#clawed hand stroking your cheek as more black ink falls onto your skin

[lustlovehart]

Oh my goodness??? This is horrifying 😭😭

I would literally pee my pants if I was Idia and Malleus just ominously said that. The way they don’t even show him either is so scary (╥_╥).

The end is coming for Diasmonia, and they’re really building it with this horrifying exchange 😭

Over blot Malleus fic... (a few spelling errors in the tags be warned >.<)

[katsukikitten]

In which Shoto is an asshole Oni and I am the author that wrote the majority of this fic tipsy, you’re welcome! Bnharemcollab masterlist found here

Warnings: Non con bruv. Claws horns? He's an oni bud

"And they say he's been stealing the hearts of beautiful women for centuries. So don't go talking to any ole handsome man that steps over a threshold." The tour guide adds to the end of her ridiculous story about some Demon King that drags women to hell before she leads the group onto the next painting.

Still there was something captivating about the art work, how the man has his back to the viewer and how women bow to him, foreheads pressed into the tatami mats with their own bleeding hearts held high over their heads. Blood drips from their hands, splattering on the mats like rain or tear drops. The man, who is assumed to be the Oni, is looking over his shoulder, hand reaching out for the nearest offering. Both figures are forever suspended in brush strokes and desire for more. The closer you inspect the other worldly looking figure the more your gut tightens. His elaborate kimono hangs loosely from his body but you can still see the broadness of his shoulders, the thick bands of muscle on his forearms, the apparition of elongated nails when you look closer and finally the faint strokes atop of his two toned hair that are in the shape of sharp horns.

A God among men or maybe you should say a Devil among friends. A sigh escapes you as you admire the work before the tour guide announces the title, artist and time period of the next piece. “Wrath of the Mountain God.” A large man, with long hair so deep in hue you first mistake it for black, stands in a Kimono. His chest on display as he stands giving the view his profile, his eyes glow red in the light of the full moon, in his arms seems to be a maiden, a flower crown falling from her hair. It looks as if his strong form had just taken a step, beneath his foot begins a nasty fissure that gapes the Earth for miles and miles. The painting feels charged and emotions practically drip from the ink painting and yet still your eyes flicker to the painting to it’s right. At this angle you can see a faint shimmer in his smoky quartz colored eye. It sends a shiver down your spine as you feel a faint breath on the nape of your neck. Quickly you turn your head, craning your neck to look over your shoulder but no one stands behind you. Just another painting, “Golden God of Destruction.” Red gaze glowering as his hair drips gold, while he walks over the hellish landscape of cooling and erupting lava. You swallow thickly before following the tour guide onto the next section.

The tour lasts another half an hour but your mind lingers on the shimmering eyes of the dangerous entity. The more you think of him the bigger the sinking feeling in your gut becomes, not to mention the more you feel as if something is stalking your every move. Another quick glance over your shoulder as you exit the museum while you ponder over why this particular Oni was handsome when all of the other artworks featuring a yokai or oni were depicted as ugly, grotesque even.

Maybe it was because he was the King? You couldn’t be sure, all you knew is that you could understand why the women would rip out their hearts and offer them up to him. He was hot as hell, no pun intended.

Suddenly the fall air smells of frost and the threat of snow, you wrinkle your nose before you jump out of your skin. .

"So you liked the "Oni King, stealer of heart’s'' piece best?" A smooth voice calls from behind you, you press your hand over your rapidly beating heart as you try to catch your breath. Startled, you turn around to see a handsome man opening the gate, stepping over the grass line onto the sidewalk. Instantly you feel heat rush you as a cool autumn breeze swirls around fallen leaves around your boots.

"How did you…"

"I come here often and no one has ever stopped and looked at that piece as long as you have." He seems stoic and you can just barely see the corner of his mouth lift up. You take a moment to really drink him in, his tall stature, his hair a shocking white with contrasting red and a scar that sits beautifully over one of his gem stone eyes. One a smoky quartz and the other a bright turquoise.

You swallow thickly as you stare at the other worldly man, finding little to no words as your heart beats into your ribcage. You grip at the fabric of your jacket over your heart, it pounds against your rib cage like a fluttering wild bird.

"Where are my manners? I am Todoroki Shoto. But you can call me Shoto." Again he offers his barely there smile, "And you are?"

It's laughable how you stumble over your own name, you have never had issues talking to attractive people before, what the hell was your problem now.

“It sounds lovely.” He says your name, it rolls off of his tongue like music makes you swallow thickly, your knees threatening to buckle and you can’t understand why you’re acting like a love struck teenager again. There is a contrasting air about him, just like his hair. Passion and reservation, raging power and quiet tranquility, and the feel of it is making you dizzy. Tipsy almost, drunk if you linger here too long. Just as you’re about to express how you’ll be late for dinner he smiles at you.

Fully this time.

And you think your heart was going to claw out of its calcium coffin but it stalls when you notice that it doesn’t fully reach his eyes.

“Well since you have a good appreciation of art, would you care to join me in the garden, the Chrysanthemum are in full bloom this time of year.” You swallow as you look at him, a twinge of fear lingering in your blood that is soon lost as he steps over the threshold of the garden, waiting patiently.

“Uh, yea I think I can spare some time.” You smile nervously, he offers out his hand.

“Be careful, the step down can be quite steep.” A genuine small form on your lips now as you remember the first time you set foot into this garden and almost twisted your ankle. You step over the threshold, blinking against the late afternoon sun as you do.

Except when you open your eyes once more, you are no longer in the garden. There are no shrubs and bushes, no cinderblock wall of the old museum, something more sinister stands in its place. The sky is an inky black, the full moon hangs overhead shining down onto a small village that thickens the closer it gets towards a large feudal era looking castle. Fading sunlight filter behind you as you whip your head behind you. A giant Torri stands where the aging fence and garden gate stood before, a hazy image of an autumn afternoon in the shape of the gate rapidly begins to shrink. Panicked you lunge arm outstretched as if catching a full elevator as you’re running behind for a very important meeting.

If only your paralyzing panic was over something so trivial.

A strong set of arms wrap around your waist, pulling you towards a chiseled chest as hot breath whispers cooly in your ear.

“I wouldn’t do that if you want to keep all of your limbs, love.”

Shaking you glance over your shoulder before you watch the portal to home close up.

Just like that the landscape that could be seen through the gate was endless night and rolling hills dotted with homes here and there. When you turn to face your captor his eyes narrow as he studies you. His gem stone eyes glittering in the rich moonlight, following your hands up to your chest. He stills as he listens and while he looks you notice the horns growing from his head. Thin and shaped into a deadly point. He tilts his head as if you are bewitching before he leans closer, capturing your hair between his fingers. Now that you were in the moonlight, in the realm he ruled, you looked...familiar and the feeling made his chest tighten.

“How does your heart feel?” He asks, eyes anywhere but yours. You try to jerk out of his touch but his warm hand wraps around your bicep keeping you well within arms reach.

“My heart?! What does that have to do with me standing in HELL!” You scream and it echoes across the chilled landscape. Some women in kimono pass by, keeping their eyes turned down as they pass but once they are a few steps behind this brute’s back, they send you withering glares.

Your attention comes fully back to the man in front of you, or maybe you should say demon. He presses his hand over your heart with a puzzling look. Your body heats from the contact and embarrassment, you were sure he could feel how hard your heart was pounding. All the while his brows knit upwards.

“Seems you aren’t affected…”He murmurs to himself, tonguing his cheek. Suddenly he tears your sweater, pressing his hand against your chest and part of your breast.

“Hey!” You protest until a burning sensation blooms on your skin, when he pulls away you see kanji puckering up, that reads “Shoto”

“That should keep the lower demons away...for now.” He grabs onto your wrist tightly, too tightly before your world bends and blurs. Folding in on itself as if Space and Time were suddenly a beautiful origami paper creased until the maker was satisfied.

The world is bright when you open your eyes next, cradled in an abundance of candle light as your stomach sours causing you to lurch.

“Ugh, not on the tatami!” A woman’s voice scolds, but her state doesn’t help the nausea that hits you in waves. She wears a beautiful kimono, embroidered with gold and silver thread on violet cloth, the chest stained a deep cherry and a hole is where her heart should be. Her hands stained blood red and you back up, panting as you try to keep a level head.

“Get her cleaned up.” Shoto snaps, “I will want her in my room promptly.”

The women in the room shake slightly, keeping their heads down, distantly you can hear the sound of a thousand thundering hearts, deafening in a sense. The stately woman gently guides you towards the bath in the large mansion, shock sets in as your gaze glazes over. Every hall has a woman, anywhere from the feudal era to today, all dressed in kimonos, most were dressed in the ones they obviously died in or dressed in old clothes with their tattoos and fresh wounds peeking out from beneath the fabric.

Every single person sends you a death glare.

You’re stripped of your clothes and dignity in the company of about twenty women, hands shove you into the steaming water, cupping the cloudy water to wash your skin.

No matter how often the woman dip their hands into the water, the blood never leaves their fingertips, forever stained in their sin.

“We gave them away, you know. Ripped them from our chests….” She looks up at you with a timid look.

“Kiyoko, hush.” An elder hisses as she straightens the thin piece of cloth you were going to wear once you were all pieced together.

“No, she deserves to know..” Kiyoko hisses back, “The story is similar for a lot of us, he appears in a doorway, he seems kind enough, and then we look into his eyes. Gazing too deeply before our hearts seize in our chests, flopping around as if behind your flesh was killing it and it should sit in the palm of his hand. The only logical thing was for us to reach deep inside of ourself and give him what he deserved.” A quite falls over the room before a heavy solem air settles on your shoulders.

“He stopped for a while….after he met you.” Your eyes flash to hers and the elder’s hand wraps into Kiyoko’s hair, pulling her away from you.

“Enough.” She snarls as tears run down her cheeks, down all the women’s cheeks and you swallow thickly.

After an hour of primping you find yourself in front of two sliding tatami doors that have Oni and other yokai decorating their sheets.

“Send her in.” A deep voice sounds from the other side.

“Yes master.” The women answer, opening the doors before one shoves you in.

Doors to the eqwaa are open as he lounges on the polished wood, staring at the moon. He turns his head to look over his shoulder and it eerily reminds you of the painting in the museum.

In an instant he is in front of you, backing you into the plush bed that sat in the middle of his room, you fall onto the raised futon looking up at him.

The lowlight plays tricks on your eyes, the square paper lantern and the moon painting him in strokes of kind, of hurt, not some beastly thing he obviously was. Even his horns seemed soft, but nothing was softer than his lips as he pressed them to yours. Embarrassingly ecstasy blossoms under your eyelids as liquid heat floods your core. His tongue probes yours as he leans over top of you, playing with you nipples through the thin cloth as you moan into his mouth. Your body arches into his his as your heart flutters, trying to pull you away from his addicting touch.

Maybe you could have gotten away, maybe….

If only his hand hadn’t slipped between your thighs where he teased your sex utnil you pruned his figners, singing like the song bird he knew you were. His hard cock presses against your thigh twitching with delight. He kisses down your throat before he shreds the thin white kimono away from your body. He groans audibly before he leans down, one finger pulling at your pebbled nipple while the other pulls it between his teeth.

“Shoto…”You cry and he moans into your supple skin. Taking off his own thin kimono to align himself up to your fluttering hole. Eyes glued to your heart, fingers tracing the kanji as he eases himself in inch by inch. Stretching you and filling you pleasantly. He sits for a moment, taking in your body and how you burn under his touch. Free hand roaming your body as the other prods your fresh burn. Tracing the strokes over and over as if he wrote it himself.

Well technically he did.

“Please.” Your mouth betrays, hips pressing up into his to get any sort of friction, his free hand comes down, slamming your hips into the bed.

“Say it again.” He huffs, “Say my name again.”

“Shoto.” It's a hushed, reluctant breath but your skin was icy hot, lifeforce feeling as if it were evaporating away from the heated tension that sat between you two. He watches your body wither, feels your cunt clamping down onto him desperately and it’s all he can do not to thrust into you widely.

“Again.” He barks, pulling at your nipple harshly.

“Shoto.” You moan, the sound is enough to make him start his harsh pace. Pelvis slamming into yours as his tuft of pubic hair glides across your clit. Your vision blurs with tears, it feels so good. Better than anything you’ve ever had or could ever remember as his claws ghost over your soft skin.

“You thought you could escape me.” He grunts, ramming himself into you harder, you moan in response, “I marked more than your flesh two hundred years ago, I marked your soul.”

“You couldn’t help yourself, coming back to the very piece of art you created.” He continues with a laugh, claws raking down your skin, slicing at your skin superficially. Your eyes roll into the back of your head and you cannot fathom what he’s said. All that there is the feel of his hands, the pleasure that threatens to snap in your stomach.

He watches the way your cunt coats his cock in a silvery sheen that has his lips parting. Taking wanton ruts, the motion of it rattling the art on the wall. Pieces fall around you and any of the scrolls that try to block his view of you get shredded mid air. His thrusts turn sloppy as he comes down to bite at your neck.

“Shoto!” You cry out, vision going black as your body convulses around him, eyes rolling in to the back of your head as you forget your name and only cry out his.

“That’s right, tell me who you belong to. Who owns you love.” He pants, holding his own release for a moment longer just to hear your sweet voice scream his name over and over. Finally your milking cunt sends him over the edge. He grunts, staring into your eyes as he paints your wall a creamy white.

“Mine.” He growls, biting at your breast, at the skin over your heart. You feel his spilling cock harden again as your body melts into the sheets.

Most of the night is spent in mind numbing ecstasy and in those few short hours you forget you were ever brought here unwillingly.

You sit on a throne, overlooking the vast landscape of Yomi, Oni running the underworld as heartless women wander the streets. Their mortal heartbeats keeping time as they ceaselessly beat just beneath your feet. Mind’s eye miles away as you see a ghost of a hand before you. Memory playing out as you take careful brush strokes against your canvas, hoping this would serve as a warning for other women as you dab the brush in the deep colored liquid that stains the tatami floor of your home.

