#anyway. moth cape cloak thing!

[cure-icy-writes]

Sky: Children of the light cosplay writeup

Wig: The fun part about skykids is you can do basically any hairstyle, so long as it’s in white. Good quality wigs start at about 20 dollars; I just happened to have one on hand that I was willing to recycle for this. If you’re on a budget, consider checking secondhand websites, local cosplay swap meets, and facebook marketplace.

Mask: I used this pattern from Punished Props to make the mask out of 5 mm EVA foam (Which would cost… I want to say $2 at michaels to get a similar sheet?) and then decided I didn’t like it, so I did it over again at 75% size. The gem is resin, painted with nail polish. I like using nail polish as paint; I know it’s not conventional, but it’s super fun and gives a nice shimmer without being overbearing. And then I stuck some aluminum foil onto the back of the gem to give it a nice reflective shine! The eye holes were enlarged somewhat because I shrunk the pattern to begin with, so as they are, I think they give it a more appropriately childish vibe. I put some of the plastic mesh that knitters use in the eye holes and painted it with a bit of shimmery gold! Finally, I just hot glued elastic to use as the strap, no need for leather or anything.

Cloak: 2.5 yards anti pill fleece. It’s a ¾ circle shape, so what you do is buy 1 ¼ yards of the color you want, then the same amount for the(Comes out to 15-20 dollars total; fleece is relatively cheap) and take one, and fold it in half and lay it down so the selvedge is going up and down. Measure on the center fold 29 inches up from the bottom edge, and make a mark with washable marking pen. This is the center. Now, using a yardstick or other measuring tool, continue marking in a circle 19 inches from that dot.

Make a smaller circle using the same dot as a focus, this one about 4 inches in diameter. There’s your neck hole. Now use the first piece of fabric as a pattern to cut out the second. Applique on your stars (I did a five star cape because the look I’m going for is that of a young moth who’s just barely becoming a butterfly, but you can do however many stars you want!) After this, you put the two layers together, and sew, leaving a small opening for turning. Turn, topstitch near the edge, and you’re all done!

You can also use this tutorial if you want more in depth instructions! However, keep in mind that this one requires more fabric to begin with.

Tunic: This was made out of a t shirt pattern and a curtain I thrifted for two dollars. The only real advice I can give here is to make a small pintuck on the inside to sort of cheat the seam on the right side of the chest, and don’t be afraid to make it baggy!

Pants: I already owned these, they’re just a regular pair of khakis, but I’ll budget in five dollars to thrift a new pair.

Shoes: Another thing I already owned. I’m going to cut this out of the budget, because frankly you will want comfortable shoes at the con and can likely get away with something casual.

Candle: Six dollar flameless candle at hobby lobby. The outside is made of actual wax, which is odd and not super durable. I also bought a real red candle and a white one for photoshoots.

So, overall? About $55 in total. You can cut down or cut corners or use coupons, and I don’t think it’s terrible, but there’s also the option of cutting out the mask entirely. Which is entirely fair; masks are a hassle to wear and to see out of, and often require a handler, which cuts down on the things you can do. Anyways, if this helps you at all to put together a cosplay, I’d love to see it!

[abyssembraced]

I've briefly mentioned this before in the past, but I've given it some more thought recently and can now safely say with confidence:

Ghost's (and by extension, all other Vessels') "cloak" is actually a set of wings.

By default, these wings don't actually work, however, which could have been caused by multiple different things. Maybe it's some sort of genetic thing that came about because of how different the Pale King and the White Lady are species-wise (though since they and the vessels are all gods, maybe they wouldn't have any issues like that?). Or perhaps the Void prematurely halted the development of the wings when it was introduced into the Vessels' egg(s). Or maybe the Vessels did initially hatch with working wings, but being in the Abyss damaged them and rendered them unusable. Regardless, the point is that the Vessels have wings, but they don't (usually) work.

(More under the cut, this post is long dgsgshf)

If nothing else, the "cloak" is definitely part of the Vessels' bodies in some way, considering that they're present on the Vessel corpses in the Abyss, so it has to be something they hatched with:

And yeah, sure, the "cloak" doesn't really look much like a set of wings, but the Radiance has similar noodle-y things that are almost certainly meant to be wings:

Same goes for Markoth, who, being a moth, should logically have wings:

And Grimm, who also has a tendril-y segmented cloak that later turns out to be very wing-like:

And Grimmchild, who flaps its wings and flies:

And the Maskflies and Belflies:

Among others.

So yeah, I'd say that the Vessel "cloaks" look similar enough to other wing designs in Hollow Knight! And also I don't know enough about bug biology to have any other ideas of what the "cloak" can be dgdgsgsf

And also, to go off on a quick, non-Ghost-specifically-related tangent, I imagine that most of the "cloaks" and "clothing" that the bugs in Hallownest seem to "wear" are actually just part of their body in some way. Pretty much only the Weavers and the bugs rich enough to afford their creations had actual clothing garments that were separate from their bodies. So like, Hornet's cloak and the things the husks in the rich half of the City of Tears are wearing are Weaver-made clothing, but, say, the "cloak" that Elderbug has is just part of his body. Clothes are a symbol of status, not something everyone is expected to wear.

Hollow's design, more specifically their appearance as Pure Vessel, also points to the "cloaks" being some sort of body part. Looking at two of their sprites from their pre-battle cutscene, you can see that Hollow's armoured cape that they destroy and the shorter cloak that they actually fight in are two clearly different colours. They're two different garments, with the grey cloak being underneath the white cape. The grey cloak being part of their body would explain why Hollow wasn't just wearing the white cape alone.

It is true though that Hollow's "cloak" as an adult really doesn't look like wings, even for Hollow Knight's artstyle, unlike the ones the baby Vessels have. So, continuing with the idea that it is, indeed, still a set of wings, maybe Hollow's have been clipped?

Considering Broken Vessel/Lost Kin, it seems like the wings normally grow to be pretty long. I imagine they'd get in the way quite often when trying to fight with a nail and stuff.

So, with that in mind, as well as the fact that the wings don't even work, and that even if they did work, Hollow is so large that there wouldn't be many places where they really could fly much, I could see parts of their wings being trimmed to make fighting easier. Probably by the Pale King, or perhaps even by Hollow themself. Or maybe it wasn't a deliberate action at all (at least at first), and the wings just got sliced off in a training accident because of how large they were. …And then PK/Hollow continued to clip them if they ever grew back in subsequent molts, since it was just more convenient that way.

…But anyway. Back to Ghost.

The Mothwing Cloak and the Monarch Wings that Ghost obtains on their adventure aren't their own separate items—they're more like upgrades to Ghost's existing wings. The dead Greenpath Vessel's wings happened to be more intact than most others', and Ghost was able to basically absorb those wings' energy (and/or the "mothwing strands threaded within them") to strengthen their own ones. In doing so, Ghost gained a slight control over their wings that they previously did not have. That, combined with them observing Hornet's movements before and during their battle (in order to get a sense of the technique they'd need for the rest of their body), granted Ghost a short dash using their wings to propel them forward!

The Monarch Wings, meanwhile, were able to restore enough functionality in Ghost's wings to allow them a short burst of flight, though it's still far from proper flying. The Monarch Wings strengthen and lengthen Ghost's "cloak" wings by temporarily transforming them, which is something we do see in their sprites when they use it:

Also, in my old post about my Ghost's postgame design references for their masked and Shade/Void forms (which I actually wanna make an updated version of eventually with a timeline and added information and stuff), I mention that Ghost's "cloak" in their masked/stable/normal form transforms into Void tendrils in their Shade/Void form. This is, of course, because the "cloak" is their wings, and is part of their body! So when Ghost breaks or otherwise exits their mask, their wings also transform into pure Void alongside the rest of them.

And of course, in their Void form Ghost has access to full, unrestricted flight/floating. It's just a Void Creature Thing. There are stranger things about them dgdgsf (*cough* Shade Soul passing through solid surfaces)

[albatris]

moth pics, courtesy of my best friend

(I just look like a blob in the second one hahaha)

[monstersandmaw]

Mothman x male reader (sfw) - Starfall Springs

Edit which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Whoop! A story! An actual full-length story! I'm sorry it's been a bit quiet lately - I've had a lot going on, and doing all those hand-written thank you stories and cards took it out of me a bit last month.

But! We're back on track again! And here's an adorable mothman to celebrate!

So, without further faff, here's Fitz' story (here's his colouring and sketchy doodle in case you missed it over on Patreon). Don't forget to let me know what you think of it!

Content: 4,445 words, sfw, reference to high-school bullying and there's the appearance of a face from Fitz' past who brings back bad memories.

___

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”

“You… ok?” came a hesitant voice from behind you.

You jumped, turning your back on the mess behind you as the lab door swung closed with a soft hiss and your heart sank. Not only was the subject of your every waking (and sleeping) fantasy standing before you, but he was observing the absolute, catastrophic, and apocalyptic cock-up you’d just made of the test samples.

The mothman tilted his dusky head slightly and then allowed his delicate antennae to waggle before, to your surprise and evident relief, allowed himself a tiny chuckle. The sound wheezed out of him in a little squeak and he fluttered his twin wings to make a soft buzzing sound. His two sets of silvery brown arms waved in a pacifying gesture and he stepped closer on his impossibly tiny feet and murmured, “It’s ok. Those are the samples of varnish from the furniture conservation lab, right?”

You nodded disconsolately, no longer worried about concealing the mess of broken glass and flakes of ancient, decrepit varnish behind you. “They were…”

He buzzed his wings again and grinned, his dark, fuzzy face splitting into a frankly adorable grin as his mouth parts moved. “It’s fine. My friend is head of furniture conservation. I’m sure she can take some more samples for you. Relax… You don’t want to know how royally I fucked up on my first day here.”

“But it’s not my first day,” you mumbled. “Or even my first month…”

“I know. You’ve just been storing it up for now…” Fitz laughed and took you gently by the arm, steering you carefully away from the mess of shattered glass and out of harm’s way. Your hands were shaking. He tilted his head and frowned, his huge eyes unblinking and yet somehow full of concern. “Hey, you ok?”

