Yes, Quaxo? What is it?”

“Electra, would you-?” He broke off when she tilted her head at him curiously, swallowing nervously “What I mean is, would you like to . . .? Would you care to - ? Oh, Bast!” Quaxo buried his face in his hands, face turning red beneath his fur. Why did he always get so tongue tied?!

“I'd love to go to the ball with you.”

He looked up sharply and stared at her with wide eyes.

Smiling softly at him, Electra clasped his hands in her's and leaned forward to give him a peck on the lips. Quaxo let out a surprised yet pleased squeak at this. She chuckled softly and the two shared a bright smile.

“IT WORK – umph!

Quaxo and Electra whipped around and their eyes widened in shock. Tugger flashed them his trademarked smirk, a hand clamped firmly over Etcetera's mouth “Well, isn't this just cozy.”

Quaxo narrowed his eyes, mind furiously making connections “You two set this up, didn't you?” he demanded, gesturing to the candles and rose petals.

“Yumph!” Etcetera confirmed cheerfully despite Tugger's hand still covering her mouth.

Tugger shot them a smug look “Well, it wasn't like you two were ever going to work it out for yourselves.”

“I'll grant you that.” It would have probably taken up five lifetimes for them to figure it out for themselves. Tugger and Etcetera's eyes went wide when he raised one of his hands, magical sparks crackling on the finger tips. “But also: how dare you!”

The Pair bolted when he charged them, bolts of magical light exploding into the ground at their heels as he chased after them.

Electra giggled as she watched Quaxo chase the pair about, eyes sparkling with mirth. She looked back at the table and ran her finger over the piles of rose petals. She would think up a clever revenge against Etcy for setting her up and revealing her secret crush to Tugger of all cats later.

Right now she'd just focus on how happy she was.

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drowning-in-dennor · 6 years ago

Text

We Shall Live

One autumn night at the ruins of Nyx Avenue, two former residents meet and reminisce about what once was their lives. [This work contains many mentions of death, blood and weaponry.]

Most people would call such a night, quite conveniently on the thirty-first of October, dark and stormy, but they would be wrong. With the moon anointing the earth below with its ethereal silver glow and the air cool and still, it is peaceful. In any other neighbourhood, there would be children running around in colourful outfits demanding candy, or couples taking romantic strolls under lantern-light.

But Nyx Avenue, tucked far, far away from any sugar-hungry children and overzealous lovers, is silent. Its streets have been long-abandoned, fences chipped, lawn overgrown with wild grass and houses choked with vines. It is, in all senses, a ghost town falling slowly into disarray.

Ah, but what do we have here? At the door of 4 Nyx Avenue, there stands a man, or what appears to be a man. He looks rather old-fashioned, with his cravat, navy jacket and worn-out breeches, as though he was once a wealthy young lad. His head is heavily bandaged and blood, perhaps already dried up, stains the white cloth. He floats effortlessly through the weeds around his house and glides across the pavements, and it is clear - this is no living being.

The ghost sails, like a boat through water, across the houses, passing through picket fences and rusty mailboxes, until he reaches 13 Nyx Avenue. And still he drifts, through the splintered door and up a set of stairs that creak every time wind passes through.

Through hallways of peeling paint, past paintings with their captive faces shadowed by the night and gnarled by the claws of time, the ghost skims across wooden floorboards pockmarked by mould and rot, until he reaches the door at the very end of the hall. The once-blue paint is more of a black now, not that he cares. He goes through it easily.

Inside the room, there is a four-poster bed, the canopy moth-eaten and the wood chipped. The sheets are perhaps in the worst condition, rumpled and stained with what is most likely blood. And hovering by the ornate French window is another of that ghost’s kind. This one is a young man too, cerulean dressing gown torn at the hems and swirling about him like ink in water. Around his neck, blood drips like a twisted necklace.

When the visitor from 4 approaches, he turns, revealing sad azurite eyes and a distant expression that mirrors the young man he once was. “Good evening, Henrik.”

“Being nostalgic again?” Henrik, adjusting the bandage over his head, waves at him, translucent in the silvery moonlight. “You rarely spend time in this room, Stellan.”

“Ah, you’re right.” Stellan bobs up and down as he floats away from the window and towards the door of the room. “I usually go to the reading-room. A pity, though.” A wistful smile just barely flits across his face. “I can’t pick the books up anymore.”

“And I can’t paint like this.” He waves his hands through the air, following behind Stellan. “Oh, do you remember when we could pick things up, toss them or use them or do whatever we wanted with them?”

Stellan floats down the hallway, gazing up at the mildew-painted ceiling. “There is no such liberty for the dead,” he laments.

Predictably, they arrive at the reading-room at the other end of the second floor. Stellan looks at the yellowing parchment on the desk, the fountain pen next to it having a nib caked with dried ink. Books are haphazardly jammed into the shelf next to it; a few of them have even landed on the floor. Behind him, Henrik whistles and wisps through a tall candlestick. “You really love this room, don’t you?”

“I stayed in here more than I did my bedroom.” He tries making a grab for a novel, sighing as his hand predictably passes through it. “If I’d been here that night, I might have been able to read and write for twenty more years.”