Ever the artist you wanted to add final touches even as you drew your final breaths, having thought it better to take your own life than to sit at the right hand of a demon, your chest was already mutilated with his name.

Irony weighs heavy in your stomach as you realize how futile it was to even make that masterpiece. It did not serve as a warning.

No if anything, it served as a beacon, drawing you like a moth to flame until you circled to close.

Burning up in the flames of the very thing you admired.

[after-witch]

Adoration and Pain (Vampire!Yandere Overhaul x Reader)

Title: Adoration and Pain (Vampire!Yandere Overhaul x Reader)

Synopsis: You are his pure, sweet doe. His perfect angel. The most exquisite blood bank that a vampire, that Kai Chisaki, could ask for. 

Word Count: 2243

Notes: yandere, vampire, descriptions of violence and mild gore, mentions of past suicide attempt

You sit on your bed, legs crossed, and take a calming breath. You remind yourself of the things that you know, the things that you can count on. It keeps you from panicking, it keeps you sedated while you wait for him to arrive.

The things that you know: It is night time. You are in your room. You are wearing a pale blue night gown, the one with a small blood stain on the lace wrist cuff that won’t come out. Kai will be coming soon. 

You still know your name. You still remember, however dimly, what it was like to feel the sun on your skin, the glowing warmth of a summer day, the cool brightness of a cheery blue sky in the wintertime. Kai will be coming soon. You have no way of tracking time now, in the small suite he’s crafted for you, nor did he like you attempting to keep track of the days.

What is a day when you’ve lived hundreds of years, after all?

Kai will be coming soon.

Time is not a blip for you, though, poor mortal thing that you are; instead, the days--the nights, the nights--drag on endlessly, sometimes feeling like an exquisitely painful, delirious dream. Grounding yourself when you wake up is the only way to keep things from completely blurring together, keeping things separate enough to maintain sanity.

He visits you every night to feed. To tear open your skin and drink the oozing life blood inside. Pure blood, he’d said, when he first took you away from everything you’d ever known. Sweet blood, clean, refreshing--the finest blood he’d ever tasted, and now that he’d tasted it, Kai Chisaki could not fathom anything less.

You were his endless dinner, providing sustenance night after night. Never mind the bruising, never mind the pain, never mind the sounds, those sickening slurps of your blood being feasted upon. Never mind the fear that still gripped you every time he removed his mask, revealing sharp, predatory fangs that could only be hidden by keeping his mouth shut tight--or by wearing a mask.

 You know the rules, now. He’s never been so kind as to lay them out neatly, organized on parchment and ink, ready for you to read and repeat until they’re drummed into your pretty little brain. But he’s expected you to know them, nonetheless. They’ve been learned night by night, in a repetition of a different kind. You used to scream and fight and claw, beast-like. 

That was ages ago, when you still had the strength, physically and otherwise. Before you’d become a paler, fragile thing that gets dizzy, sometimes, when you stand up too quickly. Before you learned the rules, and before you’d learned that obeying him made your life a little easier. Not by much, no, not by much. But a little was an enormous thing in the existence you’d been trapped in.

He keeps you in nightgowns. White ones, pastel ones, with lace and frills, all in the softest of fabrics that feel like a dream against your skin. They must have cost a fortune. You’d said as much once, and he merely smiled at you patronizingly. “Such things aren’t appropriate for ladies to talk about,” he’d said, and you never brought it up again.

You sleep during the day. Or what you assume must be the day, for it is when he leaves you. You are not afforded the luxury of windows. He can’t take the risk, you see, of you accidentally forgetting to close the curtains. Not that you would ever, ever try to kill him, of course. You were pure and sweet and a doe, a lamb, the sweetest thing on hell or Earth.

Sometimes, when he murmurs these things against your wrist, your own blood and flesh brimming against his darkened lips, you wonder if he’s genuinely forgotten how you used to behave. You were not a pure and sweet doe when you’d broken the rail of your bed and tried to stake him with it. You were not a lamb when you broke your mirror and used the glass to stab him, or when you’d found a forgotten shard underneath your bed and sliced your wrists open in an unsuccessful bid to end it all. Both earned punishments, the second more so--you’d tried to deprive him of your sweetness, your purity, your beauty. A terrible thing to do, for someone like him, someone so everlasting and lonely. And hungry.

That was, however, in the past. Weeks ago or months or maybe years. You don’t know, and you know better than to ask--except sometimes when you’re delirious from blood loss and forget yourself.  He’s forgiving of those slip-ups, most of the time. You even have a new mirror, and every morning--night, you remind yourself--before he arrives, you get dressed in a fresh nightgown and brush your hair in front of it.

Which is what you must do now. You slowly put your legs over the side of the bed, rising carefully. You don’t want to pass out on the floor. Once your mind steadies, you make your way over to the large, immovable chest pressed against the wall of your room. You open it, relishing the cool smell of wood that accompanies the ancient creak of the hinges. Inside are your night-gowns and under-linens. You lift up a delicate nightgown made with white muslin; it’s trimmed in exquisite lace and has a ruffled trim that ends at your ankles. You grab an accompanying chemise to slip on underneath.

The curtain on the mirror is there to keep you sane, whenever he feeds. He has no reflection, a fact which used to make you cross yourself; once, it had slipped off while he greedily drank down your blood, and the sight of wounds pulsing out gore like magic had made you pass out. You cautiously slide it over, letting it fall to the ground with a theatrical flourish.

You stand in front of the mirror, slip off your worn gown and under-dress and set them aside. You don’t pay your naked body, thinner and paler like the rest of you, much mind; instead you swiftly change into your fresh clothes, wanting to be ready for his arrival. You smooth down the fabric with your hands, then lean over inside the chest to grab your brush.

Your hair is longer than you like it, which makes it tangle and twist terribly; but he likes it long, so you don’t dare ask to cut it. But you make do, patiently unweaving the tangles from all the tossing and turning you do at night. The strands feel a bit greasy, and a pang of anxiety plagues you--you should have bathed before going to sleep the night before. He likes you to be presentable. You wonder if you have time to wash your hair, at least, but the unmistakable steps coming up the stairs answer your query for you: there is no time.

Thump, thump, thump. You rush, awash in dizziness as you quickly toss your things inside the trunk and swiftly lean down to replace the fallen curtain. Thump, thump, thump. Your head is still reeling by the time you climb back onto your bed, pulling your legs up and curling them to the side. You take a few gulping breaths to calm yourself, just in time to hear the large, heavy door to your suite unlocking.

Before you were taken captive by a vampire, you imagined them to all wear fantastical cloaks, dull and dusty from mausoleums and nights spent roaming the earth. You imagined them to have bat-like ears and claws. You would never think him a vampire, to look at him. He has tousled black hair and striking eyes. He wears a refined, yet simple, suit. It’s only when he takes off the mask and speaks--when those fangs, hidden and terrible--reveal themselves, that his true nature becomes evident.

Tonight, like all nights, he locks the door behind him after he enters. You don’t have the strength to run, even if you could imagine escaping from this place. But it’s a habit, you think, long-ingrained in an immortal creature.

He approaches the bed with a calm, almost soothing demeanor. “Did you sleep well? Are you hungry?”

Pleasantries, pleasantries. Spoken so softly and sweetly. He sits down on the bed next to you, and you nod. You wonder if your eyes are as wide as they feel. Maybe that’s why he calls you a doe, a lamb. You tremble before him like an animal to the slaughter--only your slaughter never ends with death, only with pain and nightmares and fever dreams.

His hand reaches up to pet your cheek. It feels cold and stiff to the touch. “I’ll bring you dinner later, pet.” His hand strokes your cheek, and you imagine it would feel comforting, if it didn’t feel so clammy. You lean your cheek into his touch, as you’ve learned to do. “Such a good girl for me, aren’t you?”

You nod again. He likes it when you are quiet and compliant and meek. He’s said so, and you believe him, for it is your quiet and compliant behavior that earned you new things; books and a silver hair brush and even a necklace, gold and rimmed with blood-red rubies, though he’d yet to give you anything but nightgowns to wear it with.

His hand travels from your cheek, down your jawline. You shiver as he traces a healing, bruising wound on your neck. He continues his exploration of your body, roaming hands ghosting against your breasts and then down, down to your thighs. You tremble, and he smiles.

“Hand me your wrist.” Your arm raises without a thought. Memories of pain and terror and screams flood through you, heating up your skin and making your heartbeat thrum. He rolls the sleeves of your nightgown back, and a small part of you is thankful--it’s such a nice dress, and you’d have to have it spoiled with blood.

Kai lifts your wrist until it rests against his cold cheeks. He presses his nose against the thin, ever-bruising skin, against the blue veins that wait underneath. He groans, softly, inhaling your scent and feeling the warmth of the life flowing through you.

“So pure,” he murmurs. “So precious.” His lips part, revealing the eager fangs behind him.  

“All mine…”

Holding your wrist in one hand, he brings his mouth closer, opening wide and then biting into the soft flesh with a sickening sound.

You hold your breath. You don’t want to scream, you don’t want to--

But the pain floods you, as it does every night, and you cry out anyway. You moan in pain, and it merely makes him moan in return. His grip is unrelenting as he eagerly begins to drink, sucking blood and even bits of flesh into his mouth with practiced ease. The sensation of his tongue lapping inside the gory wound makes your stomach churn.

Your wrist feels like it is being stabbed in a thousand different ways; burned and dissected and pounded by a hammer. You forget yourself and look away from the sight of Kai feasting on you, the sight of your blood smearing down his chin.

“Mind your manners,” he says quietly against your open wound. You look back instantly, feeling weary and slightly dizzy and tired. You hope he will be done soon. You don’t want to pass out again. You want something to eat. You want to stay up late enough to read a few pages in a book, if your eyesight isn’t too blurry.

Your vision does blur, for a moment, and when it returns Kai is running a sharpened nail down your wrist. It burns, as it always does, but it heals the gaping wound with barely a trace of a scar. Nothing can be done about the bruising, the blue and grey and green mottled skin that takes ages to fade away. He usually bites the same spot again before those can properly heal.

You let out a shuddering cry of relief as he finishes, as he lifts his fingers--now warm, thrumming with your secondhand life running through them--and wipes away your tears. His fingers stroke your cheek again, leaving behind a smear of your own blood, and this time you lean into his hand without effort.

“Such a precious thing you are, such a delicate thing.”

You nod, barely listening, thinking instead to the promise of a dinner, the promise of a few pages in a book. You will never leave. He’s made sure of that, weakening you in mind and body. You will be here as long as he’s hungry. As long as he needs to feed. And he will always need to feed. You will never leave.

[i-love-side-characters]

Do You See It Differently?

Pairing: Various Relationships

Characters: Various Keeper of the Lost Cities Characters, One-Time OCs

Genre: Angst

Summary:

“Once you’ve seen there is another perspective, you can never not see that there’s another point of view.”

― Ellen Langer

TW: Death, Character Death, Injuries, Blood, Disease Mention

Word Count: 1.8k words (1,817)

Additional Notes:

You should be proud of me, this is all canon!

Or at least based on canon events

Okay you shouldn't have expected so much of me

This is terrible i am so sorry

no beta we die like nixx's happiness when me and pyro are coming up with angst

Tag List: Let me know if you want to be added/removed!

@bronte-deserves-better @councillor-bronte-is-best-boy @cadence-talle @an-absolute-travesty @bookwyrminspiration​ @keefeinnit @mallowmeltz​ @ultralazycreatorfan @everyonehasthoughts @mistythegenderqueermess @imaramennoodle @rainbowtay-11 @we-need-more-empathy @catboyruy @we-wont-dissapear @we-have-no-bananas-today @loverofallthingssmart @a-lonely-tatertot @thesandsofdawn @enbies-and-felonies @fire-sapphics @jadenightthewriter @alabestrine @sunlight-in-a-bottle​ @damischs @pyrokinetic-loser @pyrarayn @towishuponashootingstar

Read below the cut!

you've read the stories.

the ones with the obstacles beyond compare.

the true loves and dramatic battles.

the heroes, valiantly fighting against evil.

they're inspiring tales, to be sure.

but have you read the other stories?

the ones about the villains?

about the families?

about the kings?

about the children caught in war?

those, my dear, are the stories that truly matter.

they are the stories that go untold.

they live and die with them.

and that, is the true tragedy in this tale.

•·················•·················••·················•·················••·················•·················•

"careful!"

her lips twisted into a smirk, dark eyes tracking her daughter sprinting through the city.

"brilla! come back here!"

the little girl laughed, turning smoothly and running back into the arms of her mother. "mommy, did you see how fast i was?"

"yes darling, you were so fast!"

she squealed, wriggling out of her arms, running back into the crowded market.

"ms. sakh?"

she spun around, squinting at the amour-clad guard. the queen seal glowed brightly, it's shimmer enhanced by the golden city. "yes?"

"if you could come with me." his voice stayed even, solid. a queensguard through and through.

she didn't move, twisting to see her daughter playing in the peace fountain. two guards shadowed her, not interrupting, but keeping a trained eye on the little girl. "what's wrong? what happen?"

the queensguard shook his head. "the queen needs to see you, ma'am." he reached out, gently steering her towards the glittering palace.

she glared at him, wrenching her arm away. "tell me what's going on."

his face darkened, eyes filled with sadness. "i'm so sorry to tell you this, ma'am. but at 4:30 today, your wife, brielle sakh, was killed on duty at an elven residence in the lost cities."

the woman's eyes widened, her basket falling to the floor in a dull thud. tears spilled over her cheeks as she stepped back, shaking her head. "no. not brielle―"

"i'm so sorry." he said, reached out again, gently guiding her toward the palace. "let's go."

it seemed darker somehow. the palace. the city. it no longer shimmered bright and gold. the shadows shifted and grew, twisting darker and darker, until they lunged forward and swallowed her whole.

