#3. Washbasins

[tapronlimited]

How to Choose a Bathroom Basin

The Tapron blog post "How to Choose a Bathroom Basin" offers a comprehensive guide on selecting the perfect basin for your bathroom, emphasizing the importance of material, shape, and design. It discusses various materials, including ceramics, metal, and glass, and explores shapes like round, oval, and corner basins. The guide advises on choosing basins based on individual style preferences, practicality, and the overall bathroom design, ensuring the basin complements the space both functionally and aesthetically. For detailed guidance, visit the full article here.

[umbral-seraph]

I GOT THE FUNNY EMOTE I'M SO HAPPY

basically fate i'll become a top tier player now i can edit the metal pipe sound in >:)

[yokohamabeans]

TOKREV CHARABOOK 3: RINDOU'S PROFILE

TRANSLATION NOTES:

Yak*za = Yakuza: Censored it here because the original text also censored the word yakuza, (ヤ○ザ), likely for comedic effect.

ABOUT HIS DAY IN THE LIFE—Not much of a big deal, but I personally found it amusing that he ran and hid in the toilet. Toilets in Japan, and the Haitani's apartment for that matter, are separate from the bathroom (where the bath and washbasin are located). So Rindou was probably hiding out on the toilet bowl lmao!!

Seiza (正坐) = Formal, traditional way of sitting in Japan, in which one kneels and sits on their heels. People sit in seiza to show respect, and sometimes as punishment (as it is hard to sit this way for long periods of time).

TR CHARABOOK 3 TRANSLATION MASTERLIST

[middleearthpixie]

Here I come bringing my obsession your Ask Box!

AUgust Mashup:

Eomer + Enemies to Lovers + “I didn’t know you cared.”

No pressure: Please and thank you! <3

Ahhhh... I know this took me FOREVER, but here you go (and you should know, this is my very first time ever writing Éomer, so I really hope I got him right!)

I hope you like it! 💜💜💜

Fair Enough

Trope: AUgust Mashup Enemies to Lovers

Quote: “I didn’t know you cared…”

Pairings: Éomer x fem!reader

Warnings: None. Just fluffy fluff

Rating: G

Word Count: 4.6k

***

“Isn’t there some way we could just—you know—knock him from his saddle?”

You bit back a smile at Cynewyn’s suggestion, although it did have merit, and tried instead to focus on the plate you were drying. “The trouble with that would be, we might spook his horse and if it was injured, we’d never forgive us, would we?”

“Well, no. I don’t suppose we would. But, the horse might be just fine. Only Éomer would get no less than he deserves.”

“True, but it’s a risk I’d rather not take. The last thing either us or papa needs is to to pay for replacing his horse.”

“It would be no less than he deserves as well, the snake. I’d like to throw a rock at him right now.”

“Makes two of us, but again—” 

“I know,” Cynewyn sighed, “it’s a risk you’d rather not take.”

“Exactly.” You smiled at your older sister. “We can only hope that one day, he gets his and that we are lucky enough to witness it.”

“Which is not going to happen.” Cynewyn went quiet as she dunked another plate into the washbasin. “Still, why would he do that to you, anyway? What was the point?”

You shrugged, taking the plate to wipe dry. “To make sport of me, I suppose. After all, isn’t it funny when a man pretends he’s interested in you and then when you show up at your agreed upon meeting place, he’s nowhere to be found? And isn’t it funny when he and his friends were just outside of the pub, giggling like children, is just so amusing?”

“Men? Bah! They are but boys. Big boys, but boys just the same.” She passed you another plate.

You said nothing, but dried the plate and then slid it onto its shelf in the cupboard, atop the small stack you’d already dried. In the time it took you to do that, Éomer had moved on down the road that ran before the kitchen windows of your family’s small stone cottage. You should have known he’d been sporting with you when he asked you to meet him at the coffeehouse the previous week. Until that morning, he didn't seem to know you were alive. It was only too bad you could not say the same, because not only did you most definitely know he was alive, you thought he was the most perfect man alive. That afternoon, however, he toppled from that pedestal and shattered at its base as far as you were concerned. 

Of course, that didn't mean his thoughtless actions didn't hurt. Because they did. They most definitely did. 

But, you’d not think about what happened any longer. He’d gotten a good laugh at your expense, but you would rise above it. You had no other choice, really. He was the king’s nephew and you were… well…

You were nobody, really. 

A depressing thought.

You finished drying the dishes and left your sister to whatever it was she was doing. You shared a room and night after night, you would stretch out on your bed and try to read whilst she went through her seemingly bottomless supply of fabric for whatever gown she was going to try to copy from whichever lady she saw in town. She was really quite gifted, so you didn’t mind when she asked you to be her model, as you had no dressmaker’s dummy. But tonight, she did not need your assistance and, claiming a headache, instead she chose to go to bed early. A good night’s sleep was always welcomed, but as you lay there in the dark, sleep mocked you instead. It had been happening more and more often now, as the world grew more unsettled and while you could usually find some way to drift off, tonight was not one of those nights. You were simply too restless and so you slipped from the small stone cottage to go for a walk. 

You tried not think about how disappointed you’d been when Éomer stood you up at the coffeehouse. Perhaps you should have expected it, but it hurt just the same. Of course, you weren’t the only one who imagined catching his eye. Half the women of marriageable age in Edoras dreamed of doing just that and no one could blame a one of you. Not only was he the king’s nephew, but he was so blasted handsome, with his long, wavy dark gold hair and direct hazel eyes. And whenever you saw him on horseback—you melted a little on the inside each time.

Of course, now he knew you fancied him and not only that, but he’d used it against you. Knocking him off his horse wasn't even close to being enough. Still, you couldn't dwell on it forever. In time, everyone who was in that coffeehouse would forget.

Everyone but you, anyway. 

“And that is the last we will think of it,” you muttered, trying instead to focus on something, anything, else as you strolled on. 

It was a peaceful night, hints of the coming autumn in the crisp edge of the breeze that stirred the leaves last night’s storm had pulled from the trees. The best thing about the stone cottage at the end of the road in Edoras? You were the farthest point from the king’s residence, which meant you would most likely not cross paths again with Éomer at this time of night. True, he’d been riding south, which meant that at some point he would pass by here again, but you’d have enough warning, as the road was wide and almost no trees lined it. Sneaking up on you would be almost impossible. 

Not that he would even try. He’d made himself perfectly clear where you were concerned. 

The night sky was clear, spangled with stars and moonlight bathed everything as far as you could see an etherial silver color. There had been rumblings to the east, and you’d heard talk amongst the menfolk about the possibility of war, and you also knew that orcs had been seen on the borders of Rohan. And that was why you did not leave your house without a blade of some sort. Although your father was not overjoyed at the thought, he allowed both you and Cynewyn to carry a small sword, which you were almost never without. You weren’t a master by any stretch of the imagination, but Papa had made certain you and your sister learned how to defend yourselves, should the need ever arise.

Your walks had become your way of remaining sane when it seemed there was so much uncertainty all around. The thought of war was so foreign to you, as your father insulated you and Cynewyn as best he could, and yet you knew it wasn’t far off. The king’s health was failing, and you’d heard rumors that he, Éomer, and the king’s advisor, Grima, had been butting heads of late. 

Perhaps that was why Éomer had gone thundering past the kitchen windows on his horse as he had. One too many cross words with his uncle, maybe? In some ways, you hoped so, for if Éomer was banished, life would become easier for you.

But at the same time, if you were completely honest with yourself, you knew if he left for good, you would miss him terribly. How difficult it was, caring so much for a man you also tried so hard to despise! If only you could forgive him.

If only.

You vowed once more to not think about it. 

Instead, you concentrated on the beauty of the night sky, of how those stars seemed so vast and endless, how the moon managed to bathe things silver although it gave off no light. You listened to the whisper of the wind through the scrub grass and bushes that dotted the landscape seemingly to the edge of Middle Earth. The wind whispered, crickets chirped, and in the distance, an owl hooted. A normal night.

Or so you thought.

You heard the noise before you saw the creature that made it and as those sounds reached your ears, the stench reached your nose. Your heart lurched, your stomach kinked, and a sour taste filled your mouth, brought on both by the stink and the coldest, iciest, most petrifying fear that ever permeated your being.

Papa always told you not to venture too far from the road. One never knew what lurked in the fields sweeping east and west, where twisted trees grew in clumps and provided cover for many things.

Such as the orc now standing over Éomer’s prone body.

You ducked, shifting toward the stand of pine trees twisted by the winds, which thankfully carried any sounds you might have made away from the orc and Éomer. Metal clanged Éomer blocked the orc’s downward swing with his blade. He held fast, his arms trembling from the effort and his heavy glove the only thing keeping the dual-sided blade from slicing into his hand.

The orc appeared to brace harder against his blade, determined to run Éomer through and you couldn't let that happen, no matter how angry or hurt you were because of him. So, you slid your blade free and crept about the pines as silently as you knew how. You’d learned from Papa, who would take you with him when he went hunting, and although you could never bring yourself to kill anything, you learned from him just the same. Besides, an orc wasn’t anywhere near as beautiful as a deer or fox. Quite the opposite, really. They were the ugliest, vilest, most disgusting creatures to walk the earth as far as you were concerned. 

Your soft-skinned boots made no sound as you approached and the orc never knew what hit him when you swung and cleaved his head clean from his shoulders. What was left of him collapsed like a sandbag atop Éomer, who swore softly as the creature’s thick, black blood splattered him. 

Nausea rose in your throat as it spattered you as well, and you tried to ignore it as you grabbed the still-warm shoulder and threw the corpse back. “Are you all right?”

“I’ve had better nights,” Éomer groaned, rolling over and onto his knees, his sword clattering softly in the dust. “What are you doing out here?”

“I was but going for a walk. What is that—” you gestured to the dead orc—“doing here? They do not usually venture so close to our borders.”

“They grow bolder and have been for some time now.” He rocked back on his knees and swept his silver and brass helmet from his head to let it clatter to the ground alongside his sword. “Are you all right?”

“Me? I am fine.” You resheathed your sword and carefully crouched alongside him. His dark blond hair was damp with sweat, pulled away from his face and held back with a small strip of worn leather. “And you?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“What happened?”

“It’s nothing.” He winced as he shifted onto his backside and gingerly prodded at his left thigh.

You looked down, your stomach clenching at the sight of the wound that must’ve bled terribly, for the entire front of his trouser leg was stained with a large wet patch. It looked as if the orc’s blade had sliced through the fabric. Without thinking, you brushed his hands aside to see for yourself and as soon as you had, you wished you hadn’t. 

The wound was ugly and raw, a long slice from just below his hip to his knee, and still bled freely. “We need to get you home.”

“You go on. I need to find my horse.”

“Your horse is not here,” you told him, scanning all around to make certain you weren’t lying. You were’t. There was no sign of a horse anywhere about. “Come, let’s get you up and I will help you.”

“Just leave me…”

“Oh, don’t be a fool!”

He jerked back. “I am serious. Leave me. The last I want is harm befalling you on my behalf. So please, just go. There will be more of them coming, looking for this one,” he nudged the corpse with one boot. “And I am not at all certain I’d be able to protect you.”

“You mean you aren’t certain you’d want to.”

He just stared up at you. “I didn't say that, nor would I.”

“You might as well. Aren’t I only a laugh to you anyway? Ever the fool for you and your friends to chuckle over.”

At least he didn't try to deny his actions or motivations as he said, “Oh… the coffeehouse.”

“Yes,” you nodded, “the coffeehouse. So, you’ll forgive me if I don't believe you would lift a finger to keep an orc away from me. Of course, you would do well to remember that it was I who saved you from an orc regardless. Still, if you wish to be left alone, far be it from me to insist on staying.”

You moved to stand, only to have him catch you by the wrist. “No, please,” he said softly, looking up once more, “don’t go. I—I owe you an apology for that.”

“To save your sorry skin, no doubt.”

To your surprise, he chuckled. “I deserve that.”

“Oh, that’s mighty big of you to admit,” you said dryly. “How very big indeed.”

“Very well, you’re right, you know. About all of it. And I mean that in the most sincere manner possible. Honest.”

That took a bit of wind from your sails and you sighed. “Perhaps we might fight about it later?”

He bobbed his head. “I wholeheartedly agree with that notion. Much, much later. In fact, we should never speak of it again.”

“Once you apologize, you mean.”

“I just did apologize.”

“No,” you shook your head, “you said you owed me one, which you do of course. But admitting it is not an actual apology.”

To your surprise, he burst out laughing. It was cut short by a sharp inhale of pain, but his smile only wavered as he snorted, “You’re joking, right?”

“You mean to tell me you honestly considered that an apology? Those sorry words? Truly?”

“Well…” he nodded. “Yes."

“Fine.” You stood up and brushed dirt and crushed pine needles from your backside. “I’ll bid you good eve then. You should hope you’re mobile once more before they come looking for their friend.”

You had every intention of marching off, of just leaving him there to rot, not caring if any more orcs happened upon him. It would serve him right. Apology. Bah! He could go pound sand, as Papa would say.

However, you only got maybe ten feet away when your conscience got the better of you and you came back to find he hadn’t moved an inch. 

“Come,” you growled, crouching beside him once more to take hold of his left wrist. “Let’s get you back.”

“I didn't know you cared,” he said even as he allowed you to help him up.

“I don’t. I should let you rot.”

“So, why aren’t you?”

“I don’t know. I’m a soft-hearted fool, I suppose.” You gave a not so gentle tug. “We should go. His pack is bound to notice he’s not returned and I do not want to have to explain to your uncle how I let you get butchered by orcs.”

“I’ll be forever grateful,” he replied drolly.

“Do you wish my help or not?”

He draped an arm about your shoulder. “Yes, of course I do. And I appreciate it as well.” He winced. “How far are we from Edoras’ border?”

“It’s better if you don’t know.”

“That far, eh?”

He leaned heavily on your shoulder, and you tried to ignore the stinging along your neck, the dull ache that spread down into your shoulder from bearing the brunt of his weight, as he was considerably taller and heavier than you were. “I’m afraid so, yes.”

“Wonderful.”

For reasons you couldn't begin to explain, the drollness in his deep voice made you laugh. “Yes, I couldn’t agree more.”

You managed to get him back to the road, him leaning hard against you with each step he took on his wounded leg. And with each step, his gait slowed. “Take care,” he said when you stumbled. “It would do us both no good if we fell.”

“I beg your… pardon,” you gritted, hefting him higher on your shoulder once more, “but… you are… not light, you know.”

“I know and I appreciate your help here as well.” He went silent for a long moment, then, drew in a deep breath and added, “And I’m sorry. For what I did at the coffeehouse.”

“All you had to do was come in and tell me you’d changed your mind, you know.” you told him, staring straight ahead, waiting for Edoras’ reassuring lights to come into view. At least then, you knew you’d be close to home and close to safety. 

“The thing of it is, I didn’t change my mind.” The regret in his voice surprised you and you stopped without warning, catching him as he stumbled, then scolded, “Take care, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“I’m sorry, but what? What do you mean, you didn't change your mind? Of course you did. I was there, remember? I was there and you were not.”

“No, I know that, but,” he pulled free, easing his arm from about her shoulders before shifting to settle on a rock, “I need to sit a moment.”

You didn't fight him, happy to be free of his weight, even if only for a few minutes. You rubbed the side of your neck. “Only a few minutes, though. We don’t know how much time we have left.”

“I know.” He looked up at you. “I didn’t change my mind, you know.”

“So you’ve said. What you haven’t said, was why you just left me sitting there like a fool.” Finally, you were able to get that weight off your chest, your eyes stinging the way they had in the coffeehouse, when you realized he was not coming through the door. “Why did you do that to me?”

“I was coming in,” he said slowly, looking up to meet your gaze, “and when I saw you… I got nervous and I know that sounds idiotic, but it’s the truth. It was a stupid, fool thing to do to you and I am ever so sorry I hurt you. If I could but do it over, I would walk through that door and we would not be having this conversation. And for that, I am also sorry.”

You had waited so long for him to assume responsibility for how he’d hurt you. And now that he had, you were at a loss for words. How did you respond to that? What did you say?

“Am I supposed to believe you had an attack of nerves? You, of all people?”

“Is that so hard to believe? I’m only human as human as any other man, you know. And that means that yes, sometimes, I have an attack of nerves. I’m not made of stone, I’ll have you know and you—”

You waited a moment for him to finish, your heart beating erratically now as those words were the last ones she ever thought she’d hear from him. But, when he remained silent, just staring at the ground, you leaned in. “I what?”

He looked up then, his eyes soft, and murmured, “You stole the breath from my lungs.”

You could only stare. Were you but dreaming or perhaps he’d suffered a head injury before you reached him? One of those had to be the truth because there was no other rational explanation for his words, no matter how they set butterflies free in your belly to batter your insides with their wildly-beating wings. 

“Éomer, I—I don’t know what to say,” you finally managed. 

“No, I’m sure you don’t,” he replied softly. “And I cannot fault you. But, if you could find it in your heart to forgive me, I would like another chance. A chance to right things between us.”

“Things between us? Is there a thing between us, never mind more than one?”

To your surprise, a sheepish smile lifted his lips. “I should like there to be.” 

“I don’t even like you, you know.”

His grin widened. “Somehow, I don’t believe that. After all, you came back, didn’t you?”

“Don’t let it go to your head. I could still leave you out here.”

“You could.” He nodded, then shook his head. “But you won’t.”

You stared at him for a long moment, then let out a heavy sigh of resignation. “No. I don't suppose I will.”

His eyes sparkled with mischief. “I knew it.”

You offered up a smile of your own and then, with all the force you could generate, you punched him square in the shoulder. 

He yelped as the blow sent him rocking backwards. “What was that for?”

“Because you, Éomer, are an ass and I should leave you here to suffer whatever fate you deserve.”

“You should, but I wish you wouldn’t.” He reached for your hand, caught it, and linked his fingers with yours. “I am truly sorry, though. You have to believe me.”

“Why should I believe you now?”

Éomer winced as he carefully stood. “Because I would like the chance to right my wrong where you are concerned.”

You looked up at him. “And how do you think you can do such a thing? I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.” 

“I’m fairly certain I do.”

He smiled then and bent and before you could say anything, his lips met yours. Despite his wounded leg, he caught your face between his hands, not so much as wavering as his lips moved teasingly and gentle against yours, as his tongue eased between your lips to caress yours, and you shivered at the silken caress. His lips were soft and warm and those butterflies fluttered harder now, with more fury as he kissed you slow and deep and made your head spin as it had never spun before. 

Éomer was slightly breathless when he drew back. “So, will you allow me another chance? A chance to right what I’ve done wrong?”

“By all rights, I should say no.”

“But you won’t.” His hazel eyes sparkled with mischief.

“No,” you shook your head slowly, “I won’t.”

In the distance, came the snarl of wargs and that was enough to spur Éomer to drape his arm about your neck once more and say, “We should go.”

“A wise idea, to be sure.”

You made it back to Edoras without incident and you wasted no time in rousing the healer  from her bed, just as she wasted no time in shooing you from the infirmary. Someone must have alerted Éowyn as well, for she came hurrying down the corridor, her hair bound up away from her face and still in her nightdress.

“What happened?”

“He was set upon by orcs just beyond the border.”

“But what were you doing out there?”

You managed a smile. “I was but going for a walk. I was having trouble sleeping, and sometimes that helps.”

“You need be careful,” she warned. “What if you’d been alone?”

“We won’t think about that.”

The healer came out. “My lady,” she said with a tired smile. “His lordship is resting now and he’d like to see you.” 

Éowyn stepped forward, only to have the healer shake her head. “No, my lady, I’m sorry. He meant you,” she said, looking at you.

You swallowed hard. “M-me?”

The healer nodded now. “He was very clear.”

“I’ll just see what he might want,” you said, feeling no little guilt at Éowyn’s almost hurt expression. “And when he hears you’ve come down to see him, I’m sure he will ask you be brought in.”

Éowyn said nothing, but bobbed her head and you followed the healer into the small, quiet, semi-dark room. 

Éomer was abed, the linens stark even against his pale hair, and your heart skipped a beat at the sight of him, as you’d never seen him so informally dressed, his loose tunic left unlaced to offer up an enticing patch of what you were certain was a finely-muscled chest. The image that came to your mind brought those butterflies to life once more deep within your belly. 

His eyes were closed, his enviably thick lashes dark crescents against his pale cheeks, but as you drew near, they opened and a tired smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “I thought perhaps I’d dreamed everything that happened this night,” he said softly, “but the pain is far too real.”

“I assume your healer stitched the wound. It looked fairly ugly.”

He nodded. “She did. I can resume duties in a week, according to her.” He gestured for you to come closer and when you did, he added in a whisper, “and we won’t tell her when I’m gone come morning, will we?”

“You should take her advice.”

“I cannot. Not right now.”

“Éomer, you will be useless with only a few hours’ rest and one leg. You need allow yourself time to heal.”

“Are you taking her side?”

“In this?” You nodded. “Absolutely.”

“But… you’re supposed to take my side.” 

“I would be, if you weren’t talking such foolishness.”

“Ouch. You wound me.” As he spoke, he reached out and caught your hand, and your mouth went dry as he gave a gentle tug. “Come and lay with me.”

“I couldn’t.”

“You could.”

“Éomer.”

“What?”

“I don't even like you.”

His eyes glinted with a hint of mischief. “We both know that isn’t true, don’t we?”

“Oh, it’s true.”

“Liar.” He tugged again. “Are you truly going to make a wounded man beg?”

“Éomer.”

“What?” He brought your hand to his lips, to your surprise, brushed its back with a kiss and murmured, “Please?”

You stared down at him for a long moment. “You are supposed to be injured.”

“I am injured. Nearly twenty stitches are holding that wound closed. But somehow, I don't think I’ll mind being trapped in this bed, if I have someone to share it with.”

Your heart fluttered. “Éomer. You are in an infirmary.”

“I know, but I’m in my own room, as you see.” He smiled. “No one will bother us and I promise to keep my hands to myself.”

With that, his smile grew mischievous. “Unless, of course, you’d rather I didn’t. And then, the next time I see you in the great hall or the yard, I’ll just look across at you and smile and only you will know why.”

You sighed softly and then, after a quick look about, gingerly stretched out alongside him, your heart beating faster as he drew his arm about your shoulders to tug you closer. You peered up at him. “And why will I be smiling?”

His eyes glinted with that same hint of mischief that let loose even more butterflies in your belly. “You’ll see.”

With that, he caught you beneath the chin with one bent finger, lifting your face ever so slightly and as his lips captured yours, you smiled. “You aren’t going anywhere come morning, you know.”

He broke the teasing kiss to gaze down at you. “Is that so?”

“It is,” you nodded, “because you have some very real making up to me to do. And I’m fairly certain it will take longer than a few hours."

“Making up to you, you say?” One dark brow arched and his smile grew wicked with promise. “I think that’s fair enough.”

***

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[reticulating-splines]

Chez Cromwell: Redux - Pt. 1

Magical Victorian Cat Mansion. Redone.

Part I: Exteriors | Part II

So after the long-awaited addition of Infants and Ceilings to the game, I realized I should probably update my one furnished build (so far) for these features. Unfortunately I got carried away again and just ended up revamping the whole build from the exterior, to each individual room + some new ones! This version has also been more extensively play-tested over time with all age groups and pets, with some extra fire hazard and accessibility issues addressed.

It still has all the original Lot Features:

Victorian era historical build, fully playtested

Off-the-grid compatible

9 Bed / 6 bath

Library Greenhouse

Spellcaster's room

Outdoor smokehouse

Pleasure + kitchen gardens

Portal to the magic realm

Hidden cat room, litterroom, + catway system for Familiars

Staff/Servant's lounge w/ private stairs

Bedrooms for Butler, Nanny/Governess, and Maids

Lot size 30x40, fully landscaped

Cat Hangout, Peace and Quiet

Spooky lot challenge

As well as an extensive Changelog and list of New Features:

Revamped exteriors + interiors, roofs, and gardens

Ceilings for all rooms

Added even more windows somehow

Skylights for 3rd floor and wraparound verandah

Rooftop meditation-garden-yoga-summoning-circle

Portals! Small library located off the spell-room has been converted into the Portal Room with 3 portals leading throughout the house: one to the tower on the roof, one to the greenhouse in the back, and one to the third floor hall.

Moved Magic Realm Portal to rooftop garden

Put more cat doors everywhere, they enjoy using the catdoors and portals for zoomies

Sprinklers, alarms, and fire resistant flooring have been added around fireplaces.

Fireplace in the tower was removed for it's propensity to set the roof on fire and become unreachable and inextinguishable

Tower room has been converted into a Collections display room instead, a la sims 3

Portal in the tower/Collections room also makes potential burglaries more threatening, but if you’re an occult you’re expected to employ practical DADA techniques to avert this

Updated Nursery and Playroom for Infants

Redid terrain paint. Twice. Why tf does it just vanish randomly sometimes

NEW Magic Bean Hunt! Stump is located where the magic realm portal used to be and beans are strategically hidden around the lot. I'd love to see how long it takes for you to catch them all!

Washbasins for rooms without bathrooms now look like washbasins and are actually useable, both on and off grid

Added privacy hedges and lattices to backyard and fenced in chicken run

Potions Crafting Table added to Spell-room

Crafters Supply Cabinet added to Kitchen

Pocketed pocket doors

Secret Cat Room color scheme updated and cat-approved artwork added

Another Cat room added to 3rd floor

Magic Well has been shrunk

Rooftop area outside 3rd floor Study converted into rooftop Pavilion with chessboard and painting easel

Jack-and-Jill bathroom added for two of the third floor bedrooms

Toilet room removed and bath added for staff washrooms, for an equal 2-toilet/2-bath arrangement, which means the build now has a total of 7 full baths, and 8 toilets.

More crafting tables (fizz machine and candle maker) added to Staff Lounge

Yoga/Meditation Balcony for staff above greenhouse

Small telescope added to rooftop outside tower room’s new 2nd door

Garden lights around yard configured for power + off grid lighting

‘Bike racks’ added by front gate

New Library shelves seem to allow sims to retrieve books but not put them back. However this is actually a feature, not a bug, since now you can put the books back yourself on on the right shelves and keep things organized 🙃

Should now be consistently able to feed and be eaten by the Cowplant

Homey trait replaced by Gnome lot trait since there is a proliferation of gnomes

Requirements

Lot: 40x30, $752,005, 9 bed 8 bath, Cat Hangout, Gnome, Peace and Quiet, Spooky Lot Challenge

Packs - packs in bold are essential:

EPs - Cottage Living, University, Island Living, Get Together, Get Famous, Seasons, Cats&Dogs, Eco Living, City Living, Get to Work

GPs - Realm Of Magic, Jungle Adventure, Parenthood, Vampires. Strangerville, Spa Day, Outdoor Retreat

SPs - Paranormal, Laundry Day, Romantic Garden. Nifty Knitting, Vintage Glamour

Kits - Blooming Rooms, Desert Luxe

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Public: Available Dec 15th!

