#i could almost draw a bird skull without reference these days

[eldritchblep]

This clip made me laugh harder than it had any right to. Sound on for full effect. 

This is my end-of-year love letter to Critical Role - the cast, crew, and critter community. Thank you all <3

[kbstories]

Entangled

en·tan·gled (adj.) Twisted together; interconnected.

Eustass Kidd joins the Flying Six. The Kidd Pirates go to war.

(Or: Welcome to the worst timeline.)

Tags: Canon Divergence, Blood and Violence, References to Brainwashing, Rescue Missions, Hurt/Comfort (It’s a solid 80% hurt you have been warned)

Set in Wano, Act Three. Spoiler warning for all of Wano. This is an AU where Kidd is imprisoned on Onigashima and Killer doesn’t eat SMILE.

Content warning for some torture, some blood and references to brainwashing.

***

They’re dead, they said.

Wiping blood from his mouth, Kidd had laughed. “My crew? Dying to cock-faced cunts like you? Never.”

They fought to get to you and they died, they said as cruel hands dug into Kidd’s hair and put him under, over and over.

“They didn’t”, Kidd bit back. “They’re alive”, words fractured by the water in his throat, his lungs. Again – they will come – and again – they’re fine – and again – they’ll come for me. By then he couldn’t catch enough breath to speak but it was there, conviction burning bright in his chest.

They said, he’s dead, and even though his eyes could barely see and his ears were ringing, Kidd recognized blue and white and Killer. Kidd’s veins ached with whatever they pumped into him, his brain struggling to tell truth from lie, dream from reality.

The mask is there, real. The seams Kidd worked a full day and night on to get them just right, cracked apart and caked with blood where Killer’s temple would be–

They’re dead, they say and Eustass Kidd’s world shatters apart.

***

The Victoria Punk strains against the raging of the sea, waves mighty as mountains crashing against her skull and bursting into a thousand pieces. Killer doesn’t turn his head away from the spray, lets the ocean sting every inch of exposed skin.

Under his mask, his eyes stare straight into Onigashima’s soulless gaze.

“Hey, you there! Spikey’s friend!”

Strawhat’s voice rings true through the winds and the rain. Killer keeps his arms crossed and nods, the gesture over-articulated to carry despite the storm. “Stick to the plan, Strawhat! We’ll catch up to you on the other side!”

A smile and a thumbs-up from Strawhat to his right, a sardonic laugh from Law to his left. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for an optimist, Massacre Soldier.”

All Killer gives him is the bird. Kidd would’ve laughed at that, he thinks.

Wire is at the helm, hands steadfast and solid. “Keep course”, Killer tells him as he hops down on deck. “There’s a spot at the bottom of the bay. The Punk should be safe there.” Heat flanks him as the rest of the crew gathers, every face around him retaining that grim sort of tenacity that carried them through the past month.

There’s exhaustion there too, so keen Killer can sense it: None of them can quite shake that phantom presence permeating the Punk, the constellation of their very being-together fundamentally incomplete.

To sail into battle without Kidd is… wrong, inconceivable, almost. Killer has endured all magnitudes of that feeling while they scoured every corner of Wano Country in search for that element that will make them whole again, that unique gravitational pull that makes their individual parts click into each other like carefully-crafted machinery.

(It doesn’t get easier, being without him. Missing him. Killer can’t tell why he ever expected it to.)

“Stay low”, Killer reminds his crewmates, his voice as steady as it’s been since this nightmare started. “Find the Flying Six, that’s our priority. We have to get to Kidd before the raid starts, or things will get messy.”

For years, Killer’s mask has been a comfort; the immediate “Aye, Captain” he gets in return makes him wince where the crew can’t see it. It’s a necessity, for them to remain in the dark about his weakness – about the visceral fear that shot through Killer when he realized Kidd is gone and all eyes fell on him to make the next step.

(This has been a possibility since the very beginning yet Killer never expected to live long enough for it to become reality. Always together, even in death, that was the plan.)

*

From the moment their boots touch land, all Killer can think of is Kidd. Find Kidd, save Kidd, a near-obsessive mantra playing in his head on an endless loop as they leave the Punk behind.

For weeks he lived as Kamazo the Manslayer, every scrap of intel extracted in crimson splatters under moonlit skies. Alliances made and information combined for one purpose alone, and it’s worth it to pass by hordes of drunks and people-soon-to-be-drunks unnoticed. Every step the Kidd Pirates make on Onigashima is accounted for, their approach methodical sans the perpetual chaos Kidd’s mere existence brings.

Killer hates how easy it is, to become something other than themselves. There is no time to waste on regret, not here. They have to keep going.

Finally: There is the fortress, there are the Flying Six – and among them, a flash of red Killer would recognize anywhere, anytime. His vision narrows down to the shape of Kidd perched on the parapet, dressed black-on-black like the rest of them, and a murmur goes through the crew behind him. By some animal instinct, Kidd’s head turns and he stares right at them, too.

And for the first time in a month Killer inhales and feels his lungs unfold, his chest swell with a full breath. Kidd is there. He’s right there, and Killer’s too far away to pick up any details but Kidd is alive and now he knows they’re here, too. All that’s left is to get him out of here and regroup and–

“Soldier, watch out!”

–the shout is almost drowned out by Killer’s instincts. He tears his scythes up in the last second to deflect the little bits of something raining down on them. Shrapnel, the ground littered with it in moments.

What the…?

The thunderclap of Conqueror’s Haki precedes a furious roar he has heard a hundred times, a hundred battles over. Killer catches sight of Kidd, and how scrap gathers and swirls around him, the eye of a silver-tinged hurricane about to hit, and his mind stalls as that murderous glare locks on him.

Then Kidd is upon them.

Metal screeches against metal, the air turning sharp and heavy with Kidd’s will as his fists clash against Killer’s scythes. There’s not a shred of hesitance to the strike: A fraction of a second is all Killer gets to seek out Kidd’s eyes, glowing with the sparks exploding in all directions between them, and Killer’s gut drops at the cold fury he finds there.

That, and bloodlust so strong he can taste it. Oh fuck.

The force of the attack has Killer’s heels skidding back a few feet – motherfucker, Kidd isn’t holding anything back, is he? – before Kidd’s gaze flicks to the side and he scoffs, a pissed-off tch.

A breath, drawing deep. Flames engulf them both, then, the fire throwing up a wall that gives Killer some room to breathe.

“Heat”, he gasps, and they motion for him to move. Wire isn’t far behind, grabbing Killer by the elbow and dragging him away from the inferno swallowing the person they came to save. “You okay? Killer. Did he–?”

Killer can barely look elsewhere. “No. I’m fine, Wire, let me– What the hell did they do to him?” The last part is little more than a snarl, something venomous and ugly within him stirring. Just a glimpse of it sends Killer’s heart on a warpath, beating hard enough to throb even in his fingertips.

Wire’s expression is drawn, lips a tense line. “I don’t know but this is bad. There’s too much metal on all of us.” Which is by design, to help Kidd get around in a fight and– Fuck. Fuck.

A handful of seconds, that’s all Heat can buy them. Fire can’t hold Kidd, not for long, the man himself forged in heat and pressure just as the metal he commands. Killer grits his teeth to see Kidd emerge from plumes of smoke wiping soot off that same look on his face, lethal and so cold, and he pulls both Heat and Wire behind himself.

“Leave him to me. Take the others and–”

Wire’s hand goes bruise-tight on Killer’s arm. Heat hisses, “Killer–”

“Listen to me. Kaido’s forces will follow him here any minute. Keep them off our backs. Buy us time. Whatever this is, Kidd will fight it. I just have to make him listen.”

Two little words stick to Killer’s tongue, almost making it out of his mouth. Captain’s orders. He doesn’t have to say them, though, the tense sigh Wire exhales an answer in and of itself.

“Fine, just– Stay sharp. Let’s go, Heat.”

“Yeah”, Heat says with a final glance Kidd’s way, and they’re gone. Disappearing from Killer’s limited field of vision, and Killer trusts they will keep the crew safe. It’s not like he can turn and check, not with Kidd stalking ever-closer.

Coming for him, not the crew. Just him. A joyless smile stretches Killer’s lips wide. Good.

“Care to explain what game you’re playing, Kidd? We’re here to take you home.”

Kidd snaps at him, “Shut the fuck up”, teeth big and white against the backdrop of black leather Kidd is wearing. His face is bare for the first time in years, his hair slicked back like he couldn’t give any less of a damn how it looks. Killer’s gaze falls on the symbol of the Beast Pirates on the thick belts crossing over his chest and his heart lurches, skips out of rhythm–

“I don’t care who you are. I’ll fucking kill you for wearing that mask.”

Killer stares.

“Who I…? The mask is mine. It’s mine, Kidd, you made it for me. I’m–”

Oh shit, the earth itself shakes from the pulse of magnetism Kidd draws in every last bit of metal with, Killer’s arms threatening to snap out of their sockets as his scythes are pulled in, too. “Don’t you dare”, the words are a growl more than anything. “Don’t you fucking dare say his name”, and the pressure drops to be replaced by brute physical force as Kidd lunges.

Killer doesn’t stand a chance against Kidd, he knows that. There’s his Devil Fruit, his natural strength, his skill with damn-near every weapon he’s collected – ever since he unlocked the Haki to match, Kidd has shrugged off any and all limits imposed on him. Killer knows what Kidd can do, knows his body better than his own, some days, knows every emotion that flashes in that rust-red gaze of his.

And, with Kidd hellbent on ripping him apart, Killer knows he’s but one misstep away from a very violent death.

Countless times they’ve fought yet this is an entirely different beast: The only advantage Killer has is speed, and even that is rendered meaningless in the face of Kidd’s powers turning the metal on his body into anchors, his wrists and neck aching trying to withstand that particular gravity. Time and time again they collide, a spray of sparks and panted breath as Killer stares into the hate-filled eyes of the man he loves and doesn’t back down.

As he tells him, “It’s me, Killer, it’s me, I came back for you”, and Kidd snarls, beyond words.

Something has to give and for a moment there, Killer thinks it might not be him. Kidd is panting, growing pale and covered in sweat. This close, Killer can see the fresh wounds left to scar, dotting his chest with sickening precision, and the mottled bruises blooming on his neck, right over his pulse point.

Whatever they put him through, it’s recent enough for Kidd to look like he’s on the verge of collapse once he’s burned through his rage, and Killer despises himself for drawing hope from that.

Then Kidd stumbles, Killer hesitates – and Kidd nails him in the side, a punch too swift for Killer to block, and the taste of copper spills on Killer’s tongue as he feels his ribs give before he twists. The second fist is inches from connecting when Killer slips his hand out of the metal guard slowing him down and elbows Kidd in the face, stomach turning at the immediate gush of blood that clearly spells broken nose.