•·················•·················••·················•·················••·················•·················•

he stepped out onto the stone balcony, glaring out over the city.

he could feel every pulse in his body, the tattoos scrawled across his head. they shouldn't carry weight. the elder kings decided that they didn't want the weight of a crown on their heads. that's why the tattoos became what they were.

apparently their plan didn't work.

he could feel the weight of every black swirl, every black scar.

and he could see them too.

he had already visited the hospital. he watched the shamans cover another body. children's limbs mangled, mothers and fathers crying. soldiers standing stiff, black eyes watching every body leave the room and desperately trying to convince themselves that they didn't know who was underneath the white sheet.

and now he was watching hundreds, thousands of black bodies digging at the rubble, each one helping the other rebuild.

"dimitar."

the queen walked over to him, placing a rough hand on his shoulder. "you need to sleep."

"no, i don't." he twisted away from her, feet pounding down the stone steps. the cool wind thrashed his cloak back. mud squelched under his feet, sharp bits of debris cutting into his gray skin.

they bowed as he walked by, some clapping their arms to their chest, but all looking with black, unfathomable eyes. he cut through the crowd, stopping in front of their leader. "romhil― ro."

"father."

he nodded, drawing himself tall. "get back to work."

he bent over, ignoring the ache in his back as he moved the debris. he was with his people now, not with the others. and it was a sight to see. a king, shoulder to shoulder with a peasant.

and only one thought caught the king's mind.

this can't go on.

•·················•·················••·················•·················••·················•·················•

the pages felt heavy. rough.

it was his favourite book. he had memorized it's every detail. the roughness of the cover, worn after years of use. the last few pages, lighter than the others due to a lack of paper. the gold lettering, smudged where his the oils on his skin had touched. and it was the book itself too. the way the words flowed, like music, ensnaring you and pulling you in further.

he smiled and stroked the cover, noting the ink stains from over a thousand years ago. his sister had done that. he'd yelled at her for weeks.

he stood up, nearly tripping over the stack of scrolls tossed on the carpet, wincing as the document's edge tore clean off. he'd have to get it repaired.

dust flew in the air, the delicate rolls dusted in gray. they had been sitting there for ages. maybe it was time to read one again.

he reached down, shaking off the dust and settling back in the armchair, twisting himself until the lumpy chair was perfectly supporting his body.

and then he was thrown into the story again, grabbing him and pulling him in closer, until there was no world, just him and his words.

the sun rose and fell, and rose again, and fell, and time didn't matter anymore because he was safe.

and then he wasn't.

a sharp knock sounded at his door, making him flinch and drop the newest tome. it slammed onto the ground, knocking over empty cups and crushing papers.

"uh― i'm― i'm coming! just uh― give me a minute!" he yelled, hands shaking as he stacked the books as best he could. "coming! i'm―" he gulped, hurrying to the door. "i'm here, i'm― bronte?"

"fallon." the councillor said, trying to smile. "may i come in?"

"no. i mean― it's quite a mess― you probably shouldn't. councillor."

bronte nodded, his jeweled crown glowing dimly in the evening sun.

"what do you want, bronte?" he sighed, desperately trying to comb his hair back.

he sighed, running a hand down his face. "did you know about luzia, fallon?"

"what about luzia?"

"that she's been committing treasonous acts that violate several treaties and―" he hesitated, and then, much more softly. "and could put her in exile?"

his soft, dark eyes met piercing blue ones. even though the councillor was younger, he still cowed the other. he stumbled back, slamming the door closed, turning back inside. his dark eyes scanned over the room, the piles of papers, the overturned mugs, the drawn curtains, the mess, the chaos.

how the mighty have fallen.

•·················•·················••·················•·················••·················•·················•

it was a sharp sound, echoing off the walls. she smirked, throwing another stone towards the ground. and then a deeper echo, the echo of footsteps over the hard stone.

she tilted her head, her dark hair falling over her pale face.

two footsteps. one ridged and firm, the steps of a guard trained from birth to kill. the other was uneven, accompanied by the soft clink of chains.

she shook her head, shoving the sound out her mind.

but it came back.

the footsteps pounded into her brain, her mind analyzing each shift in the pattern, a click of a chain at a different time, a step falling a second too late. a breath too heavy. a rustle of armour.

a low hiss escaped her throat, pale skin breaking as she clawed at her arms. she closed her eyes, but it was still bright, too bright, loud, too loud.

and then the smell. the sweaty, musty odor, mixed with the sharp smell of blood. but something else―something different―

she tilted her head back, lips curving into a lazy smirk. the fragrance wafted inside, the salty smell of the sea, the scent of the wind. outside.

the guard appears first. black eyes, a controlled stare. near seven feet tall. deadly weapons at his side. scars ripple down his face, down his neck, two inches wide and dark against his scaly skin.

he barely paid her any attention, turning around to motion to the others. back was the click of the chains. two more guard appeared in the door, with someone else between them.

someone new.

she watched them carefully chain him to the lumenite wall. they didn't know what they had just done. what they had just started. they just stalked away, leaving just the two of them.

their eyes met. his lips curved into a smirk, nodding at her from his own little cell. it was hard to keep herself from smiling. she had grown old here. lived and died here. seen nobody come in and nobody go out.

it seemed that would change.

•·················•·················••·················•·················••·················•·················•

she gasped for air, bolting up in bed. this wasn't new. another nightmare, more fires, more sugary smells. another night without them here.

small tears trickled down her cheeks, landing on the silky sheets.

it had been a weeks.

she threw off the covers, crawling out of the bed, letting her feet sink into the soft carpet. light streamed into the dark bedroom, moving gracefully with the watery sky. the roads of the city were empty now. everyone was asleep.

"except you." she muttered, glaring at the city.

she couldn't say she hated it here. it was gorgeous, not to mention luxurious, and the people here couldn't be nicer. but it wasn't right.

she hummed under her breath, sliding down to the floor, smiling as a large ball of fur slunk over to sit on her lap.

"hey there marty." she whispered, stroking his fur. "i bet you miss home, don't ya? they don't have temptation treats over here."

he blinked his large, dark eyes at her, meowing softly.

"yeah, it's weird for me too. but we're safe." she said, sending a commanding glare the cat's way. "sophie's got us covered, alright?"

another soft meow pierced the silence.

"mhm. i completely agree. she is definitely in love with that teal-eye guy."

the lights flicked off outside, the sounds of shuffling feet echoing through the room.

she nodded, giving the animal a small kiss. "yeah, it's very interesting. and don't be scared. mom and dad are fine, i promise."

now the lights in the streets were turning off, bathing the city in a blanket of darkness. "they'll be fine."

she climbed back into the bed, pulling the sheets tightly around her. shadows danced over the gray-purple walls, fading into the darkness of the night.

she hadn't made a wish like this since she was 6. her grandma, and something called cancer. all she had known back then was that it killed people. that was 7 years ago. and now she was wishing again.

hopefully this time it would work.

•·················•·················••·················•·················••·················•·················•

so now, what do you think, my dear?

do you still think the king is a monster?

that the recluse does not care?

that the child is safe?

do you see the others in this tale?

do you see it differently?

[theheartsmistakes]

The Last Night Part XIII

More author’s Notes at the end because it may contain spoilers! 

But if you’re just joining us... where the heck have you been?

Here are the previous parts vvv:

Here is Part I

Here is Part II

Here is Part III

Here is Part IV

Here is Part V

Here is Part VI

Here is Part VII

Here is Part VIII

Here is Part IX

Here is Part X

Here is Part XI

Here is Part XII

Part XIII

They had moved Cordelia to the best guest room in the Institute, small but comfortably furnished with a narrow oak bed and a simple writing desk, but pleasantly decorated with blue striped wallpaper and flowery chintz curtains. A lace-skirted sink, with running water, occupied one corner, and a large window stood open to the night and the fragrance of the garden. In the distance, a shimmer of silver indicated the sun on the Thames.

James walked in carrying an impressive stack of literature he’d taken from the library under his arm and in his free hand he carried a lantern illuminated with the soft bluish glow of a witchlight. He saw Cordelia first, her red hair vibrant against the white pillow case. Color had returned to her skin and the thick black veins that ran underneath it were now gone. The thick top quilt was pulled up and tucked around her chest so that her shoulders and arms were out and rested by her sides. She was modestly covered by an ivory cotton gown. Every once in a while, her fingers would twitch against the fabric of the top quilt and it felt as if the weight of the stack of books weighed on James’s chest.

He set the books on the foot of the bed and sat on the wooden stool beside Cordelia. Wishing more than anything, that miraculously, she would open her eyes and turn towards him with a smile.

“Dickens, Chaucer, Wilde, Homer, Sophocles,” said Jem as he sifted through the books James had brought. “Interesting choices.”

“I brought things that might encourage her through the darkness,” said James.

“Nothing like a good epic to encourage one through dark times,” said Jem, as he set The Iliad back on the stack. “She was administered medicine not long ago, so she is peaceful and still, but do not be alarmed if she cries out. If she begins to sweat or claw at the blankets, come and find someone immediately. If you find yourself growing tired and in need of some rest, you will also need to find someone to take your place.”

James remembered his father and the fierce devotion he had shown his mother when she had fallen ill after transforming into her clockwork angel during the war. He never left her side, not even to eat or drink, or so James was told by relatives and maids. And any time Tessa would fall ill, succumb to an injury, or give birth, Will remained by her side until she made it back on her feet again. His parents remained his highest example of love and devotion. After nearly twenty years of marriage, they still seemed to illicit in one another the emotions of young love: a bit reckless, always public, possessive, but demure, and full of endless patience. James hoped to one day find a love as eternal as the one his parents shared, and he thought he had when he met Grace Blackthorn. To learn that his feelings were simply the product of an enchanted piece of jewelry left a sinking feeling in his chest. Not because of the loss, his feelings for Grace always felt burdened, troublesome, and lonely. He grieved for the love that had the potential to burn as brilliant as his parents.

A sharp pain burst across the center of James’s forehead. He leaned forward, his eyes shut tight, and tried to rub the pain away.

“James?” Jem came beside him and placed a light hand on his shoulder. “What is it? Are you all right?”

“Yes,” said James. “It’s nothing. Just a bit of head pain is all.”

“How long have you had it?”

“It comes and goes,” said James, and waved his Uncle’s concern away. “Thank you, Uncle Jem. For allowing me to be here with her.”

“It is what is best for Cordelia,” said Jem. “She needs the familiar voices of the people she is closest to in the world. Your sister was in here not long ago. While I admire Lucie for the incredible talent that she possesses, someone should warn her about her overuse of adverbs.”

“Are you volunteering?” asked James.

Jem scarred mouth twitched. 

“Coward,” said James and turned to look at Cordelia. “Can she hear us talking? Even now?”

Jem nodded. “Yes, I believe she can.” Jem placed a hand on James’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “When I return to administer her medicine, I will bring you a vial for your headache. I’d also like to examine you tomorrow, to be sure it’s nothing serious.”

Jem left with a quick click of the door when it closed behind him. Now alone with Cordelia, James felt as awkward as he had when he was a fourteen year old school boy attempting to speak to his crush.

With a sigh, he moved the stool closer to Cordelia and the witchlight that flickered on the nightstand. Her fingers twitched against the bed cloth. He picked up the hand closest to him and held it in both of his. Her skin felt so soft. Had it always been so soft, he wondered. Memories of her finger tips grazing his skin in the orange light of the Whispering Room made his mouth run dry. Unsure what possessed him to do such a thing, he brought her hand up to his face and pressed his cheek into her cool palm.

“Daisy, my Daisy.” The name he’d given her didn’t seem to match her anymore, but there was a familiarity in it that he clung to. He hoped that maybe she could cling to it too. “If you’re able, will you grant me the smallest reassurance that you’re alright in there? When we were young, Math and I would communicate through small signals in class when our Instructor would be droning on about the history of runes, which I should have paid closer attention to, but my mind was otherwise detained on some personal dilemmas at the time… Forgive me, I’m rambling.” He brought her hand down.. “Squeeze my hand once if you can hear me?”

His eyes went to her face and watched the gentle rise and fall of her chest. He waited for the coveted pressure of her fingers gripping his with the desperation of a sinner languishing for forgiveness.

When it never came, he lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed a quick kiss to her knuckles. “That’s all right. Your focus should only be on healing. I brought some books to share with you. Personal favorites from the library that I thought you might enjoy. Mostly classics, because I thought you might like something familiar and those damned contemporary authors and their quest for enlightenment; squandering on about transcendentalism.

“I thought we could start with…” When he reached for his father’s beloved copy of Great Expectation, he caught a vibrant red leather bound book with gold lettering on the spine that glistened in the light beside the bed.

Layla and Majnun

He picked up the copy and stroked the letters with curiosity. He recalled Sona and Alastair calling Cordelia, Layla, but never understood the reference; being so enamored with another woman and his personal throes, he didn’t think to ask.

Cordelia expressed a desire to read it together some day, but under the circumstances, he didn’t think that she would mind.

James kept Cordelia’s hand in his own. With his spectacles perched on the end of his nose, he propped the book against his thighs and opened the cover and found a small inscription on the left hand corner. It read:

Dearest Layla,

I hope this book brings you pleasant company during your travels. You have always wondered and asked why I call you by the name that this most divine tale is titled after, this may bring you some clarity. Please believe that my absence from your life is in no shape your fault and do not burden yourself with trying to understand it. Please know and forever keep in your mind, that I love you and your brother and your mother. Nothing is forever, my darling, we will be together again.

Be omide khodâ,

Bâbâ

The words were slightly smudged in some spots, as if water had dropped onto the ink. The pages were all wrinkled and torn in some places. For a moment, it felt to James like he was opening something sacred: a journal, a personalized letter, a love note, but he couldn’t help himself from turning the page. He turned until he found where one should always start a new story— at the very beginning.

