#they kind of splay to either side like a frog

[pangur-and-grim]

he’s so ham some

[marypsue]

Blood will out for WIP game?

[from this meme]

Thank you for asking about this one, because it's one I haven't really talked about on here and I'm very glad to have the excuse!

I wrote Lost in the Shadow of the Vampire, which is one of the most self-indulgent things I've ever posted: a piece of semi-meta semi-fan-fiction, where a (fictional) actress working on a (fictional) reboot-slash-sequel to 1987 cult classic The Lost Boys starts to suspect that one of her costars is actually becoming a vampire like the ones in the movie. It was a complete blast to write, and I had so much fun figuring out what the fictional reboot-slash-sequel would be about that I decided that I'd just go ahead and write it.

Since the premise is that this is a movie, a 2015-ish all-female reboot slash sequel ignoring all the other sequels, I tried to come up with a plot hook that would let me introduce new leads and change the time period, while honouring the vibe (without just ripping off the plot of the original) and calling back to the original, but also respecting which actors from the original would actually be likely to come back (and which actors from the original are still, uh. Alive). Also, I wanted a girl gang of vampires who have unfuckwithable style and vibes.

So. The premise of Blood Will Out is that, shortly after she turns eighteen, Kate Fischer, the biological daughter of Star and Michael Emerson, starts turning into a vampire. Since she was adopted as a baby and has had no contact with her bio family until very recently, she has absolutely no idea what's going on - but her sister Jamie does. And, because of what Jamie had thought was a very convincing blog-form webnovel and interactive ARG but is now looking like it's actually just the blog of an actual real-life vampire hunter, they have a line of communication to one Edgar Frog.

Unfortunately, this ends up raising more questions than answers. Was there something sinister behind the string of tragedies that struck Kate's birth family and left her orphaned? Was her becoming a half-vampire really biological destiny, or does someone have plans for her? And, once she finds herself drawn into the orbit of a trio of captivating vampires who're more than willing to accept her as one of their own, does she even want to go back to human? Will Jamie get her sister back, or lose her forever?

Does the world need another female-OC-centric TLB fic? Who knows? Who cares? I haven't written one yet, and I'm having fun. (Also, I have a big reveal in mind for the third act that I haven't seen anyone do before, and is positively evil. I'm excited about it.)

I've posted one small sample here, but here, have another:

“Where the hell were you.”

Kate closes her eyes for a second. Like she’s tired. Jamie knows better than to buy that. It’s past midnight. This is prime Kate active hours.

“I’m serious, Kate. I woke up – alone, in a strange city, in California, by the way – and you were just gone. No note, no text, your phone here on the desk -”

Kate sounds defensive, not meeting Jamie’s eyes. Good. She should feel guilty. “Don’t shit yourself. You fell asleep. I was bored. I took a little walk.”

“A little walk down to the Boardwalk, Kate?”

And now Kate doesn’t look like she feels guilty at all. Just kind of flatly angry. Jamie absolutely doesn’t feel a little silver wiggle of apprehension about that. “So what if it was?”

Jamie can’t find words. So instead, she settles for letting her face and her upturned hands do the asking for her. “So what if – Kate. Kate. We agreed. Neither of us goes down there alone. Do I need to remind you that you had to lock yourself in your room for nine solid hours because you accidentally saw a nosebleed? Do you know how many people -”

“Nobody died and I didn’t eat anybody,” Kate snaps, yanking out the chair by the little desk and dropping into it with her front pressed against its back and her legs splayed out to either side. She presses her chin into her hands on the top of the chair back, so the next words come out as a muffled grumble. “Not like you could’ve stopped me if you had been there, anyway.”

The silence that descends around and between them is abrupt and icy.

Kate shifts uncomfortably in the chair, looking everywhere but at Jamie. Like she knows she’s crossed a line. But she doesn’t seem any too ready to apologise for it. “I know you don’t like thinking about it, Jay. But it’s true. If I did go off the deep end -”

Jamie only realises she’s been frozen perfectly still in place when she tries to unclaw her hand from around the TV remote. “I wouldn’t let you. I won’t let you.”

“Jamie…” Kate’s eyes shutter, for a moment, before she finally looks Jamie in the eye again. “You could get hurt. I. Might hurt you.”

Jamie meets her gaze with one of her own, steady and, she hopes, fearless. “You won’t.”

Kate breaks first. She shuts her eyes, rolls her head back on her shoulders, and grips the chair back, leaning back as far as her arms’ reach will let her. “Ugh. Do you think Mom’s found our note yet?”

In answer, Jamie holds up her phone. Kate flops her head forward again so she can look under her mess of dark curls and see the notifications that fill up the screen. Can see that Jamie’s had fifty-eight missed calls and a hundred and two unread texts.

“I think she’s found it,” Jamie cracks.

Kate groans, long and deep and heartfelt, and lets her head flop backwards again.

She starts getting out her laptop as Jamie’s crawling back into bed. Jamie watches her face, the hard set of her stare, as she sets it up on the desk and boots it up. Now that Kate’s back, the wild anger – and the fear that had driven it – are starting to settle again. But there’s a slow, deep, sucking dread starting to take their place. The matter-of-fact coldness, the who-cares attitude earlier – that’s not Kate. At least, not the Kate Jamie knows. And the longer this goes on, the more often this new, cold version of Kate seems to slip to the surface.

But. Even this new, cold version of Kate still doesn’t want Jamie to get hurt.

That has to count for something.

“Kate?” Jamie says, pulling the covers up around her head so she’s looking at her sister through a tunnel of duvet.

Kate makes a wordless noise of acknowledgment without looking up from the laptop screen.

“You’re going to go back to the Boardwalk without me, aren’t you.”

That actually does get Kate to turn around. To look Jamie in the eye. “Jamie -”

Jamie doesn’t give her a chance to speak. She doesn’t really want to hear her sister talk about losing control again. But more than that, she just doesn’t want to have to hear Kate lie to her. She doesn’t want to know if Kate could do it with her eyes steady on Jamie’s and not a hint of guilt in her face or her voice. “Not tonight, okay? Just…don’t go back there again tonight.”

Kate rolls her bottom lip between her teeth, something in her stare softening.

“Not tonight,” she agrees. “Everything’s shut down by now, anyway. Now come on, Jay. It’s almost one AM. You’ve gotta be up early tomorrow if we’re gonna have any time before dawn makes me useless.”

“Your messed-up sleep schedule’s rubbing off on me,” Jamie grumbles good-naturedly, as she lets her head sink back into the pillow and her eyes drift shut. The bed’s never felt so warm, so soft. Despite her nap earlier, she really is tired.

“Oh shit, I hope not,” Kate says, sounding worried. And then, warmly, “G’night, Jamie. Get some sleep.”

Jamie drifts off to the sound of her sister’s fingers tick-tick-ticking over the laptop’s keys.

[jack-is-lost]

PATCHES & PINS (CH 1)

A/N: This story revolves around a transgender, female to male, original character. LGBTQ+ topics are a given within this story. Gender and body dysphoria will come up as well since he is not out to his family — only close friends. If you dislike such a story premise please understand you do not have to interact with it at all. Leaving hate comments will be removed. Of course, constructive feedback is always welcomed.  

Pairing: Eventually Marko x OTMC

Story is still in progress and updates will be slow

Eventually it will be posted on A03 once I’m a few chapters in

Currently on Chapter one | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 coming soon

Chapter one

My life, for the most part, has always been unusual — a little different. Despite having parents that looked like any successful mom and dad ought to, and an older brother willing to stick up for me, things just didn't go according to plan. 

You see, my mother was excited to have a daughter finally. Someone to doll up and buy dresses for, maybe even enroll in a dance class. A stark difference to her firstborn, Tyler, who was all about karate lessons and throwing the ball with dad. Which eventually evolved to working on cars as he grew older. Our mother wanted somebody to share girly interests with, understandably. And, for a while, she was able to have it. The baby pictures are proof of that. Yet, as I grew older and became more aware of what I liked, the fewer things seemed cookie-cutter-perfect for my family.

"Are you not taking your bag to school, Jacklynn?" The mentioned item was nowhere in sight as the youngest of her children poured coffee — the action resembling someone needing every drop left in the pot as if to survive.

"It's the last day," came the grumbling response after a long, soothing sip. "I doubt most kids will even be showing up."

"Yeah, about that," Tyler, the oldest, spoke around a bite of toast. "Can't I be a minority and just stay home?"

"No, you only have one day left, guys." She smiled at her two kids. A graduate who had already filled out college applications, and is ready to further his engineering career. The other, soon-to-be senior, that seemed to have no real drive in anything but drawing and reading — and staying up too late apparently.

"Seriously," she spoke up again as they sighed in unison, deflating with their last hope crushed. "You two will survive."

Tyler nudged his sister, who leaned across the counter, jostling the coffee dangerously enough to receive a seething glare. "Want me to take you?"

It wasn't like Tyler to offer that too often, "Sure."

They both pulled away from the kitchen and made their way to the door, hollering goodbyes as Tyler grabbed the keys — the other sibling still nursing the coffee.

"Don't stay out too late!" Their mom called back, knowing full well she wouldn't see her kids after school. It seemed the closer summer drew in — the fewer tests to study for and homework to do, the more they came home later.

Tyler stepped into the car, unlocking the passenger door as he slid inside his cherry baby — A beaming red, 1983 Audi Sport Quattro, followed by his sister plopping down less elegantly. He glanced at her while starting the car.

"Talk to me, Jay." It was the last day, after all. Weren't kids supposed to be excited about that? "What's bouncing 'round that head of yours." He barely received any notion his sister was listening till she drew out a long sigh, head hitting the back of the seat.

"I don't know, man." It was drawn out, tired. "Didn't get much sleep, I guess."

Tyler nodded while giving the steering wheel a turn, making his way down the road. The school building wasn't very far when on wheels, and he pulled into a parking lot marginally less filled than it ought to be.

As his sister made to get out, he placed a hand on her shoulder, their eyes meeting as she paused halfway out the door. "Ever need to get a chip off your shoulder come talk to me, okay?" Her eyes rolled to the side, and Tyler gave her a little reassuring squeeze, "I'm serious. What are big —"

"— bro's for? I know, I know."

Tyler chuckled as he released her shoulder, "Good. Now," he slammed the door shut and leaned over the roof, "Go sleep in class or something." That at least drew a chuckle out of his sister as she turned away from the car.

The last day of school went how one could expect it to go. Some teachers put on movies and had extra treats for their students. Others went over lessons in the last semester, hoping it would stick to impressionable minds before three months of freedom — minds that were only thinking about freedom and not math.

It was by mid-day when a note made its way into Jay's locker. In gruff, almost unreadable handwriting, it merely said, 'Meet us by the big tree'. Jay instantly knew who it was from and folded the paper up.

A long night was probably ahead.

When the final bell rang, Jay had to wipe the drool off an impromptu pillow-desk before heading out and down the hall. Many of the kids loudly boasted about their summer plans while cleaning out lockers, jostling each other, and hurrying outside. Jay maneuvered around the hoard and quickly escaped out a side entrance, locker already empty since lunch.

It didn't take long to walk a block to the park, down a jogging trail, before splitting off into a cluster of trees. There, in the center of it, laid a large trunk of a dead tree. Upon it splayed out a makeshift map, bags, and — unsurprisingly, two brothers.

"Finally," Grumbled Edgar while raising his head, a red marker still poised over the map. "Where's Sam?"

Jay stared, unaware that Sam was supposed to tag along for the stroll after school let out. "Was I meant to wait for him or?"

"Forget it," came the short grunt, and Edgar was back to the more important matter at hand as Alan turned around to face Jay.

"I'm sure he'll show up. He's got the same note as you," he started to unravel what appeared to be a chaotic ball of cord in his hands. "Oh, hey—" he stopped as a thought struck him, "—Still a no go on the knife?"

Oh, not this again.

Jay leaned against the bare trunk, arms crossed and brow lifted. "Alan, we've been through this. Keep me on the books, but hand me a knife, and someone will lose a finger."

Of course, no one knew if Jay meant their fingers or not, and that was on purpose.

"Maybe some training will help," Edgar spoke up again, pausing on circling locations. "You need to prepare yourself for—"

"— the unexpected. I get it, Ed." Jay cut him off while peering closer to get a look at the map.

"Edgar," he corrected with a tired mutter despite it being useless. They've known each other for an entire year now. One would think it wouldn't matter at this point.

Jay tapped a finger on the closest circled spot, the cemetery. "Thought you marked this off?"

"One can never be certain," He nodded to his own words of wisdom. "It is a common ground for the dead."

"I'd say," Jay suppressed a snort, "It is where the deceased go to be laid into the ground."

Rustling noises announced Sam’s arrival as he pushed through, almost smacking himself in the face with a thin branch. His strained voice drew attention to him. “Guys,” he dusted a leaf off his overly styled coat, “We really need to find a better spot to meet.”

Jay lazily offered a salute wave, “Hey to you too, Sammy.”

“I’m serious,” Sam huffed while taking up a spot near Alan, hands shoved into his pockets. “What about the shop? Y’know, with school now over and stuff?”

Edgar grunted in thought. “Yeah, that ought to be doable.”

“Your grandpa still against us being at the house?” Alan spoke up.

