#Moonbrella Lake

[miss-kittys-magical-library]

Season of The Heart

A Kostas Family Holiday Story

There's not a single warning for this story. It's simply, somehow, become an annual tradition; Leon's vest. This gift comes as a peace offering between a Mama and her son-in-law. Chag Sameach and Merry Christmas!

Honey put her sewing down and balled her hand into a fist and then flexed it. She repeated the process. It was time she acknowledged age was creeping up on her.

It was bad enough that she and Leon gave in and began wearing glasses. That Selina was pregnant with their second grandchild in less than two years. They were old and young and new parents and soon to be seasoned grandparents. Selina and Sunny were innocent littles an these amazing adults. She and Leon had been together thirty minutes and thirty years.

Time, it seemed to Honey, was an asshole.

“Who’s getting that, love?” Leon asked from beside her. He put his book down and patted the space closest to him. He gestured for his wife to settle in.

“Nikolai.” Honey carefully folded the material and packaged it away. She placed it on the floor and laid back on the bed.

"What made you change your mind?"

"It's simple," Honey let Leon cradle her head in the crook of his arm, "he's Klaus in a way. Except Klaus does everything he can to turn people off or away. Nikolai practically suffocates them so they stay put."

"That sounds more like Of Mice and Men then A Tale of Two Hargreeves" Leon sniggered at his own joke. His nose scrunching in the process.

"You're such a weirdo," but Honey kissed her husband anyways. "I just hope it's enough."

"Gracie, it will be his whole world. I promise"

----

Selina watched her mama creep out of the bedroom from over a plate of cannolis that balanced precariously on top of her pregnant stomach. She took another bite and spoke with her mouth full-

“Mama, why are you sneaking around like a teenager smoking weed?”

Honey huffed, “When have I ever snuck around to do drugs?” She waved her hand in her daughter’s direction, “Just eat another cookie. Maybe this one will come out looking somewhat Italian.”

Selina rolled her eyes and accepted a kiss on the forehead. She went back to watching Irina bury herself in wrapping like a cocoon. The little girl dug her chubby fists into her eyes and rubbed.

“Вы сами устали, Irinushka?” Have you tired yourself? “All this playing in the paper instead of with these toys?” Nikolai hoisted his daughter up over his shoulder where she nuzzled into his neck. “Как маленький котенок,” he kissed her curls. You are like a little kitten. “Do you want Daddy or Papa to put you down, hm?”

“Oh Nik, why don't you do it?” Honey suggested. “It'll take Leon fifteen minutes to get off the floor,” she teased.

“HEY! Piss off!” Leon threw a ball of tinsel poorly at his wife. When that failed he reached out and smacked her in the butt as she turned to get away from him.

“No!! Stop! It's just that there's a little something for Kolya in the bedroom!” Honey gave in and allowed Leon to envelop her legs in a hug from his kneeling position on the floor. “From me.”

She and Nikolai caught each other's eye before he and Irina made their way into the bedroom. He tended to the toddler first, rocking her and humming just as absently as Selina often did. In mere moments Irina was out, and he laid her down on the pillows.

There was a gift beside Irina on his side of the bed. Nik put it in his lap and carefully undid the bow and paper setting it aside as if to save it. Inside the tissue was a lovely scarf made from the mythical pattern that his daughter wore onher dress.

He lifted the scarf which had been fashioned from the material and wool. A Star of David was embroidered on one side which he traced with his fingertips before bundling and tying it around his neck. Then Nikolai noticed the letter.

It read:

Dear Nikolai-

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah. Yes, Selina’s told us. I'm not sure why you haven't said anything because if any family is Jewish friendly it's ours. You could have told Leon and I. Though I can understand your hesitation talking to me, I've not exactly been very welcoming to you these last two years.

I didn't set out to be “that mother-in-law.” Mine has been nothing short of a second mom to me since we met. And as far as I know it's been the same for Leon. The truth is, I'm not sure what my problem is.

Selina means more to me than anything in this world. Leon and Sunny of course, but when you carry something inside of you for that long it just becomes more. Selina changed my entire world. To say her birth was a bit.. traumatic is an understatement, but holy shit was she easy to love. 25 years later, and that love hasn't budged an inch. I've always told Leon that no living person on this Earth could love her more than we do.

Until she met you that is.

That first night you introduced yourself in my club, I think you scared me. I spoke you into being the night Selina came into the world. I know that sounds ridiculous, but you know our family by now.

You're so brash and boisterous and volatile. The exact opposite of Leon. The way you spoke about my daughter was a bit jarring. Like she was just another precious momento for you to steal and hide away in a drawer somewhere. Selina was yours now; you were just informing Leon and I.

It's taken me longer than it should have. You aren't possessive out of malice. You simply hold on to what you can tighter than the rest of us because everything good in your life has been taken away. You lived your entire life without affection or kindness until Oliver and Selina. No one to take care of you or teach you how to navigate the world. Being thrust into the most unconventional family ever probably made you feel out of place. I certainly didn't help.

You have treated Selina the way every parent prays for. The two of you forged your own path, and I truly couldn't be prouder of the people you helped each other become. Or what a wonderful Daddy you are to Irina despite your own lack of role models.

So this gift is for you from me alone. With a promise. A mama is there to love her child and make him feel safe and protected. Yours was taken from you the moment you were born, but I’ll step in for her. For you. I promise to protect you and love you as long as you're my son-in-law. The scarf I made is simply a physical reminder. And I do love you, Nikolai.

Always,

Mama Honey

---

Nikolai came out of the bedroom and stood beside Selina sitting on the couch. His eyes were puffy and red as he searched for his wife's touch. He patted her massive stomach absently then squeezed her fingers.

"Kolya are you alright?" she asked gently. He lifted her hand and stooped awkwardly to kiss it as if that was an answer.

"It is a good Christmas, ripka."

Nikolai walked away over to Honey sitting by the fireplace. He gestured for her to stand and helped her up. She seemed hesitant. Uncertain which direction this would go. But to her surprise he bent to kiss her on the cheek.

"Thank you, Mama."

Honey smiled and reached up to cradle his cheek in her hand. "Merry Christmas, Nikolai."

@magic-multicolored-miracle @bisexualnathanyoung @elliethesuperfruitlover @forenschik @firstpersonnarrator @heratheanon @neuroticpuppy @rob-private @love-is-dirty-baby @vonkimmeren @sylvertyger @kronoswheel @holidayspirits

[angst-fairygodmother]

We all know that Leon probably dies not much longer after Honey. Probably a few months. Enough time to make sure everyone's going to be alright (Trick situation: the kids were always going to be alright without their parents).

Selina is angry/jealous that her brother and daughter can see her parents at will. She ignores that they have to kill themselves to do it. Sure he can conjure them, but she's conflicted about that too.

Sunny becomes obsessed with visiting Honey at least until Leon dies. He uses the guise of Klaus. He wants to keep her for himself. Sometimes he presents himself as a little boy or a teenager to make up for all the grief he put her through with his addictions and disappearing for two years.

Nikolai takes their deaths harder than anyone expected. ESPECIALLY Leon which takes Selina by complete surprise. He finds it hard to communicate what it is that is causing him so much grief, but it's really because Leon's been his dad longer than Sergei ever was. Leon always told Nik that he was very easy to love.

Luther is also devastated. Leon and Honey were his first friends outside of the academies. Actually they were Sloane's first friends too. And it was reciprocated, Honey did not have actually confidantes outside her sister and Leon until she met Sloane. They were both worried the other would judge them on their pasts.

Funny enough, I suppose this is the same situation for Diego and Lila too?

Irina and Lev and JT are the most ok with everything. Their period of grieving is far shorter than their parents and uncle and great uncles/aunts.

Leon's heaven is just a dingy flat in White Chapel above a Greek restaurant and Gracie with the flowers in her hair.

Now your turn: Jess and Ollie and their family's reactions 🥹😮‍💨

😭 I love this, but also hate it. Why would you do this to me?

Jess and Ollie have a similar timeline actually.

They live well into their eighties, or maybe even nineties (probably nineties. I like the word nonagenarian better). Time to not only meet but really have relationships with grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Jess dies first. Of something slow enough that she has time to say goodbye, but not painful. Just age?

Of the next generation, I think the three that take it worst are her middle daughter, her and Ollie’s son, and Sean (after all, she was something of a mentor figure for him for most of his life, and their similar interests kept them close. Although actually I think he takes the years leading up to her death, where age has stopped her from being able to take pictures anymore harder.)

Her eldest daughter is very stiff upper lip about it, and feels like it’s her job now to take care of the others, and she only cries after she’s sure her siblings, cousins, and their kids are all okay.

Cormac probably handles it best out of them, both because he met her later in life which gives them a unique relationship, and because of his scientific approach to things. (Plus if he’s anything like his father, he has the chance to talk to her again.)

I have no idea on the grandkids and great grandkids. Some are devastated, others take it better.

Ollie dies within a year. Suddenly in his sleep.

His official cause of death is a heart attack, but everyone in the family knows that it was actually a broken heart, it just took a while. 

The family is equally saddened, but are able to take comfort that they’ll be reunited.

This is the one that gets their eldest and youngest daughters, the latter probably at some point begs any/all of the folks in the family that can to bring him back, so they can have one more conversation, one more hour with him.

(I tried to think of how Selina and Nikolai would feel, if they outlived their other halves, but I think that is too much pain. 

[miss-kittys-magical-library]

Selina and Nikolai please?

Ohh wonder and delight! 🫦 Pas de Deux finds our siren and her sailor in the midst of a little roleplay. Very sexy roleplay involving an ingenue ballerina and her very strict Russian teacher. It even has a GIF I made 😉

Selina stood up. She gave her best impression of naive ingenue. Her eyes at their largest blinked expectantly and she swayed a little from side to side. “I was hoping you could,” she paused to think, “help me with my audition piece, Comrade Sergeyevich. Make sure my lines are perfectly straight. Bend my legs however you see fit?” Selina impressed herself with how demure she came across, biting a fingernail with mock nervousness for good measure.

Nikolai stood up and threw his boxers on before making his way to his wife. He pushed his shoulders back and puffed out his chest enough to appear authoritative.

He circled Selina once like he was studying her. She held first position with chin up and head straight. Arms just so. Nik traced a path along her jaw to behind her ear then wrapped his hand around her throat. He twisted it so that Selina was looking directly up at him. Their lips dangerously close but refusing to touch. He exhaled through his nose and applied pressure with his hand and slightly squeezed.

[miss-kittys-magical-library]

Waiting For A Star To Fall

Nikolai x Selina

Word Count: 6k

Warnings: minor angst and fluff, oral sex (m/f receiving), brief thigh riding, penetration, use of sex toys, language gif by @vousnavezrienvu

A/N: Selina and Nikolai's first date turns into more than they ever imagined. 

This took a stupid amount of time to write and became a pure labor of love. Thank you @magic-multicolored-miracle and @neuroticpuppy for being with me the ENTIRE way.  And @bisexualnathanyoung and @forenschik for being my guinea pig

September 1992

Selina’s phone rang, but Sunny beat her to it as he threw himself over the arm of the futon in her minuscule apartment.  His elbow rammed into the wall, and Selina insisted he deserved it.

“Hello?” 

There was a momentary pause.  Selina stood cross-armed with a frown on her face.

“I don't recall anyone with that name living here.  It's just my sister, myself, and the guy from the sixth floor who was murdered in 1985.” 

“SUNNY!!” 

He waved her off,  “Why would I be fucking with you?  You called here.  My sister didn't give you this number, she's a virtual nun!  She's not one to take up with strange foreign men.”

Selina launched herself at her little brother.  He held the cordless phone above his head and levitated the ten feet towards the ceiling.  His legs curled up underneath so she couldn't grab him by the ankle. 

“UNFAIR!!”  

“EVOLUTIONARY ADVANTAGE!” he shouted and stuck out his tongue.  “You were saying?”

“You aren't evolution!  You're a science experiment that was implanted in our mother by The Men In Black.”

“Low blow.” Sunny flipped Selina off and went back to the caller.  “I mean that may or may not be the woman you ravished lakeside.  I know my sister is her own woman.  You scandalized her though.  I think you made her feel.. feelings.  Rude.” 

“NICKLAUS ELTON KOSTAS GIVE ME MY PHONE!”

He held up his hand.  “HEY! I can speak Russian you know.”  And then Sunny did for the next several minutes occasionally glancing down at his sister.  

Finally, he came back to the couch and held out the receiver to Selina.  “It's for you.  He's very perturbed, and Slavic.  And sexy.”

She yanked the phone from her brother and flipped him off.  “Klaus should've left you in 1989.”  Her voice softened and her cheeks flushed as she finally answered, “Hi.” 

Sunny hovered a few feet off the ground as Selina blabbered on in flirtatious Russian.  He sneered and poked fun at the way his sister wound her finger up in her hair and then released it.  When that didn't work, craving her attention, he began to hold an imaginary conversation with an exaggerated Russian accent.  

Selina threw the first thing she could at her little brother.  The remote control sailed across the room at Sunny who simply held up his hand, palm towards his sister.  The remote hung in the air like he did.  Then he narrowed his eyes which caused the object to lower to the floor. Selina sighed and returned to the conversation. 

“Wait, you wanna take me out?”  A pause.  “You don't have to repay me.  I'm just practicing for when I'm ethically obligated to save someone.” Pause. “Arsonists and thieves too!”  Selina smiled wide as the flames licked her cheeks and ears now.  “How attractive you are doesn't alter Samaritan laws, Nikolai.” 

Sunny rolled his eyes flabbergasted at how his sister’s entire demeanor changed the moment she began to speak to the Russian from Sway Lake.  She was being coy.  Dare he say seductive as she ignored everything he managed to garner attention.  

Sunny had always been the object of his sister’s devotion.  EVERYONE’S devotion really.  As the youngest of eight “children,” it was his birthright.  Now here he was, slowly becoming Selina’s third favorite person.  Not a single soul, no matter how rakish or good in bed, would ever replace Leon. 

“Sure.  Yeah, I’d like that.”  Selina had a dopey grin on her face.  “Tonight?!  I mean can you even get reservations?”  “Trust you?  I don't know why I should, but I guess I will.  I'll meet you there. Do svidaniya, Nik.. KOLYA.”  

Selina hung up the phone and threw a pillow this time at Sunny.  He crashed to the floor having been caught off guard and rubbed his ass.  

“Just be HUMAN FOR FIVE MINUTES.” 

“I AM HUMAN!! I'M JUST.. Super.” 

“Super egotistical.”

“I can't help that the love of our parents turned me into a badass.” 

“I just pray Reginald never finds you.  You're the success to his failure with Klaus.”  Selina meant that last bit with her entire being.  “Now get out, I've a date tonight.” 

---

“Nikolai, I can't run that fast in these boots!”  Selina yelled as she desperately tried to catch up to her date.  She could hear a fast-approaching man behind her yelling obscenities in a dialect she wasn't familiar with.  Bulgarian or Lithuanian maybe. 

He stopped at the corner.  “We are wearing the same ones, look how fast I'm moving.  I think it must be the several rum and cokes you had.  Come,” Nikolai held out his hand, “we will go faster together.” 

Selina rolled her eyes but linked her hand with his.  Nikolai took off, and she started to laugh.  The exhilaration and adrenaline coursed through her veins.  Never in a million years would she have imagined dining and ditching.  

Nik was so calm as he spoke to the waiter in the dialect they were being bellowed at.  He never blinked.  Then the waiter nodded, took something from him and walked away.  Nikolai stood and clasped Selina’s hand and began to make his way towards the door. 

“Nikolai, shouldn't you pay?” 

There was a slight shake to his head.  He never looked back, just kept going with Selina tight to his side.  They made it to the door before they both had to give chase. 

