#You can tell who is more liminal by how animated their hair is or if it has white in it

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 47

Hear me out. Amity Park gets shifted in universes slightly- maybe it���s from Pariah, maybe it was a wish, maybe they did so on purpose to escape something- and they end up in the DC-verse. The thing is, thanks to the media blackout and the shields, no one in the new universe notices. The Amityville Paekers know about outside, can go on the internet and leave whenever they want, but they’ve all become more than a little liminal. More than a little off. Movements too graceful, eyes too sharp, ears too pointed and teeth more akin to predatory fangs. Skin with a soft glow, hair moving as though underwater or being tussled by the wind- bodies seemingly unaging after a certain point. They’re so ecto-contaminated that they’re unsure they can even be counted as human anymore, and it wasn’t like the city wasn’t already practically self sufficient. Add in a portal or two through the Infinite Realms to get supplies to start a few fields or some fish farms and well, they’re pretty good. Sure it’s resulted in them using a mixture of modern and older money and having several extinct plants and animals running around but that’s fine. There’s magic in this world! Actual magic, that they can learn! And use? Oh this makes rebuilding after a sparring incident go so much faster! 

This results in the hero who stumbles across this place to believe they’ve stumbled across some sort of city of fae or elves. 

[sleepy-grav3]

Obsessions - Family

A/n: So, a while back, I made this little thing about obsession speculations. Well, I made a few oneshots about that even further back and just found them. It's a mini-series that looks like it was attached to another fanfic plan? Well, I have no idea what the plan was, so I'm giving you this. There are 4 parts I made? This and the 3rd part are finished, but the 2nd and 4th are incomplete. Better together but still understandable as a standalone, you know?

Summary: Jazz has finally gotten through to Vlad in their therapy sessions. Danny is a bit on edge but relieved. Then Vlad has a talk with Jack and Maddie. Many things are shared.

TW: Unprofessional and very improvised medical treatment, mention of stalking, mention of attempted murder, intensified canonical death(s) (I made it so much worse, but it's not too detailed), hints at suicidal thoughts, hints as attempts, internalized homophobia, polyamory (I don't consider it a trigger but some people don't like it so whatever), mention of a dead kitten

Vlad/Maddie/Jack; Danny's obsession is Space and Protection; Vlad's obsession is Family; Liminal amity Park; Vlad loves animals; Amity is Danny's haunt and the people, animals, ghosts, and more sentient plants that live there are his people; Ghosts feel things more intensely and it's overwhelming for halfas who are also still alive and not built or used to it; ghosts are empaths, they know what other people around them are feeling

Danny was sitting on his bed with a needle and fishing line in hand, sewing a particularly long and deep enough cut from his last fight, when his door slammed open. He jumped, eyes wide, blood draining from his face, and heart entirely stopping.

He feared the worst, thinking about how to explain to his parents about such a large injury that couldn’t possibly be from bullying, but then he realized who it was. Jazz.

She was more frazzled, hair a mess and panting heavily. But thanks to ghost speak, allowing him to be the best empath a living person could be, he could tell she wasn’t scared or panicking. It was similar in intensity, but it was the opposite. She was excited and enthusiastic.

“I did it!” She laughed. Tears were springing forth from her eyes as she paced around, waving her hands around. “I actually did it! I-I helped him- I convinced- I- Holy shit, Danny! I did it!”

Danny sighed, shoulders slumping without the previous worry he harbored. He allowed his heart to beat once more, finishing his stitches as Jazz let out her excitement and… relief? No, it was satisfaction. Huh.

“It wasn’t- I didn’t think that- Wow! I didn’t know how it was all going to work because of how obsessions work and his seemed like it was leaning towards control but- But it wasn’t! And while the situation is a bit weird now, it’s- I got a breakthrough!”

Danny raised a brow as he looked up, having finished tying the knot and snipping off the rest while she spoke.

“Can I ask or are you implementing privacy protocols?”

Jazz took a few breaths, letting out a few airy chuckles.

“I-... No it’s…” She took another breath. “Vlad- I’ve been talking to him.” she quickly went to clarify once seeing Danny tense. “And yes, I’m fine. He hasn’t done anything. He’s sent me gifts and sent me a bunch of textbooks and all that- but nothing over the moon.”

Danny pursed his lips, making Jazz smile. He always hated how she’d slip in astronomy into the conversation to calm him down. She knew how it affected his ghostly side. It was like a sedative, a drug. It worked every time.

He was worried the addiction would grow like it had for other ghosts. Jazz stated that it was more like a prescription for a health condition. After that conversation, it clicked. She must’ve been talking with Frostbite. Damn her empathetic nature. It wasn’t even caused by some instinct (though he supposed that she may have a mother’s instinct with how she always saw through him).

“When did you…?”

“He wasn’t sure which place to get Maddie from and what would be best suited for them.” It took a moment for Danny to remember about Vlad's first cat.

“But why did he ask you?”

“He thought I wanted to be a vet. And yes, I did for a while just to be around animals. Always wanted a snake- but it wasn’t really… Anyway- The last time Mom talked about me before the incident, it was about me helping a friend with their grumpy cat.”

“Well, he went to the right person, I guess. He officially has 4 of them now.”

“Officially?”

“Remember the whole stray thing?”

It started with Danny finding a dead kitten in a parking lot. His obsession about protecting his people, including the animals and even some plants, had hit him hard. He ended up crying to Vlad about it when the older halfa saw him going on a frenzy to find all the strays in Amity to see if they were ok.

Vlad decided to join him and bought a whole building for the strays they've found. It's a play area open for adoption and just to hang out. But before that, he had to keep them in his mansion. He had to throw out his old wardrobe because of all the fur.

It was funny to think back on. Vlad spoiled them so much but refused to admit how attached he got to them even when he had 3 kittens climbing him, a surprise raccoon on his shoulders, and 2 dogs running circles around him.

“Oh, right.” Jazz snickered a bit before shaking her head. “After approaching him enough times while you were out, I was able to start talking with him. And now, he came to a conclusion!”

“And that is…?”

Jazz hesitated for a moment.

“So… how do you feel about hooking him up with mom-”

He opened his mouth.

“-and dad?”

He closed it, eyes now wide. Jazz pursed her lips, analyzing every micro-expression before falling back into therapist-brain when she found nothing.

“I know you aren’t comfortable with him after everything, but you must’ve noticed how he’s calmed down a bit, right? He’s trying and-”

“It’s related to his obsession. He has one.” Danny interrupted; Jazz could hear his slow relief sneaking in. “It’s not… You said it wasn’t control. It's... it's really not?” His expression held hesitant hope. As if he was trying to be careful not to get his hopes up.

Jazz smiled softly. “No, it’s not.”

Danny let out a small sigh of relief, slumping forward. Jazz could see the energy- something similar to adrenaline- drain out of him. He looked more tired now.

The exhaustion he carried was identical to that of a retired veteran soldier. It made a piece of her ache each time he let loose enough to show it. It made her wilt when she saw the similar expressions on his friends as well.

Val was an exception, but it was only because she acted like a military person during training rather than after war.

It made sense.

She hated how it did.

He looked up again, now with a more appreciative look. One that was thankful and genuinely happy.

“Congratulations on your breakthrough.”

“It’ll be a bit easier now, right?”

Danny let out a small chuckle. “Maybe.” He let out another sigh as his head spun a bit from the relief.

He could feel how fuzzy everything was starting to become as something in him twisted. He could feel his core amplifying whatever emotions he was feeling to the point he felt numb. The feeling made it harder to tell if he was breathing, it made it harder to stay in the moment.

He could see Jazz coming closer and he could only smile. He was happy. He was so happy. It felt like he was a step closer to completing something.

“Maybe…”

---

“Can we talk? Just the 3 of us?”

It was a few days after another session with Jazz when he finally convinced himself to talk with Maddie and Jack. Maddie looked at him more skeptically.

It was to be expected, and it made his core want to cry. But Jack accepted without hesitation, looking more than excited to see him. He smiled a bit, feeling his core mend itself with the acceptance alone that he received from Jack of all people. The very person he wanted to kill until about a week ago.

They shuffled to the living room where Vlad could finally sense Daniel in his room along with Jazz’s liminality along with him. It was always difficult to sense liminals, ghosts, or even Daniel in the household due to how much ectoplasm the scientists dealt with. It was worse than how difficult it was to track Daniel’s presence (ghost form or not) when he left Amity Park while Daniel out with his friends or at school.

It’s why he implemented cameras. He had deactivated them once the second truce came around, instead deciding to call Jazz regularly for updates. She was fully honest with him, it was relieving. It made his core hum with glee.

“So what did you want to talk about, Vladdie?”

Vlad took a shaky breath. He didn’t want to lie anymore. He didn’t talk about this to any of the children, but he didn’t want things to bite him back in the future if this worked out.

“Remember the proto-portal? The one we made back in college?”

“Yes?” Maddie confirmed hesitantly, feeling the tension of the room grow.

“Something happened to me then. I got a disease of sorts. It was fatal.”

The 2 of them stilled.

“But you recovered!” Jack exclaimed, though there was a growing puddle of fear. Of concern.

Vlad took another breath, eyes starting to sting.

“I was put into intensive care. They didn’t know what to do, it was a new field entirely. I kept getting sicker and sicker until they gave up and prescribed pain meds in dosages that should’ve been lethal near the end.”

Their hearts dropping was almost audible. Jack’s expression crumbled and Maddie’s became unrecognizable. There was too much weight in her emotions to try and piece together what she was feeling. He was too scared to find out. He was too scared to regret not saying the words “I wish” when his recovery picked up years ago.

He remembered the months during his recovery after he became a halfa. He woke up feeling a rush of so much that he felt numb until he could process it properly. He was still under immense danger of dying. He argued with the doctors, even begged, to go back into the coma he was placed into. He wanted to die without fear or any more pain.

They told him that he’d heal quicker if he was awake. That he was getting to the top of that hill. That he’d go downhill at top speed to his full recovery. He didn't believe them; he didn't want to hope. But heal, he did.

But it was so different as he did.

Too different.

He felt things so much more and it was so intense. His emotions were so strong that he couldn’t stand existing any longer in his lonely room. A room he thought he’d have to stay in for the rest of his life when his condition would go back to life threatening.

“I-” His voice cracked a bit, turning to Jack. “I thought what I felt for you was hate. That I blamed you for what happened to me.”

He wanted someone beside him then. He craved warmth he had only gotten from Maddie and Jack. The feelings he held for Maddie were so simple to understand at that time. It was socially accepted. What he felt for Jack was different. It was, in fact, much more intense. Shivers and goosebumps each time he remembered how Jack would hold him when he got a small injury or was out of breath trying to catch up to the athlete. He felt so small, so vulnerable.

“Vlad-” Jack started, his heart shattering from the fall and flowing through his voice. Vlad could see his tears at the edge of his eyes, ready to begin a stream.

To Maddie, he felt like he could provide whatever she wanted.

To Jack, he thought he felt like he was being treated like someone below him, that he needed to be doted on to be on par with the 2 of them.

But that wasn’t it.

To Jack, he felt like he didn’t have to shoulder any burdens. That he could be loved without truly doing anything in return, that he didn’t need to do anything but be himself.

“It only made sense in those times that it couldn’t be anything but. However…” He turned to Maddie and smiled softly. “It turns out that it wasn’t just you.”

He hadn’t understood it until Jasmine convinced him into therapy lessons. Practice, she claimed, she swore, she lied. She reminded him of how passionate ghosts were. How passionate he was and is.

It was then that he found that he loved Jack more than Maddie at first. That it was such an intense feeling that he confused it with hatred.

It didn’t help that their relationship would’ve been frowned upon then, that it would’ve been impossible and potentially illegal to seal the deal with a ring or even a simple kiss.

It took a moment for her to understand what Vlad was referring to. Her eyes widened, jaw dropping as she looked over at Jack before back at Vlad. Vlad nodded. She shook her head and took a breath.

“What? What do you mean-” Jack was still in the dark. Though, he always was the dense one. “You… You don’t hate me?”

“No, Jack. Though I hope that after this, you’ll be willing to give me a chance.”

“After- I don’t understand.” Jack turned to his wife. “What does he mean? The illness and ‘not just you’? What is he talking about?”

Maddie placed a hand on his shoulder, lips starting to wobble. She seemed to shake her head for a moment.

“He’s been-” She paused, eyes widening slightly before she let out a broken laugh. “He’s been obsessed with me for a long time. And… well, I guess you’re a target now too.”

Jack took a moment to process her words before his face flushed scarlet red. Though he couldn’t speak a word or react further. He simply froze up, making Maddie smile before her lips wobbled and dropped it.

“Are you normally so aggressive?”

The topic was obvious. It made Vlad hopeful that she’d listen.

“No. I was in denial and it had made me sick. For those of my kind, emotional and mental pain is like physical pain to the living. Denying my… my purpose for existing, my obsession, took a toll on me. Ghosts that attack Amity aren’t actually aiming to hurt people. They tend to go too far and forget how fragile living beings tend to be, especially humans.”

Maddie took a breath, looking down.

“They know.” It wasn’t a question.

“They know.” Vlad confirmed. Jazz and Danny knew about him from the very beginning.

Maddie took another breath.

“Why Danny?” Why did you obsess over him like you did with me?

“What- what about Dann-o?” Jack blinked back in.

“It was easier to get to him than Jasmine in my mind. Not only is he a male, but he was struggling with studies. There was also a sort of… connection I had with him. Perhaps it’s due to that portal downstairs. He has been exposed since the womb. Your children have not been fully human for a long time. Liminals at the very least, just as the city is becoming.”

“The city..?”

“Let’s just say that the ambient ectoplasm is the only thing blocking their signatures while that portal is only strengthening their liminality.”

“...”

Jack and Maddie seemed more sick. But Jack shook his head, getting himself back into the topic at hand.

“So- You-... You’re an ectoplasmic entity?”

Vlad swallowed.

“Yes… I’m what they’d call a halfa. According to a roommate, the long exposure from the proto-portal had forced my body to eventually adapt to it and learn to circulate and circulate it differently until it had… Halfas need to go through the process multiple times before they’re stuck as part of the living and part of the dead.”

“Vladdie…”

“I did not feel the final process. I was put into a medical coma. According to the doctors, I had flatlined multiple times and they had to shock me back plenty of times before I became what I am. I still get reminders, but that is a topic for another time.”

It was silent after that. Jack moved almost robotically as he came over, pushing up a sleeve and checking for his pulse. It was too feint to detect from there. He went for his neck next, looking up to Vlad in case he wished for him to give him space. Vlad didn’t fight back, so Jack started focusing on the pulse rate and translating it.

20 beats per minute.

It used to be a low average of 60-70 bpm. It had slowed over the years. He didn’t want to think what would happen when it finally stopped for good. It was already hard enough to remember he had to give a little thought of keeping some semblance of being alive when he was still so tempted to utter a wish.

Maddie came up next to him, lightly pushing him so he’d move enough to let her continue the silent physical exam. Once he did, she started checking his breathing. Then his reflex speed of his eyes in response to light. Then his joint reflexes.

They did all sorts of harmless tests, Maddie writing them down. After finishing the doctor check-up basics, they gave him some room. It made him both relieved and even more scared.

“Would a concussion show as a normal reaction speed?” Maddie asked.

Vlad blinked.

“Ah… No. While it’s much faster now, pupil dilation while concussed is the same as a normal person. Also, bleeding is less in volume, but I can self-heal.”

Maddie nodded and wrote it down.

“Do… Do ghosts have doctors? What if you get sick? We don’t know enough to help you if you do.” Maddie mentioned.

“What… What are you saying?” Please, please be what I’m thinking.

Jack placed a hand on his shoulder, smiling brightly.

“I think we have some time to make up! I’ll make some fudge!”

Maddie grabbed his shoulder before he could rush to the kitchen.

“I may be a little… on edge about this whole thing, but with time, I think we can be something. The 3 of us.”

Vlad’s eyes widened and teared up, his core practically squealing in delight. He felt as though his body was lighter. It felt easier to breathe, to make his heart beat, to- to exist.

All he needed to do was give it time. He hoped they’d be as accepting with Daniel as they were with him. And Danielle… They’d accept her too, won’t they? He hoped they’d forgive him about that. It wasn’t his… best moment.

He didn’t realize he started crying until he was pulled into a tight embrace by Jack, who had moved him onto his lap to comfort him. Maddie left them to it, deciding her next step.

She had traps to get rid of and weapons to recalibrate.

-----

A/n: Yes, Danny did faint. Why was that? Well, I'm not telling. comment what you think though. Hope you enjoyed.

Also, the next chapter or whatever, it's a dc x dp thing. I'll comment when the next chapter is up and add 2 links, a masterlist and part 2.

[prof-ramses]

Ramses Recommends : The monsters of Rodrigo Sousa's "Playground" trailer

This is gonna be the first of a new bred of post around here called Ramses Recommends, where I give a brief, spoiler free argument on why a piece of media deserves more attention before doing a deep dive into a particularly notable aspect of it for those who are cool with spoilers.

Our first subject is a proof of concept video on you tube titled "Playground I trailer", meant as a way for the short's France based creator to pitch the setting for a potential series or film and possibly a video game in the future, which, I'm happy to say, has worked.

Sousa's been contacted by a group willing to produce an animated.... something in the Playground world. The full project is still in early stages, but Rodrigo has confirmed he'll show more as soon as he can.

Spoiler-free Synopsis: We get several peeks into the struggle of kids in a monster filled ecosystem in a massive, liminal, jungle-gym like structure.

If what you've read so far peaks your interest, check the short here. And going further, the behind the scenes can be found here.

SPOLIER SEGMENT AHEAD

Now, for those who came back, or just decided to read on, let's get into the real meat and taters of this thing, the monsters populating this world.

I'll give my 2 cents on each design and give them a name, for convenience in discussion, if for nothing else.

Scuttleface

Off to a fairly typical start, two siblings (who we follow for most of the short) are hiding in a large dragon(?) statue and as one looks out the mouth/balcony, this critter comes by and open his main peepers.

Not much to say about this thing, among the more tame designs.

Stoplight Man

As the thumbnail, this guy is somewhat of the de facto mascot of Playground.

Stalking a tunnel maze, this ghoul spins his face in his skull to reveal a glowing grinning grimace. Any kid caught in the light best not move until the face spins again. Otherwise...

...Yeah

Blanket Eel

The kids hide under a "sea floor" of blankets while this blushing fish listlessly glides over them.

Nothing special, but I like it's little nose and scraggy hair, they add some character.

Pool Noodle

What else was I supposed to call this guy?

The same siblings who seemingly escaped the eel are now on a freaky duck floaty boat and starring down this lovely fellow.

Noodle doesn't actually move, but his intestine like namesakes slink through the waters of his tiled domain.

Also, his face vaguely looks like a dick tip and I can't tell if that's a "peeing in the pool" joke.

The Ballpit Babies

This sole shot is all we get of these eggs, but they're clustering together evokes a ballpit and reminds me of Muncher Marathon from DKCR, which is a good thing for any horror media.

Night Lights

The siblings get a moment's rest as they watch this precession of cutesy crittters.

My absolute favorite is the little shrink-wrapped lizard. Does it grow in water, I wonder?

Blanky Banshee

This madam wanders an extra decrepit party place. The glow in the dark stickers littering the place fitting her eye motif.

Weirdly, her abdomen seems to be made of exposed guts and her nose resembles the Blanket Eel. I can't help but ponder the possible connection.

And a brief moment of silence for the kid who shined a flashlight on this thing.

Big Bad Baby-Bat-Barfing Bug-Bat Beast

The least uncanny/liminal monster, not that that's much comfort.

The siblings barrel towards this thing in a fish shaped minecart, as the older kid bats bats out of the air with a mallet.

This particular domain seems to be the most foreign to the rest, meaning that I'm really excited to see more of it in the full Plaground.

Jim Jungle and his Shape Pals

This isn't actually how we meet Jim, but I love his spidery behavior matches his monkey bar abode.

When we see him chase the siblings, he unleashes the three shapes on his stomach as smaller arachnophobia generators to catch them.

I'd say he ties with Stoplight Man for iconographic value.

Cuddly

Still brandishing the mallet, the older sibling jumps off a trampoline towards this creepily baby like kraken.

And we get this:

RIP

The Monster Under The Bed

We don't see anymore of this little doofus than this shot, but it feels oddly... Friendly.

It doesn't feel righ to imagine this guy to be one of the boogimen here, despite his complexion.

And lastly,

Uncle Krampus

Even though his lore probably doesn't exist yet, I NEED IT!

Despite being dragged away by him, the younger sibling doesn't seem be wiling to put up much of a fight. Is he just a strict but still benevolent presence, one that keeps kids save here?

His fanny pack, bells and realistic, relatively unassuming pitchfork create the impression of a knowledgeable guide through this strange place.

Definitely the monster I want to see more of the most.

So there you have it, the first Ramses Recommends. I hope you loved it and loved it's subject, until next time, play safe ;)

[wardenannie]

Okay!

Can we get a fic of Levi being jealous? Like some doggy style with hair pulling??

🥰🥰🥰

Please

anything for you anon ;)

NSFW below the cut

-

Pieck was visiting again.

It was the third time that week, and though the woman was perfectly polite Levi found it difficult not to side eye her as she chatted vivaciously with his spouse.

Hange.

Bandages finally stripped away; gnarled, angry scars exposed and then hidden once more beneath the long sleeves of a shirt. They had only been made more ruggedly handsome by the patchwork of their healed wounds.

Speaking to Pieck, grinning despite the stiffness in their cheek, they were glowing. Beaming. Radiating an energy of confidence and an attitude that leaned towards the masculine. A rare form for the usually androgynous Hange Zoe.

They were positively charming, and Levi was beside himself that such a reaction wasn't directed towards him.

Hange liked Pieck. She awakened something within them that often lay latent. And having heard the rumors within the Corps that Hange had once preferred women to men? Levi was piqued.

But he wasn't an animal. And he certainly wasn't about to mistreat a guest in his own home. So he poured the pair their tea and bided his time in the kitchen as they caught up.

Where normally he preferred to be relegated to the quiet, supportive role of house husband, the longer Pieck lingered the more irate he became. The uncharacteristic wave of jealousy had him fuming by the end of the afternoon, scrubbing a plate in the sink until it shattered in his hand. 

“What was that?” He heard Hange stand and Pieck make a slight noise of alarm. 

Levi cursed, holding his hand beneath the stream of warm water as it bled.

“Levi, is everything alright in here?” Hange peered around the doorframe, handsome face framed by russet hair. Their single eye shone curiously; mercifully spared from the flames all those months ago. 

“Yeah,” Levi groused, not so much as looking up from his wound. He prodded it with a finger, finding that it wasn’t particularly deep. He took a clean dish rag and patted the area dry before wrapping it. “I’m fine. Go back to Pieck.” 

“Levi,” Hange’s voice dropped to a whisper, “Is that a hint of jealousy that I detect?”

“Shut it!” Levi snapped, finally spinning on his heel to face his partner, “You have a guest, attend to her!” 

A knowing smirk passed over Hange’s face as they shrugged their shoulders and left the kitchen, presumably returning to Pieck. 

Levi let out a frustrated huff, leaning his back into the damp counter. He pressed the rag tight around his hand, staunching the flow of blood. His eyes were drawn to the shattered plate, and he silently cursed his own emotionality. 

“It was great seeing you,” he heard Hange from the living room. 

“You too, Hange,” slowly, Levi crept towards the kitchen door, peering out towards the living area where Pieck and Hange were currently locked in a friendly embrace. His stomach sank like a stone watching them. 

Hange saw Pieck to the door, and as soon as it was shut behind the woman they turned on heel and planted their hands firmly on their hips. 

“And how fares my jealous husband?” They called to him where he remained in the liminal space between the kitchen and living room. “You’re being ridiculous, you know.”

Levi pursed his mouth, removing the rag from his hand. The wound had clotted. It would likely scar. 

“You pick the strangest times to be possessive,” Hange sighed, approaching him. They wrapped their arms around his waist, pulling him flush to them. They smiled down at him, ran a hand up the curve of his spine. Levi shivered at the contact. “Pieck, really?” 

Levi looked away, even as Hange raised a hand, thumb brushing over the curve of his cheekbone. He flushed, unbidden.

“Pieck is a woman,” the admission was small, perhaps slightly ashamed. 

“Your deductive skills are still keen, I see,” Hange teased, and they kissed the corner of his mouth. 

“Fuck, shitty-glasses, what is it that you want from me?” 

Hange kissed him, slow and chaste. He was beginning to calm despite himself, his partner’s soothing touch was irresistible. Then he remembered the sight of Pieck’s hand on Hange’s arm; friendly and harmless, and prickling rage climbed up his spine once more. 

“Pieck is a woman and I’m not,” Levi seethed, unable to help but lean into Hange’s warmth. 

“Again, your skills of deduction are unrivaled... are you really jealous?”

“Hange.”

Wordlessly Hange dropped their hand to take his, winding their fingers together even as his quivered with jealousy. 

“I know what you need,” the former Commander teased as they led him towards their bedroom. The bed was neatly made; dark coverlets pulled flush beneath downy pillows. It would not remain that way for long. 

“Sex?” Levi grunted? He couldn’t pretend he was interested, but he was still fuming (unreasonably). 

Hange laid back on the sheets, spreading their arms wide, “I was going to suggest a nap for the grumpy toddler.” 

“I don’t want a fucking nap,” Levi seethed, and he pulled Hange up by their arm, seating them on the edge of the bed so he could kiss them, ravish them, really. All of his anger and possessiveness was poured into the kiss. Their teeth scarped, Levi’s tongue lancing as Hange submitted under his assault. 

Their hands caressed down his shoulders, but he stopped their slow descent towards his fly by snatching their wrists in a single hand. 

“Tell me you love me,” He snarled, flipping them onto their stomach. He tugged their pants down hastily, revealing the pink folds of their dewy cunt. Levi pressed a probing finger inside, finding that they were already wet and pliant. Moaning and writhing against his jealousy fueled ministrations. “Only me.” 

“Love you,” Hange whined, hips rocking back and onto his hand wetness spilled around Levi’s finger. “Only you. Only ever you, Levi.” 

