#c: cj wingrave

[rapunzel-withthegoodhair]

everythingsheclaimed asked you: Top 5 Daimon Helstrom moments :)

PUT “TOP 5” ANYTHING IN MY ASK AND I WILL ANSWER OK GO

Top 5 Daimon Helstrom moments...according to CJ Wingrave 

                  (listen while reading) // (google doc link for easier viewing)

I.

The air across Portland shifts firmly, as if a warm front just pushed its way in across the frigid morning cold. Not slowly, but all at once. For a moment, the friction crackles in the air. As Daimon glances up from his office desk, a flash of lightning splices through the campus. Roaring thunder soon follows and the rain that he wouldn’t know how to live without begins to splash heavily across the windows. 

Storms in the pacific northwest aren’t unusual. On average, it rains 164 days out of every year in Portland alone. But it wasn’t supposed to today. Just moments ago, the sky was clear. 

Across campus, students are already chattering about how typical it is for Oregon to flip moods on a dime. But Daimon knows the truth. The change in energy across the city is undeniable. 

After seven whole months...CJ is back. 

~~~

The circle of candles in her room flickers to life just as her body appears within it. Rings of salt and iron guard the flames, ensuring nothing crosses over with the young witch. Blonde hair covers her face and for a few long moments, CJ just lays on the hardwood. Every muscle feels like rusted metal. As if her body was burned to ashes and then baked back together all over again. 

It’s never The Fade itself that fucks with her. It’s the process of travelling between dimensions. The process of ripping open the dense fabric of space-time and shoving herself through. It’s gotten a bit easier over the years. But her body is still made of simpler things than magic. Flesh and blood and bone is never meant for a thousand rebirths in one life. 

Everything inside of her wants to get up and stagger towards her phone right this very moment. But there’s simply no way. She needs rest. 

Eleven hours later, she wakes with a start. The candles have burned themselves out. And her mind is narrowed to one thought: Daimon. 

Her legs wobble like jelly beneath her as she leans heavily against her queen-sized bed. All she wants is a shower and some food and him. 

He answers on the first ring (he always does, for her). Sitting in his home office grading papers, he’d been fighting to focus on anything that wasn’t her return home. 

“How long was I gone?” She can never tell. CJ can’t stand to be away from Daimon for longer than a week. But traveling through the fabric of space-time warps everything. The farther she travels between dimensions, the longer she’s gone, even if it only feels like a few days for her. 

Immediately his laptop is closed. Rubbing at his tired eyes, Daimon pushes himself up. His spine screams in protest, neck stiff from staring down at a computer screen all day. Wincing, he pushes stubbornly through the pain. 

“Seven months.” The words are heavy. With relief. With exhaustion. He’d wait the rest of his life to see her again if he had to. But damn if the waiting doesn’t take its toll. After all, abandonment was all he really knew before her. “Can I come see you?” 

The rain that began earlier begins to pound harder outside. Tugging his coat on, he grabs his keys without even looking for an umbrella. Nothing can keep him out of her gravitational pull. Even if she says no he’d be content to sleep in his car in the looming shadow of her apartment building. To feel what tiny seeds of her energy he can soak up now that she’s back in his atmosphere. 

“Yeah…” Gripping the doorframe to her bathroom, CJ barely makes it to the bathtub without injury. Their connection is so intense, she swears she can feel him all over her already. Strong chest pressed to the skin of her back. His delicate fingers tracing her throat. His cold nose along the back of her ear, drinking in the milk and honey scent that lingers strong after a trip to The Fade. “Yeah, I need you.” 

For the first time in seven months, a smile pulls at his stoney features and light flickers back into his stormy blue eyes. 

II.

She appears without warning.

One moment, the classroom desk in the far corner of the back row is empty. Next, CJ is soaking in the beam of sunlight falling through the windows. Sunlight is hard to come by in Portland. But CJ likes to play with the weather to fit her mood. Apparently, she’s feeling bright today. Playful.

Eyes falling on her for just a moment, Daimon doesn’t allow his lecture to skip a beat. Though a tiny smirk tugs at his mouth.

“The Greeks believed that goodness and beauty were interwoven. They were inextricable. And hey, maybe they were right. Isn’t beauty just chaos given order? Isn’t order what allows us to survive?”

“Or maybe that’s just what we tell ourselves to justify hitting on the same girl every one else is eyeing at the bar.”

The class turns to glance at her. No one has the spine to ask where the hell she came from or what her name is. But they’re all thinking it. Particularly the boys.

Arching an eyebrow, Daimon’s posture straightens slightly. He pushes away from his desk, eyes locked on her own as he responds carefully. Few students have ever dared to interrupt him during lectures. If she were anyone else, they’d be sorry for trying. But CJ’s mischievous side is his greatest weakness.

