#i hope you come back again my water and boat enjoying fuzzy man
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protocolseben · 1 year ago
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destinys-dragon · 4 years ago
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A Pirate’s Catch
Characters: Janus, Roman, Remus, Logan, and Random crewmates Ships: Rociet main & a small bit of Intrulogical
For: @noodlesyo
Note: I do not own Cinderella ‘So This is Love’, Tangled ‘I See the Light,’ or ‘A Lovely Night,’ from La La Land. Those all belong to their respective artists I hold no ownership of them.
Word Count: 2,378
Merry Christmas noodlesyo! I was your secret Santa this year for the @sanderssidesgiftxchange and gifted you a fluff filled pirate au, featuring mer Roman! I hope you enjoy this sweet bit of fluffiness
"All those days chasing down a daydream," a melodic voice called from below the ship, making the captain groan. ".....All those times never truly seeing...." The voice continued, followed by a small splashing sound
"Oh for fucks sake!" He cried out, plugging his ears. He heard his crew laughing and chuckling at his misery. "Not this fish brain again!"
"Oh come on! Give him a chance, his breath is probably only somewhat fishy" His first mate, Remus, called out, sending the crew into a louder fit of laughter. Even Logan, the ever stoic man, let out a small snort.
Janus shook his head, trying to tune out the merman swimming beside his ship. "I want the ship moving faster!"
"We can't do that, Captain," Logan stated, raising his hand up. "The winds are practically dead and the sails are already fully opened in an attempt to catch as much wind as possible. We are, essentially, stuck."
"I'm where I'm meant to go, and at last I see the light," the voice continued, and Janus wanted to throw himself overboard, that would do nothing but put him next to said thing he wanted to hide from, so he resisted the urge.
"God dammit...is there anything we can do?" He asked Logan desperately, but Remus was the one to speak up.
"Yeah totally! Just go talk to him already. I mean you wouldn't be throwing this much of a stink about it."
"But he is super annoying and-"
"And if he was as annoying as you believe, you'd have sent men to capture and kill said annoyance, right?" Remus practically purred. He enjoyed watching how red Janus got, even the long scars on the side of his face seemed to glow a bright red.
"Well still he is being annoying and disturbing my break tim-"
"So this is love~" The mer swooned, causing the crew on board to fall silent. "So this is what makes life divine. I'm all aglow~ And now I know~"
Those few lines made the crew burst out into cackling laughter. Most of the crew had to find a support from the mast or a few barrels littered around. Remus was in absolute pieces, rolling around on the floor and shrieking with laughter. There was a soft splash and the mer left, startled by the demented howling that was Remus.
Janus couldn't even formulate a response, turning to head back into his cabin to sulk. He heard his crew outside cheering and joking about him and the mer, "Finally gonna get in bed together," as Remus put it. He felt his face flaming, causing him to bring a hand to his face, pressing it against his hot cheeks. He shook his head, tugging open a drawer and grabbing a quill and some paper.
He ignored his crew who were still talking about him and 'His mer', pretending they were talking about someone else. He put on a pair of reading glasses and flicked his lamp on, focusing his attention on some paperwork that needed to be done. Sure, a pirate's life was very free and they could go wherever, as long as they had wind and a working boat. That didn't mean they escaped paperwork and typical adult duties, and it was a good distraction from the singing outside.
Just before sunset, Janus snuck out wearing a yellow wool sweater and fuzzy black pants. He had to stay as warm as possible, especially with how cold it gets the closer it gets to dark. He made sure everyone else was in bed, before making his way towards the front of the boat, slowly looking over the side. When he saw no merman he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pearl. It was about as big as his palm, it's smooth milky surface practically glowing in the moonlight.
He held his hand over the edge of the ship, opening his hand and letting the pearl fall into the water with a small splash. Janus smiled to himself, sitting down with his back against the side of the ship, closing his eyes. He counted in his head, getting to seven before there was a loud splash and a plop when something landed on the front deck.
"Do you always have to sing love songs?" Janus couldn't help but ask, opening his eyes to see the merman, his merman, sitting in front of him. The pearl was held in his webbed fingers, and he looked rather smug.
"Why can't I? Have you caught feelings for me yet?" He asked, holding the pearl out to Janus.
Janus flushed, taking the pearl back. "I...well I don't know yet. Have you lost your feelings for me?"
The merman grinned, slowly reaching out to take Janus' hand. He held it, pressing a small kiss to the back of it, before looking up at the pirate once again. "Never."
One word. One simple five letter, two syllable word managed to light his heart on fire. He slowly pushed the mer away, hiding his face using his captain's hat. "Now come on, stop teasing me like that. I don't find it very funny, Roman."
"I'm not teasing," the merman, Roman, assured, sounding far more serious than his normal frivolous attitude. "I would never put my heart out on display for a joke. I mean every single word I speak to you, dear Captain. I have caught feelings for you, and I do not plan on releasing them anytime in the future."
"But why? I'm a human and your a merman. I'm also a pirate, and we capture and kill merpeople to add their scales or whatever to our trophy collections."
Roman let out a small snort, making Janus glare at him. "Sorry sorry, I don't mean to laugh. But we have been seeing each other for months. Surely if you wanted me dead you would of already done it, correct?"
"Well yes but-"
"Then I'm fine. I trust you." He slowly scooted closer to Janus, and Janus slowly, very slowly, moved closer till their lower halves were brushing against each other.
Tail to legs, it was rather nice, something that Janus wouldn't readily admit to anyone else. "So....what do we do tonight? I don't have much to share with you, as I only did paperwork today."
Roman was silent for a few moments, before a big grin broke out on his face. "Sing with me....please?"
"What?"
"I want to sing with you, a duet. Please? You have a lovely voice and I'm sure we could make glorious music together."
"I don't sing!" Janus squawked, shaking his head. "I don't....what would we even sing?"
A chuckle was pulled out of Roman's mouth and Janus felt rather embarrassed. "Pick from the heart, it's rather easy to do. Would you rather me?"
"Yes, oh yes. I don't...well I don't sing as I don't see a point and I can't think of a good song to sing at the moment."
"Alright alright...I'll start for you," Roman assured, winking. "But you'd better jump in. Don't worry about the words, this is my own melody. Just sing what comes from within, alright?"
"Fine," He grumbled, huffing. "But don't expect it to be any good, got it?"
Roman gave a small hum, thinking up a few words. His gaze went out, looking at the setting sun with a small grin. "The sun is nearly gone, the lights are turning on. A silver shine that stretches to the sea."
Janus had a brief moment where he wondered how he got lucky to have a merman falling all over themselves for him. Isn't it supposed to be the other way around
He looked up when Roman stopped singing, clearly waiting for him to continue. "We've stumbled on a view that's tailor-made for two. What a shame those two are you and me." Janus felt his heart break a bit when he noticed Roman's face, leaning closer to show he didn't honestly mean it. He did continue though, stealing the next few lines as he thought them up. "Some other girl and guy-"
"We're both men," Roman commented, whining when he got a hand placed on his mouth and a light glare from the captain.
"Would love this swirling sky. But there's only you and I and we've got no shot." He let out a small squeal when the mer licked his hand and he pulled away, looking disgusted.
Roman pouted at the last line, before grinning. "This could never be, You're not the type for me-"
"Bullshi-" Janus yelped when a scaled hand reached out and pinched his cheek.
"-And there's not a spark in sight. What a waste of a lovely night~"
Janus rolled his eyes, before grinning. He threw his leg over Roman's tail, sliding onto his lap so they were face to face. Roman looked caught off guard, and that's exactly what he wanted. "You say there's nothing here, well let's make something clear. I think I'll be the one to make that call."
"And though you look so cute, In your polyester suit-"
"It's wool," Janus broke in, smirking.
Roman huffed, pouting at the human and poking his chest. "You're right, I'd never fall for you at all~"
Janus rolled his eyes, until he felt hands resting on his waist, pulling him closer. His cheeks grew pink, but he wasn't going to back down and lose this little "battle."
"And maybe this appeals, to someone not in heels-"
"Do not mock my heeled boots," Janus grumbled, sticking his tongue out.
"Come now, they are adorable!" Roman assured, lightly bumping his forehead against Janus' before picking up right where he left off. "Or to any guy who feels, there's some chance, for romance~"
"But I'm frankly feeling nothing," Janus sang back, lowering his volume as he noticed Roman's face getting closer to him.
Roman was only a hair's breadth away from him. One of the hands on his waist left, sliding down his arm and lacing their fingers together. He brought Janus' hand up to his mouth, pressing his lips against his fingers. "Is that so?"
Janus let out a soft chuckle, feeling his mouth dry up when those ruby red eyes met his. They looked at him with such adoration that it made him almost melt into a puddle. "Or it could be less than nothing," he sang, barely getting the line out as he just about choked on the words.
"Good to know~" Roman purred, letting go of his hand and moving to cup the captain's cheek. "So you agree?"
"That's right," Janus assured, leaning in and closing his eyes.
"What a-" Roman began, only for Janus to join in at the last line.
"Waste of a lovely night~"
Janus couldn't help himself, he just wanted Roman. He didn't know how a silly song made him realize his longing for the mer, but it did the trick. Maybe it was how close they were, or maybe this was just the perfect moment to show the mer how much he desired him.
He slowly leaned in, pressing their lips together. He never believed in first kisses being anything special, but goodness this felt absolutely magical. Sparks were flying and he could feel the love and tenderness Roman poured into it. Janus' eyes fluttered shut as he felt Roman deepening the kiss, the hand on his waist pulling him closer till they were practically chest to chest. His arms looped around Roman's shoulders and he wished this could go on forever.
Eventually, they had to break apart for air, both of them panting with flushed cheeks and pupils blown wide. Janus' clothes were a bit rumbled and messed up, as was his hair. When the captain finally caught his breath he gave the still frazzled mer a smirk. "Well....was that enough to clarify my feelings for you? Or shall I have to show you more?"
"N-No," the mer stuttered, and Janus couldn't help but find it endearing. "I just....that was very forward and I'd....if your actions prove anything, I believe that you are attempting to court me."
Janus snorted, kissing Roman's cheek. "Yes I am...I want to court you and form a relationship. So....will you give me the chance?"
Roman paused, before he pulled Janus into another, much shorter, kiss. When they broke away, he laughed. "Good gods yes. Yes I want you to court me!"
"IT"S ABOUT FUCKING TIME!" Remus cried out, poking out from behind a pile of barrels. "Finally we've been waiting forever!"
"Remus!? What are you doing here?" Janus shrieked, moving to climb out of Roman's lap. He felt the arm on his waist tighten and he stayed put.
Remus scoffed, crossing his arms. "I am watching my best friend finally get together with his fishy crush! Logan came too!" He reached behind the second barrel, hauling Logan to his feet.
"Hey!" Logan squawked, looking at both of them. "Uh...good evening, Captain."
"God dammit," Janus huffed, slowly standing up. "Well...I suppose that since you caught us, you should be the first to know that yes, I am in fact courting this lovely mer.”
“Hell ya!” Remus cried out, turning and pulling Logan into a kiss as well. He pulled away with a loud pop, cheering and celebrating while Logan stood there, completely stunned. His cheeks were flushed and he struggled to process what just happened.
Janus couldn’t help but watch those two. Sure Remus was waking the entire crew, but it would be worth it for this. He had his new partner, and he could see Remus making a move on Logan. It was about time, those two have been pining for each other for longer than even he and Roman had been.
He looked at Roman, slowly lifting the fish into his arms. “I know this is sudden, but would you be willing to announce our new relationship to my crew? I know it’s new and everything but-” He was cut off by a finger on his lips.
“For you, I’d do anything,” Roman whispered, leaning against Janus’ chest. “I’ll meet them, as long as you’re by my side.
“Of course. I’ll always be right there,” He assured, and realized that there was no other place he’d rather be than right by Roman’s side.
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tomsrebeleyebrow · 5 years ago
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Bad timing part.2 | tom holland x fem!reader
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part.1
Summary: Tom stake to his words. In fact, since the viagra incident, your life was in a constant loop of teasing and frustration. But the torture ended when the boy finally asked you to marry him. Joy and happiness overwhelmed you, but you couldn’t help asking yourself a single question: what will happen during your honeymoon?
Warnings: language, sexual teasing/tension, SMUT including romantic first time sex fingering, oral (f receiving), unprotected sex (wrap it up kids) and sooo much more, oh and fluff too obviously!
Word Count: 5228
A/N: you cheeky beauts 😏... so many of you asked for a part2 whaaaat!! I think I’ve left you guys a bit frustrated, am I right? 😜 so I tried to please everyone bc you all gave me ideas and stuff, so it’s a mix of everything I guess? 👀 as originally requested by @photoshopart15 but also as a general demand, here it is! hope you will enjoy it as much as the first one, you cheeky beasts 😉✨ did I enjoy writing it too much? judging by the word count... HECK YES 🙈
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Tom is a kind and well-mannered man, always putting the others before himself. You knew that since day one. And when he had a precise idea in mind, boy does he keeps his words until he goes fully through it.
After the viagra incident Tom was teasing you any time he had the chance, to the point you would have to lock yourself into a room or just go out by yourself to calm down. You have never been so fuzzy, your whole face starting to keep the blushing aspect. Any occasion was an excuse to push you at your limits. And he loved it. But you kind of got used to it by the time and well, and learnt to live with it.
Then came the day Tom proposed to you. 
And later came the weeding.
"I do."
You remember saying these two special words during the ceremony. Exchanging vows with your loved one surrounded by the people who are precious to you both is just how you imagined that day. Beautiful yet intimate, with little extravaganza touches from Tom. 
The best day of your life.
The sun begins to set little by little, letting behind it an orange-reddish sky before it disappears below the horizon. Some rays still light the bedroom you actually are. The peaceful roll of the waves running aground the shore livens up the surrounding, sometimes followed by tropical birds’ cries. Calm. Total serenity. And relaxing, just what you needed.
For your honeymoon, Tom booked a villa on stilts in the Maldives for three weeks. You arrived a few hours ago, slightly bitten up by the jet lag but more than happy to be finally there. No one around but you and the beach of the island at five minutes by boat. You are totally living the dream.
As the weather has nothing to do with London at the moment, you just wear a simple top and some sport shorts. Your hair put into a messy bun, you lay on your stomach on the king size bed that is at the perfect place to watch the sunset. Right in front of it, the patio door widely open to this magnificent scenery and the last ray warming up your exposed skin. Phone in hands, you scroll through it as Harry already sent you the first pictures he took of the wedding.
You couldn’t suppress the smile on your face. Both you and Tom had bright smiles on the photographs, sometimes with teary eyes due to emotion but still radiating happiness and love for each other. 
A new chapter of your life just started and you can’t wait to see where it will take you with the man you love.
Speak of the devil, you notice now that the running water coming from the bathroom stops. Just like the humming from inside. Another two minutes later, the wooden door opens to reveal your newly husband freshly exiting the bathroom, only wearing a boxer tight around everything his hips and hair still wet. And to think that he can look hot with and without clothes... and that he is now officially yours.
You hear his steps on the creaking parquet as he approaches your shared bed and look over your shoulder. Then the bed dips from the weight of his body next to you.
"Looks like Harry did a great job with the pictures, right?"
Tom’s hot breath is next to your ear as he speaks, sending you chills over your body. When you turn slightly your head towards him, his face is close to yours that you can feel the heat coming from him. His eyes look lovingly at the picture you stopped on: both of you sharing a kiss after your vows.
“The pictures are beautiful, indeed” you reply in a whisper, eyes back on your phone.
You feel him leave a kiss on top of your exposed shoulder, his lips warm from his previous shower. He then put his chin on the nap of your neck, getting closer as if searching for more closeness, his still wet torso against half your back.
“I want to frame that one when we go back home” Tom adds while putting one hand over yours which holds the phone.
Your heart is thumping from many emotions rushing through your mind and body. You sure feel blessed to be now married to this young man you knew since your young age, not to forget how attracted you are to each other. Yet the incident of “that day” still remains fresh in the back of your head. 
But you were a newly married couple now so why would you be frighten or self-conscious about... what has to come? That is right, you have no reason to be scared. Not at all.
You lock your phone and let it fall on the soft sheets. Your hands still linked, you now intertwine your fingers with his as you kiss his cheek then repeat the action a few times, a bit slower and lips never leaving his skin. Tom slightly pulls away turning his head to look at your face, admiring the gleam in your eyes that are like an open book to him. 
In a light motion Tom pushes your upper body to make you turn on your back. After biting his lips to hide a smirk, he slides closer to you and both of you roll on the bed followed by giggles. Now wrapping his strong arms around your frame, Tom hugs you tightly against his chest.
“My beautiful wife...” he mumbled, pressing the tip of his nose into the tresses of your hair. “... Mrs. Holland.”
The last statement makes you heart thump heavily, cheeks starting to redden. 
“I love you, Tom, so much” you whisper, answering the unspoken way his heart relayed just how much he loves you as well. 
A giggle escapes your lips when he huffs a hot breath against the rim of your ear squeezing you even tighter in his arms before finally relaxing into a soft cuddle. Sliding one of your arms around his back, you snuggle into his frame trying to be as close to his body as possible so he can be enveloped by your warmth and body heat.
Then Tom shifts just a bit placing his hand on your cheek, getting you to tilt your head up where he admires the shade and gleam of your beautiful eyes before pulling you to meet his lips. Instantly your body melts under the gentle and warm sway of his kiss, that feels soft and sweet like the perfect flavour of ice cream. 
The moment Tom pulls away your eyes flutter hazily, telling him you want another with the soft way you whisper his name. 
"Someone’s needy..." 
Not trying to hide his smirk anymore, the man is more than happy to give you all the kisses you could ever want as he leans down again meeting your lips in the middle. One more kiss turns into many, as one of your hands glide into his wild brown hair. Your eyes soften, parting your lips when his tongue slides over your top lip wanting to make the kisses more steamy.
The heated sway of his slick muscle laps around your own slowly and sensually coating it with his saliva, letting you become enthralled and overwhelmed so much by his passion that a small murmur of a moan hazes into his lips.
"Mmh, I can never get enough of the way you taste" Tom mutters the moment he pulls away licking his lips, noting the thin trail of saliva connecting you together.
He then trails the edge of his lips down your neck while placing soft enticing feather-like kisses.
“What do you say about me marking this gorgeous body of yours?” he rasps, letting the heat of his breath haze against your skin and picks a soft patch to suck on. 
It takes you a moment to realise he is indeed leaving you a hickey. Such a mark would not be the first one he has given you, but you always remind him to not make them too big and somewhere easy to hide. But today, you don’t want to impose him any restriction. 
And that is when you feel some kind of pressure... between your legs. More precisely against your core. You let out a high pitch squeal when the steady pressure evolves into back and forth moves. You can’t stop a few moans escaping from your mouth at the feeling, Tom’s hips in total rythme with his sucking.
Your body arches more into his, letting him have complete access to your neck. Tom slides his tongue up and down, sucking and swirling his muscle till a deep purple love bite is forming against your skin, right on the side of your collarbone. Only then does he pull away to admire his handy work.
A tingle slides through your body as he uses a few of his fingers to caress over your love bruise, as if he could feel how warm and pulsating your skin and heart are. Short-winded and almost sweating, your eyes still blurry with what just happened, and definitely wet down there. A total reminder of the “incident”.
Then you see it. His huge deadly smirk, staring at you so deep as he perfectly knows what he is doing to you. 
And without a word Tom stands up from over you and the bed, passing his finger through his now dry curls as he starts walking towards his luggage on the other side of the room.
“Alright, a boat’s gonna take us to the restaurant of the island for 7pm so let’s get ready.”
And the man just leaves you still on the bed to go change into the bathroom. You roll onto your side, breath still short while squeezing your thighs together to find some relieve.
That. Fucking. Bastard.
* * * * 
Fortunately, the delicious food and tasty cocktails appeased your infuriated more like frustrated state from earlier. You were not THAT mad at Tom... but still. Since you left the villa to have dinner on the beach, you never felt so tensed. You tried your best to not show your husband bad attitude because first, he doesn’t deserve any of it and two... There is no other reason, actually. 
You racked your brains all evening. You knew you were ready, and that is why you mostly welcomed Tom into your shared steamy embrace. And it all stopped abruptly like he did every times since the viagra incident. But now, you were married so why does he keep playing that hell of a teasing game? 
So you kept your composure as much as you could, even when Tom tried to be touchy-feely. Each time both your skins made contact, it surprised you to the point Tom started wondering if you were alright. But you still managed to conceal your weird behaviour to him.
But he still noticed something was on.
* * * *
You are finally back to the villa. Tom gentlemanly helps you to get out of the little boat, not without nearly falling into the sea as doing so. At least, his usual goofy self always brings a smile on your face. Tom opens the door to let you in first, and you thank him as you do.
Entering the house you stop when you notice the inside plunged into complete darkness, but with candles lighten up here and there. In the air flutters a calming perfume of tropical flower, just enough to mix with the salty perfume of the sea. And at your feet are spread flowers petals as if creating a path to lead you somewhere.
“You like it?” Tom whispers in you ears, giving you the chills.
“T-That’s really pretty, but why-”
“Shh, you will see, princess.”
Before you can finish your sentence, Tom’s hands gently press onto your hips and he slowly pushes you to make you walk. As he walks you through the dark villa - and banging into some furnitures on the way which makes you laugh again, you now are able to guess where he takes you. 
Tom then stops you in front of the familiar wooden door to open it, and before your eyes is a nicely arranged the big bathroom with the same lighted candles around the bathtub already filled up with water and petals. But what takes your breath away may for sure be the beautiful view from the patio window on which the bathtub is placed against. You can still hear and see the sea waves in the darkness of the night, but in the distance you can make out some lights coming from the next door island. There are actually curtains on both sides of the window, slightly closed to keep some intimacy but still a bit see-through.
A bright blush decorates your cheeks at all the display as suddenly tones of intimate thoughts crosse your mind. 
“As cliché as it sounds, I always wanted to take a bath together. And now that we are married...” Tom interrupts himself to slide his arms around your hips, as you take a breath and lean back against his chest. 
“Well now that we are married, I wanted to try it with you. Do you want too?” He murmures with his suave voice, placing a soft kiss against your slender neck as you nod your head. 
“Y-You also brought some champagne, as I see” you notice, still overwhelmed in the warm embrace of your lover. 
The bottle in an ice bucket and two flutes glasses are nicely presented on a wooden coffee table next to the bath. Tom nods against your cheek, leaving another kiss there. With a pounding heart you nuzzle your face against his, feeling his smooth face on your lips and his natural scent filling your nostrils. 
"Can I undress you? Or we can undress each other? Piece... by... piece..." Tom places a kiss after each word, making you feel all warm and tingly as he then trails his hands down your hips and massages your thighs under the summer dress you decided to wear tonight.
"Ah... I like the sound of that. Can I go first, please?" you shyly ask, looking at him through your long eyelashes.
After moving you to the center of the bathroom, Tom turns your body around to face him and agrees to your demand. He is unsurprised when you start unbuttoning his stripped white and lavender shirt. Letting it fall at his feet, he takes his cue and bends down to his knees, running his hands up and down both your legs up under your dress. 
You can't take your eyes off his sleek and sculptured chest muscles. Your fingers wander along his neck to then stop on his broad shoulders. 
Smirking at your focused eyes Tom takes the edge of your dress to pull it up your hips, your thighs finally at his mercy. As he purposefully has a gander at your black coloured panties, he gives both your thighs a nice warm kiss and then stands up while tugging your dress upend off your entire body.
A pant full of desire escapes your lips so Tom takes a little initiative and grabs your hand to place it on the front of his darted white pants, encouraging you to unbutton and slide the zipper down. Which you do after a few seconds of looking into his lustful brown eyes, pushing at the waistband before the material gladly slips down his long legs and pools around his ankles.
He kicks his pants away before encouraging you to approach him closer. But you stop him and with trembling hands, you slowly unclasp your bra, not daring to look directly at Tom as your cheeks keep flushing.
His tongue licks his bottom lip admiring the outline of your breasts coming into view. Tom thought you would be a little reluctant to completely undress in front of each other, even if he has seen your gorgeous curves before but you surprise him by taking the first step yourself.
With blushy cheeks, you still hide your almost exposed tits with an arm. Tom can't help himself when he steps up to your body and presses your bare chests together, meeting you in the middle for a kiss. The feeling of your soft breasts is a complete and utter turn on for him, as his hands began to gently explore your body a little by caressing around your hips and down your back before dipping one into the back of your panties to give your bottom a nice squeeze.
A moan of his name hazes into his mouth as you wrap both your hands around his rippling back muscles, while you can feel him greedily wanting to pull down your last remaining article of clothing. 
But you feel he doesn’t want to force you into anything you don’t want to. Or maybe... will Tom actually interrupt everything like before dinner? That would be even worse, just by analysing the current situation you are in. Despite being a little jittery with tones of questions in mind, your own hands slide down his hips and push at his boxers, blushing at the way they easily slide down his legs lower on his v-line.