Selina swung out into the street.  She waved and whistled loudly at an oncoming taxi.  To her shock, it stopped to pull over for them.  Nik was incredulous but had no choice except join his date as she yanked him inside the cab.  

“Bleecker and Christopher, please,” she instructed the taxi driver.  Selina turned to the Russian beside her,  “Are we going to break the law EVERY time we're together?”  

“Yes.  Like a new Bonnie and Clyde.”  Nikolai lifted the hand Selina hadn't realized he was still holding.  His lips brushed the back of it, “Without being shot to death by the FBI.” 

Selina's heart pounded in her ears.  She couldn't remember seeing anyone look attractive in the color orange.  Yet here was the man beside her, currently with a look she could only describe as voracious, pulling it off.  Her cheeks grew hot under the weight of his stare. 

“What?!” came out in an embarrassing giggle. 

“I cannot look at something beautiful?” 

“You don't have to lay it on THAT thick.  I'm taking you back to my apartment already.” 

“I'm not trying to trick you, Lina.  I think you are beautiful. I almost blew my own mission.  Especially under the moonlight.  You made me forget what I was doing.  Your willingness to allow me to do unspeakable things to your body helped,” he teased.  

Selina decided to play coy as the taxi stopped in front of her building.  “Let's see what happens under this month’s full moon.” 

---

Selina and Nikolai on the fire escape outside her living room window.  Selina a few beers in and a few steps above.  Nikolai nursing a beer of his own while settled between her knees.  His arm under her knee to snake around her calf.  His fingers mindlessly stroked her ankle to the naked foot dangling in his lap. 

They had fallen into a contented silence after nearly two hours of talking.  Sharing stories in Russian and English.  Nik’s curiosity about the photos and books and records she owned was endless.  Selina had a hard time keeping up and answering as he flitted along from keepsake to keepsake. 

Yes, that's Elton John.  Somehow he and her parents were old friends.  He dedicated “Your Song” to her parents every concert they went to.  Selina could never figure out why. 

The somehow dower, yet smiling man, with a giant cigar in his mouth that tossed Selina in the air while little Sunny hung from his back was her Godfather, Tom.  He had been a CIA agent that now lived in a cabin with his beautiful French wife, Ella.  That's where she had been  staying up at Sway Lake.  Yes he did always look like a lion with a thorn in his paw, but he was soft and kind and loving.  

The Lady Godiva on the horse was her mother, Honey, back when she frequented Studio 54.  Selina recalled her hair rivaled only Cher’s at that stage.  Raven colored and long enough to hide her naked body (barely) as she sat side saddle on the white mare.  Her head resting against the back of an equally nude man. Her one arm wrapped around his thin waist. 

Nope, Nik was totally not imagining things.  The man holding the reins did strongly resemble her brother and himself.  That was HER papa, Leon. His hair in perfectly wild curls to his shoulders. His face full of confidence and sex. 

The questions began to wear Selina down.  No one had ever been this inquisitive or interested in her life.  Her family.  Her.  The endless questions, punctuated by making out until their lips chapped, about her personally.  Then, between an anecdote about Luther and rollerskating and tongues fighting for dominance they stopped.  

Now Nikolai lifted Selina’s foot and kissed the top of it.  Then his mouth made its way up her shin.  When he reached her knee, Nik turned abruptly to face the woman behind him.  He set the bottle down on the windowsill before kneeling on the stairs.  He slid the hem of her dress up, fingers hooked into the fabric of her panties to tug them off.  He kissed her inner thigh before letting his tongue trace painfully slow along her sex. 

Selina could only grasp the railing.  Her fingers curved around the cold metal and she cried out in pleasure as Nikolai slipped his tongue inside of her.  

It slid in and out before eventually discovering her clit.  His hands on her ass so that he could pull her onto his face.  Encourage her to ride him as his tongue flicked in circles and then snaked in and out. 

Selina started to lose herself.  Her free hand tugged at Nik’s hair while her hips bucked and the spark grew.  She twitched and cried out louder as his mouth and tongue worked faster.  She opened her eyes to look down at the man keen to make her cum. 

Almost as if he could feel her eyes on him, Nikolai looked up at Selina.  She felt strange, shameless and used her own thumb to wipe away what was on his lips.  She sucked on it briefly then grabbed Nik by the shirt towards her.  Wanting for a kiss.  

Selina revelled in the way she tasted on his lips and inside her own mouth.  Like beer and bitterness.  She had never done that before Nikolai and the lake.  She wanted to do it again, and every time he went down on her.  She wanted to put him in her mouth.  To suck and lick and make him bend and writhe.  

She could, she thought, now.  Selina pushed Nik away at arms length meaning to have him sit on the stairs so she could give him head.  Her fingers deft at the belt buckle and buttons on his pants. She laughed full of nerves as he fumbled, THE OVERCONFIDENT RUSSIAN FUMBLED!! 

Nikolai fumbled with the buttons on his dress shirt before he finally came loose.  He yanked his pants and boxers over his hips and held his cock in his hand. Nik parted her legs and started to push inside, but Selina held up her hands.

“What are you doing?”

“Do you not want me to have sex with you?”  He was more shocked than angry. 

Selina ran her hands over his chest and stomach then up around his neck.  “I very much want to fuck you.” Nikolai huffed, but Selina continued, “I mean I've seen you naked and can't get over how fucking sexy you are.”  

“Then what is wrong?  Not here?  Maybe this is not comfortable for you.  We’ll go inside.”  He stood and held out his hand.

“It's probably the same as fucking on a bunch of sticks and acorns.”

Nikolai sniffed again at the use of the word “fucking.”  “Then what is wrong?”

Selina stood and climbed in through the windows.  Her date followed.  “There's an international health crisis.   A incurable disease that passes mostly via sex and fluids?” she shouted from her room as she rummaged through drawers. 

“Do you mean The..AIDS?  Is that not for,” he chose his words carefully, “The gay men?” 

Selina could tell Nik was more confused than anything.  She heard this all the time at the clinic where she volunteered. “Or you could be bisexual or pansexual like my brothers.  Contract it from a man and pass it to a female partner.”  

She appeared in the living room now with a small foil package.  “Or an IV drug user, also like my brother, and get it that way.” 

Selina started to unwrap the condom without noticing that Nikolai was standing completely nude in her living room.  “This is usually where most guys bail.  They're not interested in protection or rubbers.  Mostly just a pump and..” she looked up and paused in her tracks. She was distracted by his body and neck and eyes and jawline.  “Christ on a cracker.”

“What?”  he chuckled.  

“Sorry! I know. I know.  AIDS talk is a bummer.  I get this close to just.. sitting on a dick and I panic?  Everyone in my family got the sexual confidence memo but me.” 

“Why are you panicking now?  You did not freak out by Sway Lake.”  

Nikolai couldn't help the teasing in his voice.  He reached out for Selina to draw her close to his body.  His knee inside of her thighs just like that night.  

Now he unzipped and helped her out of the dress.  “I think it's very sexy when you talk like a nurse. So smart and commanding.”  His hands ran over her bare back and down to her ass as he brushed his nose along her neck up to her ear.  He nipped at the lobe, “That can be very erotic putting a condom on.” 

“Nik,” Selina could only squeak out.  Her body involuntarily started to rock back and forth. 

“It's Kolya.  In Russian we use end of names,” he breathed in her ear.  “Like your sister, Vanya.   Little Ivan.”

“Ok,” Selina didn't want to hear about Vanya right now.  Or Klaus.  Or Diego.  Instead she got down on her knees.  The condom was still in her hand as she used the other to hold his erection towards her mouth.

“Lina, what are you doing?”  

She looked up through her bangs, her tongue darted out to trace around the head of the cock.  “Sucking your dick.  What else does it look like?”  She took it fully in her mouth, letting the tip hit the back of her throat.  

“Fuck,” he mumbled in Russian.  “Dorogoya, stop.”  

Selina sat back with a popping sound, “Did I do it wrong?  I'm like, the LEAST experienced person in this family.”

“You don't have to be an expert.  A blow job is a blow job, we can practice another time.  I want to be inside of you.  And I have been very patient.”

Selina stood, but Nikolai lifted her completely off the ground.  She wrapped her arms and legs around him as they stumbled towards the futon.  Mouths and tongues at war as Nik sat her down on the cushions.  Selina held eye contact as she expertly unrolled the condom down the length of his cock.  She kissed his stomach as he noticeably shuddered.  

Nikolai let his fingers caress Selina’s bottom lip before crawling on top of her.  She still held his erection in her hand as he threw one of her legs over his shoulder.  He held her bent knee to the side as she taunted him with her sex.  Guiding it just inside before digging her nails into his ass so that he buried himself to the hilt. 

Selina clawed at his back as Nik started to undulate.  Over and over, further inside each time.  Their bodies rocked wildly as Selina’s muscles started to shake from the position she was in.  She clung to him desperately as he searched for her neck and chest with his lips.  

Nikolai’s mouth devoured one of her breasts.  He sucked and bit at Selina’s nipple.  She cried out in shock at the sensation.  The sound egged him on to go harder.  

“So you like that too?” His voice raspy in her cleavage. His suckling and biting increased.  She mewled in reply. 

Selina was worried that it wasn't working.  That she couldn't or wouldn't orgasm.  Not like she did when he went down on her.  How she hung from the cliff.  

She WAS being pleasured.  Nikolai was hitting the right spots, but she was so nervous about what she looked like under the lamplight.  His rhythm and pounding, it was pounding, into her was unmatched.  She cried out with exaggeration to indicate she had cum hoping he wouldn't notice. 

“Fuck!” he cried out and propped himself up by the back of the futon.  

Nik’s body arched while his hips made circular motion.  He spasmed and shuddered as his body immediately went into shut down mode.  His face covered in a sheen of sweat as he pressed his forehead into Selina’s neck then pecked it a few times. 

“I.. am sorry, Lina.” There was disappointment in the Russian’s voice as he held the condom so he could pull out.

“For what?”   Her arms and legs still enclosed around his back and hips.  

“You did not.. cum,” Nik’s eyes searched the woman below him.  “I should have tried better.  I just was so turned on by you.”  He swept the damp hair away from her forehead. 

“You were fine!  It was good.  Really good.  I got in my own head is all.  Maybe next time?” 

“You mean later tonight,” he winked then pecked the tip of her nose. “I won't leave until you are honestly screaming my name.”  There were four dimples Selina counted in his smile.  

“Then we’ll sleep on it first.” 

---- 

Selina tip toed out to the kitchen both starved and thirsty.  She thought about Nikolai's playful threat about not leaving until she got off and chuckled to herself.  Then she peered around the wall to see him asleep on the futon.  His mouth slightly agape and one hand under his cheek. 

Would it be so bad with him around all the time? She thought as she cracked open a beer.  To not be alone when she came home from a shift?  How nice it would be to have conversations with someone not “related” in some form or another. 

And Nikolai was interested in Selina.  He still dodged questions about himself, answering straightforwardly with no details.  She knew it was because he didn't trust her just yet.  It wasn't like she didn't have secrets of her own, but the more open she COULD be, the more she knew Nik would reciprocate.  It had to be lonely with only one confidante. 

Selina turned around and jumped a mile in the air.  “Motherfucker!”

Nikolai was casually leaning against the doorway watching her contemplate life and drinking a beer.  “She IS very sexy,” he replied with a cheeky grin. 

Selina rolled her eyes and walked towards her kitchen table to keep distance between herself and the Russian.  As if she were daring him to chase her.  Nik made her feel so contradictory.  In control and submissive.  Safe yet dangerous.  Lustful.  

There was no opposite to that, she realized.  The light from her small kitchen window illuminated the lines and definition of his chest and shoulders.  The collarbone that met in the middle and moved up into his thick neck with its Adam's Apple bobbing along as he swallowed.  A sharp intake of breath before he clenched his jaw.  

Selina’s heart pumped into her ears as he casually reached across the table for her, but she ducked out of the way.  His eyebrows knit together in confusion as they danced around for only a few moments until she allowed him to grab her by the elbow.  Her world stood still as he took her in his arms, back to his chest. 

“I have been thinking, rypka, about our little challenge,” Nikolai settled one hand on her breast which he massaged lightly paying close attention to her nipple.  His mouth somewhere behind her ear as his other hand dropped to her sex. 

A finger found its way inside of Selina and she lost the air in her lungs.  It curved and hooked before making a lazy swirl around her clit.  “Already?” was all she managed.  Her nails closed around his wrist and urged him on. 

“I would like to try a different way of having sex with you.  I just don't want you to be offended.”  

Nik let go of Selina and placed her arms on the tabletop.  He spread her hands out; bent her forward so that her top half was pressed into the wood surface.  Then he grabbed her hips so that her ass was flush with his hardened cock.

“No anal,” she moaned.  “Wear a condom,” another instruction. “Bathroom shelf.” She grazed against him. 

“If you insist,” Nikolai replied in Russian. “I will obey.”  

There was a playful slap on Selina’s ass, and she felt herself swell and throb.  A first time for everything. If she enjoyed it, wet from the sting of being struck, it was.. genetic.  

Her brothers, father, even Honey mentioned the occasional pain got them going.  Klaus and Sunny with varying degrees of punishment.  She knew from eavesdropping or snooping that her parents preferred it light: spanking or hair pulling.  Maybe she did as well.  Too vanilla to ask.  Inexperienced to what she wanted from a partner. 

“Do it again?” Selina tried not to sound desperate as Nikolai tore into the condom wrapper.  She almost presented herself to him as she felt the smooth surface on her cheek.

“What?” he was distracted.  There was a strange snap of latex as he adjusted it.  Then taunted Selina with the head of his cock.  He rubbed it along her slit, marveling at how easy it was to slide in. 

“Hitting me?” she asked timidly. 

“Why would I hit you?” Nikolai was offended.  His hand flat on Selina's back as it traveled to her neck and hair.  His fingers combed and intertwined with her dark waves then lightly tugged. 

Selina braced herself as he lost himself up to the hilt.  Nikolai's pelvis met her ass and pulled out to just the tip.  He repeated this until he gained friction.  Her head and hips were his anchor so he could thrust quicker. Their bodies make a clapping noise. 

“My ass.  Like you did.  Hit it.”  She was willing to try anything.  Wanted to cum for him.  She knew she could, she did it alone all the time.

“Really?” Nik was surprised.  His pace was even faster and the table started to creak under the motion.  “Did you like it then?” His hand cracked her flesh but only slightly harder than before.  

Selina cried out.  Her sex ached and was swollen.  Nikolai did it one more time, but she could tell it wasn't really his thing.  Sensed that it bothered him to be serious about erotic corporal punishment.  Playing was different.  His hand did tighten in her hair to bend her head back. 

“I don't know,” was all he mumbled in Russian.  

The hand that spanked Selina now encompassed her own on the table.  He bent to kiss her shoulder as he found his breakneck rhythm. 

“Then just go harder,” Selina found her voice now.  She relaxed and allowed her body to take how deeply he penetrated her.  His cock at that angle hitting a spot she found mythical. 

Nikolai railed into Selina.  The table and their bodies shook almost violently as he pounded into her.  His shaft lost until she felt a pressure in her womb.  He stood straight and clutched at the thick of her hips.  Her curves she inherited from her mother.  They cushioned her as his body and cock pleased her.  That spark and wave rolled over Selina like on the couch.  

They weren't quiet.  Both forgetting about neighbors as Selina mewled and screamed out. Nikolai growled and uttered obscenities in his first language.  They were certain this would be it, that Selina would orgasm and Nik would feel satisfied that he could please her.  

