#I never see recognition for selkies

[babeilovemonsters]

It kinda bugs me when people make these unique, incredibly interesting monster designs, and then give them normal human genitals. That's missing so much potential!

Picture a dragonborn or lizardfolk, who's cock is concealed. No matter how desperate you are, begging and pleading, whimpering pathetically, you only get it when you actually put in some damn effort. Having to stroke, suck and lick, just to get it out enough to be able to satiate your need.

In turn, an afab dragonborn/lizardfolk, who needs just as much effort to be able to open their hole for you. Needing to be massaged oh so gently, have your fingers trace along the ridges of their crease, until the skin moves out the way enough for you to slide deep inside.

Or how about cat monsters? They might pass the harkness test, but no matter the shape, their cocks still have those little spikes. Soft and movable, but stubborn, gently scratching through your inner walls, making you feel every single one. Latching on the inside of your throat so you choke, leaving you all hazy and dizzy as it just takes so much more effort to get out.

Cat monsters with fluffy, silky holes, with such soft fur to rest your face in while you slide your tongue so deep, they're forced to meow pathetically. Hitting such a good spot, they purr uncontrollably, vibrating the entire bed.

Or robots, who don't have proper genitalia? Who need to get creative, starting off with just toys and vibrators, before recognising that it's getting boring. Using live wires to safely but noticeably spark your soft parts, using their strong metal limbs to stop you squirming too much. Displaying porn on their screen to get you so horny, while not actually doing anything to you, just holding you down so you can't touch your poor, throbbing hole no matter how turned on you are.

Or even selkies, who most would only fuck in human form! But that's no fun. Dragging you to the depths in their halfway form, barely holding your head above the water as they pound their slippery, soft cock into your aching holes beneath the surface. Or maybe even going full seal, just barely hiding behind the rock of a nudist beach, making you pretend like everything is normal, because most people wouldn't know they're a selkie, they pass so well.

Or selkie vaginas, that are so fat and squishy. Teasing them about being unable to hide how open their hole is just by the slightest interaction. Finding the salty taste difficult to swallow, but with every moan, they hold onto you tighter, so you can't stop until either they're satisfied or you give up. And you definitely aren't doing the latter.

Just. Monster genitals. Monster cocks and cunts. Monsters.

[miscellaneous--bones]

"So what did you do to end up on death row, anyway?" Sebastian's cackle died off. His tail shifted as he leans back against the sofa, raising his bottle against the florescent lights at the edge of the room.

Saoirse's own bottle was set beside her on the desk shed pulled over. Her legs swung idly as she watched a stray bubble float passed the window."I killed my husband with a pair a' fabric scissors."

Sebastian's ear wiggled as his focus switches to her, his brow furrowing. "Hah... sheesh, what'd the bastard do to deserve that? Ohhhhoho did he cheat on you or somthin'? Didn't take you for the jealous type," his surprise melted away to a laughter again. He went back to swirling his alcohol and his tail thumped at the other end of the circular room.

Saoirse's hand quietly fell to her thigh as she took a moment to will her good eye to leave darkness outside the window. Leaning back, she looked towards the lounging salesman. "... told you 'm not human, right?"

"You've mentioned it." Sebastian stilled as he met her gaze, noticing the way her mood shifted. Damn, he'd hit a sore spot.

"Dunno if urbanshade's files had anything on selkies," Saoirse was relieved to see recognition in his expression. "But he sold my coat. It was.. right after my son's death, somethin... punishment maybe? 'E didn't hold up his end of the deal n' I snapped."

It was a longer sentence then he might have ever heard out of her, and brought up more questions than answers. Saoirse had kids? Kids that died? "Deal?"

"'S a long story. He said if I could give him a son, he'd give back my coat. Guess I should've known he was lying after his 5th birthday." There was a sadness settling on her shoulders. Sebastian watched her gaze flutter across the carpet.

Saoirse seemed farther away than before while he contemplated. She'd already read sebastian's file, but it was strange to be on the learning end. It felt rude to pry, but worse to drop it.

"What was his name? Your son." He clarified. Saoirse's eyes finally lifted, "Jonah. He was 9."

Her hand came up to rub at the eye that wasn't scarred and droopy. Her claws caught her hair before she rested her chin on her palm. "His father's name was Joseph."

"So what he... stole your coat to force y'to have his kids?" Sebastian's lip twitched as he spoke. Douche was an understatement, and he would've killed him too.

The expendable reached over to take the neck of her bottle. She swallowed before she answered. Liquid courage, or something. "I thought I lost it, at first. He, comforted me on the beach, and took me home. Didn't learn till later he'd taken it and at that point we'd been married a few years."

"He wanted some fancy magic wifey to show off. I wanted to leave as soon as I found out, but he refused. Said if he got a son- something about his estate- then he'd set it up so we could get divorced. I'd get my coat if he got his kid." As she continued sebastian's face continued to tighten. His tail drew closer and his claws flexed.

"What a fucker. Good thing you killed him. Even if- y'know." Saoirse's mouth twitched upwards. It tickled her to see him so angry at a dead man he never knew, and it was cathartic to be validated by someone who'd been wronged the way sebastian had.

"Gets worse. My first kid was a girl, a selkie." There was a terrible smile across Saoirse's chin, and a glint in her eye. It was angry, in the worst way. "What was her name?" Sebastian questioned.

"Hilda." Her brow furrowed, and her smile faltered. "I named her Hilda."

"Selkies need to be in the ocean fer a while after we're born, to form the bond, and grow our fur and shit. To be healthy. Joseph would've had to give me my coat for her to make it, an I would've brought her back when she was old enough. But... he wanted a son. So..." she rubbed at her eye again, rougher this time. Saoirse pulled in a shuddering breath. Sebastian rose to the edge of his seat. his tail thumped again, closer.

"So he just let her DIE? his kid??" He shouted, louder than he meant to. Saoirse shrugged, taking another sip out of her bottle. "'Probably didn't want me to run off with her or some shit."

The two sat for a moment, allowing the shifting of the facility to fill the quiet. Saoirse breathed, and tried to regain her composure. Ugh, crying in front of the great sabatour, how embarrassing. Sebastian's thoughts raged. His claws picked at the sticker on his bottle as he slumped back on the couch.

"Y'didn't deserve that." Saoirse breathed again, once, twice.

"...you didn't either."

Their eyes met again. Somewhere, gunfire. Saoirse's leg began to sway again as Sebastian laughed. The room felt lighter again, and saoirse chuckled alongside him.

"MAN this place sucks!" The serpent cackled. The selkie hunched over, a hand over her chin as the two were left breathless. "Ugh.. outta all the stupid suckers down here, you seem to be the most tolerable.

Sebastian lifted himself from that creaky little couch and chugged the rest of his bottle. Grabbing the forgotten remnants of the stash they'd found, he called over his shoulder, "I'm not keen to share all these with anyone else, so let's see how good you are at navigating monsters under the influence."

"Hey if you weren't so big I could drink you under the table!" Saoirse pushed herself off the desk and trailed after him, grabbing her own drink on the way.

"Yeah, I'll show you big, short stack." "If I didn't know any better I'd think yer comin' onta' me, solace."

[blooberrries]

『midnight, midsummer』 — four

— pairing: shoto x reader — tags: university au, urban fantasy au, selkie shoto, accidental marriage (lmfao), faerie antics, 18+ — wc: 4.6k — notes: it Begins

“I have no intention of forcing you into anything,” Shoto says evenly, expression neutral despite the roiling depths of his mismatched eyes. He seems to hesitate slightly before he continues. “Let me propose something, then. A bargain.” Your eyebrows shoot up before you’re able to stop them. Shoto is offering to enter a faerie bargain with you? As though he can see the cogs turning in your head, the corner of his lips lifts in a half smile. He breathes in deeply, closing his eyes a moment before he lets the air go and meets your gaze once more. “If you find that you do not have any feelings for me at all, come Midsummer’s Eve, then I will dissolve this marriage and leave you be.” ---- You get a little more than you bargained for when you knock some poor guys coat off his chair in the library. You pick it up and give it back to him, of course, because that's what anyone would do, right? Well, apparently not when it comes to selkies.

masterlist || prev. | next (to be added later)

It’s at dusk the next day that you find yourself at a familiar stretch of sand and rocks.

You’re all dressed and ready to go to the celebration; you were actually on your way there, barely ten minutes away, but decided to stop for a few minutes. This is a beach you’ve been frequenting since you first came here. It’s where you go to sit with your thoughts and unwind. The ocean has always been a secret love of yours, and this beach is sequestered off and separated enough that more often than not you’re able to be in complete solitude while you bask in the sun and sea breeze.

You’re sure that amongst the dolphins and seals there is a bunch of sea-dwellers that can catch sight of you from the water, but you don’t have to deal with them in your everyday life so you’re relatively unbothered by it.

A particularly brisk breeze cuts against your skin, and with a shiver you shove your hands into the pockets of your jacket, nestling further into the fabric. However warm it may get during the day, the wind at night is another matter entirely.

You pause when, in the midst of your shivering, your fingers brush against something at the bottom of your pocket. Confused, you draw the item out and attempt to discern what it is in the moonlight.

Recognition lights in you not long after you set your eyes on it. Right, this is the jacket you were wearing when you arrived home to the ring and orchid on your front porch. Normally you’d be inclined to shove it back into your pocket in an effort to forget about it, but for some reason you feel like you can look at it without having a lowkey panic attack today.

Drawing your other hand from your jacket, you crack open the box and retrieve the ring from inside. It’s a beautiful piece, you have to admit. The style is something you probably would have chosen yourself, too. You’ve never seen a pearl with this colouring before… it’s quite mesmerising to the eye. Against the backdrop of the night sky, it’s like your very own drop of the moon.

Your fingers fiddle with the band, fingertips dipping into the ring as though to put it on before shying away. A part of you kind of wants to see what it looks like on… but you’re paranoid that once it’s on it won’t come off.

It’s a little bit silly of you, really. You decide that fear is a little irrational and proceed to slip the band onto your ring finger.

… It looks good.

Immediately after that thought you rip the ring off your finger and cram it back into the box. Said box is then banished back to the depths of your jacket pocket, and you return to your original journey towards the docks in the distance. Stubbornly, you force yourself to think of something else, and decide to focus on your destination.

The location of the party is a place called Tinsel Cove – contrary to the name it isn’t a natural formation, but rather an abandoned warehouse that has since been repurposed into party central for the sea-dwellers. Hence, the tinsel. Between the ocean folk and the land fae, there is no shortage of celebrations year-round. This is only one of many regular haunts that host these parties, but it’s probably one of your favourites if only because of it’s proximity to the ocean.

True to what they had texted you earlier, Toru and Himiko are waiting for you at the entrance to the building. You actually hadn’t seen the former until you caught sight of Himiko next to her. Toru really blends in come nightfall. As you approach, she pulls something out from behind her and cracks it with both hands. Glow sticks. You try not to snort as she fashions them into jewellery.

“Looking good,” Himiko croons with lidded, appraising eyes, licking her lips. “Offer still stands if you’re up for some rapid weight loss.”

You laugh. You don’t think she would know what to do with herself if you ever said yes to one of her frequent, half-hearted requests for a drink of your blood. “I’ll have to decline – I’m quite happy with how I am currently. Plus, I don’t think your method is very recommended by health professionals.”

You’d heard bits and pieces of the music from half a mile away, but now that you’re approaching it’s quite booming. It would be just shy of deafening for those with more sensitive hearing. Your friends seem to hear you okay all the same, though, because they both snort.

“Right, well, enough standing out here-- there are drinks inside with our names on them. Everything but the green ones should be human friendly.”

“Noted,” you nod, following them both as they enter the building.

The insides are interesting, a peculiar combination of open and staggered design. There are portions of the warehouse that are completely unrestricted, nothing separating the floor and the sky-high ceilings. Other parts are sectioned off, with several levels to the structure. Each room seems to have its own little party happening, but in the open-plan area there are a bunch of different games occurring at once.

People all throughout the building are dancing, some more wholeheartedly than others, but there seems to be a section by the far corner where everyone who wishes to do so have gathered together. You make a note to avoid that corner like the plague, because if some drunk pixie grabs you and pulls you in like they did last time you’re not going to be able to move your legs for three days.

A mesmerising mixture of twinkling fairy lights and gradient LEDs (likely mixed with a few real faery lights) illuminate the room in ever-shifting hues, but shadows truly dominate the space. You didn’t realise how important the glow sticks were until you attempted to find your friend and only managed to locate her by the pink one she had fashioned into a choker around her neck.

“Don’t go wandering or I won’t catch sight of you ever again,” you joke, leaning down so Toru can actually hear you. She lets out a loud laugh that oddly reminds you of a tinkling bell. A lot of things about Toru are evidently hard for your human senses to perceive. They seem to be doing their best, though.

Himiko slips her arm around your waist, pulling you close. “First, let’s go check out the chaos over there – I think they’re playing potion pong and I saw that harpy pour something funky looking in some of the cups. It’s gonna be fun to watch.”

Toru is in immediate agreement, and loops her liquid-cool arm through your own. “That’s Tokoyami! He’s known for his odd creations in Concoctions class, so whoever has to drink his cup is going to have an interesting time.”

You are then unceremoniously dragged over, neither of them bothering to ask if you want to watch (probably because they already know the answer, but still). The three of you pick up drinks along the way, and your night officially begins.

True to Himiko and Toru’s words, the potion pong match does end up being really fun to watch. A majority of the drinks were safe, but a good number of them were rigged with potions that had weird effects once consumed. You watched someone’s hair turn red and mould into feathers at some point, and the most recent penalty you observed was a poor shifter who shrank about two feet and had to suffer a high-pitched voice every time they spoke. The potions wouldn’t last very long, the ones with outlandish effects never tend to, but you still felt a bit bad despite your laughter every time some poor sap got hit with another one.

You wouldn’t want it to be you, let’s put it that way.

While your friends had promised they would stick with you the whole night, and to their credit really attempted to keep you company for most of the time, you’re not really surprised when you slip away to get a drink and return to find they’ve wandered off somewhere.

Honestly, with the way Himiko was eyeing off someone in the corner who looked eerily like Izuku, you’re actually kind of relieved. You’ll find them again later anyway.

You walk around aimlessly for a bit, a few drinks down and feeling nicely buzzed. When you pause in front of a bunch of boys playing King’s Cup (or at least, some abridged version of it from the look of the rules and the weird mixture in the cup), you could swear that you feel someone’s eyes on you.

Turning to your left reveals a very familiar silhouette, violet hair as wild as ever and heavy-lidded eyes sporting a lazy, amused curve.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Hitoshi says, turning his gaze to the game beside him for a moment. “Have I missed the fun?”

You laugh, taking a generous sip of your drink. It’s purple-pink, and tastes like pomegranate and roses. You can identify the alcohol in it by the remnant heat as it slides down your throat, though.

“I only just started watching this one, so I’m not sure.” You peer over, wrinkling your nose. “Whatever is in the King’s cup looks nasty, though.”

“Oh, ew.” Hitoshi immediately agrees, eliciting another laugh from you. “Almost makes me miss the banquets and carnivals of the Night Quarter.”

This festivity is actually one of the more PG ones. You’ve been to a few that are a hell of a lot raunchier,muchmore R-19, and more often than not they’re hosted in that part of Moonhollow. The Night Quarter is home predominantly to those of demonic descent, incubi and succubi included along with the occasional yokai. While there is no true segregation in this city, historically those of similar ilk tend to naturally gravitate towards each other.

“Not enough orgies for you?” you ask, and Hitoshi bursts into laughter. He takes a sip of his own glowing drink before giving you an answer.

“Definitely not,” he snorts. “Or at least, not for Izuku. I’m not even kidding, you should see him in his element. Get him in the Night Quarter and he’s like a completely different person.”

Hitoshi is always telling you this. “I’ll believe it when I see it, dude.”

“You won’t believe it when you see it,” he insists, laughing. “I’m telling you, he only looks cute and innocent.”

Quite frankly, you refuse to believe anything that comes out of his mouth right now until you see proof for yourself. Hitoshi has bamboozled you before, and you won’t let it happen again.

“Yeah, yeah,” you say, waving your hand. “Where is he, by the way? Don’t tell me you came here alone? All by your widdle sewlf?

The lavender-maned incubus rolls his eyes, but you catch the smile that tugs his lips. He tilts his head beyond you. “The stallion is over there.”

You turn, eyes seeking, and freeze. Izuku is over by one of the many drink stations, chatting to a small, familiar-looking group. That’s not what made your heart skip a beat, though. No, it was the glimpse of pearly-white hair you got when you first looked over. You don’t see it again in the moments following, though, and can only guess the owner had wandered off.

“Who was that talking to Izuku?”

You ask before you can stop yourself, and Hitoshi hums. “Ah, that’s Natsuo, one of the Todoroki kids. He only ever comes to gatherings held in the Marine Quarter, so Izuku tries to catch him when he can.”

You release a breath you didn’t even realise that you were holding, and you feel the reverberation of the music go straight through your chest. Ah, right. You’re spending tonight taking your mind off of everything that has been stressing you out – surely the universe wouldn’t be so quick to pull you up on your hubris? You need to chill out.

“Oh, I see,” you turn back to Hitoshi, downing the rest of your drink before shaking your cup. “Wanna come top-up with me and then hit-up giant jenga? I figure it’s probably one of the most human-friendly.”

The tall man agrees, downing the rest of his own drink and following your lead.

A long while later finds you leaning against the wall in a small little alcove, Hitoshi leaning back against the one opposite you with his feet between your own. You didn’t win jenga, but you also didn’t lose it either, so there’s that. The two of you ended up making the rounds through most of the weird shit happening in amongst the chaos of festivities, and he even managed to pull you into a brief dance that left you in a fit of laughter. You’ve lost count of how much alcohol you’ve consumed, and if you couldn’t hold your liquor so well, you’d most definitely be drunk by now.

“This is a good place to be in, drink wise,” you say aloud, mostly to yourself. You turn to Hitoshi. “Can you even get drunk?”

The incubus looks borderline offended. “Why would I even drink if I couldn’t get drunk? Stupid.”

You smack him lightly on the arm for that, and he laughs. You haven’t managed to find the two friends you initially came in with, but Hitoshi has done a good enough job of distracting you that your problems are the furthest thing from your mind right now.

The only thing you can’t seem to shake, is the thought of how nice he smells. It’s a characteristic of his genes, you know— the sweet honeysuckle scent that caresses your nose in the most unsuspecting moments. Your inhibitions are sufficiently lowered right now though, and you can’t help allowing yourself to acknowledge the thought.

“Did you forget whatever it was you were trying to forget?”

Considering you’d been completely lost in thought and staring off into the distant crowd of dancing bodies, the question takes you by surprise. You pin the incubus with a suspicious look. Since when was he in your head?

Hitoshi snorts. “I didn’t read your mind. You were just downing drinks like they were water, it wasn’t too hard to guess.”

You frown. You’re not sure you believe him, but it’s a lot of effort to be suspicious right now so you decide to let it go. You chew on your answer for a moment before releasing it into the air.

“Mostly.”

Hitoshi hums, leaning forward and craning his neck down slightly. His half-lidded eyes meet yours, still with that sense of playfulness that always seems to be present, but also something… different. Honeysuckle and traces of lavender swirl together, overwhelming your senses for a moment.

“Well, just how big of a distraction do you need?”

Your breath hitches ever so slightly in your throat, tummy doing a tiny little flip in something akin to excitement. You survey his features, scanning the open expression splayed upon them. Alright, you’re not opposed to this. You lean forward yourself with your eyes flicking to his lips, mouth opening to answer.

“I—”

“SHINSO!”

You jump in place, flinching back in bewilderment as familiar forest-hued hair blurs before your face. Hitoshi also flings back, eyes wide as they fall upon his friend.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you, I need your help with something.” Izuku’s voice is bright as ever, but as he turns his gaze to you over his shoulder, you feel something is different. “Oh hey, y/n. Sorry, I gotta steal Hitoshi for a sec.”

You shrug, bringing your drink to your mouth and hoping the action hides the warmth swarming to your cheeks. “Yeah, do whatever you gotta do.”

“Thanks, sorry again! See you later y/n!”

You refuse to believe this boy has a hidden side to him.

Hitoshi is then whisked away before he can even give you the apologetic look beginning to form on his features. With his departure, the haze in your head brought about by the alluring aroma of honeysuckle and lavender seems to clear. If that had continued, you might have jumped him. You really need to get laid if you’re going for one of your friends.

You’re kind of at a loss for what to do now, but to be fair you probably need a moment to pull yourself together. Hitoshi wouldn’t have let his pheromones out on purpose, since it’s normal to lose control when inebriated, but it doesn’t change the fact that shit is strong. That wasn’t even a quarter of the full potential. You’d have been in trouble if they were any stronger tonight.

You draw a deep breath in through your nose, allowing your eyes to close. Calm, calm is good.

A hand slips around your waist and immediately breaks the illusion of peace you’d summoned, and your eyes shoot back open.

Warmth emanates from your side, lips brushing the shell of your ear. A familiar sensation washes over your limbs at the proximity.

“We need to talk, a mhuirnín.”

–

Things happened very rapidly from the moment you heard someone in your ear, and a chaotic few minutes later finds you here.

In a room somewhat distant from the heart of the festivities, with none other than Shoto Todoroki. Perhaps it really was him you saw earlier. Probably should have looked a bit harder.

Shoto had led you here with a gentle grip on your wrist, and to be honest you’d just allowed him to pull you along. You saw his face and in your buzzed state its handsomeness had momentarily stunned you. Kind of sad, really.

The door clicks closed behind the two of you, but you notice that it doesn’t lock. When he draws closer, you see that he has positioned himself further from the door, and you closer. Oddly thoughtful, but it pains you a little bit to realise he is giving you an easy escape because you’ve been unreasonably dodging his presence like the plague everywhere you go.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he says, without a single hint of accusation. You blink in surprise. His handsome features are neutral, and combined with his neat, dark clothes in stark contrast to the energy and crowd outside, it’s almost funny.

For once, your feet aren’t forcing you to flee. You decide to make the most of the opportunity.

“I have,” you admit, frowning a little. “Look… I should have said this sooner, but I’m sorry for how I acted when you came up to me. It’s not your fault, and I kind of just freaked out.”

Shoto tilts his head, reminding you of a puppy. You smack that thought down before it continues.

“You don’t have to apologise,” he says, and when his low, soft tone brushes your ears you find yourself relaxing involuntarily. His arms come up, hands cupping his elbows “I should have been more mindful of the fact that you’re… probably not used to things like that. I could have handled it better. I was just… excited. I apologise for making you uncomfortable.”

He continues to surprise you with each thing that leaves his mouth. His mismatched eyes are clear and earnest as they meet your own, thick brows drawn in a slight frown.

“As it turns out according to the magic, we are still married, though.”

Well, fuck.

The look on your face must be funny, because his lips tug up in a half smile. You can’t decide whether your heart dropped or skipped a beat as a result.

A different, familiar feeling is beginning to well in the depths of your chest. You attempt to squash the panic down, wanting to remain reasonable.

Shoto steps forward, head tilting once more. The music still booms in the background, but all you can focus on is him and the tingling feeling his gaze leaves on your skin.

“Why did you run, wife?”

For some reason, the term makes heat rush to your cheeks. It’s the alcohol, it has to be the alcohol.

Your sudden fluster has your mouth running before you can stop it.

“I- I can’t do it. I can’t just — This has all really happened so fast, and sudden, and I’m not ready for anything like this and I don’t – I don’t even really know you—“

You cut yourself off before you start sounding as panicked as you feel, and instantly regret the word-vomit you just released. A few beats of silence pass between you, each one weighing heavier on your shoulders, before the selkie finally hums.

“I have no intention of forcing you into anything,” Shoto says evenly, expression neutral despite the roiling depths of his mismatched eyes. Reading the look on your features, he seems to hesitate slightly before he continues, “Let me propose something, then. A bargain.”

Your eyebrows shoot up before you’re able to stop them. Shoto is offering to enter a faerie bargain with you? Something twists in your gut, a nameless feeling of unknown origin.

As though he can see the cogs turning in your head, the corner of his lips lifts in a half smile. He breathes in deeply, closing his eyes a moment before he lets the air go and meets your gaze once more.

The low, velvety timbre of his voice caresses your ears in the most persuasive of touches, almost succeeding in drawing your focus away from the important matter at hand.

“If you find that you do not have any feelings for me at all, come Midsummer’s Eve, then I will dissolve this marriage and leave you be.”

“That’s it?” you find yourself asking, disbelief colouring your words. Something deep within your chest is protesting his words, but you steadily ignore it. “If I don’t have romantic feelings for you in three months time, you’ll leave me be and you’ll drop this marriage thing?”

Shoto nods, and while his face still maintains neutrality, there is something solemn about the motion.

“You have my word,” he says, a glimmer flashing through his eye. “And as you know, I cannot lie.”

It’s rare for fae of any kind to propose a bargain that doesn’t suit them better in some way, so you find yourself reasonably shocked at the man’s words. You can’t find anything that would be a trick, can’t sniff out any possible loopholes. He has simply given you an out, a clearly marked exit from the situation you’ve found yourself in, and he’s presented it on a silver platter, It almost seems too good to be true, but in his defense… he hasn’t exactly been behaving in a way that is completely inappropriate. All he’s done is look good and call you ‘wife’.

“Okay,” you say, the word spilling out before you can lock it down. “You will have my answer by the end of Midsummer’s Eve. I agree to the terms of your bargain.”

Shoto smiles, and holds his hand out. His expression is kind, as always, but his smile… this one doesn’t reach his eyes. You ignore the way that observation makes your stomach sink, and take his hand into your own.

It’s like a spark of electricity, an instantaneous tingle that zips from the tips of your fingers and travels over your skin, up your arms. You don’t even realise you’ve gasped until you notice the look that Shoto is giving you, a mixture of amusement and fondness. It takes you a moment longer to realise that your hand is still holding his, and the deal has already been done.