"Adventurous, little missy?” Tom teasingly rasps when you can't help but fully eye his now well endowed manhood for the first time. 
It is not surprising that you stutter out an answer and tilt your face away, but it gives him a moment to caress down your stomach and grip the waistband of your panties and lower them leaving you both equally naked.
Your hands shake with embarrassment but since Tom is not hiding himself, you try to adapt some of his courage and allow the man you love to have an unhindered view of your body that he has desired for so long. And he takes full advantage of bouncing his eyes up and down with zero shame.
"Dammit baby, have I ever told you how beautiful I think you are?" he groans softly in defeat, nestling his face in your neck.
A smile slides up your lips as you whisper you feel the exact same way, causing him to face you again and cup both of your cheeks for a nice warm kiss. Once you part, he leads the way into the tub which is delightfully warm enough and encourages you to sit between his legs. 
At first you are still a bit shy about that but don't really have a choice as you both slide down and sit in the water. Your heartbeat is thundering, which doesn’t help the fact you can properly feel the shape of his cock against the bottom of your ass. It is way too late to shy away now. Tom is indeed hard, clearly turned on from having his naked wife in his arms for the first time. Leaning forward, he gives the nape of your neck a warm and sensual kiss while both of his hands caress up and down your now soaked legs.
"Mhm, Tom... Y-you can touch me..." you murmur to him leaning back and allowing him more access to your neck, which he takes advantage of with many more kisses and several gentle nibbles, enjoying your flavour.
"Where would you like me to touch you, gorgeous?"
Taking a breath, your hands slide under the water and grab both his, placing them against your breasts. Your matching golden rings make contact and instantly, Tom starts slowly and sensually groping them, earning some very satisfying skin tingling moans of his name from your perfectly pink lips.
"You make my mind so hazy, Tom... All the damn time" you whisper between light moans, his large hands making wonders.
Deciding to explore another part of your body, his fingers pet down your stomach and edge your legs further apart before gliding down the womanly outline of your slit. 
"A-ah, Tom...!" you whimper out of surprise, but his touch is slow and sensual and it assures you he just wants to make you feel good.
When your body starts to relax, Tom continues his soft pleasuring of your lower lips, while still squeezing one of your breasts and kissing both your neck and shoulder several times. The moment he curls one digit between your warm folds, your entire body spasms with waves of foreign pleasure.
You begin panting, as if showcasing how unprepared you were for this sensation. But he calms you down using his free hand to push your cheek to meet his lips while he works a slow rhythm of back and forth. Quickly, the curl and sway of his slender digit starts to feel utterly amazing so he slowly adds a second one, making you moan of pleasure.
 “O-oh, Tom! I-It feels so good!”
Tom grins as he nips at your neck to feel the vibrations of your mewls of delight, while he notes the subtle difference between the sticky sensation starting to warm his fingers and the water around. However after pleasuring you for awhile he pulls away and whispers into the rim of your ear, his desires to continue this in bed.
“(Y/n), I want you so fucking bad and I want to thoroughly enjoy you” Tom growls as he nibbles your lobe between his teeth, slightly tugging it.
It sounds almost desperate and what can you say? You were as much desperate as he is right now, so you have no intention of denying him after coming this far. You prove your husband how deeply in love you are with him by turning in his lap, wrapping both hands around his neck and deeply kissing him.
Using his amazing upper body strength to pick you up bridal style, he lets the water thoroughly drip from both your bodies before taking careful steps out of the tub. Thankfully, there is a rug on the floor so he doesn't slip or slide as he rests your butt down against the sink. 
You smile at him with soft pink cheeks as he tries to dry you off a bit. But it is pretty much a lost cause since Tom just admires your body for the most part. He uses another towel to dry himself off a little before being very direct with the way he pushes apart your knees and picks you back up, forcing you to wrap your legs around his back and making you blush brightly as your hands cling to his broad shoulders.
The next thing you know, your back is laying against the soft mattress where he instantly starts some very sensual kisses. Starting with your lips and working down to your neck, eventually claiming one of your soft nipples. 
"Mhm Tom, I love your kisses so much" you practically purr to him, unable to do much but run your hands through his brown locks and down just a bit of his smooth back muscles. Honestly, you are kind of grateful for his hungry desire to take the lead, as the way he is sucking and licking between both of your breasts just feels sensational.
His coffee orbs glance up as he lets go of one of your tits with a juicy pop and notes your closed eyes and relaxed features, finding it a nice time to go further south. He places soft kisses down your bellybutton, which let you know where he is going but you assure yourself you are okay as long as it is him.
With a lift of your leg, his eyes graze over the intimate pink outline of your womanhood, but he doesn't go towards your sex right away. His lips kiss softy at your inner thigh, bringing tingles up your spine as you find his slowness and need to appreciate all your body romantic and endearing.
"Your skin is so damn soft... And your smell is driving me crazy" Tom growls again, gliding his tongue up as he eases apart your knees until the tip of his wet muscle laps over the middle of your slit before instantaneously turning it into the most intimate French kiss you could ever imagine.
"O-oh! K-kissing me right there... i-is strange...!" you shyly murmur, gripping both of your hands against the sheets. But soon all you can think of is the enthralling sensation of his tongue as he thoroughly slides between your folds and thrusts back and forth, turning you into a moaning and mewling mess.
One of your hands finds its way into the back of his hair, where you give a few tugs in the throws of your pleasure. In turn both of his hand glide up your hips to keep you in place, while he continued to eat you out like one of the best meals he ever had in ages.
At this point, you are not sure if you are being loud or too quiet anymore, but the answer doesn’t really matter as the passionate sway of his tongue is talented enough to have the oddest sensation warming the pit of your stomach. But you don’t have the time to ask him because you are experiencing your very first orgasm.
"H-hah, fuck... You taste amazing, baby" Tom husks as he pulls back to lick the slick sweet essence of your arousal from his lips. He then wipes off the bottom of his chin before rising above your body to caress one of his hands against your cheek and give you a hasty kiss that lets you taste yourself.
“Oh Tom, I love you so much" you mutter during his flavourful kisses when suddenly, you can clearly feel the tip of his cock poking against your inner thigh.
"I love you too, so much” Tom kisses your lips a last time. “Ready to enjoy the ride, my beautiful wife?”
And as words are about to leave your mouth, Tom moves his face closer to you ear.
“And no need for me to take any blue pill, right?”
He for sure means it to sound like a tease. At a time like that. Well, it wouldn’t be Tom if he didn't remind you of the day you non-naturally made him excited because he was being such a brat. And remembering it right now is even worse, judging by the redness of your cheeks.
“S-Stop with that- aah!”
Yet again he does’t let you speak fully as his hips slide up to press the tip of his cock at your entrance. Griping both hands against your own, he fills you to the brim with his girth in a slow but smooth thrust.
"Ah-mhm... Ooh, Tom" you mumble of slight discomfort but you quickly assure your husband it doesn’t specially hurt too much, just feels sensational and unbearably tight at the same time. 
He kisses your neck and lets you know you could claw or squeeze him as necessary if you feel any pain, which has you smiling and returning a peck to his cheek and another to his neck nuzzling him like a kitten.
"You can move Tommy, I'm okay..." you whisper into his ear, pulling back to meet his eyes where he most certainly doesn’t need to be told twice as hearing you use that particular nickname makes his stomach flip.
So he eases his hips backwards only to slap forward hard enough for you to toss your head and yelp out his name in a moan. 
“Ah! Tommy!”
You feel him rock the most dizzying rhythm into your body that it has you squeezing his shoulders and moaning his name on harmonious repeat. That was the sexiest tune he has heard in his entire life. The sound of your voice and the pleasured look in your eyes feeding his desire all the more, as he thrusts his hips back and forth and then growls like an animal about how tight you are squeezing him.
"S-shit, I can feel how wet you are baby... Practically dripping all over my cock" he rasps while biting warmly at the side of your neck, to give you a mixture of possessive teeth marks and bright purple hickey.
You can’t even muster a reply as he picks up your legs and slides his warm strong hands under your ass to ensure he could pick up his pace to fuck you faster and deeper. Which you doesn’t seem to mind because your hand squeeze his sweaty back, and get off on both the pleasure and the sweet smell coming from his body.
He smirks before sharply claiming your lips, thrashing his hips back and forth and sloshing your juices that lets you know he wasn’t lying before when he said you were wet. That along with the accompanying smell of raunchy sex has your mind become so overly dizzy and hazy that you can barely concentrate.
His hips become sloppy with his desperation and you completely understand that feeling as you cling to him, even dragging a few of your nails down his back not really out of any pain but more so the intense sensation tightening in the pit of your stomach. With a few more hard and deep thrusts that rock both your bodies in perfect unison, Tom presses deeply into your tight pulsating folds allowing you both to achieve release simultaneously.
One hell of scream leaps from your vocal chords as the most vision blurring orgasm of the night sways through your system. Slowly Tom eases your bottom back down to the mattress since he has sort of propped up your lower body for those few aggressive minutes. 
When coming back to his senses, Tom pulls out of your core causing you to hiss from the loss of being so full. He pants almost as heavily as you and after proudly and hungrily admiring both your mixed juices coming out from your core, the man slides down tiredly next to your side.
"How... do you feel, gorgeous?" he huffs, taking a few deep breaths as lazily bringing an arm around your frame to keep you close to his sweaty frame.
"I... f-feel a bit tired... but also good, really good..." you smile to him, cuddling closer and placing a kiss against the middle of his chest before snuggling your cheek against his soft and warm skin. 
He sighs in relief, not voicing how he thought he was being a bit rougher than he meant to be, but instead runs one of his hands down the middle of your back in a soft soothing petting motion.
“Damn, the champagne!” Tom suddenly shouts out of nowhere, startling you a bit.
Tom reluctantly detaches from you, not without a sloppy kiss and stil butt naked, he runs back into the bathroom and comes back with the bottle in one hand and the flutes on the other. You also notice a small towel hanging on his shoulder, probably to clean you both from your previous activity.
You giggle at him, smiling warmly letting the thumping of his heart lull you as you finally share a glass of champagne, still naked and bodies tangled together and into the soft sheets. Both of you hold each other tightly, letting each other’s heat warm your bodies and just keep chatting until your eyelids feel too heavy  to stay open.
Life sure feels great.
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fanficshiddles · 4 years ago
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Caught in his web, Chapter 39
When the jet started to descend, Chloe was a little bit nervous again. Not sure what to expect. But it went smoother than she had thought it would and it wasn’t too bad. The pilot was good at his job and always did nice landings, that’s one of the reasons why Loki had hired him.
It was a short drive from the private runway to the dock where there was a small speed boat waiting for them.
The driver, Lucas, carried their bags from the car onto the boat and handed Loki the keys for said boat.
‘Have a great stay, Mr Laufeyson.’ He said politely with a bow of the head.
‘Thank you, Lucas. If you can be here to pick us up on Tuesday at two in the afternoon. I won’t have my mobile on, so any issues contact the house phone.’
‘Of course, Mr Laufeyson.’ He nodded with a smile.
Loki took Chloe’s hand and led her onto the boat. There were life jackets waiting for them, Loki made sure that Chloe got hers on first and that it was on securely.
‘Don’t want you falling into the sea.’ Loki was very focused while he tightened various straps, Chloe couldn’t help but stare at his beautiful face.
‘There we go.’ He said, pleased with her life jacket he smiled at her and cupped her cheek.
‘Thank you.’ She smiled back at him.
It made her feel warm and fuzzy inside how he was looking out for her. So attune to her health and safety.
It was exciting being on the speed boat, even though Loki didn’t make it go as fast as it could. They were in no rush so he took it easy over the waves, not wanting Chloe to get sea sick.
‘There it is.’ Loki grinned and pointed ahead of them.
There was a small island that was coming into view. Chloe’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open. She could see the beautiful looking villa just off the beach, surrounded by a few hills and some small forest areas. The villa stood out well because it had white walls with a lovely red colour slated roof, with plenty of large windows.
‘So there’s absolutely no one else on the island?’ She asked, struggling to believe that he actually owned the entire thing.
‘Not a soul. Apart from some birds.’ Loki chuckled.
‘Wow.’ She kept staring at the island as it started getting larger and larger. ‘And you said it was a small island!’
‘It is, in comparison to a lot of others.’ He grinned. ‘But I am glad you think otherwise.’
‘This is just insane.’ She shook her head, making Loki chuckle again. He enjoyed surprising her. And he was a man that was definitely full of surprises.
When they got to the beach, Loki jumped off the boat and held his hand out, helping Chloe off before then grabbing their bags. He tied the boat to a post further up the sand, making sure it wouldn’t get taken out to sea.
Chloe was already wandering slowly up the beach with her bag, taking it all in. Loki easily caught up with her and slid his arm around her waist, smiling down at her.
‘Do you like it?’ Though Loki could tell by the look on her face what the answer was.
‘I love it! It’s stunning.’ She grinned, her heart was racing with excitement.
Loki led her up towards the villa. It was up some steps and had a perfect view out to the ocean. You could just see mainland in the far distance.
As soon as Loki unlocked the villa and pushed the door open, Chloe rushed inside to take a look around. Loki watched in amusement, Chloe was like a kid in a candy shop as she rushed around all the rooms, ooo’ing and aah’ing at every room. Plus a swearword or two in shock when she saw the likes of the swimming pool outside that overlooked the beach, it was huge and had a lovely patio area next to it that also went undercover. There was a hot tub too and a large barbecue installed with stone built around it, so it blended in well.
‘Did you have this place built yourself or did you buy it like this?’ Chloe asked when Loki caught up with her after putting their bags in the master bedroom.
‘I had it built. When I bought the island I wanted a blank slate, so I could build my own home away from home, exactly as I wanted it.’ Loki draped his arm over her shoulder and guided her through to the kitchen.
‘It’s absolutely amazing. Really beautiful!’ Chloe said as Loki went and opened a secret looking cupboard, revealing an array of alcohol.
Chloe face-palmed at how well hidden, yet well stocked, the cupboard was. Loki just grinned at her and poured them both a drink.
With drinks in hand, Loki showed Chloe their room. Of course it had an en-suite and was very luxurious. She fished out her bikini, wanting to go for a swim as Loki had suggested they swim before drinking too much.
‘Who says you’re getting to wear a bikini?’ Loki growled, grabbing her wrist before she could make it to the bathroom to get changed.
‘What else would I wear in the pool?’ She knew what he was going to say, though.
‘One rule. No clothing of any kind is allowed in the pool.’ He wiggled his eyebrows and prised the bikini out of her hand, tossing it behind him onto the dresser.
Chloe opened her mouth, about to protest in worry of someone seeing. Then she remembered where they were. And she didn’t know what to say as a comeback to that.
Loki smirked in triumph when she couldn’t think of anything to say in response. He gripped her chin and kissed her, then stepped back and started removing his own clothes. ‘Come on, doll. Get naked.’
Chloe bit her lip and started taking off her clothes too. But as she took her dress off, she realised something…
‘SHIT!’
‘What’s wrong?’ Loki frowned, pausing with his trousers down around his ankles as he looked up at her, concerned.
‘I… I must have left my knickers on the plane! I forgot them! What if the cleaner finds them under my chair?’ Her eyes were wide in panic.
Loki threw his head back laughing. He finished removing his clothes, including his boxers, then stalked over to her. She tried her best to keep her eyes up on his, instead of looking down at his semi erection.
‘Don’t worry, doll. I’m sure the cleaners find much worse on other private jets.’ He chuckled, amused at how horrified she was. And he slyly unclasped her bra and pulled the straps down off her shoulders.
‘But… They’ll know it’s your jet…’
Loki flicked her bra to the floor, then cupped her face and kissed her forehead. ‘Relax, Chloe. Trust me, they’ll have seen worse. It’s just a company here in Greece anyway that deals with the cleaning on this end. The cleaners won’t know who the jet belongs to.’
He stepped away and bent over to pick up his trousers. Chloe was momentarily distracted at how amazing his ass was. She wanted to just bite it…
‘Besides.’ Loki’s voice pulled her from her thoughts as he stood up straight and turned around to her. ‘I wouldn’t leave these delightful garments behind.’ He grinned cheekily, holding up said knickers.
‘You fucker! You had them all along!’ She snarled and launched at him, making him laugh when she tried to wrestle him down, but he just stood like a marble column, laughing.
Loki wrapped his arms around her and threw her up over his shoulder, she just huffed in defeat. ‘You’re an ass!’
Loki chuckled and gave her bum a slap, making her yelp.
‘Behave, doll. Or I’ll redden this lovely behind of yours.’ He growled.
Chloe didn’t want to admit that the mere threat, and taster, had her clenching her thighs together a little, not entirely opposed to the idea. But with how powerful his swing could be when he wanted to, she decided against asking for it.
Loki carried her out to the pool. Without any warning or putting her down first, he just jumped straight into the deep end.
When they came above water, she couldn’t resist splashing at him and then swimming away while giggling.
‘Oh you are so asking for it!’ Loki called out and swam after her.
Chloe glanced over her shoulder but didn’t see him above water, she could just make out his form underneath. Coming after her like a shark. She squealed loudly and tried to swim faster, but Loki was a strong swimmer and managed to grab her ankle, hauling her back to him.
The two enjoyed their swim together. They mainly messed around, teasing one another. Loki was enjoying this playfully braver side of Chloe that was coming out. And Chloe was enjoying the calmer, playful side of Loki too. He just seemed a bit more relaxed as soon as they stepped onto the island. Though she wasn’t surprised really, considering he was basically on twenty-four seven at home.
But she was hopeful, perhaps being alone on an island with Loki wasn’t going to be such a scary thing after all.
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For we rise and we fall, and we crash on the coastlines (Only our love will last 'til the end); Chapter 1
thank you to @drowninginstarlights for editing! Heads up for Travis’ and Gable’s terrible dad’s and mom death!
the journey of a selkie, a cursed fisher, a lighthousekeeper, her aprentice and a very confused mortal as their lives intertwine and the magic around them grows.
or a selkie au with general folklore themes!
In the end, Uriel doesn’t even remember what happened. All they have are pieces of their memories, flashes of knowledge. They remember being afraid of the sea, ever since they were young. They grew up in a big coastal city, where the sea was as much your enemy as your only source of income. They remember their father, a deeply unpleasant man. They remember anger. They remember a fire, and a boat sinking, and they don’t think they’ll ever be sure what actually caused it, but that doesn’t matter. There was no doubt in their father’s mind that it was caused by them.
They remember, before that, being in school and being taught not to curse people, not even as a joke, and certainly not on the sea. Magic is finicky business. It doesn’t take much for things to get out of hand.
So here’s the thing. They remember their father spitting his last words at them, but they can never remember the exact phrasing. Must have been something like “may you dwell upon the sea forever,” or “may you never stray far from the sea.” It must have been, because they remember thinking Odd words for a dying man .
There is power in the last words of a dying man, they did not think.
After that, they couldn’t drown. They remember not being able to drown. They don’t remember the months after, the ones they must have spent on some shore somewhere, slowly realising something in their father’s wording must have made it so they couldn’t die. So they couldn’t ever leave.
They stared out to the vast expanse of the ocean, now both their prison and only companion.
-
William’s father hated magic. He was a wealthy man whose money made money, and he’d never seen any point in such frilly business as magic.
William’s mother, however, had loved magic. Not only that, she’d respected it, and believed that it was important to teach it, as much as any of the other fundamental truths about the universe. There were even whispers that her own mother had come from the sea itself.
Like anything his father hated and his mother loved, William adored magic. He’d stand and stare with great intent whenever his mother had shown him even the most basic of protection charms. But then she’d fallen ill, and then suddenly she was gone. Really gone, gone as in there was no trace of her left in the house, not even her body. It hadn’t taken long for Father to get rid of all her possessions too.
“She’s gone back to the sea,” William would tell people. They’d look at him uncomfortably, clearly thinking this was just a child struggling to process grief, but he always knew better. The only thing he always wondered is why she hadn’t taken him with her.
Years later, his father was on a trip and William was alone. He had grown up attempting to forget about his mother, about everything, but he couldn’t. He’d grown up to enjoy being left alone in his vast house where he never felt at home, spending the downtime between his father’s presence nursing his wounds.
He stared out of the window of the penthouse, dreading his father’s return, hoping with every inch of him that his father’s ship wouldn’t make it to port.
Eventually, he couldn’t stand there any longer, so he turned inwards. There wasn’t much left of his mother’s teachings in the house, his own memories turned fuzzy with time, but he had managed to snatch a single grimoire from the library. Bargains were easy, he imagined, and especially so for him. He too, in some way, belonged to the sea.
So in the middle of a dark, cold night, while the full moon hung heavy in the sky, he went to plead to the waters.
“I am not, I must admit, entirely sure what this whole deal is,” he said, the moonlight shining off the sand around him, “But you took my mother from me.”
He looked at the lapping edges of the water. The sea remained just the sea. The waves came and went.
“I get that you won’t just drown my father for me, and I don’t particularly have much to offer but-” he shuddered a bit, knowing what he was about to do was cruel and very dangerous, “You can take me, William.”
As he spoke his name, the wind picked up suddenly. It smelt of salt and distant rainfall.
“You can take me like you took my mother,” he continued, “And in exchange, I want you to make sure his ship doesn’t get here.”
The sea seemed to agitate, the waves picking up, dark even in the moonlight.
“Did you hear me?” he yelled, raising his voice over the rushing wind, “You just need to drown-”
As he spoke his father’s true name, the world went black.
He hadn’t expected to wake up, after that. It seemed fair enough, a life for a life. Maybe he would get to be a cool water spirit, scaring tourists. Or maybe a fish, with no memories at all. He did not expect to wake up and find himself a seal.
He knew about selkies, sure, but waking up and being a seal was still a shock. He stared at this new body, his new completely different body, attempting to rationalize what he knew was true - that it was him.
The other thing he did not expect was to wake up looking onto the ocean, and seeing a storm raging. There was a ship, tossing up and down with the waves, a very familiar ship. It was so close to port, but he knew that it couldn’t make it. It was sinking. His father’s ship was sinking.
He knew it was the sea showing him their deal was signed. He hadn’t known, not truly, the enormity of his choice until he stared at it, burning in front of him. He didn’t know how to feel as he stared into the sinking ship.
How many people had he just killed? What was he supposed to do?
He stayed there for a long time, looking on until the ship fully disappeared under the waves. Eventually, when there was nothing but dark wreckage on the surface, he dove down into the water. Time to learn how to be a seal.
At least now he didn’t have to be human anymore. At least then he could swim far away, see where the ocean currents take him.
It’s not like there was anyone at home missing him anyway.
-
Eventually, Uriel got their hands on two things: a small living, and a fishing boat. The boat was just a little too small for them, but it was cozy. She was old enough that her boards creaked in the wind, ropes faded and fraying, and the paint was so worn that her original name was entirely illegible.
Uriel couldn’t die, and they couldn’t leave the waters for too long,or they got antsy. They’d never gone away for long enough to test the ocean's patience, but it wasn’t hard to imagine the consequences. So living on the water was their only option, and as they still enjoyed food and food cost money, fishing it was.
It was a lonely existence, but they discover you can get used to even the loneliest things. They had eternity in front of them to learn how to do their job, and do it well.
They settled in a small town by the name of Safe Harbour. Uriel knew painfully little of magic to understand the how or why, but the town was protected somehow and the magic was strong. Everyone was perfectly content to buy Uriel’s fish, and never talk to them unless they spoke first.
Routine took over and life was almost pleasant. Uriel wasn’t exactly happy, but they imagined this is as happy as people like them got to be, so they pressed on. There was always more fish to be caught.
-
William met Uriel the only good way of meeting people, which is while robbing them. By now, he was perfectly capable of hunting for his own food, but it was such a chore, and a boring one at that. Other seals could tell he was different, that the sea owned him in a different way, and anway, he couldn’t actually talk to them. He didn’t have to be a seal, all the time. But it wasn’t like he could really talk to the humans either, and the vulnerability of being human once again always set him on edge. So he stayed a seal, and passed back and forth through towns, being a general nuisance.
The only consistent thing about his life these days was stealing, and that was practically second nature. So he didn’t think anything of it when he swam up to a small fishing vessel to get his lunch for the day.
He managed to climb up on the deck, and was about to flop back into the sea, triumphant with a fish in his mouth, when he heard a loud voice.
“Hey!” they shouted.
He froze, turning to look at the irate fisher. He wasn’t the type to be afraid, not anymore, but this person was incredibly tall with long, flowing hair that was almost stark white tied haphazardly back. They had the look of someone who had been on sea for years, but they also didn’t look older than maybe their late twenties. They were also holding a harpoon, pointed menacingly at him.
He wasn’t the type to be afraid, but he was, perhaps, a little nervous.
“I swear those damn seals get smarter every time,” they muttered.
He dropped the fish out of his mouth and sighed. “I have always been this smart, I'll have you know.”
This made them pause, looking at him baffled for a second before they let out a cry and charged at him with the harpoon.
