#but she does grow to enjoy the study of the fade and its inhabitants

[impossible-rat-babies]

i love that eshka loves spite and that, to a degree, he sees her actions and can interpret them in his own way to understand that she cares for him. and the opposite is true as well

[pathofcomet]

my honey, my daisy, my only

fandom: ikemen vampire

pairing: isaac/MC

summary: “Do not fall in love with anyone here,” Sebastian threatens, wiping a glass and carefully placing it to the side, to be moved to the cupboards a little bit down the hall.Written for Isaac week, day 4. Prompt: AU. Hanahaki AU. (AO3)

“Do not fall in love with anyone here,” Sebastian threatens, wiping a glass and carefully placing it to the side, to be moved to the cupboards a little bit down the hall.

She places her trembling hands in her lap: scared and her heart still throbbing in her chest. This place and this time suddenly don’t really feel like a dream anymore, the fear too real. Love is a concept that doesn’t fit in this image that she’s building of the inhabitants of Saint-Germain’s mansion, so his warning is hollow, empty.

“Why?” she still asks, dumbly.

Sebastian stops – and then slowly, he undoes his necktie and the first two buttons at the top of his shirt. With the downwards pull, she can see the small scar sitting at the base of his throat, nothing but a faint line, whiter than the rest of his skin. His finger is just delicately following the path of where there has once been a cut.

“You know what this is, right?”

She nods. It’s not proper to ask more about it, because what’s there left to be said, when you have given up all memories of a loved one for the chance to keep on living? When the flowers start growing in your chest alongside your love, there are only two choices, really: you’re either having your feelings reciprocated, or have them disappear forever, alongside your memories of the person you fell for. Sebastian chuckles, a dry little thing.

“This does not exist here yet.”

And now the warning sinks in, with its whole finality and strength. If you love, and you are not loved back – here the only choice left is to eventually choke on all those feelings. She can feel her throat constricting in painful memory, the ghost of something she will never be able to recall. She nods again, and Sebastian, pleased that he got to her, resumes his work.

***

Love is pain. Love on its own is pure death – it goes as simple as that. But love kills slowly and beautifully, for it is not entirely unkind.

For vampires, the suffering is doubled. Because while sex is the food, love is the appetite.

And Isaac is stuck in the middle, thirst clawing at him, knowing the pain long before the love arrives.

***

Is there a reason for what humans do? Isaac doesn’t feel like he became a vampire a long time ago, but the separation still comes to him naturally. Even more so ever since she joined this place and turned his world upside down.

Isaac opens his door to her small figure in the frame and no matter how much he scrambles for a reason why she’s here, he can find none. By all laws of logic, she should be afraid and hateful. Instead, she smiles and doesn’t pour all the contents of the tray in his lap, which is more than he’d expected.

And Isaac finds himself smile back. Mistake no. 1.

***

Saint-Germain drinks his coffee, watching the exchange between Isaac and his newest visitor, and he calculates inside his mind several possibilities and probabilities. In time travel, just as in love, there are no real certainties, not even for the best out there.  But there are more or less twenty days left for their young visitors – certainly not enough to develop any severe forms of the sickness, even if she is to catch it.

Saint-Germain thinks her better than that. But twenty days are more than enough to have her fall in love with a city instead. Cities don’t break hearts. So he clears his throat, passing his cup over to Sebastian, and creates an excuse.

Mistake no. 2 – Isaac didn’t do anything directly about this one, but he still considers himself guilty for it.

***

“Smiling suits you,” Isaac says, and her cheeks bloom red, like flowers.

He is smiling as well, and the two of them are on the side of the road, looking at each other, suddenly transfixed. When not frowning, when not teased, when at ease – Isaac looks like a man entirely enjoying the spring of his life. Full of playfulness and boyish charm.

It is gone in a moment, but she trusts her eyes more than the slip of her mind.

She doubts she’ll make Isaac admit to such a thing, especially when he still seems to have problems keeping his blush at bay even when they brush shoulders accidentally, on the more crowded streets, but… she thinks this might be a date. Or at least that’s how dates in movies look like, since she cannot remember her own ones.