You pull your arm away, the movement somewhat mechanical, but halt as you catch sight of something foreign on your skin. You’d offered your left hand to him, since that was the hand he had led with, and on that hand now lies the visual seal of your bargain. A delicate dance of white and scarlet winds around your ring finger, shifting and swirling over the back of your hand until it reaches your wrist, which it loops around once

Shoto’s eyes are trained on the mark, somewhat unfocused, as though he has become lost in thought.

“What a beautiful seal,” he murmurs to himself, before turning his attention absently to the one on his own hand.

While yours had been intricate and endearing like the curl and climb of ivy, his swirling lines are decorated with thorns and thistles. You’re confused at the sight – you would have thought that your marks would be the same, considering you’re equal parties in this bargain. Unless that isn’t the case…? You don’t really know enough about faerie law, you’ll have to go and do some research when you return home.

You do know, however, that Shoto frowns slightly upon seeing it, a look of poignant understanding flicking across his face.

He brings the hand to his chest palm resting over his heart, and turns his gaze to you. For a moment he simply looks, saying nothing, before a soft breath leaves him and he attempts a smile.

“I will let you get back, your friends are probably looking for you.” He turns, beginning to move towards the door.

“I’ll see you around, a mhuirnín.”

The sound of his receding footsteps mixes with the beats beyond the walls, and for a few moments you simply listen. When he reaches the door, words bubble in your throat.

“Shoto,” you call, before you can think better of it. You’re still in the same spot, flexing your hand like you expect to feel the mark branded painlessly on it every time you do. When he halts in the door way, head tilted slightly in your direction, you muster the will to continue.

“If, come Midsummer’s Eve, I find that I have feelings for you… what will happen, then?”

At your words, he turns his head so he can meet your gaze over his broad shoulder. The amused glint is back in his stormy hue, and a sly smile tugs his lips. You can feel your ears begin to burn in advance of his words.

“If, after three months time, you find yourself accepting of my feelings, the bond,and you come to me, wanting and willing... ” He hums, and the secretive curl of his lips is the last you see of his expression as he turns back.

“I suppose that’s something I can leave to your imagination, wife.”

He leaves before you can chase him out yourself.

— — —

Before he can even make it fully around the back of the building, Shoto’s gut seizes and his body convulses, hunching over. A wet cough rips from his throat and he retches, throat and nose burning from the acrid combination of bile and blood. He has a hand braced against the brick, nails catching against coarse, gritty clay as another round of spasms roil through his gut and leave him choking and sputtering. An explosive arc of dark, glistening maroon paints the building wall before him, stark in the moonlight.

As he leans, hunched over and braced heavily on the arm against the wall, he sincerely hopes there isn’t anyone who sees him in this moment of weakness. He is panting, attempting to catch his breath and banish that awful smell and taste from his senses. His eyes move of their own accord, boring into the ring of thorns that now gleam against his skin.

All of his life, he’d been told not to, had been warned of the consequences. He should have known better than to make a bargain he couldn’t keep.

[chaoticgeminate]

Meetings on a Rising Tide

Part of The Iridescence Fictional Universe

Precious Sea Glass Series

Pairing: [Dragon] Pero Tovar x [Nereid] f!Reader

Series Rating: E (Explicit, minors DNI)

Word Count: 1.6K

Summary: Pero meets the one he chooses to claim as his own, the one whom calls to his very magical core, while war rides on the horizon. You have never met a being whom your magic called out to before, this dragon who can see beyond the bloodline you carry.

[AO3]

War was coming.

Everyone knew it, the feeling of that swelling tension bearing down on all things.

Mercenaries of all manner could be found sharpening their weapons, soldiers and fighters honing their training, while farmers and craftsmen prayed to the Immortals for it to come with minimal losses. Fathers and mothers kissed and coddled their children more often, hushed goodbyes whispered in the still of night between desperate touches and kisses, and the spell casters poured over tomes and cauldrons and runic emblems to prepare for the coming bloodshed.

He watched it all from his dreyerie above the village, rarely did he take his bipedal form to mingle among the people below and even less as the blood on the wind began to grow thicker, for this was a war he had no reason to fight. The Elder Fae attempting to wage war against the Immortals had been brewing for centuries before this village had even been imagined, and the losses on all sides would be heavy no matter how much the fools prayed.

His great wings unfurled as he spotted the form of William heading into the village, the elf was a good ally and excellent archer thanks to nearly four hundred years of training, and as he yawned Pero shook out the stiffness in his muscles before jumping to glide down into the field. The village knew of his presence, he’d long since negotiated the cost of livestock when he couldn’t find whales to feast on, and none of them gave him a second look as his form shifted and he strode toward the elf waiting at the village center for him.

“Brother, there you are.” He gripped the man’s forearm and nodded, granting the man a soft hum of greeting, but as they made their way to the village’s only communal drink house the dragon spotted something shining out of the corner of his eye. His gaze followed it and every instinct to possess ripped through him, blazing like the wildfire in his veins, the alluring woman was clad in a draping gown of fabric that gleamed in blue tones like the ocean’s surface.

Adorning her head was some sort of intricate headdress laden with small pearls, colorful sea glass, and lovely shells woven together with green sea grass and hemp strips. He might’ve thought her Selkie as she spoke to the fishmonger’s wife Marta who was one of the seal-people but she lacked any furred cloak to indicate such. “I see you’ve noticed the Ocean Lord’s daughter.” Pero turned his head sharply to look at William as the elf smiled; the softness in that look tore a growl of warning from the dragon despite his attempts to quell such a sound.

All it did was draw gazes his way, including hers, and Pero could see the blend of surprise and curiosity in her gaze before she was ushered away to the baker’s husband by a visibly furious Marta. He knew many of the magic born feared him, for valid reasons given what he was, but to openly display her hostility like this meant the little Nereid was important to the seal-people of this area. “The Selkie have been trying to convince her to marry into the pod for decades now, but she’s always refused even their strongest warriors.” William’s explanation made Pero smirk at Marta, who glared right back, but the dragon decided that he would appease his curiosity this day.

You truly loved the village of Kvia, it had been erected on the shores just outside of your sea home, but sometimes it was exhausting to be amidst the cheerful faces. You hadn’t sought recognition or any sort of seat of power over any of these people and they insisted on treating you as if you were royal, all because the Ocean Lord was your Father and you were one of his favored daughters, and this made it a constant competition for your favor.

Marta was kind but the Selkie was relentless in her attempts to convince you to wed one of her brethren, to become a member of their pod and show them favor, but in truth you had no interest in any of the people of Kvia. You were not a young creature and they often chose to forget that you’d called this place your home long before they were even born, the Selkie would never live to match your own span of life and perhaps it was selfish but you were afraid to love anyone that would leave you long before the Immortals reclaimed your soul.

“When you plan to head to the shores please let me know, I can have Gawain accompany you.” Marta’s hopeful expression was clear and you found yourself sighing softly.

“Marta, I’m not interested in any of the people here romantically-“

“Nonsense, you just haven’t met the right one my dear. Besides, you’re a Nereid so it makes sense for you to wed a Selkie since we can join you in the seas without any special magics.”

Your eyes closed as you tried to maintain your control, knowing that if you grew angry the waves would grow choppy in response, but your patience was truly beginning to wear thin with her. A rumbling growl filled the air before you could reply and you found yourself looking with many others, seeing two mercenaries standing in the roadway, but your eyes landed on the man with tanned skin and black scaled armor that was watching you. Heat rolled off his frame along with the strong scent of soot and volcanic rock, his eyes were dark enough to mask it but in the light they flashed molten gold and revealed the slit pupils, but the sudden zing of your magic swelling to match his sent a thrill down your spine.

Marta ushered you off to Jaxom’s stall with a whisper, advising you against engaging him at the risk of antagonizing the dragon and his elf companion, but you couldn’t help the way your gaze followed them. Bidding Jaxom a hasty farewell and hurrying after the two, despite the dismayed sound of Marta calling your name, all you wanted was to see him up close. Slipping into the drink house and looking around, seeing the two at a corner table, you were about to go over when Gawain himself stepped into your line of view.

The Selkie was built more like a bear than a person, layers of fat hiding the muscles you knew he had, and while there were plenty of seal-women who would be attracted to his very round belly and the coarse cloak of hair that he left untamed and long you were not one of them. “Couldn’t wait for me to walk you home today? Am I finally going to be graced with your favor, Princess?” Gawain was the exact kind of arrogant, cocky, bull seal that left you fuming for hours after sealing with their antics for any reason; unlike some of the bulls he was large and he didn’t take no for an answer unless he lost in a fight.

“I’m not here for you, Gawain, and I don’t need you to walk me down to the shore.” If he noticed the clipped tone of your voice he certainly didn’t mention it and the Selkie moved to loop his arm over your shoulder as the rest of the drink house went quiet, every single Were was growing tense and one of the ogres that served in the local militia placed a hand on his dagger waiting for you to react. As you slipped out of range of the bull’s massive arm you felt the searing presence and heard the rumbling snarl before gasping as the dragon put himself between you and Gawain, he wasn’t as tall or holding nearly as much bulk but the power coming off him was unmistakable.

His voice nearly shook you to the core, low and raspy dripping with venomous fury. “I do believe you were refused, it is best you don’t continue to sniff where you are unwanted, friend.” Gawain’s pale skin flushed with fury but the Selkie wasn’t stupid enough to challenge a dragon, blustering with a noise of irritation before returning to his pod mates, and you found yourself being addressed by the fiery man now as he turned to you.

A scar bisected his left eye that you could only assume came from another dragon, not much could do damage to those scales after all, and you didn’t think much as you stood up on your toes to run your thumb along the discolored skin. “You are here for me, cristal marino?” The way his eyes closed and he leaned into the touch of your hand reminded you that you’d just touched him without asking, moving to draw your hand back, but his closed gently around yours and returned it to his cheek. “It is in my nature to crave beautiful, shining, things; if you choose me there will be no going back.” His voice dripped with intent and for the first time in millennia your magic pulsed and met his, your aura meeting his own creating a misting of warm steam as you smiled.

“Then prove to me you are a good choice, I shall wait for you…”

Something about him called to you, the Immortals had put him in your path today for a reason, and you knew just by looking at him that under his fire he was a good man.

“Tovar. I am Pero Tovar, mi cristal marino.”

Not a diamond or pearl, not any sort of precious stone, you were his sea glass. Beautiful in your simplicity, and you already loved him for it.

[doomfisthero]

Dads for Deku: Day 1

Prompt: Hugs or Headpats (Hound Dog, Shishido, Selkie, Gang Orca, other Mutant Heroes)

Setting: Mutant!Izuku AU

As soon as the doors to the banquet hall opened up, Izuku could tell that Gang Orca had spared no expense in assembling everything. The lights high above cast the walls into a golden glow, settling gently upon the darkly decorated room in which Heroes of so many aberrant shapes congregated. The soft classical music that lilted through the air, combined with the sharp dress code that every guest was expected to abide by, firmly established the event as “high-class.”

Izuku shuddered in his tuxedo, struggling not to mumble or run his fingers nervously through his hair. His first Mutant Homecoming – he'd expected to wait much longer, if he was ever so lucky. He'd almost declined Nedzu's offer, but having Hound Dog and Power Loader-sensei with him took away some of the edge.

Still, they'd refused to answer his longstanding questions about the event, admitting that there was something of an unspoken agreement among the Heroes not to spoil it for anyone.

Power Loader noticed Izuku's stress and gave him a firm pat on the back. “Breathe, kid. This is something you should try to enjoy,” he said. “You might just be the youngest guest of honor we've ever had. Lot of people here are excited to meet you in person.”

Izuku swallowed. “W-what if they're disappointed? Or-or if they don't want me here?”

“Then they can keep quiet,” Hound Dog growled. “Orrr else they'll be chased out.”

Izuku tried to take some comfort in that as his teachers guided him inside. The air was cooler on his crimson scales in here than outside; he tried not to shiver, either from the temperature or from the dread of running into whoever recognized him first.

It was quick when it happened – the Lion Hero Shishido appeared from thin air and engaged Hound Dog in prodding banter, then glanced downward from the corner of his feline eye and caught the little lizard standing next to him. “Say, Inui, no one said you'd be bringing a student along. Going soft, old dog?” He said, flashing Hound Dog a wicked, fang-filled grin.

If Hound Dog's hackles raised at all, he didn't show it. The Hunting Hero merely snorted and patted Izuku softly on the head. “Idiot. Didn't anyone tell you who the guest of honor was tonight? This student of mine is Midoriya Izuku.” He glanced down at Izuku. “You know Shishido, I assume?”

Izuku's mouth went dry as he nodded, then remembered a moment later to bow low. “Y-yes! I'm sorry I didn't say anything. It's a pleasure to meet you, Shishido-san! You're--” Izuku cut his babbling off before either of his teachers could do it.

Shishido's wild expression turned to surprise, and then his terrifying smile slid open again. “You're Midokage, kid?” He asked, using the silly name that Izuku had created for himself long ago – his surname plus hitokage, meaning 'salamander'. He didn't look annoyed as Izuku expected, or disinterested or disapproving or like he thought the high schooler before him was a 'fake Mutant'.

It was a little hard to tell, but as Izuku met his gaze, the Lion Hero looked...almost happy. The loud guffaw he let out as he descended upon Izuku didn't help.

“Damn, it's really you, huh?! You're a little guy, ain'tcha?” Shishido growled, tussling Izuku's hair with a gruff but affectionate paw. “Here I thought Nedzu was just shooting shit!”

As the cavalcade of fellow Heroes slowly took notice and descended upon Izuku, Hound Dog and Power Loader stood back and watched with tickled expressions – as tickled as either of their irritated demeanors ever seemed.

Centipeder slipped through the crowd and took Izuku's hand in a glove. “I hope you're doing well, Midoriya. I never expected to see you as tonight's guest!”

Iida Tensei rolled up in his chair and gave Izuku a weary but warm smile. “I'm really happy to see you tonight, Izuku! Tenya wouldn't stop talking about you. He sounded like he was proud, but I think he wishes he could have come too. Either way, it's good to see you!”

Gunhead gave Izuku's hand a delighted shake. “Wow, I can't believe it's really you, Midoriya! I still remember the first time you wrote to me, when I was starting out on my own. You just made me feel so seen. I still have all of your messages!”

Selkie lifted Izuku off the ground and crushed the boy to his chest. “Hah, you kept us all waiting, you damn tease! Can't believe I almost skipped this year, when I could've missed ya!”

Uwabami looked Izuku from hair to shoes and back again. “Well, you've certainly got your boyish cuteness down pat. You'd provide some excellent name recognition for my Mutant Collection, you know? Give me a call sometime.”

One of Hawks' sidekicks – attending on his behalf – told Izuku that his boss was proud to meet another promising young Mutant. It took the green-haired lizard several moments to come back down to Earth.

Godzillo knelt down and patted Izuku's head with a claw so large it covered him entirely. “It's always good to meet a fan, especially one as prevalent as you. I'm glad I had the chance to speak with you while I was here.”

Takahiro, young as he was, bounded forward and hugged Izuku tight. “Hey, you don't know how much it's helped having you cheering me on. Sometimes it feels like it's just me against the world...But you make me feel like the greatest Hero in Japan. Let's rap together sometime, okay?”

As the night wore on, Izuku's attitude slowly shifted from fear to excitement to a calm engagement with the Heroes around him. So young, and yet already so much of the Mutant community was embracing him. It made Hound Dog and Power Loader quietly pleased to see him so comfortable in his own skin.

(Scales, as it were.)

As if timing his appearance for the greatest impact, Gang Orca himself didn't engage Izuku until well into the night, when it was finally time for the boy's formal acknowledgment. He waited until the night's guest of honor walked anxiously onstage and then the Killer Whale Hero loomed suddenly over him. Even with how many people he'd met tonight, Izuku's stomach couldn't help but flutter as he looked up into that villainous face.

“Midoriya,” Gang Orca began, Izuku's chest vibrating from the rumbling bass. “I'm sure you're well-versed in my career by this point. You know how difficult it's been for Mutants like me, like many of us, to progress against a society that sees us as monsters.”

Hesitantly, Izuku nodded. “Yes...but it's gotten better, hasn't it? Especially because of you. You...you've paved the way for other Mutants to become Heroes just like you.”

Gang Orca hums, arms still folded across his bulky chest. “It has improved, you're correct. But there are still too many people who cling to those outdated views of humanity. They persist on causing pain and dragging the world back to what they deem is acceptable.” He paused, as for effect. “That's why we chose to have you, Midoriya. There isn't a Mutant Hero or sidekick in this room that you haven't given support, be it in their first steps or their darkest hours.”

“In the whole country!” Someone shouted from the crowd. People laughed. Even Gang Orca's lip quirked.

“Regardless...” Gang Orca said, quieting everyone. “Midoriya Izuku. Midokage. For over a decade you've shown exemplary support for the Mutant community and proven yourself an essential pillar toward civilians and Heroes alike. Tonight, we are all honored to have you with us and express our gratitude to you firsthand.”

Izuku barely heard the applause as Gang Orca shook his small hand in a far larger grip. Even though the Killer Whale Hero famously resembled a Villain, in that moment his proud eyes and genuine, warm smile made him seem like the greatest Hero in the world.

“And thank you from myself as well, Midoriya,” Gang Orca added softly. He released Izuku's hand and – to the boy's surprise – rested his massive palm gently upon his head. “To all of us, you are our Hero.”

And as Izuku struggled not to cry, even as his grin threatened to light the night singlehandedly, his teachers watched on with their own gratitude borne close to their hearts.

[queenbirbs]

surrender | Edward Mortemer x f!MC

Pairing: Edward Mortemer x Elena McTavish

Word count: 7.5k+

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: N*FW

AN: In the words of Kacey Musgraves: I’m alright with a slow burn. But when you want to speed it up a little, that’s what fics are for, right? Takes place pre-chapter nine and also kind of skirts around the very end of chapter eight.

**Re-post due to my dumb ass trying to edit the original on mobile and it wiped the whole damn thing. Cool. Cool cool cool. 

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“Good evening, Miss McTavish?”

The words aren’t so much of a greeting as a question. It’s silly, then, that her breath catches a little. She hides it with a stretch, raising her arm above her head and letting out a throaty noise of content when her spine lengthens. Dropping back onto her heels, she watches Edward finish his ascent up to the crow’s nest where she stands watch.

“Nothing but sea and sky,” Elena replies.

“Aye, should be more of the same on through ‘til morning.”

He settles at his preferred spot, just a few feet from her. She wouldn’t be surprised if his boots have worn divots into the wood from the amount of time he spends up here.

“I’m no Al Roker, but I’d say the nice weather will continue. The sunset was as gorgeous as ever.” She tips her head to the side and bites down on her lip, trying to pull a script line from her memory. “What’s that saying, ‘red sky at night, sailor’s delight’?”

“Al Roker?” he repeats the name, his brow furrowed.

“He’s... a person who predicts the weather. Sort of.”

Edward’s gaze flickers from the sea to her, and then back again, huffing out a short laugh.

“It seems that you speak another language, sometimes.”

“Comes with the territory, I suppose.” Elena shrugs. “What with being a twenty-first century transplant and all.”

She doesn’t miss the quick search he does of the ship below, looking out for any wayward pirates with curious ears, but she knows, just as well as he does, that most everyone is tucked away in the galley below deck. The only other soul around is Maggie back at the helm, who makes a show of feigning interest towards the starboard to give them more privacy.

“I hope you don’t find me rude, that I still don’t know what to make of your… claims.”

“No offense taken,” she assures with a nonchalant wave of her hand. “I thought about what I would do if someone suddenly appeared in my house, claiming they were from your time.”

“And what would you do?”

“Call the cops and then threaten to sick my dog on them.”

“The dog wearing the life preserver?” he lifts a single eyebrow at her, the corners of his lips twitching upwards. “Aye, a truly terrifying sight to be sure.”

“Was that a joke?” she asks, her eyes wide as she makes a show of looking him over.

“You didn’t care for the one about falling in battle, so I thought I’d try out another.”

“Not bad. But I wouldn’t give up your day job quite yet.”

Edward hums his agreement and turns his sights on the ocean before them. Elena understands why he enjoys being up here -- she likens him to a king, high in his tower, or a lion, perched atop his rock; all the world is an oyster from such a height.

Tipping her head up, she takes in the night sky’s view. With little to no light pollution, especially this far out at sea, the stars come out in droves. The Milky Way is a cloudy, violet river that commandeers the horizon. It’s almost dizzying, the amount of stars visible, layers upon layers of them blooming across the sky. Elena’s never seen anything like it. Even when she and her sister would skip their Friday classes, drive up to the nearby state park, and spend the weekend up there, pretending they knew how to camp.

She thinks of the text on her phone from Gabby and the plans they were in the process of making for her to come visit Elena in Los Angeles. When she dropped out of college to follow her dream, the few family she remained in contact with ceased their feeble attempts at communication. When she made it to LA (or, rather, to the one-room hovel she could barely afford), Gabby was the only person on the other end of the line, trying her best to cheer her up. The pang of loss strikes her hard, somewhere behind her ribs. Other than her sudden departure from the set, Gabby might be one of the only people that notices her disappearance -- which is kind of sad, when Elena thinks about it, given that her sister still lives back in Austin.

That thought launches a thousand others. How long has she been gone? Is time moving at the same speed in the future? Is she even going to make it back home?

“Lovely, isn’t it?” Edward’s voice jolts her from her thoughts.

“Yeah,” she agrees, clearing her throat of the emotions that clog it. The railing is steady below her hands; she clings to it, trying to ground herself as best she can.

“Tis... not the same, where you’re from?”

“Where I live, it’s hard to see this many. I feel like if I could get a little bit higher, I could almost touch them.”

Edward looks back to the east, where the moon hangs low in the sky.  

“I don’t see why not,” he murmurs, making a show of leaning close to continue, “if what you say about the moon is true.”

“The stars are a lot farther. And the moon isn’t exactly suitable to live on. At least, not right now. Or,” she pauses, her lips twisting into a grimace, “well, not in my time, it’s not.”

“I’m glad, then, that I’ve made the sea my home.”

If his words are tinged with melancholy, Elena doesn’t mention it. Though she could encourage him to elaborate, she doesn’t want to ruin this peaceful moment. The thought brings with it the memory of their afternoon swim: of his arm wrapped tight around her waist, of the hungry look in his eyes as he took his fill, of the ache in her chest when their moment was broken by the need to surface.

The crystal-clear, turquoise water of the cove brought its own reminder of the summer before her sophomore year of college. It was Gabby’s idea to use their open water diving certifications for something other than taking up space in their wallets. Having spent so much time after her gender affirming surgery entertaining herself with shipwreck documentaries, she booked the trip to the Florida Keys, flights and all, before informing Elena -- in typical Gabby fashion.

“I would never get tired of the views, that’s for sure,” Elena sighs. “Or the constant opportunity to explore whatever island I sailed upon. Like that tiny island we stopped at, I would love to dive there, spend some time exploring underwater.”

Glancing over, she spots Edward’s furrowed brow; she sifts through what little historical knowledge she has of diving. Have those weird, space-age looking suits even been invented yet?

“Sometimes, Miss McTavish, I wonder if I have not happened upon a selkie, with the things you claim.”

“Selkie?” she repeats, rolling the word around in her head, but recognition never comes.

“Aye, a creature of myth, though some people believe they do exist. My mother used to tell me stories when I was little, of the women who came from the sea. Once they reach dry land, they shed their seal skin and transform into a human.”

“So... kinda like a mermaid?”

Edward tips his head in consideration. “In a way. But selkies are usually considered to be gentler. Unless their seal skin is stolen, they favor their time spent among humans. And, when they tire of us, they return to their skin and resume their life under the sea.”

“That sounds sad, in a way. But I promise I went down in a diving suit, not a seal skin.”

“I’ve heard rumors coming out of England, of a man who salvaged sunken ships by trapping himself inside of a barrel. I assume that is not what ye mean, though.”  

“No, not in a barrel,” she grins, pulling her phone from her pocket. “I can show you, though, if you’d like to see.”

“Ah, the black box of witchery.”

He moves closer as he speaks, though, clearly interested in taking another look at it. If he was truly frightened of it, she supposes, he could just lob it into the sea. Her grip tightens on the phone at the thought.

Navigating to her photos, she taps at the folder (embarrassingly titled we’re in miami bitch!!) and turns the phone so the images can expand into greater detail.

“Some of these I took with a disposable camera, so they aren’t the best,” she laments, swiping her thumb across the screen every few seconds. “But my sister -- she has this fancy underwater housing, so her pictures are nice and clear. I would message her for more, but I don’t think Verizon has that great of service.”

She can’t help but chuckle at her own bad joke. Edward, it seems, couldn’t care less -- entranced as he is by the colorful images of the coral reefs and the sponges sprouting from the USS Spiegel Grove’s rusted frame.

“These paintings are exquisite.”

“Pictures,” she corrects.

“You say that as if I’m to know what it means,” he counters.

She swipes to a selfie her sister had taken, the image capturing little else but their masks and the blue world around them. The next photo is better: a full-body shot of Elena in her wetsuit and gear, a cloud of bubbles floating above her head. “I suppose this explains you being such a strong swimmer, when you jumped in after Ginny.”

She shrugs at the veiled compliment and returns the phone to her pocket, avoiding his intense look that she can feel burning into the side of her head.

“Well, swimming in thirty-foot waves is a bit different from the calm waters of Key Largo, but thanks.”

Edward reaches down and skims two fingers under her chin. He tips her head up to meet his gaze, his dark eyes flashing with certainty.

“Make no mistake, though: I am to see that you do not perform such a stunt again.”    

Elena knocks his hand away; irritation bubbles up inside her, heating her cheeks and neck.

“I wasn’t performing. I’m not the Wonder Twins. And I’d do it again, if Ginny or anyone else went overboard. Even for you.”

His expression sharpens, his mouth twisting into a frown. She crosses her arms across her chest and serves him a look right back. Whatever he’s about to say, she cuts off as she continues, “Just because I haven’t been sailing the high seas or… or crossed swords with some real buccaneers as long as you all have been doesn’t mean I’m not capable. I fought Robert and won -- I even got his fancy-schmancy sword -- and I sailed our ship through a storm, didn’t I? You need to learn to trust me and-- and… why are you smiling?”

The irritation fades from his face in one fell swoop, there and then gone, replaced by a soft smile that he seems to reserve only for her.