“It’s interesting...we’re always so arrogant to assume beauty is about us. Isn’t...a neatly pruned orchard beautiful? A well built house?” Glancing casually across the sea of students, he shrugs. “Do we not crave order? Is this not what keeps us alive?”

“Keeps us alive for what? If not to enjoy the chaos of passion. If beauty is the key to passion, how does the argument stand? How can beauty be both order and bring chaos at the same time?” A smirk twitches over her pretty mouth, eyes dancing with his as their mental waltz dizzies the rest of the class.

For a moment, Daimon allows her words to hang in the air. He mulls them over, then ultimately shrugs.

“Clearly Miss Wingrave isn’t Greek.” A low rumble of laughter disperses the tension in the room and the two of them exchange amused smiles.

After class, she waits patiently for the other girls to finish coming up with excuses to talk to him. Stupid questions and cliché compliments, their bouncy curls twisted around manicured fingers as they giggle while he isn’t even trying to be funny. But his eyes have trouble staying away from the long legs CJ has crossed at the knees while perched on a desk in the front row. He can feel her eyes dragging over his skin, as hungry as her teeth when they’re in bed.

With a flick of her wrist, the door locks behind the last girl to leave.

He closes the space between them with purposeful steps, slowly tugging her thighs apart so as to stand between them. Cold hands hooking under her knees, he pulls her closer. Nuzzles over her forehead, into the warmth of her hair.

“You’re a  brat.” His words are a breathy laugh against her skin as a gentle kiss is dropped to hairline. Feeling her this close is to him, the same sort of relief a morphine addict feels as they finally get a needle to the arm. “And you’re so full of shit. I know you don’t believe a word you said.”

“Of course, I do.” Smirking softly, her fingers brush through his short hair, then down his shoulder. “I’m my own best evidence that beautiful doesn’t always mean good.”

“You’re plenty good.” He shakes his head in disbelief, amusement twitching at his lips. Slowly his fingers tug her ponytail undone so he can have the luxury of feeling her long, silky hair fill the spaces between his fingers.

“Only to you.” She has to admit, she’s softer with him. Softer than she even knew she could be. Anyone who only saw the side of her that Daimon brings out would never guess what she gets up to in The Fade. Or how rebelliously outspoken and impatiently abrupt she can be here.  

“Yeah, you’re right.” He sighs through a soft mumble over her skin, nuzzling into her neck, searching out the pocket of warmth there. “You can be a little bit of a monster. Like when you apparate into my classroom mid-lecture just to interrupt me.”

His words pull a laugh out of the girl as she drags a hand up and down along his spine. “I just like to watch you teach. It’s what I miss the most when I’m gone.”

Carefully, Daimon untangles himself to pull back. His brows knit together in a disbelieving (and slightly offended) look. He works hard to keep her satisfied in bed. Very hard.

CJ’s head tips back as she gives up a theatrical sigh. “Okay, the second most.”

“Better.” Playfully nipping at her lower lip, he gently curls his fingers into her hair and tugs just firmly enough to fit their mouths together in a deep kiss.

III.

It’s late when he knocks at her door. But CJ feels him the moment he enters her apartment building. His energy is low, dialed down with exhaustion after a night spent fighting and ultimately descending a particularly nasty demon. But the connection between them is like a tethered cord. The slightest tug always ripples through her body.

Reaching up on her toes, she pulls him into a warm hug. His body is colder than usual in her arms as it fights to heal from expending so much energy. She loves Louise, but this bullshit is going to get him killed. Why the woman insists her replacement be a powerless human so completely out of touch with their world of witchcraft and demonology, CJ will never understand. She’d be lying if she said being passed over for the position hadn’t stung. Though in fairness to the older woman, she’d never given Louise much reason to hope that Daimon could always rely on her presence in this realm. A month or two at home and CJ is always back to flitting between worlds.  

Pushing the troubling reminder of Gabriella away, her thoughts narrow to the simple task of making him tea. She turns to head into the kitchen and Daimon trails after her quietly, like a stray puppy in want of a home.

She cups his cheek as they stand by the stove, dragging in a slow deep breath while waiting for the kettle to warm. There are fresh lines on his face, a map of  all the stress he keeps balanced on his shoulders. Guilt tries to knock at her heart. If you wouldn’t leave him to bear the earth alone like Atlas, maybe it wouldn’t weigh so much. But she knows it’s bullshit.

She loves him. But she can’t cure Victoria or bring Ana home or turn back time on what his father did to him. Worse than any of these, she’ll never convince Louise to send Gabriella back to The Vatican. Tracing the pad of her thumb over the dark circles beneath his left eye, her features soften.

“You need sleep, baby.”

A wrinkle finds his nose. He can’t stomach the thought of wasting time sleeping while she’s home. When she may leave again tomorrow and take ten months to return. Or ten years. Or ten centuries.