[moonspirit]

hello moon. i’ve been lurking on your page for a long time, never interacted. maybe i can become a regular on here, who knows?

i was hoping you’d do that send a ship thing for aruani.. i found it strange you haven’t done them yet given how clearly obsessed you are with them. you’ve already done them for the lock screen thingy but i wanted to see the rest, it’s like 5AM for you rn.. but maybe your best thoughts are at the ass crack of dawn?

yours truly, behyuu.

Hi behyuu!

Haha, feel free to become a regular on my blog, no problem xD But I had received more than one request for Aruani, so I thought I'd do them all together.

Who said “I love you” first

I think it'd be Armin. From the boat scene in 131, when Annie asks him why he kept visiting her, he really could've said any number of things that wouldn't technically have been false, like "I wanted to make sure you were okay," or "I wanted to tell you what was happening," but he very clearly says "I wanted to see you, Annie." He was blushing like a ripe tomato, and yet he chose to say the one thing that would leave no room for any doubt as to what his feelings were. Armin doesn't hesitate to express himself through words, and with Annie, I believe he'd only take this a few steps further to tell her clearly that what he carries for her is love, nothing less.

Annie herself would not say "I love you" until a long time after they're comfortably together, I feel. She's been denied love all her love, deprived of it to the extent that Armin's barest hints of care were enough for to cling onto, and so being loved and loving back is all going to be so very new to her. She will express it through her body language, but not in words; not very early on in their relationship anyway.

In the long run, I really think this spoken-aloud form of reaffirmation from Armin would be the most beneficial for Annie. As much as physical touch is her way of seeking security, safety and comfort from him, it's also very crucial to be reminded that yes, the person kissing her and loving her body also really does love her, the way he never forgets to say in words.

Who would have the other’s picture as their phone background

I answered this one here!

Who leaves notes written in fog on the bathroom mirror

Both maybe! If Armin's the one taking a shower first, then he leaves a little "I <3 U" on the mirror for her to find once he's done. Nevermind the fact that by the time she does find it (say she wakes up late and he's already left), it's all maybe mostly gone and runny around the edges, but she knows he left it there for her, and it makes her feel all warm inside.

What if Annie's the one taking the shower tho? In that case, she's brushing her teeth in front of the washbasin and the mirror, messy haired, sleepy eyed and lethargic. As she works the toothbrush between long yawns, she doodles a cat on the mirror that's steaming up from the hot water she's left running in the tub. Later on, Armin finds this cat when he comes in to shave, and he finds it to be the cutest thing ever. Maybe they name each cat she draws.

Who buys the other cheesy gifts

I have a hc that Annie's really awkward with gift-giving, so while this doesn't translate into "she doesn't pick good gifts", what it does mean is that her gifts are funny, bordering on cute-as-fuck.

Armin is good with gifts. He buys her things she needs, and throws in some flowers, some chocolate, maybe a plushie and a picnic date. He pays attention to what she likes, what she doesn't like, and this generally means Annie's going to get some of the best gifts ever, whether or not his planning and execution goes to shit because he's so nervous about everything being perfect.

So the one giving him cards with cliche quotes and a leather wallet that the seller tells her is a trendsetter with men, are some of the things Annie gets him. Cut the girl some slack. Her gifts don't suck, they're just cheesy. And he finds it so fucking cute how hard she tries.

Who initiated the first kiss

Armin. It's the pounding heartbeats in their chests, synchronizing. It's the static in the air, sparking and tingling. Her wide pale-blue eyes atop blushing cheeks, locked onto his own in baffled surprise, because he's just told her he loves her and she doesn't understand - why her? Why her, of all the other girls? But that's what his heart wants - her - and he's told her as much and all he can do is hope she feels the same.

But she does. She does, he can see it, right there in her eyes, when her gaze drops lower. She feels the same, he can see it, as her lips part, just a bit, ever so slightly he can almost touch her breath. Then she looks up again, searching his eyes.

He sees his chance, he takes it. Because who knows if there'll be another? He kisses her, long, and slow and sweet, until she's kissing him back with the same longing.

*Aherm* Okay, I got carried away. Basically he kisses her first, but the next time he loses his confidence and doesn't, and then because Annie's impatient as hell, she kisses him second.

Who kisses the other awake in the morning

Annie. I hc that she's the early bird while he struggles to wake up in the morning in general, so naturally being up first, she gives him a little peck on the nose or on the lips. Sometimes he's so deep asleep he doesn't stir at all. Sometimes he's half-awake and drags her closer for longer kisses, and the hope of sleeping in late with her. Sometimes she kisses him short and brief, when she's aching from dealing with something she doesn't like and hasn't told him about; other times they are fluttery, airy, open mouthed kisses, offering silent, sweet promises of love and happiness from between her lips.

Who starts tickle fights

Armin. He reaaaaaaaalllllyy likes teasing her. Whether that's because she's scowling to hide her embarrassment, or refusing to tell him what she's finding so funny in the magazine she's reading - he's always got his hands ready to grab her around the middle and invite her into a tickle fight. The thing though, is that Annie's laughter isn't because of his actions--she's NOT ticklish by any means--but because of the whole play-fighting itself. His laughter is infectious, and she can't help but follow with her own giggling until she's snorting at his stupid jokes and bright eyes.

Guess who's ACTUALLY ticklish? Him. Once she gains the upper hand and squirms away to straddle his hips, it's all game over.

So he may be the one starting the fights, but he's not the one winning them.

Who asks who if they can join the other in the shower

Annie. I just find it more in-character for her to blurt out that he's welcome to join her in the shower. Say they've just come back home after a long and tiring muddy hike, and they're so exhausted they might not have the energy to take showers after each other. It's a casual suggestion, quick and without much thought to it, when Annie says, "Join me then. It'll be quicker."

She might've said that, but once they're actually stripping in the bathroom and getting into the hot waters of the bathtub, Annie's the one burning to the tips of her ears. Doesn't help that Armin's lost all his initial embarrassment and inhibitions and is welcoming her to sit between his legs, pulling her back flush against his chest.

The rest belongs in a smut fic.

Who surprises the other in the middle of the day at work with lunch

Annie. Armin forgets to eat, especially when he's drowning to his neck in documents piling up on his table at work. He's studying up for a meeting on his morning transit, signing off agendas and rescheduling appointments, making six dozen phone calls, holding talks with important people... ugh. He has barely any time to breathe, so his eating habits at work are basically non-existent. During such times when things are more hectic than usual, and it's often a familiar sight to find him coming home with a loosened tie and exhaustion on his face, Annie's the one heading to his workplace with lunch and coffee in her arms. She makes sure he eats, and also eats her own lunch with him, so he's kept company by the only person he can be his silly, goofy self around.

Who was nervous and shy on the first date

I'm inclined to say both, it's just that Armin would express it more openly than Annie would. What Armin would be fretting and worrying about is how perfectly the date is going, how smoothly his plans are working out, and so on. He'd be so bothered about every teeny tiny detail and Annie's enjoyment that he wouldn't really be able to relax and enjoy it himself.

Annie on the other hand, would be nervous and scared about disappointing him. It would warm her heart how he sweetly switches to her more exposed side as they're walking down the street, but it also worries her about how expressive she's being, or rather, how much she's lacking in that respect. Disappointing Armin is probably her biggest fear.

Who kills/takes out the spiders

Annie. Armin hesitates too much. He looks at the mama spider, looks at her eggs, looks at her babies, thinks of the consequences, thinks of their extended families and their ancestors, their futures, their pasts, their presents, and so on and so forth. It's been six hours and he's ignoring the spider in the bathroom because he's conflicted over killing them.

Annie would kill them (she doesn't like bugs), but because she knows it'll break his heart, she traps them in a special plastic cup she keeps for the spiders and lets them out somewhere far away.

Who loudly proclaims their love when they’re drunk

Armin. Even sober, he's always running to give her a big hug with a stupid wide smile on his face, going "Aaaanniiieeeee!!". The happiest golden retriever in the world. Now get that golden retriever drunk to his eyeballs and he won't fucking shut up about how beautiful she is, how big her heart is, how soft she is, how her eyes are like the sky and the sea and other fantastic imagery. He tells her he wants to marry her (even if they're already married), and how he wants to wake up to her presence everyday. In a crowd, it's fucking embarrassing for Annie. Secretly though? She loves it. Replays it in her head over and over again.

[xsavannahx987]

TS3 CONVERSION-STORYBOOK BATHROOM

All CC on this pack are base game compatible.

9 items

alas a lamp - new mesh, 2 swatches, all lods and shadow (low poly). Fully tested in game. Cost 270$

commodious commode - new mesh. 3 swatches, all lods and shadow (low poly). Fully tested in game. Cost 1340$

dr. prosper's glowing orb - new mesh, 2 swatches, all lods and shadow (low poly). Fully tested in game. Cost 60$

once upon a glowy glow glowlamp - new mesh, 2 swatches, all lods and shadow (low poly). Fully tested in game. Cost 85$

poetic justice wall sconce - new mesh. 2 swatches, all lods and shadow (low poly). Fully tested in game. Cost 95$

porcelain tub - new mesh. 3 swatches, all lods and shadow (low poly). Fully tested in game. Cost 2285$

romantique wall mirror - new mesh. 3 swatches, all lods and shadow (low poly). Fully tested in game. Cost 375$

towel drying stand - new mesh. 3 swatches, all lods and shadow (low poly). Fully tested in game. Cost 120$

worthington's washbasin - new mesh. 3 swatches, all lods and shadow (low poly). Fully tested in game. Cost 120$

To find all objects in game, type [STORYBOOK BATHROOM] in the search bar

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CCs are always free but consider to buy me a coffee<3

@moonglitchccfinds @dreamstatesimsfinds @emilyccfinds @sssvitlanz

[deadboyfriendd]

Cochise Il: Mudsill

Summary: The morning after his first day reaps a certain morosity with it. After a gruesome shootout with a grisly outcome, he vows not only to protect this town, but you as well. In more ways than one. The second part of Cochise. Sequel to Nellie. 

Warnings: Fem!Reader, Outlaw/Doc Holliday!Eddie Munson x Reader, wild west/Tombstone AU!, Sherrif!Steve (he has a mustache), guns and gun violence, death of minor original characters, period-appropriate death, suggestions of lynching and public execution, drug use, angst, fluff, save a horse (the horse watches in this one), ride a cowboy, smut included, death of a spouse discussed in this, blood and wounds (gunshots), minor unintentional self-harm, unprotected p in v, creampie 

My content is 18+ Minors DNI

Word Count: 6.1k

Author's Note: This is for Drac <3 thank you for beta reading! And also for dealing with me going, “now what?” every fifteen seconds, and also for being my nepo goth mommy and being the only reason I get reads on this godforsaken app and also for indulging me in this fantasy and also for ominously looming over my docs because the performance anxiety makes me write better and more consistently. 

Find the series masterlist here!

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed

In one self place, for where we are is hell,

And where hell is must we ever be.

The morning is nonetheless blistering, no qualms of early warmth and birds singing. Here, the sun meant silence, this world turned itself over to the night and reaped rest by the break of dawn just to escape its harshness until winter. Not all would make it. By five the blossom of the night-blooming cereus will have shriveled away, and by six the earth would begin to heat. 

The sun does not rest, only lies in wait. Remnants of it settling in the sand beneath him. 

He awakes with a groan and a pulling sting that blossoms across his neck and face at the first stale movements of wake. He could hear the vacant crunch of footsteps against gravel, hollow and softened by the fine sand beneath them. A shadow overtook him, one that granted a relief like the sour sting of white chocolate against the prevalence of melting.

“Well, good morning, Edward.” His eyes nearly crossed to look up towards you, attempting to make out any of the features of your face. They were too backlit from the sun and his eyes were still too sensitive. A basket for laundry sat firm against your hip, emptied. Above you, there is a line strung from one ironwood to the next, a washbasin several feet away with suds still running down the sides. 

He bears his senses, pulling his mind away from that celestial body it rested in the previous night. He tried not to think of your supple nature in front of him, the way your silken skin felt beneath his fingers or the way the ends of your hair tickled against his belly within his dream. It was up now, twisted into braids and tucked unto itself. 

His face and neck are red, you aren't incredibly introspective, and you can’t tell if it is a blush or the beginnings of a sunburn. You waited to wake him, washing and hanging your laundry before the break of dawn. He seemed tired, but leaving him out in the sun seemed downright cruel. You ‘d think of him in the same respects as the rattlesnake– the one who cooks from the outside in when it sits in the sand too long. 

You offer your hand to him, and he takes it. You are much stronger than your body implies, taking on the weight of him with a pull, hands calloused from housework and the general husbandry that comes from western living. 

“Couldn’t sleep?” You asked behind a grin, by now his eyes had adjusted and settled on the whites of your teeth and the upturned fat of your face. 

“Apparently I was the only one that wanted to.” He was sore from the ground, though he couldn’t quite tell if his tailbone hurt from the sand or the train to Tombstone. He watched you in stride, taking a few of your smaller ones ahead of him. 

You giggled softly, and it sounded like church bells. You looked over your shoulder at him, and he couldn’t bring himself to watch your eyes, instead, settling on the way the flesh of your neck folded at the crease. He counted the moles to ground himself,  “The west never rests, Edward.” 

He followed your stride for a few steps, his long strides becoming staccatos in comparison to yours. He looked down at his feet, avoiding rocks beneath him in his still-weary state and watching the dust kick up from beneath your heels to collect on the front of his boots. 

The gold of your earring refracted a light that brushed across your cheek, had Eddie not been staring so intently, he would have missed it. He’s glad he didn’t. “Steve already came ‘round this morning. Said a telegraph came in for you. Trains’ delayed ‘till ‘bout tomorrow.” 

The confession hit him like a shot to the chest, and he could help the dramatization of the groan that escaped him, “Christ.” 

“Got something important on that cargo train?” You raised a poignant eyebrow at him, more motherly in nature. It questioned the dramatics more than his personage. 

He shook his head, unable to stop himself from chuckling at his own bad luck, “Only my horse… and everything else.” 

“I see.” You nodded back in repose, turning your body back to face him. Your hands still clutching the laundry basket braced over your hip, “Well, let's see if we can’t scrape up some fresh clothes for you to wear then.” 

You reach your hand out towards him in invitation, his own forbearance of politeness and handshakes prompts him to reach out, though, you don’t seem to let go. You don’t notice the rouge of his cheeks or along the tips of his ears in schoolboy embarrassment beneath his sunburn. Your hands aren’t soft, not like the other women he’s touched. Your hands have been kissed with the calluses of men’s work. Ropes on horses and hands on guns. His memories reel back to your husband, the slack you were forced to receive in his absence. You wouldn’t have to pick up any slack on Eddie, he didn’t plan on dying soon. Not if he could help it. 

You use your hand like a reign, pulling him towards the wrought-iron staircase within the bar that led to your home. The staircase rocked with each footstep – a solid structure that seemed not-quite fixated to its endpoints. 

He looked around at the corridor, modest, but nevertheless a home. The dark wood on the floors closely resembled the mahogany excessiveness of The Grand Hotel, though, the expanse of it was limited to the flooring. A pale Mexican plaster covered the vast expanse of the walls, rounding the corners and archways into a smooth texture. 

He noticed the boots by the door, covered in dust and much too large to be your own. It filled in the gaps where the empty spots on the wall still lie bare, and where the second dining chair had remained tucked neatly beneath the table. Though this place resembled a home, it was not. Instead, it housed the ghost of your husband. He laid in bed at night next to the shell of grief that resembled you, the decanter on the table filled with tears of loneliness and guilt. 

You opened the thin door in the corridor, and he realized that all of your husband’s clothes had been moved here. He tried not to picture you pulling them out of the dresser they resided in, tried not to imagine the tears streaming down your face as you buried it within the fabric just to smell him again. Just to feel like he was close enough to touch one more time. 

The garments were well-starched. A white high-collar shirt, black vest, black pants, black cravat. He was a man after Eddie’s own heart, that was for sure. You excuse yourself towards the kitchen, allowing him open access to the dressing room to change. 

When he slipped through the door, loose on its hinges, he met your eyes– pressing and cold in nature. It wasn’t intentional, at least, not in the sense that your coldness was directed towards him. At an instant, your hands had found his chest, and he peered downwards to watch them, intently. It was a force of habit, righting a missed button and an off-set pattern on the vest. Once you corrected it, you laid them flat against his sternum.

He thought back to last night, the pressing warmth of your hands against his chest and the soft brush of your hair that tickled against his belly. He thought back to the purely pornographic sounds that resounded off the walls of The Grand Hotel in his dream. Though, you’d felt more human now, with the hurt in your eyes that dragged like a trunk you couldn’t rid yourself of. Your eyes carried a grief like granite, pulled from the quarry chipped into the mountain of your life and heavy on your soul. 

He thought back to what The Sheriff had said to him, about picking up the slack when your husband died. Who had been there when you were grieving? Surely the sheriff, but he had said it himself. You had your pick, but had never taken another lover. He wondered if it could be him. 

+

There is an ex-cathedra bass crescendo that reverberates against the dainty backing of tenor melodies in the bar at night, long after the dust has settled beneath the feet of the common folk. You never understood why the people here still chose to do their bidding during the day, when the sun casted an itching burn across the delicate cutaneous layers of exposed skin like lye. 

It was not Christmas, and yet you’d found pieces of words in fragments of memories beneath your breath as you hammered against the keys with clumsy fingers. You grazed your tongue against your bottom lip, still in search of the remnants of sugar from the dried Christmas fruits you’d been given as a child. 

There is a sombering solidarity in this aloneness, and in the way you no longer search for the feeling of your husband’s fingers against the cold ivory. It was just that now: cold. That emptiness would always linger, but that coldness of keys was now not for the absence of his warmth. They just were. 

Eddie watched you from the gap in the glass door to the parlor, smoothing the hairs on his arms down from where the low, deep notes rattled in his coccyx. He let the press of the mesquite against his back keep him tethered to the earth. He’d recognized the song like a ghost, Christmases past like bugs with needle-prick feet crawling up his back in repose. Where your fingers lay heavy against untuned, rattling keys, he found a softness. A delicacy in this world that was anything but. He saw tarantula legs in your spindles of fingers, light and silent as they crawled across ivory. 

There was not an inherent evil to the tarantula. Only existence. 

Your own existence was different here. You weren’t so on edge now that you figured you were alone. He felt guilty taking advantage of your comfort like this, but your softness radiated light out past the windows and into the sand outside in a warm, golden glow. Your lashes kissed in the corners of your eyes, nursing against the apples of your cheeks as you looked down in concentration. He wanted to smooth out the line forming between your brows. Your hair lay wild, splayed across your shoulders and roused from the removal of your hat. 

He adjusted himself against the door frame, the creak against the flooring from behind you sent you reeling upwards, the scratch-key a heavy hand against incorrect and out-of-tune keys. The man in black looming behind you like a shroud. You’d gasped without realizing it. He took a step forward, hand out in gentle appeasement as you whipped around, more startled than afraid. He registered it as fear. Your hand came to your chest in repulse, laying flat and tight against your breastbone. 

He takes a few steps forward, quickly closing the gap between you. The echo from the heel of his boot bounced off your body and you convinced yourself that the ringing in your ears was from that alone. 

“Woah, Nellie.” He’d said to you, softly, a pressing grin upturning crookedly at the corners of his lips. This was not the first time he’d used the horse moniker, and you’d figured this was not going to be the last. You’d blamed your own spooked nature at the way your breath did not fill your lungs completely and not the way Eddie’s warm hands felt as it picked yours up off of your chest, holding it between his two like a vice in apologetics. 

You squeezed his hand under your fingers, shaking it slightly in annoyance, “You scared me half to death, Edward.” 

“I didn’t mean nothin’ by it, ma’am.” He’d said in apology, once again, yet the smile pulled across his face further, pretty teeth grazing against the suppleness of flesh. 

You raised a brow at him, stern in nature, “When you smile something awful like that, it makes me think you did.” 

His smile stretched wider in his face, a laugh coming to fruition in his chest and exhaling through his nose and over your face, “I didn’t. Honest.” Not that you really thought that he did in the first place.

His hand left yours and found itself around your waist, where the tautness of your dresses stretched over the softness of your hip. He grasped for skin beneath the ruching of the fabric over you, warm hand splayed across your back. 

He was close — entirely too close to be considered professional or polite, but you welcomed it. You felt the breath from his nostrils, cooling against the bridge of your nose and dissipating across the crests of your cheeks. His lips parted, and the breath changed to warm. You could taste the tobacco that resided against his lips like the sugar you’d searched for on your own mere moments ago. 

His weight against your chest is foreboding, and even the bracing from his wide palm cannot stop the soft step back you take. The heel of your own hand presses against a random selection of treble keys and creates an awful, off-putting sound that makes him jump.

You can’t stop the girlish giggle that slips past your lips at the momentary terror that registers in your eyes. You don’t know if it is because of the immediate karmic justice or the fact that he was so startled by the noise he just listened to from afar. He looks back down towards you with a look that mirrored your own previous one, trying to force the smile off of his face down into a scowl. 

“I didn’t mean anything by it, honest.” You laughed between syllables, quickly pulling the key cover over the tops of the ivories and resting back against them.

“Well, you’re smiling something awful like you did.” 

+

The air outside was still. Too still. Like it lies in wait of travesty that happened in a near-constant turnstile. There is no one in the streets tonight, the party crowd gathered before the stage of The Grand Hotel to watch tonight’s opening of Faustus. 

However, Hell would not just be a frame of mind tonight. 

Michael ‘Mudsill’ Doten leaks off the steps of The Grand Hotel in a clumsy choreography of laudanum and drink, pupils blown wide in an opiate tincture waltz. The peacemaker across his hip a metronome of depravity waiting for the subtle fingertip of quarter counts to off-beat.

He howls at the moon, firing one, two shots towards it into the open air. It both draws townspeople towards and away from the scenery. Marshall Milt Kilmer steps off the balcony of The Grand Hotel haughtily, fumbling with the weapon holstered against his side. 

From behind the glass at the Whispering Sands, you stand at the sound of gunshots, hands finding your own weapon holstered beneath the folds of your dresses. Eddie’s large palm finds your shoulder, squeezing softly in a promise of not us. His other hand met the stock of his gun, tucked away in the shoulder holster against his waist. 

“Michael! Come on now.” You heard Milt start, sound clear despite being muffled by glass. The commotion must have been right outside your window. Eddie and yourself listened from behind the front door, air between your bodies stagnant in wait. 

Michael was slovenly, more so than usual, “Well, howdy Milt.” He stumbled, lame as a duck and ten times more disgusting. He wielded his pistol like a bomb with the pin pilled, a travesty in wait. 

“Alright, hand those over, Michel.” Milt insists, gun wielded in defense against Michael. The commotion has attracted onlookers that seeped from ant pile buildings in uneasy swarms – the Doten family leaking out and congregating in their own slovenly hive like wasps,  “Hand ‘em over!” Milt calls, more firm this time. 

Micahel takes a look around, then back at the County Marshall before him. His pupils are blown wide like dinner plates, “Okay, Milt, I’ll hand ‘em over. It’s only fun. Here you go.” 

But what are thou Faustus, but a man condemned to die?

There is a split second in which you can see the silver line between life and death, in which you can walk the plane between realms. There reaps a morosity heavy on your heart in the fractions of a second before a man’s life ends. It is entirely too familiar to you, and you crumble under the weight of it all. You don’t hear the crack of the gun, and you don’t see Milt’s body fall limp, but you see the breath that falls from his lips that keeps his soul on a lark. You try to catch it in your hands to force back into his lungs. Running towards his body felt like wading through sand, burning hot and suffocating around your waist. He was dead by the time your hands cupped around his shoulder, but the remnant of his essence felt like a sheet, drowning you in the great planes of the Gila.

“Milt? Come on now.” Michael said, the gun long dropped on the ground. He nudged Milt’s boot with his own, unable to process the velocity of the events that transpired just moments before. 

The sheriff is fast to rush Michael, cracking the stock of his own peacemaker across the crown of the man before him, the body dropping heavy against the sand to your left. Heavy, but still alive. 

Everything is heavy. The weight that you bear crouched beside Milt’s body, the way Michael slumped into the sand beside you, the crowd gathering around the sudden onslaught of commotion, and the hand against your back that undoubtedly belonged to Edward. 

“Get him off the street.” Steve ordered, sweeping his peacemaker around in a circle to fend off the feigning crowd, “Alright, back off.” He said, stern and loud. You’d have half a mind to be afraid of him when he was like this, if you weren’t still in shock. 

“Get a rope!” Someone from the town said, stepping down from a nearby patio. 

“String him up!” 

Edward could sense the rising tension, his other hand coming firmly around the taught expanse of your waist and pulling you back without giving you room to fight. You stumbled backwards in a stupor, hot tears streaming down your face emotionlessly. You were a stone. A puppet in his hands watching the scene before you unfold. 

Steve’s face hardened, jaw clenched under cold eyes, “Nobody’s hanging anybody.”

“He just killed a man–”

“And he’ll stand trial for it. Now, get back! Move!” Steve made sure the hammer was pulled back on his gun, serious as sin. You don’t think you’d ever seen him this scary before. You didn’t think he could be this scary at all. 

“Turn him loose.” One of the town patrons called from the building riot, stepping forward from the mass. He was a dirty cattle pusher that still carried the grime and anger of a juvenile foal. When Steve gave him a cold stare-down, he spoke up once more, “He said to turn loose of him.”

“I’m not, so go home.” Steve said again, face like a stone. 

Another voice emerged from the crowd, “I swear to God, law dog, you step aside or we’ll tear you apart.” He was an older man with a scraggly beard, wiry hair to match his wiry nature, a dust-alden bandana hanging loosely off the skeleton-physique. He wielded his own weapon, pointing it at the Sheriff. He knew he was outnumbered, but wouldn’t back down. You wanted to cry out, to let them lynch Michael. Anything to avoid watching someone you care about die again. Anything to avoid feeling that. 

Steve took a step forward, pressing the barrel directly to the forehead of the old man. Hard enough for it to leave an indentation on the skin. 

“You die first, got it? Your friends might rush me later but not before I kill you first.” Steve’s eyes had hardened from something stone-cold to something ablaze. His eyes reaped the anger of the afternoon sun, alight with anger. Anger from defiance. Anger for Milt. “You understand me?” 

“He’s bluffing, let’s rush him” The younger man spoke up, further trying to entice the crowd. Everyone else was at a standstill, tension so taught, that if that wire snapped, it could recoil and kill both Steve and the other man. 

The old man’s eyes went wide, hands splayed out in a half surrender, half heeding motion, “No! He isn’t bluffing. Don’t rush him.” He pleaded, as if he were staring death in the face. By the look of rage and hunger alight behind Steve’s eyes, you were sure he was.

This time, the sheriff went quiet, talking only to the man in front of him, “You aren’t as stupid as you look. Now tell them to get back. “

“Go on, now, get back.” The old man said, hands still upward in surrender. The statement was shaking and quiet, unsure and teetering between tears. “Go on!” He said, louder this time, a plea for his life. 

“He’ll kill me.” He whispered, a single salty tear streaking through the fine layer of sand on his face. The crowd dissipated back, the yelling and demands of public execution coming to a gelatinous quiet. 