They fall apart, Killer holding the scratched-and-bruised mess of his midriff and Kidd groaning with his face tucked into his elbow. Struggling to breathe through the pain, Killer fumbles for his second scythe, throwing it to the side where it lands with a dull thud, unseen. Kidd is staring at him, mouth open and painted crimson.

Then Killer’s fingers hook into the back of his mask and he pulls it off, the world suddenly too-bright, too-loud, overwhelming – it all pales against the fear choking him, smothering any ounce of reason Killer clung to without Kidd there to guide him.

“Kidd, it’s me”, he says, the words small between them, on the brink of vanishing altogether. Well and truly lost, for the first time since they met. “Your partner. Please. I don’t know what to do. Please come back to me.”

And Kidd– He staggers towards him, like he can’t help it. “You’re dead”, he whispers, helplessly hoarse. “You died. You’re dead, Kil.”

Killer’s eyes sting as tears well up; he bites the inside of his cheek until it bleeds. Thinks, oh, and his mind puts together the puzzle pieces even if all he feels is his heart break.

“I’m right here. Right here, Kidd.”

Step by step Kidd’s fists lose their substance, metal falling to the ground in chunks and pieces and loose gears. Kidd asks, “…Killer?”, and it sounds so painfully uncertain, so threadbare and fragile that Killer throws caution to the wind.

Kidd’s knees give the moment Killer reaches for him. He doesn’t manage to catch the fall but it doesn’t matter, the feeling of Kidd’s arm sliding around his neck like breaking the water’s surface, like coming home at long last. His stump is left bare, bandaged and sore-looking, lacking the mechanics that have become Kidd as much any other part of him. Killer holds that shoulder before he does anything else, the tension there beyond unbearable to watch.

“Killer”, Kidd rasps, and Killer kneels so he doesn’t have to strain himself so much. “K-Kil, fuck, I didn’t– I thought–”

Half-realized words turning to heaving gasps, and Killer wraps himself around him as his shirt grows wet where Kidd’s head is tucked against his neck, equal parts blood and tears with how fucked up Kidd’s nose is. Murmurs against his hair, “It’s okay”, rubs a hand up and down the groove of his spine.

“Shh, it’s okay. I’m here. We’re all here, Kidd. Not leaving you behind, ever, got it?”

It’s there, with Kidd in his arms, that Killer becomes aware of their surroundings once more: There’s distant cannon fire, and battlecries cut short; the cracking of rifles and ringing of blades being drawn and crossed; bit by bit, the world reshapes itself into the beginnings of a war around them. The first thing Killer sees is a loose circle of backs turned towards them. Dead ahead, the signature woosh of Heat’s breath-turned-fire illuminates the silhouette of each and every member of their crew fighting tooth and nail to uphold the perimeter.

Closest to them, Wire’s trident blurs with motion as he smashes a volley of arrows out of the air, aimed directly at Kidd’s vulnerable back. A glance over his shoulder, and Wire’s eyes widen as they meet Killer’s.

Properly catching his gaze, for the very first time. Killer nods at him, mouths, we gotta get outta here. Wire reads his lips and smiles, unwavering.

Kidd is stirring as well, eyes red-rimmed and weirdly naked without the heavy black around them. He wipes at the blood that hasn’t quite stopped dripping down his chin before he looks up. Stares at Killer like he can’t quite believe he’s there, and then:

“Shit. Fuck, Killer, your mask”, Kidd mumbles urgently, an exhausted motion of his hand pulling closer the scattered remnants of their fight. “Where’s– Ah.”

And something in Killer breaks a little more at the gentleness with which Kidd handles his mask, his fingers unsteady as they wipe dirt and blood off the blue-white stripes before offering it to Killer, those red eyes tender with unspoken emotion.

Kidd doesn’t do apologies, mostly because there aren’t many actions he deems truly reprehensible, but... If apologies were Kidd’s thing this would be it.

Killer exhales a soft breath and presses a kiss to the line between Kidd’s shaved brows. “C’mon”, he says, and he hides his face before hoisting Kidd up to his feet, a breath shuddering out of him as his ribs shift in his chest. Kidd’s hand brushes over the furrows he left on Killer’s skin, frown deepening yet he doesn’t speak.

Piece by piece, they put themselves back together until they’re Eustass ‘Captain’ Kidd and Massacre Soldier Killer once more. There is hell to pay, a war to win and an Emperor to kill – when Kidd steps forward to rejoin their crew, he doesn’t waver and neither does Killer, following close behind.

[revolutionary-demosthenes]

So to start off, here are some mini-bios of people who I’ll be talking about! This is going to be a long post, but it will make it easier to understand my future posts if you don’t know some of these people. I’m covering: Alexander Hamilton, John Laurens, Francis Kinloch, Lois Manoël de Vègobre, Johannes Von Müller, Charles Victor de Bonstetten, Alleyne Fitzherbert 1st Baron, St. Helens, and Thomas Gray.

John Laurens: You might’ve heard of him if you listen to Hamilton. John Laurens was born in Charleston, South Carolina. His father was Henry Laurens, a prominent South Carolinian who co-owned the largest slave trading house in North America, “Austin and Laurens.” Yeah. He pretty much was a terrible father and a terrible person. He would later become president of the congressional congress. His mother was named Eleanor Laurens. Her death when John was 16 marked a significantly traumatic event in his life, however in general, John Laurens was very well acquainted with death. He was the fourth child born in his family, but he was the oldest by the time he was four years old, his older siblings all dying at young ages. One can only speculate how these early losses affected young John, or Jack, as his family called him.

John was most likely tutored at a young age. He grew up in very privileged circumstances certainly, as his father was one of the most well-known and rich South Carolinians of the time. 

As John grew up, he became very studious and serious. His father viewed him as the most promising child of the Laurens children, and prayed he would not fall prey to gambling or women. At nearly thirteen, we find our first piece of evidence suggesting John Laurens might be gay. His father Henry Laurens writes, “Master Jack is too closely wedded to his studies to think about any of the Miss Nannies I would not have such a sound in his Ear for a Crown…” In other words, Henry Laurens noticed his son’s unusual lack of interest in girls. Of course, one could read it as a passing comment on how studious his son was, or just thankfulness that Henry’s ‘best’ son didn’t seem to be ‘tempted’ in any way, but this does still confirm that as a young teenager, (and some point out that this is the time when many boys go through puberty, and therefore discover their sexual interests,) John was NOT interested in ladies. 

As John grew even older, his father decided the time was ripe for some education in Europe. Some speculation has occurred that right before John left for Europe he painted a collection known as Pope Brown Collection of South Carolina Natural History. It contains 32 paintings of natural organisms, including many types of birds and plants. This is not confirmed, but it is of interest to many that John Laurens was a very good artist, and probably quite interested in art. Many have heard of the (in)famous turtle drawings John did. In truth, though John did draw the soft-shelled turtle for naturalist Alexander Garden, he most likely did not have an uncommon affection for that particular animal.

So, John soon found himself on a boat to Europe with his younger brothers, Henry jr. and James, known as Jemmy. They eventually settled in Geneva, staying with a family friend. 

But before we even get to Geneva, it is worth noting a passage from a letter by Henry Laurens. This was written while John was briefly enrolled in a school in London. While complaining about the many crimes and indulgences of the city, he mentions “…and every black and execrable Crime had gain’d in the City is equally astonishing and shocking.” Now this simply could be another thrown in crime in the long list that precedes this, but in those those days ‘black crime’ was sometimes a code for homosexuality. So was John exposed to homosexuality in London the way Hamilton was at Nevis? This could provide some context for his later relationship with Francis Kinloch.

In 1772, the Laurens boys arrived in Geneva. John studied a multitude of subjects, and polished up his French. While he fretted about finding his brothers proper schools, his Uncle James Laurens was concerned about a different aspect of his time. Geneva, which had been a theocracy at one point, was now very open to new, more secular ways of thinking. John assured his Uncle that he was not influenced by any of his teachers not being ‘classically’ Christian. But it may not be a coincidence that the place where John most likely had his first homosexual relationship was a place more open to new types of thinking and concepts, especially in terms of religion.

What exactly was this first relationship? To establish some context, we must return briefly to Charlestown, South Carolina. The Kinloch family lived there and did know the Laurens’s. The name ‘Kinloch’ appears in some of Henry Laurens’s papers, and apparently Francis Kinloch’s sister made John ruffles for his travels to Europe. But in 1774, as John was dutifully studying in Geneva, his father wrote to him “From a hint which Waag dropped at Bath tis expected by the freinds of the young Eatonian that he will find a freind in you at Genevé, tho none of ‘em have Said a word to me on the Subject.” This “freind” is in fact Francis Kinloch, so it may be that he and John had met before. 

John and Francis became very good friends along with one of Laurens’s tutors, Luis de Manoel de Vegobre. There is little documentation of the Kinloch-Laurens relationship whilst the latter was in Geneva, but once they were separated many letters were exchanged, several quite romantic sounding. What is quite possibly the most passionate line Laurens ever wrote to a lover is contained at the end of a letter to Francis. “We may differ in our political sentiments my dear Kinloch but I shall always love you for the knowledge I have of your Heart.” Kinloch was a loyalist, influenced by his guardian Thomas Boone, while John Laurens was obviously a patriot and the two debated hotly via letters. 

Another aspect that must be looked at when considering the Laurens-Kinloch relationship is the amount of trust in the relationship. The level of trust is apparent when we see John first express his abolitionist views in a letter to Kinloch,  “I could talk much with you my Dear Friend upon this Subject,” says John, referring to slavery. “and I know your generous Soul would despise and sacrifice Interest to establish the Happiness of so large a Part of the inhabitants of our Soil_  if as some pretend, but I am persuaded more thro’ interest, than from Conviction, the Culture of the Ground with us cannot be carried on without African Slaves, Let us fly it as a hateful Country_ and say ubi Libertas ibi Patria…” Kinloch responded that he supported the ideas, but did not see how fellow Southerners would adopt them. This only illustrates more clearly that though there were serious conflicts, theirs was a loving and trusting relationship. 

