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fragilevixenfic · 5 years ago

Text

She Walks at Night

Title: She Walks at Night

Rating: M

Category: RST, canon-divergent/AUish, a little bit of UST (leading to that RST), humor/Mini-casefile/Some smutty goodness

Summary: (Post Agua Mala) Mulder’s knack for getting himself and Scully into sticky situations leads them to the heart of NOLA at the tail end of Hurricane season after barely surviving a Floridian storm—to investigate a rumor of a notable Voodoo Queen and missing girls trying to bring her back.

“Voodoo girl, but she knows she has a curse on her, a curse she cannot win. For if someone gets too close to her, the pins stick further in.” –Tim Burton

“The moon has awoken, with the sleep of the sun, the light has been broken; the spell has begun.” -Midgard Morningstar

Note: Hurricane Mitch really didn’t flash toward the coast of Louisiana until it was a tropical depression, near the 4th of November. I’ve moved the date up and made it just a touch more intense than it actually was.

Bouzen = Bitch

@starbuck09256, I truly hope that you are ok with the stretch on your prompt. I wanted you to really adore this without going too far outside of your constructs or, worse, grossing you out.

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Spooky_2019/works/21118628

Tagging @monikafilefan @suitablyaggrieved @peacenik0 @rationalcashew @gaycrouton @xfilesfanficexchange @today-in-fic @piecesofscully @poolsidescientist @kyouryokusenshi for the fic lovers

The world is full of

Monsters with friendly faces

And angels with scars.

-Heather Brewer

Thursday, October 29, 1998, 7:15 PM

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1

French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana

It had been drizzling all night within the stained, cracked walls of a legacy that had stood the test of time in the French Quarter. The high tombs and altars curved, saturated, and marked by generations of memories down to the nearest doused candlestick. The wind howled through the trees and whipped the rain against marble, the thick tapping nearly drowning out the soft, scattered taps of footsteps as they weaved through the gravel and dirt. Three palm guarded candles under darkened hoods lit the faces of their individual holders—their features highlighted by red lips, white, black, and deep red dot and line pattern around the eyes and down their cheeks. They were spiritually awake, open…ready.

“Did you bring it?” The tallest, in the center, with a thick, Haitian Creole accent kept her eyes forward, wincing as the wind nearly dragged her protective wear off of her head.

To her left, the shortest, less inclined to listen and weaker of the two, nodded in spite of the lack of light around them, her voice bursting through like nails on a chalkboard. “You concentrate on not falling on your face, I’ll worry about the incantation, Madeleine.”

“Bouzen,” Madeleine wanted to knock her over as the Creole slang slipped off her tongue, while they passed a line of high ossuaries with various angels and oddly shaped gargoyles.

“I’ll do this without you both if you don’t stay quiet,” Their third, the quietest, with an equally thick Creole accent snapped her fingers and nearly blew out both of their candles, her deep, mahogany and green eyes burning as she stood in front of them. “We got work to do.”

The hostile night sky was brewing another storm as a flash of lightning streaked across the rolling black clouds, momentarily illuminating the expanse of the multi-century old cemetery in a blanket of hot, blue and white light before returning to the dim. With All Hallows’ Eve just days away; the energy was already rising and the pathway was already well worn with white petals to that had been offered to their lady. It wasn’t simply to remember a fallen hero or heroine but to seek the favor of a Queen. Not just any Queen but the Voodoo Queen that lay beneath the stone and marble, with the etchings and typeface on the exterior wall of her sepulcher. Most would assume the gravesite was being defaced and degraded but every mark was left by those that came before—to ask for good fortune, be granted a wish, or favors of their lady.

As they always say, however, every request comes with a sacrifice.

“Marie Laveau, Voodoo Queen, Mother to two daughters of the same name, in this, your resting place, we bring you offerings of light,” Madeleine enunciated carefully as the three knelt at her marker, at her plain yet remarkable altar, guiding their candles against the side of the stone away from the pelting rain as the wind seemed to change in their favor.

“Our priestess, we bring you wound tobacco, three gold coins, and the mark of Papa Legba wrapped in silk and lace to conjure your strength,” The second, Ayanna, gathered a small satchel, arranging it carefully in front of their candles, creating a little circular offering platform for their items.

Finally, the third, Kya, pulled a needle from a cushion, jabbing her own finger as she stared at the plaque with the inscription about Marie’s legacy, her voice strong as she revealed her hair and face to the air. “I offer a sacrifice, mother of conjurers, daughter of spirits, to summon your form—to walk among us once more.”

Each pinprick was marked with an X on the wall, in blood, to seal their gift to her, asking for only her presence, even in death. As if finalizing the request, the thunderclap reverberated above them and shook the hallowed ground beneath their feet. They knelt and tilted their candles with synchronized movements, spilling the black, melted wax across the stone in a singular circle while chanting ‘it is done’ to properly seal their unique, unusual even, plea to the revered Marie Laveau. It might’ve appeared as an oddity but this was a commonality as they stood and brought hands to the sky, drenching fingers in the falling rain as another streak of lightning danced across the sky.

It illuminated the top of the fence—and the visage of shadows that couldn’t possibly have existed.

“How do you know if it worked?” Kya held the front of her cloak shut, concealing the pretty dress beneath it as the rain took aim, soaking her braids.

Madeleine turned toward her, sneering at her as though she could bear witness to the expression, but all Kya could see were the dots subtly moving as her face contorted. “The Voodoo Queen will make her presence known.”

They didn’t wait to find out if their imperfect conjuring had made an impact as the wind bellowed through the willows, dragging the branches across angels with their heads bent in eternal devotion while they moved toward the front gate. Their diminishing silhouettes, in the gloomy maze of the dead, groped their way toward an exit; absent of steady light as the skies opened in another downpour. The wind ripped through the consecrated grounds and the rain battered the formerly white stone, embellishing each Mary’s tears until they were real. The lines of purple and pure, electric snow angled across the clouds, mimicking a Voodoo ritual dance, illuminating the tomb of Marie Laveau once more.

As the light faded and the thunder rolled, the soft, halo lined contour of a woman in white manifested against the backdrop of the candles still burning at her feet. She stood, motionless; her hair wrapped high, eyes piercing in the gloom, hands folded carefully in front of her with a charm hanging freely between her palms. As quickly as she appeared, she vanished with the dampening of the thunderous booms overhead…leaving the three candles extinguished, their smoke hovering in the air in a circular motion toward the skies.

Friday, October 30th 1998, 5:30 PM

New Orleans International Airport, Rental Parking

New Orleans, Louisiana

“I know you want to say it, Scully, and I think, if you want me to keep this Lumina on the road, you’d better choose your words wisely,” Mulder was already soaked from the walk to the car from the rental counter and the umbrella was inside out in the backseat, tossed haphazardly after catching a gust of wind from the wrong angle.

Scully, hair already dampened from the precipitation, watched the wipers stutter and drag across the windshield, the squeak just loud enough to be evident as they did next to nothing to get rid of the collecting droplets. “I was only going to ask where we’re staying and if you know where we’re going?”

“I don’t even need to turn my head to know you’re full of it,” Mulder was already miffed that he accidentally took the wrong road as he took the entrance onto interstate ten and merged, narrowly avoiding a big rig who didn’t want to give him space. “We’re staying down at one of the few places with a vacancy in the French Quarter that I could find with such short notice…that wasn’t crawling with college students looking to do kegs stands.”

“What? Didn’t feel like living it up in the middle of an incoming hurricane?” Scully tilted her head toward him as the blackened skies swirled, pouring down around the cars and trucks on the highway while the headwinds gathered and rocked against the driver’s side. “We left one storm for another storm and Hurricane Mitch has already been doing damage all over Central America…why are we here, Mulder?”

“A file came across my desk this morning with a newspaper clipping and a missing person’s report on a teenager from the French Quarter. Her parents are questioning the circumstances surrounding her disappearance, pushing for an investigation of an underground trafficking situation…but her connections in the community are a little more…odd,” Mulder hovered over the word ‘odd’ as he approached their exit, veering toward the right lane to merge.

Scully had a look on her face as he explained the situation, her eyes rolling and lips parting as the air escaped in a puff that conveyed every bit of her mood. Mulder knew that expression all too well and felt the deep, slow blink that preceded her piercing stare through the side of his face as he swallowed hard, refusing to look. This is what he had meant about choosing words wisely—but he should’ve aimed the comment at himself rather than at his enigmatic partner in the passenger seat, who was close to informing him how ridiculous he was. Sometimes, one does not need to hear the words you’re a moron before getting to check into the motel and that was exactly where Mulder’s thoughts were residing as he came to a red light with his blinker on.

“Define odd and try not to glitter it up with words you think I can’t understand because they are heavily rooted in something extraterrestrial,” Scully raised her eyebrows and nearly coaxed a nervous laugh from him, the old world hidden beneath palm trees and yellowing greenery.

“Do you remember our brief stint at the INS processing compound in North Carolina?” Mulder was circling the reality of what resided in the newspaper clipping, in the information regarding the teenaged Haitian.

“Haitian Voodoo?” Scully smirked and leaned her head back against the seat, reveling in his discomfort as she heard him grunt before fidgeting in the driver’s seat. “Did Skinner laugh at all when you brought this proposal to him or was he just that glad to get us out of his hair for another few days?”

“I should’ve lied and said it was the Chupacabra, you’d be flicking me a lot less shit,” Mulder knew she was delighted and part of him was relieved that she wasn’t mad, which was shades different than the trip to Florida. “At least with the Chupacabra, I’d have a body for you to slice and dice.”

“Aren’t you thoughtful?” Scully wasn’t upset with the locale this time as she marveled at the attention to detail on the historical buildings on the final few streets toward the hotel, her attention on the balconies as they dripped with water and barely sheltered the structures from the weather patterns. “You wouldn’t have been able to lie for long…not here…wrong state for that mythology.”

Scully had only witnessed the spectacle of New Orleans through the scope of history, through books that her parents would never have approved of, and word of mouth via trips that others had taken over the years. As they drove, it was more than a little apparent that this was an entirely different situation from third party information as the sounds and sights were already saturated even in this weather. She wasn’t fully prepared to witness the elaborately painted faces, elaborate dresses, and costuming before the consumption of alcohol had really begun. It was hedonistic, it was traditional, it was mildly erotic and plastered just feet from their faces…a notion that had her rethinking the buttoned-up look she had put on this morning. It couldn’t have looked that bad, though, she had already caught Mulder staring twice since final call in DC.

Not that she minded it—it was the instant need for him to look away that left a bitter sting she felt in her bones.

“The young girl, named Kya, had been associating with a couple of girls who were dabbling in Haitian Voodoo for the last year or so to an end that they had been borrowing books on conjuring spells from local, known Voodoo associates,” Mulder leaned forward a little bit, squinting through the windshield at the street signs to navigate where they were, reticent to really delve into it before unloading the trunk. “Her friends aren’t talking.”

“Refusing or are they afraid?” Scully was actually curious as she found herself fondly reminiscing about the ghostly little boy that had suckered Mulder into buying a charm from him. “You have me morbidly curious.”

Her words were like foreplay as a chill went up his neck while he hesitated to divert his field of vision toward her for a moment, thoroughly intrigued at her level of interest in the unknown for a change. “Both…kept rising their protection emblems from around their necks that had been doused in soot. I don’t know the implications of such a maneuver but it can’t be good.”

“Did anyone bother to ask where the ash came from?” Scully had been keeping her knowledge of the occult and Voodoo traditions close to the vest but flexed her intellect as Mulder pulled into a spot near a row of two-story buildings at the corner of Burgundy and St. Peter Streets. “Inn on St. Peter…Mulder, there’s no way this was approved by the Bureau to stay at.”

“It was when I lied and said the only other place available was a hostel with a half roof and no windows in the middle of hurricane season,” Mulder flashed his teeth with a smile and turned off the ignition, the broken umbrella in his peripheral less than pleasing as he opted to skip even reaching for it. “I don’t think anyone bothered to ask about the type of ash on a bronzed pendant.”