Edward removed his hand from your waist, putting the pistol from beneath his arm. He pulled the hammer back without question, pointing it at the young cattle-hand that started this all. 

“And you, big boy, you’re next.” He spoke it like a promise. Like a prayer. If you hadn’t been magnified by everyone's slightest move, you would have missed the way Steve’s eyes met you before he nodded in Edward’s direction.

+

The train comes by way of Texas Pacific that next morning, long before the break of dawn, and Eddie’s steamer trunk and horse were brought by means of Butterfield’s Overland as the sun was breaking darkness over the horizon. 

You don’t remember the sun turning over the next morning until you are blinded by the sudden onslaught of neon orange through the glass of the Whispering Sands. Your eyes feel dry, juxtaposed to the salty wetness of the rest of your face and the bottoms of your dresses, yet you kept scrubbing. 

That wretched spot in the middle of the floor that was beginning to divot from where the wood had worn away, yet you swore you could still see the dark coagulants of blood pooling between the grain. Maybe it was your own. 

There, where your husband lay dying, where his final breaths sputtered and choked from the blood that congealed within his lungs and escaped the gaping hole in his sternum. Where the unnamed bandolero lay already dead in your doorway, an iron barrel burning a vicious welt into your leg as your hands desperately plunged into the red pool forming within your husband’s chest. That night, the blood of two men covered your hands. 

The only evidence that anything had ever happened here was the mild divot on the floor and the blood seeping from your skinless knuckles and you scrubbed salt over the ghosts that resided between these floorboards and in these stools. You haunted this place in search of your husband, who would no longer be found at the piano or behind the bar. You were a ghost in your own rights. 

That holy shape becomes a devil, best. 

The laundry outside needs tending, and you let the burn from your knuckles tether you to this mortal plane, the unpleasant stick of your wet overcoat sticking ad unsticking from your knees and making them raw as you mundanely schlop wet clothes from the washbasin and pin them to the wire. 

You hear Edward round the corner, shrouded in the shadow from the smoky black quarter horse. Though quiet as they try, the equine presence is never quiet. He clears his throat haughtily, though you fail to recognize if it was him or the horse blowing a hefty breath through large nostrils. 

“Ma’am.” He started. Your nose was still red and your under eyes were still swollen from the night before, though, he hadn’t originally meant to say anything. Watching a man die was hard, he knew that you would have understood that. You looked like you had died and been resurrected when you turned to face him, hair frizzy and half escaping the braid that hadn’t been touched since the days before tucked beneath your hat, clothes sopping wet and hands bleeding. 

“What did you do to your hands?” He asked, suddenly softer now. He reached down to grab your hands, the sides of his calloused fingers scraping the undersides of your own calloused palms. 

“Tending to the floors.” You said to him, barely above a whisper. You wouldn’t meet his eyes. 

“You're soaked.” He observed, taking a step back to look down the front of your buckskin overskirts. Without a doubt, your underskirt and bloomers clung to your skin beneath as well, no longer dripping due to the warming sun. 

He understood what was happening here, the frantic nature in the way you scrubbed the floors matched the way he scrubbed his own body raw from the blood that covered his skin. He knew your hurt all too well. 

You mustered the courage to look him in the face as he inspected the outer edges of your knuckles with a tenderness that nearly brought the tears spilling back from your eyes. It was a tenderness that you hadn’t known in so long. It was like you were witnessing him from outside of your own body, through the eyes of a spider. You could count the smattering of freckles across his nose– those akin to a schoolboy, endearing in nature. A scar of what no longer remained. While he looked for signs of infection and wood shrapnel and remaining salt, you looked at the near perfection in which his thick lashes brushed from his lid to his cheek and you understood that God may not have been forgiving, but He certainly was real. 

A fluttering, frantic desire builds in your core when you slot your lips against his. This feeling was not akin to butterflies and moths. It was frantic, more persistent. Like that of the hummingbirds that drank from the cactus blossoms in the cooler mornings. You watched them in silence, searching and flying entirely too close. Fast and sure. All you can feel is the dry cracking against softness as his startled breath dissipates across your own mouth. 

“I’m sorry.” You mumbled to him, only pulling a mere few centimeters away. You were not sorry, but you were polite enough to fake it. 

“Don’t.”

He drops your hands, fingers scrambling for purchase against the tautness where your vest is slotted tight over your waist, clutching at fabric in search of skin instead. You reel closer, your own hat bumping the brim of his and falling off your head. It is frantic and sloppy and full of an animalistic reproach. The heat of his skin and lips is no different from the staleness of the desert around you. Your hands find his neck beneath his hair, tacky and slick with the sweat of the already blistering morning. You wanted him to touch you with all of the resolve of your dead lover, you wanted him to take you here in the sand– to make you shake and shiver all of the worries that had plagued you to the bone. To feel close to someone was foreboding, if you wanted to feel close you would have taken another lover. To feel safe with someone was something you clung to like a vice, for you hadn’t been safe since you’d started out west. You buzz like the fat hummingbirds in the saguaro blossoms when he hikes you close against him, aggressive without malaise. Both of his arms entrap you tightly, almost too tightly to be comfortable, and keeps a crushing weight to keep your body taught against his. You whine, all woman and all desperation, as your back braces against the rough stone texture of the brick behind you, his leg slotting between your thighs and casting a desperate friction to fruition. 

When you gyrate your hip against his thigh, unsparingly, the broad planes of his hands cling to the valley of your back between your shoulder blades relentlessly. It brings you up towards him instead of away against the wall. You can feel the harness of his braced between your bodies, and it sparks a churning feeling deep in the pit of your belly. You are whining, his tongue funding purchase within your mouth and making a home there. He does not expect you to initiate the act, but when your hands slide down the tautness of his abdomen, and pull his shirt out from his trousers, he is surprised. 

There is no sense of familiarity to this. Sure, you had been married. Laying with a man was no unexplored land for you, but this franticness, this panic and desperation was all new. It was risky, and it felt dirty, though, not incorrect. Edward reaches up, pulling the hat off of his head, his fingers turning tender against your waist as he guides you off of the wall and downwards into the sand. It is firm against your back and pleasantly warm. 

You are not soft like in his dream. You do not whine or beg for him when you see all of him for the first time. You are relentless in undoing your own buttons and pulling your own shirt off. When you see him, he is tall and lean, there is a scarecrow-like nature to him, the gangliness clinging to him like the naivety of youth, though, just as you were all woman, he was all man. Even in his softness. He is soft in the way he looks down at you, and allows your eyes to skim over him. His awestruck nature forces you to resist the urge to cover yourself. 

You are not womanly in the way you disregard the messiness of your hair, the tear streaks that stick against your hot cheeks, or the sand that sticks to your back as he lays you down. When he reaches a hand up to cup the side of your neck, it feels like walking that tightrope again– the one that teeters between the plane of life and death. This was a part of you that you no longer had resolve in. You did not think you would ever feel something that resembled your husband again. Though, as you walked this tightrope, it felt like crossing the threshold of your upstairs quarters again. His hands around you like a foundation and his arms around you like walls. 

There is a change of pace as he kisses you this time, unhurriedly and exploring. Your fingers grasp around the thick bone of his wrists, thumbs tethering you to the ligaments of his wrists beneath his alabaster skin. There remains a tackiness on the front of your body from where the lye water soaked through your clothes and stuck to your skin, though, he didn’t seem to mind. 

Behind the fast-paced nature and desperation of it all, there lies a sticky sweetness. Dark and slow-moving like molasses against your skin. It finds a resemblance in his lips against your neck that trail your collarbones. If it were a different circumstance, perhaps, this would have been slower. He would have taken you like a lover, something that more closely resembled the way he wanted you in the hazy fog of The Grand Hotel. But you needed him here and now, and he would have to give you that. 

He does not have to ease your legs open with reproach like he had to do with the other girls, the ones who hid themselves away in meek shyness. Even in the open expanse of the desert before you, where, on the opposite side of this building, the town was awake and beginning to stir, there was a profound lack of meekness to your demeanor. There would be no begging from your lips, though, you didn’t need to. You had him already. You had him as soon as you’d met him. 

He found himself tepid, “Do you still want me to–” 

“I want you to fuck me, Edward.” You’d insisted, and he was taken aback by it. Though, he was not going to deny you. Not with the sweat pooling between the valley on your breasts and your curls sticking to your forehead. He wouldn’t have denied you anyways. 

“Okay.” 

His voice was hoarse, moan rumbling low and deep from the confines of his lungs. He is rushed with feeling– taken aback by the crudeness of your language and comfort with your raw body. This was not what he had dreamed of, but rarely was it ever. The thrill changed quickly from an excited tingle to an aching need. His thumbs pull the hair from your face as he braces himself on his elbows, the soft smattering of hair on his stomach becoming flush with yours. 

You didn’t understand before the softness that lay just beneath the layer of dust that settles over him, the roundness to the apples of his cheeks or the plush of his lips. Though, now that he was this close, it was hard not to miss. His eyes, though you had only ever seen them dark and angry, were now a golden honey against the tan backdrop of the desert. It resembled the waning orange of the sunrise you were too forlorn to watch this morning. 

There was a resounding softness in his promises of, “I’ll take care of you” that reverberated with the building of tears that formed against his pretty lash line, though, not enough to break the surface tension and spill over his even prettier face. 

There is a relentlessness in the way he rocks his hips against your core, desperate for the feeling of closeness. A single tear buds against the corner of his eye, dripping down his pretty red cheek and on to your chest. You had half a mind to swipe it away with your thumb. He fucks you languidly in the building spring heat. The tackiness of your skin turns to a slide as he works you. 

His hips stutter in a pistoning motion, punching a moan out of your core that was not frilly or rehearsed. Please don’t stop’s resounding off of his chest like prayers. He is a little rougher than before, your back arching in pleasure. His voice is broken as he presses hot, open-mouthed kisses to the column of your throat. 

There is a certain inevitability, like you both know that this will need to come to an abrupt end, and you whine with the filthiness of it all. There is a soft soreness that buds from within your core, and from the way he cries out, whiny and vulnerable, you know he feels it, too. There is a reciprocating cry that resounds from both your mouths, and you know he has reached his apex when he spills inside of you, moving slowly and then coming to a stop. 

You do not stop him when he drops a heavy head against your sternum, instead resulting in pushing the hair away from his face. His head bobs up and down on your chest as you breathe, his own falling out of sync with yours. There is a resounding whisper that leaves his lips, and you are not sure if you are meant to hear. You reply anyways. 

“Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.” “It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery.”

[thotpuppy]

WIP Wednesday

tagged by both @whimsicalmeerkat and @like-lazarus !

In honor of posting the first chapter of Triskelion Reign today, here's an excerpt from chapter two <3

“You’ve slept in,” he announces, and while his voice is stern his face is soft. Stiles blinks and glances at the window. The sun is higher than he’d first thought, a good bit past dawn, and he groans again louder. “Yes, well, the kingdom’s impressions of merrymaking include an unscrupulous amount of wine,” he defends, dropping back against his down mattress for a moment. His father says nothing, but Stiles can practically smell his amusement in the air so he sighs to himself and reaches a hand for his dressing robe, so he can at least pretend to be decent. He turns away from the door as he slips the smooth fabric over his shoulders, pulling his legs from beneath the covers and standing. His head is throbbing between his ears and he still feels keenly nauseous, but if his father is here to pull him from sleep, he must be terribly behind schedule. They’re both quiet as Stiles sorts himself out, scrubbing his face in his washbasin before turning to greet his father. “How bad is it?” he asks, somewhat concerned. His father lifts an eyebrow, giving nothing away, and Stiles winces. “Right then,” he starts, turning towards his clothes chamber. “I’ll rush about it, shall I? I can straighten out in the carriage.” “Stiles,” his father calls, voice heavy with something unnamed. It makes Stiles pause in his steps, turning towards him. His father looks at him with a multiple of emotions in his eyes, and Stiles isn’t quite sure what to focus on most. Then, he lifts both arms, gesturing to come hither with the tips of his fingers. “Mieczysław,” he pleads, and all at once moisture is pulling to Stiles’ eyes as well. He turns quickly and falls into his father’s embrace, as easily as if there hadn’t been this distance brewing between them for the last few years. He’s promised himself he wouldn’t cry, but held tight to his father’s bosom, it’s impossible not to. He lets himself shed a tear as his father holds him tightly, whispering over and over, “My son, my son, my beloved boy.”

low pressure tags : @jagged1 @like-lazarus (taggin u back lol) @noxnthea @kordyceps @quackquackcey

[fallenwhumpee]

No but wait- imagine team leader whumpee sacrificing themself to save a team who thinks leader betrayed them. But whumper keeps all of them in the same cell and vows to kill any team member who thinks leader isn't a traitor-

Anon this is perfect I hope you don't mind me writing it <3

"I didn't mean to."

• Masterlist •

Warnings: Captivity, death threats.

Whumper was vibrating. The delight of deception was something they could never get bored of. They could play with people's actions even without getting their hands dirty, and it was just as satisfying.

With a grin they didn't bother to clean from their lips, they barged into Leader's cell. Poor thing was curled up on the floor, ears damaged from pulling g too much probably. The screen was still on, showing the cell at the other side of the facility.

Leader didn't even hear them coming in. The other cell was arguing again, about what had really happened and why they were there.

They pulled the body up and ripped the earphones harshly. They didn't care much about the tape coming off with the earphones ripping a chunk of Leader's hair.

Leader yelped, almost screaming. Whumper sighed. Such a wasted opportunity, they wanted to hear those cries.

"Your team has grown too comfortable," they snarled. "And noisy. I'd show them their place, but we have a deal."

Leader sank into their place.

That was worrying. Whumper wanted them to snarl, to fight back. Not accept. That was why they had chosen Leader, not anyone else in the team. And it was so unsatisfying.

"I'm sure you are also not happy with how they talk. You're going to tell them to shut up." Something sparkled in Leader's eyes. Good. Then it was time to drain that. "If they realise you're not a traitor, I will burn them alive."

Leader's eyes grew. "You—"

"I promised to keep them alive as long as they hated you. Realising that you once more foolishly sacrificed yourself beats up the purpose. And don't forget that I keep my promise because I pity you."

Whumper gave the best smile before pulling Leader to their feet through the collar of their worn shirt. Leader stumbled a little before finding their footing, glaring right into Whumper's eyes. They were going to enjoy the show.

"I'll make them understand. I'll find a way," Leader spat, a spark of defiance breaking through.

Whumper chuckled. "Oh, please do try. But now you have to fix your look. I don't think a rat like you can be fixed with clothes, but you at least have to appear decent in front of my bargaining chips."

Leader straightened their back, resisting the pull of Whumper's grip on their collar. A forced smile played on their lips, a veneer over the turmoil within. "I'll play your game for now," Leader responded with a cold calmness that betrayed none of their inner turmoil.

As Leader moved towards the small washbasin in the corner of the cell, Whumper watched, arms crossed.

Human nature was fascinating. The protective emotions, which would only make an animal protect its place, were working differently on humans. A dog would leave if a stronger one came. But humans? They would challenge. They would protect something they love at all costs.

Whumper would go to every extent to keep doing this. In theory, it was no different than what Leader was doing for the team. Ethically, what Whumper did was unforgivable, but Leader would be praised for their little cat-and-mouse game with Whumper if the team learned that Leader had only done it to save them.

Whumper stopped musing when Leadder came out with clean clothes. They gave Leader an earpiece with one last warning. Whumper had no value for the little pests.

Whumper settled in the security room, trying to contain their curiousity.

Leader stood next to the door, silent. The dim light in the cell did little to soften the anger etched on the faces of the team members as Leader, wearing a forced facade of composure, was escorted into the room.

Whumper had expected a more vivid scene, not this awkward one.

"How much?" Right Hand asked after an eternity.

"What?" Leader asked, caught off guard. Oh, Whumper was going to enjoy this.

"How much did you sell us for?"

"I-" Leader started, but Right Hand didn't let them continue.

"Maybe you hadn't even done it for something. You only wanted the power over us, and now you have us at your mercy. Are you fınally happy?"

"Looks like you don't have to try much," Whumper whispered to the earpiece. Leader winced as a response, but luckily, the team didn't get it.

"I... didn't..." Leader stuttered, eyeing the hidden camera subtly. "I didn't mean to."

"You didn't mean to," Medic laughed. "At least try to lie." "We followed you, and you led us right into a trap. How could you?"

Leader's lips parted, ready to argue, but they only whispered for the earpiece to pick up.

"Please get me out."

The helplessness of the voice was soothing for Whumper. With a smile they knew no one could see, they chirped.

"Sorry, but I enjoy this too much."

[rp-guzi]

What is your favorite memory with your dad :3 it could be recent or it could be around when you two first met :D

I do have a memory in mind, but it's a little embarrassing.

Promise not to tell? Really promise???

OK

( ꈍ .̮ ꈍ )

The first time I had a nightmare when I lived with my ghost dad, I woke up to deal with it like I usually do: get a cup of water, wash my face, and then squeeze my blanket until I feel myself inside my limbs all the way again.

When I went to draw the water, Qi Rong was there, and I didn't realize until he already saw me. I froze, expecting the kind of thing that happened when the other man caught me out of bed.

But he didn't do anything. He just sat there curled up on the floor with his head against his knees like I wasn't there. He didn't say it, but I could tell he had a nightmare too. I got him some water and helped him wash his face. I brought him the best blanket we had and showed him how I squeeze it. (It took him a while to get it right, he definitely clawed some holes in it) After everything, that made me feel so much better than just helping myself ever had.

He didn't let me go that night. We both fell asleep next to the washbasin under the same big blanket. His body wasn't warm, since he's a ghost, but I felt warm anyway.

\(♡˙; ﹏ ;˙♡)/

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Victory Through God

For the music director; according to the shushan-eduth style; a prayer of David written to instruct others. It was written when he fought against Aram Naharaim and Aram-Zobah. That was when Joab turned back and struck down 12,000 Edomites in the Valley of Salt.

1 O God, you have rejected us. You suddenly turned on us in your anger. Please restore us!

2 You made the earth quake; you split it open. Repair its breaches, for it is ready to fall.

3 You have made your people experience hard times; you have made us drink intoxicating wine.

4 You have given your loyal followers a rallying flag, so that they might seek safety from the bow. (Selah)

5 Deliver by your power and answer me, so that the ones you love may be safe.

6 God has spoken in his sanctuary: “I will triumph! I will parcel out Shechem; the Valley of Succoth I will measure off.

7 Gilead belongs to me, as does Manasseh! Ephraim is my helmet, Judah my royal scepter.

8 Moab is my washbasin. I will make Edom serve me. I will shout in triumph over Philistia.”

9 Who will lead me into the fortified city? Who will bring me to Edom?

10 Have you not rejected us, O God? O God, you do not go into battle with our armies.

11 Give us help against the enemy, for any help men might offer is futile.

12 By God’s power we will conquer; he will trample down our enemies. — Psalm 60 | New English Translation (NET Bible) NET Bible® copyright ©1996-2017 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. All rights reserved. Cross References: Genesis 12:6; Genesis 33:17-18; Genesis 49:10; Numbers 24:18; Numbers 34:19; Deuteronomy 33:12; Joshua 7:12; 2 Samuel 5:20; 2 Samuel 8:1,2 and 3; 2 Samuel 8:14; 2 Chronicles 7:14; Job 21:20; Psalm 17:7; Psalm 18:7; Psalm 20:5; Psalm 33:16; Psalm 44:5; Psalm 44:9; Psalm 66:12; Psalm 108:10; Psalm 146:3; Isaiah 5:26

[spacesquidlings]

The Babysitter Is A Vampire Chapter 3: Bed Time Stories and Embroidery

Summary: As the last of the day gives way to night, finally bed time arrives for the children, although peace and quiet is not yet guaranteed.

Pairing: Astarion x Female Tav (Aspen)

Warnings: Some slight implied suggestive comments, nothing overt though by any means

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2

*********************************************************

With the bathroom otherwise occupied, Astarion made use of the kitchen, heating up water in the small fireplace covered in cinders in the corner. Aisling stood off to one side, forlorn, not even a glimmer of the hellion he’d first met hours ago.

“As fond as I am of pouting,” he called, grunting as he lifted the pot filled with water from where it hung above the fire. “I do not think it will be of much help right now.”

She sniffled, staring at where Rigel had been unceremoniously dumped next to a small washbasin on the table, amber liquid still pooling beneath him. “She hates me.”

“No, she doesn’t.” Willow was having a tantrum, her emotions boiling over so she could not think clearly, could not do anything. They were too big for her body, and that was something Astarion could understand. Something he could empathize with.

His circumstances and Willow’s were, of course, vastly different, but still he could understand. And even a tantrum over something as small as a ruined toy and spilled tea deserved space to work through her feelings, deserved support and gentleness.

He wished he’d had gentleness when he was young, he would not deny it to these children now.

He wondered if Aspen would be proud of him, and he made a note to himself to ask later. Anything to see her smile, to earn one of her sweet, chaste kisses.

With a huff, he poured the steaming water from the pot into the washbasin, wincing as it splashed against his shirt. He did not have a spare, so he would have to hope it dried quickly.

Aisling crept closer, perching on a chair beside him and staring down into the wavering water. “What do we do now?”

He plucked Rigel from where he had been left, dunking him into the water. “Now, my dear, we wash him.”

“Don’t we need soap for that?”

It took every ounce of self control he had not to release the poetic swear that bubbled in the back of his throat.

Of course they needed soap, and of course he had forgotten it.

Stumbling to cover himself for his heedlessness, her arched a brow. “Didn’t I ask you to get the soap?”

She stiffened, even as accusation lay heavy in her voice. “No, you didn’t.”

“I think I did.”

“You didn’t!”

He smirked, lifting his hands from the basin and flicking the water away. “Darling, we could stand here all night and argue. But why don’t you be a doll and get me the soap? Then we can do this together.”

Aisling looked like she was on the verge of arguing, some of her devilishness returning to her. But it was gone just as quickly as she eyed the basin and Rigel looking miserable as the water turned murky from the tea.

She grumbled was sounded like an “okay” before hopping from the chair and rummaging around the kitchen until she found a bar of soap.

“Thank you darling, you’ve been most helpful,” he cooed, snatching it up from her and returning his attention to the stuffed wolf.

He’d learned to clean and stitch and embroider over the years, struggling to keep his mouldering clothing intact and beautiful. He’d never thought he would be using the skills he’d honed to clean up a well-loved toy, and yet here he was.

He supposed he hadn’t anticipated everything that had happened to him recently, either, but he was glad for it. Glad for the sudden turn his life had taken, for the chance to live again.

The heat from the water turned his skin pink, then red, as he scrubbed at the toy, ringing out the liquid as best he could before dunking it again and scrubbing it more. The bar of soap was slippery, and more than once it slipped from his grip, careening halfway across the kitchen. Aisling retrieved it for him, a devoted assistant as they worked to fix her small mistake.

The water cooled much quicker than he had anticipated, and still Rigel’s fur was stained.

“What are we gonna do?!” Aisling whined, defeated as she lifted the sopping wet toy, suds still clinging to his fur. “I’ve ruined him forever!”

“He’s not ruined.” Astarion took the toy from her hand, ringing it once more before setting it on the table. “I’ll heat some more water. The tea just stains easily, but it’s nothing we can’t get out.”

He’d only just lifted the basin to dump it outside when two sets of footsteps raced down the stairs, a familiar voice calling to slow down, to wait!

Willow burst into the kitchen first, water gleaming on her face and arms, the collar and shoulders of her nightgown already soaked from her wet hair. “Star!”

He nearly lost his grip on the basin, tea-stained water sloshing over the edge and onto his shoes.

He huffed a laugh as she beamed up at him, unable to curse at himself as soundly as he would have liked for soaking his shoes. “Feeling better, are we?”

Willow’s smile only grew wider as her hands flapped at her sides. “Miss Aspen used pretty smelling soap for me! Just like a princess!”

Astarion couldn’t help smiling, as delighted by Willow’s smile as she was by the soap. Aspen must have raided their things and taken some of his oils and her flowery soaps.

Had it been anyone else he would have been annoyed, but he could not fault her for it. Not when Willow was smiling so widely, not a trace of her earlier misery to be seen.

He considered using some of his oils to make Rigel smell a little better, once he got the last of the stains cleaned away. If using flowery soaps made Willow this happy, surely she would love it if her wolf smelled as nice.

Aspen appeared a moment later, face red, heaving as if out of breath. “Willow. I told you not to run!”

“But I wanted to come tell Star!”

Astarion blinked. “And am I this renowned Star?”

Aspen’s smile turned wry. “Who else would it be?”

“Well my darling, you do always outshine the stars.”

Colour bloomed in her cheeks, the soft pink of a peony unfurling towards the sun. She looked like she wanted to say something, but the words would not come.

“I didn’t realize it would be so easy to render you speechless, darling.” He couldn’t help teasing her, not as the pink of her cheeks turned to a burning crimson, her brow twitching in ire.

She looked like she was on the verge of throwing something at him, and he laughed, setting the basin to the side and gathering her in his arms. “I don’t think I will ever get tired of this expression.”

“Astarion, you are so lucky-”

“I am lucky,” he sang, cutting her off and earning a dark glare. “I am so terribly lucky to have you in my life, my love. What would I do without your light?”

He could practically hear the sound of her grinding teeth, her eyes sharp as daggers. “Still nothing to say, my darling? Well don’t hurt yourself, I would hate for you to be injured on my account.”

“Uh, excuuuse me!”

Astarion was saved from whatever scathing retort was brewing in Aspen’s mind by Willow, who was waving her hands impatiently. “What is it, dear?”

“Can you braid my hair?” She stared up at him with wide, pleading eyes.

Aspen coughed, her brow quirking. “What else?”

Willow clasped her hands together. “Please?”

“Well how can I say no to that?” He released Aspen, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “If that’s alright with you, my love?”

She nodded. “I can take over cleaning duty with Aisling.”

“Excellent.” He crouched, ruffling Willow’s hair. “Why don’t you show me where you keep your hair things.”

Willow scampered off, seeming happier than she’d been even when they’d first met.

“She’s looking better.”

Aspen nodded, her eyes soft, her hands gentle as they reached up to smooth his curls. “She’s feeling better. We had a talk, but I don’t think she’s completely better yet.”

“She’s still angry?”

Her expression fell. “A little. But she kept asking for you, and she was very excited to tell you about the soaps.”

The warmth of her breath brushed against his skin as he stroked his thumb over her bottom lip. “You used my oils, didn’t you?”

Refusing to meet his gaze, she answered. “Perhaps a drop.”

“Darling, my nose works perfectly fine. I can tell it was more than a drop.”

She lowered her gaze. “I’m sorry, I should have asked. She’d said she liked pretty smelling things, and I’d thought they would make her happy.”

“Nonsense.” Astarion took her chin in his hand, lifting her head until their eyes met. “I’m quite glad you did. I hadn’t known it would be so easy to delight a child.”

She giggled, her face still flushed so sweetly. “The strangest things make them happy.”

“At least we know she has excellent taste.”