You took a huge sigh and shook your head. “I… I just wanted to do ok here, you know? And I’ve fucked up already. My three month probation period isn’t up yet… They can just fire me, and there’s nothing I can do…”

To your surprise, he laughed again, but it wasn’t unkind. “It’s fine,” he said, his small hand coming to rest between your shoulder blades as he guided you away from the mess towards the door. Instinctively you leaned into the touch before you’d even realised it, and he smiled again when you jerked your chin up to look at his face. “Accidents happen,” he reassured you. “Come on, let me take you to the break room and get you a cup of tea.”

“Really, you don’t need to -” you began, but he only smiled. “I mean, I should clean this up first…”

“It’s non-toxic and it’s just you and me in the lab today. I’ll lock the door behind us. Besides, I’d like to get a cup of tea with you. You don’t have to come with me though,” he added, taking half a step back, “If you’d rather not.” It was then that you noticed just how delicate his tiny feet were, and he did another little shuffle as your eyes landed on them. He was barefoot, and they were fuzzy.

“Sorry,” you muttered. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

He smiled and led you away. “I haven’t had much chance to chat with you,” he said conversationally in his rasping, musical tenor, and as he turned you saw that in the downy fur on his hunched, dusky shoulders were the markings of a skull. You guessed that he was a privet hawk mothman, given that his wings and body had a glorious pink banding on, and as he glanced back over his broad shoulders, he caught you staring at the dusky brown wings that hung down his back, shuffled them ostentatiously and smiled. “I’m guessing I’m the first moth boy you’ve met, right?”

“Right again,” you said, flushing hot.

Fitz chuckled again, a sound like a whickering horse, and he said, “And you’ve not been in Starfall Springs all that long either…” It wasn’t a question.

You shrugged. “Few months.”

“Where are you living?” he asked, holding the door open for you with one left hand and ushering you through with the other.

“In a caravan on the outskirts,” you said. “It’s all I can afford right now, and I don’t have a lot of stuff so…”

“Oh,” he said, his antennae perking up. “Have you met Saph then?”

“Saph?”

“Guess not. She’s one of the conservators who works at the workshops across town but she lives at the park too. She’s a feisty little goblin - if you’d met her, you’d remember her,” he snorted, quickly adding, “But she’s great.”

“Not trying to set me up, are you?” you said, unable to keep the heat from your cheeks again, and Fitz laughed.

“If you want me to, I can try, but I’m no matchmaker. For that, you want someone like Crystal.”

You halted. “The goth faun from forensics?”

He bowed his head. “The very same.”

“No.”

He waggled his antennae in a way that reminded you of someone raising their eyebrows, and said nothing.

You snorted and said, “Well, thanks, but I don’t swing Saph’s way anyway.”

“Not into goblins, or not one for an interspecies relationship altogether?” he asked, a sudden and almost imperceptible quavering creeping into his husky voice, though when you glanced back over your shoulder as you entered the break room, he didn’t seem to show any sign of unease.

“Not into women,” you muttered, and the sudden rush of adrenaline that came with the admission nearly made your knees cave in. If you’d have admitted to being gay to a colleague at your previous job in the city, you may well have found your car tyres slashed at the end of the day at the very least. That had been a chapter of your life you’d been only too happy to leave well behind.

But Fitz seemed to relax and even laughed softly again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was absolutely none of my business. I apologise.”

“I’m the one who brought up matchmaking,” you countered jovially, pushing through your momentary stall. “It’s fine.” You filled the kettle and set it to boil while he went right up onto tiptoes to get a couple of mugs out of the cupboard.

He wasn’t as tall as you, perhaps half a head shorter, and when he turned round and caught you staring at the way his wings flexed slightly when he strained to reach the shelf, he seemed a little bashful. “Well, we can’t all be big graceful men like you,” he snapped quietly, clearly embarrassed. Excluding antennae, he was probably about 5’6”

It was your turn to laugh, “‘Graceful?!’ Did you actually see the giant mess I made back there?” you snickered, jabbing your thumb over your shoulder.

“Good point. Here,” he said, handing you a mug. “There’s an assortment of teas in the cupboard, and milk in the fridge. Sugar is in that pot there.” That last bit of information he added with particular relish, and you had to smile, knowing how moths essentially existed off nectar and sugar water.

“So what exactly did you do that was so catastrophic on your first day?” you asked with a twinkle in your eyes once you had your mug cradled in your fingers, and he threw back his head again and laughed, wings fluttering with merriment.

“I broke the portable XRF machine… Dropped it.”

Your brain stalled. Those things didn’t come cheap. “Wow, ok…” you said, fighting off a giggle. “That… That puts a few dropped specimen jars into perspective!”

“Right?” he said cheekily. “Oh man, the boss was angry about it, but, that’s what they have insurance for. It was fine, in the end. But I was banned from using any equipment except for a pencil for a week…”

Chatting with him over a cup of tea had precisely the effect that Fitz had hoped for, and you relaxed after the shock of breaking the glass, and didn’t feel so bad about the shattered containers and contaminated samples either. You got back to work not long after that, and he headed up to his office on the second floor with the promise that he’d have his friend collect a few more varnish samples from the antique furniture she was working on for you to run through the FTIR spectrometer.

Shortly after five, you had just switched the lights off and locked the lab door behind you when the sound of someone clearing their throat behind you in the dark corridor almost made you screech like a stepped-on dog toy.

Whipping around, you saw a dark shape in the dimly lit passageway, with hunched shoulders and a strange, cape-like silhouette. For a horrible moment your brain went blank with fear until you realised that it wasn’t a cloaked figure, but rather that the outline was in fact that of gently folded wings. “Fitz!” you hissed, “Fuck! You scared the shit out of me!”

“Sorry,” he said. “I forget that humans can’t see in the dark.”

“Or hear your adorable feet moving around,” you muttered.

“I’ve got good hearing too,” he said dryly, letting your awkward compliment slide by him.

“Of course you do,” you cursed. “What did you want, other than to make sure my adrenal glands are still functioning, which they are, by the way.”

He snorted a delicate laugh out of his fuzzy nose and stepped back as you walked down the corridor towards him. “I wondered if you wanted to get a drink after work, that’s all.”

You paused and frowned curiously at him. “Sure,” you said. “Alright. You have somewhere in mind?”

He nodded, suddenly shy. “Yeah. There’s a nice cosy little traditional pub on the north side of town.”

“That’s a bit of a walk from the trailer park, but I could use the exercise. Sure. You want to go straight there, or shall I meet you there later?”

Fitz shrugged a wing. “Up to you. It’s probably a good forty minute walk from here…”

You adjusted your rucksack on your back and said, “I’m up for it. It’s a nice evening.”

The mothman’s delicate mouth parts shifted slightly into his little smile, and the two of you left the building together. His stride was surprisingly short and dainty, but his delicate feet made easy progress along the road and down the hill from the research lab and down towards the rambling town of Starfall Springs below. The ancient trees of the forest which was known by locals simply as the ‘old forest’ whispered softly to one another and you could have sworn you heard half-articulated phrases drifting on the light breeze. Leaving the eerie, timeless place behind, you and Fitz rounded a bend in the country road and saw the sandstone buildings with their cheery terracotta roof tiles and lush, green spaces spread out like a fairytale tapestry below you.

You sighed contentedly and shook your head slightly with mild disbelief that this verdant paradise was now where you lived.

Fitz picked up on your shift in mood almost instantly, as though the wind had changed direction, and, antennae shifting back and forth slightly in alternating waggles, he asked, “Something wrong?”

You shook your head. “The opposite actually… This place is unreal.”

Fitz turned his head back to look at the same view, but something told you he saw a different scene. “I guess…” he said softly.

Quizzically you turned to look at him. “You don’t think so?”

He shrugged. “I’ve lived here all my life,” he said, letting the light breath of wind lift his wings a little before clamping them back down again. “I grew up here, went to high school here, moved back here after university… I mean, sure, it’s pretty, and it’s a haven for non-humans who’ve had a shit life in the city, but it’s not without its issues.”

“Like what?”

“Oh… you know… I don’t want to put you off or anything, but… it’s not just a case of ‘humans versus non-humans’… There are family feuds and deep prejudices amongst the rest of us too. Take the Silkfoots for example…”

“The driders up in the mansion on the hill?”

“Exactly,” he said, running his small hand over his fuzzy, dusky coloured head. “They’re alright, don’t get me wrong, but they’ve had this long-standing hatred for Rhae, you know, the reclusive lich mage in the tower, and his little so-called ‘gaggle’ of goblins… The miners hate the Silkfoots because they controlled all the trade and taxes in the area way back when and made a load of profit on it, and… yeah, I won’t bore you with all of it, but let’s just say there’s politics here too, right down to a seriously petty level.”

After a moment’s thought you said, “I guess I should have realised…”

He shrugged nonchalantly, though you could see that something troubled him deeply still; something long-ingrained and with great emotion behind it.

“How do you feel about more humans moving here?” you asked hesitantly.

Fitz took a moment to think about it, but after a sidelong look at you, he nodded and said, “I think it’s a good thing… It stops us non-humans getting too high and mighty and ‘better than thou’, way out here with no humans to hunt us or bother us or objectify us, and it opens up healthier communication between the species.”

“Back to that interspecies relationship stuff again,” you grinned, digging him lightly in his fuzzy ribcage and nudging him off balance for half a step.

His wings tucked in suddenly very tightly and he turned his face away, antennae flat to his head like a worried horse’s ears.

“Fitz? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable…”

A nervous laugh fluttered out of him and he risked another glance at you before laughing awkwardly and scratching the back of his head with his upper right hand again. The death’s head pattern on the thicker fluff of his stooped shoulders was disturbed for a moment before it rose like a werewolf’s hackles and settled back into place, as though he’d got the shivers for a moment. “Forget it,” he said, his hoarse tenor voice cracking a little. “I just meant that it’s nice to have some humans around who are actually good for us, for a change. My best friend in school was human.”

“Was?” you blurted before you could stop yourself.

You were nearly at the bottom of the winding road into town and the wide sweep of Starfall Springs beyond was beginning to melt into the dusky haze of late evening. Fitz sighed again. “‘Is’ human,” he corrected himself. “Just no longer my best friend.”

“Oh.”

He sighed. “He and I were so close. We never thought anything of the difference between us as kids. Then when he went away to university - Oxenbridge, no less,” he added bitterly, “He just… ditched me. Said that I ‘couldn’t possibly think he’d stay in contact with a dirty animal like me now that he’d escaped Starfall Shithole’…”

“Fuck, Fitz, that’s awful,” you growled, heat rising up your neck, fists clenching, pulse quickening to a gallop in your ears. “Ack, shit like that makes me so angry. It’s so unnecessary and small-minded.”