“Something you said, Miss McTavish.”

“I said a lot of things,” she points out. Despite the opening she leaves dangling for him, he doesn’t elaborate. She’s not sure why she expected him to; the man is stubborn to a fault. “Okay, fine. You can keep your charming and mysterious act. You certainly have it down pat.”

“As you do with your… turns of phrase.”

The tension between them cools, aided by the winds that blow towards them from the north. Elena settles at his side once more, the railing at her back. He gives a cursory glance over the horizon.

“You know,” she says, “I realized today that I never said thank you.”

“For what?” he returns his sights to her, curiosity warming his eyes.

“For getting me the hell off the Admiral’s ship. I knew he wasn’t a stand-up guy when he shot one of his own men, but knowing what I know now, I’m especially grateful.” She reaches out to touch his wrist, squeezing it for a long beat. Edward brings his other hand up and covers hers. “I know you took a risk, not knowing if I was a navy spy, but you brought me aboard anyway.”

“Even when we made you stand trial to prove such innocence?”

“Do you think I would’ve been given such a chance on his ship?” she asks, her tone thick with sarcasm.

“No, I do not.” Edward’s face darkens for a moment. “A man capable of such depravities would have treated you… terribly, no doubt.”

“Hey, like I said: white dude of high rank in the eighteenth century? He’s got about a two percent chance of not being an awful person.”

“You--” Edward pauses, lowering his voice as he continues, “are things… different, in your time?”

Elena bites at her lip, wondering how much she should divulge about the twenty-first century. Hope works much better if the outcome is still uncertain, and she doesn’t want to dash any he has for his own future.

“Different, sure, but also very much the same. There’s a famous expression: ‘those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.’ It’s -- let’s just say it’s been accurate more than once or twice.”

“I’ve never heard of such a phrase, but I understand its meaning rather well.”

“And, hey, that’s the second time now that you’ve referred to my ‘situation,’” she marks the term with air quotes. “Does that mean you believe me?”

Edward makes a show of heaving out a sigh. “I am making a valiant effort to do so. Your box certainly helps your case. It -- all of it -- ‘tis still rather wonderful and strange, though.”

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Edward, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

“You’ve read Hamlet?”

“I’m an actor by trade. Of course I’ve read it. And by read it, I mean that Shakespeare’s works were forced on me in every English class in school.”

That gets an exasperated chuckle out of him. She can’t help the smile that forms; she really enjoys the sound of his laughter. For as much as he tries to play up the stoic, unfeeling pirate captain, he seems to lose the battle whenever she’s around. “It’s all right, you know, if you don’t believe me. I know this is kinda crazy.”

The humor on his face is there one second and then gone the next.

“’Tis… not that.”

“Then what is it?”

No answer comes.

“Charlie was right,” she teases, knocking her elbow into his. “You’re really not great at changing the subject.”

That gets her a snort of amusement, but nothing more. Before she can prod, a cold gust of wind sings through the rigging, whipping up past them and sending her hair into disarray. Despite the residual heat of the sun-warmed railing, Elena can’t help but shiver, and hugs herself to conserve what little heat she can. Edward wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her close, his hand running up and down her back with gentle strokes. Her heartbeat quickens at the gesture, now familiar since he helped pull her up out of the raging waters.

“I apologize, Miss McTavish. I shouldn’t have kept you up here so long. You should go down to the galley -- you missed dinner, after all, while on watch. Can’t have you on a chameleon diet. And you’ll be much warmer down there.”

Elena shakes her head and reaches up, placing a hand on the warm plane of his chest where his shirt parts. His breath catches under her palm.

“No, I’m alright. I’m glad you were the next on lookout duty, actually. I wanted to ask you a question.”

“Ask away.”

“Do you really think the Admiral cares about getting his property back?” Edward’s body tenses under her touch; she shoves down the wiry ball of nerves in her stomach at the movement. “That lieutenant I ran into, he didn’t mention anything about--”

“Need I remind you of what I promised on our walk from the mayor’s estate?” he interrupts.

Confusion sweeps through her. Elena quirks her head to the side, trying to connect the dots between that conversation and her current fears. “You are no man’s property,” he spits, his voice gone rough from obvious fury. “And for as long as you are here, you are under my protection.”  

The wave of realization hits her.

“I was, uh, talking about the compass.”

“Ah.” He sucks in a deep breath and lets it out. The hard line of his shoulders softens. “I… see.”

“But it was interesting, to say the least, to see you puff up like that. I’m sure it would make any other lass swoon. I mean,” she lifts her hand from his chest and holds her thumb and pointer finger inches apart, “I was this close.”

He rolls his eyes at her. “Aye, I’d pay top coin to see you swoon.”

“I can think of a few things you could do to make that happen,” she teases.

Edward takes her hand in his and drops a kiss to her knuckles. Before that familiar swell of longing in her chest can rise, though, he shakes his head.  

“I will not risk it.”

“You would sail your ship into every storm across the Caribbean, but this,” Elena glances down to their entwined hands, “you won’t take a chance on?”

“That should tell you how serious I am.”

“I can’t follow your line of thinking, Edward. Do you think the Admiral will suddenly know? That he’s some omniscient god, overseeing all that goes on?”

“People are fond of gossip.”

“Who? What people? Because if it’s the crew, I trust them with my life, just like you do, and I don’t--”

“Not them. But anywhere we’d go, we’d have eyes on us -- eyes that could report back to the Admiral. And if we were -- there would be no world where I wouldn’t want to have you by my side.”

“But we--”

“Jealousy is a hideous trait to have, but I’m afraid I would not be able to stop it from affecting my actions. I’ve seen the people at port, the way they flirt with you.” Edward frowns at the dark sea ahead. “You don’t think I wouldn’t challenge anyone who tried to -- to woo you? I would not be able to stand idle while--”

Elena barks out the short laugh she’s been holding in. “What is so humorous?”

“Because you already do all that.”  

Self-awareness rushes in like the tide, flooding his brain. His jaw goes slack, as does his hand in hers, before he collects himself. Elena feels pinned under those eyes of his. She watches them drop down to her lips before returning to her gaze.

“May I?”

“You really have to ask?”

“Aye, of course.”

He starts to say more -- probably a long-winded explanation about his gentlemanly values -- but she’s waited too long for this to be delayed another second. Elena leans up and silences him with a kiss. He doesn’t turn and flee, like she expects; when he breaks the kiss for air, she gets but a second to collect her own breath before his lips return to hers. She hums her encouragement when he lets go of her hand to sink his fingers into the loose wave of her hair.

His lips, cold from the ocean breeze, warm under hers. Elena finds that his kisses are exactly like him: brash, and quick, and intoxicating, with the slightest hint of steel. When she draws her tongue against him, she can taste spiced rum and saltwater. He growls from the deep well of his throat when she bites down on his heavy, bottom lip. His arm cinches tight around her waist and hauls her against him; their bodies meet in a delicious roll of pressure.

“Miss -- Miss McTavish--”

“Elena,” she corrects, her hand skating up his back, searching for purchase so she can drag him closer.  

“Elena.”

His breath is hot against her skin where his lips trace the line of her jaw. The world dips and sways suddenly, the railing digging into her back. She clings to him when the sensation of weightlessness shoots up her spine.

It takes her a moment to register that it's only the ship underneath them, crossing over a rough wave. Concerned that she’ll end up pitching over to the deck eighty feet below, he picks her up and spins until her back meets the mast. Elena reaches for the lapels of his coat, but he’s faster, and snatches her hands in one of his and pins them above her head.  

“I have dreamed of this,” he murmurs, skimming the pads of his callused fingers along her throat, his mouth trailing behind with fervent, open-mouthed kisses.

She swallows back the moan that wants to form. A shiver dances under her skin, now damp from his attention.

“I have too,” she admits with a sigh. “Except mine deserve an NC-17 rating.”

“You know I don’t understand what that--”

“I certainly fuckin’ can!” someone shouts from below.

The wonderful spell they’ve found themselves under shatters. The voice might as well have been a gunshot, with the way Edward leaps back from her. Elena mourns the loss of his mouth on her as she adjusts her waistcoat and smooths down her hair.

Flipping and tumbling their way across the deck, Ada and Ax continue their argument about who can reach the top of the main mast first. Charlie, Jonas, and Ginny trail behind them, wagering their bets. Maggie’s thick accent carries across the ship, telling them off for circusing about, and ordering them to stay away from the rigging.

It’s not as if their tryst could have continued much longer, Elena considers, given that the crow’s nest wasn’t exactly a secluded spot. The twins make a good show of pouting, but eventually head for their quarters, Ginny giggling as Ax twirls her round.

“Maggie deserves a raise,” Elena tells him.

“Because she knows how dangerous ‘tis for them to be climbing about with no light?”

“Because she knows they would’ve caught us up here, making out like a pair of horny teenagers.”

“Ah. You--” his hand lifts in an aborted move towards her before he redirects it through his tousled hair. “--you should get down to the galley. I’m sure Henry is waiting on you, by now.”    

“Okay,” she says, because it’s the only thing to say. Swinging down onto the rope ladder, Elena starts to descend but pauses, peeking over the railing to catch his eye. “But don’t think this conversation between us is over.”

“Aye.” A wry grin flickers across his face. “I know much better than to assume that.”

+

Edward is right -- about the food, at least.

When she makes it down to the galley, Henry sits her down with a covered plate. Well, as covered as it can be with the dirty rag he’s thrown over it. She’s learned not to make a fuss, though, especially to the man cooking the food.

“Thanks for keeping it warm for me.”

“Took ye long enough,” Henry huffs, but makes a show of looking over his shoulder at her. His face, streaked with ash that he sifts with a makeshift poker, makes it easier to spot his sly grin. “Find somethin’ interestin’ up there, hmm?”

“I was distracted by the view.” Which is the truth, although she doesn’t include that Edward’s lips were part of said view.

“Nothin’ beats a clear night at sea, to be sure.” Swinging the stove door shut with a satisfied grunt, he jerks his chin towards a small barrel on the nearby shelf. “Charlie made some punch, if ye want more’n water to wash yer food down.”

She shakes her head; she’d made the mistake once of drinking their ‘punch.’ It put the jungle juice she drank back at college parties to shame. Charlie now called it Caribbean moonshine, thanks to Elena and her fiery round of swearing after taking a sip.

With the comforting noise of Henry’s humming as he cleans up, she takes a seat on the tin-lined floor and eats her dinner. Not for the first time, she notes Maggie’s touch in the confined space. Fitted across the shelves are iron bars to keep the contents from taking a tumble in rough waters. Tied round the necks of bottles with twine, scraps of parchment label each oil and spice in her spidery handwriting.

“I worked up a new dessert for ye to try, if ye’d like.” He produces a bowl of something that might come out the other end of her garbage disposal back home. Elena inspects the concoction with interest. “I boiled some hard tack in a little bit o’ rum and brown sugar, and then boiled mangoes with some sugar to mix in with it.”

“Ooh, like a compote?”

“Aye, sorta.”

In another world, three hundred some-odd years in the future, she could easily imagine Henry with a cafe or food truck, selling ‘deconstructed desserts’ and other kitschy items. Scooping up a sample, she’s surprised at the delicious flavor of it. The enjoyment on her face must be obvious, because a grin appears behind the ash. “Good, init?”

“Really good! Except, and this is going to sound weird, but maybe add a pinch of lime juice? I think it would really bring out the sweetness of the mango more.”

“Yer right, lass. That might do. And then maybe I can finally get the others to try it.”

“I’ll vouch for you,” she promises after sampling another portion. “Unless I die of food-poisoning tonight, and then you’re shit outta luck.”

Henry shakes his head and huffs out a laugh. “Edward’d have my head first.”  

“Did he at least try it?”

“I doubt he would’ve, if he’d come down for dinner at all. Too busy broodin’ in his cabin, I suspect.”

Elena hands off her empty plate when he motions for it. Curiosity, instead of hunger, gnaws at her insides.

“Can I take this with me?” she gestures to the bowl in her hands.

“Aye, have the rest of it -- and see if ye can convince the cap’n to get in a few bites, hmm?”

She doesn’t bother asking him how he knows where she’s going; the rest of the crew isn’t as blind as Edward claims them to be. “But if ye break it, yer buyin’ me a new one.”

“Deal. Thanks, Henry!”

+

Elena climbs up to the deck carrying her pilfered bowl.

From where she’s manning the wheel, Charlie throws her a two-fingered salute from the bridge. High overhead, Jonas wishes her goodnight from his post in the crow’s nest. Grateful that she won’t have to try holding onto the bowl while climbing up the rope ladder, she continues on towards the stern.

“What can I do for you, Miss McTavish?” Edward asks before his door is fully open.

“How’d you know it was me?”

He shoots her a deadpan look. Moving aside to allow her entry, he shuts the door behind her.

“No one else would dare bother a captain’s sleep, lest there was an emergency.”

“Henry told me you skipped dinner, so I brought you something to eat.” Elena gestures to the bowl in her hand. Stepping close to give it a thorough once-over, Edward grimaces.

“I will take my chances with starvation.”

“Hey,” she scolds, “it isn’t that bad.”

He does a double-take between her and the food. “You ate it?”

“In college, I once ate stale Wheat Thins drizzled with an expired bottle of honey mustard. And before you say anything,” she holds up a hand to stop the statement she knows is coming, “I know you don’t know what either of those are, but trust me: it was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever eaten.”

“And this bowl of slop is better than that?”

“If it weren’t, would I be forcing you to eat it?”

He mutters something under his breath, too faint for her to catch, but seems to concede. After a brief hesitation, he takes the bowl and spoon she offers him and shovels in a mouthful of the mixture. His eyebrows pinch down at the initial taste, and then lift in bewilderment.

“Not bad, right?”

“Not… horrible, no.” He sounds just as surprised as he looks. “This is one dessert of Henry’s that I may live to tell the tale of.”

“Good. But that’s not the only reason I came.”

“Aye, would it have anything to do with continuing our conversation from earlier?”

“All that time, Robert was accusing me of being a witch, but here you are, able to read minds.”

Edward gives a soft snort at that, collapsing into his chair. The desk in front of him is littered with maps and parchments and various trinkets. Elena crosses the room and comes round the side of the desk, taking in the starry view from the windows. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches the spoon swirl round and round in the gruel as he assesses her.

“Ye would’ve been a good jester, Miss McTavish, in a previous life.”

“It’s just us,” she murmurs. “You can drop the surname.”

“No, I can’t.” The grief in his voice is as clear as a bell. “In another life, yes, but here--”

“--here,” she interrupts, turning at the waist to study him, “in your cabin, alone. Not even then?”

Edward sets the bowl down onto the desk and glares at the floorboards. “We can’t let our emotions cloud our judgement.”

Folding her arms across her chest, she lifts a single brow at his attempt to backtrack.

“Says the man hell-bent on playing cat-and-mouse with an enemy to exact revenge on him for something he clearly feels guilty about? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.”

His gaze shoots up to her, those dark eyes of his flashing in the candlelight. “That phrase I indeed do know.”

“Then you should know that you can’t kiss me like the world is ending, and then shoe-horn me back into a neat, little box, Captain Mortemer.” Elena doesn’t see it coming, she’ll admit that. She’s too busy ranting at the starry night, too pissed off with the man beside her, too afraid she’ll lose the runaway train of her thoughts if she focuses on him and sees all the emotions he claims to be above, all that longing and heartache and desire, painted across his face. “Since you’re so insistent on using surnames to avoid--”

In the second it takes her to draw a breath, Edward surges out of his chair and crosses to her. In the next, his lips are on hers. That passion she saw the mere beginnings of up in the crow’s nest roars with intensity. He cups her cheek and tilts her head just so, deepening the kiss; she can taste the mango’s sweetness on his tongue.

All at once, he pulls away. She mourns the loss of him with a quiet moan.

“My -- my apologies. I’m--”

Before he can worry himself into the ground with another fit of propriety, Elena holds up a finger to his lips.

“Stop being so polite and kiss me again.”

That familiar grin breaks free, lighting up his face with a naked delight that sends her heart racing.

“As you command.”

His mouth claims hers again. A muscled arm circles her waist, one hand splaying wide across her back to pull her close. She comes easily, readily into his embrace. His shirt twists in her hand where she holds on for dear life, parting for a quick breath of air, before diving back in. His other hand strokes a molten path up from her waist, brushing over the beaded point of her nipple. The moan she releases is louder this time, wanting more than anything for him to do it again.

For all his faults, he’s no fool. Sure, he takes his sweet time with it, dragging his fingertips along her collarbone and up into her hair to push the blonde curtain back, but he eventually makes his way back down. Cupping her breast, his thumb rubs circles against her -- even through the layers of lace and cotton, Elena’s breath catches at the immediate flare of pleasure.

Emboldened by her response, Edward backs her up against the cool, glass panes, his mouth leaving hers to suckle at her throat. Elena tips her head back, her lips parting as his stubble prickles against her skin. His thumb works steadily over her and she’s dizzy with the primal need to have him.

Braced by the window behind her, she hooks a leg up and around his ass. He needs no more encouragement to invade the space she’s created, his hips rocking tentatively against hers. Frustrated with the buffer of all her layers, Edward retreats to the buckle at her waist, his eyes searching hers.

“May I?”

Elena swallows to free the words from her throat, but they won’t come; instead, she nods her permission. The belt hits the floor with a thwack. Her waistcoat comes next, which she tosses off with a flourish. Edward captures her hands and tugs off her gloves. Spotting the gleam in his eye, Elena distracts him with a roll of her hips and frees her hands, chuckling when he mutters a curse at her.

“You’re a cunning lass.”

“I can’t wait around for you to strip me of my garments.” Her fingers making quick work of the corset’s laces. “Besides,” she drawls, “between the two of us, I’m probably the one with more experience taking off a lady’s corset.”

His eyebrow raises in response to her claim. The image of her and another tangled together plagues him; his jaw clenches tight at the thought.  

“That may be so,” he growls, reaching down for his own shirt and tearing it off, “but it won’t be their names you’ll be calling soon enough.”

Her blood flash boils at the promise. She grabs the hem of her blouse and yanks it up over her head.

“Jealousy is a good look on you,” she teases, tracing the line of his jaw with her fingernail.

Seizing her hand, he laces their fingers together and presses a kiss to her wrist. Goosebumps raise across her skin as his mouth trails from the tendons in her forearm to the curve of her shoulder. Nudging her bra strap down, Edward continues his trek to the rosy flush blooming across her chest.

Not one to play the passive participant, Elena cards a hand through his shoulder-length locks and nudges him down. He takes the cue and moves further south; she whimpers at the wet heat of his mouth closing over the lace of her bra.

“God, stop teasing and--” her gasp echoes across the cabin at the sharp bite of his teeth closing around her nipple. His tongue darts out, soothing any hurt, and turns to lave at her other breast.

Once she regains motor control, Elena unlatches her bra and flings it to what might possibly be the furthest reaches of the universe -- she doesn’t care, as long as Edward will keep doing wondrous things to her with that mouth of his.

“Miss McTavish,” he rumbles, tilting his head to run his stubble along her naked flesh, enjoying the ragged, little noises she makes. “You are well on your way to looking thoroughly ravished.”

Her wandering hand smooths over the tight curve of his ass and grabs hold. She smirks as he bucks up into her.

“Then get on with it, Captain.”  

Deft fingers pop the button on her pants and dip down below the waistband. Elena stretches up and rests her bare shoulders against the glass, tipping her hips up to encourage his exploration. She cries out when he slides two fingers inside of her. He gives her a moment to adjust to the intrusion, nuzzling the curve where her neck meets her shoulder.

“I’ve long wondered,” he murmurs, his tongue skimming across the salty sweat of her skin, “what you taste like.”

At the sudden loss of his hand, Elena opens her eyes to tell him off for his teasing -- but her throat goes dry when he brings his fingers to his mouth and sucks them clean. It’s a long moment before her world centers on its axis once more for her to ask.

“How do I taste?”

“Decadent,” he growls.

Crowding against her, he props himself up with one hand spread wide against the window above her head, while his other draws a wet trail down her belly. A short grunt of pleasure sounds from both of them when he slips back inside her.

Elena reaches a shaky hand up to hook around his arm, her nails digging into the muscles there. Arousal clogs her veins like molasses -- slow and syrupy and sinfully sweet. The movement of her hips turns clumsy and erratic. Sweat beads across her forehead as his fingers work her open, the heel of his hand circling her with delicious pressure.

“Edward -- fuck, I--” she cries out.

“Will you come for me?” he asks, his gaze snapping to hers. Desire clouds his eyes, the brown irises eclipsed by the black of his pupils.  

“Please--” he cuts off her begging with a kiss.

“Will you?”

“Yes,” she answers with a gasp.

Covering his hand with her own to guide him exactly where she likes, she stretches up for another kiss and grinds down against his hand. The heat inside of her reaches its critical point, flaring to life and scorching through her bloodstream. Clenching tight around him, her hips convulse as she rides out the quake of her orgasm.

Edward slides his fingers out, dropping a kiss to the crown of her head when she whines with oversensitivity. He brings her into his arms, smoothing a hand over her hair as her body shudders with the last of its tremors.

“Fuck,” she sighs, a delirious sort of giggle bubbling up. “Well, how do I look now?”

“Exquisite.”

Leaning down, he captures her lips with a kiss. She blames the blush from her recent orgasm.

“I think it’s my turn, then, to ravish you.”

“We don’t have to--”

Elena silences his gallant protest with a heady kiss, raking one hand through his hair. Her other runs along his side, where she hooks two fingers into his waistband and yanks him closer. Continuing down, she runs the flat of her palm against the obvious sign of his arousal. Edward groans into her mouth; he ropes an arm around her waist and carries her to the desk. With a wide sweep of his arm, he knocks documents and equipment to the floor before depositing her atop it.

“Careful!”

He jerks back at her yelp, casting a worried eye over her form. “Have I harmed you?”

“No, no -- I promised Henry I wouldn’t break his bowl.”

Edward rolls his eyes and grabs the dinnerware before she can reach for it, then tosses it to the floor.

“I will buy him a new one when we stop at the next-- why are you laughing?”

Elena shakes her head at him, avoiding any explanation by dragging his mouth back onto hers. It’s a rather effective technique, as she’s finding out tonight. Their remaining clothes join the messy pile on the floor. Edward huffs a laugh at her threat of injury if he rips her underwear, but seems to heed her words and takes care to drop them onto the desk. Moving into the space between her thighs, he grabs two handfuls of her ass and drags her closer. The soft giggle that sounds from her delights him; he leans down and savors the taste of it on her lips.

Elena’s hand wanders over his stomach and down the trail of coarse hair to take hold of him. He thrusts into her touch with a grunt, choking on an inhale when she twists her wrist on the next upstroke.

“May I have you?” he manages to rasp.

“You may,” she purrs, and guides him to her entrance.

With a surge of his hips, he plunges into the slick heat of her. At her gasp of encouragement, he slips out and then back inside, grinding his teeth against the clench of her. Pleasure is a ripple on the surface, building into a wave that banks higher and higher as they move together. The world outside slips from its perch, losing what little control it has over the confines of the cabin. There is only the two of them, lost in the frantic rocking of their bodies.

A shameless staccato of moans falls from her lips as he fucks her. Edward wraps a fist around a length of hair and pulls her head back, exposing the long line of her throat; he nips at her pulse point and then at her bottom lip, swallowing her cries of pleasure.

“If you shout any louder, the whole ocean’ll hear you,” he playfully scolds.

Spotting her opening, Elena tightens her legs around his hips and digs her heels into his lower back. Retaliation sings its sweet tune as she jerks him forward on top of her, the both of them crashing back onto the desk.

“Don’t underestimate me.”

“Nay, I would never.”

Edward props himself up with one hand next to her head, his other clamped firmly around her thigh as he drives into her, the angle somehow that much sweeter. “God, but yer a pretty sight, spread underneath me.”

It’s impossible -- that she’s here, that the desk underneath her is scattered with papers that would be considered treasure in her time, would be framed in a museum and ogled by historians. A quill digs into her spine and she’s certain they’ve spilled a pot of ink, but Elena can’t find it in herself to care. If she’s lost in time, then at least she has Edward to guide her through it; her beacon of light, keeping her adrift, illuminating her way through the confusing, treacherous world she’s been transported to.

“Elena,” he gasps, his chest gleaming with sweat in the candlelight. “Elena.”

His hold slips from her thigh and down to where they’re joined, rubbing quick circles against her bundle of nerves. Whatever he’s asking of her, she gladly surrenders. The wave of her climax rushes over her, flooding her veins and drowning her with euphoria.

The sight of her lost in the throes of pleasure is an anchor; he sinks.

Edward curses with his release, collapsing beside her onto the desk. Their sweat-slick bodies heave as they catch their breath. Something catches flame in Elena’s chest and simmers there when he folds her into his embrace, his palm cradling her head against his chest. His heart thunders against her temple.

She sees no better time than now, lying naked in his arms.

“I have a question.”

He hums with what little strength he can gather for her to continue.  

“When we were up in the crow’s nest, after discussing our love of Shakespeare--”

“--as I recall,” he interjects, “I am the only one who willingly read his works.”

Elena makes a waving motion with her hand, which would prove more effective if his fingers weren’t laced with hers.

“Whatever. What I want to know is, when I said that it was okay if you didn’t believe me, why that made you…?”

“Disquieted?” he finishes for her.

“Yeah.”

She can feel the weight of the sigh that empties out of him.

“Because I do believe you. Your mannerisms, your accent, your magic box with its…?”

“Pictures.”

“Pictures, aye. Everything about you should not fit here. But it does, you do. You’ve adapted remarkably well, given what’s happened to you. You are a strong woman, Elena.”

“I would blush, but I’m too tired from our activities.”

He brushes a kiss against the crown of her head and huffs out a laugh.

“Yet, despite how well you’ve adapted, I know that this is not your home. Your true home, that is. I promise you, once we stop the Admiral, I will do everything in my power to send you back home. But, I confess, I will be… terribly upset to see you go.”

Tears prickle at the corners of her eyes; she shuts them against the fading candlelight.

“Me too.”

His palm skims up and down the soft skin of her back, marred here and there by the cuts and scrapes from life aboard his ship.