Grinding his teeth, Levi removed his finger, pressing it between his thin lips to taste the essence of his lover. They were sharp, tangy, earthy and human in a way that he could not put to words. It made his cock twitch. 

“Fuck, Hange,” He fished his thick cock out of his fly, aligning himself swiftly with the heat of Hange’s cunt. His eyes flashed dark and dangerous, teeth flashing as he rocked forward and sheathed himself in a single fluid motion. 

“Shit!” Hange bucked back onto him, fisting the sheets with white knuckles. They turned their head to the side, face flushed bright pink as Levi set a steady, rough pace, fucking them loud and lewd. 

“Mine,” Levi grunted, half sobbing with pleasure and rage, his hand fisted into Hange’s russet hair, forcing their back to arch as they took his cock even deeper. “My Hange.” 

He brought his hand down on the smooth skin of Hange’s asscheek, the loud slap carrying through the narrow hallways of their shared home. 

“Yours!” Hange exclaimed, rear jiggling back onto him, cunt squelching wetly as they began to tighten with impending orgasm. 

Levi leaned over them, breath puffing hot on the back of their neck as he snapped his hips, losing all rhythm. He tugged their hair harder, craning their neck and kissing along the curve of it as his dick began to swell and twitch, balls tightening to his body. Their was fire in his loins, blooming across his lower back and thighs as he reach the pinnacle of their jealously fueled fuck. 

“M gonna cum,” Hange whimpered, drooling into the sheets as Levi finally dropped their hair. He stood behind them, slightly crouched, hands on their hips, fingers digging in with a force that would surely bruise as he fucked them with every ounce of his strength and energy. 

The sight of his handprint, red and stinging on their ass like a brand, was enough to send Levi spiraling over the edge.

“Hange!” He shouted their name as his hips stuttered to a stop, dick buried deep as he spilled himself into them. 

Hange groped at the sheets, sweating and gasping as they came alongside him, cunt bearing down like a vice. 

“Fuck,” Levi rasped, collapsing onto Hange’s back. All of his rage, his jealousy, his misplaced anger began to wane in the softness of the afterglow. He brushed his lips along their clothed shoulders and the exposed notches of their spine. Their skin was salty with sweat. 

Hange let out a breathless laugh, flipping onto their back and tugging Levi with them. His head settled on their chest, fingers curling lightly into the fabric of their shirt. 

“You know, Levi,” they were grinning ear to ear, tone playful, eyes glassy with the remnants of their pleasure. “I’m not particularly interested in women... and even if I were, there isn’t a person in the world who compares to you, tiny husband.” 

Levi huffed, now it was his turn to flush, “I’m not tiny.” 

Hange’s russet eye flashed with mischief, “You’re big where it counts.” 

The former Captain snorted, then propped himself up on his elbow so he could reach his partner’s lips. 

When they parted, Levi glanced down the bed to where their mingled cum had stained the spread. His lips quirked downward into a scowl, “Damn it, I just washed the sheets yesterday.” 

Hange’s eye was beginning to flutter shut, preparing for an afternoon nap. They mumbled, half asleep, “We have sex in this bed at least four times a week. A little cum won’t kill you.” 

Levi sighed, then pressed his lips to Hange’s temple, “Sleep, four-eyes. I’m sorry I got so jealous, that was foolish of me.” 

Though their eye was closed, a small smile graced their lips, “Love you, short stack.” 

“I love you, too,” Levi answered. 

[the-iron-orchid]

BOOK II: THE HIGH PRIESTESS

Chapter 1: The Seer  (~2330 words)

Warnings: None

Back to table of contents

The landscape is desolate, a place of tawny sands and little else. The sky overhead is oppressive, thick with dark, lowering clouds. Where the two meet, the slim line of the horizon pulses with a viridian glow.

My arms hold fast to Asra’s waist, the scent of his hair in my nostrils. Beneath us, I feel the loping stride of a great beast, shaggy and immense. I realize that I must be dreaming... and in dreams, I have made contact.

“Mast -” I stop and swiftly correct myself. “Asra, where are we?” I ask him. It is only then that I notice the path of shining obsidian before us, snaking ahead to the horizon - clear, and yet ever-changing, its reflection of the sky above further confusing the perception.

Asra says that we are far enough away... but for what?

For answers, he says. For clarity. He senses a terrible storm on the horizon; something is changing, and not for the better.

I am instantly reminded of what the Countess said, her dream-visions of a terrible future, which must not come to pass.

Asra tells me that soon we will reach a crossroads, a nexus, a liminal place. He says that I will make a choice, one that changes everything for me... and for others. I feel his hands over mine, squeezing very briefly. But they are trembling, just a little, and he lets go hurriedly - as if the touch might burn him, or me, if held too long.

A chill wind rises around us, bearing the sands up with it in a vortex. It blots out first the landscape, then the horizon… then everything.

The last thing I hear is Asra’s voice: “Rest now, ya albi. I'll be back soon.”

---

I awaken to late morning sunlight slanting through the small windows - rather later than I wanted to sleep, but it seems that the previous night left me exhausted. I stumble into the kitchen, yawning, and rouse the stove salamander so that I might brew a pot of strong tea. He, too, needs to use his abilities regularly, lest they cause him trouble. If I am to be out, he should have a good round of exercise first.

Over my tea and a scone that has seen better days, I consider what I should bring with me to the Palace - a change of clothing, spell components, my current journal… I’m certain that they will be able to provide me with writing instruments...

It keeps my mind off of my strange dream, and its portents. For now.

Fortified with multiple cups of tea (the scone, not especially improved by toasting, was left out on the doorstep for the pigeons), I pack my things. The bag that Heron made for me is very special - it holds much, much more than it appears to. Then I set about readying the shop for my absence. I dust down the counters, and ensure that the stove salamander has a supply of coke to consume.

I go up to the rooftop to water my plants, such as they are. Heron has a lush rooftop garden that provides us both with herbs and vegetables year-round; I have a planter box full of pretty flowering weeds. But the basil is doing very well in its bucket, and the aloe in its large bowl. There is also a forgotten bean that started to sprout, now residing comfortably in an old mug with no handle. Hopefully I won’t be gone so long that they all wither in the midsummer sun… well, the aloe will survive, I am sure.

When I come back downstairs, I must turn away a few customers, hopeful for a reading. Everyone wants to know what the future holds. 

If only I could ask the Arcana about the past, everything that came before the last three years. Three years of struggle and pain, of learning to be an adult human all over again, after whatever accident or illness took that part of me forever… for the most part. Once in a while, a dim memory will float by, like a distant iceberg on the sea of my mind. To try and grasp such memories is to invite pain and terror, and so I let them go. 

But sometimes, there are things that I know or can do which I did not learn in the last three years with Asra and Heron. I must assume that these come from Before, written so far below the surface of my mind as to escape erasure. I dance fairly well, and I sing better than that. And while Asra and Heron are always cautious in how they teach me, I very often feel that the small, shallow pool of my magic bubbles up from something much deeper, an underground ocean in the caverns of my soul.

It is a place I cannot explore, not even with the seemingly unending patience and help of my teachers. When I have tried, it leaves me bedridden for days, my body unresponsive, my mind a maelstrom of vivid hallucinations. Giants, ghosts, talking animals… a deeper dimension to my relationship with Asra, which is almost certainly wishful thinking on my part.

They tell me that my power springs from something very fundamental and dangerous, the primordial Chaos that underlies creation. By the same token, Heron’s magic springs from the primordial force of Order, and Asra’s from a direct connection to the Magical Realms that lie beyond our own. Each of us is something different, and yet the same.

They both tell me that I’m making wonderful progress, that my power and ability will continue to grow; it simply is not a linear progression. Magic grows in fits and starts and flashes of understanding. 

I hope they are right.

As the day wears on, I must be on my way to the Palace. I thoroughly lock up the shop, tracing the wards on the doors (not that this seemed to help against last night’s intruder). As I am doing this, a sudden prickle down the back of my neck causes me to start in alarm - a huge shape has materialized at my side, seemingly from nowhere.

Eldritch energy immediately crackles around my left hand, but I rein it in - they are doing nothing in particular besides looming, so large that they block my access to the side alleyway entirely. Two glinting eyes watch me from within the depths of a rough hood of furs, draped over a massive body that is crossed again and again with ropy scars. 

I clear my throat. “Er, excuse me… I need to pass through there.”

For a moment, they simply continue to look at me. Then, they shift their weight, and start moving out of the way. There is a strange muffled clanking, as of chains.

“Thank you.” I nod curtly, settle my bag on my hip, and start walking past the large figure.

“He will return. Though uninvited.” The voice is deep, so deep it’s like the thunder of a waterfall. “He will offer you an escape when you need it most. Turn him down, or you will fall into his hand… just like the rest of us.”

I pause at this apparent prognostication. A teller of fortunes, I know a seer when I hear one.

“Take this, or my warning is for nothing.”

I turn back to the person, curious. The light just barely strikes two glimmers of green from within the hood. Pinched between the huge thumb and forefinger is a little leather pouch on a thin cord. Grudgingly, it seems, the figure holds it out to me. I reach a hand out, palm up, and they drop the item into it, as if unwilling to touch.

And without a further word, they turn and shuffle away. Oddly, no-one seems to take notice of the hooded figure, despite their immense size - normally, people would be gawking, pointing even.

How odd. I scrutinize the tiny bag in my palm with my magical sight. It radiates a faint aura of protective magics. I glance up again - but the figure is gone.

The pouch is well-sealed with complex warding knots, and the leather is inscribed with a sigil. Bringing it to my nose, I smell the warm, woody scent of myrrh resin.

Philosophically, I hang the little pouch around my neck. My magical sight shows nothing malicious in it… and I can use all the protection I can muster, I’m sure.

I step into the flow of traffic and noise as I cut my way through the bustling Market, but I hear little of it; I am lost in my own thoughts. Who is the he spoken of by the seer? Julian tried to give me some warning or other about Asra… but I’m not sure I credit that. He seems to have some personal vendetta. Julian himself, perhaps? What more warning could one need about a wanted criminal?

As I climb the steps that lead into the market plaza, a black shape catches my eye - it’s a large raven, perched on one of the lines of colorful lanterns that crisscross overhead. The bird looks back at me with one beady eye, blacker than my own, then croaks and turns its head. I, too, turn my head, following its gaze.

...and my heart stumbles and skips a beat as I spot Julian Devorak, walking through the crowd as if nothing at all is amiss, his face bare to the world... and unblemished. His temple shows no bruising, no hint of a wound where last night he bled.

He hasn’t seen me yet. Half of me wants to flee, but the other half is intensely curious as to how he can walk about so freely, a fugitive from the law. And how has he healed so quickly? 

It is this second half that sends me after him. 

Unfortunately, this means I must move against traffic, and I am not large. I also don’t want to form an obvious eddy in the crowd with my movements. Devorak is making his leisurely way along the market stalls, seemingly without a care in the world. Is he looking to get caught? Wanted posters litter the city, and between his height and that profile, it’s not like he is anonymous in any way. An eyepatch only distracts so much.

The raven gives a sudden shriek, and Devorak turns, our eyes locking for a frozen moment through the crowd.

And then a cart passes between us, causing me to step back involuntarily. When it is gone… so is he, vanished as if he had never been there at all.

I pause, traffic flowing around me, and wonder at my own actions. The man is a wanted criminal, maybe even a killer. Why on earth would I put myself in danger by following him around, no matter how curious I am? Shaking my head at myself, I rejoin the foot traffic, resuming my interrupted journey.

Maybe it was Julian that the giant of earlier was warning me about.

A voice cuts through my reverie, a voice I know. It’s Selasi, the baker, whose stall Asra and I often frequent - one of the small handful of merchants who seem unfazed by us. He asks if I’ve eaten, saying that there are spiced pumpkin loaves fresh out of the oven, almost cool enough to eat. He cajoles me to sit and talk with him in the meantime.

A pot of tea isn’t enough to fuel my day. My stomach rumbles to resentful life as the scent of the spiced bread reaches my nose.

“Well… I can’t stay long,” I tell him. “But I am starving!”

Selasi laughs and waves me to the back of the booth, where I seat myself up against the sun-warmed wall of the building behind.  An enormous orange fluff of a cat appears from under a table, and rubs itself against my side. Absently, I scratch it between the ears.

The baker offers me a steaming cup of tea, asking after Asra. 

“Oh, out on a journey again.”

“Of course! Where to this time?”

“I… don’t know, actually. He didn’t say.”

Selasi frowns slightly. “Really?”

“It seemed really important. Maybe it’s a secret.” I shrug, sipping my mint tea.

The baker folds his arms and shakes his head with a sigh. “Nothing new, I guess. Your Asra on a mysterious journey, that is. But what about you?”

I lift my brows. My Asra, indeed. “What about me?”

He grins widely. “They say that the Countess’s own carriage was spotted here in Center City, late in the night. You can’t miss it, not with all the escorts on horseback. Circling around not far from your shop, even.”

I do my best to cover over my surprise. Selasi loves gossip as much as he loves to bake, and maybe even more. It’s harmless, but I don’t know that the Countess wants her business all over the market.

“Really? I wonder what she was after?” My stomach chooses that moment to let out a long growl, and I laugh. “Me, I’m just after pumpkin bread. I’m a simple creature.”

Selasi laughs, throwing his head back. “Keep your secrets, then, just like your master.” He shakes his head and pulls a fresh loaf from the cooling racks. “One hot for now, and one cool for the road?” he asks, and I nod, giving the cat one last pat before rising and placing my empty cup aside.

Selasi wraps the loaves for me, and I hand over my coin. I place the cooled one into my endless bag before taking a big bite out of the warm loaf. The outer crust has a pleasing bite to it, the inside soft and fluffy, the spices fragrant. “Mmph! Delicioush azh alwayzh! ’ll zhee you lader!” I say around the mouthful of pumpkin bread, waving as I exit the booth.

“Don’t keep the Countess waiting!” he says, almost making me choke on my bite of bread.

I suppose it’s true what they say… the only thing that travels faster than magic is gossip.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Eccentricity [Chapter 11: You Don’t Come Around No More]

A/N: I apologize profusely for the long wait. Thank you all so, so, so much for your support. Every single reblog, message, comment, emotional rant, and/or screech of despair makes my day, and I couldn’t do this without you. 💜 Only THREE more chapters left!!!

Series Summary: Joe Mazzello is a nice guy with a weird family. A VERY weird family. They have a secret, and you have a choice to make. Potentially a better love story than Twilight.

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: “More To Life Than Baseball” by Petey. 

Chapter Warnings: Language, angsttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt.

Word Count: 7.5k. 

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii​​​​ @bramblesforbreakfast​​​​​​​ @maggieroseevans​​​​​ @culturefiendtrashqueen​​​​​ @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark​​​​​ @escabell​​​​​ @im-an-adult-ish​​​​​​ @queenlover05​​​​​ @someforeigntragedy​​​​​ @imtheinvisiblequeen​​​​​ @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhyee​​​​​ @deacyblues​​​​​ ​ @tensecondvacation​​​​ @brianssixpence​​​​​ @some-major-ishues​​​​ @haileymorelikestupid​​​​ @youngpastafanmug​​​​ @simonedk​

The Rain

I wish I felt empty.

I’m supposed to feel empty, right? I’m supposed to feel steeped in grey, oceanic misery; I’m supposed to dip in and out of depressive naps all day and sob delicately over creased photos and fading, wistful memories. I always envisioned heartbreak as a soft and inherently feminine sort of affliction: the hems of nightgowns and bathrobes sweeping along hardwood floors, Kleenex boxes and concave couch cushions, weepy phone calls to friends and aunts and mothers, Queen Victoria wearing black for the rest of her life after Prince Albert’s death, Mary Todd Lincoln sinking into dark and hushed obscurity. Women, hollowed out by despair, cross the history of the earth like lines of latitude.

I don’t feel empty at all. I don’t even feel sad. I feel razored by sharp, red, ceaseless anxiety. I am consumed by thoughts of what I did wrong, what I said that started the wheels of doubt spinning in his mind, if he had known how it would end from the start. I dream of white, clawed hands dragging me down through cold waves. I hear words scream to me as I toss at night in my suddenly too-spacious bed, words that now hit me like knuckles to the gut: Shhh, hey, it’s just me, don’t get up, as Joe slipped beneath the Arizonan blankets, wrapped an arm around my waist, kissed my collarbone as I tumbled back into sleep; I love you to death, as his Subaru idled in Charlie’s driveway; Baby Swan, listen to me, nothing is supposed to hurt, okay, so if anything hurts, ever, at all, you tell me and we stop, deal? as we stood in the doorway of our hotel room at the Four Seasons in Chicago. And now...and now...

And now everything fucking hurts.

It doesn’t make any sense; and yet it does. Look at him. Look at me.

The Polaroid photo from Homecoming was still taped to the top of my full-length mirror. I peeled it free like a layer of translucent, friable reptilian skin, tore it straight down the center, burned both halves over a brand new three-wicked, lemon-scented Bath And Body Works candle—a gift from Renee and Paul—and closed my eyes like a child casting a wish over her birthday cake like a spell. I wished for my memories to vanish with the photograph. I wished to get hit by a truck and wake up in the hospital with no recollection of the past two and a half months. I wanted the Lees to dissolve into distant, enigmatic mystery; I wanted to join the rest of Forks in believing that they were nothing more than bewildering and yet harmless freaks, barely worth noticing, one of those glitches of the matrix that were better off ignored like liminal seconds of déjà vu. I wished to carve out every part of myself that they had ever touched.

And Joe’s voice came rushing back from where we stood by that star-lit fountain outside the Church of Saint Lawrence, accompanied by falling raindrops and a crooked grin: I can make wishes come true.

The three tiny flames flickered in the breeze that sighed through my open window. The bright, citrusy scent of the candle reminded me of Lucy. I couldn’t fucking win. What else is new?

I turned back to the mirror. I flinched when my gaze snagged on my reflection: bloodshot-eyed, swollen-faced, utterly unbeautiful, restless like a caged animal. Look at him. Look at me.

I ripped the last memento off the mirror—Official Citation!! No More Sad Spaghetti!!—and watched the yellow square of paper catch fire, curl up around the edges, become unrecognizable, turn to ash. And I wished over and over again, like a poem, like a prayer: Let me forget, oh god please let me forget.

Charlie keeps asking if I’m okay. The answer, of course, is no; but I can’t tell him that. So I wear a serene smile like clip-on fangs, a cheap polyester cloak, crimson smudges of lipstick like trails of spilled blood down the side of my neck. Every day is Halloween for me now. I dress up as someone who isn’t haunted, who hasn’t become a ghost.

And when Charlie turns up the World Series or I’d Do Anything For Love on his geriatric, staticky kitchen radio—the same radio he’s had since my mother was the one joining him for daybreak coffee and Pop-Tarts—I choke back tears like dragonfire.

Missing In Action (Revisited)

Joe wasn’t here. Neither was Ben.

Lucy, Rami, and Scarlett were sipping cups of tea at the Lees’ usual table, their eyes downcast, their voices low and murmuring, their pristine lunches neglected. Lucy and Rami were dressed in matching charcoal grey turtleneck sweaters; Scarlett had come from Fencing Club and was wearing royal purple yoga pants and a black tank top, her duffle bag of gear on the floor by her sneakered feet. Her hair was in a long fishtail braid. Archer hadn’t mentioned her since Joe broke up with me. That either meant that it was going blissfully and he didn’t want to injure me further, or that Scarlett had ended things as well.

Since Joe broke up with me. That sounds so fucking pedestrian.

I stared at the three present Lees, almost leered, commanding them to see me, to acknowledge me, to admit that I had once meant something to them, that this hadn’t all been some transitory delusion to fill the cavernous void of losing my home, my life as I knew it in Arizona. They took no notice whatsoever.

Jess kicked me beneath the lunch table. My attention snapped back to her.

“Sorry, what?”

“You want to go shopping with me and Angela tonight?” Jessica’s hands were folded just beneath her chin, her voice gentle, her eyes large and sympathetic and watery. This was her version of being supportive. I appreciated it...in a perpetually tormented and preoccupied sort of way.

“No thanks.” I forked my cold, sauceless spaghetti listlessly. I’d forgotten to pack a lunch. I didn’t have an appetite anyway. I had deleted the GrubHub app from my iPhone and had no intention of using it ever again in my comparatively short and calamitous human life.

“You could come to temple this weekend,” Jessica pressed.

“Uh.” Mingling with a churchful of sociable, wholesome, marriage-obsessed adolescent Mormons sounded like the absolute last thing I’d want to spend my evening doing. “That’s a really generous offer, but I’ll pass.”

“Well you have to do something,” Angela said. “You can’t just sit in your bedroom alone all weekend and stare at the wall and wallow in self-pity.”

We’ll see about that. I turned to Jess. “How’s Vodka Boy from your Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic class? Did he ever reappear? What’s his name again, Elmo? Ellington? El Chapo?”

“Ellsworth.” She frowned as she slurped her patron-drink-of-Mormons Sprite. “And no, he definitely failed out or overdosed or something, because he never came back.”

“Tragic,” I noted.

“But I’m pretty sure Mike’s coming over this weekend, so we’ll see if I can get some Netflix and chill action going.”

“Jess,” Angela chastised, widening her eyes and nodding to me subtly (but not quite subtly enough). No talking about getting lucky in front of the heartbroken single loser, that look said.

“I think I can be emotionally supportive without taking a goddamn vow of chastity, Angela!” Jessica hurled back.

“I gotta go.” I stood, threw on my backpack, discarded my nearly untouched lunch.

“You’ve barely eaten anything!” Angela protested. “You’ve barely eaten for a week!”

“I’ll live.” I picked my umbrella up off the slippery tile floor—peppered with muddy shoeprints and pearlescent drops of water fallen from coats and limp, sopping locks of hair—and headed out into the pouring rain. I hated the rain. I hated it. Maybe I had forgotten that for a while, but it all came hurtling back now like a hurricane, like a hand cracking across my face. I ached for the desert, for blatant and unapologetic heat, for palm trees and cacti and naked stars in the night sky. I had been researching marine biology graduate programs in the Southwest. There were good ones at UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, Texas A&M, the University of Southern California, UCLA. I would miss Charlie and Archer—and maybe Jessica and Angela on occasion—and absolutely nothing else about Forks. At least, that’s what I promised myself.

This is a no-giving-a-fuck-about-Lee-boys zone, I thought morosely.

Ben was brooding at our table in Professor Belvin’s classroom. It was the first time he’d shown up to Chemistry since that day Joe met me on the beach at La Push, since the place I’d once occupied in his universe had closed like a wound. I took my seat beside Ben. The window was shut today, the downpour outside torrential. Ben recoiled, just enough for me to notice; he was wearing his oversized black hoodie and practicing his Welsh, his handwriting messy and unbalanced.

“You could have warned me,” I said.

Ben didn’t glance up from his notebook. “Would that have made it any easier?”

“No,” I realized in defeat. I guess it wouldn’t have. I pulled my own notebook, my favorite pen, and a can of Diet Coke out of my backpack.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Ben said. “You really need to know that. It had nothing to do with you. And none of us are happy with the current situation. None of us.”

None of them. That included Joe. “Interestingly, that didn’t stop him from creating it.”

Ben was thoughtful, debating his next words. “We’re probably going to be moving soon.”

“What?” I startled; my turquoise blue pen dropped out of my grasp and rolled across the table. Ben snatched it up and returned it to me. “Really?”    

“Yeah.”

“And what, just redo this whole college thing?”

Ben shrugged. “We’ll probably start our junior years over again. Gwil will say there was some horrible family tragedy and we needed a few semesters off. I could use the extra time to figure out Calc anyway. Parametric equations make me want to kill myself.”

I just stared at him. It didn’t make any sense. “But...why would the whole family leave Forks? Because of me? One pathetic, aggrieved human? Do you all pack up and relocate every time Joe fucks and dumps someone? That must be exhausting.”

“It’s better for everyone if we get some distance. Put more space between our world and yours.”

“But...” I tried to imagine never seeing any of them again: no Mercy humming merrily as she tossed handfuls of homegrown carrots to the alpacas, no Dr. Lee dabbing away my blood with an ageless sort of patience, no Scarlett or Lucy or Rami, no brief glimpses of Joe as he avoided me in the campus library. It’s exactly what I wanted; and yet it wasn’t. It so, so, so, so wasn’t. It keeps getting worse. How is that possible? My voice was flimsy and quivering, absolutely pitiful. Disgustingly pitiful. “Who will be my lab partner?”

Ben peered over at me with wide, confused green eyes. And then—gingerly, awkwardly, like holding an acquaintance’s baby for the first time—he laid his hand over mine. “I’ll miss you too.”

Professor Belvin lectured about coordinate covalent bonds. I didn’t absorb a word. I conjugated Italian verbs with my turquoise blue pen, sketched disordered whirlpools of ink, tried not to think about whether this was my last-ever Chemistry class with Ben, whether it was my last-ever weekend sharing Forks with the Lees. Those rageful, frantic thoughts were back. What did I do wrong? What didn’t I do right? Why did he have to leave?

My nomadic gaze caught on a flier on the wall next to our misted window. I had assumed it was a leaflet for some club or protest or seasonal dance that I would definitely not attend, but it wasn’t. It was a missing poster.

Have you seen this student? the flier asked in bold, businesslike black font. It was urgent, but not quite despairing; not yet, anyway. I could hear a Dean of Student Affairs cajoling some affluent, strings-of-pearls-adorned mother over the phone: Yes ma’am, you have my full attention and I can assure you that we’re very concerned, but I’m sure it’s all just a misunderstanding...he’s probably gone backpacking or sailing with some friends and forgotten to call home. You know how college students can be. Beneath a large photo of a grinning blond kid—pink polo, flushed cheeks, clever crop job to nix a can of Natty Light clutched in one fist—was a name: Ellsworth Jonathan Griffin.

Ellsworth, I thought, my stomach plummeting. The guy from Jessica’s Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic class. He hadn’t failed out. He was missing. Missing like a 20/20 episode or a true crime podcast, missing like the pregnant stillness before a murder is confessed in some glaringly florescent-lit interrogation room, before a distended and bloodless corpse washes up on shore.