But they walk and talk. He takes her to his favourite café, and she has the best baguette of her life. The coffee sticks to her throat.

***

She reaches out, too much and too willingly. Trusting too much, fearing too little – it drives Isaac a bit crazy. He doesn’t have the bloom to go by. He never experienced love in his past life, focused on his studies as he’s been, and vampires can judge only by their thirsts. But it feels like way more than anyone has tried to do for him in a while, ever since Napoleon, and suddenly Isaac isn’t sure if he wants to call her a friend.

Or something more.

Mistake no. 3. He spends two hours on the kitchen floor, Sebastian stepping gracefully around him, drinking bottle of rouge after bottle of rouge, his lips turning redder and redder, the clawing feeling at his throat not quite disappearing.

***

“Luv,” Arthur says, and she flutters her eyes open, slowly, to him pushing her hair behind her ear.

She went unfocused there for a bit.

“That expression doesn’t suit you,” he continues, sighing.

She tries to scold her features better and focus on the game of chess in-between the two of them in the library. Leonardo is napping on the floor in the corner, a blanket she brought from upstairs over his shoulders. It’s been harder to control the pain, flaring up at random times – and she’s sure it still shows on her face, no matter how much she wants to actually hide it. It’s nothing much but discomfort, thrumming from deep inside her chest, but only for now.

It’s a bit annoying that Arthur somehow already picked it up. She frowns at him, pushing her piece across the table. From his own expression, she can tell it was a bold but completely stupid move. It’s fine; she hasn’t played chess in a long time and she didn’t expect to win in the first place anyway.

“What are you going to do?” he asks.

“You know him better,” she closes her eyes again, turning her neck a bit – Arthur gets a bit distracted staring at the expanse of skin there. “What should I do?”

Arthur grins, his fangs sharp.

“I think you’ve been doing just fine.” He points a finger towards the clock on the wall, already several minutes past the time for Isaac’s meals.

She gets up, technically allowing him the win, leaving the room. Leonardo opens his eyes to peer up at the writer, and although they say nothing out loud, there’s some knowledge passing between the two of them regardless.

***

“Why did you stay until so late, then?” Sebastian asks, grateful that no matter how badly Isaac might need blood, he’s not just grabbing at his shirt and sinking his fangs in his skin, instead ripping from his hands a glass vial.

She’s away now, so his hunger is already slowly fading, as Isaac is trying to do calculus in his head, and more definitely not think about the time spent together, which just keeps adding up.

In the entrance hallway, she’s coughing, delicately trying to cover it up with her handkerchief. When Saint-Germain shows up, she gathers the two small flower buds that she coughed out in her handkerchief, and hides it in her pocket, smiling up at him instead.

The notion of having him as a dance partner staves off the pain, at least for a while, just a bit.

***

She gives and gives. Mistake no. 4: Isaac accepts. He doesn’t know how to say no, even when it hurts. He doesn’t know how to translate her own suffering, when he’s so happy to just have her near.

Isaac’s used with the thirst, nothing else he hasn’t experienced before. The trouble with love is that it feels fresh each and every time.

So while he thinks he has things under control, she most definitely doesn’t. When one chooses to pluck out the flowers growing in their chest, the memories disappear. The one who picks this path, will keep on making the same mistake, not recognizing the patterns, unable to grow with no roots grounding them in place.

So she falls, fast. When Isaac saves her, an upside down mirror of her first night here – not fear thrumming at her wrists this time around, but just the pleasure of having him near, she stumbles, and swears, and the words come out muffled.

She covers her mouth, looking up at Isaac like a deer caught by its hunter. He wants nothing else but – mistake no. 5. Isaac doesn’t stop: then and there, when the doubt starts coiling inside his stomach.

Instead, he offers himself as her company and gentlemanly ignores her when she asks for five minutes to freshen up. In the corner of the room in which she ducked to hide, Vincent pats her back, as petal after petal falls out from between her lips, until she’s left shivering.

And beautiful. Love is pain. Pain is beauty.