“Whoa, okay no need to be rude,” he said, attempting to quickly move out of the way. But he was, in fact, a seal, and seals aren’t made for quick motions on land, to his dismay.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. He transformed into a man.
The stranger stopped again, the harpoon dangerously close to his body.
“Who are you? And what are you doing on my boat?” they say.
Travis couldn’t help but grin as he held up his hand, with his fish clutched in it. “I feel like it’s rather obvious.”
-
Uriel didn’t know how to feel. There was a man on their boat. That’s an undeniable fact. First there had been a seal, and now there was a very annoying silver haired stranger, wearing a ridiculous coat and actively stealing their fish with his bare hands.
They could deal with seals. They could deal with other sea creatures. They weren’t in any way prepared to deal with this.
“Asking for names, just like that?” he said, “How rude of you.”
They could feel more annoyance bubbling up inside them. “I wasn't asking for your name!”
The stranger smirked at them again, clearly enjoying getting them riled up. They should have harpooned him to death then and there. They’ll never know why they didn’t.
“Well, you may call me Travis Matagot anyway,” he said magnanimously, dropping the fish and extending a hand.
They stared at it incredulously, before deciding that their life was already so weird, this might as well happen. They shook it.
“You can call me, uh…” they said. It had been so long since they had to give out names like this. “Gable,” they settled on eventually.
“Like the roof thing,” he said, deadpan.
Gable felt their cheeks heating up. “Shut up!” they said, still holding a lowered harpoon in their other hand, “You were stealing from me, what makes you think-”
“I was hungry,” he said, shrugging. He seemed harmless, if very annoying, so they cautiously put the harpoon down.
“Can’t you fish? You are a seal part of the time, apparently.”
Travis visibly relaxed a little once they’re no longer armed. “Now, why would I, when I can have others do it for me?”
“You could have just asked me,” they said.
Now it was Travis’ turn to be taken aback. He stared at them. “What?” he said.
“I have a lot of fish soup,” Gable said, knowing what they were saying is surreal but being certain that by now they were far too late to stop this trainwreck of a conversation.
“Like in general?” he seemed almost amused.
“I always make too much,” they admit.
-
That's how Travis ended up in their painfully crowded combined kitchen and living room, his coat draped over the back of the chair he was sitting on, staring at a hot bowl of fish soup.
He almost wondered if he ought to accept food at all, but although he didn’t know what to make of Gable yet, they certainly didn’t seem the type to trap him eternally by feeding him.
Gable stared at him, almost self consciously. He almost wanted to pretend he didn’t like it, just to see how they’d react, but regrettably he was hungrier than he thought, and the soup was surprisingly good.
“You liked it,” they said, grinning.
“It was fine,” he said, stopping himself just short of asking for seconds.
“I have spent a lot of time perfecting that soup, Travis.”
He laughed. Time had been something of a laughable concept for a while now. “Well, can’t have been that long. How old are you, twenty five?”
That made his companion pause. They looked down and, honest to god, started counting on their fingers. “Probably forty by now,” they said, looking at him sheepishly. “No clue what that is in seal-man years, or whatever.”
He stared at them, somewhat intrigued at last. But not enough to pry, certainly. “First of all, you must have heard of selkies before,” he said. They gave him a blank stare that meant they honestly probably hadn’t. “And I don’t know either, we don’t age, exactly.”
Gable shrugged. “Sure, did you want more soup?”
“Well if you insist,” he said, passing his bowl to them.
-
They fell into this new routine together easily. Travis would come and try and steal things or otherwise be an annoyance. Gable would threaten him with increasingly odd weapons or just bodily throw him off the side.
And sometimes Travis stayed, and ate Gable’s repertoire of fish based dishes, or mucked about in the small space of the boat. They both occasionally went to town, although mostly separately, as Gable had the reputation of a gentle constant and Travis was rather more of a trickster cryptid.
They never talked about the pasts that plagued them or the curses on their heads, and they were both entirely too stubborn to admit this is the happiest they had been in a very, very long time.
There wasn’t a single moment that they realised they had become friends, and certainly not one they acknowledged. There was only a night, and a tipsy Travis falling asleep on the couch, his silver gray coat left behind, still slung over the chair he usually ate at. There was only a morning Gable spent staring at it wistfully, telling themselves they shouldn’t read into it.
There was him waking up, not for a second doubting his coat would still be there, safe and untouched.
And so in the fragile silence of their friendship, time pressed on.
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whaleofatjme1920 · 3 years ago
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heyo can i request a romantic matchup with one of the creepypasta guys perhaps??
-im 20 years old with dark brown fluffy short hair that goes just a bit above my shoulders. im bisexual and i go by she/they pronouns. im 5'6. im a cancer sun, virgo moon, and sag rising. im also female!
-im an infj!
-i like making flower crowns for people, custom earrings, and rings! i rlly love nature and the woods so i enjoy walking along on a path or settling down by a relaxing river to have a nice lil picnic :)
-swimming is a big thing for me, i love just jumping into a lake and swimming around yk?
-i rlly love indie, rock, grunge and 50's to 90's music. i have a great love for 80's movies and the horror genre.
-i love superhero and action stuff like the avengers and x-men as well as stuff from DC.
-uhmm im an artist. i do trad but also digital art. if i paint i like to paint scenery. im also a singer and i write my own songs. i play the guitar and the ukulele!!
-i own two rats and two cats! yes they get along lmaodksjsj. im a witch whos into crystals, herbs, dieties and all. i do tarot and pendulum. i love drinking tea especially mint and chamomile teas.
-things i dislike: alcohol, someone yelling at me, aggressiveness, going on boats, too much heat, summer, thunderstorms, chicken, being alone in the extreme dark in a place like the woods, seeing or hearing stuff like people gagging or their nails being ripped off :// (i can somehow take gore tho-)
-things i like: tea, some coffees, sunflowers, motorcycles, cuddling, relaxing inside on my bed while its raining outside, the calming sound of rain, autumn, when its chilly out, seafood
-i actually rlly love reading and sometimes I like to write lil short stories or make up characters but not too deep into them. just fun little things yk?
-i kinda rlly like playing w ppls hair- like having them sit in my lap. or having them do it to me.
-omg chasing each other in an empty (empty as in like no other ppl) pretty field during a picnic date with our favorite music on?? YES PLS
-WATCHING THE SUNSET AND SUNRISE OMGGG
-i don't rlly plan on having kids :/ i don't do well with them so. fur babies as in pets tho! ABSOLUTELY
-i kinda would be a big spoon but also a little spoon. i'd do either.
-if im being honest one of the downsides of me is that I get emotional quickly in an argument :// or like I get defensive or if someone yells at me I get sad and start crying. I don't seek out fights tho and I try to avoid them.
-despite how much I like to talk im an ambivert leaning towards introvert. I get panic-y quick in public w people I don't know and im rlly nervous but i try to be as friendly as possible and keep a convo going. around my friends and stuff tho im an absolute goof ball!
-i like staying home tbh its calming
-i don't like seeing messy things eiakssksk i like organization but im not controlish about it. I like to clean tbh its kinda fun.
-my love language is honestly quality time and touch. some words of affirmation is nice too tho,, sometimes I get scared someone will get bored of me and leave ://
-i love to buy or make ppl gifts! i like to see people happy. the look on ppls faces when they see that i bought them something they rlly love makes me warm and fuzzy :,))
-im not rlly a jealous person tbh. but if someone outright is happening like obvious flirting,, i WILL say something if my partner isn't taking care of it themself.
-honestly i love being a goof but when its time to be serious ill be serious
-i talk alot so i need someone who'll be willing to listen to me talk and be interested in what im saying EIOSLAKS ill also absolutely listen to anything they say :))
-i don't care abt body types or looks rlly and im not just saying that.
-i love to remind ppl that they're stunning and gorgeous and they deserve the world 😩🤌
-i like having deep convos about random things. like who found out that we should drink cow milk? why are wild animals just fine w out toothpaste but we absolutely need to brush our teeth??
-id love to cook or bake something with someone :))
-i can't rlly think of anything else to say abt myself so
Your matchup is... Hoodie/Brian Thomas!
In general:
Took me a hot minute or so but I ultimately decided on Brian because it's the vibe I'm getting. Let's elaborate on that.
What he likes about you:
I always start out with the physical stuff first and I'm just going to say that Brian really likes your hair! Thinks it is absolutely gorgeous and fun. Will compliment how fluffy it is. Likes that you're into nature, crafty, and your music choice! Thinks your art is super fun and will want to see it. Thinks your singing voice is absolutely beautiful. Coming back to this. Your pets are fun to him as well, and your likes just seem to really line up with him y'know?? Especially loving Autumn, rain, when it's chilly, all that kind of fun stuff.
General cute things:
ALright, I feel like swimming outings would be a thing between the two of you. Brian likes water. It's just the vibe I get. Make him flower crowns please lmfao. Brian is soft and actual sunshine when he wants to be. He will watch the sunrise and sunset with you!!! He loves to just strum his guitar in the early mornings, listening to the birds sing. I feel like music dates would be a thing between the two of you. Just sitting in a flower field, watching the world go by, singing and all that cute stuff. Brian is admittedly a bit of a home body as well, so like,,,,,, hey. Just the two of you curling up on the couch, taking naps? Yes. Brian will occasionally get you gifts of things that remind him of you. He also gives me the vibe that he would get you flowers just because he thinks you'll find them pretty. He will goof around with. ALSO, Brian loves to listen to you!! Please talk to him about whatever is on your mind and I guarantee he's going to love it!! You being such a sweet person makes his heart sing? Like, you just reaffirming all the things he needs to hear make him so happy. He will also play with your hair, and on other days, he will rest his head on your lap and you can play with his.
You two as a couple:
Y'know, I think the only thing that might be a bit of a talking point between the two of you is the not having kids thing. Brian strikes me as such a strong family man. However, I don't think he's incapable of bending, so if the two of you want to be fur parents, he'd be just fine with that. Other than that, one of Brian's love languages is touch to like, be prepared for hugs, kisses, all that wholesome stuff. He's definitely a bit of an insomniac so like, please spend time with him cuddling on the roof while the two of you talk about anything and everything. Brian will definitely cook and bake with you as well, seeing those are two things he loves to do. You won't ever have to worry about jealousy with Brian because he's a king of "I have a partner stop speaking to me :)" You can also spoon him, he'd find that comforting. Brian prioritizes communication, so if you start crying, or anything like that, he'll give you some space and then come back to it. He doesn't want to cause you any harm, but some things need to be spoken about. Brian will also be your rock if the two of you go out in public and you're not very happy or overwhelmed. I swear, he's always going to be there for you.
Closing thoughts/other things:
Hi love bug, sorry this is late. The matchups were giving me some wonky type of burn out, but it's here now. To answer your thing about why animals don't need toothpaste, it actually has a lot to do with their diet! They don't eat refined sugars or the high amount of acids we do, and they also tend to eat way more twigs, sticks, bark, bones and even grass that help keep their mouths free of debris. Tell me about your characters and stories! One of my favorite things to do outside of running this blog is OCs and world building. Again, apologies for this being late. Tumblr doesn't timestamp when things come in so I just kinda guess?? I imagine it's been here for a while, my bad, I've been working out of order now. As always, let me know what you think and I hope you enjoyed!
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imagine-loki · 4 years ago
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Caught in his web, Chapter 39
TITLE: Caught in his web CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: Chapter 39 AUTHOR: fanficshiddles ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine Loki is a crime lord, a very dangerous man in the city. He is owed money, but the man is unable to pay Loki back, so Loki takes his daughter as payment instead.  RATING: M
When the jet started to descend, Chloe was a little bit nervous again. Not sure what to expect. But it went smoother than she had thought it would and it wasn’t too bad. The pilot was good at his job and always did nice landings, that’s one of the reasons why Loki had hired him.
It was a short drive from the private runway to the dock where there was a small speed boat waiting for them.
The driver, Lucas, carried their bags from the car onto the boat and handed Loki the keys for said boat.
‘Have a great stay, Mr Laufeyson.’ He said politely with a bow of the head.
‘Thank you, Lucas. If you can be here to pick us up on Tuesday at two in the afternoon. I won’t have my mobile on, so any issues contact the house phone.’
‘Of course, Mr Laufeyson.’ He nodded with a smile.
Loki took Chloe’s hand and led her onto the boat. There were life jackets waiting for them, Loki made sure that Chloe got hers on first and that it was on securely.
‘Don’t want you falling into the sea.’ Loki was very focused while he tightened various straps, Chloe couldn’t help but stare at his beautiful face.
‘There we go.’ He said, pleased with her life jacket he smiled at her and cupped her cheek.
‘Thank you.’ She smiled back at him.
It made her feel warm and fuzzy inside how he was looking out for her. So attune to her health and safety.
It was exciting being on the speed boat, even though Loki didn’t make it go as fast as it could. They were in no rush so he took it easy over the waves, not wanting Chloe to get sea sick.
‘There it is.’ Loki grinned and pointed ahead of them.
There was a small island that was coming into view. Chloe’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open. She could see the beautiful looking villa just off the beach, surrounded by a few hills and some small forest areas. The villa stood out well because it had white walls with a lovely red colour slated roof, with plenty of large windows.
‘So there’s absolutely no one else on the island?’ She asked, struggling to believe that he actually owned the entire thing.
‘Not a soul. Apart from some birds.’ Loki chuckled.
‘Wow.’ She kept staring at the island as it started getting larger and larger. ‘And you said it was a small island!’
‘It is, in comparison to a lot of others.’ He grinned. ‘But I am glad you think otherwise.’
‘This is just insane.’ She shook her head, making Loki chuckle again. He enjoyed surprising her. And he was a man that was definitely full of surprises.
When they got to the beach, Loki jumped off the boat and held his hand out, helping Chloe off before then grabbing their bags. He tied the boat to a post further up the sand, making sure it wouldn’t get taken out to sea.
Chloe was already wandering slowly up the beach with her bag, taking it all in. Loki easily caught up with her and slid his arm around her waist, smiling down at her.
‘Do you like it?’ Though Loki could tell by the look on her face what the answer was.
‘I love it! It’s stunning.’ She grinned, her heart was racing with excitement.
Loki led her up towards the villa. It was up some steps and had a perfect view out to the ocean. You could just see mainland in the far distance.
As soon as Loki unlocked the villa and pushed the door open, Chloe rushed inside to take a look around. Loki watched in amusement, Chloe was like a kid in a candy shop as she rushed around all the rooms, ooo’ing and aah’ing at every room. Plus a swearword or two in shock when she saw the likes of the swimming pool outside that overlooked the beach, it was huge and had a lovely patio area next to it that also went undercover. There was a hot tub too and a large barbecue installed with stone built around it, so it blended in well.
‘Did you have this place built yourself or did you buy it like this?’ Chloe asked when Loki caught up with her after putting their bags in the master bedroom.
‘I had it built. When I bought the island I wanted a blank slate, so I could build my own home away from home, exactly as I wanted it.’ Loki draped his arm over her shoulder and guided her through to the kitchen.
‘It’s absolutely amazing. Really beautiful!’ Chloe said as Loki went and opened a secret looking cupboard, revealing an array of alcohol.
Chloe face-palmed at how well hidden, yet well stocked, the cupboard was. Loki just grinned at her and poured them both a drink.
With drinks in hand, Loki showed Chloe their room. Of course it had an en-suite and was very luxurious. She fished out her bikini, wanting to go for a swim as Loki had suggested they swim before drinking too much.
‘Who says you’re getting to wear a bikini?’ Loki growled, grabbing her wrist before she could make it to the bathroom to get changed.
‘What else would I wear in the pool?’ She knew what he was going to say, though.
‘One rule. No clothing of any kind is allowed in the pool.’ He wiggled his eyebrows and prised the bikini out of her hand, tossing it behind him onto the dresser.
Chloe opened her mouth, about to protest in worry of someone seeing. Then she remembered where they were. And she didn’t know what to say as a comeback to that.
Loki smirked in triumph when she couldn’t think of anything to say in response. He gripped her chin and kissed her, then stepped back and started removing his own clothes. ‘Come on, doll. Get naked.’
Chloe bit her lip and started taking off her clothes too. But as she took her dress off, she realised something…
‘SHIT!’
‘What’s wrong?’ Loki frowned, pausing with his trousers down around his ankles as he looked up at her, concerned.
‘I… I must have left my knickers on the plane! I forgot them! What if the cleaner finds them under my chair?’ Her eyes were wide in panic.
Loki threw his head back laughing. He finished removing his clothes, including his boxers, then stalked over to her. She tried her best to keep her eyes up on his, instead of looking down at his semi erection.
‘Don’t worry, doll. I’m sure the cleaners find much worse on other private jets.’ He chuckled, amused at how horrified she was. And he slyly unclasped her bra and pulled the straps down off her shoulders.
‘But… They’ll know it’s your jet…’
Loki flicked her bra to the floor, then cupped her face and kissed her forehead. ‘Relax, Chloe. Trust me, they’ll have seen worse. It’s just a company here in Greece anyway that deals with the cleaning on this end. The cleaners won’t know who the jet belongs to.’
He stepped away and bent over to pick up his trousers. Chloe was momentarily distracted at how amazing his ass was. She wanted to just bite it…
‘Besides.’ Loki’s voice pulled her from her thoughts as he stood up straight and turned around to her. ‘I wouldn’t leave these delightful garments behind.’ He grinned cheekily, holding up said knickers.
‘You fucker! You had them all along!’ She snarled and launched at him, making him laugh when she tried to wrestle him down, but he just stood like a marble column, laughing.
Loki wrapped his arms around her and threw her up over his shoulder, she just huffed in defeat. ‘You’re an ass!’
Loki chuckled and gave her bum a slap, making her yelp.
‘Behave, doll. Or I’ll redden this lovely behind of yours.’ He growled.
Chloe didn’t want to admit that the mere threat, and taster, had her clenching her thighs together a little, not entirely opposed to the idea. But with how powerful his swing could be when he wanted to, she decided against asking for it.
Loki carried her out to the pool. Without any warning or putting her down first, he just jumped straight into the deep end.
When they came above water, she couldn’t resist splashing at him and then swimming away while giggling.
‘Oh you are so asking for it!’ Loki called out and swam after her.
Chloe glanced over her shoulder but didn’t see him above water, she could just make out his form underneath. Coming after her like a shark. She squealed loudly and tried to swim faster, but Loki was a strong swimmer and managed to grab her ankle, hauling her back to him.
The two enjoyed their swim together. They mainly messed around, teasing one another. Loki was enjoying this playfully braver side of Chloe that was coming out. And Chloe was enjoying the calmer, playful side of Loki too. He just seemed a bit more relaxed as soon as they stepped onto the island. Though she wasn’t surprised really, considering he was basically on twenty-four seven at home.
But she was hopeful, perhaps being alone on an island with Loki wasn’t going to be such a scary thing after all.
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thran-duils · 4 years ago
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Devils Look Like Angels (Ch.11)
Title: Devils Look Like Angels (Chapter 11) Summary:  Fem!Reader x Psychotic!Castiel. An unhinged, criminal, supernatural artifact collector extraordinaire… and the reader caught his eye. It will not take her long to realize that beneath the charm and mystique is a crazed killer who will go to great lengths to woo her. Words: 2,507 Warnings (for the fic in entirety): Stalking, angst, death/murder, violence
Chap 10 || Chap 12 || Masterpost || Fanfic masterpost
Slowly, you stretched your legs, waking from your sleep. Squeezing your eyes, your arms stretched, and you became acutely aware they were over someone.
Quickly blinking away sleep, your eyesight focused on the person laying facing the ceiling. You were on your side, arm draped over your torso.
“I was wondering when you were going to wake,” Castiel said gently.
You were away from his side instantaneously, wildly trying to take in your surroundings. You felt sluggish, fatigued. Where were you? And why were you in bed with Castiel?
The bar.
You had been at the bar. And had needed to go to the bathroom. But the line… so you had gone outside. You had met him out there. It was coming back to you, fuzzy, but still the bigger picture was there. You remembered agreeing to go with Castiel, but why?
Becoming acutely aware – again – that you were in bed with him, you eyed him accusingly before throwing the sheets back. He was merely shirtless; you were dressed but wearing different clothes than you had had on at the bar. Some boxers and a t-shirt.
Castiel sighed heavily, “Please, Y/N, again, I’m not a pervert. You were far too intoxicated to give any level of consent.”
He slipped out of bed, stretching himself. You noticed he was wearing swim trunks.
“I made breakfast. It is on the deck out here, next to the hot tub. There is a suit there—” He pointed towards a flower printed one piece on the back of the chair by the desk. “I believe it is your size. Join me?”
He walked around the bed, not waiting for an answer, to the sliding glass door and walked out, disappeared from view.
Rubbing your forehead, you threw your legs over the side of the bed. Where was your phone? Had he hidden it? Or worse, disposed of it? Trying to keep calm, you stood up, eyes roaming the room. It was not on his side of the bed, nor in the bed, or on the dresser. Upon seeing the bathroom, you searched there as well to no avail.
You walked out the door that Castiel had left through, finding him sitting in a hot tub, relaxing. He opened one eye as you approached.
“No suit?”
“I’m hungry.”
It was the truth.
Sitting at the table, you took the cover off the tray, finding eggs, bacon, and fruit.
“Where’s my phone?” you asked directly, stabbing at the eggs. You did not think Castiel meant to poison you, so you would not insult him by asking.
“You left it at the bar,” Castiel told you.
That came back to you now. The moment you had realized it had been left behind on the table. No doubt Dean and Sam had it now, at least you hoped.
“There is more aspirin downstairs if you need it,” Castiel added. “You did take some before passing out, but I am not sure how you are feeling now…?”
He trailed off, and you realized he was looking at you expectantly. You swallowed your food quickly.
“Fine.”
“Miraculous. You always seem to be able to surprise me, kitten,” Castiel said, the corner of his lip turned up in amusement. He continued, “I sent a couple of my men to get you some fresh clothes for you to change into. Until then, the suit is really all I have.”
“Are you going to take me back home?”
Castiel sighed, “Yes. Of course. But are you so eager to leave? Look around you.” He gestured over his shoulder and you followed his arm. The lake was vast, you could see that even through the tree line. Right. The lake house that he had mentioned. Another piece falling into place. “If you do feel good, shower, change into the suit. We can go down to the lake. It is going to be a warm day.”
You said nothing, chewing on the bacon.
“I am constantly trying to impress you. I just cannot figure out why it is so hard, kitten.”
“I… the lake is nice. It looks beautiful. And thank you for breakfast. It is tasty.”
Relaxing against the side of the tub again, Castiel stated, “Well, at least I have seemed to have finally done some things right.”
Uncomfortable with the situation, you continued eating, trying to go as quickly as possible without making a mess. Castiel was basking in the hot tub, watching you lazily through half open lids.
When you finished, you stood up and said, “Should I take this inside to the kitchen?”
“Don’t bother. I can do it. I should be getting out of this tub anyway. It has been twenty minutes; I do not want to overheat and leave you abandoned when I have such a lovely day planned.”
“Okay,” you said, playing with the hem of your shirt. “I suppose now is a good a time as ever to change.”
“Quite,” Castiel agreed as he got out of the tub.
He was quite fit; you wondered if like his men, he used that strength to murder and otherwise torture others. There was small doubt in your mind that was far from the truth. He caught you looking as he grabbed his towel and gave a quick smirk and you averted your eyes, disappearing inside.
At least it was a modest suit, no way to be too revealing to him. You were nervous enough as it was to even be in a suit around him.
How the hell were you going to make it through this day?
<> <> <>
Holding onto the life vest, you tried to think about anything else than the possibility Castiel might be taking you out to the middle of the lake to shoot you and weight you down to toss you in. It was the middle of the day though and there were others on the lake; it would be difficult for him to pull off such a task without anyone else noticing. Still… he was not entirely stable.
The sun glittered on the water as the boat sliced through the soft wake caused by other boats. It was quite lovely, you had to admit. The warmth of the sun on your skin was comforting and it was not too cold even with the wind. Your hair was going to be a tousled mess at the end of this, but you breathed deeply, taking in the surroundings.
You caught Castiel sneaking looks back at you adoringly as he drove, smiling at you reclining in the boat behind him. His smile was wide and dazzling, simply beside himself.
He was doing it again… making you believe this would be normal. Just like at the auditorium. The two of you, enjoying a vacation together at the lake, having a grand time. Nothing out of the ordinary. You knew that is what he wanted desperately.
There was no way to appease him on that front though. Knowing what he was capable of… what he did… you could not – would not – be able to reconcile or ever be okay with that.
All you could do was give him today and you tried to enjoy yourself.
<> <> <>
Castiel followed you up the stairs, still beaming about the time you had spent on the lake today. He had taken time in the middle of the lake to fish, you had declined. He was actually good at it, admitting that it was a hobby of his, which threw you off. It did not seem like something he would enjoy. He was a man of cleanliness and the idea of him knowing how to gut and debone a fish was strange. Yet… knowing how to maim an animal may actually be in his wheelhouse. That thought hit you quick.