I turned to Ben. He noticed me eventually, crinkled his brow, shrugged in that way that seemed so petulant if you didn’t know him well enough to not be offended.

I pointed to the flier and raised my eyebrows. Ben twisted around in his chair to look. Then he sighed, scribbled a sentence in the corner of a piece of notebook paper, tore it free, and slid it across the table.

Ben’s note read, in atrocious penmanship: Are you seriously asking me if I ate that guy?

Maybe, I wrote back after a moment’s hesitation. Maybe that wasn’t exactly what I was asking; maybe I just wondered if he knew anything about it.

In either case, Ben’s reply was swift and resounding, and underlined three times: No.

Sorry, I wrote, abruptly remorseful. I am a jerk. And I added a frowny face for good measure. Ben chuckled when he saw it, shook his head, gave me a drawn little smirk. His words tiptoed around in my skull, leaving searing imprints like footprints in the sand. I’ll miss you too.

I have to forget about them. I drummed my turquoise blue pen against my notebook as Professor Belvin drew families of molecules on the whiteboard with squealing dry erase markers. I have to find a way to make myself forget.

Jessica was waiting for me in the hallway after class. It was part of her convince-Baby-Swan-not-to-jump-off-a-cliff initiative. “Hey.”

“Okay,” I told her with steely resolve. “I’m ready for you to set me up with one of those guys from your church or temple or whatever. I’m ready to be a nice wholesome wife, pop out like six kids, learn how to scrapbook, give up caffeine and horror movies, do the whole white picket fence thing. Sign me up.”

Jessica blinked at me. There were flecks of fallen mascara on her cheekbones like ashes. “What?”

“You’re a Mormon, right?”

“Girl, I’m not a Mormon,” Jessica said, puzzled. “I’m a witch.”

Lucille

I found Joe where he usually was these days: sprawled on the sofa, engulfed in the same blue Snuggie he’d been wearing for thirty-six uninterrupted hours, gazing catatonically at the big-screen tv. A 90 Day Fiancé marathon was on. Some rodentish guy named Colt was apologizing to his gorgeous, aspiring-green-card-holding Brazilian love interest for calling the cops on her during their last screaming match. He was also apologizing for the fact that they lived in a two-bedroom apartment with his mother. I didn’t need clairvoyance to see where their future was headed.

“Hey,” Ben said when he spotted me. He was sitting next to Joe and occasionally tried to shove pieces of popcorn into his mouth, which Joe accepted passively like coins plinked into a gumball machine. Ben had been his shadow for the past week; he was perhaps the best equipped of us to understand this degree of melancholy, of hopelessness.  

“Ciao.” And then, to Joe: “How are you?”

“Terrible,” he replied, not tearing his eyes from the tv.

“I figured.” I squeezed between them on the couch, curled up next to Joe, rested my chin on his shoulder. He ignored me completely. I could hear Mercy tapping at her laptop keyboard out in the dining room; she was browsing through Zillow listings in Portland, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland. Dear god, please don’t let us end up in fucking Cleveland. “Guess what.”

Joe stared at the tv for a long time before he answered. “What.”

“I had a vision of you. Just now, as I was doing laundry. Crystal clear and very scenic too, I might add.”

“Fascinating,” Joe said flatly.

“What happened in this vision?” Ben asked, far more invested, which I was thankful for.

“It was pretty far away, maybe a year from now. I saw you in the desert at night, under a full moon. There were cacti everywhere. The shadow of the Milky Way was threaded through the sky, and the stars were very bright. I could make out the constellations Pegasus and Cassiopeia. You were filling up a tiny glass bottle with dirt.”

“That’s remarkably helpful,” Joe said.

“It is, a little bit,” I insisted. “It means you get through this. That you have a future. I get nervous when I go too long without a vision of someone in the family. But now I know you’re going to be okay.”

The reflections of the feuding 90 Day Fiancé couples danced in his glassy eyes. “Being alive doesn’t mean you’re okay.”

“That’s dark,” Ben said. “Even I think that’s too dark.” He pushed a handful of popcorn into Joe’s mouth. “Are you gonna hunt at some point or what?”

“No.”

“You’re just gonna sit on this couch and waste away?”

“Yeah.”

“You want me to bring you anything? Grizzly bear? Brown bear? Fuck it, I’ll get you a polar bear if that’s what you want. There’s probably some on the black market. Rami would know.”

“He what?” Mercy called from the kitchen. Her typing had stopped.

“Nothing, Mom!” I shot back.

“I don’t want anything,” Joe said. That was a lie, of course. We all knew what he wanted. Rami couldn’t stand to be around him; the thoughts were relentless, smothering.

I linked my arms around Joe’s neck, laid my head against his chest, sighed deeply and mournfully. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I know that doesn’t fix anything. But I’m so, so sorry. And I’ll help however I can. We all will.”

And I had accepted that Joe wasn’t going to respond at all when he finally whispered: “I just wish I could forget.”

Cato

My rolling suitcase snagged on the cobblestone driveway. The tiny spinning wheels bashed against concrete as I scaled the front steps. As the taxi pulled away, I dug around in my suit pocket for my keys, found them, unlocked the enormous front door, stepped inside the palace as my suitcase trolled along the marble floor.

“Cato’s back!” Charity announced as she breezed down the nearest staircase, beaming and embracing me. She was a lovely, innately warm woman from Pointe-Noire, Congo; she still wore the silver cross necklace her mother had once given her around her neck. “Did you have a nice flight? Wait, let me check.” She pressed the fingertips of her right hand to my cheek. I felt the memories rush up like blood to a flushed face: the bite of sipped champagne against my tongue, the thin semi-transparent newspaper pages gliding between my fingers, the husky voice of the bearded, bearish naval officer who sat in the seat beside me, the misted silhouette of Vladivostok as it rose up out of the Pacific Ocean. “Uneventful, but pleasant enough. You flew commercial?”

“The jets were otherwise occupied, apparently.” Charity could see things with the predictability and precision that Lucy so often lacked, but only the past. I pushed her hand away. “Was that really necessary?”

“You’re not mad,” Charity declared, confident, impish, helping me shed my suit jacket and draping it over her arm. “You’re never mad.”

She was very nearly correct. “Where are the rest of the kids?”

“In the kitchen. Go say hello, they’ve missed you dreadfully.”

“I know the feeling.” I kicked off my Berlutis, ran a palm over the wiry fur of the Irish Wolfhounds that appeared to greet me before they resumed padding watchfully around the palace, and went to the kitchen, my black socks slipping a bit on the marble floors.

I could hear their voices before I reached the door: laughter, teasing, complaints, requests. The scents of pancakes and cold butter and maple syrup were thick in the air. Charity was one of our four newest recruits, and they all still had that energetic lightness of being human, a youthful enthusiasm, a relative normalness. I spent quite a lot of time with them. It was my job—to help with the transition, to keep them happy, to facilitate the welding of their individual parts into the beastly machine that was the Draghi—but oftentimes it felt more like a reprieve. Some would stay close to me as they matured, others would grow in different directions, like ambitious vines climbing the skeleton of a garden trellis. I usually missed them when they ‘grew up,’ so to speak...although there were exceptions. I had never liked Liesl. I had always liked Ben. I opened the door.

“Ah, you are home!” Ksenia cried from where she stood over the stove, a spatula in her right hand, bouncing excitedly in place on her small bare feet.

“Hey!” Max and Austin called together. They were both sitting with their shoes propped up on the unglamorous kitchen table. There was a massive formal dining room that could accommodate up to twenty-five guests, but we rarely used it.

“Good morning,” I said, aware that I was smiling for the first time in days.

Max groaned as he scrolled through his Google search results on a burner phone. “What the fuck. My name is one of the top five dog names again. I think I’m gonna have to change it.”

I ruffled his long blond hair, stealing a piece of bacon from his plate. Max had grown up a trust fund kid in Perth, Australia. His mother was old money; his father was a professional surfer. “Your name is fine.”

“Really, Kato Kaelin? Is it really? How am I supposed to intimidate people when I have a fucking dog name?”

“So make them call you Maximilian,” offered Ksenia in a heavy Ukrainian accent. She’d only been with us for eight months, but her English was coming along swimmingly. She flipped a massive A-shaped pancake on the sizzling griddle. That one was for Austin.

“Seriously?” Max said. “That is just way too many syllables. They’ll be halfway down the block by the time I’m done introducing myself. ‘Hey, come back mate, I haven’t killed ya yet.’”

“At least you aren’t stuck with a basic-white-boy-circa-1992 name for all of eternity,” said Austin Tyler McInerny, originally of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. He was chomping on a multicolored Fruit Roll-Up, which swung from his mouth like a lizard’s tongue. He’d been working at an ailing skatepark when Larkin found him. He still enjoyed showing off his kickflips, and kept insisting that he was going to teach me how to ollie. I didn’t have the faintest idea what an ollie was.

“Do you want a pancake, Cato?” Ksenia asked, passing Austin his plate and wiping her hands on her pink apron. Her black hair was tied in a high ponytail with a matching rose-colored ribbon. She looked so young. She was so young, actually. Nineteen. And she would be forever.

“No, thank you dear. I’m alright.”

“I like Alaric,” Max decided. “First king of the Visigoths. Alaric is a name fit for a vampire. Creepy, yet dignified. Or maybe Silas. Or Draco.”

Austin shook his head as he swirled a river of viscous maple syrup over his A-shaped pancake. “Definitely not Draco.”

“Why not?”

“Well, the Harry Potter connection is unfortunate. People will hear Draco and think of that obnoxious white-haired kid from the evil snake-people house or whatever.”

“Oh, right,” Max sighed. “Like I said. Alaric would work.”

“So many A-shaped pancakes!” Ksenia poured a K on the griddle for herself.

“It’s good for you,” Austin replied, pointing at her with his fork. “We’re practicing English.”

“Alaric Luther,” Max mused, scrolling through his phone. I didn’t think he’d find that on any list of trendy dog names. “Alaric Lothaire...Alaric Lucian...”

“I like your name, Max,” Larkin said from the doorway. None of us had heard him arrive. He was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, wearing a deep maroon suit and a ring on every finger, grinning hugely. He was exactly as I remembered him: stunning, captivating, terrifying. The kitchen fell quiet. I could smell Ksenia’s pancake beginning to burn.

At last Max chuckled nervously, pushing soggy pancake hunks around on his plate with his fork, averting his gaze. “Guess I’ll keep it then.”

“I thought I heard you come in,” Larkin told me.

“It’s always a pleasure to be home.”

He nodded out towards the hallway. “Come. Regale me with the stories of your travels.” Then his eyes flicked down to my socks, and he grimaced—slightly, briefly—before turning away. “And find your shoes.”

I followed him through the hallway, the living room, the grand front foyer with the crystal chandelier, into the elevator. Larkin did not speak, but he hummed as we ascended: House Of The Rising Sun.

It hadn’t always been like this. It was difficult for me to pick out the details of what had changed—the tone of his voice, the proportion of wonder and gratitude I associated with him versus fear, the way this palace (or the one in Reykjavik, or Juneau, or Ivalo, or Murmansk, or any of the others) felt when I stepped inside it—but I knew something had. It had begun before Ben left. It was much worse now. Older vampires, in my fairly learned opinion, are something like the stars. They mellow as they age, temper their character flaws, grow wise and patient like Nikolai or Honora or Gwilym Lee; or they rage until they burn away every last atom of humanity, until they destroy themselves and take entire solar systems down with them. Increasingly, I harbored fears that Larkin was a vampire of the latter variety. And we were all his planets.

In his study, Larkin dropped into the chair behind his desk, brought a hand to his forehead, surveyed a disarrayed flurry of papers: letters, notices, deeds and titles, meticulously managed accounts of finances and disciplinary actions. Larkin had a laptop and burner phone, of course, as we all did; but he liked to work in paper as much as possible. That’s how he’d done things for centuries, since long before the name of the inventor of the internet (or harnessed electricity, for that matter) was a whisper on his parents’ lips. The sky outside was clouded and seeping soft rain.

“Things have been busy?” I ventured.

He frowned, gesturing to the cluttered desk. “I’m in purgatory.”

“I’m terribly sorry to hear that. Can I help?”

“The Lancaster coven says they’ll need an extension for their dues. That’s the second year in a row, now it’s not just an exception, it’s a precedent. If you let one coven bend the rules, others will follow. So something will have to be done. Then there’s Stockholm. Anders’ coven has eaten a few too many locals—including the mayor’s favorite niece—and now the city is launching an investigation. Fucking idiots. They’ll probably all have to relocate. There’s some new territory dispute in Lima between Alejandro’s coven and a group of strangers that just came out of the Andes. We’ll have to make their acquaintance, of course. And as if all that weren’t enough, Rigel accidentally fed on a heroin addict and he’s currently detoxing in a cell in the basement. Would you check on him for me? I’m sure your presence will be a...” He waved his hand distractedly, almost dismissively, searching for the words. “A comfort to him.”

“Of course.”

“How are the Lees?”

“Fine. Typical. Gwil’s putting in a lot of hours at the hospital. Rami’s planning to get another law degree. Ben is, uh, adjusting. Slowly, very slowly. He’s not particularly content. But he hasn’t murdered anyone that I’m aware of.”

“How nice.” Now his eyes darted up to catch mine: focused, luminous, unreadable. “Nothing new at all?”

And instantly, I wanted to tell him everything. I forgot why I had ever planned to blunt the girl’s existence, to conceal her talent entirely; I felt her name rising in my throat. And then I remembered again. I’m doing this for Gwil, for Ben.

I pretended to ponder Larkin’s question, as if it was so difficult to remember, as if there was nothing left to sift through but a trunkful of mundane details from the trip like a grandfather’s tattered correspondence and tarnished war relics. That was something an average family might have squirreled away in their attic, I assumed; I’d never met my own grandfather, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have had anything to leave me if I had. “Joe’s got some new girlfriend, but I don’t think it’s serious. I doubt she’ll be around long. You know how Joe is. Scarlett’s seeing someone too, actually. A Quileute kid.”

“Poor boy.” And Larkin grinned like a shark beneath burning eyes. “He’s in for a lifetime of disappointment. Who will ever be able to hold a candle to those memories?”

Larkin had a moderate preoccupation with Scarlett’s beauty, her...tenacity. Her lack of talent was a great disappointment to him, a somehow more egregious fault than Joe or Gwil or Mercy’s. What a shame, Larkin often said. And I believed I knew what came after in his mind, although never aloud: What a partner she could have been.

He was still grinning at me. His expression was hollow, vacuous. A shiver clawed down my spine. He was waiting for something. No, he was searching. I stared back, and I willed for that intangible, contagious harmony I carried around like a wedding ring to hit him like carbon monoxide or bromine: undetected and yet inexorable, knocking him off his path of inquisition.

What does he suspect? What does he already know?

“Anyway,” Larkin continued abruptly, turning his attention back to his paperwork. “I’m glad there’s nothing to worry about in Forks. Liesl will be back in the next few days, Rigel will be ready to work again, I’ll come up with a plan to handle all this and my mood will improve tremendously.”

And where has Liesl been? I almost asked; and then I didn’t. It was a good sign that she was coming home. I had looked for her once while I was in Forks. When I made up my mind to find someone—when that switch flipped in my skull or in the tangle of nerves of my solar plexus or wherever it lived—it wasn’t like poking around on Google Earth: zooming in here, scrolling over there. A goldish trail lit up on the floor, a ‘Yellow Brick Road’ Honora and I sometimes joked, and I followed it. And I had no way of knowing how far that trail might lead. A route heading dead east from the palace might stop in the next town over or continue across the Pacific Ocean; my search might last one day or a hundred. In Forks—as I perched in a soaring western hemlock tree in the forest outside the Lee residence on a cool October evening—Liesl’s trail had led north. North to Vancouver, to Victoria, to Dawson, to Alaska? Who the fuck knew. I was just relieved it hadn’t led to the tree next to mine.

“Well, as always, I’m happy to assist however I can,” I told Larkin. “Just let me know and I’ll be on the next flight out of Vladivostok.”

“I appreciate that, Cato.” He smiled, paternally this time. And then he spun his chair around to peer out the window into the episodic flares of lightning that illuminated great dark clouds like neurons in a celestial brain. I hate thunderstorms. They remind me of South Carolina. “But I think you’ve earned a rest.”

After checking in on Rigel—irritable, frenetic, pacing, and yet predictably pacified somewhat by my visit—I trotted up the main staircase to the second floor of the palace. I found her in our bedroom: sitting at her easel, a paintbrush held in one graceful hand, an image like a photograph on the canvas. I promptly pried off my Berlutis for the second time today and tossed them into the closet.

“Ciao, amore,” I said.

“Ciao!” Honora replied, beaming. Her curly brunette hair was pinned up and away from her face; wayward tendrils spiraled down to brush her bare shoulder blades, the back of her neck. “Just give me five minutes...I have to finish the shadow of this tree...”

There weren’t many in the Draghi who survived the transition from Nikolai’s leadership to Larkin’s, but Honora had. She was gentle to a fault, a hopeless warrior, turned into an immortal on her forty-fourth birthday when Rome was still an empire; and she was without any talents whatsoever, except for one which was useless in combat. Her paintings, drawings, and sculptures adorned every palace the Draghi owned. Each year, Larkin would ask her to paint all of us together, incorporating any new faces, erasing the memories of those who had proven themselves unworthy. One such portrait, I knew, hung in Gwilym Lee’s home office.

I went to the woman I called my wife, laid my palms on her shoulders, leaned down to kiss the top of her head. “Take your time, love.”

“Everything’s alright?” Honora asked, looking hopefully up at me with large, wide-set jade eyes. No, not just hopefully. Trustingly.

“Everything’s alright,” I agreed, not knowing if I believed it.

Shadows And Spells

“He just...just...disappeared?!” Jessica sputtered, scandalized, gaping at me as she held a Styrofoam cup of spiked apple cider in her clasped hands.

We were on a quilt near the outskirts of the sea of beach towels and blankets that circled the bonfire. Women—wearing flowing dresses or robes or tunics or not very much at all—flounced around the flames banging tambourines and reciting chants that I didn’t know the words to. Some carried torches, beacons of heat and light in the darkness. Jessica was wearing a short black shirt, fishnet tights, and a black crop-top turtleneck sweater; I had opted for a bohemian blue dress patterned with stars, an old thrift shop find and the closest thing I owned to Wiccan festivities apparel. I had a cup of hot apple cider as well, enhanced with a generous splash of Captain Morgan, but hadn’t quite conjured up the rebelliousness to drink it yet.

I suddenly recalled Mercy bringing me an endless supply of virgin autumnal sangrias as Joe and I swam in the hot tub on the Lees’ back porch. As soon as you turn twenty-one, you can have the real thing. I frowned, shuddered, took a bitter and burning sip.

“Yeah,” I replied. “He told his roommate he was going to a frat party or something and never showed up and never made it back home either. The parents are blaming the university, the university is insisting he must be off with a girlfriend or on some hipster soul-searching nature adventure or whatever, it’s a mess.”

“Jesus,” she murmured. “What does your dad say?”

“He’s been helping the state police with the investigation. There’s really no evidence of anything. No witnesses, no footprints, no surveillance footage, no handy anonymous tips...”

“No body,” Jessica finished.

“That’s morbid.” I downed the rest of my cider. Was the world already beginning to list like a ship on choppy waves, or was that just my imagination? I guess it would be possible. I’d barely eaten all day.

“You were thinking it.”

“Well, one’s mind does tend to wander towards homicide under such circumstances.”

“It is the season of the dead.” She grinned wickedly, then took my empty cup. “He’s probably fine. I bet he wants to drop out to become a weed farmer and hasn’t worked up the guts to tell his parents yet. You want another?”

“Sure.”

“Cool. I’ll be right back.” Jess rose to balance on black boots with five-inch heels and staggered off to the foldable table piled high with cans and bottles and snacks. I was getting the impression that her Wiccanism was more of a novelty than a spiritual commitment.

The season of the dead. Now that’s VERY morbid.

There were some guys laughing, smoking home-rolled cigarettes, and toasting glasses of red wine on a nearby mandala blanket, bespectacled intellectual types who were probably getting PhDs in Anthropology or Medieval Studies at the University of Washington. One of them—curly-haired, pale-eyed, wearing a sweater vest and a cautious smile—raised his wine glass in my direction. I waved back without much enthusiasm.

“He’s cute, right?” Jessica asked, plopping back down onto our quilt and shoving a full cup of spiked cider into my grasp. She motioned for me to drink. I did. “That’s Sebastian, but he likes to be called Bash. He’s twenty-three and speaks fluent German.”

“Charming.”

“He’s very...uh...gifted. I’m not saying I know from personal experience, but I’ve heard it from a very reliable source. And his parents own a beach house in Monterey. You could go skinny-dipping.”  

“In the ocean?” The world was definitely wobbling now. I was warm all over, numbed, fuzzy; it was becoming difficult to picture Joe’s face, to hear his voice. This was good. I kept drinking. “No thanks. Too many sharks. They have great whites down there.”

Jess tossed her long, loose hair and sighed impatiently. “I’m just saying that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else. So you should pursue that.”

“I’ll totally consider it.” I lied. I would not consider it.

She smiled, sympathetically, fondly. “I can’t believe you thought I was a Mormon.”

“I can’t believe I’m out in the Washington wilderness commemorating the Gaelic festival of Samhain, but here we all are.”

Jess glanced over my shoulder. “Oh my god. He’s coming over here.”

“Ugh.” I craned my neck to see. Sebastian—whoops, my mistake, Bash—was approaching. “Please distract him. I don’t want to talk to anyone. Also I’m pretty sure I’m getting drunk and I don’t want to do anything humiliating, like sob uncontrollably about how much I miss my ex-boyfriend.”

“Don’t worry. I gotchu, Baby Swan.”

“Hey Jess,” Bash said, but he was looking at me. He pitched his cigarette off into the trees. What the fuck, who does that?

“Only you can prevent forest fires,” I told him in a woozy, mock-Smokey Bear voice.

“What?” he asked, baffled.

“Ignore her, she’s drunk,” Jess said quickly. “So what’s up? Come on, sit with me. Keep me toasty. Teach me some German...”

As they chatted and giggled and snuggled closer together���I’m starting to think that Jessica might have been her own reliable source—I studied the forest, watching to make sure the cigarette didn’t begin to smolder in the damp brush. The voices and crackling of the bonfire and sharp ringing of the tambourines faded into one muted, uniform drone. The trees reeled in the haze of the spiked cider; the cool wind moaned through them. And then, for only a second: a glimpse of something impossibly quick, something silvery and reedy and sunless.

What was that?

I blinked. It was gone. I blinked again, staring penetratingly. The swarming heat from the cider evaporated from my skin, my blood. There were goosebumps rising all over me.

What the hell was that?

I remembered how Calawah University students sometimes reacted to Ben: flinching, withdrawing, autonomically fearing him on some primal, evolutionary level. They knew he was a predator. They knew they were prey. It was chillingly similar to what I was feeling now.

I have to get out of here. I have to go home.

I shot to my feet. Oh, wrong move, that was too quick. I swayed, and Jessica reached up to steady me. “Are you—?!”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I gotta go home now.”

“What?! We just got here! Look, chill out, let me get you some vegan samosas or something—”

“No, seriously, I have to go.”

“Okay, okay,” Jessica conceded. “I’ll finish my drink and we’ll call an Uber, alright?”

“Really?” Bash asked, crestfallen.

“I’ll call an Uber,” I told Jess. “You stay, I’ll go.” Maybe she shouldn’t stay, I thought foggily, irrationally. Maybe it’s not safe.

“I can’t let you go alone. I got you drunk and now you’re a mess and if you end up murdered it would be my fault. There are unsolved mysteries going around, you know.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Girl, there’s no way I’m gonna—”

“I’ll call you as soon as I get in the Uber and I’ll stay on until I’m physically inside my house, okay?”

Jessica considered this. Bash leaned in to nibble her ear. I could smell the red wine and nicotine and animalistic lust sweating out of his pores. And unexpectedly, agonizingly: a biting flare, a muscle memory, Joe’s fingertips skimming down the small of my back and his scent like winter nights saturating the capillary beds of my lungs. Stop, stop, stop. “Okay,” Jess agreed at last.

“Awesome.” I was already opening the Uber app on my iPhone.

My driver was a Pacific Northwestern version of Santa Claus: wild grey beard, red flannel, L.L.Bean boots, rambling about his upcoming trip to hunt caribou in British Columbia. I honored my promise to Jessica and kept her on speakerphone for the duration of the twenty-minute drive. I rested my whirling head against the seat, let my eyes dip closed, watched the intermittent streetlights appear and disappear through my eyelids. I let myself into Charlie’s house when I arrived, wished Jessica goodnight (and reminded her not to get pregnant), and meandered clumsily into the kitchen for a glass of water and a cookie dough Pop-Tart to ward off a possible hangover. Charlie was snoring quietly on the living room couch. I watched him for a while, smiling and achingly grateful, before heading upstairs to my bedroom.

My window was wide open; that’s the first thing I noticed. I didn’t remember leaving it that way. I was always neglecting to lock the window, sure—I kept forgetting that there was no one to leave it unlocked for anymore—but I hadn’t left it open when I went to meet Jessica this evening. Icy night air flooded in. The stars were bright and furious in an uncommonly clear sky.

“You trying to give me pneumonia, old man?” I muttered, thinking of Charlie. I tossed my iPhone down onto my bed and crossed the room to close the window. And as it creaked and collided with the sill, I heard my closet door open behind me.

Someone’s here. Someone’s in this room with me.

I turned, very slowly; it felt like it took a lifetime. She was standing in the doorway of my closet, sinuous and white-haired, wearing black leather pants and stiletto heels and a long-sleeved lace blouse the color of blood, the color of her eyes. And she was harrowingly beautiful; not like Lucy or Mercy, not like Scarlett. She was beautiful like a prehistoric jawbone, like a serrated crescent moon, like a blade.

The owl. The goddamn albino owl.

I recognized her immediately. I heard Joe’s words as he introduced each vampire in the immense painting hanging in Dr. Lee’s upstairs office to me, though I desperately didn’t want to: She’s literally Satan, only blonder.