“Stay.”

For a terrifying moment, Elena isn’t sure what he means -- and is terrified all the more that she isn’t sure if she wants to return home, at least not so soon. Realizing that he’s probably (hopefully) meaning for the night, she musters up a reply.  

“The crew will talk.”

Edward scoffs. “They do little else.”

Her shoulders shake from her smothered laughter.

“Is this what passes for pillow talk in the eighteenth century?” she wonders aloud, making a show of stretching and enjoying the noise of interest he makes. “But yeah, okay, I’ll stay. I might even make it worth your while.”

“Of that, I have no doubt.”

+

+

+

References: an LMFAO song (it was between theirs or Will Smith’s “Miami,” but MC skews younger to me, so I went with the former), a line from Peter Pan, the ‘those who forget history are doomed to repeat it’ is actually a misquote, but I consider it enough of a ref to list it here. There’s a few slang terms from 17th/18th century and various pirate research sprinkled throughout. The USS Spiegel Grove is a real artificial reef, located off the shore of Key Largo. You can dive it with an OWD certification, though it’s recommended to have an AOWD to properly explore it. ~~the more you know~~

Thanks for reading!

[nelllraiser]

hell hath no fury | luce & nell

PREVIOUSLY: Plot Drop Page, Plot Overview

LOCATION: Montgomery’s House

TIME: 6:17 PM

PARTIES: Luce Vural and Nell Vural

TRIGGERS: Sibling Death mention, Vomit (brief description)

‘hell hath no fury like a sister scorned’

To think that all along, Montgomery’s house had been hidden in the Outskirts, the same part of the town Bea’s house was in. Of course, the Outskirts were fairly massive, and his dwelling wasn’t all that close to the Vural home. But still, it was close enough to make Nell’s head spin a bit. She was creeping through the undergrowth that surrounded the home, looking through the windows of the home to see if she found any movement hinting at someone being home. “I’ll do a revealing spell.” Hopefully there wouldn’t be any sort of magical protection preventing the spell from working. As Nell tapped her foot against the ground, a wave of magic flooded towards the home. Nothing alive registered in the home, meaning that Montgomery wasn’t there. Perfect. It was time to get her sister’s head back. “We’re clear,” she said to Luce, adrenaline rising in her veins. She was confident in her magic, but she couldn’t help some of the anticipation that was bubbling within her. This was the home of the man who’d murdered Bea, and now she was bringing her other sister into it. It almost seemed like asking for Luce to get hurt.

When Nell had told her that she’d found out who was behind this, Luce hadn’t waited for an invitation to go with her. If they were going to bring Bea back, they were going to do it together. They were all that each other had, she wasn’t going to lose her baby sister too. She wasn’t going to let that happen. If Nell went somewhere, Luce would follow. Like she hadn’t before. Following closely behind Nell, she nodded in acknowledgement, her hands curling up into tight fists at her side, prepared to set the forest alight at the slightest provocation. Montgomery. That was his name. Having a name, seeing a home, it didn’t make what he’d done any less horrific. If anything, it made the crime he’d committed all the more real. He was a person, just the same as them. And he had killed their sister, had taken her head. “Sounds good.” She muttered before testing the door. Locked. Not super surprising. “You happen to know how to pick locks?” Luce joked, though in the back of her mind she couldn’t help but wonder what else Nell might be hiding from her. She’d known what Jared was, didn’t seem all that bothered by the prospect of dark magic, of necromancy. “Or I can just melt the doorknob, whatever.”

Nell hadn’t shared the name before, not wanting to give Montgomery the satisfaction of his name being spoken aloud to anyone even remotely related to Bea. He didn’t deserve to be spoken in the same sentence as her, and Nell also didn’t want the piece of information getting out. If others knew who’d done it, no doubt they’d seek their own retribution. And as far as she was concerned, Montgomery’s life only belonged to three people. Herself, Luce, and of course...Bea. It was the only reason they weren’t here to kill today, to make sure that their older sister got her own chance to exact revenge alongside them. Nell shrugged at her sister’s question. “I mean, maybe not the conventional way.” She considered using her own magic to quietly take care of the door, but why be quiet? He would know they’d been here when he found the head missing. Why not make a petty mess along the way? “I’d love to see it melt, though,” she offered back with a slightly sadistic grin. 

Well, at least Nell probably wasn’t moonlighting as a burglar. At her sister’s grin, Luce offered a similarly cruel slash of a smile before moving to grasp the doorknob. Before her hands touched it, she engulfed the metal handle in blue flame. Concentrated fury and magic mingled together into a single jet of heat. The handle began to bubble, the surface changing color as heat permeated through the metal. It took a minute of pure concentrated will, soon the doorknob was nothing more than a molten mass of dripping metal, spilling onto the ground. Extinguishing the flames with a single motion, Luce kicked the door open, rattling the heavy frame. “What the fuck..?” Luce asked as she stared at the house they’d just broken into. Taxidermied animals of all kinds decorated the home-- if she could even call it that. It looked more like a big game museum than a home. Her train of thought was broken as a loud beeping filled the room and her eyes flicked over to the keypad on the wall. With an annoyed glance, she shot a small burst of fire at the panel and the circuitry promptly died, overheated and destroyed. A security system wasn’t all that out of place, but the rest of it… What the fuck was this place? Who was this man? 

A small, mirthless laugh fell from Nell as she watched the doorknob melt beneath Luce’s hand. This simple, small act felt good. It was nothing to compare to killing her sister, but it was the first action they'd taken against Montgomery that was malicious ever since Bea had fallen, and it stoked the flames of revenge that had been lying in wait within Nell. She wanted more. But today wasn’t the day for that. They needed to get in and out, to retrieve Bea’s head before the hunter returned and found them here. Then again...that didn’t mean they couldn’t have a little fun along the way. Nell walked through the door as if she owned the place, letting the scene that greeted her fill her with even more anger. He’d hunted her- hunted Nell and Bea like they’d been one of the animals lining every wall in the home. Pettily, Nell reached up and wrenched the nearest mounted head from the wall, throwing it to the ground before blasting it with magic, watching the thing shrivel in on itself. Kaden had said there was a basement where the heads had been kept, along with the Selkie skins he wanted her to take back. “I don’t see it- not in here.” Bea’s head wasn’t with these ones. Spotting a hallway not far from her, she began to advance down it.

“What kind of sick freak…” Luce breathed as she looked at one of the stranger creatures that decorated the home-- she’d never seen half the creatures that filled the room. Some were animals, but most were of the magical variety. The sound of nails being wrenched from wood jolted her and she watched as Nell destroyed one of the mounted heads, the stuffed remains crumpling to nothing. “We’ll find--” Luce hesitated to say “it.” This was Bea, this was a part of her. The most crucial part of her. “We’ll get what we came for.” She amended. That said… they could still have a little fun. And, what better way to have fun than ruin a madman’s murder house? Luce followed after her sister at an easy pace. As she did, she ran her hand along the hallway. Five thin lines of flame trailed across the wallpaper, across photographs, stuffed heads, carefully mounted collections of pixie wings. As she followed Nell into a room, Luce snuffed out the flames, leaving a smoking, charred hallway behind her. “If I was some fucked up Saw villain, where would I put my latest victim. The basement. Of course he’d have a basement.” She growled with a shake of her head. Fucking murderer.

It wasn’t the first time Nell had wished she had fire magic. There’d been a long few years growing up that she’d yearned for it, wanted nothing more than to have the gift the rest of her family had been given, if only because it might earn her the recognition of her mother. But it’d been an even longer while since she’d had that wish, having grown into her own beyond the wishes and approval of Nisa. Still- it was times like these that she found herself admiring how easily destructive it could be. If she could burn the entire home to the ground, she happily would. And certainly she could make it all through other means, but there was simply something satisfying in the way the wallpaper curled and burned and charred. This room was no more fruitful than the last in terms of finding Bea’s head, but her eyes narrowed as she spotted a set of stairs. “Kaden told me it’s a windowless basement room or something.” As always, she was focused when it came to things relating to Bea, not nearly so chatty as she generally was. 

Luce’s frustration only grew as she and Nell’s search continued to turn up empty. What the fuck had he done with her? Where the fuck had he hidden her? The longer they spent in this fucked up hellhole of a house, the more and more Luce wanted to destroy it. She wanted to burn it to the ground. She wanted to destroy everything he had built, leave nothing but ash in her wake. But, she couldn’t do that until she and Nell found what they came for. Looking at the stairs Nell pointed out, Luce nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, sounds about right.”

Nell followed the stairs down, brows drawing together as she was met with a heavy door at the base of them. It looked rather fortified, made of shiny steel with big, metal beams latticing it. This had to be it, didn’t it? The place Kaden had been talking about? It fit his directions. This was where Bea’s head would be. If it wasn’t, Nell wasn’t sure what the next step was. She hadn’t been in any of the other rooms. Her hand was raised against the door, giving it an experimental push. Nothing happened, not even the slightest budge as she added more weight behind the shove. There wasn’t so much as a lock on the door, but it seemed determined not to budge. “Might as well barbecue this one too, right?” Not wanting Luce to have to do all the work, Nell bit her thumb until it bled, rolling her sleeve up to reveal one of her summoning tattoos. It was the one Luce hadn’t inked on her, Nell having gotten it while she was abroad. She’d also been unwilling to have this particular circle done on her by Luce, as hellhounds weren’t exactly clean of a demon reputation. But now- what was there to lose? In the flash of an eye, one of the hellhounds sprang forth from Nell’s arm. It was Shaggy, the biggest of the boys. “He can help- not that you need it. Just- don’t want you wasting any strength.” 

 Descending the stairs, Luce stared at the steel door that stood before them. Nothing was ever easy. It couldn’t have been a quick and simple, get in, get Bea back, get out, could it? She watched as Nell tried to force the door, but was unsurprised when the effort was made in vain. “Yeah, I can give it a shot.” She said, though the idea had her apprehensive. Her magic was strong, stronger than it had ever been, but this was a steel fucking door. Keeping up a blast of heat to melt through the mechanisms that held the door shut would take time and energy. The effort would be… immense, to say the least. As she took a few deep breaths, preparing herself for the sheer output of magic she was going to be drawing upon, Luce caught sight of her sister rolling up her sleeve in the corner of her eye. A tattoo, one that she didn’t recognize but she could see the familiar circles of a summoning tattoo. She hadn’t done that one. Before Luce could ask what she was doing, a hulking monstrous creature appeared next to her. “A hellhound. Nell--” She stared, incredulously before swallowing. First finding out about Nell’s involvement with some kind of Ring thing, then Bea’s necromancy books and altar, and now this? “Yeah. Yeah, just… tell him to focus on the lock. I can’t melt an entire door, but if we can get the locking shit melted down, it’ll be fine.” She said, forcing herself to focus on the task at hand. Even so, it was troubling. How much did she really know about her sisters?

Nell swallowed hard as Luce fixated on the hellhound for a moment, not meeting her sister’s eyes. “I can explain it...later,” she said softly, knowing that there were apparently too many things the sisters didn’t know about each other between all these revelations. “No more secrets once this is all over.” Not after this. Not after it had gotten Bea killed. And Luce deserved to know the whole truth of why August had gone after her. She turned her attention back to the hound, giving him an encouraging nod. “You heard her, Shaggy.” The demon dog took his stance, at the ready to provide whatever it was Nell might need, and opened his maw to let forth the red hot flames his kind were known for, aimed as much as he could manage towards the pieces Luce had mentioned. 

“Just as long as you explain eventually.” Luce said, still staring at the hellhound. “No more secrets.” She echoed. How much had her sisters hid from her? How much were they hiding? Remmy had told her that Nell had fought alongside them against a giant fucking lobster and here she was summoning fucking demon dog bullshit. Necromancy. Dark magic. Christ. How was it that she was the only who’d never felt the need to play with the laws of nature? Fuck. Shifting her attention to the door, Luce channeled her rage, her frustration, her irritation with all the lies and the secrets into a concentrated jet of blue flame. With the hellhound’s flames adding the support she needed, the minutes ticked away, the air around them growing burning hot as the metal glowed and melted before them. Sweat ran down her face, dripping down her arms as she continued to pour power into it. Eventually, the flames had pierced through the metal and Luce killed the flames before falling to her knees, panting from the energy. “Gimme… gimme a second.” She gasped, her head spinning. She’d expended so much of her magic on just burning through and now she was… left with nothing in the tank. Fire. That’s all she was good for. Not necromancy, not summoning, not anything else. Just firepower. Gritting her teeth, Luce forced herself to stand, leaning against the wall heavily. “Let’s get her back.”

“I will,” Nell affirmed, knowing they couldn’t afford to be like this any longer. The sisters had been disjointed for too long. They weren’t meant to be exactly a set, but still gears that could mesh and come together to work towards a greater purpose, family that knew their function in the grand scheme of things, how to make the machine work when they needed to. But how were they meant to slot into place when there were entire corners of each other they didn’t know? Spaces that had grown dark and damp and hidden in darkness where their sisters hadn’t been allowed to shine their lights, fumbling in that inky blackness to try and remember where the teeth lined up with one another. Nell had been too caught up in her thoughts to realize that Luce was overdoing it, and instinctively jerked forwards to lay a hand on her sister’s shoulder as she fell. “Luce? Luce, are you alright?” Worry laced her voice despite knowing this was a perfectly normal side effect of magic, as she couldn’t help that losing Bea had made her hypersensitive to her remaining sister’s struggles. Not asking, knowing that Luce would most likely rebuke an open and spoken offer to help, Nell reached out for her sister’s hand, letting her own magic flow into Luce to give her strength. “We’ll get her back. Together.” 

Luce’s vision went black for a moment, spots of white appearing in her vision as she pressed her back against the wall. She felt Nell’s hand press against her shoulder, felt her cool touch on her skin. She couldn’t make out her words, but she could hear the tone. Shaking her head, she swallowed, “It’s okay, I’m okay.” She said with a wave of her hand, taking deep breaths to steady herself. As she focused on her breathing, Luce felt a small stream of magic trickle through her-- Nell’s energy. Her vision cleared up and her breathing eased as strength returned to her body. “Thanks.” She managed, patting Nell’s hand on her shoulder briefly before pushing off from the wall. Her knees felt weak, but at least she was sure she could walk now. “Together.” Luce nodded as she pressed her boot against the cooling steel door and pushed into the basement safe room.

Nell should have been prepared for what was inside the basement room, but even by her standards and the things she’d seen...it was grotesque. Countless trophies strewn about the place, with many a head in jars lining the area as she reflexively began to look for one that was familiar. Jesus. How fucked was this? She was scanning jarred heads to find the one that belonged to her sister. With the hand still on Luce’s shoulder, she steeled her heart and stomach, knowing that the sight of Bea’s head wouldn’t be a happy one. She just needed to shut everything down like she’d been doing, not let any emotion in to touch her and wrap the deliciousness numbness around her like a blanket as she continued to search. “Do you...see her?” There were the selkie skins Kaden had mentioned, put up in a proud display that made Nell’s anger burn fiery in her stomach. She’d take them like she’d promised after they found Bea.

While the upper levels of the house had looked like some big game hunter’s wet dream, this was literally something out of a goddamn horror movie. Jars with light colored fluid and heads floating in them. Was Bea’s head in one of them? Luce’s stomach turned as she made her way on unsteady legs into the room. “I’ll check the top shelves.” She said, her voice even and calm despite her emotions. She was exhausted, drained of magic, but that didn’t change the fact that all of this was weighing heavily upon her psyche. But, they had to do this. She had to do this. To face the reality of what had happened. As Luce looked around, her eyes fell on a large jar and she let out a choking sob. “Nell.” She said, grasping her sister’s shoulder as she pointed at the corner of one of the upper most shelves. Through the cloudy glass, she could see her sister’s face, the clean slice across her neck, her dark hair a tangled mess, her skin an awful, greying pallor. Weakened by the effort of melting the door and the rush of horror that washed over her, Luce turned around and retched, her stomach spilling its contents on the floor. 

Nell knew what Luce had found simply by the strain in her voice, could tell what her sister had seen by the utter shock in the words. Her stomach dropped, having wished she’d be the first one to find it, so she could cover it from Luce’s sight or something of that like. It was too late now. Nell didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see the missing part of her sister’s body after already having dealt with the headless portion of it. But they needed to be out of here as quickly as possible, not knowing when Montgomery might be returning. So she turned towards Bea’s head, bile rising in her throat as she did. She had to be sure, to really get a good look and make sure it was her sister. They would be no coming back, not after they’d left a mess behind. There she was, the face of the sister that had been a constant in her life looking back at her from the inside of a jar. Jesus fucking christ. It was her, there was no doubt. Quickly, Nell shrugged out of her jacket, and threw it over the jar. They didn’t need to see this any longer than they already had. Tentatively, she took the jar in her arms, at odds with whether she wanted to drop it and run to the furthest edge of the Earth, or make sure it never came to harm. She could feel the head bumping lightly against the sides of the jar as it sloshed within it, and she again has to steel herself from losing her own lunch. Fuck fuck fuck. Get out. Get out and put the head down and then she wouldn’t have to look at it again until the ceremony. She couldn’t break now, not when there was still so much to do. “I’ve got it- I’ve got her,” she said, turning to Luce to make sure her sister was recovering from her violent reaction. Again she asked, “Are you alright?” The selkie skins caught her eye once more, but with her hands now full and unwilling to relinquish Bea, she asked Luce another question. “If you could- can you get the selkie skins? I told Kaden I’d bring them back. He has a friend or something that’s looking for them. Not in a Hunter way,” she clarified.

Shivering as she stood upright, Luce spat bile to the ground and shook her head. Weak. She was fucking… weak. She had to be better than this, stronger than this. Whatever it takes, that’s what she’d told Adam. It’s what she told herself now as she looked over at Nell, her sister cradling that jar in her arms, jacket thrown over top of it. “Sorry. Sorry, I fucking…” She said, shame on her face. “I know that she’s dead. I knew that before. But seeing her, like that… What he’d done to her, I just… I couldn’t fucking handle it.” She said, her jaw clenching tightly. At Nell’s request, Luce raised an eyebrow but nodded all the same. Secrets. More secrets. And maybe this one wasn’t Nell’s to share, but right about now, Luce had enough of being kept in the dark. No more goddamn secrets. Once Bea was back, once they were sure that she was right and whole, she was going to sit the two of them down and make sure they talked about everything. Glancing at the lightbulb tattooed on the inside of her arm, Luce swallowed. Everything. “Sure.” She said before grabbing the selkie skins from where they were displayed. What kind of fucked up guy went after selkies? They were harmless, they were just fucking seals for christs sake. Bundling them up in her arms, Luce walked towards the melted door and pushed it open with her back, the hot metal barely warm against her skin. “Let’s get the fuck outta here.” Looking at the hellhound that had remained outside, she looked at Nell. “Wanna have Shaggy light it up?”

Nell didn’t judge Luce for her reaction in the least, and tried to make it clear that it had only been normal. “I did it when- when I first saw her...after everything” she offered softly, hoping it’d make Luce feel better to know that she wasn’t the only one who had such reactions to seeing their sister like this. “I get it. It’s just- it’s wrong.” She took comfort in watching Luce reclaim the skins, glad to know that hopefully...someone might get their happiness back from this if they managed to get a skin returned to them. Holding onto that kernel of warmth to center herself, she followed Luce back out of the room, where Shaggy was waiting with a wagging tail. “You’re just full of good ideas today, Luce,” she said before giving the hellhound a nod of affirmation. He didn’t hesitate to light the room alblaze, siren feathers and lamia skins catching fire, quickly spreading to every corner of the room. Nell turned her back as the glass of the jars began to melt from the heat of the inferno the dog had struck into a frenzy, leading the way back upstairs, and out of the house. Let the fire burn. With luck, it would take the entire house with it, and all the trophies Montgomery prized. It was a small strike against the man who’d wronged them, but a hit nonetheless, and Nell’s own fiery vengeance that seemed to live in her stomach these days was stoked to life, crackling comfortably as it finally gained a taste of the satiation she’d been desperately craving since that day in the forest with the hunter. She didn’t try to keep the smoke billowing from the house, letting it be a message to the man and whoever else might see it along the skyline. They were coming, and they wouldn’t stop until Montgomery was ashes as well.

[sabraeal]

The Call Which Carries You Home

He Who Fell in the Sea | Previous Selkie AU

Obiyuki Week, Day 3 Gluttony | Charity

He’s not used to the lights in Lyrias, not anymore.

Sereg may be shoved into the furthest, most godforsaken corner of the country, but it was a military installation, funded for by the crown and kept in the best condition. It would not do for the men on its walls to think more of the contents of their stomach or the lumps of their mattress than what lurked in the dark. It has been a decade since Clarines went to war, but no one has forgotten what they learned. A single flinch could change the tide, when brother fought against brother.

The lamps were always full at the knights’ circle, each sconce blaring like its own sun, every hall lit up like daybreak. But here in Lyrias --

Well, most scholars don’t want to spent their budget on things like candles and lamp oil, not when they only use the dorms for sleeping.

Miss’s back treads before him in the dim, the black of her cloak making her little more than a shape glimpsed through dark waters, a swimmer lost in the fog. Each time they pass a lamp, her gold stitching glitters, outlining the proud set of her shoulders with St. Elmo’s fire. She cuts through shadow as a hull cuts through a swell, never a moment’s hesitation.

He ducks his chin, smothering a smile. Of course. No matter what tricks his eyes play on him, Miss has never truly been adrift in her life. She’s got a compass where her heart should be, and it always points her home.

Welcome home. 

A breath rasps out of his lungs, ugly and awkward; a seal’s groan from a human throat. Goosebumps pimple his arms, his legs, and, ah, even his scalp tingles, so tight he’s sure his hair must be on end, trying to figure out which way is up.

If Miss hears, she doesn’t give a sign of it, just forging on through each twist and turn. The slope of her shoulders before him is as familiar to Obi as the ache in his chest, as the beat of his heart. He’d been half-lost at the castle, each step taken on the wrong foot, but he’s hardly been back an hour and already he’s back on course. It’s so much easier to find himself when his north star is just above him.

Welcome home.

She’s right before him and his palms itch, his pelt growing heavier by the step. Obi’s not supposed to touch her, not supposed to get in the way, but he’d seen her in the street, had met eyes with her through the press, raised his hand and --

And he had not known until her gaze hooked his, until her eyes lit with recognition and she took that first trembling step toward him, how long he had been holding his breath. Each one at Sereg had been like gulping down seawater, drowning so slowly he hadn’t even noticed, hadn’t even felt it until he looked at her and took his first pull of air in weeks.

Welcome home.

She had said that to him, to him. His wrists still burn where she held them, and he cannot forget the way his hands felt wrapped around her hips, how light she had felt in his arms --

He shakes his head. Ah, he thought he might be used to her touch by now, but -- her hands in his fur and her hands on his skin are two different things, and though it was muted through the leather of his gloves he still -- still--

He wants her to do it again.

The castle’s sconces set her hair ablaze each time they pass, and he’s sharply reminded of the last time he walked these halls. He had been alone then, dressed for bed, breathless, and she -- she had answered her door the same way, his pelt clutched to her chest.

She couldn’t have known what she’d done, what he’d done, but she’d looked up at him with dark eyes and --

He shouldn’t think about that. The guilt had practically eaten him alive when he was with Master, those thoughts creeping up on him in the silent moments between. They’d snuck in while he traveled to Sereg, while he’d waited for Master to make his decision, while he’d laid in bed with physicians fussing over him, telling him he’d best stay there another week.

Obi had tried, at least. But idle hands did him no good when he had thoughts like these waiting to overtake him.

Miss might scold, but it was worth it to be free of -- of that. Save that here they are again with her right here before him and --

“Your hair got long.”

He blinks, but Miss is already pinking up quite nicely, her hand hesitating over her door. “I mean, longer.”

This, he can deal with. His teeth peek between his lips. “It’s only been a month, Miss.”

“I know that!” She fusses with the knob, flush creeping up the pale skin of her neck. “I just...noticed it. Now.”

He hums, eyeing where her own hair falls on her back. “Yours looks longer too.”

Her hand flies up, fingering the ends of her hair, and though her back is to him, he sees her cheeks round in a soft grin. “It’s only been a month.”

“Well,” he murmurs, far too close, the spice of her soap tickling his nose. “I only just noticed.”

“Go sit on the bed,” she tells him, opening the door. “I still want to take a look at that cut.”

“It’s all healed,” he protests, even though his side tweaks the moment he lifts his arm to fuss at the buckle for his cape. “Clean bill of health.”

Mostly.

The looks she turns on him is dubious. “That’s not what Mitsuhide’s letter said.”

He should have known Sir would tattle. “Well, Sir is not exactly the best judge of...”

Words desert him as he slips tongue though buckle and allows his pelt to slither down his side, and Miss --

Her gaze follows it, heavy and dark, until it hits the mattress with a slump.  Even when he starts in on his coat, her eyes are on it, breath coming out in a labored rasp, body unnaturally still. If he didn’t know any better --

Well, he’d say she was holding back. That the look in her eye might be something like hunger.

She blinks, dragging her gaze back up to his, and flushes under the question in it.

“You should...” She takes a moment to shut the door behind her, and once again she hesitates before turning back, before taking a few more fluttering steps into the room. “You should lay down. It’s on your side, isn’t it?”

He lets out a huff, annoyed, but drops himself to the mattress, rucking up his shirt until it’s up under his armpits. “I should have known he’d tell you.”

Miss hums, buzzing in close, fingers brushing over his skin. His breath catches, tingling where her fingers press, but if she notices, she gives no sign. “It wasn’t him.”

A laugh barks out of him, incredulous. “Then who--?”

“You did.” She flicks him out of those sly glances that makes him want to kiss her. “Outside. Remember? A-tt-tt, my side!”

She’s far too proud of herself. “I don’t sound like that.”

“Mm.” Obi knows every flavor of Miss’s mms, and this one is distinctly not an agreement. “You’ve taken good care of this.”

Praise cuts straight through his annoyance, and he can’t help but preen. “I did promise Miss I would be more careful.”

Her mouth quirks, just the slightest bit. “And I promised I would never let you scar.”