Fitz fixed you with a strangely sanguine stare and shrugged again. “I figured I’m better off without someone like that in my life. Still hurt at the time though.”

“I bet,” you breathed. Acting on impulse, you reached for his lower left arm as it swung gently beside you as you walked side by side towards the river and the old stone bridge into the town. You touched him lightly above his elbow and let your thumb play back and forth over the fur there, the colour of wet sea sand, and he shuddered violently and then laughed.

“Mothfolk are pretty sensitive,” he murmured, voice catching in his throat.

“So I see,” you said, repeating the gesture just once more and withdrawing your hand.

After a few more paces down the road, he smiled shyly again and said, “Thank you,” and you knew he was referring to his story about his best friend’s betrayal.

“Did you love him?” you dared ask.

He nodded silently. “He was my first.”

“Ah, shit, I’m sorry. That makes it even worse.”

Fitz took a big sigh and stared off into the horizon.

“Hey,” you asked, changing the subject and looking at his wings. “Can I ask you something completely different?”

“With pleasure,” he said wryly. “Fire away.”

“Since I’ve never seen any mothfolk before, let alone met one, I have no idea if this is a rude question or not, so…”

“I’ll forgive you if it is,” he laughed. “You’re making me nervous. Get on with it!”

With a snort, you said, “Fine, ok, how come you get the bus to work in the morning instead of flying? Surely it’d be quicker, and more sanitary than public transport…?”

Fitz gave a beautiful laugh, and let his twin set of wings unfurl slightly, a sign, you’d come to realise, that he was feeling relaxed and trusting again. “You want to watch me fly? Is that what you’re really asking?” he asked, leaning in a little closer as the two of you walked through the emptying market square and out towards the northern quarter of the town.

The lich’s tower stood out above the pine trees in the distance, but your concentration was all on Fitz as your mouth went very dry and you realised that you did want to see him fly. Very much.

You nodded.

“Maybe another time,” he said, eyeing the tall buildings on either side. “I’m not the most graceful in takeoff; less ‘jump-jet’ and more ‘cargo plane’…”

“Aw, I bet you’re cute though,” you smiled, and his antennae bobbed bashfully.

Changing the subject away from himself this time, he raised his upper right arm and said, “The bar’s just up there.”

You caught a glimpse of the beautifully hand-painted sign hanging above the door which showed a kenku with a hood covering their dark head and an open beak, and below the figure, written in a curly, elegant script, was the name of the pub: The Kenku’s Aria. “Strange name…” you commented. “I thought kenku had no voice…”

“Ah, interesting story with this one,” he said, pushing the door open with his arm and letting you step inside first. It was nicely full, though not too rowdy, and you waited for him to catch up with you again to continue his explanation. “Turns out that the current owner’s grandfather fell in love with a kenku, who had no voice of her own, but she’d heard this beautiful orc singing an aria from an opera once, and she choice her voice to be her own, and she would sing the aria night after night to draw in the crowds.”

“Amazing,” you breathed. You glanced around at the bar at the back and saw what looked like one of the lizardfolk working behind it, but instead of being entirely covered in jade green scales, they had tufts of black feathers behind their temples and down their back. It was only then that you realised you were the only human in the bar.

“Not popular with my kind here, I take it?” you hissed at Fitz as he leaned on the unusual, copper-topped bar to wait for the lizard to look your way.

“Hmm?” he asked. “Oh, I… I didn’t even think about that…” he said, turning suddenly mortified, his antennae lying flat against his head.

“Relax, it’s fine,” you reassured him, putting your hand unthinkingly on his upper arm again and eliciting exactly the same full-body shiver of pleasure as the first time.

He laughed and this time he put his other left hand reassuringly atop yours. “Perks of having more than two hands,” he quipped with a cheeky tilt of his head that was definitely his equivalent of a wink, before turning to order a huge glass of honeysuckle nectar from the lizardfolk bartender and pausing to wait for you to order something.

“Oh, a beer please,” you said.

“Which one?” the lizard rasped. “Ale, beer, lager, bottle, cask…”

“Uh…” you said, raking your eyes along the taps. “That one,” you blurted, pointing to one with a picture of a minotaur with a war hammer in his enormous grip.

“Good choice,” the lizard grinned toothily and began to pour.

You and Fitz retreated to a table not far from the bar, and he sank onto a little three-legged stool that allowed him space to drape his wings behind him without squashing them. You talked more about yourself than you asked him about his life, mainly because he seemed interested in what you’d done before coming to the research lab in Starfall Springs, but partly because you thought he’d probably had his fair share of giving uncomfortable answers to you.

Perhaps an hour later, you were leaning on the table between you, your chin resting in the palm of one hand with your elbow propped up on the tabletop, while Fitz carefully held your hand in both of his lower hands. It was a private, quiet gesture of mutual respect and understanding, and it gave you the closeness you’d craved for such a long time. The warmth of genuine affection that surged through you for this gentle being was almost overwhelming, and you swallowed the last of your second pint and looked away, eyes glassy.

The door opened and a breeze ruffled the shaggy fur of Fitz’ collar. Over his shoulder, you caught sight of someone who was so startlingly beautiful that it stole your breath for a moment. Fitz followed your gaze a moment later, and his shoulders dropped, antennae drooping, wings hanging limply down his back. “That’s Alec,” he said in a tiny voice.

“Who’s Alec?”

“He’s in fashion now,” you heard him say as you stared at the dazzlingly blue wings of one of the rare and exquisite lepidoptera, or butterfly folk, “But he was at high school with me.”

You turned your gaze back to Fitz and said, “Bet he was a right arsehole…”

Fitz nearly snorted his nectar back into his glass, and his adorable, curled proboscis sprang back into his mouth like a loosed spring as he fought off laughter. “Hit the nail on the head with that one. Actually, we were both kind of ugly… our caterpillar stages weren’t… all that pretty.”

“Oh?”

“I was bright green,” he said, clearly deathly embarrassed about it, though you couldn’t quite see why. “He was also green, and he was pissed that everyone thought I was like him, or - even worse - that he was mothfolk like me… He made my life hell, even after we had both metamorphosed…”

“Keep your head down then,” you said. “He’s looking this way.”

“Fuck.”

And sure enough, as though Fitz were a beautiful flower, Alec was drawn over to him, his fabulous, electric blue wings fringed with black splayed wide in a display of arrogant self-assertion. Your admiration for his beauty quickly soured as he sneered, “Well, well, if it isn’t everyone’s favourite little mothball. Fancy seeing you here, butt-fluff. I see you never left this little provincial backwater… Well, it was to be expected after all.”

Fitz took a long moment of utter stillness before he turned slowly to look up at the tall, slender lepidoptera who loomed over his seat. “We’re not in high school any more, Alec.”

“No, indeed,” he crooned. “Some of us have actually made a success of ourselves…” he said, reaching out with a black hand that reminded you of an opera glove and plucking at the thick, sensitive fur of Fitz’s collar with a snicker as the mothman winced and flinched.

You waited for Fitz to tell Alec to fuck off, or even bat him around the face with one of his fan-like wings, to inform him curtly that he had a PhD and worked at one of the top research labs in the country, but he didn’t move, didn’t speak.

“Come on,” Alec sneered after an uncomfortably long silence to the strange, wasp-like insectoid creature beside him who might have been a bodyguard or a crony, but it was impossible to tell which. “I’m bored with shagpile here already, and I don’t want to get fleas from his dirty fur… I only came here to speak to Anwen, and now that I have, I want to remove my beautiful feet from this vile, sticky floor as soon as possible.”

Your lip curled and you placed your hands on the table, intending to rise and yell at the obnoxious peacock, but Fitz shook his head subtly and implored you not to move without saying a word. Grinding your teeth, you respected his request and sat back in your seat, watching as Alec swayed away, as gracious and uncaring as a petal on the breeze.

“You ok?” you asked when he’d gone.

Fitz was trembling subtly. “No,” he said in a whisper. “Dammit. You can get away, you can go to university, you can get a job, but something can still tip you right back into being sixteen again and having selotape and chewing gum stuck to your new fur…”

“It’s a powerful thing, Fitz, but you showed him. He lost, and he knew it. C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

He smiled, his mouth parts shifting slightly and his eyes narrowing ever so slightly. “Where?”

“Anywhere. How about a stroll over the bridge on the other side of town? I bet the stars are nice tonight and there’s nothing but vineyards and farmland on that side of town for miles…”

For a moment you thought Fitz was going to refuse you. He still looked frightened and caged, but then he made an obvious effort to pull himself together and he nodded, visibly relaxing again. “I’d like that,” he said.

The two of you rose and threaded your way between the tables and out into the cool, summer night. The moon painted silver lines along the rooftops and delighted in her own reflection on the windows of the houses whose rooms were already dark, and as you walked towards the other side of town at a leisurely pace, Fitz slid one hand into yours and gripped it with surprising strength.

“Thank you,” he said again.

In answer, you squeezed his fingers back and said nothing.

___

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[tisfan]

Only a Matter of Time

Name of Piece: Only a Matter of Time Square Filled: T4 - Aliens made them Do It Also on A03 Rating Explicit Warnings: Anal sex, Stephen’s magical lube, angst, captivity, aliens made them do it, sex pollen, discussion of weird mating rituals, crack taken seriously Summary: Tony Stark/Stephen Strange

Captured by aliens, mistaken for a mating pair, Tony and Stephen find themselves having the universe’s most awkward honeymoon.

Created For : @tonystarkbingo 

Tony Stark woke up to at least a half dozen or more different species of alien staring at him. He shrieked, scrambled backward, and had to stop to stare. The brain takes a lot of shortcuts so that we aren’t constantly looking at trees and trying to identify them, so it puts them all in a box marked Tree and lets us sort it out later if we care to.

Tony had never seen these things before, and they were all so vastly different from one another that his brain couldn’t stop picking out the little details.

That one had huge eyes -- or what he thought might have been eyes, he couldn’t really tell, since they didn’t have irises or pupils the way human eyes did, and who knew, maybe they were radar dishes -- in the top of its face. That one had a million little wormy squirmy things on its chin that wriggled in the air around it. He wasn’t even sure that thing -- looked like a crude salt carving of a whale, by someone who didn’t know what a whale looked like, and was tiny, besides -- was alive until it moved away.