When John was forced to leave Geneva, (and he did want to stay… one wonders if Kinloch had something to do with this. It may have been other reasons, like that John felt freer from his father or enjoyed his rich social life.) he wrote a plaintive letter to Kinloch, telling him, “If my Letter is a little confused, dont be surprised at it, for I am quite like a creature in [a] new world…” 

  However, as if John hadn’t lost enough family in his mere nineteen years, his brother Jemmy lost his life that summer. The boy had apparently tried to jump to John’s window and had fractured his skull. John was with his brother through the horrible night. He wrote to his uncle James, “At some Intervals he had his Senses, so far as to be able to answer singe Questions, to beckon me, to form his Lips to kiss me, but for the most part he was delirious and frequently unable to articulate. Puking, Convulsions near very violent, and latterly so gentle as to be scarcely perceived, or deserve the Name, ensued, and Nature yielded.” It is notable that soon after this, John Laurens sent a letter to Francis Kinloch, whom he hadn’t corresponded with since late the year before, 1774. This again illustrates that though the relationship was not flawless or without conflict, Laurens trusted and confided in his friend/lover.

Now studying law at Middle Temple, John received an extremely upsetting letter from Francis Kinloch. Apparently Kinloch was ready to move on from their romance. He starts the letter with an almost deceptively affectionate opening, “Whatever may be your idea of my manner of thinking in political affairs, don’t let that hinder you from telling me yours, and I promise to be as free with you: we hold too fast by one anothers hearts, my dear Laurens, to be afraid of exposing our several opinions to each other.” But Kinloch signs the letter “be certain I shall never forget you.” Apparently John  saw this as Kinloch being done with him, and as a result did something that would change his life forever.

One of Henry Laurens’s business partners, William Manning, was in London the same time as John, and apparently young Laurens came to call occasionally and enjoyed the company of Manning’s children. This is where he met Martha Manning. There is one piece of evidence to suggest that they were courting for a time, however all we know for sure is that Martha became pregnant around the time the last Kinloch letter reached John, and John Laurens was forced to marry the woman, certainly not because he loved her. “Pity has obliged me to marry.” John  wrote to his uncle. It could be that if they were courting prior to the pregnancy, the relationship was one-sided, or was an attempt for John be seen as straight. 

Though John was now married, he was yearning to leave his unhappy marriage and fight for America. An ardent patriot and abolitionist, he longed to go overseas and join the army. Henry Laurens tried his best to hinder his son’s want, but found that John was no longer a child he could bend to his will. So, John boarded a ship to America, not knowing, and possibly not caring, that he was leaving his wife behind. 

Henry Laurens, being a very prominent Carolinian and future president of the Continental Congress, managed to get his son an excellent position as Aide-de-Camp to general George Washington, though John was not officially appointed the position until October 6th or 7th. He joined the staff in August 1777, and met Alexander Hamilton, a man who would change his life forever.

Alexander Hamilton:

In quite a contrast to John Laurens’s privileged, if morbid childhood, future Founding Father Alexander Hamilton was born out of wedlock on the tiny island of St Croix to Rachel Facuette and James Hamilton in either the year 1755 or 1757. (There is great debate over his birth year. Hamilton himself used 1757, but a large amount of evidence from his childhood points to 1755. For time’s sake, we will use 1755.) Hamilton adored books and writing, but was hindered in his intellectual dreams by the grim circumstances he was brought up in. 

Hamilton had a single brother, James, also born out of wedlock. When Hamilton was 12 his mother died of smallpox, quite common at the time. Alexander was also sick, however he recovered, albeit he always had health problems most likely connected to the early brush with mortality.

Where Alexander grew up, blacks outnumbered whites by a ratio of nearly 8:1, so there was existential tension in the air, a constant fear of sugar plantation owners that the slaves would revolt. Indeed, the slave owners were so cruel to their slaves that things Hamilton witnessed as a child appear to have given him a permanent pessimism about human nature. In addition to the rich white landowners and enslaved blacks, there was a population of poor whites and criminals. St. Croix was a place where outcasts in society at the time were sent as well. This included people accused of sodomy (homosexuality). Ron Chernow writes in his biography of Alexander Hamilton, “Hamilton had certainly been exposed to homosexuality as a boy, since many ‘sodomites’ were transported to the Caribbean along with thieves, pickpockets, and others deemed undesirable.” This may explain why Hamilton seemed more at ease with his sexuality than Laurens, who grew up in a more strict, to say the least, household.

After his mother’s untimely death, Alexander and his brother lived with their cousin Peter Lytton. Unfortunately, very soon after the arrangement began, Peter took his own life, leaving the boys with practically no place to go. 

Alexander managed to get a job clerking for a prominent businessman. It is no stretch to assume that this is where Hamilton began his economic studies. While Alexander managed to get a good job, his brother was stuck being a carpenter and competing with others for work. Ron Chernow points out that this is again an example of Hamilton’s superior intellect pulling him out of ditches.

When Alexander was seventeen, a horrible storm shook the island of St. Croix. Hamilton wrote a beautiful and moving account of the hurricane, and this led to people raising enough money for him to enroll in King’s College in New York City. 

Louis Manoël de Vegobre:

A Swiss lawyer who met Francis Kinloch and John Laurens while in Geneva. His early life is pretty elusive, as he does not even have a wikipedia page. He was a math teacher, and John Laurens’s math tutor. John Laurens taught him English, and both Kinloch and Laurens seem to have taught Vegobre to love America, as he grew despairing when he heard about the challenges of the war in America. The book, Evolution of a Federalist: William Loughton Smith of Charleston (1758-1812) says of Vegobre, “When the first rumblings reached Europe, de Vegobre wrote Laurens: ‘Poor America!—you cannot believe how much me heart is moved on its account; you, and after you Kinloch have raised in my mind such a concern for your native country! I am as much affected for what happens to it, as if I were an American…. English friends, I will, I will see you in your country, before I die!’”

Vegobre was likely in a romantic relationship with Kinloch. He wrote to John Laurens in December 1774: “Let me tell you what are these pleasures whose you are the first cause.  I began to understand speaken; I read Spectator, Clarissa, Milton and Shakespear, besides some philophical books.  Never, never in my life I have been so well entertained as I am when I read Milton; and why?  First, for Poet’s excellency, and secondly and chiefly because I read it with Kinloch.  My beloved, my dearest friend is Kinloch; how happy am I, when I teach him some part of natural Philosophy, when I read with him both English and French Poets, when I talk with him about various matters plainly and heartily as with a friend!  Let me say again: Kinloch is my beloved, my dearest friend.”

Charles Victor de Bonstetten (Karl Victor von Bonstetten in German):

A writer from Switzerland, he was educated partly in Geneva, where he would develop the liberal beliefs that alarmed his father enough to make him return to Bern, where Bonstetten was born. He introduced the people of the Ticino Valley to potatoes.

He appears to have had a romance with Johannes Von Müller and Thomas Gray (I will be posting about the Gray- Bonstetten relationship very soon)

Johannes Von Müller:

A historian who’s life goal was to compile a giant master history book on Switzerland. He was a teacher of Greek, and later appointed office by Napoleon himself. He wrote many history books, and traveled throughout Europe throughout his life. 

Letter from Müller to Bonstetten: “Any mistakes I may make in the future will be your fault; that is only if you neglect your letter-writing – your friendship can never grow cold – might I let myself be surprised by a passion. Tell me why I love you more as time passes. You are now incessantly in me and around me. My dearest friend, how much better it is to think of you than to live with the others! How is it possible to desecrate a heart that is consecrated to you? I need you more than ever; over and above these immutable, laudable plans for a useful life and an immortal name I have forsworn everything that is considered to be pleasant and delightful – not only pleasure but love, not only revels, but good living, not only greed, but ambition. B. is everything to me, you make all my battles easy and all abstinence sweet. Thus you live in my mind and especially in my heart. You write to me often, but it does not seem enough to me; you often address only the historian, and do not embrace your friend often enough.” 

Thomas Gray:

I stumbled upon this man while researching Bonstetten and Müller. I came upon the book My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters Through the Centuries. I saw that one of the essays in the book was entitled Thomas Gray & Charles- Victor de Bonstetten. Intrigued, I clicked on the essay, and then from there I somehow managed to find the archive of a full biography of Gray. Thomas Gray was an English poet. He was/is pretty famous, but not super well-known, partially because he did not publish much in his lifetime. Thomas Gray’s childhood was marred with sadness. He had nearly a dozen siblings, but none except him lived past babyhood. He stayed with his mother once he had left his father, who was abusive. He was born in 1716 and died in 1771.

Francis Kinloch: 

John Laurens’s first boyfriend. He was also born in Charleston (then Charles Town) and educated at Eton College. After this he went to Geneva, where he met John Laurens. He later hosted what I call Kinloch’s Gay Retreat, in which he had Johannes Von Müller, Charles Victor de Bonstetten, and Alleyne Fitzherbert, 1st Baron, St. Helens stay with him.

Alleyne Fitzherbert, 1st Baron, St. Helens:

I haven’t been able to find anything gay about him except he was apparently lord of the bedchamber for George III, and find words.info says this about lord of the bedchamber: “A Lord of the Bedchamber's duties consisted of assisting the King with his dressing, waiting on him when he ate in private, guarding access to him in his bedchamber and closet and providing companionship.” So… possible? Maybe, but King George III also had like 20 other Lords of the Bedchamber. Also fun fact: Mt. St. Helens is named after him!

Hope this was informative!

[vide0-nasties]

whatever a moon has always meant

Pairings: Julian/MC, mentioned Asra/MC

Content Warnings: NSFW, mutual masturbation, vaginal fingering, mentions of past bodily harm, strong language, mood whiplash, butchering of a poet’s most famous work, Jeff Goldblum-isms, lethally high corn content

Word Count: 6.8k

Author’s Note: Post Book VIII: Strength, Julian and my apprentice get into their feelings then each other’s pants wink emoji. If you find the Seabiscuit (2003) reference, I’ll mail you a check for $5 that will bounce.

Two long bodies, all in black, devour a sea of tall grass by virtue of their immense strides, under a moon that’s turned their quiet night-world an eerie shade of blue.

Many of Eustacia’s nightmares have started out this way, but she’s never been one of the long bodies, and the other has certainly never been Julian Devorak. She’s not had any dreams about him, yet, though he looks like something out of one.

Weak light catches on his harsh features—turns the precipice of his cheekbone, the scalpel-sharp line of his jaw, and the sickle-slope of his nose into platinum slivers carved from the moon herself, making him phantasmal.

But, like a phantasm, he looks cold and bloodless. Like her—greenish veins under waxy skin, a body left to set too long with eyes bruised by a fight that hasn’t happened.

Eustacia imagines him wearing Portia’s freckled complexion—the veins on his eyelid less blue and more purple, color and warmth high on his harsh cheekbones.

She imagined that in Nopal, if only for a few moments when she hadn’t been rapt by and wrapped in Asra. Julian, bright as man’s red flower, dancing in the desert’s peyote-fugue dusk. Julian, setting sight on vistas impossible to capture in oil paint or chalk, barking awed laughter at land older than humanity.