Henrik watches as Stellan huffs in frustration and gives up on trying to retrieve his books. “Say, what happened that night again?”

He freezes.

“I’m just curious, that’s all. You don’t have to say it if you don’t want to.”

“I’d just married into a new family.” Stellan floats towards the desk and peers at the century-old documents. “My wife was lovely, my in-laws delightful. How was I to know about my wife’s secret lover?” He shakes his head. “How was I to know that he’d show up in our bedroom, right after realising she married me, and stab me?” He raises his head, exposing the wound on his neck — gruesome and gaping, almost like a second mouth with how wide it is. “Maybe if I’d stayed here, I would have been able to pretend to be a butler, or something-or-other. But I didn’t.”

The two ghosts stare at each other for a moment. “You got your throat hacked open by a jealous man?” Henrik finally asks.

Stellan nods, turning his face away. “Now I want to hear your story.”

Henrik closes his eyes, one hand unconsciously tugging at the bandage wrapped around his head. “Well, I was your typical wealthy young heir waiting for an eligible dame to show up, because I was supposed to sweep her off her feet and marry her.” He smiles crookedly. “As you might be able to tell, that didn’t happen. I didn’t really want to marry. I just wanted to leave the house the moment I could, find somewhere else to live and ignore my family until I died. That didn’t happen either.”

All the while, his companion listens in silence.

“My mother thought I was just being silly,” Henrik continues, “until I turned twenty and I still hadn’t a wife. I’d just started university, you see, so I was really just waiting for the chance to leave. Now, one day, my mother showed up in my room and declared, ‘I’ve found you a nice young lady to be wed to.’ And naturally, I was not happy with that.”

“What happened next?”

“I refused, of course. But my mother persisted, and I ended up going to a wedding ceremony with that girl a good few months later. During the ceremony, the priest of course asked if we’d take the other as our honourable partner, or something along that lines.” He tugs at his bandage again. “When he asked me that, I answered with, ‘I don’t.’ My mother was so enraged that she took a bottle of wine meant for the celebrations afterward, hit me with it, and, well, here I am now.”

Outside, the wind howls.

Once again, Stellan gives up on trying to pick up his old fountain pen. “I don’t remember when I died,” he murmurs, “but I do wish I could have lived a bit longer.”

“I’d rather be dead than my mother’s puppet,” Henrik declares resolutely. “And anyway, this isn’t too bad. I have you to keep me company.”

He smiles at that, a full, genuine smile that seems eerily dissonant from the wound in his neck. “I suppose spending all eternity with you could be nice.”

They leave the reading-room, floating down the stairs and towards the front-door with its squeaky cat-flap and fallen-off doorknob. “Come to my place now,” Henrik offers, “I’d like to show you my old paintings.”

And they continue to haunt the Avenue, two dead men lost to the ages.

#aph dennor #APH Denmark #APH Norway #aph fanfiction #my writing #happy halloween!

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leadpaintrose · 6 years ago

Text

Ok, So How Do We Want To Do This

A Critical Role (Vox Machina) ficlet. Look, this is a really stupid, self-indulgent piece of fic, but I’m also really pleased with it and I’m trying to at least put stuff up here, so there you go. All of it under the cut.

Inspiration

At the beginning of the most recent episode I watched (Episode 22, I think), Matthew Mercer made a comment about how the Critters were slowly “turning us into our characters”, and I just had to run with it. I had recently found their second intro video, albeit one that was quite a few episodes in the future of where I was up to, but it immediately inspired me as well.

So, How Do We Want to Do This?

The darkness rang with their groans well before any light blossomed. They called out to each other, seeking reassurance that they weren’t alone. Those who had been sitting together reached out, grabbing hands and shoulders and sighing with relief. Matthew, alone at the DM’s table as he had been, spoke loudly.

“Everyone still here? All accounted for?” he asked, hopeful and afraid. One by one, they all responded, everyone relieved to hear to each distinct voice, though most of them were tinged with some pain from the unceremonious fall.

“Where the hell are we?” Travis asked the room at large.

“I don’t know,” Liam responded, “But, more importantly, how do we get out of here?”

“So many would be delighted to be where you find yourself.”

A voice sounded in the darkness, the direction from which it spoke impossible to follow. It wasn’t coming from everywhere, it wasn’t surrounding them, but each direction seemed just as likely as the others. Sam spoke into the darkness, clinging to Marisha’s hand.

“Well, we aren’t them. We’d like to leave. Can you help us?”

“Though, I suppose,” the voice continued, ignoring his question, “so many would also be terrified to be brought to this place.”

The room suddenly filled with light, and the group closed their eyes against the sharp brightness. The warm glow of tallow candles shone around them, though they couldn’t spot any individual candlesticks. The walls were a rich wood, and the room they stood in was almost perfectly circular. It was totally devoid of any furniture, and the roof rose high overhead, but no-one spared a glance upwards. All eight of them stared at the figure in the centre of the room, a mix of fear, confusion, and some intrigue in their face.

The figure – a woman, tall, fiercely red-headed and pale – smiled at them, her hands folded neatly in front of her. She slowly turned as she spoke, taking them all in, and meeting each of their eyes.

“Welcome. No doubt you have many questions. As do I.”