Her name tumbled from my trembling lips. “Liesl.”

“Wonderful, we can skip the introductions.” Her voice was like windchimes, cutting and brisk, with a hint of an Austrian accent like a shadow. Now she was at my bedside and picking up my phone, scrolling through it with lightning-quick and dexterous thumbs. “Hm. No texts from any of the Lees in the past week. So we don’t have to worry about them dropping by, I suppose. Joe got bored with you already, huh?”

“Evidently.” My own voice was brittle, anemic, weak; just like my ineffectual human body.

“That’s quick, even for him. How sad.” She sighed, tucking my iPhone into her red Chanel purse. “There’s a private jet waiting at the Forks Airport. Pack a bag. You have five minutes.”

“Please don’t hurt my dad,” I whispered, scalding tears brimming in my eyes.

“Of course not,” Liesl replied with a savage, saccharine smile. “Not yet, anyway.”

[joelmillerthirstqz]

From this prompt: Joel meets y/n and he makes it his MISSION to fuck her. Throw in a daddy kink if you’re brave

(I did, with ten thousand character-intensive caveats. Porn with obligatory plot, is there a tag for that? Anyway have some suspiciously assertive Joel)

---

Joel moves throughout the rooms of his house, picking up one occupation after the next, bored around one in the afternoon and faced with the reality that he neither remembers nor knows what to do with actual free time, safety, and space of his own. Tommy and Maria had brought some kind approximations of traditional housewarming, but much of his home was furnished by the previous resident and he sat there overwhelmed by spatial possibility. For all his griping about Ellie’s perpetual stream-of-consciousness chattering, the silence roared in his ears like he’d been dragged downstream.

Do people just go drink now? Just talk to each someone to pass the time? he thinks to himself, frustrated. By the time he could legally go to a bar, he’d been twenty-one and Sarah had been three, her mom long gone. He hadn’t spent time alone since the outbreak—always Tommy or Tess and others in between nearby. Acute problems to solve, no time for chronic reflection.

Tommy brought a lone box of possessions from his apartment with a case of cheap beer the night Sarah’s mom left, hanging around more tangibly than any other family had and often taking Sarah to school once Sarah was old enough. Tommy joked that it was more like Joel having two kids to deal with; Joel ribbed him for perpetually flirting with the very clearly married moms of his niece’s classmates.

Joel gulps a breath, self-flagellating with the idea that he hadn’t been able to protect Sarah when Tommy and Maria so clearly deserved to have their own child, forgetting as ever that his brother executed the soldier that shot Sarah before he could get to Joel—without a blink.

Wonderful. That’s what you do alone with your thoughts for two seconds. Jesus, Joel, he grumbles inwardly.

He’d been dragged to so many damn things since settling in Jackson and didn’t know what to do when it was his choice, so he looks outside. If Ellie’s light is on, he’ll go awkwardly try to make conversation, see if she’s okay. If she’ll be caught in a forgiving mood; if not, if he’s really pushing it.

Joel’s boots thud softly on the flagstone they’d carefully laid together, a path for her to get up to the house without soaking her sneakers through. Tonight, though, she’s gone or playing dead, so he sighs and shrugs a coat on, headed for the Tipsy Bison.

————

Joel spent a nontrivial amount of his time lately fending off interested parties in Jackson.

It was just cuffing season, he dismissed—encroaching fall making people a little weird. Since he’d begun to settle in, slowly accustoming himself to having Ellie out of his sight often and a normal couch in a house without shattered windows, he’d slowly accepted more public interactions. He’d grudgingly shoulder into town meetings, quiet until Tommy or someone else would put a question to him like he had a fucking clue.

Joel went on patrol, helping some of the greener residents learn to keep themselves safe. Unfortunately, it meant more people caught sight of him. Joel was used to prowling through quarantine zones swollen with cowering masses plainly terrified of him, which left him minimally prepared for reactions he thought he’d stopped evoking long ago.

The people whose breath hitch when they first notice him, the longing stares when he’d finally break and smile or laugh—they’d gotten embarrassing enough for him to avoid certain places.

Whenever Joel seems like he’s about to not comply with her wishes, Maria frequently threatens to tell the women who ask her in lewd tones if Tommy has a brother the truth—he does, and how about I introduce you?

The truth was he didn’t feel capable of starting anything with someone who’d ask where he’d been. Joel didn’t want to remember, even if he’d finally pinned the picture of himself with Sarah at a soccer game up next to the blooming collection of pictures in his living room with Ellie, Polaroids in Jackson blooming over nearby wall space every few weeks. People who wanted honesty to go with their peaceful existence reminded him too much of Tommy’s near-fatal optimism, and he felt like it would be too dishonest to start anything with anyone who still lost sleep over distasteful things done to survive. Delightful first-date baggage, in his estimation.

At the Tipsy Bison, he edges in by the drinking patrol nearest the door, welcomed gruffly and responding the same. It was nice to be recognized without raw fear or calculation as he entered, and Joel warms enough to drop his coat over the back of his chair, his rust-colored flannel’s buttons parting over the shirt beneath it as he moves, listening to Eugene tell some inflated war story with an almost-cold beer.

“Alright, fuck this. Knuckle up, asshole, I’m not doing this on patrol tomorrow,” Joel’s ears perk up at the sound of your chair clattering backwards as you stand. Joel recognizes you from the newer batch of arrivals, clearly deemed capable enough to join an early patrol just days after your arrival.

“Jesus, settle the fuck down,” one of the younger patrolmen grouses, standing up. Alex. Oh, the dumb kid.

“Nope. Now or never,” you insist.

“Listen, I’m not hitting you,” he sounds unapologetic but tries to portray himself as the reasonable party. He’s wiry, and Joel’s seen him fend for himself, but his posture doesn’t belie cool confidence.

“You clearly have some doubts, so let’s get into it,” you urge, agitated beyond belief. He’d been needling you about perceived skill, something about not growing up having to field dress animals, and you’d fucking had it. He was going to make a point on patrol and get someone hurt, and you were not carrying bodies back into Jackson because of some ego or misplaced crush.

He taps your shoulder mockingly with a closed fist, a gentle little motion, trying to smile playfully.

You hook him across the jaw, staggering him before taking a knee to his stomach as he tries to right himself.

“More, or you’re finished?” you ask.

Joel fully sits up in his chair. He hasn’t seen anything like this in Jackson. Glancing over both shoulders for his brother, Maria, and finding a clear coast he watches the outcome with interest, sipping his beer with an upturned mouth.

You’re cute, or appealing, or some reflexive word Joel hadn’t used in years, pushing hair out of your eyes as you regain your center.

Alex tries to sweep your legs out, successfully swiping one and getting a knee to the diaphragm for it as you land.

“Okay, fuck, I’m done,” he grunts and you rise easily, offering him a hand.

“Good,” you mumble, letting go the second he’s righted. You look around a little chastened by all the eyes on you, deciding to forego another round.

“I’m going to bed before we do this again,” you nod at Alex, and the rest of the patrol group you recognize in turn.

Joel eyes you as you depart, beer polished off and goodbyes waved, coat gripped in his fist to be flung on once outside. He knows your name, had seen you near the stables and conversing with the patrols. Hearing you speak, despite the context, maybe because of it, let him confirm something he’d been suspecting when he caught glimpses of you before. Never having had the right circumstances or raw spare time to devote all his energy to taking someone to bed, he steels himself to confirm it.

He trots after you, tugging his jacket back on and finding his way to the four-story hotel the town had spent arduous time clearing, stripping of spores, and making hospitable enough for people new to Jackson. Joel ended up leading a lot of the effort himself, vaguely proud to be doing something other than dismantling things, stretching old skills. Your little corner balcony faces off of one side, a nice view of the town unfolding as people begin to switch lights on for a sooner-than-yesterday sundown. You’re appreciative of a strange little luxury—not sure when the last time you stood with your back to a door without anticipating some infected would burst through.

You lean your elbows on the railing, a flask of whisky tipping in your fingers as you watch Jackson light up, a lone figure’s long strides coming into view down the broad street. The night is cool against your skin, but the little shiver the breeze causes feels affirming.

You’d always loved the fall, and Jackson’s soft sounds of life feel unreal enough that you could never sit here just sobering up before bed. It would leave you too wired, buzzing with the anxiety of certain impermanence. Reconciling this liminal zone with the gnashing horror just beyond it wasn’t something you’d take on without help. If Jackson was only a passing reprieve, you had to make yourself calm enough to enjoy it.

Joel halts below where you’re standing, hands on his hips pulling his jacket open as he looks up at you.

You’re instantly sheepish—you’d guessed in whatever patrol hierarchy there was, he was rather important. And you’d just visibly beaten someone down.

“Alex okay?” you call.

“He’ll be peachy. Not here for that,” Joel retorts, low drawl pleasant.

“Well,” you shrug, gesturing to the two mismatched chairs on the balcony with your flask. “Allow me to be a gracious host.”

He smiles and looks down for a moment. Even a couple of stories above him, you can see his height, start to assess his proportions because you’re too tipsy to be a human fucking being about your first interactions in a good place. You quickly add up a sum: his legs are long, shoulders broad, hair long enough to tug on. His frame suggests complete capability and you have a dire need to test it.

Aw, fuck.

“Y’know, I’ve got real glasses for drinking that,” Joel insinuates before he can tell himself to shut the fuck up, or to stop harassing newcomers, or any other sensible thought.

“Fair enough,” you call, closing your flask and holding a finger up to signal that he should wait.

When you arrive downstairs, boots poorly laced and denim jacket barely enough for the chill, Joel’s leaning on the veranda of the whole structure. You suppose its fair to gawk in appreciation so you do, assuring yourself you could have chosen not to.

“Look, I’m not going to ask what this is, and you won’t ask why I’m saying yes, okay?” you say softly when you’re a couple of feet from him.

Joel raises his eyebrows, feeling untethered. Some corner of him expected to humiliate himself to death so he could go home and fall asleep barely after dark, anything to shut himself up until he was occupied again. His heart speeds a little at your reply, hand on the back of his neck as he pushes back onto both feet.

“I’m close,” Joel offers, hand down towards the street, fists quickly in his own pockets. You pull your bottom lip inward, looking at his profile, wanting to hear it again, lower, helpless.

You pass the walk in tense but not unpleasant silence, glancing at each other until you reach his porch and he edges in to unlock his door.

Turning on lights as you toe off your boots and follow him inside, you watch how he moves, past the need for any type of persuasion. He returns from the kitchen with two matching, unchipped short glasses and a cylindrical glass of amber liquid.

“Trade?” Joel asks setting the bottle down and closing an open window. Your mouth quirks.

“That’s a nice custom. It a Jackson thing?” you ask, tipping your flask into his glass as he returns and pours from the bottle for you.

He laughs, sharp hazel eyes jumping up to you and back down, hand running over his beard.

“Not sure. What else would you do?”

You drop onto one of the two couches, arranged in the way that says people actually spend time here together. Joel gets onto his knees to build a fire, definitely a necessity, though kind of needlessly sweet for the occasion.

“This?” you tease, gesturing between the two of you. Joel joins you on the same couch, heat radiating into the space around you, well before the spark in the fireplace could catch enough to reach you.

You take stock of each other in comfortable silence, and a slow grin moves from one side of your face to the other. You finish your drink with a tinge of shyness, setting it down as he does the same.

You have no warning before his mouth is on yours, hands on either side of your face. It’s achingly good to be kissed with complete attention, luxury of time changing the entire tenor of kissing another person. You’re grounded to who’s holding you, mouth accepting him as Joel leads, guiding your jaw where he wants it with the flat of his palm. Joel moves slowly, plenty of time for you to reciprocate his motions though you begin to shift closer, scant sense of rhythm keeping you from straddling his hips.

The taste of him and your anticipatory haze keeps you fixed on the kiss, his hands sliding lower and beginning to move you towards his lap.

You try not to break the kiss with a smile, but it happens anyway and he looks up curiously. You sit back on your heels and tear through the buttons of your jacket, tossing it over the back of the couch and stroking fingernails through his beard before beginning the kiss again. Joel tugs you closer by the hip, urging you into his lap. He scans your face intensely, pulling you fully against him and letting his hands run the expanse of your back.

You can feel how rough his hands are through your shirt, so your fingers fly to his to work the buttons of his flannel.

“Christ,” you roll your eyes, exposing a second shirt underneath. He chuckles warmly in his chest, your foreheads bowed together a moment.

“C’mon,” Joel mutters, broad hands under each of your thighs as he rises with you wrapped around him. A segment somewhere in your brain shimmers, clicking with the novel experience, a knockout strike in the lane of neurons igniting to remember their roles.

“Where’s c’mon?” you ask incoherently between kisses, moving your mouth to his neck so he can answer. You think regretfully that it’s probably substantially warmer down here, fire catching nicely.

“Upstair—” Joel cuts off, your teeth nipping his pulse point.

You feel his heart jump against your mouth and your chest at once. You kiss him slowly as he takes you upstairs, stopping halfway up. He pushes you against the banister and deepens the kiss, hard length made clear. Shifting you closer to his waist once you resume, Joel’s hands creep a little higher, fingertips edging up as they dig in.

As you reach his bedroom, you have one hand hooked in the bottom seam of his shirt, ready to pull it off as he tries to set you down. Joel grunts when you tangle his broad shoulders in it, getting free and discarding it agilely. He bears down on you under dark lashes, chest rising and falling noticeably. The chill upstairs dissolves quickly as you twine together, hands running over his chest. It’s impressively broad and defined, thickening line of hair leading into his jeans.

You strip out of your two shirt layers with a casual roll of your upper body. Joel’s rapt eyes dragging over every rib leave you feeling exposed until his hands cover your breasts, mouth on your neck. You try to tug the rest of him towards the bed by the belt loops, but get frustrated and try to unclasp his belt instead.

Joel stoops to claw quickly at his boots, both thrown one handed before coming to rest against the wall. He hasn’t taken his eyes from you as you rise to slip your jeans down, one hand already curled back around your waist. He spreads his other hand across your abdomen, callused fingertips making you shudder appreciatively. Shoving you back, Joel gets to his knees with one of your legs hooked over his shoulder, grasped in his palm, kissing down your thigh. His free hand still moves over the rest of you.

Your mind is blankly focused on the rasp of his beard inside your legs. If you were honest, head wasn’t a frequent priority after the outbreak, sex usually a time-sensitive stress fix—for everyone. Add to that the average skill of the college peers you’d fucked before and, well, you’d only ever mildly enjoyed it.

Joel sucks your clit into his mouth, hard, and you arc off the bed. He moves without an ounce of uncertainty, shifting and roughly positioning you for the best angle as he goes. Being pursued like this, by a person who squarely checks boxes you didn’t know were empty left you wet enough to take him the moment you’d been out of your pants. His tongue pushes inside of you, followed quickly by one finger and then another, static but wonderful. You writhe on the bed at the feeling, low hum of a chuckle skittering across your sensitive skin.

One hand in the sheets, your other makes it into his hair. You grind against him without being able to help it, riding the stretch of his fingers as his tongue laves forceful circles around your clit.

“Fuck,” you try to grit out, embarrassed by the disassembled breathiness of your voice. It’s more a sigh as he curls his fingers within you, hazel flicking up to watch your reaction. You paw at his shoulders blindly, wanting him closer, wanting to fuck him, trying to pull back from him to tell him. He’s deadset in his focus, teeth softly grazing you in reply to your attempt.

“Can you just—” Joel grumbles, rising,“—be good for one goddamned second—” he yanks you towards him by your ankle.

“This where you want me to tell you to make me?” you tease, sitting up in his lap and wrenching him closer with your legs.

He huffs a small laugh, making to kiss you, but you hold him back.

“I want you to make me, okay?” You say seriously, grasping the hair at his nape to emphasize it.

Joel leans forward, biting your lip with care.

“Alright,” he confirms, hands around your jaw. You taste yourself on him, and a near-growl ripples through him, evident through his chest pressed against yours.

You duck away from his kiss, not caring to get his jeans off before getting a hand around his cock, your mouth enclosing the tip before you can register how much there is to take.

“Christ,” he breathes, eyes shut, face turned towards the ceiling. As your hand becomes slick enough to work over his shaft, his hands stabilize in your hair, bunching. You feel him flex in your mouth as he parts his lips and tugs on your hair, hauling you up level with his face.

“You don’t get to end it now,” Joel smiles, mouth almost against yours. You smile at the rough motion, hot interest skipping down your spine. His opposite hand is running over your chin while he composes himself, far closer than he’d wanted to be at this point.

You bite his fingers, pulling two deftly in to suck and keeping his gaze. His pupils darken and you feel a surge of pride at the same time as you feel him shove you back onto the bed, tearing his jeans off and finally joining you. Joel covers you, kissing you roughly and pulling your thighs around his hips, on his knees. He sheathes inside you without resistance, groaning and bowing his head at first. Even ready, he stretches you noticeably and you gasp at his first experimental thrusts, dragging your hips up to his each time.

You rise up to meet him, nails dug into his shoulders for traction, meeting his thrusts.

Joel hisses more in chastisement than discomfort at it, smacking your ass curiously.

“You know I’m not delicate,” you say close to his ear, snapping the lobe between your teeth unnecessarily hard.

“Shit, ow—” he grumbles, smacking you harder. You moan at the feeling, spread over his lap and trawling nails down his back. You tug where you’ve latched on, moving lower and biting his neck. He does it again, rolling his hips as you clench down on him. You scrape your teeth over his shoulder. Joel hits you again, force of it stinging how you’d hoped.

You provoke him to continue, pulling his hair, hard, and biting the skin over his collarbone.

Joel fists your hair and tugs back hard, exposing your throat to him even as you keep riding him, spanking you with almost musical timing. You almost draw blood scratching your nails out of his hair to the nape of his neck, grinning from your forced angle as he pants under you.

Joel leans forward and nips carefully over your larynx, clamping down hard on tendons just next to it. It’s a brash spot to suck a bruise into, and even the less visible parts of your body would surely be screaming on patrol in the morning.

You cry out, nerves and instinctive reaction to teeth near your neck making your heart and your cunt clench.

Joel flips you without effort, pressing a palm against your lower back to shove you into the mattress. You feel him strike your ass, once, twice, three times, and then his fingers are at your entrance, coaxing your hips to tilt up. He brushes his knuckles against you, leaning over to breathe into your ear.

“Here?”

“What did I just say?” You retort, appreciative of his caution but entirely sold on the possibility that walking will hurt tomorrow.

Joel doesn’t reply but you can see him roll his eyes from the corner of yours as he swats your cunt, hard, sensation shattering across your skin. You moan and he takes the initiative to do it again. Your shoulder blades pinch together around his hand, veering up with it. You turn your face entirely into the bed, muffling moans and faux-objections as he works, tenderness rising to the surface of your skin.

You feel Joel’s hands harshly grasp handfuls of your ass the second before he thrusts into you again, the force pinning you to the bed. He fucks you hard for long minutes, sweat building between you enough to make his hands slip. Joel’s forearm slides around your front and pulls you back against his chest.

You immediately claw at his arm, grateful to anchor yourself to him directly, pushing your hips down against his as he falls back to a gentler pace. His mouth reaches your shoulder and your hand flies to his hair again, straining to kiss him. Maybe it was weird to seek him like that—could still be a fantastic, unattached fuck—but Joel kisses you with this unerring focus that already makes you hope it will happen again.

“Takin’ me perfectly,” he drawls, some enunciation falling away with his blood coursing like this. You want to keep hearing him, so you nod and resume kissing him.

“More delicate than you thought? Need a break?” Joel taunts, and your eyes narrow as he speaks low and close, still thrusting shallowly.

“You want it hard again?” Joel teases, fingers skimming your stomach to roll your clit between them his thumb and index. It pinches and you suck in a breath, your hips floundering against his patient rhythm.

Your eyes spark and you decide to push.

“Yes, daddy,” you mock, almost sneering at him.

A dim recollection of a girl he’d briefly seen after Sarah’s mom left dusts itself off, and he reconnects dots that drifted apart from disuse after the outbreak. Joel raises his eyebrows at you and tips his head as if to say, “Well, alright then.”

You’re on your hands and knees before you can react, his hand spanning across your collarbones, bracing you against his repeated impact. Joel’s breathing becomes ragged each time he slides home, folding over you again to spill an endless wave of questions into your ear. His fingers are smoother across your clit now, drawing soaked concentric circles as you hitch.

“That’s it, baby girl,” Joel punctuates with a snap of his hips.

“You gonna come for me just like this?” Again.

“Come around my cock like a good girl?” Again, rough.

You moan, dropping to your elbows as he pounds into you, orgasm building inside of you spilling over to his fingers’ stimulation, a low groan meeting yours. You’re past words and shivering on the edge of climax when he taps your jaw.

“Focus up, c’mon,” he rumbles in your ear, demanding your attention. The pressure of his length against the tension inside of you has your vision blurring at the edges.

“Tell me,” Joel demands, pulling out halfway.

“Yes! Please, please,” you hear yourself sound panicky at the threat of losing his touch.

“Not what I asked you, baby,” he goads, nipping softly across your shoulders. His hand hasn’t stilled, and you know your eyes are rolling with the distracting pleasure of it.

“Yes, yes I will, please—”

“Tell me what,” he slips in an inch, voice shaky with thin control, fingers flexing where they meet your skin.

“Come for you, please don’t stop,” you plead, trying to shove your hips back to to meet his.

“That’s it, baby girl,” Joel murmurs and you break, quivering against his fingers and fussing with effort and relief. Your cheeks and mouth bloom red as your eyes droop with the onslaught of endorphins, still cresting as you feel Joel’s hips snap in quick succession, burying himself deep and making the best, most broken noise you could have hoped for. Even deep in your own fog, you reach for him, finding his mouth as it seeks yours again, aftershocks rolling through him.

Joel rolls onto his back, tugging you along one side. You don’t much enjoy being pinned if you weren’t also being penetrated, so the intimacy of lying there like lovers with someone you’d barely glimpsed, much less talked to, was unsettling.

Joel laughs like it’s easy for him, face lighting up with the motion, hand stroking your hair behind your ear.

“What?” You ask, propping yourself up on an elbow.

“Just surprised you said yes,” he clarifies. “I’m don’t—this isn’t a usual Wednesday for me,” he clears his throat.

You analyze his expression for a second, looking for the deceit and just finding something genuine and suspiciously shy for having nearly spanked you to orgasm minutes ago.

“You don’t accost every vulnerable newcomer and ply them with good whisky?” You prod, draping yourself over his chest, an easy negotiation of legs happening without either of you needing to acknowledge it.

“Bourbon, and, just the ones who start fistfights, really,” he teases, hands drifting over you, hungry warmth reaching his eyes as the afterglow begins to recede.

“Come downstairs?” Joel asks, like you weren’t tangled up in his bedsheets, surrounded and willingly captive to whatever he wanted.

“That was the original plan,” you protest, peering around for his shirt and slipping into it.

He smirks and kisses the tip of your nose, pausing and tipping your chin up to kiss you properly.

God damn it, you think. Oh, god damn it.

[scarletaire]

homeland (Chapter 1)

A/N: Welcome to my very first multi-chaptered fic! Would love to know what you think ❤️

Fandom: The Folk of the Air

Genre/s: Contains Fluff, Slight Hurt/Comfort, Slight Angst, Smut

Rating: Explicit

Tags: Post-QON, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Protective!Cardan, Bewildered!Jude, Jude and Cardan discuss the Undersea, but they get a little Distracted

Description: 

Cardan’s eyes flash open.

“Why?” he repeats, and Jude feels the power shift between them. “Don’t you remember, wife?” he croons. “It was the Undersea who stole you away from me.” 

And Jude has only enough time to think, danger, before he lunges at her.

or:

Cardan and Jude work on removing their armor. Taking off this particularly stubborn piece happens in varying states of undress.

Links: Masterlist | AO3 

Jude wakes at the brush of Cardan’s tail against the back of her knee. 

It tickles more than anything, and it’s this that shoves her into wakefulness. Growing up as a human in Faerie has not afforded Jude the luxury of graceful sleep. She comes into consciousness like a soldier, eyes open wide and trying to make sense of her surroundings. 

Cardan watches her from the far side of the bed. 

Jude furrows her brows. The sun is low in the sky, and it casts their room into burnished amber. It lines the angles of Cardan’s face with gold and shadow, and with the length of his body reposed before her, he is unearthly. Untouchable. She thinks she could still be dreaming right now.

Until she notices the distant look in his eyes.

She peers past the drowsy haze of sunset, taking in the way his tail lashes low and distracted across his body. He probably hadn’t meant to wake her from the looks of it. His tail often moves with a mind of its own. 

She stretches out a hand across the space between them, the sheets of their bed cool and empty against the backs of her fingers. “Cardan?” 

They had gone to sleep as they usually did, curled together and limbs tangled. It was the common way things were after they began sharing their marriage bed in earnest months ago. 

This is new. 

“Jude,” he says in reply, and in his voice, she hears something she doesn’t understand. 

It strikes in her an unfamiliar urge to soothe. It’s a human thing, one that she hasn’t had reason to attend to while being raised in a redcap’s stronghold. She’s not quite sure what caused it, what it was in the way he whispered her name. All she knows is that it makes her want to shift closer. 

Cardan has an unnerving ability to bring out the human in her, despite her best efforts, despite her being High Queen of Elfhame. 

She reaches out a hand, and he – unearthly, untouchable – lets her brush a knuckle across his cheek. She waits. 

He says nothing. 

Undeterred, she tries to brush a curl of ink black hair away from his eyes. They burn. 

She pauses. 

He is holding himself preternaturally quiet, and still. So still, the way only fae can. An animal sort of stillness, she thinks. 

Within the next heartbeat, Jude understands that gentle is not what Cardan needs right now. 

Alright. This she knows how to do. 

Her fingers, previously resting at his temple, move to tangle in his hair. She pulls hard enough to make him hiss. “What is it?” She tightens her hold. “What happened?” 

His black gem eyes go clear with pain – and something else. Something darker. “A nightmare,” he breathes, finally.

She narrows her eyes, thinking about the tense line of his shoulders.

When he doesn’t elaborate, she slips a little bit closer. For better leverage. He tracks her movement across the bed. 