“Well she adores you, so we already knew that.”

Now Astarion was flushing, and he looked away as heat bloomed in his face. It was subtle, little more than the rush of warmth he felt when he fed, but it was there all the same, clinging to his cheeks as Aspen beamed wider and wider.

“Oh please, it’s only because I’m someone new. She’ll grow tired of me quickly.”

“I didn’t grow tired of you,” Aspen said. “I only knew you for a very short time before knowing I wanted to spend my life with you.”

He ducked his head, staring furiously at the ground, at the puddle of water he was standing in.

“Astarion.”

He looked up without thinking at his voice on her tongue, finding her eyes watching him, the crescent moon of her smile soft. “I know words do not always mean much, but I hope you know that when I say them to you, they do. I’m not trying to trick you, or con you, or manipulate you into my bed.”

He gave a dry chuckle. “You don’t have to manipulate me for that, my darling. I share your bed gladly.”

“Astarion.” She said his name more like a sigh this time, rolling her eyes. “I’m trying to be serious.”

“So am I.”

She didn’t speak this time, only glowering.

He pressed the pad of his thumb against the space between her brows, smoothing the lines there. “Careful, darling, you don’t want your pretty face to get stuck this way.”

Closing her eyes, she sighed. “I’m going to ignore that.”

“I mean you certainly can. I will think you’re beautiful even when you’re a wrinkled crone, but perhaps it’s best not to hasten that process.”

“Astarion!” Her eyes snapped open, her mouth falling open.

He lifted his hands in surrender, chuckling. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think you are.”

“Well I am a little.” He cupped her face, bringing it close. “I did mean it, though. You will be beautiful in my eyes. Forever.”

He could feel the flutter of her lashes against his skin. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Love me? Adore me?”

“I do love you,” she said, laughing. “And I mean it. I love you, Astarion.”

Her hands covered his, their fingers, threading together. “And I mean it when I say that little girl adores you, too.”

He had nothing to say to that, his words failing him.

Luckily, he did not need to come up with anything to say, because Aisling filled the silence before Aspen could begin teasing him, her little voice dripping with disgust.

“You two are gross.”

Aspen whirled around, kneeling so she was eye-level with Aisling. “Yes, well it’s these gross people who are going to help you win back your friendship with Willow.”

Aisling huffed, her hands turning to fists at her side. “Fine! But stop being gross!”

“We will not,” Astarion said, grinning as the little girl scowled.

It was right at that moment that Willow returned, stomping her feet, stopping him from teasing Aisling any further. “Star! You said you’d braid my hair!”

“Yes, I’m coming dear,” he called. He squeezed Aspen’s shoulder before taking Willow’s outstretched hand, letting her think she was yanking him up the stairs.

“Can you do it in two braids?” She asked, skipping up the steps. “I like it that way best.”

“Yes, I think I can manage two pigtails, darling.”

She led him to what he assumed was the shared bedroom, a handful of beds lining the walls. Some of the other children were already there, gathered on beds and whispering in low voices, or flipping idly through worn books.

Willow released Astarion’s hand, diving under one of the beds, surfacing moments later with a wooden box covered in pink and purple stars and hearts, their paint beginning to flake.

Opening it revealed a trove of childish treasures. Shiny rocks and pieces of quartz, dried daisy chains that looked like they would disintegrate if they were moved, little wooden peg dolls with cheery smiles and colourful dresses painted on their round bodies. And tucked to the side was Willow’s hairbrush and comb, small elastics and pink ribbons piled on top of them.

“Ta-da!” She sang, gesturing to the box. “Do you like it?!”

“It’s marvelous, my dear,” he cooed, taking out the brush and comb. “Now why don’t you get comfy so I can do your hair, alright?”

She nodded, sitting on her bed and crossing her legs so her back was to him. Astarion perched behind her, taking a few locks of her damp hair in one hand and beginning to run the comb through it.

“Let me know if you feel any tugging or anything hurts, alright?” There were far more knots in her hair than he had anticipated, and he didn’t want to hurt her. He’d become quite skilled at twisting and styling Aspen’s hair, but she kept her hair much shorter than Willow’s, and she brushed her hair regularly enough that it was rare for him to find a tangle in it.

Yet despite all that he managed to comb through Willow’s hair without issue. He ran his fingers down each section of hair he took, checking for knots, before painstakingly combing them out, making sure not to tug too hard or yank her hair.

In no time at all he had combed through her hair, and it lay in silky waves down her back and over her shoulders.

“You know,” he began, plucking two elastics from the box. “Your hair has a little wave to it.”

She spun around, her eyes round. “Really? Like a mermaid?!”

He chuckled, taking her shoulders and turning her back around. “Yes, just like a mermaid.”

“I want to meet a mermaid.”

“Maybe one day you will.”

He separated her hair into two sections, tying one section off in a pigtail so he could begin work on the first braid. “If you leave these braids in overnight and then take them down, I bet your hair will be even more wavy.”

She squealed, wiggling. “Even more like a mermaid.”

He chuckled, biting down on the second elastic as he began to wave her hair into a fishtail braid. Willow babbled on about mermaids, about how sometimes when the weather was very nice they were taken to a pretty lake where her and the others played mermaid. She told him that her mermaid tail would be pink, but that if he was a mermaid it would be silver like the stars.

It made him smile, and he murmured a soft thank you, because that sounded very pretty, and of course he had to be the prettiest of all the mermaids.

He was nearly done with the first braid, reaching the end of her hair, when the other girls came up to them, perching on the other side of Willow’s bed.

“What are you doing?” Ellie asked, crawling behind him to peek over his shoulder.

He arched a brow, speaking around the elastic between his teeth. “What does it look like? Braiding her hair.”

“Can you do mine next?”

“And mine?”

“Me too, me too!”

He took the elastic from his teeth, tying off the end of the first braid. “I’m doing Willow’s hair first.”

A chorus of whines rose up, some of the girls bouncing on the bed in protest.

“Have you all gotten ready for bed like Aspen said?”

“Yes!” The sound of their voices resounded through the room.

“And you cleaned up all the plates and everything?”

He didn’t even know why he was checking with them, but it felt like perhaps the right thing to ask the group of unruly children.

Another chorus of “yes” rang out, and he nodded his head, biting back a smile at their enthusiasm.

“Okay. Then once I’m done with Willow’s hair I can do everyone else’s.”

He made sure to take his time on the second braid, some of the earlier calm returning now that the children had what they wanted. He braided her hair tightly, so she would have the prettiest waves when she took the braids out the following day.

Once he was done he plucked two soft pink ribbons from her box, tying little bows over the elastics with a flourish.

“There we are,” he announced. “Pretty as a mermaid princess.”

He didn’t expect the smile she greeted him with, nor did he expect her to throw herself into his arms, hugging him tightly as she pressed her face against his shoulder. “Thank you! Thank you, Star!”

Chuckling, he returned her embrace, his heart aching terribly as her little hands clutched him.

Then, just as quickly as she’d launched herself towards him, she sprinted away, wanting to show off her braids to the other girls.

After that, Astarion spent what felt like an hour working on all of their hair, combing and braiding and tying ribbons into the girls’ hair.

He was struggling to finish Ellie’s hair, the child refusing to sit still for more than a few seconds, when Aisling bolted into the room, Aspen at her heels.

“What are you doing?!” She shouted, pointing to Astarion.

He sighed, not responding until he finally finished Ellie’s braid and removed the elastic from his mouth to tie it off. “It seems I’ve become everyone’s hairdresser.”

“What?”

“I’m braiding their hair, dear.”

Aisling danced awkwardly from foot-to-foot, looking sheepish. “Could you braid mine, too?”

Behind her, Aspen was gathering the girls’ who were not waiting for their braids, telling them she would read them a story before bed.

“Of course, my dear,” he sang, sending Ellie on her way with matching green ribbons. “Go fetch me your brush and your favourite ribbons.”

She had only just settled before him, her hair a veritable mess. It had been in braids earlier in the day, but at some point she must have torn them out, because now her hair fell in thick, tangled waves down her back.

He hummed, gathering up the hair near her temple, when Willow came up to them, ringing her hands.

“Aisling?”

Aisling tensed, her face paling. “Yes?”

“I don’t hate you,” Willow murmured, tugging at one of her braids. “I’m sorry for saying that.”

Aisling blinked. “Does that mean we’re friends again?”

“Please?” Willow clutched her hands to her chest. “I forgive you for spilling on Rigel and I’m sorry for being upset. I wanna be friends again.”

Aisling’s expression brightened, and she nodded furiously. “Okay! Oh, and I forgive you, too!”

And just like that everything was better, the rift between the children healed. Astarion caught Aspen spying on them, her expression so soft it made him ache, watching as the children made up before Willow scampered off again.

He finished up Aisling’s hair and sent her running to the circle of children gathered around Aspen, her braids bouncing behind her as she curled into a spot next to Willow. His hands ached, and his back hurt from hunching over for so long, dull pain rippling down his spine and out towards his sides as he stood. 

It made him resolve to whine about it to Aspen. He’d worked so very hard, and he certainly deserved a reward for his efforts. He’d braided all of the girls’ hair, and he’d helped with cleaning up Rigel.

He planned to creep from the room as the children all dispersed as Aspen finished up her story, making their way to their beds to be tucked in. He’d even made it to the door before a little hand tugged at his sleeve, drawing him back into the room.

“Star?” Willow peered up at him, her head tipped all the way back to find his eyes. “Will you read me a story?”

“Didn’t Aspen just read you one?” He gave her head a pat, wondering if she was feeling clingy because she was missing her toy.

She pouted, looking on the verge of summoning false tears. “She did, but I want you to read me one.”

Sighing, Astarion ran a hand through his hair. “Listen-”

“Please?”

Her sad expression gave him no space to argue, and it was with a resigned “alright” that he let himself be dragged back into the room.

Aspen was watching him from where she was tucking in one of the children, her eyes bright, her smile equal parts mischievous and delighted. He rolled his eyes, trying to make himself look as unenthused as he possibly could.

Her smile only grew wider, her eyes sharp with knowing, and Astarion knew he’d been had. There wasn’t any point in keeping up the charade any longer, and he let his annoyed expression drop as Willow began rifling through a stack of books against the far wall.

“Dis one please!” She announced, swinging a wide book with a sparkly pink cover at him.

“And what do we have here?” He asked, inspecting the glittering covering, taking in the cartoonish drawings of a girl in a magnificent, if somewhat gaudy, gown and a moon with a serene smile.

“It’s my favourite!” She sang, curling into her blankets. “It’s about a princess and her best friend, the moon!”

The plot sounded contrived at best, but Astarion would humour her. She was smiling so widely, and she looked so delighted as he flicked to the first page and cleared his throat, that he could not find it in himself to whine.

His assessment of the story had been correct, with the plot making little sense, all of it based around pink sparkles and moon magic and talking stars. And yet Willow was enamoured, her hands twisting into her blankets as she listened raptly. The girls in the beds closest to them, Rose and Marie, rolled over to face them, listening in as well.

Astarion couldn’t help fearing for the state of literacy in the land if this story was what passed for literature nowadays. It was fifty pages at the most, each page nearly drowning in the technicolour the drawings had been styled in. He had to lift the book after reading each page, turning it slowly so everyone listening in could see the pictures before he could continue, the children more delighted by the art than the story itself.

Yet, then again, they were only small, their lives only just beginning, like buds of a flower not yet bloomed. It made sense that their stories would be more simple, more fantastical. And there was surely a place for the fantastical, wasn’t there?

Aspen was like something out of these storybooks, wielding glittering magic that had turned his life upside down. She had given him light, even though he was still bound to the shadows.

The book was still silly, but he could appreciate it at least. And he could appreciate the content smile on Willow’s face as he finished it and closed the cover.

“Can you read another one?” She kicked her feet, pouting again. “Please?”

He snorted, patting her cheek. “Nice try, darling. You’ve gotten two stories tonight, but I think it’s time you went to sleep now.”

“Aaaah.”

“Consider this,” he said, tapping her nose. “The sooner you fall asleep, the sooner it will be tomorrow, when you’ll be reunited with Rigel.”

“He’ll be all better?”

“He’ll be even better than new.”

She giggled. “Okay. Goodnight, Star.”

He smoothed back her hair, lingering for a moment before whispering, “Goodnight, Willow.”

Astarion’s second attempt to depart was met with more success as he crept from the darkened room, wincing as aging floorboards creaked beneath his feet. But still he managed to cross the dark sea of shadows the room had become, emerging on the other side to find Aspen leaning against the wall, smirking at him.

“Have you missed me, my darling?” He ran a hand over his shirt to smooth out the creases, trying to ignore the ache in his chest. It had settled there like a sleeping beast, heavy and warm, with no chance of being chased away anytime soon.

She came towards him, taking his hands and holding them to her chest. “Of course I have.”

“And what is that smirk for?”

“Oh nothing,” she sang, her smile widening. “I just thought it was rather sweet how you read to Willow.”

“I can be sweet.” He pouted, leaning forward to brush a kiss to the corner of her lips. “See? Wasn’t that sweet?”

“Oh the sweetest,” she laughed, stroking the backs of his hands with her thumbs. “My teeth ache from your sweetness, my love.”

It was Aspen who was sweet, and he liked to imagine that all the sugary confections with their whipped frostings and sweetened fillings and candied fruits tasted like her kisses, like her smiles as he caught her lips with his.

But he did so love to be complimented, and he loved it most when it came from her.

“It seems we make a perfect pair then,” he teased. “You, a lover of all things sweet. And me, the sweetest of all things.”

She laughed, heartily, the sound warm as it billowed up from deep within her heart. “I kind of love the sound of that.”

“Oh?” He wriggled one hand free to tap against her cheek. “I’m sure I could come up with much more clever things to say if they’ll make you laugh.”

Another snort, her smile turning wry. “You’re being terribly generous with your kind words today, love.”

He relished in the warmth of her touch, in being close to her once more now that the day was spent. He couldn’t have resisted swaying towards her, even if he’d tried. To be close to her was a gift, and he leaned near as he continued to tease her. “I am nothing if not generous and kind.”

She laughed again. He hadn’t realized he could make someone laugh so brightly, so genuinely, as he did Aspen. Before her laughter had been cold titters, callous sounds that grated against his ears, like nails digging into his skin as they were breathed against him.

But she laughed like sunshine, at the strangest of things. She laughed when he said the smallest of jokes, when he rolled his eyes as he feigned annoyance. She even laughed at her own jokes, and although they were rarely that funny, it made him smile too.

“Perhaps we should head back downstairs,” she said, covering her mouth even as her shoulders still trembled from the stray giggle. “I fear if we keep standing here we’ll keep the children up.”

“Oh thank the gods,” he breathed, slumping against her shoulder, earning another bout of laughter. He grinned as he pressed his face against her neck. “Can we please? My legs are killing me.”

She patted his head, snorting. “Yes, yes, let’s go you big baby.”

“Thank you, my darling.” He nuzzled his face against her throat, smirking as she shivered. “You are too kind to me.”

“I am,” she agreed, an arm looping around his waist. “Now, do you think your legs can make it down the stairs? I don’t think I’m going to be able to carry you.”

“If I must.” He pressed a chaste kiss to the spot above where her pulse thrummed before straightening. “But you will owe me for it.”

“Astarion when have I ever been able to carry you?”

He shrugged. “You spent the evening carting those babies around. Perhaps you’ve put on some muscle.”

She frowned. “Request denied, I’m owing you no favours.”

She made to step away, but he did not let her get far before capturing her around the waist and collapsing against her once more. “But darling, it’s something I need terribly.”

“I already give you my blood!”

“Not that.” He rolled his eyes before fluttering his lashes, peeking up at her as demurely as he could. “It’s something else.”

It was the sound of her sigh that told him that he’d won. There was very little she would say no to when he requested it, although some days she liked to put up a little bit of a fight.

It was adorable, and he loved to poke and tease her until she finally gave in.

“How terribly?”

“The most terribly.”

“Fine,” she conceded. “What are your demands?”

He could not hold back his smile, not even as he continued to bat his lashes as though he were innocent. “Would you massage my hands? They ache after braiding all the girls’ hair.”

She huffed. “And?”

“And my back too, if you could be so kind.” He was pushing his luck now and he knew it. But it was also an excuse to be closer to her, to be held by her.��

She would hold him against her chest and run her hands down his back, massaging anywhere that ached. She had no great skill in massaging, but it was her touch he craved, her closeness. She always did it with such love, with such gentleness, her hands and the steady rhythm of her heartbeat a balm to his own heart.

“I suppose I can do that,” she muttered, eyes narrowed. “Anything else?”

At that he straightened, tapping his cheek idly. “A kiss? As a reward for all my hard work?”

She didn’t hesitate, leaning forward to brush her lips against his cheek. “You never need to ask for one of those. I give them to you gladly.”

He pouted a little, tapping his lips. “Darling.”

She rolled her eyes, but still she leaned forward, one hand falling to his chest as their lips met. He caught her then, twisting one of his hands in her hair, tipping his head to the side to kiss her deeper.

Aspen gasped, but then she melted, nestling into his embrace. He could feel her smile against his lips, feel the murmurations of her quiet humming.

He held her tightly for a few more moments, only releasing her when he knew she needed air.

“Now then,” he said, grinning at the sunset pink of her cheeks and the bruised red her lips had become. “Lead the way downstairs, my darling.”

She blinked, her eyes glassy and wide, her lips parting in a small o.

“Or perhaps I should be the one to lead.” He beamed, taking her hand and tugging her towards the stairs. 

He watched as reason slowly returned to her, the dumbstruck expression on her face replaced with ire, the glossiness of her eyes turning sharp as she levelled a glare on him.

“Astarion.”

“Yes, my love?”

He could practically hear her teeth grinding together. “You’re such a little shit.”

“Not the kind of compliment I’m used to, but I’ll take it.” She rolled her eyes, the colour in her cheeks flaring brighter, deeper. “That kiss must have been utterly enchanting.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she huffed, turning her head away.

“Yet you’re such a mess.” His cheeks hurt from how widely he was smiling, from how much he was smiling, but he could not stop himself. Did not want to.

“I am not.”

With her attention focused on quite literally anything but him, it was easy enough for Astarion to reach out and pinch her side. “Don’t be cross, my darling. I only wanted a kiss.”

She tried to brush his hand away, but he only pinched her again, earning a yelp and an utterly murderous glare.

“I could kiss you again, if that would cheer you up.” The breath she drew in was sharp, her throat bobbing as she swallowed. She looked tense, like she was holding herself together by fraying threads, the flush in her cheeks spreading down her throat, reaching below the collar of her shirt.

He leaned closer, snaking an arm around her waist so she was pressed close. “Or perhaps,” he breathed against her ear. “There is something else I could do to lift your spirits.”

She tensed further, a strangled gasp escaping her lips. “Astarion.”

He hummed, nipping her ear. “I do so love how you say my name. When we are both spent, it will be the only thing you will remember how to say.”

With a strangled groan, Aspen wrenched herself free, putting space between them as she descended the remaining stairs. She really did look like a mess, her hair askew, her chest heaving. Her face was a deep crimson, her eyes dancing like the flicker of flames. “You can be such a villain.”

“My darling, you are overflowing with compliments for me today.” He followed behind her, pausing on the step above where she stood, giving her his most mischievous grin. “I’m touched by your kindness. I suppose I will need to think of some way to return your affection, to show you just how much I adore you.”

“There’s no time for messing around.” Her voice cracked, like dried kindling beneath embers that would ignite into a blaze. It was far too easy to fluster her, and it delighted him to no end. “We have to finish fixing that toy.”

He ran a hand through his hair, feigning annoyance. “I suppose we can continue being altruistic for the sake of these children.”

“Oh please.” Her agitation was fading, and she looked far less tense as she rolled her eyes. “Don’t pretend like you don’t care on my account. I saw how easily you caved when Willow asked you to read her another story.”

He held up his hands in surrender. “I fear I’ve been had.”

“You’ve been had from the moment that child introduced you to her stuffed wolf,” Aspen teased, poking his chest playfully.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

She shrugged, mischief in her eyes. “Only that I suspect your heart is much softer and sweeter than you think.”

Sighing, he stepped down so they both stood on the ground, taking the hand still poking his chest and holding it above his heart. “If my heart is soft it is only because of you, my love.”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” she murmured, her eyes searching his, her free hand reaching up to ghost over his curls. “I think your heart has always been soft and sweet.”

“Well you would know, wouldn’t you?” He wasn’t teasing her now, not really. In truth it made his heart warm, made him feel alive, to hear her say such things. To know that in her eyes he was good; she knew of the gory details of his past, of all the terrible and sordid things he had done, and she saw someone precious anyways.

Her hand slid down the side of his face, pausing only to cradle his cheek in her palm. “I would. I fear I may get cavities if I kiss you too frequently.”

He chuckled, bringing her hand to his lips, brushing kisses to her fingertips. “We wouldn’t want that.”

“It’s worth the risk.” She leaned close, kissing the corners of his lips.

He would have gladly stayed like that for ages, but there were things they needed to do still. Namely, finding a place to sit and fixing up Willow’s stuffed wolf.

He closed his eyes, resigned to their tasks. “We have to finish cleaning up that toy, don’t we?”

“Don’t sound so disappointed,” she teased, stroking his cheek. “I’m sure the orphanage will have relief for us soon, and we can be on our way to find somewhere to rest.”

The reminder that they would likely very soon be on their way was like cold water sluicing over him.

Something must have shown on his face because Aspen’s smile fell, her brow creasing with worry. “What’s wrong, love?”

He covered her hand with his, trying to reassure her, trying to reassure himself. “It’s nothing, I’m just feeling a bit tired.”

They had only been here for a few hours, he had no reason to be upset at the thought of leaving. The children likely would not even remember them once they absconded.

Aspen looked like she didn’t believe him in the slightest, but she didn’t press for more details. Instead, she only began making her way back to the kitchen, letting him know she’d finished cleaning the stains from Rigel.

Upon entering the kitchen, they found Rigel balanced on a rack near the fire, already nearly dry.

“He looks good,” Astarion murmured, inspecting the toy. “Although there’s some tears, and it looks like the stuffing is coming out from the legs.”

She chewed on her bottom lip. “I saw that. I tried to stitch up one of his legs, but…” She trailed off, scratching her nose. “I am not exactly skilled in the art of sewing.”

Humming, he turned the toy over, noticing the rough, jagged stitches that had clearly only just been added in. He could recognize that poor handiwork anywhere; he was all too familiar with Aspen’s attempts at sewing up tears and cobbling worn clothes together from all the times she’d tried to fix her clothes after they’d been ripped in battles. Her precious stuffed bear that she kept tucked away in her pack was riddled with similar stitches, the poor thing coming apart after years of being clutched in her arms each night.

“A valiant effort, darling,” he said, arching a brow as he looked back at her. “But I think you are much more skilled at other endeavours.”

She huffed, pouting as she crossed her arms. “I did my best.”

“Yes, well I think you need a bit more practice, my dear.”

Another huff, her brow furrowing. “I tried.”

He stood, holding the toy in one hand and reaching towards her with the other. “And you made a magnificent effort. But why don’t you show me where the needle and thread is, and I can manage the rest?”

Aspen sighed, turning to rummage through some of the drawers until she produced a small pin-cushion crowded with needles, and a few rolls of multicoloured thread.

He plucked them from her hands with a flourish, dropping a kiss to her cheek so she would smile once more. “Thank you, my darling. Now, why don’t we retire somewhere a bit more comfortable while I work on this?”

‘Somewhere’ ended up being a small sitting room just to the side of the playroom. Aspen had used it for Aisling’s time-out earlier, and although the fire was little more than embers, the room remained warm.

It was easy to rekindle the flames, and to light a number of the candles that were piled on a desk in the corner of the room, giving the room a golden cheeriness it had not had moments before.

Astarion settled against the cushions of a low couch that was pressed against the wall across from the fireplace, sighing as he stretched out his legs. “I feel much better already.”

“I’m glad.” Aspen perched on the other side of the couch, folding her hands in her lap. “Thank you, for agreeing to this endeavour. I’m sure you’ve thought it foolish.”

“Not at all.” He shook his head, sitting up straighter. “I’m happy to follow where you lead.”

Her answering smile was small, timid. “Are you sure?”

“Darling, if I was not sure, I would have complained a lot more.”

She giggled. “I suppose that is true. I would have been subjected to unending theatrics.”

“It is, however, foolish that you’ve sat so far away.” He gestured to where she sat on the other end of the couch. “Won’t you come closer? I fear I may catch a cold without your warmth.”

She shifted closer, then at his beckoning, closer still, until he could against her, resting his head on her shoulder.

“I thought vampires couldn’t get colds,” she mused, running her fingers through his hair.

“Well I would hate to find out.”

Her words were a sigh as she stroked his hair, as she made good on his demands to have his back massaged, starting with her hands at his shoulders. “Even if you could get sick, I would take care of you.”

He snorted, angling to the side, sighing as her hands made their way to his spine, pressing gently on the skin on either side before sliding up the back of his neck. “I would be much appreciative if you did.”

“Of course I would take care of you,” she repeated, hands sliding down his spine now, her palms digging into the muscles near his waist. “I would gently nurse you back to health until you were silly again.”

“I’m not silly,” he retorted, pouting. She couldn’t see it, so he turned around, ensuring she could see what a magnificent pout it was. “I’m hilarious, and charming, and roguish.”

It was her turn to pout now, an equally magnificent thing that made him consider falling to his knees. “But I love when you’re silly.”

He could not withstand the lullaby softness of her voice, nor could he hold out against the petulant pout on her lips. His resolve crumbled, and he scowled at the floor in defeat. “Alright, I suppose I can be silly. Sometimes. On occasion.”

His response delighted her, and she leaned forward to drop a kiss to the curve of his jaw. “I do think you’re rather charming, too.”

He sniffed, turning back around so she could not see the genuine smile on his lips as he pretended to preen. “I should hope so. You’d be a fool if you did not.”

“But would I be your fool?” Her question was soft, her hands gentle as they worked the knots and the aches from his back.

“Of course.” His body felt too small for his heart, for the way it swelled with warmth at the thought. That she was his, that he was hers. That she wanted to be his, and that she wanted him. “Of course, my sweet fool. I hope you will always be mine.”

Another kiss, softer this time, her lips lingering against his skin as though she were loath to draw away. He was loath to let her draw away, to feel her receding, even if it was only a few inches away. “As long as I draw breath, and even after.”

They shared more sweet words after that, Aspen telling him how proud she was, how happy he’d made the kids, how well he had handled things. She told him how she’d thought he was awfully sweet, that she’d missed him terribly, especially since she’d had to leave so frequently to change diapers and feed the little ones.

Genuine words were still a struggle to Astarion, and his compliments were more stilted as he searched for words that felt real, that felt true. While he loved to use smooth words and charming phrases to tease her, using them when he was trying to be sincere felt like oil on his tongue. So he did not use them, although it meant that whenever he tried to tell her something sweet it was a struggle.

But Aspen was a patient woman, and she was delighted in even the smallest of compliments and loving words.