Working from instincts he did not know he had, Liam pulled a blade from his belt and threw it at the woman standing in the center of the circle. She casually turned to face him, plucking the blade out of the air as it sped towards her. A quick movement of her fingers sent it shooting back, flying an inch to the left of his face to embed itself into the wood behind him. He swore, flinching away from the blade, speaking in a language he had not taught his tongue. The confusion and blossoming realization in his eyes were matched by the shocked understanding on Laura and Marisha’s faces, as all three realized he had sworn in Elvish.

“That was the very height of rudeness, Vax’ildan. I would have expected at least some of your upbringing to force better habits into your instincts. Though, half-elves always were a tricky breed to predict, hm?”

Small blue sparks flickered around Sam’s fingertips, coalescing into a writhing ball of bluish-purple lightning. He opened his palm, throwing a bolt of thick lightning at her back. She held her hand up behind her, and the energy fizzled into nothingness inches from her palm. She turned to him, blue lightning now crackling from her eyes. He took an involuntary step back, holding his hands up in a placating gesture.

“Anyone else want to try attacking me?” she asked the room at large, turning to look square at Travis, holding a large axe comfortably across one shoulder. He shook his head, calmness in his stance betrayed by wildly darting eyes and a twitching vein in his forehead. Seeming to finally realize the weight on his shoulder, he looked at the axe in shock. “Good. Glad to see you all learn eventually.

“I see you, Rogue!” the woman declared, turning back to Vax, a conjured gust of wind throwing back his hood as he attempted to sneak around her. “Do not presume to be able to surprise me.”

“What is going on?” Ashley asked, falteringly. The woman snarled at Liam, forcing him back into his spot, before turning to smile, almost gently, at Ashely. “A good start, young Cleric. Not the best question, but often important to at least try.”

“Who are you?” Laura spoke, “And why do you talk to us like we are our characters?” The woman looked at her, clearly amused.

“Why, simply because you are them. In form, in skills, in memories, in actions. They are you, just as you are them. You chose them, you created them, did you not?”

“But, they aren’t who we really are!” Marisha shouted in desperate panic, releasing all her nervous energy at once. The woman turned her gaze on Marisha, and the she shied back from the blazing fire in the strange woman's eyes.

“Aren’t they? Then why, Druid, were you able to so effectively cast Grasping Vine on me?” she asked, pointing slowly to the ground, and cocking her head to one side. A small ring of vines had burst from the ground at the woman’s feet, and had woven themselves around her ankles and up her legs. A bright flash, and the tendrils were burning, writhing away to fall in charred piles on the floor. Marisha clutched her head as the pained cries of the plants echoed in her mind– she seemingly the only one who could hear them.

“Those are characters – they aren’t our names, or what we are!” Taliesin interjected angrily, though with no little fear.

The woman stepped closer to him, moving with slightly unnatural grace. “And yet, gunslinger” she said, almost seeming to spit the word, “you all wear the robes of those of Vox Machina.”

Almost as one, the eight of them turned their gazes first downwards, and then outwards to their friends. Indeed, all of them were wearing the clothes that they had worn in the introduction video they had shot for the game. But these felt different. Each outfit was perfectly tailored to them, fitting with clean lines and a sense of real belonging. A magical electricity pulsed through the items that they knew to be magical, though they had been simple props in their world.

“And you,” the woman said suddenly, spinning and taking quick steps towards Matthew. He was wearing the Dungeon Master robes he had been in the introduction video, but there was a shimmering quality to them. Parts of them faded in and out of existence slowly, sometimes changing to look completely different. “He of the Pretty Face, and Many, Many Voices. You lead these all so well.”

“No,” he said, swallowing down the fear. “I am not the leader here.”

“Yeah,” Sam piped up nervously, unable to stop himself, “we all do our own thing. Just together.”

The woman did not move her gaze, seemingly completely ignoring Sam, though a shock of electricity through his body caused him to sink to one knee, crying out in pain. Ashley hurried next to him, clutching the holy symbol around her neck, closing her eyes, and laying a hand on him. They looked at each other in shock as light spilled from between her fingers, and his pain faded.

“No. You don’t lead, do you? No, you...you control them. You are their Master. You create, and they step so willingly into what you create for them to face. Without fear, yes, but without much choice either. How quickly you could destroy them all, rob them of everything, of their lives. Of other things far, far more important.

“What would you be in this?”

Matthew swallowed again, panting faintly, unable to break the lock she held on his gaze. “Whatever is needed.”

She paused, then broke out into silvery laughter, peals of it rising and falling delicately. The laughter quickly turned scornful and mocking.

“Just a good answer. So honourable and helpful and disgustingly honest. We shall see what you really are. Although....” she paused, considering. She cocked her head again, seeming to gaze at his soul itself. “The cloth still ripples, even now. Perhaps that really is who you are...”

She flipped a hand, and the tension left Matthew’s body, causing him to sag slightly, and pant heavily. “No matter. We will find out soon enough.”

“Now,” she said, clasping hands together, and slowly turning to look at each of them, “Ask your questions.”

“What are you?” Liam asked. The woman turned delighted eyes on him.

“Ah, finally. A good question. So much better than “Who?” You always were my favourite.”