(Julian, caught between a water-sick town waiting on a hero and the wailing ghost of locked-away history, mistaking beetles for flames, then checking himself for soot or scorch.)

Were he not so yoked by sleeplessness and a full stomach, his voice might’ve carried its natural bustling cadence and shattered the scenery as he asks, “Eustacia. Could I, ahm. Ask you something? Several something’s, actually.”

Their hands swing between them lazily, the six of her fingers laced protectively through his five. It is late, but not so late. They tromp through the fields outside the palace’s gardens, destined for her shop and a scant few hours’ respite before parting in opposite directions with plans to reunite and pursue his beetle-ended key’s lock.

She cannot remember the last time she slept a full night, but that is not so distressing. Better than her other days—days like lost dogs, unable to budge from bed more than minutes at a time.

“Three questions I will answer for you—no more.” It’s an old fall-back, a defense beaten in with closed fist and repetition. “Answers as honest as I can provide, with the hope they’ll sate that which fuels your seeking.”

“Three…” he hisses softly, staring into the middle distance, as if trying to pare down a two hundred verse southern eda into a limerick. “Enigmatic as a sphinx, aren’t you? Tell me, are you a fan of classical tragedies? Oh—damn, no, those weren’t—”

“I wasn’t going to count them,” she assures him, waving her hand in a mock trick of magic. “I know what a chatterer you are. Like one of those shitey morning-time birds, making noise just to make it. It endears me to you.”

He snorts, moves around like he wants to face her, but can’t quite accomplish the feat. “You just had to say something insightful and heartstopping, didn’t you? Right before I ask all these rude questions.”

“So long as you don’t ask whether my toes are webbed like my fingers. They are. Only slightly, makes a stronger swimmer of me.”

“Ah, good, good. I only have two questions now!”

That mopey-dopey grin he wears so well, so tragically self-deprecating and ingratiating, she can’t help but pitch her head back and laugh at the night. He laughs along, only a moment, and not so heartily, letting it peter out to a vexed sigh that captures her attention and forces her to draw the smoke back through the keyhole.

“Alright,” he begins, swallowing again and forcing himself to face her, bullying his voice into keeping from questioning, “I know that Asra lives with you…”

She gives a half-nod of confirmation, a tilt of the head and hand, so-so. “He travels constantly. When he returns to Vesuvia, he is a welcome guest in my home. He doesn’t live any one place, really.”

Less a lie than a half-truth. These days, he’s little more than a drifting stranger, mirror-backward-image to the beginning, when she can scarcely remember a moment that was not filled with his presence and help.

Julian clears his throat. “I’m—it’s not that I want to pry. Everyone is entitled to their secrets. Personal lives,” he corrects. Now his eye will not meet hers. “You and Asra, are you…you know…together?”

Yes. And no. She has loved Asra even before she’d known his name, when he was only soft hands, smoke scent, and a gentle voice she’d thought she’d known from dreams that promised they would be alright. But, these three short-long years and the revelations of the last several days have muddied the waters.

“This cannot be a satisfying answer, but I’ve none better to give: I am not entirely sure. He is…dear to me,” she admits, painstaking. Even at odds with him as she is, she loves him as if he is permanently moored to the center of her being, but there are rubs.

She cannot fucking stand the way he treats her as if she’s no more substantial than a blown glass flower. Actions, loving in nature, that are stained with fear and concern. And Julian—she does not wish for him to feel belittled, or insignificant, or used. He is not a diversion or dalliance. He is more.

“And I,” she continues, “as I believe you surely know, am dear to him.”

“I. Uh. Yes, I’ve noticed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look at someone the way he looked at you in the library.” There is a tint, there, that leans toward jealousy. Eustacia is not sure of its direction, toward her for being the object of Asra’s affection, or toward Asra, possibly standing as a competitor toward Julian’s keen little romantics.

There is a possibility that both are true, but she doesn’t know how to grapple that beast.

“Whatever we may be, he and I, he knows of the tender bruises I’ve come to nurse for you,” she tells him, filling her words with warmth and hoping he tastes sincerity. “They’re in the shape of your name, and I can’t stop digging my fingers into them. Like half of myself is broken apart, and I’m choice-spoiled with body aches.”

She finds him frowning, the shape of the word why forming and dying on his lips without ever being given life. He’s not asked, but she will give him the balm for that sore. “I have found something familiar in you, in this world of strangers. It’s precious to me.”

Julian’s eye goes wide and he shifts about the shoulders. Truthful sentiment might be a touch too heavy for him. But, there he goes, throwing off her balance in kind. Taking her hand, he brings it to his mouth and presses a lingering kiss to her busted knuckles. He chances a look at her from under his lashes, then demurely—almost shame-facedly—to the back of her wrist.

When the man that has something to say to everything chooses to forgo his voice, what is to be done?

She takes him to a safe place. She takes him home.

+

His second question comes when, from a different place in the city, a clock tower strikes eleven. Not quite time for the carriage to turn back into a pumpkin, nor the horses into mice, but well past time for sleepless skulls to lie down and make amends with their abandoned dreams, for good or ill.

Julian changes into a pair of her loose, silk buccaneer pants behind the frosted glass of the changing screen that separates the tub from the rest of her home above the shop. When offered trousers to borrow in any color he wanted, so long as the color was black, he’d scoffed no peach? but admitted that he looks wretched in the color at any rate.

They’re close enough in height, only two inches difference between them, that they could theoretically wear each other’s clothes whenever—had he had twice and a half the amounts of hips, and she a third wide slice of chest. But, for a few hours, he will make due cinching borrowed drawstrings tight as they’ll go.

Eustacia rids herself of boots and clothing, stripping down to cotton drawers and the flimsy camisole slip keeping her tiny tits from kissing the wind while she washes her makeup away. It feels heavy after three or four days without it in the middle of nowhere, but there is a wrongness to her without the ritual and the sleight. Even the blue bottle glass pendant dipping in the murky suds on its long, braided gold chain and needing a wash of its own is muscle memory.

She does look like the risen dead. Her skin’s got a sick pallor to it, pulled tight over her face with no muscle or fat for cushioning. All bone and teeth. The drooping of her left eyelid is obvious without the pitch makeup she smears around it, no matter how often Asra kindly assures her this is no truth she need consider. Corpse-blue lips, like kissing a drowned woman.

There was a time that this wasn’t the face she painted away every morning—the face of a half-finished thing, Asra’s project in media res. Like he’s still pulling her from the glowing-hot gut of a forge and beating out her bends with a hammer. Knocking off the accumulated slag and pig iron.

How burdensome a thing she is, for a thing that should not be here at all.

“Oh. You have tattoos.” Julian’s voice brings her out of the old thoughts and old ritual of oiling her earlobes for the gold-and-abalone discs she favors, and she tracks him carp-eyed, bewildered, and in a state of sweet undress near her kitchen table. “Lots of tattoos.”

He is divine, she thinks. Wearing her pants cinched tight and still exposing the sharp jut of his hipbones, the hair on his chest that truly begins to concentrate on the little, adorable paunch below his navel, traveling down. Broad shoulders, big arms. But it’s the simple sight of his pale, bare feet on her floorboards that unspools her.

She’s never welcomed a wounding such as this.

At least he’s staring, too. She’s not an isolated fool, just one on equal footing with another.

“More than these, even,” she mutters, exhaustion weighing down her shoulders. Of course, she’s seen her skin, but she has no names for the green-black symbols that cover her from face to foot. The woman she used to be had made a grimoire of herself, and the body’d turned into a necronomicon when that stranger passed it into her hands. “Did you think I was southern?”

“‘I was southern.’ Now that could be a very interesting tell, if you maybe sounded like you came from anywhere close to the south,” he laughs uneasily, taking a few circling steps in his immediate area. “No, I didn’t think you were from one of the tribes, but I—hah—I don’t know a fucking thing about you, do I?”

She gives no response, not wanting it to count against the two questions he has left. She goes to the bedroom, and he follows along in buzzing silence.

+

He sits on the edge of the mattress—cast half in the warm, pale gold of her witchlight, half in the eerie moon-blue that persists through the window, mired all else in the unbent dark of night—while she tries to divide the pillows into a more even ratio, pushing her rabbit pelt blanket to the wall-side. She intends to give him the door-side; freedom, should he require it. Hopefully, she tells herself, she will not wake up alone in a few hours.

“Eustacia…?”

Here it is, then. The second question.

Rocking onto her haunches, she hushes her hands and faces him with devout attention. His words come fast, rambling, like he’s chasing them out before he can change his mind and let them stay living in him, “That night we…talked—you said, you said something. That, you said that I’m not the only person that ever lived who has a—ah, ah, ah—a history. What, exactly, did you mean by that?”

“You’re not the only person that’s had tragedy bred into your bones,” she tries gently. “Or the only person that’s done bad things, or hurt people—meaning to, or not…”

The words are stuck behind his teeth. It’s a physical pain he endures before they crash out, “Have you ever killed someone?”

The third and final question, striking like a slap.

“Julian—I don’t…”

She could tell him everything—the crater of her past, the why of her dodging.

How often she wakes with smoke charring her lungs, and someone else’s tears on her face.

To speak and babble and open up for the vivisectionist, the way she does with Asra—

Did. The way she did with Asra. There are so many secrets there now, minuscule torments of her own making, things she can’t let go of.

Her hands want to tremor, but don’t.

She offers one, palm-up and waiting. He obliges, slipping against her, hooking his thumb with hers and squeezing slow. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s…” His other hand drifts like a ghost over her scars. Ones hidden under her tattoos, or cut into them. A crescent moon hugging her waist. The long gouge on her stomach, under her ribs. The blanched stripes on her shoulders.

He lingers over the necklace of scar tissue at her throat, the one that hides under her collars or chokers.

All she can think is, I’m so sorry I’m empty-handed. I’m so sorry for being built of blanched scars and hollow-eyed cackling.

“What would you do if I had? Would it really benefit you if I’d the stain of blood on my hands, never to be washed off?” she asks, soft as ash and not aiming for interrogation or accusation. “If I wore that mark, and you’re innocent of this murder that haunts you, you’d’ve made concessions to the sort of person I think you’d despise. If you are guilty, would you even find comfort from like attracting like?”

That is no answer at all, fluttering obfuscation and only. She lays out something plainer, more plausible, and truer-ringing, “I like barroom brawls. I’m angry, all the time; it builds up like venom. The way you enjoy your pain is not so much the way I enjoy mine, but there is a pleasure to bleeding.

“Beyond that, I am a stranger to my life before Vesuvia. It doesn’t matter that, in my heart, I still sleep with my boots or, or wake flinching as if I’m still there.”

An answer, but not much of one.