He told her that he’d missed her and she cooed, he told her that he’d thought of her often and she blushed, he told her that he was happy she was his partner and she nearly melted into his embrace, murmuring about how happy she was that he was hers.

Eventually though, they lapsed into silence, fatigue descending on them like a heavy veil. Aspen’s words turned to humming, melodies melting into each other as her voice dipped and swelled through all her favourite songs. Astarion turned his focus to Rigel, the toy fully dry, its matted fur soft and fluffy, conjuring up an image of what he must have looked like when he’d first been gifted to Willow.

He threaded silvery thread through the eye of a needle before stabbing it into the fabric of the toy. At first, Astarion had planned to just quickly stitch up the tears so no more stuffing leaked out. But the memory of all the stars painted onto Willow’s box of treasures rose in his mind, as did the echo of her voice shouting “Star!” when she saw him.

He was no great artist, but he had become adept at simple embroidery over the centuries. Perhaps he could try to embroider in constellations around the rips in Rigel’s body and over the places where his fur was most matted.

The task was easier said than done despite Astarion being intimately familiar with the constellations that glittered in the sky. He suspected he knew them better than even the most skilled astronomers and academics, the stars having been his only companions, his only source of light for so long.

But just because he knew them, did not mean he could stitch them into Rigel’s side particularly easily.

He cursed as he stabbed his finger with the needle, yanking his hand up to suck on the wound as he glared down at the toy. Perhaps he needed to use a different coloured thread, one that would show better against the fabric that had been used to make the toy.

“Are you okay?” Aspen’s words tickled his jaw as she perched her chin on his shoulder, peering over to see what he was so focused on.

“Nothing to worry about, my darling,” he murmured, the sharp pain nearly vanishing entirely. “My hand slipped, that’s all.”

“Do you want me to kiss it better?”

He lifted his finger to her lips, turning his head as best he could to meet her eyes. “If you would be so kind, my love. I think your kiss might be just what I need to feel better.”

Her answering smile was wry as she leaned forward, brushing her lips against the pad of his finger, over the small puncture wound that was nearly invisible already. “How’s that?”

“I feel much improved already.” He tapped her lips once for good measure, her breath ghosting over his skin. “What would I do without you, my dear?”

She kissed his finger again, tilted her head to the side to kiss his jaw, her lips lingering on his skin. “You’d have to find someone else to kiss your wounds better.”

“I’d rather bleed out,” he declared. “Than let anyone else’s lips touch me.”

She giggled, nestling her head in the crook of his neck. “I’m sure you would find someone else, perhaps someone who has a bit more talent for stitching, to adore you.”

“Yet I don’t want anyone else.” He reached around to pinch her side again, and although she yelped softly, she did not move. “I only want you. And if I could not have you, then I wouldn’t want anyone else.”

She hummed, warm breath tickling his throat. “Can I tell you something?”

Curiosity piqued, he twisted, trying to assess her expression as best he could from where she’d perched her head. “Anything, my darling.”

“I don’t want there to be anyone else either,” she whispered, her lips curled up in a conspiratorial smile. “I want to be the only person who kisses you.”

He chuckled again, mirth like spun sugar, sweet and fluffy and light. “I didn’t know you were so greedy.”

“And what if I am?” She wrapped her arms around his waist, hands knotting together above his navel, holding him close. “No one is perfect.”

Perhaps not, but he didn’t need perfection. He wanted her as she was, soft and silly, her heart so big it was far too easy to wound, a little selfish despite how hard she tried to hide it.

“I don’t mind.” His words were whisper soft, and still they carried, dancing in the air like the firelight. “You can be as greedy as you want.”

Aspen said nothing, although he felt the shudder of her breath against his neck. Her arms tightened, and it felt like she was curling against him tighter, holding herself so close it was like she wanted to crawl beneath his skin.

He did not speak either, instead only stroking the back of her hand, tracing his thumb over the ridges of her knuckles. Silence with her was comforting, it was safe. He didn’t have to say anything, didn’t have to be anything or do anything at all. He could just sit here, with her close by, and that was enough for the both of them.

Eventually he did return to his work, slowly embroidering constellations into Rigel’s side. Behind him, Aspen shifted, resting her head against the back of his neck, scattering kisses against him every few moments.

“What are you doing?” She was the first to end the quiet. It startled him, although her voice was soft as a caress. He’d thought she’d fallen asleep, her breaths so even, not a sound coming from her.

“I’m adding a bit of embroidery to Rigel,” he said, shifting around to show her his work. “I thought it would add a bit of flare.”

She leaned over the toy, pressing the tips of her fingers to his work, tracing the lines of the constellations. “They look like stars.”

He smiled, pleased with her cleverness, with the quiet awe at his work. He wasn’t even close to finished yet, but already she saw something beautiful that he had created with his own hands. “They are. I thought, since he shares the name of a star, and Willow is so fond of stars, why not add some constellations? A little embellishment around where he was torn.”

Looking back up to catch his eye, Aspen’s expression was warm, soft, and utterly enchanted. “You’re amazing, did you know that?”

He chuckled. “I did know, but it sounds better when it comes from your lips.”

She snorted, rolling her eyes as she sat back against the cushions. “You’ve done a beautiful job already.”

“I hope she likes it.” He hadn’t meant to give the feeling form, and yet the words slipped out anyways. Honesty was forever being coaxed from him in her presence, his heart opened and laid bare.

It was an anxiety that had only just begun to well in him like water from a leak, but giving it voice eased some of the pressure, especially as Aspen fixed her eyes on him.

“I think that she loves stars,” she said, turning towards him, one hand resting lightly on his arm. “And she loves Rigel, and she’s fond of you. I don’t see how she wouldn’t like it.”

He quirked his mouth to the side. “And you’re quite certain?”

“I am. And with your skill at sewing and embroidery I can’t imagine you creating something she wouldn’t love.”

Her praise was like sunshine peeking out from the horizon at dawn. “It’s not my usual kind of work, I’ll be honest. But I do think it will turn out quite nicely.”

“You embroidered my dress only last week, didn’t you?” She asked, bringing to mind the pretty dress she had worn to a midnight market that had been torn in a slight altercation. He had stitched flowers and vines along the tear all the way to the waist of the dress. “It’s not much different than that, is it?”

He hummed, setting the needle to the side. “I suppose not, although I’m more used to working with clothes rather than toys. I doubt the person I was when I learned to sew had planned to use the skill for adorning children’s toys.”

She was silent for a moment, her eyes searching his face, a curious look in her eyes. “What do you think he would say to you now? The you that’s using your skill to decorate a toy?”

Astarion stared at the floor, feeling strange. It was like he was heavy and light all at once, both melancholic and blissful. He had never thought of a life beyond the shadows back then, beyond the torture and the darkness. And yet here he was anyways, sitting in a warm room, bathed in light. Here he was, loved and cherished. Holding a toy in his hands, trying to make it beautiful for a child he had only just met.

“If the person I was even just a year ago could see me now, I don’t know what he’d say,” he admitted. Because it was the truth, he did not know.

She settled a hand on his wrist, squeezing gently. “Do you think he would be upset? Or angry?”

“No, I…” Trailing off, Astarion considered the question, thinking of the darkness and the hopelessness he had lived in for so long. “No, I think he would be surprised. I think he might not believe it at first, that it was just an illusion, or a trick.”

“And what about when he finally did believe it was true?”

He swallowed, his tongue heavy as he tried to find the words, as that strange feeling only grew, unfurling great wings like a magnificent creature about to take to the skies. “I think he would be surprised. I think…”

Her fingers ran down his hand, gently flipping it over so she could trace the lines of his palm. “Do you think it would make him happy?”

“I think it would give him hope.” He wrapped his hand around hers, focused on the way their fingers interlaced. “To keep living another day, because one day he would be happy.”

When he looked up again he found her eyes lined in silver, her mouth fallen into a small o.

It made him chuckle, and he cupped her cheek. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Her voice was wobbling, her lips tugging into a tremulous smile. “But… Does that mean you’re happy? Does that mean you’re happy now?”

Astarion turned the question over in his mind, gently prodding at the strangeness in his heart, that was spreading through his veins. The lingering sorrow from the memories of his past that still clung to him. It was fading slowly, but he knew some of it would be with him forever.

Then there was the newfound radiancy, the delicate, spidersilk-thin happiness. It was newly bloomed, fragile as flower buds. And yet it was bright, growing stronger with every passing day. It washed over the melancholy, softened its sting. Like a flame, the tiniest kindling made it glow brighter, spread its warmth through his veins.

Aspen’s smile, her laugh. The newfound freedom that let him travel freely, that let him do as he wished when he wished. Plucking flowers and braiding them together, tying them into Aspen’s hair as she settled a wildflower crown in his curls. Holding her hand as they wandered through starlit streets, searching for shops and taverns still open late into the night. Dancing with live music arcing through the air, laughing and free, no thoughts in his mind but that he found the melody pleasing and the air was warm and he could feel his heart thrumming in his chest.

Waking each day whenever he wished, buying new clothes and sweet-smelling perfumes, bathing in burning water whenever he pleased, napping like a lazy cat as Aspen played with his hair. Reading new stories that were utterly enchanting, wrapping himself in silken blankets. 

Coming here, listening to the children chatter on about utter nonsense. Listening to them tell him about their toys, playing games with them and braiding their hair and trying not to laugh at their utter silliness.

All of it, he turned over in his mind. Threaded it through Aspen’s question like a needle as he stitched something beautiful into cloth. It shone, glittering yellow and silver and gold.

The shadows were there, yes. But the light was so much brighter. It was vivid, incandescent, blooming in his heart, strength lying hidden in its fragility.

Was he happy?

“Yes.” His voice was low, hoarse. He cleared his throat, looked back up into her eyes, tears gathered at their edges, catching in her dark lashes. “Yes, I’m happy.”

Her bottom lip trembled, her cheeks turning a splotchy pink. “I think that’s the first time you’ve said that you’re happy.”

Another ember to add to the flickering flames in his heart, another piece of kindling that made it grow. It felt strange to admit it, but it felt good, too. It was a sweet pleasure, letting the words fall from his lips, seeing how her face brightened even as tears rolled down her cheeks.

He chuckled, catching her tears on his thumb and brushing them away. “It won’t be the last time, either, my darling.”

A small sob escaped her lips, and she wiped at her face. “My love, can I hug you?”

He cupped her cheek, giving her an indulgent smile. “You never have to ask.”

She buried her face against his chest, nearly knocking Rigel and the needle and thread away. “I know,��� she muttered, her words muffled against his shirt. “But I feel like I must ask, especially when I am acting so dramatically.”

“I don’t mind.” He breathed the words into her hair, gently stroking her back. “I love all your theatrics.”

She gave a tremulous giggle, another sob chasing after it. “I love you. I want you to always be happy. I’ll do anything to make you happy.”

He sighed, smiling. How did he tell her that she was his light, his sunshine? That she had painted his world in technicolour, irrevocably changing everything from the moment their eyes had met?

He didn’t know, at least not yet. For now, as he cradled her close, he settled on saying “then hold me a little longer.”

Aspen had no qualms with that, her arms wrapping around his waist to hold him tight.

They held each other close, the night stretching out around them. Once Aspen’s sobs had quieted and her tears had dried up she tried to pull away, but he drew her back, not yet ready to let her go. He needed another minute, maybe five, maybe ten. Maybe he just needed an eternity to hold her and breathe her in and memorize the beat of her heart and the shape of her body and the feel of her hair against his cheek.

It was only when Rigel tumbled to the floor, having been perched precariously on his knee when she’d dove into his arms, that reminded Astarion that there was still work to be done.

Begrudgingly, he released her, leaning down to scoop Rigel up and continue with his embroidery.

Aspen curled up beside him, leaning back against the cushions of the couch as she watched him work. Her hands, idle with nothing to keep them occupied, strayed to his hair, and he welcome the touch as she combed her fingers through his curls, as she slid them down the back of his neck.

“I’m sure there is a book somewhere in this house you could read,” he teased, sparing her a glance. “Or there should be one you haven’t read yet in my pack.”

“Perhaps.” She paused, her hands falling. “Did you want me to stop?”

Oh the opposite. Had he not been dreaming of her touch all day?

“Not at all, darling,” he murmured, drawing the needle up, silver thread shimmering in the firelight. “But I don’t want you to be bored.”

“I’m not bored,” she said. “I think what you’re doing is amazing.”

“It’s only embroidery. I’m sure I could teach you.”

She looked away, cheeks staining pink. “I fear I would make a lousy student.”

He sat up, smirking. “I’m sure I could come up with some incentives that would encourage you to do well.”

The pink turned to a burning crimson, and she stood with a start, huffing. “Maybe I will go find a book to read if you’re just going to tease me!”

There was no missing the smile that tugged at her lips, although Astarion decided to keep quiet as she slipped away, searching for where they had stowed their belongings.

She returned moments later, plopping down onto the couch with a huff.

It did not escape his notice that she was still smiling, or that she’d still sat close enough that their arms brushed against each other. Had she truly been mad she probably would have sat at the other end of the couch, if not a completely different chair.

“Did you miss me terribly?” He arched a brow, sneaking a look at her burning cheeks, at the quivering smile she was clearly trying to fight.

Despite all that her tone was clipped, her answer short. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“But I missed you,” he cooed, leaning so close his lips brushed against her skin as he spoke. “I missed you so terribly.”

Her eyes flicked away, focusing on the empty mantle above the fireplace. “And if I did miss you?”

“Then I would think there was no greater compliment.”

She rolled her eyes, but she no longer fought against her smile. “You’ve caught me. I missed you.”

“Terribly?”

Finally her eyes met his, widening as she caught sight of his smile. “Yes. Yes, I missed you terribly.”

Satisfied, Astarion turned back to his work. He’d completed two constellations, but there were still a few more to go, and he really did have to focus if he wanted to complete them by dawn, when the children would surely begin stirring. Willow was surely anxious for her wolf to be returned, to hold him close once more.

But thinking of the children gave him pause, and in his heart he still ached, the feeling heavy after carrying it around for the day.

“Aspen?”

She looked up from her book, brushing back a lock of hair that had fallen over her cheek. “Yes?”

Again he set aside the toy, a part of him wondering if he even would finish it before the sun rose again. “Do you remember earlier, when you told me that it was okay not to know how I feel?”

She nodded, her brow creasing. “I do. And that it’s okay to take your time.”

But he didn’t need time, not really. He did not fully understand what it was that he felt, but he knew there was fondness. He knew there was want.

“I…” He trailed off, biting his tongue. “I think I do know what I’m feeling, in a way.”

“What kind of way?” She set her book to the side, reaching out to take one of his hands, cradling it between hers. “What are you feeling?”

“Well as you know, I don’t always do the best around children,” he started. He felt like he was rambling, taking the long way around rather than getting straight to the point. But what even was his point? How did he articulate this?

For her part, Aspen remained patient, nodding her head. It looked like she was chewing on the inside of her cheek, trying to decipher where he was headed.

“But I feel…” He covered her hands with his free one, needing to hold onto something. “I feel fond of them. I don’t exactly show it well, and I don’t exactly know how to act around them most of the time. But I always feel something strange, like my heart is aching.”

Oh what was he even saying? His heart is aching? Who did he think he was, a poet? A bard?

Her eyes narrowed, but she only nodded again. “I think I might understand.”

He clapped his palm to his forehead, groaning. “I think you might be the only one. I don’t even understand what I’m saying.”

“It’s okay,” she murmured, squeezing his hand. “Just take your time. I’m here, I’m listening.”

He searched through his mind again, rifled through the knotted tangles of the feelings in his heart. It was like he was stumbling through a darkened wood, branches and thorns reaching out to tear at his clothes and hair. He could not see very far ahead, but he knew he had to keep going forward, felt it deep in the marrow of his bones.

“I like them,” he said, fighting through the dark wood in his heart, the words clawing their way up his throat. He wished he could find a more eloquent way to say it, a prettier way to give his feelings shape and form.

He was not yet used to voicing his wants. Simple things like perfumes and clothes and kisses on cheeks were easy enough, but digging into his heart to unearth something he wanted, to then show her what it was that he had kept buried, that was another thing entirely.

It didn’t help that he’d shoved all of these things away when the tadpole had allowed him to escape. He’d needed to focus on keeping himself safe, on staying safe, on finding a way to end his eternal servitude for good. Yet now here he was, free from his shackles, trying to learn who he was now, trying to understand what it was he wanted.

A lover, a partner. A wedding, something extravagant but private, shared with only his beloved and their closest companions. A life spent together, adventuring, searching for fun, feeling alive.

And beyond that…

“Children, I mean,” he said, looking away for a moment. He felt her squeeze his hand, her thumbs gently pressing into his palm as she began massaging it, trying to soothe him. “I like children.”

Her reply was soft, gentle. “They seem to like you, too.”

The hand at his brow fell into his lap, clenching into a fist. He looked back up, meeting her eyes again. They were warm as spring, reminding him of blooming flowers and verdant buds on trees, of life and growing things. A soft smile curved across her lips, hesitant, like she wanted to say something more but did not want to cut in.

“I feel like… Like perhaps I would want one. Perhaps I would want a child.”

The breath she took was sharp, her brows shooting up. “You want a child.”

He couldn’t have looked away from her now even if he’d wanted to. The persistent flush in her cheeks was spreading across her face, down her throat and beneath the collar of her shirt. He could picture it spreading further in his mind, even the soft skin of her breasts warming to a vermillion red.

Her chest heaved, her eyes bright against the carmine of her flushed face. There was a tremble to her lips, and he watched as she bit the inside of her cheek, as though she were trying to hold herself together.

She looked spellbound, clinging to his words like they were made of magic. And perhaps they were, relief and bliss spilling into his veins as they passed his lips.

He had said the words, he had found what lay in his heart and he had laid it bare. He had unveiled it to both Aspen and himself.

Hope danced like sunlight in her eyes, joy bursting like a fulmination of colour. Just seeing it made him happy, watching her face grow bright igniting a euphoria that nothing could match.

“I say we just take the lot of them with us,” he said, feeling giddy, heedless of any of the logistical issues in adopting seven children at once.

Aspen giggled, her eyes squeezing shut. “Astarion-”

Laughter bubbling up her throat cut her off, and he took the opportunity to squeeze her hands, to lean forward and rub his nose against hers. “Yes, my darling?”

She snorted, her laughter becoming infectious. His shoulders trembled, his breath catching as he laughed.

“Astarion, we can’t just adopt seven kids.”

“Well we could, technically.”

She drew away, errant giggles catching between her words. “You realize children are a lot of hard work. And neither of us have the means to take care of one, let alone seven.”

That sobered him a little, and he moved closer again, resting his head on her shoulder. “You’re right, and I know you’re right. But I…” His chest tightened, his heart clenching. “It’s hard to explain. But I want one. And I’ve grown fond of the children here.”

“I understand,” she murmured, stroking his hair. “I would like to have a child, too.”

“That wasn’t exactly a secret, my dear.”

Swift, sharp pain cut through his side as she pinched him, but Astarion only chuckled, pleased with himself.

It was true, although she’d never fully voiced her desire. But he was no fool, and he’d pieced together the want brewing in her heart easily enough.

“My apologies, love.”

She sighed. “I can feel your smile, Astarion, I know you’re not sorry.”

“Well, I am a little sorry. You were in the midst of telling me how deeply you want my children.”

Another pinch, followed by a groan of annoyance.

“I am not sorry for that,” he said, pulling away so he could gaze at her adorable scowl. “Not in the least.”

“I’d gathered.” She sighed, closing her eyes. “You can be such a scoundrel sometimes.”

He beamed. “But I’m your beloved, am I not?”

Her eyes opened to narrowed slits, her mouth quirking down. “You are.”

“Then I am your beloved scoundrel.”

She groaned again, but there was no hiding her smile. “Yes, you are my beloved scoundrel. My most cherished villain.”

“Thank you, my dear.” He stroked her cheek, the heat of her skin seeping into his, warming the blood in his veins. “You are my beloved as well, although you are not much of a scoundrel or a villain.”

She laced her fingers with his, holding his hand to her cheek. “And if you were curious, I would very much like your children.”

Now he was the one to blush, as much as his undead body would allow, and he looked away quickly, his breath caught in his lungs.

Perhaps she could be a rogue, on occasion.

“Astarion?” Her voice had softened, and she reached for his face, slowly turning it back to face her. “Are you still with me?”

He cleared his throat, swallowing thickly. “Yes, you were saying…”

The smug delight in her face was radiant, and although it was at his expense, he didn’t mind.

“I was saying that I understand how you feel,” she said, her voice lilting like a melody. “That I want children, too.”

He sighed. “But I assume you are saying we cannot keep the children as our own.”

Shaking her head, she looked sorrowful, remorseful. “I wish that we could. I’ve grown fond of them too.”

He looked back at Rigel, perched on the edge of the couch, needle and thread dangling from his side, the embroidery half-finished. “Not even Willow?”

“Not right now.” She sounded sad, close to heartbreak. “I wish we could. I want to, my love, I do.”

He could sense the ‘but’ in her words, although she did not voice it. And he understood, he really did. He even agreed with her on it. They were in the midst of travelling, searching for texts and scholars who could help them, scouring the lands for anything that might allow him to walk in the sun once more, that could cure him of his centuries-long curse.

It was not exactly a good way to raise a child, especially not one as gentle and delicate as Willow.

“But…” Aspen kept her hand on his cheek, the corners of her lips turning up once more. “Perhaps, since we are both so fond of the children, we could stay a little longer.”

Hope, like fountain water, surged, glittering like diamonds beneath sunshine. “We can stay?”

She shrugged, her smile growing wider. “I don’t see why we couldn’t. It’s clear they’re going to need support until the flooding gets fixed. And, I’m sure the children would have no objection if they had someone new to play with for a few days.”

Like the flutter of wings in the sky, giddiness flitted through his heart. He could not sit still, electric energy crackling across his veins, making his hands tremble.

“I would love that,” he said, so joyous, so happy, he felt incandescent. The stars could not compare to the light that was setting him ablaze.

Aspen giggled, stroking the corner of his lips. “I’m so glad.”

“My darling,” he said, nearly sang, reaching up to take her hand, to bring it to his lips. He pressed a kiss to the heel of her hand, then her palm, then another still to each fingertip. “My sweetest Aspen. I love you.”

A sigh like the wind rustling leaves slipped from her lips. “I love you, too.”

“Thank you for always showing me such patience, and kindness.” He had spilled his heart to her, and now it seemed he could not stop. “Thank you for listening to me, for this kindness.”

Silver lined her eyes once more, and she laughed, and then she sighed again, tears trickling down her crimson-stained cheeks. “You don’t need to thank me, my love. I want to make you smile, I want to make you so very happy.”

“And you do,” he insisted, kissing her palm once more. “You make me happier than words could ever say.”

She shuddered as he trailed his lips along the lines of her palm, as he nipped at her skin, not quite hard enough to draw blood.

“Thank you for this indulgence,” he breathed, closing his eyes. “I hope one day we can have as many little ones as we want.”

“I hope so, too,” she said, longing in her voice. “I want that terribly.”

He did, too. He wanted it terribly.

It was strange to admit, even just to himself. And yet he wanted it so deeply his heart ached, and sorrow threaded itself between the tributaries of his veins at the knowledge that in this moment they could not. They could not adopt a child of their own, not when they were still in the midst of their quest. Not when he himself was still healing and finding himself.

But the hope in Aspen’s eyes, in her words, that same hope kindling within him, softened the sting of the melancholy.

Today they could not, and tomorrow would likely be the same. But the day after? Or the day after that? Neither of them knew, but perhaps it would bring them one step closer to meeting their goals. To starting a new adventure, to finding a different sort of fun.

And that did nothing but stoke the hope in his heart, make it burn all the brighter. That someday he would be healed. That someday both his heart and body would be cured, and their life would take another turn. That perhaps they could truly consider having children.

How could it not, especially when Aspen was at his side? When she would always be at his side, the two of them facing the world and the future together.

But for now he would be content with staying for a few days longer, playing with the children, braiding their hair, reading them stories if they wished.

He turned his attention back to Rigel, back to the incomplete embroidery. There was one little girl in particular he wanted to ensure was happy, who he wanted to see happy again before they departed.

“I really must finish this,” he said, settling the toy and his needle and thread back into his lap.

“It’s beautiful,” Aspen said, leaning against him to peer around his shoulder. “I’m sure it will make Willow very happy.”

When he looked over at her, Aspen had a strange look in her eye. Something wistful, full of longing.

“What is it?” He tapped her nose, drawing her from her reverie. “What are you thinking about?”

“Oh nothing. It’s nothing.”

He smirked. “Darling, it is not nothing, I can tell. I shared my secrets, now you share yours.”

There was yearning in her voice as she spoke; “I was only thinking that you would make a good father, considering how hard you’re working on making that little girl happy.”

A choked sound emerged from his throat and he coughed, looking away quickly. Delight curled in his belly like a pleased creature, heat spreading across his body, gathering deep within him.

“That’s very kind of you, my dear,” he said, his voice coming out strangled. “But now I need you to hush. I need to finish this for Willow, and you’re distracting me.”

She rolled her eyes, smirking as if she knew exactly how she’d made him feel. “If you insist.”

Before she could fully stand he snagged her arm, keeping her close. “But you have to stay here, with me.”

Her smile softened, and she nodded, nestling against his side. “Of course. There’s nowhere I would rather be.”

He tapped her cheek. “But no more distractions.”

She schooled her expression into one of faux solemnity. “Yes, absolutely no more distractions.”

With a sigh, he returned to his work, Aspen’s comforting warmth washing over him like ocean waves. She stayed close, although she diverted her attention to the book she had found, her steady breaths a balm to his mind, to his heart.

There was nothing particularly exciting about the night, no monsters to fight, no puzzles to solve, no death-defying feats that needed to be performed. There was only the quiet hush of her breath, the steady weight of her body leaning against his, the cool metal of the needle between his fingers as constellations bloomed into existence beneath his hands.

It was, by all accounts, utterly mundane.

And yet Astarion could not stop smiling, happiness settling over him like a blanket tucked around his shoulders, like the warmth of a kiss pressed to his brow.

This was not at all how he had expected to spend the rest of his day, or his night, but he was glad for the detour. He didn’t want to fight any monsters or solve any puzzles or do anything particularly dangerous, no matter how exhilarating. He only wanted to be here, embroidering by firelight, Aspen curled up beside him, the memory of the day replaying in his mind.

It didn’t take long for him to finish the embroidery, and he lifted the toy up for examination, turning it from side-to-side as he caught the glitter of the silver thread he had used.

“My love, what do you think?” He turned to show Aspen, only to find her fast asleep, her book having fallen to one side. He hadn’t even noticed, too wrapped up in embroidering to register how her breaths had changed, the sound of pages turning ceasing altogether.

He clicked his tongue, warmth blossoming in his heart at her sleeping face. “Oh, my darling, you’ve gone and fallen asleep on me.”

He set Rigel to the side, situating the toy so he sat like a wolf would. He would just have to show Aspen in the morning, before presenting the toy to Willow when she awoke.