She settled into a relaxed pose. “I am... a guide, of sorts.” she answered. “Here to assist through what is to come – as much as I am able to, of course. I am, perhaps, the only friendly face you will see here.”

“Friendly?!” Travis asked, incredulously, “Dumping us all here, attacking us, demanding questions – you call that friendly?!”

Laura put a hand on Travis’ arm. “What are we doing here?” she asked.

“What indeed?” the woman responded, face a careful study of neutrality.

“Why did you bring us here?” Sam asked.

She shook her head. “I did not bring you here, Bard. Those Who Watch brought you here. I am merely their servant.”

Ashley gasped softly, the sharp intake of air drawing the woman’s eyes. “Then you are the One Who Knows. The Keeper.”

The woman inclined her head towards Ashley. “A keen mind, young Gnome. Sarenrae teaches her Clerics well.”

Marisha's eyes widened at the woman’s titles, hands moving in the first motions of a spell, a few leaves gathering against her feet. The loud click of Taliesin’s gun cocking echoed in the still air. The woman, The Keeper, looked at both of them with disapproval, as the rest of their friends looked at them with shocked concern, those with weapons quickly finding their hilts and handles.

“If you know my name, you know that it will take a lot to kill me.” the woman cautioned. “If you even can. Are you really willing to take that fight, and lose any chance of my assistance and kindness?”

Marisha released a soft growl, but the magical energy pulsing between her palms dissipated. Taliesin did not lower his gun, keeping it firmly trained on the woman’s chest. She once again inclined her head, acknowledging his right to the gesture.

She turned suddenly, grabbing Liam’s arm as it pushed a dagger dripping black poison towards her neck. The colour fled from his face as she glared at him from inches away. “Even your advantage cannot impact me, little half-elf.” His fingers twitched as she tightened her fingers around his wrist.

“But with his other hand, while she was distracted, Vax slid his dagger of life-stealing into the creature’s side.” Matthew’s words ran out through the room, a sense of power behind them. Liam’s hand moved of its own accord, driving the dagger towards her waist. He cried out in pain as the dagger dropped to the ground from suddenly loose fingers, a soft thud on the dirt floor before the dagger reappeared on his belt. Still staring into his eyes, she released her grip, and Liam dropped to the ground as well. He scrabbled away from her, rubbing his wrists and working his fingers.

“Excellent attempt, sir,” she acknowledged, looking at Matthew, who stooped over, grimacing and rubbing massaging fingers into his temples. “Unfortunately, this is not your game. You are not the Master here.”

Ashley approached Liam, pausing for a second, checking that The Keeper would not stop her. When the woman did not look at her, Ashley knelt down beside Liam, grasping his hand and her holy symbol, pouring healing energy through him. He gasped as the cold washed over him. The effort drained her far less than she expected.

“Well then. If there are no more questions.” the Keeper said, clasping her hands, completely ignoring the few who tried to speak, “it is time that you began.” The shape of a door suddenly burned itself into the wood behind Matthew, swinging open silently as the ornately carved door sprung into existence. The Keeper pointed towards it. “That way lies your quest. I look forward to seeing how you succeed.” She grinned, teeth perfectly white and straight. “As I’m sure you all will.”

With a final inclination of her head, she was gone.

#It's trash ok #Critical Role #Vox Machina #I'm so new to this but I already love them?#myfic #writings

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books-bring-you-to-wonderland · 6 years ago

Text

Be Our Guest

A request for REDACTED! Title should give this away, Disney BBS AU- enjoy! Ohmtoonz and Terrormoo- sorry if the formatting is off, Tumblr is a bitch