Instead, his body violently shuddered as he exploded inside the condom.  His muscles and adrenaline gave way to Nik almost collapsing on top of Selina.  He faltered prior to catching her up in his arms again.  He held her and whispered apologies to her as they kissed. 

“Kolya,” she whispered back.  “It's fine.  I was really close.  We have other times to  experiment.”  Selina swept his damp curls back. 

Nikolai leaned into her hand, “You want to keep being with me?” 

“That's what dating is,” she laughed under her breath. “I like being with you.  I wanna know more about YOU though.  Come on,” Selina took his hand.  “Let's actually go to bed and talk.”

---

Selina reached blindly for Nikolai after her alarm went off.  Sitting up, she slammed the clock and turned to see an empty space on the side of the bed he had fallen asleep on. 

She knew he wasn't obligated to be there when she woke up.  This time waking up alone left a weird knot in her stomach.  

“Fuck,” she tossed herself back and threw a pillow over her head to scream.  Her arms and legs failed around like a toddler throwing a fit. 

How long was enough before she called him?  Would he just disappear now? Klaus called it, funnily enough, ghosting.  Why did everything Nik say tread a weird line between romantic and calculating?  And why did Selina want him to keep saying things, anything at all, to her? 

How does someone know they're falling in love? How did Honey and Leon?  Klaus and Dave.  Allison and Ray.  Diego and Patch or Lila.  Vanya and Sissy.  Uncle Tom and Aunt Ella.  Poor Luther.

Selina’s family had a knack for impulsive behavior when it came to attraction.  Her mom moved to a foreign country with a man she had slept with for money.  Klaus fought in Vietnam for a closeted man that kissed him once. Sunny went home with, to Selina’s chagrin, anyone who showered him with the simplest of affection. And Selina had laid down and spread her legs for a Russian committing arson.  

“Lina you are awake?” Nikolai asked from the other room. 

She threw a bathrobe on and wandered into the kitchen.  “You came back.”

Nik was reaching above her tiny sink for coffee mugs and plates.  “Did you not want me to?”

He set the dishes out and opened a box to pull out some pastries and bagels.  Then poured coffee and handed Selina the cup. 

“I wasn’t sure what you liked,” he offered her the plate.  “Greek, Italian and Russian,” a satisfied grin flashed across his face.

“Well that was kind of you,” she smiled back and helped herself to a cannoli and Russian tea cookie.  “Yes, I wanted you to come back. I think I kinda always do?” she questioned her own intentions with a mouthful of pastry. 

Nik leaned over and kissed Selina.  His tongue darted out to taste the sweet ricotta filling on her lips; she reciprocated.  Her own slipping to the back of his mouth to catch him off guard. Nik steadied himself on her hips. 

There was a muddled sound of pleasure when Selina’s fingers unbuttoned Nikolai’s shirt in expert time.  Their mouths never separated as she went to work on his belt and pants as he struggled to take his boots off. 

“This was not my plan for this morning,” Nik breathed heavily in Russian. 

“I'm just really interested in us reaching that goal,” Selina helped him out of his clothes.  

Kissing again, they could feel their lips start to chap already as Selina began backing Nik into her room until he hit the foot of her bed.  As he leaned back, she climbed on his lap.  Her hands seized his cock and settled it in the folds of her sex.  Selina rolled her hips.

“What are you doing!?” Nikolai could only cry out. Astonished by the lack of a condom.  

“I'm sick of being the safe one,” she raised up on her knees so that she was above him.  Her hands on his face and neck as she snaked her tongue to the back of his teeth again.  

Selina shoved him back on the bed and threw off her robe.  She straddled Nikolai like a woman possessed, took his hands and placed them on her breasts as she rode him.  Still not penetrated.

Nik lost himself for a moment.  He massaged the breasts.  One hand teased a nipple, pinched it,  before sitting up to devour it.  Selina held him to her chest, clung to the hair on the back of his head and pulled in her excitement.  Her fingers found the gnarly scar and she rocked harder on his lap. 

“I want you to fuck me until I cum.” 

Nikolai looked up and held her back, “It is not fucking at this point.  Not for me, Lina.  Also you must not compromise your principles for anyone.  I do not want this for you.”  

Selina groaned with exasperation.  Her walls were swollen and slick and wanting.  “It's not a compromise, Nik.  Everyone jumps in my family and trusts they’ll fly while I stand on the cliff pacing back and forth.” 

He blinked, mouth just slightly agape.  That face.  Selina knew that face.  She loved that face.  She loved this face. “Lina, you are extraordinary.  You don't need to have a big life just yet.  It will happen.” 

“Kolya,” her words softer now as she relaxed, “I love you.”

“Do you?!” a dopey grin spread across Nikolai's face.  “It is the same for me I think?  I've never done this, you know.  “That I love you.”  

He kissed Selina before turning under her to rummage around the nightstand drawer. “Now we will go back to the way you prefer?  If I need to I will get..” he stopped and held something aloft.  Now his smile and dimples were devilish. 

He studied it before making it buzz with a push of a button.  “Pocket Rocket?! Lina, are you secretly naughty?" he giggled. 

"I don't think it's a secret to you anymore,” she reached for it.  Her cheeks turned red. 

"Who do you fantasize about when you use it?" Nikolai held it to Selina’s breasts.  He watched with fascination as her nipples hardened.  He let it travel over her stomach and back up. 

Selina moaned and twisted. "You're just trying to get me to say you, but I've had it since I turned twenty.  So mostly you know.. Keanu Reeves..”  

“But not me?" his eyebrow cocked.  Nikolai traced the vibrator along her hips and over her pelvic bone.  

"Once in a while,” her words came out breathless.

"As a Russian, I'm already superior at using it because rocket?” he waggled his brows now.  “We can now?  With you on top?”

The toy found her slit and slid inside easily.  It buzzed and made the air rush out of Selina’s lungs.  She dug her nails into Nikolai's chest while he started to use the vibrator to have sex with her.  Found a pattern of in and out while she bucked and writhed.  

Selina reached back to anchor herself on one of Nik’s thighs. It allowed him better access to her clit.  He Marveled at the way she agonized under his hand as it manipulated her.  His free hand on her ass to coax her faster as SHE undulated now as he had done on the couch.  Her hips danced separately from her upper half.

Nikolai rolled Selina on her back all of a sudden.  Her hair hung off the bed as he propped up on an elbow.  He worked the vibrator in circles.  In and out of her slick walls before going after the clit.  

Selina got tangled up in the sheets as she felt a warmth spread from her stomach to her sex.  Her thighs started to tighten around Nik's hand as she thrust her hips off the bed.  Eyes clamped shut as the first wave washed over her body.  Neck exposed for him to suck and bite which urged another orgasm to burn through her.  

Nikolai was stunned by her silence.  Selina’s mouth opened in a silent cry as she came a third time in succession.  This last time she managed a strangled scream of his name which he swallowed with a kiss.  

A shiver ran through Selina while she relaxed.  Her fingers traced patterns along Nikolai's bicep as her eyes closed.  Cumming was like a sedative.  Nikolai cupping her face and drawing it to his for a lazy kiss was a sedative.  The rain she had no idea was pouring in buckets outside her window was also a sedative.  

The vibrator continued buzzing until it didn't.  The room grew quiet save for the breaths that came from Nik’s nose.  Still heavy with his still hardened bulge pressed into Selina’s hip.  There was no move to get on top of her.  To have sex with her so he, too, could cum.  She started to idly jerk him off. 

“Lina stop,” he gently took her hand.  “This was about you, not me.  It'll go away eventually.  Like I will,” he said that last bit with a challenge in his voice.  

Selina curled on her side towards Nikolai.  “Or maybe don't go?” 

“Ty khochesh', chtoby ya ostalsya?” You want me to stay?

“Po krayney mere, yeshche odno polnoluniye.”

At least one more full moon.

Tag list: @elliethesuperfruitlover @super-unpredictable98 @messengeronthemoon @nightmonsters @070188 @rob-private @firstpersonnarrator @ghouls-buddy @frogs--are--bitches @maerenee930 @duck-noises @bwritesstuff @sylvertyger @a-ghoulish-tale @icecoffeegirl @iamsexytrash @clumsyramen @falloutby @inspiremeandsetmefree @philodenmonstera @seancekitsch @the-freckled-luba @violetrainbow412-blog

[miss-kittys-magical-library]

WIP Wednesday

Isn't She Lovely?

“You have those Kostas curls, definitely wild. I paid good money when you were kids to have hair like that. Fucking perm fell out in two ruddy months. Wear those earrings from Nikolai. What are they? Cufflinks?”

Selina rummaged around in her makeup bag for the box that housed them. She opened it up and held the phone between her shoulder and an ear to put one earring on. Then switched and did the other. The rose gold sunlight reflected off of them and the lake outside the window. Selina turned her head back and forth slowly to catch it even more.

“Sugar Moon where the hell do you keep drifting off to?!” Honey sounded so far away as Selina snapped to. “Does Oliver know you have those?”

Selina blanched. She didn't respond when her mother asked where they were from. She had simply thought, with smug satisfaction, from right under Charlotte Sway’s icy stare and upturned nose. Somehow Honey simply knew as if she heard her daughter's thoughts. Was anyone in this family fucking average?!

[angst-fairygodmother]

@miss-kittys-magical-library Moonbrella Lake

Sometimes canon is really just mere suggestion, something to give you characters, but then get ignored for everything else.

[miss-kittys-magical-library]

[miss-kittys-magical-library]

You guys I can't wait for you to see what @sobert-rheehan has done with Selina and Nikolai 😍😍

[miss-kittys-magical-library]

Brick

(An au!Nikolai x Selina one shot)

word count- 3k

warnings- brief mention of m!f sex, discussion of abortion

a/n- Every choice we make splits into a million possibilities. Choosing to wear a red sweatshirt instead of a blue dress. Picking a state college over an Ivy league university. Decisions Selina makes lead to very different circumstances. That night was just one of them.

Selina felt her head spin and stomach twist in the opposite direction of her pirouettes. At 23 she knew how to take them; to focus her eyes on a stationary object in the studio before whipping her head around to see it again. It steadied her center of gravity. Instead she felt her breakfast try to make a quick escape up her throat. Hand to her mouth, she launched herself towards the can in the corner of the room where she retched up every single thing eaten. How many times would she do this before heading to a clinic?

Selina looked at herself in the mirror. The green pallor of her skin starkly contrasted with the black leotard. A hand spread along the space between her legs and her bellybutton. A little nagging voice told her exactly what was happening. There was no schedule, no cycle to keep track of like clockwork. Like all of her friends with all of their 24-28 days. Hers came whenever the fuck it felt. HOW did she find herself in this situation?

She sighed and laid down because the room was mocking her by spinning in its own pirouette. It was a dumb question, she thought while curling up into a fetal position on her side. That night flashed in her mind; heart beat wildly in her ears.

She was sitting in the darkness. Her nephew sound asleep in her arms. The rain had brought blessed quietness for his little mind. These little moments where the only music was the song she sang absently that carried into the night.

He had come to them, by coincidence or fate she wasn't sure. They spoke a few words while she studied his defeated face. His eyes swollen from crying she could tell. Selina laid the little boy down far enough away they could see him but he would hopefully see nothing.

“He sleeps like the dead,” she whispered with a giggle, undoing her bikini top before straddling the Russian who scrambled out of his shirt. Her skin pressed to his. Nothing passed between them now but kisses quickly turned rough and desperate.

Then she was on her back gazing at the moon. Her hand passionately tore at his hair while he consumed her. All of her. The other covered her mouth to stifle her cries. He was in her ear suddenly. “Is it ok?” he asked hard against her thigh. “Please,” came from her at the same time. Without hesitation, he buried himself inside of her. That was how she got here.

Selina in a phone booth in Hell’s kitchen. She had walked God knows how many blocks without thought. Or with many thoughts. Her headphones blasting a mix tape Ollie had made to psych her up for the audition. Tiny Dancer had come on, and it broke her. A million pieces led her to the silver and blue box. She waited for the ringing to turn into soothing comfort.

“Poppet? What's wrong?” Leon knew. He always knew. Honey too, but she would bide her time until she burst at the seams to offer unsolicited advice.

“Papa, I’m pregnant.” Selina sounded small and young. Sheepish. As if he would be disappointed in her. As if Honey would be disappointed in her. Like she and her parents and some cousins and uncles weren't unplanned themselves.

“I've no clue how to answer this, love. It's not for me, is it?” Leon wouldn't fix it. Her parents taught her and Sunny bodily autonomy before either of them could read or write.

“Sugar Moon, it's Mama.” Honey couldn't chomp the bit any longer. “I know this is a giant elephant that will need you for the rest of its life, but you don't need to keep them in your circus.”

“Whot!?” she choked out a laugh.

“Get rid of it. Send the elephant out to pasture.”

“Are you calling this baby a wild animal that should be poached instead of made to perform? Twenty years is twenty too long around Klaus.”

Honey made a sound like she blew a raspberry. “If you were excited you would be crying and laughter would be in your voice. Except you called Papa like you destroyed his class’s midterm papers. You don't have to do anything, but whoever he is? At least tell him you're getting rid of it. I needed to be gentler with Leon about you because I loved him. You've got no attachment right?”

The feeling of a ring dangling between her bare breasts followed by the gaze of his eyes and chapped lips on her nipples filled Selina’s mind. She blushed with embarrassment. His boastful swagger and romantic obsession with the past settled in the pit of her stomach and swished like a washing machine. It was not love, she thought, it was her sex organs that cut off circulation to her brain.

“Sex is sex my little moon goddess, but that doesn't mean you need to keep the pregnancy as self flagellation for ‘knowing better.’ You aren't the first woman to lose herself to pretty eyes and a killer accent.”

Selina narrowed her eyes and sighed, “Sunny you bastard.” Her baby brother meant well trying to protect her heart. She sighed again, “I need to make the appointment first, but I know where he works.”

----

Selina chewed on her nail nervously outside the giant garage door. Big Jim didn’t seem surprised to see her, a knowing smile hidden behind that big grey beard.

“Sugar what brings you to my neck of the boroughs?” he had a full smirk now.

She rolled her eyes, “Don’t. Can I please just speak with Nikolai?”

“Nikolai who?” his eyes were practically twinkling. He turned to the other mechanics milling about, “Boys do we have a Nikolai?” They all hollered and whooped a response. “I think she means Rasputin. Will someone let him know the Czarina is here?”

Selina crossed her arms, jutted out her chin and let her eyes nearly roll back in her head. “NOW!” she demanded with a bit more anger than she planned. Jim simply held his hands up in defense and agreed, calling her Little Honey over his shoulder while getting lost in the shop.

There he was, his jumpsuit unzipped and tied around his waist. Just to spite the bitter Manhattan cold, he wore only a thin tee shirt. Selina’s heart lodged in her throat.

She didn’t really think about him, not the way she pined for and obsessed over people she had been with in the past. The occasional flash of conversations that made her angry and annoyed. That rushed the blood to her face and her skin and the parts she kept to herself. She never asked Ollie about him even as Ollie became more entangled in her life through Jess. It was unspoken. She was embarrassed that she gave in because he was exactly what her mother had proclaimed the day she was born.

Nikolai wore a shit-eating grin while bending to kiss Selina just behind her ear. It caught her by surprise so much that she gripped his waist without meaning to. Her other hand tangled in the hair on the back of his head pulled it towards a mouth suddenly hungry for his.

Nik jerked his head back and separated himself from Selina. She couldn't decipher the look on his face but hers flared red at the cheeks. Maybe this was easier than she imagined.

“I'm pregnant-” “I saw you in Swan Lake,” tumbled from their mouths and slammed into one another with a force strong enough that they almost lost balance.

“You what?” another shared sentiment.

"You weren't with Ollie and Jess when they came."