Following you up the stairs, holding the fish, Castiel was chattering all about the rest of the food in the fridge that he could prepare for you for an early dinner. You agreed with him that roasted potatoes and sautéed spinach would pair lovely with the trout.
His men had brought back a change of clothes just as he said they would. A casual sun dress that you slipped into while he began prepping the food. You came back into the kitchen to find he had taken the time to slip into chino shorts and a laid back, collared white button up.
As he cooked, you asked him, “Where did you come from?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Like where did you grow up?”
He flashed you a quick smile over his shoulder and said, “Have I never told you?”
“No.”
“Hmm. Well, it is quite a private thing, is it not? Your childhood.”
You acknowledged, tapping your finger gently on your wine glass, “It is.”
Castiel responded, bringing spices out of the cupboard, “Well, I was born in the desert. This scenery around here is foreign to me, as is Kansas.
“Where?”
With a small chuckle, Castiel said, “Well, since you were so talkative last night, I guess it is only fair…”
You stiffened, staring at him. “What?”
“I think we are at a point where we can dive into details about these types of things,” Castiel said, ignoring your question. And you believed he did it deliberately. “Mesa, to be exact. Normal childhood. That is until my parents got murdered because my father happened to buy himself quite an extraordinary knife from a pawn shop that was… special. And these artifact collectors of special nature wanted it. I suppose simply asking for it was too tall of an order for them. The leader only noticed me in my doorway after the deed had been done. Took me to keep the murder quiet, but also because I believe he could not stomach killing a six-year-old.”
“They raised me. Taught me everything they know. You know, that typical story. And I was loyal to him… until I was not. They taught me too well. I slaughtered him and his men and took all the riches they had procured. I formed my own posse. We hunt supernatural artifacts as you know.”
“I have been unable to find anymore bone knives. That is what my parents were killed over. And I understand why, truly. It is very powerful, especially made from certain eras and more so from certain historical figures. The magic that is in them, bestowed from dark sorcerer’s is remarkable.”
He paused, seeming lost in thought. He had been expertly caring for the food as it cooked despite the deep story he had been telling.
A few moments passed before he turned, seeing you were looking at him with rapt attention. He chortled, amused, “Oh, kitten, you flatter me. You let me get carried away in my self indulgent story.”
Shrugging, you told him, “It was interesting.”
And it was. Learning about what had made him who he was. Monsters were created, you had always believed in that philosophy. And it seemed to be the case with him.
“I am sorry that you went through so much,” you told him honestly. “And especially at such a young age. I can’t even begin to imagine.”
Taking the lid off the skillet with the potatoes, Castiel adjusted them. “I made it alright. As you can see.”
“Of course,” you responded, not about to let him think any differently.
“This is about done,” Castiel announced, gesturing at the oven timer. “Would you care to dine in here or out on the deck?”
“The deck seems nice. The sun is setting.”
Castiel smiled widely, “That it is. How lovely you will look in it.”
You blushed at his compliment as he turned to go to the cupboards to look for plates.
He set up the deck table, serving everything to you, and refilling the wine. You refrained from asking if he was going to be okay to drive, wanting to find a good interjection to ask when exactly you were going to be going home again.
Clinking glasses, Castiel said, “I hope it is to your liking.”
“I am sure it will be more than satisfactory, Castiel.”
“Again, you flatter me. I will never tire of it, kitten.”
You gave him a small smile as you cut into your fish. “So, how did you say you got this place?”
“Rental,” Castiel told you. “Air bnb. You would think it would be far more… sketchy to stay in these types of places. But they are very reputable with a high rating and this is proving that correct. This is a lovely house.”
“It is.”
“How long do you have it?”
Castiel swallowed and gave you a mischievous smile. “Now, Y/N. What an underhanded way to ask me when I am going to be taking you home.”
You could not help the red that tinged your cheeks at him catching what you thought was a clever way to ask him. “Well, you know Sam and Dean are worrying. I do not have my phone and I just disappeared from the bar.”
A look of annoyance passed his face. “They always seem to know how to ruin a good time, do they not? I have it for two more days but if you wish to go back tomorrow, then I will be more than happy to take you. I have enjoyed today and would like more but it is ultimately up to you.”
A buzzing came from within his shorts and he sighed heavily. Placing his silverware down delicately, he reached into his pocket, pulling his cell out.
“It is as if their ears were ringing.” Licking his bottom lip, he eyed you across the table. To your immense shock, he reached his arm across the table. “Pardon my reach. But here. Keep it under twenty seconds. I know Samuel is smarting with tracking.”
You took the phone from him, recognizing the missed number on his phone as your own.
“They have called three times now. They are quite persistent,” Castiel told you, picking his silverware back up.
Going to stand to have privacy, Castiel said, “No. Here. Please.”
Sitting back down fully, you did as he requested.
“Where is she?” Sam demanded, answering on the first ring.
“Sam, I’m not going to talk long. I’m fine. I’m okay. I’ll be back tomorrow night.”
“Late,” Castiel said quietly from the other side of the table.
“Late tomorrow night. I promise. I will see you then.”
You hung up, keeping it under twenty seconds, despite Sam arguing on the other end. You hated to think of them worrying so much. But at least you had let them know you were okay.
Castiel held out his hand for his phone and you handed it back over, him slipping it into his pocket.
“So… any more questions? It may be the wine or my company, but I feel like being open.”
Settling back into your chair, you picked up your silverware again. You took a bite of your potatoes, chewing slowly as you thought of anything else.
~~~
CASTIEL FOREVER TAGS: @willowing-love @perseusandmedusa @greenappleeyes @afanofmanystuffs @earthtokace @shikaros-blog @marisayouass
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bishop-agent-provocateur · 4 years ago
Text
Vacation from Hell
Three weeks later...
Petit St. Vincent. 

1 am. 

The couples were asleep except for one. Leonardo was up with Aurora, holding her hair for her while she threw everything up into the bucket. He was caressing her back with his fingers, trying to bring the sick woman some comfort. When the heaving stopped, she pulled her face from the pail. 

“I shouldn’t have eaten that shrimp...” she moaned, still feeling the affects of the nausea. “Did you eat any?” 

“No,” Leo told her. 

“It’s probably under cooked,” she groaned, tipping her face back into the pail to heave once more. When it was over, she carried the pail to the bathroom to dispose of the contents in the toilet. She then turned the sink taps to rinse her face and mouth out. 

Leo followed her into the bathroom and took the pail to rinse out in the tub and placed upside down on the tub edge to dry. Aurora was busy brushing her teeth and reaching for a bottle of tylenol in her travel bag. “Feel a little better?” he asked. 

“Mhmm....but crappy. I think I should keep that bucket by the bedside just in case. She popped a few pills for the headache and joined Leo back in the bedroom where he had already placed a brand new bucket. “Thanks,” she said sweetly as she pulled the covers up over her chest. 

He pressed his palm to her forehead. “No fever, at least,” he said, now rolling onto his side and draping an arm over her.
“Thankfully…” she whispered, closing her eyes. Heaving tired her out and she needed to recover from the stress on her stomach. Sleep came relatively quickly and she managed to get a dream or two in before her stomach flipped once more and she woke up to quickly catch herself with the pail. This time, she managed to avoid waking Leo and took herself to the bathroom on her own. She planted her hands on the rim of the sink, peering at her pale and disheveled-looking self. “Fuck…’ she grumbled, irritated with an unusually angry stomach accompanying her mood. Once she let it out, she felt immediate relief from everything but the nausea. She turned the taps, splashed cold water in her face, and brushed her teeth for the third time tonight.
Another glance in the mirror to fix her mussy hair and she turned the light off. When she crawled into bed, she realized Leo did not wake up once during her absence. Climbing over him was the quickest way back to her side of the bed so she did so…
...and did not wake him.
An odd surprise. Usually this would stir him slightly, but he did not budge to turn and cuddle her again. She sat up against her pillow and looked him over. “Leo?” she asked softly, hoping he may turn and attempt to bring her close, but he did not move. “Um….Leo,” she repeated, gently tapping him on the arm. Still no movement.
Panic swept over her and she quickly looked him over. Unable to see in the darkness that well, she quickly reached for the switch over the headboard. The room was filled with light and right away, Aurora saw a few small tiny syringes protruding from his shoulder. “Oh my g….!!!!”
Something quickly forced itself into her neck and Aurora yelped as a second sharp spike joined it. Her hair was pulled harshly and her neck craned until she saw her attacker.
There was a man in black with his face covered with a ski mask. Whatever he put in her neck worked fast and her limbs instantly fell limp. She heard him talking, but the words were jumbled. Aurora toppled over onto her pillow. Her eyes closed partially and she felt so weak and unable to fight back. The intruder waited a minute before scooping her up into his arms and carrying her off. He took her from the cottage and out into the night. Aurora tried to listen, but the urge to sleep kept threatening her.
Heavy whirring overcame the voice of the abductor. Aurora was placed on a chair and sat upright with restraints while her captor fiddled with the restraints on others present. Through her fuzzy, tunneled vision, Aurora could see other forms…little ones.
Then came the words that she dreaded most…
“Put those babies to sleep…” a man said. “Don’t want them screaming the whole way.”
Aurora’s panic grew. They took the children! Alex and Athena were on this thing! “S-stop…” she could barely manage.
“And make sure that one is out too,” the man added.
Her voice was already weak and she felt her head spin more as another needle pierced her skin. “Leo….” Blurred vision grew worse but she managed to see who else was on board this transport, likely a helicopter. Everyone was unconscious. “Emerald…” she whispered, seeing her friend close by. She was heavily restrained and unconscious. At least Athena would have her mother close.
The chopper did not take off for a bit and the door opened and closed several times as armed soldiers climbed in. There was talk of eliminating the “Damn CEO” on board between these men.
For the final time, the door closed and the chopper lifted off. The captain and several men lined the walls, buckled in and congratulating themselves on a job well done.
“The company will no longer have to entertain or look after these abnormalities,” one man said to his partner.
The other soldier laughed and agreed. “Got paid big bucks for those freaks and left one to finish the job. He has a history with Madame CEO. Leave a monster on the island with only 2 weak and helpless women and he’ll slowly regress…”
“Oh you guys are cruel…” the first soldier laughed. ______________________________________________
The fear was real. Island employees were missing and not a single boat was in sight.
Blossom heard Holly’s panicked screaming as she came rushing over to the large villa.
“Blossom! Mikey is missing and I woke up with a syringe in my arm! Everyone’s gone! Leo, Aurora, Emerald, Don…” Holly cried out as she ran up the steps. She was greeted with a sad sight…
Blossom was holding a paper and tears streaming down her face.
“What’s that?” Holly asked, taking a seat next to Blossom and gently tugging the paper out of her friend’s hand. It was a short handwritten letter.
Enjoy your remaining time on the island. We left you a gift to alleviate the pain of your son and husband’s absence.
“What? What does that mean? Who would take everyone?!” Holly jumped to her feet and quickly went inside the villa, leaving Blossom on the patio.
The tearful CEO looked out at the morning horizon, her heart broken and fearful. What would become of her family? Why did they take them? Who were these people? When Holly returned to the patio, she stopped short of the steps.
“Blossom…look,” Holly said.
The young CEO glanced where Holly pointed and the girls both saw a solitary figure coming towards them. Tall and in his signature purple bandana. Donatello was approaching the villa looking confused and heartbroken.
________________________________
@aurora-the-kunoichi
@southernblossoms
@hollybunch95
@imthegreenfairy88
@bishop-agent-provocateur
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serenlyss · 5 years ago
Text
Reach
(Alternatively titled: Reach (for things you thought were gone forever))
Rating: G Pairings: ritshou, very small background terumob Summary: “Are you an angel?” Shou croaks, suddenly very sure that he must be dying, because this boy is so different from the rumors he’s heard from the people in his village that there’s no way he can be a harpy. He finds himself smiling despite the realization that his death is soon approaching, and murmurs, “You’re beautiful. If this is what dying is, I don’t think I’d mind going with you.” As it would turn out, not all fairy tales are born from imagination. Crossposted to AO3: Reach
Oh my gosh it's finally done. This AU was born from a half-baked desire to write a wings au with ritshou and I've been feverishly writing it for like 5 days now. I'm really excited to share it and super proud of how it turned out, so I hope you all enjoy it too! I had a lot of fun writing in a more poetic, descriptive style. Depending on how the inspiration hits I may write more of this au in the future as well, and make it into a little series. For now though, have this 12k+ word monstrosity.
---
Shou’s starting to regret not telling anyone where he’d planned on going.
His thoughts had started out innocently enough. The rumors of mythical creatures and terrifying monsters that lurked in the thick woods near his little village had always intrigued him, drawing his attention to the shadowy woods he’d been reminded from the time he could walk to never wander into.
Some of the stories are very obviously untrue, like the one that claims that a fearsome dragon sleeps within the shade of the forest’s tallest trees, guarding mountains of gold. They’re the kinds of fables meant to scare people from wandering off too far, but everyone is aware that dragons don’t exist. Even if they did exist, Shou doubts one would choose to live in a place as boring and uninteresting as this.
The other tales are slightly more believable to Shou. They’re stories that had probably sprung from a person’s real memories, stories spun with bravado and just a little extra embellishment each time they’d been told until they’d evolved into fairy tales in their own right. These are the ones that speak of monsters lurking beneath fishing boats, waiting to snap up any poor soul who happens to tumble from the safety of their ship, of human-faced animals that draw you in with sweet words only to lure you to your own inevitable death. Terrifying and malevolent creatures whose only interest in a person is to tear them apart.
Of all his people’s myths and fables, there’s only one that manages to pique Shou’s interest enough to draw him away from the safety of his town. These are the stories about the harpies, a horrifying combination of bird and man, a creature with the talons of an eagle and the face of a woman that could never be satisfied, always ravenous, searching endlessly for its next meal. They’re said to be terrifying, bloodthirsty, beautiful creatures, and Shou can’t help but want to meet one in person.
He knows, rationally, that he’s as good as dead if the rumors are true, but it’s not like he has anything more to go off of, or anything better to do. He’s terribly bored of his uninteresting, lonesome daily life, where the only exciting thing to come to his front door is the salesman trying ceaselessly to sell him things he doesn’t need. So, one day he packs up a bag with his sketchbook and some art supplies and a snack in case he gets hungry and sets off into the woods without a word. He knows that if he tells his neighbors where he’s going, they’ll try to stop him, and that sounds like more of a pain than Shou’s willing to put up with, so he doesn’t tell them. It’s not like he’ll be gone for long, anyway.
---
As it turns out, Shou is very, very wrong about the length of time it’ll take to reach the thicker center of the forest, and even more wrong about being confident in his ability to read his map. By the time he’s a few hours into his walk, he can’t tell what direction he’s moving in anymore, and he’s turned the map over half a dozen times trying to reorient himself. Eventually, he gives up and crumples the map into a ball, shoving it into the pocket of his backpack in frustration. Way to go, idiot, he scolds himself, shoving his hands into the pockets of his pants as he continues to trudge ever forward, you’ve screwed yourself. This stupid forest is impossible to navigate, and now you’ve gone and gotten yourself lost.
The forest is like a maze, trees so close together that it’s impossible for Shou to see more than a few hundred feet in front of him at any time. It’s huge, too; Shou swears he’s been walking in a straight line since he entered the forest hours ago, but he still hasn’t reached the other side. His feet are starting to ache from the uneven terrain beneath his shoes and his neck is slick from sweat that beads from a combination of the hot, humid weather that accompanies the transition from summer to fall and the fact that he hasn’t stopped walking since he first stepped foot in the woods. He hasn’t even brought any water with him, certain that he’d be in and out in a few hours at most.
Shou walks and walks and doesn’t let himself stop to rest, too worried that if he stops he’ll forget what direction to walk in and never find the edge of the forest. It isn’t until the sun has fallen behind the horizon and the trees in front of him are almost too deep in the shadows to make out that he finally stops to sleep, curled up in the thick grass and undergrowth with his jacket wrapped tightly around his shoulders.
After five days of waking, walking, unfolding his crumpled map and futilely attempting to find his way back to his village, the lack of food and water is really starting to get to him. He hasn’t come across anything salvageable, not even a forest stream he could drink from to stave off the dehydration that makes his limbs feel heavy and his tongue thick and dry in his mouth. His skin shimmers in an ever-present layer of sweat as the liquid slowly seeps from his pores, and he’s powerless to do anything about it. Even though the sun doesn’t touch him very often through the trees, the humidity and heat grips him strongly, their fingers digging in and wringing every last drop of water from his body until he starts to feel the telltale dizziness and nausea shutting him down from the inside out. His brain turns to fog and his legs to jelly, but still he walks, knowing that the moment he stops is the moment he gives up on living.
In the end, it’s a gangly tree root that does him in. It catches him around his toes and makes him lose his footing, and he lets out a hoarse yelp as he’s thrown swiftly and certainly to the ground. He hits it shoulder first, arms not quick enough to catch him on his hands, and the shock of it sends cramps up his arm and down his back. He winces, sure that it’ll leave a terrible bruise.
He attempts to push himself to his feet, to continue his endless walking, but his legs won’t listen to him anymore. His arms can hardly support the weight of his torso, and after a few fruitless seconds he lets himself flop uselessly onto his back. The sun is setting, spots of white appearing against dark blue as the last rays of daylight throw long shadows across the forest floor and plunge his surroundings into a thick and unyielding darkness.
He blinks slowly, eyes falling shut for a few seconds before he forces them open again. His limbs are heavy, not an ounce of energy left over to lift them with, and as he stares up at the open sky above him he finds himself unable to make out the stars anymore, vision too fuzzy to separate the white from black. He lets out a shaky breath, feeling the weak breeze stir the hair that arches away from his face. Why did I come here? he wonders to himself, regret creeping under his skin and settling there. This was so stupid… He feels a tears leak out of the corner of his eye, streaking down his face and disappearing into the creases of his ear. He hadn’t thought he’d have any water left in his body to cry with, and yet here he is. He can’t even reach up to wipe the trail of wetness away.
Behind his head, he hears the sound of tall grass rustling under soft, light footfalls. He doesn’t even try to turn to see what animal has stumbled upon him, eyes half-lidded. He knows he’s as good as dead, and whatever scavenger has happened upon him must know it, too. By morning, he'll be long gone, and the animals will pick him to pieces until there are only bones remaining. Maybe one day, he muses to himself in a delirious haze, some scientist will finally make it out here and find my skeleton. They’ll say I was killed by the harpies, and make up stories about a fantastic battle I must have been in… I’ll become the story they tell their kids to scare them away from the forest. The thought brings a bittersweet smile to his face, a brief flash of humor that quickly dies as the feather-light footsteps draw closer.
He listens as the creature approaches him, crushing grass and dry leaves underfoot, until it pauses right behind his head. Its form casts a shadow over him, and through his hazy vision he sees it bend down to look at him. He furrows his brow, fighting to focus his blurry eyes enough to make out the thing that most certainly will be eating him once he finally kicks the bucket, and finds that it’s not an animal at all.
The creature lowers itself to its knees, half-crouched over Shou’s head. Two hands reach out and brush against his cheeks, soft and incredibly careful, but the touch is not quite human. Through his eyelashes, Shou can make out slim shoulders and a slender neck that leads to a head that is distinctly human-shaped, and he can see the shock of black hair that falls into the creature’s face and frames shining eyes with its long strands. Shou’s eyes open wider, a gasp of awe caught in his throat. Two sprawling, shimmering wings curl around the creature and shield Shou’s upper body from the outside, falling over him like a dome and blocking out what little light the half-set sun provides. Hundreds of pitch-black feathers hover over him now, like the ones from the crows he sees outside his modest house, picking at the neighbor’s garden. Something about this creature’s wings is ethereal, however, the kind of vision that can only be conceived in lucid dreams and supernatural visions. His expression swims into focus gradually, revealing an impassive, boyish face framed with those same dark feathers. There’s something melancholic about his expression, a wistful, empathetic look in his eye that makes Shou’s failing heart skip a beat in his chest.
“Are you an angel?” he croaks, suddenly very sure that he must be dying, because this boy is so different from the rumors he’s heard from the people in his village that there’s no way he can be a harpy. He finds himself smiling despite the realization that his death is soon approaching, and murmurs, “You’re beautiful. If this is what dying is, I don’t think I’d mind going with you.”
The boy doesn’t react to Shou’s words. He doesn’t even know if this mystical, ominous, alluring creature can understand his language, though he likes to believe the near-imperceptible lift of his eyebrows is an indication that maybe he can after all. If he does, he makes no effort to respond, simply slides his hands along Shou’s cheeks to gently cup his face between them. He leans over Shou’s unmoving form until his face is mere inches away, his warm breath ghosting over Shou’s skin. Shou wrinkles his nose instinctively against it, feels feathers tickling the bare skin of his arms, and then the boy closes the gap between them.
Shou feels lips press against his, warm and soft, and he draws in a shocked breath through the corners of his mouth. The kiss is careful and awkwardly angled, Shou’s head turned in the wrong direction for it to feel natural, but there’s no discomfort behind it. The dark-haired boy lets out a long sigh against his lips that fills his lungs with fuzz and butterflies, the sensation sending tremors down his spine and raising goose bumps along his arms. A numbness starts in the pit of his stomach and spreads outward, a comfortable heaviness weighing down his limbs and making his eyelids droop as though he’s about to fall asleep. So this is what dying feels like, he thinks, the last thought his brain can manage before his eyes fall closed and he succumbs to the darkness pulling at his mind for good.
---
Shou regains consciousness in phases. The first thing to return to him is his sense of touch, poking at the edges of his foggy mind in the form of a weight that pushes him down into something soft. He feels pleasantly warm and cozy, his head cushioned by a material that reminds him of the soft wool he sheers off of the sheep in his village every summer. His fingers twitch when he realizes he can feel them again, but he doesn’t dare move lest he ruin the comfort of the moment too quickly.
The next thing to return to him is his hearing. He registers, faintly, the sound of movement not far from where he’s laying, the clang of metal on metal or the shifting of fabric nearby. At one point he hears the sound of someone humming in a voice he doesn’t recognize, a melody that comes across only slightly out of tune. The humming is incredibly alluring, and the more he listens, the more he’s desperate to find the source of the voice so he can tell them how mundanely beautiful it is.
It’s this desire that prompts Shou to open his eyes at last. He blinks a few times, letting his eyes adjust to the light that filters into the room from the skylight overhead. He wiggles his feet experimentally, legs shifting beneath a thin blanket that’s been tucked around him securely. He takes a deep breath, then rolls onto his side with little difficulty, propping himself up on one elbow so he can orient himself in his new surroundings.
It doesn’t take him long to realize that he’s not dead after all, the pains in his head and soreness in his shoulder from when he’d fallen an indicator that this isn’t the afterlife. He lifts one hand sluggishly to rub his eyes before glancing around, taking in the humble room he’s found himself in.
He’s laying on a bed atop a mattress stuffed with sheep’s wool and feathers, it’s edges carefully shaped to allow for a flat, comfortable surface to rest on. The afghan now bunched around his waist is also made of wool, dyed and knit by hand from the looks of it, and Shou takes a moment to run his fingers over the surface of it admiringly before he slides his sluggish legs out from under it. If it isn’t for the ache in his head and shoulder he might think he’s dreaming, with the way his fuzzy mind doesn’t quite grasp reality and the soft but constant hummed tune tries to lull him back to bed. He feels like he’s crossed over into another world, bare feet sinking into the coarse fur of the elk pelt that covers a portion of the house’s wooden floor.
The whole house appears to be one single room. The bed Shou is sitting on is set up against the wall furthest from the front door, nestled comfortably in the corner under a window. A shelf housing rows of neatly-folded clothes sits beside an identical empty one, and on the other side of that he can see a second bed, a matching knit afghan neatly tucked around it. It looks like it’s been tucked in very carefully and deliberately.
Gripping the shelf at his side, Shou hauls himself uncertainly to his feet. He sways slightly, reaching his other hand up to his face for a moment as a wave of dizziness washes over him. It passes, though, the dark spots clearing after a few seconds. He releases his hold on the shelf, taking a shaky breath to steady himself before he continues to explore the little cottage.
A neat kitchenette is set up against one wall, a large wood stove and oven taking up most of the space. A stone chimney rises from it to vent the smoke, disappearing through the sturdy roof of the house. Wooden countertops line the rest of the wall, held up by thin, hand-carved beams slotted into holes in the floor, and on top of them lay bowls of fruit and jars of various spices, filling the house with a mixture of aromas that make Shou’s nose tingle. Above the countertops, rows of shelves hold bowls, pans, pots, plates, and even some utensils. Large spoons and spatulas hang in rows from hooks underneath them, each one just a little different from the others.