As he read, he smiled to himself when he approached the part about when Layla and Majnun first met. It reminded him something of the first time that he saw Cordelia. When he really saw her. Away from the blinding manacle around his wrist. She was beautiful, but more than that, she was pure light. When he approached a passage, his tone slowed:

[His soul was a mirror for Layla’s radiance: how could he keep such reflections to himself? She shone in him like the sun at noon in a cloudless sky: how could such light be concealed? How could he turn away, even for a second, from the only thing that gave meaning to his life? Kais’* heart was out of step with his reason, and however hard he tried to hide his love for Layla, he failed miserably. Without her, he felt the arrows of reproach from a thousand bows; without her, the pain of separation cut into his heart like a knife.]

When he finished reading it aloud, he felt the faintest flutter from Cordelia’s hand against his, and when he looked up, her mouth was slightly open. The book nearly tumbled out of his lap as he leaned closer to her.

“Cordelia?” He picked up her hand in both of his again and tightened his hold, bringing it to his chest. “Cordelia, can you hear me?”

Her eyes fluttered back and forth underneath the hoods of her eyes.

“I’m here,” he whispered and climbed into the small space on the bed beside her. Carefully, he tucked her head underneath his chin and straightened the quilt around her again. “I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”

                                          ___________________________

The cottage of Cecily and Gabriel Lightwood was a low, thatched building standing amid the fields in an arrangement of a perfectly tended garden. Ivy grew on the green-painted windows, and the eaves and the plastered walls. The front gate hung open, slightly distressed on its posts, and a bicycle lay carelessly toppled against the porch, where two large glazed pots, of the most intense blue, foamed with flowers in hues of Mediterranean pink, orange, and red. The cottage should have inspired only disdain for its tumbledown air, but instead Grace Blackthorn, who was raised to despise her adopted uncle and aunt, found it strangely romantic.

From the rough stones of a back hall, she emerged into the kitchen where a most egregious ruckus was coming. Since arriving at the Lightwood cottage, she’d spent most of her time either in the garden reading or in the kitchen talking to the housemaid who seemed to be the most interesting individual in the house and who didn’t seem to mind Grace’s presence especially after recent truths had risen to the surface like bloated dead fish. The kitchen was always orderly. On a wooden table in the center, a tea urn hissed above its small burner, a stack of old blue and white china teacups waited to be filled. A cake stand held an assortment of the usual small sandwiches and the plain rock cakes that were popular now. Only today, atop the counter, kneeled someone in tweed trousers, one leg bent on the counter and the other outstretched for balance as they reached for something in the cupboards above. She quickly recognized him as the young, illusive Christopher Lightwood.

She leaned her shoulder against the door frame and crossed her arms over her chest.

Since her arrival at the Lightwood’s, she’d rarely seen Christopher. They’d pass each other in the hallways or sit across from each other at meals, but he would be scribbling in a notebook, his face covered in some type of grime. She never attempted a conversation with him considering her relationship with his friend and cousin James. She had the impression that he didn’t care for her so much.

She could hear him whispering to himself. “Where are the damn tongs?”

“Bottom drawer,” said Grace, “to the left.”

There was a terrible clamber as Christopher looked over his shoulder at Grace, resulting in his leg slipping off of the counter. He reached for a ceramic bowl for stability but ended up taking the kitchen utensil down with him. She could not prevent a cry of fear as he hit his back upon the impact.

“Are you all right?” she cried as she ran around the wooden table. “I’m terribly sorry.”

His glasses were askew, as were the dark brown tendrils of hair that mirrored his father’s, fringed at the ends as if burnt. “Fine,” said Christopher after shaking ceramic out of his hair. “I’m fine.”

“Allow me to help you,” she said. Christopher, she had noticed, had the kindest eyes out of all of his friends. She reached her gloved hand out to him.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” said Christopher, not unkindly, but rather sheepishly. He grabbed a hold of the table’s edge and hoisted himself back to his feet. He brushed his hands off on his trousers, but seemed otherwise unscathed. “Sorry if I disturbed you. I was looking for the—“

“Tongs?” Grace pointed to the drawer by Christopher’s left hip. “They’re in the top drawer. And there is no need to apologize. I was the one who startled you.”

“Not at all.” He turned and opened the kitchen drawer, moved things around a bit, and finally retrieved the tongs from the far back. “A-ha!” He clapped them together several times. “Wonderful. Thank you. Our housemaid likes to hide them from me.”

“Why is that?”

“Possibly because I’ve melted the last several,” he said, and though she could not detect any note of humor, she couldn’t help but laugh into the back of her gloved hand. Christopher looked at her perplexed, his cheeks turned a soft shade of pink.

“Melted them?” she asked. “How on earth did you manage something like that?”

He examined the tongs in his hand. “Uh, it’s difficult to describe.”

“Could you show me?” she asked, shocked by her own bravery, or her desperation to escape her lonely isolation. “I’ve heard so much about your experiments and I really admired your discovery of the cure for demon poisoning.”

“I conduct most of my experiments in my Uncle Henry’s basement,” he said. “He’s not really my uncle, but I’m close enough to Matthew that he might as well be. I have a few experiments in my bedroom, but I don’t think that it would be appropriate for us to be alone in that regard.”

Grace hesitated, but there was no hint of condescension in Christopher’s tone, and his blunt face showed worry in a single vertical crease between his eyes. He was trying to treat her well. She understood that in the past couple of months, or years, she had lost some trust in how people would treat her. She blinked her eyes and nodded once without a word.

“Of course,” she said. “I’m embarrassed for suggesting it.”

“That’s quite all right,” he said, as he examined the tongs. “You must be terribly bored here.”

She was, but she felt it rude to say it. “It was very kind of your parents to allow me to stay in their home considering the grief my dear mother has brought to them.”

“Lucky for you my mother does not share my father’s grudges.” He meant it in fun, but he noticed the dubious look on her face. As she ran her finger through a spilt pile of flour on the counter, he wondered how all of the time he could have mistaken Grace for being so cold and plain when she looked saddened and lost. “Perhaps you could help me with something.”

Her gray eyes lit with curiosity. “With what?”

“I need an assistant to conduct one of my experiments,” said Christopher. “Since Thomas is spending time with his family after their recent loss and the four of us are not meant to be spending too much time together as punishment, but perhaps we can conduct some sort of arrangement for you to be my assistant of sorts. If it’s not too forward to ask.”

Grace fought to keep her emotions respectful, but inside she felt the quick bubble of anticipation that she had not felt in some time swell in her stomach. “As long as I wouldn’t be in the way and your comrades wouldn’t mind us spending the time together.”

“There’s no need for them to know,” said Christopher, straightening his glasses up higher on his nose making his eyes appear abnormally large. “Besides, they don’t seem to take much interest in my experiments anyway. Thomas is with his family. Matthew is under Charles’s watchful eyes, and James is—“ Christopher flushed.

“Is what?” she asked.

She already suspected that they all knew the truth behind the bracelet that she had given to James, but no one cared to ask for her side of the story. Why she did what she did? It was probably for the best. She wasn’t entirely sure she could tell them the truth of it anyway.

“James is with Cordelia.”

“It’s all right.” She pressed her lips together, and began to wonder if it was a mistake to have entered a conversation with him. “What I did was terrible and I won’t pretend to see it otherwise. I understand if you are disinclined to trust me.”

“Can I ask how you did it?” he asked. “How did you enchant the bracelet?”

The question took her off guard. Most people that have approached her with the question asked her why she felt the need to do it. James Herondale was more than inclined to give her his affections on his own; there was no need for an enchanted bracelet. Her answer was often some variation of the same lie.

“I would prefer it if you didn’t ask me that question,” she said. “Only because I cannot answer it. But would it help to know that it wasn’t me who did it?”

“It would,” said Christopher. “It does.

Grace folded her hands in front of her and felt a strange weight removed from her shoulders; grateful that while her truth remained hidden, some of it could be shared with someone else. And while she didn’t believe herself to be entirely innocent, there was some relief in not being entirely guilty either.

The housemaid entered through the swinging doors from the servant’s quarters, humming a Irish melody, which was cut short when she found the two of them in the kitchen. Her cheeks flushed as her watery eyes drifted down to the tongs in Christopher’s hands.

She switched her basket of fresh veggies over to her other hip. “Are you doing the cooking for supper tonight, boy, or are you just polishing the silver again?” she asked. “Because I know you’re not taking my good pair of tongs to use for your little experiments.”

(Author’s notes: Hello! Thank you for reading. I appreciate each and every one of you for indulging me through this quarantine while I pine and wait for Chain of Iron to be released. So a few things, I think everyone knew the book James reads to Cordelia would be Layla and Majnun... it would have been insulting if it was anything else. If you’re not familiar with the story (here is a link if you want to check out a preview), Majnun’s name at the beginning of the story is Kais. SPOILER: when Layla and Kais separate, he becomes mad with sadness and the town people call him Majnun, which means ‘madman’, so that’s why in the passage he is referred to as Kais... in case you were wondering. It’s such a beautiful story. I highly recommend everyone to read it. It gives me strong Romeo and Juliet vibes. There are so many variations of the story, but I really liked this one, and I believe it’s mostly accurate to the original source-- correct me if I’m wrong.

Also, I’m not sure where that Christopher and Grace scene came from. I wanted to experiment with their characters in a friendly way and I wasn’t mad at it, so I thought I’d share. There is a purpose for it in the story. I hope you enjoyed it. As always, if you liked it, please give it a heart, give me a follow, pop in with some comments about what you liked and even what you didn’t. I really appreciate you all. Next update will be Sunday, 7/26. Cordelia is waking up and things are about to get messy.)

[papermajesty]

redmancy

— the act of loving in return.

“A boy born of myth, against every instinct, travels to the metaphorical ends of the earth, hoping to catch and preserve a love he never thought he could have.”

Verse: Spiritborne

Characters: Seamus Frost, Selina Calabrese

Rating: T

Word count: 4433

Let it be known, there were very few things that Seamus would go to the ends of the world for.

After living for as long as he had, one eventually learnt to keep few things close to the heart. Everything was temporary, after all — words, promises, even his very memories. Try as he might, they all eventually slipped through his fingers like grains of sand. What was the point of devoting his heart and mind to things that were destined to break them?

This was what he told himself, every time he was tempted to break his invisible code. He whispered it to himself in the silence of a golden twilight, looking on as his mother was lowered into the earth, followed far too closely by the first girl he’d ever loved. He gasped it as he gripped a fallen brother in arms’ hand against his chest, blood and grief tasting bitter on his tongue. He bit it out as Manhattan’s Upper East Side’s moon painted whorls of silver on skin barely covered by silk sheets, ripping his suit jacket from the floor and turning his back, eyes flinty in the dark. “Everything was temporary.” He had made an arse of himself in the name of his code, sacrificing kindness and cheer for brusqueness and snark in the face of anything remotely resembling the possibility of comfort. He shrank away from light, from love, from peace, and told himself that at least he was protected, at least he was safe.

And yet.

And yet, and yet, and yet.

If he were typical, a puff of white steam would have billowed from his lips as he sighed, turning his cheek up to the moonless sky that domed this backwater city, sprinkling snowflakes that drifted down and rested on the black wool of his coat. His hands were stuffed into his pockets, one of them gently brushing a slip of paper that detailed exactly how unwanted he was in his current location, complete with a death threat and an announcement that she didn’t need him for anything, thank you very much. His eyes swept past the urban scenery, watching as the wraiths of city nightlife dawdled on street corners and sped down alleyways, leaving him the lone idiot foreigner standing stock still under a lamppost, looking remarkably innocent and very pickpocketable. Of course, to catch the mouse — hah — he wanted, looking that way was probably beneficial, but that was only if she didn’t know his face.

She did know his face. Very well. She’d probably say too well, knowing her.

God, he missed her. He missed her laugh, her smile, her face first thing in the morning, her awful way with jokes and her utter lack of comedic timing. She was cheek and mischief personified into copper corkscrew curls and glinting hazel eyes, and for the longest time she’d seemed like just another blip in the eons long timeline of his life. She was to be another strange character he’d had the pleasure to meet, a random American thief with too much time on her hands and nothing worthwhile to spend it on.

Until he started seeing her everywhere he went. Until she started to inexplicably worm her way into his everyday life. Until he found her only two steps behind him on some London rooftop, gripping onto his coat with a smile like diamonds and lips that whispered like a secret and a declaration all at once: “Gotcha.”

She was nothing. Then, suddenly, she was everything.

And here he was, having crossed to the metaphorical ends of the world for her. His fingers crumpled the paper in his pocket, and he tried valiantly to resist temptation, before succumbing with a sigh and pulling her last note to him out. It was written in an almost unreadable scrawl, with ink that looked suspiciously like it came from his favourite fountain pen. Despite its contents, he huffed a laugh, gazing fondly at the messy writing, bare fingers brushing the angrily written warnings and accusations.

Seamus,

I never wanted this. Don’t come looking for me.

Whatever happened between us, all of it, it doesn’t matter. It never did.

If you find me, you’ll wish you’d have left me alone.

I hate

You’re the worst.

Selina.

Seamus closed his eyes, imagining how she would have looked writing the words in his hand. She would have probably been all scrunched up, expression furious and limbs tensed, ready to fly off into the night. She had probably wanted to write down more, but that would have revealed that she actually did care about him, and heaven forbid she let him know anything like that.

Or... maybe she didn’t. And this was all for nothing.

The thought brought a wry smile to his face. Classic Selina. He would never be able to predict her. Her actions were incomplete and erratic, with no real pattern other than her own whims and fancies. When they’d first met in the back of a London alley, he had originally thought her to be an oversized alley cat. The way she had tried to rob him was remarkably strange. He had not expected a girl instead from the quick slashes and scratches at his coat, but, well, she had never failed to surprise him, even from the get go.

Frost had speckled the leather of her jacket, blindingly white against the black. Her arm had been trapped against the wall by a chunk of ice that flared out unnaturally in jagged strokes, following the strike of his arm. Her eyes had flashed dangerously in the moonless night.

“You should’ve picked on someone your own size,” he had growled, eyes flashing blue in the glow of his ice.

She had bared her teeth. Alley cat. “What are you, some kind of freak?”

He had cocked his head. So recklessly brave. “You could say so.”