Scully joined Mulder on the sidewalk, the melancholic and oddly rhythmic melodies of a funeral procession blending with the celebration songs from both directions without concern for the weather’s plans. The daylight had barely begun to fade as they dragged a couple of suitcases into the Spanish influenced building constructed in the 1800s, the brick painted a deep burgundy, dripping rainwater across the textured tiles. Scully stayed near the doors as Mulder went to the check-in desk, her growing fascination with the surroundings only intensifying as she watched the funeral parade through the muddied glass of the only window that hadn’t been shuttered. It was haunting and poetic as men and women in a myriad of colors, black lace shrouding faces, danced along muddied sidewalks and alleys with their brass instruments and drums, scattering white petals in their wake.

“Don’t be mad…” Mulder startled her out of the trance with a palm to the small of her back, his warm fingers radiating through her damp jacket.

“What did you do this time?” Scully wanted to be surprised as she wiped the excess of water droplets off of her forearms, angling her head to judge him just a little better.

“I, apparently, wasn’t listening all that well when I made the reservation,” Mulder was watching her use that unnerving smirk as he searched for the right words to explain his massive oversight. “The woman that I spoke with insisted that she told me it was for one room with two beds and I remember it as two rooms with a bed each.”

“So, you get to explain that to Skinner when he asks for the printout on the second room, then?” Scully’s voice elevated as she reached for her luggage at her side then raised her eyebrows toward the hallway and stairs. “Lead the way.”

9:45 PM

Between St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and No. 2

French Quarter, New Orleans, LA

A puff of smoke and a flash of almost turquoise and orange flames danced in front of Mulder and Scully as they meandered through the amassed crowds that had already begun to block sections of the street, with or without permission. They felt underdressed or overdressed as casual clothes looked out of place in the sea of elaborate, well-thought-out attire to pay homage to the dead. The celebration, a cross between a masquerade and a Día de los Muertos festival, had the theme of death, resurrection, and Voodoo at its center, marked by the makeshift tents with markings that represented each sect. They had been tipped off to the location of their two witnesses and had been seeking out their wares for just over thirty minutes, all the while being approached by every creature with an offering.

“You look like you are in need of a reading…and a charm,” A woman with her long, dark locks wrapped carefully atop her head in tight, desperately meticulous braids and satin strands with elaborate beadwork intermixed stepped directly in front of Scully, disregarding her personal space. “Come.”

“Wait, what?” Scully was taken aback as the woman, clad in a deep purple and red French Pompadour dress already had her by the arm, tugging her toward the shadows of a small, hut style tent with a single side drawn open. “Ma’am…wait.”

“It is tradition,” Her unassuming yet demanding, deeply Creole voice caught Scully off guard and before she could protest further, a generous yank of her wrist had her separated from Mulder before he could fully realize. “Now…you sit.”

“This seems like something that is more my partner’s speed, maybe you should have him do this instead?” Scully made eye contact with him through the sliver of light at the doorway, the flashes of fire dancers illuminating him as he shrugged his shoulders and became engulfed in the crowd.

“I don’t think you want your strictly platonic to know you don’t want to be strictly platonic,” The words slipped from the raven-haired Voodoo soothsayer like she knew Scully’s entire story in only a few glances, the power of which had her gasping for air.

Scully spun around, disbelief in her voice as she hovered by the door, the wind dancing against the back of her neck as she narrowed her eyes at the trickster before her. “What did you just say?”

“You’re a lot of things, Dana Katherine Scully, but naïve and stupid, you are not,” Each syllable was a torture device and yet, Scully didn’t want to look away as a perfect stranger proceeded to call her by her full name with no sense of irony. “Now sit.”

“Now, how exactly would you know my full name?” Scully sank into the wicker, the cushion saving her backside from the bite as she fidgeted her fingers underneath of the tablecloth. “Do you have a name or do you prefer to just be nameless?”

“I’m very good at what I do,” She reached across the small, rounded table, gesturing for Scully’s palm as she elevated her own in the middle, on a velvet doily with the burned ashes of an incense stick. “I am Ayida…given name was good enough for what chose me.”

Scully reluctantly elevated her hand across the table, her palm facing up as Ayida winked at her and marked lines of perfumed, purple-tinted incense across her palm. “I could guess you’re a palm reader but something tells me you’re about to tell me that I’m wrong…”

“The lines on our hands tell a story but they only tap the surface of a person’s story. Your name, divulged from your eyes, while your adoration of your partner out there…well, that came from your pulse point,” Ayida dabbled a little dot along the center of Scully’s middle finger and inhaled a deep breath, exhaling away her Cheshire cat grin. “You hide from your heart, Agent Scully…”

Scully didn’t like personal information unfurled in this fashion as she uncomfortably chewed on the inside of her cheek and squinted at the lines on her hand. “You’re just making guesses. Anyone could make that leap.”

Ayida took the comment as a challenge, blatantly calling out her craft as a candle flickered in the corner, the flame deepening in color, matching the hue of red in her dress for a moment as she burrowed her stare into Scully’s soul. “You’re here chasing a shadow when the one you should be looking for is your own. You’ve battled sickness with light at your side—but you keep turning away from crossing its path. You’re afraid that you’re not good enough.”

It was enough to rattle Scully, even if it sounded vague and indirect, as she swallowed hard and looked over her shoulder, praying silently that Mulder couldn’t hear any of this. It wasn’t that she wanted to hide from him or keep a part of herself locked away but that she didn’t want to be exposed with no hope of the hammer to fall in her favor. She could hear him in the distance in awkward conversation with a group of people amidst the music and mixture of chants, drumbeats, and melodies that she’d never heard before. Ayida wasn’t menacing, by any stretch, but there was a part of her hardened, damaged heart that was crying out to know more, to see exactly what she was seeing in spite of the repercussions.

Morbid curiosity had always been a vice.

“That isn’t the only thing that terrifies you,” Ayida finally dug deep enough that Scully’s actual worry manifested in a barely audible yelp as the candles flickered in unison, burning blue in a series of flickers she snapped her fingers in the air. “Someone very close to you, long ago, gave you a crystal once upon a time, didn’t she?”

Scully ripped her hand free, eyes wide as she held the puff of air in her lungs, jolting backward while the tears formed along her waterline. “Wait, just a damn minute. That’s…that’s…”

“Too close for comfort? Your sister believed in so much more than the spiritual,” Ayida was calm, almost too calm, as she gestured for Scully to move back to the table as she opened a small satchel of silver charms and a single length of matching chain. “That crystal represents healing, strength, and compassion in Voodoo rituals. I saw you from afar, wounds no longer healing, and knew you no longer keep visible to forget her memory.”

“This is too much,” Scully managed to keep the lines of incense perfectly intact on her hand in spite of wringing her fingers to the point that they were hurting as she deepened the focus on her palm. “This is all too much.”

Ayida held a section of her skirt away from the edge of the chair and carefully crossed her legs, returning the fabric to the floor as she was shocked to find Scully extending her hand across the doily, her free hand wiping errant tears. “Is there something that you want to know or are you simply challenging me to push further into your open wound? I am not into that kind of Voodoo…as much as you might disagree.”

Scully had a picture in her mind that had been brewing for years, one that had taken shape from purely self-doubt to one of regret as she nodded slowly, her voice softer than intended. “The decision I made…to do…this with my life.”

“Your line of heart, your line of life, and your line of head have points of intersection but the Girdle of Venus is light, yet fanned, you hide your sensitivity in spite of it being an ally. You hide that quality from everyone,” Ayida dragged the answer out as she dipped a feather into a container of palm oil then pulled it across the center of Scully’s palm. “Loneliness is consuming and you are in the dark with the key at the door.”

“Hey…Scully…” Mulder was wide-eyed as he pushed through the canvas opening and nearly scared Scully right out of her skin, his ears catching half of Ayida’s last words as he went off a little half-cocked. “Am I…Interrupting?”

Scully shook her head and saw that Ayida had cleared her hand of the marks, leaving only the residue of pleasantly scented palm oil along the bottom of her hand up to the tips of her fingers. “No, I think that about covers it?”

Scully knew that she wasn’t obligated to pay but she slid at least twenty dollars across, covering it with the edge of the doily and stood, embarrassment written on her face as Ayida blocked her from leaving. Confusion would’ve been an easier emotion to experience for Mulder as he watched Scully blink twice as she was stuck in the crosshairs of the palm reader that had kept her from their investigation for well over twenty minutes. Mulder cleared his throat and was met with a soul-piercing fixated look from Ayida that had him swearing her eye color changed as though she were silently delivering a warning. He knew not to move—it was the kind of glare that mothers give when they are pushing that last nerve.

“I do have one more thing,” Ayida gathered the chain and put it up and over the top of Scully’s head, letting the charms attached rattle against each other as they fell against her chest, “Wear these, for protection, for the answers you were seeking about the life you chose…and about the loneliness, if you hope to discover where you are meant to go, to do…if they come off, they must be hung near where you sleep…to remind you.”

Scully was petrified over the notion of Ayida saying that out loud in front of Mulder, but she agreed with a quiet nod and sipped the charms underneath of the material of her shirt without fully looking at them. She didn’t necessarily want to linger too long over them knowing that she had seen them before—and knew exactly what they represented. Ayida watched, like a raven hiding in the trees, as Scully moved closer to Mulder’s arm, casually seeking refuge in his familiarity without it being painfully obvious to anyone but, perhaps, the clairvoyant in the corner. Mulder furrowed his brow and assisted her with the heavy canvas, letting her back onto the sidewalk where the chilly rainfall met the heat in Scully’s cheeks and only made them more apparent as she put distance between herself and that tent.

“Scully?” Mulder barely touched the curve of her shoulder and felt her push into his palm as she tilted her head to meet his gaze.

Scully pressed her lips together and glanced around at the growing sea of faces clad in various paints and glitters, some with elastic held masks, purposely shrouding their identities from one another, her eyes slowly wandering back to Mulder. “I’m okay, I’m okay…did you find the witnesses?”

Mulder knew, beneath her shroud of grit and placating strength, that she was breaking but he held back and wiped the moisture from her face, not needing to know if they were tears or rain before pulling her hood onto the top of her head. “I did a little better than that…I found someone who knows where they went last night and is willing to get us there.”

“Are we taking a walk in the dark, Mulder?” Scully was still shell shocked as the weighty presence against her skin, hidden by her shirt, as Mulder’s eyes were doing their best to slip under her skin, into her life force.

“I promise there won’t be any broken bones…or accidents leading to either of our demises,” Mulder gestured toward an alleyway, a smile forming on his lips beneath wet, tousled hair while he tore his eyes away from hers to lead her toward their next destination.

Scully followed Mulder in the direction of a split in the crowd, where the unlit corridor of the alley hinted at secrets, lies, and more questions than answers as Mulder’s guide waited, dressed in blue, umbrella above her head. As they came to the edge of the crowd, the rolling thunder emanated from the sky, shaking the foundations of the historical French Quarter. The vibrations didn’t phase the atmosphere of praising the ultimate passing of time and the afterlife as the flames danced through the zigzags of bodies in motion. The flames dotted into an arc and married with the jagged lines across the sky as the blues mixed with the reds, casting light over the crowd.

It was then, at the center of the crowd, that the woman in white took shape, shrouded by a haze of blue smoke, smile perched on her lips, eyes glowing red as she shook her necklace full of charms around her neck. She kept her stare in the direction of Mulder and Scully before undulating like a walking serpent into the blackness.

10:30 PM

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1

French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana

“Daliah, how big is this cemetery?” Mulder was fascinated by the sprawl of the above-ground burials in spite of the decline in conditions, some parts worse than others as lack of upkeep was an ongoing problem.

“A full city block, it isn’t even our largest of the historical sites,” Daliah had Voodoo protection charms around her neck, along with a few that Scully didn’t recognize, but lacked the face paint of a priestess of any sect, her accent native to Louisiana, leaning toward the French aspect as she carried both dialects in her twang. “We don’t have much further to go—the tombs are hard to navigate at night, even with a versed traveler.”

“Thank you for doing this, even under the circumstances,” Scully kept her pocket light aimed at the ground as she matched pace just behind Daliah, the sounds of faint, distant murmurs just enough to keep her from feeling completely at ease.

“Naïve little Voodoo girls come out to Marie Laveau’s resting place and expect to become equal to the High Priestess in one incantation,” Daliah ranted as they turned a corner, passing the angels bowed in devotion, and the offering of Mary, her voice shaking as the chill brushed past her lips. “Nothing good comes from playing with the dark arts when you are not ready to dabble.”