Her hand presses softly to the wound -- one that almost certainly will leave a mark -- and lets out a sigh. Against his skin, he could swear he feels her heart beating its swift tattoo.

“Is it different now?”

He can only stare at her, unsure of what she could possibly mean.

“You hair,” she clarifies. “Is it different, now that you’ve let it grown out?”

It’s a whole new world. He’d thought himself sensitive before, but now colors are brighter, smells are sharper, and he moves as if the world has gained another dimension.

“I don’t need so much spice in my food,” he says instead, because anything else feels too intimate with so little space between them. “And I don’t get myself stuck in tight places.”

She lets out a grunt of a giggle. “You never did before.”

“Ah, didn’t I?” He waggles his eyebrows. “Or did you never catch me?”

Miss smiles, but suddenly her touch is gone, only a memory of her warmth lingering against his skin.

“All right,” she sighs, taking a step back. “You can get up, if you like.”

He doesn’t like; he wants to stay right here, breathing in the soft lilac of her sheets, but Obi also knows a dismissal when he hears one. Doubtlessly Miss has a hundred other things she would rather be taking care of than him.

He levers himself up, rolling the film of his shirt back over his stomach. Next to him, his pelt lays crumpled on the bed, smooth and sable as always, and --

He could keep it. He could wear it every day, a choice he continues to not make, hold his own reins --

“This is yours.” His hand is already outstretched, fur spilling over his fingers, holding it like a small child might hold out a favorite blanket. Miss stares down at it with eyes so wide he can almost see the whites around them.

She won’t take it, he knows. Miss has never liked keeping it away, never liked forcing him to stay when he longed to be elsewhere, longed to be home -- but his home is right here, and if he doesn’t give it to her, if he keeps it and catches the song of his sisters --

Sparks shoot up his spine, his knees nearly going out from underneath him as her hand closes around the edge of it and rubs. A cry tears from his chest, hungry and inhuman, and she can’t possibly have missed it, can’t possibly --

“Obi?” She’s never said his name this way, so thoughtful and yet...more. “You seem tense.”

A breath raggedly escapes from his lungs, and -- what can he say, when all his world had melted away to where her fingers idly trace patterns into his fur, like nails scraping down his back in the most delicious way.

“Would you like me to help you?”

He’s so turned around that he almost thinks she’s offering something else, something Master’s Mistress has no right offering, but then he remembers -- relaxation. Just what they have always done, her hands on his pelt and him laying near, feeling safe in her company.

Or near enough, save for that last time, the night before he left--

“Yes,” he chokes around the knot in his throat. “That...yes.”

It’s been a month, he knows, but somehow it’s too long; the moment she kneels on the bed, pelt spread over her knees and not even touching, he just -- whines. Like a mutt who’s seen a lamb chop through a window.

Miss doesn’t raise her gaze, but her eyelashes flutter and her mouth curves, and he knows she heard.

“You should sit,” she says, and there is far too much amusement her tone for his comfort. “I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

He sniffs disdainfully, and for the entire circuitous route he takes to her bed, he refuses to look at her. In a fair and just world, she would be seared by his scathing disdain, be entirely repentant --

Instead, her shoulders shake. She’s laughing.

With a huff, he settles himself by the footboard, legs hanging off so the balls of his feet still brace on the floor. It’s a safe distance; any closer and he might smell her, might touch her -- and with the memories of before haunting him, with the way she welcomed him home --

He’s already reading far too much into this. She’s just -- offering comfort, as she always has.

Neither of them speak, but when his weight dips the mattress her lips curl at the corner, and her palms stretch flat on the fur.

He sighs into it, the phantom pressure of her hands warm over the curve of his back. When she moves them, stroking slowly, surely, his head tips back. He’s never felt a touch like hers; every other hand to hold his pelt has set his teeth on edge, but with Miss it’s nearly a massage, working out all the tension beneath his skin.

Perhaps this is the way of it, for his kind. He was stolen from his sisters too young to know, and now --

Well, if he ever saw them again, he certainly wouldn’t let them touch him like this.

Her hands are halfway down his spine when she laughs, and he jolts, nearly topping over. He’d been half asleep, listing where he sat.

“Obi.” Her voice slips over him like her hands do, too warm and inviting. “Why don’t you lay down?”

She pats her lap -- tap tap, just over his kidneys -- and it’s not the first time she’s offered, nor even the first time he’s taken, but --

It feels dangerous, with all these thoughts rattling around in his head, making the air feel heavy with more. Still, it doesn’t stop him; she pats her lap again and he just tips, settling with his head pillowed by her thigh, pelt soft under his cheek.

She starts again, running a hand right along his shoulders, making him sink further into her, face nuzzled right against her belly. It’s better like this, with both his skin and her scent so close to him, more lulling, and she’s barely stroked him twice before he’s drifting again, the siren call of sleep luring him under --

Until he jolts, fingers clutching at the duvet, heart pounding in his chest. Her hands hover, uncertain, as he gasps hard against her belly.

“O-Obi?” Her voice is small, worried. “Did I--?”

“No. Just -- my hair,” he manages. “It’s..sensitive.”

An understatement. If whiskers feel like this naturally, then he’s sorry for every cat he’s ever touched.

“Oh.” It’s hardly more than a breath, her palms settling flat against her thighs. Their phantom warmth presses against his back, and -- that helps, at least, even if he’s still strung tight like a bowstring. “Hm.”

That’s his only warning -- one thoughtful hum, and then her fingers drag deep furrows into his pelt, down and down, towards her knees and --

He arches off the bed with a gasp, writhing as he feels the warmth of her hands around the base of his cock. His breath rasps out of him, humid where he’s pressed himself into her belly, and it takes everything in him not to grind his hips into the mattress, not to get some relief from the way her fingers have sunk into his belly fur --

Her hand lifts, burying itself deep into his hair, nails scraping his scalp, and --

Her grabs her, fingers wrapped tight, purposeful around her wrist.

“Miss,” he rumbles,  peeking up at her with a gaze he knows says too much. “Either keep your hand on the pelt, or lay on it.”

Her jaw drops as wide as her eyes, and for a moment he thinks he’s made his point, that she will balk and retreat to the safer boundaries of touch, but -- but --

Haah, no. It’s not in his Miss to retreat. Her lip takes a determined just, and with barely a moment of hesitation she plunges both hands deep into his hair, every nerve in him alight as he bolts upright, meaning to close the space between them as she spills back --

“Obi!”

He leaps back just before the door bursts open, Suzu collapsing breathlessly over his knees. He must have run all the way here. It would have been touching, if, well...

“You’re alive!” Suzu cries out between gasps, hand pressed to his chest.

“I am,” Obi agrees, maybe a little terse.

“What did you expect? I told you I saw him,” Yuzuri complains, tucking herself between Suzu’s arm and the door. Her bright gaze fixes on him, smile curling her mouth, and she opens her mouth --

Only for her eyes to flick to Miss, and then to him, and then to the entire room between them.

“Well, you’ve seen him, Suzu,” she says brusquely, practically shoving him out the door. “You can work easy now.

If anything, this only makes him struggle harder. “But--”

“I think Obi and Shirayuki have things to talk about. Important things!” she says, with the sort of strident, pointed tone that implies he knows exactly what those things are, and he better not ruin it. If only she knew just how well Obi had done that, all on his.

“But--!”

Yuzuri shoves him the last little bit out of the room. “Good, glad we understand each other.” She leans back, smile bright and too-knowing. “Glad to see you’re alive, Obi.”

“Thanks,” he grits out, but it’s covered by the slam of the door. And then once again, he’s alone with Miss.

Only it’s different this time. Tense.

“Obi--”

“Master is looking forward to seeing you,” he says, because he’s never met a good thing he deserved.

“Oh.” her face crumples with confusions. “Did he say that?”

Obi hesitates, before forcing the smile on his face. “He doesn’t need to, Miss.”

Her mouth pulls thin. “He might try, once in a while.”

It’s dangerous being here when she says things like that. Hearing his own thoughts from her lips is too intoxicating.

“I should get going.” The words come out far to breathless. “If you don’t think I’m going to die, His Lordship will want to hear my report.”

“Oh.” She steps back from him. “Right. Of course. Yes. You look..fine. Very healthy.”

“Yeah, I feel it,” he lies. “I should--”

“Take this.” Miss’s arm thrusts out, pelt dangling from the end of it. “You should really...keep it.”

He should, he should.

“No.” His hand curls over hers, clasping it tighter around his pelt. “It’s where it’s supposed to be.”

He can’t bring himself to say what he means, but she pulls it to her chest, looking up at him with such bright eyes, that he wonders if she can hear it.

Home.

[sapphires-and-gold-fics]

Fictober Day 27: “Can you wait for me?”

Fandom: Game of Thrones / ASOIAF / The Little Mermaid (?)

Characters: Jaime Lannister / Brienne of Tarth

Notes: Here is the final chapter of my Mermaid!Brienne AU as suggested by @chromium-siren here.

Read Part 1

Read Part 2

Part 3 on AO3

xxxxxxxxxxx

Jaime lodged her in one of the lower towers of the keep among the servants whilst she recovered from her exertions. For the first two days, he visited with her whenever he had a free moment, asking her questions which she could not answer, and telling her about the city, which she could view from her small window; on the third day he had arranged to have his duties covered and he spent the whole day recounting for her how his life had altered since she had saved his life.

Jaime had been born into a great house in the west, but as a young man he had been honored with appointment to a position in the Kingsguard. His father had wanted him to stay at home and promote the family line but Jaime had wanted to be a true knight and he believed serving the king to be the most honorable pursuit, and so he had defied his father and accepted the king’s offer. It was not long before he realized how cruel and mad the king he guarded was, but he had sworn his oaths and he could not leave.

The night that Brienne had rescued him, the king himself had set fire to the royal ship en route from Dorne to the capital. In the aftermath of the explosion, Jaime had found the king with torch in hand, moving to set fire to the untouched portions of the ship. Jaime had wrestled the torch from the king and thrown it into the sea. In a fury, the king had shoved Jaime backward toward the blaze, screaming “burn them all!” and then chased the extinguished torch into the water. Jaime, like the king and many of the men who’d been traveling with him that night, could not swim. And so even if he had not honorably fought and then found himself in harm’s way, he would not have survived without Brienne’s intercession.

When the ship had not made its scheduled return to the capital, the king’s son sent a search party south and, though few bodies had washed up on the Stormland shores, it was eventually presumed that all had perished that night, set on by pirates or worse. When Jaime returned some time later after begging his way to King’s Landing, he was welcomed back as a kind of hero by some, and as a fearsome spirit by others. The new king - that sane son of the mad king who’d died - elevated Jaime to Lord Commander. And so now he found himself serving a more worthy king, and he strove to feel deserving of his new station. He never revealed to anyone the terms of the former king’s demise, nor did he clarify the assumed record.

When he had finished his tale, Brienne pantomimed her own as best she could. Jaime managed to gather that she needed to get back to the sea, and that she wanted him to go with her. When she struggled to explain her reason - while avoiding certain facts - he stopped her. He did not need a reason, he had said - she had saved his life, and he would not deny her his help. And so he secured leave from his duties and made arrangements for them to go to the Stormlands with a carriage - since Brienne could not have ridden - and two other guards, leaving four days after her arrival in the capital.

A fortnight had passed since her transformation before Brienne recovered her voice. And when he heard it again Jaime very nearly cried for, despite being slow to return in this new body, it - like her eyes - had not changed. He took up her hand in his and would not let it go until she had told her story again, without miming it; by then they were almost at Tarth.

She told him that her form had been altered by a witch who was keeping her family captive, who had turned her in order to punish her for her interference in the shipwreck; she needed Jaime’s help to rescue them because she did not know and trust any other men. She did not tell him at what cost the lives of her family would come until they had been on the island for two days. By then she found that she could lie to him no longer. She’d grown attached to him - more than she ever had with Renly, and with more love than she’d ever felt before. She would not abuse his honor with trickery.

When she told him the truth of it, he turned her hand over in his as if looking for something, and squeezed it. He said that he understood and that he felt he’d been waiting a year for this - that he had always expected his life to have come at a price; if this was it, he was glad to forfeit his own that those she loved might live; only once they reached the shore where he’d been beached did he ask if there was any way around it - not because he did not want to help her family, but because he did not want her to have his life on her conscience. At this, she became overwhelmed with feeling and he held her until she pulled away and ran to sit on the beach in solitude, unable to bear his proximity. That night he sent his lieutenants back to the capital without them, gold in hand, and secrecy secured.

Jaime walked to the beach and sat down next to Brienne in the sand, wrapping her in his arms, and she let him. She had ripped the sleeves from her borrowed dress days ago, and now she found that when the air was chilled, Jaime’s arms were just as warm as they had been when they first met, and she sank into them. Hey stayed there many hours, listening to her hum until her voice grew tired and they fell asleep curled against each other.He left her there an hour before sunrise and went back to the inn to don his armor. She woke on his return as the first pink rays of dawn picked at the sky, just like that morning so many moons ago.

“I can make it easier on you,” he said. “My armor is heavy. Walk me into the sea and it will drag me down.”

She stared at him. “Why?!” she cried.

“You are the reason I lived,” he replied with a sad smile. “Let me be yours.”

She began to say no through her tears. But as the sun peeked over the horizon, his armor cast a golden light all around them, and she found herself looking down at her petite hands and arms, and then down at the sand which now in the low tide continued further east than before.

The armor would sink him.

It would sink him because it was dense. It was heavy.

She knew what had to be done.

She stood and took his hand, pulling him behind her, across the sand. When they were just out of reach of the sandbar, she had him sit, and told him to stay in that spot, and then asked for his blade.

He gave her a strange look but unbuckled the sword belt all the same.

“What will you do, Brienne?”

“I have to try,” she said sadly.

He placed the ornate blade with the animal on the pommel in her hand, and then passed her the smaller dagger that he wore on the other hip. When she took the dagger, he clasped her hand. “Swear that I will see you again.”

She nodded, then knelt in the sand to bring their eyes level. “Jaime, the next time you see me, I will be in my true form.”

He nodded almost imperceptibly and reached out as if to brush sand from her bare unmarked shoulder. He met her glance, “Thank the gods.”

“Can you wait for me?”

“Will you promise to come back?” he asked sadly.

Brienne worried at her lip. “If no one has come for you by sunset, then I have failed and you must go, else you may still be in danger. If that happens, do not try to find me. Go, and do not come back to the sea for anything, ever. Swear to me that you will do as I say.”

He cupped her face, fingers stretching again to that point on her throat where her gills should be, and looked deeply as if re-memorizing her eyes. “I swear it.”

She swallowed and stood up and away from his touch. “Don’t forget to breathe - to,” she gestured for holding breath, not having the words, “please.”

He nodded. “I’ll remember.”

She took one last look at him, storing his golden face and hair in her mind, whispering his name like a wish, and then turned from him. She divested herself of the dress and, clasping the sword in one hand and the dagger in the other, she dove into the waves.

Her form began to revert painfully. She felt the skin of her neck, where Jaime’s fingers had just been, tear open as her gills re-formed, and she twisted in agony as the bones of her shoulders expanded, and her cheekbones stretched.

But her tail caused the most excruciating pain. The bones of her legs and feet seemed to dissolve as her lower body re-molded into her vivid blue tail. She felt sore, and awkward as she had in youth, swimming crookedly until she could finally control her tail properly and orient herself.

She navigated the coastal shelf and secreted the dagger. Then she retraced her path, sensing the currents until she thought she had located the whirlpool at the cave mouth, perhaps a league away.

As she approached the cavern, she whipped her powerful tail harder, speeding up to burst through the watery cyclone. She came out the other side without incident and swam deeper into the cave until she came upon the selkies, still guarding her pod while the witch seemed to be meditating in the corner, her fiery hair glowing brighter than Brienne recalled. Her eyes shot open at Brienne’s approach, and two of the guards moved to block her entry, but the witch waved them off, looking at the sword almost as if with recognition.

Brienne moved it in an arc through the water, letting it catch the red glow. “This is his,” she told the witch. I was able to lure him to the beach and subdue him, but he is too heavy. The body you gave me on land was weak and could not pull him into the sea. And now that I have my form, I cannot reach him. I have brought the sword as proof of my intent.”

The witch looked at her hungrily. “So close, foolish child. And you let mere weakness get in the way.”

“He is near,” cried Brienne, “Come to the surface if you do not believe me - perhaps you can reach him - your form is more suited for the land.” She stuck the sword into the silt as if to call a truce. The witch nodded with a gleam in her eye and preceded Brienne to the entrance to the cavern. She dragged her claws across the wall near the entrance, and the whirlpool dissipated, allowing them to leave.

The red woman seemed to know exactly where to find Jaime, and she sped away leaving Brienne struggling to catch up. Before she could, the witch had lurched out of the water and onto the sandbar. In less than a minute, the selkie reappeared, dragging Jaime in his full armor into the water by the leg. As their figures sank, it barely occurred to the witch that she had lost track of Brienne.

The witch was in such a fury and so committed to finishing the game that she had mislaid the most important player.

She had sunk with him nearly ten fathoms when the dagger sliced through her neck.

While the selkie had above the surface, Brienne had recovered the blade and had sat coiled in the shadows until the witch had reappeared beneath the waves. Brienne had followed quick as she could, snapping her tail hard, knowing that Jaime’s life was in the balance. With one final powerful thrust she had reached them and ended the witch’s life and, by association - though she did not know it - the lives of the selkies who guarded the others in the cavern; the seal-skinned creatures had turned to sea foam at the red woman’s demise, floating away and leaving the merfolk surprised, but free. Brienne’s father slowly lead his people back out into the open sea, the god of death having been appeased.

Brienne wanted to rejoice in the death of the red woman, but they were 20 yards below the surface now; Jaime was nearly out of air, and the armor was weighing him down.

Brienne tore at the golden armor and his clothes, removing piece after piece in an attempt to make him more buoyant. She gripped his arms and tried to climb higher, but she had exhausted her newly-re-grown muscles, and was too weak to lift them both; they continued to sink deeper.

Jaime was getting weaker and even as Brienne’s tears floated free around them, Jaime’s eyes said that he understood. He touched her arm, marveling at the speckled skin of her true self, and then he reached up and stroked her hair which, under water, was softer than silk - she had wanted this that first morning and had longed for it ever since. And now it would be her last memory of him - his fingers running through the hair at the nape of her neck while his palm stroked the skin around her gills.

She stared at him.

Her gills.

She forced Jaime to look at her and, cupping his face, slanted her mouth against his, pushing his lips into an O with her own, sealing him against the sea, and breathing into him.

His eyes widened as his lungs expanded, and she felt him settle his hands on her thick waist where skin met scales, holding her close as they continued to sink downward as one.

The god of death, having already been sated, took pity on them.

Gently, Jaime pulled away, breaking the seal. Brienne reached for him, desperate to save him again, but then froze. Under her fingers, his skin had split, though he showed no sign of pain as he breathed his first watery breath. He smiled, his startling green eyes fixed on hers, as his bright golden tail fidgeted and flexed below them, and then entwined with hers, pulling her closer still. And though she no longer breathed for him, his mouth sought hers, and he held her in a forever kind of embrace.

[philosapphos]

a fleeting memoir.

I don’t know how to write a great book. All I know how to do is feel. 

At my university, his eyes narrow as he skims through my writing. “You should cut down on the adjectives. And be more precise.” During the semester, I learn how to write quietly, obediently holding my hands between the walls of the keyboard. The writing was programmatic: a steady string of code to create tight, virus-free argumentation. I feel like I was choking during my lectures and would run afterward toward the campus gardens, gasping for air. 

It’s always raining in the classics. Whether it’s the European drizzle of existentialist contemplation and ennui, the dreary Scandinavian sleet, or just the histrionic downpour of a popular romance, something about water falling from the sky touches the soul. I moved from California to England a few years ago. Upon meeting me, everyone would always joke about the weather. Even at its most aggravating, there’s still something slightly mad and magical about getting wet from the rain: from the child’s ecstasy to splashing in puddles to the bursts of unexpected showers. Film is awash with portraits of a dark-haired woman, her face and arms lifted, her eyes closed, rain streaming down her hands and cheeks: a worship of the skies and sea, bathed in baptismal rivers, rising toward truth like an ancient Niniane. 

So let’s imagine it’s raining in this story: the tale of a brunette woman in her early twenties, sliding out of her damp coat as she settles into a library desk. The world outside is darkly wet but she is wrapped around the warm glow of a favorite book, smiling softly as she turns each page. 

As she moves through time, she loses herself for a bit, as young minds tend to do; drifting away into a third-person binocular gaze of her own life. One day, as though reminded of a long-lost childhood friend, she glanced into the mirror and feels a dull ache of recognition.  

Through a series of unfortunate events, she had become an academic. (She smirks to herself as she writes that.) Clever enough to critique the system, with a delicate list of degrees lifting her above the rest of society. The academy was a castle (a fortress), and she strolled its hallways, draped in elegance. The world lay like a lavish fur at her feet: it wasn’t until years later that she noticed the delicate golden chains wrapped around her wrists.  

People will think that this is an intellectual book because its text winks at readers with graduate degrees and aspirations of Platonic cerebrality. Unfortunately, the protagonist is an ordinary human: a body of neurochemical imbalances and menstruation and psychologically complex sexual urges. I am writing a story about a woman. 

Rilke writes about solitude: about the world created within the self, the infinite loneliness and the sweet-sounding lamentations of its suffering. “There I shall live all winter and rejoice in the great quiet.” Like most people living in the recurring buzz of a city, she was lonely. She often found her peace within the walls of her apartment: a silent altar to herself, as if she were living wrapped up in the pages of her diary. She hung her friends’ art up on the walls, framed photographs of her family, and filled her bed with soft, silky fabrics. She would light incense and candles, and fill the air with soft beats of music: purifying the space, making this ground holy. 

She was a graduate student, which meant everybody outside of academia thought she was brilliant and everyone inside of academia thought she was rather interesting and worthwhile. She grew up spoonfed the myth of the metals, told the tales again and again of her own precocious cleverness, of her mystical intelligence. She read far above her grade level and overextended her vocabulary. When she was young, she called herself a bookworm, and when she was older, she called herself a sapiosexual. At twelve years old, she dressed up as Athena and silently worshipped the goddess of wisdom (—she would ignore the war and weaving part). 

She was also enraptured by Boudicca. She grew up on McCaughrean’s Brittania and D'Aulaires' Book Of Greek Myths. She was fascinated by the portrait of powerful women, radiant in their own strength. She loved mermaids, selkies, sirens: those dark and dangerous women of the seas. Boudicca rode in the streets of her city, naked except for her long hair, which wrapped itself around her body: history painted an eroticized form of the woman, straddling a horse, pale skin and trembling lips; tresses enticingly, teasingly feigning at modesty. Boudicca’s performance to make some statement, some protest against patriarchy or injustice, but it was clear to her, even as a girl, that this story was not a political one. The sculpture of Justice may be a blinded woman in robes, but there is nothing more appalling than a hysterical female voice screeching for equality. 

I don’t remember when I first discovered feminism: I only remember hating women as a child. I found a notebook once, filled with a child’s scrawl, where I exclaimed that I was so glad to be clever—not silly and pretty like most girls. As I grew into adolescence, I occasionally cast longing glances at the other girls: with their golden curls and million-dollar smiles, exquisite little dolls of coiffed femininity and rich daddies. I went to a whiskey bar recently that embodied a kind of polished masculinity: mustached waiters in tweed vests over cuffed white shirts and sculpted forearms, busts of hunted deer and other achievements of man, wooden bookshelves filled with elegantly muted book collections. It was another kind of holy place: where one kneels before the marble mantelpiece in obeisance to the power-hungry colonizer. 

My sexuality began to emerge in the office of a professor: his mahogany desk looming around me, legs spread nonchalantly in an easy authority. My heartbeat quickened, knees crossed primly in a skirt, as I blushed and asked questions about the course. Lower your voyeuristic eyes: these encounters never went beyond a comment or an accidental touch. My years as an undergraduate were spent daydreaming over my notes, talking about the world over coffee, and thinking about sex in the library. I liked that momentary hesitation of surprise as I casually mentioned something sexual from my studies: a metaphysical puzzle about pornography, the liberatory rise of polyamory to dethrone an antiquity of monogamy, the darkly wrung layers of power within sadomasochism. Perhaps it was there that I found feminism: from a language of embodying oppression flowered forth the idea that surrender could be empowering. The thought was a pearly light: the gift of femininity, of submission and release—and the deep, silent power within. 

I found my sexual power like the rest of my generation: by exerting a measure of control over the other. It was a prize to hold enticingly before them; deliciously unattainable. To have something that someone else wants: that is the only measure of worth in a capitalist landscape. The mouth of the cave was enticing: that insidious allure of Pandora’s box. Suddenly, it was no longer enough to be intelligent: one must be desirable as well. Like a trophy held above the heads of others: they needed to see the prize and want it for it to be special. She saw herself as a tightrope dancer: balancing the power of the mind with the desires of the flesh. It was an elaborate performance, a practiced soliloquy for a darkened theatre: one hopes dearly for an audience.  

I spent a year as a professor. I recall a single frozen scene: it is raining outside of the coffee shop and I am listening to achingly melancholy French music (Les mémoires blessées, Crier tout bas). I prepared my mind and body for each lecture as though I were entering a gladiatorial ring: I neatly typed and stapled my handouts, and slid into a modest knee-length dress that subtly held close to my waist and dipped along my collarbones. My clothes felt like a costume for a 1960s-style secretary or stewardess: cleanly washed with a mildly sweet perfume, hair twisted into a tidy chignon, legs folded at a desk with my books stacked in alphabetical order. I answered emails in a timely manner, graded with a kind but firm hand, and smiled with the vacantly polite gaze of customer service. I checked my evaluations diligently and tried to be likable and friendly, welcoming my students into the warm hearth of philosophy and letting them wander through my home. They would step in for a moment, tracing their fingers along the spines of the books, glancing over at me as if I were an aspect of the furniture as much as the shelves. I felt like a salesman, smiling indulgently and explaining to the unimpressed consumer why they should consider getting into academia. I model prettily, showing them the life that they could have: the picture of success in this tier of society. I still see other professors twisting into this routine: the assumed air of authority, the dignified crown of the philosopher-king. Like prophets of an ancient religion, they share their advice with all and teach the one true path toward enlightenment: the rigor and the rituals of knowledge. Like any good advertisement, they draw others in with a manufactured sense of humanity: the self-deprecating humor, the melodramatic tearing of cloth and hair at self-imposed deadlines, the pale, bony thinness of perfectionism, wasting away before an audience of other performers. 