"There are places people like me know about where people like Ollie only go for fun. Oleg and I.. we are intertwined but sometimes I feel like charity or revenge against his blue blood. So we've not been as close lately."

Selina pondered this, “It's like my uncle is both of you.” Then as an afterthought, “Maybe don't try to fuck your best friends grandmother?”

Nikolai ignored the last sentence focusing on the first, “Would I like to meet this uncle?”

“Oh no. You're totally not ready for that. And I'm not ready for this,” she gestured towards her stomach. I'm only here out of courtesy, really. I'm getting rid of it no matter what you're feeling.”

He rolled his eyes, “What's in you is made of me.”

“Yeah it took you one seizure-like orgasm to make. I'M the one pregnant for nearly a year of my life with my organs rearranging and my bones cracking apart. I can't take a year off to become a mother because you have a hatred for the 90s.”

Nikolai blinked, "Youre insulting what I look like when I cum before telling me you're killing my baby?"

"SEE?! Outdated bullshit viewpoint! It's not YOUR baby. It's OURS in MY body. It's a parasite that's living off of ME for a year. You get the fun part and then can be as involved or not as you want forever. I've spent, what, two hours in your presence total? JESS has spent more time with you."

“Old-fashioned? Having a family is old-fashion now.” Nikolai clenched his jaw.

“A family?! A family isn't a baby, the woman you seduced some night and a pompous, ostentatious rainbow colored peacock with a bad temper and a short fuse.”

“I seduced you? I think this was a two way situation, Lina. I didn't use magic or witchcraft to make you fuck me.” He mumbled under his breath in Russian about the peacock comment.

Selina knew that was true. About the mutual seduction. The magnetic pull of him was tugging at her insides. Whether it was the pregnancy hormones or the way the vein in his neck pulsated in time with his Adam's apple as it bobbed with a hard swallow. There was the possibility that it was the flex of his biceps and the inverted triangular shape of his torso she could see through the flimsy tee shirt.

There was that pounding in her ears again. It was not just her heart. It felt primeval. Selina felt a sense of belonging when she looked at Nikolai. She could see in his eyes he maybe felt it too. Still it wasn't a foundation to build on; sexual attraction.

“Whatever your view of what's in your belly, it belongs to me AND you. It’s not something I had to lie or steal or take. He or she is my baby too.”

“It's a clump of fucking cells.”

Selina tried to maintain an icy defiance. She started dancing at nearly three years old and never stopped. Not for injuries or frustration or family chaos. Twenty years led her to this exact moment of not just her moment to shine as the coveted Sugar Plum fairy (which she told her papa she would be one day). But principal ballerina? That waits for no one. Not 9 hours and certainly not 9 months.

Nikolai literally threw his hands up. “Whatever. You win, mm? Ok. Let me get some money.”

“You don't need to pay for it. And there's no winner in this. Trust me.”

But it was too late. Nikolai came back with a wad of cash that astounded Selina. It was bigger than her hand, and far bigger than she imagined he could have. It felt dirty. Some secret shame they were silently hoping to get over when what happened that made this baby was fairly beautiful considering. Still Selina walked away from the defeated gaze lingering in his green eyes with tears in her own.

----

He didn't mean to show up late. Nikolai had somehow pried the time and location of Selina's procedure from Jess after their confrontation. The least he could do, he had thought, was show her he supported her even if he was disappointed. He knew what it meant to be the child desired but not loved.

She was startled when emerging from behind a door. To see him sitting there unkempt and fidgeting. For the smallest of microseconds, with his five o'clock shadow and wild hair she thought Nikolai was Sunny. Suddenly she was desperate for her little brother to stop wandering and come home.

Instead Nikolai followed her home. More like a silent bodyguard than stalker as they entered her building.

“You don't have to do this. I'm fine,”

Selina clutched the spot just between her legs. Bent forward with a hand splayed on the wall. The clinic doctor told her the cramping would be excruciating, bleeding heavier than the average period. Yet to trust her instincts and go to the ER. It never came to that.

Nikolai ran up the stairs in time to catch Selina by the waist. “Where is your Mama? Or Jessica?” He brushed the hair back from her neck into a makeshift ponytail. Her skin clammy to the touch.

Selina waved him away. The rest of her body committed treason by leaning back into him. “JESS can't get here until later. I wanted to do this without my mom, but she's only a ten minute walk.” She took a deep breath and continued her march towards the fourth floor damning each step that forced her to curse ever choosing this old of a building.

“You would rather do this alone?” Nikolai shadowed her perfectly. “I asked what happens during the.. thing-”

“Abortion, Nikolai. It's called an abortion. It's not a dirty word. It just means to stop, like your little pretend military missions. You abort them when they aren't going to work out.”

Selina let herself in and tried to close the door on him. He stopped her with a hand stronger than she expected. “You did not give it a chance to work, Lina.” He clenched his jaw.

“SElina. My name is SELINA.” Now she was simply defying the Russian filling up her doorway.

In reality, she liked having a secret nickname given to her by someone that knew her body and mind so quickly it gave her motion sickness. That he pronounced it “Lane-ah” instead of “Leen-ah.” The affection behind it the way Leon called Honey “Gracie.”

They came to a stand-off, staring at one another from across the threshold. Selina knew that if she let him in he would never leave. This she said as much while adding, “Like herpes. You just infect someone and then they have you forever.” She waved him off and turned her back knowing the cramping was making her angry and irritable. Not just his face or his confident swagger.

Nik closed his eyes and took a breath before following her to the bedroom where she began to undress. “I am like a song that gets stuck in your head. You have to just embrace it and sing out loud for me to go away.” He leaned against the doorway this time to watch her. “I can help you.”

“I can get dressed with cramps, thanks. I've been living with them since 1982.” Selina immediately regretted speaking the words out loud as one rendered her body nearly immobile.

She scrambled for the muscle relaxant, crushing it between her fingers and snorted it. Nikolai could only stare. “I've a drug addict.. uncle. It hits you faster this way. You learn things.” She shrugged then collapsed on the bed in a fetal position. Only in her underwear and uncaring about the pad contraption they gave her at the clinic.

For the second time Nikolai instinctively launched himself across the room to do something. Catch her. Soften her landing. Though it was a mattress not the dirty stairwell. He knelt on the bed beside her, lost for what to do, so he began searching for clothes resembling pajamas.

“What are you doing?” Selina asked weakly.

“I'm going to dress you, can you sit up?”

She obeyed like a sick child while Nik drew the giant sweater down over her lifted arms and shivering body. Selina put her feet inside of the flannel pants he had situated on the floor before sliding them up her legs.

“It's Kolya,” he whispered. Selina’s eyelids grew heavy, but she narrowed her gaze down in his direction. “It is Russian little name for Nikolai. Kolya. It is why I call you Lina.”

The young woman above him let her fingertips travel along his cheeks and chin. Selina’s thumb traced his bottom lip softly which he kissed without tought.

“I know you,” Selina slurred with a hint of a stoned smile. She held her finger up to her lips like she had the juiciest secret. “I've known you since before we were born,” she whispered. “You are especially mine, but the timing is wrong.”

Selina frowned but kissed Nikolai's mouth frozen open in stunned. “We changed something, made a left when we should've gone right,” she giggled. “Yet here you are just like Mama told the universe.”

Nik laughed a bit louder than he meant. “Lina, ripka, you are very high and speaking bullshit. Get some sleep. But I'm not leaving until Jess gets here though. Or your mama who tells the future.”

Selina settled on the pillows curled again in a ball. “Please stay with me?” She covered her face and began to cry. “I didn't mean to get rid of the baby. I did, but I shouldn't have.”

“Lina shh,” Nikolai hushed her while crawling into bed. He wrapped an arm protectively around her pulling Selina close to his body. How he marveled at the way she fit there perfectly. “It wasn't a baby. It is not a choice I could make, but it was right. One day, she will happen.”

Nik pressed his forehead into the back of Selina’s neck. He let his nose drag along the skin before kissing her again this time on the top of the head and fell asleep.

Hours later quiet voices roused at least Nikolai from sleep. He tried to focus on the diminutive woman with impossibly long hair, her eyes narrowed and eyebrow arched. He only saw an older, equally beautiful version of the woman in his embrace. It was the man behind the woman (clearly Selina's mythic mama) that blew his mind.

"I told you, Leon. What's meant to be will always be in every strand of time."

@a-ghoulish-tale @bisexualnathanyoung @crabstick @duck-noises @forenschik @falloutby @love-is-dirty-baby @maerenee930 @magic-multicolored-miracle @neuroticpuppy @rob-private @firstpersonnarrator @vonkimmeren @sylvertyger @elliethesuperfruitlover @holidayspirits @heratheanon BECAUSE SHE'S FINALLY HERE!!

[miss-kittys-magical-library]

It's All Coming Back To Me Now

(Sunny Kostas x Jess O'Neill - another @angst-fairygodmother collaboration ☺️)

Warnings- a hint at teenagers doing naughty things?

a/n- Once upon a time there was Sunny and there was Jess and there was love that maybe didn't last but it was true while it did.

Sunny didn't want to be unique. Although in his family he really wasn’t. He could perhaps levitate and telepathically manipulate people (his mom called it charm because hypnotize sounds too vaudeville) on top of summoning and conversing with the dead, but it really wasn't THAT special.

Sunny’s parents were friends with George Carlin and Elton John and Blondie. His uncle or brother, or whatever Klaus was these days, started a religion. A cult. Both? And Selina danced her way through life effortlessly. She was a natural. Sunny faked his ability to keep up. He had it somewhere inside, but got addicted to borrowing talent from dead people.

When he was 14 years old, and grew about a foot, Sunny realized he didn't just favor his father. Or Klaus. He was their triplet. He would often walk past the full length mirror and call out a greeting to Leon, but when it was reciprocated identically Sunny would sigh. Even his looks weren't his own. Selina could at least muddle by only resembling Honey in passing. The teenage boy had a crooked nose that he had never broken and slid into a British accent without realizing.

He did however grow a sarcastic exterior. A loud demeanor that announced his arrival before his physical body even could. He was lanky and bony with big hair and big lips he hadn’t quite grown into yet.

But girls, and boys, couldn't help looking at him when he came around. So Sunny learned how to flirt and charm and kiss his way around not being able to use his powers freely. To give himself a reputation that preceded him as he plowed through anyone who dared get close enough to fall under his spell.

Then Sunny went down off of Tom’s mountain into Sway Lake for the summer with Selina. They decided to spend it with their surrogate grandfather. Even HE stood out: ex-CIA assassin, and his partner Ella was a French model, art film actress, and ex Warhol Factory Girl.

The summer Sunny turned 15, the townies were his for the taking. Until the unstoppable force (him) met the immovable object (her).

Jessica O’Neill.

---

Jessica O’Neill (never Jess, no matter how much she wanted to be, because it wasn't ladylike. And only Jessie when her sister wanted to make her feel foolish and small.) learned young not to go after what she wanted, that it wasn’t her place. She wasn’t the oldest, who was allowed to aim high and act mighty, who could only fly and never fall because their family was there to make sure of it. That was April’s role. And she wasn’t the baby, or the only boy, little Henry who could do no wrong in the eyes of anyone. No, she was first the youngest, and then later the middle child, which meant that her duty, her place in life, was to look out for her brother and support her sister, and never make a fuss. She felt certain that there would never be anything meant for her, that she could call her own. She pushed herself in school to get good grades and stand out, to have something that was hers, but she had so many of the same teachers in school, she was called the wrong name or no name at all until well into the year anyway. Jessica O’Neill was, or seemed to all the world to be, invisible.

At seventeen, she was sent to Sway Lake to live with her grandparents, to help care for her grandmother who had fallen ill, and work for her grandfather and “learn to be more responsible” (as if she weren’t already bearing the weight of her family on her shoulders). She stayed for nearly a year, accepting the long commute for school and the isolation from people she'd called friends in favor of space to breathe.

She fell in love twice that year.

The first time was with The Papermill. She had worked there from time to time before, helping out whenever she went to visit, but now she was left to run it alone many days, to explore and find its secrets and quirks, to run her fingers over hundreds of spines and breathe in the life hidden in their pages. Within those four little walls in the not-quite-town on the lakeshore, she found home and a happy place and hope that there might be something for her still.

The second time was with an impossible boy. He was brash and sarcastic and beautiful in an unconventional sort of way, all wild hair and bright eyes and charming devil-may-care smirk. Her friend Selina’s little brother, Sunny Kostas was everything Jess should never have wanted.

--

There was something that compelled Sunny to follow his sister into town that summer. Typically he would steal away in the evening, blend in to the parties at the summer camp. The townies, bored high schoolers who needed cash to blow and college students pretending to enforce hidden rules while getting high and fucking practically out in the open. This was the crowd Sunny could work over.

But there was a strange pull into the bookstore he passed a hundred times. He had been so filled with the belief in soul mates, he was always subconsciously looking for that connection. So when he realized THIS was where his sister had been going, he hoped she could share.

In all the years to come Sunny would remember that first kiss with Jess with embarrassment and warmth.

Their playful and natural banter. Which, in his nerve-wracked state, spewed out in a multitude of languages that made her face scrunch in confusion. Then a smile and crimson crept along her face while he handed her the latest Stephen King. Sunny had puffed out his chest in triumph.

Jess rolled her eyes behind closed lids when he had shown off using his tricks to shelve books with only his mind. Playfully, to her annoyance, he stacked them seven feet high in the aisle. Her imperviousness to his charm drive him nuts. So he resorted to parlour tricks.

"Who ya gonna call!"

"Klaus!" Jess bit her lip and smirked. She pushed him in that way girls do just to touch someone.

Sunny had momentarily scrunched his nose. She leaned up and kissed the end of it. He swallowed his bottom lip to stifle a giggle.

"I.. Don't tell Selina.."

"She's not our keeper," That wasn't completely true. "Do it again. Please?"

She did, but lost her footing and landed on his chin. Sunny could feel the heat from her mortification against his skin. Goosebumps had formed on every inch of his body.

"Fuck," she had mumbled.

Sunny launched himself at her. His hands knew instinctively how to hold the back of her head and small of her back. He Invaded her space. She was Troy and he was the entire Spartan army. Tumbling into bed one day was inevitable.

~

“What are you doing Sunny?” Jess mumbled, squeezing her eyes shut and burrowing her face into the pillow.

She could feel his fingers trailing patterns across her spine and shoulders. If she didn't know any better, she'd think he was drawing pictures there.

“You know you've got constellations?” He asked instead of answering. So maybe that was what he was doing. “My sister the moon, me the sun. It makes sense that you're the sky, between us.”

“You're talking nonsense.” She felt her face getting hot, shame and a strange sense of anger filling her as he rambled. The Kostases were like that, and after nearly a year of…of...whatever she and Sunny were, and longer as Selina's friend, she should have been used to it. All their talk of gods and destiny and celestial symbols. But she wasn't, and he'd never pulled her into it before.

“They're not stars,” she snapped as she rolled away from his feather-light touch. “They're freckles. Blemishes. Marks on the skin developed because I'm too pale to have any business being outside all summer and I–”

spend too much time in the sunlight. The words suddenly died in her throat and she cursed herself for getting dragged into his foolish metaphorical terms. But it was true. She'd been spending so much time with him, soaking in his energy, basking in his light. Her grandfather had even commented how different she seemed since that summer began, bolder. She had no business with a boy like him, someone so special, and because she dared to anyway, she was changing.

It was never supposed to go this far. They were supposed to just be friends, indulging boredom and curiosity and hormones. Because he was sweet (if arrogant) and pretty (if still boyish and awkward) and she trusted him a hell of a lot more than any of the boys from town. But once became twice. thrice. More. She stopped keeping count when they added in hand holding and kisses in dark corners and secret picnics and closed for lunch signs and napping together on the stupid futon in the attic (always after, never on its own, not yet). If she didn't know any better she'd think she was dating her best friend's little brother.