“I’ll sleep when you’re gone.” His voice is soft and stubborn, but so vulnerable. The cold tip of his nose nudges into her shoulder as he curls against her. CJ’s slender arms wrap around his larger body and she tries so hard to push away the guilt his words dredge up. She tries to just hold him and love him and be here and let that be enough.

IV.

She’s the only one who ever gets his coffee order right. Double brewed, black with cinnamon stirred in. 

When he comes back to his office after class and finds the cup of Starbucks waiting on his desk next to a wax paper bag of fresh apple fritters, he knows she’s gone again. 

Leaving gifts behind like Santa is the only way she knows to stomach a goodbye. She’s never looked him in his eyes and said it. He almost wishes she would, even though he knows it would rip his heart out to hear the words aloud. At least he’d be able to see her eyes and know without a doubt that leaving hurts her too. 

V.

The water around them swirls with CBD oil, hot enough to steam up the windows of her bathroom. Her clawfoot tub easily fits both of them and a smile pulls at his mouth as he rests back against her. No one else ever lets him be the little spoon and it never fails to take the weight off of his shoulders in seconds. 

Slowly, CJ scoops up handfuls of warm water, pouring each one down over his shoulders and chest. She rubs the back of his neck carefully, thumb massaging at the tight muscles there. The candles lighting up the room flicker lightly as she pulses healing magic through his skin and down into his bones. He’s not even injured right now, and even if he were, his demon blood allows him to heal faster than her magic could ever knit muscle tissue. 

But he hasn’t been able to reach Victoria in over a month and he’s broken from the effort. She can feel it hanging heavy in his skin, making each breath feel like he’s trying to kick to the surface with rocks tied to his ankles.  

He’s tired of being alone. He’s tired of shouldering Victoria’s demons alone. He’s tired of fighting demons alone. He’s tired of dealing with family trauma that isn’t his cross to bear alone (since Gabriella seems to think it’s morally abject of him to turn those he’s helped over to her for counseling). And he’s tired of waking up in an empty bed, alone. 

Brushing a hand along her thigh, he tries to find the words. To beg her to stay. To convince her that he needs her more than any Fae or Spirit or Goddess. 

Carefully, he drags in a breath, summoning his courage. 

“I’m going to stay.” Her words are soft but clear. “I want to stay here, with you. If you’ll have me. If you promise you won't grow sick of me.” 

Her arm wraps across his shoulders and she holds him close. 

“Careful...” Slowly, a tiny smile tugs at his mouth. “ I may not let you go again. Ever.” 

He’s trying so hard not to have real hope. He trusts CJ with every fiber of his being. To catch him when he falls. To fight on his side. To hold her ground when hell comes knocking. But the part of him that’s been left behind too many times is never sure if this is the last time she’ll come home. Still, he wants to believe it so badly it aches in his bones. 

“Good…” She smiles into his neck, pressing a soft kiss there, words down to a whisper. “I won’t let you go again either.”

[rapunzel-withthegoodhair]

Charlotte Jeyne “CJ” Wingrave

born: London, England

age: 51

sun sign: gemini / venus sign: taurus 

Born in 1969, CJ was the only daughter of Henry Wingrave. With her father forever buried in his work in London, and her mother buried six feet under the earth, CJ was raised at Bly Manor. Surrounded by ghosts since before she could walk, CJ developed a sort of numbness to the normal fear anyone else faced with the dead might feel. She befriended the ghosts around her and became skilled at witchcraft from a young age, out of necessity (as she quickly learned there were much worse things than ghosts in the world). 

Moving to America after graduating in Anthropology from Oxford University, she pursued a Masters in Philosophy & Theology from Portland’s Gateway University. It is here where she meets Daimon Helstrom while paired together for a project in the Middle Eastern Religious History class they share. Daimon is the first person with a pulse who can keep up with CJ’s hungry curiosity and her rapid-fire stream of consciousness. His magic also happens to be the most powerful she’s ever felt. 

Though he tries not to make it a habit, Daimon finds himself calling CJ often to help him in the field when Louise isn’t available. The cases they explore are more challenging than any spell she’s ever cast and the rush of real danger is one she can never deny. The two work well together and for a while, they’re sort of a team. And sort of lovers. 

At 51, she is an incredibly skilled witch whose primary focus it has been for the last decade to explore The Nine Realms. Though she still appears as young as the undergrads in Daimon’s Ethics classes, her experience and power set her apart as the best partner Daimon has ever had in the field. And while this would be enough to tether him to her, the truth is, it is her caretaking he craves. The way she always lets him be the little spoon or how she always brings him food during office hours, knowing he’d completely forget to eat otherwise. 

He waits for her, no matter how many months pass by as she jumps between parallel universes. And she only bothers to come back home so she can see him. Because no matter how many new worlds open up before her, and no matter how many incredible beings she meets, no one in the whole goddamn universe measures up to Daimon. Not even a little bit.