In academia, we hide our faces under a paper-mache mask of stiffly inked degree papers and watery excuses of endless busyness. A Kafkaesque artist of twisted, exhibitionistic self-torment, a Pharisee loudly lamenting a self-inflicted agony: the scholar fights to surpass another in self-flagellation, a mortification of the unbearably corporal flesh. “Only pain is intellectual.” We tout depression as an honorable badge of intellectual superiority—the masses are dead-eyed and drunk on a cocktail of prescription drugs and pre-packaged ideology. But those gifted, cerebral children can see through the painted backdrop and television lights: they witness reality as it is.

At its best, intellectualism is unhappy—at its worst, it is cruel. The 17th-century dramatist Jean Francine wrote that life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel. Some scholars do care, and care deeply: for them, a pedagogical journey is like excavating a lost city, brushing dirt away from crumbling walls, filled with warnings written in an ancient, dying tongue. Unearthing the skeletons of a forgotten history, a memory that humanity longs to forget. 

“It would be much better if, on the earth as little as on the moon, the sun were able to call forth the phenomena of life; and if, here as there, the surface were still in a crystalline state... In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means.” (A. Schopenhauer, Lehre vom Leiden der Welt)

With the inevitable tumble into nihilism and absurdity, the rarity of the compassionate philosopher sinks deeply into the quicksands of despair. But what of the hermit, the ascetic, who casts aside the ropes of human connection? From the side of the hilltop, he looks down upon the ravaged city and laughs; like a dying man in a desert, watching his horse die before the mirage of a lush oasis. Perhaps I felt this way when I was younger: laughing at my freedom before the pilloried women, imprisoned in the bodysuits of gender. Perhaps I saw myself as androgynous: a sexless fae child with inexplicable knowledge of wordly things and a playful schadenfreude. 

As a child, I saw the pillars of women and their wisdom as arching tombstones in the chilling mist of my future, the inevitable decline into the pains of labor, that aching creation of an object to be snatched away from my grasp: the anonymity of motherhood. I longed to be a maker of worlds: to hold my hands in the raging welding fire and twist metal into mechanism. When asked why I chose to study philosophy over literature and history, I tell people that I never wanted to be relegated to Whitehead’s ‘series of footnotes’ on a great thinker. The idea of dedicating my life, fawning at the frozen feet of bygone wisdom, entangling myself in the discourse of another and attempting to organize their thoughts, struck me as debasing. 

I imagine these scholars as custodians, moving slowly along the great halls of the history of the mind: dusting off the tired exhibits, examining a relic of ancient wisdom, and guiding others to a particularly showy gallery of pop intellectualism. I longed to be one of the innovative elite: developing my own ideas and launching them out into the world like sleek silver rockets. 

Still, unbidden thoughts lift to a rising echo, like bloated corpses floating to the surface of a lake:

i. This too shall pass.

ii. The truth will always emerge. 

iii. Failure in life is inevitable. 

Why have we created lives that lack a solidity of meaning? The Aristotelian virtue of striving has been perverted into a constant desire for something out of reach. We exist in the hellish stance of Tantalus: the king of Sipylus who consumed his young in an unquenching burn for power. He was condemned to the agony of desire: emaciated, shaking fingers brushing against the soft, bruised flesh of a fruit he would never taste. I never understood why the Garden of Eden was a utopian paradise—Eve and Pandora have been damned by the priests of time for embodying that trait that is valorized in men: curiosity. The great men—the scientists, the philosophers, and the poets—have loudly proclaimed the glory of the inquisitive gaze, of those first pioneers who pressed into the darkness of the great unknown. Yet it is a sin for woman: feminine curiosity is prying, gossiping, the idle chatter of busybodies. The curious woman is one who should have known better, who ought to have kept her mouth shut: her questions are barren and vain. The moral of these ancient stories is simple: obey the commands of men and remain shrouded in ignorance. When offered knowledge or understanding, the good woman will look away and choose the path of purity. (“The innocent eye is blind, as the virgin mind is empty.”) 

I recently bought my mother a print transcribed with the cheerfully defiant line, “Well-behaved women rarely make history.” The sentiment is true, in the bland, platitudinal way of many inspirational quotes, but what is the fate of the women that do make history? Too often, their mangled corpses are left hanging on the city walls: a grim reminder to all of the merciless suppression of insurgent forces. 

Curious women are not considered clever: they are considered dangerous. Eve damned humanity to physical pain and scarcity; Pandora released a whirlwind of sickness and death; even Joan of Arc was burned with so many others at the stake. The women who refused to be ‘well-behaved’ are condemned to inhabit our nightmares as graffitied caricatures of the Furies: shrieking women wreaking havoc and suffering across the orderly landscape of civilization. 

Again and again, we watch these women bowing their heads to accept their punishment: Boudicca, Artemisia, and Cleopatra each died by their own hand. Western history relishes the tragic figure of Lucretia: a woman who was raped before committing suicide to preserve the honor of her father. Marble sculpture immortalizes the brutal rapes of Prosperina, of Europa, and the Sabine women. Even the Old Testament tells the story of a Levite throwing his concubine to a mob maddened with bloodlust in an effort to protect himself. She is brutally raped and murdered and, like Lucretia, she is marked as culpable for her rape: the Levite later dismembers her corpse by slicing her body into twelve pieces.

If only I had known before that the trinkets of intelligence and sexuality are finery on men, yet mark women out as scapegoats. A woman told me yesterday of a line that resonated deeply with her: “Give no-one cause to fear you.” To me, it sounded like a warning. Intelligent women are intimidating—I am told this time and time again. Men are afraid of women who out-earn them, both in pay and degrees. They are terrified of being laughed at by women—and this fear quickly boils into a destructive rage. The woman who smiles at the wrong time is beaten, raped, and murdered; the confident, curious woman is seen to invite her own destruction. 

Academia is like wandering into a gilded museum and gagging upon the stark realization that the naked bodies of your mother and sister are hanging from the walls. Silently slipping into the room, you can feel the hands of men reaching for you next. 

The kindest death that I face is to be ignored and silenced. My words have already been torn away from me or kicked into the shadows, and I have already been punished for my ideas. Men only respect other men. The esteemed title of ‘philosopher’ is unattainable unless I contort myself into masculinity. Either I must destroy the woman or they will do so. 

Catherine Malabou writes on the contradiction of a ‘woman philosopher’: “Philosophy is woman’s tomb. It grants her no place, no space whatsoever, and gives her nothing to conquer... The possibility of philosophy is thus largely premised on the impossibility of woman.”

Female philosophers are exiled to the land of poetry, where their writing is derided further. I like to say that my favorite philosophers are Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath: a comment that raises the eyebrows of male academics. These writers are mostly known for their highly publicized breakdowns and suicides: while madness is romanticized in male artists, it is scorned in women. 

The two cruellest labels against women are hysteria and gossip. The powerful wisdom of the emotions, the deep interpersonal insight of psychology have become degraded feminine ways of thinking. The kingdom of the heart, the knowledge of the self and of others, is ravaged by the pillaging armies of the mind. The ideal individual becomes a solitary agent, swathed in a protective layer of rights: he relies on nobody and protects only himself. A father is permitted to walk away at any time, while a mother never gives enough for her children. The nuanced intricacy of the web of care and dependency is wiped away in the blank face of laws and duties: men see themselves as tabula rasa, pretending to be immune to the deep memory of the womb from which they emerged. Plato wrote that the traumatic event of being born caused men to lose touch of their innate knowledge, while Socrates called himself a ‘midwife’—both espousing an ideology that men must be pulled away from the treacherous touch of woman in order to flourish into excellence. It is a mantra repeated again and again within the Western tradition: the mother is the passive soil of the earth, little more than a breathing incubator, while the father actively sows his seed and causes new life to spring forth. 

The medieval philosopher Boethius is known for proposing a theory of time, stretched out across eternity, where God stands as Being in a place apart from spatiotemporality, gazing down upon existence. He writes often of a single woman: Lady Philosophy. Even within the Romantic languages, where declension casts a shadow of gender across the syntax, the word ‘philosophy’ is feminine. So too can we return to Iustitia, the female figure of justice. In the masculine world of law and philosophy, why are the disciplines imagined as encapsulated by the female body? And why is this female body possessed only by the men who study her? 

The male gaze is not merely a visual technique of producing images of women that cater to an audience of heterosexual men. In feminist theory, the ‘male gaze’ is often imagined to be a lavascious position: the businessman watching the stripper sliding around the pole, the voyeuristic neighbor peeking through a young girl’s window as she dresses, the horny teenager scrolling through a disjointed compliation of fragmented genitalia and artificial moaning. 

But the ‘male gaze’ is the dominating gaze: there is power in the ways that we see. It is written as far back as the Genesis Rabbah: in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. To see is to rule over all, and the cruelest power is forcing another’s eyes open to gaze upon the unspeakable. MacKinnon writes that women live in sexual objectification the way fish live in water: not only does it surround us constantly, but it constitutes the only environment we have ever known. We see ourselves and other women through the blurred filter of this hierarchy—gender is not a dichotomy of body parts but rather a manufactured reality: nothing remains untouched by it. When men see philosophy and law as woman, they see themselves as her conqueror: explorers stepping foot on yielding, fertile ground, eager to ravage her body in imposing their structures of violence and cruelty. Within the institution of sovereign state, her life is nasty, brutish, and short. 

Do you remember the woman from the beginning of this story? Night has fallen and the library has grown cold around her. The austere portraits of men clad in greatness loom over her, reminding her that she will never join their ranks. The female body of classical art is nude, her limbs arranged invitingly. She smiles softly and asks no questions: she allows the viewer to take what he likes from her with a self-effacing brush of coy reserve. The woman has spent many hours studying the art of the Greco-Roman world, and she has never recognized herself in any of the half-lidded eyes of these soft, eroticized women. 

She once stood at a museum in front of a sculpture of Venus. The marble woman was crouching to the ground, as if kneeling before her viewer. Her arm curls across her upper body, obscuring the breast from direct view—her thighs are pressed together, and her hair falls in elegant waves across her face. Art historians have called her posture ‘playfully erotic’: a titillating peek-a-boo of sexuality behind a veil of feigned modesty. 

She imagined the marble woman standing up: pushing back her shoulders and jutting her chin upwards. She imagined looking at the marble woman directly in the eye. The sculpture is naked, but she is unashamed of her nakedness: like the endless depictions of the Athenian youth, her body is seen as a perfection of nature—strong and elegant architecture to house a dignified mind. 

This standing sculpture does not resemble the warrior women of the Amazon: fierce mythical women who sliced off their breasts in order to kill more effectively, rejecting their femininity to transform into virago. Our culture fantasizes about the Amazonian woman as female Ares: Diana, ferocious princess of the Amazons, is often depicted in armor and headgear. Even Athena is rarely depicted without her helmet and spear. 

But standing before us is not a warrior: she is simply a woman, and her body is simply a body. We can trace the muscles along her thighs, the soft rise and fall of her belly, the bones along her neck and shoulders. Her expression is unreadable: she gazes back to meet your eye, watching your movements. Standing before her, you seem to forget which one of you is the art and which is the audience. Perhaps you hold your breath, wondering if she will reach out to touch you. 

But the woman simply turns and walks away from you. Her marble feet make no sound as they climb down the pedestal and across the hallway. She was not created for you to look at her: she was created to exist, to experience the world through herself. 

One day, I find myself resting in a secret garden: there are stone walls surrounding me and in this hidden place, I have discovered the meaning of life. A grey cat is sleeping next to me and blue butterflies swim through the air, but there is no-one else here. I breathe deeply and on the exhale, my knowledge of time disappears: I float within the essence of reality and it is beautiful in its vast eternity. Like gazing upon the sea or the sky, I look at the world that I have created. With a smile that nobody will see, I press my lips against the small cat beside me and stand to leave. I retrace my steps by memory: across the hot desert sands and snowy mountaintops and finally to a familiar dirt path. I walk until I arrive at my childhood home. Tears spill over as I hold my mother, my sister: even my dog is there, her tail wagging in recognition. In Ithaca, I have found everything I was searching for. The rest of the marble melts away, and my story is just beginning.

[mulifan]

Excerpt from The Wicked King, by Holly Black We danced once before, at the coronation of Prince Dain. Before the murdering began. Before I took Cardan prisoner at knifepoint. I wonder if he is thinking of it when he spins me around the Milkwood. He might not be particularly practiced with a blade, but as he promised the hag’s daughter, he’s a skilled dancer. I let him steer me through steps I doubtless would have fumbled. My heart is racing and my skin is slicked with sweat. Papery moths fly above our heads, circling up as though tragically drawn to the light of the stars. “Whatever you do to me,” I say, too angry to stay quiet. “I can do worse to you.” “Oh,” he says, fingers tight on mine. “Do not think I forget that for a moment. You’d never allow it.” “Then why?” I demand. “You believe I planned your humiliation?” he laughs. “Me? That sounds like work.” “I don’t care if you did or not,” I tell him, too angry to make sense of my feelings. “I just care that you enjoyed it.” “And why shouldn’t I delight to see you squirm? You tricked me,” Cardan says. “You played me for a fool and now I am the King of Fools.” “The High King of Fools,” I say, sneer in my voice. Our gaze meets and there’s a shock of recognition, of mutual understanding that our bodies are pressed too close. I am conscious of my skin, of the sweat beading on my lip, of the slide of my thighs against one another. I am aware of the warmth of his neck beneath my twined fingers, of the prickly brush of his hair and how I want to sink my hands into it. I inhale the scent of him — moss and oak wood and leather. I stare at his treacherous mouth and imagine it on me. Everything about this is wrong. Around us, the revel is resuming. Some of the Court glances our way, because some of the Court always looks to the High King, but Locke’s game is at an end. Go back to the palace, Cardan had said and I’d ignored the warning. I think of Locke’s expression while Cardan spoke, the eagerness in his face. It wasn’t me he was watching. I wonder for the first time if my humiliation was incidental, the bait to his hook. Tell us what you think of our Lady. To my immense relief, at the end of the reel, the musicians pause again, looking to the High King for instructions. I pull away from him. “I am overcome, your Majesty. I would like your permission to withdraw.” For a moment, I wonder what I will do if Cardan denies me permission. I have issued many commands, but none about sparing my feelings. My mistake. “You are free to depart or stay, as you like,” Cardan says magnanimously. “The Queen of Mirth is welcome wheresoever she goes.” I stumble away from him and out of the revel to lean against a tree, sucking in breaths of cool sea air. My cheeks are hot, my face is burning. At the edge of the Milkwood, I see waves beating against the black rocks. Then I notice shapes on the sand, as though shadows were moving on their own. I blink again. Not shadows. Selkies, rising from the sea. A score, at least. They cast off their sleek seal skins and raise silver blades. The Undersea has come to the Hunter’s Moon Revel.

The wicked king by Holly Black

[ladyoftheshrimp]

Modern day creatures AU based on a selkie thing I saw in passing: someone picks up another’s coat which turns out to be a selkie's pelt, so the selkie sees them as a potential mate afterwards and seeks their hand in marriage. Percival and Newt can be either one and the one being proposed to is all 'oh fudge you were a selkie...' and the other is heart eyes and be mine forever. Cue cross-cultural shenanigans and earnest wooing!

The bar was dimly lit, lights flickered as the storm raged on. If Percival strained his ears he could just about hear the roar of the waves over the patter of rain. As far as holidays went this was an abysmal one. It had been Seraphina’s idea that he go to the shores of Ireland for a break from everything and everyone. At least she could have organised a portkey to some sunny beach or adventurous jungle, Percival groused to himself as he emptied his glass. The rain was never ending and showed no signs of letting up. There was nothing for it, Percival was going to have to brave the elements to get home. Rising from his stool he nodded to the barkeep and grabbed his coat from the rack.

It was a warm coat, snug and seemed to repel water as he stepped out into the dark. He shifted, the cloth pulled at his shoulder while the bottom dusted his ankles. The rain came thick and heavy so Percival paid no heed to the coat and hurried back to his hotel. Only once in the dry and light of his room did he realise his mistake.

The coat was beautiful but it was a mottled grey rather than his usual black. No wonder the arms felt so tight, it was obviously tailor made for someone taller but more slender than Percival. He wanted to return it but the weather (and a little humiliation at his mistake) made his hesitate. Understandably the owner of the coat would be annoyed by his mistake and perhaps the next day Percival would be able to return it when the weather may have had a sudden change of heart.

The knock on his door drew Percival out of his musings. With one last look at the coat he moved to open the door. A man stood in his doorway, an ill fitting black coat wrapped around him, too short in the arms and length but large around the shoulders.

“I didn’t think I’d managed to catch your eye at the bar.” It was a peculiar greeting made all the more strange by the man peering over his shoulder into the room. “I suppose you’ve hidden my skin already. Theseus always said I should be more careful.”

There was something remorseful about that comment but Percival couldn’t fathom what the stranger was on about.

“I suppose you want your own coat back now?” said man shrugged out of the ill fitting coat, unperturbed by the rain that lashed his back now. “Clever ploy, I’ll give you that. But someone as good looking as you could have just asked.”

Percival mutely took the offered black coat and realised rather belatedly that it was his. As he moved to hang the coat up to dry the other man strolled into the room behind him with wide eyes.

“Is this where we will live?”

“We?” Percival spluttered.

“Well, I don’t exactly have any land dwellings to share. I suppose for a starting family this will have to do. Though I’d always envisioned a little cottage by the sea somehow. That’s what all the scare stories we’re told as pups involve.”

“I’m sorry. Who are you? And what on earth are you on about?” Percival asked and moved a little further from the man, hand wrapped around the handled of his hidden wand.

“Oh!” The man sounded oddly pleased. “You’re a wizard. That explains it. And I’m Newt. Your intended.” The last part was said with a bit of puzzlement like Percival was the one who wasn’t making a lick of sense. Newt’s eyes alighted on his coat and a spark of hope lit him up from within before he quashed it down with a longing stare.

“I suppose you’ll lock it away. Though I didn’t have you pegged for the cruel kind who would torment me with it being so obviously close yet unattainable.” Newt said, eyes downcast and cheeks red. Percival looked between the man and his coat before making a snap decision and he flung the garment at Newt. The other man caught it with a surprised look before once again his face fell.

“You don’t want me?” The coat crumpled in his hands as he clenched his fists around it. Something niggled at the back of Percival’s mind. A story his mother had told him as a child.

“Selkie?”

Newt visibly brightened a little at the recognition.

“Why were you enticing strange men to pick up your coat in a bar?” That was a sentence Percival never thought he’d ever say. Newt shrunk in on himself.

“I’m too old and too odd to be considered desirable by my kin. I thought perhaps someone on the land might want me even though I wouldn’t be happy.”

“You’d rather be with someone and be unhappy than be alone?” Percival pondered the idea as Newt nodded.

“I don’t want to bring more shame to my family. When my intended crossed me it was bad enough. My name’s been tarnished since. It would have been almost easier to be considered a fool than an outcast.” Newt shrugged a little at his explanation and Percival nodded. He looked Newt up and down, appreciative of the man’s physique.

“Well, I don’t really want to keep you against your will. But I would be willing to get to you know a little better and see where things lead.” He confessed while internally he mused that perhaps the holiday wasn’t quite such a bore after all.

[mollymauk-teafleak]

The Seal Lullaby

In small, isolated, tight knit towns, people tend to talk. And in this town, they talk most about the strange couple that live down in the cottage by the sea. They talk about how they just turned up out of the blue one day, they wonder if they'll ever stop having children, they wonder what it is about them that makes them feel so...odd.

My Selkie AU fic! Thanks so much for all the excitement and support over this, it’s really turning into something I’m proud of and I can’t wait to show you guys it. New chapter every Thursday and comments are really really appreciated. Here it is on Ao3 if that’s more your thing and so many thanks to my phenomenal beta readers @minky-for-short @sassy-laffy @purearcticfire

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Eliza Schuyler had always been a girl who had one foot in some other world.

She was a ‘daydreamer’. She was always ‘away with the fairies’. She was ‘never quite there’. The ‘lights were on but no one was home’.

There were a lot of ways to say it, most of them dripping with honey sweet condescension that making the obstinately gentle phrases feel a little off, more like thinly disguised insults than anything else. They were muttered to Catherine Schuyler by friends and book club members and distant relatives in just enough of a low voice to make it plain that they didn’t want Eliza to hear but didn’t care that she absolutely could. To make it obvious that they were pointing out a serious flaw but in a delicate way that the girl should really be grateful for.

Eliza was never fooled. She knew exactly what they were saying; that she was strange, weird, an anomaly. That the way she went wandering on long, lonely, meandering walks for hours was unusual. That the way she could sit perfectly still and placid, like some eerily glass like lake, perfectly content inside her own head, made her odd. That the way she devoted herself more to the worlds between the pages of books than the one she physically occupied made her seem disjointed and distant.

But she couldn’t have cared less than if the musty, oddly dressed figures in the antique paintings scattered through the Schuyler mansion had begun wittering about her behind their hands. Eliza knew that this world, this life where everything her parents did had to be carefully calculated and considered for how it would ripple through the political and social circles they swam in, it just wasn’t where she belonged. Her older sister Angelica, one of the few people who understood and appreciated Eliza, apparent flaws and all, had learned to adapt. She found that she could easily navigate the complicated maze that was a life at the centre of the New York political scene, she was born to cut her path through the city with her wit and her charm and her brains. Even Peggy, her younger sister, was warming to it, she liked a life of risk and challenge and god, was the life of a Schuyler a challenge. But Eliza had learned very early on that she wasn’t supposed to be here. She preferred things clear, honest, genuine. She liked to know where she stood and know exactly who she was, she liked softness and calm and clean air. And none of that was here. Here things had to change a hundred times a second, the ground was always shifting underneath everyone’s feet.

Of course, Eliza made her peace with it, she’d had to or spend the rest of her life dissatisfied and she hated any kind of confrontation, it was so unnecessary. But there had always been a part of her that had felt like it was waiting. Though for what, she wasn’t quite sure. For something, for the world she was supposed to be in to come and find her.

She’d almost given up, as her twentieth birthday came to pounce on her and her parents started making noises about settling down, about finding a partner, finding a career. Internships and apprenticeships, whatever the hell ‘networking events’ were, battlegrounds and arenas to find a job that involved a glass panelled office and a mahogany desk and spreadsheets and market research, a husband that involved painfully polite dinners, loaded comments over breakfast and very quiet, formulaic sex. Eliza saw all of this coming and began to panic, seeing no way out before it all came crashing down on her head and drowned her. Her something still hadn’t found her; her lifeline was nowhere in sight.

And then, on an otherwise decidedly unspectacular day, it found her.

Or rather, she stumbled upon it. Nearly tripped over it, as a matter of fact.

Eliza had been going crazy cooped up inside the beach house. So, when the storm finally passed on and some weak sunlight began filtering through the thick, cloying grey clouds and the wind calmed from a furious howl to a vaguely irritated murmur, the instant the weather got over its days long tantrum, she was out of the door. Driven to the brink of insanity having no power, trapped between four walls with her parents constantly needling at her how she really should be attending Mrs Washington’s party next week, it would be useful for her, very beneficial; drowning them out by wishing with all her heart that Angelica hadn’t left on her honeymoon three days ago and Peggy hadn’t wriggled free of the family’s yearly beach vacation with pleas that her finals were coming up. As soon as the storm died down, she kicked back her bedcovers, pulled on some ratty old jeans and a threadbare brown wool jumper, her ever faithful scuffed, clunky boots and ran outside before either of her parents could snag her with a pointed remark. She didn’t even bring a coat, she wanted to feel the cold mist of the morning and the slight wind against her skin.

Eliza felt all her troubles begin to dissipate to some far corner of her mind, almost as soon as her boots began to crunch the dark, pebbly sand and the shore came into view. Everything was grey and cool and a little damp and that was exactly what she loved about it. The landscape looked as if it had been painted by some melancholic artist and Eliza could empathise with them. This was where she wanted to be right now, somewhere that made her shiver and squint a little and just feel a little more alive than she’d felt in a while, alone with the waves sighing against the shore and the breeze gossiping quietly as it ran through the long grasses.

And it was when Eliza was just wandering in blissful aimlessness on that freeing morning, on the beach that was quietly steeling back down after a storm, that she nearly tripped over the rest of her future.

She’d been nudging away all the pieces of driftwood that littered the shoreline to make herself a path, wanting to stick as close to the water as possible so it lapped at the base of her shoes. And some of the bigger scraps, the ones that maybe had once been part of a building, maybe someone’s home or a mighty ship, they required a bit of a kick to send them back into the waves and on their way to another shore. So Eliza made a bit of a game of daydreaming where these slabs of aged, salt worn driftwood may have come from and once been in another life as she nudged each one out of her way. It was a lot of fun actually…

Until one of the pieces of driftwood yelped when she kicked it.

There was simply no other response to that than to scream loud enough that it echoed all along the foggy beach and to pitch backwards onto the soggy sand. Which is what Eliza did, falling back on her butt and scrambling away, her dark eyes wide and terrified, anticipating some attack from the creature from the black lagoon. They’d find the careworn boots her mother had always hated on the beach that night and that’s all they’d have of her to bury…

But it wasn’t a monster. At least she didn’t think so.

The shadow she’d just unceremoniously kicked rolled, unfurled and sat up. It was a boy. A young man except…even in the first second she looked at him, in the mist, there was a second where she refused to believe he was even human at all, he looked like something from another reality in a way that was imperceptible but so obvious it was like the difference between up and down. And then the mist cleared as the young man began to hack and cough and wheeze, sounding terrifyingly sick and very normal. Eliza gasped and saw him clearly for what he was, a muscular but lithe man of what must be exactly her age if not very close, amber skin dappled with droplets of water, long dark hair plastered to his head almost all the way down to his shoulders, sharp features, long nose, high forehead and the most intense eyes she’d ever seen. It was those eyes that convinced her that the brief moment of unreality hadn’t just been a dream, that for a split second he really had appeared to her as something unknowable even in the oldest, dustiest, most worn tomes of myth and legend. But now all he was just a scared, cold, shivering young man, looking at her with as much fear and awe as must be in her eyes too. Like she was something odd and strange.