Sam gave a partial shrug. “Sort of,” he eyed the map, then glanced at Jay, who returned the unspoken question with a tired look. Sam returned to explaining when Edgar motioned for him to continue. “You guys can visit, as you have, but you can’t — you know —” he shuffled his hands for the right phrasing, “— bring hunting business there.”

Jay had never actually been to Sam’s place, but the stories shared made it sound like a lot of stuff went down there — destroying property kind of stuff. So Jay could understand what the man was trying to avoid. The Frog Brothers being walking time bombs of destruction, after all.

“The cemetery again?” Sam squawked at noticing it. “I am not doing that again.” The sound of Jay snickering redirected Sam’s defiant stare. “Make Jay do it this time.”

“Wait, wha—”

“—He doesn’t have the qualification for it, Sam.” Edgar cut in before an argument could occur. This only made Sam huff, arms crossed and brows furrowed.

“So? I didn’t either last year.”

Alan stopped weaving the cord at this point, placing it down on the dead trunk. “Jay needs the experience. It could be good for him.” He simply spoke, agreeing with Sam.

“Hey, Jay’s right here,” he had pointedly avoided parading around Santa Carla for a whole damn year. Sure, his knowledge of supernatural things is what drew the Frog Brothers to him in the first place — and the free charge of ordering books at their shop kept Jay in the circle, but he was a good year older than them and didn’t feel like playing make-believe.  

Sam smirked in the way that screamed challenging, “C’mon, Jay, or are you scared of the dark?”

Jay narrowed his eyes, “I know what you are doing.”

“Then prove me wrong,” Sam continued.

“No.”

Despite that, Jay found himself amongst the dead at one in the damn morning. It was eerie, the cemetery, sitting in absolute silence and blanketed by a coat of darkness. The only noise now filtering through was shoes scrapping against the ground and low grumbles around him, voices hushed as not to alert anybody — or anything. Even their flashlights were ordered to stay off unless it called for it, as directed by Edgar.

“Exactly what should we be expecting to find here?” Jay spoke up quietly while trailing behind the two brothers, hands stuffed into his jacket. It was chilly tonight.

“Any signs of the undead.” Edgar simply said without much explanation, to which Alan filled in.

“Disturbed graves, tombs broke, drag marks.” he ticked off like a list.

“Ah,” Jay deadpanned. “So zombies?” the brothers turned to him, the moonlight hitting their frames but leaving their faces shadowed. “What?”

“Could be vampires too.” Edgar simply grunted. “Fresh ones crawling out of their dirt bed.” Alan nodded along with his brother, and Jay sighed.

“Sure, yeah. That too,” It wasn’t like anything of the sort actually existed, but Jay would humor the guys. They put up with his oddities, after all, so he could continue to do the same for them.

“Didn’t any of your books mention that?” Edgar continued while turning around, walking along a worn-out path again, and avoiding stepping on actual graves.

“A little,” Jay admitted as they continued on their trek.

A majority of Jay’s supernatural books were all about how one became something, the signs, and lore behind creatures — not exactly if they crawl out of graves or not. It made sense, though, if considering how people feared vampires in the past. How they would stake and behead someone during burial just in case their loved one decided to raise again.

Same could be said about leaving a bell.

Alan suddenly crouched down near the edge of a grave. “Look,” his flashlight clicked on to bask the empty hole in light. Edgar followed promptly as Jay stared at the two figures eyeing an obvious dug hole for a burial happening soon.

“It might be a sign.” Edgar rubbed a finger over the crumbling edges, dirt smearing and falling back inside the pit.  

“Or,” Jay leaned over them to get an exact look at the perfect outline, “It is the groundskeeper getting ready for a funeral. There’s not even a casket down there.” Jay simply summarized before leaning back.

Alan clicked off the light and stood, “He’s right, Edgar. It is too perfect.”  

“Hey!” the voice resonated out, cutting the muffled talking off as a beam of light frantically flailed in their directions. “What are you kids doing?!”

Without a shared word between the three, just mere glances at one another, they quickly split. Or at least Jay tried to do just that, but the brush of Edgar flying past him in a rush entirely threw him off balance. It wasn’t until tailbone smashed into dirt that Jay even figured out what happened.

“Fuck…” he muttered, then covered his mouth as the light grew brighter over the grave from above, rushing footfalls growing closer before fading away in the direction the brothers ran. Once it was clear, the curse slipped again with more fever.  

Jay eased to his feet and stared above his head, the wall towering almost a foot over him. “They truly mean six-feet-under,” he muttered while raising a hand to the ledge, just able to cup fingers over the lip, only to stumble back as it gave away.

The recent rainfall was not making it easy.

Again Jay tried to grab, shoes scraping along the wall in an attempt to gain some height — thinking if he just rushed up the wall it would give him enough momentum, only to fall back against the adjacent wall.

“Shit — fuck,” Jay didn’t even care if his voice traveled that time. He was stuck in a damn grave, after all! Screw it!

“Need a lift?” came a voice from above, and Jay shot his gaze upward to see a hand reaching down toward him. The moonlight didn’t offer much else to see but light curls and the frame of a coat.

Even if it were the security guard, Jay knew this would be his best bet. It wasn’t like waiting till daylight to be discovered was an option. It would not help much in regards to needing to be home before Jay’s parents could find out he even snuck out.  

He reached for the hand, feeling leather against palm and uncovered fingers wrap around his wrist. It took only one good heave, shoes against the wall and other hand clinging to the edge, to be entirely pulled out. Despite mud caking Jay from front to back, he could even feel it in his shoes; it felt good to be back on the surface. It wasn’t like he had a fear of enclosed places, but it still sucked regardless.

“Thanks,” he looked over at the stranger, still only catching the slightest glimpse of a smirk within the darkness. It was hard to make out any features, and the way the guy stood didn’t help anything.

“Were you takin’ a dirt bath?” he joked inquisitively, and Jay chuckled under his breath.

“No, not exactly.” Who would want to do that in a cemetery anyway?  

The beam of a flashlight washed over them again as rustling sounds drew near, and Jay stepped away from the pre-dug grave. Definitely not wanting to repeat that incident all over.

“Looks like we should start running,” spoke up the other guy, head turned away from Jay to peer toward the security guard.

What was once hidden was now lit up like a spotlight. A smooth curved jawline, willowed eyes bright with brown, and curly dirty blond hair glowed on display for a split moment. Until the flashlight jostled by the running security guard fanned over the area. And Jay would be lying if he said he didn’t stare.

“Avoid any more holes, yeah?” he easily teased before seemingly stepping in a direction with no real speed.

Jay floundered for a moment before taking off after him. “Wait.” Jay didn’t know the grounds that well, and the two idiots that did had left him.

The guy laughed while reaching behind him, grabbing Jay’s wrist again with no problem, then started to run as the worn-out guard hollered something. He seemed to avoid any lifted tombstones, flower arrangements, and small fences like it were daytime. All while Jay tried his best not to stumble, gaze more on the ground than anywhere else.

When they neared the exit gate, chained to prevent people at such odd hours to visit, he let Jay’s arm go and placed both palms out while crouching down. Jay didn’t have to ask and quickly stepped into the waiting hands. He felt the guided push upward as his own hands grabbed for purchase, trying to avoid being nicked by the gothic-style fence. Yet, as Jay’s leg swung over, his pants snagged and ripped — the gravity of his body spilling over the other side holding little resistance.

Surprisingly Jay landed on his feet, if not a little wobbly, and quickly looked through the fence to see the guy still standing there undeterred. “You coming?”

“Don’t worry about me,” he simply said. Jay wanted to comment, but the sight of the guard pushing past the nearest tombstones shut him up. “Go.” he laughed again — actually laughed as if nonplussed by the whole thing. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep him distracted.” Then he turned around and fanned his arms out as if directing air traffic before darting down the side of the fence.

And that was the last Jay saw of the guy before quickly hiding behind the bushes lining outside of the cemetery, not wanting to be seen as the flashlight shown in his direction.

The walk home was slow as he picked flakes of mud off his jeans. Jay could feel the dry mess on his face and in his hair. A shower was needed as well as a talk with the Frog Brothers tomorrow. No way were they getting off free from abandoning him in the damn graveyard! Even as he climbed back through the bedroom window, Jay was envisioning how he’d throttle them. It wasn’t until he was in the shower, scrubbing extra hard to clean the grime off, that his thought wavered to the stranger.

“Why was he even there?”

[bisexualcrowley]

SFW Alphabet Headcanons - Charlie Bradbury

// Headcanon square on @girl-next-door-writes​​ ‘s bingo!

A = Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?)

Charlie’s super affectionate when its just the two of you, loads of sweet kisses and hugs from behind. She’s not all that into intense PDA, but quite often the two of you will link hands or walk with an arm slung across the other’s waist while you’re out, or give an affectionate peck on the cheek while you’re walking past

B = Best friend (What would they be like as a best friend? How would the friendship start?)

Super goofy, always joking around, NEVER hesitates to tell you her secrets. After the Dick Roman incident Charlie had a rough time trusting people again, but you were one of the few who she would trust with her life

C = Cuddles (Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?)

If you’re just sitting on a couch together or something of the sort, Charlie likes to wrap an arm around your shoulders and tuck her head down against your neck, but at night she’ll want to be closer to you, usually laying with her head on your chest and arms wrapped around your middle with a leg tucked between yours.

D = Domestic (Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)

Yes! Charlie would love to settle down into a domestic life with you. Hunting was all good fun at first, but in the long run, what she wants is to live a long, normal life by your side

E = Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

She would try her best to hurt you as little as possible, but it would end up being a decently awkward ending where you eventually end up back as friends with those unresolved feelings that were never dealt with

F = Fiancee (How do they feel about commitment? How quick would they want to get married?)

After getting out of hunting, Charlie would be a bit nervous about settling down into a marriage, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want it. In reality, she would love nothing more than to marry you, but the knowledge of what her past held scares the hell out of her and she would need to be 100% certain that you would be safe if you got married

G = Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?)

She’s not overly gentle with you once she get’s really comfortable, never rough, but she can be playfully aggressive at times

H = Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?)

Charlie loves hugging you, being hugged by you, it’s her favorite place in the world to be. When it’s been a while since you saw each other, she’ll barrel into your arms and almost send you tumbling over she’s so desperate to be in your arms again, but usually hugs with Charlie are from behind, a loose squeeze of her arms as they snake around your waist with her chin resting on your shoulder

I = I love you (How fast do they say the L-word?)

Pretty soon after you started dating. It was awkward and clumsy, an “I love you” blurted out in the middle of a discussion you were having about Lord of the Rings, but it was nothing less than perfect for you

J = Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous?)

She’s not really the jealous type; she definitely won’t enjoy it if she sees another woman try to flirt with you, but she respects that you’re your own person who’s allowed to have friends outside your relationship

K = Kisses (What are their kisses like? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)

Usually when Charlie kisses you during the day it’s short and sweet, but when the night rolls around the kisses get deeper, more passionate and are always able to get you in the mood

L = Little ones (How are they around children?)

Charlie loves kids, but is always painfully awkward around them. She never knows exactly how to act when a child is present and usually ends up resorting to referencing old cartoons she watched when she was young, which never fails to make you laugh

M = Morning (How are mornings spent with them?)

Charlie is NOT a morning person, so most mornings are spent with her limbs wrapped tangled between yours while she tries to convince you to stay in bed just a little bit longer, loads of sleepy kisses and eventually, you making breakfast while Charlie makes tea or coffee for the two of you with soft music playing in the background, which has more than once led to pancakes being abandoned for slow dancing in your pajamas

N = Night (How are nights spent with them?)

Movie marathons, game nights, all sorts of dorky little things that make Charlie’s heart soar. You always take turns choosing what the movie(s) for the night will be, and you always plan to sit quietly and just watch for once, but every time it turns into a much enjoyed infodump session where you spend most of the film gushing about your thoughts until you either pass out on the couch together or make it till the end of the movie and curl up together in bed

O = Open (When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?)

If you were a hunter beforehand Charlie would waste no time starting to open up about herself, knowing that there was no reason to hide anything. If she was dating a person with a normal life, she would be a bit more hesitant to tell you about that side of her past, wanting to avoid roping you into it

P = Patience (How easily angered are they?)

There isn’t much that can get Charlie really mad, or at least nothing that you’ve come across yet. She’ll get annoyed every so often, upset sometimes, but you’ve never seen her actually angry.

Q = Quizzes (How much would they remember about you? Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?)

She remembers almost everything she learns about you, to the point where you’ve been confused more than once due to Charlie bringing up some obscure fact about yourself that you completely forgot you had ever mentioned

R = Remember (What is their favorite moment in your relationship?)

The memory that stands out most in her mind is a night barely a month after you started dating. Charlie was sitting on the floor of your apartment wrapping presents for a friend’s birthday when you slid into the room wearing knee high rainbow socks and a star trek nightgown you had stolen from Charlie and grabbed a empty tube of wrapping paper, brandishing it like a sword. Charlie had abandoned the gifts almost immediately, grabbing her own roll and whacking you in the leg with it as she stood up. You both had a busy day in the morning, but at the time the impromptu sword fight was more important, and you chased each other through the apartment for almost an hour, laughing the whole time. It seems so simple, but Charlie knew it was the moment realized she was in love with you

S = Security (How protective are they?)