In the center of the room is a modest kitchen table, made from smooth wood and accompanied by four matching chairs. In the center of it, a woven doily cushions a tall, thin glass vase, inside of which are resting a handful of sunflowers. A few brown, dry petals have fallen from them, but they look otherwise healthy and alive, their clipped ends half-submerged in clear water. Shou smooths his hand over the natural wood, feeling the veins and notches beneath his fingertips. The table is finished with a lacquer that gives off a pleasant floral scent, like lavender. Shou’s never seen a table this nice before, not even in the huge houses of the richest people in his town. He can’t help but marvel at all the personal touches he sees all over the place, each and every item in the house handmade with a skill and precision that he’s only seen from the master carpenters that come to sell their wares in his tiny village.
The house’s third wall is lined from floor to ceiling with shelves. Some of them contain little trinkets - shiny rocks, wooden carvings, stuffed dolls with embroidered eyes and patchwork limbs, beaded necklaces and polished rings - while others are filled entirely with books. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, brightly colored spines propped up next to black ones. Some of them look like they’ve been bound in a factory, their pages perfectly even and titles printed on, while others are bound with string and leather and are labeled by hand with dark ink. Shou can tell their owner has organized them very intentionally, but he can’t quite figure out how. Fiction novels sit beside textbooks on physics and mathematics, historical journals lay propped between children’s picture books, and in one corner he even manages to find a few books in a different language, all of them written by hand.
He pulls one out and thumbs through it briefly, and finds it filled with still-life drawings between lines of text he can’t read. There are illustrations of mountain scenery, of lakeshores sprouting cattail reeds and waterfalls careening over jagged cliffs. There are sketches of fruits and flowers, animals and cloudy skies, each of them incredibly detailed and true to life. He has to resist the urge to touch them, a habit he might indulge with the paintings and photographs in his home, but he really doesn’t want to smudge art like this.
He turns the page once more and finds himself in awe all over again. Staring back at him is a beautiful sketch of a boy, sitting in a grassy field with his legs drawn up to his chest. His back is facing Shou, his head tilted up to stare at the sky above, and stretched out from his back are two massive, gorgeous wings. They dwarf the boy with their sheer size, and yet they seem to fit him perfectly, arching up over his head and sloping back down until the ends of them just barely brush the grass behind him. On the boy’s face is a serene smile, eyes soft with fondness and bright with innocent admiration. His hair is carefully shaped, blunt bangs brushing his ears and forming a ring around his head, and Shou has the fleeting thought that his haircut would look incredibly stupid on anyone else but him. Instead, the subject of the drawing manages to make it look charming, in a plain sort of way, and Shou can’t help but wonder how accurate the drawing is to how this person must really look, if he exists at all.
Shou closes the book and replaces it as though he’d never touched it at all, and finally wanders toward the open front door of the house. The closer he gets to it, the louder and more clear the humming becomes, the soft sound quickly swallowed by the noise of the empty fields around them. Shou leans against the door frame and peeks around the corner, breathing stalling when he lays eyes on the source of the noise. He recognizes him instantly.
The boy is young, that much is clear to see. In fact, he looked to be around Shou’s age, or maybe a little older. He’s taller than Shou is, though not by much, but his build is much slimmer, a lightness to his stature that Shou doubts he can replicate. Everything about him is long, from his legs to his arms to the fingers loosely holding the handle of the broom that he sweeps in gentle arcs, chasing fallen leaves from the porch’s wooden floor. His skin is sun-dark, turned a muted copper as a result of long hours outdoors, and his back and shoulders are nearly entirely bared by the backless halterneck top he wears. Shou finds his eyes drawn immediately to the soft edges of his shoulders and the gentle curves of his arms, slim but toned, like a runner’s, and to the divot in the small of his back where his spine curves and disappears into the waistband of his pants. His thin feet are protected by a pair of sturdy-looking leather sandals, held unmoving by the fitted leather straps that secure them.
The most amazing part about him, however, is the pair of pitch-black wings that sprout from his shoulder blades, framed by the seams of his backless shirt. Their feathers shimmer in iridescent hues, sometimes appearing more blue or purple or red depending on what angle the light hits them from. Even half-folded, they take up a great deal of space, even more so than the boy himself does: they’re easily almost as tall as he is, the tops of them level with his head and the ends of his flight feathers hovering at the curve of his calves. They’re beautiful, like something from a fairy tale or a fable, and Shou has to stop himself from rushing over and impulsively threading his fingers into the downy feathers that poke out from between the boy’s shoulders just to see if they’re as soft as they look.
Shou isn’t sure how many seconds he stares before the boy notices his presence, instinctively turning his head to look at him with eyes that are wide with surprise. His humming stops abruptly, as does his sweeping, and he stumbles over his own movements just a bit as he straightens himself up and holds the broomstick to his chest in a distinctly protective manner. “You’re awake,” he says, then winces at his own obvious observation.
Shou can’t help the grin that comes to his face. “Nah, I’m just sleepwalking,” he replies teasingly, shifting his weight off the doorframe to just stand on the threshold of the house. Now that he’s not staring at the floor, Shou can get a good luck at the boy’s face, and he takes advantage of it to give him another once-over. His tan face is all soft curves, and his cheeks still hold just a hint of leftover fat from his childhood years, giving it a rounded look. His hair is short on the sides and longer on top, and it spikes out wildly in every direction. Shou can’t tell if it’s intentional or not, but he can’t help but find it charming anyway. Some of the untamed hair falls into his forehead, framing eyes that aren’t quite humanesque. It takes him a few seconds to realize that the boy’s eyes are pale yellow where a normal man’s would be white, and his irises are all black, not a sliver of color coming to them. They flit over him restlessly, taking in his appearance the same way Shou is taking in his. Now that he’s getting a closer look, he can see the small, dark feathers that sprout in odd places, like the strips of skin between the corners of his eyes and his ears, or along the curve of his shoulders. It’s simultaneously fascinating and just a little bit unnerving, seeing someone who looks so much like him but still so different.
The boy’s brow furrows at Shou’s unwithheld snark, lips pursing in a minute frown that Shou finds surprisingly endearing. “Right…” he murmurs uncertainly, moving to balance his broom against the rail that surrounds the porch. He clears his throat into his closed hand, clearly uncomfortable, then adds, “How do you feel?”
Shou hums, grin softening into something a little more genuine in response to the boy’s concern. “Well, I’m not dead, so that’s good,” he answers. “Thanks for taking care of me, by the way. I was, uh, pretty sure I was gonna die back there, before you showed up out of nowhere.”
The boy nods. “Yes, you mistook me for some sort of angel,” he confirms. Shou sees the corner of his mouth twitch, like he wants to smile but has stopped himself before he can. “There’s no need to mention it. You’re lucky it was me, though, and not another human, otherwise there would have been nothing they could have done.”
Well, if that isn’t ominous, Shou doesn’t know the meaning of the word. “I was that far gone, huh?” he sighs, raising a hand to push a few loose strands of hair back into place, slicked away from his forehead. “How did you manage to bring me back from the brink, anyway? I remember that you kissed me, which was… well, it was weird, I guess, and then I totally passed out.” From the time he’d lost consciousness on the forest floor until now he has no memories, no way to know how much time has passed since then.
“Kissed you?” the boy echoes, looking confused for a moment before he seems to realize what Ritsu’s talking about. “Oh, you mean when I lent you my breath? That was just a spell. I put you into a coma, essentially, to conserve your energy output before you starved to death.”
“You can do magic?” Shou breathes, eyes wide with awe. “That’s amazing! No one in my village can do magic, they don’t have the genes for it. Human characteristic, apparently, but I’ve always thought it would be cool to learn. What other kinds of magic can you do?” The words tumble from his lips without much forethought, even as the boy shifts uncomfortably on his feet in front of him.
The boy lifts a hand to absentmindedly rub at his opposite arm, glancing away. “Why don’t we sit down?” he suggests after a moment of silence, gesturing toward the table sitting, lonesome, in the middle of the one-room house. “I think there’s probably some stuff we should talk about, and you should really get something to eat if you want to get your strength back.” That said, he moves into the open front door, not bothering to wait and see if Shou’s following. The wings on his back rustle quietly as he walks, and Shou has to keep himself from falling into another speechless stupor as he watches the way the light touches them.
The growl of his stomach is what saves him this time, and he stifles a laugh at its fantastic comedic timing. “Yeah, food sounds pretty sweet right now,” he agrees. Before he goes inside, though, he drifts over to the rail and peeks out at the scenery that surrounds them. The house is set up on the bank of a river that rushes down from a tall mountain behind them and disappears into the thick forest on the house’s other side. Shou doesn’t recognize the scenery at all, but he can’t bring himself to worry too much when this new change of location is so pretty.
After a few seconds he moves back into the house, spotting the black-winged boy sorting through the bowl of fruit on his countertop. He pulls a few pieces out and moves them into another, smaller bowl, alongside a small loaf of sweet-smelling bread. He looks nervous, Shou notes, and when the boy glances sideways to meet his eyes he’s quick to avert his gaze again. Shou wonders if he looks as strange to the boy as the boy does to him, if they’re both anomalies of their separate civilizations. Judging by the empty scenery all around the little cottage, though, the boy doesn’t have much of a civilization to fall back on, so maybe he’s just nervous to meet another person at all.
“What’s your name?” Shou asks, sliding into one of the four sturdy chairs. It doesn’t even rock under his weight, each of its four legs the perfect length to sit level on the floor. He can’t help but feel another surge of amazement that nearly everything in this house has been crafted by hand.
The boy turns and slides the fruit and bread onto the table between them, hesitating for just a second before taking a seat across the table from Shou. “It’s Ritsu,” he replies, tone soft and uncertain. “What’s yours?”
Ritsu. The name is surprisingly mundane, the kind of name that, if Shou heard it called in his own village on any given day, would blend right in with the rest of the locals. “Call me Shou,” he says, leaning one elbow on the table in front of him and propping his chin up in his hand. “Where is this place? I’ve never been to this side of the forest before. Seems peaceful,” he continues, conjuring up a map of the area surrounding his village in his head. He wonders how far he’d managed to walk before passing out, and his much farther Ritsu had carried him in order to end up here.
Ritsu nods his head, letting one hand rest on top of the natural wood table while the other reaches for a slice of the bread between them. He tears a piece off of it to eat, and it’s then that Ritsu notices his hands. They’re flecked with tiny feathers that sprout from his wrists and shift when he moves, and they’re tipped with talons that look much sharper than Shou’s blunted nails. They remind him a bit of the unnecessarily long nails that the rich women in his town wear, painted in gaudy colors and long enough that it makes it difficult for them to do something as simple as holding a pencil properly. Ritsu seems undeterred by them, however, pulling apart the bread with coordinated hands that are simultaneously gentle and precise. “Not too far from where I found you. I would tell you what I call it, but it won’t mean anything to anyone other than me,” he replies in a very unhelpful way. After a moment, he reaches out and picks up a second slice of bread, holding it out to Shou.
Shou blinks, meeting Ritsu’s expectant gaze across the table, and accepts the bread from his outstretched hand. He tries to ignore the way their fingers brush against each other as he does, tries not to shiver when he feels the little feathers at his wrist tickle his fingertips. “Thanks,” he sighs, bringing it to his mouth and taking a bite of it without bothering to pick it to pieces like Ritsu is.
“So… what’s it like being a harpy?” Shou asks after another moment of tense silence. “You’re so mysterious out here, living by yourself. The stories say harpies thirst for their next kill and are never satisfied, but you don’t seem so bloodthirsty to me.”
Ritsu looks up at him with an expression that Shou can only place as offended, eyes narrowed and brows knit together. Then he scoffs, face screwing up in unhidden condemnation. “Humans will come up with any excuse to rile each other up, won’t they?” he replies contemptuously. “And I’m not a harpy, don’t compare me to those folk tales. Harpies don’t exist, that’s just the name the humans gave to my people after finding traces of us. We’ve never hunted humans.”
Shou tilts his head, leaning a little further forward in his seat. “Then what should I call you?” he asks.
Ritsu huffs out a breath, tearing another piece of bread from his slice. “You can call me by my name. It’s not like you’ll ever meet another one of me again,” he answers quietly, and the bitterness in his words is palpable.
Shou purses his lips, a bit unnerved at the sudden tenseness in the air, and casts a glance at the untouched bed, nestled in the corner beside the empty shelf. “What about the extra bed? It belongs to someone, doesn’t it?” he asks, watching Ritsu’s face carefully to gauge his response.
Ritsu stands up and turns his back to Shou, moving over to the counter and filling two glasses with water from a pitcher. “It used to be my brother’s,” he answers after a quiet moment, “but he’s not around to use it anymore.”
Curious as he is, Shou’s not so confident he should parse this particular subject. He can practically see the muscles in Ritsu’s back tense up as he speaks, his shoulders hunching up a little closer to his ears and his head purposefully turned away. “I see,” he just says instead. By now, his bread is long gone.
Ritsu returns to the table after another minute or so, sliding a glass of water in his direction. “You need to drink lots of fluids to replenish the ones you lost,” he instructs. “It was the dehydration that got to you first. How long were you in the woods for, anyway?”
Shou cups his hands around the glass and sighs. “Five days. It was stupid of me to think I could make it through the forest,” he grumbles, feeling his regrets from his days of walking catching up to him now.
Ritsu just nods, face carefully impassive. “In the late summer heat, it’s no wonder you got so weak so fast. You probably sweated out most of your body fluids in the first couple of days,” he explains. “Speaking of which, you should really change out of those sweaty clothes, they reek.”
Shou jumps, feeling a rush of mortification as he looks down at his bedraggled appearance. Now that Ritsu brings it up, he can definitely smell his own body odor clinging to his shirt, and he’s certain he must be covered in dirt and grass stains. He screws up his face in disgust, nodding his agreement. “Ugh, you’re right, how did I not notice before?” he sighs. He downs the rest of the glass of water as Ritsu moves over to the shelf where all his clothes are carefully arranged, then stands up to follow him, hovering a foot or so away as Ritsu peruses his wardrobe.
Ritsu turns to face Shou for a moment, looking him up and down, and Shou does his best not to squirm under his sharp, meticulous gaze until the winged boy turns away again and begins thumbing through a pile of shirts on one of the middle shelves. At least, Shou assumes they’re shirts, but they look nothing like the tee-shirts and button-ups Shou usually wears. When Ritsu pulls one out of the pile and holds it in front of him, his suspicions are confirmed.
“Wear these,” Ritsu instructs, pushing the top into his hands alongside a pair of loose-fitting cloth pants. “They’re thin and have good ventilation, so you won’t overheat as easily.”
“Uh, thanks,” Shou responds awkwardly, laying the fresh clothes on the bed. He changes his pants first, which is easy enough, then reaches over his head and grabs his shirt by the collar, pulling it up and over his head in a smooth, well-practiced motion. Then he reaches for Ritsu’s lent top, and pauses when he sees that it’s less of a shirt and more of a flat piece of fabric. Backless, like Ritsu’s current top is. “Um, not to sound ungrateful, but how the hell am I supposed to wear this?” he asks, incredulous. “It’s got no back on it!”
Ritsu casts him a confused glance, tilting his head. “Of course not, it’s kind of hard to wear a shirt with a back on it when you have these,” he points out, gesturing to the sprawling wings that sprout from his shoulders. “It’s not totally backless, anyway, it has hooks at the bottom that clasps in the back.”
“This is super weird,” Shou mumbles, mostly to himself, but Ritsu’s indignant snort says that he’s heard as well. Still, it’s better than nothing, so he slips the halter neck of the shirt over his head and fiddles with it until it lays somewhat comfortably against the back of his neck. It rides high in the front, brushing the bottom of his throat, then swoops down below his arms to hug him around his waist. He moves his hands to clasp the back of it like Ritsu had described, his fingers finding the little copper hooks, but as much as he tries, he can’t get the pieces to fit together. “This thing is so complicated,” he curses.
Ritsu lets out a sigh that’s probably meant to be annoyed, and he takes the hooks from Shou’s fingers. “Let me,” he says, more of a demand than an offer to help, and deftly fits the little metal hooks together so the shirt is snug around his waist. The pants are high-waisted, riding up past his belly button, but even with the extra fabric in place the shirt still leaves slivers of his stomach exposed.
“You really wear this stuff everyday?” Shou asks, tugging at the edge of the top and attempting to stare at his own back to confirm that it really is as bare as Ritsu’s is.
“Only in the summer,” Ritsu replies. “Summer clothes are easy, since I don’t have to worry about covering the skin around my wings. My winter clothes are a bit more complicated.” He gestures to his bottom shelf, but without picking up one of the aforementioned winter shirts and looking at it himself, Shou has no way to gauge what ‘complicated’ could possibly mean. “In the summer it’s easiest to wear these kinds of tops, or just not wear a shirt at all.”
Shou nods, figuring it makes about as much sense as it possibly can considering he’s currently standing in front of an honest-to-god winged person.
Ritsu takes a step back and admires his handiwork now that the outfit is properly in place. “You look much better now,” he comments. “Your dull clothes are ridiculously boring, you know. You’d think humans would have some sense of color.”
“We do, that’s just what I usually wear when I go hiking,” Shou replies, scooping up his faded brow tee-shirt and laying it out carefully. “And if you ask me, it’s you who looks more ridiculous!”
Ritsu makes a sound half between a sniff of disdain and a laugh, and when Shou glances over he sees the dark-haired boy fighting another smile. It makes Shou wonder why he feels the need to keep his reactions to himself, what kinds of reservations he has about Shou that keep him from letting loose and expressing himself. “Say, Ritsu,” he starts, moving to fold up his tee-shirt and pants until he figures out what to do with them later, “why’d you save me, anyway?”
The question makes Ritsu stop in his tracks, halfway to the table to gather and replace the bowls and glasses he’d used for breakfast. “Why do you ask?” he retorts, answering Shou’s question with one of his own, and it comes across defensive.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t seem terribly fond of humans,” Shou says, sitting down on the edge of the bed he’d woken up in. He shifts uncomfortably in his borrowed clothes, trying to ignore the way he can feel the drafts on his back now. “I mean, I can see why, humans do some pretty shitty stuff all the time, so what made you want to stop and rescue someone like me?”
Ritsu swallows, picking up the glasses and bowls and dropping them in the sink to be washed later. He lets his hands fall against the rim of the sink, bracing against the surface of it, and is quiet for a few long moments, brows knitted together so tightly that lines form between them. A deep frown tugs at his lips, lips that Shou knows to be soft and warm. “I don’t know,” he says after a moment, quiet and contemplative and maybe just a little lost.
There’s really nothing Shou can say to that, so he doesn’t say anything.
---
Shou finds himself in very little rush to get home, and to his surprise, Ritsu doesn’t rush him to leave. When Shou asks, he brushes it off with empty words, telling him he isn’t back to full strength yet and that he should wait another night, but three days later, when Shou is back to feeling well again, he still hesitates to leave.
He’s not quite sure what keeps him rooted to this barren, empty space. Ritsu is the only humanoid creature for miles, which would normally make Shou ache for the bustle of the marketplace or the empty chatter of the village women gossiping by the church, but instead he finds himself soothed by the noise of the wind in the trees nearby and the lull of Ritsu’s soft humming in the early mornings when he doesn’t realize Shou can hear him.
“Aren’t you weirded out?” Ritsu asks him once, when they’re sitting in the twin porch chairs underneath the hand-thatched awning overhead. The woven straw back of it itches against Shou’s exposed shoulders, but he’s growing more used to it every day. Ritsu continues, “A person with wings like a bird’s, clawed fingers and a feathered face. Doesn’t it make you even a little afraid?”
Shou laughs, loud and unwithheld. “Of course I’m weirded out, you’re like something out of a fairy tale. Afraid, though? You haven’t done anything to make me afraid of you,” he replies, flashing Ritsu a bright grin in return. “You saved my life, after all, it would be kinda rude if I was scared of you after all that.”
Ritsu hums, soft and thoughtful, and runs his fingers absentmindedly through the feathers of one wing. Shou’s caught him doing so a few times now, has watched the way he straightens the crooked feathers and lets the loose ones fall to the ground to be swept up later. He’s preening, Shou realizes, and the thought causes a smile to tug at the corners of his mouth. The little quirks he manages to catch Ritsu indulging in only endear him more to his new friend, if he can consider this friendship, and he finds himself feeling just a bit more fond of Ritsu with each day that passes. “I suppose it’s a good thing, that you’re not afraid,” Ritsu says after a long pause, his black-eyed gaze fixed in a point in the distance that Shou can’t follow.
Shou simply shrugs in reply. “I think it is,” he offers, and sees the way Ritsu softens to it, ever-so-slightly.
There’s a stretch of silence between them, comfortable and calm, and then Ritsu blurts, “Let’s go somewhere.”
“Okay,” Shou agrees immediately, sitting up in his seat, and he tries his best not so show how elated he is at Ritsu’s sudden, impulsive request. In the few days they’ve been together Ritsu has already proven himself to be thoughtful to a fault; he refuses to make even small decisions without thoroughly considering all of his options, so that fact that Ritsu has decided to do something without noticeable forethought sends a thrill of excitement through Shou. “Where should we go?” he asks, curious about what destination Ritsu has in mind.
Ritsu pushes himself to his sandal-clad feet, shaking his wings out and scattering a few dark feathers on the porch. “Someplace I used to go a lot. Get what you need, and we can go now.”
Shou doesn’t wait to be asked twice. He ducks into the house and grabs his tennis shoes, the ones in which he’d walked miles to get here, and slips them on over his sockless feet. Then, as somewhat of an afterthought, he snatches up his backpack from where he’d propped it up against the mostly-empty shelf by the bed he’d claimed and hefts it over one shoulder.
When he turns to head back out the front door, he spots Ritsu standing in front of one of his many bookshelves, holding a hand-bound book in his clawed hands. He runs the fingers of one hand over the cover of it, eyes downcast, and Shou is struck by the wistful, melancholic expression that crosses his face for just a moment before he slides the book into his own bag and settles the strap of it over his shoulder. A question perches on the tip of Shou’s tongue, a quiet curiosity that he has to hold himself back from voicing. There are plenty of things about himself that Ritsu’s hasn’t told him, and that’s okay with him. After all, Shou has plenty of things about himself that he hasn’t told Ritsu, either. It doesn’t keep his mind from wandering, though, wondering what those things could be.
They walk, because even though Ritsu says flying would be faster, he’s adamant that walking will be easier. Shou’s not sure whether or not Ritsu can support his weight and fly at the same time, anyway, and he doesn’t mind walking. The hardest part is scaling the hill behind the house, which is steep and a little slippery from the morning dew that still clings to it, and by the time they reach the crest of it both of them are just a little out of breath.
Shou’s breathlessness is partially due to something else, though, as Ritsu gestures with one feathered hand to the little valley nestled in the hills and Shou’s eyes land on what is quite possibly the most beautiful sight he’s seen since leaving his village all those days ago.
At the bottom of the hill is what appears to be a field of wildflowers, though most of them have wilted under the late summer sun’s glaring rays already. The few that are still standing are bright against the green of the rest of the valley, poking out of the tall grass so that their bright petals can be seen by all who pass by. Most notably, clumps of little sunflowers like the ones in Ritsu’s vase at his house can be seen cropping up all over the field, the bright sunlight only serving to make them look even more vibrant than before.
“Woah, this place is awesome!” Shou exclaims, face blooming into a broad grin. He finds himself reaching for Ritsu’s hand on instinct, fingers curling around his palm and pulling him down the hillside. The surprised yelp he lets out only serves to make Shou’s grin widen, but he’s conscious of the way Ritsu squeezes his hand back so he doesn’t lose his grip.
Shou doesn’t let go until the ground beneath their feet evens out again and he finds himself in one of the little sunflower patches. He drops Ritsu’s hand and flops unceremoniously down into the grass with a laugh, kicking his feet into the air in a burst of energy. The grass and dirt is rough against the exposed skin of his back, but he can’t bring himself to mind as he stares up at the great blue sky and the fluffy white clouds that occasionally cross it. The sun is warm, but not unbearably so, and its rays make everything around him look and feel so much brighter than he’s used to. He takes a deep breath of the sweet-smelling air, limbs flopping out all around him starfish-style, and lets himself be blessedly still for a few minutes.
Ritsu continues past him, black wings folded comfortably against his back as he drifts deeper into the field. Shou cranes his neck back and manages to catch glimpses of him through the tall grass as he walks, stopping periodically to bend over and touch the flowers that poke up through the grass. He looks peaceful, Shou notes, expression holding the closest thing to a smile Shou’s ever seen from him, but there’s a hint of bitterness behind it, too, that makes Shou’s own high spirits dip just a bit. He sits up, turning to give Ritsu a proper look, and watches as he sits down cross-legged in the grass not too far away and plucks a small but bright purple flower from the ground. He twists its stem between his fingers, quietly observing it, and Shou is suddenly and surprisingly reminded of the pencil sketch he’s stumbled upon during his first morning at Ritsu’s house.