Only she did know. They had agreed to keep their hearts out of it, so they were still ‘just friends.’

It was an agreement they reinforced when summer ended, and when he called her unexpectedly and when they cuddled, one crawling in next to the other long after Selina fell asleep, when Jess would spend those blessed long weekends in the city. But eventually that stopped too. They never labeled it, though, or made it “real,” even as she fell madly in love with him.

“Jess?” Sunny's voice startled her, so close to her ear but loud, confused. She realized that she's stopped mid sentence.

“Don't be stupid, okay,” she said, voice weaker this time. “They're just discolored spots of skin, normal skin.”

“They’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

She flushed, whole body growing hot under such simple praise. And for a shining moment, she let herself be convinced that this was how life was meant to be.

@neuroticpuppy @firstpersonnarrator @forenschik @love-is-dirty-baby @rob-private @holidayspirits @a-ghoulish-tale @elliethesuperfruitlover @crabstick @bisexualnathanyoung @vonkimmeren @sylvertyger @falloutby

[miss-kittys-magical-library]

New Year's Day

(Nikolai x Selina)

Word count- 1900

Warnings- mentions of breast-feeding, penetration (m!f), fingering, angst and some fluff

A/N- How quickly a year changes for Nikolai and Selina.

Well folx, here we are. My last story for 2021, and the end of the Library for now. I'm putting down the pen in 2022 and picking up some books. It's not forever, just for.. awhile.

Creating content for a non-existent community has become futile. I'm so sorry if I didn't fulfill your requests, but I'm leaving them in my inboxes in case of future inspiration. I cannot apologize enough for not getting there, it makes me feel like a failure 🥺 I am forever grateful to those who stuck around. I'll be back one day.

My inbox here and at The Portal are forever open. I will update the Library Master List on New Year's Day. Until then readers.

The Librarian

New Year’s Eve 1992

Despite being far from a packed Times Square waiting for Dick Clark, people still crowded the streets of The Village. Even four flights up from their cramped apartment, Selina and Nikolai did their best to ignore the screaming, the laughing and the distinct smell of weed and stale alcohol.

Selina rolled her hips to the beat of the music from the street. She steadied herself, one hand with nails dug into Nikolai's chest. Her other enclosed around him massaging her breast and nipple.

“I.. we,” she modified her words, “do have a bed.”

“Yes,” he panted, “but that window faces a very creepy Polish babushka who likes to watch us.”

Nikolai bit his bottom lip in concentration. Letting go of Selina’s chest, he seized handfuls of her ass. But instead of urging her faster, he manipulated her into a slower grind. Then he slipped a thumb inside of her sex to tease her clit.

“Since when do you care.. If-” Selina clawed at his forearm. She tried to encourage him to finger her faster. “Someone watches?” That last word came out in a moan.

Nik angled her movements so that his sheathed cock could rub her clit at the same angle as his thumb.

The peachy glow of the street lights and reflection of occasional fireworks on Selina’s alabaster skin seemed to make her glow from underneath. Just for a moment, while their bodies connected and the only way Nikolai could be any closer to this woman was to literally possess her, he lost his breath watching her.

He found himself quickly.

“Not when she gives us the evil eye.” He sat up briefly to kiss her shoulder and neck. “What time is it?”

“What?” Selina strained to find a clock, “It's 11:58. Why? Fuck can I go faster now? I'm gonna.. cum.” Selina’s eyes darted around the room while she thought. “Holy shit, I'm gonna get off!”

“No! I want to make you cum at midnight.”

“What?!” She couldn't help but laugh.

Nikolai pursed his lips, but his green eyes danced. He tried to swallow his own laugh. “It will be fun! There's only one more minute on the clock, Lina.”

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. Then her demeanor changed and she focused on the feeling. Nothing else. Not the revelers or the smells or sounds of chaos on the avenue below. Just her hips as they collided with Nikolai's.

There it was, the countdown. Selina’s body grew hot as she felt her orgasm building inside of her sex. That scalding hot which feels strangely ice cold to the touch. Your brain tricking you into tolerating it. Like Nik’s was now telling him to endure. It'll be worth it.

“HAPPY NEW YEAR!!” people screamed and cheered.

Nikolai exploded inside of Selina whose walls contracted and slickened and throbbed around his cock. Fireworks and car alarms and sirens exploded in The Village.

But the mini-explosions weren't outside. They were all around the couple as the young woman came. Sparks and dazzling colors rained down on them, but no one screamed or panicked.

Nikolai gasped in delight. He was memorized.

Selina held her hand up to watch the fireworks display swirling from her palm. She sighed. Not heavily, but with a dreamy quality.

“Look what we did”

---

New Year’s Eve 1993

Selina sat up in bed. A pain encompassed her breasts which were already chapped tender from the baby. She cupped one under her tee shirt and felt that it was wet. She was leaking, but no crying baby had triggered it. Baby.

Selina frantically searched in the covers for her infant daughter. She wasn't fully awake, but surely she passed out with Irina beside her in the bed. You couldn't just LOSE a baby in a 550 square foot apartment. Especially one who was only eight days old.

You also can't lose a six foot man, even if he's a bit thinner than usual these days, Selina thought. Relief replaced her panic. Nikolai had their daughter.

The young mother hurried into her bathrobe. She piled her hair in a sloppy ponytail and headed towards the soft murmurs and smell of Greek food from the minuscule kitchen.

“Hello, poppet. Are you hungry? Yía yía made too much.”

Leon pulled his daughter into his arms so he could kiss her forehead. She leaned back to look at him, chin up with an open mouth like a greedy bird. He popped a stuffed grape leaf in and laughed.

Selina was grateful for the savory taste of lamb, mint and cumin. She reached up and kissed Leon's cheek. “Thank you, Papa. Yía’s yía’s here though?” Selina was confused.

“She and Ollie and Jessie are outside with Luther. Mum had some grievances to send out into the air before midnight, and I think the others just wanted a shout without waking you and littlest poppet up. It's New year's eve after all.”

“Day,” Honey corrected while holding a tray of baklava. “It's after midnight.”

Selina’s face fell. “I missed it?” A lump formed in her throat and her fingers started to spark.

“Sugar, Nikolai said you fell asleep feeding Irina around three. Hard.”

Honey held her daughter’s hands to calm them. She kissed Selina too. “It must have been deep. Ollie and Jess got here way before we did. You really haven't heard us?”

Selina shook her head. She could feel the tears well and blur her eyesight. “Kolya must be so pissed. We were supposed to all be together for our first New Year’s as a family. We really went through it this year!” Her voice wavered.

“Yeah no fucking on the couch!”

There was a snicker behind the women. Selina's heart soared as she turned around to throw herself on Sunny. “YOU’RE HERE!” she cried

Instead she found her father’s twin enveloped in her arms around his neck. She tried to hide the disappointment when Klaus set her back down on her feet. His face was a little hurt but full of understanding. He didn't even try to make a sarcastic quip.

Tears spilled down her face without provocation. She covered her face and apologized. The heels of her palms rubbed furiously at her eyes. Postpartum made her feel as unhinged as pre.

Honey murmured nonsense to her daughter. She hummed a little without realizing, they both did. A calm seemed to blanket the kitchen.

“He’ll come back to us. Nicklaus just has to find his own way home. Kolya’s in the living room with Irina.”

Selina nodded and sauntered into the living room. It was 12:30, and the Village was as lovely as ever. She could only marvel that somehow Nikolai and Irina were both asleep on the couch.

One hand had a protective grip on the infant with her head tucked under his chin. Irina was swaddled tight in a blanket, little mouth slightly agape like Daddy’s. A daddy who also hadn’t slept or showered or shaved or had a hair cut in solidarity with Mommy. Never in her wildest dreams could Selina ever imagine loving him more.

She sat down on the edge of the cushions and leaned down to kiss her baby. Then lingered her lips somewhere near her boyfriend’s ear.

“с новым годом, коля,” she whispered in Russian. Happy new year, Kolya. She kissed him on the neck.

A tiny buzz akin to licking a battery passed from Selina’s lips to his skin.

Nik rubbed his eye with the back of his hand and opened only one of them. He looked at the clock, then Selina. His brow creased in thought like he was trying to recall even coming to the living room let alone passing out.

“Καλή χρονιά Λίνα,” he responded in kind. This time in Greek. Happy New Year, Lina.

He looked down at his daughter, “She finds the busy-ness of the city to be a comfort.” Irina didn't fuss. “Like her Mummy who needs water sounds at least to sleep at the lake.”

“You don't like quiet either!” Selina countered.

“That's because I have unpleasant thoughts to be alone with. That little soft melody you make without knowing helps. Like your mama. Papa and I are very lucky to have sirens in our beds.”

Nikolai sat up to kiss his girlfriend properly. The newborn cuddled between them, little coos and sighs came from her while she dreamt. He laughed through his nose.

“Irinka will do the same. She will do so much more.” He inhaled her baby scent.

“Good grief she’s not even ten days old.”

Selina took Irina from him and undid her binding. It was old hat for her now to pull her shirt up so that Irina could latch which she did without much of a fuss. Which, also like her mother, seemed to be her way. Soft cries with only an occasional wail so far.

Nikolai watched while Selina fed their daughter. She rocked back and forth while Irina curled her tiny fist around her finger. The new mother stroked the downy dark hair on the baby’s head while singing just like Nik promised she would. This time a John Lennon song deliberately.

“Lina?”

“Hmm?” She was only half-listening.

“I want to be your husband.”

Selina’s eyebrows raised with skepticism, “Yeah ok. Did you have any of Mama’s sambuco?”

“Selina!”

“Why would you say that?”

Nikolai put his hand around Selina's neck. He massaged it before brushing the bangs from her forehead. His thumb brushed her bottom lip causing her to reflexively kiss it.

“Because saying I want you to be my wife sounds like I want to own you. I have never belonged to anyone the way I am yours, Lina. You are not someone to die for. You are who I want to live the rest of my life for.”

Nik felt around the pocket of his jeans and pulled a box out of them. He opened it to reveal a beautiful ring that was the same blue as everything she loved from the waters of Mykonos to the glow of the specters conjured by the men in her life to a simple dress shirt.

The aquamarine was surrounded by a frame of eight ovals filled with tiny diamonds. The ring itself was rose gold and very old and familiar.

“Oh Kolya, where did you get this? It's my great nonna’s. From Florence. I've only seen it in pictures at my grandparent’s house.”

Nikolai stared at her plaintively. Soon Selina shook her head yes with enthusiasm. He looked.. relieved.

He held her hand and slid the ring on her finger, “It is. It came in the mail earlier today while you were sleeping. Look at the letter on the coffee table.”

Selina picked up a small card. The familiar loopy handwriting sprang tears to her eyes. They flooded down her cheeks.

Nikolai-

You're going to need this. It happens tonight.

Please be good to her and love her. My sister makes the best of all of us. She will make the best of you too. That's her gift.

Welcome to the family. I always wanted an identical twin brother-in-law that my sister is boning.

Sunny

PS- Let Sel know, I'm doing alright. Happy New Year.

Selina hugged the letter and Irina to her chest. Happy new year to you too, Sunny. Wherever you are.

tag list: @neuroticpuppy @magic-multicolored-miracle @elliethesuperfruitlover @forenschik @nightmonsters @vonkimmeren @bisexualnathanyoung @firstpersonnarrator @rob-private @vonkimmeren @maerenee930 @a-ghoulish-tale @holidayspirits @messengeronthemoon @love-is-dirty-baby @wasabimia @frogs--are--bitches @sylvertyger

[miss-kittys-magical-library]

After The Lovin'

(Honey x Leon/Nikolai x Selina Valentine's Day Crossover)

Warnings- mention of f!m sexual intercourse, smoking, nudity, otherwise general love and fluff

A/N- Selina still feels the happy effects after sharing an experience with her parents one night long ago. *Introducing Anne Hathaway as Selina Kostas

Selina remembered one particular evening peering through the crack in the bedroom door. She was maybe 8 years old and, having shooed Sunny off to bed, stood mesmorized while her parents had sex.

"That is just your parents.. loving each other" Klaus had told her some other day.

He had brought the kids home from somewhere or the other to the boisterous sounds of Honey and Leon. More one than the other. It's up to you to decide.

Still Selina asked Topolino what was happening when she noticed her little brother walking the line between curious and crying. The hand whose thumb he sucked glowed electric blue.

Klaus lowered down to kiss it. Sunny gap-tooth smiled around the digit in his mouth. They ignored whomever the little boy conjured before quickly dissipating.

He then took Selina’s hand with its bright pink nail polish and kissed it too. “That is the only way I can explain it to you, Little Moon.”

“Have you done that?” the little girl asked bluntly while petting Klaus’s goatee. Archimedes the old bar cat didn't care for it, but Klaus and Leon never seemed to mind.

“Not like that,” was the simple sad reply.

“With Dave!” Sunny exclaimed.

“Nope.” And that was the end of that.

Now Selina was engrossed with the scene in front of her. The way Honey clung to Leon with one hand engulfed in the mass of curls on the back of his head. Her other clawed encouragingly at his bare backside.

The little girl covered her mouth to stifle a nervous laugh. How silly they looked coming together and pulling apart. The way they bumped into each other like she and her cousin Marco on the amusement park swings high above Coney island and Brooklyn.

Except this was different. Selina knew not just by the nakedness of her parents, but how it felt like the steady rhythm she found in her dancing. The way Prince Sigfried and Queen Odette flowed and undulated as he hunted the swan but fell enchanted by the woman.

She understood and she didn't simultaneously. There was a humming and breathing and soft cries her mama made when Papa placed warm loukoumades in her mouth.

It was pleasure like the soft Grecian sand under their feet, and Honey's repetition of Leon's name like she was saying the rosary. And he went faster and cried out how much he loved Grazia. Gratia. Chári. Gracie. In a million languages until..

Leon collapsed in his wife’s arms where they lounged heavy-lidded and kissed, Selina was certain, with tongues. A Twister tangle of arms and legs and laughter. Their noses rubbing together like the lions at the zoo.

Honey sat and playfully slapped Leon’s backside after he got up and left Selina’s view. She lit something that smelled sweet like Christmas wine while pulling on her panties. Her impossibly long hair covering up swollen breasts Selina envied. She looked up, black cigarette hanging from her lips and caught her daughter’s eye.

The little girl tried to scramble away but Mama shouted,“Vieni qui piccola luna!” Come here, little moon.

Not in an angry way. Melodious the way Honey often was while in a good mood. She got back in bed and opened her arms for her daughter to crawl inside. Then covered her up with the blanket.

“Do you have any questions about what you saw us doing?” Honey buried her nose in the top of Selina’s head.

Snuggled into her mother’s chest, Selina lay her cheek against Honey's skin which was like her namesake: sweet and warm and golden. Their hearts beat in time instantly.

“No. Well, maybe?”

Honey braced herself by squeezing Selina tighter. She hoped there would be at least a few more years before this conversation, but Leon agreed. They should be honest and open. Not that they hid much.

“Mama, will I look like you after I'm loved?”

Honey giggled from the unexpected question. “Whot? Selina you are already loved.”

"No!" Selina rolled with laughter at Honey's confused face. She reached up to whisper in her mama's ear acutely aware Leon had come back into the bedroom freshly showered. His 8 year old caught him off guard, but he made no moves to hide his nudity.

"After the way Papa just loved you," she spoke softly. Her cheeks flushed. "You're so beautiful after and you smell like," Selina sniffed her mother's chest, "Earth and old. Like the temples in Greece and Italy are old." She clarified.