She’s got a bit of separation anxiety and struggles when you have to be apart for longer than she’s used to, so when you’re together Charlie is a little bit overprotective, never smothering you but always keeping an eye out for anything that could hurt you

T = Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)

Charlie always puts heaps of effort into your relationship, and she somehow finds a way to work an inside joke into every present she gives you.

U = Ugly (What would be some bad habits of theirs?)

Even though you enjoy it when it’s just the two of you, Charlie always talks during whatever you’re watching on tv, even if you’re in a theatre or watching with friends

V = Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?)

She doesn’t spend a whole lot of time messing with her appearance, but she’ll take a few minutes every morning to do her makeup and brush through her hair

W = Whole (Would they feel incomplete without you?)

Charlie wouldn’t feel incomplete, exactly, but without you she would definitely feel alone, like something was just a little bit off and she couldn’t fix it

X = Xtra (A random headcanon for them.)

Charlie always sings in the shower, and It’s loud and off-key and she probably doesn’t know you can hear it, but it makes you smile every time

Y = Yuck (What are some things they wouldn’t like, either in general or in a partner?)

Anyone who she can’t have fun with, or would make fun of her interests. If you’re dating, you’ve gotta be willing to marathon Harry Potter with her, it’s a given

Z = Zzz (What is a sleep habits of theirs?)

She snores lightly, and never bothers putting her hair up for bed, which inevitably ends up splayed out across your pillow when you go to sleep

tags/ lmk if you want an add <3 @imagine-whatever​ @frog-tiddies @samsblurryhusband​

[hermannsthumb]

As per our twitter convo: Newt asking Hermann to help him take nudes for his current bf and “forgetting” to mention they’ve broken up...

THIS ONE IS FUN sorry they dont get laid until off screen at the end 😔 hard m, but still, 18+/not sfw

-----------------------------------

“So, uh,” Newton says, “this really isn’t what it looks like.”

Newton’s protests would be far more convincing if he took his hand out of his trousers first. As it is, Hermann can’t help but assume that the opposite--that it is, in fact, exactly what it looks like--is true.��It’s to the credit of the sheer number of times Hermann’s walked in on Newton engaging in questionable acts that he doesn’t turn heel and march right back out of the lab but, instead, settles in wearily at his desk.

“What is it this time, then?” he says.

Newton tugs his hand from beneath his waistband, cell phone (curiously enough) in tow. “I’m taking a picture of my junk,” he says.

“Are you,” Hermann says.

“No, really,” Newton says. “I am!” Then he grins. “I’m seeing someone.”

This, at least, is not news to Hermann. Around two months ago, Newton began cutting out of work early three nights out of the week and coming back each following morning suspiciously ill-rested and in wrinkled clothing. When pressed, he admitted to Hermann--eventually--that he had begun dating again. (“Nothing serious,” he said. “A few guys. It’s just--I need an outlet, y’know? A sex kind of outlet?” “Yes, Newton, I understand,” Hermann snapped. He hadn’t said what he really wanted to say, which was I could be that for you. An admission like that was far too desperate. As it was, he merely proceeded to spend the next few weeks simmering with jealousy and fervently hoping Newton’s mystery man of the night would walk off a cliff.)

“Another one?” Hermann says.

Newton had begun dating again, but that did not necessarily mean the dates were going well. He cycled through them faster than he did pairs of socks. (The last one had kicked him out before they even surpassed “second base,” Newton admitted to Hermann sadly, because Newton couldn’t stop giggling over a joke he’d heard earlier in the day.) “Yes, another one,” Newton says. “He’s really cool, Hermann. Super dreamy. Brown eyes--a smile that--”

“Very fascinating, Newton, I’m sure,” Hermann interrupts, unable to help himself from bristling. He is not going to sit idly by and listen to Newton describe--well--effectively his romantic rival. “Unfortunately, I have a great deal of work to do today and I can’t stop to talk.” He grabs a random stack of documents and begins to scrawl across them blindly.

Newton is silent for an unsettling amount of time. Hermann looks up to find he’s jammed his mobile down his trousers once more.

“Newton,” he says.

“I just can’t get a good angle,” Newton huffs, marching over to Hermann’s side. “It’s all turning out blurry. Look!”

He thrusts his mobile up in front of Hermann’s face before Hermann can even contemplate averting his eyes, treating Hermann to an--indeed--very blurry photograph of what appears to be his genitalia. In all the times Hermann fantasized about being face-to-face with that particular part of Newton’s anatomy, he can’t say this is how he expected it to happen; yet, at the same time, he’s not surprised. It was bound to either be something like this or a lab shower incident.

Hermann pushes the phone aside with the tip of his index finger. “I see,” he says.

It’s is shoved back under his nose. “Do you think this is sexy?” Newton says.

Hermann says nothing, though the answer would’ve been yes. Newton could show him a photograph of his left pinky and Hermann’s lonely, sex-starved, Newton-infatuated brain could twist it into something dazzlingly erotic. He thinks if he were on the receiving end of the picture on Newton’s phone his brain might fizzle into nothing and melt out from his ears. He thinks he’s close to it now.

Newton shakes his phone. “Help me, dude!”

“I don’t bloody know,” Hermann finally snaps, once he remembers how to speak. “I don’t know why you want my help, or how I’m meant to be helping in the first place--do you want me to take the damned photographs for you?”

This, as it turns out, is precisely the wrong thing to say.

Exactly one hour later, Hermann finds himself in Newton’s bunk, holding Newton’s beat-up iPhone, as Newton attempts to wriggle out of his impossibly tight skinny jeans. His button-down has already met a similar fate, and it lays--crumpled--in the corner by his boots and socks. “You ought to know,” Hermann says, “that wasn’t an offer.”

(You’re my best friend, Newton said. I trust you more than anyone, Newton said. It’s what lab partners are for, Newton said. I really want to get laid, Newton said. Can you help me take my shirt off? Newton said.)

“It’ll be real fast,” Newton says. “And so much easier with an audience. You can tell me what works and what doesn’t, get better angles... Boxers on or off?”

Oh, bugger, Hermann thinks miserably. “Er. Whatever you prefer.”

“Off,” Newton says.

His boxers have small frogs on them, and they end up in the pile with his jeans and button-down after a few more minutes of strategic hopping. Then Newton spreads his arms wide and beams proudly. “Alright, cool! Picture time!”

“You can’t really expect to seduce anyone like that,” Hermann says to the wall to Newton’s left.

Newton’s arms fall to his side. From the corner of his eye, Hermann sees him pout. “I can’t?”

“No,” Hermann says, and--with a sigh--caves in and looks fully at Newton. His tattoos go all the way down. Not that that helps Hermann in any way. “The lighting is terrible. You have rubbish everywhere. And--you ought to be lying down, not standing like that. And--here--”

Hermann thrusts Newton’s phone back at him and proceeds to clatter around his bunk, making it as presentable as any living space of Newton Geiszler could possibly be without severe intervention. Newton’s dirty laundry is shoved out of sight under his bed with the aid of Hermann’s cane; the overhead fluorescent light switched off and replaced with the warm glow of Newton’s bedside lamp; the crumpled paper and crushed energy drink cans littering Newton’s desk tipped into the trashcan; Newton himself pushed back on his bed, soft thighs splayed open, mouth parted in mild surprise, gaze wide and eager behind his crooked glasses and focused in on Hermann. “Am I good now?” he says.

Oh, someone help Hermann. “Yes,” he croaks. “Ah--back against your pillows. And--your hands--ah, however you’d like them.”

Hermann’s mouth is dry as cotton and his hands are shaking as badly as anything as he takes a series of pictures of Newton, each one--somehow--more tantalizing than the last: Newton winking, Newton with his hands on his thighs, Newton on his stomach with his arse in the air, Newton with his hand around--

Hermann drops the phone, and it clatters to the ground. Newton sits up quickly. “Sorry,” he says, noticeably pink in the face. “Too much?”

“No,” Hermann stammers. “It’s whatever you--your date--would like. I merely--wasn’t expecting it. No, don’t get up!” He bends over and snatches up the phone before Newton can get to his feet. He doesn’t want to chance getting too close to a naked Newton (unsure of what he’d do, frankly), or chance Newton getting too close to him and discovering that Hermann’s trousers are doing a rather poor job of disguising his interest in the proceedings. Hermann might be able to explain it away by blaming simple gut instincts to seeing a nude, moderately attractive man sprawled about in front of him (as Newton, after all, is sporting an obvious arousal himself, likewise something to be blamed on being on display), but he’d rather not.

Newton shrugs and begins to rummage around in a drawer next to his bed. “Okay,” he says, “pink or sparkly, you pick.”

“Pink?” Hermann says, furrowing his brow. Is it lingerie? Some fancy underwear? Newton’s never struck him as the sort to tress himself up in bows.

It turns out it’s neither. “Good choice,” Newton says, and presents a garish, rather intimidating hot pink dildo to Hermann. “It’s easier to suck on.”

“Oh,” Hermann squeaks.

Newton insists on introducing props into their photo shoot (he calls it) after that, and it’s not until Hermann takes a third shot of a lab coat-clad Newton sucking away at an esoterically shaped sex toy that Newton finally stops and declares it a night. And just in time at that. If Hermann doesn’t readjust his trousers soon, he may lose circulation to the lower half of his body.

Newton presses Hermann’s hand with far more sincerity than circumstances call for when he stands to retrieve his mobile phone. “You’ve been a huge help,” he tells Hermann, grinning and beaming up at him. At least he’s left the lab coat on: Hermann might’ve keeled over entirely if a fully nude Newton got this close to him. As it is he merely wobbles, something which he hides easily by shifting more of his weight to his cane. “Seriously,” Newton continues, “these are exactly what I wanted. He’s gonna love them.” 

“Very good,” Hermann says. He nods stiffly. “I hope they work.”

“I have a good feeling they will,” Newton says.

Hermann has a very satisfying wank-off session in his bunk afterwards. As he lays there, sweat cooling on his skin, breathing slowly calming down, and the image of a labcoat-clad Newton cupping himself burned permanently into his retinas, he’s surprised to hear his mobile go off on his bedside table. Approximately two people ever attempt to contact him through it--his sister, and Newton--and he can’t imagine why either of them would need him right now.

It’s Newton, as it turns out. More specifically--it’s Newton’s nudes. He’s attached a small winking emoticon at the end of the series of pictures. Then (as Hermann stares at his phone, and the night’s handiwork, in disbelief), a moment later, my bunk?

Oh, how mortifying--Newton must’ve meant to send them to his mystery date. At least it was Hermann he sent them to and not someone else. Newton, it’s me, Hermann replies. Hermann.

i know ;) Newton replies.

Oh.

Hermann does up his trousers and stumbles out the doorway.

[kaweeella]

Bonding Time, Kids

Chapter 2- You Say It So Normally, But What You’re Saying Is So Absurd

Warnings- Swearing, let me know if I should add anything else.

Words- 1368

Author note- :D

“Wait, do you have my quirk?!”

“It would appear that the fog did more to our quirks than we first thought.” Momo stands up with a sigh.

“I presume this was her objective since square one. I ponder, however, what she wishes to gain from this.” Reiko says so quietly it’s nearly a whisper.

“Aaah!” Kosei screams. Looking at him, everyone sees a large, dark, bird-like entity coming out of his midsection. It does not look happy.

“Dark Shadow!” Fumikage runs towards the two and gains their attention.

“How do you control it?!”

“I haven’t even done anything yet!”

“The sun is still out, so this is as controlled as he gets.”

Dark Shadow gets really close to Kosei, uncomfortably so.

“What is it…” Dark Shadow bumps into his face. “Why?”

“He needs enrichment.”

“Yeah, alright. I’ll just pretend this is normal.”

While that goes on; Mashirao sits up, rubbing his head. But he feels something on his temples, and feels uncomfortable sitting.

“Oh hey, Ojiro. Good to see you’ve come-to.” Denki sat by him the entire time, not really doing much, but there isn’t really much he can do.

“What happened? Where’d the villain go?”

“Well, we don’t know where she went, but we do have a pretty good idea of what she did.”

“Which was…” Mashirao prompts Denki to finish the statement.

“She scrambled up our quirks.”

“Does that have anything to do with whatever it is on my forehead?”

“Yeah, probably. It’s weird to see you without a tail.”

“Oh.” So that’s why he’s so uncomfortable. “You seem pretty calm about this.”

“I was so confused and startled that I looped back around into a zen state.”

“You know, I think I’m going through that, too.”

“Nice.”

“Who’s quirk do you have?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t?”

“Haven’t really checked.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I don’t want to. Maybe I’m nervous.”

“Oh.”

“It’s probably silly of me. It’s dumb, a lot worse could’ve happened. I can only imagine what it felt like for you.”

“I guess, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be nervous.”

“Huh.”

Something grabs Denki’s attention. He gets up and walks over to Hitoshi, with Mashirao following behind.

“I found your tail.” He says, pointing at the boy who’s still laying on the ground.

“Fuck, what happened?” Hitoshi props himself up on his elbows. Denki sits down and starts petting the tuft of hair at the end of his newly acquired tail. “The hell?”

“You should try this, it’s calming.” Denki says, not to either of them in particular. 

Mashirao sits next to him and looks Hitoshi in the eyes. After a second, Hitoshi gives a small nod, and he pets the tuft too.

“It’s soft.”