He pulls the misery and poison back in, draws ragged breath, and returns it a sigh, “I’m sorry for asking. I just thought…maybe you’d understand. If that makes any sense. I, uh. I don’t actually know. Maybe if you had, it wouldn’t be so…bad to have dragged you into this.”

He’d invited her to run with him on the aqueduct, turned at the end to make sure she was following when the guards were coming and that stretch of lemonstone might as well have been the edge at the end of fucking world.

He could’ve turned on his heel and sped away without a word. Rescued himself from depending on the kindness of a stranger. And she could’ve planted her feet and watched him disappear in the gloom.

But. He didn’t. And neither did she.

By cosmic coincidence or fuck-up, they’d found each other that night in the shop, and they kept finding each other.

Her hand reaches out, runs her thumb over his orbital bone. This, at least, she can own without apology or wondering. “My choices have always been mine to make. There is no action in my life where my hand has been forced. That I promise you.”

“If you say so.” He turns into her hand, heaves a heavy breath, and gives a drippy, dubious little half-smile.

With consideration, he pulls her lower lip down a little with his thumb, eyeing the chipped front tooth he’s so fond of, the one she’d given herself crashing into him at the Raven that night they traded names. The edge of the digit runs over the missing corner. “You’ll forgive me if I have trouble buying that bridge you’re trying to sell, right?”

“It is your nature,” she kindly agrees, kissing his finger and threading her lacquered-black, pointed nail through the end of his eyebrow, into his sideburn. “If you’re agreeable to it, I’d like to lie down a time and listen to one of your stories.”

+

She sleeps, she dreams, and she wakes with a jolt and Julian’s forehead in her armpit. He’s drooled, she can feel it following the curve of her ribs, and a silver string of spit connects his bottom lip to a tattoo of a lion grotesque’s head when he cracks his eye and croaks, “Bad dream?”

“Not sure,” she mumbles, absently patting his hair, blinking fish-eyed at the room. “…Storms at sea. I was beyond it.”

“Hm? It’s storming?”

“It’ll storm today, bad. Can’t you feel?” Without looking, she motions to the window. The glass jiggles in the pane against the steady wind. The air has an electric, earthy taste.

He wipes his mouth, then her ribs with an apology. “That’s ominous,” he laughs, rusty. “Ah, fuck it all. Now I’m awake.”

She doesn’t want to cast about looking for some indication of the time, so she doesn’t. She shifts around Julian, pulling him farther up the bed, close enough to kiss. He seems in better spirits after a few hours gone-dark under his belt. Maybe the questions of last night have left him, or perhaps weigh lighter. “Any idea the time? I can cook you breakfast before parting ways…I need to go to the palace and play pretend I’m at all in the Countess’ good graces.”

“Prooobably half-past three. Maybe four? It’s still dark out.” He smiles when she hunkers close and touches the tips of their noses together. “Are you sure you have to go back? We could just…hmm-hmm, get to know each other, play by ear from there.”

“If my name alone was holding up my reputation, I’d stay, but we both know that’s not the case.” Idly, she runs a finger over the shell of his ear. It makes him shudder. “We’ve some time, yet. I’m thinking we definitely could get to know one another a bit better.”

The look of disappointment doesn’t last long, and he is the one to draw first blood, as it were, teeth grazing her lip as he goes in for the kiss, responding in kind when she adds tongue to the party.

Something rises in her body when she presses close to his. The image of ships burning in the open ocean. The howl of wind over a barren blue desert. A sea of grass writhing under the gale hand of the bruise-colored thunderheads rolling over the land. Frothing red sea foam, boiling up into three hundred pounds of gold bullion.

All exultant, crackling with the feral notion of hard-bought freedom.

Beauty. Beauty. Beauty.

Syrup-slow, their bodies slide together. Her leg slots between his, his hips find a comfortable landing against hers. Their chests and bellies come together so neatly that every breath is noticeable.

His arm wraps around her, hand to the back of her head. If only she had more than stubble for him to find, but he travels to the crown of her head and kneads his fingers into the thick mass of black waves.

A tired smile against her matching mouth, his sigh so content and pleased, tinged with the ghost of his braying laughter, “There it is.”

“You can grab a handful,” she teases, reveling in the innuendo, “it won’t break me.”

“You? Doubtful—couldn’t knock you over with a pail of water. Me? Oh, my dear. They wouldn’t be able to pick up the pieces in a hundred years—maybe a thousand.” His eye pops open and he pulls her tighter to his body, absorbing her shocked cackle. “Don’t you—I know what you’re going to say, so don’t you dare. Don’t even think it!”

Oh, she’s thinking it. That big, bawdy bullshit—you are much more fragile than I—but he’s asked in a roundabout way that she not shove her hands into the barely-settled earth of their new history to dig it up and dangle in his face.

So, she mimics locking her mouth with a key, and tosses it carelessly over her shoulder with raised brows and an affable, closed-mouthed grin. There’s not much room betwixt the two of them for such a movement, but she manages, and his kiss, tender and tentative now, picks the lock.

“I’ve a proposal, if you’d like to hear it,” she mumbles against his mouth, tracing the line of his shoulder blade. She can test the waters, she thinks, feeling him half-hard against her hip, his skin against hers furnace-hot and flushed. She is long-past excited, drenched in her drawers and thumping. “I’ll warn you—it’s forward, and a little fresh besides. Very fresh, in fact. It might even offend.”

“Oh, please, please offend me,” he laughs, but it doesn’t sound many shades from whining. “I live to see the day I’m offended by something—it’s never happened before, and it looks quickening.”

“I’d very much enjoy touching myself while you watch,” she tells him, full aware her voice drops close to a growl. “And, heartsweet, I would love it if you touched yourself, too.”

This noise comes out of him, like his soul has left him. He gapes and gapes. “I died last night, didn’t I?”

“I’m hoping not, otherwise I’m taking necromancy to soaring new heights, and I will be paying for these crimes.”

Again, he laughs (HAH!), and he nods, eager as a puppy. “Yes. Please—that’s fantastic. It’s devastating.”

She smirks and unlaces the drawstring keeping her drawers up, shimmying them lower to make space for her hand. Not once do her eyes leave his face, his rapt attention on her fingers.

His hand drifts to the waistband of his borrowed trousers, touching the laces, fingers twitching. Even in the dark, for lack of the witchlight that died as they slept, she can see his erection against the fabric, and, fucking hell, if this doesn’t feel as natural to her as swimming.

“Mm—can I, uh, can I…?” He nods down toward himself, and she laughs—throws her head back and cackles so hard the bed quakes in the ebony frame.

“Heartsweet, I don’t know how to break this to you,” she wheezes, sitting up on her elbow and taking her hand away from her pants to tug the fabric on his thigh, “but you’ve already gotten yourself into my pants. You can do whatever you want.”

Before she returns attention to herself, she pats his chest and points toward the petrified wood stump that serves as her nightstand. A gift from Asra, gone red-faced and grunting, struggling it upstairs on his lonesome a memory burned into her (no, no, I got it this far, didn’t I? Don’t worry!). “There’s an amber-glass vial of mineral oil there. It’s for my skin, but it should slicken your stroke.”

She dips two fingers between her lips, settling back onto the pillows with space between them now, swirling her clit in alternating figures that make her head swim and heart race. He pulls double-duty, stretching himself long for the oil as he takes his cock out of the trousers, then gives himself a firm, oil-dripping squeeze-and-stroke that forces his face against her shoulder, leaving his leg jolting not moments after.

She can’t stop looking at him—not just his cock, as pretty as it is, thinking of taking it in her mouth with his body backed against a wall—but all of him. The color in his face, the hurricane of his hair, the spectacular lines of his limbs.

To hell with herself, she has never felt more covetous, has never wanted anything more. She wants to find a way to live under his skin.

Breath hot against her neck, he physically restrains himself, slowing to something hellish. A drop of pre-cum forms at the slit, and a swipe of his thumb disappears it, racking his body with a shudder. Already, there’s a thin glimmer of sweat on his shoulders, collarbones. The blankets and bedsheets grow too warm, and they kick them away.

Eustacia almost slips a finger into herself without thinking when the point of one of her nails almost catches her entrance, and the whine that emanates from her is pitiful. These damn things. So naked without them, and frustrated to howling when she needs them gone the most.

Julian pulls away, brow furrowed and lips swollen from his teeth, breathing from the bottom of his lungs. His eyepatch rides up, but not enough to show anything he’s not willing to share. His throat bobs again, and his eye boggles looking at the shape of her hand. “Oh…nails?” he asks, and when she nods, he offers very carefully, “what do you think about, er, trading?”

“Where the fuck have you been hiding my entire life?” she demands, but there is no heat to it, none at all. His fingers skim down her belly, over the sigil that halts her monthly bleeding, and teasingly between her labia, stealing the breath from her lungs in a shameless act of larceny.

“You are so wet,” he groans, adding two more fingers to spread her lips, running over her clit with his middle finger. “You’re soaked—that’s—oh, fuck me, that’s the sexiest thing…”

“More, please,” she urges him, wrapping a hand around the back of his arm, reaching between them with the other to take hold of his length, stroking it hotter and harder in her grip. He moans, deep and loud like a bellows-press, rattling in her throat. So vocal, so vocal, and, again, she asks for, “More, more.”

It takes pumping him tip-to-base to kick him into gait, passing all pleasantries and sliding his middle and ring finger into her to the third knuckle. It’s the perfect angle, the perfect feeling of fullness, and the heel of his hand sits where she can ride it, rocking against him and trying to match the rhythm.

That’s a failing endeavor the moment he arches his hand, rubbing his thumb over her clit with pressure that’s all liquid gold, brushing against the sweet spot in her that makes her hackles raise, her pupils blow out, her sex clench.

The hand on his cock loses rhyme and reason, and she throws her knee over his leg to keep from squeezing her thighs together to impede him. Her hands are suddenly very stupid, not knowing where to go or what to do when he curls inside her, watching the stunning lines of his superb hand, wet with her slick in the palm, almost to the wrist—so shamefully wet.

Knuckles bending, tendons flexing, the veins on the back of his hand and the underside of his forearm standing in harsh relief against his skin—vascularity and vitality, and, shit-shit-shit, that has always been so attractive to her. Parts that are supposed to work and do, a body built the right way.

Fuck, it’s all firecrackers, and the taste of gold rings, and muscle knots coming loose. It’s his breathing, and his fingers, and his tongue laving over her pulse point. It’s her eyes crossing under her clamped-closed lids, and his name clenched savage in her teeth like a coin to buy passage into the afterlife.

Her orgasm drags her deep like undertow, blotting out all light and thought and feeling apart from gold, liquid gold, and throws her mercilessly back to shore, where she breathlessly giggles a hyena’s bark, still twitching on the fingers inside her.