He had wanted to leave her there — the sun was beginning to rise, and the ice would have melted eventually. But there was something in the way she glowered at him, the way she beat the heels of her boots against the wall in frustration, the curl of her fists. A certain franticness and fear. Not of him, but of the city around them.

His fingers had curled into his palm. I should leave her. If she had the gall to rob a man blind in an alley, she could handle the London underbelly. He didn’t owe her a thing.

Her gaze had snapped to his. His breath had caught.

… He’d fractured her arm, anyway.

He wanted to believe that he had just felt bad for injuring her, but when she ripped her freshly bandaged arm away from him, eyes trained to the floor with a grumbled out ‘thanks’, he had let his fingers hover over the leather of her jacket sleeve a couple seconds too long before pulling away.

Sighing, Seamus folded the note. So she’d had him since the beginning. What else was new? A wave of frustration crested over him at the thought. If everything was temporary, why had the feelings remained when he’d ripped the note from its innocuous perch on his bedside table? Everything he felt for her: joy, irritation, guilt, affection — they’d stuck to his mind like wads of cotton on Velcro, refusing to fade, as luminescent and bright as the day they had sprouted.

She’d somehow had her claws stuck in him from day one, and now, he’d be damned before he gave up on her.

How could he? She had dragged him back from hell. She’d snapped and snarled and slapped him back to his senses whenever he got caught on the dangerous precipice that led to damnation. He still remembered the smell of her hair when she gripped at his back one chilly night on some obscure rooftop, her face hidden in his chest as she heaved out a breath that sounded too big for her body.

“What do you think you’re doing?” He’d asked. His voice had felt dead in his mouth, ashy on his tongue.

“Saving you,” she had bit out from her hiding place. “Because you’re too stupid to save yourself.”

Seamus’ eyes fluttered closed against the scene in his mind’s eye. The paper felt thin in his fingers, scarily thin — like at any moment, the smallest spark might set it aflame and crumble it to ashes. For all of winter’s might he possessed in his veins, he felt powerless to stop it, should it happen. He would have probably deserved it.

Which was stupid, once he considered it. There hadn’t been anything wrong between them. If anything, things had been going great. She’d finally stopped visiting exclusively in the night. She would have breakfast with him and Jamie every once in a while. Sometimes, she’d even use the front door. Her note and departure had felt like a kick to the chest, because he had never seen it coming.

The shock had propelled him here, he guessed. Even if she had abandoned him, even if he’d done something wrong, he couldn’t believe that she would want nothing to do with him ever again. He couldn’t believe that whatever was between them, tenacious and fragile as it was, had broken without him trying to fix it first.

Everything was temporary, but just this once, he didn’t want it to be.

His fingers tightened on the note as he exhaled. He moved to slip it back into his pocket, before abruptly, its presence disappeared. His fingers clutched at empty air as they stuttered halfway to his pocket, and his eyes snapped open, flashing blue in the night as his power pushed beneath his skin, ready to strike. But there was no target to hit.

For a moment, he deliriously applauded himself for jinxing it. The paper must have actually caught aflame and crumbled in his fingers, just as he had predicted. Bloody good job on his part. Likely, too, considering his rotten luck.

But then, clumps of snow pelted his hair, and automatically, he looked up. The light of the streetlamp blinded anything above it, but he didn’t have to see her to know she was there. Silent as she was, he could still recognise the subtle way she shifted on her perch, little clumps of snow dotting the pavement around his feet as they fell from the streetlamp’s arm, disturbed by her weight.

The city seemed to fall silent around them, the distant sounds of car horns and roadside chatter softening to nothing as they appraised each other. He could feel her eyes travelling up and down his body, and felt almost cheated at how he couldn’t make out a single feature on her. But he reckoned that was how she wanted it.

It felt like ages before she broke the silence. “I told you not to come,” she said, her voice rolling effortlessly over his shoulders, unlocking them and miraculously relaxing his entire posture. Mentally, he scoffed. She was probably about to berate him, yet his body still responded to her voice like a balm.

Her statement hung in the air for a couple seconds, before he exhaled. “You did,” he admitted.

Her boot made a squeaky noise against the metal as she shifted. “Then what the hell are you doing here?” She asked, harsher than any ice he could ever conjure. He suppressed a wince.

Seamus cleared his throat, shrugging one shoulder. “This city’s tourist attractions are something else,” he said. “Maybe I’m just sightseeing.” 

“Sure,” she said, scoffing. “I’ve heard raving reviews about this particular lamppost from tourists all over.”

Seamus bit down on his lower lip. “I’ve heard it’s a favourite meeting spot for alley cats,” he said, forcing nonchalance into his words. “Miraculously, I’ve become a cat person in recent years.”

Silence stretched between them. For a moment, he wondered if he had overstepped, before realising that he had passed that line a few hours ago when he got on the train from Manhattan to here. Head first, eyes closed, he supposed. There was no going back now.

Selina seemed to have gone stock still above him. “I don’t know where you heard that from,” she said stiffly. “Someone’s lying to you.”

He huffed a disbelieving breath. “Then why are you here?” He asked. He knew the answer he wanted to hear. He wanted her to swing down from her roost and tell him that she was here to see him, that she didn’t really want to go, and that there was a reason behind all of this. Even if she had wanted to go, he thought he’d earned an explanation as to why this had gone wrong: how he’d messed this temporary good thing up and had it ripped away from him before he could truly appreciate it. He felt alone and too young again, vulnerable against the chilly London winds as Alice was lowered into her grave, and he wanted her to block those winds and tell him that things were going to be alright, that she’d protect him, that he’d be okay.

But everything was temporary, wasn’t it?

Selina was silent, and he could almost hear the cogs working in her brain, weighing each option, deciding on what to say to him. Her fingers flashed in the light as she adjusted her grip on the lamppost. His own twitched, anticipating a fall to catch her from, though he knew that she would never fall, and even if she did, she’d always land on her feet.

“... I don’t know,” she said finally. He had to blink a couple times before he fully registered her answer. Her voice was impossibly quiet. “I know what I wrote on this thing, and I know I meant it, but I’m still here.” With a crinkle, the paper fell to his feet, floating to rest on a small mound of fallen snow. “I can’t… deal, with the way you make me feel, but… I can’t seem to cut you off.”

He couldn’t help it. He felt hope prickle at his heart. His heart usually rested at a beat so slow it could barely be detected, but at her words, it jumped to hyperspeed. His fingers almost felt warm. “How do I make you feel?” He tested the waters, balling his fists in his pockets.

She huffed something unsavoury under her breath. “I shouldn’t be saying anything,” she said. “I don’t even want to see you.” But she didn’t move from her perch.

He chanced a ghost of a smile. “Cat,” he said. “How do I make you feel?”

He heard her frustrated grumble all the way to his toes. “Good!” She said, her sudden volume startling him into taking a step back. “Happy! Content! I don’t know!” The lamppost creaked with her weight as she shifted. “I’m not used to it!” Her voice cracked on the last word. “I don’t know what to do with it, with any of it. I just…” Her voice trailed off with a desperate air, like she was dying to finish her train of thought, but couldn’t put it together well enough to say out loud. His heart palpitated in his chest. How could he respond? He longed to push off the ground and come eye-to-eye with her, to see the emotions flickering in her unfathomable eyes and find some way to comfort her, but she stayed blended in the shadows, intangible and untouchable. All he could do was wait.

“I just… I don’t want to feel like this,” she said finally, voice small and unfamiliarly weak in the night air. “I just want my old life back, Seamus. The one where I… I didn’t have to worry about hurting anyone, because they’d always hurt me first.”

And suddenly, it clicked. Selina was an alley cat, a pickpocket, an orphan with very few she could truly call friend. She had never had a place to visit during the day, never had anyone to have breakfast with, never had the chance to ring the front door. Her life existed in the shadows, and it was only when he’d brought her home to bandage her arm that she’d stepped out. Maybe he had done something wrong to scare her off, but in the end, she hadn’t run because of him. She’d run because of herself, because she was scared that if she stayed with him and the world he came from, she’d have somewhere or call home, somewhere she could feel happy, somewhere she was…

“Safe,” he murmured. He heard her go still above him.

“What?” She asked.

He blinked, before looking up at the space he assumed was her perch. “That’s it, isn’t it?” He asked. “Why you didn’t want to stay.”

“I don’t—“

“It’s because I— we make you feel safe,” he fumbled, bending down to snatch up the note. “You didn’t have that. But we gave it to you. And now that you could have it, you’re scared. Scared because—“

He could practically feel her hackles rising. “I’m not scared—“

“Scared,” he said, firmly, “because you could lose it.” He barked a short laugh. “Selina, that’s the point! That’s what having a home feels like!”

More snow pelted him from above. “What the hell are you even talking about, Frost?” She asked, tone gruff.

“Maybe I’m completely off base,” he said, feeling a grin stretching his lips as he smoothed out her note. “But I think that you wanted to run away not because you didn’t want this, but because you’re afraid of wanting it. Because if you want it, you’ll have something to call your own. You’ll have people who care about you and who you’ll care about in return. You’ll have a place to stay and come home to after a hard day. You’ll have something that matters.” He scanned the words in his palm. “‘Whatever happened between us, all of it, it doesn’t matter. It never did.’ ”

He heard Selina shift above him. “Stop that,” she muttered. If he didn’t know her so well, he’d have thought she was angry at him. But he knew that tone. She was feeling shocked, maybe even guilty.

“‘If you find me, you’ll wish you’d have left me alone.’,” he continued. “Except it did matter, and I did find you, but you haven’t told me to get lost yet.” He looked up at her again, folding the note neatly in his hands. “You want this, Selina. You want to come home.” His fingers felt so warm. “Don’t you?”

She didn’t answer immediately, and for a moment, he thought she’d somehow dematerialised from the spot above him. He felt a foreign kind of anxiousness creep in over the hope, a kind he hadn’t felt in a long time. “... Or, maybe—”

A shadow blocked the streetlamp’s light, making him blink rapidly, before he felt cool fingers brush his hand. His vision refocused on Selina, in the flesh, her hood barely containing the copper corkscrew curls he’d missed so much that barely brushed his chin. Her head was lowered, gaze focused on the space between their feet, but her fingers poked out of her jacket sleeve to grip at the hand still holding the note. Snowflakes continued to dot her hair and jacket, stark white against the black. He felt a surge of nostalgia.

She didn’t speak for a moment, though her jaw worked rapidly. He felt his lungs tighten with a held breath. It seemed unlikely, even now, that she would come home with him. After all, he could never predict her. But he hoped beyond hope that for once in his life, he’d done something right, and that for once he didn’t have to watch as something precious slipped through his fingers.

He hoped that for once, he could have something permanent.

Her throat cleared. “I…” She murmured. “I don’t know... if I could ever… you know.” Hazel eyes glinted at him beneath her hood. “I don’t know if I could call this, whatever this is, mine.” Her fingers tightened their grip. “But I… you’re… you’re right.” She looked up, catching his gaze and his breath. A thousand emotions flashed by in them, too quick for him to catch, but he felt a tremendous pressure press in on him, feeling the weight of each one nonetheless. He knew how hard it was for her to admit what she was saying. “I never had a home. I never had a family. It’s always been me against the world.” She chuckled. “Even when I met Donnie, I couldn’t… fully relax around him, and he was—is—my best friend. I ran away from that too. But you…” she made an incoherent noise. “You tried to kill me, but then you saved me. You took a look at a random street girl and opened your door to her, even though you owed her nothing. You let me meet your sister, your friends, your family… then you gave me a chance to be a part of that family.” She laughed something soft.

“I ran away because when I saw you, I could let myself relax. I didn’t have to fight. You…” Her gaze flickered from their linked hands to his eyes. “You’re right. I felt safe.”

He couldn’t keep the fondness out of his voice. “And you were scared of that.”

She snorted. “Can you blame me?” She asked, picking the note from his hands with her free hand. “I'm what you like to say so much: an alley cat. Alley cats don’t have homes.”

“This one does,” he said, and he nearly startled himself with how confidently he said it. There was no hint of doubt in his voice. He couldn’t imagine his London apartment without her window escapades and her lounging on the kitchen counter anymore. Gently, he interlaced their fingers, feeling his own warmth seep into her hand. “That is,” he hedged, “if she wants it.”

A sliver of a smile ghosted her lips as she watched their fingers clasp each other. Something felt right about that image. “She does,” she admitted, running a thumb along the side of his palm. Her free hand crushed the note in its palm. “She… really does.”

A weight lifted off his chest, and he felt his shoulders sag with obvious relief. “Good,” he sighed, tipping his head back, “if not travelling here would have been incredibly painful.”

Selina raised a brow, looking up at him with a small grin. “What, you can’t handle this city?” She asked. He couldn’t even be mad at her insinuation. The grin on her lips was far too blinding to detest.

“The tourism here is decrepit,” he raised a brow of his own, mirroring her expression, “and I would rather die than stay a night at the ‘Rochester Abyss’.”

“What? That doesn’t exist. Someone is seriously lying to you,” she said, then paused. “... Why would you stay? You could have just left if I had told you to scram. You don’t owe me anything.”

He huffed a laugh, bringing his free hand up to smooth a snowflake from her cheek. “I wouldn’t have given up,” he admitted, watching as her cheeks flushed a delightful red. “I’d have stayed a week, or a month, or longer, if I needed to. Even if you didn’t want to come home with me, I’d have wanted to make sure you were okay before heading back, and… if I’d done something wrong, I’d want to know what.”

Her gaze flitted to the side, a grumble escaping her throat. “You’d never,” she said, sounding almost petulant. “You’ve always been good to me, even when you were being stupid.” She rolled her eyes. “I wanted to hate you, you know, but you didn’t give me enough ammo to.”

He grinned then, a real, big one, feeling the last vestiges of anxiety break away from his heart. “I’m glad I didn’t,” he said. “I didn’t want this to be temporary.”

She looked back at him then, a disbelieving laugh on her tongue. “Temporary?” She asked, looking almost amused. “Seamus, you do a lot of things half-assedly, but you’ve never made me feel like my place was temporary.” She pressed his palm to her cheek. “I want to stay with you and everyone else for as long as I can. Does that sound temporary to you?”