Maybe that’s why Isaac cannot look away, cannot keep away: because her cheeks blush with the prettiest of red each time he gets to close. He realizes he maybe pushed too hard simply because, in the fountain where before was only clear water, once he gets up – she’s surrounded by cherry blossoms.

The petals swim all around her, a child leans over to pick a few in her hands. An older lady tuts disappointingly at the two of them. Isaac reaches out a hand, fearful.

But what is he fearing? Why is he so afraid? If this is true –

No.

Mistake no. 6. Isaac cannot believe the obvious signs, because he doesn’t think he’s worthy of them. Men kill more hearts just by not trusting their own.

***

She shivers in the bathtub, the water getting colder, overflowing with flowers and petals. She’ll have to deal with that later – now she is busy counting up to 10, over and over again, trying to calm the thrumming of her heart, the desperate up and down of her chest: her hand pressed over the scar there.

She wonders: how long into these symptoms she got the removal done? How much did she think she could handle, before it all became too much?

Isaac, pushing at Napoleon’s shoulder, bites at his neck, fangs so painful that it makes the other man hiss.  The soldier grabs at Isaac’s hair, enough to make eye contact.

“Slowly,” he urges, and Isaac’s grip on him relaxes, though his gulps still ring too loud in his head.

It brings him no pleasure, but his friend calms: with the warmth of another person, the fresh blood, hunger easier to be sated. The tug turns into pets, and Isaac places a kiss where he pierced the skin, lapping at the blood spilling out.

Napoleon sighs. “You’re wet. Let’s change, shall we?”

***

“This room is getting stifling, Toshiko-san,” Dazai says, coming around to check on Isaac.

They’re vampires, they’re supposed to heal and recover fast. Dazai just wants the bragging rights, that he cares the most out of their friends group. And also, maybe, Dazai wants to check the one rumour he has heard, which proves itself quite true.

Isaac is still asleep. Around him, overflowing from his desk and shelves and windowsill: flowers upon flowers, fully bloomed. Dazai sighs. The smell is almost sickeningly sweet – and she looks quite pale.

“I figured I’d be bothering him more if I were to take them out each and every time…”

Each and every time she bends her body over and coughs out flowers in exchange for his love, is the sentence that she doesn’t finish. She is also quite right. And despite it all, she is still here, right next to him.

What a little fool, their Toshiko-san.

***

They dance together, in front of several pairs of eyes, carefully noting each and every small detail, change in them. Like how Isaac’s pupils get the slightest bit more dilated, his fangs sharper, grazing his lips even with his mouth closed. Like how she can’t quite keep her back straight, how she doesn’t really speak.

Sometimes what remains unsaid means more. It is unbearable to hold each other like this, would have been even more unbearable if they didn’t.

Isaac disappears as fast as he appeared, and she’s left on the spot, hands clawing at her throat. She hunches over, clasps her palms to her mouth as she’s trying her damn hardest to stop breathing, to stop feeling. To calm the wave of emotions threatening to spill over, past her lips and in her lap, like a sky decorated with cherry blossoms.

“I believe it is a bit late for that,” Saint-Germain says.

And then they’re out.

***

In the afternoon glow, filtering through the stained glass, she looks beautiful. And Isaac is filled with need: not for her blood, to be fed – but for her love, as a man. His touch against her cheek is tentative and tender and that of someone begging to be held and pushed away at the same time.

Isaac isn’t sure yet which scenario he’s wishing hardest for.

She meets his eyes, and something in him goes even softer. It melts away everything in her.

“W-what is-? Why are you crying…?”

And despite not being hurt, she keeps crying. The tears are just that, in the beginning, and Isaac’s thumb passes over her skin, catching each and every one. She finds she cannot stop, once the dam has been broken: the happiness is suddenly too much. Here he is: just him and her, and he is touching her, and he is caring for her.

Much more than she thought she deserved, much more than she thought she’d get. Way too little compared to how much she still wants. So the tears keep spilling, never stopping. Then they’re not just tears anymore, a petal falling as well each and every time.

Isaac’s hold gets just a bit gentler, and that’s how she knows something is not quite right, before the petals start falling in her lap. Against her cheek, he clenches and unclenches his hands. Slowly, awkwardly, searching her face all along, he reaches out… and pulls her into an embrace.