“So it’s common?” Mulder nearly biffed it as he took a step over a white brick that had tumbled into the pathway, tripping across it and into his partner, who managed to hear him grunt prior to him vaulting forward. “Sorry, Scully…”

“You’ve got two left feet, Mulder,” Scully had held onto him at the bend of his elbow and his ribs, instinctively, and for longer than necessary as he re-established his balance.

“Common is a relative word,” Daliah turned her head to glance at the commotion and the display of affection that hadn’t meant to be caught as she cleared her throat. “A lot of novices, non-believers, believers, and highly skilled Voodoo priests and priestesses come to her for an ask—a wish. It’s not usually something massive, because, the bigger the payoff…the higher the price.”

“An expensive quid pro quo,” Scully stopped in her tracks as the sound of branches snapping apart had the hairs standing on the back of her neck, the chills down her spine. “What was that?”

“Try not to let the noises in here lure you in and unravel fear, Agent Scully,” Daliah kept her eyes forward, unbothered by the sounds that were mimicking footsteps from behind them, a concept that would have rattled anyone else. “There’s too much history within the gates to not have a few, lingering spirits that want to take advantage of the scent of fear.”

“No one is going to be able to smell fear above the odor of garlic and spicy sausage on my breath and all over my clothes from dinner…woof,” Mulder cracked the joke, much to Scully’s chagrin, and pressed a hand to his chest as the stonework of Marie Laveau’s marked up vault came into view in the spot of Daliah’s flashlight. “Is that it?”

“The very same,” Daliah crept closer, muttering a subtle blessing under her breath as she rubbed her protection emblem that rested in the center of her neckwear. “These candles were big before they expired, a circle of poured wax, and those large, centered X’s? Blood.”

“I would assume that isn’t a good sign,” Scully knelt next to Daliah as she pulled a small satchel from her pocket, the contents of which were heavy in her hand. “What is that?”

“Protection…” Daliah poured a swirling line of salt between them and the altar, keeping her hands away from the improperly conducted divination spell. “These girls didn’t know what they were doing and I fear that they’ve done something stupid without even realizing the gravity of it. I’m not going to pay the price for their improperly sealed conjure.”

Daliah’s focus was fixed on the altar, the smeared and splattered droplets of red along the sides of each candle, wrapped delicately at the base with smudged, soaked hair around two of the three. Her eyes opened and the gasp left her lips like a wisp of a whistle as she considered not uttering a word of it to Mulder or Scully. It was not a good sign—and one looked significantly less bright with crimson than the other. They were already paying a price for their request. A soul…cannot rise without a considerable sacrifice.

“That doesn’t exactly give me the warm-n-fuzzies about the chances of anyone finding the missing girl alive, Daliah,” Mulder could hear, and see, out of the corner of his eye, apparitions of silhouettes moving from grave to grave, ducking behind the high walls of the burial sites, a phenomenon that he believed in, but never truly experienced until now. “You’re right about this place…plays tricks on your vision.”

“You’ll be lucky to find any of them when this case is said and done, Agent Mulder,” Daliah stood and turned away from Marie Laveau’s grave, tossing the last of the salt in the air as the precipitation began to come down a little harder to meet the power of the wind from the south. “Bodies and all…”

“I know that the locale is perfect for a little cryptic delivery on the clues, but I don’t plan on being in a cemetery all night listening to riddles,” Scully felt her boots squishing in the developing mud beneath her feet as she shifted her weight and held onto her hood while the wind howled through the trees like a distant siren.

Daliah didn’t want to be here anymore as she pushed past them, gripping the handle of the umbrella as she turned her flashlight toward them. “This was blood for blood. Two of the three candles are wrapped with hair. Once the third has the same ornamentation…Laveau will be intended to walk amongst the living until sunup on the 1st. They didn’t know that their sacrifice would be each other for a night of glory for the Voodoo Queen.”

“They cannot just vanish into thin air,” Scully was elevating her voice as the lightning returned like a cipher in the air, barely making her move as she glanced to her left. “That doesn’t happen.”

Scully moved the spot of her flashlight toward the side of Marie Laveau’s reliquary and caught a glimpse of the unreal in the form of hollowed wraiths of two young Haitian girls with vacant spaces where eyes should be. As quickly as the wights presented themselves, they were gone, leaving Scully to flick the light back and forth in hopes of finding them again. It made her stomach roll and the worst of it was that Mulder hadn’t been paying attention to her motions to realize that anything had happened. As she inhaled and exhaled slow, Daliah was looking at her with her eyebrows raised, fingers wrapped around the center of her necklace again.

“You don’t know Voodoo, Agent Scully,” Daliah had power in her voice to warn them as she desperately gripped the umbrella to keep it from pulling free of her fingers, shaking her head defiantly. “Neither of you do…and if you stay here any longer? They’ll know who to come for before they finish it.”

11:30 PM

Inn on St. Peter

French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana

“Scully, you’re going to wear a hole in the floor if you don’t stop pacing—these rooms are old,” Mulder looked up from a reclined position in his tee-shirt and sweatpants, his toes wiggling freely while he flipped channels in their dimly lit room on the second floor.

Scully’s dark blue, satin pajamas were swaying with every step and did little to hide what resided beneath them as they clung to each of the right spots without her even noticing. Mulder definitely did as he watched the angle of her backside until she buried it against her bed and let out a frustrated groan in the process. Scully was preoccupied and wasn’t the least bit concerned over the likelihood of Mulder staring at her in her pajamas…at least until she turned her head to see his head already angled in her direction. There was nothing more obvious of being caught than a sudden jerking motion of one’s head to look as though innocence were actually a possibility.

With Mulder? It usually wasn’t.

“You aren’t the least bit concerned about the chances of not finding your missing girl?” Scully yanked a pillow onto her lap and hugged it to her chest, the charms rattling against each other as she adjusted the fluff to her chin. “Especially after the speech that your little tour guide, Daliah, delivered out there next to Marie Laveau’s crypt?”

“Two…” Mulder noticed her eyebrows going up as he came up to a seated position, tossing the remote down by his knees as he leaned against the head of the bed and felt her signature, irritated stare against his skin. “While you were showering…the local PD informed me that Ayanna, the second of the three girls, never came home tonight.”

“You can’t be this calm about an investigation that unfolded in a matter of hours,” Scully could hear the wind whipping against the shutters behind her and the spray of rain that it brought, the air in the room thick with moisture. “I’ve never seen you this calm over an unknown escalation…it’s disconcerting.”

Mulder had the remote in his hand again, his nose wrinkling as he kept his eyes looking straight on and exhaled slowly, loudly. “I’m not calm. I’m thinking and I have a lot whirling around about what happened out there—but you’re jumpy, moreso than ever. Do you…think you want to talk about it?”

Scully had been dreading the inevitable as she felt herself reaching for the charms against her chest, almost willing the fortitude to process her own thoughts as she diverted her eyes to the floor. “That woman, the Voodoo palm reader, knew things that she shouldn’t have been able to know and I wasn’t really expecting it. I know that I shouldn’t even put a second of my time into extrapolating anything from any of it but…The experience made time stop. I haven’t been able to shake the feeling I had when I walked out of the tent.”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being affected by something so outside of your normal,” Mulder knew how tough it was to open up about being adversely influenced by an experience, especially when it concerned anything out of her comfort zone. “I was surprised that you stayed in there as long as you did—and I’m a little shocked she didn’t go straight for me.”

“I think that’s why she went after me,” Scully thumbed the chain and made eye-contact with Mulder, searching his face for an affirmation to delve deeper. “She saw my fear written on my face and knew I’d be resistant to what she’d divulge. I don’t know how to feel about it except for exposed.”

The lights flickered and the shutters shook against the windows, popping one of the mechanisms free that caused the door to the balcony to swing wildly with the gusts. Mulder scrambled for the shutter at the door, pulling it in until it snapped back into place and the lock flipped tight, the vibration of the wind rattling against his hand until he could close the door behind it. He had been exposed to the wind and ricochet of the downpour for only a moment, but it was enough to spray his face and soak the front of his shirt. Mulder turned around just as Scully had gotten to her feet, the pillow still in her hand as the room went completely dark, filling it with silence.

“Power’s out,” Mulder broke the quiet with a quip and had Scully letting out an awkward, necessary laugh while he groped across the floor, toward her. “You think they equip these rooms with candles?”

Scully turned on her flashlight and aimed at the nightstand, pulling the drawer open to find a stack of emergency candles to her surprise. “Ask and you shall receive…looks like someone had issues with the power here once before?”

Mulder had them lit and arranged along the two nightstands, illuminating enough of the room to keep from tripping over everything, or each other. It was eerily quiet aside from the rumblings of the storm surge outside, enough so that they could hear the other guests shouting at each other for matches and candles. Everything unexpected had happened and left both of them retreating to the confines of their beds while the distant thunder started nearing their proximity. Scully was the first to get under the covers while Mulder was still meandering through the pile of crap on his bed including a bag of sunflower seeds he had been devouring. He pushed them onto the stool sitting at the end of the bed and slid between the sheets, the chill mixing with his body heat to the point that he had goosebumps almost immediately.

“How long do you think they’ll be up yelling for candles?” Mulder was staring at the ceiling while Scully’s back was to him, widely gaped at the windows, tension through her.

“I don’t know but if I hear gunshots, I’m not moving…” Scully looked over her shoulder at him, his cadaver-esque positioning making her wonder if he was just as uncomfortable as she was. “Mulder?”

“Hmmm?” Mulder turned his head toward her, the subdued, delicately dancing light of the cast against her face as she rolled over completely.

“You can say no if it’s just, out of the question,” Scully lifted her head and leaned against her palm, the charms falling away from her skin with a clang while she swallowed her pride, her fear. “Can I sleep with you?”

“Get those things off your neck and bring another pillow, mine are flat,” Mulder was secretly losing his mind over the prospect of being inches from Scully, with no more than the thinnest, softest material keeping her skin away from a caress, but he kept his cool. “None of that, sticking your cold feet on my legs, either…I kick.”

Scully carefully dangled the charms from the lampshade, looping the chain around the top until it swung carefully from the bottom, tossing the pillow onto Mulder’s face as she slid into the bed. “I’m cold from the neck down so watch yourself.”

“Jesus, fucking, Christ,” Mulder let out a laugh as Scully’s fingers and toes simultaneously touched the side of his arm and halfway down his leg, sending a chill through the material of his sweats in the process as he pushed the pillow under her head instead. “You weren’t lying about being fucking cold…scoot that way, you’re just plain mean trying to steal my body heat!”

“Come back, you’re warmer than I expected,” Scully tugged at the bottom of his shirt and found bare, surprisingly hot skin along his abdomen, while he tried to maneuver away from her, half flailing his right arm until he was almost to the edge of the bed. “You’re going to fall off the bed and all I’m going to do is laugh…now stop, you’re making it colder.”

Mulder rolled onto his side and gave the blankets a yank to his shoulder, enveloping them both as he found himself rubbing her arm over the top of the satin pajamas, fixating on the charms as they swayed above the lit candles. He hadn’t had a chance to really look at them since Ayida had put them on her but he was seeing them clearly now, glowing in the light of the emergency candles below. Mulder squinted—protection, love, and incite lust—that last one had him inhaling a breath as though it had been revoked from him, weakly contemplating the reasoning for them. Voodoo was more than superstition; it was a way of life for so many and Scully was already following the instructions of a woman who had, admittedly, frightened her.

“Scully…why did that palmist mention something to you specifically about choices and loneliness?” Mulder had his chin close to her forehead, his hands pulling her closer to give her as much of his heat as she needed, comfortably cradling one arm underneath of her upper body. “Do you have regrets or are you questioning life?”

Scully thought back to the prophetic words from Ayida about guarding her emotions from the man that she was now intertwining limbs with, close enough to feel his heart beating against her own. She replayed the actuality of just how badly it hurt to be this close to him with no real hope still burning in her eyes. She had been running from her heart, from the possibilities that taking a chance might possess, even as they presented themselves with clear opportunity. It was never that simple—at least it never seemed that simple. Even as she felt the warmth of his hands against her back, her arms, her shoulders, something felt complicated and tentative from within her soul that she never placed until now. She never felt like she was quite enough for more.