Then he drew Aspen to his chest, brushing her hair back from her face. A worn blanket was tossed over the arm of the couch, and he took hold of it, tucking it around her to keep her warm as the fire began to die.

“Sweet dreams, my love,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her brow. “I hope you dream of me. And perhaps some little children to keep us both occupied.”

He smiled then, letting his mind wander as he held her close. He was incandescent in the happiness he felt, outshining the stars that glittered in the midnight sky.

He could not dream, but he would imagine what their lives could be. He would imagine finding a cure so he could walk freely in the sun, so he could age alongside her. He would imagine little children, sharing her smile and his eyes. He would imagine every tiny thing he could ever want, and then when she awoke, he would tell her them all.

And after that? He would look forward to her smile, and he would hold onto the hope that they would make all of those things come true.

[croginski]

Day 2- Blackstaff Student AU

Fanfic only

Rating: teen

Gale/ named tav (Holly Mac)

Alternative universe where Holly meets Gale before the events of Balder’s gate 3

Warnings: mentions of Mystra

Gale felt the feeling of something small and soft patting at his face. “Mr. Dekarios! You are late once again! You are going to miss the student exchange!” His beloved tressym shouts at him as Tara tried her best to wake up the senior apprentice. Gale grumbles something incoherent before rolling over in a futile attempt to avoid Tara’s yowls.

A low rumbling growl comes from tressym as she released the claws of her paw, hesitantly she puts a few into the eighteen-year-old’s flesh. Gale jumps up with a jolt, “Tara! The hells! Fine, I’ll go to the student exchange! Now, please, allow me to dress!” He screams as Tara jumps off the bed. “Thank you Mr. Dekarios please make sure to hurry!” She comments as she makes for the small balcony to allow the young wizard some privacy.

Gale flings the covers off of him and hunches over at the edge of the bed. He runs his hands through his short brown hair before rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He had spent much of the night with “her” in the astral plane. His body may have remained here but his mind did not sleep much. With a loud sigh he pushed himself off the bed and over to the wardrobe. Carefully he opened it and started to put on his student robes. He moved with very little sense of urgency as he started to wash his face at the washbasin. He took far too much time adjusting his appearance.

Tara returned from the balcony and swatted at the young man’s legs. “Gale you are late! As one of the school’s top scholars it is important for you to greet the students of New Olamn!” She hisses. Gale stops his preening and lets out of string of ‘okay’s and ‘I’m going’s, as he rushed out of his dorm room. He briskly walked through the dark colored halls to the great hall. Several professors met the prodigy’s gaze and tsk’d disapprovingly. Eventually the young wizard finally reached the great hall and tried his best to slink in unnoticed into the nearest seat. He knew the boy he sat next to, he knew him more than he would as an acquaintance but not well enough to consider him a friend. Gale nodded to him in acknowledgment, the boy chuckled at his peer. Gale finally turned his attention to the front of the room as the professors explained what was happening today. “New Olamn students will be joining us for their lessons today. This exchange had a long standing history to network amongst scholars as well as, hopefully, harbor an appreciation for a different way of spellcasting.” Explained the professor up at the front as both the budding bards and young wizards looked extremely bored. The professor continued to lecture on the history of the partnerships amongst bards and wizards. Gale’s attention drifted from the professor to the bard students sitting on the opposite side of the hall. Most of them were attractive individuals, some of those who presented more masculine were dressed bright costumes, while others were more debonair. Those who presented more feminine leaned into femininity. While all the blackstaff students had a set uniform, these students of the bard college had no such conformity.

Gale’s eyes landed on a few of the students he found particularly attractive. He pondered if the rumors of bardic behaviors of promiscuity was true. Finally his eyes landed on a girl with long copper colored locks and tanned freckled skin. While nothing could compare to the beautiful projection of his “lady”, this girl perhaps held at least a close second.

Suddenly a voice interrupted his musings, “…Master Dekarios! Please tell me what you find so fascinating at the other side of the room.” Suddenly all eyes turn to him, including the girl he was just looking at. She knew in that instant that the young wizard’s attention had been on her. She smirked and let out a small giggle as she made this realization. Gale’s cheeks flushed in embarrassment as he quickly turned his attention to the voice that had called him out. “Apologies professor, my attention will be on you for now on, can you repeat the question?” He asks in a panic. The older wizard shook their head, “please enlighten us on who is Elminster and what connections he had to a particularly famous bard…” Gale nodded and started to explain what he knew about Elminster and his connections to Volothamp Geddarm as he tried to appear unabashed.

The rest of the day went about pretty uneventful. There were lectures and demonstrations by both the Blackstaff students and New Olanm students. Lectures were given by professors from both schools.

Soon it was time for lunch lead to networking, where the pretty girl with the copper colored hair introduced herself to her admirer. Gale looked up from his food and noticed her standing in front of him and the peers he had chosen to sit with. She was flanked by two of her own peers. “Mind if we sit? I’m Holly Mac by the way.” She said with a sweetness in her voice as she looked directly at Gale. The young man froze for a few moments, normally he was a bit suave when he was talking to people that caught his fancy. However, this girl matched his confidence and that made him pause.

The boy he had sat next to greeted the group of bards and invited them to sit. Holly sat opposite to Gale and nodded to him, “and your name?” She asked as she piled on some grapes and cheese onto her plate. Gale cleared his throat and bowed his head to her, “apologies, my name is Gale Dekarios” he replies as he extends his hand to her. Holly takes it gently and gives is a slight shake. “Pleasure, I must admit I was hesitant to come today, but I do find Blackstaff Tower to be quite welcoming despite its intimidating exterior” she replies with a bright smile. Gale smiles back and nods at her comment, “well I am glad you have felt welcome, I hope you found the demonstrations useful. I hope to be able to join the group attending the visit to New Olanm.”

Gale and Holly exchanged pleasantries for much of the lunch hour as their respective peers got to know each other. The boy who had sat down with Holly turned the groups attention to him, “spread the word, the bards of New Olanm will be going to the Yawning Portal tonight, hopefully you all can join!” He announced, before the bells chimed for the students to return to classes.

——————————————————————-

Later that day, Gale returned to his dorm. When he entered the room a familiar smell met his nose. Rosewater… and the air pulsed with arcanic energy. His goddess was calling, Gale smiled to himself as he reached out his hand to the wisps of energy and soon he was whisked away to the ethereal realm.

Mystra placed a hand on the young wizard’s shoulder. “Good evening Gale of Waterdeep… I presume you had a productive day…” she said in a low amused voice. Gale smirked as his eye-line met the goddess’s “Yes, my lady… though I must ask that we cut our lesson short tonight, I’ve actually been invited to a social event tonight. And I must be a good Blackstaff representative” he commented with a chuckle. Mystra joined him in his laughter, “ahh yes, the exchange of Blackstaff Academy and New Olanm. Yes, yes, of course. I shall drop you at the Yawning portal after our lesson…” the goddess said with a nod.

——————————————————————-

Gale walked into the tavern later than he had expected. However, the Blackstaff students and bard students were still engaged in their reveries. As he entered the Yawning portal, he noticed a few of his peers that he enjoyed the company of. He greeted them and engaged in hellos. The entire tavern was filled with noise, chatter and music. He finally noticed that there were two bards up on a table playing lewd shanties on their lutes. The flamboyant boy that had sat down with Holly and Holly herself both enjoying themselves. Both had dawned more colorful garb, Holly’s shirts were hiked up to reveal slivers of calves and thigh in between to colored frills. She wore a tight set of leather corset stays and a flowy peasant blouse underneath, artfully revealing and concealing her décolletage in an appealing way. Gale noticed this and smirked, she was beautiful… and only here for one night. Perhaps, he could indulge his more carnal instincts. He stole a few of his peers drinks and downed them, promising to buy them another before making his way through the crowd towards the bards’ makeshift stage.

Holly noticed the handsome young wizard approaching her through the crowd. She smiled as she continued to sing and dance for the crowd that she and her friend had accumulated. However, she had hoped Gale would show up tonight. She met his gaze and boldly decided to preform directly to him, a good opportunity to use her bardic charms. Over the next couple minutes the two flirted with each other without words. Looks and glances filled the space between them. Once the song was over Holly passed the lute to one of the other bard students and jumped down off the table. She approached Gale with a particularly seductive sway in her hips. She smiled at him before speaking, “I’m glad you made it!”

Gale tilted his head and smirked back “wouldn’t miss the opportunity to network with the next generation of bards” he replies before offering his hand to her. Holly looked down at his hand back to his face, deftly she takes his hand. Gale nodded and pulled her through the tavern to a more secluded corner. Several other couples were already there engaging in kisses and necking. Similar ‘networking’ was being conducted among the students of Blackstaff and New Olanm.

Gale pushed Holly up against the wall gently as his hands explored her waist. “May I kiss you” he asks almost in a hushed tone. Holly nodded before taking the lead and engaging in the kiss first. Gale let out a huff through his nose as if like a laugh before leaning in and joining her in their exchange. Moments seemed to stand still as they explored each other’s tastes. However, eventually, Holly broke away having run out of air. She clung to this handsome boy as Gale took the opportunity to kiss down her jaw and on to her neck, making sure to enjoy the taste of her sensitive skin on her neck. Holly let out a quiet moan before whispering “so… my room or yours?”

[reticulating-splines]

Chez Cromwell: Redux- Pt. 2

Magical Victorian Cat Mansion. Redone.

Part II: Interiors | Part I

So after the long-awaited addition of Infants and Ceilings to the game, I realized I should probably update my one furnished build (so far) for these features. Unfortunately I got carried away again and just ended up revamping the whole build from the exterior, to each individual room + some new ones! This version has also been more extensively play-tested over time with all age groups and pets, with some extra fire hazard and accessibility issues addressed.

It still has all the original Lot Features:

Victorian era historical build, fully playtested

Off-the-grid compatible

9 Bed / 6 bath

Library Greenhouse

Spellcaster's room

Outdoor smokehouse

Pleasure + kitchen gardens

Portal to the magic realm

Hidden cat room, litterroom, + catway system for Familiars

Staff/Servant's lounge w/ private stairs

Bedrooms for Butler, Nanny/Governess, and Maids

Lot size 30x40, fully landscaped

Cat Hangout, Peace and Quiet

Spooky lot challenge

As well as an extensive Changelog and list of New Features:

Revamped exteriors + interiors, roofs, and gardens

Ceilings for all rooms

Added even more windows somehow

Skylights for 3rd floor and wraparound verandah

Rooftop meditation-garden-yoga-summoning-circle

Portals! Small library located off the spell-room has been converted into the Portal Room with 3 portals leading throughout the house: one to the tower on the roof, one to the greenhouse in the back, and one to the third floor hall.

Moved Magic Realm Portal to rooftop garden

Put more cat doors everywhere, they enjoy using the catdoors and portals for zoomies

Sprinklers, alarms, and fire resistant flooring have been added around fireplaces.

Fireplace in the tower was removed for it's propensity to set the roof on fire and become unreachable and inextinguishable

Tower room has been converted into a Collections display room instead, a la sims 3

Portal in the tower/Collections room also makes potential burglaries more threatening, but if you’re an occult you’re expected to employ practical DADA techniques to avert this

Updated Nursery and Playroom for Infants

Redid terrain paint. Twice. Why tf does it just vanish randomly sometimes

NEW Magic Bean Hunt! Stump is located where the magic realm portal used to be and beans are strategically hidden around the lot. I'd love to see how long it takes for you to catch them all!

Washbasins for rooms without bathrooms now look like washbasins and are actually useable, both on and off grid

Added privacy hedges and lattices to backyard and fenced in chicken run

Potions Crafting Table added to Spell-room

Crafters Supply Cabinet added to Kitchen

Pocketed pocket doors

Secret Cat Room color scheme updated and cat-approved artwork added

Another Cat room added to 3rd floor

Magic Well has been shrunk

Rooftop area outside 3rd floor Study converted into rooftop Pavilion with chessboard and painting easel

Jack-and-Jill bathroom added for two of the third floor bedrooms

Toilet room removed and bath added for staff washrooms, for an equal 2-toilet/2-bath arrangement, which means the build now has a total of 7 full baths, and 8 toilets.

More crafting tables (fizz machine and candle maker) added to Staff Lounge

Yoga/Meditation Balcony for staff above greenhouse

Small telescope added to rooftop outside tower room’s new 2nd door

Garden lights around yard configured for power + off grid lighting

‘Bike racks’ added by front gate

New Library shelves seem to allow sims to retrieve books but not put them back. However this is actually a feature, not a bug, since now you can put the books back yourself on on the right shelves and keep things organized 🙃

Should now be consistently able to feed and be eaten by the Cowplant

Homey trait replaced by Gnome lot trait since there is a proliferation of gnomes

Requirements

Lot: 40x30, $752,005, 9 bed 8 bath, Cat Hangout, Gnome, Peace and Quiet, Spooky Lot Challenge

Packs - packs in bold are essential:

EPs - Cottage Living, University, Island Living, Get Together, Get Famous, Seasons, Cats&Dogs, Eco Living, City Living, Get to Work

GPs - Realm Of Magic, Jungle Adventure, Parenthood, Vampires. Strangerville, Spa Day, Outdoor Retreat

SPs - Paranormal, Laundry Day, Romantic Garden. Nifty Knitting, Vintage Glamour

Kits - Blooming Rooms, Desert Luxe

Patreon Download

Public Download: Available Dec 15th!

[lullabyes22-blog]

Mal de Mer - A Silco x Mel Piece - Ch: 2 ~ Sealegs

Summary:

A high-seas honeymoon. Two adversaries, bound by matrimony. A future full of peril and possibility. And a word that neither enjoys adding to their lexicon: Compromise.

War was simpler business…

Part of the 'Forward But Never Forget/XOXO' AU. Can be read as a standalone series.

cw: rough sex, rough oral sex, manipulation.

tw: unhealthy parent-child dynamics, abandonment trauma.

Thank you for the graphics @lipsticksandmolotovs<3

Mal de Mer on AO3

Mal de Mer on FFnet

CHAPTER

I - II - III - IV

꧁꧂

Touch if you will my stomach Feel how it trembles inside You've got the butterflies all tied up Don't make me chase you Even doves have pride

~ "When Doves Cry" - Prince

Dawn breaks against a paling sky.

The sun, a fat gold disc, hangs low on the horizon. The wind blows a steady ten knots.

The SS Woe Betide slits through the waves with a sensation not unlike a fingertip dipped down the edge of a rowboat, soft ripples fanning outward.  Mel feels the velocity of the turbines in her bones. But the vessel's fine-tuned calibration keeps it perfectly stable. There is only the sleek purr of power; the gliding cut of friction.

And, far beneath, the vast dark unknown.

Her fever has broken. She's still a little languid. But it's a deep, rejuvenated languor. As if the Mal de Mer had drained her body, and sleep has filled it again.

Sleep—or Shimmer.

In small doses, the drug's efficacy is renowned. In large doses: reviled. A Philosopher's Stone, and yet a Devil's bargain—all in one sip.

Mel's never condoned the drug's use.  But she's no fool. In Zaun, Shimmer is a necessity. The air, foul. The water, contaminated. The food, inedible. To survive, one needs ironclad immunity. And Shimmer, in moderation, keeps the body's defenses strong.

She's seen Silco, with his bad eye and the wreckage of his scarred face, rely on it daily. A single drop, pierced into the eyeball, the plunger bottomed. Ssssss—his gasp afterwards. A hiss of bitter necessity, not want. His is a pragmatic, utilitarian dependence. Not a millimeter more, and only once per day.

For him, Shimmer is a means to an end. And the end is survival.

And survival, Ambessa always said, is its own justification.

Slowly, Mel sits up. Her breakfast is ready on the sideboard. A pot of steaming green tea paired with a bowl of hot oatmeal. Her husband has come and gone. And she, alone again, with the rising sun.

Not this time, Mel thinks.

This time, I will rise with him.

Last night's thwarted seduction is a splinter. Irksome, in hindsight. She's never had to work so hard for a man's interest. Usually, her smile is enough. But her husband, she's learning, is not a creature to be coaxed or cajoled. He's a man to be met on equal terms.

And if that means she has to fight, to show him the woman she truly is—a woman not afraid of hard truths, or a harder sell—then that's a challenge she will rise to meet.

You are a Medarda, Ambessa always said. You will find your sealegs in the worst storms.

And your footing in the darkest fathoms.

Mel, rising, finds her sealegs. They are, admittedly, precarious. Her balance is off.

Strange how that works. One spell of illness, and the world's axis tilts. Suddenly she's a girl again, stumbling after her mother. Trying, and failing, to walk the path laid out for her.

My path, Mel reminds herself, is my own.

Ignoring the porridge—her appetite, reawakened, cannot be fobbed off by gruel—she slips into her peignoir. Then, barefoot, she pads into the shared bathroom between hers and Silco's berth. The humid air is an olio of him: astringent tea-tree aftershave, the bittersweet tang of bergamot oils, the lingering trace of cigarette.

Inhaling, Mel feels a tug between her thighs. It's a visceral reminder of last night's unfinished business.

But first: the real business of the day.

Beautification.

The clawfoot tub, huge and gleaming, beckons. The past week, she's made do with the washbasin, and a sponge soaked in lavender water. But it's an inferior substitute for the luxury of a proper soak. Twisting the tap, she lets the water run hot, and fetches her favorite scented salts: Kalishma rose petals, jasmine, and a generous dose of vanilla.

Then, shedding her peignoir, she slips in.

Bathing, for Mel, is always a languorous affair. Mornings are her rare moments of solitude before her day takes flight. A chance to meditate and set her plans in order.

A time, too, for self-reflection.

In the water, she can never stop the memories from bubbling to the surface: her mother's tutelage, absorbed both willingly and otherwise. Lessons in warfare and wile; in politics and poise. The many things she'd been taught, and the one thing she'd refused to learn:

To be a Medarda first—and a woman second.

To Ambessa, the two were one and the same. Their lineage was of singular, inviolate importance. The rest was frivolity.

Here, Mel relishes the woman within. And the pleasures of being that woman.

The hot bathwater suffuses her muscles. Her locs, unraveling at the ends, are gently coiled into separate rolls, and pinned up to await later care. She massages a special scrub, scented with Icathian lavender, into her scalp. Then, with lukewarm water, she rinses out the suds. A second lather follows: a heavy moisturizer of honey and coconut oil. With a warm towel, she lets it set into hair. Then, she scours her body from neck to feet: a pumice of sea sponge and a soft, sugary exfoliant of crushed pearls.

Nothing goes without attention. Every part, every inch, is carefully tended.

In her girlhood, she'd never had the luxury. Cleanliness was a necessity, not an indulgence. Mel was expected to be presentable: in mind, and in form. Under Ambessa's exacting scrutiny, she'd dressed as a Noxian noblewoman should. Her curls, pinned back in a simple bun. Her face bare, with mimimal flourishes of jewel and paint. And her body, a mantel for unadorned high-collared gowns of beige, blue, or black.

No frills. No furbelows. Just the austere, unvarnished truth of her person.

It was the style favored by Ambessa, no aficionada of feminine frippery. Not that Ambessa needed frippery to stand out. Her mother could wear bloodstained armor to the grand ball, and turn every head in the room.

Mel, meanwhile, was a late bloomer. Of her family, she'd been the plainest: her mother, the iron lioness, all dark mane and fierce eyes; her father, a Targonian admiral, his sinewy physique weathered by the winds of daring voyages; and her brother, Kino, the best of both worlds, so chiseled he could've been cut from pure bronze, and possessed of such guile he could've outwitted man or monster at the bargaining table.

Whereas she, the spare, was a mere slip of a thing. Delicate in her stance, and saddled with a heart too tender to match her family's martial ambitions. As for her looks: well, she was comely enough, or so Ambessa conceded. But she'd never hold a candle to the great beauties of their dynasty. 

She'd tried, as a young woman, to be the mirror of her mother. But the reflection was a pale imitation. She was never as tall. Her shoulders, never as broad. Her nose, her eyes, her chin: all too soft.

Ambessa was a force of nature. Mel was a girl, still finding her feet.

In the end, she'd been relegated to a consolation prize. Mayhaps she'd catch the eye of a warlord's bastard, or the youngest son of a merchant clan. But she'd never be esteemed as a person of consequence. Never be the face that launched a thousand ships, nor the fist that won a thousand wars.

Never, truly, be the heir Ambessa wanted.

In the end, Mel's duty, her only value, was her readiness to play by the rules. Be the docile daughter. The biddable bride. She had no place in the halls of power, where the real bargains were struck. No say in the brokerage of alliances, nor the redistribution of spoils.

And no right, certainly, to her own ambitions.

Ambessa saw only weakness in Mel's softness. Mel, though, knew better. Soft was just a different sort of strength. One that, even in the worst darkness, must endure. Must, in fact, shine brighter.

Because, Mel thinks, real power isn't in the closed fist.

It's in the open palm.

In the end, she'd done exactly that. Chosen mercy instead of the blade. Philanthropy over bloodshed; diplomacy over conquest.

In short, she'd chosen progress.

And paid the price.

By her twenty-first year, Ambessa, despairing of her daughter's idealism, had cast her out. She was not, Mel knew, an unfit heir. She was merely unfit, period.

The banishment—Mel's final lesson—was the cruelest cut of all. Yet, in the aftermath, Mel learnt that cruelty was not, by definition, the absence of love. The opposite: cruelty was the most extreme form of survival. It was a mother, unable to express the full depth of her heart, reduced to the worst of her instincts.

That cruelty—its extremity—was Ambessa's way of protecting Mel, from their world and from herself.

The exile, the rupture of their bond: they were sacrifices.

Sometimes, Mel thinks of how reptiles will sever their own tails, forfeiting a piece of their selves to escape a larger threat. It's a hard and terrible choice. But a necessity if the whole is to survive.

And survive, Mel did.

In exile, she'd found her own worth. She'd found her self. The self that she'd polished to a sheen, slowly and painfully, from the splinters of a broken psyche. The self built, brick by brick, out of a lifetime's loneliness and despair. 

She'd never be a force of nature like Ambessa. So, she'd become something else. 

A luminary.

In Piltover, she'd undergone a breakthrough into breathtaking beauty.  She'd left off her old wardrobe: the gowns with their plain, high collars and the muted palettes. She'd learned how to gild herself like a lily in an elysian garden: dresses in dozens of sun-kissed hues, cut tantalizingly low to trace the shadow of her decolletage, or cut daringly high to showcase the smoothness of her thighs. Jewels that were a symphony in a spectrum: emerald, amethyst, citrine.

And gold, lots and lots of gold: until she'd glittered bright enough to outrival the sun.

As a girl, she'd worn her hair in its natural curl. Simple, stark, unfashionable. Now, she'd let it grow, and grow, and grow. Glossy locs coiled in gold, and styled into a coronet at the crown of her head: a diadem fit for a queen. As for her face: she'd learnt her best features, the way an artist learns the play of light. With philters of plum lip-stain, phials of indigo kohl, and pots of golden dust, she'd highlighted what nature had given, and exaggerated what it had not.

Until the girl was gone, and a goddess remained.

It was a transformation as gradual as the phases of the moon. As shocking as a solar flare.

And when, finally, she'd seen herself in the mirror, she'd felt the strangest sensation. Like the face staring back was a reflection, not of the woman she'd failed to be, but of the woman she'd been all along.

Mel, at last, had seen herself.

Piltover had seen her too. And, once they'd looked, they'd never stopped. She'd entered the elite circles as a mere footnote in the Medarda family-tree. Yet her footfall had stirred a stampede. Men and women vying for her attention; artists clamoring for her likeness; suitors offering themselves on a silver platter.

They didn't know where she'd come from. Only that she was here.

And, in her, they'd seen a rarity worth keeping.

Her beauty had been the key. Her cleverness, the lock. Together, they'd opened doors for her all the way to the Council chambers. In the space of a decade, she'd flourished from a foreign enigma into the Patroness of Progress. Wherever she stepped, she shone. Wherever she looked, they fell in line.

She was the impetus behind Piltover's transformation into a technological juggernaut. She'd bankrolled Jayce Talis, the boy who'd become the Man of Tomorrow. She'd spearheaded the Council's most forward-thinking social reforms, been the architect behind its boldest public works, and the guiding light for its brightest scholastic minds.

Her golden fingerprints were all over the City of Progress. She'd made it, the world swooned, a paradise. Her brand—the Medarda brand—was synonymous with a better tomorrow.

And she'd done it without spilling a drop of blood.

Her mother, Mel thinks, would detest the irony. Her daughter's ideals, once a folly, had given her the impetus to imagine a world where her family's sins were not a burden to carry, but a gift to give.

A brighter world.

In the tub, Mel feels for her wedding ring, twisting it gently on her finger.

And then...

And then, she'd met the Eye of Zaun.

And wanted, in a flash, more than the sum of what she'd built.

Wanting a man, Ambessa always said, is a fool's errand. They're empty vessels. The more you give, the more they need. You can pour your whole life into a man, and he will still be empty.

Better to keep yourself full.

Mel, as a girl, had learned the words. Mel, as a woman, had heeded the lesson. Men were tools. In the boardroom, pieces on her chessboard. In the bedroom, morsels on her tray. She'd made a study of their wants, molding them to suit her ends as a sculptor molds clay.

Each man she'd bedded was, in his own way, the same. Predictable. Easy to seduce; easier to discard. She'd always kept a measure of distance.  Kept her heart separate from her head; her self, her own.

Only Jayce—her darling—had breached that divide. Their relationship had been a seamless fit. He was the same person, wherever he went. Always honest; always, forthright. He was the best piece of her, and she'd loved him for it.

Truly—loved him.

But the rest of her was a Medarda. And Medardas were neither honest, nor forthright. Least of all in matters of love. She and Jayce had both suffered for it. And, finally, they'd broken. Jayce, with his ideals, and Mel, with her pride.

Their city had broken too: the rift between Piltover and Zaun spilling blood into their streets.

And in the aftermath, their faith lay in wreckage. Jayce, a disillusioned husk, had left to heal in solitude. And Mel, a woman scorned, had turned to the shadows for succor.

She'd sworn to herself.

No more broken hearts. No more broken cities.

Then she'd met a man with a taste for both.

In Silco, she'd found, first an adversary, then an unlikely ally. Found, in his eyes, the answer to a question she'd never dared ask:

How far will I go to safeguard what's mine?

Theirs was the anti-match for the annals. And yet it proved the perfect antidote. They were so dissimilar at first glance, they threatened to cancel each other out. Like the sum of their parts was null.

And yet, in their duality, they were a force to be reckoned with. He possessed so many traits Noxus esteemed: grit, pragmatism, resolve. Traits extolled by her mother; traits Mel had grown to despise.

Yet, on him, they weren't hollow trappings. They were hard-won byproducts of a hard-lived life.

A Zaunite's life, through and through.

His grit was rooted in privation, not privilege. His pragmatism, a necessity, not a vice. His resolve, fed not by conquest, but the desire to carve out a future. A better life for his child, and his city.  

Zaun was the lodestar of his compass. And Jinx, the lodestone of his heart.