She sniffles in the material of his shirt, his arms closing around her. The petals are cascading now more rapidly, down his back, and her hands claw at him.

“It’s going to be all right… Please, don’t cry.”

Of course, he can say that because he’s not the one spilling his feelings from his guts, betrayed by his body to show his feelings. He can say that because he is not dying from loving. She trembles in his arms, knowing she doesn’t deserve the comforting, knowing he doesn’t want her.

“… I’m sorry,” she whispers, and her hold on him tightens, and her tears fall even more furiously, accompanied by her pained wailing.

Isaac holds her, gentle as ever, his palms soothingly rubbing down her back. If he were to count the bones he can feel through the thin material of her dress, the numbers would be higher than in a normal human body.

Love taking roots, love taking over.

If she were to see his expression, she would find it pained, his face buried at the crook of her neck. But even when they untangle, Isaac covers his face with his palm, the downward tug at his lips, making his fangs visible, hidden from her.

Mistake no. 7: Isaac cannot tell the truth. Even worse, Isaac hides the truth, even when he knows hers is so painfully obvious, even when that so obviously pains her.

“Do you intend to return home?”

***

“Don’t go back…” Isaac says, laid on his back, her just a bit further to the left.

And while she’s staring at the open night sky in front of her, he can’t stop looking at her.

She shifts, coming up, suddenly coughing up the now familiar flower petals. They’re falling in-between her fingers, overflowing her hold. Isaac’s heart squeezes in his chest at the sight.

“Does it bother you?” she asks, in-between gasps of breath.

He looks at her, taken aback.

“This,” she shakes her hands in the air, the pink flowers falling all around her. “Knowing it’s you.”

Isaac chokes on his next words, and changes the topic. He can hear her, trying to keep in a new wave of coughing. He has accidentally heard her complain to Sebastian about the chest pain, how her muscles are aching with how much she’s been heaving, how her insides don’t feel quite alright anymore.

Her body, so small and frail, holding the weight of her entire, spilling love.

***

Isaac doesn’t like the way he gets when he’s hungry – it’s been worse these days, what with the desperate need of her as well. Sometimes, something alike a fog washes over him.

When he comes back to himself, he’s in a bed made of blood and flowers: scene of an almost-crime. She’s still breathing, and that’s all that really matters, but his head is foggy and there’s nothing to do but wait and pray, and pray and wait – and hate himself for all of it.

Isaac has only words to rely on in this scenario, for his feelings. And words tend to fail him already, so much and so often. And he tends to fail words as well, so obliviously.

If he can hurt her even like this, why does she love him?

If he can hurt her even like this, how is he supposed to hold on to this last piece of his humanity while actually accepting that he loves her?

Mistake no. 8. Isaac pushes her away.

***

“Sebastian,” she whines, because it’s the fourth time he’s brought up to her rooms only a bowl of the blandest soup.

He pushes at her shoulder, gluing her back to the pillow again – as it should be. She’s paler now, weaker, and in the air all around her room, the sweetest of fragrance, the spring back in his home country. Bouquets of flowers sprang from place to place since his last visit, and… he is fearful she might not make it for the door.

“Sick patients don’t get to complain about the schedule of an overworked butler.”

She pouts, even as she picks up the spoon. It hangs in-between her fingers.

“Sebastian?”

A beat.

“Yes?”

“Just… why?”

He sighs. “I don’t think anyone knows, or remembers for that matter. I just think it’s just the heart thinking it doesn’t want to be alone anymore.”

“So you get a person or you get the flowers? They’re pretty, but they’re cruel.”

Sebastian eyes her cracked lips, the petals of her flowers – living and still image of each other.

“So is love.”

A beat.

“Did anyone tell you that you make a terrible emotional support?”

He grins at her, this time flicking her forehead.

“Might have heard it several times before.”

***

  “What do you think you’re doing, Newt?” Arthur asks, shoving his friend’s body against the wall, a bit too harshly, holding onto the collar of his shirt.

Isaac covers his hand in his, pushing. Arthur doesn’t let go, just lets out something that is between a growl and a sigh. Isaac, more or less, does the same.