What Selina longed to say were things she once overheard Leon say to her Tio Jonny. That after and before and during his loving (he called it a shagged) Honey was all of these powerful women.. She smelled like someone called Your id a see (a woodsy fairy Selina read) and had breasts and hips that hypnotized like Calypso. She was Venus and Diana and Juno. He wanted to touch her and kiss her and do what Selina had just seen all of the time even after all this time.

But the little girl couldn't convey any of that. Not yet. So she blinked expectantly at Honey and waited for an answer that very honestly came out:

"You will, my Moon Goddess. And he- they," not wanting to limit her daughter despite what she laid claim to the day Selina was born, "will love you beautiful and ugly and weak and strong."

---

Selina crept out of the bed quietly. She left Nikolai sleeping on his side. He rolled to his stomach and, having spread out, lost his face in the pillows. The comforter pulled up so that only his curled hair stuck out.

The young woman wasn’t used to it. Even after several months. Having a man occupy her bed and her space and her body. She had shared a living space with someone before of course. But except for the odd unbearable frozen night in winter (or particularly amorous night), she and Jess rotated between the master bed and futon.

Selina studied her naked body in the mirror on the back of her bedroom door. How her chestnut hair cascaded over her shoulders but wasn’t nearly long enough to cover her breasts. The way her hips curved and breasts swelled and breathing picked up fantasizing about the mouth that teased them. Or inside of her thighs.

She stopped and shook her head. Flushed. Selina felt the skin on her chest and flashed to a memory she had long boxed up. Honey’s warmth and earthy smell. Her clove cigarette and Leon's nudity after taking a shower. The way Mama sang absently to lull her little girl to sleep while rocking her.

There was always music. Before the club and the Xanadu roller disco and Blondie and tiny Irishman with big glasses and tiny Englishman with sequins and feathers and horses in Studio 54. They all sang and danced and played guitar, but only the girls could entrance others with it.

Selina put her balled fists on her hips, breasts puffed out to stand like Lynda Carter. She understood what Leon meant comparing his wife to a Goddess. Having sex or fucking or making love to Nik made Selina feel positively Amazonian.

Oh it wasn't just his tongue or fingers or penis inside of her that made Selina appear.. different. Just like it wasn't those things with Leon that made Honey. It was the way Selina saw Papa treat Mama.

The affection in Leon bending to kiss Honey's temple as they did dishes. Or how he playfully swatted her butt when they passed in the hallway. If he was sitting on the couch or kitchen table or armchair, and his wife was within reach, there were a million memories of Leon clasping her hand to kiss it or pull her laughing into his lap. Any little touch or glance or word that matched the act of “loving” she saw that night as a little girl.

Now here Selina was in her twenties. With a man who made curls in her hair with his fingers while they cooked dinner. Who pecked the back of her neck as she poured her soul into studying then made her coffee or tea without a word. He tucked her in when she passed out in bed over her books before he got home and stayed up until dawn to buy fresh bagels from the Russian Jews on the corner.

And now a muscular arm snaked around her middle. Nikolai stood behind Selina. He left a trail of kisses along the expanse from shoulder to shoulder. She turned in his embrace so he could take part in her absolute favorite display of affection.

“Lina,” He brushed her cheek with the utmost tenderness, always using the backs of his fingers. “What are you looking for, rybka?” He gestured towards the mirror.

“Nothing. Just seeing how beautiful I am after being loved.”

Tag: @magic-multicolored-miracle @maerenee930 @forenschik @elliethesuperfruitlover @bisexualnathanyoung @holidayspirits @neuroticpuppy @frogs--are--bitches @love-is-dirty-baby @duck-noises @falloutby @vonkimmeren @wasabimia @sylvertyger @rob-private @firstpersonnarrator

[miss-kittys-magical-library]

Lay All Your Love On Me

From The Moonbrella Lake Universe (Nikolai x Selina) *1994

Word Count- 3200

Warnings- family drama, mention of breastfeeding, use of superpowers, language, fingering, penetration (m!f)

A/N- Why would Selina and Nikolai ever think a transatlantic flight with the Kostas family would be uneventful? *Appearances by Sunny, Leon and Honey Kostas, Klaus Hargreeves, and Oliver Sway and Jess O'Neill (borrowered with love from @angst-fairygodmother) **Picture by Ari Gold

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Continental Airlines Flight 1423 non-stop to Athens. We've been given the ok by air traffic control. Once we've reached cruising altitude on our ten hour flight, we'll start our service including a selection of in flight entertainment. Again thank you for choosing Continental.”

“Hey did you see they have Leon,” there was a dramatic pause, “The Professional. Sel imagine our dad, a career hitman!” The plane engines roared to life so he shouted.

Sunny’s face appeared between the seats. His nose scrunched and grooved dimples formed just under his eyes while laughing at his own joke. Then he grew instantly stoic, his gaze shifted to stare up at his own eyebrows that met in the middle.

“Is that what he’s learned from Abba Tom all these years?” He bit his pinky nail, “Like The Commission?”

Selina rolled her eyes while fiddling with her nursing bra. She freed herself from the fabric and lifted her tee shirt up enough for Irina to latch. Hoping to prevent her tiny ears from popping, she was glad she skipped a feeding to ensure her daughter was hungry enough to take a nipple.

“If anyone in this family is a hitman it's Klaus. He has combat training, dad has Whitechapel street smarts. Which means his mouth and a switch- Ow! Shark teeth! Do you have two more, dolcezza? Hrm?”

“You know, Nikolai’s face matches his eyes. You alright? Not thinking about doing a runner as Dad would say. Imagine the first ‘return to sender’ Russian bride.” Sunny giggled at his own joke.

Nikolai could only white knuckle the arm of his seat. His eyes clenched shut while the plane continued climbing higher. He ignored his soon-to-be wife who had covered his hand and tried to wedge her hers around it. He relaxed and spread his fingers so she could settle her fingers in between them. Then they formed a clasp.

Selina turned her gaze towards Sunny. Her eyes narrowed, "Why are you like this?"

"Why did you hide an entire baby from me? Or that a Sway is with my.. Jess."

Irina responded for her mother instead by squealing with delight and grabbing a tiny fistful of her uncle's poorly excuse for facial hair.

"You look like a tool. Your niece thinks so too."

"You're a frigid hag who's marrying a Russian hooker. As for all this on my face, the ladies love it." Sunny flashed an obscene, two fingered gesture that involved his tongue. Why do you think Honey's been with Leon this long." He puts his split tongue on display and points at it then his mustache, "I-iss ah iss."

Selina grows queasy, but Irina stares at her uncle upside with intense fascination. Her eyes transfixed on his every movement. Sunny can only respond with pink cheeks and masked embarrassment at the unwanted attention. He didn't command it, so he can't bear it.

"Alright you, go back to Mummy's milk or whatever." Then he whipped around with a finger pointed at the seat beside his sister, "AND STOP OGLING MY SISTER'S TITS, OLIVER! Would Nikolai be ok with that?"

"Turnabout is fair play, Kostas. That's for looking at my fiancee's," Ollie spoke with a calm misdemeanor. His arms crossed in front of his chest.

"Oh come on Little Orphan Ollie, I've done more than ogle them," Sunny makes a motorboat gesture in Jess's direction.

Oliver turned pale pink, but it looked weak next to Jessica's blood red cheeks that rivaled her hair. A hand reached from a seat in front of Sunny to slap him on the back of the head. He flinched in a dramatic fashion.

“OW! Mama!”

“Stop being an asshole, Nicklaus. It's a 10 hour flight, you're 23, and YOU walked away from her. She's not a toy Oliver picked up that YOU decided belonged to you because you stopped playing with it. Now quit being a bitch, or I'll replace you with ANOTHER clone.”

Honey didn't even need to look at Sunny. She went back to her book, head resting on Leon's shoulder. Sunny seemed to deflate in his seat next to Klaus. His voice softer when he finally dared to talk back.

“Well you weren't supposed to replace me with one of your pet projects, let alone a Sway. Is Charlotte Darling dead?” He paused and a blank look came across his face. He was trancing; searching for her spirit. “Mmm, is Nikolai rich now? I bet he's rich. He really has a way with the retirement home crowd. It's almost grave robb-”

“Достаточно!” Nikolai’s outburst startled them all with his outburst. ENOUGH! Irina so much, she started to cry.

“NIKOLAI!” Selina snapped.

She held their daughter to her chest and murmured nonsense to her. Her body rocked back and forth instinctively while she sang a lullaby under her breath. Every parent’s worst nightmare was a screaming child on a flight of any length.

“Lina, he has done nothing but turn everything into a joke or mock us all. I won't have him speak to you or Oleg or your Mama that way. Or anyone,” Nik’s eyes darted towards Jess. “HE left this family.”

Nikolai turned towards his future brother, a finger pointed at him. “Yes, Sunny I get it. There are two of us here who understand your need to be separate. From your abilities. From the Kostas name. It is big shoes to fill. But YOU did not watch your Mama cry for so many months because you never called or wrote.”

“Kolya, please.” The baby had calmed down, so Selina now held on to Nikolai’s shirt. “He doesn't need to know this.”

Nikolai trembled in response. He was shocked to feel the sting of tears while holding back a wave of nausea. “Sunny, you broke everyone's hearts because you were a jealous, selfish prick.”

Nik unbuckled his seatbelt and struggled to get around Selina. “прошу прощения.” Excuse me

Sunny had gone totally dumbstruck for once. No smart ass retort or quick, immature comeback. He watched as his brother in law practically climbed over his sister and niece. Then to the front at his parents.

Honey, who couldn't really be seen over the back of the seat, was ignoring her son. Leon towered over her and was pushing all that dark hair streaked with silver behind her ear. Sunny noticed for the first time his dad had aged. He LOOKED fifty. The grey in his goatee also crept from his temples and was growing through the rest of his head. Even Klaus beside him finally started to age, allowing time to ensnare the time traveling Prophet.

Sunny remained silent. Hands folded awkwardly in his lap, he bit his lip. He could hear Selina singing Moon River until it became just humming and babbling.

He saw Leon's own dad (who died when they were little) and brother (who died when Leon was sixteen) sitting nearby. They were always nearby, but Sunny knew Papa didn't need his abilities to see them. Leon had his own secrets that likely only Honey knew. And the days his son.

There was a calm that floated along the family and some of the passengers, and Sunny wondered if his sister had come into her own powers finally after all these years. Her voice was like an anesthetic. Yet the one person who needed it was having a panic attack in the bathroom.

Right on cue, Selina spoke up: “There's something really wrong with Nikolai. Ollie, can you take Dolce for me?” She lifted the musically sedate baby in his direction.

“Normally yes, but maybe Sunny should. It's pretty obvious to Jess and I that he's more upset about us getting to be with Irina than he is about not knowing you were pregnant. You think he'll really say no to you? Or her?”

Selina held the baby aloft. A flicker of a memory so long ago of her papa doing that with a baby of his own. Those flashes always played with her mind, what was real and not.

But Irina had her fingers stuffed in her mouth like her uncle used when he was little. She beamed a barely toothed smile and squealed at her mommy; Selina could only see Sunny.

She supposed of course Nikolai and Leon and Klaus, but her daughter had Nicklaus’s cheek. His wonder with the world around him and need to command any room’s attention. But the utter dependence on Selina.

She sighed and stood with the baby on her hip. Irina put her head on Selina’s shoulder while babbling softly to herself.

“Take your niece,” the young mother demanded and presented her to Sunny.

“Whot?”

“Something is wrong with Nikolai. He's been in the loo for way too long, and he either died or MacGuyver’d his way out of the plane somehow.”

“No thanks. We have nothing in common. She can't even speak English, and my poly-lingual abilities are tapped out. It's EXHAUSTING sleeping your way across several continents.”

Selina reached out and a tiny firework appeared on the tips of her fingers. She flicked it at her brother’s direction and shocked him.

“OW WHAT THE FUCK?! WHEN DID YOU LEARN TO DO THAT?”

His sister held her palm flat in front of him and made a small light display with sparklers. Sunny’s jaw unhinged when it shot in his direction and into his head. It shrunk and twisted in his cortex until he nearly passed out. Then it was over.

“The longer Nikolai and I are together, the more we find out something was in me too. Nik too. He's like you, but in different ways? When I got pregnant, Irina’s abilities were immediate the further along I was. She's so much like you, Sun. You and Kolya and all of us that came before.”

“Oh good, so she's THIS universe’s Vanya. Due for an apocalypse soon?” Sunny inhaled sharply when his niece began to float in his direction. “Oh no. Nope! Go to Topolino.” He tried to manipulate her in Klaus’s direction.

Klaus shot his head up, “ No way. She's YOUR niece. I did my baby duty with the two of you.” He deflected Irina back to his double like a tennis ball.

Irina giggled. Her uncle folded. Sunny held out his hands so he could catch her. “If she falls helplessly in love with me, well that's on you and Nik. You should've taught her better.”

“Thank you! Promise me we’ll talk later? REALLY talk?” Sunny nodded. She continued, “Be warned, Irina is a stage five face hugger.”

"What's a stage five face hug-"

Before Sunny could finish his query, Irina grabbed a fistful of her uncle’s hair and got them tangled. She put her wide open mouth to his forehead and sucked. Saliva dripped down his face. "Oh," he said from somewhere in her terry cloth onesie.

Jess snickered, “I see she kisses like you.”

But Selina noticed her friend’s face when Sunny seemingly tapped into a hidden parental instinct with the baby. She leaned over Ollie to kiss Jess on the head, humming to her. The red head relaxed as her best friend made her way towards the restrooms.

---

“Kolya, are you ok?” She knocked on the door. “Can I come in?” To Selina’s surprise it was unlocked, maybe had been this entire time but no one had tried to interfere.

Nikolai was leaning forward over the sink. His forehead pressed to the mirror. He looked, as Sunny pointed out, green around the gills.

Selina closed and locked the door before hooking her fingers in his belt loops. “I can get my scrubs out of my bag, and we can play nurse. That might make you feel better, hrm?”

She kissed the back of his neck and grazed her fingertips under his shirt along his stomach. It reflexed and grew taut in response. She let them trail down to the button and fly of his jeans before he swatted her away.

“Lina, stop. Please.” Nikolai’s free hand had a death grip on the sink.

“You're actually scared,” her voice was soft. Selina leaned back and so he could see her reflection. “Do you want me to sing? Relax you a bit?”

Nikolai shook his head no.

“You've never been on an airplane before, have you?”

Nik closed his eyes and shook his head again. “We took trains to somewhere in western Europe, and then a boat to New York. By the time we got to America, we got stuck in that cabin on Long Island. Pops died or was killed.”

Selina laid her head on his back, her cheek to the fabric of his purple shirt. Her hands covered both of his. “And now we know you had to be smuggled out of Russia.”

“How can he exist in so many worlds? WHY does he exist in our world?”

“Because the Fates are tricky, my love. They need a balance: intertwined our souls, but those bitches needed someone inhuman to keep the circle going. Every little choice my parents made and my Abba made and Reginald made and Klaus made spirals and branches off. This one gave us you and Irina and Ollie and Jess. And Klaus made the choice to bring us Sunny and The Umbrella Academy and himself.

“You sound like Leon,” Nikolai smirked. Then his face fell before lifting her hand to kiss it. “I was made to be a weapon.”

Selina slipped around the front of her partner. “Nikolai, look at me.” She held his chin so that he was forced to see into her eyes. “Children are meant to be loved. Not alien science projects on evolution or weaponization.”

Nik held onto her tightly. Selina kissed the dip in his neck where the collarbone met. She felt him grow immediately hard against her thigh when her fingers tangled up in his hair.

