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with-my-murder-flute · 4 years ago

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by the sword (Nile genfic, 2.6k)

Fic summary: Nile learned fencing and longsword and hand-to-hand fighting long before she ever met Andy's small army. But learning with them is a new form of difficult. Not because they've got thousands of years more experience (though they do), but because this time the practice doesn't stop when somebody gets hurt.

So she has to learn about war and how you balance it out with peace. Figure out how they do it and who she wants to be. And decide which weapons suit her best.

Content notes: Explicit depiction of the injuries Nile gets when training in knife fighting and quarterstaff combat with Nicky and Joe. There are also discussions of the physical damage done by different kinds of weapons, the butchering of animals, and people cutting off their own body parts in industrial accidents. (Oh, and a positive/sympathetic portrayal of Nile as a Christian)

They promised that in March they'd start teaching Nile how to fight with a sword, but when March came, Nicky gave her a knife.

A hauntingly familiar one, even though she'd never touched it before. For a second she thought it was her own, the Ka-Bar she planted in Andy's shoulder the day they met. Instead, as she turned it over, finding it familiar in every groove and contour, she found it an anonymous and identical match to her dad's instead. Not new, with the black paint worn down around the edges of the handle, but not a knife she knew. It could have been used by any Marine in the world except her. Except her father.

"You know too much," Joe explained from the side of the hangar, where he'd tumbled an umbrella stand of swords out onto a tarp and started removing their rust with fine-grit sandpaper. "We're not knights or cavaliers. For them, swordfighting was about honour. There were rules. We don't have any of that."

Nile knew going into this that nothing she knew so far was real swordsmanship. Like yes, she could fence; she'd competed in foil and saber for two years as a teenager. But that was closer to stagefighting than actual combat. It was all so staged and carefully managed. Even in her longsword league they said over and over again, it was a martial sport, not actual combat. They could imagine what it might have been like—could land heavy blows on armour, could mime falling down dead—but that wasn't the reality of it.

It seemed to her that the purpose of beginning with knife-fighting lessons was to go over territory she already knew, and do it for real this time. Nicky said he had something else in mind, some principle of combat he meant to teach. But that wasn't what Nile noticed.

What Nile noticed was that this time, she really died.

The old people argued it over, about how to teach Nile. Andy's example made them newly-cautious, but this was the way they'd always trained: You had to do it through blood and pain, you had to fight when you were still resurrecting. It was the way Andy and Quynh had trained Nicky and Joe.

Nile wondered, in the back of her mind, if being trained like that had something to do with the way Booker... well, Booker. After he'd already had such terrible experience of war that he'd wanted to desert. But that was the kind of thing she didn't air out loud, because they'd only just stopped having that kind of useless, circular, self-flagellating argument. She figured she'd keep her own peace on Booker.

She also opined, after hearing them wrangle over it for a day or two, that she'd rather practice with live weapons and get injured among friends than play it safe and incur a dangerous injury among enemies.

And when the knife fighting started, she was grateful they hadn't moved directly to longswords.

They taught knights how to do this, Nicky said, by having them slaughter and butcher animals. It taught you your way around muscles and tendons and joints. He offered to take her to a bullfight sometime, which she didn't say sounded so barbaric she had to wonder why PETA bothered with picketing rodeos.

He said that after her trachea healed over. She hadn't actually died that time; you had to aim further up or to the side to get the carotid artery. But the horror—not actually the pain, but the horror of feeling the air wheeze through the gash in her throat—had been so overwhelming that she'd barely resisted the pin he got her in. She'd just shuddered with her arms behind her back and his weight pressing her down until it healed, and tapped out of the rest of the afternoon. He'd been understanding when she didn't want to be around him for a bit, and let Joe gather her into a hug and let her cry.

That was when he told her about the bulls. She told him about Chicago's meatpacking district, about the old men she knew who'd butchered hogs every day of their lives for decades. About how they said they got numb to it, until one day one of them cut off his thumb with a machine and didn't feel it, until the guy next to him looked over and noticed all the new blood. About how after you see too much violence, your brain just stops processing it. About how a study on kids in the next neighbourhood over from hers had shown they had permanently elevated levels of cortisol, a sign that their bodies were under stress all the time and didn't know how to calm down.

Those were the kind of conversations Andy couldn't stay in the room for. She slunk off somewhere and got drunk, and you saw her the next morning, maybe. Nile used to judge her a lot more for it, but the day her throat got cut she let Joe and Nicky feed her a red wine as soft as velvet and fell asleep pressed against Joe on the sofa and understood, deeper than words, just how much keeping sane meant feeling anything other than your body shattering into pain.

Nicky braided her hair, the next day. Slow and careful, a little unpracticed, singing ballads in a language that wasn't exactly dead, but only had a few thousand speakers left in northern Italy. Their composer hadn't been good, exactly, but they'd been snowed into a castle with him one winter in the 1680s, so Nicky remembered his entire repertoire. Nile listened to the music and knew he'd refuse if she offered to record it, or write it down. One of the songs felt like the length of a novel (but was, when she checked her phone, more like one hour twenty) and by the end of it she was singing the chorus along with him, and it occurred to her that she could simply ask him to teach her.

"You can't rescue every one you see," she remembered her mom saying, when she found a half-stunned bird on the sidewalk. That was what it felt like with languages.