“Whaaaaaaaa?” Tony babbled, pushing away until his back fetched up against something solid, which made him scream again and roll the other way. He’d hit something -- a tree, maybe? If Trees were pink, and scaly.

“Good morning,” someone said. “So good of you to join me.”

Tony’s head whipped around so fast he thought he might have given himself whiplash.

Dr. Stephen Strange was floating, a few feet above mauve (moss? Grass? Mushrooms? Jesus Horatio Christ what even the fuck?) ground, wrists resting on his knees, legs crossed.

“Gimme an elevator pitch of what the fuck, would you, Strange?” Tony managed to even sound like he wasn’t panicking -- he had a lot of practice -- but it was probably too late for that.

“So far as I’ve been able to gather?”

God, there was something unfair about the fact that Strange had already had time to compose himself, figure some shit out, and be composedly meditating midair (had Tony mentioned that he hated that?) before Tony woke up. One of these days, he’d like someone else’s dignity to be laying in pieces on the floor.

“Speculations allowed, doctor.”

“Welcome to the Yu!anz Zoo,” Strange said. Tony wasn’t sure how he said that word, which sounded a little like the sorcerer spat up a tiny bomb in the middle.  “We’re the new special exhibit. They’ve never had humans before.”

“And you haven’t done your bibbity-bobbity-boo schtick why, exactly?”

“Can’t,” Strange said. “I can sling from one side of the room to the other, but it bounces anything further away. I’m attempting to study the shielding they’ve got on the habitat, but it’s all mirrors. All I can see… is us.”

Tony gave him a flat, unimpressed look. “I thought you were supposed to be the greatest sorcerer in the universe.”

“In the known universe, which is to say, the part that’s known to us,” Stephen said. “Also, I’m still new at the job.” He made a face, a little tip of the eyebrow and mouth that Tony should not have found cute, and did anyway.

“Always made jokes about being a zoo exhibit,” Tony said, looking out at the gawkers. There were entirely new sorts of aliens there, now, staring and pointing and rapping on the glass. “Remind me to not do that again.”

(more under the cut)

There was no way out.

The glass, Tony discovered, wasn’t glass at all. It was some sort of force repelling shield. If he threw a thing at it, it bounced it back with equal force. In fact, one of the few times he even saw their captors, he’d nearly killed them both by throwing something with enough force that the shield bounced it to the back of the enclosure, which in turn, bounced it back. The ricochet effect forced Strange to tackle Tony to the ground and cover them both with the Cloak of Levitation while the damn rock ping ponged around like a deranged kangaroo.

“Well, this is comfy,” Tony said, mostly to cover his embarrassment at fucking up. Hard. And speaking of hard…

“Stop wriggling,” Strange snarled, teeth clenched.

“Seriously, Stephen?” Tony wriggled anyway, mostly because he could, and there wasn’t anything else to do while they were wrapped up tight in Strange’s semi-sentient shoulder-wrap.

“Stark--”

“You are…”

“Shut up and stop moving.”

“You know, I don’t think I will,” Tony remarked, casually, letting his hips rock up into that comforting warmth. “But, I mean, I suppose you could shut me up if that--”

“I hate you,” Stephen said, almost utterly without emotion, which would have been more convincing, probably, except that most decidedly wasn’t Stephen’s wand poking him in the thigh, and then that was absolutely Stephen’s tongue in his mouth.

Who only knew how far that might have gone except their captors entered the habitat and yanked the projectile to a stop. One of them poked at the cocoon that was protecting Tony and Stephen, and the Cloak leapt away, smacking at alien… oh, god, had they just been poked with an alien proboscis? Ew, gross.

Their captors -- or, at least, the aliens that kept the habitat, were like giant, humanoid mosquito/moths, bulby eyes, long curled up nose that whipped out to poke and prod at them. They had thick, feathery antennae and wings that tucked close to their backs, like cloaks. Tony and Stephen found themselves backed into a corner by something impossibly strong and wrong to look at. Literally, staring at the alien hurt Tony’s brain in places it did not want to be hurt.

Every time Tony tried to dodge around the thing, or push it away, it returned him to his corner like a misbehaving child.

Finally, after the other one had cleared out all the rocks, their captor fluttered its wings at them, dusting them both with gray powder.

Tony blinked a few times and slumped to the ground. “F’ink, take… nap, now.”

“Yeah,” Stephen said.

Tony woke up, curled in Stephen’s arms, the cloak tucked around them like a blanket.

“Okay, sunshine, this is just getting weird,” Tony said, but he didn’t bother to move. Stephen was warm and for a guy who sometimes looked like a collection of sticks wrapped in wizard gear, he was soft and comfortable. He ran one hand over his hair, scrubbing at his scalp, and then-- “What is that?”

Stephen sighed and grabbed Tony’s wrist, holding it tightly. “It’s a bio monitor,” he said. “Do not try to pull it out, or scratch at it. You’ll just hurt yourself.”

“Do you have one, too?” Tony didn’t know how Stephen could possibly know that, but the feeling that there was something -- another thing -- inside him that he didn’t ask for filled him made him want to puke, want to dig it out, even if it hurt, even if it killed him, even if…

“Shhh, shh, I know Tony, I know, I’m here, it’s okay. They’ll take it out again, I promise,” Stephen was cradling him, holding him in a warm, comforting grip.

“Do you have one, Stephen?” Tony demanded.

“I don’t. I’m sorry,” Stephen said. The wizard flinched, and Tony realized he was squeezing Stephen’s hands, desperately tight, hurting scars and injuries that would never quite heal.

“Why?”

“Um. They think you’re the female,” Stephen said, slowly.

“What? How do you even know that?” It took him a while to let go of Stephen’s hands anyway, and to not instantly reach for the foreign thing he felt in the back of his skull.

“I’ve been studying them,” Stephen told him. “Their language is really confusing, but I think I have it down, now, at least enough to get the basics. And they think you’re the egg-carrying member of our species.”

“WHY?”

“Well, first of all, you’re a lot smaller than I am,” Stephen said, tipping his head to one side. “Tony--” Stephen pressed a finger to Tony’s lips. “I’m six foot two and a half inches. You’re five eight on your good days. Don’t argue with me, height is fact. They don’t see differences in our facial features.”

“Awesome facial hair bros, yeah,” Tony said.

“But they’re bugs. Big ones, smart ones, but, you know. Insectoid. We don’t… they don’t recognize our primary or secondary sexual characteristics. And I have wings, and you don’t.”

“They think your walking security blanket means you’re a guy? Capes are so gay, Stephen.”

“Well, so am I, so it’s okay,” Stephen said.

Tony tipped his eyebrows. Well, he guessed he’d asked for that. “So, what then? They think I’m female and delicate and I need monitoring?”

“They’re waiting for you to get pregnant.”

“THE FUCK?”

“I mean, I suppose we could tell them you’re well past child-bearing age--”

“Excuse me, Mr. Sorcerer Supremely grey?” Tony spluttered. Was Stephen calling him old?

“Just because some of us don’t like sitting in a salon chair,” Stephen pointed out. He had the actual nerve to flick his fingers through that grey streak on one side of his temple. It should not have been attractive. “Face it, I’m taller, and younger, and I have a cool cloak.”

“You only wish you were as cool as I am,” Tony said. He took a deep, shuddering breath. “Thank you. I’m calm. Tell me what the fuck is going here, Stephen, I am begging you.”

If he hadn’t been quite so close, he might not have noticed the way Stephen’s lips parted and his eyes darkened.

“The really important thing is… it won’t take them too long to realize their mistake. And then they’ll trade us out for a proper, reproducing couple,” Stephen said. “Which kinda sucks, but then, we keep dolphins in fish tanks and make them do tricks, so I can’t really criticize too much. And trying to war with them would be a mistake.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I am the sorcerer supreme, even if I am new at the job. And my abilities are fully functional, inside the habitat. So, I’ve been living these next four or five days, learning something new every time. I can… sort of understand their language. It’s complicated, and the writing is horrific. The little antenna on their heads makes it pretty much impossible for us to communicate with them. I don’t even really think they think we’re sentient, at all. Kinda like… we are to bees, they are to us.”

“Are you telling me bees are sentient?”

“Hive mind is a pretty incredible thing, Tony,” Stephen said. “I mean, on an individual level, no, bees aren’t sentient. But a hive of bees… well, they’re pretty damn smart, actually.”

“So, what, we wait until they figure out that we’re both dudes, and, they let us go?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Stephen said.

“How long is that going to take?”

“Couple months,” Stephen said, nodding his entire body back and forth.

“A couple of--”

“Shh. Stop it.”

Tony glared.

“Time stone, Tony,” Stephen told him. “When we get out of here, I’ll just roll us back to a few minutes after we left. No one will even know we were gone. Think of it as… extended leave of absence.”

“I am going to die of boredom in a couple of weeks, Stephen.”

“No, you won’t,” Stephen said, and then he was blushing, and wasn’t that interesting.

“Okay, so what aren’t you telling me?”

“It would take a while to cover all of those things,” Stephen said. “And… really, this day is going really well. If I tell you right now and you freak out, I’m just going to have to start this day over and I’ve already done this one like five hundred and six times already.”

“You do that a lot,” Tony said.

“Yeah. There’s a reason why I’m not sane,” Stephen said, and his chin wobbled a little. “Mostly, I store all the alternative timelines in a memory box.”

“You’re getting very Harry Potter right now.”

“Magic is imagination given form,” Stephen said. “I stole that from Harry Potter because it fucking works. Otherwise, I’d remember dying over seventeen million times, when bargaining for the fate of our dimension, 14 million times dying because of Thanos. No one, no mind, could survive that. I forget. Because I have to. So, if I tell you, you have to not freak out, okay? I need to keep these memories until we get out of here, and you need to help me. Okay?”

Tony couldn’t forget a thing if he tried. Every detail of Afghanistan, every detail was etched in his brain, he relived those moments in his nightmares. He couldn’t imagine what dying hundreds of times must feel like, what sort of burden that had to be. “Stephen…” He nodded. “You can count on me.”

“I know,” Stephen said, and he smiled, sweet as honey. He cupped the side of Tony’s face with one battered, scarred and crooked hand. “I know I can.”