Instead of his lips meeting her’s, Nikolai kissed behind her ear. He bit it gently; his breathing grew heavy coming from his nose. His lips trailed down her throat. Selina moaned.

“You’re a brother.. And.. husband..” Selina urged him towards her cleavage. “A dadd-”

The sounds he made caused her to lose the words. Then Nik reached under her shirt. His warm palms on bare skin electrified her. Lifting her shirt he unfastened the nursing bra to pinch a nipple gingerly knowing they were tender from the baby.

Selina literally sparked; Nikolai laughed into her chest just before capturing the nipple to swipe at with his tongue. He knew not to do anything else, having learned that lesson the moment they could have sex again after Irina was born.

Instead he sucked on the flesh just above. Hard. He lost his hand under her polka-dotted skirt. He teased the fabric outside her entrance wetter than it already was.

Their mouths inches apart, sharing oxygen but refusing to touch. Little whimpers escaped Selina as Nikolai worked his fingers faster. He stopped only to aggressively tug her underwear down so she could shimmy out of them. She put her long leg out with a foot up on the wall behind him, astonished that her flexibility was still intact.

Nik bent down in front of his fiancee and held a fistful of her thighs. He was anchoring himself before lunging forward to dive into her sex. He sucked on the parts of her that hid her clit before snaking the tip of his tongue inside to find it. He spread her with thumb and forefinger for better access and worked with a strange fury.

“Fuck!” Selina cried. Her thigh started to shake. She had overestimated her stamina to hold a position she once could for ages. “Use your fingers too,” she commanded. Throat dry.

Nik obeyed. He looked up at her, plunged his fingers in her sex again. He reached up to lower her leg so that it was over his back. He hooked his fingers inside of her and found a rhythm by alternating this move with circling her clit with his tongue. Stopping to suck on her slit at various times.

Selina groped at him. Her grip tugged his hair and head so that he was smothered in her. Nikolai made a satisfactory growl when she constricted and her thighs clenched. The orgasm started in her throat, her body coiling and flexing under his mouth.

Suddenly he was on his feet to swallow the punctuated cries that came with her cumming. Selina could taste herself, the sticky bitterness, while her body rocked and contorted. Nik held her and she threw small fireworks that flashed colors in tiny raining sparks. She had never done that.

Before either could react, Nikolai freed himself from his jeans. “I think it is my turn, dorogoy.”

Selina turned beneath him so that her back faced her soon to be husband. She stood with her feet wide apart and bent just slightly over the sink to present herself to him.

Nikolai held his erection in hand and widened her stance with a knee. He grabbed Selina’s hip which he pulled down on to his cock ramming it forward. Inside of her so deep her ass crashed into his hip bones. She gasped and cried out.

“More,” she begged.

“Like this?”

Nik started to rut wildly. His face twisted with pleasure. Selina desperately clung to the sink. Her eyes fixed on him in the mirror. He took handfuls of her tits and clenched the nipples. Used them to rock her up and down over the shaft.

There was a rhythmic drumming to the pounding. He penetrated Selina like their bodies could merge together. Her gaze, never straying, finally locked into Nikolai's. It encouraged him to fuck harder. Faster. Until her muscles quivered from trying to keep up. She relaxed into his control. That tiny bit of submission and-

“Motherfucker!” Nik all but shouted. His Russian accent all but gone. “I'm gonna cum!” right before he did.

Nik spilled into Selina. His body twisting and twitching and pumping every last ounce into her. Their eyes held each other like he was holding her to his chest. If they were in a bed he would've stayed inside of his fiancée until they fell asleep. Instead he embraced her tightly while he tried to return to normal.

“I think I can survive the rest of the flight, hrm?” Nik kissed Selina's neck.

Selina adjusted her skirt before fastening the nursing bra and caught Nik's eye in the mirror while he put himself together.

"You know it is impressive you've kept the long con. Even around my family. Will you ever let them hear your real voice?"

"Lina, they know me as the Russian thief. Why upset them?"

"You've been here since you were ten years old. They're smart enough to realize the possibility that your accent is fake."

"Yeah but when I talk like this," he affected a New York tone between Brooklyn and Long island, "you freak the fuck out! So, I'm Russian."

He shrugged. A panicked look had spread across Selina's face. Unease laid out in her dark brown eyes. "Huh, what did I say? Это заставляет нервничать. Вы просто видите своего брата или дядю." It makes you nervous. You just see your brother or uncle "Και αν μιλάω στα ελληνικά, είναι ο μπαμπάς σου"

And if I talk in Greek, it's your papa. "Russian separates me from them."

Nikolai slapped her on the ass as was his way post sex. “Let’s hope someone besides you is worried about me. When will the rest of the family meet us in-”

He was interrupted after opening the door. Sunny was flirting with a flight attendant. With a few flight attendants. Their eyes blank, listening intently to his words. Nikolai realized he was enchanting them. Probably keeping them from catching his sister and brother in law.

They turned to make the way towards their seats only to see the entire plane spaced out. Save for the Kostas family of course. Irina happily babbling and holding fists full of Ollie’s hair. He looked mildly sick.

“You aren't the only one whose powers grew.” Sunny moved past them. “Selina, I think maybe we should talk now instead of later.”

She couldn't help but agree while she and Nikolai did their best to ignore the flood of blue spectres filling the empty seats and aisles.

How dare they believe a wedding in Greece would be drama free. And to think, they still had eight more hours.

tag list: @bisexualnathanyoung @magic-multicolored-miracle @maerenee930 @messengeronthemoon @love-is-dirty-baby @neuroticpuppy @nightmonsters @elliethesuperfruitlover @vonkimmeren @forenschik @duck-noises @feed-davis-and-steve @falloutby @firstpersonnarrator @rob-private @frogs--are--bitches @holidayspirits @a-ghoulish-tale

[miss-kittys-magical-library]

Let It Snow

(Leon x Honey)

Word Count- 2k

Warnings- nothing really, just holiday fluff

a/n- Tradition gives Honey and Leon a little Christmas reflection on forty years of love and loss. A book end sequel to "Baby It's Cold Outside“

“Leon, I can’t do this, there won't be anything left! He's nearly two, he won't know.”

Honey put her sewing down. She let the fabric drape across her lap so she could smooth it out. Her eyes focused on only the triangles of glittery red and silver. It was tattered and scarce, but she knew she could make it work. Somehow, no matter what, there was always enough.

“There won't be.. Have you gone daft in your old age, woman?!” Leon teased. He rolled on his side to prop up on an elbow. “This vest is spread out over forty years, two children, three grandchildren and one Klaus. Two broke hippies in love sharing a tiny little flat in White Chapel who had massive sex drives and no heat made it FOUR DECADES and created three generations of people together.”

Honey rolled her eyes, “It's that why you’re making us stay in this insanely small studio apartment in the absolute worst part of downtown with no heat?!”

Leon's eyes danced. He kissed Honey’s cheek then behind her ear. Her forehead and lips. “Just a little anniversary recreation is all, love. Even gave a go at wearing your knickers again. Carry on with JT’s thingies you're making.”

“You fucking weirdo!” Honey smacked him on the arm. “Piss off.” But Leon smiled, his dimples creasing, and she relented.

Honey kept on fashioning overalls from what was left of her years with Leon. Honey hoped the babies were done until at LEAST another fifteen years, and then it would be up to Selina to carry this tradition on. Here she was at 65 trying to grasp 80.

Leon gingerly got out of bed to plug in the artificial tree their granddaughter reluctantly parted ways with for the time being. He couldn't believe his mother had saved it. That it ended up with Selina who passed it along to Irina. She cherished it like a priceless family heirloom.

“You cheeky bastard, this isn't romantic! We have arthritis!” Honey yelled, but there was laughter in her voice.

She pulled the comforter up to her chin practically. She watched Leon sort of dance around to the Christmas cd he put on. It made her smile in spite of all the shivering. She clung to the fabric in her lap like she did the memories that came flooding back.

They were so in love and so incredibly poor. She never wanted to think about where or how Leon got that present. The rent was paid, and they mostly had food, but what was left over from their measly paychecks often ended up smoked or drank or fucked away. But they had each other.

Back when their hair was dark and not streaked with silver. That first Christmas together where Leon wore those ridiculous thermal underwear.

Honey had put on her leopard coat to model. They unwrapped each other like gifts and made love with Leon imploring her to keep the jacket on. They shared a joint and orgasms and made snow angels at 5am. Both oblivious to all the Christmases to come.

Leon laid down again beside his wife. His mood a bit nostalgic and sad.

"I'm half expecting Johnny to burst through the door, pissed and high on cocaine with some bird he picked up."

"And they looked like he collected them from the different countries in It's A Small World."

"EXACTLY! And he started slurring at us and very dramatically blinked. 'Piss off you two monogamous freaks. Thorpe needs a shag!' then banish us to the couch. IT WAS MY FLAT! Only went along with his hare-brained schemes so no one killed him. Little over our heads with that Kubrick thing was all."

“I have to admit though he was a world class shyster. He could sell a dildo to a nun. Honestly, he could talk his way into anything and shockingly back out of it! Don't know which one of us was a better bullshitter. Probably why we didn't always get on I guess.”

Leon looked over at Honey, "I know you didn't always get it." He kissed her hand.

"It wasn't for me to get. Like Nikolai and Oliver. Or Selina and Jess. He was just there. Hustling aside, Johnny was a good uncle. He adored our kids in spite of himself.”

"Well we definitely loved each other. I think he was the other part of my soul. Now that's missing."

Honey brushed the hair away from Leon's forehead. "Fifty year is a long time to love someone. I will always be jealous of those ten years he had on me. Certainly thought he'd outlive us. Johnny, Tom, Cher and cockroaches."

"And Klaus!” Leon laughed. Then began to cry.

“I'm sorry, my love.” Honey bent to kiss the tears on his cheeks. “We don't have to talk about Johnny if you don't want to.”

“No, it's good to talk about him. Maybe we all should've done more talking. Not just gobshite either.”

Honey settled into Leon's arms with her ear pressed to the sound of his steady heart. He wrapped his long arms like he had done without fail for forty years. If she could tell her younger self anything it would be that one day a man will hold you for fifteen thousand days and counting.

There was a bit of melancholy in the air that dampened the festive mood from earlier. It was always funny to her how some holiday music could be so sad. Or maybe it was bittersweet? Like the lyrics of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.”

“I'm sorry that loving me got so complicated there in the middle.”

Leon held his wife back a little, “Piss off.”

“Leon, you can't act like it was easy.”

“Whot?! Gracie loving you is the easiest thing I've ever done. Now stop, you're bringing down the Crimbo vibe!”

Leon leapt, or as much as a 66 year old could, out of the bed again. He went to a bag in the closet to reveal a gift wrapped box. He placed it in Honey’s lap along with the obligatory Christmas cracker.

"Honestly Leon, I hope this isn't another leopard coat,” she teased. “Irina would kill us! And she's way more powerful than Sunny ever was.”

“Imagine a bloody mountain lion when all we had to put up with was a crow. Go on love, open it up. It's from all of us.”

Honey tore into the paper like she had always done. A trait both of her children and at least one grandchild (so far) possessed. Irina was delicate about it, like her Pappou. As if they both wanted to either leave as little waste as possible or cherish the wrapping as much as the gift.

Now she lifted a quilted blanket. In the center of it was the material from Leon’s vest. All around it were fabrics and patches of memories. The blanket Klaus had swaddled Sunny in. There was tulle from Selina’s first tutu. Irina’s little tee-shirt from Lilith Fair. And another shirt belonging to Leo, his first Elton John concert.

Honey ran her fingers over every swath stitched together. The parents and materials that made up all the days and hours growing their family.

“Oh, Nikolai's orange dress shirt! Selina loves that shirt. She gave that shirt up for me?”

“It's a shirt, Grazia. You're her mama.”

Leon rang his fingers through Honey’s hair. He was content to watch her get lost in her memories. Their memories. There wasn't a day that went by that he didn't love looking at her.

Honey stopped over emerald green metallic fabric in the left corner. “Is this Jessica’s prom dress?

“Yes!”

“Remember we bought this for her?”

Tears started rolling down Honey's cheeks without her realizing.

“I told her I couldn't have my surrogate daughter going off to a city prom in a big shouldered, hoop skirted monstrosity. Jessica and Isadora and Selina looked like Jem and The Holograms after I was done.”

Honey laughed now at the smell of Aquanet that filled her nostrils suddenly. A memory of her and Leon catching the redhead and Sunny being so clandestine. A shared kiss, a hug too tight. Sunny smelling her hair. It was bittersweet and doomed from the start.

“She really gave you something for this?”

“Why wouldn't she, love? Everyone did. I've had it a little while so this bit here,” Leon pointed to a paisley pattern, “was from Johnny. He said it was the only shirt you had ever said was nice about him.”

“The way he dressed was my favorite part about him, actually.”

“Ollie’s sweater he always wore is on here.”

“And Klaus’s prophet jacket.”

Just then an alarm went off from Honey’s phone pulling her out of her reverie. She looked at her watch, midnight.

Honey handed Leon a cracker and urged him to tug while she did the same, giggling at the speed in which she rushed him. She popped her own and placed the paper crown on Leon's head.

Leon frowned but was ready for his. “One. Two..” CRACK!

The contraption split open and something round and metal fell out on the bed. Leon picked it up to examine the prize. It was a silver ring.

“Whot?” was all he could ask.

Honey laughed. A loud, heartfelt laugh. How lovely after all these years just a simple word, an expression of innocent confusion, could make her melt. Or find so much joy.

“Get your coat and come with me. We're going outside.”

Down the stairs to the lobby. When it had started to snow neither of them knew. This night, most nights, they were so tangled together that only they existed. Or the kids and grandkids. Still out in it they went.

“HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!!”

In the middle of the snow covered street was, quite literally, every member of Honey and Leon's tribe. The four generations of Bartucci-Kostas family from Leon’s mum to Honey’s parents and all her siblings and Klaus (who allowed his age to finally show). Their nieces and nephews. Selina and Nikolai, Sunny and Ollie and Jess. And their entire brood.

There were absences in the family. Empty spaces left by Nick and Benjamin, Leon's dad and brother. And black holes where Johnny and Tom ought to be with their larger than life presence. But they were there, quietly observing in a bittersweet way.

Everyone kissed and hugged. Leon didn't need anyone to conjure his best friend as he bent to pick up his youngest grandson. His name and his somehow dark red hair were enough.

Leon kissed the toddler in his arms, “Have you come to see Pappou at half 1 in the morning when Santa’s coming? Was this all Honey’s doing, hrm?”

He pressed his forehead to the little boy’s who nodded and giggled. “Yeah,” he whispered only for Leon to hear.

Honey stood in front of Leon and put their grandson down. She took the ring he was still protecting in his hand.

“All these years you never wore or asked for a wedding band. And I have always trusted you. But! Tonight. In the middle of the night, under the Christmas lights and snow no one predicted, I want us to get married again. We had our found family back then.”

“And Selina,” Leon smirked.

“Hey!” she hollered from the crowd.

“But now we have everyone else here. So let's get married again?” Honey kissed the backs of Leon's hands.

“I'm certainly ill dressed for a wedding.”

“Because you should wear this.”

Sunny handed Leon his vest. One that looked brand new but the same. Worn and a touch tattered but intact. Like it had never been touched by Honey to spread out through the years.

Leon let his son help him with it. He turned to Honey and pulled a paper crown out of the vest pocket. He kept it there for good luck and placed it on her head. “Go on then, love. One more time.”