Ohm was a bit worried, walking through dark and unfamiliar halls. He made sure to stick close to Brian- the candlestick providing a rather warm glow in the dusty corridors. Evan was toddling next to the candelabra, his wooden feet echoing loudly on the stone-tiled floors- nearly in time with the ticking of the clock that made up most of his face. “Brian! Slow down! We’re going to lose Ohm-” “Slow down? Thought ye always wanted to be on time?” Brian turned to his friend with a smirk, hopping just a little faster just to spite the clock. His laughter was nice to hear, and Ohm found himself smiling despite the crazy circumstances he had been thrown into. Magic appliances? A beast with one eye? He did say he wanted something more than the provincial life… “Maybe I should be more careful with my wishes.” Ohm said, more to himself than to his hosts. His mouth was open, poised to ask a question, but the words died on his tongue as they all rounded the corner and the dining room came into view. Even dusty and nearly barren it was still gorgeous; with a high painted ceiling, unused but pretty china resting in a cabinet along the fall wall, and most importantly the table- a long piece of mahogany that shined like ice despite the rest of the room’s rot. Brian and Evan seemed to pay no mind to the state of the dining room, jumping onto the table with surprising ease. Ohm wandered in after them, trying not to eavesdrop but it was hard not to when Brian was shouting- in the direction he assumed to be the kitchen- before turning back to Ohm with that charming smile on wax features. A bright light fell straight upon the candelabra, making him glow even brighter than his own candlelight. “Mon cher Monsieur! it is with deepest pride and greatest pleasure that we welcome you tonight. And now we invite you to relax, let us pull up a chair-” As soon as the words left the candle’s lips, a chair swept up behind him from seemingly out of nowhere- his knees buckling as the edge of the seat knocked against him. In any other circumstance, he would have screamed- but he was more charmed than anything; enamored with the magic and mystery that hung around the castle like a thick fog. With the chair snug against the table, Ohm had no choice but to look to the candle once more, whose snuffer looked more like a fashionable hat atop his head. “-as the dining room proudly presents: your dinner!” One look at Evan showed that the clock wasn’t too fond of whatever antics Brian was up to (if the eye roll was anything to go by). Soft piano, barely audible, sounded through the nearly empty room. Ohm turned his head in any attempt to find the source of the music, but his attention was quickly diverted when the flirty candle on the table started singing, his voice just as accented in melody as it was in speech. “Be our guest! Be our guest! Put our service to the test. Tie yer napkin 'round yer neck, cherie and we'll provide the rest!” Brian had to sing just a bit louder as the sudden clanking of metal and china drowned out the song- trays and dishes spilling from the kitchen and heading straight for them, whereupon they danced onto the wooden surface with linens to cover the tabletop. Brian didn’t seem unfazed at all, dancing around silverware and platters to get a bit closer to Ohm. His candle hands, which were still lit, gestured to a few covered trays- and they opened up like clamshells, wafting heavenly smells of fresh bread and cooked veggies. “Soup du jour, hot hors d'oeuvres- why, we only live to serve! Try the grey stuff, it's delicious! Don't believe me? Ask the dishes-” With a mouthful of sweet bread, Ohm turned his head to the dusty china cabinet where a ruckus had started. The plates tumbled and rolled out of the open cabinet doors with ease, swirling around in a synchronized dance as more melodic voices filled the dining room. “They can sing, they can dance, after all Sir, this is France- And a dinner here is never second best! Go on, unfold your menu- take a glance and then you'll be our guest, be our guest, be our guest!” Evan seemed to be having a pretty hard time- clumsy on his feet the more wound up he got (literally). Brian just smirked as he twirled around the clock, narrowly dodging a swipe aimed his way. More trays opened up at Brian passed them, his candlelight casting a pretty golden glow over all of the dishes. “Beef ragout, cheese soufflé, pie and puncakes en flambé! We'll prepare and serve with flair a culinary cabaret!” The candelabra sidled up onto the arm of Ohm’s chair, leaning close enough so the inventor’s son could feel the heat from his light on pale skin. Ohm found he couldn’t wipe the excited grin from his lips even if he tried- he did have to stop himself from bouncing in his chair, though (mainly because he didn’t want to hurt the thing). “Yer alone and yer scared- but the banquet's all prepared. No one's gloomy or complainin’ while the flatware's entertaining! We tell jokes! I do tricks-” As Brian sang, he tossed the hard wax of his hands in the air, juggling them for a moment as he belted the words, eyes closed and smile wide on his beige wax features. “-with my fellow candlesticks, and it's all in perfect taste that ye can bet! Come on and lift yer glass-” A dozen or so cups, filled with wine and beer alike, hopped and spun around Ohm’s side of the table- just narrowly keeping their liquid contained as it sloshed around the sides. “-ye've won yer own free pass to be our guest- if yer stressed, it's fine dining we suggest. Be our guest! Be our guest! Be our guest!” The upbeat music seemed to die down a it, replaced with music more somber and softer- and the dancing came to a standstill all at once. The lights dimmed down one more, this time Evan in the spotlight- frozen as he was singled out from all of the silverware and china. Brian sidled up to the clock, wrapping a spindly arm around wooden shoulders. With one small blow Brian’s lights in his hands were out- but the candelabra started singing as if it didn’t happen, voice low and solemn. “Life is so unnerving for a servant who's not serving- he's not whole without a soul to wait upon.” Brian shook his head sadly, memories flooding blue eyes. Evan seemed to somber up a bit too, his clock ticking slower and sadder, if that was even possible. Ohm bit his lip, clearly missing a bit of context as the staff reminisced. It just made him even more curious about the beast that was currently residing god knows where. “Ah, those good old days when we were useful… Suddenly those good old days are gone…” A pause, and Brian draped himself over one of Evan’s arms, looking far too dramatic- especially when his candles lit back in a snap, bathing wood and gold in a bright glimmer. “Ten years we've been rusting- needing so much more than dusting. Needing exercise, a chance to use our skills! Most days we just lay around the castle…” The mood as well as the beat seemed to perk up instantly, as if flicked on by a switch, and Brian’s voice came back cheeky and sultry as it always was. “Flabby, fat and lazy- You walked in and oops-a-daisy-” Maybe Brian’s sudden enthusiasm had to do with the lovely teapot that made his grand appearance, all smiles and twirls as he sashayed across the white linen- past numerous trays of food and dessert. His little boy- Squirrel- the teacup with the chip in his left side, hopped behind him eagerly, sloshing tea a bit over the clean tablecloth. “It's a guest! It's a guest! Sake's alive, well I'll be blessed! Wine's been poured and thank the Lord I've had the napkins freshly pressed!” Brock’s smile never left his face, nearly as bright as the white porcelain that made up the majority of his body, sans the multicolored pieces that were more decoration. Pink, yellow, and orange paint stood out as colorful as the teapot’s personality. Ohm pushed himself out of his chair- unable to stop himself from dancing as the melody picked up. He saw Brock’s gaze follow him, but the teapot just kept smiling and hopped with a bit more spring in his step. “With dessert, he'll want tea- and my dear that's fine with me. While the cups do their soft-shoein', I'll be bubbling, I'll be brewing. I'll get warm, piping hot-” Brock trailed off from his thought, eyes focused on the little teacup at his side- and when Ohm twirled around he managed to spot a little smudge on the right side of the cup’s face. “Heaven's sakes! Is that a spot? Clean it up! We want the company impressed-” Ohm watched with a giggle as Brock wiped at Squirrel’s face like an overbearing mother, the teacup giggling too as he was spun around, his laugh bright and so innocent. “We've got a lot to do, is it one lump or two? For you, our guest!” “He's our guest!” “He's our guest!” “Be our guest! Be our guest! Be our guest!” The music picked up once more, Ohm taking in the sight with pretty green eyes as more and more and more plates and silverware flooded the table, along with dusters and trays, their metal glittering with every turn and swivel as they swept across the now clean tabletop. In a loud but nice harmony- voices loud and belting in the dining room. Even Evan seemed to join in the clock’s tick clicking in time with the fast beat, and the hands on his face spinning faster and faster across his cheeks and over his eyes. “Be our guest! Be our guest! Our command is your request. It's been years since we've had anybody here- And we're obsessed! With your meal, with your ease yes, indeed, we aim to please. While the candlelight's still glowing let us help you, we'll keep going…” Brian cut in, his Irish lilt cutting through the many different voices of the table. Ohm kept swishing from side to side, watching with bright eyes as the candle hurried over to dip Brock- the teapot flushing pink across white porcelain. “Course by course, one by one- 'til ye shout, ‘Enough! I'm done!’. Then we'll sing you off to sleep as you digest! Tonight you'll prop your feet up But for now, let's eat up-” There was so much for Ohm to take in- so many dancers, plates and napkins spinning fast enough to become blurs. Voices louder than ever, lights flashing with gold and yellow wherever Brian sashayed by, Evan and Brock hot on his heels with a small teacup hurrying to bounce along with the rhythm behind them all. It was better than any book he had read, the books long forgotten as the fantastic scene in front of him came to a climax. “Be our guest! Be our guest! Be our guest! Please, be our guest!” A cacophony of music, loud and bright and enchanting as the last note was held. With careful ears, Ohm could pick up the four distinct tones of the servants he had gotten to know the best. His heart felt close to exploding- and it did- Or rather, the dining room doors had slammed open, the beast standing in the doorway. His sudden appearance made everyone shut up in an instant, forks and knives clattering on the tabletop and making the subsequent silence that much more awkward. It was broken by the beast, a snarl on his lips, his good eye filled with hate and anger as he roared, “BE QUIET!” before storming off just as quickly as he appeared. Like lightning and thunder; a flash and a boom, leaving the servants shaken and a bit upset. “Well, that was rude.” Ohm was certainly going to give this Cartoonz a piece of his mind.