“What is this?” Tony reached into the box that had appeared -- literally, appeared. Their keepers had been feeding them like this for at least a week now, so Tony wasn’t as startled as he was the first time, but this box didn’t contain the food pellets. (By the way, so leaving a bad yelp review. The food there was boring and repetitive, the same three or four round discs about the size of a hamburger patty, although they tasted more like generic, doritos that someone forgot to put the flavor dust on.)

Instead, there were a few… things.

Things that Tony couldn’t identify by looking at.

One of them sort of looked like a ball of string, except the string kept changing color, and he couldn’t quite track where the piece went.

“Enrichment activities,” Stephen said. He was doing the floating thing again. “They think you’re pining.”

“For the Fjords?” Tony wondered. He poked the string and the end of it jerked away from him like he’d insulted it, and dove into the writhing mass. It was like… a puzzle? Tony grabbed for the end, trying to figure out what it did.

The end bit had disappeared, and Tony started hunting for it. Each time he spotted the end and attempted to secure it, he felt a little jolt of satisfaction. Several hours passed before he realized that he had, actually, been entertained with the puzzle. By the time he finally found both ends, he was actually feeling really good. Soft and--

“Stephen, is this thing making me high?”

Stephen glanced up. “It’s stimulating the part of your brain that makes endorphins, so, yes,” Stephen said. “Brace yourself, that’s not all we’re going to be getting tonight.”

Tony barely had time to ask what that meant before he found out. The habitat lights dimmed, cheesy seventies porn music started playing, and the habitat was flooded with the scent of roses, chocolate and… oh, god, steak.

“What are they doing?”

“Trying to get you in the mood to mate,” Stephen confessed. And he was blushing, which was weird because--

Tony’s eyebrows went up. “Trying to get me in the mood,” Tony wondered. “Not us.”

“What little they know about humans comes from some of our television signals,” Stephen pointed out. “In almost all of our media, it’s portrayed that males are always ready, and the females need to be wooed.”

“They should try going to the annual Maria Stark Foundation ball, it’s like a feeding frenzy. I barely escape with my balls intact. I’m still annoyed that they can’t tell the difference between men and women. Some super advanced aliens they’re turning out to be.”

“Give them some credit,” Stephen said. “As far as they know, we could be like snails, and make little love darts to stab each other with in an exchange of sperm.”

“No stabbing,” Tony said. “I draw the line at romantic stabbing.”

“Or… some species of male octopus literally launch their penis at a potential mate,” Stephen said. “The female octopus being notoriously short tempered and apt to eat their mates.”

“There are times when I’ve considered that as an alternative to a messy breakup,” Tony said. “Bees. Bees are a good example of fucked up mating. The male bee explodes, to seal off the queen’s reproductive channels, otherwise, other males could dig out the sperm and mate instead. Talk about your dedicated daddy.”

“Snakes. Female snakes have it particularly bad,” Stephen said. “There’s one species whose mating scent is so strong, it can attract males from over a hundred miles away, and they all pretty much jump her in tandem, a little orgy-ball of fuckery. Female snakes can be, literally, fucked to death.”

“That… sounds more fun than it probably is.”

“Especially for her,” Stephen remarked. “But humans aren’t much better. Human mating habits are weird,” Stephen said. “Almost as weird as the ridiculous premises around it for entertainment. It’s a waste of time.”

“So, you’re a hey, becky, lemme smash kinda guy?”

“Romance may not be dead, but it is frequently unnecessary,” Stephen said. “Most people decide within a few minutes of meeting someone if they’d ever want to have intercourse. The rest of it is needless time wasting. Don’t you?”

“My playboy reputation was always exaggerated, and currently somewhat out of date,” Tony huffed, feeling insulted.

“I don’t mean you always get the sex,” Stephen said. “I mean, you look at someone across the room and think, even for a second, yeah, that one’s nice, I’d do that. Sex is a game of numbers. We’ve developed all this ritual around it, but our base, human biology is satisfied with passing along our genes to the most number of people, as quickly as possible. We like to pretend we’re thinking about it, or choosing to have multiple partners to increase our social standing, but it’s mostly just justification for the chemical stew in our blood stream, the monkey brain that says procreate and survive. It’s irrational, and trying to pretend we’re somehow above that… well, that’s just wishful thinking. Humans, individually and collectively, are a hot mess.”

Damn, that was both sexy and challenging. The sexy past was the way Stephen discussed a one night stand as basic biology, showing off a big, sexy brain. The logical part that always forgot that logic was just a mess of hormones and chemistry. For a doctor, a neurosurgeon, Tony would have expected Stephen to come down on the side of cold logic.

The challenge… “So, Mr. Wizard,” Tony said, as casual as he could manage. “What did you think when you first saw me?”

Stephen laughed, a soft chuckle. “We were a bit preoccupied at the time.”

“That’s dodging the question,” Tony said.

“Seems unfair for you to ask it,” Stephen replied. “What did you think?”

“Buddy, there’s like four people I’ve ever met that I wasn’t related to, that were on my Do Not Fuck, Ever list. Everyone else, I’m open to negotiations,” Tony said, stretching out, full length. “And I’ll tell ya, if they give me that steak that they’re pumping fumes for, I might be willing to fuck you.”

“I suspect they’d be more pleased with the activity if I were to…”

“Bang me like a cheap screen door?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“You get the steak… and some coffee would be great, and you can have the goods.”

“Tony, did that little puzzle go straight to your--”

“Does it matter, doc? You already said they’re not going to let us go until we prove I’m infertile to your wizardly dick. I’m hungry, I’m bored, and I happen to be really fucking horny right now. So, if we gotta do it anyway, let’s just do it.”

“And I thought that I believed romance was dead and unnecessary,” Stephen commented, idly.

“Aw, baby, do you want me to romance you?” Tony was still smirking. His pants were a little uncomfortably tight, and Stephen was looking better to him with every minute. He was pretty familiar with pharmaceuticals, and he knew, mind you, that he’d been hit up with some sort of high end aphrodisiac, but the part of his brain that rarely shut up was spinning it around. It wasn’t like having sex with Stephen would be a hardship. The man was attractive and had been weirdly kind and comforting the whole time they’d been imprisoned, keeping Tony sane and safe.

There was something romantic about it.

Tony eyed the man again, noting the blush and the way Stephen avoided his eyes. “You do… you want me to romance you,” Tony said, the realization coming over him like a tidal wave. “This… you…” Tony made a little circle in the air with one hand. “You care. This matters to you.”

“Of course I care,” Stephen said. “You’ve been living in here with me for… what, two week, in this time line? I’ve… been reliving each day multiple times. In my head, Tony, we’ve known each other for years. Inside two weeks, this has been the longest relationship of my life. Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder, Tony. Closeness does. I know you better than anyone. Probably better than you know yourself.”

Tony swallowed. Usually people got fed up with him after a few days, and all the money and fame hadn’t been worth it for many. He drove Pepper crazy on a regular basis until she’d finally decided that, much as they loved each other, it wasn’t going to work. She couldn’t be his mother and his girlfriend and his ceo and his personal assistant and his babysitter all at the same time, and he knew he was unfair to ask it of her. How-- “How long?”

“What?”

“How long have we been together? How long have you known?”

Stephen reached out then and touched his cheek. “I’ve loved you since Titan. I didn’t throw all the memories away. I couldn’t.”

Tony turned his face and kissed Stephen’s mangled palm. “Are you going to erase today?”

Stephen was even closer, close enough for Tony to notice that his eyes were actually both blue and green at the same time, close enough to feel the heat seeping off his body. “Do you want me to?”

“No.”

Their lips met in a fevered kiss. Stephen’s mouth was demanding, fierce, a counterpoint to the way his hands moved, hesitant, as if he couldn’t believe he had the right to touch.

Stephen’s hands dragged heated trails down Tony’s skin. He struggled with the fastenings and Tony had to suck air, while he helped. The Cloak of Levitation hovered over them, and Tony was almost imagining that it disapproved, but then it flapped off, giving them some degree of privacy.

Tony laid back on the soft floor of their habitat as Stephen touched and explored, kissed and tasted. His teeth grazed over Tony’s nipple, sending a flush of heat down his spine. Another kiss, this one deeper, longer, slower, a mating of lips and tongues that was profoundly intimate. Sensual. Tony considered himself an expert on kissing; Stephen’s technique might have been somewhat clumsy, but there was an earnestness to it, a sweetness, that had been lacking in many of Tony’s other kisses.

There was no doubting Stephen’s desire, not just for bodies, but that he’d had this secret for so long, and he’d never said anything, he’d never made a big deal out of it. There was something innocent about it, enough that Tony wondered if he was doing Stephen any favors.

“How many times have we done this?”

Stephen rutted against him, pulling him in for another kiss. “Not enough,” he said, mouth brushing over Tony’s with exquisite sensation. “Never enough.”

Tony could believe it had been a lot; Stephen seemed to know without being told where Tony’s most sensitive spots were. That was distinctly unfair, because who would have guessed that Tony would go weak at having the small of his back caressed with light strokes, or a warm mouth licking at the inside of his elbow could get him to moan wantonly.

Also, he didn’t know any of Stephen’s, and had to content himself with being a keen observer and eager enough to explore. Still, Stephen decidedly had the upper hand, and that didn’t even include all the magic stuff, like being able to conjure lube with a quick muttered word, or, at one point, adding extra arms and mouths. Tony had participated in any number of multiple-partner sex adventures previously, but there was something different about having one person touching and kissing him so many times.

Stephen could capture Tony’s mouth, while holding his legs spread wide. The sensation of a hot, wet throat to fuck was vivid and real and intense, but when Tony managed to pry his eyes open to look, there was only a blueish, ghostly impression. He was held down and carressed by multiple hands, while Steve’s own, fragile and thick-fingered and trembling, touched Tony’s face, brushed through his hair.

“And I thought I had good tricks,” Tony said, and then, because everything was a contest, as far as Tony was concerned, and he had to score some points, he took Stephen’s hand, the real, flesh one, and drew his index and middle fingers into his mouth, sucking them lightly.

All of Stephen’s boojums disappeared at once, and they settled back onto the ground with a bump -- when had Stephen started levitating them, Tony would have thought he would have noticed that?

“What? Off limits?” Tony took his mouth off Stephen’s hand, but kept it cradled between his own. “Does it hurt?”