“I don’t know if me saying it out loud will really change things,” Scully marked circles with her index along his shoulder-blade through the material of his shirt, looking up at him as though something might flicker back. “Even if I did…would it matter?”

“Anything you say to me, matters,” Mulder’s voice unexpectedly dropped an octave, teetering somewhere between affection and desire, capturing Scully’s attention as she angled her head back to really look at him.

“Ayida, the palm reader, managed to expose something about me that I was not ready to face,” Scully couldn’t fully concentrate with Mulder’s leg wrapped around her own but she held on, breathed through it, and looked into his pools of green and brown with flecks of deep gold in the center, his lashes fanning with every blink. “I don’t regret the life I chose…but the things I keep doing are the makings of an awfully lonely life. I’ve shut you out of so much and kept you away because I didn’t think you’d want to hear it, or be there—"

Mulder cut her off with an unparalleled gesture, masterfully capturing surprise and elation with the unexpected, the necessary, the singular unfolding of years of holding back. It was as though Mulder had been tacitly conceptualizing this moment for years as the hand once residing against her arm slipped to the curve of her jaw where it met cheek, stroking that place as his mouth came alive. Scully held on, lips parting to let him in and hands feverishly groping along the back of his neck, awakening the part of her guarded heart that had been crying out his name for far too long. It went beyond a twinge as the swaying of the flames mimicked their every move, reaching in the dark as Mulder rolled and encouraged her thighs around his own, wheedling a breathy moan that reverberated against his tongue.

“Mulderrrr…” Scully couldn’t help it as her head tilted back and left his lips along the curve of her neck, lavishing her with kisses while a not-so-subtle erection pressed against her inner thighs.

“I can stop if it’s too much,” Mulder could hear it in her voice as the sound of his name went ragged from her lips, the resonation of which had his head swimming as he met her waiting gaze.

“No, don’t stop,” Scully shook her head and dragged her fingers down his back until they found skin, tugging at his shirt while she fumbled with her words, agonizing over the way she must’ve sounded. “I have wanted this for so long.”

“It wouldn’t have taken walking in on a palm reader for me to want to know if you ever wanted the same things that I did, Scully,” Mulder put his weight against the flex of his arm and elbow, dotting his lips along her collarbone while painstakingly unbuttoning each pearl finished dot from the bottom up, his eyes trained on hers. “The day you walked into the basement office…I wondered how you would feel, how you would sound in so much more than conversation, and how your mouth might taste. I couldn’t keep it out of my head on the flight to Oregon, then you went and dropped that robe in front of me? I tried not to think about it but what would you have said?”

“Oh, God,” Scully bit down on her lip, the muted glow against his bedroom eyes as he found that top button and nearly disconnected it from the threads as well as the loop, his thumbs just barely between the gap in the material. “Say it…please, say it…”

“I want you,” Mulder gradually exposed porcelain skin to the air and dragged his fingers along the space between her breasts until he could see the gooseflesh appear across every inch of unveiled Scully. “Jesus…Christ…you’re fucking beautiful.”

Scully would’ve inspired a full prayer from Mulder as the meticulous, pale form beneath him was more than he expected, more than he could’ve hoped for. She licked her lips instinctively and guided his tee-shirt up and over his head, taking the time to admire every mark across his chest as she discarded it on the floor. Mulder brought her to his mouth, his arm guiding her torso up to guide the satin sleeves off and away from her, tossing it into the general direction of his shirt. Mulder allowed her back to find the pillows all over again as his hands grazed across delicately raised and hardened flesh, earning a low, stuttered moan from Scully as she arched against his hands, the shockwave of electricity flowing straight to her core. Scully dug her fingers into Mulder’s shoulders and met a look drenched in pure, raw sexuality as he lowered his lips anent her breasts.

“Yes, yes, yes, keep going,” Scully enjoyed the gradual building of every one of her senses but wanted to urge him on, as she felt his index fingers barely pulling at the waistband of her bottoms, thrilling her with the agony of taking his time.

Mulder guided her out of her bottoms, leaving her in a pair panties that seemed to match the texture of her pajamas, much to his surprise. “Eager, Scully? I would’ve thought that I’d be the one to express that…given the confession I just made.”

“Eager doesn’t go far enough,” Scully’s voice shook as she guided his hand to the space between them, pressing against the thin, diaphanous material of her panties until he could feel the heat and wetness seeping through. “That happened the second you slipped your tongue in my mouth…I can’t wait any longer.”

Mulder wanted to tease her a little more but his own, growing problem was pushing against her, throbbing against the spot just below his hand as he dragged his thumb across the silky material until Scully was undulating up to him. Scully had been concerned with being seen as fragile or breakable but as Mulder’s thumb strummed her like an instrument, she nearly sailed over the edge. Mulder dragged his fingers only once more, this time to free her of the confines of her panties, leaving her naked beneath him. Scully had her lip between her teeth as she gazed up at him, giving him the lightest of tugs to bring him back to her lips, back to the place that had started it all. There was a secret yearning to take his time but the woman already halfway to spilling over had his thoughts jumbled, knowing that they’d already taken their time to get to this point.

They had both supposed it was years of foreplay, in the oddest way deemed possible.

“Fuck,” Mulder’s mouth popped free as he felt his erection slip free, only to realize that it was Scully that had brought that action into motion as her perfect, graceful fingers gripped him just enough to make his eyes roll back. “Scullyyy…holy shit!”

Mulder inhaled sharp and connected that gaze with hers, as the distant thunder finally arrived and rolled overhead. He lingered for only a moment, caressing her thigh as her free hand glided along his midback, memorizing the details of his body in the same fashion that he had already been doing with hers. They fit together, like perfect puzzle pieces, and Mulder was careful with his first thrust as the mattress sighed beneath them and the lightning flooded through the gaps in the shutters. Rhythm slowed and hastened as their passion set the bed ablaze while the candles continued to flicker in the dark, wind whistling through the cracks in the windows and doors. They didn’t care if anyone could hear them as the moans became frantic, stuttered, and mixed with the thudding of the headboard against the wall. It was long overdue as their heartbeats met and synchronized.

He couldn’t have been more in love and she had finally given him all of her heart—as the storm raged on outside.

Saturday, October 31st 1998, 5:30 AM

Inn on St. Peter

French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana

They had only slept for a few hours, through the heart of the storm, and woke to the sound of the phone ringing on the nightstand between the beds. It would’ve been easier to ignore it as Mulder felt the warm, barely stirring Scully still cuddled against his chest, her arm draped up to his neck but the lull in sound only meant that the person on the other end was simply calling back after no response. Mulder groaned and smirked at the half-awake, disheveled Scully as she tilted her chin up at him, mouthing “what the fuck” as the jarring sound echoed in their room. They’d both had enough of it as Mulder rolled halfway out of the blankets to get it, glancing at the mess of nightclothes on the floor in the process.

“Mulder?” He couldn’t shake the sound of agonizing sleeplessness from his voice as he looked over at Scully with the sheets across the center of her back. “Well, that happens when you call at 5:30…Okay, you’re going to have to repeat that for me, Sergeant…two of the three girls are confirmed missing, the third hasn’t been seen since late last night?”

“What?” Scully kept her voice low as she sat up, wrapping the sheets around her in the process, her hair a wreck as she ran her fingers through it.

“It’s Halloween…you’re going to have strange shit all over the place,” Mulder paused, his face turning white as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, frustrated that he couldn’t enjoy the memory of last night for a little longer. “Okay…We’ll investigate from our end…you get people out there looking for possible bodies, as much as I don’t want to go there, these families deserve to know what happened to their daughters…Bye.”

Mulder placed the phone back on the receiver, his eyes on Scully as she reached for his hand. “What’s going on?”

“You know how Daliah mentioned last night that the three girls made a blood deal when they went to Marie Laveau’s burial site?” Mulder reached for a pair of boxer-briefs from the pile of clothes, the frustration climbing in his voice. “Officers went out there this morning after someone reported hearing screams coming from the cemetery—when they arrived, they found a jar.”

“Mulder?” Scully didn’t like where this was going as he turned, his face less than pleased with the situation.

“The jar was filled with embalming fluid,” Mulder’s tone was somber, sober even, as he rubbed his eyes again, index lingering along the bridge of his nose. “…and six eyeballs.”

Saturday, October 31st 1998, 8:30 PM

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1

French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana

The task force had been working busily through the day, in spite of the weather destroying nearly all particulates and evidence that could’ve been used to find who could’ve orchestrated this morbid experiment. Mulder and Scully had been overworked throughout the day, interviewing every person that saw Ayanna, Kya, and Madeleine since before their experiment in the cemetery. It was another dead end—stories full of holes, people that had sworn they’d seen each of them, at the same time of the day, in opposite places, which had given the agents little hope in finding the three teens alive. The investigation, in all of its yellow, Do Not Cross tape, had only confirmed one thing; that the eyes they had found matched their young, missing Voodoo conjurers.

“Mulder, this is a literal dead end,” Scully could see him squinting into the dark as the sounds of celebrations began to interrupt their work, the drumbeats and chanting had begun to flood along the outside walls. “We’re not going to find anything here…not in this weather, not in the dark, not with this going on in the background.”

“We found parts of them, like breadcrumbs in the most macabre way possible,” Mulder moved closer to her, into her personal bubble, his hand on the small of her back as though he were protecting her from the wind. “They were out here and someone is doing this…”

The reverberating chants were barely discernible above the thuds of drums and wailing of trumpets as the flashing red and blue lights of local PD seemed to add to the hovering from mystics. The shadows were now blending with the fog, the air thick with moisture as the lingering storm continued to bring the wind, rain, and an intermittent thunder. Lightning blitzed across the sky and had the Agents looking up instead of down, taken aback at how intense the colors were as they skidded across the sky, leaving behind a fraction of a second long halo before the thunder cracked all the way to the ground. Neither of them would have ever noticed the woman, with her hair wrapped tightly, eyes glowing red, floating in the background in the midst of the flashing lights, her silhouette barely visible as her smile appeared and faded before she disappeared into the shadows.

An officer shouting “we got something!” from the corner had Mulder and Scully jogging to meet them, to discover what could only be described as another piece of the morbid puzzle. Mulder’s stomach spun and Scully heaved a heavy sigh as their confirmations of dread had been met—finalized by the spilling of too much blood. Mulder didn’t want to admit that he knew what it was, even as he stood, in disbelief, of the carnage that someone had inflicted on three, unlucky teenaged girls. It was too much for them to contemplate alone—it was exactly as Daliah had foretold.

“What in the fuck?” Mulder looked at the tangled mess spilled along the dulled white surface of the walkways, just feet from Marie Laveau’s tomb.

“Entrails,” Scully winced and felt the blast of cold air to the back of her neck as instructed officers clad in protective gear before turning her head away from the grisly scene. “I need someone to make sure that we identify if it belongs to one…or all of them. Start searching the surrounding area for the bodies.”

It must have been poetic justice, by design, that Mulder had missed this moment for a second time, as Scully witnessed the misty apparitions of the three teenagers just behind two angels in prayer. She blinked and the clear as day manifestation was gone, leaving her to simply grip the chain around her neck, reminding her of the gift she had been given and what it meant. Mulder squeezed her hand, pulling her focus, and nodded symbolically at her, as though her expression said what had happened, without saying anything at all.

#x files #fanfic #xfspooky2019 #fanfiction is life #MSR #Mulder and Scully #writing is life #inspiration

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sitiaisyahwrites · 5 years ago

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Point Danger & Movie World

Getting off of the plane when we landed at Gold Coast Airport was a very visceral experience. There was just something about the air that even your body could feel that you were in a whole different place Gone was the hot and humid tropical weather that was the norm in South East Asian countries, and in its place was the searing hot and relatively dry weather that was commonly associated with Australia. When we arrived, the sun was scorching hot, the temperature around 27 degrees Celsius.

After landing, we were picked up by our local Australian hosts and were given the keys to our rental cars. The first place we headed to was Point Danger in Coolangatta, a scenic lookout point on a large hill overlooking the sea for a quick picnic slash early dinner. The view from the top of the hill was breathtaking, with its large expense of rolling hills covered in paradise-green grass facing the alpine-blue sea with its walloping waves crashing onto the sands of Duranbah Beach.