Hit with a sudden urge, Shou quickly snatches up his backpack from where he’d discarded it at his side and opens it up, removing his sketchbook and a tin of pencils he’d brought with him from his home in his village. He shifts himself to sit cross-legged on the grass, flipping the book open to the nearest empty page.
He’s not sure if he can consider himself an artist, at least not by trade, but the scratch of his sketching pencil on paper is a familiar and comforting noise. Sketching has become somewhat of a hobby over the last few years, a way of relieving boredom or filling time when he has it. Sometimes he sketches memories, or tries to copy down the faces of people passing outside his window. This time, he finds his eyes drawn to Ritsu: to the not-quite-bittersweet expression on his face, to the little purple flower he twirls between clawed fingers, to the long grass that half-hides his legs and sways gently in the warm summer breeze. It’s like a painting, the kind of image that’s surreal enough that it shouldn’t be able to exist in the real world, and yet Shou sits, and stares at it, and has the undeniable urge to cement this moment for posterity in graphite.
His sketches are fast and rough at first as he focuses on copying down the base image and plotting out his canvas with light lines and geometric shapes. He roughs in the shape of Ritsu’s form sitting in the grass, cross-legged, one hand propping himself up in the grass while the other lightly grips the little bloom he’d claimed for himself. He sketches the curve of his shoulder and the arches of his wings, stretched out to accommodate their length while sitting, and attempts to capture the effortless messiness of his wild, untamed black hair. With softer, more deliberate strokes, he brings to life the line of Ritsu’s jaw and the slope of his nose, all soft edges and muted curves. There isn’t a sharp angle on him, and when he moves he does so with effortless grace and purpose that just serves to add to his ethereal beauty.
Shou would be hard-pressed to deny at this point that he does find Ritsu beautiful, and not just for his shimmering feathers or the way he seems to glow in a way only mythical creatures can. There are little things that bring this thought to mind, like his slender, careful fingers, or the annoyed little frown he gets whenever Shou tries to tease him. He’s never seen Ritsu really smile, but he imagines his smile must be beautiful, too. There’s no way it can’t be, coming from him.
He moves his pencil to capture the set of Ritsu’s mouth, but when he looks up to get another look, he finds that his companion has moved. He blinks, momentarily confused, until a distinct shadow falls over his sketchbook.
“What’re you doing over here? You look really intense,” Ritsu comments, leaning over Shou’s shoulder to get a look at what he’s working on. His expression quickly changes from confused to surprised when he recognizes the rough sketch, though. “Is that me?” he asks.
“You moved! Now it’s ruined,” Shou groans melodramatically. There’s no real anger or annoyance behind his words, though, and his sketch is mostly finished, anyway. “Don’t you know that the first rule of modeling is that you have to stay still? Otherwise the artist has to start over.” He tips his head back and offers Ritsu a smile, if only to reassure him that he’s really only joking.
Ritsu raises a brow at him, unimpressed, and turns his attention back to the rough sketch in Shou’s hands. “I didn’t know you were an artist,” he says, rather than trying to pick apart Shou’s attempted joke. “Why me, though?”
Shou shrugs, setting down his pencil for now and craning his neck back to look at Ritsu upside-down. “I just thought it would make for a good drawing,” he replies honestly. “I can leave it unfinished if you’re uncomfortable.”
Ritsu moves to sit at Shou’s side rather than leaning over him, shaking his head. “No, it’s fine, you can finish it,” he replies, and one of his hands drifts to the bag draped over one arm. He hesitates for just a moment before reaching inside and pulling out the hand-bound book Shou had seen him stow away earlier. He turns it over in his hands once, twice, then holds it out to Shou. “I guess you could say I’m a bit of an artist myself. I sketch in my journal sometimes, when I see something nice that I want to remember. You can look, if you want.”
“You’d let me read your journal? Hope you don’t have any deep, dark secrets in here you don’t want me to know about,” Shou quips, cracking open the book’s leather cover.
Ritsu snorts out what might be considered a laugh, tapping the first page with one long nail. “I wrote it in my mother’s language, you won’t be able to read it anyway,” he points out, quirking a brow in an amused manner. He drags a finger to the top of the page. “This is my handwriting, and this,” he adds, running his finger down the page to where the shape of the unfamiliar words changes just a bit, “is my brother’s handwriting. We used to take turns writing little passages in these books.”
The implied “before he left” hangs in the air between them, unspoken but felt and understood all the same. Shou nods, noting the way Ritsu’s neat, even script contrasts with his brother’s more messy, sloped style. He flips through a few pages of indecipherable writing before he reaches the first aforementioned drawing, a sketch of a new garden filled with tiny green sprouts. Each row of plants is meticulously labeled with a little sign written in that same language, unreadable to Shou, but it’s an impressive sketch all the same.
Most of the sketches in the book of are a similar calibre, still life drawings or landscape sketches of places Shou has yet to see. “You’re really talented,” he tells Ritsu after flipping through a few of them. In between the sketches, Ritsu and his brother’s alternating handwriting take up most of the extra space.
“I’ve been drawing since I was a kid,” Ritsu replies, reaching over Shou’s arm to flip the pages of the journal of his own accord until he reaches one in particular. His hand lingers on the page before he sits back and lets Shou look at it himself, pale yellow eyes trained on his expression from beside him.
Shou blinks in recognition when he lays eyes on the sketch Ritsu’s chosen to share with him. It’s different from the rest, far more detailed, and it takes up an entire page of the little journal. The only writing on it is a few letters written in the corner with Ritsu’s neat handwriting: some sort of caption, Shou guesses. A name, or maybe a date.
The sketch is of another boy, one that Shou recognizes, because he has the same face as the boy from the sketch he’d seen in Ritsu’s other book just a few days ago. He looks like he can’t be more than a few years older than Ritsu is, his face carrying the same soft, childlike curves that Ritsu’s does. On his face is a small, tentative smile, shy, like he’d modeled for this but could never get quite comfortable enough to make the emotion come across natural. Faintly, Shou can make out laugh lines around the corners of his eyes, and dimples at the edges of his mouth where his smile shows his teeth. Like the other sketch, his hair is cut bluntly all the way around his head, leaving straight bangs that fall nearly into his eyes. There’s something undeniably endearing about the sketch, as though it’d been drawn with a great deal of affection. “Is this him?” Shou asks. He doesn’t need to clarify who he’s talking about.
Ritsu nods. “His name was Shigeo - is Shigeo, I mean,” he says, catching himself as he begins to refer to his brother in the past tense. “He’s about a year and a half older than me, though he never could really keep up with me, growing up. Where I was quick to pick up concepts and new skills, he always took just a little longer. My parents worried about him a lot.” As he speaks, his eyes flick down to the sketch in the journal, something undeniably sad in the way he speaks.
Shou swallows, watching Ritsu’s face as he speaks. “Where did they go?” he asks. Surely they couldn’t have abandoned him?
“My parents passed away a few years ago,” Ritsu says, letting his hand fall away from the book. He draws his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them, hugging them close to his body. “They were hunted by humans who were scared of them and their magic. They would have killed me, too, but Shige protected me.”
“You care a lot about him,” Shou murmurs, “and he cared a lot about you, so what changed?” After all, Shigeo isn’t here anymore. His bed and shelf are empty and there are no traces of him in the little house that used to belong to both of them, but at one point he’d been as active and present as Ritsu is now.
Ritsu’s expression darkens, and he leans forward to rest his chin atop his bent knees. A frown tugs at his mouth, and his gaze is distant. “He fell in love with a human,” he replies, the words barely travelling over the gentle noise of the wind, and Shou catches the way his voice wavers in an attempt to keep his emotions from coming through. “I didn’t like him. I tried to tell Shige that it was bad idea to get involved with humans, that he’d only get hurt in the long run, but he wouldn’t listen. Growing up, we always got along well, to the point where we only had a few silly little fights as brothers, but this was different. Neither of us was willing to change our mind.” His wings shift slightly against his back, drawing in around his shoulders as though to protect himself. “I said terrible things to him, about how I didn’t want to be his brother if he was going to choose a human over me. I told him that if he was going to make such a terrible decision, he might as well just leave. I didn’t think he’d take me seriously, at the time.”
Shou stares down at the sketch of Shigeo laying open in his lap and tries to imagine him standing beside a younger version of Ritsu, one with wide, dark eyes and arms that are a little shorter and chubbier than the ones he knows. He can easily picture a loving and dedicated siblings relationship between them, the kind Shou has never experienced himself but that he’s seen countless times in the children from his village, can easily wrap his mind around a protective Shigeo eager to please his genius little brother. It makes his heart ache to imagine what such a bad fight between the two of them must have felt like. It’s a vulnerable memory, the one that Ritsu has chosen to impart to him. “Why are you telling me all this?” he asks after a moment, folding the journal shut and holding it tightly with both hands. “Why save me, why let me hang around you for so long, why tell me about your family? I thought you hated humans.”
“I do hate them,” Ritsu says immediately, squeezing his knees closer to his chest, and his gaze hardens with regret and anger and loss. “They took my parents, they took my brother.” He pauses to take a breath, shaky and tense, and buries his face in his arms so that Shou can no longer see his face. “I hate them… but I don’t hate you.”
Shou forgets to breathe for a moment, stunned speechless. He’d known, of course, that Ritsu can’t possibly hate him, but it’s still shocking to have it laid out so plainly. Shou had never considered that he might be the exception to the rule, the lone redeemable human that Ritsu has chosen to place his bets on. That if he had been someone else, Ritsu might not have deigned it necessary to try to save his life. “But why me?” he repeats, desperate to know what part of himself was the part that Ritsu had seen and decided was worthy of saving. “Why am I different from everyone else who tried to cross that forest and never made it to the other side?”
Ritsu lets out a long breath into his arms before he raises his head once more. He still can’t look Shou in the eye, though, and he stares stubbornly at the patches of bright flowers instead. “Did you ever realize why the forest seemed so endless and impossible to navigate?” he asks. “It’s because it’s guarded by a magical trap. My brother and I laid it when our parents were killed, to keep humans from ever finding this place again. Anyone who walks into the forest is cursed to wander it until they die from starvation or are killed by wild animals.”
Shou hums, remembering the way his map had become all but useless once he’d walked deep enough into the forest. Without magic of his own, it would have been impossible to sense a trap laying in wait for him. “So that’s why I could never find the end, even after five days of walking,” he murmurs.
Ritsu nods. “Well, we both helped to lay down the spell, but Shigeo was always far stronger than I was when it came to magic. His powers are deeply rooted in people’s emotions, including his own, and it made it difficult for him to control them,” he continues, picking at the purple flower still pinched between his fingers. He tears a petal from it and lets it fall into the grass, nervous. “His powers created a link between the two of us and the emotions of those who would enter the forest. We could feel their anger and their killing intent, but we could also feel the fear they felt in their final moments, their regret and desire to keep living. I tried to ignore it, but Shigeo never could. He never admitted it out loud, but I could tell it tortured him inside, even as the people walking into the forest become fewer and far between. I think that his connection to the trap is part of what led him to start caring for the humans.” He pauses, lowering his gaze, and adds, “Empathy is a powerful thing.”
“So, you knew I was in the forest the whole time?” Shou clarifies, leaning forward and looking up into Ritsu’s face.
By this point, Ritsu’s plucked the flower bare, nothing but its brown middle left attached to the stem until Ritsu pinches that part off, too. “Yes,” he replies. There isn’t an ounce of regret in his voice, but after hearing his story, Shou can’t find it in himself to be annoyed by it. Ritsu continues, “As soon as you entered the forest, I knew you were there, but you seemed… different from the others. You weren’t scared, and you weren’t angry. You weren’t lost, either, like the children would that sometimes wander into the forest without knowing where they were. There was something driving you, I could tell, but it wasn’t a desire for revenge or self-preservation like the hunters that used to come after my brother and me.” He drops the flower’s browning stem, lets it be swallowed up by the tall grass around him. “I saved you because I could tell you didn’t come to hurt me, and because part of me was curious to see if a human really did exist who could look at me without fear or anger. I thought that maybe then, I could start to understand the feelings that would make my brother want to leave me behind.”
Shou swallows, glancing down at his legs, splayed out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. It hasn’t occurred to him until now just how insanely lucky he is to be alive right now, now fortunate it is that Ritsu had decided to let him be the one to change his mind about humanity. “Do you think you understand any better, now?” he asks, voice soft and curious.
Ritsu squeezes his legs impossibly tighter against his chest. “Yeah, I think I do,” he admits, but when Shou chances another glance at him, he doesn’t find peace or closure in Ritsu’s gaze like he might expect. Instead, Ritsu just slumps with regret. His dark eyes are clouded with grief, as though this discovery has condemned something within him. “I do, and that’s the scary part.”
---
Neither of them speaks on the way back to Ritsu’s house. The sun is beginning to set behind the horizon by the time they make it back, and Shou’s stomach is grumbling. He grabs an apple from the fruit bowl to graze on while Ritsu sweeps the feathers and early fall leaves from off the deck, and he tries not to think too hard about the implications of the day’s revelations. He plops down on the edge of the bed that used to be Shigeo’s, a person who Shou now has a name and a face to attach to it. A person who still has a place in this house, should he ever come back to reclaim it. It’s not a place that Shou can keep for himself much longer, and he knows it. Guess I have to go home sometime, huh? he thinks to himself, and the thought leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.
Ritsu comes inside and closes the door behind him, leaning the broom up in the corner by the coat rack. He moves quietly over to his shelf to change into his night clothes while Shou lays on the soft mattress, and when he’s ready to climb into bed himself, he turns to face him. “Shou,” he says, hesitantly, fiddling with the fingers on one of his hands. “I want you to know, I’m… I’m really glad I met you.”
Shou sits up in the bed, eyebrows raised in quiet surprise, but his reply is caught in his throat when he sees the small but undeniable smile on Ritsu’s face. It’s shaky, like he’s fighting the urge to stifle it the way he has so many times already, but it’s still there. It’s slightly crooked and, Shou notices, entirely humanesque, holding the same blunted incisors and sharp canines his own mouth carries. The sight of this little smile, simultaneously remarkable and unremarkable, is enough to send Shou’s heart somersaulting in his chest, the words on his tongue dying before they have the chance to see daylight.
It’s irrevocably beautiful, to Shou.
“I-I’m glad I met you, too,” he finally stammers, once he’s managed to get a grip on his thoughts long enough to form a coherent sentence, though he can’t quite suppress the awe-struck stutter that accompanies his words. “You’re a good friend, Ritsu. I’m really grateful that you decided to save me, that day.”
Ritsu doesn’t say anything in return, just flashes him another little smile and, oh, Shou could definitely get used to seeing that. Then he blows out the candle keeping the room dimly lit and plunges it into darkness, crawling into his own bed for the night.
---
Shou decides the following morning that it’s past time he returns to his village. He has a house and a job waiting for him at home, after all, or at least he hopes he still does, and while he doesn’t have any really close friends, his neighbors are bound to be wondering where he’s gone off to by now. He tells Ritsu as much as he packs up his sketchbook and his pencils and prepares to start the walk back home.
He pretends not to notice the way Ritsu stifles his disappointment under a layer of practiced calm. “Are you sure? If you need an extra day, it really wouldn’t be that big of a deal,” he offers, but Shou just shakes his head and offers Ritsu a bittersweet smile.
“No, I can’t do that. This was never meant to be permanent, anyway, I’ve just been borrowing your extra space from your brother. He’ll need it once he decides to come home,” he replies, gesturing to the empty bed and shelf nestled into the back corner of the house. “Although, it may be a good idea to invest in, like, a bedroll or something, in case he decides to bring his boyfriend with him.”
The suggestion makes Ritsu screw up his face in unhidden disgust, drawing a loud laugh out of Shou’s mouth at the sight of it. Ritsu rolls his eyes, long-suffering. “Yeah, alright,” he sighs, and follows Shou to the door to he can give him a proper send-off.
“You’re sure I won’t get lost again in there?” Shou asks, pointing to the magically trapped forest that lays sprawling in front of him. “I just walk straight, and I’ll make it home?”
Ritsu snorts, raising an incredulous brow at him. “Of course, I know what I’m doing,” he assures. “My brother may have been the one strong enough to lay the trap in the first place, but the illusion on it is all from me. I can manipulate it in any way I want. I won’t take you more than an hour or two to make it back without the trap getting in your way.”
Shou nods, taking comfort in Ritsu’s confidence as the two of them stand side-by-side facing the woods. “Well then, I guess this is goodbye,” he says, and tries not to let show the way the words make his heart fall and his throat feel just a little tighter.
Ritsu shakes his head, laying a hand on Shou’s shoulder. “It’s not ‘goodbye’, it’s ‘see you later’,” he corrects, and lets slip one of those small, kind smiles. “I don’t expect you’ll be able to resist coming back anyway, even if I tried to stop you, so I may as well give you permission to come visit before you end up lost in the forest again.” He plays it off in a casual manner, but the way his neck flushes just slightly pinker than usual gives away his true intentions.
Shou doesn’t bother to fight the grin that comes to his face at this, and before he can think better of it he pulls Ritsu in for a quick, tight hug. He catches the little squeak of surprise Ritsu makes in response to it, but his friend doesn’t pull away, lifting his arms to tentatively return the brief embrace. One of Shou’s hands finds its way into the downy feathers between Ritsu’s shoulders, soft as cotton between his fingers, while Ritsu’s splay against his back and squeeze him once, gently.
“Come back soon,” Ritsu mumbles against Shou’s shoulder before he pulls away, letting his hands linger for just a moment before he lets them drop back to his sides.
“Count on it,” Shou replies with a bright grin, offering Ritsu one last clap on the shoulder before he turns and begins to walk toward the forest. “I’ll see you later,” he adds over his shoulder, raising a hand in an energetic wave as he reaches the edge of the trees. He watches just long enough to see Ritsu return his wave before he turns and disappears into the forest, homeward bound.
---
When he would reach his lonely little house just under two hours later, his neighbors would greet him with worried words and frightened expressions, and when he would tell them where he’d gone and why, they would ask him if he’d found anything worthwhile after so many days away from home.
“No,” he would say, with a helpless little smile. “Nothing at all.”
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loverdrew · 7 years ago
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Overboard | 1
I’m overboard…
Intro: When you’re on a cruise ship to get away from life, the first thing on your mind isn’t to find love. That is, until you met him.
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“Ma’am I need to see your ticket please.” said the slightly older man as I stepped up next in line. I quickly handed him my ticket, and he simply smiled at me before letting me onto the ramp to board the beautifully massive ship. With two suitcases in my hand, and another purse on my shoulder, you could say I had enough on my plate, but as I entered the ship, a nice younger man offered me a strawberry and banana smoothie, complementary of course. Still, I smiled and took it, sipping as I continued to look at the decor in awe. There were plenty of shining chandeliers that hung so high above everyone’s heads, even the ones on the top floor. There was beautiful carpeting with royal gold designs that covered the entire floor. There was wood interior, and plenty of glass structure as well. I pulled my luggage roughly over to the counter where a woman was waiting for me to give her my information so I could get my room key and a dining area card, so I could eat to my heart’s content.
“Hello miss, have a handle on everything?” She humored me. I nodded and set my drink down, slightly laughing myself.
“Yes I just, need to get these up to my room so they won’t be a pain anymore.”
“I see, well just give me your name and phone number and I will quickly give you your room key and dining card.” I told her my name and phone number, and she nicely handed me my necessities for my trip. “Have a wonderful stay.” And with that, I was off.
I was located on the 2nd floor in the middle of the hallway, room 40B. Unlocking my door, I stepped in to find one of the most beautiful rooms I had ever stayed in. The interior design was modern yet fun. The walls were a muted Tiffany blue, the bed sheets were a crisp bright white, and the desk, tv stand, and dresser were shining wood. The bathroom had granite counter tops and a shower that was big enough for 3 or more people. I sighed happily to myself, finally away and free from the life I had been living only yesterday.
I opened the door on the other side of the room to reveal a small patio, and felt the sea breeze hit me with the salt water smell. I breathed in heavily, and leaned against the railing. A few moments of silence passed by before it was interrupted by my phone ringing. My heart started to pound so loud in a matter of seconds, but pulled it out only to find that it was Madison, my best friend.
“You scared me.” I said seriously.
“Calm down, you know he’s not going to find you now.” She spoke matter-of-factly.
“You never know, he’s a smart guy who knows me and my ways of doing things better than anyone else.”
“Hey, not better than me. Which is why I’m helping you through this okay.”
I sighed trying not to let the tears come down this time, they’ve been a constant thing on my face for the past 4 years…
“Okay Madi.”
“Are you on the ship? Did you get settled in?”
“Just boarded, going to put my clothes and shoes away after I grab some food, he literally wouldn’t even let me eat this morning so I’m running on empty.”
“Okay, good. I’m relieved you’re on there for 9 months, even though I’ll miss you like crazy.”
“Hey if you’re in Castaway Cay in 2 months, we’ll see each other.” I said to lighten up the mood, but she only chuckled.
“Settle in, and call me when you’re done eating. Maybe try talking to people, I’m sure there’s plently of 18-25 year olds there to keep you company.”
“Yeah but the only 20 year old I want here is you Madi.”
“Shut up. I’ll talk to you later. Love you, remember that.”
“Love you Madi.” And I hung up.
I continued to stare out into sea, watching the waves roll up and down and crash onto the side of the boat. The drop from here made your heart want to jump into your lungs as you looked down. Maybe a year ago I would’ve jumped at the chance to be free. Free from him, free from everyday life, free from myself and who I was. But I look now, and I see in my reflection that I am not who I was back then. I have grown, matured, become responsible, and capable of taking care of myself. For the next 9 months it’s me and only me, with nobody to get in my way of doing anything.
Before exiting my room, I swooped up my smoothie and went for the doorknob of my room. My intentions for the next few hours were to eat some brunch, then explore for a little bit, of course not looking at everything the ship had to offer just yet.
As I stepped out into the hall, back turned to make sure my door was locked, I turned around and was immediately knocked over and next thing I know I was staring at a fuzzy looking ceiling. I groaned at the pain that was growing on my back and continued to lay helpless on the ground. I felt another body on me, the heartbeat laying right over mine, and they too were groaning. I felt my smoothie now dripping over my face and running down my neck and chest. I slowly wiped off the sticky drink, and tried my best to sit up. The person above me moved quickly, and placed their luggage (which was also conveniently on top of me also) to the side of the hall against the wall. A hand rubbed my back, and another tried wiping the smoothie off my fae gently.
“Look I’m so sorry I can explain,” yup, this was definitely a boy, figures. “It’s really stupid but my brother and I were racing to our room to see who’d get there first because whoever was the first one there would get the bed near the patio and-“
He stopped talking once he saw me open my eyes. I looked up to find a boy who looked as if he was sculpted by the gods themselves. His lips parted but perfectly light pink and plump, his hair disheveled but somehow perfectly placed, and his dark yet glowing eyes stared down into my timid ones. I quickly continued to wipe my face of any strawberry or banana mixture, and tried to avert my eyes from his. He was too beautiful to be in the presence of someone like myself.
“W-why are you looking at me like that?” I mentally face palmed myself. What a bold question to ask, when did I get so ballsy to even speak to a boy this gorgeous.
“I just-you’re really pretty.” I stood up almost butting heads with him, and fixed my clothes and picked up the smoothie glass which was thankfully not broken.
“I-I uh have to go return this.” I said referring to the glass. Again, mentally face palming myself.
“I’m sorry if I scared you off right now I just think-“
“No no, your compliment is appreciated trust me.” I smiled kindly, and he smiled back to with the most white and bright smile a boy has ever flashed.
“Well then I’m sorry for knocking you over so hard, if you want to, I can make it up to you by taking you out tonight to walk around the ship?”
I thought hard about it. He seemed like a genuine guy, but so did he. I bit my lip before answering, and slowly nodded my head yes. From behind us, we could hear fast footsteps approaching and once I put two and two together I realized it was his brother still determined to win the race. The boy quickly grabbed all of his stuff before running up to me close to my face with another smile.
“And I’m Ethan by the way.”
“Y/N.” I whispered, getting lost again in those damn eyes.
He ran off and his brother ran past me just missing me by a completely of centimeters, and I continued to watch Ethan run to the end of the hall where their room was, he obviously won. I only turned around to walk toward the dining area. My heart was racing and pounding, my hands sweating, and my breath hitching in my throat. But I hadn’t felt this good in what felt like a lifetime.