He felt like he could fly him and her home in one shot then. He feared his face might get stuck in a ridiculous smile for the rest of his life. “No,” he said softly. “It doesn’t.”

Her grin burned bright into his mind, searing into his eyelids. “Good,” she said, sounding delightfully satisfied. Her feet shuffled a step forward, the hood of her jacket falling back with the movement. He got a face full of grinning, copper and hazel warmth, and his stomach swooped, like he was a kid again and his crush  had just smiled at him from across the room. It was giddying. Terrifying in its intensity, but oh so exciting in its reality. This was real, and it was good, and most importantly, it was here. Was it permanent? With his lifespan, hah, but he’d be damned if he let it slip through his fingers now.

Everything was temporary. He was beginning to realise this. He couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t defy it. But… he could learn from it. Selina was another blip on his eons long timeline, but she was a very real, very loud blip, and she made his heart go insane and his gut drop from beneath him, and even if it would hurt him in the end… he was beginning to think that he didn’t care anymore.

No, not that he didn’t care… he was beginning to accept it.

There were very few reasons he’d go to the ends of the world for. Selina Calabrese, with her unkempt hair and diamond smile and cat like eyes, would always be one of them.

His cheeks flushed red as he realised this. He caught her eyes widening at the sight, but before she could marvel at it, he swept an arm around her waist, pressing her to his chest. “Let’s go home,” he said softly, and the smile that unfurled across her lips proved time to be a bitch who didn’t matter in the slightest, because it’d never steal that image from his mind.

Her fingers tightened in his coat, melting the snowflakes that dotted the material. He had never felt warmer in his life. “Yeah,” she breathed, white steam billowing into the sky. “Bring me home, Seams.”

[yxlenas]

New Beginnings

Body worship for Niytavia, based off of this post. Trigger warnings for under negotiated rough sex, and a panic attack

“I haven’t seen you naked in 125 years.”

The room they’re in is small and sterile, a bed and a dresser, a bathroom down the hall. Octavia is perched on the bed, a thick layer of bravado in her trembling voice. The muscles in her back and shoulders are tense, lines creased in her forehead. Niylah ties her hair up, turning away from the tiny mirror mounted on the wall next to the window. The new planet shines below them, a red and blue blur. Octavia swallows, her hands clenching the sheets on the mattress.

“Does it really count if you’re in a state of stasis?”

Octavia laughs, nervous and tight in the back of her throat. She tucks her feet up underneath her, then extends them again, letting her socked feet brush the floor. Niylah kneels in front of her, making careful eye contact, resting her hands on Octavia’s thighs. The muscles jump and twitch beneath her palms. Octavia is wound tight, on the edge of breaking, of shattering into a million pieces.

“Okteivia?”

“M’fine.”

Niylah rubs gentle circles on her girlfriend’s thighs, pressing through the white fabric of her leggings.

“We’re safe for right now. No war, no famine, no disease. We’re alone, we have a bed and a shower and the people we love. You can relax, niron. Nothing is going to happen to you in this room.”

There are tears soaking into Octavia’s hollow cheeks, her skin pale with fear and anxiety. Niylah stands, slowly, palms off Octavia’s legs and extended outward not to spook her. Octavia jumps anyways, flinching back onto the bed. Her eyes are vacant and cloudy, still full of tears.

“Deep breaths. 3,4, and 7, remember? Good girl.”

Octavia takes measured, stuttering breaths for a few moments before her body language indicates that Niylah can touch her without making her feel worse, and Niylah draws her into a tight hug, pressing light kisses to Octavia’s collarbone and shoulder.

“Niylah. Niylah, wait.”

And then Octavia is cupping Niylah’s cheek, tugging her in, pressing her lips to Niylah’s with an element of desperation and panic. She tastes like sweat and tears, and her tongue strokes across the roof of Niylah’s mouth slowly while her hand snakes up the back of Niylah’s tank top.

“I missed you, I missed you-”

“Slow down, O.”

Octavia pulls away from her, hurt glazing her face along with her tears.

“I want- I-”

“I need to know you’re sure, alright? You’re upset, you might not be thinking clearly.”

Octavia’s hand wraps into Niylah’s tank top from where it rests against Niylah’s upper back, blunt, jagged nails digging into the black ink criss crossing her spine.

“I’m sure. I’m sure, please, Niylah-”

“Ok. Ok. Deep breaths, love. Can I kiss you some more?”

Octavia just swallows hard and dives back in, the hand not clutching Niylah’s shirt sliding up and tangling in her long braid. Strands get tugged as Octavia attempts to get closer, practically tugging Niylah into her lap. A shiver goes up her spine. Octavia’s nails rake down towards her waist, stinging and burning and maybe drawing a little blood. Niylah whimpers, moaning into the kiss, moving her own hand to grope at Octavia’s breasts.

Octavia tugs back, eyes a little unfocused, mouth swollen, red, and wet. There’s a seam on her lip, full of blood, from where Niylah must have bitten her.

“Take your clothes off.”

Niylah strips, pausing to smack Octavia’s ass as she tugs down her pants. Octavia’s thighs clench, and then she’s snatching Niylah around the waist and tugging her to lay on the bed, pressing a knee between her thighs and grinding down onto her, hard. There’s lines of tension in Octavia’s back, and she flinches away from Niylah when she touches her before tugging away.

“On your belly.”

“O, are you sure about taking control right now?”

“Yes. On your belly”

Niylah flips over, not entirely certain that Octavia is safe doing this, but then Octavia is straddling her waist, leaning over, and encapsulating them both in the curtain of her dark hair.

The first kiss is on the back of her neck, right against the beginning of Niylah’s tattoo. Then there are teeth, scraping across her vertebrae. She shivers, moaning and rolling her hips into the mattress, slow and controlled. Octavia moans appreciatively, licking diagonally across another swooping line of ink.

Niylah begins to melt into a puddle of pleasure, Octavia’s mouth working at her tattoo, and her hands kneading the globes of Niylah’s ass, sliding under her and squeezing her breasts, twisting her nipples.

Octavia is rubbing her clit steadily, her teeth scraping down lower and lower on Niylah’s back, and Niylah is just on the edge of a slow, steady, orgasm, when the teeth sink into her skin too vigorously.

“Baby, baby.”

Octavia’s nails dig into the soft skin of her belly, and Niylah winces.

“Octavia.”

A sharp pain. Octavia’s nails are clawing at her, and on her back, Octavia’s entire body is shaking. Niylah reaches down, tugging Octavia’s hand away from her skin and wrapping it in a bone crushing grip.

“Baby, what’s wrong?”

A strangled, wheezing breath. Niylah isn’t sure how she gets out from under her girlfriend, but she does, tugging Octavia into her arms. She’s crying, tears running down her flushed cheeks, muscles taut, thin breaths struggling to make it in and out of her lungs.

Niylah presses their foreheads together, rocking and breathing deep. Her back aches, and her belly has angry scratches on it, but Octavia-Octavia is falling to pieces in her arms.

“I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

Even before Bellamy opened the bunker, their sex life had been rocky. Octavia was always tightly wound and tense, and it made her nervous in the bedroom. On more than one occasion, Niylah putting any sort of pressure on her arms or wrists had started panic attacks, but never anything when Octavia was on top. In her arms, Octavia shudders and cries out, shoving her face into Niylah’s neck.

Niylah rocks and shushes for almost an hour before Octavia is calm enough to pull away and lay down with her, a trembling hand hovering over the scratches on Niylah’s stomach.

“I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“It’s alright.”

“I was shaky, and upset. I should have known better.”

“We both should have. It’s alright, Okteivia.”

Octavia takes a deep breath, pressing her forehead to Niylah’s shoulder.

Maybe their fresh start isn’t going to go as well as she had hoped.

[unsettlingshortstories]

Snow, Glass, Apples

Neil Gaiman (1994)

I do not know what manner of thing she is. None of us do. She killed her mother in the birthing, but that’s never enough to account for it.

They call me wise, but I am far from wise, for all that I foresaw fragments of it, frozen moments caught in pools of water or in the cold glass of my mirror. If I were wise I would not have tried to change what I saw. If I were wise I would have killed myself before ever I encountered her, before ever I caught him.

Wise, and a witch, or so they said, and I’d seen his face in my dreams and in reflections for all my life: sixteen years of dreaming of him before he reined his horse by the bridge that morning, and asked my name. He helped me onto his high horse and we rode together to my little cottage, my face buried in the gold of his hair. He asked for the best of what I had; a king’s right, it was.

His beard was red-bronze in the morning light, and I knew him, not as a king, for I knew nothing of kings then, but as my love. He took all he wanted from me, the right of kings, but he returned to me on the following day, and on the night after that: his beard so red, his hair so gold, his eyes the blue of a summer sky, his skin tanned the gentle brown of ripe wheat.

His daughter was only a child: no more than five years of age when I came to the palace. A portrait of her dead mother hung in the princess’s tower room; a tall woman, hair the colour of dark wood, eyes nut-brown. She was of a different blood to her pale daughter.

The girl would not eat with us.

I do not know where in the palace she ate.

I had my own chambers. My husband the king, he had his own rooms also. When he wanted me he would send for me, and I would go to him, and pleasure him, and take my pleasure with him.

One night, several months after I was brought to the palace, she came to my rooms. She was six. I was embroidering by lamplight, squinting my eyes against the lamp’s smoke and fitful illumination. When I looked up, she was there.

“Princess?”

She said nothing. Her eyes were black as coal, black as her hair; her lips were redder than blood. She looked up at me and smiled. Her teeth seemed sharp, even then, in the lamplight.

“What are you doing away from your room?”

“I’m hungry,” she said, like any child.

It was winter, when fresh food is a dream of warmth and sunlight; but I had strings of whole apples, cored and dried, hanging from the beams of my chamber, and I pulled an apple down for her.

“Here.”

Autumn is the time of drying, of preserving, a time of picking apples, of rendering the goose fat. Winter is the time of hunger, of snow, and of death; and it is the time of the midwinter feast, when we rub the goose-fat into the skin of a whole pig, stuffed with that autumn’s apples, then we roast it or spit it, and we prepare to feast upon the crackling.

She took the dried apple from me and began to chew it with her sharp yellow teeth.

“Is it good?”

She nodded. I had always been scared of the little princess, but at that moment I warmed to her and, with my fingers, gently, I stroked her cheek. She looked at me and smiled — she smiled but rarely — then she sank her teeth into the base of my thumb, the Mound of Venus, and she drew blood.

I began to shriek, from pain and from surprise; but she looked at me and I fell silent.

The little Princess fastened her mouth to my hand and licked and sucked and drank. When she was finished, she left my chamber. Beneath my gaze the cut that she had made began to close, to scab, and to heal. The next day it was an old scar: I might have cut my hand with a pocket-knife in my childhood.

I had been frozen by her, owned and dominated. That scared me, more than the blood she had fed on. After that night I locked my chamber door at dusk, barring it with an oaken pole, and I had the smith forge iron bars, which he placed across my windows.

My husband, my love, my king, sent for me less and less, and when I came to him he was dizzy, listless, confused. He could no longer make love as a man makes love; and he would not permit me to pleasure him with my mouth: the one time I tried, he started, violently, and began to weep. I pulled my mouth away and held him tightly, until the sobbing had stopped, and he slept, like a child.

I ran my fingers across his skin as he slept. It was covered in a multitude of ancient scars. But I could recall no scars from the days of our courtship, save one, on his side, where a boar had gored him when he was a youth.

Soon he was a shadow of the man I had met and loved by the bridge. His bones showed, blue and white, beneath his skin. I was with him at the last: his hands were cold as stone, his eyes milky-blue, his hair and beard faded and lustreless and limp. He died unshriven, his skin nipped and pocked from head to toe with tiny, old scars.

He weighed near to nothing. The ground was frozen hard, and we could dig no grave for him, so we made a cairn of rocks and stones above his body, as a memorial only, for there was little enough of him left to protect from the hunger of the beasts and the birds.

So I was queen.

And I was foolish, and young — eighteen summers had come and gone since first I saw daylight — and I did not do what I would do, now.

If it were today, I would have her heart cut out, true. But then I would have her head and arms and legs cut off. I would have them disembowel her. And then I would watch, in the town square, as the hangman heated the fire to white-heat with bellows, watch unblinking as he consigned each part of her to the fire. I would have archers around the square, who would shoot any bird or animal who came close to the flames, any raven or dog or hawk or rat. And I would not close my eyes until the princess was ash, and a gentle wind could scatter her like snow.

I did not do this thing, and we pay for our mistakes.

They say I was fooled; that it was not her heart. That it was the heart of an animal — a stag, perhaps, or a boar. They say that, and they are wrong.

And some say (but it is her lie, not mine) that I was given the heart, and that I ate it. Lies and half-truths fall like snow, covering the things that I remember, the things I saw. A landscape, unrecognisable after a snowfall; that is what she has made of my life.

There were scars on my love, her father’s thighs, and on his ballock-pouch, and on his male member, when he died.

I did not go with them. They took her in the day, while she slept, and was at her weakest. They took her to the heart of the forest, and there they opened her blouse, and they cut out her heart, and they left her dead, in a gully, for the forest to swallow.

The forest is a dark place, the border to many kingdoms; no-one would be foolish enough to claim jurisdiction over it. Outlaws live in the forest. Robbers live in the forest, and so do wolves. You can ride through the forest for a dozen days and never see a soul; but there are eyes upon you the entire time.

They brought me her heart. I know it was hers — no sow’s heart or doe’s would have continued to beat and pulse after it had been cut out, as that one did.

I took it to my chamber.

I did not eat it: I hung it from the beams above my bed, placed it on a length of twine that I strung with rowan-berries, orange-red as a robin’s breast; and with bulbs of garlic.

Outside, the snow fell, covering the footprints of my huntsmen, covering her tiny body in the forest where it lay.