Tag: @elliethesuperfruitlover @magic-multicolored-miracle @neuroticpuppy @forenschik @frogs--are--bitches @firstpersonnarrator @vonkimmeren @love-is-dirty-baby @nightmonsters @bisexualnathanyoung @maerenee930 @rob-private @messengeronthemoon @sylvertyger @a-ghoulish-tale @holidayspirits @gayandfairycore @karinasmoonlight @wasabimia

[miss-kittys-magical-library]

Happy 1st Anniversary, Tupelo Honey ❤️‍🔥🍯🧔🏻‍♀️👩🏻🧑🏻‍🦱👩🏻‍🦱

*You've spanned (soon)three generations and what will be four universes of characters. Even if no one is really around to enjoy it anymore. I'll finish you one day.

*Thank you to @neuroticpuppy @magic-multicolored-miracle @forenschik @bisexualnathanyoung and @elliethesuperfruitlover

[angst-fairygodmother]

Girl Talk (The Song of Sway Lake Fic)

A/N: The moment has finally arrived! The first official collab/crossover between myself and @miss-kittys-magical-library​! I’m really excited for how this came out, and how much fun we had writing it together. 😊 Word Count: 3127 Rating: T - mild language, brief mention of blood, discussion of violence

~The Papermill bookstore, Sway Lake~

Selina burst through the door of the bookstore.  She almost doesn't wait for Jess to say hello or ask questions.  Selina is overcome with adrenaline, the exhilaration of what she did. A giant smile spread across her lips.  There's almost a dreamy look in her eyes.  

She's covered in blood: her hands, her jeans, the bottom of her shirt.  Selina held her hands like a surgeon so she didn't touch anything.  

Jess’s mouth hung open while she pointed nervously towards the upstairs.  Her friend knew where to find what she needed.

Selina comes out of the hot shower knowing Jess will be in the room waiting.  She found clean clothes but stopped to study herself in the mirror.  Somehow she felt like her body had changed somehow.  

Selina caught a picture of her and Jess and held it up.  How far they've come from the girls in the photo on her best friend’s dresser.

She glimpsed Jess in the mirror, a strange smirk on her face.  Selina knew something was up.  She handed the picture to her friend and spoke,

“Can you believe this was us?”

------

There had been a time in life where Selina and Jess had told each other everything, no matter what. And yet somehow this summer, one of the most eventful in recent history, Jess hadn’t told her best friend anything. Anyone who had spent any time on the lake knew about tensions between the Sways and...basically everyone, but especially Selina’s mother and her relatives. And more than that, it had been kind of nice to have a good secret all to herself for a little while. But she missed her friend, and would have loved her advice on what to do about the boy who was quickly becoming someone important, and a problem for her heart. 

She was just thinking about the other girl, wondering if she should call her after work, maybe suggest a bonfire or late night rowboat race like they used to have, when Selina burst through the door. Jess’s eyes fell to the blood first, and then rose quickly to Selina’s face and the expression that didn’t match the apparent situation at all. 

A thousand questions raced through her mind as she pointed her best friend toward her bathroom (not that Selina didn’t know where it was by now) and made quick work of closing the shop. She didn’t seem hurt, so everything else could wait. While Selina washed herself clean, Jess dug for any clothes left behind the last time she had come for a visit, and failing that, any old shorts and t-shirt. She left them on top of the dresser and poked her head into the bathroom to gather the discarded bloody garments and throw them into the wash. 

Selina was standing in the bedroom, studying herself in the mirror when Jess returned, and for a moment she wondered, again, if her friend was injured. 

“Can you believe this was us, what?”

Selina laughed, “These girls.  We’re just girls here trying to be grown women.  I sort of treated you like I did Sunny.” 

She waited for Jess to maybe bristle or tense up at his name. “I marched on to the beach, saw the first girl my age who had SOMETHING in common with me, and declared you mine.  We aren't little girls anymore.”  

There was a bittersweetness in her voice.  Selina didn't even care that she was naked. 

Jess laughed. She remembered that day, meeting Selina after escaping her siblings in search of a moment of peace and quiet, far from what actually found her instead. But they had got on so quickly she'd forgotten to be angry about it.  

"No, we really aren't," she agreed with a tinge of nostalgic sadness in her own voice.

She leaned back on her hands on the bed, watching her friend study the picture. "I never minded, you know. It was kind of nice to be claimed by somebody. You'll always be my first for that," she bit her lip, hoping the joke didn't come off as uncomfortable given the situation. 

Selina finally dressed and sat beside her friend on the bed.  Her knuckles caressed the other woman’s cheek before she swept the hair from her face. Without a thought, she leaned in and gently pressed her lips to Jess’s, tongue lingered a bit before she broke away.  

“That's from Sunny too.”  Selina laid on her side tucked under Jess’s arm.  “How is it that I was here for a few weeks, and youuuu have been tramping around Sway Lake with some chick?!  Have you gone FULL lesbian?” she dropped her voice low. 

Jess turned onto her side, propping a head on her arm to face Selina. 

"You two are so weird," she rolled her eyes. "I don't think I'll ever get used to that." 

Her stomach flipped at the thought of Sunny, eyes cast to the ceiling as her thoughts wandered. She loved Ollie, but there was something raw about the idea of losing the other boy, even though he wasn't really hers anymore and hadn't been in quite some time. 

She quirked a teasing eyebrow as she returned to the present moment and the woman beside her.

"If I was going to do that, do you think it would be with anyone else than you? Whoever gave you your gossip needs glasses."

Selina’s mouth dropped open, “There's a guy around here with hair that long?!”  

She linked her arm through Jess’s and pulled her in for a hug.  The other woman now wrapped up in her embrace.  Selina let her chin rest on her friend’s head as she stroked her hair.  “You feel happier.  Content.  Like you're just drifting along.  I know you loved Sunny in your own way, but this is different.  It's the,” she ran a hand up and down Jess’s body without touching it, “this.  Papa would call it your aura.” 

Jess grinned. "I am. I'm really, really happy," she answered dreamily. "Ollie's a really sweet guy. But only here for the summer…"

She swallowed down the lingering bitter taste her argument with Ollie the previous morning had left in her mouth, not wanting to burden the conversation with her fears. Especially not when she still had so many questions of her own. 

"But don't think asking about my love life is going to get you out of explaining yourself, missy." She teased.

Selina sat up, “Oliver Sway?!  Jessica!  Come on.  Any other Tom, Dick or asshole at this stupid lake.  Sunny.  Sunny’s RIGHT THERE.  Just grab him by the ankle and bring him back to Earth.  He needs you.”

She took a breath, “That.. harpie will tear you apart because you aren't good breeding.  It's Sway Lake because that's what those upper crust cunts hold over this entire town.  Sway.  Lakes dont belong to one family, they should belong to EVERY person.  Are Sunny and I the only ones NOT under this family’s curse?  First Tom, then Nikolai and now you.”  

Selina’s voice was full of disappointment more than anger.  She looked at her hands.  Her palms, white and clean, were just caked brownish red not even an hour ago.  “It can't be the both of us.”

"Nikolai?!" Jess asked, staring for a moment before doubling over in laughter. "Oh god it all makes sense now."

She struggled to contain her laughter, gasping for air and wiping away the tears in her eyes from it. 

"Fuck Charlotte Sway, I couldn't care less what she thinks," she said, sobering and then sighing. "It's not like I planned on falling in love with Ollie. But I did, and it kinda scares me. I really really don't want to lose him. And he hates her and the whole legacy bullshit as much as anyone. Let it all rot or burn or whatever."

Jess was silent for a moment. It was hard to say Selina was her only or even oldest friend. But they were best friends, for certain, and they knew everything about each other. There were even times when they were younger that Selina and Sunny had talked about soulmates and Jess had wondered if she were hers. Which is why her stomach twisted with guilt as she realized just how unsettled Selina was, and pretending not to be. 

"But enough about me, it doesn't matter. Are you okay?"

Selina took Jess’s hand in hers.  She laced their fingers together and laid down again.  This time she and her friend were side by side.  She was certain no one in any spoken language had invented a word for what the two of them were.  

Selina knew it was why Leon and Johnny always ended phone calls and visits with long hugs and I love yous.  Why Honey and Klaus showered each other with intimacy and affection Honey showed Leon.  Friendships that made people question your sexual intentions.  It was probably something in the Kostas skin, like a pheromone. 

The 23 year old pushed the thought out of her mind that everyone around them was their friend because they didn't have a choice.  Instead she squeezed Jess’s hand.  

“You know Honey, she holds grudges with a tight grip.  There's only two people she hates: Charlotte Sway and Reginald Hargreeves, and he's the one she really wants dead.  Charlie is lonely and miserable. That's punishment enough for Mama.  Papa always says she would make a great Mafia don. She DID like Tim Sway; 

cried when he killed himself.  He wasn't even Charlot-”  Selina cut herself off.  “Either way Ollie must take after him then.  I hope he does.  I think we played together when we were little?”   

She realized she was avoiding the question and wanted to deflect solely on Jess.  Sunny wasn't the only one who slept around up here, or had a weird effect.  Selina again panicked if maybe, somehow, what was in him was in her.  That the Russian on a canoe in the middle of the night would show up in the Village, screaming at her in the dead of night.  Some of the guys she fucked flopped around on top of Selina for a few minutes, got off while she stared at the ceiling.  Then they laid claim to her like any White guy who thought he owned someone else’s land.

“And don't laugh like that either!  I was doing my duty as a future nurse and helping someone who got hurt.”   

She watched Jess cross her arms, even on her back.  She was giving Selina THAT stare.  Selina threw her hands up. “Ohhh,” she whined, ”I was swimming, floating really.  Probably out further than I should be in the middle of the night, but that fucking moon.  And there he was on his way to get rid of those horrendous jet skis of Jimmy’s.  And he was flirtatious and made me groan, but also laugh?” 

Selina had pulled her knees up to her chest so she could hug them.  A far off look on her face.  “And he's very.. I didn't really pay attention to what he looked like.  WHO, right?  It was just this fire that went through me.  Like I knew him?  

“Mama always talks about the day I was born and speaking into existence this notion. That every version of her will be loved by and love Papa.  She thought it was blood loss creating insanity, but Sunny and I had designs on a love like theirs.”

“And the way Nikolai made me feel, and the way he knew my body?  We didn't even fuck; not like that.  I haven't cum that hard or much ever.  Even by myself.”

“Then he got hurt, and I made Sunny take me to him.  Ollie had saved him, right?  As we're stitching him back together, I see his face.  That face I grew up with three times over.  He's fashioned for me, Jess.  Maybe like Ollie is for you.  But Nikolai is Leon and Nicklaus and Klaus and he's made to be mine.” 

"No, no  I'm not laughing at that, or you," Jess promised. "Just...the first decent conversation Nikolai and I had, he mentioned meeting someone. Matching his description to you is what's funny. And the fact that you two are such opposites." Jess paused, smiling in fondness for both parties in question. "But it's safe to say he likes you, a lot." 

She felt silly now, not putting it together sooner. After all, there was no one else in the world she could think more aptly described as a siren made of the moon. And as funny as it was on paper, something about Selina and Nikolai made sense. 

 And, it made her heart beat giddily. Her faith in fate was complicated, but when it came to the Kostases, the concept was shockingly simple. And it seemed impossible that this was just coincidence, the four of them tied together like this. 

'Or maybe,' she silently scolded, 'it's wishful thinking so you can tell yourself you're not being completely crazy.' 

The rest of what Selina said registered belatedly and she blanched. "Wait. That was a lot of blood. Are you saying that it was all Nikolai's?"

“It was,” Selina replied softly.

"Jesus. What did he do, get in a knife fight?" Her voice was a mixture of concern and annoyance. 

She could see Nikolai doing something like that, to defend his own pride which he deflected onto Ollie, or for some other stubborn, idiotic thing. And now that there were two people she loved who would get hurt if something happened to him, she made a note to have a little chat with him about being so reckless. And to find Ollie later to check on both boys. 

"I know if he had you helping take care of him, I don't have to ask if he'll be alright." She nudged Selina teasingly with a shoulder, hoping to break up some of the heavy, contemplative air settling over them both.

“Knives don't cause QUITE as much damage as you think.  Unless you hit a vein.  Diego showed me how to do it effectively once.  Plus if he's like the others, Nikolai probably prefers fists to weapons.  Or the spider monkey sleeper-hold thing Klaus and Sunny do.  Although Papa stabbed Uncle Jonny once, it was just an artificial wound.” 

Selina suddenly scooped Jess up in her arms so they could go back to a cuddle.  She tangled her legs and arms around Jess to sort of dominate her personal space.  Her forehead pressed into her friend’s neck.

“He and Jimmy got into it, and they were on the boat dock.  Nik slipped and hit his head.  Ollie swam for like, the first time ever to get him up into a boat.  Had pressure on it.  I just stitched him with fishing wire.  They'll do better at the ER.”

Selina sighed, “If he's like them he wouldn't die anyways.  Klaus died like twice in a few days, also head injuries?  Either way, Nikolai would’ve been fine without me.”  

Then almost like an afterthought, “Did you say he talked to you about me?  Probably something about conquests and the Russian army.  But you!  YOU FELL IN LOVE this summer!  I got my pussy licked and think he's this mythical soulmate.  You're in actual, real love.”

Selina propped up on her elbow, “Have you slept together?  No I'm sorry,  YOU get to call it MAKING LOVE!!”  she burst into a fit of giggles around cheeks fired by jealousy.  “I am happy for you.  I promise.  I'm glad Sunny..  I'm just happy.”

"No, actually," Jess said, shifting around Selina so they tucked together more cleanly, like two matched puzzle pieces. This kind of closeness wasn't Jess's favorite thing, but Selina knew that, and Jess trusted that if she didn't need it, she wouldn't be initiating it. "It was surprisingly non-militant. And only one nautical reference."

Jess hesitated, remembering some of the incidents Selina had to deal with and one or two more from the summers that  Sunny, or Jess herself, had headed off before they got far enough to be a concern (or for Selina to even know). She wanted her friend to know just what Nikolai had said, and that he very much did not just see her as just some conquest. But the line between sweet and creepy was a hazy one at best. She brought one hand away from the tangle to fret the corner of her thumb between her teeth while she thought it over. 

"I'm not saying I'm jealous...but I thought it was romantic. And dramatic of course, look who we're talking about. But dramatic isn't always bad. I wish you'd stop dismissing yourself like that. Soulmate or no, you have some sort of feelings for him which seem serious; one might call it a crush at least. And he made you feel good. He made you happy. You're allowed that. You deserve it. And now, for the moment if not more, you have it, savor it." 

"As for Ollie and me..." 

She froze, frowning as she struggled to figure out just what to say. There was a part of her that feared a reputation of some kind (even though it was just Ollie that she'd been a first time for, and Sunny, but he didn't count). And another part that wanted to keep it to herself, even though most of her wanted to share. She bit again at her thumb, searching for words. 

"It's not that big of a deal?" 

Selina bit her lip before a yawn escaped her.  “One: a crush is a crush because you can get hurt.  Otherwise, it would be called a cushion.  I think that's what Papa said once.  Or was it Klaus?”  

Selina closed her eyes now. “Either way, it's a very big deal!  I can feel the difference in you.  I want you to be in love.  To maybe leave Sway Lake.  Come back to the city with me?  Close up this place for a few months.  You can live with me.  Or Oliver for a little while. Oh lovely little Oliver making my sweet Jessica come ‘round again.  All your sadness and little pieces everywhere.  I couldn't stitch you back together with fishing wire, could I?  I shouldn't have let Sunny break your heart.  I just didn't want being around me to remind you of him.  I'm sorry.  But Ollie.. he’ll..  Sorry, I think I'm a bit delirious from adrenaline?  Mind if I nap a bit?” 

But Selina was fast asleep before Jess could give permission.

Jess shook her head with a smile, carefully extricating herself and tucking her friend into the bed. Selina had given her a lot to think about.