Hope you guys enjoyed my first story on this blog! Part 2 will be up this week :)
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organicli · 7 years ago
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Day 71, Phi Phi
I woke up with my last memory being that I'd woken up in the night with no top on in the wrong bed. I knew I didn't know how I got there and I very much hoped there had not been many events after the fire show, which was the other last thing I could remember. Stop it me, you're gonna get us killed!! With this attraction to thai men now and all!! Stop!!! And no more limbo!! My legs were covered in bruises and grazes, as if the myriad of mosquito bites didn't make them horrible enough. One of my knuckles is purple from when I probably punched the ground. I was still a bit drunk but I was cheerful. I apologised to everyone in the room, including the poor girl that I woke up when I climbed off the bed above her. I was told that I'd also gotten in another bed that wasn't mine. They were both top bunks and I don't know why I would've climbed up; my bed is on the bottom and i hate the top bunk. I really wanted to find my bikini top and I looked around for it on the beach before I located it in the bunk bed above mine. James, Jeffrey, Emma, Ernesto and I went and got breakfast and booked a boat tour for tomorrow. Then I came back and lay down and then me and Emma went for a massage. It was much more gentle this time. We looked in some shops and art galleries. I really need to stop spending so much money but I also need a new backpack because mine is falling apart but I'm being stingy in all the wrong places. I went and lay back down on my bed. I'd said I was going to the beach but I ended up just staying in the room. My friend Shane from Penang and Langkawi came!! It was lovely to see him again. We had dinner with Emma, Jeffrey, James and some Canadian girls. I went through the embarrassment again of tourists asking for their food to not be spicy whatsoever. We went to Blanco on the beach, where the boys were staying although I went back into town with Shane to the 7/11 to get a sim card. I told Shane about Tri and how I wasn't sure about going back to Lipe. We passed Ernesto and he largely ignored me. We watched the fire shows on the beach. I wasn't really clicking with the night and I didn't feel like consuming large quantities of liquids. I also did not to do the limbo! There was a guy and girl that were so drunk omg they were getting body paint and he had written all over him stuff like "eat shit cunt" and "you fuck your mother with that thing". The girl had a scarf tied around her waist but she didn't have any underwear on and he picked her up a lot. They did a lot of limbo. I was going to leave after I finished my bucket but it was taking so long so eventually I just said I was going. I said goodbye to James who'd pulled a beautiful and adorable blonde girl and I was quite jealous but when I got up on the table with them, she spilled cold drink down my back. Shane said he'd stay so I went with Emma back to the hostel. I'd walked past a Reggae bar half a dozen times going back and forth because Blanco wanted to charge 20 baht for the bathroom and now I considered stopping for zoot. I weighed up how much I had already drank and whether it would be a good idea. I went back and ordered a blunt and a bottle of water. One of the boys working there came and spoke to me. His name was Audi. He asked me if I had some Asian flavouring and how long I was in Phi Phi. He asked if I liked thai food and I said yes, it was embarrassing how many tourists are like please NO SPICY AT ALL. He said he needed to get back to work and left me to my zoot. I was peacefully enjoying a smoke by myself when a male came and invaded my space. He sat right near me and I was like fuck he's gonna talk to me. He introduced himself but I wasn't very responsive. He asked if he could come and sit next to me so we could talk and I said," i don't know man, i'm pretty waved." He said, "what does that mean?" I said, "it means I've had a beer, a bucket and a blunt," and he was like oh and he didn't persist. Then his friend came and sat next to me and I was like ffs. He said his name was Steve and, oh, as mine is Sarah, did I know that people whose names start with the same letter are more attracted to each other? It was working for him, he said. Hmm. They realised I wasn't chatty and left. I spoke to Audi a few more times and added him on facebook. I quite like him. I didn't get to say goodbye to him before I left though. I went to bed with a fuzzy head but the music was so loud and blaring. At 2am, I went and got a pizza slice from downstairs. I was messaging Ernesto in Spanish, pretending that I could speak Spanish.
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auroraphilealis · 8 years ago
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The Siren
The Siren | Once, a long, long time ago, Phil had heard a story – a strange story, so fantastical he hadn’t known whether or not to laugh, eyes wide and terrified amidst it all, - about a mermaid, a siren, who supposedly stole away the sailors of the sea to the bottom of the ocean, never to be seen again. | Phan | Teen and Up | Siren!Dan, Asexual!Phil | 3811 words
Happy birthday my dear Rachel, @phansdick​ <3 Sorry I suck at surprises and decided to spend all day teasing you about your birthday fic. I’m really, really glad I was able to pull this together for you, though, as I didn’t think I was going to make it, and low and behold, you ended up getting it early! I love you a lot, even if some times I really, really suck at showing it and disappear for days on end, and you’re the best friend anyone could ask for. You are truly one of a kind, perfect, amazing, and so incredibly strong. Thank you for always being there for me, and I hope that I can always be there for you as well. I sincrerely hope you enjoy this, because I think I legitimately took a turn with his most people probably won’t be expecting.
Based on that tumblr post asking for an asexual sailor to run into a siren.
(Ao3 Link)
**
Once, a long, long time ago, Phil had heard a story – a strange story, so fantastical he hadn’t known whether or not to laugh, eyes wide and terrified amidst it all. He’d been about thirteen at the time, just coming into puberty and all that that supposedly entailed, and staring in absolute disbelief at the father of a friend who swore up and down that he’d seen it – a mermaid, a siren, the deadliest of the kind.
It was the first time Phil had come over for a visit, walking over the docks of his little town’s shipping yard towards the boat of his new found girlfriend Myla that she’d lived on for her entire life, their hands swinging together between them, and some kind of notion of sex flashing through Phil’s mind.
(He didn’t actually know what sex was yet, and he was in for a nasty surprise.)
Myla’s family were sailors – well, kind of. Myla’s father was a sailor, and he’d been teaching Myla all her life, but she wasn’t really into it. In fact, she only really tolerated the lessons as some sort of penance for being the reason her mother had died – child birth – on the rough and tumble seas that they’d both loved so much, but she told anyone who would listen that she was never ever going to be a sailor like her father before her.
(Eventually, the boat would be passed down to her, and she’d hand it off to Phil, a lifelong companion of hers after the fateful and awkward events of that afternoon.)
They’d walked up together a little shy and bereft, aware that Myla’s father would be leaving soon for some kind of shipping conference up in the middle of town, but also aware that they wouldn’t be able to avoid him all together.
Myla had introduced Phil to him, and they’d thought that will be that.
But it wasn’t.
No; instead, Myla’s father had practically ignored them, staring out across the sea towards a little island that most of their town knew to avoid. The weather was almost always torrential out there, making it near impossible to even approach the shores, and those who’d bothered to try were never heard from again.
Whether or not they’d been stranded on the island had yet to be seen.
(They hadn’t.)
Phil had thought it strange, then, for a man to be so captivated by a storm raging over the tiny mound of rocks on the sea, and he’d squeezed his fingers around Myla’s with the full intent to swing her around and let her lead them back to her rooms.
They didn’t get very far before Myla’s father turned around with eyes so wide and horrified that Phil had thought, just for a second, that he must have seen a ghost.
“I’s seen it, lass,” he’d said, not even looking at Phil. “The beast that’s taken all ‘em sailors.”
Phil hadn’t known what he’d meant at the time, but Myla clearly had, and she’d rolled her eyes at her father like she’d heard his drunken rambles one to many times before.
“What are you on about now, da?” she’d shot back, tossing Phil an amused grin. It had relaxed the terrified set of is shoulders for just a moment, and then Myla’s father had turned his gaze onto him.
There had been something haunted in those steel grey eyes that Phil would never forget, even to this day.
“The siren that’s been stealin’ all ‘em, the mermaid. I’s seen it, boy, I’s seen it take ‘em all away.”
**
Myla had taken Phil to her bedroom not long after the strange encounter, and she’d kissed him soft and sweetly on the mouth. It had been nice, drawing forth some kind of fuzzy feeling in the pit of his stomach, but then she’d started doing other things – strange things, like touching Phil in places he never wanted to be touched again, and drawing Phil’s own hands up to cup her breasts.
He hadn’t liked that, he hadn’t like that at all, and when Myla had asked Phil what he’d thought sex was, all he’d been able to offer up in reply to her was not this.
(Phil would have a few boyfriends and girlfriends in the interim of figuring it all out, but they never lasted very long after Phil refused to do much more than kiss them.)
**
Years later, Phil would follow in the footsteps of nearly ever male boy over the age of sixteen in town in joining the shipping industry, loading himself up on a sailboat on his off days for a little extra cash helping fisherman catch or sell fish across the way to another little town known as Hasten. It was quite a bit further out, not even visible from the docks of Phil’s own town, Miligan, but they were a trading post, and rarely went about retrieving their own goods despite the water’s edge being so close.
It was a good job, a fun job, but it all it really did was nurture a deep desire within him to become a sailor himself. It wasn’t the fishing that he’d enjoyed, or the unloading and haggling, it wasn’t even so much the sea; it was the beasts hidden inside of it, and the islands Phil was constantly catching sight off on each and every outing he so badly wanted to stop and explore.
(There was one island in particular that Phil wanted to see, but there wasn’t a boat in Hasten or Miligan that would venture anywhere near it, not, at least, on purpose. The tall tale Phil had heard so many years ago from Myla’s father constantly swirled through his head, and he thought one day… one day.)
**
Consequently, despite their awkward first “date”, Myla ending up being Phil’s only friend, and while she gave up sailing the second she was old enough to get a job and move out on her own, she entertained Phil’s private notions of wanting to pick it up with short lessons of her own and old school books her father had piled upon her.
(Phil had never been so grateful for his ex-girlfriend in his life, except for the time she sent him a link at two in the morning outlining the terms asexual and revulsion and he’d cried for six hours because he was finally not alone.)
**
Sailing wasn’t Phil’s only passion, though, and while he spent most of his time studying sailing and the proper ways to navigate a boat, he sometimes indulged himself in a little light reading - deep creatures of the sea: mermaids; sirens: what to expect; how to avoid the sweet call of song; alluring and beautiful, these creatures will kill you.
Mind plagued with the memory of that long ago story, Phil hadn’t ever really let it go. He was fascinated, had even harassed Myla for days – after she’d forgiven him for “breaking her heart,” and “not being sexually interested in her” – to let him talk to her father again, find out more about this elusive mermaid and what sailors it was stealing away into the depths of the sea.
Myla had never really let him have his go, angry at him anew for even suggesting that he might entertain her drunkard of a father, but still, Phil had never forgotten.
In fact, one could argue that he was obsessed, and he didn’t even really know all that much about the strange creature other than the fact that their song could lure anyone to their death – so deeply attracted would the person be to the monster, they’d chuck themselves overboard just to be in their arms for the rest of their lives.
The sirens, meanwhile, wanted nothing more than a quick meal, by all definitions, asexual.
(And there was that word again, that word that rang so deep in Phil’s chest it tugged and and tugged the same way the islands called…)
But there was rumor, too, rumor that sirens existed solely with the purpose of finding their one true love, and that they haunted the oceans in search of their mate in the hopes that one day they could be truly happy. Their song lured only the unfaithful, the sexual, and their fangs killed only the unholy, and they drowned their victims not for vindictive enjoyment, but to protect those back home who could never know of their partners misdeeds, and one day, one day, they’d find their own perfect partners and -
Well, they were only rumors.
( - rumors that a siren waited for the one unaffected by their call, waited for someone to join them with needs that matched their own; rumors that circulated the internet like a joke, but which Phil heard like a call of his own name.)
**
When Phil turned twenty-three, Myla’s father passed away – liver cancer.
He attended the funeral, helped pay through some of the costs, and sat with Myla for three whole weeks while she worked to get over the devastation of it all.
The day she sent him home, she handed over the keys to her father’s fishing boat, and made Phil promise to be careful.
(It was a promise he wanted so desperately to keep.)
**
The island had been calling his name for years by then, so was it really any surprise the day he finally packed up to leave?
**
Once, a long, long time ago, Phil had heard a story – a strange story, so fantastical he hadn’t known whether or not to laugh, eyes wide and terrified amidst it all, - about a mermaid, a siren, who supposedly stole away the sailors of the sea to the bottom of the ocean, never to be seen again.
Once, a long, long time ago, Phil heard a story about a creature so powerful, its song was enough to lure any sailor to its death.
Now, nearly ten years later, Phil would stumble across said creature of his own accord, curious and tempted far beyond their song.
**
The storm rages fast and strong, stronger than Phil had ever anticipated, has ever experienced out here on his own. His sails whip about starboard from the colossal winds, and his boat surges upon the water with every pelt of the angry sea below him. He’s freezing cold, his hair plastered to his forehead, clothes soaked through with the salty brine of the ocean below him, but his hands remain firm on the steering wheel of his boat, and his eyes remain trained on the island before him. It’s so close, Phil can practically feel it.
He’s been at this for hours now, struggling against the wind and the rain, fighting for control over something he knows he’ll never quite be able to hold onto, and all for what? To reach the shore of an island he’s been told over and over and over again swallows up sailors like its own personal victims?
No, no, not quite.
He doesn’t care about the island, even as its shores call his name, even as he stares at it through the thick veil of dark storm clouds that practically hide it from sight.
No, it’s not the island he’s here for, but the rumors of the creature that’s made it its home.
The siren.
Phil’s heart is racing in his chest. He’s been battling these winds for hours now, literal hours, but he refuses to give up just yet. He’s heard rumor that most sailors never even make it this far, heard rumor that most hear the call on the outskirts of the storm, and turn their boats into the middle of it all only to die before they can make it past the first fifteen feet towards the island, but he knows that he isn’t wrong to keep moving forward, to fight past the wind and the rain towards a shore he’s starting to see clear as day – a shore where the rain doesn’t touch, and the sands sparkle under the same dull sun as his own little town thousands of feet from where he is now.
He knows that there’s something waiting for him there, and when he finally breaks through the rain to the other side, a mere few feet from the shoreline – there, a song so beautiful and sad that Phil stops short to turn and find where it’s coming from; just beyond the line of the storm sits a mermaid so beautiful Phil nearly feels his heart stop, sat just upon mossy and green rock protruding from the sea as if it were an island all its own.
His boat, his fishing boat decorated with years of use and muck that Phil’s never learned how to clean, scrawled across in the ugliest shade of green with the words the st. mary, crashes into the far shore, but Phil doesn’t care to even look.
His gaze remains fixated on the mermaid sat before him, their smile so cunning and sharp that Phil thinks amazing.
They’re singing, a dark head of brown curls fluttering in the wind, their eyes nearly as sharp as their eyes, and their fingers dancing about the air in a come hither motion that Phil hasn’t seen in years.
Revulsion sears through him, but he ignores it, fascinated, captivated by their song, by the red-black of their long, glossy tail, and he closes his eyes for the briefest of brief moments just to take it all in.
The moment he does so, the singing stops, and he hears a splash.
When he opens his eyes once more, the mermaid, the siren, is sat bobbing along in the water below him with that same sinister, all knowing smile gracing their too beautiful features.
“That was beautiful,” Phil says, and offers them a gentle smile.
Slowly, slowly, the siren’s grin fades, and they stare up at Phil with eyes so dark, he feels like he’s staring into nothing. They don’t even have any whites to their eyes, and their teeth are bared, sharp and terrifying.
Some deep part of Phil can’t quite believe that this is real.
“Will you sing for me again?” he asks when the silence wears on far too long.
The siren’s grin slowly comes back.
“Of course, my love,” they say, their voice a deep baritone that soothes over Phil’s soul, calming his racing heart beat and the aches of his soul, and they haven’t even started singing yet.
“But only if you were to join me down here?” they offer, hands snaking out of the water once more to return to making that same come hither motion from before.
The easy grin Phil had been wearing moments before fades as the revulsion surges through him once more, and he finds himself shaking his head, almost tempted to turn away from the siren bobbing along in the water before him, but terrified of what they might do to him then if he does.
“I’d – rather not,” Phil disagrees, and feels his heart lodge in his throat. The rumors he’s clung to for years swirl about his head, but he doesn’t act on them, doesn’t trust them enough to lay them quite to that kind of test. “But I’d still really like to hear you sing again. Your voice is beautiful,” he says.
The siren stills below him, staring up at Phil with eyes dark and piercing, almost sinister looking for how black they are. He feels his heart thump anew in his chest, but the oddest sensation of safety suddenly over takes him until he’s able to grin once more.
“Please?” he requests, and watches as the siren slowly opens their mouth and starts to sing once more.
The song brushes over Phil like a cool wind, soothing and calm, and the longing he’s felt for years suddenly comes to an end. He can feel it, that strange pull that had been driving him for years, withering away into nothing but content. He has no wish to dive into the waters below like the books always said, has no desire to leap into the siren’s arms, but he does feel something close to – close to – home.
He listens with one eye open, not quite trusting, not quite believing, as the siren sings their song to him in the most beautiful and captivating voice that Phil has ever heard. The song is soleful and soft, but there’s that same tone of mourning Phil had heard before that breaks his heart.
Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s singing too – soft and breathless, the words caught in his throat.
The siren stops.
“Who are you?” they demand, throwing their body backwards in the water until their pale chest glistens up at Phil, and he feels another surge of deep revulsion surge through him at the same time as their tail beats at the sea, propelling them backwards against the fair rock from before.
Phil doesn’t know quite how to respond, but he does his best.
“I’m Phil Lester, uhm… a sailor from Hasten,” he says.
The siren bares their teeth at him once more, sharp and pointed just as legend had said, but Phil does not recoil.
“Why do you know that song? Why do you not fling yourself before me? Do you not want me, not desire me? No mortal before you has ever resisted my allure,” the say, and their words are heavy with anger and frustration, fear.
There’s something there in those deep, intent eyes that Phil wishes he could get to the bottom too.
“What do you mean? I know the song from you – I was just… mimicking you,” Phil tries to explain, a little shaken, the calm that had overtaken him mere moments ago rescinding until he suddenly feels like this was a mistake.
(It wasn’t.)
The siren hisses, and then cries out, the beautiful song they had been singing mere moments ago belting from their tongue in a long, hideous shriek of irreversible pain, and Phil cringes away, pressing his hands to his ears to block out the sound while his heart twists painfully in his chest. He’s panting before he knows it, crying, the tears dripping down his cheeks in a long stream of agony and pain, and the siren just looks at him, never stopping, tears of their own dripping down their cheeks.
Phil can’t bear to see their pain, but he’s frozen in place, and it wouldn’t matter if he wanted to leave right then and there or not, because he can see now that he’s shipwrecked, his boat sunk deep in the sand of the island, and the rest being pushed further and further in as the moments pass, until Phil is certain that he can never go home.
“Please, please stop!” he begs, but the sound doesn’t end, and Phil falls to his knees, squeezing his eyes shut in agony.
When he passes out, he thinks this is it.
(It’s not.)
**
When he comes too, he’s on the shore, and the water laps at his legs like an old friend. He sits up, disoriented, only to come face to face with a pair of black eyes and a head of curly brown hair, just like before, staring at him from the depths of the ocean. A storm rages in the distance behind them, a backdrop to the already menacing image.
Slowly, Phil draws his legs to his chest, and holds.
“Who are you?” the siren asks again, the words a dark hiss of agony.
Phil merely shrugs.
“Just a man,” he says, and leaves it at that.
**
Once upon a time, Phil believed in a set of rumors that said that a siren wanted nothing more than to find their mate.
Once upon a time, Phil found that to be true.
**
It’s not until nightfall that the siren approaches, surging out of the water like a monster of the deep, only Phil knows better. He holds himself back from the water, merely letting it lick at his skin, but never take him, and watches the sirens slow approach, their tail thrusting them up the shore and passed Phil’s long destroyed boat – and when did that happen, while he was out cold? – until their body is hunching forward over the sand.
The red and black of their tail glistens under the moonlight, and Phil feel his breath stolen from his once more.
“Please,” the siren pleads. “Tell me who you are.”
“I’m Phil,” Phil repeats once more, “And you are?”
“Dan,” they say, with a little pained incline of their head. Their sorrow echoes over the island unlike anything else, and it hurts Phil on such a deep level that he starts to sing.
The siren only stares, and stares, and stares, uncomphrending of how Phil could not only know the words, but understand the pain.
**
They sit there together in silence as the night wears on, but Phil doesn’t mind. The terror, the agony, the pain has gone, and now that the creature isn’t trying to seduce him, so is the revulsion. He stares at them the way an admirer would, and he knows it confuses them.
“I can’t hurt you,” they say.
Phil smiles, and inclines his head.
“You’re pure,” they tack on, slinking further along the shore, closer, closer still, and Phil merely nods.
He’s long since let go of his legs, resting the palms of his hands behind him against the somehow still warm sand, and he’s stretched out his legs in front of him.
He’s waiting, suddenly, with a certainty he’d never known he’d have.
“I can’t even seduce you with my song.”
Phil shrugs, and offers them a hand.
“No, you can’t,” he agrees, and waits for the warmth of them to touch him.
They scream, then, grabbing onto him and dragging their wet body towards him, completely naked, and yet the lack of sexual desire wafting off of them prevents the usual revulsion from taking him over.
Their fangs close in on his face, their eyes dark and wild, but there is no fear, and Phil does not flinch away.
The siren, Dan, freezes, inches from his face, their warm body poised like a threat over Phil, and their tail transforms into a pair of legs and a torso, but there are no sexual body parts, and they stare at Phil like this, at least this should work.
But it doesn’t, and they stare at him in awe until their fangs recede and they say, “I can’t even seduce you with my body,” and then… they succumb.
They succumb, and they sink into Phil’s embrace, and Phil feels home.
**
Their song is even more beautiful when they sing it together, and for the first time in both of their lives, they feel like they belong.
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willswalkabout · 8 years ago
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Hanoi, Hue, Hoi An
I had one night in my own room in Bangkok. Once again in Bangkok, Arsenal were playing at 2 in the morning. Luckily this time I woke up to find we’d managed to beat a non-league team on a dodgy pitch escaping with only 1 injury.
I flew the next morning to Hanoi. Having felt like I’d spent too much on taxis in Bangkok, I launched a new plan to avoid taking a solo taxi at all costs. In general while traveling I’ve left couples alone unless they join a larger group. However while approaching the taxi stand I heard an English accent and practically threw myself at one. I knew all the hostels in Hanoi are within a couple of blocks, and it indeed turned out that the guy was from Manchester and was only a 10 minute walk from my place. The walk saved me £10 as the taxi was split between 3. My first night in Hanoi involved going out for some food with 3 dutch backpackers. I had a fun conversation with Elsa, the girl in the trio, about the trials and tribulations of a long distance relationship. Characterised by very fuzzy Skype conversations and the occasional drunk text, where the receiver is either eating lunch, or already in the next morning. We also went to see a film, even writing this now I’m struggling to remember the name, I’ll have to look it up when I get internet (writing from seat 17F on 20:50 Da Nang - Ho Chi Minh flight). The film was awful and 3 of the 4 of us fell asleep a good hour before the end. The next day I met Harry, a Kiwi who was at the end of spending a couple of months in South East Asia as a way of breaking up his move from NZ to London. I spent the day wandering around Hanoi’s French Quarter, though this exploration was delayed by Air Asia letting me know that morning that they’d moved my flight to the Philippines 8 hours later, something that was going to cause me major issues, and led to some infuriating use of their “web chat unsupportive service”. Hanoi gets mixed reviews from travellers which I personally don’t understand. There’s lots to do, it’s incredibly cheap, people are friendly and it feels very European due to the French architecture and street layout. I went out that night with Harry to ‘beer corner’. It was classic Vietnamese organised chaos. Thousands of little stools and tables, shared by travellers and locals, as beers are served at 50p each, by someone that claims to own your stool.
The next morning I had coffee and visited a market with Harry. I’ve got to say it was the first point that I’ve really missed London, as I enthusiastically reeled off all the places he should go as he frantically took notes. I wasn’t feeling great that afternoon, but it was a pleasant surprise to return to my dorm and find that my roommates were now 5 Norwegian girls, who in turn created the nicest aroma I’ve ever experienced in a hostel room. I can only put it down to an apparent desire to keep themselves and their clothes clean on a routine basis. A characteristic very few other backpackers appear to possess. Some, who proudly tell you they’ve worn “this vest for 6 days straight now”, in one of the world’s most humid countries…
That evening I only ventured out to Hanoi’s 5* Intercontinental hotel, as they had one of the best viewpoints over Hanoi’s west lake. The same beer I’d been drinking the night before was a horrific £2.80, but one was worth it for the view. Walking back I saw a bar on the other side of the street which has the PS3 emblem on the outside. On entering they had 4 TVs set up with people playing FIFA 17. It was an opportunity I could not miss. I spent the next 2 hours playing FIFA with 4 Vietnamese guys who were evidently confused as to how I found the place, and who could speak very little English. Not that this stopped them from producing a pronunciation perfect cry of the Swedish striker Ibrahimovic, as he scored a last minute winner.