Her hand’s wrapped around his wrist and he gazes with a look of drunkenness. “Wow.”

“Sorry, oh, hell, apologies for all that noise.” Might not be a pretty sight, trying to catch her breath after that cracked cacophony, but Julian shakes his head and grazes his teeth over her shoulder, a burning look in his eye when he tells her, “No-no, it’s called a hysterical paroxysm for a reason.”

The mournful moment she is empty of his hand—though she was the one that gently pushed him away—she spares no time nudging him onto his back. His hands don’t so much guide her hips as follow the path they take when she straddles him and snatches the mineral oil from the floor in a fluid motion.

Let it never be fucking said that she is one for inaction over gratitude.

One pause draws between them, her hand dripping on his stomach, poised over his member between them. The other cradles the base of his throat, thumb over the space his sigil lives, feeling every swallow. She waits until he meets her eyes, then breathes, “Please, take what you need from this—what you want. Ask for it. Will you do that for me?”

He studies her face, prodding the words around his mouth like worrying a broken tooth. “Yes, I can do that—for you. Since you asked so nicely.”

Oil-slick, her hand wraps around him, and her mouth is just in time to catch his groan like passing smoke.

All his little noises and movements, she commits to memory. Sometimes she’s frightened she’ll forget again. That this thing that has only recently begun to feel like living and breathing once more would be stolen a second time.

This is not something she wants to forget. He is not someone she wants to be twice a stranger to.

Rising off his pelvis, she maneuvers her wrist between her legs and encourages the bucking of his hips to fuck her hand. Clenching on the upstroke, loose going down, working the head with the slick loop of an index finger and thumb with a flicking wrist that leaves him near to simpering.

He slides under her camisole, rolls one of her still-sensitive nipples between his fingers, and groans in tandem with her when he finds the ring piercing it. He bucks into her hand so that she feels her last knuckle thunk his pelvis.

“What do you think of this?” she asks him, hoarse from ragged lungs. Her legs burn with the effort of keeping herself hoisted, neck tight from her dropped head watching him. “Have you ever imagined this?”

It is a croak, it is a whine, it is a declaration, “Sometimes—sometimes I—mm-MM—hah, I’d try to sleep, and—there you are!—traipsing in my thoughts like you own them. In the tea house—or theater—whatever-the-fuck, when you bit me? That ruined me—that’ll haunt me forever. I dream about your teeth.”

Quickly, she resituates between his knees. Hooks an elbow under one, hitching his leg up and away when she looms over him. His hand locks around her wrist, squeezing with urgency.

“Tell me what you’ve imagined of us? How you pictured our bodies coming together?”

His eye drops half-open, same as his mouth, halting little gasps escaping him. So undone, so pretty and wondrous. So damnably charming is the color flaming his ears and face.

Red as poppies. Red as velvet. Red as his hair.

She wants to wrap herself in the color and get lost.

There are people she’s come across that looked as though they were ripped out of statuaries, from the pages of illuminated text, but never has she ever seen someone like him—like the gods chose to breathe life into stained-glass. Vibrant, lovely, where the sun could shine through him and make him brighter and brighter if he’d the chance.

“You—we’re…we’re some place we’re not supposed to be—faster, please, please. Could you—could you grind against me?” he rattles, tremulous, everywhere and nowhere all at once. She obeys, thrusting against his ass and amping up the speed of her hand, her reward a strangled noise and his hands locking around the back of her neck for want of anchor.

He grinds out, “We’re not supposed to be there, a-and you—you want me to fuck you up against a wall—tell me how to move. I do good—so good, you’re so happy and twisted up and wet. Pulling my hair, kissing me, and tell-telling me I’ve done good, you’ll use your f-fingers on me next time, and—god, Eustacia, please.”

What bodice-ripping bullshit, she won’t be able to stop herself from thinking of it every time she masturbates.

He cums with a shout, shooting hot over her hand and his belly, legs bunching fiercely around her elbow and hip. She almost pulls away from his twitching cock, but he catches her, wrapping around her hand and continuing to stroke the last drops of seed from his body, even when his eye screws shut and his jaw goes tight with clenched teeth and whining.

When he relents, it is with a wince, taking breaths like a run-hard animal that’s found safety in shelter. He loosens, jaw mulling, eyelids going slack, knees and the rest of him turning to putty. Then, he begins to laugh. A small chuckle deep in his chest, escalating.

His hands travel up her arms and he just keeps honking this gut-busting laughter, eye squinted and watery. It’s so infectious, so invitational, bright and bubbly as champagne. She worries, amusedly and only for a sweet second before she joins him, that he will dissolve if he continues and she’ll have to sop him out of the blankets with a rag, bring that to Mazelinka’s in a few hours.

Here’s Julian, he’s much more slippery now, I’m afraid.

“Thank you,” he manages, smile cut so wide she can see his molars, “thank you.”

Eustacia climbs from between his legs and into the lifted arm he offers, accepting his hold around her hip as drapes happily and lazily over his thorax. “Thank you. What’re a few hysterical paroxysms shared among friends, anyway?”

Arms folded over the breadth of his chest, she rests her cheek on her hands, and lets her eyes drift closed. She can feel his heartbeat in her arms—through her heartbeat, too. For a few bars, they answer each other, thump – thump, until they come very close to syncing up with his fingers curling a pattern on her nape, one she can’t decipher.

Why he touches that spot so often and tenderly, she does not know. Why spare the sweetness? It doesn’t matter, she droops like a dog and turns into the touch, wanting more of it, wanting it everywhere.

“Would you humor me wondering what you’re going to do after all of this?” The sighed question is almost lost in a hard gust of wind against the wall, rattling the glass fierce.

After all this—after the masquerade, implying that he will dead or out of the picture, she thinks he means. Humor him, what a crock of shit. Might as well, and why not jerk him about at the same time.

His fourth question, and she lets him get away with it.

“I’m going to go on a long journey. I will find a hopeless place, and there I will fall in love.”

“Don’t let this sway your impression of me, but I always did take you for a romantic.” Another sigh, not so sad this time, and he lolls his head until he can make eye contact with her. “Where’s hopeless place of yours, anyhow?”

Maybe it’s the air between the fingers he curls against her neck.

She’s not going to tell him this. Already, he’s had his three questions, and snuck in a fourth, besides.

Instead, she drums her fingers against his collarbone and chatters, “Did you realize you sleep like a bird? Tuck your face under your wing, or someone else’s. Kept your head on my shoulder, my arm ‘round your face like you’d like to smother, and woke in my armpit.”

“Okay, okay. I get the hint,” he snorts, shaking his head with a smile. “…Do I really?”

+

“I know what my last question is!” he calls from behind the changing screen, popping his head up over the edge. “It’s a real barn-burner, too. Oh, you’re just going to love it.”

Running her hands over two ceramic mugs glazed over gold leaf, warming them with minor magic so their coffee isn’t piss-warm when poured, she scoffs, “You’ve had your three tonight, don’t go turning into a greedy, promise-breaking little bampot.”

Come to think of it, she’s certainly let him get away with four questions. She’s slipping.

“Like hell, my dear, I very distinctly only remember the two.”

“You can ask,” she concedes, tacking on a silent but I may not answer to the end.

He comes slipping back out into the kitchen with one of her wrap-skirts around his hips, eyeing the coffee press and the mug she promptly passes to him. There’s no modesty to him, invading her personal space while humming a toneless little tune, pressing his back against her as he pours himself a coffee, neat. “Here we go,” he says, now leaning his hip against the counter, sipping and hissing, “oh, that’s good.”

“Are you a morning person?” she accuses, righting the shoulder of her black silk robe.

“Hardly. The nap helped, and that was one hell of a ‘how-do-you-do,’ but I’m still borderline delirious.” He sucks his teeth and lowers the mug. “Third question—”

“Fourth.” Fifth, actually.

He plows on regardless, shit-eating grin on full-blast. “Do you ever give straight answers?”

Oh. Oh, that’s not even a question at all! That’s a fucking forgone conclusion! “How can I be expected to give straight answers, when I am such a deeply crooked person?”

“Two of a kind, hm? Rrrr! That’s why we ended up crossing paths—moths to flame, and all. Our sort has to stick together. The deeply crooked, I mean.”

She’s smiling a pinched smile that’s all sarcastic accusation and sincere agreement, just looking at him and trying to think of any snappy little zinger when it happens.

A coolness, a stillness, a calmness—it all slides over her shoulders and down her back like water. At once, she is sleepy and warm and unworried. She wants to go back to bed, and she wants him to come with her, even though they cannot.

“Are you staring at me? You’re staring. Is there—oh, shit,” he mumbles, checking his eyepatch. It’s still in place, and that’s how he finds it. He looks back to her, almost frowning in perplexity, but he goes a little slack and catches on, mouth curling into a bashfully pleased, disbelieving little twist. He wears this smile peering down into his mug.

For a moment, she is crushed with an ache deeper than blood or bone, more powerful than the hammer-strike landfall of a tsunami. I wish we’d found each other young, she thinks, we might never have been lonely.

His hand has moved, and so has his body. Closer to her, the tips of his last two fingers crawling over her craggy, inked knuckles, the cautious legs of a wary spider on uncertain ground.

This is it—the image of him that will be summoned to her when her thoughts lift his name to the surface, from not until the jumping-off point. Whether it finds them gray and bedridden in another hundred years, or in a sudden outpouring of blood and pain tomorrow, she will think Julian, and her mind will show her this:

He is tall and pale, thin through the waist and broad through the shoulders. He is barefoot on her warped floorboards, and he wears nothing under her clothes. A soft blush colors his cheeks and ears, and his lips are the same hue because of her kisses. He smiles, sweetly-sadly-softly, and he holds her hand.

Then, she thinks it.

She thinks it so quickly the words don’t have a chance to form out of the ether, but she is doomed all the same: a fool girl with fool notions, ten hundred questions, and not a single answer, who would not cry near so much as she does if she did not have them.

She will carry him in her heart.

She will carry him forever.

[dinoswrites]

The Lovers, Reversed

The Arcana, Role Reversal AU. Asra x Apprentice.

Based off this post by @cedarmoons.

[Previous |  Masterpost | A03 | Next]

This references some events that happen in a snippet @cedarmoons wrote for me, and it’s beautiful so you should read that first if you like. <3

The Lovers reversed indicates that you are avoiding responsibility for the consequences of your own actions... You must do what you can to make amends but if this is not possible, let the past go and resolve to make better choices in the future. [x]

It’s another maddeningly grey Vesuvia morning, and Asra is climbing the back wall to the old shop.

Second time he’s done so in as many days—and it’s hard not to let old memories resurface as he swings one leg over the top, and looks down at the overgrown garden, at the rain rippling the water of the reflecting pool.