“Are you aware of the… horns?”

“I had some idea of them, yeah.”

After a few seconds, Hitoshi lays back down.

Meanwhile, Izuku mutters, as he is one to do. Looking up, he sees a bunch of mushrooms have sprouted around him.

Kinoko slowly walks up to him, inspecting the fungi around him.

“I guess that means I got your quirk, Komori.”

“Hmm.” Is all she says in response.

“It doesn’t seem like the swaps were one to one.”

“Yeah, looks like it.” She pokes at a cluster of thin, tall, and white mushrooms. “These are flammulina velutipes, also known as enoki mushrooms. These ones are specifically cultivated ones, that’re grown specifically for eating. They’re also referred to as the golden needle mushroom in Chinese.”

“Why are they called that?”

“Probably because the wild ones are more orange-yellow in color.”

“That’s cool!”

“Yeah.”

Yosetsu lays on the ground where he was thrown by his teacher. He’d been laying there for a while now, on his back and limbs splayed.

Itsuka reaches her hand down to help him up. “You doing alright, Awase?”

“I feel like my insides are trying to become my outsides.” He says as he takes her hand and stands up, with a bit of a slouch. Yosetsu mumbles curses under his breath.

“Hey I think I figured it out!” Denki yells and large amounts of ice jets out of his side, freezing up Yosetsu.

“Fuck. What th-the fu-fu…” He can hardly finish his sentence.

“Whoops, my bad.”

“Awase, are you alright?”

“No… I…” He passes out.

“Oh god I killed him!”

“No, he’s still breathing. Why’d that happen, though?”

Tsuyu walks over to him and pokes his face. “I think I know. Could you give me a hand here?” The three of them pull him out of the ice.

“Now what?” Denki adjusts his grip.

“If I’m right, he just needs to be warmed up and then he’ll be fine.”

“Alright,” Itsuka isn’t sure how to go about it. On a normal day, she could just cup him in her hands, how people warm up hibernating hamsters. Actually, on a normal day, she wouldn't need to be warming him up at all, but this is not a normal day, no matter how hard she wants it to be.

Tsuyu looks around, and spots Shihai sitting on the ground. It’s obvious who’s quirk he has, with the six arms. “Hey, could you help with this?”

“What problem do you have that could possibly require my assistance?”

“Awase needs body heat.”

“And you think my cold dark soul will provide?”

“No, just hold him in your arms.” The three of them sit down with the strange brooding boy and try to warm up Yosetsu.

“If I’m correct, he has my quirk, so he just needs to be warmed up.”

“Wait, I have Todoroki’s quirk, so I could use his fire to warm him up!”

“No, you don’t have full control over it. Or any, it seems.” Tsuyu taps her finger to her chin.

“Oh…”

“It’s not surprising, this is new for all of us. We can’t expect to figure it out immediately.”

“Yeah… hey, who’s quirks do you guys have?”

“Uhm, I’m not quite sure. It seems pretty hard to test, since we don’t know what we’re testing for.”

“It seems we’ve become chickens with our heads cut off, running around blindly to die soon after.” Shihai says.

“Actually, chickens can survive over a year without their heads. About a year and a half, if I’m remembering correctly.”

“How do you know that, Kaminari?”

“I was looking up random facts as a way to procrastinate on my work.”

Their conversation was interrupted by a small “Kero...”

“I was right.”

Yosetsu starts squirming and slowly gets up, still looking kind of tired.

“What happened?”

“Your body temperature dropped and you went into hibernation.”

“... what?”

“You have my quirk, and my quirk is frog.”

“So what can you do with your quirk?”

“Well, you can shoot your tongue 20 meters, create three different types of mucous, climb walls, and spit out your stomach and clean it. Among other things.”

“What the hell…”

“I get that reaction a lot when I get to that point.”

“It is pretty unusual.” Itsuka says.

Ibara runs her fingers through her hair, which was once thick and thorny vines. Now it’s just… normal hair. It’s such a foreign feeling to her.

“Oh lord, what is it that I have done for you to forsake me so?” Her eyes are concentrated on the engines that have taken root in her calves.

“Oi Bible Thumper, you’re not the only one going through this shit.” Katsuki is growing increasingly tense. He’s always a little tense, but with the stress of everything that just happened and everyone freaking out, he’s getting really tense.

“What has brought you opinion of me so low that you see me as on the same level as this repulsive sinner?” She continues to prey.

“The fuck did you just call me?”

“Hey guys, check this out!” Mina cuts in, grabbing Ibara by the arm and lifting her gently. When she lets go, Ibara hovers in the air. “Tada!”

“So you got Round Face’s quirk.”

“Yep yep!”

“Would you put me down please.”

“Oh, right.” She presses her fingers together. “Release!”

She lands back on the ground. “Thank you for the demonstration, but I’d appreciate it if you’d never do that again.”

Mina gives her a big goofy grin in response.

[captain-mcdavid]

mackenzie blackwood - it’s all in the hands (drabble)

this was heavily inspired by this video. also all credit for this goes to @kallmekarlsson i don’t know if i love or hate you but one thing i am sure of, is that this is your fault.

[[MORE]]

You look up from your book when Mackenzie strolls into the room, looking bored while he scrolls through his phone. He tosses it onto the bed and you watch as he flops down onto the mattress.

“I’m bored.” He mumbles and you smile, shrugging your shoulders at him before redirecting your eyes to your book.

You’re starting a new sentence when Mackenzie pushes at your foot, looking up at you with sad eyes. You huff and shake your head, “I don’t know, watch a movie or something. I’m reading.” You tell him, moving your foot so it’s further away from him.

He notices and reaches over so he can push at it again, the corner of his mouth turning up in a mischievous smile.

“Stop,” You murmur, using your other foot to shove at his broad shoulder. He barely flinches, grabbing your ankle with his free hand. He holds it in place and you have a small stare down while you wait to see what he’s going to do.

You raise your eyebrows when he does nothing, “Quit bugging me.” You demand, rolling your eyes before looking back down at your book.

You’ve taken in all of one word when Mackenzie is standing on his knees on the bed, yanking you down by your ankle until you’re laying. He flops down, hands landing on either side of your head while he grins.

“Mac!” You grunt, dropping your book to the side so you can try to get him off of you.

“Mac!” He imitates, nosing into your neck to follow his mockery with a hard bite to your skin.

“Ow!” You jerk underneath him, punching at his shoulder while you manage to scramble up from underneath him. He laughs, staying level with your knees on the bed. You scowl at him, bring your feet up in front of him so that you can use them to push him away if he tries anything again.

You sit, legs splayed out like a frog while you pick up your book again, Mackenzie groans and you give him a look. “Leave me alone.” You say, voice hostile.

“You’re literally begging for attention like all the time, and I give it to you, but the one time I want some love you tell me to leave you alone.” He grumbles, bottom lip jutting out at the end in a pout. “I’m gonna remember this next time you poke my cheeks while I’m playing fortnite.” He’s talking quietly, like he’s talking to himself, while he sits up on the bed, crossing his legs in front of him. He moves your legs so they’re draped over his, and now he’s facing you, sitting rather close in between your open legs. You’re kind of exposed, the big shirt your wearing riding up at the waist, leaving your whole bottom half uncovered except for your panties. His touch is probably not, but it seems rather innocent, so you just watch carefully while he searches the duvet for his phone.

Surprisingly that’s all that happens for a while, he lets you read while he busies himself playing 8 ball, but eventually he gets bored of that too, tossing the device to the side.

You side eye him suspiciously but he doesn’t seem to notice, and he actually just sits, thinking for a moment before his fingers slide up to the tops of your thighs.

It doesn’t seem devious, they just stay there while he sits, staring blankly at his hands on your legs.

You watch on for a moment, but go back to reading your book when he makes no more movements. You’re so engrossed in the words that you barely even notice when his hands actually do start to move.

They move rhythmically over your skin, massaging the insides of your thighs while he watches the way his fingers work against your skin.

He looks enthralled, completely fascinated by his movements. His fingers slide up more, and you think he’s about to try something, his fingertips ghosting over your lower stomach, and just over the waistband of your underwear.

Despite your earlier preference to be left alone, you feel just a little disappointed that he didn’t actually try to take it further.

You consider interrupting him, making a comment about what he’s doing but he just looks so transfixed. The little crease between his eyebrows, and the way his lips are turned down towards the edges, he’s just as concentrated as he would be if he was in net, and watching him is almost as hypnotic to you as your thighs are to him.

The more his fingers ghost over your skin the more you start to feel fidgety under his touch. You swallow and Mac’s eyes lift to yours momentarily, but you look away, pretending not to notice because you really don’t want him to stop.

His thumbs rub circles into your inner thighs a few times before they slowly inch up. You can feel his eyes on you now, he’s watching intently for your reaction when hands go up to your lower stomach again, soothing back down slowly his thumbs glide down directly over your pussy. The contact is minimal, and light but it still has you sucking in a sharp breath.

Mackenzie definitely notices and he pretends not care when you avoid his eyes, opting to stare lasers through your book instead.

He goes on for another five minutes, relentlessly tradings you, and you don’t know how you haven’t broken yet.

He moves down again, his thumbs grazing over your cunt with more pressure this time.

You hold your breath, praying he can’t feel how you’ve basically soaked your panties, but judging by the way his hands freeze and his mouth parts, he can.

He looks up at you through his lashes and this time you look back, holding his gaze. He tests the waters, his hands going back up until his fingertips are slipping under the waist band of your panties.

“Mac,” You breathe, and he the corner of his mouth pulls up in a smirk.

“Yeah baby?”

In seconds flat you’re barreling yourself over and onto him, knocking him down against the bed while you connect your lips. He laughs against your mouth, flipping you onto your back so he can get at it.

One hour, and five orgasms later Mac’s hands are covered in your cum, and he stares smugly while you struggle to catch your breath. He leans over to kiss you gently and you feel his hard on press against your bare leg.

Throughout the entire process he managed to stay fully clothed and untouched, pulling you apart so fully that literally all you could do was lay there while he did unthinkable things with his fingers.

“I think I’m gonna go take a shower,” Mac grins, but you stop him, grabbing his wrist to pull it towards your mouth. He watches in awe while you suck yourself off of his fingers, your legs coming to wrap around his waist. He looks down at where you’re clinging to him in confusion, and you smile up at him, batting your lashes.

“Or you can take a shower after you pound me into the mattress?”

“What- how- what?” He stutters, and you pop up on an elbow to catch his lips in a quick kiss.

“I mean after all you just did for me, I wanna help you out,”

“But-,” He starts, looking at you like you’re crazy. “God, you have like no refractory period. At all.”

[bisexual-inuyasha]

Snow Drift

If snow can drift, so can leaves and dust and responsibilities. – Neil Hilborn, “Snow Theory”

A/N: BotW AU, where Ling is Prince of Xing. He’s supposed to be able to feel the Dragon Pulse, supposed to be able to stop what’s coming like his Father and his Father’s Father before him. He goes to the Spring of Power to see if he can trigger his abilities. His faithful Knight follows him.

Ling stared at the lump of rock. The scene was picture perfect: light filtered through the clouds to shine pointedly on the statue, silent princes glowed in the shadows, and his Knight stood with his back turned in an illusion of privacy. Ling had never been more miserable.

The rock remained a rock. No sweet voice called out to him. No power thrummed through the water. Nothing happened at all except that now his legs were wet. The dread gnawed its way up his spine. Fear clawed at his throat. He could feel the walls of expectation closing in on him. Suddenly the Spring was too enclosed. All the empty space above him meant nothing because he could not see the sky.

“Why can’t I hear anything? Why can’t I do this? What’s wrong with me?” His question bounced back to him, louder as it echoed off the rocks. He couldn’t even revel alone in his anguish successfully. Ed would have heard.

He took his time turning around. If he moved slowly enough, Ed would give up trying to sneak a look at him before Ling faced him. Then he could avoid his face for the rest of the day.

He dove under the water. White robes rose in a cloud above him. The water wasn’t deep enough to fully submerge into, but with his head between his knees, he couldn’t see or hear anything above the water.

He looked around. The Spring was peaceful. A frog pushed its way through the water with its powerful legs. The glow of a silent prince cast his voluminous robes in soft blues, completing the illusion he’d dove into a cloud. He wondered how long he could hold his breath. He started counting the stones on the bottom of the water until he could feel his lungs burning.

He’d reached sixty before a boot interrupted his counting. He didn’t have time to ready himself. A hand grabbed his robe and pulled him up to his knees. Water dripped down his forehead and nose, dribbled down to his chin. Like he’d planned, all the salty tears he’d cried had been left behind in the Spring.

“What were you trying to do, drown yourself?” Ed’s usually calm voice snapped. The Knight’s temper didn’t at up much, and almost never at Ling. Duty all but forbade it. When it did, a sticky embarrassment clung to Ling until he’d been properly restored to Ed’s good graces.

“Don’t be silly, there can’t be more than two feet of water here. I was just having a swim is all.” Ling waved Ed’s worry away and stretched his lips into a smile.

“You’re wet and we’ve got to get back to the palace. The air is freezing.” Ed squeezed one of Ling’s long sleeves. Water streamed between his fingers and splashed into the pool. “You’ll get hypothermia.”