The winds on Point Danger were cool and pleasant yet strong, to the point where we needed to hold down our hijabs to stop them from continuously flying in the wind. The temperature was much colder up on the Point and despite the sun shining directly overhead, my family still had to bundle up in jackets to stave off the chill.

Standing proud on the top Point Danger stood the Point Danger lighthouse with it’s tall, modernistic white walls, also doubling as the Captain Cook Memorial. The lighthouse is used to indicate the border between the states of New South Wales and Queensland, that has two different time zones. Dozens of tourist line up to stand between the line indicating the borders and taking pictures in the almost sci-fi-like area where you get to literally travel between the future and the past with a simple small step and to be in two places at once at the same time.

The next day, we all journeyed to Warner Bros. Movie World, one of the many theme parks that can be found in the Gold Coast area, though this specific park was located in Oxenford region. The theme park featured some of Warner Bros. most popular movie properties such as DC Comics themed park rides and rollercoasters, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory themed candy shop and Harry Potter themed merchandise stores.

We arrived relatively early, intending to beat the crowds but the lines of people queuing and waiting for the park to open were already insanely long. When we finally stepped through the gates of the theme park, we were struck in awe at how large the park really was, as it stretched as far as the eye could see with the tall and scary-looking theme park rides with varying themes and structures drawing the most attention.

We first headed towards the Main Street area that was shaded by expansive white domed roofs that was closest to the entrance of the park. The street was surrounded by various movie-themed restaurants, cartoon-themed buildings and concession stands, several popular chain stores such as Ben & Jerry’s and the most impressive of them all was the theatre with its bright neon signs and lightbulbs, reminiscent to what a movie theatre would look like back in the 1960s.

We visited a lot of the park’s attractions, taking turns to go on exhilarating roller coasters and other rides – though it had to be noted that most of the attractions seemed to be DC Comics themed. Certain examples of the rides include One of the most notable rides include the Arkham Asylum roller coaster, designed to look like a shabby, vandalized mental asylum as it was portrayed in the comics. The ride was also quite frightening, as the tracks were designed to look very lopsided and poorly constructed to fit the theme of the ride, which instilled even more fear into the riders.

Movie World also has a lot of photo spots with statues of popular characters and aesthetic photo spaces sprinkled all over the park for those interested in getting Instagram-worthy pics to post on social media later. Though, you have to pay at certain popular photo spots such as in front of a statue of Batman in front of the Batmobile, the average costs being 10 AUD for a phone picture and 30 AUD for professional prints by a nearby photographer.

One of the theme park’s biggest highlights was the big parade held at Main Street during the afternoon. Park employees dressed as characters from different Warner Bros. properties flooded the Main Street in floats and on foot, interacting with the children and taking multiple pictures with the park goers. Fan favourite characters such as Batman and Justice League as well as the Joker and Harley Quinn had dozens queueing to take pictures with them, though we avoided the ones that required is to pay because 30 AUD is far too expensive for just a simple photograph, especially for a Malaysian tourist.

Because of the lack of affordable halal food options at the park, we decided to pack our own lunch cooked of noodles and fried chicken that we cooked at the homestay we were staying in University Village. There are prayer rooms provided in the park that make it easier for Muslim travellers to perform their prayer. We also decided to treat ourselves with a scoop of Rocky Road’s ice cream from the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream shop that was also previously halal certified as well.

#travel writing #gold coast

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believingispowerfulmagic · 5 years ago

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“The Christmas Cottage” Chapter 2: Storybrooke

Storybrooke was too small to have an airport, so Regina had to fly into Portland International Airport and drive the rest of the way. Tink had already made arrangements for her rental car but Regina still had to fight the holiday crowds to get to the rental desk. When she got there, the harried clerk handed her a key. “You’re lucky. That’s the last car,” she told Regina.

“I didn’t know Maine was such a hot destination for Christmas,” Regina replied, taking the keys from her.

The agent shrugged. “Everyone wants a white Christmas and we’re predicted to get a lot of snow between now and Christmas Eve. I guess they couldn’t resist.”

“I guess,” Regina replied. She held up her keys. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Drive safe and have a happy holiday,” the agent told her, doing her best to smile despite how tired she clearly was.

Regina rolled her suitcases out to the lot and found her car—the last Mercedes there. She loaded her big suitcases into the trunk before placing her smaller bags into the backseat. After settling into the passenger seat, she turned the heat all the way up and turned off the GPS but turned on the radio. Even after years of living in New York, she still knew the way to Storybrooke by heart. As she pulled out of the lot, Karen Carpenter crooned that there was no place like home for the holiday and Regina found it fitting.

It was about an hour drive up to Storybrooke, which was a hamlet located on the Maine coast. She followed the highway for almost a half hour before turning off onto a mostly deserted country road that carved its way through a dense forest. Most of the trees had lost their leaves but were coated in white snow. Snow also covered the evergreens that were in the forest and, along with the Christmas music playing, Regina felt the Christmas spirit more than she had in years. A Maine Christmas clearly had nothing on a New York City one for her.

A thrill went through her when she spotted the familiar white and blue sign welcoming people to Storybrooke. She smiled as she passed it, feeling a sense of rightness and calm wash over her. Though she wanted to get to her hotel and get something to eat, she slowed down so she could get a good look at the town as she drove through it—and so she didn’t get a ticket for speeding from whoever was sheriff now.

It was about five miles from the town line to the first building, which was the ranger station. The building was locked up for the night but one of the evergreen trees outside the building had been decorated with lights and a star, welcoming Regina back. As she turned onto Main Street, she smiled at the other Christmas decorations that filled the town—including the lights, garlands and wreaths that hung over the streets from wires tied to the lampposts lining the curbs. Many of the stores and the apartments over them had lights and other decorations illuminating the dark December night. And she had to laugh when she spotted the familiar sleigh “crashed” into Granny’s Diner. There weren’t many people out at that time though she could see the diner was filled with many patrons. She figured it was too cold and so most people were seeking the warmth of being indoors, whether in their own homes or not.

She left Main Street and entered the more residential area, which was just as devoid of people but just as lit up. Regina looked at their decorations with a pang of jealousy, wishing she had the time and space to really go out like them. One day, she promised herself. Maybe next year if you make partner.

As she drove down Mifflin Street, she tried not to look at the large white house bearing the number 108. She tried not to think of the days she spent running up and down that very street before going to greet her father when he got home from work at the cannery. And she tried not to think of all the happy Christmases they spent together in that house. But she failed and a lump formed in her throat as tears filled her eyes. While she loved the feeling visiting Storybrooke gave her, she also avoided it so she wouldn’t think of everything she had lost—especially her father.

It also didn’t help that Elvis was now singing about how he was going to have a Blue Christmas.

Regina swallowed past the lump as she reached the end of Mifflin Street, arriving at the harbor. Personal boats were moored at the marina, many of them covered in Christmas lights as well. Some of the ships in the harbor were decorated much the same and she smiled through her tears, always appreciating how much the Christmas spirit permeated through the town. It made her feel a little bit better as she made a left turn, heading away from the cannery and toward her hotel at last.

The Mist Haven Lodge rose up before her and Regina took a moment to admire the building. It had been built during the Victorian era, the gables and the two red polygonal towers flanking the main building, painted white with red shutters, attesting to that. Red shingles covered the roof. The porch stretched from one tower to the other, red and green bunting hanging from the eaves. Evergreen bushes grew along the porch, matching the evergreen trees that surrounded the property, and were decorated for Christmas like the rest of the town.

Regina had always admired the Lodge and had often begged her father to stay there. Her mother had scoffed at her request, saying it was a waste of money since they lived in Storybrooke and could just stay in their house. She also insisted that Regina was too young and immature to eat in the restaurants housed in the Lodge. “Our family is very respectable in this town. We don’t need you embarrassing us with your childish antics,” she had said, sniffing in disdain as her husband chided her.

When her parents got divorced, Regina’s father Henry took her to the Lodge for dinner. He told her not to worry about anything and to just enjoy herself. She felt very grown up in one of her favorite dresses (a red one that had been her Christmas dress, she recalled) and she recalled the large ice cream sundae she had split with her father. While others she knew whose parents had divorced had a rough time of it, she was much happier without her critical mother around anymore.

While her father got primary custody, Regina still had to spend time with her mother. Thankfully, her mother was not as big into Christmas her father had been and was often away on a child-free cruise during the holiday, so Regina could celebrate in Storybrooke with her father. She did have to spend a good chunk of the summer with Cora out in California and it became tradition that her father would take her to eat at the Lodge the day before she left and the day she returned.

Yet they still never stayed in the Lodge.

Henry had promised her that they would for her eighteenth birthday, saying he would book a full weekend package so she could be absolutely pampered. She had been so excited and had started to count down to her birthday.

Her father had a heart attack right after that Christmas. She had raced to the hospital when she got the call from his secretary but there was nothing the doctors could do. Regina barely had a chance to say goodbye to her beloved father before he slipped away from her, leaving her. She didn’t feel like celebrating, even when those around her encouraged her to still go to the Lodge for her birthday. Or when her friends offered to send her after they graduated high school. It just didn’t seem right to go without her father and so she never stayed in the Lodge, that childhood dream remaining unfilled.

Until now.

She pulled into the driveway and parked in one of the spots reserved for people who were checking in. Leaving her bags in the car, she hurried up the porch and entered the lobby.

Warmth enveloped her immediately and she paused, taking in the lobby. Gold carpeting lined a large area filled with wood tables, matching chairs and red couches. Old-fashioned lamps and telephones rested one some tables, making it feel like a rather large living room than a hotel lobby. White tile framed the area and a beautiful crystal chandelier hung over head. Her eyes travelled upward, taking in the five floors of the resort. Guests and staff walked along the hallways, some guests leaning against the railing to look down on the lobby from their floor. Everything always seemed so opulent and she now felt woefully underdressed in her black pants and blue shirt under her black wool Princess cut coat.

She kept to the tiled part of the floor as she walked to the front desk, located directly opposite the front doors. The heels on her boots clicked as she passed a little store and what appeared to be a bar area before she got to the desk. Regina pulled out the printout of her reservation confirmation, setting it on the counter as she smiled at the clerk waiting there. “Checking in.”

“Okay,” the young man said, taking her paper. He typed something into the computer before nodding. “You’re here for the Blanchard-Nolan wedding?”

“I am,” she confirmed.

Clicking was the only noise for a few moments as he typed in her information, nodding as he pulled something up on the screen. “Okay, Ms. Mills, I have your reservation right here. I see you made an alteration to your reservation the other day, changing it to only one adult. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” she said, fighting the bitterness and disappointment coursing through her. It was not the time to deal with those.

“Okay, so do you want one or two keycards?” he asked her.

“Two,” she replied. “Just in case.”

He nodded, pulling two plastic cards out and running them through the scanner to put her room information on them. She watched as he tucked them into a cardboard holder, writing something on the back before he placed them on the counter. “Okay, you are in room 323. Most of the guests here for the wedding are staying on that floor. I’ve written the password for our wifi on the card as well. If you have any questions or need anything, do not hesitate to call us here at the front desk. We are here to make your stay as enjoyable as possible.”

“Thank you,” she said, glad to hear there was wifi. She had a lot of work she needed to try to get done in between everything for the wedding.

“We hope you enjoy your time with us here at Mist Haven,” he said before handing over a piece of paper. “This is your parking pass. Parking is in the back. Please park in spaces that are marked for hotel guests.”

Regina thanked him, taking back her confirmation paper when she grabbed her parking pass. She headed back to her car and drove around to the parking lot, finding a spot not far from the side entrance. It took her two trips but she got all her bags out of the car and she settled into Room 323

The room was painted a soft yellow color with an off-white carpet. A king-sized four poster bed sat against the wall, white blankets and pillows covering it. Two nightstands flanked it, a lamp on one and the phone on the other. A beautiful wooden desk lined the wall opposite the bed, complete with a lamp and several plugs there. Regina was relieved to find a comfortable looking leather chair there, knowing she would be doing a lot of sitting in it. She rested her suitcase next to the chest of drawers that had the TV sitting on it. A closet was located to her left along with the mini-fridge, ice bucket and glasses. Yellow curtains were pulled open, revealing she had French doors that led to a balcony.