“She’s bad,” Arthur says.

Isaac remains unfazed. “I know.”

“Worse, after all that blood loss.”

And only that – the guilt, makes Isaac actually realize that bad is not just the dull lull in her chest, but something more definite. Arthur would have never gone out of his way like this if that wasn’t the case. Only when the panic settles in, accompanied by a wave of anxiety so forceful Isaac almost feels like throwing up, does Arthur finally let go.

“You can lose her in two ways,” he says. “Pick the one you can live eternity with.”

***

She can’t really speak anymore – words too harsh on her throat, where buds are slowly crawling their way up. Someone comes by to prepare her a new cup of tea regularly, because it’s supposed to soothe the pain. She’s not sure it’s effective at all, but she also cannot complain much anymore, anyway.

Her coughing fits now can keep going for even half an hour at a time, and she cringes with each intake of air, because her muscles are aching so desperately for some kind of relief. She has nothing to give.

Theo comes and reads poetry to her, though she notices him skipping the love poems. Arthur plays chess with her again, though he’s not chiding her for taking too long this time around. Napoleon sits by her side, as they eat crepes together.

She misses a party, stuck in this waiting game, to see what comes first: her demise or her return. Isaac doesn’t – and in the span of a night, he makes a new friend in an old one and loses him too.

He doesn’t want to lose another person. Ever – if possible, or at least not in that way.

His hand trembles around the handle of the door, trying to gather his courage. The familiar scratching at his throat returns, stronger and stronger the longer he hovers.

He enters without knocking, and she looks up from a book she’s trying to read, startled. She immediately starts coughing at the sight of him; this time around, the petals fall freely all around her. Isaac shakes and trembles in the doorway.

“G-gods!” he says, and in two big steps, he’s closer to her bed. “You’re… this is… bad.”

She manages a weak smile at him.

“I know.”

His voice trembles. “How can you be so c-calm about this?”

She shrugs, though it’s just a tiny movement, barely there, so that she doesn’t trigger another coughing fit. She’s had so long to imagine herself at this point – just because it came faster than she expected, doesn’t mean she didn’t expect it at all.

He keeps his distance. Any closer and she’ll just explode in a bouquet of flowers.

“Y-you’ll soon get back and you can get help and-” Isaac is a blabbering mess and a stuttering fool, only for her.

“I won’t.”

“What?”

“Even if I return, I won’t.” She raises a hand to her chest, pressing it to a scar, that Isaac can notice from where her nightgown has slipped down her shoulder. “It would mean forgetting you.”

She raises her gaze, meets his. She’s begging, one last time. She’s telling him, in words this time. And Isaac stands there, stunned into silence, because if she is to have the same fate either way, what is he protecting her from in the first place?

“I love you,” he says, and for a long moment, there’s only silence stretching between them,

Then, he blushes, fidgeting on the spot, the words obviously out without having thought them. She struggles with her bedsheets, but is still fast enough, despite her weak body, to have gotten up on her own feet by the time Isaac is at her side, arms around her waist, to help her.

She licks her lips – chapped and pale things that they are, and looks up at him, exhausted and obviously pushing herself.

“Say it again. Say it and mean it,” her hands, fisted around the material of his shirt, eyes falling down with the request, too much and too late.

“I l-love you. I don’t…. Please don’t just disappear like that.”

His hold tightens around her body and she sighs.

“I love you too,” and she gets up on her tiptoes, pressing her lips against him, nothing but a chase gesture.

Isaac closes his eyes, pulling her closer, opening his mouth, his tongue coaxing hers to follow suit. Which she does, so willingly and openly, and something in Isaac’s chest tightens, just the love he has for her. And something in her chest opens up, releasing, just the love she has for him.

When they part, all around them, branches of cherry blossoms surround them. It’s like her chest has been cut open, and everything fell over – and she is smiling, beautifully and honestly for the first time in weeks.

“Thank you,” she murmurs, and Isaac buries his face at her neck, exhausted with the honesty, relieved at her health, so in love that it hurts – and maybe he understands her better than he wanted to admit, maybe he understood her all along.