“Not with your determination—I’m sure you’ve already got a plan to make me all better again.” The outfit was heavy and cold and cumbersome. His horse hadn’t like it anyway. He’d told his father he hadn’t liked the outfit, but the Spring of Power was sacred and so his clothes must be too. He should have brought a change.

Ed watched him for a moment, hands resting back on their sword. His metal fingers twitched every few seconds, though Ed didn’t seem to notice. Ling noted Ed’s flesh hand had no such tics. He had noticed too many things too often about Ed. His contemplative eyes at dinner when he ate with his brother and brainstormed strategies to defend the Palace. His heavy smile whenever he returned from Zora’s domain with new Winry tales. His silent anger in meetings where Revali spoke over Ling in favor of the bird champion’s own ideas. The King would not approve.

Princes did not fall in love with Knights. Certainly not a Prince whose destiny was very clear. He would defeat Ganon. There was no time for anything else.

“It is my duty to protect you. Understand?” Ed’s face burned red.

Ed took off his tunic. There were scars beneath. Old ones, like the rugged edge of his automail and the small cut under his eye. Ling saw newer ones, too. Fresher, pinker than the others. A long scar across his side—a misstep with the Master sword—was the newest. Ling thought he could still see a few marks where the stitches had only just healed.

Ling had been so concentrated on Ed’s chest and arms he hadn’t fully recognized what Ed was offering. It wasn’t until he saw the arm outstretched, tunic hanging from the ticking fingers, that Ling registered what he was meant to do

“You want me to wear that?”

“The robes are the heaviest thing you’re wearing, which means they’ll take the longest to dry. We don’t have that kind of time. With that much water freezing on you, you wouldn’t make it three steps.”

Ling frowned. “What will you wear?”

Ed gestured over his bare torso. “I’ll be fine.”

Arguing would be fruitless. Ed had done this sort of thing before. Ling suspected acts of pointed selflessness made him feel heroic. He’d had few chances to prove himself so far but the King said that would be changing soon. Ling had no doubts Ed would be more than ready. Already the Knight was proficient in sword work, had proven himself to a begrudging Revali, endeared himself to Armstrong in Goron. In a matter of time, Riza would tell Ling about some amazing feat he pulled in Gerudo.

“Why do you look like that?” Ed didn’t turn around while Ling took off his robes. But he didn’t watch him either.

“Like what?”

Ed was silent for a moment. Ling could hear the ticking. He’d hear that sound forever. He was certain of it. “Like you’re hollow,” Ed finally turned to look at him when the tunic fell over his head. “All the way through here.”

Ed poked Ling’s chest with an automail finger.

Ling’s mouth fell open. A whirlwind of emotion spun through him at once but only one thought fought its way up his throat. “How do you see?”

Ed must not have expected him to answer. He took a step back, cleared his throat, and turned towards the exit. “We should hurry, before the night gets too cold.”

The snow fell lazily outside the Spring. Small piles of new and clean white covered their dirty footprints from their long trek. They wouldn’t be getting home tonight—not if this was any indicator of how the weather would go. Ling shivered, but didn’t say anything about the cold. With Ed’s automail, they couldn’t spend long in the open.

“I think I saw a cabin a little way up the hill.” Ed waved a hand toward a hill among hills. Ling never knew where his Knight was taking him when they went off route. He’d learned Ed would take care of things, as long as one didn’t question him too much.

Ling plucked silent princes as they climbed, tucking them into the wrap around his torso. He stumbled when the ice on his legs began to numb his feet. After the third time, Ling tripped over a stone hidden beneath the snow. He landed with all his limbs splayed out, his face crunching frostbitten grass and twigs.

Ed sighed and doubled back. They had an awkward few minutes where Ed struggled to position Ling on his back but that didn’t last long. Ed put his fingers in his lips and blew out a whistle that rung in Ling’s ears.

They hadn’t gone more than a few yards before the horses showed up. Ed lay Ling across his and set to work tying them together. “I wanted to avoid using the horses. They’re big and noticeable. We don’t have a lot of cover. I just don’t think either of us will get very far like this.”

Ed talked to him steadily on the rest of the trip. Ling trembled. His hair froze to his face. His hands shook. He grew so tired, so ready to be home and warm and asleep before the next day’s worries. He stayed awake so he could hear the rest of Ed’s story.

It was a pleasant story—one Ling had heard before. Ed’s brother had been a royal guard before him. Alphonse was good enough to lead his class. They’d all expected the sword to choose him as the hero. Instead, it hadn’t reacted at all to Al’s touch. The relief was palpable as it rolled off him in waves. The relief lasted for weeks while they scrambled to test the sword with every knight. None of them worked.

Then Ed came to visit Al from his travels in Goron city. His skin was bronzed in those days. Months out of the scorching heat had made him pale again, like his brother. Ling knew then he’d be the one. A coil had begun to tighten the day Ed came into the Palace. It tightened with every step they took towards the Calamity. Ling had brought Ed to the weapon’s room. He’d disguised the sword as a plain weapon, wrapped in an unremarkable cloth.

The cloth, oiled and browned with dirt, hadn’t hidden the gleam. Ed’s fingers wrapped around the hilt and they’d hurtled toward the end.

It had taken another three weeks for Ed to realize he’d been lured into the weapon’s room by the Prince of Xing.

Al was the one who’d told him after he saw Ed and Ling drinking late into the night in Ed’s small cabin, the Master sword resting in the corner after Ling had “gifted” it to him.

Ling remembered Al walking in that night. Ling wasn’t nearly as drunk as he’d pretended to be. Al thought he was revealing an amazing secret. Ling felt as though the young knight had stolen a precious gift.

Ed’s laughter had faded that night, and had never fully returned.

He must have dosed. The next thing he knew, Ed was jostling him awake in front of a fire.

“I know you’re tired, Prince.” Ed poked some fish with a stick. He had his shirt back. Ling’s robes had been freed of their long sleeves and half their length to hang over a fire. The cabin was more shack than cabin. Ling counted only one room and no amenities.

They must be in a town lost to the Lizalfos. Ed had cursed a dozen times when they’d discovered the new breed of monsters with horns that gave off electric currents.

“You never answered my question.” Ed flipped a sizzlefin trout into the embers. The skin would taste like char and the meat would be unevenly cooked. But Ling appreciated Ed had listened the last time he’d talked about his research.

“You never answered mine.”

Ed hummed. It was a sweet sound. From what Ling gathered, it was an old lullaby his mother had used to play for him. He’d told Ling, in their fleeting time as just two people who’s met by chance, that when his mother sang to him time stood still. The severity of the memory, the suffocating sorrow in the memory, had knocked Ling breathless.  

Ed covered the fish in embers. He finished his song and set his eyes on Ling. “I watch you. You separate yourself from the other Champions. You are fiercely protective of all of Xing, and of the others, but you refuse to get close.”

Ling smiled. His thoughts were groggy and slow but he knew he didn’t want to answer that question. Not really. “I am meant to die, aren’t I? What is the point of getting too close?”

Ed nodded. “I understand. All I can think of when I hold this sword is how likely I am to lose my brother. I’ll never be able to punch my dad in the face like I want to.”

Ling snorted. “You want to punch your dad in the face?”

“Don’t you want to punch yours?”

Ling laughed. Snow flurried in through a window. The cold outside could not reach him through the fire. “My dad is the King.”

“And yet, despite his divine rule, he can’t seem to grasp the value of your research.”

Ling curled into a tight ball.

Ed had been stationed outside his door the night his father had come into his room. Ling hadn’t gone to his meetings that day. He’d spent the day studying hearty salmon instead. He’d found that combining salmon and truffles could produce a meal that significantly reduced one’s chances of becoming mortally injured in a fight. He’d had the best knights testing out his meals for weeks now. He’d had even greater luck with elixirs.

The elixirs had been the final straw for his father.

Don’t you think you risk his life enough having him accompany you to all of your trips out to the abandoned camps? He should be here, training! Not gathering up lizard tails and octorok eyeballs for your childish playing!

His father had been right. Like he would be right when he was angry with Ling for being late coming home. How could he take his destiny if he couldn’t stop playing with bugs and frogs and critters?

“My brother had one of those hasty elixirs. You know, the ones with that frog you showed me? He was able to outrun a Moblin just as it turned the corner. It saved his life.” Ed pulled the fish from the embers. “It’s about to save ours.”

Ling ate the fish greedily. The skin was unseasoned, and more than once he bit into a spot that was soft and undercooked. As he ate it, he could feel warmth return to his skin. His stomach burned like a hot coal, but his muscles and bones were pleasantly warm. Ed finished two in the time it took Ling to eat one. When they’d finished, they sat back happily.

“Well, now that we don’t have to worry about freezing to death for the next several minutes, we can relax.”

Ling laughed. The sound started as a chuckle, then spread until it boomed through his chest. He couldn’t remember a time he’d ever relaxed. The closest he’d come had been when he was lying to Ed.

“Tell me, Ling.” Ed rested his head in his hands. “Why don’t you ever speak of your mother?”

Ling’s laughter stopped. He tried to recall the woman. He sensed kindness, sorrow, worry. He remembered a tiredness he could feel deep inside her. Her face, he couldn’t remember. She just looked generic in his mind—dark hair, average weight and height. Faceless. “I don’t remember her well.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok. She didn’t die when I was young. She just. Was always busy. What I’m supposed to be able to do is usually guided by a friend or relative. Mother was supposed to be mine, but a stray bokoblin got her when she was on the way back from Gerudo. She was supposed to help me come into whatever power I have, but so far, nothing has happened. I think my father suspects they got it wrong this time. Shiekah people wrap themselves in their mysteries and never consider how rude it is to other people.” Ling shrugged. He tried to keep the motion easy and lazy, but his shoulders were too heavy. “Maybe my father is right.”

Ed frowned. “Maybe the sword is wrong, too. I’d never considered being a night before this. I was always intent to be a traveler.”

“Are you kidding me? I had my doubts when we first started—not of you, mind, but of all of this. But you’ve picked up sword fighting almost overnight. The other knights are jealous. You are excelling at your destiny.”

Ed gave a dissatisfied grunt. He pulled Ling’s dismantled robe down from the fire. “It’s warm. We should try to get some sleep. We’ve got to head out tomorrow.”

Ling nodded. He feared he’d somehow insulted his Knight, and he wasn’t sure how. He’d meant to be encouraging. Complimentary even. He decided not to risk speaking any more.

Ed lay on his back. The shack had nothing in the way of a bed or cushion. Likely, the people had taken what they could carry and the Lizalfos had destroyed the rest. Ling’s earlier nap hadn’t done much in the way of rest, but even still, he found himself unable to keep his eyes closed.

Instead his gaze drifted to Ed laying restlessly, fingers tapping out a soft rhythm on the stone floor. After a while, he looked out the window to the silvery moon. They were lucky the moon hadn’t turned red. It had taken to doing so the last few months, at random. And when it did, the monsters seemed to come out in droves.

“Tomorrow we could take the long way around, if you’d like. I know you’ve been running low on hot-footed frogs. We could catch some. Maybe some of those hearty lizards, too.” Ed’s tapping stopped.

“The King would be—”

“And I could try to practice fighting these lizard fellows. We could see about making Al some more of that potion.”

“It’s an elixir.” Ling’s lips twitched into a smile of their own accord. In the dark, the smile was for no one but himself.

“After all this is over, and Ganon is defeated…” Ed’s tapping resumed. “Do you have any plans?”

Ling remembered the fate of every Prince in his role. There would not be an after. Not for a long time. “Not really, no.”

Ed moved across the fire, until his body was inches from Ling’s. “We should go see Goron city together. They eat rocks there. Shaped like meat. I don’t know how it works exactly, but you may be able to get Daruk to show you.”

Ling closed the gap. If his Knight was offering to keep him warm and speak of future plans, he’d not turn him away. It would be nice, for once, to imagine a future where he was not smothered under the weight of Xing. Or any future at all, for that matter.

“What is Goron city like? What were you doing there?”

Ed began to tell him stories about a stone and the power to ward off attacks. Ling listened, mainly to the cadence of his voice, and watched the snow drift outside. He pretended not to notice Ed’s hand reach for his. Despite his efforts, Ling drifted off in the middle of Ed’s story.

The Knight didn’t seem to mind.

They both deserved a long rest.

 A/N: I know crossover day is a different day, but I saw royalty in the prompts for today and couldn’t help myself. SO. Here’s a BotW au. I’ll do another fanwork or crossover thing for that day. I just got to the Slumbering Power part of Captured Memories, and was so inspired!

@edling-week

[thedistantstorm]

Come Together 03

Fandom: Destiny

Pairing: Devrim Kay/Marc

Warnings: ridiculous romancing, cursing, smut (this one is a bit nsfw)

“A young city planner set his eyes on an older militiaman. He was unkempt and terribly forward. The militiaman had class. He wasn’t interested.”

“Clearly,” Marc tells their friends. “That’s why they decided to get married.”

(A story told in bits and pieces.)

Chapters: 01 | 02

-/

Marc kisses with what he calls passion, but it's lacking finesse. Every flick of his tongue is done insistently, desperate for more, downright sloppy in Devrim's estimation. Devrim himself might have gone a minute without a significant other, but Marc doesn't strike him as a man who goes long between relationships without a plaything. This is either a ploy or he's sorely in need of proper coaching.