It was that blend of ruthlessness and tendresse that had first intrigued Mel, then attracted her. Their courtship was a slippery thing, conducted in stolen glances and double-edged banter. Under the spotlight, they'd traded barbs. In private corners, they'd traded confidences.

They'd circled each other, closer and closer: a slow spiral that led to a low-down smoldering, and finally, after months and months, burst into catastrophic flames.

The fallout had sent shockwaves through both their cities. And yet, after the secrecy was blasted away, and the scandal had burned itself out, the spark between them had kept on fizzing.

And fizzing.

And fizzing.

A walk down the aisle, Silco had written in a letter to her, isn't much different than a walk down a corridor. It's a means to an end.

The end being the two of us.

In a room. Alone.

In other words: marriage.

The stone on Mel's ring glints: a green spark. She lifts it to her lips.

Sometimes, it still feels surreal. That Silco, a subterranean predator with no heart in him for trust, no room in him for mercy, had given her his ring. Had pledged himself to her in a simple vow: I do. And she, a sunlit mirage, the chambers of her own heart hidden beneath layers of guile and grace, had repeated the same vow: I do.

A binding oath.

Elora, in her gentle way, had cautioned Mel not to sign on the dotted line. He's a dangerous man, Mel. I've seen the way he looks at you. He'll do anything—anything at all—to get what he wants.

Mel had smiled.

So will I, Elora.

Jayce, predictably, had been less circumspect. He's a crimelord, Mel. Worse, he's a monster. He'll ruin you. He'll ruin our city. Why the hell are you doing this?

Mel had kissed his cheek.

Progress, my darling.

Loyalty had stayed Elora's tongue. Love had stayed Jayce's. But in their eyes, she'd seen the same misgiving. They'd both feared that Mel was blinding herself to the truth. That the Eye of Zaun, with his black heart and blacker past, would tally up her life, and take it for all it was worth.

Take her coin, and her city, and her soul.

Their doubts, Mel knows, have merit. Except she's no doe-eyed naïf. She's a Medarda. And because she's a Medarda, she'd known the truth from the beginning. Known it, and chosen anyway.

Chosen, because it was the truth she'd grown up with. The truth that'd defined her entire life. A mother, who'd culled her children's weaknesses with the same blade she'd cut down her enemies. A childhood, spent first as a spare, then an exile. A womanhood, alone, trying to reconcile her heart with her head. Trying to understand, the difference between power and cruelty; between a fist, and an open palm.

Ambessa's lesson: Power is absolute. Cruelty is the means.

Mel's answer: Power and cruelty are both means.

The end is mercy.

She'd learned, at Silco's side, not to fear power. Not to flinch from the cruelty that came with it. And she'd never feared him, though she had flinched, once.

Because she'd understood that his power, like his cruelty, had a source:

Love.

To safeguard it, he'd resort to the worst of himself. He'd be the monster to end all monsters. He'd hide his open palm in a fist, and close the deal, whatever the cost.

For his city—and his child.

I am not, he'd told Mel once, a good man.

But for my family's survival, I will do what must be done.

Perhaps it was a measure of Mel's own hypocrisy, that she'd recognized in Silco the same monstrosity as her mother's, and yet embraced its paradox. Perhaps it was a measure of her own madness, that she'd seen past the scars, and into the eyes of a kindred spirit. Perhaps it's a measure of her own strength, that she'd taken the monster's hand, and taken him to bed, and in the morning, awoken not only whole, but held.

As if he'd found something, in her, that he'd likewise dared to keep.

Something that could survive the sum of their pasts.

Survival, Mel reminds herself, is its own justification.

Both she and Silco are survivors. They've seen, in each other, two halves of a greater whole. The promise of a future.  He's seen Zaun: a city transformed. No longer an industrial blight, but a cutting-edge marvel. She's seen Piltover: the City of Progress. A shining jewel on the cusp of eternity.

She's seen him. And he, her.

And together, their vision can be made real.

They are so close. The game is in hand. The prize, on the hook. All Mel needs to do is reel it in.

But her guests aren't the challenge.

The real challenge sits on the other side of that door.

"Sea legs," Mel whispers.

The bathwater has become a perfumed broth. Her skin is tingling. Her curls gleam like spun-black sugar. Rising, she douses herself with a blast of cold water, then wraps up a thick towel. Padding out is like walking on clouds.

Her mind and body are humming, primed.

Ready.

In her berth, she opens the armoire. Inside, the dresses she'd chosen for the trip are neatly arrayed: each one a study of tasteful luxury. Silk, organza, damask.

Since her wedding, she's favored a number of Zaunite clothiers. Every gown, exquisitely tailored, combines sartorial elegance with political substance. Not a single thread of silk, but an entire industry. Not a single motif, but a manifesto.

Fashion, she knows, can be a handstitched masterclass in diplomacy.

Already, her strategy has borne fruit. At press engagements, her gowns are photographed from every angle. High-end publications, from the Gazette to the Illuminator, feature her wardrobes across their glossies. Each label she patronizes, the jetsetters have followed suit. Zaun's textiles, once derided as subversive trash, are becoming the toast of the town.

Last summer, she'd sponsored an entire exhibition: 'Zenith.' A collection of avant-garde couture, by the most talented Fissure=bred artisans. In a mere week, the exhibition had sold out. Newsreels had praised her 'daring tastes', and the Sun & Tower Newspaper had devoted three full pages to the 'cultural significance' of the collection.  In the space of a season, Piltover's fashionistas had begun making pilgrimages to visit their edgier sisters belowground. They'd flocked to the bazaars, gaped at the splendor, and left with a veritable caravan of textiles.

It's the opening, Mel hopes, of a dialogue. An invitation for Zaunites and Piltovans to meet each other halfway.

One fashionplate, Silco often disparages in his wry way, won't fill a dozen empty stomachs. 

Perhaps not, Mel concedes.

But a starving artist, with the right benefactor, might become a rich one.

She takes a dress off its hanger: a chiffon day-gown of the palest champagne. It boasts a paneled bodice in a deep V-neck and sheer overlay, and a pleated skirt that cuts away into a slit at the knee. Light and ethereal, with a coy touch of sin.

Retwisting her locs, Mel pins them up into a high sleek bun, baring the swanlike curve of her neck. Then the finishing touches: a dusting of gold powder on her cheekbones, a dab of plum stain to her lips, and a slash of indigo to her eyelids. The green and gold flecks in her irises leap out.

There.

Not quite ready to greet her guests. But not a woozy invalid, either. 

She needs to look vibrant. For herself—and her husband. Her pride won't allow otherwise. Three weeks of marriage, and she's already been felled. By Mal de Mer. By a novice's nerves. By a costly error, and her own failure to read the tides. 

Now, she must make a show of her vitality.

Sealegs, she thinks.

Mel exits her chamber. No sound comes from the baronial stateroom, just a diffuse light stealing from behind the drawn blinds. The space holds the gloomy masculinity of a bachelor's den: the floral bouquets withering, the basket of exotic fruits competing for space with cut-glass decanters of whiskey, the elegant mantelpiece crowded with papers.

The whole scene, an artist's rendering of old-world baroque, is muddied by a fug of stale smoke.

Mel's lip pinches.

It's Silco's morning routine: shortening a cup of black coffee and a cigarette as he goes over the dispatches from his network. Thousands of miles away from Zaun, and yet his grip is merciless. His lieutenants keep him in a constant loop. A barrage of reports: delivered by radio-wave, or through a series of cyphers embedded in the latest editions of the local newsprints. His orders: a litany of edicts, read by dawn and set into motion by dusk.

The Eye is an all-seeing entity, his system a web of a thousand threads. His informants are everywhere in Zaun: its rooftops, its basements, its ginnels.   Nothing goes unnoticed. Nobody is beyond reach. He keeps a tally of all his assets, and moves his pieces accordingly.

Even away, his presence remains: cold, remote, watchful.  

But here, Mel thinks, it should be different.

Here, he should relax.

This idyll was meant to be a respite. For both of them, and the duty of their stations. By her own plan of events, they ought to still be in bed. Instead, she's been laid up for a week. And he, of course, has defaulted to a state of hypervigilance.

He's a creature of instinct, her husband. And instinct, in this instance, is to reconnoiter and safeguard his territory.

At land—and at sea.

It's plain he hasn't let a soul enter their cabin since she's fallen ill. He hasn't even let the staff air it out. The dimensions are steeped in neglect. And Mel, despite herself, feels a twinge.

Was he... concerned?

Then: a second twinge, sharper.

He needn't be.

She can look after herself. And the sooner she puts a foot back in the game, the better.

At the table, calling cards spill from a silver tray. Her guests, Mel sees, have paid their respects. And, soundly, been declined. Their messages—fawning, frivolous, full of platitudes—pinch her lip again.

The lot are as predictable as clockwork:

'Pray, accept my sincere well wishes, Mel; your absence has cast a poll over our bridge games' — 'Dearest Mel, I hear the seasickness has laid you low. May I suggest a cure? Better company than the sort you'll find in your berth.' — 'Madam, my heart is a-breaking. My eyes a-aching. When will you come out, and let me feast them on your sweet face?' — 'To the loveliest Melusine on the SS Woe Betide. Please accept this small token of my esteem, and my earnest hope that the sun will shine on me again.'

And etc.

In the margins, the original reader has scrawled notes in his own spiky script. His messages, however, are the antithesis of flattery.

In a few choice strokes, Silco eviscerates every line:

'Poll, you say? How about a grammatically calamitous plague?' — 'Better company than at the bottom of a bottle? That's how much I'd have to drink to stomach yours.' — 'Feast your eyes on this: I have a knife, and it's a-begging to feast on you.' — 'Sunshine is the last thing you deserve. How about a tempest? Better yet, a kraken? Melusine, pray oblige.'

And etc.

Mel smiles. The penmanship is neat as a pin. But each line cuts to the bone. The guest who'd penned the last lovelorn verse is left, rather literally, hanging: his message ends with the phrase, "Darling, dearest—" only to be punctuated by a single, damning word.

Dead.

Mel stifles a laugh. Then, a third twinge. This time, behind her ribs.

Silco, since their departure, has been perched on a knife's edge. Small wonder he's kept to their quarters. For a self-made man, wading night after night into the piranha-infested waters of Zaun's underbelly, the open seas of Piltover's high society must seem a veritable abyss of boredom.

That he's shown his face, each evening, is a credit to his patience. That he's not stabbed anyone—with a fork or a pen or a single sharp word—is a miracle.

And miracles, Mel knows, are not the currency her husband trades in.

Squaring her shoulders, she goes to Silco's berth. A hand lifts to knock.

Then:

"Not there."

Mel turns.

The voice floats from their private saloon. The door is ajar. The sunlight, a cool white-gold, filters through the skylight above. The rays fall upon a veritable feast on the table. Not a lavish Piltovan spread, with its towers of sugar-spun dessert and silver trays laden with exotic fruits and rare cheeses, but a simple, savory repast. Fragrant heels of bread, sausage, scrambled eggs, and spiced congee.

A Zaunite breakfast, born to fill the bellies of miners, factory workers and chem-fiends. 

And Silco.

He sits in a louche sprawl across the settee. His lounging robe is charcoal linen, Fissure-woven, the collar trimmed in a subtle gold braid. The color suits him. His scar, usually a lurid slash, is softened by the milky morning light. And his eye, the one without the red, is cut as if from the sea.

He reminds Mel of a creature caught between worlds: a merman, perhaps. Or a sea-monster, half-submerged. 

But his double-take is the same as any man's.

"Hell's bells."

Mel purrs, "Good morning to you, too."

His stare—detaching from the letters in his lap—takes its prowling measure of her, head to toe. It lingers on her bare throat. His favorite place to cut a target. Or to bite.

His smile is a bite too: slow and sharp. "Here I thought you'd be another day on the rack."

"I'm a resilient creature, you'll find."

He crooks a brow. "And the Mal de Mer?"

"Gone as the fog."

"In that case, I'm waiting."

"What for?"

"Those three sweet words."

Without missing a beat, she coos, "Schön bist du."

"The other ones."

Sighing, she relents. "You were right. The Shimmer worked. I feel better."

"Not quite yet."

Rising, he pulls out her chair. He's no stickler for etiquette; every act of chivalry is as calculated as the rest of him. His manners, in fact, are the exact opposite of Jayce's: sardonic rather than sincere.

Yet in their focus, the two men are cut from the same cloth. Both give Mel their undivided attention. 

Except, where Jayce was sensitive to Mel's whims, Silco is attuned to Mel's wants.  

"I gather," he says, as she slides into her seat, "you skipped your porridge."

"I find I've lost my taste for oats."

"Even mine?"

"It's seven o' clock in the morning, husband," she chides sweetly. "Do turn your mind from the gutter."

"I was born in the gutter. Seven o' clock is prime time."

"For what, precisely?"

"Breakfast," he says, all innocence except for that gleam in the bad eye. "It's kept me busy, at any rate."

Mel stops mid-furl on her napkin. "You made this?"

"I've had to. Your chef can't tell a Ripper from a Wreck 'em."

"Which is which, exactly?"

"You prove my point."

Spearing a sausage with his fork, he holds it out to her. It's a smoky morsel, dotted with sprigs of herbs. Mel hesitates, then takes a bite. The flavor is bolder than she's accustomed to. But, chewing, she finds her smile lit with a softer glow than a moment ago.

He is, her husband, a man of many layers. Some, she'll never unravel. Others, reminders of the humanity he's never fully forfeited. 

"Well?" he prompts.

"A bit much, perhaps." She takes another bite. "But it grows on you."

The gleam returns, full-force. "It's seven o' clock in the morning, wife. Do turn your mind from the gutter."

"I'm married to you," she rejoins archly. "It's a lost cause."

But she makes no protest as he heaps the rest of her plate. The sausages are piled high; the bread, thick-crusted, is slathered with butter. Even her tea is soused with dollops of honey.

It's a far cry from the delicacies of a Piltovan palate. But Mel, her belly grinding with hunger, finishes every bite. Silco, settling across her in a chair, rests his chin on his knuckles, and watches. It's less a look of appraisal than of absence.

It occurs to Mel—  

"Did," she asks, "you used to make this for Jinx?"

"If I hadn't, she'd have grown up eating gummy bears and gobstoppers." The barest grimace. "Just contemplating the inside of my daughter's belly makes me shudder."

"What was her favorite food?"

"Cat's Eyes on a Checkerboard."

"Which is?"

"Waffles with tapioca pudding." The grimace becomes a sly grin. "The ingredients smuggled, naturally."

"From Piltover's larders."

"Your city has plenty to spare."

"As a rule, we do." Mel bites a forkful of egg. "Is that why you're feeding me Fissure fare now? To repay a debt?"

"Not a debt. A favor. Another day of the galley's swill, and you'd have keeled over and left me a widower. Jinx would've composed the perfect eulogy. 'Woe Betide, the best of brides—'till she stuck a spoonful of porridge down her pie-hole.'" His mimicry is eerie. Then again, Mel sometimes thinks he and Jinx share a hivemind. Or, at the very least, a very morbid sense of humor. Refilling his coffee cup, he adds, "She sends her regards, by the way."

"Jinx?"

"A postscript attached to her report." He stirs a fingertip through the pile of letters on the table, and plucks out a glittery pink envelope. Unfolding the sheet, he recites in a droll monotone, "Dear Silly. Hope you're having a whale of a time. Hey, can you get me a whale tooth? I hear they're great for bludgeoning. I'll use it on Sevika—she's been driving me crazy. Why'd you leave her behind? She's already smoked all your cigars, and converted the study into a pool room. Also, Dustin's filched your cigar-box, but he won't admit it. I'm gonna string him up from the ceiling by his ankles till he fesses. Oh, I've just designed a new batch of generators for the mines. If they work, they'll double the output. So, get your butt back here soon. And maybe get me a crate of sun apples? I hear they're super juicy. Tell Step-Mel I liked the dress she sent me, but no lace next time. Lace makes me itch. Also: the new Sheriff is a tool. Get rid of her, will ya? And her hat, too. XOXO."

Mel hides a smile. "Step-Mel, is it?"

"A marked improvement from your moniker before the wedding."

"This, I take it, signifies progress."

"Or a bullseye in motion." He folds the letter, then pockets it. The fond paternal gleam is replaced by the usual half-lidded enigma. "Speaking of: hers and Sevika's report warrants a consultation."

"How so?"

"Noxus is playing at sabotage again. Warmasons are making overtures to the chem-barons. Shimmer-fueled weaponry in exchange for a shot at destroying Piltover's Hex-Gates." He leans back, steepling his fingers. "In my absence, the chem-barons are tempted."

"That's troubling."

"Isn't it just?"

"And your response?"

"I've told Sevika to wait until my honeymoon's done."

His smile is a slow, lethal thing. Mel returns it, sweet as nectar. It's an old game between them: petty one-upmanship played out on the surface, while currents, unseen, run beneath.

They make a game of it because they both know his remark might've been a threat, once, but that now it isn't, and cannot be. It is their way of keeping score. Not of their place in the game, but at each other's side.  

Progress.

And yet...

"I trust," Mel says, deceptively light, "you'll make the right choice."

"I figured I'd give you the first shot. After all, they're your brethren."

"They are not," Mel corrects him, with a fixed smile. "Noxus was my nation. Piltover is my home."

"A distinction without difference."

Her smile dims a degree. "Only to an exilee." 

There's a moment's silence. Then: a slow clink-clink. Silco's fingers against the rim of his half-empty cup. The gesture is, for him, the equivalent of a sigh. Concession, in the language of their détente.

"If the distinction holds," he says, "then I'll humor the warmasons until the end of our trip."

"Lull them and gull them, as the Zaunite saying goes?"

"Exactly so. By the week's end, my network will have intercepted every last correspondence between them and the chem-barons. The latter, their hands down the cookie jar, will have no choice but to renege their assets. Or their heads. And Topside's Wardens can have the warmasons for themselves. After a fee to Zaun for services rendered." His teeth, a serrated gleam between curving lips, put Mel in mind of a shark's. "No fuss, no muss. Also a Zaunite saying."

Moments like this, Mel marvels queasily, are when she can glimpse her husband's true face. The face she's seen delineated in her mother's visage time and again: a carnivorous hunger that exists only to consume. 

It's a face he is adept at concealing. He can wear the mask of the gentleman, or the statesman, or the patriarch. A versatile repertoire: yet each with its infinite capacity for cruelty. A cruelty that is a necessity.

And yet...

Silco's mismatched stare hooks hers. The darkness dissipates.

"You should know," he says.

"Yes?"

"For all that you're an exilee, you've got a home. In Piltover, yes, but more.  Zaun is where Topside hides its dirty little secrets. But it's also the place the lost lay their heads. And you, my dear, are the patroness of lost causes. My city will always welcome you into its fold."

There is no tenderness in his tone. And yet, for a man who has never had the luxury of giving away his heart, the matter-of-factness is, perhaps, the best he can offer. A pledge of loyalty, as real as the ring on her finger.

Mel fights down the dizzy dip in her chest.

Monsters, she thinks, know a thing or two about pledges.

"I hope," she returns, softly, "my stay in your city comes with a tour of its best parts."

"The brothels?"

Her foot, beneath the table, nudges his leg. "The breakfast. Because the chef's quite outdone himself."

"Has he now?" he drawls. "Well enough to earn a tip, or a...?"

"If you dare finish that sentence with tup, Silco—"

He smiles, unrepentant. The shadowed mood is dappled with tiny pricks of light. So it always goes between them. He lays a gold nugget of honesty in her palm, and she exchanges it for a fistful of diamonds. They trade in the currency of extremes rather than trust.

The former comes easy; the latter, hard as a heart.

Yet, incrementally, the balance is shifting. Bit by bit. An ounce of feeling, for an ounce of faith. A gleam of promise, for a glimmer of truth.

In time, Mel thinks, they'll learn fair trade.

Maybe, one day, the language of compromise.

"I suggest," Silco says, stretching out his legs, "you thank the chef the proper way, and eat. There's nothing fouler than cold congee."

She complies, taking a spoonful. It's rich and heavy, spiced with cumin, and garnished with fried shallots. Silco, meanwhile, piles the remnants of breakfast on to his own plate. They compete, in their own way, to finish what's left. Each vying for a place of their own: the upper and the underhand.  

Though it's a game, Mel can't help but be caught up.

Caught up, but far from caught.

"So," she muses, "what is your agenda for today?"

"Besides fortifying you like a warship?" He tops off his cup, then hers. "Nothing."

"Then why are you in such high spirits?"

"Is your good health not reason enough?"

"You're never in high spirits. Not unless there's wickedness afoot." She hesitates. "And last night, you seemed—cross."

Silco says nothing. From his waistcoat, he withdraws his silver case, and a matchbook. Lighting a slender roll, he taps the spent match. The smoke, a thin grey veil, obscures his features.

Six a day, Mel knows, is his current limit. He's been trying to cut down: for Jinx's sake, and hers. 

"What you call 'cross,'" he says, "is my natural state."

"With me?"

"Only now and again." He takes a drag. "But since you're so very curious: we're taking an excursion. Today."

Mel, finishing the last bite of bread, frowns. "You mentioned. But to where?"

"Someplace close."

"How close?"

"A few kilometers. I've had a word with the captain. He'll lay down anchor. We'll take the motor launch there." He blows a rippling smoke ring. "I'm told the scenery's pleasant."

"What?" Mel sets down her slice. "Silco, we can't delay. Our itinerary—"

"—has been adjusted. Our guests will enjoy an afternoon on the water. And a late supper at the villa."

"We were scheduled to arrive by midday on the island. Take a tour of the local sights. I had a meeting with the Wuju chieftain. He and his wife have requested a private reception. There is a dinner, at night, on the High Councilor's flagship. To simply alter our schedule—"

"—will have no consequence. And if it does, so be it."

"We are not freewheelers," Mel objects. "We don't make and break plans at our own convenience."

"We are not cogwheels," he counters. "We are not beholden to the whims of those who wish to use us. And if they are offended, well. The wind changes direction all the time."

"You are being absurd!"

"I'm being a man with a message."

"Which is what, exactly?"

"Compromise." He nudges her teacup closer. "Drink up. You'll need your strength."

Mel's mouth sets in a stubborn line. "Will I?"

"The captain's expecting us at the wheelhouse in one hour."

"I don't like surprises."

"You'll like this one."

He takes another drag on the cigarette. The tip glows a fiery red. His expression, beneath the smoke, brooks no argument. She can't read the currents.  Whatever his diabolical designs, she's going to find herself caught up in them.

She'll either have to fight him, or ride the tide.

Sealegs, she reminds herself.

"Silco," she warns. "If you've some elaborate scheme planned, I'd rather not have to apologize for it later."

"Elaborate?" He grinds out the cigarette in his empty cup. Smoke curls everywhere. "Nonsense. I've no interest in grandstanding. Only a modest spectacle."

"Silco—"

"We needn't linger. But your presence would be appreciated."

"Why?"

"Because," he says, "I want you there."

Mel, stymied, stares. She's lost the thread, somewhere. His mood, too, has changed. It's as if the currents have shifted, and the tide is rising.

The question is whether to dive, or let the flood overtake her.

Silco, taking advantage of her lapse, hooks a finger into her bodice. He gives a playful tug. The space between them closes. His scent is a cool wash: bergamot, tobacco, and a touch of body-warmed musk.

It's the scent of a Morning After. Déjà vu lodges low in Mel's belly.

Last night's near-miss still burns vividly on her skin. Her fever's gone, but another's taking its place. This one: hotter, headier. Nothing to do with Mal de Mer.

Everything to do with him.

Tipping her chin up, Silco holds her eyes.

"I want you there," he says, "because, as my wife, I think you ought to see your husband's world."

"My husband's world," she says, a touch breathless, "is cutthroats, and cons, and chaos."

"Not his whole world. Not the heart of it."

"But—"

He kisses her. His lips, cool, are flecked with spice. Then they part, and she tastes his tongue. The flavor is the same, with a hint of smoke. The kiss itself is a slow, searing thing. The kind of kiss that leads to other, equally slow and searing things.

"We have," he says, a little hoarse, "one hour."

Mel's breath hitches. She wants nothing more than to take him up on his offer.

But she cannot afford to lose sight of the stakes.

"One hour to explain yourself," she says, trying to disentangle. "And this isn't fair. I can't think, when you're—"

"When I'm, what?"

He dips his head. His lips touch the base of her throat. The tip of his tongue tastes the hollow, a hot, slick glide. Mel shudders. Her eyes fall shut. She's lost her appetite. Now, all she wants is his.

"Silco," she tries again. "Our itinerary."

"Damn the itinerary." His lips drift lower. "Tell me."

"Tell you, what?"

"Do I feel like a liar?"

Mel's lashes flutter. Her breath quickens. She shakes her head.

"Good." He flows like a spool of shadow to kneel between her thighs. "I've always told you the truth. Even when you didn't want to hear it." His gaze, dark and steady, rises. "Today's no different."

"But—"

"You want the future. So do I. But I've a different view of what it holds." His hands settle on her knees. "So: compromise. I've seen your world. Now you'll see mine. And we'll both have what we want."

Mel struggles to gather her wits. "The guests—"

"Are our guests. They'll play by our rules." His hands, cool and rough-tipped, coast up her thighs. Her skirts rustle into a crumpled heap. "Ours, Mel. Not theirs."

He's a man with a plan, her husband. The plan is, at present, undoing the buttons holding up her stocking garters. His fingers pick each one. Each, with a faint plink, gives way. The fabric, a whisper-fine silk, is tugged loose.

Then his palms, cupping her knees, tip them higher. Spreading her wide. His breath is a hot susurration across her thighs. And between them: a wet heat gathers in throbbing counterpoint.

"This is how compromise works." His thumbs hooks into her satin drawers. "By giving. By taking."

"This isn't compromise," Mel pants, one last-ditch effort. "It's extortion."

"Is it?" He smiles, a sly little curl. "Here I thought I was taking my due."

"I—"

"Six nights," he muses, the satin slipping down. "Five days. And you've been laid low the entire time." His breath ghosts her bare flesh. "It's robbery. And I aim to rectify."

"I would've happily—"

"In your sorry state? Tch. You needed rest."

"I needed—"

"My attention. My care. My patience." He peels her drawers down, leaving them to dangle from one ankle. "Now I'll give it. All of it. Every drop. But first: a down payment."

"Silco…"

"Ssh." He looks up. "Let me."

The last of Mel's willpower melts. He's too close. Too much. And she, the shrewd stateswoman, the expert negotiator, is a lost cause. 

She is, Ambessa would say, a child yet. Too easily distracted. Too eager to forget her lessons. She is, Ambessa would say, a woman yet. With a woman's needs, and a prerogative to seek them.

She is, Ambessa would say, a Medarda yet.

And a Medarda, at heart, is a hungry thing. Hungry, and never, ever full.

He spreads her thighs wide, curling one over his shoulder. His hand splays the small of her back, arching her up. Mel, gasping, grips the chair arms. In the bright clean light, he can see everything. Her naked thighs, the folds of her smooth-shaven labia, the dewy moisture gathering at her entrance.