[juleswolverton-hyde]

Before the Dawn (BC x OC)

Genre: Angst, Historic, Werewolf AU

Pairing: Werewolf!Bangchan x Hunter!OC

Warnings: No warnings apply

Summary: When Religion grows and slowly diminishes another, worshippers of Nature are made victims of the new laws put upon Man by a single God.

A God who hates the apparent spawns of Hell who were once seen as another part of the people inhabiting the realm of Mother Nature. However, His believers want to see them gone, even if it comes at a cost.

And this contract has a highly personal one. 

Author’s Note: As mentioned before, I am currently doing a creative writing course as part of my studies and the story below is part of the building portfolio.

Personally, there has always been an interest in the growth and belief in Christianity despite being an atheist who strongly leans towards the older polytheistic religions, especially the Greek and Roman ones. Nevertheless, recent focus has been turned to the Celtic belief system thanks to studying Germanic and Celtic medieval heroes and Christian saints.

And knowing that Christianity did not overtake Ireland in one night, this is also a wee exploration of the co-existence of Paganism and Christianity.

Furthermore, this work was inspired by a piece of art I picked up when I was in Edinburgh for the first time about the Scottish folk tale ‘The Grey Wolf’ (link to Hannah Forrest’s art). This myth is blended into the piece with an old English legend that when someone who truly loved and trusted the werewolf called him by name, the wolf would become human again. To top it all off, there is the mention of banshees to put some Irishness into the mix.

Lastly, the names are in Irish. But, let’s be honest, we all know who I actually wrote about.

I sincerely hope you enjoy. 

Banner art is by ShamiesArt on DeviantArt (link)

Masterlist

It is a common mistake for ordinary people to immediately expect silver-coated arrows in the hunt for the monster terrorizing the village. Little do they know that there is another pacifist trick to make the evil go away. The reason that this method is so hardly known, is that it is erased from most texts that are passed down in hunter families or altered to require so much that mindless violence is the simple and fast solution.

Mankind sure does love its beastly side.

However, to maintain the peace and spare even the life of the huntress, all one truly needs is the lady worshipped by the wolf and who knows his true - Christian, if you ask the Godly people - name. Ana, Mother Goddess, has left an epitaph behind when the Gods left the Earth, describing in it how to pacify the Children of the Moon she created and noting this precise method. Always being up for new weapons and hunting techniques, tonight the divine word will be put to practice.

If only to save the heart faithfully belonging to the one beating in the chest, shrouded by evenfall.

Faced with ivory fangs glistening in the moonlight warmed by smoking fire, blood-frenzied.

Familiar deep brown eyes now blazing with rage while they always looked so tender when secretly making love in the grove with the oak tree, overlooking the crystal lake in the valley.

The giant wolf a contract has been set out on by the very same townspeople who once whispered of a lucky marriage. Withal, those truthful rumours soon darkened when Christianity made the beloved golden-haired boy an abomination instead of the baker’s son whereas the remaining Pagans tried their best to protect the youth without being burned at the stake.

Heretics.

Like the mistress who is supposed to murder the boy that has been missing from the riverside village for more than a year, much to the delight of the overbearing Churchgoers.

What has happened to humanity?

Why must Religion ruin Love?

Why does one person have to pay for the primary sin of the Many?

Nay, two will grace the Cross that is both their blessing and punishment.

If we stay.

“Criostoir.” Just an inch away, the big nose often kissed with sincere affection and now transformed and blackened like the night halts. The beastly anger subsides, dilated pupils softening and sharp teeth covered by wolfish lips carefully listening to a voice they have to recognize. ‘’It’s me, Iúile.’’

And do. 

A shudder like a disturbed body of water mirror treks through ashen dotted with hay fur, muscles snapping and reattaching as bones break and change positions in limbs slowly becoming human, stretching and shrinking vocal cords voicing the agony.

‘’My love.’’

The two little words spoken before entwined fingers assuring of endless faithfulness have to unravel, no moment to be taken to assure humanity has truly returned to the wolf lover.

We run.

Fading like the banshees in the bogs.

The contract sees no silver.