#bbs #bbs fanfic #banana boat #ohmtoonz #terrormoo #disney au #my writing #my art?#bbs au #be our guest #Disney #beauty and the beast #the candle and the teapot dont fuck in the movie but here they do #fight me

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avengers-nextgen · 7 years ago

Text

The Rise Of The Lost VIII

(Warning; this chapter contains some sensitive content. I have made a warning before the sensitive content starts and when it ends. Read at your own discretion.)

— — —

The building was as she remembered it. In ruins of decay and remnants of an old life never lived. Portions of the home still stood as centinals over the wreckage of the rest, like a corner of the wall that was stained with soot, a shuddering doorway, and impressively a portion of the dining table.

A hollow breeze blew across the corpse of a home. It hadn’t been disturbed since the incident occurred, other than the collection of her mother’s remains, and the neighbors had long since left in fright or died in the accident too.

She had discarded her old and tattered green clothes for something more practical: a simple, black cotton shirt with her usual dark trousers. The breeze licked at the nape of her neck drawing a chill to pass down her spine.

With a hesitant stride she passed beneath the shuddering doorway with a limping and wounded heart. Memories of how the home should have looked danced in her head, but the debris crunching beneath the soles of her shoes made it just that-a memory.

With great effort the young girl treaded across the landscape to pause at the fallen table. It lay crippled and tortured with burns across the laminated wood surface. Pale slender fingers hooked along its edge to bring the object to its full height. It would not stand on its own.

Eyes scoured the debris until they located the remnants of an old shelf. Leaving the fallen ally for only a moment the girl returned to prop the table upright with a sturdy piece of salvaged wood.

Gradually it began to take shape. A table now rested in the center of the floor, the discarded and damaged husk of a microwave acted as a seat, a charred candlestick lilted at a slant upon the wooden table top, and two broken spheres of glass sat at each end.

Weeds pushed up from between the debris and cinders searching hungrily for light. Dandelions bloomed in the crevices of the homely skeleton, offering a thin glimpse of prosperous light.

Boots greeting the threshhold’s surface alerted the absorbed child. With an anxious leap she turned to find a dark suited man standing calmly beneath the precarious doorway. “I did not expect to find you here.”