The display is as obscene as his slowness. Turning his head, he dots kisses along her inner-thighs, first one, then the other, until they quiver.  Then, the barest bite. Another, and another. Harder, then harder still.

Reflexively, Mel's legs try to squeeze shut. He doesn't let them. There's iron hidden in his lanky form. When he holds her down, there's no quarter given. With a touch, he strips away decades of pretense. With a kiss, he cuts her to the quick.

And with a look, he rips her last veil to shreds.

Veils, for Mel, were once her armor. The veil of her beauty: worn in the Council chambers, to hide the full scope of her cunning. The veil of her grace: worn in the ballrooms, to disarm the most hardheaded adversaries. The veil of her composure: donned since girlhood, to keep her most raw hurts hidden.  

And the veil of the dark: her body bared and her heart barred, while her bedmates groaned and shuddered and finished atop her.

The last is, perhaps, her own fault. For years, she'd made a game of it: playing a part, but withholding the sum. Her affections were an exquisite riddle; her lovers, a revolving door. If they courted her with enough finesse, she'd consider them worthy of her bed.

But the thrill was always brief.

During the act, they'd try too hard. They'd want too much. Quite often, she'd slip from the moment, even as she lay in the heat of it. She'd keep the satisfaction for herself. Afterward, as the men slept, she'd finish with solitary caresses what they'd failed to give her. In the morning, she'd smile into their eyes and bid them adieu.

Their egos were her little trophies. Her heart; their loss.

Only Jayce—sweet Jayce—proved the exception. Jayce, who'd kissed her, and shown her the stars. And in his arms, she'd found a sanctuary she'd never imagined. She'd bloomed as a night-flower does, shy and secret, in the safety of his hands.

After they'd parted, he became the standard by which she measured every paramour. Each one proved a pale imitation; the disappointment barely worth lingering on. And she, in turn, made bitter peace with the loss.

Life, she told herself, was made of a thousand little losses, and a hundred little gains. And sometimes, a heart must lose the one to gain the many. Sometimes, a heart must accept, even as it breaks, that the dream is over, and it's time to wake up.

Silco's kiss hadn't woken her.

It had ripped her wide open.

She still remembers their night, in the depths of Zaun's underbelly. How, in his smoky little bower, the glow from the windowslats had cast a deep-green hue across his silhouette. How the shadows, slow and shifting, had cut dark rills like blood across his scarred skin. 

How, bad eye glowing, he'd drawn her to him, and taught her the pleasure of the darkness.

She'd always been a woman who made love beneath the sheets, with the shutters drawn and the lamps low. Her body, her greatest mystery, was only ever hers to reveal. She did so with deliberation: a coy unraveling of garments, a languid unfolding of limbs.

In the dark, her nakedness was an offering. And she, the secret garden in bloom.

With Silco, the dark became something else. A realm of unshackled instinct. Inhibition was a four-letter word to him. His tastes were neither gentle, nor genteel. And that night, she was—as he'd made indelibly plain—all his. Her body, his domain.  

And he'd possess every inch, even if he had to carve her open to do it.

Mel hadn't expected her own surrender. But surrender was all she could give. She, who'd always enveloped herself in beguilement, even as she saw through others. She, who'd divined their needs, and kept her own at bay.

And yet...

And yet, there was a side to her. A side she'd never revealed, even to Jayce. A hunger that verged on ravenous. A darkness, deep and desperate, that ached to delve into the unknown.   

To be uncaged.

Monsters, Mel thinks, know a thing or two about cages, too.

Silco had understood. Sometimes, Mel thinks, he'd understood before she did. And that night, he'd looked at her, and she's been reflected in his eyes: the want and the woman.

He'd seen her for all she was. All he could take, and give.

Afterward, they'd lain tangled in the sweat-soaked sheets. She, sore and spent and throbbing in every particle, too drained to do anything but breathe. He, with a hand on her bare throat, breathing in turn. He'd fallen asleep that way, still half-buried inside her.  His body a little heavy, a little sharp, but solid and grounding.

And Mel had felt, for the first time, completely and utterly unveiled.

Veils, Silco had written, in a final letter delivered with a single, ink-black orchid, a day before their wedding, are a bride's prerogative. Wear one as you will.

But remember: a groom's prerogative is to cut through it. To lay bare what's beneath. 

He'd signed the letter: Yours, S.

Then, a postscript, scrawled in his spidery hand:

I promise, whatever is beneath, I'll keep it safe.

Mel, on her wedding, wore no veil. She didn't need one. Silco had already seen through her luminous façade, and glimpsed the starveling beneath. And she, whatever Elora or Jayce believed, had long since pared down the man from the monster.

"Mel," the monster rasps now, his breath hot and close. "Look at me." 

She does.

He holds her gaze, as he holds her spread wide. She's pinned head to toe, her skirts a froth, her ankles trapped. She is, in his eyes, bared to the heart of herself. The heart that beats, in her throat, in her breasts, between her thighs. She feels a single droplet of moisture seeping out, tracing its way down. His eyes, rapt, follow its course.

And finally, mercifully, his mouth covers her.

Jolting, Mel cries out. He doesn't relent. Hooking her heel behind his shoulder, he holds her steady. And then his mouth is teasing her open, one slick nudge at a time. His tongue, dipping lower, tasting her: one savoring slurp after another. He's a connoisseur of his craft, her husband. He devours with idle relish, as if sampling a rare oyster. And she, shivering, is the pearl. The very deliberateness is a torment.

She needs more. She needs everything. She needs—

"Silco," she whimpers, the air thickening with musk. "Gods—"

"Patience. Breakfast's not to be rushed."

"Please—"

"Sssh. Let me finish." His chuckle vibrates deep. "And then, petal, I'll finish you."

His teeth close, and suckle. Her vision flashes white. Her nails score the wooden armrests. He's an absolute beast, her husband. The only mercy is his own hunger. His tongue teases her clit until it is taut and throbbing, and she is gusting high-pitched contraltos that are not quite song but nearly prayer. Then his hands shift: two fingers sliding into her. Not prodding, but slyly insinuating, a come-hither curl.  

Mel's thighs spasm. Her eyes roll upward. Through the skylight, she sees the sky. Blue, bright, endless. She's at the crest of a wave. She's at the bottom of the sea. She is sobbing, her fingers seizing his hair and her heels kicking at his spine.

His hand, cupping her bottom, hauls her up. Now, her only anchor is the chair, and him.  And he's lapping her without pause: tongue liquid, teeth scraping, fingers digging. His growls, low and filthy, reverberate straight to her core.

She feels as though she could be consumed by him. Devoured top to toe. She'd welcome it.

But her husband is nothing if not an opportunist.

Before the climax can claim her, he drags his mouth away. She wails, clawing at him. He wrenches loose. Kneeling between her splayed legs, he is a disheveled mess: his hair wild, his lips glistening, his bad eye spitting fire.

Their shared breaths saw raggedly in the sun-streaked parlor.

"Silco," she moans, her body wracked with tremors. "Silco, Silco—"

"Ssh." His palm stills her hips, a firm press. "That's only the first course."

"What—?"

Her juices gleam on his mouth. He takes his time licking them off.

"A proper breakfast," he says, "proceeds in stages."

"Oh, I hate you," she groans, and falls back. "I absolutely hate you."

"Not quite yet."

With a sinuous stretch, he rises. A moment's work, and his lounging robe is tossed over the chairback. In the stripe of golden sunlight pouring through the skylight, he is a lean, coiled creature: all scarred sinew and jutting bone. No ink on the pale swathe of his bare torso. But his body, like hers, is all history. His wounds, etched, where hers are veiled. His shape, utilitarian where hers is ornamental.

And yet, between the extremes, they find their golden mean.

Compromise.

He undoes the buttons of his trousers. Mel, half-lidded, stretches a leg to stroke his thigh. "Do that quicker."

"If you insist."

The last button, flicked free. His cock, jutting from the peeled-back flies, is hard and wet-tipped.

Ready.

Mel, staring, licks her lips. It's been a week since she's had him, and her appetite is a high flame. She imagines sinking to her knees. Taking him, deep, in her mouth. It's not a service she doles out on whim. But with him, it's nearly a reflex. Her palate pools with saliva. Her tastebuds tingle. She wants the tang of him: smoke, salt, musk. Her throat wants all of him: the fullness, the heft, the ache. 

Except it's nothing to the ache between her thighs. Every breath is a sharp-toothed misery.

Silco's fingers thread into her hair.

"Open, petal," he rasps. "Open wide."

Mel, wetting her lips, obeys.

He's not gentle. He shoves himself inside without prelude, a heavy slide across her tongue. Mel's jaw unhinges wetly. Her breath hitches. He's ungodly thick; blunt-tipped and heavy-veined. But the rest is all smooth elegance: silk and velvet.    

Her palms starfish his hipbones. Her tongue swirls. Once, the knob past her throat was all she could manage. But he's a patient man, and she's a canny woman. In his own words, she's graduated, From a competent little cocksucker to a downright connoisseuse.

The lascivious praise still sends a thrill through her.  It's an act of mutuality, when she pleases him. To give her power away, and yet be given more. To yield, and yet have all her hungers met.

Even the ones so dark, so deep, they threaten to swallow her whole.

Mel suckles, her cheeks hollowing.  Silco grits out a curse. One hand fists her hair.  The other curls under her jaw, tipping her head back. His cock hits the back of her throat. The pressure makes her world blur. She gags, tears spilling.

He doesn't let up.  His eyes, red and black and blue, lock her in place. 

Be a good girl, they warn. Finish your breakfast.

So she does.

His first thrust is goading. The second is dizzying. The third is deep. And she takes it all. Every last inch. Her mouth, swollen and wet, works his shaft. The sounds are obscene: slurp, swallow, slurp.  Her hands, trembling, cup his testicles. They're heavy with their load. She fondles them, rolling the sac, teasing the base.

Silco's head tips back, the pale smoothness of throat bared. The muscles work as he bites down a guttural groan. Anguish. Agony. He's not a man given to raptures. But in the grip of his own, he's a sight well worth savoring.

"Mel," he grits, "fuck—"

Then he's taking her, filling her, using her. The only thought in her mind is his cock.  The only thing she wants is more. Her jaw burns. Her lungs burn. Between her thighs, the throb becomes a clench. Reflexively, Mel's nails score his hips. Her mouth seals around him. Sucking, laving, begging. 

"That's it," Silco gasps, voice raw. "Such a greedy little slut."

She keens around his cock.

"Soon," he pants. "Soon, petal."

Then, he's gone. The loss is a shock. The sound her throat makes—a wet, lewd pop—echoes through the parlor. Panting, Mel stares up through watery eyes. His own are a seething void.

She's what's undone him. Her, and her insatiable need. The knowledge makes her drunk.

"Silco," she rasps, "now, now, now—"

He doesn't argue. Seizing her shoulders, he drags her from the chair. The room spins. A moment later, the carpet's a soft landing. The skylight, a blue corona.

And Silco, blotting out everything: the eclipse.

He is upon her, one long continuous line: sharp teeth, sharp elbows, sharp hips. His cock rides against her mons. Mel, spreading herself wide, tries to urge him where she needs. Her hips roll: seeking friction. Her sounds are wordless, wanton, weeping.

"Ssh," he soothes. "Ssh. I've got you."

And then, at last, he's there. A hot slide, and a slow shocking stretch.

A sob tears out of Mel. He's so much, and she's so full. The sensation is almost too much. But her body, her mind, her heart: they are greedy creatures. They will never be satisfied until she is split wide open. Until she is utterly, completely, his.

Until he is hers.

"Harder," she gasps, thighs locking. "More, more, oh—"

Her husband, no less greedy, delivers.

It's not the tender lovemaking she'd dreamt of all her girlhood. Younger, she'd imagined sex as no different than a ballroom dance. Two bodies, one harmony. Each step, a perfect accord. A graceful, inevitable union.

Diplomacy in motion.

Her husband is the antithesis. His body, a taut, sinewy cage, keeps her pinned. His rhythm is the same as his zest for everything else. Merciless. Remorseless. Relentless. It hurts, it hurts so sweet, her whole body a single raw nerve singing in a pitch that verges on pain. The sounds he makes: growls, grunts, harsh-edged curses. The sounds she makes: whimpers, sobs, incoherent pleas.

It's the fever, come back. It's her senses, aflame. It's him, the only cure.

"Mine," he hisses, driving into her. "Mine. Mine. Fucking mine."

"Yours, yes, yours—"

He lifts one of her thighs over his shoulder, their bodies wedged impossibly close. Then he's grinding, grinding, grinding. She's so wet, every motion is a visceral squelch. Every thrust hits where she needs: deep and unerring. She seldom climaxes except in her own time. But here, she's already halfway to the edge.

And then, he takes her over.

His slick thumb finds her clit. Her head falls back, thighs seizing.

"Silco, gods—"

"Let me feel you, Mel. Come for me—"

The crescendo hits in a shockwave. Mel cries out, a shriek torn from her bones. She, who's always held together with threads of glossy gold, is unspooling into wet ribbons. It's no pretty picture. It's sweat, and slick, and spit. It's her, and it's him, and it's theirs.

It's everything.

The aftershocks don't ebb. They crest into another wave: smaller, sharper, sweeter. Keening, she rides out the spasms. Silco, teeth gritted, hitches himself deeper. His thumb is still on her clit. And his cock, gods, his cock, the way he's working her, is a bliss tantamount to torture.

"Again," he growls, "fuck, again—"

She cannot. She's going to. She cannot. She has no choice.

She's not anything, anyone, except his, his, his—

Her third peak is a slow-burning quake. Mel feels it from her heels all the way to her heart. Her spine arcs. Her body locks. She is the sun, and the sea, and the sky. The world is blue. The world is gold. The world is red, and black. She cannot take her eyes from Silco. Needs to see him watching her, her reflection in that monstrous, burning pupil.

He is a monster, her husband. A devil in scarred mortal flesh. 

And his mouth, his hands, his cock, are a hell she will gladly suffer.

"Mel." His thrusts, rapidfire, are losing tempo. "Gods, you feel—"

"Come," she begs, her thighs quivering. "Inside, now, please—"

He does, with a hot, pulsing rush. She feels it: each distinct throb. He's buried achingly deep. She is full of him, filled with him. In that moment, she knows nothing else. His face, above her, is a rictus: bared teeth and wild eyes.

All the layers, undone.

"I should," she gasps, "do a painting."

Silco, chuckling raggedly, collapses. His weight, pinning her, is deliciously heavy. Mel cradles him in place. His body is a little angular, a little cutting. But she's filled with such a languorous, liquid warmth, the discomfort doesn't register.

She wants only this: him, and the sun-dappled silence, and the whole day to come. A hundred days of this. A thousand nights. 

She can be selfish, and take it all.

Except he's already peeling away.

One cool palm smooths the curve of her skull. Cooler lips touch her temple. Their bodies disengage wetly. The echoes of him throb inside her, a visceral pulse of emptiness.

Mel bites down a whimper. In the aftermath, he seldom lingers.

A shark, she'd once read, must keep swimming, or die. Silco is the same. After the attack, he's gone. A cigarette lit; smoke suffusing the silence. A caress imparted: cool, light, fleeting. An endearment, if he's well-pleased: petal, darling, sweetness. 

And then he's off to whatever wickedness his mind's conjured up. To his office, where his Amazonian lieutenant waits. To the clubs, where the chem-barons congregate. To the workshop, where his daughter, his pretty little mirror, sits spinning her own wicked webs.

His is never idle, her husband. His languor is all surface: a silhouette gliding beneath the black.  

Always on the prowl.

But here, he's no shark. He's just a man. His body, spilling onto his side, is a study in elegant lines. Long, lean, sated. Sweat cools on his hairline. His breathing evens. His good eye, the one that's all blue sea, holds a gleam she knows. 

A little raw, a little real.

All hers.

"A painting," he repeats, his voice a drowsy husk. "Of what?"

"You."

"Ghastly."

"Only when you're scowling. When you're like this—" she lifts a hand, fingertips tracing his scarred torso, "you're almost handsome."

"Almost?"

"Beauty is different from magnetism. The first is best appreciated from afar. The last draws you in. Forces you to look past the surface." 

Her palm, roving down his shoulder, finds a knot. She kneads until he hums. Tactile hooks are her little specialty. They keep him close. Keep him from straying away.

"I remember," she whispers, "the first time I spent the night with you." It's not an easy memory to conjure up. So much is layered on top of it: before and after. "In the morning, I saw you in full daylight. You were lazing naked in the patch of sunshine, with your awful cigarettes and your awful musings. And as the sun rose, it dyed your skin to all the colors of an autumn forest. Amber, copper, ash. And I thought: I must have him in the sun again. I must paint the sea in his eyes." 

"What sea?"

"It's there, in the right eye. There's a hint of storm in it. A little thunder, a little lightning."

Her palm aligns to his cheekbone. Thumb edging his notched lower-lip. Testing the waters. 

"A little darkness, too," she whispers.

His teeth, closing gently around her thumb, make her jump.  

"Is that what you'll paint?" he says. "My eye?"

"All of you. The way you move. The way you look at me." Her voice hoarsens. "Everything."

"And the selling price? What'll that be?"

"I'm a Medarda. We don't sell. We stake our claim."

"Hmmm." His tongue laves the pad of her thumb. "So I'm a resource to be hoarded."

"Not hoarded. Admired. Like a rare cut of onyx." Her palm, drifting, finds his belly: a supple stretch of bare, bony muscle. "I'd frame you in gold. For posterity. And my own pleasure. I'd never let a soul see it."

Idly, he rolls over. "A dirty secret, hm?"

"A private delight."

Mel, turning too, curls against him. She is, by default, a cuddler. He, by design, is not. But sometimes, default outstrips design. The trick, she's learnt, is the timing. Sometimes, the tide's high, and he's gone. Other times, it's a low ebb, and he'll let her cling.

Today's her lucky day. His arm encircles her: proprietary. His lips brush the crown of her head: possessive. Their legs entwine: a lazy braid. Nestled against his chest, Mel listens to the cadence of his heart. There's the urge, as the minutes melt together, to slip beneath the surface.

Sleep, and wake, and start the morning all over again.

"I wish," she sighs, "you were a painting."

"Silent, and easy to put away?"

"Easy to hold." Her palm starfishes his chest. "Easy to keep in place."

His hand covers hers. "Is that why you married me?"

"Not the only reason."

"But a factor." His thumb, caressing, is calloused. "A gilded box for a beastly thing." 

Mel tips her head up. "What?"

"Beneath the layers of oils, pigment, and gold leaf, that's the only painting of me you'd have." His hand imparts a squeeze. "That's all I'd become. Your caged monster."

"I—"

Before she can marshal her expression, she sees him take it in. His hand drops hers.

"Our hour," he says, peeling himself away, "is nearly up."

"But—"

"Come along."

With a twist, he's unfolded to his feet. His silhouette, a pale-skinned apparition, is framed by the skylight.

Mel, head full of sea and sharks and shadows, rises too. Her legs wobble. Little aftershocks still pulsing from her core.  Her updo's unspooled in a halo of loose curls. The rest of her is unmoored. And the tide, without her knowledge, is creeping in. 

She has to keep up, or drown.

"Tell me," she says, steadying herself, "what's this surprise of yours?"

"Nothing too grand." His hair curls in silver-threaded vines over his temples. He smooths it back. "Just a small show."

"A show of what?"

"You'll have to see."

"Silco—"

His good eye is a searing blue. "Afterward, Mel."

Mel stares. This, she knows, is no mere excursion. She's caught a whiff of blood.

She could stop him, and demand answers. Demand to know the plan, and the terms. She could threaten, or cajole, or plead. She could throw a fit, and storm out. She could even, as she's done before, try to dissuade him. He'll listen to her. He'll even bend, sometimes.

But not now. His course is set, and those fins are in motion.

And yet…

And yet, there's something. Something in the way his good eye tracks her. Something in the way his hand lingers on the small of her back. Something, behind the fierce, hard lines of his face, that tells her the world won't end.

That, if it does, it's not the end of their world.  

"I don't suppose," she says, a touch tart, "you'd tell me why we're rushing."

The corner of his mouth hitches. "To make a grand entrance."

"Without the benefit of a script?"

"You're a better performer when you improvise."

Mel, shaking her head, kneels to scoop up her underthings. One stocking laddered; the other split at the seam. She gives them up for lost. The rest of her is a disheveled wreck. She'll need to wash, and redo her makeup, and re-tame her hair. She'll need a different dress, and a pair of heels that won't wobble.

All before the hour slips away.

"Give me a moment," she says, turning toward the door. "I'll need to—"

Unexpectedly, he enfolds her. His scent is different now: not the usual cool smoke, but a warm, salty musk. Arousal, savoringly spent. The evidence of their coupling is all over him, too. A wet stain, glistening across his abdomen. Her lipstick, smearing his throat. Her scratches, furrowing his shoulders.

Mel, eyes dipping, inhales. She is sated, physically. And yet there remains, always, a residual fascination. 

And, like Mal de Mer, it will always, inevitably, return.

Like all else between them.

"I meant it," he says. "I want you to see my world. I want you to understand what I've fought for, and why. Because the alternative is to live the rest of my life a painting in my wife's house."  

"Not my house," she corrects him. "Our home. There's a difference."

"Only to an exilee."

"That's who I am, Silco."

"You are not." Cupping her chin, he holds her stare. "If Noxus has cast you off, the last thing you should call yourself is exiled. Exiles are people without a place to go. You've built yours. You've built a city." He tucks a curl behind her ear. "You've made the whole damn place shine."

"And I want to keep it so." Her hands find his chest, smoothing the scratches. "Keep you so."

"You can't keep me, Mel. Not in a portrait. Not on a ring. Not in any gilded cage. I am who I've always been: the man you'd never have met, if he'd not cracked the ground open beneath your complacent feet, and let all his monsters out." His voice is hard. His eyes, harder. "And monsters can't be caged. Only fed."

Stung, she drops her hand. "I'm not trying to cage you."

"You are. Not because you wish it, but because you believe it's best. 'Keep him distracted, and he'll be content. Keep him close, and he won't wander. Keep him in sated, and he won't have his way.'" His mouth, a bare inch from hers, crooks. "It's not a bad plan. Twenty years younger, and I'd be putty in your hands. But a cage, whether it's built of caresses or chains, is still a cage. And I'm not your Golden Boy, Mel. I don't have his heart, or his dreams. I've only ever had my own. And I am can smell the fear on you, whenever I go chasing after them."

"I'm not—"

But she is, and they both know it. The buried horrors of her past, and the hidden hungers of her present. How, with a touch, he resurrects them all, and bares her down to the bone. How, if she missteps in their two-quotient dance, he'll do the same to her city. He'll bleed them both dry, and then he'll be gone. Leaving her to pick up the pieces.

Alone, again.

She whispers, "Why marry me, if that's how you felt?"

"Because the alternative is a war neither of us would win." He exhales, and the heat of it fans her lips. "We understand each other. We want each other. So we'll compromise. We'll take, and we'll give. But not a single thing more. Not for diplomacy, or duty, or anything else." His thumb traces her jaw. "This, between us, is ours."

Mel, blinking hard, is suddenly, absurdly, near tears. "And the rest?"

"The rest is fair game."

"And that's not an act of war?"

"No," he says. "It's a choice."

"I—"

"You chose me," he says. "Why?"

"Because—"

The sunlit air congeals between them. Past dopplers queasily through the present. She sees Jayce, his eyes full of hurt. Jayce, who'd asked her, Why him? 

She sees Elora, a hand on her heart. Elora, who'd pleaded, What does he mean to you?

She sees Ambessa, a shadow looming. Ambessa, who'd warned, Where does his loyalty lie?

Where, Mel thinks, does mine?

She knows. She's known for a while. But to breathe it into words is to give it life. It's too dangerous. The undertow is stronger than she'd expected. If the current claims her, the last thing she wants is to go under. The last thing she wants is him cutting her loose.

Except he's not.

He's keeping her close.

"Do you know," he says, "why I chose you?"

"Silco—"

"Let me tell you." His cool palms cradle her hot cheeks. "Because you, with your pretty dresses and painted smiles, have always known the price of survival. You, who've swum in the currents of compromise, even as you watched the ships of war sail in. You, whose eyes see farther than the rest, and yet whose hands are never far from a pen." His thumb caresses her mouth. "You, Mel. Nobody else."

And that, in its simplicity, is her answer. It is also, she thinks, the sum of her truth.

And he, whatever else, has always valued his sums.

"I won't ask why you chose me," Silco says. "I'll ask, instead, for something simpler."

"What?"

His stare is a strange thing. An uncanny glint of dark and light.

"Trust me," he says. "For today, if not tomorrow."

"What makes you think I don't?"

His lips shape a small sly smile. "Because you've no reason to."

Mel falls silent.

"We've a bargain between us. A marriage. But you've never been tied to something you couldn't shape, or bend to your will. You're a Medarda, after all. You stake your claim. And if you'd chosen a different man, a more pliant one, you'd not have any of this—" He strokes a stray curl from her temple, "—Mal de Mer. Now I need to know: is it well and truly gone? Or do you still feel it? That pull. That dread, when I'm elsewhere, that I'll never return. That one day, I'll wake up, and decide to take everything? Because if you do, and if that's where you'll stay, I'll let you go." Wryly, "I'll even help you pack your trunks." 

Her lips part. His thumb touches them, silencing.

"If it's not," he finishes, "then a single word will suffice. Yes, or no."

The moment is a knife's edge. His scrutiny is a physical paring-down. It makes her feel—not naked. Transparent. All her veils gone. Herself laid bare, and every secret exposed.

For a heartbeat, she nearly breaks. Nearly blurts her deepest fears. The ones he'd promised, in his last letter, to keep safe. To let her believe, however desperately, that it was all worth the gamble. That he, and she, and they, could be—if not happy, then something close.

But there is no close.

There's only the tide, and her choices.

"Yes," she whispers.

"Say again?"

"Yes." Her palms, flat on his chest, curl. "I trust you."

A pause, so brief she nearly misses it. Then the scarred corner of his mouth lifts. "I will hold you to that."

He leans in, and kisses her. It's not tender, but it is true. She tastes the currents, the tides, the undertow. She feels, she fears, she knows:

If she lets go now, she'll drown.

The danger, strangely, is freeing. It's a leap, not a fall. A choice, not a compromise.

It's her, and him, and the rest be damned.

Breaking off, he whispers, "One thing."

"What is it?"

"Change out of the chiffon." Detaching, he looks her lazily up and down. "It won't survive."

"Survive you?"

"Survive the day." He's already moving toward the bath, stripping his clothes. "You've plainer dresses in the armoire. Choose something durable."

"Durable?"

"Something—" he glances over his shoulder, "—you wouldn't mind never seeing again."

The door swings shut. The roar of running water begins.

Mel, perplexed, stands in the sunlit parlor. It's not yet midday, and she's already jelly-legged. Mal de Mer—or just the man. The aftermath is a slow, sticky, aching throb. Reality takes its time sluicing back.

And when it does, there is nothing to do but meet the tides.

Sealegs, she thinks, aren't enough.

Sometimes, the only choice is to swim.

Fortunately, she's never been afraid of the deep-end.