She walked over and opened them, stepping onto the white balcony. There was a small metal table and two chairs out there, though she doubted she would spend much time out there due to the cold. Regina leaned against the railing, admiring the beautiful view of the forest and mountains behind the resort. Lights from the hotel glistened off the snow and it seemed like a painting come to life.

It was the perfect setting for Mary Margaret and David’s fairy-tale Christmas wedding. It was the perfect setting for a romantic Christmas vacation.

And she was all alone.

Regina pushed that thought away as she grabbed her phone. She hit Daniel’s contact and pressed the phone to her ear, counting the rings. Disappointment flooded her when his voicemail picked up but she tried to sound as cheery as possible as she left him a message.

“Hey, Daniel. I’m settled into my room here at the Lodge. I’m in Room 323 in case you need to reach me. The room is absolutely gorgeous. I can see why people always wanted to stay here, especially given the good views. My room faces the forests but I’m sure the other side has beautiful views of the harbor and ocean.

“Anyway, I’m going to get ready for dinner with everyone,” she continued. “I’m really excited to see them again but I miss you. Hope we can talk tonight. I love you and I’ll see you soon.”

She ended the call and placed her phone on the desk. With a deep sigh, she opened one of her suitcases and pulled out her garment bag. It was time to get ready and to start the wedding festivities. And she was going to enjoy herself.

Continue reading on FFN, AO3 or Wattpad

#once upon a time #outlaw queen #oq au #oq ff #oq advent #the christmas cottage

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baxtonme · 5 years ago

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Discounted Car Hire Rental at Gold Coast Airport Coolangatta ensures Cheap Holiday Flights

Gold Coast Car Rental CEO: Rise in Business Visitors Boosts Economy

While there’s been a lot of media buzz about the soaring number of tourists thronging to the Gold Coast in the past couple of years, it’s not just holidaying tourists behind the massive increase in visitor numbers. The number of business visitors who are making regular calls to the Australis’s Sunshine Coast has been taking off on a similar trajectory, and that’s great news for the Gold Coast economy, and especially for service providers such as Gold Coast Family Car Rentals, according to CEO Darryl Essington-Wilson.

Darryl, who founded his car rental in 2001 after many years in the city’s business sector as an accounting executive and business consultant, sees nothing but benefits for the city in the current rise in visitor numbers, and the fact that business tourists form a big part of them.

One in 10 Visit Gold Coast on Business

Visitors to the Gold Coast totalled about 11 million last year, and their financial contribution to the local economy topped AUD5 billion. Seeing this economic injection into the city he has served and called his home for so long, is like music to the ears of this veteran Gold City entrepreneur. He believes the growth in the number of business visitors indicates that the city’s business sector is clearly vibrant, which in turn points to a rise in business in general, but particularly for those like car rentals which are involved in the service sector.

According to the 2017-2018 statistics released in March this year, close on 40% of those 11million visitors overnighted in the city, and nearly 400,000 of those were international and domestic visitors who did so for business reasons. And a further 627 000 made day trips to the city for business reasons, bringing the total number of business visitors to over 1million or just under 10% of the total number of visitors to Gold Coast City.

Land, Rent and Ride

Darryl, who hasn’t forgotten his past career as a business consultant, is very quick to point out that the potential for growth in this business boom does not come for nothing. He said it is up to business owners in sectors servicing and supplying these visiting businessmen, and the businesses and developments they come to visit or create, to see the potential benefits the current boom could hold for them, should they take the steps and make any necessary changes.

Gold Coast Family Car Rental has a free pickup and drop service at Gold Coast Airport specially targeted at making car rental easier for those who fly-in and fly-out to attend important meetings, conferences and expos in the city, as well as those who visit clients, or keep an eye on one or more of the development projects in Gold Coast city during this business boom.

For those intrastate and international visitors who fly in with tight deadlines and even tighter time constraints, convenience is a priority when it comes to arranging transport. Gold Coast Family Car Rentals can be booked online with Gold Coast Airport Car Rental, or by calling + 61 7 5508 3333.

Discounted Car Hire Rental at Gold Coast Airport Coolangatta ensures Cheap Holiday Flights was originally published on Baxton

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aliciameade · 6 years ago

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Baby - Ch. 8

Title: Baby Author: aliciameade Rating: *** M *** Pairing: Stephanie Smothers/Emily Nelson Summary: That tearful kiss shared between Stephanie and Emily wasn't their first—and it certainly wasn't their last.

(Chapter 1)

Also on AO3

“Hi, Moms! Stephanie here.” Stephanie smiles into one of the cameras set up in her kitchen. “My best friend, Emily, and I are taking a girls’ trip to sunny southern California this week. I grew up on the east coast and have never been west of the big Mississippi, so let me know in the comments what I absolutely must do, see, or take on my trip!”

She switches to Camera 2. “It’s with that in mind that today we’re going to make our own travel toiletry bags! All you need is a yard of fun fabric and a few buttons. You can also use Velcro strips or ribbon, or if you’re feeling really fancy, a zipper. Ready? Okay!”

~ ~

Her subscribers—she thinks of them as a family, really—were helpful in their suggestions. She folds and packs an extra cardigan to protect her from the chill that might roll in late in the evening off the water. Briefly, she considers “forgetting” any outer layers at all; the prospect of doing something obscenely romantic with Emily like strolling on the beach and getting chilly and being offered whatever expensive jacket Emily will surely be wearing is more than tempting.

But she sets the sweater on top of the négligée she’s found the perfect occasion for, and what she thinks might be too many pairs of panties but she also is pretty sure she’s going to need them.

Two-and-a-half days alone with Emily in another city with no looming husband and no dear, darling children to be cognizant of?

Yeah, she’s going to need them.

She didn’t ask Emily what she meant by “it” when she’d texted her last night saying, “Pack it.”

She has to bite her lip when she sees a loop of black leather of the harness peeking out from where it’s buried at the bottom of her suitcase.

Her toiletry kit, the one she perfected to use as her example on this week’s vlog, is the last thing to be tossed into her bag. Her heart races as she zips it. She’s minutes from loading Miles and her luggage into her Subaru to drop him—and her car—at Emily’s house.

With one final check that she has everything she thinks she might need in her purse and anything Miles might want while he has his two-night sleepover with Nicky, she shepherds him out of the house, locks up, and leaves.

~ ~

She realizes, as she steps into the hired car waiting outside Emily’s home, she has no real idea how they’re getting anywhere. Emily had said they’re taking Dennis Nylon’s private jet, but beyond that, she’s uninformed. She doesn’t know where they’re staying, if they’ll have a rental or a driver in Los Angeles, or even what Emily’s work commitments are while they’re there.

She’s never traveled without an itinerary and there’s something oddly exciting about it.

She slides over to the far side of the back seat and watches Emily take a seat next to her, graceful and dapper as always in what Stephanie surmises is a version of professional travel-casual. Her navy blue suit is tailored but it’s only a two-piece. Simple blue slacks and blazer and a white blouse that’s not even buttoned up all the way, with brown loafers. Even her casual style makes Stephanie feel underdressed when she’d put extra effort into her outfit today. She knew private travel was a luxury and she wanted to fit the part. Her dress is designer, though a full four seasons ago, something from Kate Spade’s 2017 spring collection. She knows Emily probably knows it’s outdated, but she doesn’t comment on it.

“You look nice,” is actually what she says once the driver closes the door and they’re alone in the car for a few seconds before he’s behind the wheel.

“Thank you,” Stephanie replies, feeling a bit like a blushing schoolgirl. Emily can be so hot and cold with her communication and affection, and it manages to catch Stephanie off-guard every time.

Emily’s quiet after that, focused on her phone—texting or emailing, Stephanie supposes—leaving Stephanie to her thoughts. She wants to make conversation, but she’s not sure what’s okay to do or say with someone else in the car. The driver might be someone Emily uses frequently. It might not be okay if he overhears their conversation, even if it remains mundane and platonic about work or kids. She wants to ask what the plan is or even where they’re going.

She knows they’re heading east out of town. It’s growing increasingly industrial and she’s almost uneasy until they’re parking behind a massive warehouse.

She realizes, as she steps out the car, that it’s not a warehouse but a hangar because there’s helicopter parked and waiting in the middle of the wide open pad of asphalt.

“What is happening?” she says with a laugh as she watches Emily round the back of the car until she’s by her side. It’s only a touch of a hand to her back, but it makes Stephanie shiver.

“The plane is in Teterboro.”

Stephanie starts walking, half a step behind Emily because she was too surprised to move quickly. “So we’re taking a private helicopter to a private plane?”

Emily glances at her. The small smile she’s wearing is almost a smirk and it makes Stephanie feel a little childish in her excitement.

“I’ve never been in a helicopter, either,” she says as she follows Emily into the open bay door of the sleek black and white aircraft.

“The jet is nicer.”

Stephanie leaves an empty seat between them, unsure if it would be suspicious if they sat side by side when there was plenty of room in the six-seat cabin for the two of them.

Her decision is affirmed when they’re joined by a stranger, a man in a suit with a briefcase yelling into the Bluetooth earpiece he’s wearing about the manufacturing industry in China. He sits across from Stephanie and though his words aren’t directed at her, they feel like it as he stares through her in his heated conversation.

She turns to look at Emily in horror that they’re going to have to listen to this the entire trip to the airport to find that she’s already being watched. The tiny smirk is a full-on smile now and it makes Stephanie forget about the man as she returns it.

Whatever complaint Stephanie was about to lodge dies on her lips because Emily’s smiling at her in the back of a helicopter. It’s clear the man doesn’t know Emily; he’s talking factories and steel and he’d barely acknowledged their presence when he arrived. So, she decides to see what happens if she slides over to sit in the middle seat right next to Emily instead of leaving it empty.

The only thing that happens is a slight raising of eyebrows as Emily uncrosses her legs so her foot isn’t encroaching on Stephanie’s leg room.

Stephanie buckles her seat belt and when she sits back, she angles herself enough for her elbow to rest against Emily’s. She feels it lift in acknowledgment but the motion isn’t meant to push her away. A playful bump and a shared glance.

“How long is this flight?”

“Ten minutes.”

“That’s it?!”

Emily nods and turns to look out the window as Stephanie feels a roller coaster-like effect on her stomach and she realizes they’re airborne.

It’s too loud to carry on a conversation, not without putting on the comms headsets anyway, so Stephanie remains quiet in her excitement.

~ ~

“I feel like Ilsa in Casablanca,” Stephanie finally lets herself say as she and Emily walk across the tarmac from a helicopter to a private plane, its door open and waiting.

Emily glances down at her. “Rick is putting Ilsa on a plane to send her away at the end of Casablanca.”

“I know, but it’s still so romantic and glamorous, walking across the runway ready to get on a waiting plane with someone you—” She catches herself. “With someone.”

Emily doesn’t respond; she steps aside when they get to the steps of the jet, engines already humming. “After you.”

Stephanie’s seen interiors of private planes before—on celebrities’ Instagrams, in movies and the like—but nothing could have prepared her for the reality of stepping into an airplane cabin covered in nothing but white leather and polished wood with gleaming gold (well, probably brass or similar) accents. It was a very, very far cry from the Economy Class on American Airlines that she was accustomed to.

“This is…” She senses Emily waiting behind her and turns around to find her right where she knew she’d be. “Emily, I don’t even know what to say.”

Emily smiles and gestures toward the back of the plane. “Lady’s choice.”

Stephanie yearns to pop up onto her toes and kiss her but the cabin door is still open, crew are milling about doing their final checks and loading their bags, and the cockpit door is also open with the pilots readily visible. They’re not alone, and this is Dennis’s plane and crew. Instead, she claps through a barely contained squeal and spins back around, nearly skipping through the aisle until she decides on the only row that has a pair of seats instead of singles.

She knows Emily might choose to sit alone, but she’s certainly not going to be the reason for it. She sees Emily watching her over the top of the seats and sees her making her way closer until she’s stopped at Stephanie’s row. She glances toward the front of the plane, then nods at the empty chair next to Stephanie.

“Is this seat taken?”

The whole situation already has Stephanie overdosing on endorphins, but Emily teasing? Being humorous? The compliment in the car. The elbow nudge on the helicopter. Stepping aside to allow Stephanie to board first. That pick-up line a second ago. She fights to get her joy under control lest it is off-putting and motions for Emily to sit.