“No,” Stephen said. “No, it doesn’t, well, yes, it hurts, but my hands always hurt, it’s not anything particular that you’re doing. I’m just--”

“Not used to people touching anymore, I get it,” Tony said. He ran his thumbs across Stephen’s palm, stretching a little at the scars there. “You are so beautiful.”

Stephen did start tugging at his hands, then, the fingers curling up defensively. “I used to be,” he said. “A surgeon’s hands.”

“You’re not ugly because of your scars, Stephen,” Tony told him. “Scars are… the roadmap of our lives. They tell people what we’ve suffered. The worst ones are the ones we can’t see, that we carry here--” he tapped his own chest, covered and matted with ropy scars from where the arc-reactor had been. “But you still have beautiful hands, Stephen.”

Stephen sucked in a breath. “I have known you for thirty million lifetimes, and you still surprise me, Tony, with the depths of your compassion.”

“It should,” Tony told him with a wink. “Given that I’m not supposed to have any, at all.” It was rare that he would take any such conversations about his good points seriously; Howard had spent a lifetime pointing out all of Tony’s mistakes to the point where Tony owned everything, presented it all up front in his showman manner. If he presented his heart, already bleeding, it was rare the person who would continue to stab. Not unheard of, but rare. There were always people who needed to score points by making someone else feel small. There was something unsatisfying to a critic to be answered with “yes, I know” when they’d taken such efforts to craft an insult. It was petty, but Tony would admit to being petty. Tony knew how to deal with insults; he had a long list of character flaws.

What he didn’t know how to deal with was sincerity and compliments. Compliments themselves were easy; everyone who ever wanted something from him would shower him with whatever they thought he wanted to hear.

But the combination of knowing that there was nothing Stephen wanted from him, and that he was perfectly in earnest. Well, that was harder to hear.

The two of them stared at each other, a long moment, gauging the other’s emotional state, the depth of sincerity, and then, “I think if I don’t kiss you right now, I might die from it.”

“Drama queen,” Tony accused, fondly.

“Drama wizard,” Stephen corrected, and then they were kissing again, a desperate, greedy, clinging sort of kiss to say everything with bodies and lips and tongues that they didn’t know how to say with actual words.

Stephen stroked Tony’s cock a few times, this time with his own hand, not playing with magic tricks and distractions, but just loving him.

Tony arched into it, moaning. “Please,” he said, breathless, running his own hands down every bit of pale skin he could reach until he ended with his hands firmly on Stephen’s ass, pulling them together, feeling the slick rut as their cocks aligned and glided together and it was the best tease, the best feeling.

He hooked his legs around Stephen’s thighs and the friction for even better, the heat between them growing. And the whole while, Stephen kept kissing him, kept returning to his mouth as if to hone his skill, to taste and know and breathe in every bit of Tony that he could get.

He didn’t stop kissing even when he was pushing at the opening to Tony’s body, getting him ready -- Tony could forgive him for the magic lube, because that shit was amazing -- even if it did get a bit sloppy. Tony loved it. Wet, heated, open-mouthed kissing, tongues that slid together and then apart. Little nips along his lip. A smear of dampness across his cheek and chin, and all the while, Stephen was breathing harder and making these delicious little sounds.

“Are you sure?” Stephen asked, still working Tony open with one hand.

“Stephen,” Tony said, touching his face, his cheek, that adorable little beard, running a thumb over Stephen’s lip. “I want you with every fiber of my being, you cannot get more enthusiastic consent than this. Give it to me.”

Stephen pressed against the ring of muscle and then, slowly, slid in. Tony shifted, threw his head back, struggled for a moment to relax. Stephen’s cock was lovely, long and slender and somehow as graceful as the man himself. He heard a sharp gasp of pleasure and realized it was his own, before Stephen started to move in him, on him, over him. Stephen’s mouth opened, as if to catch the gasp, and those obscenely beautiful lips fluttered over Tony’s in a soft, ghosting kiss.

Something about that tenderness got Tony even hotter. He grabbed a handful of Stephen’s ass and impaled himself on that gorgeous cock. Everything about the wizard was so much more than Tony had expected, he had to breath, deep and steady, a few times, to regain some equilibrium.

The push and pull of lovemaking was organic, natural, the way his body always urged him to move and grip, to roll his hips and to show his throat. The way his hands would grasp the blankets to hold himself down. All the same, all the way it always was.

And yet, at the same time, so new and fresh that Tony’s very skin ached, that he felt like a snake, peeling its scales and showing something new and shiny underneath.

Stephen alternated, deep, heavy thrusts and slow slides and quick, shallow movements, until they found themselves in the best possible rhythm, in which their heart beats and breaths aligned, until they were lost in each other’s gazes, until the world vanished and everything was feeling and sensation and love.

Stephen seemed to be everywhere around him, touching his hair, kissing his throat, gripping his ass to bring him closer.

Their bodies were heated, slick, and Tony could no longer tell where he ended and Stephen began. He stretched, reaching for his pleasure, wanting it, wanting to feel himself clench down on Stephen’s glorious dick, and then--

“Oh!” he rocked, taking as much of Stephen as he could and…

“Tony!”

When it was over, Tony found himself chasing his breath, Stephen a warm, heated weight on top of him, not quite crushing him into the ground, but close. It should have been suffocating, but it wasn’t. He kept his leg hooked around Stephen’s back, not wanting to let go, wanting to stay there, locked together. They lay there for a long while until their pulses slowed and the world came back into focus around them.

Tony had never really had a vacation before. Not a nice, long one. Even when he’d tried vacationing before, he always found himself working, or fretting because he wasn’t working. Stephen’s reassurances that they wouldn’t lose any real time, in their real lives, made the whole thing feel just a little surreal.

“You sure you should use the time stone for something this frivolous?”

“Don’t make the same mistake Thanos did, Tony, of believing the time stones are only tools. They have their own agenda, their own purpose. There is a price to pay, the further off its path you take it. For now, the Time Stone and I walk the same road, and it helps me, as it can. I will know, when it is right to give it up.”

“You’re saying the time stone wants you to enjoy your honeymoon?”

They didn’t discuss much else that day, since Stephen decided to take Tony at his word, and they were soon too breathless and sweaty for deep conversation.

But there were days of conversation, while Tony learned the theory of sorcerery, and Stephen learned the basics of particle physics. They told each other stories of their not-entirely-dissimilar childhoods. Stephen reminisce about his medical residency, and Tony laughed through old tales from MIT and the trouble he and Rhodey used to get into.

Their keepers provided them with food -- and eventually, better food, which was nice, although, really, what sort of universe didn’t have coffee -- and enrichment activities, and all the comforts they really could want.

“I’m going to get spoiled and fat,” Tony was saying one night, laying with his head in Stephen’s lap while they explored the nearby stars with one of the enrichment devices. Looking at other planets and moons from the relative safety of the zoo was somehow pleasing.

It did still bother Tony that he wasn’t free, that he couldn’t just make a choice and leave, but it was comfortable captivity, and Tony needed it. He needed this little oasis of time and peace.

“You deserve to be spoiled,” Stephen told him.

He woke early to the sounds of muffled sobs.

“What? What, Stephen, what’s wrong?” Tony was there, his hands on his lover.

“We’re leaving today, and I knew it would be soon, but--” The cloak was nudging at Stephen’s face and Stephen absently brushed it away. “Stop that.”

“It’s all right, though?” Tony asked, not really sure what he was asking. “We’re going to go home and everything--” He swallowed around a lump in his throat, the size of a tennis ball. “--you’re not going to let me remember. Is that the plan, Stephen, because I… I did not agree to this plan!”

“You have your life, Tony, back on earth, this was-- I’ll treasure this, but--”

“Don’t you fucking let go of me, you goddamn coward,” Tony spat. “What do you think this has been for me? A lark? Goddamnit, Strange, I love you. Don’t take that from me. Don’t steal this. Even if-- if you’re done with me, I don’t want to forget it.”

Stephen reached out one battered hand and caught the tears spilling from Tony’s eyelashes.

“Tony?”

“Did… I forget to tell you I loved you?”

“You did.”

“Well, don’t worry,” Tony said. “I will.”

“Tell me now.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too. I’ll… okay, change of plans. We’re still leaving. But--”

“You keep me with you, right? I don’t want to forget this.”

“Okay. Okay, Tony. I’m sorry.”

“Damn well better be. I’m the best thing that ever happened to you, you idiot.”

“Tell me again why I love you?” Stephen was laughing, his blue-green eyes bright.

“Because I’m awesome, and you have good taste,” Tony said. “And you know me better than I know myself, and yet, you still fail to recognize that I might love you back. Seriously, Stephen, why give me such relationship gold? I’m going to be mining that for years.”

Stephen smiled. “Yeah, yeah, you are.” 

[myluciddreamer]

Dreams of Melding Machines

I don’t like bars. Especially when I’m there by myself. “It’s single’s night!” She said. “Find yourself a man already!” She said. She was supposed to be here too but she bailed. Now it’s just me sitting in this ridiculous outfit as someone is painting my face with bright red for some weird moth themed dating game. I adjust the red construction paper crown that was placed on my head so it would hopefully look less stupid. A cape is wrapped over my shoulders and I’m spun to look into a mirror. I don’t know what the fuck I was made to be but it certainly wasn’t a moth. I was dressed in reds, whites, and mostly black. I looked... strangely good, all things considered, but I didn’t see anyone who matched. The girl dressing me up smiled, seeing my confusion, “Oh don’t you worry. THEY are Moths. But YOU are a butterfly! You just have to find another butterfly, ok? Don’t settle for the Moths, as tempting as they might be”.

I took out across the sea of people in the bar. Not everyone is dressed up, only the singles... and not a single butterfly in sight. I’m pushed out into the group and after a short while music begins to play... and everyone not in costumes clear out. I wanted to leave too but I’m here and dressed weird for this. I guess I’ll see it through.

The game began and I watched as several men glided their way towards women with similar looking outfits. They seemed to be hitting it off right away. Maybe there was something to this game after all? A few men approached me but they were moths... I shouldn’t settle. I was warned not to. The hours passed and I’m beginning to get frustrated. There isn’t a single other butterfly in this entire game. I’m tempted to just settle for the next moth that approaches me just so I’d feel less alone. Looking around the room i spot a peculiar looking individual. He was given a rather rushed and rough looking paint job that looked like it had gotten smeared off here and there from moving through the others a lot. He looked just... done with this game. And so was I. I headed over and took a seat next to him, ordering whatever it was he had. He gives me a cautious side glance. I decide to calm his nerves, “You look like you’re over all this. Ugh. Me too”. The bartender hands me my drink... what is this? I want to say Whiskey but I can’t put my finger on it. I drink it anyway and suddenly he looks impressed.