From this distance, her nails rake a path down his temple and the side of his face. She digs her fingers in when she reaches his jawline, feels the way he clenches it in response. “Tell me.” 

Something cruel pulls the corner of his mouth upward. “You shall like very little of it.” 

He smiles when he’s nervous, Jude reminds herself. 

She leans in close enough to see how the skin of his jaw is going white against the half-moons of her nails. “Tell me anyway.” 

His eyes close. She thinks she sees a little of defeat in the way he leans into the rough grip of her fingers. “I dreamt,” he whispers into the waiting air, “of the Undersea.” And even in the warmth of the bed they share together, something cold slithers up Jude’s spine. 

“Why?” she demands, before she can think better of it.

They haven’t talked much about her kidnapping. He’d almost forsaken his kingdom in exchange for her, and that was more than her heart, then so unsure and betrayed by her exile, could understand. 

But now, there is space to wonder. 

(“When you were gone—truly gone beneath the waves—I hated myself as I never have before.”)

Cardan’s eyes flash open. “Why?” he repeats, and Jude feels the power shift between them. “Don’t you remember, wife?” he croons. “It was the Undersea that stole you away from me.” 

And Jude has only enough time to think, danger, before he – 

– lunges at her – 

Jude’s back hits the bed with a thud, and Cardan leans on his elbows over her, the unforgiving weight of him pressing her into the mattress. This time, it is his hand that grips her chin, the raw emotion in his dark eyes at odds with the careful way he tilts her face up to his. “They hid you away for weeks.”

“I clawed my way out of there,” she says, a little breathlessly. “I didn’t let them keep me.” 

The slant of his mouth grows crueller. “Darling, I had to forge a treaty for you.” 

Indignation sparks in her, at the reminder of her weakness. “I didn’t ask you to – ”

Cardan swoops in, and Jude holds her breath as his lips come perilously close to hers. “Do not mishear me, Jude Duarte Greenbriar,” he says softly, so softly. “I would have done anything to get you back.” 

Jude sucks in another breath, because Cardan has suddenly dropped his mouth to the tender skin of her neck. 

“Anything,” he says, and his lips ghost the words behind her ear as he speaks. “Everything.” 

It’s instinct that has her spreading her legs, letting the weight of him make a home in the cradle of her thighs. He settles against her body like he belongs there. 

“Do you understand that, Jude?” he asks. “Can you?” 

He presses a hot, open-mouthed kiss at the base of her throat, and Jude wonders at how something so small can be felt all the way down to her toes. 

Still, his words have dredged up memories she thought were long past. They are vivid in her mind now: the dampness of the dark cell, the ache of her exhausted body, the cold brush of Balekin’s lips – 

“They did all that they could,” she says, because suddenly it’s like she has something to prove, “but I did not let them break me.” 

Cardan tenses, his forehead resting on the softness of her cheek. 

“Don’t you remember?” she asks him now. “I came for you the very same night they released me.” 

Something passes over the length of his body, and pressed against him so closely like this, Jude can recognize it for what it is: a shudder.

“Oh, Jude,” he breathes into the line of her jaw. “I dreamt that you didn’t.” 

What had he said? A nightmare. 

“There was nothing left of you to ransom for,” he continues, face hidden in the crook of her neck. “Nothing but salt and seafoam.” And there, in their ridiculously large bed with the cobweb canopy billowing in a sunset breeze, the High King of Elfhame begins to tremble.

Jude is frozen underneath him. “Cardan,” she whispers, because there is nothing else she can say. No one that she can remember has ever cared for her like this before. 

Another shudder passes through him at the sound of his name. And suddenly, he is moving closer, something like desperation igniting the insistent press of his body over hers as he tries to burrow his face deeper into her collarbone. 

“I dove into the water,” he says, and she feels every word dance on the sensitive skin of her neck, “and it was cold and it was dark, but I swam and I searched, and I couldn’t find you.” His hands fist into the gossamer skirts of her nightgown. 

Jude grits her teeth. She is powerless in the wake of his heartache. She doesn’t know what to do. This is an enemy she has never faced before. 

“I would have done everything,” he repeats, lost. She gets the feeling that he isn’t speaking entirely just to her anymore. 

In this liminal space between waking and dreaming, Cardan duels with the imaginary horrors of his nightmare, and Jude holds on as tight as she can. 

The rocking starts with the intention to soothe. Jude thinks of Oriana, calming a restless Oak in the cradle of her arms. She thinks of her mother, wrapping her in an embrace that swept her back and forth. She thinks of Cardan’s mother, Lady Asha, and how she most likely never held her son the way mothers do. 

So Jude begins to sway, as best as she can with the weight of him all along the front of her body. There is so much of him to hold, almost too much because he is so much bigger than her, but she will hold him. She will hold all of him until he no longer needs her. 

A different kind of tremor passes through Cardan’s body when he feels her moving under him. She runs a hand through the hair at the base of his neck, gently scraping with the tips of her nails. Cardan seems to melt into her more, a long, faint breath easing out of him. 

Soon, he starts to sway with her. Just a simple accompaniment of his body with hers. Against hers. Beat and tempo are but second language to the king of Faerie and his many revels.

He continues to murmur in her ear, as if the words are a refrain he cannot get out of his head. “Everything,” he is saying. “My everything, Jude.” The words are both vow and reassurance all at once. She feels them seep into her bones. 

Cardan moves over her, trembling no longer. The mattress dips under their combined weight. 

There’s a certain whiplash to all of this. She’s supposed to be the one comforting him, and yet now it is he who is whispering sweetly into the quickly heating skin of her neck. It is he who guides their bodies into an altogether different kind of rhythm. 

Jude’s fingers clench into his bare shoulders. His habit of wearing nothing to bed has carried over into their marriage. She feels the overwhelming warmth of him all over her, the wisps of her nightgown a paltry barrier. 

Their hips press flush, and Jude knows it wasn’t intentional, but he’s right there between her thighs, and the way he’s rolling against her is now wickedly familiar. 

Or maybe he had meant it. Maybe this is how she can give him the comfort he needs –

There is no mistaking the rocking of their bodies now.

They are similar in this regard, in this need for something to fight with, to move against.  She will be the sentinel at his back as he wrestles with the phantom of his dreams.

Cardan surfaces from the crook of her neck like he is surfacing from cold water. She brings him down to her, until they are nose to nose, until she can see the last dregs of his nightmare swirling in the depths of his eyes. 

The words spill from him like a confession. “In the darkest shadows of my heart,” he tells her, hushed against the backdrop of the dying sun, “I wondered if I should ever see you again.”

And Jude thinks of the many, long months of her exile. Of how he had fought to keep her when Madoc stole her back as Taryn. She remembers the way he had clutched her to him after she beheaded the cursed snake. This isn’t just about the Undersea. 

“I came for you,” she reminds him. “I came back for you.” And then she rolls her hips up to meet his. 

Cardan groans. 

All traces of innocence evaporate. 

He descends upon her with a new vigor. She rises up under him with purpose simmering in her blood. Their bodies collide, and collide again, and he grasps her by the waist to hike her up higher. She wraps her legs around his hips, feels the length of him through the insubstantial fabric of her underwear. 

He dances, she fights, and in this, they move together. 

But first, she needs him to understand something. 

Jude pulls on his hair again, now a mess of black curls from her fingers. She wants the pain to remind him just who exactly he has pinned beneath him. His Queen, his wife, his equal. “I’m not going anywhere,” she promises harshly, and then takes her teeth to the base of his throat. 

His assent is a broken moan against her forehead. He spreads her knees wider, and grinds down in retaliation. He hits that spot between her legs, and Jude chokes back a whimper. 

“I want you with me for always.” His breathing is ragged. His pace is ceaseless. “Do you believe me?” 

Her body is hot all over, and he feels so good right there, she rocks her hips up because she wants him to do it again, more – 

She can feel his cock now, hard and hot against the quickly dampening fabric between her thighs. It’s blessed friction, but it’s not enough. 

“Do you believe me?” he says again. When she doesn’t answer right away, he digs into her again, running the length his cock up and down the seam of her underwear. The tip of it rubs against her clit, not quite hard enough, with every pass. 

Something like a whine escapes her lips. She can almost feel the beginnings of an orgasm curling low in her body, if only he would just – 

“Say yes, Jude.” It’s almost a plea, sealed with a strategic roll of his hips that has her arching up from the bed. And there, in his need for her confirmation, for her validation, Jude feels another piece of armor fall away between them. “Say yes.”

He’s crushing her, with the sheer weight of him all down the length of her hypersensitive body, with the magnitude of the meaning behind his words. 

She is surrounded by him, his chest pressed against hers. He is all she sees when she opens her eyes, not realizing that she had closed them in the first place. His eyes scorch as he looks down at her, dark with desire – and the need for her to believe. 

A small wildness charges the air between them. He knows her body so well now, knows exactly how to angle the next flex of his hips – 

“Yes,” Jude gasps. 

Cardan grins, slow and full of wicked intent. 

He bends down low again, ready to whisper another naughty pledge, ready to press a kiss to her wanting lips, ready to finally take that sinful mouth and those clever fingers and finish what he started – 

Three knocks, rapid like gunfire, ricochet through the room.  

_____________

End Note: 

😈

Look out for the next chapter hopefully within the next couple of weeks! The King and Queen need to address their little interruption, and Jude still has her own confession to make.

This fic started because Jude and Cardan needed to talk about the Undersea, and the repercussions of Jude’s kidnapping. I like to think that they both have their own hangups about what happened, and this is my humble exploration into how they possibly worked it out between them post-canon.

With added sexytimes, of course.

My inbox is open, so feel free to come shout about fic and fandom with me on my tumblr!

[tirednotflirting]

for the prompts: “Could you hold my hand?” with mashton would be an absolute dream but any pairing would be lovely

hi ily and our good cop-bad cop coordination on lashton content sdfkjajls 

Airports at night had always given Ashton the creeps.

He should be used to them by now. He’s probably been in an airport at just about every single hour in the day at this point in his life. But there’s something about being in them at nights that makes the scene feel more existential than liminal. 

They had booked a 10PM flight back home, figuring it would be best to arrive early but after everyone in Sydney had woken up. But the flight is delayed so it's nearing midnight and they’ve been in the international terminal for nearly four hours and Ashton wants nothing more than to be in the air and one sleep away from his family. 

When Michael wakes up from his power nap, he’s alone. Or at least he thinks he’s alone but then he hears Luke giggle behind him and he turns around to see Calum pointing to something on the screen of Luke’s Switch and then mimicking something. Calum likely roped him into helping with Animal Crossing things, he figures. 

But he can’t find Ashton. He looks around the gate for their flight they’ve been camped out at since arriving at LAX just before 8PM but the sandy haired boy is nowhere to be seen. He rises to his feet, tosses his backpack over his shoulder and pulls out his phone. 

Ashton picks up on the second ring. “Mikey?”

“Ash, where are you?”

“Uh,” his voice drifts a bit like he’s moved the phone from his face. “I’m in the back corner of gate 11.”

“Why are you gate 11?”

“Needed some quiet.”

“Ashton, we’re in an airport at midnight. There’s quiet everywhere.”

“Yeah, I know that but,” he pauses and Michael can hear him release a shaky sigh. “I just needed like, less. To try to get my brain to shut up.”

Michael doesn’t exactly like that he’s being told his brain needs to stop. “I’m coming over.”

He hears a soft okay and then hesitantly hangs up before telling the other two he’s off to find their fourth member and receives kind eyes and head nods as he heads off.

Ashton really was in the back corner, his back against a set of plush chairs as he sits on the floor, his jogger clad legs sticking out in front of him as he stares out the window. The worn sleeves of his sweater are tucked over his hands and his shoulders are hunched over some.

Michael sits beside him and notes how Ashton is so stuck up in his head that he doesn’t even jump at the new presence beside him.

“You okay?” Michael asks quietly despite the two of them being the only ones at that entire gate.

“My brain just feels full and I feel all buzzy and stuck,” Ashton mumbles quickly. “Like it's fine being here in the day but something about being here at night makes me feel stuck.” Michael nods slowly, turning to face the sun kissed boy despite knowing he’s not likely to turn his gaze from where it sticks just beyond the window. “I know what you mean. But we’ll be out of here in like,” Michael pulls out his phone to check the time. “Forty five minutes and then we’ll be just one flight away from the season we should actually be in during December.”

Ashton doesn’t react to the southern hemisphere humor. They sit beside each other in silence, the only sound being their breathing for a few minutes. Suddenly, Ashton shifts his gaze, his hazel eyes meeting Michael’s green. “Could you hold my hand?”

“Huh?” Michael questions, snapping back to the present moment after briefly zoning out, the lateness (earliness?) of the hour finally hitting him.

“Michael, I’m tired and I want to be home and I want to be held but we’re in the middle of LAX so please, can you just hold my hand?” he says quickly, his pent up anxiety dripping through his words. 

Michael wants to argue that he really doesn’t give a shit about the opinion of the thirty or so random business people and others crazy enough to book flights out at night, and that if Ashton wants to be held, he’ll hold him. But the nervousness on the face of the boy who so often had to serve as Michael’s own confidence tells him not to question the request. 

He pats his shoulder and hesitantly Ashton lets his head drop to rest there, a sigh escaping his lips as he does. Michael reaches for the other boy’s hand that’s playing with the hem of his sweater, dropping his fingers to fall into the spaces between Ashton’s. He squeezes their palms together and can feel the callouses on Ashton’s fingers and wonders if he can feel the marks Michael’s own instrument leaves on his. 

“Thank you,” Ashton mumbles against Michael’s neck as he cuddles up closer to his side. Michael feels a gentle smile tug at his lips at the tickle caused by the contact. 

“What are you taking the sibs to do when we get in?”

“Think Lauren bought tickets to some gig. Like taking them to gigs.”

Michael only hums in response, his free hand lifting to run through Ashton’s hair as he listens to his breathing steady out. They really should get up and go back to their gate, but he figures he can leave him for at least a few minutes.

(And selfishly, he finds himself thinking, as he catches a whiff of Ashton’s lemon-y cologne, he really never wants to move from this exact position.)

[edelwoodsouls]

all roads lead - ch. 4

When his mother dies, Stiles runs away, straight into danger - only to be saved by Peter Hale. Seven years later, after burying their alpha, Stiles and Malia return home.

Word Count: 2,380 | Also on Ao3 | Other Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 5,

Chapter 4: WATER

Stiles has always been a creature who thrives on certainty. On logic. Control. Knowing the variables, knowing the future. Knowing what truly lies in people's hearts, their motivations, their secrets. Knowledge is power is control. Until the nogitsune. Now chaos hums in his bones, in the thrum of his heartbeats. He knows the two aren't so different now. Control is just an illusion, a sliver of rock above a sea of chaos that will drag you back under no matter how hard you cling, and isn't afraid to let the rocks claw you to shreds on the way down. The only true control is instigating the chaos. Still, not knowing where the future will lead is something that sits heavily in his chest, the beginnings of panic that Stiles is oh so used to, but still makes his fingers shake after years. His father went out to make a phone call, still shaken, eyes still glistening. Make yourself at home, kids, he'd said, eyeing Malia with renewed curiosity now the dam has burst. So naturally, Stiles headed for the showers. Four days on coaches across the country coats him in a greasy film, and he desperately needs the rhythm of the water against his skin, the liminal space that seems to exist only in showers, giving him a moment to breathe. He turns the heat as high as it will go, watches his troubles eddy and fall from him into the drain. Being here feels like curling up by the fire, beside Malia, watching as Peter plays the piano tucked in the corner of their apartment with the exagerrated motions of someone overly skilled for the piece he's playing. It's a false comfort, he knows, one he should think twice before allowing to smother him. But he's so tired. The weeks have leeched all the fight from his bones, and this place, Beacon Hills, his father, have reminded him of the days when childhood was something still permitted to him. Stiles has never had a shower so good in his life.

Whilst Malia takes her turn, Stiles stares at himself in the fogged-up mirror. His hair has grown out (when was the last time he cut it?); his bones jut out at awkward angles from his too-pale, shadowed skin (how often has he been eating?). He looks like a man possessed. Has he looked this bad since he actually was? Malia pokes her head around the shower curtain, and he's surprised to see a delighted smile on her face, eyes glinting in that mischevious way that never quite leaves her. "This shower is fucking brilliant," she declares. "I never want to leave." Me neither, a small, too-loud part of him whispers back. Instead he just grins back at her and flicks water from his hair at her. She squeals, vanishing behind the curtain. A moment later, the shower head is turned directly at him, spraying him once more with startlingly hot water. John finds them ten minutes later, deep into the most intense water fight of Stiles' life. The towel tucked around Stiles' waist is soaked, the walls slick, the shower half-heartedly continuing to spray from the bottom of the tub. The two of them are crumpled beside it, chests aching so hard from laughing that the room spins. His father, standing in the doorway with a bemused expression as he takes in the chaos, just sends them into another bout of giggles. "Hey, dad," Stiles says, still gasping, pulling himself up over the lip of the tub and bringing Malia with him. John blinks, something unnameable flitting across his features, gone in an instant beneath a sheriff's poker face. Or maybe a father's one. "I thought you might want a change of clothes," he says, holding up a stack of clothing in between his hands. His eyes look anywhere but the two of them. "Then we should have a talk. I only have clothes for a teenage boy, though..." His eyes drift to Malia's face. She stares at him with the unnerving edge of a coyote's challenge, then extends a hand out for the proffered clothes. Stiles tries, and fails, to imagine Malia in a skirt - the thought is nothing but funny.

"Thanks, Mr Stilinski," she grins at him, wolfish, and bounces out into the hall, letting her hand brush Stiles' for a brief second as she passes.

Then it's just him, and his father. Alone. Silence stretches, and eventually John backs out into the hall and turns away so Stiles can get dressed.

"She's certainly... a character," his father's voice rises eventually. He's looking off distantly down the hall in the direction Malia left.

Stiles snorts. "That's certainly one way to describe Malia," he shrugs.

"And is she...?"

"What?"

"Is she your girlfriend?"

Stiles almost slips over on the floor again. "No," he says vehemently, then stops. How can he explain to his father the utterly entwined connection the two of them have? Siblings doesn't run nearly deep enough (and he thinks most people would frown on naked water fights with siblings at this age). Friends, family - all of it falls short. Society would like to describe them as significant others, simply because normal society deems romantic attraction the highest form of love. But that's something neither of them have ever considered, never would. What they give each other is infinitely stronger, infinitely more empowering. "She's the closest person I have," he says eventually. "We've been through a lot together."

An understatement if ever he heard one.

The clothes he tugs on are soft and warm, far too large for him. Scott's clothes, he realises. Half of him wants to snuggle in closer to them, smell the familiar scent of his old best friend. The other half riles at the smell of another alpha, at the thought of taking his clothes, invading his home.

"So you and Melissa," he says, voice oh so light and casual. His father flinches, turns around instinctively- and stops. Stiles has pulled on most of the clothes, but the tshirt is still half over his head, his chest still clear to see.

Considering how painful it was when he got it, he forgets about the tattoo over his heart far too often. Simple black lines, the symbol of his pack emblazoned forever in his skin, the only scar his body would let him keep. To a layman he supposes it looks like a sharp, angular S, but Peter's love of tradition and meaning, combined with Stiles' own magical training, mean he has learned to read runes like English.

"Eihwaz," Peter had declared when he'd selected the rune as his symbol. "The yew tree. Stability. Endurance. Irreversibility. Perseverance."

And wasn't that the thing that held their little family together? Despite all the odds, they had survived. They had found each other. They had weathered irreversible change and chosen to plant roots, to seek stability, knowing better than most how easily it slipped between their fingers.

In the end, it had done very little to save Peter's life. But here Stiles was, here Malia was, still persevering.

Stiles shoves the tshirt down over the tattoo, and his father's eyes blink away.

"Me and Melissa," he says slowly, as if the ground might crumble with a single word.

"Dad," Stiles says shortly, cutting across. "It's okay, really. You don't need to make any excuses. It's been a while. I'd be surprised if you'd survived this long alone."

And doesn't that just kill the mood.

"Stiles..." his father's tone immediately sets him on edge. "Why are you here? After all this time, why now? Did you want to come home? Did you... did you have a choice?"

 Were you kidnapped or did you leave?

Why is he here? To reconnect with his father? To inform Derek and Laura Hale of their uncle's passing? Is he just searching for a reason to keep moving, a direction, a goal, or else he'll shut down and never move again?

"I wanted to come home," he says, and right now it's the truth. "As for choice, it's not that simple, and-" he breathes slowly to ground himself, to calm the swirl of thoughts in his head. "I'm not really ready to talk about it. But, I was hoping... I was hoping we could stay. Find our ground again. For the longest time I've felt like I'm falling, and finally here..."

It feels like home, he doesn't say, but oh how he wants it to be true.

"You're welcome to stay, Stiles," his father says, so quickly a small light flickers to being in Stiles' chest. "You and Malia both. We have a couple spare rooms. But to all the world, you're missing."

Ah. Crap.

"I need to take you to the station, do a full report. You're a minor, so there's a whole bunch of hoops to jump through. As the sheriff I have a certain amount of pull, but there are gonna be questions."

"Not just for me," Stiles cringes. "Malia is from Beacon Hills, too..."

His father nods in consideration, like he's just the corner of a puzzle he's been wrestling with for a while. Stiles really doesn't like that expression. "So she is Malia Tate. I thought she was, though it's been a few years."

The world stops. Stiles isn't here, but somewhere far away. The buzz of electricity in his ears. Blood leaking between his fingers. "You can't send her back there."

John looks up, surprised by the vehemence in his voice.

"I mean it, dad. Don't even tell her dad she's alive. He gave up any right to her when he sent her to Eichen House."

"Stiles..."

"Do you know what they did to her in there? Do you want to know what nightmare you've sent 'problematic' cases into? When we found her, she was-" His voice breaks. He doesn't want to remember the blood of that night, the wild look in Malia's eyes, so driven by animal terror she hadn't even recognised him or Peter.

None of them talk about that year, when Malia left to find herself and came back more lost than ever before. That night, more than anything, has kept him away from the west coast entirely. He's managed this long to keep Beacon Hills and Eichen House separate in his mind, distanced by time and trauma, but how far is it really? An hour's drive? The thought of Malia locked up there again makes something inside him cold with fury.

He won't let it happen, no matter what he has to do.

John doesn't say anything for a moment, clearly mulling over the information - too much - Stiles has just let slip. "I'll do what I can," he nods eventually. Stiles lets go of a breath he hadn't realised was burning his lungs. "I can pull some strings. I can respect your boundaries - up to a point. Eventually you're gonna have to talk to me about all this. Where you've been. How you and an asylum escapee are so close. Or you can talk to a therapist, at least."

The idea of a therapist attempting to untangle the utter clusterfuck of his brain makes Stiles smile.

"And you have to go to school."

He says this like it's a punishment, but Stiles suddenly, unexpectedly relishes the idea. He'd graduated early last year in New York, bored of school and pretending to be dumb just to stay at a regular pace. But the thought of being given something to fill the yawning chasm of time he's found himself with is a good one.

Malia won't like it, but she doesn't like anything involving written words and human social cues, all of which fester inside the halls of a school.

This is their chance, he realises. To live like normal teenagers. To meet people their own age, make friends who aren't pack. To play lacrosse and go iceskating, worry about inane things like homework, and clothing, and - just maybe - college applications.

"Of course," Stiles nods along. "Thank you, dad."

His father gives him an awkward, one armed hug, quickly lets go again. "How about I show you guys your rooms, that way you can get settled while I get started on dinner."

"You, cooking?" Stiles gasps in mock horror.

"Hey, kid, I am now a gourmet chef, I'll have you know. No more charred black fry ups or greasy take out. I'm on the straight and narrow."

"I'll see it when I believe it," Stiles grins.

"You will," John says earnestly. "I like to impress when it's my turn to cook - I'm doing shepherds pie today. Scott and Isaac'll be back from lacrosse practice in a couple hours, and Melissa finishes at six. Dinner at seven?"

Scott'll be back from lacrosse. In the excitement of finally seeing a road ahead of him, he's forgotten the small problem of the supernatural. Does his father know? Does Melissa? How long can he and Malia mask their scents living under the same roof as an alpha?

How the hell did asthmatic, wouldn't-harm-a-fly Scott McCall become an alpha anyway? The idea of Scott with blood on his hands like Stiles makes the world feel entirely wrong.

And who the hell is Isaac?

He manages a smile that's probably more a grimace, though his father doesn't seem to notice the difference. "Dinner at seven sounds great. But, uh, Malia and I only need one room."

"Are you sure?" John looks unsure. "I have two-"

"We sleep together." Stiles' tone leaves no room for discussion, a little too much of that alpha agression showing through. He relaxes immediately, hoping to glaze over the moment. "We both have pretty horrific nightmares. So unless you want screaming at 3AM, probably better for us to just stay together."

He can see his father is hardly convinced. John Stilinski is the sheriff of a town where tragedy is commonplace. He's seen trauma in all its shapes and sizes. He understands it all too well, how it makes an enemy of everything other. Malia and Stiles' closeness isn't simply a bond of friends or pack. They've been through things too awful to imagine together.

It's them against the world. Even against John Stilinski, if needs be.

But his father nods, once, firmly, and that's that.