He's social, his nights start out with a group, and if he's lucky, ends mano-a-mano. Not that he doesn't enjoy a night in - clearly. That's why he's nudging Devrim's head back against his sofa and pretending like he isn't thinking about straddling the older man while he curls up beside him.

Devrim lets him guide things, waiting, seeing how far the younger of them wants to push. He can't deny that there's a certain wantonness to how eager Marc is for it.

There's a moment when he's panting into Devrim's neck that the militiaman brushes his knuckles down the side of Marc's throat and he whines, high and sweet.

"Fuck," Marc curses, nipping Devrim in retaliation, but not hard enough to bruise. He's learning, Devrim thinks to himself. Perhaps he isn't as hopeless as he'd thought. "Fuck, I wanna see you under me."

Well. That's not what Devrim was expecting.

Determined not to have this conversation - it's been three weeks, this is not ending in the bedroom - Devrim lets his hand drift down Marc's side and to his hip, lacing a finger through his belt loop and giving a little tug.

The barest insinuation has Marc climbing atop him, careful not to grind down. Devrim fixes that with another innocent touch down his spine, hands splaying on Marc's lower back like it's commonplace. He allows himself a throaty groan when their sexes grind against each other, casually threads his fingers through Marc's hair. Tugs.

He comes undone immediately, his brows pulling together, eyes fluttering shut and rolling back into his head all at once. 

Devrim chuckles when Marc slumps against his shoulder, giddy and breathless. He whacks the other side of partner's chest with the back of his hand. "What're you laughing about?"

"I thought that might have been an erogenous zone," Dev deduces aloud.

"Sorry to be predictable, but it clearly was," He huffs, sans bravado.

"No disappointment here. That face you made was worth any frustration I'll suffer." 

Marc rolls off him, flopping bonelessly against the couch. "Really, you don't want-"

Blue eyes pin him where he lies, sparkling with amusement. "It's fine." Marc slumps gratefully into the cushions. It earns him a real laugh. Devrim manages despite it, "You - heh - you look like you could use some time to recover."

Marc kicks his thigh but doesn't move, and Devrim only laughs louder.

-/

Their next foray comes after an expensive dinner - Devrim knew French, so Marc couldn't surprise him with frog legs like very obviously been hoping. Every time Devrim speaks in the love language, he watches Marc's pupils dilate. The lower he speaks, the more the effect becomes immediate. He drags them back to his flat - a fancy high-rise in the Peregrine District.

A combination of that, excellent wine, a very romantic jazz ensemble in the corner of the restaurant, and the rapidly deepening kiss Devrim bestows upon him in the elevator has Marc keyed up, hands nearly fumbling his keys.

He lets them drop to the floor with a clatter, not bothering to turn on the lights when they enter, pushing Devrim against the back of the door and sinking to his knees.

"I owe you," He whispers up at him, letting his fingers trail up the musculature of Devrim's thighs before hovering over his belt buckle.

"That seems to be the case," Devrim agrees, swallowing thickly.

Marc makes short work of his trousers, pushing them down his hips before tracing his rather interested erection through his pants. Devrim sighs when he gives up the ghost and pulls them down too, licking his palm and wrapping it around his partner's hot, velvety flesh, guiding him into his mouth without further ado.

For a man so usually impatient, Marc takes his time, swirling his tongue around Devrim's tip, being mindful of how to inflict a guttural groan, what makes him clench his fists at his sides, or tip his head back against the wall. He lingers at the parts Devrim seems to enjoy, drawing them out, letting the sensation build. 

As he approaches his peak, Devrim tries to warn him, but Marc is insistent, palming his rear instead and forcing the gentleman to come down his throat with a muttered "fuck!"

"You like that?" He asks after, smirking as Devrim takes a moment, breathing hard, leaning against the door.

"I'll admit," Devrim says with a sigh, "That was," He clears his throat, breaking off with another heavy sigh as Marc swallows, grinning, making a big show of licking his lips and flashing his teeth.

"You are such a prude," Marc tells him. "Let me guess, you don't return the favor." There's no malice there, Marc's simply pumping him for information. In fact, most of his cheekiness is used to mask his nerves and self-doubt, Devrim notices.

So instead of a direct answer, he puts his clothing to rights, dragging an enraptured Marc to his own sofa and pulls him in close. "I guess you'll find out," He whispers.

Marc shivers.

-/

Devrim accompanies him to a work event, a true mixer this time. He's equal parts over the moon and terrified. Marc has only made one very large mistake since coming to work for the City Planner's office, and that was dating a superior, very early on in his tenure.

The other man has since moved into the private sector, but he's always invited to events like this, and he always makes a pass. It's a superiority thing. And Marc hates it with a passion.

Usually he gets nice and obliterated, then carries on happy-go-lucky like nothing has changed. The obliteration becomes a small bender, he has a good greasy meal around noon the next day, then sleeps until Monday morning, wakes up right as rain and pretends like nothing's happened.

But now he has Devrim. The last man he'd brought to one of these… Marc shudders. It was over a year ago, but that had been a breakup he still only remembers in bits and pieces, something about being called an insecure brat and then being dragged to his door by an upset cabby. (He'd made formal apologies to both, after, and took better care to stay just sober enough to make it home.)

The nerves both paralyze him and fuel his ability to consume liquor, and the fact that this party celebrates an eight-month project he'd been the lead on doesn't help. Devrim stays at his elbow, cordial, polite,and dashingly handsome, excusing himself with a hand at the small of Marc's back to go see about hors d'oeuvres for them both.

As luck would have it, that's when his old boss appears. He throws back a shot easy, flashing a toothy smile. Before, it had mostly been about getting flirting, getting Marc riled up, maybe a dance. Now, it was all that and a job proposal.

Marc does his best to be kind but disinterested, and it doesn't have the 'buzz off' effect he's going for. He can't shake the guy before Devrim returns. It's going to be an issue, he stresses internally. Devrim is too polite, he won't make a scene, but he'll be angry later.

He's fucked, Marc thinks. The whole thing is fucking ruined. He knew he should have gone alone, but things were going well and-

Devrim places a hand on the back of his neck, thumb brushing against the edge of his collar and clammy skin.

"I don't believe we've met," He says, effectively interrupting whatever Marc's pursuer is saying, Marc himself hasn't been paying attention: the sound of his heartbeat in his ears is too loud. Devrim extends a hand to the other man. They shake, but before his stupid ex-boss can pull away, Devrim leans in, speaking innocently, "You wouldn't be trying to upset my Marc, now would you?"

His jaw must hang, and it makes his ex laugh. "Wow, you're Marc's new beau," He slaps Marc's shoulder, and the temperature in the room must drop about forty degrees. He finishes the rest of his liquor to keep warm, waving down the bartender for another whiskey while he's asked, "Where'd you find this one, Marcus? The cover of a magazine?"

"Our paths crossed through work," Devrim informs him, his voice mellow, almost light, really. Marc thinks about texting his secretary now, he's going to need until at least Tuesday to drink away all memory of this trainwreck-to-be.

"Oh, how sweet!" He's interested. Of course, the ex is interested. He's always interested. One time, he'd stolen a date from Marc, right in front of his eyes. "What do you do?"

While Marc frames his temples with his hands, leaning over the bar from where he sits on the barstool, Devrim answers, "I'm City Militia."

"Wow." He knows that tone. That's the appraising one he uses to reel someone in.

"It's not all that glamorous, I assure you," Devrim croons, tilting toward the bar. He gestures, "Say, can I get you a drink?" He asks, and Marc feels tears blur his vision.

Fuck, he thinks, on a loop. He's going to need the entirety of next week to get over this. He is not drunk enough to handle this situation. Finishing his new drink in three swallows doesn't help any, either. 

"What do you do with the militia?"

His ex sounds closer now. Marc lets his head drop to the counter, cradled by the cross of his arms. The bartender doesn't ask as she passes with their order, just refills the glass in front of him almost to the top.

"Mostly civilian patrol and Tower duty in peacetime," Devrim says, innocuously. "But," His voice drops an octave and every nerve in Marc's body tingles. "You see, I'm a sniper. The Gentleman Sniper, they call me." Marc dares a bleary look over his right shoulder. Devrim stands between him and the other man, blocking Marc's view entirely. 

"I've always enjoyed the thrill of lining up the perfect shot," Devrim continues. "I have a great deal of patience, not to be taken lightly. There is something to be said for a sniper's observation skills as well. You have to be able to read a situation, understand what your target is thinking." He lifts his drink to his lips and take a sip, smirking, "I am good at that. Good enough to know you've been looking at Marc here for the majority of the evening, and that your decision to approach when I stepped away was more than mere coincidence."

"That's not-" The stammer comes from the other side of Devrim. Marc turns, in time to hear him say, "You're just a plaything to him, that's how he operates."

Devrim chuckles. It's sinister, not sarcastic. "I don't think I am. And even if I were, at least his standards have gotten better." At the resounding silence in their little pocket of the bar, he follows that up with a dismissal. "You have your drink," He nods down to the scotch in the other man's clutches. "Enjoy your evening."

The feather-light touch is back at his nape, and the tears come even easier than when he thought all was lost. He keeps them at bay, but not the tremors they come with.

Instead of giving in though, he finishes his whiskey with a flourish and gives Devrim a grin full of watery bravado.

"Say the word and we'll go," Devrim tells him, gentle as anything, lips at his temple.

"I won't let him ruin my party," Marc says, willing himself to sound like he's still having a pleasant time. He meets Devrim's eyes to prove he's not lying - though he is, through his teeth. "Besides, that was hot. Really hot." That part is true, at least. He didn't feel like a child bring protected. He felt valued, equal. The right kind of belonging. Not something he's used to.

Devrim's ears are pink. It's adorable enough to make him forget his concerns for a moment. "I worried I might have overstepped," He says, rubbing the back of his neck.

"No. That was amazing," He says, honestly. "You're amazing."

-/

Marc gets absolutely annihilated. Devrim isn't expecting anything different. He'd expected such an outcome even without the interference of the inbred idiot who attempted to ruin their evening. He manages to steer him to his own flat before the whole thing goes to hell, but it's close. Marc is weepy the entire way, slurring apologies and self-disparaging commentary.

"You can go," Marc tells him, shoulder bouncing off the wall as he stumbles toward the washroom. "I'll be- oh fuck-"

There's no way he can leave him in this state, either. Not that he's feeling particularly inclined to. He's very much aware that Marc was rattled going into the evening, and now that he knows why, leaving would only feed his insecurity.

Following him into the washroom leaves him in an unpleasant predicament, the younger man expelling alcohol and bile mostly in the direction of the toilet. He's certainly no stylist, but he manages to locate a hair tie and pull Marc's lengthy hair back into a neat-enough ponytail despite his hiccoughing retches. Marc swats at him - in gratitude, Devrim is sure - before returning his grip to the porcelain.

When all is said and done, he's still terribly drunk, but manages to suffer through brushing his teeth. Devrim uses some mouthwash himself and drags his partner to his bed without complication.

In the dark, Marc clings to his hand, staring up at the ceiling. "I'm sorry," He apologizes, frantically. "I never should have-"

"It's alright." Devrim strokes his forehead.

"No, it's not. It's not like that. I used to be like that and maybe - maybe I wanted it to be a fun little tryst when we started, but it's not like that," He rambles, imploring Devrim to believe him. "It isn't, I swear. I don't want you to think I'm just fucking with you, Dev, really, I-" Two fingers are pressed against his lips, effectively cutting him off in the dark. He feels Devrim move, feels strong arms wrap around him, pull him into a solid chest that smells like sandalwood cologne.

"Hush, darling," Devrim tells him. "I know. You gave that up weeks ago."

"I want you to like me," He whines pitifully, tears staining his partner's undershirt. "I don't want you to think it's a game. He said-"

"Whatever that wanker said," Devrim growls firmly, "I promise you, I do not believe. Whomever you might have been when you were involved him, you are not that man now."

"How do you know?"

Devrim kisses him, bringing the arm that's slung over Marc's side up so he can palm his cheek. Tears fall onto his fingers before he pulls back, pressing his lips to Marc's forehead as well.

"Because. You've had plenty of opportunities to push the envelope and you haven't. You've gone out of your way to offer me an out, even tonight, when it was a celebration of your admittedly impressive achievements. All for my comfort." He wipes the tears from Marc's cheeks with his thumb. "I tread carefully into relationships, my dear Marc, I assure you. If I thought you had anything but good intentions you wouldn't have gotten a first date, much less a do-over for what was honestly a heinous outing."

"You're never going to let that go, are you?" He mumbles, but it doesn't sound nearly as sad.

"Not on your life," Devrim assures him. 

He strokes his hair, nudging Marc's crown beneath his chin. "You're going to be hurting in the morning."

"Worth it," He hums. "Sorry in advance for whining. I'm going to be horrible, I can feel it."

"Oh, I think I'll manage."

"What, you gonna leave me alone to suffer?"

"I figured I'd take you to breakfast, assuming you have a shirt that buttons up all the way I could borrow."

[derickandveronica-blog]

V #1. Real Characters

I walk the two miles all the way down to No Frills because it’s one of those off brand grocery stores where things are cheaper but you have to bag your own stuff. I wish I could go to the nice bodega downtown that sells creamy, herb cheese set in little displays with plastic grapes, but right now that’s a luxury I can’t afford. My friend Jackie says, “Always set aside enough money for fancy cheese,” but I guess this month I forgot.  