The girl’s eyes scanned for another face, searched the shadows as if it were lurking in them, as if those two odd colored eyes would be mocking her. With a bowed head she sat down once more and turned away from the man.

“Please, don’t be like this.” He pleaded. One foot after another came the hesitant approach of her father. He expected a response but none was given. “I know-Sage, look at me will you?”

There was no inclination that Sage had even heard her father. He sighed longingly before waving his hand so that a new chair was built from the ever present debris. Two strides later and he was perched across from her in a seat of his own- taking solace in completing an examination of the make shift dining room. “Let me explain.”

Loki frowned when she did not move except to rest a pale hand upon the table in a tight knuckled fist. His eyes widened as the crippled home began to glow and take shape into something else.

The walls slowly repaired themselves in a golden light. The table was shining and new, the doorway was sturdy, the seats were real-even a light hung overhead- and the candlestick sat straight on the table. A warm sound similar to that of bells ringing cheerily in the sky filled the empty space.

Loki knew that laugh better than anyone, he had been lucky enough to hear it once upon a time. The god’s throat grew right with emotion as he watched a very young and small image of Sage scamper into the room.

Her tiny frame was adorned in pajamas and dinosaur slippers were nestled snuggly on her feet. Fabric mouths arched up over her ankles making it seem like the T-Rex’s were munching happily on her toes.

“Daddy! Boo!” Her eyes lit up with an intense light. Loki followed the gaze of his young daughter to find himself sitting on the floor with a mask on his face. It resembled a wolf in nature and he gave a deep growl that sent Sage running off again.

“If you scare her and she ends up in my bed I will hunt you down and make you sleep on the hard tile floor of this kitchen.” Loki’s head snapped up eagerly in search of the voices owner. When he did not find her, Sage’s mother, his heart sank in grief.

“Why must you torture me like this?!” Loki demanded with a rising anger in his voice. He no longer looked at the illusion in effect, but at his real daughter who sat only a few feet away. “Show her to me.”

The beautiful illusion crumbled like broken glass until the once beautiful house was again the depressing waste land they both sat in. “Talk to me! Say something damn it.”

For the first time since he arrived Loki saw his daughter’s face. It was gaunt and pale, the skin was stretched too tight over her cheeks, her lips were cracked and dry, her hair was far too long and not at all neat, her collar bones protruded too prominently, and her eyes were full of emotion.

“What did they do to you?” Loki was unable to keep the mounting grief from his voice. His daughter had once been beautiful, but this was not the same girl. “Tell me.”

“You’re no different than they are, Loki.” Her voice hoarse from lack of use and Loki cringed at the sound of his name on her lips. She never called him that.

“How can you say that?”

Suddenly a new illusion took shape beside the god in the form of a thirteen year old boy. “He’s precious isn’t he? Charming? Powerful, young, bright, happy, and he’s yours.”

Loki could not escape the accusation in his daughter’s voice. “You did not let me explain.”

“What is there to explain?” Sage shook her head. “That you’re a liar?”

“I have never lied to you-“

“You said I was the only one!” Loki blinked as his daughter’s calm dementor vanished and was replaced with a brooding rage. “You said mother was the only one for you but-she’d not even died when you were with someone else!”

“That’s not true!” Loki stammered.

“When is his birthday?” Sage spat. She watched her father squirm uncomfortably. The answer was mumbled but it was all she needed to know. “Liar!”

“I’m sorry.” Loki wailed.

“I was right. You bastard.” Sage looked away to conceal the tears brewing in her eyes. “You were supposed to love my mother, to care about us, and all that time you were away it was with some other woman wasn’t it?”

“Sage, I didn’t want you to know. I was worried you would hate me-hate him.” Loki swallowed hard.

“Well I do. Congratulations.”

A long pause passed between them and it wasn’t until Sage spoke again that the silence was broken. “Why?”

“Sage-“

“Weren’t we enough for you?” She demanded and turned her full glare upon him once more.

“You were, I made a mistake.” Loki admitted. His heart hammered in his chest far too quickly for his own liking,

“You know...mother said you weren’t like everyone else said you were.” Sage stood from her makeshift seat to glare at the man across from her. “But she was wrong. You are exactly like everyone says you are! I wish Thor would have killed you instead, maybe I’d still be here, and with someone who actually gives a damn!”

“You don’t mean that.” The god’s voice was empty.

The sounding approach of another caught both of their attention.

“Father, you said you were going out for-“ The boy paused immediately upon passing through the door.

Loki’s eyes widened with horror. “Enzo I told you to stay put!”

The god turned towards Sage expecting to see hate. Instead, she stood there with a defeated gaze fixated upon Enzo, her hands shook from adrenaline, and she turned her back to the duo. “Leave.”

“Sage...” Loki started. “Please, I’m your father I want to fix this.”

“You’re no father of mine.” Loki’s gaze fell upon the broken ceramic pieces st her feet. He recognized them with a grieved pain in his chest. It had been a gift from Sage for father’s day. It was a mug now shattered beside her shoe. “I wish I’d died that day. This life you’ve given me isn’t worth living.”

— — —

“Orion, land here.” James spoke through the headset allowing him to communicate with Orion who sat in the pilot’s seat.