[aveaugvstus]

❛ You made a mistake. Everybody makes them. Even me. I’ve made many. It’s only fair that you made one. ❜

it’s strange how the passage of time warps and bends around the shape of the people in your life, the silhouettes they carve from the liminal space of your soul — it’s like that thing about stars and how when you’re looking up at the night sky, you’re actually looking at stars that could be already be dead a hundred years ago, their fading requiem only just now reaching earth’s stratosphere, a thousand light years away. 

this is what it feels like to see vladimir standing in the door frame of his childhood bedroom looking like the ghost of fuck-ups past.  (  he has no lock now, which is mildly insulting and excruciatingly patronising; he’s an addict, not bloody suicidal, but to his family the distinction might as well be non-existent.  )  he looks different, and also like nothing has changed at all in a way that august can’t quite pinpoint. it’s as if he’s lost his ability to translate him; the myriad tiny, insignificant nuances and habits he used to obsessively decrypt with his very own rosetta stone, a whole stele for the vladimir yamatov script, forgotten like a dead language. or maybe he no longer cares to. he doesn’t know if that should make him feel nostalgic, or furious, or bittersweet. feeling particularly strongly about anything these days is a herculean task in and of itself. which, he supposes, was the original sin that instigated everything to begin with.

he thinks he can remember asking vladimir to come home.

he thinks he can almost remember begging, knees in the dirt and gravel scraping his flesh raw, over voicemail like a needy fling who had accidentally gone and done the thing you and every other idiot knows you’re not supposed to do, and fallen. 

he thinks he might have begged for absolution. 

but that could have also been the sixth line of blow cut with ketamine and procaine and only god and the devil knows what else  (  he’d been desperate, it was three a.m. in camden  )  and he’s composed text messages nay, goddamn fucking letters, ad nauseam, ad infinitum, like he’s on the receiving end of some dear john bullshit, and he’s never been sure which of them actually made it to the send button. he’s smashed, or lost, or misplaced, half a dozen phones, for all the futile effort to replace them. collateral damage in the dawning realisation that vladimir wasn’t replying because he was mercilessly leaving him on read, but because he wasn’t receiving them at all, and judging by his infrequent instagram updates, was doing absolutely fine / fuck him, happy / having the time of his fucking life on his primitive anti-tech detox.

for a moment, he entertains the fleeting, whimsical distraction that this could be yet another delusion. after all, he’s conjured vladimir enough times that this wouldn’t be unusual.  (  why, sometimes i’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.  )  he has imagined vladimir heartsick, wretchedly beside himself with guilt. he has painted him alabastrine, cold and immovable, patron saint raphael of the lost and the meek indifferent to august’s self-inflicted torment. he has envisioned him lit with madness, seized in catastrophic rage, gripping him by the jaw and rattling his bones till he might see reason. there were other imaginings, too, steeped in the unspeakable, tauntings of an uninhibited mind free to conceptualise the reality of its most ludicrous desire. in the worst dream, the most terrible, most fantastical one, vladimir comes home because of him. for him. it plays out like the final scene of a cult romantic comedy, or the odyssey, maybe, much-enduring odysseus returning home to penelope at last. two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk, their hands meeting as light spills in a flood, the sky pouring out the sun. and he would take his other-soul’s face in his hands and kiss him and say the words this lifetime’s vladimir would never say.

there is, of course, a singular difference in this one. this vladimir. the vladimir he filled his dreams with never looked at him like this. with this curious amalgamation of horror and — most tellingly so; am i not what you expected, vladimir? how did you imagine you would find me? beatific? flourishing? — disgust. 

august knows what he looks like. five shades too pale and ashen, like the vivacity has been drained right out of him. a layer of grease shines in his hair, the fade he alway maintains with meticulous care and precision grown out into his natural, unruly curls. he’s not quite skeletal, his frame was always too lean and muscular for that, but he seems perilously thin for his height. it shows in his face, he knows even though he’s been avoiding mirrors and isn’t allowed one anyway, because a) addicts use those to cut their coke, and b) suicidal ones might be inclined to break them, he knows because of the way his mum looks at him when she comes into his room to bring him his meals three times a day like a convict. it hurts him a little, more than the physical pain of looking at vladimir, of hearing his voice, that he sees him like this. he had not been informed in advance that vladimir would come calling. if he had, he would’ve — he doesn’t know what he would’ve done  (  attempted an escape, maybe; broken his twelve-day sobriety, maybe  )  but he might’ve. cleaned up a little. tried to look less like a shell of himself. augustus has always been vain, has always been a gilded, preening thing who took great pride in being pretty and well-loved for it. it pains him. not to be even that anymore. he is rusted. tarnished.

if he had known, maybe he would have told vladimir not to come. 

now that he is here, he is split in two, cleaved in half by the urge to tell him to go and the more pressing compulsion to make him stay to never go never leave again never go anywhere that is out of his sight out of his life out of him. 

his ambivalence makes him poor company and a poorer conversationalist. not that this is entirely his fault — what are they supposed to do? chat about the weather and trade perfunctory banter just to fill the air? he’d rather do a line right here in front of vladimir. 

your hair is longer, august had said. the only thing other than what are you doing here, which had come out of his mouth, part-shock and part-petulance, when his mother had opened the door and presented vladimir like some screwed-up surprise gift for reaching a whopping week and a half of not being a fucking disappointment to everyone around him. so, now he can disappoint the person that matters most fundamentally, tortuously, to him in the world, too. how delightful.

vladimir’s hair being longer is the only thing he can think to say that doesn’t make him want to give in to the pulverising sensation in his head, in his bones, in his chest, screaming for a deus ex machina reprieve. if this is what they have come to — the two of them, who had spent their entire lives talking about nothing and everything till they could anticipate exactly what the other’s response would be — augustus is glad he didn’t come home sooner. he looks handsome, which feels like another slight against august’s pride. rugged and sun-soaked like a male model cum travel influencer, but one that actually does something meaningful with his life. time, and sunlight, and the kind of hard labour that builds muscle definition and character, has certainly been kinder to him than it has been to august. he doesn’t say you look good because that would sound like he has any remotely positive feelings towards this interaction, and, indeed, the cause of vladimir’s looking like a golden, newly-anointed demi-god. it seems they have traded places. or maybe vladimir is exactly who he was always supposed to be. and august is, too.

august supposes it’s the silence, and the reality that vladimir cannot abide it either, that prompts him to say what he does.

what happened?

he doesn’t say anything for a long moment, he drifts in the absence of an answer because he is allowed to, because he is technically, partially an invalid now, and people who are sick are allowed to be not altogether there. 

(  sick. malaised. he likes this word for it. he likes that there is a scientific explanation for what he is. a brain disease. a diagnosable mental illness. see, vladimir, he almost wants to say, a little deranged part of him finally gleeful at not having a pedestal to stand on anymore, you aren’t special. i’m fucked up now, too.  )

well, vladimir. it’s a very long story that i don’t care to repeat as i’ve recounted the tales to you so many times through missives you were never inclined to respond to. there was angel, and bennie, there was emmy, and good old molly. ah, and charlie, my favourite of the lot. ours was a whirldwind love affair. but it turns out i loved him more than he loved me. seems like i have a nasty little habit of doing that. it’s one i haven’t learned to kick yet.

god — august...

it’s the look of wrenching disgust, again. the thing that twists and snakes across vladimir’s face and awakes something snarling and animal shackled to august’s throat, something that slams into him chest-first and doesn’t stop until it’s gone right through him, left him raw, all bloodied edge and teeth.

what happened? what happened? what’s the point of asking now when it’s all been said and done. how long am i supposed to carry this black mark? until everyone around me deigns to let me bury it? i’m not a fucking child.

it’s not an explanation, which is what vladimir is after. he would know, however, if he had bothered to answer august any of those times. he would know, he would have known, if he hadn’t left august in their bed that morning at the warwickshire summer palace and run from everything they’d ever touched. they’d had the world world in their hands in that bed, in that room, in that place of stolen summer outside of time, outside of life itself. they could have had — everything. everything august had to give. and he gave it, and vladimir looked him in the eye and decided it was not for him.

you made a mistake. everybody makes them. even me. i’ve made many. it’s only fair that you made one.

he feels each word grate right through him, each syllable catching on his skin like little knives, the thin strand keeping him tethered to the present grinding down into dust and bone. he doesn’t blame vladimir for what happened to him. he blames him for leaving. but it’s a mistake that vladimir won’t — can’t acknowledge because to do that, he would have to admit to the thing he doesn’t want to say, or can’t say, and august can’t make him say it. that’s what made him do it, the first night at that grimy, filthy club in the berlin underground. that’s what made him want to trade his soul for just a night of rapture so euphoric he wouldn’t have to remember how fucking miserable it was to be unloved by the one person you thought you were meant for. but then, it’s never just one night is it? it couldn’t have been. you don’t get over something like that with one goddamn night.

(  if august were honest, and his heart not surrendered, he would say it was this, too: that vladimir could walk away from them, has always been able to walk away, and think nothing of it. him. that vladimir had found purpose and higher meaning in something other than themselves and the stupid, foolish, boyish dreams they used to talk about like they might someday happen. that august had disappointed him somehow by, what, not being enough? not living up to the unearned greatness that vladimir saw in him and was supposedly the only person in the world who could? that vladimir would forge a path for himself in life that diverged from august and not feel his soul rending itself in half to be half a world away from him, and survive it. — it was enough to ruin him then, it still ruins him now.  )

“if you’ve come all this way just to lecture to me, you can sod the fuck off back to phuket or hanoi or fucking antarctica if that’s what you want. maybe there’s some disease-riddled penguins out there that you can save to sate your saviour complex. saint francis of assisi. a non-shitty mother teresa. malala.”

he’s exhausted before the first word leaves his mouth, strung out just with the effort of starting, but he can’t stop them now any more than he can stop the hunger and thirst clawing at his head howling for a drop of blood, a pound of flesh, any part of him that it can cannibalise in retribution for starving. it’s easier to be cruel than to be wounded, better to be the conqueror than the fallen — but right now it just feels like he is going through his twelfth or two hundredth day of withdrawal and the boy he loves has come back but not the way august wanted and not the way he wants to be wanted. it hurts just to look at him, it hurts to have him looking back. every part of his body aches with dependence, codependence. they’re the definition of it. see what happens to me when you are not in my life?

alexander lay on hephaestion’s bed for three days. but you are not him. you are just a spoiled, arrogant, silver-spooned nothing who will never amount to greatness, glory, or anything at all. it is no wonder he would not have you.

his rage breaks, like sea foam crashing against cliffs; it rends and shatters down the fault line mapped throughout his body, the one that winds from his throat to his sternum, down to his thighs and feet, and aches forever mostly at his heel. helpless to the unbidden trembling of his hands as he curls them around the sheets of his bed, unmoored. he looks small and disarmed, more lost than he’s ever been with vladimir by his side. it doesn’t mean the same thing anymore, does it? not if he cannot make vladimir stay. whatever they had between them — is it damaged, now. they could rebuild it, but the foundations would still bear the memory of where the cracks lie. he would still remember this look on vladimir’s face.

he has looked at him a thousand times, and there has always been an echo reverberating between them. the wavelength of an elegy he knows the words to like they are writ upon heartbeat, upon headstone. there have been other faces, but vladimir’s eyes have always been the same. fathomless as distant stars in an entire universe light years away and yet close enough to touch if he dared to. if it is fate, or circumstance, or a reiteration of the immortality that stands between them and their freedom, then he already knows how this ends. vladimir knows it, too. it doesn’t make him want it any less. it doesn’t make him suffer for it any less. this ache he has spent an eternity chasing after, this feeling of being so incandescently alive that even death cannot keep them apart, this is what vladimir ran from. augustus cannot blame him. if he was not the one who always outlived him, he’d do the same.

“is this why you came back? because you think you can save me, too?”

[boneandfur]

A Wicked Wind [1/?]

Notes: this is an AU fic set several years before the events of VOS. It takes place in the Intimate universe, the same universe as Riley x Rashad. This is for the Choices September Challenge, Sept 21, Autumn (although it could also fit under "Magic"). @choices-september-challenge Thanks to @lizeboredom for being my sounding board! // Pairing: Flynn x MC(Maureen) (yes! Not a crack ship! 😱) // Rating: Mature, later chapters will be NSFW // Words:3213 // Summary: Is a chance meeting between these would-be lovers of another time fate, or does autumn blow in a wicked wind of grief and misfortune? Loosely inspired by a New England folktale. // Song: Something Just Like This, Chainsmokers + Coldplay // WARNING: This chapter is rated MATURE for mentions of rape.

"Look at that pretty little thing, Danny. Ain't she wicked hot?"

Flynn knows he should stay out of it. He should keep on walking, head down, straight to Rayvynne's apartment to wait for her to get back from her job throwing tarot cards near the Witch House. Yes, he should keep on walking, past this girl with dark red hair and whiskey eyes, the kind that remind him of the man he should have been, the man he'll never be.

Even from here he can tell that she's the kind of girl every good Irish Massachusetts boy has known at least once in his life, a Virgin Mary, a Mary Magdalene -- a good Irish Catholic girl, the kind he would have brought home to his mother -- his life hadn't been taken from him too young, if he hadn't spent the best years of his life in the joint, when he should have been out fighting every Yankees fan and fucking every pretty girl or boy who caught his eye. And he's young, still, but on nights like this he feels old, as though whatever spark, whatever ambition he once had, has already been burned up by his thirst for revenge on the man who wronged him. 

"Pretty stuck up, Mikey. She needs to be taught a lesson." 

If Flynn wasn't thirteen minutes late already to pick up Rayvynne, who smells of pomegranates and graveyard dust, who fucks him like a girl with daddy issues, who leaves smears of black lipstick all over the place where his heart used to be -- then he knows he'd stop walking now. If Flynn O'Malley was still a good man, if those years hadn't been stolen from him, then he'd stop in his tracks. He'd turn from his path, and he'd take that girl by the hand, the one who could have turned him from his fate if he'd met her seven years ago.

"Yup, I'm gonna fuck her bloody tonight." Danny is lean and wiry in that way of a man who's grown up fighting everyone who's crossed his path. Flynn recognizes a fighter, after all, he's one too, but he's not soft in the middle like Danny, he hasn't spent the last six years before this drinking cheap booze and eating greasy burgers, he's become a man inside the clink, he's learned how to break men down, like animals. 

But this girl -- even a hardened criminal like Flynn O'Malley can see how wrong this is -- this girl, even with a skirt that's too short and tight, isn't fooling anyone. There's something pristine about her still, something innocent. She sure as hell shouldn't be standing in the autumn rain, tears on her freckled cheeks, witch hat listing sadly to one side of her head. 

Not with those men looking at her the way they are, hunger and darkness seeping from them like the mist rising off Gallows Hill in the twilight. 

The girl looks up and sees him under the cemetery trees, Flynn is certain of it: he smells deep green lake water and wild roses, and for a moment, he's a boy again, searching for pirate gold and a beautiful witch with red shoes, down in the Devil's Pasture with his Donnelly cousins.

The leaves blow across Flynn O'Malley's boots, the tip of his cigarette glowing in the darkness. 

And Flynn knows he's left it too late -- it's too late to stop what's meant to happen, what always was meant to happen -- because he's turned his back on fate, leaving it behind him like seven years bad luck, like a curse. 

And then -- before he has time to think, before he can take the step that will separate him as a fox among wolves, the girl leaps over the headstones and begins to run. Danny and Mike let out wild howls that raise every hair on Flynn's arms, and give chase. 

•••

Ten years ago, when the world was young, two girls set out from one end of Greenwood to the other on Halloween night. Only one returned. And that girl, Maureen Ronan, is standing in the liminal space between life and the sweet hereafter, at a quarter to twilight, under the cemetery gates, waiting for the doors to open between the worlds. 

Behind her, she can hear men talking about her, and her spine grows stiff, it's nothing she hasn't heard before. And though she'd like to think she can handle herself when it comes down to it, she knows the truth -- she's more likely to cut and run. She was always the fastest girl on her block, for all she was the dreamiest, and after what happened to Ayla, she'll never trust anyone else to save her, not ever again. 

"I'm gonna fuck her bloody..." The words send a distinct chill down the back of Maureen's neck, but she's already left an offering for the guardian at the gate, and she's already come this far, and been through so much. Nothing is going to stop her now, not even...

"'Til she's raw, and then I'll let ya have a turn, Mikey..."

They could be talking about anyone else, she thinks, but there's something in their laughter, long and low, that makes every hair on the back of her neck rise, and she can hear Ayla's voice, down through the years: Don't worry about me, Molly. I'll be fine. 

Her instincts kick in, and Maureen cuts and runs -- she bolts down the center path of the cemetery, zig-zagging through the tombstones, heading for the back gates. She can hear the men behind her, calling for her to slow down. 

Pretty girl. We just wanna be friends. Get back here and let us fuck you! 

She's got a stitch in her side already, she can feel her lungs constrict. She's regretting running already, it's not like she knows Salem village like the back of her hand, not the way she knew the forests and creeks just outside Chicago, when she was still a girl, before the world fell apart, and every truth she'd ever known had turned out to be a lie. 

And then it happens -- she trips, and goes sprawling in the wet leaves, and she knows she'll never outrun these men, they are already nearly upon her, smelling of greed and lust, rank and coppery like the taste of rust where she bit her cheek to keep from screaming Ayla's name, sure she could see her friend beyond the basement window of the Coyne house, when all good girls were in bed in the suburbs, their knees locked tight. 

It's a liar you are, Maureen Ronan. That's what you get for reading too many books. Mr Coyne is a nice man. Ayla was out after curfew, and she ran away, that's all. Her mother was turning tricks again, so who'd blame the girl for running...

She's crying now, hot angry tears, like the night they found Ayla's scarf in the creek outside of town, before they moved away, to live with her grandmother and cousins in Canaryville, in the city. The police let Mr Coyne go, they said there was nothing to hold him, without a body there wasn't a crime, and if Ayla's disappearance made folks lock their children up at night, soon people forgot that girl, swept under the rug of memory like all missing children in an unkind city. 

Except for Maureen, the only one to light a candle for her friend's memory, the only one who vowed that one day she would find her friend's body, and make him pay. That's what journalists do. They find out the truth. They make men like Frankie Coyne pay. 

But it's been ten years, and Maureen Ronan has spent too long outrunning her own fate. It should have been her in Ayla's place that night, after all, Ayla was wearing Maureen's shamrock green hoodie and her red boots, pointy toed, like a witch. They'd planned to meet at the cemetery crossroads and light a vigil candle, for all the girls who'd disappeared in the neighborhood down through the years, but Ayla never showed up, and Maureen waited for hours before she'd remembered, too late, the greeting Mr Coyne had given her before she'd set off that night -- 

Where are you going, pretty girl? 

"This way." She hears him before she sees him, his voice is the stroke of midnight, it's the deep black water in the center of a salt marsh, the kind of voice a pirate has, a deep baritone that charms the tides. The kind of man you'll never know if you should trust until it's too late, a wild rover, a lover and a fighter. He smells of late season juniper berries and warm tobacco and spicy bay rum, like the cargo hold of a pirate sloop laden with silks and stolen ingots, sunk beneath the waves with her handsome captain and all hands on board. "Come on." 

•••

Up close, the girl is everything a man like Flynn should never want. She's the kind of girl a man like him should never touch nor taint, not a wicked man like him. There are smears of leaf mold on her knees, and she's crying, tendrils of mist swirling around her rust-colored curls as Flynn steps out of the trees and grabs her hand, stopping himself from pulling her too close. He's sure she'd smell of new beginnings, of all the things a man like him doesn't deserve. He's sure her lips would taste of pirate gold, and deep magic, the kind you can't find outside of old legends, or the fairytales he stopped believing in long ago. "This way." Flynn pulls her into the shadows of the crypt, the one place he's sure superstitious New Englanders would never think to look for them, not within the shadow of the church. "Come on." 

The crypt is primitive, just a dark mound in the earth, with two shelves cut out of the dirt, and stone walls. Leaves rustle across the floor, and he can hear the loud rattle of the girl's frightened breathing. Without thinking, Flynn pulls her close, marveling at just how well her head seems to fit under his chin, at how wrong he was about her, for she smells of the autumn wind and the full moon -- like home, even if he can't quite admit that to himself. 

"It's all right. I won't let them hurt you. I promise." Flynn raises a tentative hand and places it on her back, and she gives a tiny sigh and relaxes against him. He goes completely still, not wanting to ruin the moment, and closes his eyes. If only he were a better man. If only -- 

"Da name's Maureen." She has a distinct accent that marks her as not from around here, she's definitely not a Mass girl. He hopes like hell that wherever she is from isn't New York. 

"Hi, Maureen." He tastes her name softly, rolling it around in his mouth. He makes a circle on her back with his hand, tentatively at first, and then the shock of her cold fingertips brush the exposed skin near his waistband, and he bites back a groan -- this is going to kill him, he's certain of it. "I'm Flynn." 

Maureen licks her lips. Fuckkk. "Hi, Flynn." Her hair tickles his chin when she pulls her head back. His shirt is damp with her tears. "Thank you for helping me." 

He raises her hand and kisses it, as if they lived four hundred years ago, as if he were a pirate captain and she the most beautiful girl in the village, her flame red hair the beacon guiding him safe to shore. It's not gentlemanly feelings that are swirling inside of Flynn right at this moment. Maybe it's him she'll need protecting from. 

After all, if he hadn't stopped to help Maureen, he'd be banging Ravynne on her altar right now, goddess statues crashing to the floor as she rakes his back with those long black nails. 

No, he's a wicked man, is Flynn O'Malley. He's no good for this girl, and if she knew what was good for her, she would know enough to stay away from a man like him. "Just what were you doing there alone, anyway?" 

Maureen snuggles against him, as though his heart wasn't pounding like a drum. She inhales, and then takes a step back, putting a few blessed, torturous feet between them, leaving Flynn feeling strangely bereft. But when she reaches for his hand, he takes it almost unconsciously, running his thumb over her knuckles, the urge to feel her lips pressed against his making this strong man weak with longing. 

This is crazy. He shouldn't be feeling like this, not for someone he hardly knows, for someone he's just met. And yet, if he squints, beyond her eyes like firelight he can see a red haired girl standing on the dunes, waving to a man in an embroidered waistcoat and a tricorn hat, who sweeps her up into his arms and kisses her until neither of them can breathe. But that's just an old legend, a fairy story... isn't it? 

"Ah. I'm here to make magic." Maureen's voice is low and smoky, and the mist swirls around her little red boots, but Flynn doesn't notice, he's too hypnotized by the rise and fall of her chest, by those creamy breasts he's just realizing are accentuated by her laced black bodice. "Are you from Salem, Flynn?" 

"Nah." Flynn resists the urge to pull her right back in, to feel every soft, yielding curve pressed right up against every hard inch of him. "I'm from the Cape. Where are you from?" Not New York, not New York. 

"Canaryville." She gives a careless shrug. "Chicago. You know it?" 

"What's a nice little Midwest girl doing on the wild and windy coast?" Flynn winks. He's been told it's quite effective. He can't help but wonder where she learned to bat her lashes like that, and how long it takes a witch to fly from one city to the next. 

"I'm here to lay old bones to rest, and to turn a curse." Maureen stills at once at a loud crack outside, whiskey eyes wide with panic, and Flynn pulls her behind the door, covering her body with his, the instinct to protect her overriding every other thought in his head.

Pretty girl, where are you? The sing-song voice bounces against the trees, and the acorns make a crack-crack-crack noise as they fall, the sound echoing in the gathering dusk. 

There is a long beat as neither of them dares breathe. Then the voices are fading away, and yet they remain pressed up to one another, breathing one another's breath, so close he could claim those lips in his with a wicked kiss. 

With a groan, Flynn pulls away from her, running a hand through his hair and poking his head out of the crypt. "Looks like they're gone. You're free to go, Maureen." And he's free too, to go find Rayvynne, but he doesn't want to, there's some part of him that wants to see this through, to know why a little witch named Maureen makes Flynn O'Malley want to be a better man. 

•••

Maureen knows she should let Flynn go, let him walk out of her life. One look at him tells her he's a wild rover, a pirate, not to be trusted. He is entirely too handsome, and there's the matter of the tattoo on his wrist, and the watchful way his eyes scan every corner of the graveyard.

This is a man who is a fox, sly and cunning. And yet... and yet, another part of her wants to stay here, in this man's arms, where nothing bad could ever happen to her again, where she feels like ever since she started running, here is a place she might be able to stop, and find peace.

"Do you want to get a drink? You look like you could use one, I know  a wicked good place." Flynn grins and looks down at her, and his eyes are so blue that Maureen is struck dumb for a moment, staring up at him. This is the kind of man her mother always warned her about, the kind who could knock a girl up just by looking at her. Broad shoulders and dark hair with hints of copper, and the kind of beard a girl could tug on if she wanted a kiss.

Just one kiss. 

She can't help but wonder how his stubble would feel between her thighs, and feels her cheeks heat at such wicked thoughts.

"I'd love to." Can he feel the way her heart is nearly pounding out of her chest? He's smirking now, as though he could read every dirty thought inside her skull, as though he knows the kind of affect he's having on her, the way her stomach flips when she imagines the dark hair on his chest rubbing against her nipples, or what his tongue would taste like inside her mouth. "Do you know a good place for whiskey, then?" 

"I might." Flynn looks down at her arms around his waist in amusement. "You'd have to let me go first, though." 

She hopes Flynn can't tell how much she wishes he'd press her up against the dirt wall and commit sacrilege, let her run her hands all over his chest as he plunders her mouth with his tongue, as though unlocking a chest of secret treasures. "I'm hella shook." Maureen tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and vows to touch up her makeup. She's sure she looks like she's survived a ducking in the town pond, and feels her cheeks heat under his blue gaze, dropping her eyes. But she doesn't step away. 

A pause stretches out between them, with all the things unsaid, and then Flynn pulls off his leather jacket, settling it over her shoulders. He clears his throat, stepping back, and Maureen reaches out, stroking her finger down the intricate tattoo sleeve on Flynn's arm. He stills, like a Back Yards canary, or the magpie that used to bring her shiny pieces of river glass beside the creek, before she ever knew what it was to feel heartbreak. "Maureen." Flynn rests one hand on the wall above her head, and when she tilts her chin up to look at him, he brushes his thumb over her bottom lip, lingering for a moment, his eyes suddenly raw and vulnerable, as though she's someone he could trust. "Let's go get that drink." Flynn's lips graze against her earlobe, and she shivers with longing, feeling his gaze on her hips as they walk out of the crypt into the falling dusk. 

When she looks over her shoulder at him, he takes her hand, tucking her arm into his. She bites back a gasp, fire licking her veins, and when Flynn meets her gaze with one of equal heat, he takes her hand again, and leads her down the path.

--

Tag list: @darley1101 @writtenbycandy @indiacater @the-everlasting-dream @breaumonts @penguininapinktuxedo @christopher-powell @choicessa @drakewalkerwhipped @cocomaxley @fluffy-marshmallow-heart @sleepwalkingelite as always, let me know if you want to be taken off the tag list or put onto it. since i don’t have a permanent tag list i just go by comments.