The next morning I was picked up for my Ha Long Bay tour at 8am. I had booked for 2 days 1 night, sleeping on the boat. The 4 hour drive was one of the worst I’ve experienced. With no leg room on the small and crammed minibus, rough roads, and a driver who seemed intent on using the drive to practice his overtaking before an upcoming F1 fixture, it felt far longer. The bay itself is breathtaking. For that reason I was glad I hadn’t paid more for any added extras/experiences, because for the bottom rate you see what you came to see in all its grandeur and mystique. We visited a cave before kayaking on the first day. That evening I played cards with my roommates, a woman from Azerbaijan (but living in Bow, London), and a woman from Argentina. I also met my first, and to this point only gap year students. Another 2 Norwegians, though due to their schooling system they were 19 and 20. After sleeping with probably the greatest view I’ve ever had from a bed, the next day involved a trip to a particular rock where they’ve built a viewpoint and artificial beach. I was somewhat oddly the only member of the 15 person group who fancied a swim. It was indeed fairly cold outside but the water was a perfectly tolerable temperature. On exiting the water I discovered that quite a decent crowd had formed, to observe this strange white man swimming In the sea in February. It was as I dried myself that this one gentleman pictured above, chose to thrust his phone in my face for a selfie. My only rule when it comes to this situation is to demand one in return, and it may well be one of my favourite photos of the travels so far. I got back to Hanoi late afternoon and was pretty tired, so other than enjoying the well written about ‘Bahn Mi 25’ experience, I retired to reorganise for the flight to Hue the next day. I was fortunate enough to overhear 3 of my Norwegian friends from a couple of nights previous, booking their taxi, and so I got in on that deal, once again saving me a fair bit.
I arrived in Hue in the rain, and made it to my oddly Wild West hostel. It was however one of the nicest beds I’ve had so far. The evening continued with me getting an Indian with 2 Irish guys and a Bristolian. It was actually quite an upmarket restaurant we found with the £8 cost being the most I’d spent on a single meal since Hong Kong. The food was great, and it was fun discussing the Arsenal, Manchester United rivalry with some passionate fans. They also shared my desire to find a pub that would show the England vs Italy 6 Nations fixture. It was a bizarre fixture to watch. If you watched the game you’ll understand that trying to work out Italy’s ruck tactics was hard enough for the players and the pundits, let alone us watching in a noisy bar with no commentary. The same evening I found out that it was meant to rain all day the next day, scuppering my plans to scooter the 5 hour journey to Hoi An. Luckily the company I had organised the rental with were happy to use my deposit to book me the bus to Hoi An, which was about $7.
The next day I got the incredibly comfortable sleeper bus, (though taken in the morning), to Hoi An. 3 rows of double decked 80% reclinable beds, allowing 40 or so passengers to travel in unrivalled comfort. On arrival in Hoi An I went straight to a tailor that had been recommended to me by my Dutch friend in Hanoi. There in ensued 3 extremely stressful hours. Getting my full navy cashmere suit made, took up about 25 minutes of that period. The rest was spent trying to convey what Ellen and Kate wanted made, with the help of measurements they’d sent me and pictures of the items. I would have found this easy if I hadn’t then been asked a multitude of questions I had no clue how to answer. How long does she want the skirt? What kind of fabric does she want? Does she want this double hem? Which pattern is best? I was feeling the pressure enormously, however to be fair to the girls they were both pretty on hand on whatsapp at what was about 8am GMT, to firmly bat away my futile suggestions, and I hope get what they wanted. The items are now in the post back home, except for one loose cotton shirt I got made, and should make it home in about 3 weeks.
I explored the old town a bit before embarking on a street food tour organised by the hostel, spending my time primarily with 2 woman from Finland and New York. Janelle from NY was so staggered at my age, she then made it her mission for the evening to prove that her guess of 26 was not crazy. To be fair to her the exhaustive surveying gave an outcome of 25.1, which I didn’t really know what to think of.
My second day in Hoi An involved a cycle to the beach which was nice, followed by picking up the clothes, 22 hours after order. They did fit incredibly well, but by the time I’d reviewed each item, tried on mine, and negotiated the postage cost, it was worth returning to the hostel where they were doing a 'free beer’ night. I went out that evening with 3 girls and one guy from California. Hoi An has an odd nightlife scene. There are a multitude of almost identical bars where you can drink fairly cheaply if you go at the right time, befriend the Kiwi rep that walks around shouting their name, and negotiate a bit. Then at 1230 they all close, and everyone moves to the one bar in town that’s open till 5, and inevitably is the most expensive. It was regardless good fun but something I realised I was quite tired off by the next evening (Wednesday).
Nothing however was going to take away from Wednesday being one of the best days so far, due to my final attempt at riding the Hai Van Pass, most famously featured on Top Gear’s Vietnam special, and described by Clarkson as 'One of the greatest coast roads in the world’. Once again the clearly confused Hoi An weather forecasters predicted torrential rains and it was dry all day. It took about an hour to get to the start of the pass, and then began dozens of hairpins, chicanes, and 6km of wide, open, and practically empty sea view. I was in awe, and it was one of those moments that for me helped to justify the entire venture. After taking a sufficient number of photos (many) and falling in love with my bike, which with its Arsenal sticker was christened 'Thierry’, I drove back extremely pleased with the endeavour. I also got some pretty good footage of the ride by attaching a GoPro to my helmet and chest at different times.
I went out with a solely English crew that night. I’d like to say that although I obviously have no issue with English company, it did feel kind of boring discussing bits of London and A Levels. I have just found it much more fun discussing the drinking laws / politics / nightlife / education system of Finland, America, Azerbaijan or Australia over the past few days. I spent most of my time with Calum, who had recently graduated from a school in North Carolina, and whom I felt was equally bored by my harmless compatriots.
Today was a very relaxing day where I only ventured out for Pho (Vietnamese noodle broth), and otherwise caught up on some stuff, knowing that my hostel in Ho Chi Minh is quite lively. I’m actually now standing at the luggage carousel which is taking an age. I’m quite confused as to how it’s reached 1045pm, and I left my hostel at 6pm for a 1 hour 10 domestic flight. I’m sorry again this is quite a long one, but splitting it up felt like more effort. I may have landed in Sydney next time.
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londonspirit · 6 years ago
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One Last Time...
... for this year, that is! (Hopefully they sort their Brexit shit out soon, otherwise I have no clue when I can be back!) 
Anyhow, this trip was wonderful, mad and all around fantastic! (the usual then! *grins*) 
Flew over with my friend S., and naturally we had a one hour delay to start our vacation (we do have a bad travel karma, me thinks, not the first time). And sadly that was the reason I (again) didn’t managed to meet up with my L, cause she only had about an hour between engagements, and that was exactly the hour our flight was late. (Here’s hope we’ll manage another meet-up soon’ish before she goes back to the States, it’s been too long and I really miss her!) 
Upon arrival it was raining! Boo! But after dropping off our luggage and finding us dinner, we didn’t want to go to bed (afternoon flight there, evening arrival) so we decided to have a quick wander around. It had stopped raining which was perfect for a nightly walk.  Wow, even wet London is beautiful, and even more so at night. Streets were mostly empty (not empty enough to be scary tho) and we took much longer than expected.  Stumbled across filming by the side of the river - there were a few people in safety vests and we were already wondering when one approached us. He told us they were filming in a side alley, and not to worry, we could just walk past but shouldn’t stop. Of course we walked very slowly but we didn’t see much or anyone we knew. It was pretty dark, and all we say was a huge projection into the air. *shrugs* Still curious as to what was filmed there (we went there on the last day but no signs at all).  We were in bed way past midnight... (my usual London bed time!) 
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Monday was HAMILTON DAY! But in the evening - we had the whole morning and early afternoon to explore some more!  So we went to Greenwich - by BOAT!! That was soo cool. I’ve taken one of the boats two years ago with Sis but only for a few stops, this time we went all the way. And even thought it’s not cheap (Oyster card does make it a bit cheaper tho), it’s totally worth it - the view from the water is amazing! And since the weather was still not very tourist friendly, we had the entire back to ourselves.  I can def recommend it - you see so much from that side. Plus, it’s quick, we were in Greenwich within 15 minutes!  Found coffee and walked up that hill to the observatory! The view was foggy but still amazing. And since the coffee didn’t want to go back to the city with us, we wandered inside to find a loo.  Did you know that you can go inside and check out a few of the rooms without having to pay? Cause I did NOT! And boy, is it cool inside. Loads to see, and touch, and just perfect for a grey and misty day. We spent 3 hours or so in there, bought souvenirs, checked out the old telescope inside, climbed small stairs, looked at all the time measure methods humanity had invented over the centuries, and had a great time!  After that we returned to the hostel to get ready for the evening. 
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The smile on my face when I saw the Victoria Palace Theatre again was HUGE! I fucking LOVE this place soo much!!! Especially when it’s all lit in the dark!  Getting inside was just as smooth as ever! (And this time we even saw the dog, didn’t meet it tho as we arrived and were inside like 2 minutes later, despite a pretty long queue!)  Inside we walked around, looked at the Pretty all around and then we went to our seats. 
DUDE!!! I had booked a box back in January, but I had no idea that we would’ve had one all to ourselves. It’s just for TWO seats (not four as I expected), and it’s the coolest thing ever!  We got us drinks to pass the time (you can only take so many pics of that beautiful stage!), and once again the staff showed why they deserved all the praise! I got us two bottles of cider but since bottles aren’t allowed inside, two of the ushers made sure to fill it all into plastic cups! And when it all didn’t fit into two cups, they held the doors for me to bring it to the box and when I returned for the rest, they were already waiting for me! Those people are the real heroes! And everything with a smile and the loveliest attitude!!! 
And when it finally was time, I might have made noises. Being this close (with nobody in front of you, or behind you for that matter), being able to lean forward and chairdance, is the best thing ever!!! 
I was a bit sad that we didn’t get Obi or Jason, but Gabriel and Waylon did so well, it didn’t last long.  And boy, Mondays are an amazing day to go and see it! Every single soul on that stage was on FIRE!!! (Not sure whether that’s because they have the Sunday to recharge, or because some will have their last performances in the next weeks, but it was WORTH going  on a Monday!) 
I had booked that because I wanted to see Ash, as people kept raving about him (and I had seen Jam twice now). He did NOT disappoint.  His performance differs so much from Jam’s; not in a bad way, no. But he’s so into it, so ... THERE?! More intense?! Can’t really describe it. He’s fantastic. And being this close, seeing all those expressions, the cheek, the sass, the sadness, made this time so much better than the last two times.  Ash is incredible and sooo worth seeing! (although I missed the height difference between Jam and Rachelle, Ash is her height.) 
I was very happy that we got Giles, cause I’ve fallen fast and hard for his Burr!!! He’s put such a different twist on him, and once you got used to him, he IS Burr. What I love is that you can see all those little physical actions, he’s doing a lot with his body, and also with his face. Small things you miss when you’re further away. A raised eyebrow, a bitten lip, a suppressed grin. GOD, I will miss him soo much!!! There are times when I wanted to hug him and then there were times when I wanted to slap him. He’s such a great actor, and I will fight anyone who says differently!!!!! 
As for the rest of the cast, they were brilliant as usual; even though I really had the feeling everyone was giving even more than the 500% they already do!! SO DAMN AMAZING!!!  There was a big cheer for “Alexander Hamilton” in the beginning (as it should be), but weirdly NOTHING at the “Immigrants” line!!! O_O That shocked me a bit! I’ve been three times now, and I’ve had a different reactions every damn time! So weird!  Yorktown got an in between applause which I never seen/heard! Was very nice.  The King got all the laughs, naturally.  What else?  Oh, so Tarinn and Cleve are basically themselves in costumes on stage: they kept goofing around and grinning like idiots at themselves, which was adorable.  And I now know why people are shipping Laurens and Ham - the gazing loving at each other was INSANE!! *lol*  Rachel is madly talented but that you already know. That woman’s voice, her acting - GEEZ!! HOW?? So soo good!!!  Christine... god, that voice! Melted chocolate, poured over warm coals, making one feel all warm and fuzzy (and very sinful)  inside. GUH!!  Also: the ensemble blew me away, the perfection they put on that stage (night after night) is MAD!! I found myself watching them more and more, wondering how the human body is capable of the things they do and make it look easy as breathing!! WOW!!! 
It was over way too soon, and I even cried in the end. I have no idea where that came from but Rachelle really made me tear up during the last song. Never had that before. (And she’s the only one I’m still not fully convinced with; she’s good but this is NOT the perfect role for her)  So yeah, I did my final applause in tears!!! 
We stuck around towards the very end, and for the very first time, they let down the safety curtain!!! O_O (They did in the interval as well for a moment). 
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And then it was stage door time. It’s all well organized and sorted, and we queued up and waited. It wasn’t cold so that wasn’t too bad. Didn’t take long for the first to come out. I didn’t want anything signed, only asked for pics which seemed fine with them all. Although they were all well prepared with sharpies! Kelly is TINY, and so very sweet, and sadly the only one of the girls who came out :-(  Waylon was a bit shy, but also very nice. Gabriel was dressed for artic temps which made me giggle.  Tarinn and Cleve are... well, Tarinn and Cleve! They’re always goofing around, being super sweet to everyone and really taking their time. Cleve enjoyed being the birthday boy, and wishing him a great one, got me a tight hug! Tarinn smells really good, by the way! *hehe*  At some point the security made an announcement. I think he said they were all gone, or nobody wouldn’t come out anymore; we could stay but at our own risk, or something like that. We were at the end of the queue and didn’t catch everything.  Since we didn’t have anywhere to go, we stayed. Which was the right thing to do!  First Giles came out, and that’s when I got a bit nervous! He’s so good, and I never managed to get a pic with him. He took his time, chatted to everyone and was all around the sweetest. Once he came to us, I told him how incredible he was and how much I loved the Muse Of Fire documentary he did ages ago. I think he blushed a bit ;-p When I asked for a pic, he pulled me real close and thanked ME afterwards!! O_O  Hach, he’s amazing!!  And then Ash came out as well (lots had left already so we were only a few people). And the silly man did NOT have a pen!  The ladies behind us asked if we had one. When I pulled out my assortment of sharpies (three: black, silver and bronze!) I ALWAYS have on me, they laughed so hard.  Hey, you can never be prepared enough - as that night taught us!!! Once again, we only asked for pics, and praised him, told him how fab he was, and that we booked a Monday just for him,, which made him laugh. “Heard of me, did ya?” he said, cheeky bugger. But yeah, we did. So we got another really tight pic - that cast is so touchy feely, I swear! I love them all to pieces!!! SO SWEET!  He chatted a bit before moving along.  We waited a bit longer but that was it so we reluctantly left towards ‘home’. (Once again, it was LATE!) 
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The next morning we got up early to have one last walk around, and London was gracious and got out the sun and basically summer weather!  We didn’t want to leave but sadly we had to.  So long, my beautiful! See you next year - in February, for sure. After that... well, that depends on how you get your shit sorted!  Once more, a fantastic time was had, with the best company I could’ve wished for! Thank you, S, I know why I love traveling with you - here’s to our next time!!! 
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lalast0ne · 7 years ago
Text
Watched
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Wilder
A drive to clear my head yesterday, had led me here, watching the choppy waters of the lake pounding against the sand. It reminded me of the very few good days of my childhood. The ones that always stayed hidden. Or rather, the ones I had locked away. Always the bad days, played throughout my mind daily. Those were the ones that I clung too and the ones I let control my mind and body. I had become restless yesterday sitting in the confines of my house, my thoughts drifting to that little ball of fire. They really didn’t drift. She surrounded each and every thought since that night at the bar. I tasted and played with fire and I wanted that burn again. I pick up a rock and skip it across the lake before turning my back to the choppy waters and follow Killer up the path to my car. I was bone tired but couldn’t pass out here. This was not an area that I felt comfortable at. The land was unfamiliar, enemies hiding in the shadows. Always an enemy, with knife in hand, ready to stab my back. I knew exactly who enemy number one was but that name would not cross my lips until the time was right. I make my way back to my town, my safety and when I pull down my street, I am greeted by a car parked haphazardly in my grass. Little ball of fire’s. I get out the car, Killer sniffing up the grass to the porch, my stride carrying me quickly behind me. My lip quirks into a smirk when I see Layla passed out on the porch swing but it quickly dissipates when I see the bottle of whiskey laying on the ground along with the contents of her purse. She is curled up with an envelope clutched tightly to her chest. I bend down, the smell of alcohol lighting up the morning air and scoop her into my arms, careful as I carry her inside my house and lay her down on the couch. I take a seat on the table in front of her, resisting the urge to touch her and wait for her to stir.
Layla
*The choppiness of the waves increase rapidly, crashing against the sides of my boat. My stomach lurches and churns as the rocking intensifies. A storm is coming. A storm is coming and I’m in the eye of it. I look up at the black sky and wait for the heavens to open but there’s nothing. I feel so hot I’d actually welcome the refreshing rain against my face but no such luck. I look down to the sea and recoil at it’s aggressive behaviour. Like it’s ready to swallow me and my boat up. I look to the sky once more and as if by magic, my wings spread and I’m soaring thru the air. Feeling completely weightless. The atmosphere changes. The sea calms and my body relaxes as it floats back down to earth. My Nana stands in front of me with her crazy hair blowing in the warm breeze, just smiling and nodding her head slowly. Then she leans in to kiss my cheek .. then lick my cheek .. then my nose!* WHAT THE … *My eyes fly open as warm dog breath smacks me in the face and a slobbery tongue assaults me once more. My hands grip the dogs fur to pull him back from my face as I give a halfhearted laugh. My brain is still fuzzy but I recognise my furry friend which means his owner is nearby too. Looking around my new surroundings, briefly, butterflies explode to life in my stomach when my eyes finally land on you. I give a dopey smile and push up into a sitting position, trying to straighten my clothes* Hi ..
Wilder
*Your laugh stirs something deep inside me and I actually get jealous of Killer receiving your touch first. Damn dog is a traitor when it comes to you. My eyes travel up the length of your body as you stir and fix your clothes. Almost like you are uncomfortable to be in my presence. That thought causes me to lean backwards, an unsettling feeling taking up residence in the pit of my stomach. We’ve tasted each other….lips, tongue. I know how you feel pressed up against me. All innocent yet wanting. Your simple word of “hi” pulls me out of my mind, directing my attention back to you.* You’ve upped our stalking game Ms. Stone.
Layla
*I blink several times in an attempt to focus. The dog, who’s name I still don’t know, lays across my lap and enjoys the fuss I give him while I try to process your words. Mumbling under my breath, my eyes search for all the items I came with.* No game. Have you seen my bag? *I scan the floor again, like it would have miraculously appeared* I had an envelope too and *I feel my cheeks heat* my drink?
Wilder
*I laugh at all your questions, pointing to the envelope that fell to the floor when I laid you down.* Your empty bottle of whiskey and everything inside your purse is on my front porch. Along with your stellar parking job. Thank you for not hitting my rose bush. *I watch you reach down to grab the envelope quickly, several photos falling face up. Your eyes meet mine quickly as I grab for one of them. Your hand shaking as you attempt to push mine out of the way. You are inside my house after driving here sometime yesterday. My senses are heightened when you push my hand away. Questions will be answered before you make another move. I wait you out. Patience my best friend at times like this.*
Layla
*I snatch the photo out of your grasp and push your hand away as I quickly gather the others and stuff them back into the envelope.* I’m sorry for showing up unannounced but I don’t have a way of contacting you and .. I just needed to get out of the city. For some reason, here was the first place that came to mind. Do you ever have day’s like that? When you just need to escape? Escape your life and all the shit that goes with it? *I look at you expectantly, waiting for your response and offering no other explanation for my being here*
Wilder
Yesterday I needed an escape. *My eyes on the envelope and your hands gripping it tightly.* I drove out to a lake not too far away from….*My words fall off when I see another photo on the ground. I grab it before you even notice it. Fists clenching when I see what it is.* We can cut the small talk, little ball of fire and you can tell me exactly why you showed up here and what the fuck this is.
Layla
*I look between you and the image in your hand. My words fail me momentarily and I turn my gaze from yours to the floor before slumping back against the couch. Remaining silent for moments before I look back at you in the hope you’ll see how uncomfortable I feel and change the subject. But clearly I’ll have no such luck. Your intense gaze penetrates me and I know I’m going to have to offer some kind of explanation. I take a deep breath and point to the image you’re holding.* The envelope arrived at the club today. A dozen images enclosed all like that one *I reach into the envelope and remove the contents once more, handing them over to you without an argument.* Me in my daily life. Walking to and from my apartment, shopping, at the club, my parents, the night at the bar *My eyes find yours and my stomach flips but I ignore the feeling and continue as you flick thru the images* All are along the same lines except for the last. That last image was taken in my apartment. *My voice breaks and I clear my throat to try and mask my vulnerability* Someone was in my apartment .. in my bedroom .. while I was asleep.
Wilder
*My jaw ticks as I flip through the images, stopping on the last one. I’m staring at you asleep in your bed, someone’s shadow looming over you. Tearing away all your sense of safety. I hear your voice change, from the smart ass mouth that turns me the fuck on, to one of fear and downright scared. In this moment, I know I would do any and everything to protect you. I drop the photos as I reach for you, pulling you with ease onto my lap, my arms coming around you, needing to breathe you in.* Who is behind this? Tell me….
Layla
*I put up no fight as you reach out and pull me onto your lap. Your strong arms close around my waist and the feeling of safety I’ve been yearning for, since the moment I left my office yesterday, seeps thru me. It’s the same feeling I experienced the other night at the bar. No matter how afraid I might be, in this moment with you, I feel a sense of security and calmness. I take the pictures from your hand and look through them for the hundredth time. I don’t look at you and my voice remains low* I don’t know .. not for sure anyway.
Wilder
*The fact you will not look at me pisses me off. I take the photos from you and throw them across the room, turning you on my lap so you face me. I grab your chin between my thumb and forefinger, lifting your head so you have to look at me. That one simple touch of my fingers on your skin, ignites that fire that crackles between us. Our eyes lock, you worry your bottom lip between your teeth, hands twisting in your lap.* I’m not going to ask again. You know who is doing this. I want a name.
Layla
*I blink in shock as the pictures fly across the room, scattering all over the place. The dog, thinking it’s some sort of game, chases the pieces of paper, barking in frustration when he can’t pick them up between his teeth. You manhandle me like I’m weightless, shifting me around to face you and forcing my eyes to meet yours. That familiar spark ignites instantly but I resist the urge to plant my lips on yours. Instead, I keep my hands in my lap and continue the internal battle of whether to give you a name. Giving you a name will open the floodgates to a million questions, I’m sure. But the look on your face tells me I don’t have any other choice. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. It’s been a long long time since I said this mans name, just the thought of it makes my skin crawl* Adam Dawson. I’m 90% sure it’s Adam.
Wilder
Killer! Quiet! *My voice carries across the room to the dog, who stops barking and rolls over on his back. I turn my attention back to you, dragging my thumb along your neck. The feel of your soft skin under my touch, your pulse quickening. You hesitate in giving me an answer but the minute the name rolls across your tongue, I have it memorized. He will pay for taking away your sense of safety and bringing fear to your life.* You will no longer fear him Layla. Consider him taken care of.
Layla
*Your thumb stroking along my neck appears to be my weakness. Enough to render me immobile and mute unless addressed directly. I listen to the low rumble of your voice. My head tipping from side to side as your words wash over me then register* Wilder, it’s really not that simple. Taken care of how? *I drop my eyes to the floor, smiling softly as the dog, apparently named Killer .. an odd name .. nudges my hands with his wet nose.* Nothing can happen to him .. If anything happens to him it’ll instantly be tied back to my family and me. I .. I just want to forget. Forget everything.
Wilder
It really is that simple. You don’t need to know any details. *I continue dragging my thumb along your neck, growling to get Killer to move away from you. I lean closer to you, my eyes locking with yours once again.* Tell me what to do to make you forget. *Your shirt falls from your shoulder and I can’t resist the lure of your skin. I dip my head and drag my tongue along your collar bone, my hand gripping at your hip a little too tightly but I’m consumed by you yet again.*
Layla
*A tremble runs the length of my spine when your tongue trails along on skin. I inhale a sharp breath and my hand goes against your chest, fisting a handful of your shirt. My voice comes out as a throaty whisper, my eyes heavy with the last of the alcohol in my system and lust.* Please, Wilder. Don’t do anything you’ll regret. Just stay away from him. My Dad will have his people look into it as soon as I tell him what’s been going on the last few weeks. *I slip my hand up your throat and comb my fingers thru your beard, tugging gently. Our eyes locked as I move my mouth closer to yours* It’s your turn to distract me, Mr. Steele. Kiss me.
Wilder
You will tell me exactly who you and your father are soon. *Growling out my words again when I hear you say to kiss you. My hand snakes around to the back of your neck and into your hair, tugging to tilt your head. I drag my teeth along your jaw and up to your mouth, pulling your bottom lip between my teeth, our lips molding together in a heated kiss. The minute our lips touch, lightening strikes and the storm that has been brewing between us yet again is reignited.*
Layla
*The effect you have on me is frightening. The simplest touches have massive effects, the touch of your lips against mine sends me into complete meltdown. Both my hands creep into your hair while my lips respond to yours. Our kiss becoming more heated by the second. I shift in your lap, my legs moving to straddle you, my mouth never breaking from yours. My crazy dream hadn’t been fair wrong. There was a storm coming and that storm was you, Wilder Steele. A force to be reckoned with but one I had no desire to fight. You were about to swallow me whole and I was going to let you.*
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