I had the smith remove the iron bars from my windows, and I would spend some time in my room each afternoon through the short winter days, gazing out over the forest, until darkness fell.

There were, as I have already stated, people in the forest. They would come out, some of them, for the Spring Fair: a greedy, feral, dangerous people; some were stunted — dwarfs and midgets and hunchbacks; others had the huge teeth and vacant gazes of idiots; some had fingers like flippers or crab-claws. They would creep out of the forest each year for the Spring Fair, held when the snows had melted.

As a young lass I had worked at the Fair, and they had scared me then, the forest folk. I told fortunes for the Fairgoers, scrying in a pool of still water; and, later, when I was older, in a disc of polished glass, its back all silvered — a gift from a merchant whose straying horse I had seen in a pool of ink.

The stallholders at the fair were afraid of the forest folk; they would nail their wares to the bare boards of their stalls — slabs of gingerbread or leather belts were nailed with great iron nails to the wood. If their wares were not nailed, they said, the forest folk would take them, and run away, chewing on the stolen gingerbread, flailing about them with the belts.

The forest folk had money, though: a coin here, another there, sometimes stained green by time or the earth, the face on the coin unknown to even the oldest of us. Also they had things to trade, and thus the fair continued, serving the outcasts and the dwarfs, serving the robbers (if they were circumspect) who preyed on the rare travellers from lands beyond the forest, or on gypsies, or on the deer. (This was robbery in the eyes of the law. The deer were the queen’s.)

The years passed by slowly, and my people claimed that I ruled them with wisdom. The heart still hung above by bed, pulsing gently in the night. If there were any who mourned the child, I saw no evidence: she was a thing of terror, back then, and they believed themselves well rid of her.

Spring Fair followed Spring Fair: five of them, each sadder, poorer, shoddier than the one before. Fewer of the forest folk came out of the forest to buy. Those who did seemed subdued and listless. The stallholders stopped nailing their wares to the boards of their stalls. And by the fifth year but a handful of folk came from the forest — a fearful huddle of little hairy men, and no-one else.

The Lord of the Fair, and his page, came to me when the fair was done. I had known him slightly, before I was queen.

“I do not come to you as my queen,” he said.

I said nothing. I listened.

“I come to you because you are wise,” he continued. “When you were a child you found a strayed foal by staring into a pool of ink; when you were a maiden you found a lost infant who had wandered far from her mother, by staring into that mirror of yours. You know secrets and you can seek out things hidden. My queen,” he asked, “what is taking the forest folk? Next year there will be no Spring Fair. The travellers from other kingdoms have grown scarce and few, the folk of the forest are almost gone. Another year like the last, and we shall all starve.”

I commanded my maidservant to bring me my looking-glass. It was a simple thing, a silver-backed glass disk, which I kept wrapped in a doe-skin, in a chest, in my chamber.

They brought it to me, then, and I gazed into it:

She was twelve and she was no longer a little child. Her skin was still pale, her eyes and hair coal-black, her lips as red as blood. She wore the clothes she had worn when she left the castle for the last time — the blouse, the skirt, — although they were much let-out, much mended. Over them she wore a leather cloak, and instead of boots she had leather bags, tied with thongs, over her tiny feet.

She was standing in the forest, beside a tree.

As I watched, in the eye of my mind, I saw her edge and step and flitter and pad from tree to tree, like an animal: a bat or a wolf. She was following someone.

He was a monk. He wore sackcloth, and his feet were bare, and scabbed and hard. His beard and tonsure were of a length, overgrown, unshaven.

She watched him from behind the trees. Eventually he paused for the night, and began to make a fire, laying twigs down, breaking up a robin’s nest as kindling. He had a tinder-box in his robe, and he knocked the flint against the steel until the sparks caught the tinder and the fire flamed. There had been two eggs in the nest he had found, and these he ate, raw. They cannot have been much of a meal for so big a man.

He sat there in the firelight, and she came out from her hiding place. She crouched down on the other side of the fire, and stared at him. He grinned, as if it were a long time since he had seen another human, and beckoned her over to him.

She stood up and walked around the fire, and waited, an arms-length away. He pulled in his robe until he found a coin — a tiny, copper penny, — and tossed it to her. She caught it, and nodded, and went to him. He pulled at the rope around his waist, and his robe swung open. His body was as hairy as a bear’s. She pushed him back onto the moss. One hand crept, spider-like, through the tangle of hair, until it closed on his manhood; the other hand traced a circle on his left nipple. He closed his eyes, and fumbled one huge hand under her skirt. She lowered her mouth to the nipple she had been teasing, her smooth skin white on the furry brown body of him.

She sank her teeth deep into his breast. His eyes opened, then they closed again, and she drank.

She straddled him, and she fed. As she did so a thin blackish liquid began to dribble from between her legs…

“Do you know what is keeping the travellers from our town? What is happening to the forest people?” asked the Head of the Fair.

I covered the mirror in doe-skin, and told him that I would personally take it upon myself to make the forest safe once more.

I had to, although she terrified me. I was the queen.

A foolish woman would have gone then into the forest and tried to capture the creature; but I had been foolish once and had no wish to be so a second time.

I spent time with old books, for I could read a little. I spent time with the gypsy women (who passed through our country across the mountains to the south, rather than cross the forest to the north and the west).

I prepared myself, and obtained those things I would need, and when the first snows began to fall, then I was ready.

Naked, I was, and alone in the highest tower of the palace, a place open to the sky. The winds chilled my body; goose-pimples crept across my arms and thighs and breasts. I carried a silver basin, and a basket in which I had placed a silver knife, a silver pin, some tongs, a grey robe and three green apples.

I put them down and stood there, unclothed, on the tower, humble before the night sky and the wind. Had any man seen me standing there, I would have had his eyes; but there was no-one to spy. Clouds scudded across the sky, hiding and uncovering the waning moon.

I took the silver knife, and slashed my left arm — once, twice, three times. The blood dripped into the basin, scarlet seeming black in the moonlight.

I added the powder from the vial that hung around my neck. It was a brown dust, made of dried herbs and the skin of a particular toad, and from certain other things. It thickened the blood, while preventing it from clotting.

I took the three apples, one by one, and pricked their skins gently with my silver pin. Then I placed the apples in the silver bowl, and let them sit there while the first tiny flakes of snow of the year fell slowly onto my skin, and onto the apples, and onto the blood.

When dawn began to brighten the sky I covered myself with the grey cloak, and took the red apples from the silver bowl, one by one, lifting each into my basket with silver tongs, taking care not to touch it. There was nothing left of my blood or of the brown powder in the silver bowl, save nothing save a black residue, like a verdigris, on the inside.

I buried the bowl in the earth. Then I cast a glamour on the apples (as once, years before, by a bridge, I had cast a glamour on myself), that they were, beyond any doubt, the most wonderful apples in the world; and the crimson blush of their skins was the warm colour of fresh blood.

I pulled the hood of my cloak low over my face, and I took ribbons and pretty hair ornaments with me, placed them above the apples in the reed basket, and I walked alone into the forest, until I came to her dwelling: a high, sandstone cliff, laced with deep caves going back a way into the rock wall.

There were trees and boulders around the cliff-face, and I walked quietly and gently from tree to tree, without disturbing a twig or a fallen leaf. Eventually I found my place to hide, and I waited, and I watched.

After some hours a clutch of dwarfs crawled out of the cave-front — ugly, misshapen, hairy little men, the old inhabitants of this country. You saw them seldom now.

They vanished into the wood, and none of them spied me, though one of them stopped to piss against the rock I hid behind.

I waited. No more came out.

I went to the cave entrance and hallooed into it, in a cracked old voice.

The scar on my Mound of Venus throbbed and pulsed as she came towards me, out of the darkness, naked and alone.

She was thirteen years of age, my stepdaughter, and nothing marred the perfect whiteness of her skin save for the livid scar on her left breast, where her heart had been cut from her long since.

The insides of her thighs were stained with wet black filth.

She peered at me, hidden, as I was, in my cloak. She looked at me hungrily. “Ribbons, goodwife,” I croaked. “Pretty ribbons for your hair…”

She smiled and beckoned to me. A tug; the scar on my hand was pulling me towards her. I did what I had planned to do, but I did it more readily than I had planned: I dropped my basket, and screeched like the bloodless old pedlar woman I was pretending to be, and I ran.

My grey cloak was the colour of the forest, and I was fast; she did not catch me.

I made my way back to the palace.

I did not see it. Let us imagine though, the girl returning, frustrated and hungry, to her cave, and finding my fallen basket on the ground.

What did she do?

I like to think she played first with the ribbons, twined them into her raven hair, looped them around her pale neck or her tiny waist.

And then, curious, she moved the cloth to see what else was in the basket; and she saw the red, red apples.

They smelled like fresh apples, of course; and they also smelled of blood. And she was hungry. I imagine her picking up an apple, pressing it against her cheek, feeling the cold smoothness of it against her skin.

And she opened her mouth and bit deep into it…

By the time I reached my chambers, the heart that hung from the roof-beam, with the apples and hams and the dried sausages, had ceased to beat. It hung there, quietly, without motion or life, and I felt safe once more.

That winter the snows were high and deep, and were late melting. We were all hungry come the spring.

The Spring Fair was slightly improved that year. The forest folk were few, but they were there, and there were travellers from the lands beyond the forest.

I saw the little hairy men of the forest-cave buying and bargaining for pieces of glass, and lumps of crystal and of quartz-rock. They paid for the glass with silver coins — the spoils of my stepdaughter’s depredations, I had no doubt. When it got about what they were buying, townsfolk rushed back to their homes, came back with their lucky crystals, and, in a few cases, with whole sheets of glass.

I thought, briefly, about having them killed, but I did not. As long as the heart hung, silent and immobile and cold, from the beam of my chamber, I was safe, and so were the folk of the forest, and, thus, eventually, the folk of the town.

My twenty-fifth year came, and my stepdaughter had eaten the poisoned fruit two winters’ back, when the Prince came to my Palace. He was tall, very tall, with cold green eyes and the swarthy skin of those from beyond the mountains.

He rode with a small retinue: large enough to defend him, small enough that another monarch — myself, for instance — would not view him as a potential threat.

I was practical: I thought of the alliance of our lands, thought of the Kingdom running from the forests all the way south to the sea; I thought of my golden-haired bearded love, dead these eight years; and, in the night, I went to the Prince’s room.

I am no innocent, although my late husband, who was once my king, was truly my first lover, no matter what they say.

At first the prince seemed excited. He bade me remove my shift, and made me stand in front of the opened window, far from the fire, until my skin was chilled stone-cold. Then he asked me to lie upon my back, with my hands folded across my breasts, my eyes wide open – but staring only at the beams above. He told me not to move, and to breathe as little as possible. He implored me to say nothing. He spread my legs apart.

It was then that he entered me.

As he began to thrust inside me, I felt my hips raise, felt myself begin to match him, grind for grind, push for push. I moaned. I could not help myself.

His manhood slid out of me. I reached out and touched it, a tiny, slippery thing.

“Please,” he said, softly. “You must neither move, nor speak. Just lie there on the stones, so cold and so fair.”

I tried, but he had lost whatever force it was that had made him virile; and, some short while later, I left the Prince’s room, his curses and tears still resounding in my ears.

He left early the next morning, with all his men, and they rode off into the forest.

I imagine his loins, now, as he rode, a knot of frustration at the base of his manhood. I imagine his pale lips pressed so tightly together. Then I imagine his little troupe riding through the forest, finally coming upon the glass-and-crystal cairn of my stepdaughter. So pale. So cold. Naked, beneath the glass, and little more than a girl, and dead.

In my fancy, I can almost feel the sudden hardness of his manhood inside his britches, envision the lust that took him then, the prayers he muttered beneath his breath in thanks for his good fortune. I imagine him negotiating with the little hairy men – offering them gold and spices for the lovely corpse under the crystal mound.

Did they take his gold willingly? Or did they look up to see his men on their horses, with their sharp swords and their spears, and realize they had no alternative?

I do not know. I was not there; I was not scrying. I can only imagine…

Hands, pulling off the lumps of glass and quartz from her cold body. Hands, gently caressing her cold cheek, moving her cold arm, rejoicing to find the corpse still fresh and pliable.

Did he take her there, in front of them all? Or did he have her carried to a secluded nook before he mounted her?

I cannot say.

Did he shake the apple from her throat? Or did her eyes slowly open as he pounded into her cold body; did her mouth open, those red lips part, those sharp yellow teeth close on his swarthy neck, as the blood, which is the life, trickled down her throat, washing down and away the lump of apple, my own, my poison?

I imagine; I do not know.

This I do know: I was woken in the night by her heart pulsing and beating once more. Salt blood dripped onto my face from above. I sat up. My hand burned and pounded as if I had hit the base of my thumb with a rock.

There was a hammering on the door. I felt afraid, but I am a queen, and I would not show fear. I opened the door.

First his men walked in to my chamber, and stood around me, with their sharp swords, and their long spears.

Then he came in; and he spat in my face.

Finally, she walked into my chamber, as she had when I was first a queen, and she was a child of six. She had not changed. Not really.

She pulled down the twine on which her heart was hanging. She pulled off the dried rowan berries, one by one; pulled off the garlic bulb – now a dried thing, after all these years; then she took up her own, her pumping heart — a small thing, no larger than that of a nanny-goat or a she-bear — as it brimmed and pumped its blood into her hand.

Her fingernails must have been as sharp as glass: she opened her breast with them, running them over the purple scar. Her chest gaped, suddenly, open and bloodless. She licked her heart, once, as the blood ran over her hands, and she pushed the heart deep into her breast.

I saw her do it. I saw her close the flesh of her breast once more. I saw the purple scar begin to fade.

Her prince looked briefly concerned, but he put his arm around her nonetheless, and they stood, side by side, and they waited.

And she stayed cold, and the bloom of death remained on her lips, and his lust was not diminished in any way.

They told me they would marry, and the kingdoms would indeed be joined. They told me that I would be with them on their wedding day.

It is starting to get hot in here.