She also realised in that moment that he was completely naked. And making no effort to hide that fact. In the split second before she went bright red and made a point of fixing her eyes on his face, she noted that the hair that ran across his chest and muscled midriff and down to…other places was as dark as the hair on his head. The hair that was forming along his jaw into what would eventually become a goatee once he matured a little, tipped completely from adolescence into adulthood.

Eliza blinked slowly, the stunned silence between them stretching on and on until eventually she just squeaked, “I’m sorry I kicked you.” It seemed like the most appropriate thing to say at the time.

The young man blinked back, almost like he was mimicking her movements. He didn’t speak.

“I…were you swimming? It’s kind of cold out…” Eliza tried, wincing a little at her own awkwardness.

That seemed to get some response, there was recognition in those pitch-dark eyes and Eliza found that once she looked into them it was almost impossible to look away again. He nodded, a surprisingly assured nod for a guy that was butt naked and soaked on a freezing cold beach.

“Well, you’re brave,” Eliza commented, slipping into her habit of talking plainly and directly, whatever the situation, “Swimming right after a storm.”

Another response, that word storm seemed to shake something in him. Bad memories it seemed like, he looked suddenly cowed and afraid.

Eliza felt a dart of sympathy, “Did you…did you get caught in the storm?”

Of course, he’d been lying here amongst the driftwood, just like he himself was some of the flotsam and jetsam that the ferocious weather had displaced and kicked around for its own amusement. There was another, slightly sadder nod of confirmation.

She had made up her mind. Eliza was one of those rare people whose immediate response to anything was unflinching kindness and she wasn’t about to leave this poor guy naked and clearly borderline hypothermic. She got up, dusted the sand off the seat of her jeans and offered him her hand.

“Come on, you look like you need a hot drink and a blanket. I’ve even got some clothes you can wear, I think.”

He looked at her open palm with a mix of apprehension and curiosity for a long time.

“I’m not going to hurt you, I promise,” Eliza bit her lower lip, “I won’t even tell my parents, you don’t have to worry about them. You can trust me.”

He fixed his dark eyes on her- the ones that Eliza’s mind had decided looked like the blackest sea glass- and he nodded again. He did trust her, she could read it on his face.

As he took her hand and used it to haul himself up on shaky legs, as his unnaturally icy cold skin met her unusually warm skin, it was like a spark passed through them. A small but undeniable charge that made both sets of eyes open wide and both jaws drop slightly and both hearts beat a little faster. Neither of them could put a name to it, to the feeling that suddenly flooded both of their chests, but they were both so aware of it that it was as if it coloured the world. Like they could suddenly hear even the soft rustlings of the kelp way below the waves, see the individual particles of dust carried on the wind, smell the delicate scent of the tiny but hearty flowers that grew in the sea grass. Everything was suddenly more. That was the only way it could be rationalised.

“My name is Alexander.”

It took Eliza a moment to realise he had even spoken. But who else could that voice have come from; that voice that was lyrical and a little sharp with an accent that came from a place Eliza had never seen but also, somehow, knew she could never go to.

“Oh. I’m…I’m Eliza,” she answered, her own voice sounding shaky and breathy and unsure in comparison.

But the light that came on in his eyes when she said it. Alexander looked like he had never heard anything so beautiful.

The fact that he wasn’t fully human was so obvious that Eliza’s brain somehow just accepted it with no fuss. It was clear as day in the way he walked, like Bambi on ice, like the concept of getting around on two skinny legs was completely foreign to him. In the way, he kept touching his arms and running his hands through his hair and poking his stomach like he didn’t fully get that they belonged to him. The way he looked surprise at the sound of his own voice, like it startled him.

So there was something about him, that much was clear. What he was could wait, Eliza had the patience to just file that away until more immediate problems could be addressed. Like how exactly she was going to smuggle a very undressed Alexander into the Schuyler beach house, get him a shower and clothes and a hot meal without either her mother or father seeing. Because this was something she absolutely did not want to have to explain. Not just because she had no idea how but also because she felt a kind of possessiveness over him. This was what she had been waiting for, the confirmation that she wasn’t a freak or wired incorrectly, that she’d simply been in the wrong place up until now. Her parents had had their chance to understand, they’d refused. So Alex was hers and no one else’s. Plus, who know what they’d do with him, who they’d hand him over to. Eliza was not letting go of him, no way. She’d promised to take care of him.

Fortunately, her parents were still asleep, with it only being around seven in the morning so as long as they were quiet she should be able to sneak him into her room without too much trouble, he’d be safe there until…until she figured out where to go from there.

Except for one thing. Alex didn’t seem to really do quiet.

As soon as they walked through the door, those eyes snapped so wide until they took up most of his face, his jaw going slack with such childlike wonder it was a little startling. He was suddenly seized with a compulsion to touch everything like all of this was completely new to him. This didn’t combine well with his uncertain, clumsy movements; by the time Eliza had managed to herd him into the kitchen, he’d nearly knocked over the television, the ceramic vase, the side table.

The kitchen was even worse, the young man was like a hurricane. Eliza turned her back once to get a mug to make a hot drink and in seconds he’d knocked over a whole tray of cutlery as he’d tried to reach the vase of flowers on the windowsill. By some miracle, there was no movement from upstairs.

“Dude!” she hissed, pushing on his back to move him away from the carnage, trying to decide if she was more bemused or exasperated, “You’re going to wake up my parents!”

“Oh!” Alex only seemed to brighten at that, turning quickly so Eliza suddenly found her palms pressed to his damp chest. So much so she could feel the muscles rippling underneath his skin like living stone. She retracted her hands, fast.

“So, you live with your pod?” he chirruped as she waved him over to stand by the counter.

“My…my pod?” Eliza blinked in confusion, pausing as she went to hurry to the laundry room to fetch him a towel.

“Yeah,” Alex nodded, apparently not seeing her puzzlement, “How many of you are there? Are they all like you? You said your parents, do you have brothers and sisters too?”

She was a little taken aback, he asked questions with the rapid pace and animated curiosity of a small child at a museum, “Oh. You mean my family?”

Alex shrugged, “I guess.”

“Well, it’s only me and Mama and Papa here right now,” Eliza answered, busying herself with foraging in the laundry pile for the biggest towel she could find for him, “But I do have sisters. Two of them.”

“Wow, really?”

Eliza jumped a mile, in the blink of an eye Alex had somehow crossed the distance between them to stand right behind her. Apparently, personal space was another thing he just didn’t do.  

“Um…yes,” Eliza hurriedly passed him the towel, biting back a slightly exasperated sigh as he looked at it in confusion for a few heartbeats before swinging it around his shoulders, looking to her for approval. She showed him how to tie it off around his waist.

“That’s really lucky,” there was a very obvious wistful note to Alex’s voice as he trotted at her heels back to the kitchen, like he was eager to see whatever oddities she had to show him next.

Eliza looked at him as she got him down a can of soup from the pantry. Soup would help warm him up, he was still so bitterly cold she was starting to worry.

“Do you not live with your family?” she asked delicately.

He shook his head, looking a little morose, “No. It was always just my mother and me so after she died I was just on my own.”

He looked so small and lonely in that moment, Eliza was struck with a sudden urge to hold him. Fortunately, she caught it and pulled it back before she could look like a complete weirdo.

“I’m so sorry,” she said instead, meaning it.

“Fisherman got her,” Alex looked down at his bare feet, avoiding her gaze for the first time since they’d met, “They were after me, wanted my pelt but she…she put herself in between them so I could get away.”

Eliza’s jaw opened and closed a few times. That was an awful lot of information to just offer up to a stranger. And not a lot of it made sense. There were certainly more than a few words that hit her ear wrong, that jarred in the context. But they could wait.

So, what she did was she reached over and took his hand, squeezing it tight and firm in just a kind of ‘I’m here, you’re not alone’ gesture. Eliza was a firm believer that there wasn’t much such a gesture couldn’t solve.

It certainly seemed to work for Alex. Though startled at first, like consoling touch had become a little foreign to him, she soon felt his long fingers wrap around hers in turn and the raincloud that had settled over his face lifted a little.

It had gone entirely by the time Eliza had him wrapped up in one of her father’s roomier sweaters, it hung off his slim frame like a flag on a windless day, sat cross legged up on the counter top with a bowl of chicken soup in his hands that he was devouring like it was the first food he’d seen in days. As soon as he’d gotten past staring at himself in the silvered surface of the spoon in fits of delighted giggles, he’d fallen on the soup like he was ravenous; it had only been two minutes and the bowl was nearly empty. Eliza sat opposite him, watching him with a calm, curious eye, trying to start sifting through some of the things about him that made no sense.

She wasn’t having much luck.

“Here, you try!” Alex was holding out the bowl to her again, he’d done that more than a few times. Despite his obvious hunger, he was determined to share with her, “It’s so good, it’s amazing!”

“I’m okay,” she smiled softly as she gently pressed the bowl back towards him, finding his insistence sweet, “I made it for you.”

That seemed to satisfy him for now, he went back to eating with as much gusto as before.

“Alexander?” Eliza piped up after a few more moments of oddly companionable silence.

His dark eyes flickered upwards, fixing on hers with no embarrassment or flinching away.

“Eliza!” he seemed to enjoy just saying her name, he was taking every opportunity to do so. In his accent, his strange sharp tone that only made Eliza want to hear more of it, her name had a beauty to it that even her low self-esteem couldn’t deny.

“Where did you come from?” she decided just to be straightforward.

“Oh, from the sea,” he answered easily, nodding his head and wiping his mouth on the sweater’s sleeve, “I wander around a lot, started off up near Scotland but then I kept going further south because, y’know, without a pod I wasn’t doing so well with the cold and all that?”

Eliza didn’t know, she didn’t know at all, but she nodded all the same. This kid sure loved to talk, once he opened his mouth it was clear in his voice there were no plans to stop.

“But then there was that storm, did you see it! Flung me all over the place, I thought I was going to die. I got caught right in the middle of it, I didn’t even have time to brace myself. I was so scared, blacked out, then the next thing I knew, I had your boot in my ribs!”

Eliza bit her lower lip, “I’m still sorry about that. I thought you were driftwood.”

“Oh, it’s fine!” Alex honestly couldn’t look much happier about that fact, “I’m glad you did. No one’s ever been as nice to me as you. And I’ve never spent any time as a human before, it’s cool. Weird though, how do you stay up on just two feet? And I’m freezing, there’s no fur anywhere! Expect down here I guess, small mercies…”

Eliza’s breath caught in her throat, “W-wait, so…so if you’re not human…then what are you?”

For her, that question was a heavy weight, something loaded and tense and crackling. But he answered it like she’d just asked him what his favourite colour was.

“Oh, I’m a selkie?” he shrugs, “Sure, I guess you didn’t recognise me without the pelt, huh?”

That word had an edge of familiarity to it, like she’d read it somewhere in a story book before, a long time ago back when such ideas had enough magic to make them seem like possibilities. But it had no place here, here in reality, here on the cusp of adulthood?

“A…selkie?” she tried to get her mouth around the word and fumbled.

Alex nodded, “Yes. The seal people. A skin changer.”

“Oh,” Eliza wasn’t sure what to say to that. Because of course it was the truth, that wasn’t what she was finding problematic, that wasn’t the pill that got stuck in her throat. The problem was what to do about it.

“Except now I’ve lost my skin,” Alex sighed, putting the bowl down and running both hands through his salt stiff hair in distress. He looked like someone who’d just had a horrible realisation and was now spiralling, like some awful thought had just pounced on him and sunk it’s claws in, “I let go of it in the storm and now I don’t know where it is. And I can’t go back to the sea without it.”

Eliza fixed on this, this sounded like something logical that can be easily fixed. A problem with a clear and cut solution, unlike what to do with the fact that there were apparently creatures that could switch from seals to humans as easily as shrugging off a coat.

“If you just let go of it, it will probably have followed the same path,” she patted Alex’s knee reassuringly, “It can’t be too far away. I’ll help you find it.”

Physical touch seemed to relax him, he started to settle as soon as her warm palm rested on him. The temperature difference between them was still very obvious. It was slowly dawning on her that maybe Alex just ran a little colder.

“Maybe not today,” her mouth twisted worriedly, looking at the clock on the wall, “You might need to lay low today.”

Alex tilted his head, trying to follow her gaze, mimic her movements like he was taking all his cues from her.

“You look exhausted,” Eliza nodded, “Are you okay with just sleeping in my room while I fib my parents off as much as I can? I know it’s not ideal, I’m sorry, I’ll come up and see you every chance I get but I can’t have them finding you. As soon as it gets dark and they go to bed, we’ll go look for your…your skin.”

The implicit trust in his eyes was disarming, borderline terrifying. Like he’d follow her to the ends of the earth without too much questioning. Eliza had to look away after a few beats of it, close to being overwhelmed just by that honesty. She just couldn’t face it.

Any more than she could face the fact that, if asked, she was starting to feel like she’d follow him too.

[psylid]

Fandom Fic Rec Days

Thank you to all fanfic authors whose skill & creativity has floored me since middle school, and who continue to share their beautiful work with the rest of us just for the sake of sharing it. You never get as much recognition as you deserve. 

Unfortunately, I used to have a very bad habit of forgetting to bookmark fics and losing them forever. Here are the ones I managed to keep. Some fics are old enough that I’m not sure the author even uses the account anymore, but I’m going to post them anyway. Have fun with my rare pairs.

HAT FILMS:

Title: boundless as the sea (11k words)

Author: ghostofgatsby

Ships: troffy, shatsome

Summary:  Trott drums his fingers on his desk, thinking hard. It had been a few days since he and Smith had talked, and something had occurred to him. He and Smith had been together a long time, but they weren’t bonded in some sort of magical way. It wasn’t until Ross and Sips came around that the idea of magical bonds had come up. The kelpie could use some closure, some grounding, especially as unhinged as they all felt. Something to bind them together would make their court stronger. To bind Smith to him and him to Smith, he’s doing it his own way. And that means selkie magic.

Notes: One of the stories that hooked me into UMY. Beautifully written. Emotionally intense in the best way. The devotion and trust between Trott & Smith rings from every word of this fic, and I adore it.  

**

Title: Hot Whisky Eyes (5.8K words)

Author: Roehrborn

Ships: troffy, hatsome

Summary:  Time and time again, Ross has imagined the unthinkable: his two best friends, naked and wrapped in each other’s embrace. ~IRL Hatsome AU

Notes: For all your (consensual) voyeurism needs with an angst/pining appetizer. Very good smut. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve read this. 

**

Title: Spring (3k words)

Author: leonandon

Ships: hatsome

Summary:  Breezes through windows, staying too long in bed, quiet intimacy and love, lazy morning sex.

Notes: I’m going to try very hard to not put the word “lovely” in every sentence here. Gently slips you into an established, comfortable relationship and it feels so, so nice. Soft and easy and intimate and everything I wanted; a go-to.

**

Title: Boys of Summer (31k words)

Author: threeplusfire

Ships: hatsome, shatsome

Summary:  “I’ll send the car on Wednesday morning to take you to the airport,” Sips said, in the decisive tone of someone very used to getting what he wanted. - The unexpected trip out of town seems like a perfect chance to escape the sweltering summer heat. But not everyone can relax, even in paradise.

Notes: First off, there is a lot of sex and the sex is excellent, high-quality. But, this fic is also (or mainly, rather?) a beautifully complex exploration of character dynamics: Trott’s relationship with Smith & Ross, how best to integrate Sips into their personal lives, and how best to separate all of this from their professional ones. Fantastic AU; stunning fic.

**

Title: Putting the D in Teamwork (5.6k words)

Author: SummerAtLast

Ships: hatsome

Summary:  “Trott.” Ross fixed Trott with his saddest puppy eyes. “Don’t leave me hanging, mate.” “Trott,” whined Smith. “Don’t leave me out.” “Really now, gents,” said Trott. “Teamwork. I can do you both at once.”

Notes: As a heads-up, this fic has the boys as their Minecraft skins, so I guess keep that in mind if you’re put off by non-human dicks. That said, I honestly thought I would be, but I ended up loving this fic a lot. It’s equal parts good smut and funny/filthy banter that feels very correct for the three of them.  

**

Title: Gives Me the Greatest Peace I’ve Ever Known (4.8k words)

Author: leonandon

Ships: troffy, hatsome

Summary:  Smith's way of dealing with things tends to involve running around in the middle of nowhere for a few days. Trott and Ross have never gone along, but this time Trott asks if he can join. Surprisingly, Smith agrees.

Notes: An absolutely gorgeous fic with ace!Smith, which was really exciting for me to find. I love the wilderness setting and the descriptions -- the space. The quiet, the easy affection, and being mindful of boundaries. Another one I’ve read over and over again.    

**

Title: what’s done in the dark will be brought to the light (8.8k words)

Author: vosiferous

Ships: troffy, hatsome

Summary: There is a rattlesnake of a man, one with a soft smile, a gaze that slices through souls, and a tongue that rattles lies like saliva. His blood is poison and his laugh are razorblades. He is a collector of fine artifacts, and he sees value in all things.If you are not careful, he will see the value in you.

Notes: This one is technically unfinished, but each of the 3 chapters are pretty much stand-alone drabbles. Dark and gorgeous UMY stories. The writing has a magic and other-worldliness to it that’s perfect for UMY and makes this a fantastic read. Heed the warnings.

**

Title: Layout (2.8k words)

Author: threeplusfire

Ships: alsipsy

Summary: Lots of comfort, pretty boys and sports. An AU about gymnast!Smith.

Notes: I just have a huge weakness for basically everything in this fic. Takeout, TV, massages. Toys. Sips taking care of Smith in the gym and out. A total feel-good fic. Relaxing and lovely to read. Yet another go-to.

MISCELLANEOUS:

Title: Not Such A Bad Way (5.6k words)

Author: _angelicorn_

Ships: Blue Beetle/Booster Gold (DC Comics)

Summary: (My own, since the author didn’t provide one) Ted makes some upgrades to the Bug, so he and Booster take it for a test-drive. After a disastrous engine failure, they end up stranded in space with no heat and help (in the form of Guy Gardner) hours away. 

Notes: More of my weaknesses. Huddling for warmth. Awkward sex. Best friends’ first time together -- slow & experimental. ANGST. I cry every time, but I promise it all turns out okay. I will love this fic always and forever because it’s such a perfect representation of these dumb men and their beautiful friendship. 

**

Title: The Policeman Officer’s Seduction (852 words)

Author: kyuuketsukirui

Ships: Nicholas Angel/Danny Butterman (Hot Fuzz)

Summary:  You ask someone back to yours after a night at the pub, that's pretty cliched, isn't it? And what could be more romantic than Point Break? But Nicholas just doesn't seem to get it.

Notes: Another best friends’ first time fic but this one is just cute and funny. Danny’s POV is perfect. If you don’t think this is exactly what happened after the movie, I don’t know what to tell you. 

**

Title: Happy Beginnings (2.7k words)

Author: ennui_blue_lite

Ships: Control/Tony (A Bit of Fry and Laurie)

Summary: Control has something important to tell Tony. Sometimes, actions speak louder than words.

Notes: So, my friend and I were kind of in love with the ABoFaL skits featuring Control & Tony Murchison -- spies for the British Intelligence agency. We decided as a joke to look for fic, but it just so happened that one of the only people on the planet who wrote Control/Tony fic was also really, alarmingly good at it. I can’t read this without smiling. If you have no idea what I’m talking about here, you can still read this fic, but you will have many questions about it and probably also about me. (You can watch one of the skits -> here <- if it helps.)

**

Title: None So Blind (25k words)

Author: Brianna Falken

Ships: Mirror!Spock/Mirror!Kirk (Star Trek TOS)

Summary: Spock convinces a blinded Kirk to allow him to create a mental link between them while they are stranded on an uninhabited planet after the shuttle crashes.

Notes: This fic was originally published in a zine in 1997, which I think is very cool, and it’s my favorite Mirrorverse story ever. About learning to trust and lowering guards, even when distrust and distance were all that kept them alive before. Intimate & vulnerable. Even if you’re like me and usually avoid the Mirrorverse, this fic is a lot less dark than most (but still kind of dark, so be safe) and a really good read.

**

Title: Lay Down Your Burdens (8.3k words)

Author: autotunedd

Ships: Choi Seunghyun/John Lee (RPF)

Summary: Tohn vignettes

Notes: Another instance where a friend and I looked for a weird pairing as a joke, but then the fic was so good that the joke was on us. This is Korean rapper T.O.P (of Big Bang) with John Lee, the director of a movie T.O.P starred in called 71: Into the Fire. There’s no brief way to explain why this pairing exists, so I will just say that this fic ruined me. It is so striking, quiet, and achingly beautiful that I was desperate for more tohn but there really just isn’t any. Even if you have no idea who these people are, I can guarantee you will find this fic incredible. I think you have to make an account, but it’s worth it, ok? It’s worth it.  

**

Title: The Cusp and the Fjords We Wade Through (9.6k words)

Author: almadeamla

Ships: Rick Grimes/Shane Walsh (The Walking Dead)

Summary:  Written for the twd_kinkmeme prompt: Rick and Shane had a thing before Rick met Lori.

Notes: Such vivid imagery in this. Matter-of-fact writing style that leaves so much unsaid but clearly understood (shows; hardly ever just tells -- mirrors the natures of characters perfectly). I love the tone of this fic to death. Bittersweet. Aches. So good that I sometimes forget it didn’t happen in the show (and other times I choose to forget). My perceptions of the characters were irrevocably changed. For me, this is the story of Rick and Shane.

This is by no means a complete list; I messed up and had to put this together just today. I’ve read so many excellent fics, but some of them were awhile ago. I didn’t have enough time to read through again and do them the justice they deserve in my notes. So, these are the fics I’ve read enough times that I’ll remember them forever. 

Thank you again, fic authors -- our often unsung heroes. 

[mimi-kurusu]

BNHA ask: All of them you havent already done

hhhHHHHH YEEEES! ok this got really long so i put it under a read more!

1: What part of the anime/manga piqued your interest?tbh i watched it on a whim with one of my friends because we were bored and procrastinating on homework one night and we looked at the plot summary on crunchyroll and went “yeah sure!”

2: Did you think Midoriya would be a good protagonist in the first few chapters/episodes?yes!! immediately i loved him and only wanted the best for him; i have always thought that he makes a wonderful protag!

3: How do you think Midoriya’s conflict with Bakugou will end?not really sure! i just want them to be on good terms ;w;

4: What was your first reaction to Bakugou’s treatment towards Midoriya?i was not happy to say the least, but knew that his character would evolve :D

5: What do you think of All-Might as a hero?i love that man oh my god

6: Do you think that Midoriya deserved to get OFA?yes!!! are you kidding me??? he’s a good bean who just wants to help everyone!!

7: Aside from Midoriya, which character in the series do you think has had the most character development?iida and todoroki!!

8: Favorite unpopular character?i’m not 100% in-tune with the fandom so i can’t tell who is unpopular really so i may be wrong in saying mina and hagakure?

9: Favorite overall character?…. aizawa and uraraka

Pink: What are your main/favorite ships?midoriya/uraraka, midoriya/todoroki, aizawa/mic, kirishima/happiness and good fortune, endeavor/being alone and miserable forever

Blue: Do you have any NOTPs?any of the adults/any of the kids, endeavor/his wife or anyone else for that matter

Yellow: Favorite fanfiction about your OTP?i love all erasermic fanfics

Green: Any preferred rarepairs?not sure if they’re really rare, buuuut allerasermic, iida/todoroki, mic/all might, midnight/aizawa, aizawa/mic/midnight, midoriya/shinsou, uraraka/mina, kirishima/kaminari, jirou/kaminari, and jirou/momo are all very good and i love them

Purple: Do you have any works centered around your OTP?nah

Orange: Fluff or Angst?angst that ends in fluff is THE BEST!!!!

Red: What do you like the most about your favorite ship?the dynamics between the characters!

Turqoise: What do you hate about your favorite ship?canon can be unhelpful ;A;

Lavender: Does your ship get a lot of hate? If so, why?i’m not sure since i don’t really pay attention, but i certainly hope not? the fandom (or at least the small section i’m in) seems very relaxed about shipping!

Grey: Realistically speaking, will your ship ever become canon?one of them, maybe (midoriya/uraraka). i consider erasermic basically canon x3c

Pop: Do you think the “Dabi and Shouto are brothers” theory is true?i’m unsure, but it’s a good theory! it’d be really interesting, but dabi doesn’t look anything like shouto and the rest of the todoroki kids, so i’m on the fence :0

Indie: Opinions on the Traitor Kaminari theory?please no ;A; my heart can’t handle it

Punk: Opinions on the Traitor Kirishima theory?see above ;;;A;;;

Rock: What do you think of the “The doctor from Midoriya’s childhood is affiliated with the League Of Villains” theory? (in reference to this post)oh…. my god…. i’m stunned! i have never seen this particular theory before but WHOA WHOA WHOA! my mind is BLOWN!

Jazz: What do you think will happen now that Eri has been saved? look, i only know that eri exists because i am bad at blacklisting spoiler tags. i know she exists, but i have managed to avoid anything about her like her quirk, who she is in relation to everyone else, and what happens with her, so i’m not really sure! (i am not caught up with the manga since i mainly just watch the anime, btw)

11: Dekusquad or Bakusquad?both!!