“By all means.”

Emily joins her as she tosses her coat onto the seat across the aisle and though she’s still busy at work on her phone, she seems much less closed off than she had in the car.

“I really don’t know how to thank you for this,” she says as she watches Emily’s slender, strong fingers manipulate her iPhone in a way that shouldn’t make Stephanie jealous.

Emily looks up from her phone, turns toward Stephanie, and leans in and kisses her. It’s soft and brief, but it makes Stephanie tingle all the same. “I think you’ll find a way.” She punctuates the suggestive sentence with one more kiss and then she’s back at her phone and Stephanie realizes they’re already taxiing toward the runway.

She hadn’t even heard the cabin door close or felt the plane start to roll, caught up in her thoughts as she’d been.

And if they’re moving, that means there’s no one on the ground to see them through the windows, and the cockpit door is sealed, which means…

She sets her purse on the floor, not even realizing she was still holding it, turns in her seat and reaches for Emily. She catches her with a hand to the back of her neck to pull her back in. She wants a better kiss, a bigger kiss, one that will leave them both breathless and she smiles into it when Emily doesn’t pull away from her.

She feels Emily’s fingers slide into her hair followed by the heavy clunk of what she knows is Emily’s phone hitting the floor. It makes her stomach flip, but that might be from the plane taking flight, though Stephanie’s pretty sure it’s Emily and not the plane.

Stephanie has half a mind to unbuckle her seat belt and crawl into Emily’s lap but they’re barely off the ground. She doesn’t want to seem too eager or desperate despite not having been together since the morning after Emily spent an unexpected night at her house. She keeps herself in check, hands not straying into PG-13 territory. It’s enough—more than enough, really—to make her happy. Heck, even Emily looking at her with any level of affection, platonic or otherwise, makes her happy.

When she feels Emily’s hand on her waist pulling her closer, but not escalating things more either, she sighs and settles into her seat and against Emily.

There’s something just as arousing (maybe even more so) about hot and heavy making out than jumping right to sex. Perhaps it’s about a mutual agreement that it’s enough, at least for now, to simply be close and kiss. She knows more will come later. She doesn’t know when, but she knows it will only be a matter of hours. They’ll be in Los Angeles by the evening and she knows exactly what she wants for dinner.

~ ~

Emily’s phone interrupts their kissing and Stephanie can’t help but smile when Emily groans in annoyance as she pulls away to reach down to retrieve it from the floor and answer it with a very gruff, “What the hell is it now, Dennis?”

She smiles again when Emily lets her continue however she likes while she bosses around her boss, and how Stephanie likes to continue is to make sure she’s familiar with the way every inch of Emily’s neck tastes today.

As happy as she repeatedly tells herself she is to not need more right now, the need is beginning to grow. She lets her hand rest on Emily’s knee and enjoys the way she tilts her head at different angles to encourage Stephanie to continue or move to a new spot.

When it sounds like the phone call is wrapping up and Stephanie is making plans to drag Emily over to the couch to finally get some relief, she hears through the phone what sound like multiple voices speaking at once and she feels Emily sigh.

“This doesn’t warrant a call with the board—”

She seems to get cut off which Stephanie knows is a rarity. She sits back in surprise and watches Emily pinch the bridge of her nose in annoyance.

The subsequent exchange clues Stephanie in to the fact that Emily’s ended up on a conference call with the Nylon Board of Directors. It’s fascinating to watch Emily...not falter per se, but for her place to be checked. Apparently, an entire board couldn’t be fucked in the face. Even Emily wasn’t that powerful.

But speaking of fucking…

Stephanie maintains her air of innocence best she can while her lips continue caressing Emily’s neck. She lets herself run out of skin, kissing to her collar before she nudges it aside to move lower until she’s undoing the next button on Emily’s shirt to expose her collar bones to Stephanie’s lips.

Emily’s reaction isn’t strong, but Stephanie does see her fingers flex where they rest on her lap.

She doesn’t think Emily will actually let her do it. She’s sure she’ll be stopped when she keeps unbuttoning until her shirt is open. She’s sure Emily will politely nudge her away when she leans over to trail her lips over the swells of her breasts. She’s sure Emily will sit back to prevent Stephanie’s wandering hand from undoing her bra under her shirt to push it up and away so she can tease the hardened tips to further attention and not lean forward to make it easier for Stephanie.

That’s the first time she hears Emily react, a kind of a swallowed gasp that she covers with a cough. Stephanie glances up at her and she sees her put her phone on mute before she asks, “Are you going to stop and let me focus on this call?”

“No,” Stephanie says with a smile before returning to her task, one hand on Emily’s breast to guide it back to her mouth while the other moves to Emily’s pants to start working on the pair of buttons there. She struggles for a moment, one-handed, but when they give way she’s filled with a rush of arousal and adrenaline. She glances down to watch herself pull at one side of Emily’s pants to try to split the zipper but it doesn’t part as easily as she expects it to, the expensive material too pliant. She’s about to sit up so she can use both hands when she sees Emily’s hand move from where it sits in her lap to hold the other side.

When Stephanie pulls again, the zipper parts easily and she can see the scalloped edge of light pink satin.

She nicks the firm flesh in her mouth with her teeth and hears a shaky sigh above her. It serves only to encourage her further and she doesn’t hesitate to slip her hand into Emily’s pants. She does sit up for that; she wants to see Emily’s face. She’s as light as she can be, barely grazing over the soft satin beneath her fingertips and she sees the way her eyelashes flutter at Stephanie’s touch.

She’s about to ask if Emily still has the phone on mute when she speaks sharply into the receiver, something about getting a photographer from the New York Post to be conveniently placed at an event to ensure tabloid-esque coverage of another designer’s misstep. Stephanie’s still not sure what the emergency requiring this mid-flight phone call with so many people could be, but she’s sort of grateful for it. It’s giving her a new playground, something different than kids upstairs or a husband on his way home. She waits until Emily’s finished speaking before she leans in to kiss her. It’s a quiet kiss, slow and soft and Stephanie’s able to tease Emily’s tongue without any resistance.

She slides the back of her fingernail down the satin as far as she can reach, then twists her wrist to drag it back up. She feels the soft rise of flesh through the satin and smiles to herself at the sound of Emily’s quick inhale and tilt of her hips.

Her touch is moving down again when Emily turns her head away so she can speak once more; she still sounds confident and in business mode and Stephanie finds it incredibly sexy. She waits until Emily seems to be finished speaking, then guides her with her free hand right back into another kiss as she presses the tiniest bit more firmly. Emily’s hips tilt again and Stephanie knows she’s asking for more.

There’s a lot about this relationship—for lack of a better moniker—Stephanie enjoys, but none more so than the confirmation (or, at this point, the reminder) that Emily enjoys it, too, is aroused by her, is more than happy to sit back on an airplane during a business call and allow Stephanie to touch her.

She’s as light with her tongue as she is her touch and pride rushes through her when she feels Emily shiver. She can’t help herself and slips her fingertips under the satin, eager to feel the effect she’s had so far. She finds slickness and has to stop herself from making some type of cheeky comment. Instead, she catches Emily’s tongue between her lips and sucks on it.

She feels fingers twist into her hair for Emily’s response and Stephanie hums at the tightness of her grip.

Emily pulls away to speak again and this time, Stephanie doesn’t wait idly for her to finish. She leans down to take Emily’s nipple into her mouth again, having to pull against the hold Emily has on her hair but she’s allowed to move without much of a fight. She finds a pattern with her fingers, a slow, gentle circle and above her, she hears Emily hiss a quiet, “Yes,” as her back arches and hips lift.

It’s an unknown how long the phone call may last; it could be over in a minute or an hour. She could touch Emily like this, slowly and lazily to drive her mad with need. Or, she considers when she feels Emily’s legs part further and her hips start moving to match her speed, perhaps the tiniest bit more quickly than Stephanie’s pace, she could see just how professional and in-control Emily is when she really needs to be.

She presses a bit more firmly, pads of her fingers rolling back and forth. She must be hitting a nerve just-so because Emily’s knee keeps bouncing as though in reflex. She smiles against Emily’s breast, amused by it, but she adjusts to make it stop. Instead, she speeds up, pausing now and then to dip her fingers lower and into Emily to feel her and draw more wetness up with her fingers.

It reminds her of their first night together, watching a sexy movie while Emily tried to be defiant as Stephanie teased and massaged her clit until she finally begged for it.

The memory makes her teeth nick Emily’s nipple again and her hips jerk in response. She glances up and though it’s difficult at the angle, she can tell Emily’s eyes are closed and her cheeks are tinted pink.

Her own impatience gets the best of her. She can feel how much Emily wants her and Emily is the only thing in the world Stephanie wants right now. She slides off her seat to the floor and temporarily abandons Emily’s clit, licking her fingers quickly before reaching for the waistband of Emily’s pants to pull them down.

They slide easily, Emily lifting to help, and she doesn’t bother trying to get them over both of Emily’s shoes. One’s enough so she can move between her knees, hands on Emily’s thighs to part them. She can feel Emily’s hand in her hair, combing and pulling, and she doesn’t even look up at her before she does it.

There’s something empowering about that, not looking up for permission she knows she has. It’s erotic in a way she’s still getting used to, to lean in, pull the strip of satin to the side, and taste Emily.

She hears Emily stutter and lose her place in whatever it is she’s saying to the Board and it fills Stephanie with pride. She takes Emily’s swollen clit between her lips before she’s found her place in her sentence and she feels a sharp tug on her hair. It almost feels like a warning or a request to stop but the very next second she’s being pulled in closer.

She hears Emily grind out a frustrated, “Never mind,” instead of ever finishing her thought and Stephanie wonders if she’s ever had to do that before.

Feeling victorious, she glances up to find Emily’s eyes no longer closed; now they’re locked on her so she tightens her lips and pulls back, taking Emily’s flesh with her until it slips from her mouth. “That sounds really important,” she says quietly. “Don’t let me distract you.”

She can tell Emily’s about to respond until she remembers her phone isn’t muted. Instead, Emily pulls her back in and Stephanie’s more than happy to oblige.

They’ve made love many ways during their short affair. Stephanie has loved them all but Emily parting her legs and asking for Stephanie’s mouth—sometimes verbally, sometimes in other ways—is arguably her favorite.

(Okay, it might be tied with being invited to sit on Emily’s face.)

She’s generous with her tongue this time, first taking care of the arousal that’s starting to drip before lapping slowly at Emily’s clit.

She feels Emily’s leg, the one free of pants, lift to rest over her shoulder so Stephanie adjusts, wrapping an arm around her leg and pressing closer. A second later, she hears a quiet hum and feels a vibration and for a moment she’s shocked and excited that Emily has somehow produced a sex toy but when she looks up in curiosity she sees that it’s the seat and not a toy that’s humming as Emily presses a button to make it recline.

“Fuck,” she whispers between strokes of her tongue; it’s even hotter than an unexpected vibrator because Emily’s making herself as comfortable as she can to let Stephanie do as she pleases while Emily suffers through her business call.

She takes a particularly strong swipe and hears Emily’s breath catch. There’s a delay where Stephanie knows there wouldn’t otherwise be between that sound and the moan that finally comes. “Jesus fuck, baby,” follows and Stephanie assumes the phone’s back on mute. Or, at least, she hopes it is for the sake of Emily’s reputation...though the concept that it might not be is titillating, Emily getting too caught up in how Stephanie makes her feel to forget her professionalism and letting a conference room full of executives hear her moaning.

She lets herself believe that to be the case and doubles her efforts as though she’s daring Emily to keep quiet. She’s had to be the one to bite her lip and cover her mouth more than enough times and it’s fun to be on the other end of things for a change.

When she hears Emily’s breath catch, she presses inside, first with her tongue, just because, then with her fingers, firm and sure as they slide easily. She curves them and watches Emily’s hips lift off the seat for a second before they’re pushing closer.

“Then find another venue, Dennis, what the fuck do you want me to do about it?” Emily’s voice is clipped and Stephanie can tell she’s more than impatient to end the call.