He remembers it so clearly he can almost see her there. Can almost see the moonlight reflecting in the pool’s clear, still waters, and its shine in her hair as she looks up, and her whole face light up for a moment, before she schools her expression.

My aunt says that you’re trouble.

Me? Oh, it’s the hair, isn’t it? Should I cut it? Is it too long?

To this day, he remembers perfectly the coyness of her smile—he’s seen it countless times since, and heard her laugh nearly as often.

Not nearly enough, he thinks, looking down at the rain in the garden.

He hangs his scarf and cloak by the door, not before chasing any leftover rain from them with an absent-minded spell. He has to step around a large woven basket that’s overflowing with fruit harvested from the garden before he can look into the shop—finding it exactly as he left it. Every jar still in its place, every ingredient still on display.

He is not surprised to see the tarot cards missing from where he left them on the table, but the sight does bring a smile to his face.

Upstairs, the stove salamander has already built up a rolling flame, chasing the rain chill out of the room. Asra can smell lapsang souchong in the air, and as he lets Faust slip off his arm to go find her favourite pillow he spots Kai curled up on the couch, a cup in one hand and one of the books he’d leant her open on the armrest, her fingertip running along the page as she reads.

She’s wrapped up in one of her old shawls. The cream one, with amber-coloured stars knit all along its edges. One of the first gifts he’d ever bought her.

It’s such an image from his memory that he stalls a moment—this tea, this place, that shawl and her, so utterly lost in her reading that she hasn’t even noticed him.

Kai! Faust calls, delighted.

She looks up, startled. And then she smiles for a moment, and it’s exactly like he remembers, for half a broken heartbeat.

She doesn’t remember you, he reminds himself.

And yet it gets harder, every time he sees her.

From her lap comes the low growl of an angry cat, and out from the shawl pops a small black head, with golden eyes that have all the glow of burning embers. It’s the cat he’d seen skulking in the background of their impromptu magic discussion at the Rowdy Raven, though this is the first clear look he’s gotten of it.

“Hello,” Asra says.

The cat’s ears flatten against its skull, and it hisses at him.

Faust is utterly undeterred by the display of aggression from the cat, and slithers over to it, delighted.

Friend!

“Cinis,” Kai scolds, but the cat does not listen. It leaps from her lap and scurries to the highest place it can find—over the kitchen cabinets—and continues to hiss as Faust slithers up onto the counter after it.

She hangs her head upside down as she looks up at him. Friend?

“I’m sorry,” Kai says. “He’s—he’s uh—he’s not friendly.”

But Asra’s too busy looking at the cat to pay Kai much mind. At his glowing eyes, and how well the rest of him blends in with the shadows up there, at how well he crams himself into such a small space. Better than the average cat, even, he muses, and he feels a small smile begin to spread over his face.

“Hello there,” he calls, softly.

The cat turns his ember-eyed glare on Asra.

And he feels it, then. Oh, it’s a mess—a rage and distrust that it’s nearly a physical thing, nearly a wall radiating outward from such a tiny creature. He takes another step forward and the cat’s eyes flash, and the room feels markedly warmer.

Asra reaches out, without reaching—and he feels a link between the cat and Kai. It’s hardly like the one he shares with Faust; it’s twisted, and all gnarled up like a ball of twine, but it is solid, and strong, and he can feel power flowing from one to the other at a steady trickle, getting lost in the maze of their connection to one another.

“You found your familiar,” Asra says, his voice full of wonder.

The cat blinks down at him, some of its rage waning, replaced by a note of confusion.

“My what?”

Asra stands at the bottom of the cabinets and looks up at Cinis. The cat shifts his weight uneasily, and his hissing has waned to a low warning growl, though his fur is still on end.

“Amazing,” he says. “You managed to bond without even knowing it—and so strongly! Can you hear him speak?” he asks, turning back to Kai.

She’s staring at him like he’s speaking another language. “He’s a cat, Asra. Cats don’t talk.”

He can’t help a laugh. “Neither do snakes,” he teases, reaching out so Faust can slither up his arm. “But you can hear Faust well enough. And your cat is no ordinary cat.”

Kai narrows her eyes at him, unconvinced. A glance backwards at Cinis confirms that, though he is still radiating a general unpleasantness, his ears are forward, and he’s interested in what Asra has to say.

“Let me guess,” Kai drolls, “he’s got magic, too.”

Asra hums, amused, scratching Faust under her chin to placate her before pouring a cup of tea for himself. He joins Kai on the couch, and Faust immediately slithers up Kai’s arm to rest on her shoulder, nuzzling her head against her chin.

Kai lets out an infinitesimal laugh, and starts to scratch Faust’s chin.

Asra’s heart flips in his chest, and almost feels whole again.

She does not remember you.

“I once visited a land across the sea, where there were ancient jungles with trees so tall and so crowded together that they blocked out all the sunlight. Their branches are so broad and strong, that some animals live their entire lives out in their canopies without once seeing the ground.”

Her gaze rises back from Faust to him—her eyes wide with that familiar curiosity, slowly winning out over the caution and fear a year in Lucio’s city has bred in her.

“The locals there lived among the trees—the soil was poor, but they burned down sections of the forest at a time to enrich the soil, and grow their crops. And there was a story they used to tell at those burnings—about a boy who learned to call fire, by befriending one of the shadow cats that live in the dark spaces between the trees.”

“A shadow cat,” she wonders—and there is only a trace of disbelief in her voice, now.

“It’s… hard to translate. The word they used was more like, the shadow cast by a great figure blocking a fire. The locals assured me that they live in the forest still, even though I couldn’t find one. And I looked, trust me. They’re master shapeshifters, slipping between the smallest of gaps between the trees, or growing large enough to devour the greatest of prey.”

“Like rats?” she asks. She keeps shifting closer, and he doesn’t think she knows she’s doing it.

“The biggest I’ve ever seen,” Asra says—and he mimes for her one’s size off the ground, at around knee height, just to watch her eyes go wide. “Giant birds, fish twice as long as you are tall—snakes that could wrap around this room twice, and then half that again.”

Faust looks uneasily over at the cat. Friend? she asks uncertainly.

“You said he learned fire from them,” Kai says. “The boy in the story.”

Asra inclines his head towards her, just a little. “The story goes that when the cats are angry, or they’re in danger and there’s no other way out, they call on the fire within—the one that glows in their eyes, even in the light—and they raze the forest to the ground.”

Kai hums a little. She bites her lip, her gaze dropping for a moment in thought before snapping back up to his again. “And you think Cinis is one of these… shadow cats? But I just found him in a barrel one day. How did he wind up here?”

“The black market, undoubtedly,” Asra says. He inclines his head toward the kitchen table. “Though I think, given enough time, you could simply ask him yourself.”

Kai looks over—and there is Cinis, down from his perch atop the cabinets, sitting on the table. He is still studying Asra with a dubious expression, even for a cat, but when Kai regards him his ears perk up, and his tail swishes a little.

“As it stands,” Asra tells her, “your auras are tangled, and everything caught in them is weighing them down. Closing them into you—so your bond, though strong, is carrying all that negative energy with it, and it doesn’t have the space to grow.”

Her expression twists. There is some disbelief in her expression, though not as much as Asra would have thought at the start of this conversation.

“I could provide a bit of a head start,” he says, tentatively. “If you like.”

Kai and Cinis meet gazes for a long, long moment. Eventually, Cinis sits a little straighter, and lets out a soft mrr.

She exhales. “If Cinis is alright with it,” she says, right before the cat in question jumps from the table to her lap. He head-butts her chin, and she laughs a little before indulging him by scratching behind his ears.

“I believe everything we need is downstairs,” Asra says, rising off the couch.

In truth, he needs very little. Water from a high mountain glacier, melted from its ice in the sunlight, a single, perfectly cut clear quartz crystal, and oil derived from eucalyptus leaves.

“Should we… sit on the floor or something?” Kai asks, shifting her weight nervously as Asra brings what he needs back upstairs. “Are you… going to draw a magic circle? With chalk or…”

Asra looks out the window to the garden. “The rain’s stopped,” he muses. “How about we try this outside, instead?”

He leads her down the stairs, and out into the garden. She wears the shawl, still. Cinis walks at her side, glaring at Asra and radiating a general protectiveness that makes the magician smile.

She sits at the edge of the pool, Cinis in her lap, and Asra sits beside her with Faust draped over his shoulders. The morning is grey and smoky, but he can’t help of think of moonlight in her hair, or its shine in her burnt umber eyes.

So, so badly, he wants to say: I kissed you here for the first time. Under the moonlight, under the stars. Remember me. Please, remember me.

But Lucio has her in the palm of his hand, golden talons curling around her like a cage, and the less she knows, the safer she is.

So instead he says, “Your wrists, please.”

She hesitates only a moment before offering them. He drops a dot of eucalyptus oil on the inside of each of her wrists, before doing the same for himself.

He has the clear glacier water in a bowl, and he has her hold it in her hands, low enough so Cinis can look into it too.

“Your familiar is more than just a pet,” Asra says, letting the crystal hang from its chain above the water. “They are creatures of magic, just as much as you or I. Your bond right now is tangled, uncertain—I think you made it together but without guidance, when you were both very weak.”

She glances down at Cinis. The cat’s ear twitches, and he radiates a general unhappiness, as if at an unpleasant memory.

“With a strong enough bond, Cinis can assist in spells you are casting, can more easily find you in a crowd or across distances, and he can communicate more clearly with you his own thoughts and feelings. But first—that bond needs a chance to grow.”

He moves his hand so the crystal begins to swing back and forth, just above the surface of the water. Towards Asra, then towards Kai, and then back again.

On his shoulder, Faust begins to sway in time with the crystal. Cinis watches it swing back and forth, ears forward, his posture alert.

Kai stares deep into Asra’s eyes and doesn’t look away.

“Think back on meeting one another,” Asra explains in a low, even voice. “Focus on anything positive you felt about the encounter—is there anything you remember standing out in particular?”

Her eyes flutter closed, and she swallows. “He was warm and soft against my back,” she says, quietly. “When he was asleep.”

“Very good,” he says. “How about you? How did you feel, when he was close to you?”

She hesitates a moment, and her eyes flicker as if she’s embarrassed. “I—I didn’t feel lonely, anymore.”

“What you didn’t feel is good. But what you need to focus on is what you did feel.”

She exhales.

After a long silence, Asra says, “Kai, I’m only here to guide you. This is something that you and Cinis have to work through together.”

The silence stretches again, so long that Asra nearly sighs and gives up before Kai says, very softly, “I felt—I felt a little more whole.”

His half a heart beats hard against his chest.