12: Most underrated student?kouji hands down

13: Dadmight or Dadzawa?uhhh obviously BOTH! two dads are better than one

14: Whose quirk do you think is the most unique?aizawa, mineta, momo, kurogiri, jirou, midnight, sero, aaaand tokoyami

15: Aside from Midoriya, who do you think has the most potential to be #1 Hero?i believe in my kids and know they can all be great heroes, however, i want to say that iida, momo, todoroki, and bakugou are pretty high tier. as for who is #1 between them… it’s a good toss-up. :P

16: Should Mineta be replaced by Shinsou in the hero class?nah just add shinsou in. the more the merrier!! give aizawa more kids 2k18

17: Favorite student(s) outside of Class 1-A?shinsou and mei

18: Any HCs for the entirety of Class 1-A?each one of them has slipped up and called aizawa ‘dad’ once or twice. momo keeps a tally for each student in a notebook. hagakure, todoroki, midoriya, mina, and momo herself have slipped up the most. aizawa never flinches nor does he mind when this happens and is fully aware of the tally. he keeps his own mixed in with papers to grade and important files.

19: Do you remember their seating arrangement by heart?lmao nope (sorry kids!)

20: Which of the students do you think has the most potential to become a villain?i impulsively want to say bakugou, but when i actually think about it, i just can’t picture that?? the show (and manga that i’ve read) have made it a point to show and explain that he is a flawed, angry kid who does terrible things, but learns from people calling him out and losing and making mistakes and all that. so it just seems to whittle his characterization to bare bones by saying he might become a villain because of these things, ya know? so i guess the real answer is none of them XD

Techno: Favorite villain?kurogiri

Classical: Eight Precepts of Death or League of Villains?shhh i don’t know the first group so i gotta go with the league

Soul: Shigaraki or Chisaki?i don’t know who chisaki is but i absolutely do not want to choose shigaraki >>

Alternative: Most obnoxious villain?SHIGARAKI LMAO

Apple: Favorite popular HC?actual father dadzawa, esp when he adopts the kids with crappy family situations. c:

Strawberry: Who is your favorite pro-hero?aizawa, mic, all might, midnight, thirteen, gunhead, selkie

Banana: Which of the pro-heroes’ quirks fascinates you the most?mic’s!!! i relate!!! so much!!!

Cherry: Should Endeavor die like right nowYES. REST IN SMITHEREENS, ASSHOLE

Pear: What was your reaction to Todoroki’s backstory?i despised endeavor so, so much and wanted to adopt todoroki immediately. sorry endeavor, but he’s MY son now. it made me love that boy as much as i do and now i just want him happy and safe more than i did before learning his backstory

Kiwi: Should the BNHA girls get more spotlight/recognition?UH. DUH!!!!!!!!

Pineapple: What do you like the most about BNHA, as a whole?the wide range of characters!!! everyone is so cool and fascinating and there’s so many!

Watermelon: Dub or Sub?i love both! :D (tho i like mic’s japanese voice better since his entire thing with all the “YEAHHHHH!”s and other little english remarks he says makes more sense when he’s not already speaking 100% english. XD plus it’s higher and more… uhhh well, over-the-top in a good way!)

Coconut: How do you think Hokiroshi is doing, in terms of the plot?i love it so far! i’m having a great time watching and coming along for the ride and really look forward to season 3!

Blueberry: What makes BNHA unique from all the other shonen animes/mangas out there?the characters!!! both in design and personality and how the writing treats them, idk, it just feels different, ya feel?

[whyshebiteownass]

Old Excepts: Scrimshaw (2013 Unedited) 5

Wyatt crept forward once it looked like Miriam was forgotten for the moment, grabbing one hand as she more or less hid between Tristan and her friend, “Miriam. You look like you need to come play with the chicks in the nursery with me.” Miriam, still trembling, started to shake her head, looking to her brother, but Tristan touched her shoulder gently.

“No, no, Miriam. Go ahead and go, you deserve to relax a little after… that. Most people never get a chance to see dragon chicks, take advantage while you can, all right? I can take care of making the reservation for our eggs myself; just come back to the Aerie guest hosting, or let me know if you’ll be staying with Miss Ikan before nine. I’ve rented a residential unit for the week.” Hesitantly, Miriam nodded and allowed Wyatt to pull her away, glancing back at her stiff-backed brother until she was pulled through a heavy set of doors into the residential section of the Aerie.

Wyatt was quiet for a long time as they moved through corridors that got less and less crowded as time went on; it wasn’t until the came to an unmanned elevator that she spoke again, “I’m really sorry, Miriam, that was… so unfair to you. You need to know that isn’t how the Service works, we don’t just force people in if they don’t want to go, no matter how high their adaptive level is, or, or, anything! We’re not slavers. Papa is probably going to say the same thing, and your mo… Mirena is going to get scolded and docked so hard for saying those things.”

“She, what? Scolded? She’s a rider, isn’t that a little above the importance of…”

“No! No, the commander of the division she works under is going to let her have it when he hears about this, and Sobek; that’s her dragon, he’s going to yell at her so, so, so much, because he is very intolerant of nonsense. He lectured me for three whole hours about not saying thank you once time, so I can’t even imagine what he’s going to say about suggesting the things she did.” Wyatt was obviously distressed, her accent running thick enough that she was barely understandable at times, not helped by how quickly she was talking.

“Wyatt.”

“I mean, I don’t understand why she’d say any of that, she must really hate your fath… um. Mr. Reeve,” Wyatt’s hands were getting involved now, the girl gesturing wildly as she spoke; Miriam wasn’t actually able to understand her anymore, as she’d slipped back into a different language.

“Wyatt.”

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to start… doing… that. I’m sorry,” back in a language Miriam understood, but if anything Wyatt just looked even guiltier.

So Miriam slung an arm around her shoulder, “Wyatt, it’s all right. It was a little startling and a lot rude, but she doesn’t know me, my possible father hates her and doesn’t like me at all, and she obviously doesn’t like him and wanted to make him angry. I don’t actually mind all that much, because I don’t really care too much about either of them. It was just very upsetting at the time.”

Wyatt paused, the merrow girl grabbing Miriam’s webbed hands up in her own webbed hands and looking at her seriously, “You’re sure?”

Squeezing back, she nodded, “Yes. I don’t have to ever speak to her again, and I have. Um. Certain advantages at home to keep people from bothering me too much, especially if Mirena was telling the truth. I really, honestly don’t mind. I’m used to much worse.”

“That’s hardly a good thing! But okay. If you say. Okay.” Wyatt sucked in a deep breath and then brushed herself free of invisible dust, then paused to button back up where one part of her blouse was flapping a little loose, “Let us now go to see the dragon chicks! And I’m still telling my parents about this whole thing.”

“I can live with that, but let it go for now? I want to see the babies.” Miriam tugged Wyatt in the direction they’d been heading, hoping to prompt Wyatt to start leading again; it worked, thankfully.

“Chicks! Not babies or hatchlings or anything, they get offended. It’s very adorable when they get offended, but they also have sharp teeth and sometimes little horns and it hurts when they bite or headbutt you because you have offended their tiny, tiny dignity.”

“Do they really?” Miriam was intrigued despite herself, “Are they really small enough that it isn’t an issue? They get so big…”

"Oh, they're tiny to begin with," Wyatt cupped her hands a little apart from each other, enough to fit a small melon, "Eggs are small, very small; the college thinks it was to better hide them before humans and dragons paired up, but the chicks when they hatch are small too. They'll only grow a little bit unless they pick a partner. I think simorg only reach eight or nine hands, and they're the tallest breed there is!"

When Miriam didn't say anything, a little lost from the comment, Wyatt peeked back at her and stopped, sighing, "All right, how much of that do I have to explain before we go see the chicks?"

Miriam's helpless shrug was enough of an answer.

"Well. All right, we can handle this," she hustled Miriam off towards a small unused corner between a decorative pillar and a crook in the corridor, pushing the other girl into the back corner and motioning for her to crouch low. Wyatt then produced a piece of charcoal from within a hidden pocket of her pants, brandishing it with a flourish, "So, there are eight types of dragon."

"I knew that much," Miriam told her, self consciously running a hand through her hair. It was embarrassing, to know so little all of a sudden.

"Most people do! Or they think there are more, because depending on climate they can look really really different in the same breed! But, so, there are two breeds for each primary element; so basically, two for each elemental. Okay?" As she spoke, Wyatt sketched very questionable interpretations of said elementals in charcoal on the floor - one solid black scribble with a white circle of a face for efreet, one lumpy sausage like shape that divided at one end which presumably represented a selkie, one stick figure that ended in a circle with four stick legs and a flowing tail which was probably a centaur, and finally, a terribly drawn cat with wings and mustache for the sphinx.

Miriam held herself back from commenting, but Wyatt scowled at her anyway, "My art is amazing, don't judge me. So, you probably know most about Leviathans and Ursalka, since they're the water breeds," she drew two lines away from the selkie, one ending in a very long squiggle with teeth, and the other ending in a less long squiggle with teeth and stumpy legs. "People who bond to them become merrow, like your mother. You knew most of that, right?"

"Most? I knew about Leviathans. That's it." Miriam smudged the charcoal of the longer squiggle with one fingertip.

Wyatt nodded, "So, that's water. For fire, you have your Onucha," one line leading away from the efreet drawing ended in a spiky mass with little specks for eyes, "And your Buraque," fire line two ended in a little stick body with a comically large head and wings, surrounded by jagged little lightning bolts. Earth was next, a line coming away from the centaur to end in a large oval with tiny legs, tiny wings and many, many teeth, “This is the Tarask, and…”

“Oh, I know that one too, that’s the type we’re getting our Gillies from!” Miriam brightened, finally recognizing something she knew again.

Wyatt nodded, “Yes! I’d forgotten you were getting Gillies, but yes, they come from a Tarask,” another little line, “And a Leviathan.” At the junction of this new little line, Wyatt started to draw something, but Miriam dove for the charcoal and wrested it away in a mock battle, interrupted by giggles as she scrawled a more accurate depiction of the drake species in the correct spot with Wyatt desperately trying to muss her work by grabbing her hand, biting her lightly, and rolling over her in pursuit of the drawing utensil. By the end of it, they were both covered in black lines, mussed and out of breath, but Wyatt held the (now broken) charcoal triumphantly; though Miriam was pleased as well, as her Gillie drawing had survived the rumpus.

Wyatt took a moment to trace over the bits that had been smudged beyond any sort of recognition, before picking up where she’d left off, “Like I was saying… for earth you have Tarask and Vertrag,” the Vertrag was represented by long, long legs and a little slim body with a whippy tail. “That leaves the air dragons, the Lamsu - you’ll see one of these in a few minutes, she is simply adorable and so shy!” The matching drawing was all fluffy feathers, horns and huge talons, followed by a, if anything, larger and fluffier drawing, though with less remarkable talons. And no horns. “And then the Simorg, which is the biggest breed that actually flies well, and is also the least threatening looking. Once again, incredibly adorable when they’re little, though we don’t have any in the nursery right now.”

“What kinds are in the nursery, other than the one… Lamsu?” Miriam leaned forward to examine the diagram, memorizing it; Wyatt helpfully scrawling in the breed names beside each picture once she noticed.

“Well, there is Fortuna, the Lamsu. But we have Enkidi and Gilga, who are twin Vertrag, which we never expected! Same egg and everything, we’ve been looking for twins for them, too, parading every pair we find in front of them, but so far they keep snubbing everyone. We have one itty bitty Onucha who hasn’t picked a name yet, but probably will soon, and then we’re temporarily hosting an Ursalka who just hatched here because someone messed up clutch timing when they were transporting it’s egg back to Diamante. It’s so little it can’t even talk yet, and won’t even pick a gender for another half year. But it’s really eely and cute in the meantime.”

Abbreviated explanation successfully delivered, Wyatt was quick to chase Miriam back out into the service corridor proper and continue their walk down the hallway, hiding the remains of her charcoal stick back in her pocket and trying to not attract attention to the dark smudges on their clothing. Miriam remained at least partially baffled, “Well, that makes sense, but what do you mean by picking a name? Or, really, a gender? Do they change or…?”

Miriam trailed off, giving Wyatt space to jump in and clear up her confusion; thankfully, the merrow girl did not disappoint, “Let me just explain the process, then. So, two dragons, they mate, and then the female lays eggs three months later. Three months after that, the eggs start hatching, drakes first if there are any, and then dragons.”

Wyatt tugged Miriam after her as they cut into a smaller, darker passageway, “When a dragon chick hatches, it is sort of just a blobby half formed little mess, like a newborn kitten. It can’t speak, it’s eyes are still sealed and it doesn’t even have a gender, at least not yet. So, within about a month, it’s eyes are open, scales are starting to grow in, and it’s started to talk. Not really like a baby, they start off a lot smarter than a human baby, but you know what I mean. After about six or seven months, the chick starts eating or requesting certain metals or gemstones, which will change it’s body chemistry and give it a gender! It’s instinctive, once a chick decides, it just knows what it needs to get there. And any time after they pick a name and a gender, they eventually see or meet a person, who they choose as a partner. Like I mentioned earlier, they only get to a fraction of their adult size and intelligence if they don’t choose a human.”

“You’ve very knowledgeable about this.”

“Momma makes me read research papers when I get in trouble. I can cough this stuff up all day long! I do understand, but it’s so much easier to explain in larger words,” Wyatt made a face, brows furrowed and sticking her tongue out, eyes crossed as she drawled her next words, accent thickening to a intentionally mocking level, “It also makes me look smart. I’ve chased away civvies that were too interested in me by just letting them have a stream of technical jargon. I’m too nice to do that to you, though.”

“I appreciate it,” Miriam hesitated for a moment, giving Wyatt an intense look through the shield of her bangs, “Do people get interested in you a lot?”

“They do,” was the answer as Wyatt hooked an arm through Miriam’s elbow and tugged her in close, “And unlike some people I have the advantage of a pair of any and protective parents who don’t like strangers perving over their child. No offense.”

Miriam shook her head, “None taken.”

* * * (there is an awful section that I trimmed out that should go here)

Miriam leaned against the grating of the low gate, watching Enkidi and Gilga chase around the little nameless Onucha on their long, long legs, rolling the little guy from time to time, playfully, and being rolled in return when he made a sharp turn back on himself and caught them off guard as he bowled through their stilt-like legs and sent them tumbling in their own time. All three were chattering, laughing to each other, and it was… an awful lot like watching any other group of children play. Off to one side, Wyatt was peering down into a large tank, cooing at something long, sinuous and sleepily peeping back at her, a muzzle just barely held above water.

“Hello?” The little voice caught Miriam off guard, and she jerked her attention around, not seeing the person she’d expected. “I’m here,” the little voice said again, barely above a whisper, and this time Miriam could pinpoint the source; a little cave made of soft blankets and stacked crates, with a small, bluish gray colored muzzle poking out of the darkness.

Miriam shuffled closer, “Hello,” she said solemnly, leaning her forehead against the fencing, “Are you Fortuna? I’m Miriam.” It made sense that the only female dragon, and the only one she’d not seen yet, would be the tiny bundle talking at her from the shadows - Wyatt had called the little Lamsu shy, after all.

The dragon crept out of hiding, just a little, and Miriam was able to admire the startlingly bright spray of adolescent feathers and the nubby, immature horns that they surrounded, “Yes! Oh, yes, I am Fortuna. Can you help me?” The dragon chick cocked her head at Miriam.

She wasn’t more than two armfuls worth of talons and fluff; Miriam crouched down as the chick huddled in close, conspiratorially, as she requested assistance, “What can I do for you?”

“I was watching you, through our window,” the little face turned toward the wall length window of tinted glass, then back, “You… had someone else with you earlier? A boy? I…” the dragon chick shuffled, head dropping, and Miriam realized with rising delight that there was nothing else that could be described as but bashful, “I really want to meet him? He seemed very… excellent.”

This was important, somehow, Miriam knew it. She thought back to her makeshift lesson on dragons from she and Wyatt’s walk to the nursery. Well. Something from that seemed like a match for this situation. She leaned in as close as she could get, face full flush against the fencing, little Fortuna leaning in as well until their noses touched through the grating, “Miss Fortuna, would you like to proposition me and Wyatt’s friend Mordecai?”

The dragon chick chattered, fluttering her wings, twisting and tucking her head under one of them before she popped back out and hooked her claws in the grate, her voice coming out so quiet she almost sounded ashamed, “Yes ma’am, I’d like that very much.”

“Wait right here, all right?” The little dragon nodded as Miriam clambered to her feet, jogging over to Wyatt and catching her by the arm to pull her away from the tiny sleepy Ursalka. A quick glance showed Fortuna watching them with big, limpid, hopeful eyes, “We need to stage a jailbreak. Fortuna wants Mordecai.”

Wyatt didn’t seem to be catching on for a long moment, staring at her like she was crazy, before understanding bloomed on her face and she jerked around to give the dragon chick a quick look, “Want want, as in, picking him?” She clutched at Miriam’s arm like a lifeline, voice quiet and intent.

“That’s what it sounds like,” she tugged her captured arm, dragging Wyatt after her, and the pair were soon hunkered down on one side of the grating, Fortuna on the other, a makeshift council of war.

Wyatt was fully on board as soon as Fortuna shyly asserted her desire, “We’d never get someone here to let her out in time, Mordecai is leaving in less than…” Wyatt bounced to her feet and peeked out the door at the big hallway clock, coming back to them with her face grim, “If things are running on time, we’ve a half hour til he’s crated in. It takes that and that again to get someone down here who’s rated to take a chick out on an official expedition.”

“So we’re kidnapping her?” Miriam asked, just wanting to be sure.

“Yep."

They looked at each other, then at the dragon, "Miriam, can you climb the grating? My hands can fit through to help boost Fortuna up to you, if you can.” Miriam was already halfway up the six foot wall by the time Wyatt was done speaking, and she had to hurry up to get her hands in position to help stabilize and boost the willing dragon chick until Miriam, draped over the top, was able to reach her. By now, the other three dragons were gathered around; the nameless chick was the first to scuttle up the grating, paws slipping into the holes easily, and began helping boost Fortuna over the top. Enkidi and Gilga were right behind, jamming their long legs through to help balance Miriam as she reached down and pulled Fortuna up towards her while they simultaneously provided a look out.

Miriam, straddling the top of the grating with Fortuna carefully balancing across her thighs, pulled her jatak loose, flinging the long edge up and over her shoulder, making a sling for her to fold the dragon chick into, "Mind your claws, please?"

The Lamsu was careful to do just that, keeping her paws fisted up as she climbed into Miriam's clothing and settled, the great killing talons on her feet rucked up safely in the mess of her fluffy baby feathers. Miriam swayed, balance compromised, but managed to pull the edge of her jatak around and tuck in into her waistband under the dragon, meaning it wouldn’t slither open and drop the poor thing any which way when she was climbing down. All three dragon chicks and Wyatt eased her down, not giving her a single chance to fall; for which Miriam was profoundly grateful.

On the ground again, Miriam patted at the awkward, quivering lump concealed by her jatak, arms crossed underneath the tiny dragon; who while tiny for a dragon was still was five or better hands tall at the shoulder, and had a great deal of fluff besides to conceal, and was, more than anything else, surprisingly dense and heavy. One of the Vertrag, the one with more blue to her face; Gilga, then, poked her snout through the mesh and snorted, "Fortuna, your tail..."

Said tail was pulled back into the concealing clothing. Miriam still looked like she was pregnant with incredibly rambunctious octuplets; if the expression of Wyatt's face; lips twisted and turned down at the corner, almost scowling, was anything to go by, then she was about as confident in this ruse's ability to be pulled off successfully as Miriam was, "Well. If we're caught, we... probably won't get in trouble. We're children. And we're helping a dragon get to their pick."

Enkidi, more green in the face than his sister, piped in, "I will take the fall! This is completely my idea and I threatened the chick with savage nibbling if you didn't obey my whims!" Obligingly, the little Onucha flopped on the ground in a dragonic swoon, letting Enkidi slap a paw atop him and pose threateningly.

Gilga nipped at him and turned back to the escapee and her "kidnappers", "We'll cover for you as long as we can, it's almost dinner time, and there is only so long we can stall them before the realize Fortuna is gone. Hurry!"

Waddling, Wyatt walking as blockingly in front of her as she could, Miriam hustled out of the nursery, arms wrapped around the badly concealed dragon chick. They were racing against time and the service's efficiency to get her to Mordecai in time.

* * *

It was almost embarrassing how far they got before someone decided to find out what was going on. They were quite the spectacle; Miriam, at barely five feet tall, walking about supporting a round quivering lump in her clothes that made her look half as wide as she was tall, and Wyatt was doing her best to get directly in the line of sight between said enormous quivering lump and anyone who happened to glance their way, meaning she was constantly bouncing around her companion.

They had to stop to consult a hand drawn chart posted on a cork board, “Mordecai said Nippers, right? That means we’re going to either Kahai or Vayu. But I can’t remember which one is open to bidders! Shit!” Wyatt scoured the board, hoping for more information to reveal itself while Miriam carefully tried to tuck Fortuna’s slipping tail back into concealment. They went through some very unique contortions before they ended up the Fortuna legs up, gripping her own tail between her fore-claws.

The poor thing looked mortified.

Miriam felt pretty mortified herself, especially when someone gently set a hand on her shoulder and tugged her to turn her around. Tobias Dasco, the Serviceman from earlier who helped with the fight, raised an eyebrow as his eyes dropped to her draconic lump, then rose to meet her eyes again. He didn’t even have to say a word, the faint amused twitching of his lips was enough.

Miriam nudged Wyatt, then shoved her hard when she didn’t turn right away, not loosing eye contact with the dragoneer, and she finally started to turn, “Just give me a minute, I’m trying to find out… oh. Oh. Um. Hello Sir.”

“Nimah,” he responded, still watching Miriam, “What are you up to?”

“I have gotten this woman pregnant and I am taking responsibility for my youthful indiscretions!” Miriam coughed when Wyatt blurted that out; Tobias’s face went very still, obviously struggling with laughter.

“She looks more like she’s smuggling a melon or three out of the kitchens, to be honest, especially considering that this young lady looked normal when I saw her two hours ago. Except you are most definitely not anywhere near the kitchens.”

“I am incredibly fertile,” fell out of Miriam’s mouth when Wyatt seemed to be struggling for a reply.

“I am absolutely between one and three unborn human infants,” added her “belly” helpfully. Miriam’s face was bland and cold as stone; she’d play dice with Vaerlae herself with a game face this stoic.

Tobias’s voice, when he could speak again, was pitched high, and he kept having to pause to stifle his amusement, “I see. Nothing suspicious at all is going on then?”

“Nope,” Wyatt stated with conviction.

“Nothing,” Miriam asserted calmly.

“Absolutely not,” chimed in Miriam’s “unborn child” in a quavering voice .

“Shouldn’t your unborn children have more than once voice?” The worse part was now Tobias was starting to sound actually intrigued with the line of questioning.

Miriam remained bland, as Fortuna had this completely handled, “I am evidently one incredibly large unborn human child. You have now ruined the surprise, congratulations.”

“I’m devastated, Mr. Dasco. Absolutely devastated. Will you next trick my unborn child into revealing their gender so we won’t be able to make all our relatives struggle to obtain non-gender specific gifts, thus denying us one of the wicked pleasures of impending parenthood?” Wyatt laid it on thick, throwing a hand to her forehead and swooning against the wall. Miriam, after Wyatt indiscreetly flapped a hand at her, startled and covered her face with her hands, “sobbing” unconvincingly.

“Alright, alright, now, tell me serious, what is going on? Why do you have Fortuna tucked away when I know neither of you have the authority to take a chick from the nursery? And when one of you technically doesn’t have clearance to be in resident section of the Aerie at all?” Voice losing some of his previous brevity, the dragoneer pinned them all with a serious stare.

Wyatt fidgeted, opening and closing her mouth a few times, but Miriam beat her to it, deciding to just cop to the truth, “Fortuna wants our friend Mordecai, but he’s set to get Nippers and then leave very, very soon. Wyatt said that it takes too long to get someone official to bring out one of the chicks, so we kidnapped her to try and get there first.” Wyatt, aghast, was shaking her head the whole time, trying to get her to stop talking, but it was far too late.

Tobias blinked at her, “Wait, want as in she wants him? Fortuna?”

The dragon popped her fluffy head out of the jatak near Miriam’s shoulder, looking at him up side down, gaze a little mournful, “I could tell all the way in the nursery when they walked by below.”

“Well now,” of all things, it seemed that the dragoneer hadn’t expected that answer, “We were starting to think you’d not find anyone.”

“I was starting to think that too.”

Miriam obviously hadn’t gotten that far in her lesson from Wyatt about dragon life cycles, because there was no reason that dragon and dragoneer should look so sad over that alone, unless there was something else going on here, “Well, shouldn’t we… try to get her there, then?”

Dasco jumped, “Yes, damn, yes we should. Nippers? That’s Kahai, then. She’s on the far end of the Aerie, of course. How long did you say we have?” That “we” was very comforting to Miriam, and the relieved slump of Wyatt’s shoulders told her it was the same for her. It meant that the reasoning behind their actions were sound enough that they likely would not be strung up by their ankles.

“He said his Nippers were going to be crated at half past third quarter, and he’s to be crated with them.” Wyatt piped up, looking around for a clock with concern etched in the lines of her mouth and eyes.

Miriam was pulling her jatak loose, letting Fortuna out of the confines, when the dragon chick peeped and craned her head around to look at something coming towards them.

Miriam looked, too.

Oh. That was a large dragon.

The Tarask snorted at them, “Good afternoon, children. I hear there is a need to be elsewhere, and quickly at that?”

“Khepra, my beautiful lady, we need to be at Kahai’s den half an hour ago, but we can make due with as soon as possible. Send word to stall the… what is your young man’s surname, girls?”

Miriam squeaked when the Tarask, Khepra, wedged her head in behind her and prompted her to fall backwards, onto the dragon’s head between her horns, Fortuna spilling into her lap. “Kokinos,” she managed and she tried to settle semi-comfortably in place, since when she’d tried to slid down, a massive forepaw had come up to gently block her.

Wyatt appeared over one of Khepra’s horns a moment later, dangling with her feet in the air, fingers linked together around the bony protrusion as she dangled easily. Tobias scuttled up and perched on his heels behind Miriam, steadying himself with one hand against her shoulder, or, as Miriam discovered once that started moving, steadying her, as he seemed rock solid crouched in place.

The Tarask moved amazingly quickly, sliding into the slightly lower set middle of the hallway and picking up speed; Miriam hadn’t understood that the lane was effectively a dragon highway until now, not having seen any dragons moving along it.