“You... drank it” he stared at me with disbelief.

“Well yeah”, I could feel it burn on the way down, “I’m paying for it. I better drink it”.

He gives me a look up and down. “What are you supposed to be?”

“I was told I’m a butterfly for this dating game but all I see are moths out there”. At this point I realize he... isn’t dressed up for the game, “ah... everyone who wasn’t playing was supposed to leave”.

“So I was told”. He smiled and finished his drink, “I know the rules. But I also like to watch. This is the first time someone has actually approached ME at one of these”.

Before I could retaliate I see a man in one of the moth outfits approaching. I couldn’t tell if it was his size, his mannerisms, or the huge skull on his cloaked wings, but he made me uneasy. I look back at the man at the bar, “... I’m sorry. I have to go.” I rush into the crowd of people hoping to loose the skull moth. Why did I have to look so different? I stand out like a sore thumb.

I find myself cornered as a hand reaches out and grabs my wrist. I spin around and see him, with the skull on his wings. He doesn’t look as menacing as I thought but my mind still screamed danger. He smiled and pulled me close to dance...just as an announcement was made. This part of the game has come to an end. Everyone should prepare for part two. A package had been left in everyone’s lockers. It will have what is needed. I excuse myself to go to my locker when he squeezes my wrist tight... and tighter... it begins to hurt. I glare back at him and he is smirking, “I’ll see you in round two”, and he gives a wink before kissing the back of my hand and leaving. I’m determined that he will not find me.

My locker contains a small dull green flag with a set of instructions on a piece of paper. This is a game like capture the flag. Hide the flag on yourself. If someone else finds your flag you are theirs for the round. Oh, easy. I shove the flag into my bra, nice and out of sight, before entering the next room.

The room is... not a room. I’m suddenly outside where the sky is dark and the land is barren. There are huge hills of dirt, dead trees poking out of the ground for miles around... and of course the door is locked behind me. I see another woman not too far off from me. She was suddenly bombarded by three men who immediately began groping her for a flag. They found her flag instantly, hidden in her bra just as mine was. Shit. What was I going to do now? I sprint off in another direction, hunting for a place to hide. A few men see this and take off after me. I am not fast but I somehow managed to lose them. I found strange marble-like structure with a now dead tree snaking it’s way through it. I slid into one of the rooms silently. To my disappointment I feel a pair of arms slide around my waist from behind.

“To think you’d find me first this time. It’s meant to be after all”. I turn around to see the same man from before, the skull on his cloak visible even in the darkness of the room. He grips my hips tightly as his words echo in the room, “ I will find your flag. And you’ll be mine for the round”. I scramble to escape but he has a strong grip on me, one hand holding me tight as the other begins to search me. Luckily, he can’t see me moving and hiding the flag out of sight in the dark room. He grows annoyed, dragging me out of the room into the light where he could search me properly.

Sirens go off. Something went wrong with the game. It would seem a few of the contestants got into a place they shouldn’t have and accidentally unleash something deadly into the arena. From the screams of the others running past it sounded like there were hundreds and hundreds of wasps attacking people.

I break free and run. Like hell am I going to die from WASPS of all things. I see a few people sneaking into what looks like an ancient structure and I follow. Crawling through the small space I meet up with a familiar face. The guy from the bar! He smiles at the sight of me, “Rough day, huh?” Then helps me climb through the rubble of the ancient building. As I climb I can see a familiar skull cloak some distance below me so I quicken my pace. The wasps don’t seem to have noticed anyone who escaped into the ancient structures, much to our relief.

Resting near the top of the ancient rubble I could see out across the land. It was huge. Looks like this was the end of the games, intentional or not. The girl who dressed me up, who was helping to run the entire event, gave a defeated sigh, pulling out her mic and announcing the end of he game. I flop down against a portion of dead tree sticking out of the rubble in exhaustion.

“Hmm... what’s this?” My friend from the bar asks. He reaches forth and pulls a dull green flag from my shirt. A few people gasp, surprised that someone somehow managed to keep their flag hidden through the game. A shout of rage came echoing up from below. Probably the man with the skull cloak.

The girl who dressed me smiled the biggest smile is seen her give all night, “didn’t I tell you not to settle for the moths?!” She started to explain something about destiny and the rise of machines but I wasn’t paying attention. The man from the bar had the biggest grin on his face as his featured began to change. What I thought was white paint began to spread over his form revealing his true self: a sentient android. He was a bit damaged but as the girl’s muffled explanations continued I watched as the injuries grew and healed over with strange metallic parts and glowing blue lights. What little I could gather from the girl was that the whole singles night thing was really to find a perfect partner for this android.

I was confused. Why would an android need a partner? And why a human partner? It’s not like androids can mate... can they? Why me? What had I done to get it’s attention? As my mind filled with questions and doubts the android pulled me in for a kiss. I could feel myself changing in his arms, physically. My skin began to turn a metallic white like his. My body twitched and convulsed as it’s parts changed from organic to synthetic. He pulled away, watching the last parts of me transform into an android like him. My eyes glowed with new blue lights as his did. My skin now reflected things in its shiney metallic white surface. And... there was no more pain

[matchstickforyourmuse]

A fantasy prompt for 'green' plz?

Certainly! What a delightful request!(Only now, going back up to add this little response, do I realize that you asked for ‘a prompt’, and not a million. Oops.)I hope you like these. They’re a bit wordy- I got carried away. But they’re prompts nonetheless! If you would like some shorter, more to-the-point prompts without as much context-content, or whatever you want to call the lengthy bits of writing, pray tell! Or, if you just want more/less of one kind of prompt (more dialogue, less setting, etc.), or if you just want more prompts in general, I’d be happy to write you up a dozen more.

________

- - -‘Blood of Tree’, they called it. A swirling mass in a jar that bowed and dipped and swayed to some silent waltz, luminescent with some brilliant, strange force. It gushed about in oozy rivulets one moment, and then kept aloft the next in a foggy murmur of a cloud, and then it would sit on the bottom of the glass in shattered fractals, jagged and wickedly sharp. I always thought the name was silly. It deserved its own name. It didn’t need to be compared to anything. Heck, it couldn’t be compared to anything.

- - -“They aren’t pixies,” the troll whispered. Fear fluttered over his eyes like some maddened moth. “Just keep your trap shut, and we’ll get out of this alive.” And it was then that I saw one of the shrieking creatures. Wee claws curling around the stone corner, a hissing warble, followed by another mind-stabbing scream. Verdant scales and the coiled muscles of an adder, lanced through with voidish black, the intensity matched only by their eyes. Oh, the eyes….

- - -The dull thrum that came from the marsh was deafening for some, but a lullaby to others. I used to tell my kids that it was the tupelo trees singing. That, if they listened closely enough, they could hear the crickets and the frogs harmonizing to try to brighten their sepulchral melody, but to no avail. They mourned for the slow world, the one full of moss and jewelish dragonflies and sweet dreams. The one that had been replaced with smoke and spilled business and the bustle of aching feet. I told them that they just didn’t understand the change. And I told them that that was okay. Because none of us did, really. We just didn’t talk about it quite as often nor quite as loudly as they did.

- - -The elf’s sigh was explanation enough. But he clarified anyways. “Here, they can’t get us.” I looked around at the mismatched tables and chairs. The threadbare rugs mixed with the plush carpets and the faux-fur bathmats that had been shoved under stools so they wouldn’t scratch up the floors. The walls, covered in paintings and claw scores and hand-drawn pictures and toddler scribbles and one or two scorch marks from when they still had stoves. And then I looked at the people. Despite the circumstances, they were smiling. Despite what was out there, they looked…. They looked happy. Even the kids weren’t crying, despite the bandages being wrapped around their wounds, despite the acrid smell of the old candles. These…. These people. They were far from home. And, heck, they were with other species that, on any other given day, they probably would’ve been trying to rip the heads off of. But no. It was calm. And it was…. It was good. “Here,” he continued, with a trace of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, “we can heal.”

- - - “The creature will be the death of me,” the Lady sighed, delicately placing her elbow unto the table so she could properly lean her chin upon it. “He’s a genie, m'Lady,” a servant reminded, her voice choked with giggles. “He can’t kill.”They both turned their heads to the gaudy spirit, festooned in a garb of eye-straining greens and polished emeralds and parrot-feathers, his cape whirling as he turned on his heel to accept yet another noble’s quail-eating challenge. (They both had to duck to avoid being clobbered with his stein of ale.)“I know. I just wish I could kill him.” She cocked an eyebrow as she watched the grease and ginger-sauce in his beard simply whuhff away the moment it drizzled down. “He knows perfectly well what I wished for. But he’s just finding one loophole after another. I have half a mind to dismiss him.”“You wouldn’t…! I mean…. With all due respect, m'Lady! The genie is… an animal, surely. Riddled with crudity and a vile tongue. But what he’s brought to the courts surely outweighs the burden, m'Lady?”

- - -“You’re telling me you’ve never heard of Dragon’s Grog?” The vampire grinned, leaning against the wall as plumes of smoke lazed upwards to meet the haze of the city air. The neon sign above us flicked colorful shadows over his face. “Man, that’s not right. It’s perfect for everything. A night on the town. Weddings. Funerals. Parties. Any day that ends in a Y.” Somewhere in the distance, a Quik-O-Rail buzzed on its tracks. A single vwooiiiiif, and it was gone. He flashed his fangs once more before he slipped his headphones from around his neck up and over his ears. It seemed as though I could hear the blare of his electric, upbeat jam before he even hit ‘play’.