“Focus on that,” Asra says. “Just focus on you, and Cinis, and that feeling. Let everything else drift past you, through your hands, and into the water in the bowl.”

Her brows furrow, and she clenches her jaw.

“Don’t force it,” he warns her. “Just… just feel, Kai. That’s all you have to do.”

She breathes deep again—and again, and again, and Asra watches her struggle, watches as her hands begin to grip the bowl too tightly—

Cinis closes his eyes and begins to purr.

Louder than Asra thinks such a little cat has any right to. He’s honestly so startled by the sound that he nearly drops the crystal into the water. But that little cat purrs, and begins to knead Kai’s crossed legs with his sharp claws, and starts to rub his head against her arm.

Kai lets out a breath. A soft, quiet release of air, and the air around her slowly begins to shift.

Asra watches, his breath in his throat, as Kai’s aura slowly begins to uncoil from where it’s been hiding, deep within herself.

There you are, he thinks. Nearly says it, but open wonder stops the words from escaping his throat.

And oh, it’s tentative, that brightness within her. Like the flicker of a candle in the night, an uncertain flame held between two palms. But there it is, bright and warm, and Asra watches as it stretches out from her, as it meets the aura blazing out from Cinis—bright and bold like a bonfire, confident and sure.

He watches hers grow in strength, encouraged by the tiny, impressively brave cat in her lap. He watches them twine—and is it his imagination, or is the sky a little less grey? Does a little more sunlight seep through the clouds than before, or is it just the warmth growing in his chest as he watches a smile spread over her face?

Their auras settle, their bond untangled. She opens her eyes, and looks down at the bowl in her hands, the water blackened by all the negative energy trapped in her aura, before immediately turning her gaze down to Cinis.

“Is that how you’ve felt this whole time?” she asks, voice low with awe.

He turns around and stands up on his hind legs so he can rub his face against hers while he radiates pure, uncomplicated happiness. She laughs, bright and warm and loud, and sets the bowl aside in the grass to smooth down his fur, and scratch him behind the ears.

Faust winds herself around Asra’s neck. She does not say anything, but he can feel her contentment all the same, and he scratches her chin in reply.

Kai reaches up to wipe at her eyes with the heel of her palm, before finally turning her gaze to Asra.

She might as well be glowing. More or less is, with her aura shining out, unfettered by her loneliness.

The sight of it catches in his throat.

“Thank you,” she says. “I—thank you, Asra. I don’t know how I could…”

He raises a hand. “All I did was give you a push,” he tells her, leaning forward to collect the bowl. “You and Cinis did the rest.”

Cinis meows, as if confirming Asra’s general uselessness. His eyes glow even brighter than before.

Asra can only laugh.

As Asra is dumping the water in a corner that drains out of the garden, Kai blurts, “Teach me magic.”

He stills. He rises, turns slowly, trying to calm the racing of his heart.

Kai is standing—still by the reflecting pool, biting her lower lip and holding her familiar in her arms.

“Please,” she adds, uncertainly.

He remembers to breathe. Remembers to smile, and tease—“Why?” he asks, busying himself with shaking the last drop of water from the bowl. “I thought magic was illegal.”

“So is shoving Lucio off a cliff, but it would probably improve things a little around here.”

He can’t help but laugh at that—deep, full-bellied laughter, the kind that he hasn’t let out in…

“Asra, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this city needs help.” She approaches him, and now he is forced to face her properly. To look down at her as she looks up at him, and to stare down into her burnt umber eyes, and see the flecks within that are nearly black. Just as he remembers.

“It’s been a year since the countess’s death, and there are still riots. Julian’s done what he can, but the plague is going to kill us all sooner or later. If we don’t starve to death first.”

“And you’re asking the man you’ve been charged to find—on pain of death—to teach you the art of magic, decreed illegal by the monarch you just suggested we murder.”

She smirks in reply—with an all-too-familiar and entirely dangerous gleam in her eye. “I didn’t say it had to be a very tall cliff.”

A huff of laughter escapes him, in spite of himself. But his thoughts are already turning back—already thinking of the argument they had, before he fled the plague and she stayed behind.

Magic is meant to help people, she’d said. I won’t leave this city to rot.

She does not remember that argument. Does not remember him, but here she is. In this garden, with the shawl he bought her a lifetime ago slipping off her shoulder.

“First lesson,” he begins.

He watches her eyes light up, and his slow-mending heart beats faster in its own answering delight.

[cataclysmofstars]

Pen Dip Day 4

4) Change the genre of your current story, or a story that you are currently reading/watching. Make it as humorous as possible.

What could be worse than a demon? 

Solvej decides that today is not the day to get out of bed at about the same time sounds of a loud crash, followed by muffled curses and more banging, filter through her open window. She curses softly as she crawls out of bed, knocking to the floor empty bottles and pointy weapons that really shouldn’t be slept with in a discordant clatter (one of the knives is stuck in her arm. She hurls it out the window). She trips over her own feet in the dark room, and promptly curses again, far more loudly and with much more feeling.

The racket outside is getting louder, and something is very clearly…quacking.

The morning routine as usual, then.

The sun is a brief guest appearance in Denmark during the winter months, and so by the time she is dressed and limps her way down the stairs, she’s stubbed her toes against almost every wall and piece of debris hidden by the lack of light. She’s had to invent new swear words by the time she’s done.

The house has no electricity. It did when they first got here, and then Solvej caught Søren gnawing on the electrical cables a few days ago. On her way to the kitchen she passes the dark streaks and holes in the walls, cables still erupting from the gaps, without a glance. She kicks bones and broken furniture out of her way and absentmindedly ducks around knives embedded in the wall. She’ll retrieve them later.

Coffee first. Everything else...meh.

Solvej has just taken the first sip of a freshly brewed batch when the door leading to the backyard flies open with a bang and a whirlwind of unbridled energy. She grimaces and pointedly refuses to acknowledge the commotion disrupting her morning brooding.

What could be worse than a demon?

“Sis!” Søren exclaims, far too cheerful for her liking.

“Solvej!”  The second voice is Nikolai, also far too chipper when it’s what-the-hell-o’clock in the morning.

Two of them.

Her fingers itch toward the bottle sitting an arm’s reach from her on the counter. Instead, she pinches the bridge of her nose, already anticipating a headache-inducing mess, and turns to face them.

She sees…feathers.

Everywhere.

In their hair, on the floor, fluttering lazily in the air, painting their bodies from streaks of crimson; Nikolai’s got three jammed in his mouth, and both of Søren’s fists are wrapped around the bodies of at least four—

“Pigeons.”

Søren holds them up for her inspection and grins. There are bloodstains on his jagged teeth. “We needed food, right?”

Solvej’s eye twitches. “Pigeons,” she says again and downs half her coffee like a shot. Nope, not going to be able to hold out.

“There were more,” Nikolai chimes in, two of the feathers in his mouth falling to the kitchen floor. The third remains stuck in his teeth. “It’s just, we got kinda hungry, you know? We haven’t had anything decent since we arrived. But don’t worry, we found more.”

“Hey, hey,” Søren says. “Don’t be rude now. Our host is right here.” He points to the modest kitchen table behind them with a clawed finger. “We got a good meal out of him.”

“Pointing is also rude, hypocrite.” Nikolai jabs one of the bone spines in his arm deep into Søren’s side. The noise that comes out of her twin is somewhere between a lion’s roar and the screech of a banshee. The pigeons in his hands are bulging unnaturally from his grip as takes a swipe at Nikolai, who dodges easily. If one of them explodes, Solvej is going to throttle her brother. 

For now, she rolls her eyes. She always has to play the babysitter. “Are you referring to the shitshow outside my window that woke up me at ass o’clock in the morning?”

“Someone’s not a morning person,” Søren immediately teases. Solvej flips him the bird. Of course that only makes him laugh.

“Ducks,” Nikolai gestures toward the door. One of the hinges has broken and it swings pitifully. “They were hanging around the pond out back. We thought we’d surprise you. I don’t suppose you know how to clean them?”

“Just wait until we clean up,” Søren interjects. “The horses got away from us. There’re parts of them kinda…everywhere. The chickens too. You know how it is, right?”

And just like that, she is too sober to deal with this sort of thing again right now.

This time, Solvej bypasses the coffee maker for a refill entirely and instead snags the bottle of vodka sitting irresistibly on the counter. She pours a generous amount into her mug without hesitation and starts knocking it back.

This is, of course, the one thing that draws Nikolai’s immediate attention. “Is that my vodka?” He shouldn’t be able to pull off horrified, kicked-puppy-dog eyes when he’s got black sclera and irises, but there it is.

“Not anymore,” Solvej grumbles around the sides of her mug, unmoved, and stalks pointedly between them to sit at the table. The vodka comes with her.

She fixes them both with a glare. She’s happy that they’ve both attained control over their abilities, but there’s a canyon’s worth of room for improvement when it comes to their destructive impulses.

There is brief stretch of silence in which Solvej finishes off her coffee-liqueur concoction and starts on the bottle itself. Nikolai brushes dirt out of his hair. Søren sniffs at one of the pigeons.

“You should get to cleaning up that disaster zone the two of you created,” she points out eventually. She can see it from here: deep gouges upending the earth, parts of animals thrown about, and the aforementioned ducks. “We may be way out in the country, but if anyone comes by and sees that…well, just know I’m not burying anymore bodies for you guys.”

“Not unless you steal more of my vodka, you mean,” Nikolai says. Solvej picks a small bone off the table and throws it at him. “Get going. I’ll start in here. And Søren, for the love of god, leave the pigeons on the table.”

Nikolai is clearly trying to speak again, but his mouth is shifting of its own accord into a shape incapable of forming human words. There’s yet room for greater mastery, then.

Either way, it’s the perfect excuse to ignore him. With the amount of crap she’s put up with these past few months, he owes her an entire bar’s worth of alcohol.

Søren has started chewing on the pigeon still in his hand as he meanders back outside. Blood and more feathers drip onto the floor that used to be clean. After a moment, Nikolai follows, snarling and clawing at his muzzle in frustration.

What could be worse than two demons? 

“Thanks for your hospitality,” Solvej says to the farmer. “Sorry about the livestock. And the house. We’ll fix the mess at least.” The farmer doesn’t respond.

“I cannot begin to tell you what it’s like constantly looking after these two,” she continues. “The way it’s going, I can’t keep hiding them like this. They’ll either be found out or I’ll go completely spare beforehand.

I mean, I’m already talking to you like I’m Hamlet or something. Also, I think it was your pinky bone I threw at Nikolai. Sorry about that.”

Again there is no response, but then a skull isn’t known for good conversation.

 Living with them, apparently.

“A day in the life,” she mutters, and drains the last of the vodka.