It’s lucky, though, that the walk to No Frills is a nice one. It’s all downhill and I get to walk through this neighborhood filled with great, old Victorian houses. Some of the houses have gold historical preservation plaques tacked on their fronts, and the ones that don’t are painted bright, beautiful colors, like they’re competing for the plaques.

My favorite house, between Chestnut and Oak Street, is painted a smooth gradient of orange, starting pumpkin colored at the base of the house and gradually getting lighter, until at the paneling near the roof where it’s a soft creamsicle color. It just looks like light and happiness is beaming off the house, rising through the roof, like heat.

My own place used to be a stately, Victorian house, but it got chopped up and divided into apartments some years back, before I moved in. My landlord, Emily, doesn’t care about the place in the slightest. She’s let the paint fade and chip and she doesn’t seem to mind the awful stripe of black sludge down the front of the house. Its where the gutter empties. All winter, when the rain never stops and everyone is always muttering “the rain, the rain, the rain” like some kind of city-wide chant, the black, greasy rainwater pools at the roof before sliding down the front of the house into the yard below.

When I’m walking and not looking at the brightly painted houses I think about my usual stresses. I wish I could just focus on the houses and the pleasant heat in my leg muscles as I walk, but I can’t.

There’s a term paper I need to write about earthquakes and a doctor’s appointment I’ve been meaning to reschedule. And there’s my mom. She called me this morning. I had stood in my kitchen, gently stirring some oatmeal and saw that the phone was ringing, the screen lit up and vibrating. I had considered letting it ring all the way to voicemail. But I picked up. I wish I wasn’t so hopeful like that, but I am.

She told me about this new medication they’ve got her on, one that gives her these urgent, visceral, terrifying dreams. She told me she had a dream I died, something that also had to do with me being pregnant and wearing some god-awful denim dress. I didn’t know what she wanted me to say.

“I’m still alive,” I said finally.

She sighed into the phone.

 Really, she’s the one dying. Of emphysema. The unsurprising result of smoking for 40 years.

I don’t have a whole lot of feelings about my mom dying. It’s hard to explain this to people. When I tell them about her diagnosis they arrange their faces to be sympathetic or gently horrified. I arrange mine to look sad, or like I’m carrying an awful burden, but this is mostly just for the other people. It makes them more comfortable. I wish I didn’t do things to make others comfortable, but I do.

The summer before she went to the doctors and he sat there and told her about her condition and, then, five minutes later she called me and told me “I have emphysema. I’m dying. You better call me more often,” and then hung up the phone—the summer before all of that—I went home for the first time in years.

I was delusional, of course. Maybe a few years of living on the West Coast, where everyone breathes and sighs about community and love and healing got to me.

We’d fought the whole time. She was drunk and angry and always larger and taller than me. She steamed up the house with her cigarette smoke, kept the windows locked, so that I woke up in the morning feeling like the back of my throat was dry and dirty. It was like she wanted to die.

That summer I had a revelation.

 The first time I wore a bikini I was thirteen and it was bright red. I had noticed, only recently, the way men looked at me. How they poked each other in the ribs when I walked past. I spent hours looking at myself in the mirror, topless, running my hands along the smooth planes of my stomach. It was a miracle that we found the matching set for the bikini, since we got it at Goodwill. But it fit perfectly and looked great against my tan skin.

“Brown as a bunny, you are!” my mom said sometimes. Which was nice.

We went to the pool by our house, a neighborhood pool and something of an establishment during the hot Midwestern summer days. When we got there I stripped off my summer dress and took note of the muscled, gleaming lifeguards at the water’s edge. My mom, as was her habit, promptly passed out on a pool chair. Her mouth leaked open at the corners and her arms splayed out at her sides.

The bikini looked even better glistening under the chlorine blue water. But after diving off the diving board many times and frog crawling along the checkered bottom of the pool it had begun to hang loose on my body. The strings at my back, holding the top piece in place, threatened to come loose and reveal my breasts.

I woke my mother.

“Can you please tie this?” I asked. “It’s coming loose!” I was perhaps a bit hysterical.

She rose from the pool chair, her eyes puffy and groggy. She looked evil like a villainous character rising from their dark throne, and I realized, my stomach clenching, that I’d made a huge mistake.

And then, there in front of the moms and babies and muscled lifeguards, she ripped my bikini top from my body. One swift motion and it was gone.

The tender pink cones of my nipples were seeing the outside world for the first time. They felt fragile, sensitive to the dry summer air.

A woman nearby gasped.

“Get your shit and let’s go,” my mother growled. And so, we left.

 My revelation was simple. I had been dreaming, since I was a little girl, maybe even before the red bikini episode, no more relationship with my mother.

Not one where she knew how I felt, or where we fought about why I never came to visit, and not one where I was willfully and purposefully cutting her from my life. Just one that was no more, brimming with nothingness.

When she called me that day after the doctor’s appointment, blurting out the news and then hanging up, the revelation rung inside of me, like a gong.

 At No Frills I grab my usual items: bananas and oatmeal and eggs and potato chips. The linoleum is freshly waxed and gleaming. Everything is gleaming. The apples, the cucumbers, the mirrored surfaces of the meat counter. They’re playing a classic rock station over the radio and “Stairway to Heaven” comes on and I sing a little out loud, softly, when it gets to the part where Robert Plant screams and the drums get loud. It feels good sometimes to sing in public. Like I’m testing the boundaries of what’s okay to do. It makes me feel like the kind of girl brooding, artistic men would write poetry about, or else the kind of girl who’s quirky and thin and cutely-fragile who writes her own poetry. But I don’t think I’m either of those.

In line at the checkout I watch two West Coast weirdos, as my friend Jackie calls them, talk to each other. They’re real characters, like New Yorkers say in the movies. The man is wearing earmuffs, even though its blazing hot summer outside. The earmuffs are those puffy white childish ones, like they’re made from the fur of the abominable snowman, and they look ridiculous against the balding slab of his head. The woman with him, either his sister or maybe his wife--in the way that sometimes people who look alike become couples—is talking at him, nonstop, way too loudly, in some language that might actually be Latin.

“Oblitus dicere!” she says.

He doesn’t respond, just looks glassily off into the distance. Perhaps the earmuffs have made her voice fuzzy and distant. Perhaps this is their purpose.

What makes me laugh the most is that the couple has many, many cans of tuna fish in their cart and nothing else.

 Back out on the street, blinking in the sunlight, I wait for the bus. The two characters are here, like I knew they would be. I think about talking to them, but I don’t know what I’d say.

My mom would sometimes involve herself in other people’s private business. Stuff that was definitely closed to her, but she didn’t care. I try not to be like this, even when I’m curious.

Once, upon coming out of the library, with stacks of books piled in our arms—hers about political conspiracy theories and mine about girls who lived fashionable, glittering lives in New York City—she spotted a couple sitting on a bench at the library’s entrance. It was obvious, immediately, what was happening.

The girl was crying gently and the boy, with a falsely sympathetic face, was speaking quietly and quickly and patting her leg like the way distant relatives do.

My mom marched over. She shifted her stack of books to the crook of her left arm so she could point her right finger accusingly at the couple.

She took a deep breath.

“You don’t need him! You can do much better than an ugly boy like him!” She was shrieking, and the whites of her eyes were huge and lit up, like there was a light bulb illuminated inside her head.

The girl was stunned. But the boy, strangely enough, looked as if he’d been expecting this. He smiled haughtily at my mom, his lips curled up, and that was when I realized it. My mom was one of them. The weirdos on the street. The characters.

I felt myself shrink down, wanting desperately to be somewhere else.

“Stay out of it, lady!” he smirked.  

“Go fuck yourself,” she said.

 Sometimes, once in a blue moon, my mom wasn’t a character. Or, at least, she kept it under wraps. Once, when we were on a plane and the flight attendant angrily slapped a bag of cookies down on my tray table after I took too long deciding between my snack options, my mom smiled a small smile and peered at me out of the corner of her eyes. Her face said, “Somebody’s having a bad day!” I had smiled wide, not caring about the cookies anymore.

I craved these kinds of moments. When we were on the same team. I just knew that there was another world, jogging along right next to ours, that was full of these moments. Where we had inside jokes and camaraderie.

This other earth, though, was almost always frustratingly out of my grasp.

 This morning on the phone she’d told me that she was ready to die.

“I just want to be fucking dead already,” she said. It was so brash and ugly and hard to look at. I stayed quiet on the phone.

After a while she sighed. Sometimes, I had no idea what my mother knew, how wide her awareness extended.

“Maybe you want that too,” she said.

But I didn’t know what world we were in. The real one or the one just out of reach. We were, for once, on the same team. But it was all wrong.

 The houses get steadily uglier as the bug chugs towards my neighborhood. It drops me off a few blocks from my house, and the characters stay on the bus, heading, no doubt, into the even seedier parts of the city.

My shoulders and hands ache with the groceries and I have to stop every block to stretch my fingers and then curl them into fists, pumping blood and sensation back into them. At my house, I peer up at the black sludge down the front of the house, but it doesn’t look too bad today, maybe because of the sunshine. The sun has a way of smoothing out all the ugly things, blurring your vision a little. I wish I could have this effect on people, but I can’t.

I unlock the front door, give it a little kick with my foot so it doesn’t stick, and climb the stairs up to my apartment. I knock my hips against the stair’s railing, forming a soft fleshy bruise I’ll feel for the next few days but which will look oddly beautiful against my skin, because the bags are just too heavy.

[dullpoetssociety]

The Poem You Never Received You hung on to me stiff 
Arms out stretched 
 Lips forming a noose around my neck 
My hands tangled in your hair I always wanted to die 
 But never by choking It seemed more addictive than harmful in the beginning Less like hanging 
 And more like erotic asphyxiation We were never rough with each other 
But God did you make me feel high I confided in you my life story 
 And so you tried to pick up the pieces
 Like I was a little broken thing Don’t make bad decisions 
 Don’t make bad decisions 
 Don’t make bad decisions This was confusing. 
I called you my partner
 But you sounded more and more like a parent Then the questions form "Do you not trust me to take care of myself?"
 "Or did you fall in love with me because I’m childlike? " "Did you want me so I could be something you could bury and grow?" I have always done just fine cultivating my own garden
 I never needed your expert opinion on how to make the daisies grow just right Resentment.
 We fight.
 And it resolves as quickly as it starts. I try to remain an open book
 Share with you my life as it is experienced 
 Honesty is good in relationship, that’s what they keep telling me But this only leads to more scolding It changes but never completely goes away
 Like a lawyer correcting his leading question 
 The question is the same even if you don’t imply the answer. I find myself able to trust you with my secrets less and less But You kiss me too hard and it makes me laugh 
 Your arms feel like coming home 
And your proximity is peace 
You feel like waking up on a rainy day
When you walk through the door
everything is so much calmer all at once I have low self esteem.
 So do you, surprisingly.
 We both cry often. I speak to you in hushed voices Push the curls behind your red ears 
Tell you that your voice sounds like the universe creating stars 
 Hold you in my arms and promise that everything is in your head 
Kiss your forehead
 Swear that I love you 
Hold you until your breathing is even It works. 
I think.
 You keep coming back. I crumble on your kitchen floor 
Let the emotion rush out like hot lava 
It burns my corneas but I can’t stop the eruption once it has begun 
I tell you that I am worthless. You tell me that everyone has worth. 
That makes me feel broken. 
I try to explain the problem 
 But it never comes out right You cradle me until I stand on my own. I start trying to cry on my own instead You didn’t like when I was silent on the ride home 
 But I had long run out of words 
Wrapped up in a decaying sense of self 
I craved silence. You always gave it to me with the exception of pencil scratching paper In a moment all could be at peace. I couldn’t work when you were around but I still begged you not to go I never told you But it was all so empty once you were gone I brought you to meet my father 
Not because it was tradition 
 But because I wanted you to be the knight you always claimed There were no dragons slain that night.
 The beast still walked away with my carcass between its teeth You told me I should be kinder to my father. My heart stopped beating. I knew every way to be proud of you 
The hidden jems Your gorgeous bone structure 
The hidden muscle 
 The tenderness of your touch The obvious things
 Your mind 
Your temperament 
Your ease I didn’t know how to make you proud of me. All accomplishments were met with a reaction that felt more like a parent praising their three year old Any accomplishment that rivaled your own was nonexistent 
 Shrugged off before it could even begin to make my chest swell I loved you because I admired you. And I still didn’t know why you loved me
 I had asked but nothing memorable ever stuck Did you love me like loved you? 
 Did you admire my intelligence or my creativity? Did you love me because I was childlike? 
 Did it make you feel strong to protect and nurture me? Did you think I was beautiful? Did you think I was funny? Did you think I was kind? 
Or was it because you could lose your pain in my laugh? Was it simply because I was there?
Did you love me just because I was yours? Did I ever make your heart swell? Again, I have no idea But it all manifested somehow 
Slowly without my realizing it It fused together like a chimera of ugliness and Resentment. The end came far before I intended it to. 
The pain 
The doubt 
 The lost trust
 The silent crying 
 The second guessing 
 The not knowing 
 The ego
 The lack there of 
 The poem that sat on the counter instead of the fridge
 The never being good enough 
 The dress I never got to wear 
 The patronizing stare 
 The smile that went through me Choking The resentment 
The resentment 
 The resentment You tried to rebuild our lost kingdom right there on the beach where it had once stood You kissed me in celebration of the redemption of what was almost lost I cried when your lips left cigarette burns on the back of my mind
 But I never told you The toilet bowl held the evidence that proved my body couldn’t handle the new beginning I could fight back the tears
 But I couldn’t choke down the vomit And then it finally ended. 
Like the last wave lapping at the shore after a tsunami I felt new. 
Like parts of me had been locked away and could finally see light again
All air seemed fresh 
Everyone’s company was warmer But you crumbled 
 Chiseled the decaying marble into novels of emotions that you did not know how to feel 
 Flung like daggers through me each tearing away at any peace I had gained slowly Resentment I arrived everyday feeling like a frog in biology class 
Pulled back on the metal tray 
Limbs splayed so that any part of me was accessible for dissection I could not laugh or I was not sad enough 
 I could not respond to your barbs or I was insensitive I could not take my best friend out dancing or I was stepping on your toes I wanted you to be happy. I wanted to stay a love note tucked away in your shoebox 
Instead of the memory that came back to haunt you when you were vulnerable enough to invite it in And it paid off!
 Eventually. We slid into our designated seats of your car 
 And began again almost as if it had never happened Almost When things began to feel normal again 
 I began to miss you finally And when you asked me to come back I considered it fondly The way your presence made me feel warm 
 The way you looked at me when you told me you loved me 
The laugh that made me smile Laying in your arms in silence on Sunday morning The way you kissed me too hard 
God the way you kissed me too hard But the tsunami still lived in the back of my mind with the burns
 And I knew then that you were capable of hurting me So when you offered me your hand I didn’t take it And so it began again The words that you wove into a noose 
 The choking I tried to stand still on the chair But it weighed 
And the water wore away at the stone I couldn’t keep letting you light me on fire so you could barely make out your surroundings in the darkness So I blew it out. And when the sun rose in the morning we were no where to be found
 Separated on either side of the day light Seemingly new
 But something old still slept beneath the paint You still didn’t smile back when you saw me I hadn’t thought about you much when I didn’t have to. 
 I pushed you away in a box in the back of my closet that read: 
Things that hurt me.
 Things that made me feel.
 Things that broke my heart. But when I saw you again it felt Different. Read: Things the nostalgia resurrected. The doctor told me that the medication would mess with my emotions He said it would make me feel things I usually did not I did not expect it to make me miss you. Stare at the right side of the couch and wish your shoulder was pressed lightly against mine I had long forgotten what it had felt like to be in love with you and then it consumed me all at once I did not expect to miss you until I did. I thought a lot about how it might have been different. How if the tsunami had not swept away the remains we might have been able to actually rebuild But all that remains from the storm are the rocks and the waves
 Miles and miles of sand from where it had once laid siege I still remember the way your skin felt 
When I caressed your face with my hand 
 And the exact angle you tilted your face to press into me 
The way your cheek firmed when you smiled If I concentrate hard enough I can feel it all at once like one swift motion The way your arms draped around me It still makes me radiate with warmth to think about The way your body still feels like home.