The jet’s engine hummed low and deep as the air craft made a slow decent towards the abandoned street. Scout’s expression turned to one of urgency and sadness. “We need to hurry.”

The ramp extended too slowly for Scout and Alex’s liking. Both of them launched out into the open and tucked into a roll before springing to their feet.

“This whole block is ruined.” James observed with awe.

“Well, that’s what happens when a thunder god can’t control his anger, let alone a little kid with magic whose nearly died.” Orion noted. He tucked his helmet beneath one arm and tromped carefully down the ramp.

“Split up.” Scout ordered.

“Can’t you pin point her location?” James frowned.

“There’s too much energy here. It’s all jumbled together and I can’t make sense of it. We need to cover territory fast.” Scout’s voice wavered with urgency.

“You act like it’s a matter of life or death.” Orion frowned.

Scout’s expression darkened. “It is.”

The four heroes dispersed across the charred terrain at an eager pace. James scampered over a collapsed roof that had pooled into a pile of rubble. Scout arched in the air towards the far end of the street. Orion and Alex pursued on foot down the road. Orion halted at one point to investigate the healthiest looking house while Alex continued on. Her eyes flicked from side to side in an attempt to analyze the situation quickly but carefully.

A flash of light caught her peripheral. “James!”

James heard his sister’s call and motioned for the others to head her way. Alex rounded the first corner just in time to see someone disappear from sight. At first she worried that Sage had gotten away again but as she turned sharply around the second corner she spotted the girl.

Scout landed roughly next to James and held a hand to his head. “Ugh.”

“What is it?” James frowned.

“I have to stop looking for the aura. Every time I get close it hurts.” Scout winced. “I don’t feel good.”

“Stay here.” James instructed.

“Yeah, no one need to pass out.” Orion nodded trying to be helpful but failing to do so. Scout gave him a glare of annoyance and James mirrored it.

“Just stay here with him. We can’t be too far away from the jet anyways.” James turned on his heel once more and ran off at a quick clip.

(Sensitive content ahead.)

Alex approached Sage with care but realized very quickly that care wasn’t needed. There was a lot of blood, more than Alex originally perceived. Two pale and skinny arms rested almost lifelessly upon the table top with numerous cuts across the flesh.

The girl’s whole body shook with sobs and all that was repeated was the phrase, “I hate him.”

Alex swallowed tightly and rushed to collect the silver blade that rested on the ground beside the broken pieces of a ceramic mug. She tucked it into her belt with care before giving her attention once more to the crumbling individual seated at the broken table.

“Sage, what did you do?” The words were quiet but exasperated and without asking for permission Alex tugged her away from her seat. The girl put up no resistance for once which only worsened Alex’s anxiety.

“My God.” James froze in place watching with wide eyes.

“Get a first aide kit. Hurry.” Alex motioned for her brother and once he snapped from his daze he ran faster than he ever had before.

“Don’t take me back.” Alex barely heard what Sage said as her voice was strained and quiet. “Please.”

“You need help.” Alex insisted with a firm voice as she awkwardly sat down in the cinders and kept a hold of Sage.

“I don’t care anymore!” Came the protest. “I just want to be left alone.”

“That’s not what you need right now.” Alex looked anxiously at the crumbling doorway wanting her brother to magically appear.

“I have nothing to go back to.”

“Find something.” Alex chewed nervously on her lip. “Find anything even if it seems stupid. Make it seem worth while.”

“Still so optimistic.” There was the slightest hint of amusment to Sage’s voice. “It won’t always last.”

Finally, James came tearing into the room and dropped to his knees. His hands fiddled with bandages but they shook so bad he nearly dropped them more than once.

The two siblings worked with an intense urgency until both arms were covered in a layer of gauze and bandages.

(End)

“Have Orion bring the jet closer.” Alex breathed. James swallowed his fatigue and set off once more. Alex turned to close the first aide kit and collect the discarded bandage rolls. When she turned around once more the landscape was empty.

Sage was no where to be seen.

James arrived moments later and glanced about in disbelief. “Where is she?”

“She disappeared.” Alex frowned. She punched angrily at the ground and let out a yell of frustration. “She can’t be out and about alone!”

“We’ll do our best. Scout can track her.” James promised. “Same with Thalia, she’ll know where her cousin is.”

Alex turned to look at the scenery. She finally processed the extent of damage done to the house, how violent it all must have been, and how terrifying it must have felt. Her gaze settled on the blood upon the table top and the trail of it across the floor. At last she glanced down to see the red upon her hands and pants and shirt. “All of this is slowly killing her. Soon, there won’t be anything left.”

“It isn’t our fault.” James noted.

“But it is. It’s everyone’s fault James. It’s Thor’s, it’s Loki’s, it’s yours, it’s mine.” Alex shook her head and made her way to her brothers side. “We’re killing our own kind.”

“Alex...”

“Just because we don’t understand them.” James watched his sister shake her head and march off towards the hovering jet. James closed his eyes only to recall Fox’s words.

“It’s the Rise of the Lost.”

To him he did not think this was much of a rise. No, it looked very much like a long and tragic fall.

(As always, thoughts, opinions, ideas, and reactions are always welcome)

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