[your-iron-lung]

No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross 9

aka ‘Buried in Water’; available to read on A03 HERE

Story Synopsis:  Some weird low-key occult parties start popping up that Steve can’t in good conscience ignore and takes it upon himself to investigate. Billy gets caught up in the consequences of his meddling, and isn’t it funny? For all the strange things the Upside Down has thrown his way, it’s werewolves that Steve has trouble accepting exist.

Chapter Word Count: 5197

Pairings: Eventual Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington

Genre: Supernatural/Drama/Horror-ish

Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Next Chapter: 10

Notes: bit of a shorter chapter here lads, but i want the next chapppie to be ENTIRELY FOCUSED on whats gonna happen next  bc buddies. pals. friends and amigos. its gonna be real gud. 

i hope none of u reading have that fear of looking out of a window in the dead of night only to find something standing there staring back in at you :^) youll see ;)

'Liminal' was not a word that existed within Steve's lexicon, but even so, it was the word that best fit how he felt sitting there in Billy Hargrove's curiously empty home, watching him pace the floor in front of him. He was talking, speaking energetically, but Steve wasn't listening; he was finding it hard to focus, too distracted by the revelation of werewolves to actually comprehend what he was being told. It was like his brain had gone numb, blanketing his mind in indifference as he studied the bandages covering the invisible wounds over his hand.

"-I don't know anyone in this hick town, so I'm going to need you to-"

A monster, Billy had said. Another goddamned monster running around loose in Hawkins, terrorizing the youth because why the hell not? They might as well change the slogan of the towns 'now entering' sign to read, 'Welcome to Hawkins: Monster Capital of the U-nited States'.

Billy kept talking, but his words continued to fall on selectively deafened ears as Steve wondered about who he ought to tell. Who the hell would even believe him? The kids, probably; Dustin definitely. But would they be enough to help him? And then, what were they meant to help him with? Exterminating Billy Hargrove? While he was certain they'd jump to arms for a chance to eradicate him, this wasn't a monster problem he felt could be solved by bludgeoning it to death like the last two had.

"-I don't know anything about this shit, but, I think that'll be enough."

"What-" Steve spoke slowly, brow furrowed as he tried to bring himself out of the introspective daze he'd worked himself into. He shook his head a little bit and ran a hand through his hair. "Sorry, what'd you say?"

Billy had stopped pacing and was waiting to hear the feedback on whatever idea he'd come up with in the time that Steve had been spacing out. A cigarette was hanging limply out of his mouth, smoke filtering through his lips. "Have you not been listening to a goddamned thing I've been saying?" he growled, frowning sharply when he realized Steve really hadn't. "Before we do anything, I said we need proof."

"Proof…? Proof of what?"

"Holy shit, what the hell are you being so damn spacey for?

"I said I don't know anything about werewolves except for what that b-movie showed me, and even then, how much of that is based on fact? It's just a fucking movie. Maybe this healing of my arm is enough proof that it was something supernatural, but what if that's just like, I don't know, a side-effect of being bitten?" He began pacing again, rambling as he walked back and forth in front of the small couch Steve was sitting uncomfortably on. He smoked the cigarette down to the filter but kept sucking on the butt end, focused entirely on finishing his thought. "Maybe it ends there, and I'm not actually infected or cursed or whatever. Maybe this is all that'll happen with me, but maybe there'll be more. I don't know anything about this, and from the look on your face you know about as much as I do, which is jack shit."

"So, research," Steve said. The idea that he was sitting in on a lecture made him want to laugh; no wonder he'd spaced out so hard earlier. "You want to do research? Go down to the library and have ourselves a good old fashioned study session?"

"Fuck research," Billy said decisively, snarling at Steve's retort. "You can do all the research in the world and still have people who don't buy into it. Fuck that. I don't want research, I want proof. Hard proof. Evidence that can't be refuted."

"Your arm-"

"-isn't proof enough for me," Billy finished, coming to a standstill and glowering at Steve. "And won't be for anyone else who didn't see it before, Jesus, Harrington, you really aren't a good learner, are you?"

"For a guy who was trying so damn hard to get me to believe in all this, you're being awful stubborn when it comes to your own convictions," Steve snapped. "So what, then? What'll be enough?"

Billy studied him quietly, a smoldering expression of pent up exasperation clouding his features. He didn't speak right away, causing Steve to want to fidget under the scrutiny, but he remained still.

"That," Billy finally said, pointing to the TV behind him where they'd paused the movie again on the transformation scene to study and compare the beast. "That'll be enough. When the next full moon comes, then I'll be satisfied."

Of course he was right. There was only one definitive way to settle the question of whether or not Billy actually was a werewolf now, and that meant waiting to see if he transformed under the influence of a full moon. Initially the idea of that seemed ridiculous to Steve, but when he thought about it, he wasn't sure why that notion should be ridiculous to him at all- he'd definitely seen stranger things. If horrific flower-faced monsters that were born out of the depths of some alternate universe could exist and somehow crawl their way into a universe they didn't belong in, then why couldn't werewolves be real? By comparison, werewolves had more rights to exist than the demo-whatevers; at least they belonged in their world.

The digital watch strapped to Billy's wrist began to beep, loud and insistent. Glancing at the display, Billy's face hardened imperceptibly. His eyes flickered to Steve momentarily before he shifted his view to the front door.

"So you're content to wait it out till then?" Steve asked, standing up as Billy walked by him and to the door, glancing out one of the street-facing windows briefly.

"No, but I fucking have to," Billy muttered, eyes scanning the street before he looked back at the readout on his watch. "It's not like we can force the moon to come early. We need a damn plan. Well, I had a fucking plan, but you tuned that right out, didn't ya?"

"A plan for what?"

Turning away from the window, Billy appeared both excited and apprehensive. He was smiling, baring his teeth and running his tongue along their edges, but it seemed to stem more from nervousness than anything else. Steve's first thought was that he looked like a caged animal ready to defend itself, and an uneasy feeling settled into his gut.

"For if I'm right, Christ, why don't you listen? Now get the fuck out of my house, we'll talk about this later."

Billy's dad came home a mere ten minutes after Steve left, angry and without reason for it. He never seemed to need a reason to be angry these days though, and as he felt his father's rage strike him, Billy imagined that Neil must have somehow known all along about Billy's secret meeting with 'that Harrington boy'. The assault was deserved, one way or another, in his father's eyes.

Later that night, Billy came down with another fever. The cause of it wasn't clear to him, as it could've been a myriad of different things, but regardless, he felt its exhausting effects and had to turn in early.

A great heat consumed him, troubling him when he found he couldn't stop sweating; repenting for the sin of having brought another boy into to the house by perspiring to death. The fever was so terrible that when he finally tried to lie down to sleep, wearing only his underwear and lying overtop of the bedcovers in a home that couldn't afford to run the heat in the winter, he opened his bedroom window so that the chilling breeze might offer him some respite.

It was soothing enough to allow him to rest, but his skin remained sticky and sheen when he finally did close his eyes. His sleep was light, due in part to the fever he couldn't stop sweating out and owing also to the nightmares that had begun to plague him recently, offering him horrific visions of what his future might hold in store for him if he didn't figure this 'werewolf' thing out.

It was two hours after he first fell asleep that Billy woke from one of the nightmares with a deep, shuddering gasp, and for a moment as he lay there panting, he thought it likely that he had woken himself up.

He was cold now, the fever abated as he lay shivering in the freezing breeze that flooded in from his window. Some snowfall had accumulated on the sill, leaving small little puddles as they melted down. He was disgusted to note how sticky he'd become as his bedcover stuck to his back when he sat up. When he reached back to peel the fabric from his back, he heard a noise like someone walking- no, running- through the snow outside, a dark blur against the blackness rushing by his window.

Billy froze in place, slowly turning his head to look out the window. His heart rate slowly began to pick up as he heard the shuffling footsteps of something creeping around out there, running in circles. He took in a deep breath to calm himself and realized, suddenly, that he could smell it- a rotting, fetid scent was wafting in on the winter air as the beast outside ran laps around his home.

His blood ran cold in an instant, and for a moment, he didn't know what to do.

'Let's say it is real,' he could hear himself telling Steve all those nights ago. 'What's to stop it from just following you home?'

It had tracked him down, using the pheromones or whatever hormones his fever sweat had exuded to find him at home with the window open, practically inviting it inside to kill him in his sleep.

The darkness of his room was unsettling as he listened to it snuffling around, taking in huge breaths as it skulked around in the night. Carefully and as quietly as he could, Billy slowly began to swivel his legs off the mattress, unsure of what he was going to do but knowing instinctively that he couldn't sit still for it to just find him. His feet touched the cold, hardwood of the floor and he almost recoiled at the freezing touch, and as childish as the thought was, he couldn't help but fear that something was going to reach out from underneath his bed and grab his ankles before he could do anything to combat the monster that was now hunting him.

The noises outside stopped for a moment, as though the creature could sense that Billy was on the move. He himself stopped moving, heart pounding in his chest even as he tried to convince himself that whatever was outside was just a large dog or something; a sick deer just trying to find a bite to eat underneath his window. He couldn't move his eyes away from that deep, dark square of night that was framed by the window as he sat paralyzed on the edge of his bed, and distantly he realized he'd begun to sweat again.

Just as he started to think that perhaps whatever it was had left, threatened by the thought of pretty that could fight back, he heard it again, but instead of an animals feet padding softly through the snow, foraging for sustenance that could not be found, the sound of something hard and sharp clacking against the sideboard of his house began to make his hair stand on end.

It was climbing; scraping its claws alongside the house as it tried to make its way into the open window.

Coming for him.

As strong as he knew he was, Billy felt terribly weak in that moment, unable to contain his panic. He shot up from the bed, disregarding the instinct that told him to just fucking run out of there as fast as he could and instead found himself lunging forward for the window, slamming it down hard enough to shake the frame as thought it would be enough to protect him.

With his heart pounding he stared out into the darkness, face mere inches away from the glass pane he knew wouldn't be enough of an effective barrier to keep it out.

There was no movement from the other side. The night was utterly and completely still; a void of darkness kept at bay by thin glass. It was stupid of him to sit there and keep watch, he knew, but he had to be sure it was gone. Being as scared as he was made him feel like a powerless child, and if he could write this incident off as just another vivid dream, then he'd be far better off for it. Still, nothing moved as he sat there, though the glass had begun to fog up, making it hard for him to see anything. Billy wiped at it with his hand, mistakenly thinking his own heavy breathing had caused the condensation, and found himself rendered immobile yet again when the beady red eyes of the beast surged into focus.

Billy stared transfixed as dread consumed him, rooting him in place, his hand pressed to the cold glass. He couldn't think, couldn't move, couldn't do anything but watch as the werewolf grinned, spreading its lips in a wide snarl to show off all its teeth, taunting him, challenging him.

I will see your flesh torn asunder, boy; ripped to pieces, chunks in my jaw, your bone between my teeth, down my throat, your blood boiling in my belly.

With a scream rising up in the back of his throat, Billy did bolt then, shooting himself off his bed and launching himself away from the window that the creature was perched at, waiting to bust in and fulfill its promise. He collided against his closed door with a thud, and he fumbled with the handle, trying to open it without taking his eyes away from where he could see it, opening its wide mouth, exposing more, so much more as it pressed its gnarled hand against the glass to finally break through-

His door came open suddenly, spilling him out into the darkness of the hallway to land on the cold floor, chest heaving as he scrambled, trying to get to his feet but unable to find enough traction to set him straight.

"Billy?"

He almost let out a shout when he heard Max say his name.

"What're you doing on the floor?" Her voice was tired and her eyes were heavily lidded with exhaustion as she stepped out of their shared bathroom, the sound of the toilet's weak flush gurgling behind her. She yawned and rubbed her face, waiting for a response to justify his weird behaviour.

He opened his mouth to speak, but his voice was gone. Instead he swallowed, and turned away from her to look back at his window, afraid of what dark, horrible shape would be crawling through it.

But there was nothing to be seen; the monster was gone, if it had truly ever been there at all.

"What're you looking at?"

Max stood behind him, peering into his dark room curiously when he didn't answer her question.

"Go back to your room," he finally said, though his voice was hoarse and he had to repeat himself.

"What are you, the hall monitor? I had to piss," she said, using the snarky tone of voice she reserved only for him. "What are you doing on the floor?"

"I'm not," he replied, finally finding the strength required to get to his feet.

"Well, you were."

"I'm not now, am I?" Billy snapped irritably, turning a mean look on her. Despite his fright, he was careful to keep his voice low. The last thing he wanted to do now was to wake up his father in the middle of the night. "Get the fuck back in your room and go the fuck to sleep."

Max rolled her eyes and didn't move, lingering in the hall. She looked away from Billy's room and back towards her own, biting at her lip.

"I heard something outside," she said at last, speaking quietly. "Something was running around outside the house. It woke me up, but I couldn't see anything when I looked. Too dark."

"Just a dog," Billy replied, swallowing hard, hoping she didn't hear the waver in his voice. He wasn't able to meet her eye as he said it. "It was just a dog. I yelled at it and it ran off, okay?"

"A dog?" Max had an alarmed look in her eye. "What kind of dog? Did you get a good look at it? How big was it?"

"I don't know, what does it matter? It was just some stray," he said. "I told it to fuck off and it did; it's gone now, so go back to sleep you little shit before you wake someone up."

"You're the one shouting at animals in the middle of the night," Max bit back, but despite her attitude, she still looked worried. "You're sure it was a…? Nevermind, whatever, I'm going back to sleep," she grumbled, and turned away to go back to her room, shutting the door just hard enough to let Billy know she didn't value his authority.

Alone in the darkness of the hall, Billy's eye was drawn back to the window. He wondered where the thing had crawled off to, and if it would be coming back. More timidly than he would have liked to admit, he stepped back into the cold enclosure of his room and quietly closed the door behind him.

"Hey, Steve, man, I really just wanna thank you again for offering me a ride home," Dustin said, already breathing hard. In his arms was a box full of the things he'd used for his final presentation in whatever science class he'd taken that semester, the weight of which was cumbersome enough to have him struggling to carry it. Ordinarily, Steve would have offered to help him carry it, but he wasn't thinking straight.

'Later', as Billy had said at the start of the weekend, had ended up being earlier that morning on the first day of finals. Cornered in the bathroom (the fucking bathroom, of all places), Billy had locked the door and sequestered them in the math halls men's room during the downtime between finals. He'd lit a cigarette and leaned against the stained porcelain sink, his shirt unbuttoned and open to accommodate his sling, and told him about his plan. It had been a simple one, but they wouldn't be able to see it through alone.

They needed a private place; somewhere they could quarantine Billy in case something really did happen with him, and the closer it got to the next full moon, the more Billy seemed convinced that something would happen.

"My teeth're starting to come loose," he'd admitted reluctantly, averting his eyes as he ran his tongue along them, prodding at the loose ones in agitation.

"Y'sure that's not just bad dental hygiene?" Steve had joked, but his remark had only been met with scorn.

"Just because I live in a hick town doesn't mean I'm going to become a toothless hick," Billy had snapped, but even through all his bravado, Steve felt he could sense his fear. "I brush my damn teeth Harrington. I take care of my appearance. And it's not just one tooth," he'd said as he rinsed the cigarette butt under a stream of water, putting out the cherry before flicking it into the can, "it's all of them."

On top of that, Billy had seemed haggard when they'd spoken; there was an overall dullness to him that suggested he hadn't been sleeping well lately, but they weren't at the point in their fucked up relationship where he felt he should ask about it. Instead he'd simply agreed to Billy's plan; it wasn't like he'd come up with a better one, but it meant he'd have to drag someone else into their mess. For as large and private as his home was, it didn't offer what Billy felt they needed.

But he knew Dustin's did. He'd been there before; seen with his own eyes what it could contain.

"I really owe you one," Dustin wheezed, his voice sounding strained and distant, and Steve was surprised at how far he'd managed to fall behind him in their trek through the parking lot. Coming out of his ruminations, he turned in time to watch as Dustin nearly stumbled through the gravel, trying to reclaim his balance quickly before he spilled the contents of his science project into the soggy earth.

"Whoa, hey, let me get that," Steve said, backstepping to relieve Dustin of his burden. The box was heavier than it looked, and nearly fell through his unprepared arms as he took it from him. "Geeze, man, you bring your whole damn chem set in or what?"

Dustin whistled in relief before replying.

"Had to, turns out students aren't allowed to use any of the school's equipment on the last day of class because no one wants to stay late to clean it. Myself included, obviously."

"Well that's bogus," Steve absently said, to which Dustin agreed.

"Tell me about it," he bemoaned, cracking his back as they approached Steve's car.

Setting the box of Dustin's things on the rear of his car, Steve dug his keys out of his coat pocket and unlocked the doors. He set the box carefully in the back seat, making sure it was stable enough not to tilt and spill if he took a turn too fast, and stepped back to see Dustin staring curiously at the ugly seat cover stretched over the front passenger seat.

"What's with that? Having some work done?"

"Something like that," Steve replied dismissively. He'd tell Dustin about it later, but for now he didn't want the kid worrying about anything he didn't have to. "But uh, speaking of owing me one, I need to talk to you about cashing that in."

"What, already?" Dustin looked a little surprised, but Steve could only shrug lackadaisically. "When I said that, you know, I kinda figured that you'd be cashing it in waaaay off in the very distant future. Or you'd forget I said anything at all, so I wouldn't have to actually do anything."

Steve laughed, but it sounded forced, and Dustin frowned a little bit at the harsh sound of it.

"I promise I wouldn't actually ask you to do something for me unless it was important. Get in so I can turn the heater on and we can talk about it."

A look of contemplation crossed Dustin's face briefly before he got in the car, preemptively putting his seat belt on as Steve started the engine and cranked the heater on to its highest setting, the airflow tousling his hair. Dustin didn't like the way Steve's brow kept creasing, or the way Steve had seemed so distant during the walk from the school building to the car. And now he wanted to talk.

"So, talking?" Dustin prompted.

"I need to borrow your basement," Steve said, coming right out with the request instead of wasting both of their time by trying to make it not sound weird. There was no easy way to say it.

Dustin blinked; an owlish and slow movement that, for a moment, made Steve feel like Dustin suddenly knew everything.

"I don't have a basement," he said instead. Steve balked.

"Bullshit," he said. "You dragged me back there to kill that lizard pet thing of yours that one time."

"Cellar," Dustin corrected, enunciating the word slowly and precisely. "I don't have a basement, I have a cellar. Mike is the one with the basement, dingus."

Taken back momentarily, it was Steve's turn to blink dumbly.

"Well what the hell's the difference? Nevermind, don't answer," Steve said, speaking quickly as Dustin opened his mouth and took in a breath to begin explaining. "Fine, cellar, whatever; I need to use it."

"What for?" Dustin asked suspiciously. "Wait. Are you planning on throwing an end of semester party? Why not just use your house? Or is it themed?"

"No, man, it's not a party; like I said, this is important," Steve stressed, growing impatient with the way the conversation was developing.

"Parties are important, Steve; you taught me that."

Groaning loudly, Steve tossed his head back and stared up at the roof for a moment.

"Okay, yeah, they are, but this is a different kind of important, okay? Like, it's for something serious," he continued, hoping Dustin would understand without telling him too much. "Trust me, if I was trying to throw a party, the whole school would have known about it by now. Just, loan me your basement."

"Cellar," Dustin corrected again, but without any of his usual haughtiness.

While Dustin wouldn't say Steve was dumb, per se, he would have to say that he wasn't exactly… subtle. Analyzing Steve's behaviour, and knowing what he'd used his own cellar for in the past, it was easy to come to the conclusion that Steve wanted to utilize the space in much the same way he himself had done when he realized Dart was growing up to be something of a problem child. Steve didn't want it for recreational use, but instead wanted it so he could contain something. Even before they'd gotten into the car, Steve had seemed tense, as though he'd been steeling himself to have this conversation, further justifying his line of thought.

"Steve," Dustin asked slowly, turning in his seat a little bit and scrunching up the fabric of the seat-cover to face his friend, "is this a code red?"

Meeting Dustin's eye, Steve saw that he was finally taking their conversation seriously. A graveness had overtaken his usually carefree expression, and he hated the way it made his young face seem to age.

"I don't know yet," he answered honestly, sighing and adjusting the air vent so it wasn't blowing heat directly on him anymore. "It might not be, but it potentially could be."

"Oh, Christ," Dustin groaned, slouching back in his seat and staring out forlornly through the windshield. "I thought we solved all this when El- Jane- closed the rift. What is it this time? More dogs? An Upside Down puppy? Shit, is it a cat?"

"No, no, it's nothing like… nothing like those things from before," Steve was quick to say, but wasn't sure how much information he should divulge. After all, like Billy said, it might not be anything, except… Except he had symptoms now. "If it was, I definitely would've said something about it before now."

Mulling the answer over in his head, Dustin then asked: "Does it have to do with the bear attack?"

Sitting back in his seat, Steve sighed and glanced up into his rearview mirror. Billy was there, a distant, lone figure, but he was there, and he was watching, waiting for him to secure a spot where they would be safe to test their theory.

"I can't tell you right now, but I promise it's nothing I can't handle."

"Alright," Dustin said after a moment, though he sounded dubious. He was frowning deeply, lost in his own thoughts before he said, "When will you know for sure? After you use the cellar? If we need to assemble the rest of the party, I can-"

"No, no, don't uh, 'assemble the party' just yet," Steve said. "I don't want to alarm everyone only for it to be a false alarm, you know?"

"Christ," Dustin mumbled again, looking miserable as he slowly began to slouch in his seat. "Okay, fine, you can use my cellar for whatever fucked up containment bay you need it for, but you have to tell me what the hell's going on afterwards, okay?"

"I will, man, I swear."

"Shit." Dustin heaved a sigh and sat up, rising out of his slump. His seat belt clicked noisily, locked into place as it refused to let out anymore slack.

Steve watched him undo the belt and re-buckle it with a hint of amusement. He hated that he had to give Dustin reason to worry, but at least school would be over soon, and they wouldn't have to split their focus and try to decide which was more important.

"Think I can take the loan out on your cellar this Friday?" he asked after Dustin had resituated himself. "And look man, you and your mom? You guys can't be there. Think you can arrange to get out of the house for the night?"

Groaning loudly, Dustin eventually nodded.

"My mom's been telling me over and over we need to go visit her sister," he said. "Aunt Connie hasn't seen my teeth since they came in and wants to see them; the only girl alive who wants to see them and it's my aunt."

Steve laughed earnestly at his comment, and when Dustin caught the look of honest amusement on his face, he cracked a grin too.

"But the worst part? You wanna know what the worst part is, Steve? She pinches, man! I'm gonna look like I have blisters on my face when I get back!"

Steve cackled with delight, picturing Dustin's face pinched so hard his cheeks would be naturally rosy for days afterwards.

"Hey, I'm real sorry about that; I'll take you out to lunch or something when you get back, alright?" he said, feeling the burden of having to put Billy's plan into motion lift from his shoulders. They had their spot secured; now they only had to wait for the weekend to use, and then, if they were lucky, they would be able to move on.

"Oh, you'll be owing me much more than that if I survive," Dustin muttered, grinning cheekily as Steve finally put the car into gear and began to drive them out of the lot.

"Here's hoping," Steve said with a wink.

[ld14u]

diary

It’s way past time to start writing about this place and without the thick convoluted strappings of poetry...I’ve been in this hospital two months and I don;t know how to feel the truth of that once it’s been written down. It sort of just feels like anything else I might’ve done––when most people I know would balk at living like this in a sad, medicated hotel. I big old liminal space––isn’t everywhere liminal? If we are all just passing through? Bullshit questions like that get me in trouble here. I think I’m vitamin D deficient and lots of my hair falls out and get stuck, cemented to my hospital sheet. My friend is down the hall crying into her phone. She’s blonde and I wouldn’t have ever imagined having a friend who talks casually about leaving her cartier at home because she thought some of us twitches might be cleptos. I’ll forgive her. She reads a lot and loves economics and is a self proclaimed recovering coke-head. My room is a sort of periwinkle, its a color that is more oppressive than you’d think. Who is you? Who am I talking to? Is this in any way even the slightest bit organic? Are all diaries written with some theoretical audience in mind? Why do I think Im better than everyone? Why am I never enough? My room is “periwinkle” and the lights are harsh fluorescent boxes and there are multiple layers of mesh chicken wire type screens over my windows. The girl from Isreal moved out of my room and I can’t get up the nerve to ask for my vibrator. I’ll have to wait until a staffer friend of mine is on. Or maybe I can convince them that I use it to cleanse my face or zap the hair on my upper lip or something. Too bad I think that they've collectively discussed my possession of such a thing in a meeting. I haven’t been responding to letters since I got bak from the locked ward. An attempt is self injury with any intention to die---It doesn’t matter if fatality is a realistic consequence. 

Have I changed? I know I have...but am I me? I am scared of change and the loss it betrothed. I can recognize most footsteps in the hall-Can identify the staff bu their cadence and jingle of keys, like cowbells. 

Theres a line in an Anne Sexton poem about a prisoner being so poor that they fall in love with the prison. 

I wish I could simplify all of these selves into something cohesive, a pattern, a memoire, so I could make meaning of this mess. A curated mess? No? Maybe that’s all another way to minimize the way shit has turned out. I don't like that the movie version of Diary of a Teenage Girl left out the use of meth and tried to tie everything up neatly. It stripped it of some of the ubiquitous humanity. Is ubiquitous right? I want a type writer. Does this hospital provide a clean white background? Enough contrast for the pain to show up? How long have I been living with this secret death wish? Wrapping the blind chord around my neck, smoking meth in a bath tub in pacifica-waiting for the baby momma to get her rocks off in the next room. Maybe it was a performance, so i could rehash the show at a backyard barbecue in LA before my best friend’s 19th birthday. Right around the time I had started telling everyone I’d quit smoking weed. What does it mean for my future if I willingly get sober before I’m 21? Am I real? Am I real? STOP. What happened? Is it perverse to picture ones own funeral? A sort of masturbatory avoidance. I’m sure we all do it. It’s like a beer in the morning...A little dog hair never hurt anybody. 