They have told the people bad things about me; a little truth to add savour to the dish, but mixed with many lies.

I was bound and kept in a tiny stone cell beneath the palace, and I remained there through the autumn. Today they fetched me out of the cell; they stripped the rags from me, and washed the filth from me, and then they shaved my head and my loins, and they rubbed my skin with goose grease.

The snow was falling as they carried me — two men at each hand, two men at each leg — utterly exposed, and spread-eagled and cold, through the midwinter crowds; and brought me to this kiln.

My stepdaughter stood there with her prince. She watched me, in my indignity, but she said nothing.

As they thrust me inside, jeering and chaffing as they did so, I saw one snowflake land upon her white cheek, and remain there without melting.

They closed the kiln-door behind me. It is getting hotter in here, and outside they are singing and cheering and banging on the sides of the kiln.

She was not laughing, or jeering, or talking. She did not sneer at me or turn away. She looked at me, though; and for a moment I saw myself reflected in her eyes.

I will not scream. I will not give them that satisfaction. They will have my body, but my soul and my story are my own, and will die with me.

The goose-grease begins to melt and glisten upon my skin. I shall make no sound at all. I shall think no more on this.

I shall think instead of the snowflake on her cheek.

I think of her hair as black as coal, her lips as red as blood, her skin, snow-white.

[spitefulpumpkin]

Moonshine Lake; Ch.5: Love

Mirror on AO3

Self-indulgent as hell AU fic about a boy meeting a fish creature and their unusual love story. Co-plotted with @jyagantz

Trigger Warnings: Homophobia, Bullying, Animal Cruelty, Drug Abuse, non-explicit Interspecies Sex Unbeta’d, mostly written on mobile!

They were blissfully unaware of it, but Akande and Jamison had been a couple long before they shared their first kiss. The flock at least saw it that way. Even Camilla, even though she didn't know who was her son's crush, knew Jamie was head over heels for someone. If her attitude would change, would she know that the love of her child was not human? Was her motherly strong enough for that. "I can't tell her." Jamison mused one night, Akande by his side, fixing a net with a dozen of knots.

"She will find out sooner or later. Your mother is a smart woman." "My father didn't want a queer in his family and I'm sure she would want one either." "Whatever that is. I'm sure she would not dare to push you away. She loves you." "I'm not sure if her love for me is bigger than her wish for grandchildren. Can't exactly give her that when I'm with a man, like some sissy." Akande scoffed. "You keep insisting I'm a man." "Because you are! Or you look like one..." Only now did Jamison notice the mer's hurt expression. "I'm...sorry. I forgot." "I'm well aware what I look like in the eyes of a human. You don't need to remind me." "Akande. I didn't mean to be rude." "I know. You never do." He placed his corner of the net down. "Who we are will always be a thorn in someone's eye. Best we can do is hope that the people who matter are not like that." Jamison groaned before tugging at his hair. "I'm just...scared, you know? I will go to university soon and...and what happens after that?" "We will find out, once the time comes."

Jamison opened his mouth, but closed it again when he felt a weight on his head. A group of children from the flock had snuck up on the two from behind, two carrying one who placed something akin to a crown on Jamison's head. It was like the flower crowns they had made once or twice, but this time decorated with sea shells and a redish, spiky material Jamison has never seen before. Just when he had slipped his crown off to investigate it, he saw the kids place a second one on his head as well. The mer reacted flustered, waving his arm. "Will you stop that already!" The children ran and jumped into the water of the lake to join the others. Jamison hummed quietly and smiled as he put the crown back on. "The sardines got a lot of time on their hands, hm?" Akande nodded, his face darken from being flustered. Curiously Jamison leaned over and eyed Akande's crown. "The red bits..." "Coral." Akande muttered and took the ring of plants and minerals off. "We...we put those onto bonding crowns." "Oh?" Snickering came from the lakeside and Akande tossed glares at the children like daggers. "What is a bonding?" Jamison asked. And added in his head why you would be throwing mean looks at the sardines for giving them gifts. Akande scratched a spot on his shoulder. "It's...basically it's a ritual. Some perform it when they found a new flock. Or when they want to become permanent mating partners. It's a promise, basically." Jamison felt the heat crawl up his face. "Oh. It's...so it's like, a wedding?" "It, uh. It's mostly performed in water, so yes, you might get very wet, but - " "Nooo! We humans, we got something similar! A wedding. Couples do that to get tax benefits and stuff. But originally it's a love thing, you know? To show that you want to be with your loved one until the day you die..." The mer hummed and looked quietly at the crown in his lap. "I...yeah, I guess it's kind of like that. Yes." Awkwardness fell over the scene again, the tall mer slowly shaking his head. "Have you ever thought about it?" "What do you mean?" He turned and saw Jamison had put the crown back on. Akande understood the question now. He let go a chuckle. "Have you?" "I gotta, one day. Continuing the Junkenstein legacy. Whatever that is." "A legacy or a name is not what makes a family important." Jamison nodded, going back to tying knots. Slowly Akande's large figure slipped closer to his side and as if it was second nature, Jamison leaned his head against his shoulder, seeking comfort. "Maybe I will bond you to me, one day." "No empty promises." "Have I ever broken a promise?" "Well, that one time when you promised to not laugh at me when you tried to teach me to swim, and you laughed anyway because I got scared by a fish stroking past my leg." "Hahaha, you have to admit, it was very funny though." "For you." There was a smile on Jamison's face as he nuzzled against Akande's neck, his breath tickling his gils and drawing giggling out of the big mer. The children watched them in pride.

The summer seemed to pass by too quickly. The last summer they would have together for a long time. Jamison and Akande had grown up with the knowledge they could only see each other during these precious four to five months. The rest of the year the flock, even as small as it was nowadays, would move to the oceans for the colder months. This summer was Jamison's last one before he would move away, three towns over, for his studies. He convinced his mother to send him to this school early on. His dream of becoming an engineer had only grown since then. "I will be home from July to September. It falls right into mating time." He declared one night, moving up and down in front of the old fountain, excitement filling his voice. "I will finally be able to show the world my abilities. I will finally show everyone the stuff I'm made of." Akande, too big to fit into the fountain by now, sat with crossed arms at its edge, head tilted. "You want to expand your abilities and test your knowledge with others. Admirable It always fascinated me how wound up you would get over gears and screws. I'm sure you will make a fine craftsman." Jamison stopped in his tracks, eying Akande. He has never heard that tune of voice on him. "You sound...upset." The mer glanced up, sighing quietly. "I'm just...The flock elected me as the new elder." "And?" "The others want to stay away from Adlersbrunn for a while." "...I can't blame them." Jamison had seen enough violence happening to the flock to understand. "But...you will come back, right?" "I hope so. The flock will always be the highest priority. I hope you can..." "I understand it." Jamison came up to Akande, his hands cupping the mer's cheeks, thumb stroking his scales.

"I love you." "Hmm?" Jamison's cheeks flushed. "I said, I love you, James." It was at this point that Jamison began to fight with tears, a flood of emotions suddenly hitting him. His embrace around the mer's shoulders was strong. "I love you, too, you warrior, you." And for the first time in ages, Akande had to hold back sobs.

Time apart always hurts. Now more than ever, with the boy's heart so tight in Akande's grip. The journey to the university was an oddly silent trip in the carriage, Jamison's mother being openly close to tears, while her son tried to at least keep up a facade. The university was a small building of stone, a former fortress was now a house of knowledge. Jamison liked that irony. Unlike school he had to organize himself, find himself at lectures and work day and night through books. He found interest in chemistry, especially the one the Slavic wikings practiced. This technology could be devastating in the wrong hands. When he wasn't learning in the library or listening to lectures, he was in his dorm, isolated. Fellow students tried to make him join their brotherhood, but Jamison learned early that those were often just a thinly veiled excuses to meet a bunch of knuckleheads in the night time for rants about philosophy and politics while drinking oneself in a comatose state. Of course rumors of his apparent queerness spread like wildfire. But as long as these rumors did not result in violence against him again, the student couldn't care less. No, Jamison preferred to be for himself, his dorm having turned to a mess workshop within the first two weeks. Chemicals would bubble over the low flames of burned-down candles, bits and pieces of mechanical toys lay spread around, the stench of oil and ink ever so present. The low, orange light of his room gave him comfort in the lonely hours. Often he would write his thoughts down and toss them away in a bottle, down the river, in hopes it would float down the stream to the Moonshine Lake. He would know it was from him, Jamison reasoned. Whatever soothed his soul.

Sometimes he would dream of him. Of his dark green eyes, almost black, like the lowest spot of the ocean. Of his arms, strong and covered in blue scales, ending in sharp claw that would never dare to scratch him. Of his deep voice, a soothing bass that spoke in the same rhythm as his heart beat. He'd see him in his dreams, standing knee-deep in the water by the river, walking up to beach, Jamison running towards him, catching him in his arms as if they haven't seen each other for years. He would cling onto him, feeling his wet skin against his shirt, the tender claws holding him like a precious thing. He would caress his neckline, leave kisses all over it. Feel how his claw would wander over his side, grab bits of fabric to remove it and expose pale skin to cold night air. He dreamt of how they would embrace, lying in the sand, hidden by darkness and the dunes. He wondered if he could even do that with him. Of Akande would feel comfortable to be this rough with him, pin him to the ground to stroke over his lap and thighs and draw sharp groans from the blond. Jamison would always wake up with red cheeks and scold himself. How low has he sunken to objectify Akande like this? How was he supposed to ever explain this to him?

Unknown to the student, Adlersbrunn was in tumult. A blond woman in a brown coat had spread rumors. The creatures living by the Moonshine Lake, they are not as simple as one would think. They were monsters from the deep sea, feeding off of the farmer's crops, waiting just for the right time to sneak into your house and steal your child. The town had always been aware of them, but the fear of the Unknown kept most of them away. But now that they knew, they were not scared anymore. And they would carry fire over the meadows...

[teenagesavage]

I couldn’t sleep last night

Because for once you were tangled around my lanky body like a deer wrapped around my front bumper. It was so perfect a moment to feel what I always thought was a phantom breath at my neck I had dreamed

Burst into shocking clarity.

And I swear to you even in the pitch black of that room I could see the gleam in your soft brown eyes and I felt years added onto my life just by taking in the sheer nature of your smile.

You were explosive

Like cradling lit fuses of dynamite. Or strapping C-4 to my chest in some love crazed Jihad against distance and boundary. You were dynamic and alive in every claw at my back and kiss down my chest. You were pumping all cylinders of your blood through those veins until the capillaries my burst in some fountain of life

And there in the dark of three am

We made vows and bought timeshares. You inked a contract tying my pinky to your rib cage in thin red string and sealed it with your fingertips skating down my spinal chord. Playing each vertebra like individual ivory keys. Your piano, that never was quite in tune with the harmonious beauty in the way you hummed under your breath up against me.

I have recently put stock in the concept of forever

The ultimate cliché, but it is beginning to become a looming thought cloud of high-intensity font in all capitals. It is becoming the Gideon’s in my nightstand. At night I will grab leather-bound copies of the future and flip through pages of possible days and minutes spent. I have bookmarked moments that terrify me into believing that it’s possible to die with another person without hating them. I wonder about your figure and the numbers you label dresses with. And about the size of your fingers. And just how much shorter you will get with age. And I wonder how tragic it will be when my memory begins to degrade, and I have trouble remembering the way your smile lit up the first night I spent with you.

Tell me whether it’s more appropriate to cry in sadness or in joy

At the prospect that eventually I will have devoted all I can. Set every chip on the table and wiped sweat from my brow, eyeing God, my favorite dealer, from across the way. Because I have always had something. No matter how many times people have attempted to crack open the dashboard on my body and hot wire my heart. No matter how many times they’ve ran away with the keys, I’ve always kept a spare under the dash. And when they broke into the apartment and stole my inhibitions and robbed my sense of morality, I was still left with my desperation and ego tucked neatly underneath the mattress frame. But with you I am left with nothing.

I’d be homeless if it wasn’t for your arms

A tramp for your touch. A vagabond in search of settling down against your cozy grey sweaters and printed shirts. I would take shelter against those long black curls and find where I belong against the drum of your pulse in your heaving chest.

Do you love me?

You have whispered it into the crook of my neck a thousand times. Looked into my eyes and begged for the answer. Even asked with nothing more than a cursory glance over the angle of my shoulder blades. I answer every time the same.

I love you more than anything.

Calm, cool, and collected. Paced and sincere. Well calculated breaths before and after. I always remember to look at your eyes to ensure you know I’m not lying. I express with variables of touch, a stroke of the cheek or a kiss at your lips. Because I wonder, I wonder if I casually throw it out of my mouth if it will lose meaning. If it will betray what I really feel. I wonder that if I don’t cast it out like a life saver around your neck that eventually it will become something mundane.

You are Anything but mundane

You are fall mornings with dark gloomy overhead skies masking a rising sun in the distance. bright vibrant colors illuminate your city streets. Each cycle bringing a new shade of crisp reality to your pallet. Ever changing. You are a moon over the mental ward offering solace to the insane. Bringing light to even the darkest minds. You are coffee laced kisses that leave an aftertaste in my mouth so strong that later when I am laying down to sleep, I can still taste the remnants of you in my gums. Soaking me in your sucker punch of undeniable willpower.

2 / 2

Most of all you are a cool breeze

Too many poets explain their loves as a fire in their belly. Lighting organs ablaze and inspiring smoke to billow from their mouths in plumes of ashy acceptance. No. You are the chill in my bones. You are a winter morning that grips my skin in the claws of gooseflesh. You are what runs through my hair in Californian sun with the window down and the stereo treating me. You are the clouds of fog on nights by the lake, chilled air that creeps up at my toes and swallows the docks in icy white wind. No matter how long I hold you I always come off feeling the blue in my hands, and the refreshing feel of your slick sleet against my chest. In a world that so often reminds me of Dante's inferno and the flaming gates. In one that has made it so hard to sit down to a cool glass of true bliss. I can take solace in the fact that you are my refreshment.

You are what calms me down.