[captivesrp]

When Archora wakes, a terrifying headache wakes with her in place of her freedom, a previously taken-for-granted and particularly missed element of her existence.

“Don’t even think about it,” says a dark voice, and a rough hand clamps over her mouth. She is hiked up higher against her kidnapper’s chest, her thin robe not protecting her back from scratching painfully against ridged leather armour.

It is unlikely that Archora had been thinking about whatever it was---that is, talking, or protesting, though piecing the context together is also far from her mind---because she is at present utterly terrified. Though through panicked mind-racing she realizes she remembers the events of her last period of consciousness and, consequently, her recent history in relative completeness, she is still terribly disoriented and in pain, qualities unfortunately assisted with emphasis by her present predicament.

She is carried outside the hut where she had been left by the witch and unconsciously observes that morning is on its way, for the eastern sky is lightening and the air is charged with the freshness of dawn. Consciously, she observes, her presence of mind collecting, that she has been kidnapped by one member of a group of six unwashed and fierce-looking individuals, all of whom but one are startled by her captor’s appearance in their midst. The unstartled one makes a circular gesture with one hand while pointing out of the village with the other and, presumably following what was a non-verbal command, Archora’s kidnapper and his comrades run off in the direction of the man’s finger, their feet all but silent on the dirt road.

The impact of her captor’s feet seems to translate between hard roadway and Archora’s head into daggers of white-hot pain, and she blacks out after hardly twenty paces, her body going limp in the brigand’s arms.

*     *     *

“I think we should wait here for Logain,” says a voice near Archora’s ears.

Archora does not hear those words. What she hears is, “You are in an incredible amount of pain and you feel an urge to throw up.” She is covered in cooling sweat and, sure enough, feels powerfully nauseous.

“Damn you!” she says weakly, and fights against the urge.

“Where’s Warg got to?” asks a brigand beside Archora’s captor; this time, Archora’s consciousness picks up on the words, though they are spoken in the dialect of an unfamiliar tribe.

Archora feels her kidnapper prepare to speak, but the arrival of the long-haired man who had given the signal to leave the village proper prompts him to let out the to-speak breath in a rattling sigh.

“Warg is not here,” the long-haired man says. Archora’s eye is caught by severe scarring across the left side of his face.

“I will go look for him,” rumbles the voice of Archora’s captor; she half hears, half feels it through his chest.

“You have the captive,” says the scarred man.

Archora speaks. “My name is Archora and you will be dead by the time the sun is free from the earth.” She hears her own voice as though her ears have seceded from her person, listening to a stranger speak. Wise ears, she thinks, moving her tongue absentmindedly and wondering how it could have betrayed her like that.

One of her captor’s arms retracts from its hold around her waist. “Should I hit her, Logain?”

“Warg is here with another child,” says Logain without turning or shifting his single-eyed vision to otherwise recognize the arrival of a new bandit carrying a small body on his shoulder. “The girl will be allowed to back up her threat. You will let her go.”

Archora’s stomach falls away as she is dropped to her feet. Dizziness and nausea threaten to send her to her knees but she clenches her jaw and focuses on the feeling of hard earth beneath her bare feet. She opens her eyes and, through the darting sunbursts, stares hard at the scarred man’s single, golden iris. “A man as ugly as you are must have other assets, so it won’t be easy---and it isn’t as if the gods will be happy to see your shockingly hideous face among the stars, either, so they won’t be on my side---but I was planning on earning my warrior’s feather this morning anyway and you’ll do.” She spits to the side.

The man lifts a baldric holding a massive claymore over his head. He holds it idly in his hand for a moment before tossing it to the side. A lackey starts forward as if to catch it but hesitates just a breath too long and trips over the belt loop as he lurches forward. A collective breath is held as the brigand falls head-first towards the scarred man.

Archora is prepared to use the distraction to her advantage but the scarred man, without breaking eye contact, thrusts out an arm and with a massive hand catches the falling brigand’s face. He lifts him to his toes.

A voice squeaks out from between the man’s fingers, “Logain, please!”

The scarred man, Logain, ignores him, his eye still fixed on Archora. He holds her gaze for a terrifying amount of time before breaking what had become a seriously uncomfortable silence for all present. “So be it,” he says. His eye flicks up over Archora’s shoulder. “Take her.”

Archora is snatched from behind by familiar arms.

“Warg, you were too slow. You will leave yours.”

“I will . . . leave mine.” says Warg. He slowly lifts his abducted child off his shoulder and holds her, limp, at arms’ length. “Leave . . . mine.” His eyes flick to Archora’s captor.

“It’s pretty simple, Warg,” rumbles a response. “He doesn’t mean tree leafs.”

“Tree leafs . . .” says Warg. He relaxes his arms and holds his captive in a hug that makes Archora utterly sick to make the word association. “Wot?”

A scream draws all attention to Logain, or more directly to the face held in Logain’s splayed fingers. The unfortunate man has been lowered to his knees and his own hands are scrabbling at the much larger one covering his face. The man screams, “Logain, please!”

“We are moving,” says Logain, and releases the man. His gaze passes over Archora’s captor and Archora is jerked higher upon the man’s chest and daggers return to the inside of her skull; her captor runs deeper into the woods, following a few other members of the band. Archora hears Logain’s fading voice: “Warg, you are still holding your captive.”

*     *     *

Glowing hot daggers may have returned to her but unconsciousness did not. In order of appearance superficial numbness, realization of predicament, and overwhelming panic make attempts to fill the gap but none are, as can well be imagined, nearly as comforting, and by the time the group of kidnappers stops for the night hidden in the dense trees by a wide beaten roadway Archora is in profound, transcendent pain, and consequently unaware of the brigands’ activity to set up for the night.

She finds herself, then, in the middle of the night, abstractly surprised when she recovers enough of her mind to become aware of her surroundings and looks up to watch leaves in greyscale dance with tendrils of mist above her head. Pain, shock, and panic fade behind a partition like the sun behind a sheer parasol. Archora hears herself breathing. A frog croaks somewhere in the darkness; though upon reflection and as all surrounding sounds begin to creep into her consciousness, the croaking could have come from any of the dozen brigands snoring in the darkness around her. A rattling croak vibrates the ground underneath her and confirms her suspicions; it had emanated from the dark figure a few paces to her left.

Archora sits up slowly, clenching her jaw against the ensuing dizziness and pounding headache. The croaking sleeper is the closest kidnapper to her, which means they are probably supposed to be watching her. “Grand job they’re doing, too,” she whispers. She scans the rest of the camp and sees only bodies in repose. Silently, slowly, she slips her feet beneath her and stands.

“I wouldn’t,” says a low, quiet monotone from across the firepit in the center of the camp. A single golden eye turns her way, glistening in the faint orange glow of the dying embers.

Archora freezes, her racing heart hammering blood into her head. “You wouldn’t . . .” she repeats, mind racing. “I need to pee.”

The golden eye remains fixed on her.

“I need to pee,” she repeats. She hooks her thumbs in the waist of her woolen trousers. 

“You have said so,” says Logain. His gaze does not waver.

“I . . . do not need to go nearly as badly as I had thought,” says Archora, but, clearly inspired by their dialogue, her bladder is suddenly full to bursting and as she bends to sit down it makes itself known. She lies down on her back, eyes wide, bladder quite merrily annexing the rest of the organs in her midsection.

“You are wondering why I let you live,” comes Logain’s voice.

Only snores reply; Archora is too busy wondering if she can live with wet pants for the rest of the night.

“I am not a whimsical man,” says Logain, “and I sense that you, also, take things seriously.”

Archora stifles a giggle at the word ‘whimsical’.

Logain continues, “You stood up to me, and from the bruise on your cheek I gather that you are used to standing up for yourself. We need children like you.”

Archora sobers. “For what?” she asks, her voice small in the darkness. 

“Time will tell you,” comes the response.

Croaking snores blanket the ensuing silence. 

“I am going to go pee now,” says Archora, as much to satisfy the surrender demands of her body-conquering bladder as to notify Logain. She stands and moves a couple paces towards the edge of the clearing before looking towards her observer, whose eye, half-lidded, is turned her way. She fights down a blush and stares hard back as she draws down her trousers.

Logain flicks his gaze above her head, then closes his eye. 

Archora pees triumphantly.

*     *     *

Travel over the next four days is not kind to Archora. She is watered little, fed less, and cared for not at all. Logain had given her the chance to walk for herself for two hours the day following the night of their conversation and she had not lived up to his expectations of speed or resilience; her ability to vomit and dry-heave for five minutes without pause despite having eaten nothing in almost two days may have made an impression, however, though evidently a poor one. She has been carried ever since, an experience only slightly less nauseating than physical exertion had been; at least, the nausea remains only internally uncomfortable.

If Archora’s head were a village and her thoughts its citizens, pain would be the ground and the ground would be a thin, murky, muck that smells of tar in which all the villagers are drowning and dying. Her situation---that is, an existence deprived of agency and far away from even the small comforts of home---would be a number of natural disasters all happening at once: every time a villager learns to tread muck-water, or finds a thick chunk of mud to stand on briefly, they are hit by a tornado, hurricane, flash flood, lightning storm, and blizzard all at once and promptly die.

Needless to say, rest, even if it had to be at the bottom of a dank pit, would be appealing to this poor, injured girl. Luckily for her, but really only for her, as almost anyone else would consider the following development unlucky, is that the bottom of a dank pit is exactly where Logain wants her to be as of midday on the fifth day since Archora was recovering from a punch to the face in an empty hut.

“Place her in pit four,” says Logain, “and make sure she isn’t dead.”

Archora looks blearily around from her perch as a human cape over the shoulder of an unknown brigand. She has ended up in what a thought-villager---before an untimely death by crocodile-tidal wave---assumes to be the kidnappers’ base camp; the forest glade is populated by hide tents of various styles and dozens of people.

She is lifted off her carrier’s shoulder. The brigand holds her out at arm’s-length. “Are you dead?”

Archora answers deliriously in a weak voice, “No, I’m Archora.”

“Don’t care,” responds the brigand. “Watch out below!” Her hands suddenly pull away from Archora and she falls a spear’s-length or two into the promised dank pit, where she crumples to the ground and falls kindly unconscious.