It’s the least Stephanie can do to be entertaining Emily, she thinks with a shrug to herself as she fucks Emily slowly, fingers moving in long strokes. She’s rougher and quicker with her tongue; she’s always loved the way Emily reacts when she gets the angle right, that spot that’s always ‘a little to the left’ that makes her toes curl.

She knows she finds it without guidance this time when the heel of Emily’s shoe scratches at her back. It’s digging into her and trying to reel her in closer and she really can’t get any closer so instead, she presses more firmly into that spot with her tongue.

“Fuck, that’s—that’s not my fucking job. That’s why we have Elena. Why isn’t Elena on this call if this is about an event? She’s your events person. Not me. Fuck!”

Stephanie doesn’t know which, if any, of the curses are directed toward her but it doesn’t matter. Emily’s not pulling on her hair anymore. She’s just holding Stephanie there, hips starting to buck out of rhythm.

Stephanie wonders what she should do. Emily’s close; so close Stephanie can taste it. Literally, she thinks with a smile. Should she stop, or back off to let Emily unwind before it’s too late? Or should she keep going and see if Emily will allow her to take her all the way to orgasm and back during her phone call?

“Fuck, don’t stop, baby,” Emily says with a groan to answer Stephanie’s debate.

She hums in response and glances up to see Emily’s eyes locked on her, dark and intense. She looks like she’s being fucked on a private jet, disheveled and half-naked in a white leather seat and Stephanie can’t help herself. She takes her free hand back from where it’s been holding on to Emily to keep her close. She doesn’t need to do that now; Emily will do that on her own. And she reaches under her dress, between her thighs, under her panties to touch herself.

She moans at the much-needed relief and she can see it on Emily’s face that she knows what Stephanie’s doing.

But she doesn’t do anything to stop her.

Instead, she says, “God, I can hear how wet you are.”

The words make Stephanie shiver and all she can do is hum and close her eyes because every ounce of her energy is devoted to other things.

“Hey, hey guys,” Emily barks and it makes Stephanie flinch at the unexpected change in tone. “You need to figure this shit out on your own. I’m going to stay on the call so I know what stupid decisions I’ll have to fix for you tomorrow, but consider me gone.”

She hears the sound of a dozen voices yelling at once as Emily turns on her speakerphone for the call and Stephanie’s genuinely impressed that Emily’s doing exactly what she said she would. She looks up again in time to see her toss her phone into Stephanie’s empty seat, look down at her, and say, “Fuck, you look so good, baby.”

Stephanie winks and feels even sexier in doing so than she had seconds earlier despite everything.

Emily’s louder now, like the nights she spent at Stephanie’s house with Miles at his grandparents’ house. Uninhibited. Uncaring that they could be caught because there’s no one to catch them, no one to interrupt them. They’re thirty-five thousand feet in the air and alone, save for two pilots behind a locked door with much more important things to pay attention to. It makes Stephanie moan, too, no longer concerned with whether or not Emily’s call is muted. Emily’s hand, the one not resting on Stephanie’s head, is on her breast and Stephanie watches the way she plays with her own nipple, memorizing the patterns of touching, twisting, and tugging so she can repeat them later.

It’s with a gasp and a whimper that Emily comes, tense and unmoving for an eternal second until she snaps and her hips buck in a way that makes it almost impossible for Stephanie to keep her tongue on her with any sort of precision, but it doesn’t really matter now.

She groans her appreciation for it; she loves when Emily comes for her like it’s some kind of twisted gift, one that Emily chooses to give her. It’s everything she can do to stop her own orgasm. She yanks her hand away from herself to hold Emily’s thigh to keep from suffocating between them (not that she’d mind…) and feels the tiniest quiver of ecstasy make her clench and her own hips rock forward for friction that isn’t there.

Her reason to wait will be worth it, she reminds herself, as she waits until the body above her is finished twisting in release. Once Emily’s calm again, her fingers starting to comb through Stephanie’s hair, she gets off the floor, makes quick work of slipping her panties off, and moves to straddle Emily’s lap. She takes her hand, the one that’s been in her hair for however long she was on her knees, and guides it between her legs.

Emily’s slow to react and she takes immense pride in that, that she’s still trying to recover. It’s not as though Stephanie needs a massive effort on her part for this anyway. She guides Emily’s fingers into her, sees the way she looks up at her, still dazed but there’s a hint of familiar smirk returning that disappears as soon as Stephanie leans down to kiss her.

She’s moving as soon as their lips touch, rocking and holding Emily’s hand in place firmly against her so she can grind against it as she claims Emily’s mouth with her tongue. She loves when they’re like this, raw and sensual and a bit dirty and she loves when Emily lets her take what she wants when she lets her be in control. She’s pretty sure by now that Emily wants Stephanie to be in control sometimes, that Emily likes when Stephanie does things like tie her up or pin her down. She’s sure Emily likes it as much as Stephanie likes being told to get on her hands and knees to be taken from behind.

It’s a good set-up they’ve got going, she thinks. The give and take, their little games of dominance and submission that haven’t started to challenge Stephanie’s personal boundaries yet, but she thinks they might sometime soon. Maybe while alone together on this trip. She’s kind of in the mood to be tested.

The possibilities and scenarios that assault her imagination are so distracting that it doesn’t even register with her that she’s close until she’s already coming, moaning against Emily’s mouth, lips touching but not really kissing as she feels Emily’s tongue darting in and out, still teasing even as Stephanie starts to come back to herself.

She doesn’t hear the angry, arguing voices on the phone anymore so the call must have ended or maybe Emily hung up, but she’s grateful all she can hear is their heavy breathing and the loud hum of the jet engines carrying them farther and farther away from Emily’s husband.

The thought makes her lips curl into a smile and she kisses Emily again now that she’s of sound mind once more and she lets her hips resume rocking. Not hard, or fast, but enough to be able to feel Emily still inside her. It’s enough to get Emily participating again and Stephanie shivers as Emily’s fingers curl and press into her.

“Was that your way of thanking me?” Emily says with a lazy smile when Stephanie has to pull back to moan.

It takes her a few seconds to rebuild the events of the past couple of hours, their conversations and references, until it clicks. “It’s a start,” she says as suggestively as she can. She knows the impact is probably lessened a bit by the way her eyes keep trying to close and how hard she knows she’s tightening herself around Emily’s fingers, but she doesn’t care much. They can have their verbal tête-à-tête another time when Emily’s not knuckle-deep inside her and when she’s not making Stephanie help her to lift her dress over her head and off so she can pull Stephanie down at a new angle that puts her breast in Emily’s mouth.

It forces Stephanie to shift higher up Emily’s body, but it’s easy with how far back the seat reclines, almost 180º.

What it also allows her, she discovers by accident when she’s balancing herself to work her way up on her knees, is that now she can reach behind herself and find Emily again, even wetter than she’d left her.

It’s not the best angle, and she has to choose between sitting up and touching Emily or bending forward to have her nipples kissed and licked. Her own need wins out for a while, until her nipples are too sensitive to withstand more attention. Then she sits back, sits up nice and straight because even if it’s narcissistic, she knows she looks good in this position and reaches back and into panties she long ago should have stripped from Emily to find her clit, warm and swollen with need as she rides Emily’s fingers.

She feels Emily’s hips lift beneath her and it reminds her of what it was like to have Emily sitting astride her this way and despite the numerous positions they’ve tried with Emily’s strap-on, something as basic as this has yet to happen. She’s allowed Emily to be the one in control if Emily was wearing it which has put Stephanie (very willingly) onto her back, or her hands and knees, or the washing machine.

If it wasn’t packed away in her suitcase stored somewhere on the plane, she’d stop and retrieve it and take care of that oversight right here and now.

But, that will have to wait for another time, maybe tonight at their hotel. The thought makes her hips move more quickly, rolling again and again against the fingers that are inside her. They’re both moving, now, and Emily’s lifting her hips like she’s fucking her with them, and she’s really not, Stephanie’s seated too high, across her stomach, for it to have any effect but it’s probably less about trying to fuck Stephanie and more about the way Stephanie’s fingers are framing and squeezing Emily’s clit as it slides between them with every thrust.

Emily’s free hand finds Stephanie’s left breast and she’s not really doing anything more than holding on, but Stephanie doesn’t mind. She can do all the work for now; she knows Emily will more than return the favor(s).

“Fuck,” she whines, feeling the pleasure starting to coil inside her again. She can’t believe she’s doing this, she never can believe it when it happens, but now it’s even more unbelievable because opening her eyes for a second to look down at Emily, she can see the window next to them and nothing but blue sky and clouds and she’s literally flying.

Emily’s saying something, she can’t tell what though. Her ears are ringing from how hard her heart is beating but she’s nodding as she says it before her eyes slam shut and her head tilts back and her back arches off the seat and Stephanie comes with her.

She almost falls backward because she can’t bend forward without surrendering her ability to touch Emily but an arm around her waist catches her. There’s so much adrenaline and arousal flowing through her veins she wonders how she’s ever supposed to stop this. She wonders how they ever manage to stop, to act like platonic friends around each other, ever. It’s amazing to her that they can ever do anything but do everything they can to make each other feel this way.

A hand glides up her sweat-soaked back and she’s forced to slide backward until she can’t reach Emily anymore, and she’s brought down. Emily wants to kiss her and who is she to deny Emily that? Or anything, for that matter.

She hears herself moan into it, and she’d be embarrassed by how turned on she still is if Emily didn’t chuckle through their kiss knowingly. She’s still stroking Stephanie slowly but she can tell Emily’s working toward reclaiming her hand.

“How long until we land?” she asks before moving to kiss Emily’s neck, lapping at her skin and relishing the taste. She’d broken a sweat, too.

Emily laughs again and it sounds magical to Stephanie. “Save some for tonight, baby.”

“I’m never going to get tired of this,” she admits as she sinks her teeth into Emily’s neck, not hard enough to leave a mark or even inflict much pain; just enough to make Emily gasp because she knows Emily likes when she uses her teeth.

And she does gasp. But it’s followed by a hand on the side of her face, guiding Stephanie away until she’s looking down at Emily, a thumb stroking Stephanie’s cheek. “Hey, we’re good, right?”

Stephanie’s confused by the question. Of course, they’re good. They’ve been “good” since Day One. Did she say too much? Was that too revealing? Too open or honest? After Emily telling her she could get used to lazy Saturday mornings at home with Stephanie, she thought something like feeling insatiable around Emily would be less than problematic.

“Yeah,” she says with a smile that she hopes doesn’t betray her worry. “We’re good.”

“Good,” Emily replies and guides her down into another kiss, this one so soft and gentle it makes Stephanie’s toes curl in a different kind of way. “Let’s get dressed,” she says when they part. “I bet you brought a crossword puzzle book or something, didn’t you?” she adds with a smile.

Stephanie thinks about the book of vacation-themed Mad Libs in her purse; she’d bought it yesterday thinking it could be fun to see how much it would take to get Emily worked up over a story being so ludicrous, but now she feels like she might get teased about it with the way Emily’s asking her.

“Um…”

“I knew it,” Emily says with a grin before starting to sit up with the help of the electronic buzz of her seat, making sure to not topple Stephanie off her lap in doing so. “You’re so fucking cute. Let’s do it together. Let me up so I can use the bathroom?”

Stephanie blinks at her and she imagines she must look a bit owlish; she had expected Emily to mock her but instead, she’s happy and ready to play a game with her. “Sure,” she says happily as she backs off Emily’s lap and onto very unsteady legs. It’s not made any easier by the plane hitting a small patch of turbulence as she does so and she wobbles, Emily catching her with hands to her waist.

Then, as though she couldn’t help herself, Emily’s leaning in and taking Stephanie’s nipple into her mouth again, nothing rough or harsh, just soft warmth and gentle pressure and a tongue swirling around it. It makes Stephanie squeak and brace herself on Emily’s shoulders and she watches her finish before she leans to the right to give the other the exact same treatment.

She feels dazed by the time Emily sits back and not exactly turned on in the way she has been; she’s not desperate for an orgasm or writhing in need, but she feels heady and a bit drunk or maybe high and she wonders if maybe she is. Maybe Emily, especially this Emily who’s gentle and caring and giving, is her drug of choice.

If so, she knows she’s already addicted.

~ ~

Chapter 9

#a simple favor #emily nelson #stephanie smothers #asf fic #fanfic #murder moms

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