Do I write for consumption or catharsis?I feel like Im in a constant of state of delirium. Is it rude not to acknowledge the woman that comes to check on me every 15 minutes? All she needs to know is that I am alive...not that I am sociable or polite––I don’t know. Maybe I’m too ADD to write in this style, kA stream of consciousness. I have so many doubts. Who is to say it won’t be like this forever? 

INCIPIENT-developing into a specified type or role (incipient lovers) 

INCIPIENT-foolish

The kids in this unit can’t stay away from that which is forbidden. Scratching their forearms up with a loose nail or plastic butterknife, an idea that may have never occurred to them before another girl showed up to interpersonal effectiveness group in a t-shirt sporting webs of purple scars on the soft skin below her leave. Once we are all back in the van the girls pull small carved animals and chocolates from under their shirts and compare prizes. The romance of each tiny insurection, even if it means a deeper enslavement_to what? Emotional instability and a lack of personal control/freedom? A prewritten role in a societal performance reserved for the troubled and misunderstood. It can't be healthy for people to grow up in this environment. I can't imagine what id be like if i had. I can't imagine boston in the summer. I can’t imagine a future for myself that doesn’t find me lost and clinging to the dregs of life. I hope I can outrun this self imposed prophecy. There are beautiful absurdities in the mundane-not that Im the first to see it but hopefully its enough. The tiny girl holding chopsticks in her chubby little hand, the men meeting for dinner, unsure if they should hug or shake hands--they end up patting each other quickly on the back as if burping a baby. The waitstaff at this restaurant yell a greeting in japanese as soon as a new patron walks in. Funny. Theres a man sitting eating ramen alone wearing beats headphones and a shirt that says He Hate Me. 

Sometimes I am uncomfortable with how earnest  sound–on the phone with my patents or talking to the night nurse as I exit the bathroom. I feel like it opposes everything else I might be seen as . Am I even gay? Straight? Ive been thinking lately. The word like a diagnosis; to mark a pattern of behavior that hasn’t held much integrity to begin with. 

An emotional retracting of a finger from a hot stove or testicles pulled pulled back into the body. DONT READ YOUR OWN WRITING DONT THINK ABOUT WHAT WAS SAID DURING SEX DONT SCRATCH YOUR SCALP IN PUBLIC DONT END THE CALL WITH I LOVE YOU DONT LET YOUR MOUTH DRY UP DONT DREAM ABOUT YOUR OWN DESTRUCTION DO IT. 

I’m not sure what to write except that I’m anxious and I’m jealous of everyone that is not. In this moment i find fault with every last offering I have. My body. That words that come out of it. The worst that don’t. Imagine believing I might be more. Than those things. My memories make me sick with shame_I watch to all from a one sided mirror. M; chatting with a bar tender about the oily chested italian flirt in the photo on the wall behind him, me; on all fours crawling towards the hot tub–my body exposed at right angles under bright pool night lights. My tongue feels thick and dull and vengeful. Ready to provide reprisal for some crime I can’t remember committing. I punish myself. I only write about feelings and hardly ever about goings on––maybe because story telling is too fraught a medium or maybe because that’s how I operate anyway. 

Something in me feels very un-transmutable...all the ways I ache and think inwards have no place being spoken aloud. Oh, how hard it its to live simply. To really focus on each moment t the next and not the space behind or in-between. How unattractive. It seems fated that I become wayward and aimless. But reality never suits anyone. Simplicity isn’t flattering. Im scared of myself; of my propensity to twist everything into a rose, into a glass of wine or whiskey or a piano. I feel as if this might be a blinding step back.

[spiritionary]

Fae Facts - Refactored

So I caught wind of a discussion of “Fae facts” that were listed on the web, and what was true and what was not on it, and I’ve decided to write an article about it from the fae perspective…

‘Fae’ range from anything like goblins and imps to the little pixies with the wings that everyone associated with fairies to the seven-foot tall members of the royal courts. some even consider the banshee to be fae. (also trolls, gnomes, elves, djinn, dwarves, leprechauns, will-o-wisps, etc.)

Partially true.  There are actually many more fae than mortals can imagine.  There are fae unicorns (though not all unicorns are fae), merfolk are fae, there are some mortal species that can become partially fae (like changelings) and there are fae that no mortal has ever even heard of.  Additionally other cultures have fae under other names and courts, such as yokai, spirits (tho not all spirits are fae), and others.  Fae exist all over the world, in different cultures, with different names, and often their own Courts.

Some think the fae are evil, some think they are fallen angels, but most are considered to be a chaotic neutral force. some might call this ‘whimsically evil.’

False.   Angels/Demons and fae are not related.   We generally come from nature or Faerie, and the angels and demons are created directly by a divine being for a purpose.  Also our ‘alignments’ are all over the map, just like mortals.

Honey makes them drunk.

Mostly False.  Honey is the base for honey mead.   Honey mead is the base for Faerie wine.  Honey has more of an ‘effect on us’, but it doesn’t generally make us drunk.   We however do make the Best Wine fron it.  

Iron poisons them, as it does many magical beings.

True.  Almost all the fae I know have some reaction to iron.

Some were-creatures were probably just fae in disguise, since fae can assume any form.

Somewhat true.  Not all fae can shapeshift, but some were-creatures are fae.  Not all fae that can shapeshift can take any form, but some can.  I can’t take the form of a human (at least as fae), and the number of animals I can turn into… well that’s not unlimited either, but it is alot.   Also fae shapeshifters usually have a base form that they prefer.  Sometimes that is called their ‘sleeping form’ because some can’t maintain it when they sleep.

They sometimes lure humans with music that makes them want to follow and dance. They have to dance for what feels like a year and a day but it’s actually only seconds.

False.  This is the other way around, please see my article on faerie rings.  If you enter a faerie ring, and dance for a day, when you exit (on average) a year will have passed.   If you have danced with the fae in one of these rings for a year and a day, don’t return to Earth as you’re already dead there.

True names of the fae have power over them. they often use aliases when dealing with non-fae.

True.  

Some people are gifted with fae sight, which allows them to see the fae and also sometimes peeks into the future through their dreams.

Partially true.   Except that those people who have ‘fae sight’ are usually partially fae themselves.   Also it gives no insight into the future.  However they are easily able to travel to Faerie in their dreams.

Cats hate the fae, and the fae hate them back.

False.  Some fae ride cats around.   Some fae become cats, particularly when they want to become a witches’ familiar.  Pixies have the most trouble with cats, because cats think they are moths and chase them around. But in general, the cats just want to play, and are not hated by pixies for this.

Iron horseshoes over the door can act as a fae deterrent.

Partially true.  Also other things can deter fae, like salt.   Why would you want to do this?

They sometimes kidnap human children and leave their own children or elderly behind. these are called changelings.

True.  It still happens today.   Additionally some fae end up incarnated into mortal bodies, by choice, obligation or force.  These are also considered changelings.  In a society that denies fae exist for the most part, those changelings may not know about their true nature right away.  Changelings and faekin are functionally similar.

Fae are generous with gifts, especially for polite people, but prefer gifts in return.

True.  But should this be considered unusual?

That being said, better to avoid accepting gifts.  You probably don’t have enough to pay them back. By saying ‘thank you,’ you acknowledge that a gift was given and that you now owe something in return.  Being indebted to the fae = bad time.

Partially true.   Often mortals do not understand the value of what is given.  It will help, if you are going to ask a fae for something, to have the payment already in hand.   Then we will know how much of it you want in advance.

Fae can’t lie, but truth and honesty aren’t always the same.

Partially false.  Fae can lie, we usually won’t.  Not only are lies draining to maintain, but why would we bother?  I don’t lie.

Asking for a favor will cause offense. Make it seem like it’s their idea to help you.

Partially true.  Don’t just come to us to ask for favors all the time, what would you think about another mortal that did this?

Most things offend them, actually.

Mostly untrue, although the idea that mortals think everything offends us, is offensive…

Some fae can smell a lie. there’s no way of knowing which ones unless they tell you.

True.   Actually most of us can tell when we’re being lied to.  But again is this unusual?

Fae use ‘glamour’ to hide their appearance or habitations around humans. ‘Glamour’ can be gifted for use by humans.

True.   Also you all can learn glamour on your own if you put some effort into it.

It’s better for fae to have half-breed children than no children at all, so relationships with humans are fine. It just rarely works out fine for the human.

Partially true.  There are plenty of fae changelings in the mortal realm, even today.  But there is very little reason it can’t work out fine for mortals to have these children.  

Iron, salt, and bread (any kind) will ward fae away. so will rowan and hazel.

Partially true.  Iron, yes; Salt, conditionally yes; Bread, no; Rowan, yes;  Hazel, no.

Rowan and iron will ward most bad things away, actually.

And I guess good things too.   I don’t like where some of these facts are going.

Ringing church bells at dawn and dusk will drive fae and/or changelings from your village.

Mostly false.  Though most of us aren’t a big fan of churches.

Alternately, cream and butter and cakes (not bread!!) will attract them.

? … Well I like cream and butter and cakes.   There’s nothing wrong with bread.   What were people putting in their bread back in the old days?

They have many names. fair folk, the good people, the gentry, the wee folk. my favorite is the good neighbors.

True.  And even more names than that.   Humans have 1100 distinct languages and a word for us in most of them.

There are places where the veil between worlds is thinner, and these places see more fae. Ireland is said to be one. transient places (crossroads and bus stops etc.) are said to be another.

True.  Also see ‘liminal spaces’.

Musicians are often taken to their world. they may come back but they won’t be the same.

Partially true.  Sometimes mortals wander into our world, attracted to what we’re doing.  Sometimes musicians hear the music and come.   If you come to Faerie long enough, you’ll become fae.  It can’t be helped.   But there’s really no discrimination.

Adder stones (also called hag stones, witch stones, snake eggs, adderstanes) can reveal fairy or witch traps if seen through the hole in the stone. You can’t trick an adder stone.

Probably true.  Though this presumes the fae and witches set traps for humans in the first place…

The fae are highly sexed. Orgies are common.

Mostly true.  There are exceptions as always.  The fae tend to love first and ask questions later.  We can fall in love immediately with someone with a spirit that attracts us.   We don’t need your ‘spin-up’ time.

Random body pains were attributed to the fae. this was called elf shot.

Mostly false.  Random body pains can be attributed to any type of magick, energetic or psionic attack.  Check your shields.

Tangled hair in the morning was also considered their fault. this was called elf locks.

Usually false.  Though pixies playing in your hair at night is not unheard of.

Consumption (tuberculosis) was attributed to the fae as well, for forcing young men and women to dance all night.

False.  I think this goes without saying.

Basically if you were sick and there was no cure, blame the fae.

LOL.  Mortals blame everything on everything but themselves…

Alchemists sometimes called on certain fae to assist them. No word on how well this worked out for them.

True.  So do witches.  So do other types of magick practitioners.  Sometimes we even teach things.  It worked out well for most.  It depends on whether you want to learn our arts or just depend on us to do our arts for you.  Don’t be lazy.

Millers were thought to be ‘no canny,’ which means in league with the fae, owing to their ability to control elements. (fire in the kiln, water for the burn, wind for the mill, general control of machinery)

Mostly true.   Except any practitioner of any trade can have a relationship with the fae in their work.  The closer to nature you work, however, the more you can expect the fae to be involved.

If you know a fae’s true name, you can summon them at any time to do your bidding. But this is a double edged sword. If they learn your true name, they enslave you right back, and the things they do would be far worse than anything you could think of.

Partially true.   No right-minded fae is going to give you their true name.  If you find it out, however, and never abuse that power, no harm no foul.   If you begin to abuse it, though, then it’s only prudent to learn yours and get you to stop.  Most of the people who have formed the foundation of this ‘fact’ abused a fae’s name.

Some myths have lesser fae paying a tithe (a tiende) to their royals. Some myths have them paying this tithe directly to hell.

Partially true. Some Courts have taxes. I mean, castles don’t defend themselves and if courts don’t have reasonable resources to solve the Big Problems then the Court doesn’t really work.  This being said, we bear no association with the mortal concept of Heaven or Hell and we certainly do not send energy or mammon to their leadership.

Mortal midwives were sometimes summoned to the fae realm to assist in the birth of another kidnapped mortal woman.  They sometimes offer an ointment for use on the baby. if the midwife uses it herself, she will gain fae sight.

Partially true.  She will become partially fae.   Hopefully that’s what she was going for. If you’re going to do this, at least split it between you and the baby.   Why would you want to hurt the baby?

Lesser fae can die or be killed.  To witness one of these funerals is bad omen.

Partially true.  Its pretty hard to truly kill a ‘lesser fae’.  Even changelings spirits will return to Faerie.  It’s not impossible though.  If you’re witnessing one of these funerals, you’re probably already fae.  Take that as you will.

Credit and references are given to the following sites for being the source of this list:

https://faerielore.tumblr.com/post/162470095402/starbiter-some-fae-facts-from-lore-pt-2-pt-1

http://starbiter.tumblr.com/post/157281741328/some-fae-facts-from-lore-fae-range-from-anything

~ @alynnafoxie

---> Have questions? Send them to us at SpiritFAQ!

[mogdaze-blog]

In My Line of Work - Short Story

I've always found it funny that people like to call prostitution "the world's oldest profession." It doesn't speak all that highly of the human race's priorities, does it?

Paint on cave walls.

Discover fire.

Pay someone to fuck you senseless.

Get that in Latin, and we could engrave it at the base of every statue the world over - or better yet, build new statues, all shaped like giant brass cocks at full salute. That's the human mission statement in a nutshell right there: here, we have two types of animal, the ones with the dicks, and the ones getting fucked by them. And we will always - I repeat, always - be the ones with the dicks.

Yes indeed, the world's oldest profession.

I can think of an older one, but we'll get to that later.

It's outside of a motel called Restin' Easy that we lay our scene. Picture this: a gorgeous woman stands up against a sand-blasted brick wall, dressed to the nines in designer silks and a leather jacket. She's taking a long, sincere drag off a slender cigarette, and leaving blood-red lipstick rings on the unburnt white paper of the shaft. She's got the good looks of a 1960s movie star - a regular Audrey Hepburn in the making. Her black hair falls just above her shoulders, and sways gently in the night's breeze.

That's me.

The balding middle-aged man in the tan jacket with a face like a slapped ass, that's Dave. Yeah, Dave with the greasy skin that tosses back the neon rays of the glowing "VACANCY" sign above us. Dave the big spender, flashing the wad of hundreds in his faux-leather wallet.

Dave the asshole. Dave the John.

"Crystal recommended you to me," He says in an unbearably cocky tone, like I'm a new brand of aftershave he's been meaning to try out for a while, "She said you do things no other girl will do. That right?"

"More or less." I say, feigning a provocative grin.

When you've been in the business for as long as I have, you get pretty good at sizing up your customers with a glance. Sometimes, it's necessary to survival - you look the wrong way in this line of work and you've got a seven-inch stiletto buried between the links in your spine. Sex does weird shit to people's heads.

Dave, for all his faults, is easy to read. He wears a look of contempt, like he's too good for the situation he's putting himself in. He's wealthy, and entitled. He doesn't know why he's paying for sex - a man of his stature should be beating the ladies off with a stick, surely.

He probably sells used cars for a living, I think, suppressing a smirk.

"What can I do for you that Crystal can't, sugar?" I ask with an innocent flutter of eyelashes,

He grunts, one side of his mouth curling into a sneer.

"She was a little too...safe, for my taste."

"Too safe for you, huh? Ever considered trying to fuck a bear?"

"No, not like that. I mean, she was too vanilla. She wasn't comfortable with the things I wanted."

I raise an eyebrow and place a well-manicured hand on my hip, cocking my pelvis slightly to the side. Guys like Dave are almost like video games: once you know all the cheat codes, you're in the clear.

"Tell me, honey," I whisper to him in my most sultry drawl, "What is it that you want?"

What I expect is an answer, what I get is a grubby hundred dollar bill fumbled into my palm. Dave keeps scanning from side to side throughout, as though he's afraid of someone seeing him.

That's always a red flag.

"How about we go somewhere private, and then I'll tell you." He says, his voice oozing disdain.

I breathe a plume of smoke into his face and snuff my cigarette against the wall. On one hand, his rudeness pisses me off, on the other, I want it over with sooner rather than later.

The interior of Restin' Easy is everything that the facade would lead you to believe - old and chintzy, but with a certain charm to it, if you can look past the fine layer of sleaze. Think off-white shag carpeting, lamps that haven't been replaced since the seventies, and a pencil-moustached manager picking particles of cocaine from underneath his dirty fingernails. In short, it was my kind of place.

"Hey, John," I call to the manager with a playful smirk, "You got a room for me?"

His name isn't John, I know that much. But he reminds me of John Waters, so the name stays.

Not-really-John flashes me a grin back and fiddles with the lapel of his velvet suit, the lacquer in his hair rendered iridescent by the fizzing halogen tubes that hang above.

"Same as always?" He asks, his lisping voice softer than coffin-lining, "Number Seven's available."

I nod and he tosses me the keys, keeping Dave in tow. He's scowling like I've just spat in his face.

If anything's clear to me, it's that Davey-boy is used to better. He's a pervert with standards.

Smash-cut to room seven, an amateur porn set if ever there was one. In a certain sense, all hotel rooms - big and small, expensive and dirt cheap - feel like the same place, the same liminal area between destinations. They have the same walls, the same beds, the same dusty bibles in the bedside cabinets. Nondescript art of ports never visited and generic forestry grace the walls, and a minibar sits in the corner looking shameful, almost like it knows what it is. A shitty little robber with a conscience.

Dave looks out of place here, like he's being doctored into this image in real-time. He's still wearing that I-can-smell-rot-in-here scowl and avoiding eye contact with me for whatever reason. It doesn't exactly do wonders for my self-esteem, I'll tell you that much.

"So, uh, you ready?" I ask him, searching for an answer buried in the creases of his face, "I hope this doesn't take too long, honey. I'm hungry and the McDonald's closes at ten-thirty."

"It'll take as long as I need it to." He growls, loosening his tie.

I figure the uptight bastard would come-out a handful of sand after a perfunctory screw. He's never made love in his life - just fucked, and fucked badly.

In that moment, my hopes of having any fun tonight die on their asses.

Before I know it, he's pushing me onto the bed and starting to disrobe, revealing to me his fleshy, pale frame. There's a kind of solidness to him - not brick shithouse solid, but drying clay solid. As though with enough warmth, you could start twisting him into the right shape again.

I take off my leather jacket and shirt, and kick off my jeans, until I'm just in my bra and underwear. Without sounding too arrogant, I can tell by the look in his eyes that I'm better than he's had in years - but he's not appreciative, oh no. He looks at me the way I'm assuming Christopher Columbus looked at America - the look of a man ready to fuck shit up royally to assert his limp-dicked dominance over something beautiful.

I'd go into more detail as to what I look like without all those pesky clothes, but it'd cost you, sugar. And I don't come cheap.

Hell, with most of these guys I don't even come at all. See? Little bit of on-the-job humor, just to lighten the mood. What happens next is a little grimmer.

Once he's down to his underwear, Dave starts opening a briefcase he's brought in with him. I start wondering whether he expects me to sign a non-disclosure waiver or some shit, until I realize what he's producing from the case is a leather paddle covered in metal studs.

Naughty, naughty Dave.

"That looks painful," I giggle, fluttering my eyelashes, knowing the absence of fear would emasculate him, "I can see why Crystal turned you down. For a second, I just thought you must have had a funny-shaped dick."

For the record, his dick was of a relatively average shape and size. Nothing terrible, but not exactly remarkable either.

He just grunts, and runs his big, rough hands over the studs.

"You can't get this kind of action at home, huh?" I ask.

"Never in a million years," He says, finally turning to me, "My wife wouldn't allow it. But, then again, my wife isn't here."

He chuckles like a bad villain from a sixties movie would chuckle.

"Y'know, I've seen a lot of hookers, but none of them have been quite as mouthy as you," He says, taking tentative steps towards me as his erection began to bloom in anticipation, "I like that. Breaking you is gonna be a challenge."

I climb further back onto the bed, edging towards the pillows. The quilt feels cheap and rough on my skin - though I don't exactly have any high expectations for Restin' Easy. I don't come here for the comfort, after all.

"Word of advice, Davey-boy," I say with a salacious wink, "Take me before you break me. It'll make the beating more satisfying, don't you think?"

He doesn't say a word, refusing to concede to me, but he agrees. There's a soft thump as the paddle falls to the ground, and he crawls across the bed to me like a goddamn puppy.

I'd have laughed if I wasn't so excited for what comes next.

As expected, the sex is boring. For a man who carries a spiked paddle around in his briefcase like Patrick fucking Bateman, he's got a surprisingly dull preference for the missionary position - a position I'd always thought of as the mayonnaise of sex: good when you're in the mood for it, but too much of it and you lose the will to live.

He does tug my hair, though. I find that a little annoying, especially considering the price of having your hair done these days.

Once he's done and his body practically coughs into mine (thank god for condoms, or I would have caught his cold) he just collapses onto me, gasping and exhausted. It'd take another hour before the sad bastard would have enough energy to beat me.

And I've never been all that patient.

"Wow, slick," I find myself saying, with all the enthusiasm of a text-to-speech generator, "That really was something."

"Y'think?" He asks, wanting me to stroke his ego.

"Well, normally good sex can leave me satisfied," I muse, "But that just left me hungrier."

He gives an annoyed grunt and tries to hoist himself up, still awkwardly straddling me while he does it.

My painted lips are pursed into a tight grin, while my teeth begin growing from my gums and sharpening into vicious points. I have a mouth full of scalpels, and poor, ignorant Dave is none the wiser. This is something I've done before, so I know how to keep it hidden right up until the moment it all ends.

That moment, my dear readers, is now.

Without warning, I grab Dave by the fat folds on the back of his big, sweaty head and pull his face down towards me. My lips curl up over my teeth into a manic, open-mouth smile, showing him the piranha thing I had going on inside.

"Carol sends her regards." I hiss through my fangs with a cruel giggle.

There's a glimmer of terrible recognition in his eyes when I say that name. The universal look of "oh fuck, I've been caught" is plastered liberally across his face. The vain little turd looks terrified before he's even noticed my fangs, or that I've cribbed my one-liner from Game of Thrones.

He doesn't get a chance to respond. Within the next second, I've pulled him down further and clamped my jaws around his thick, piggish neck. He thrashes, but I wrap my legs around his waist and grab his arms, completely immobilizing him.

When I'm not hiding my strength, he's nothing to me.

Dave thrashes weakly while twin geysers of blood evacuate his throat, giving me a warm, refreshing drink - like coppery cocoa, that's always made me feel a little better about it.

It doesn't take him long to die, and when he does, the real feeding starts.

I'll admit, I have a tendency to black out when I'm in the middle of a good meal - like a premature food coma, you see? But, when I come back to the land of the living, I can see by the radium-green numbers on the bedside alarm clock that it's only taken me about fifteen minutes to do the damage I'd done.

When I looked down onto the remains of Dave Whatshisname, I see there's only bones left, and that I'm wearing a stylish, crimson apron courtesy of my meal.

Then, it hits me how full I'm feeling, and I collapse back onto the bed.

Cheap quilts. Easy to replace when there's spillage.

"Dave, you irritating fucker," I say with a groan, poking my bloated stomach, "If I can't button my goddamn jeans after this, I'm charging your wife extra."

Crap. That reminds me.

I lean over, feeling another pain deep in my belly as I do so, and grabbed my phone out of the pocket of my discarded jeans.

Carol. Carol. Carol. I've got her on speed dial.

When she picks up, she just says, "Is it done?"

"What? No 'hello'? Most people are polite to their hired killers, lady."

My indigestion is so bad that I barely have the strength to be sarcastic - oh, who am I kidding? I always have the strength to be sarcastic.

"Just tell me if my shitbag husband is dead."

I give an agonized groan as my stomach gurgles, as though dearly deceased Dave was protesting.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dead, devoured, digesting. Whatever. You paid me yet?"

There's a long sigh down the receiver. Most people have that reaction when they find out I've murdered their husbands, but - to my credit - I never do it without being asked.

They need people dead, and I need to eat. Seems a fair trade to me.

"The money should be in your account."

"Sweet! And it couldn't have come at a better time, Carol. After your lard-ass husband, I'm probably gonna go up a fucking dress size. You owe me for my new wardrobe."

"You don't have to eat them, you know." She says, trying to pretend she's above it all.

"You're saying that from a human perspective. I'm not human, and ergo, we have different dietary needs," I say, wincing again from the pain, "But if you're satisfied with your service, I'm gonna save the biology lesson for when your husband isn't killing me from the inside. Okay?"

"I guess..."

"I need to hear you say it, Carol."

She sighs. Again.

"I am satisfied with my service. Thank you."

"You're welcome. Bye."

I hang up on her unceremoniously and collapse back onto the bed, throwing my phone to the side.

"Ten thou isn't enough for this shit." I groan again, my stomach ache ebbing and worsening as though on some kind of nonsensical schedule.

"Jesus Christ, look at this mess you've made!" I hear a shrill, effeminate voice ring out from the doorway, "I thought I told you to lay down a plastic tarp when you're doing your weird, hitwoman stuff!"

It's John. Not-really-John.

I find myself rolling my eyes at him, as he sashays into the room with a plastic bag and starts picking up the bones.

"That'll blow my cover, John," I say, like it's the most obvious thing in the world, "I'm posing as a sex worker. You know that. And nobody wants to have sex in a room that looks like the interior designer was Dexter Morgan. It's a pretty major boner dethroner."

John just shrugs and carries on picking up the bones. I always give him a little cut of the proceeds, so he doesn't mind doing some of the cleanup - I ate most of the mess, after all. And now, I'm just laying there, on the precipice of an actual food coma.

I love a happy ending, don't you?

Like I was saying earlier, I've always found it funny that people like to call prostitution "the world's oldest profession." After all, it's not just corny, it's patently untrue.

Before people even dreamed of paying to fuck someone else, they were paying to have them killed. And that, my dear readers, is why I'll always be in business, and why cheaters never prosper.