- - -“I’ll always remember the story of when the sea switched places with the moorlands,” my grandmother hummed, wiping her knife on the edge of the tablecloth. “Back when the pheasants and the rabbits slipped through the heather like fingers through hair. The breeze would tussle the grasses, and the flowers would dance reels with the mighty winds.” As she said this, she flipped the fish over and began cleaning the other side. I winced at the stench. “But sometimes, it was still. Absolutely, perfectly still. No rippling, no swaying, no nothing. Just… solace. Butterflies playing their strange little games, and sunbeams embracing the Earth. Birdsong was the only thing that broke the silence.”I smiled, and looked out the window. A chuckle escaped. The fields were roiling again, moving up and down as they swelled with the force of the Earth-tide. Even within the safety of the house, I could hear rocks grinding and turf ripping and mending itself back together, mounds of soil cascading and ebbing away until they were replaced with the dusky emerald of the surface-moor. Rabbits and pheasants running on that? And silence? It was a surreal notion. Now she was probably going to say that fish, somehow, swam on the ocean. I laughed again.

- - - It was more of a slime, now. Probably. She didn’t dare turn on the light, for the fear that it would bear some semblance to the moon… What a silly thought. Was she going mad? It didn’t work like that, it didn’t-…. No. No, there was no risking anything. She dipped the glass stirring-rod in the sludge again. Fizzing. Popping. But no shattering. Good, good. She picked up the flask, and squinted hard- had she used too much silver? It was more metallic than anything. It was supposed to be green. Venom-green. That’s what… That’s what it was supposed to be. Darn it all, she didn’t have the time for this! How late was it? She couldn’t just remake the whole bloody thing! A cure was a cure. It wasn’t art. It wasn’t supposed to be pretty. It was just supposed to work. This was it. This was what she had been waiting for. The consequences of impurity be cursed! Oh, Lycaon almighty! THIS WAS IT! Slamming her fist on the cold table, she threw her head back, and began to drink.

- - - The butterfly was made of pale, thin pieces of interlocked jade. Stiff wings clinked against one another as it fluttered clumsily about the office. But then freaking Steven just had to see it. Without missing a beat, he grabbed his miniature stapler, and lobbed it over his cubicle’s wall, hitting his target dead-on. Upon impact, the insect shattered, and a fine, glittering dust arose, only to be sucked up by the ceiling vents. “You’re a jerk,” someone cried from halfway across the room.

- - -The dinghy lurched upwards again. We could hear the cringe-worthy scrapes of her spines on the bottom of our boat, each moment annunciated by a sharp whump as one ended and the other started. Unbroken scales began rising to one side, and then the other… a terrible, sickening shade of seafoam that reminded me a little bit too much of home. “It’s been too long.” My old voice took a chance to appear before I could catch it.“You heard our call. You heard it thrice. And only now, seven years adrift, do you come to our aid.” Whatever the meaning behind the distorted shrieks that issued from the spray there was, I did not listen. I was far too gone to have cared. “Leave. Your excuses harbor nothing.”

- - - “What part of ‘He’s sleeping’ don’t you understand?” The little dryad looked up at her with a tearful snort. “You can’t… For goodness’ sakes. You can’t wake up a non-magical tree. It’s nothing to cry about. He’s not dead, he’s not ignoring you. He’s just sleeping.” Apparently, the explanation didn’t do much in terms of making things better. The creature rubbed vigorously at her eyes with a downturned wrist before leaping forward to wrap her short arms (the best she could) around the slender trunk of the birch tree. The racking sobs came a moment later. The woman sighed. “For the love of…. Just stop, okay? You’re being ridiculous.”

- - -The air was close here. Stitches of silence had been sewn into his tongue, and he dared not disturb the resting realm. The pines, as vigilant as ever, kissed the clouds with their crowns- or, rather, the other way around. He could not see their end. He could, however, see the clouds. The height of their trunks seemed to rival the length of a giant’s sprint. (The only that kept him from believing that he had fallen to the stature of a dormouse was the trace amount of ferns that crouched about the heaps of root. And even then….) After another mile had passed, the man sat down, swept his cloak about his legs, and slumped against his satchel. The daylight had taken a rather unexpected leave. With a twitch of his lips, he felt agog as he turned his eyes above. The man’s breath came slow and swift all at once. This was what he came for. To see this.The slate clouds had gone, replaced by a great, coarse mass of charcoal brown. It fell and rose in time, before it began away, the Earth trembling as it made for the horizon. Ever-so-slowly, day returned, slipping around the belly of the beast like water over a bowl. Less than ten feet away, the bone-shaking step of an ebony hoof fell. (It had to be twice as large as any inn he’d ever seen.) Of all of his years, this marked only the second time that he had seen one of the elk of the Foraoise Mhór.

~

[doctormctiddy]

need. - fan apprentice/julian.

guESS WHO HAS SOME COMPUTER TIME!!!

well, computer w/ access to tungle, anyway. heres a fic set after the chariot update, because im WEAK and full of EMOTIONS.

featuring a bonus portion of pining julian!

check out my fan apprentice and my writing!

The silence between them was like an ever-growing chasm. Gloria yearned to reach out and grab one of Julian’s hands from his pockets, to squeeze his hand comfortingly, seek out his mouth with hers once again and just lose themselves in each other.

But it wasn’t going to happen.

Instead, she folded her hands behind her back, stiff and forward, in contradiction to her normal chipper, dramatic nature. Nearly miraculously, she was keeping up with Julian’s long strides, despite her shortness in comparison to him.

She pretended not to notice the longing glances and unspoken words from the doctor beside her.

Soon her shop came into view, homely and as inviting to her as it had always been, and they stopped outside the door. Gloria thanked her acting skills as Julian turned to face her finally, hiding her heartbreak.

She could see his viewpoint from what he had mentioned earlier, regardless of her own selfish wants and needs to be closer to him, like those nights they had had. He wasn’t the only one drawn to someone like a moth to a flame. There was truth of her feelings in his words about his own sentiments. If only he knew.

Julian inhales a shaky breath, and Gloria tips her chin up to meet his gaze. “Well… here we are. At your shop.” His gaze is sad as he says, “... End of the line.”

She holds her ground, keeps her facade up. It’s the one thing she was always good at- hiding her feelings. Funny how that hardly worked around him.

The doctor sighs, tilting his head a little. “When I came to Vesuvia,” he began, “I was seeking answers. Finding you…” Another heartbreaking grin, and she bites her lip. “That was a rare treat.”

Don’t. Please, don’t go. Her thoughts loop on repeat like a spell’s chant as Julian’s hand can’t touch her, his lips lingering on her cheeks for those telltale too long of seconds. I need you. Please, you can’t…

“Thank you, my dear,” comes his whisper, so achingly close, Gloria feels like her heart is going to crack in two, “The time we spent together, however brief… it mattered to me.” His smile is soft, and she swallows, fighting the urge to reach up and kiss it. “I won’t forget it.”

He turns to leave, and she finally allows herself to squeak out: “Don’t.”

“I need to.”

“Please.”

“... I’m sorry.”

Gloria sniffs then, grabbing his wrist before he takes off at the speed of swirling mist with those long legs of his, and Julian freezes upon contact.

“Julian,” she starts, swallowing hard from the sobs threatening to break free, “I… I just wanted to tell you. All that time we had… It was precious to me, too, and I… I feel the same way about you. But if you think I need protecting like that, then, well, that’s your call. I can see where you’re coming from, Julian, but I… God, I don’t know.” She sniffles one last time, before ducking her head.

“I don’t just want you,” comes her whisper, “I need you.”

Julian bites his lip, hard, eyes widening. He can’t let his heart get in the way of this. Not if it meant she was going to get hurt.

… Which is exactly what he was doing, in a sense. But it was for the greater good. He loved her. He had to let her go.

“I…” She looks up at the back of his head, blinking silent tears, “I need you too. But I told you. I need to protect you, first. This is… the only way, I think.”

“Then let me give you something to remember me by.”

She whirls him around then, surprising him with a wet, lingering kiss to his left cheek. He’s shaking, if only slightly, and she smells like… warmth, like home, and most overpoweringly, peppermint.

“A stress reliever spell,” she mumbles against his cheek, “so you can sleep easier.”

His chuckle is dark, hardly fitting the mood. “So, both of the witches I’ve loved have given me parting curses?”

“This isn’t a curse. It’s just a helpful spell.” She kisses his cheek again, and Julian swallows, hard, resisting the urge to capture her lips with his all over again. “Like I said, something to remember me by.”

“... Thank you.”

His hand slips out of her grip, and he vanishes into the darkened streets, hiding from more than just the guards of Vesuvia tonight.

Damn sleep.

Julian rolled over for what felt like the hundredth time already, frowning into the darkness of Mazelinka’s tiny room. He always knew when he was tired, terrible sleeping habits or not, and tonight was no exception. All that sobbing he did earlier really was pathetic.

If only he wasn’t so weak.

Eyebrows upturned, he shut his eyes again, trying desperately not to think back to the sight of Gloria’s tear-streaked face, which was near impossible. Much like the murderer’s brand on his hand, it was seared to the back of his eyelids; a painful, heartbreaking memory.

He’d missed her since the second he’d turned away, naturally. It was taking all his willpower not to fling the covers off and run back to her, to hold her close and kiss her soundly- if she’d even want him back after all of that nonsense he said.

“I don’t just want you. I need you.”

She needed him, and he’d turned away. He needed her too, of course, but the last thing he’d ever want to do is hurt her more.

Julian groaned, rolling onto his stomach. This really was a pain; he was never going to get to sleep if he kept pining like this. It was absolutely ridiculous, he thought with a scrunch of his eyes, how he thought he could still feel her arms around him, her lips on his cheek, smell the peppermint she always doused herself in…

… Wait, no. The peppermint is real.

Raising his head to look at where he’d hung his cloak, Julian was finally thankful for his pointed nose and the ability to detect scents that came with it. That's where the peppermint was coming from. It was ridiculous how fast he shot out of the bed and scrambled to his jacket, digging into the pockets that she’d been close to- only to find a small, hand sewn bag, much like a tiny pillow. That's where the smell was coming from.

He’d seen Gloria use one of these before. She’d been stressed, and he’d watched her reach into her cape and wring one of these between her hands, inhaling it.

The stress reliever spell. It made sense.

He could already feel the tears springing forward again as he pressed the bag to his lips, inhaling deeply. It smelled just like her, and he could already feel his anxieties slipping away, becoming more relaxed.

“Bless her.” Came his breath, hitching back a sob. “What did I ever do to deserve her?” Nothing, comes the response to himself, she wants you. She said it herself. But you don’t deserve her.

For now, he sat on the edge of the bed, kissing the small bag, wishing instead that it was her lips, over and over.