That afternoon Andy took her to the market. Ostensibly it was for groceries, but Andy didn't do simple errands, especially not when it involved food. She stopped to smell fruit Nile had never heard of; Google told Nile that medlar and quince were related to apples and also, apparently, roses. Nile had to try pine nuts, wild mustard, and three different kinds of yogurt drinks, one of which tasted of roses. Andy protested when she added a bag of potatoes to the load, saying they were bland, but Nile, who'd had enough of turnips, sweetly told her to pay the fuck up.

If you were lonely, and hurting, and didn't have someone to hold you, you could comfort yourself like this. Sunshine and sweetmeats and the steady hands of friends. Something, but probably still not enough. Nile understood it but it made her chest ache. She felt, sometimes, a little glad that Andy would die someday, the way families felt helping someone keep alive from cancer. Of course you wanted them to be alive, but you didn't want them to suffer.

Joe moved her on to staff fighting the next day. It was, he said, not the most useful of weapons in the current day and age, since it was most useful against long bladed weapons, "And who else but us uses those?" But there was some kind of theoretical basis behind the progression of her teaching, from weapon to weapon, and after knife came staff.

To tell the truth, Nile liked it. She'd learned about quarterstaff in her longsword weapons, as something that could defeat a swordsman, but nobody anybody she knew actually practiced it, because while you could wear percussion-resistant cloth and keep safe with blunted swords, there was simply no defending your bones against the percussive strike of a giant whirling stick.

There was something less offensive about getting your skull split or your collarbone broken, compared to getting stabbed. Partly it was because Joe was just a much nicer teacher, slower and more patient, while Nicky would keep stabbing you as you fought to reach your own knife. But also it felt more impersonal, more like an accident that had happened to you.

Okay, and it was also more fun. Knives created small imaginary hemispheres of pain, the angle of the arm as it swept out. Quarterstaves were huge, so long that if you wanted to get around them, sometimes it was literally easier to flip yourself into the air or dump your opponent to the ground instead of getting the staff to move. The first time she managed to run up a wall to get leverage on him, it felt so awesome she didn't actually mind that much that he popped her shoulder out taking her back down.

It was bloody and violent and really would have been impossible if dying had been a significant barrier for them. It made Nile laugh in a high-on-endorphins way, because it felt like she could finally push past the pain and find a place beyond her limits. It felt like being free. Like all her life she'd been wearing a heavy armor of caution, knowing she'd had to keep herself alive, and now she just felt the lightness of taking it off.

There were tears at the back of that laughter, about everything she'd lost because of it, but she pushed that away and went to shower. She and Joe spent the evening on Youtube, watching videos of capoeira and wushu, while the other two made a batch of some kind of pickled egg they thought they remembered from three hundred years ago.

Nile hugged Andy sometimes, because she looked like she needed to be hugged. Andy almost never turned her down.

A long time ago, she thought she remembered, holding a sword had seemed to transport her to some other time. Some other place. Like the sword had been a tangible connection to the past, to a time when things felt... clearer, or truer, or more real somehow. Like the feeling the word "honour" gave her, of something echoing and amplifying through a vaulted space. There was a time when people fought with swords for what they believed in. There was a time when you knew what was right and what was wrong and laid down your life accordingly.

She'd been twelve and believed in fairytales. So sue her.

The swords in their armory spelled out a long story of misery and war. When she held them now, Nile felt like she could feel the bodies that had come into contact with their blades. Curved single-bladed sabers and scimitars, ideally wielded from horseback, meant for a decisive downward chop. Nicky's giant longswords, meant to peel an armored knight like a tin can. (He'd used it, he said, to similar effect on a tank once or twice.) Andy's axes showed her age; before they had the metallurgy to make an entire blade, it was better to use a wood polearm with a blade on the end, and focus the sharp metal to a curved edge, to as small a surface area as possible.

Andy's axes showed her age, but not theirs; they were less than ten years old. Steel, especially steel that came into contact with blood, aged fast enough (and could only take so much of a beating) that the old people knew and had opinions on all the modern replica manufacturers. The oldest blades in the collection were used at Waterloo, only a little more than 200 years ago.

(Nile wondered, as she polished one and rubbed a state-of-the-art hydrophobic finish on it, if the quarterstaff lessons were actually preparing her to fight Booker, should she ever find herself opposing him. It was the kind of thing she couldn't help but think about the logistics of. Surely firearms would be more effective, she initially reasoned, except... guns jammed, guns broke, guns overheated, guns ran out of bullets. And then your gun became a very expensive bludgeon. And you're facing a swordsman who's had 200 years to train. So... why not try a very big stick?)

She knew that even this team could betray her. Even they could fight for the wrong cause. They'd supported revolutions that turned into dictatorships and fought alongside people who turned out to be monsters. There was no promise, no moral certainty, in violence.

So she felt really stupid about it, but the truth was that holding a sword... still brought back that old emotion. That feeling of being capable of doing things. Fighting for a better world. It made her feel taller. It made her feel like her life had a purpose that she'd been heading towards since she was young.

Like God had called her for a special purpose.

Which she'd never say to any of the rest of them, since Andy had been a god and Nicky had been a holy warrior and Joe had broken down completely once, when they let him get too close to a newspaper. They'd only ever hear it with the weight of all the horror they had seen.

So instead she had to carry it as a private conviction, a calling she would have to follow by herself, her own career to make holy instead of horrific. Like when she joined the Marines. Freer, in some ways, but even more out of her depth, not sure she totally understood the situations she was injecting herself into.

The fact that she wasn't sure she ever could walk the path of righteousness and keep herself always on the side of good... was absolutely no inducement not to try. It never had been.

"Picked one yet?" Andy asked, from the door.

"What, you guys weren't gonna pick one for me?" Nile asked, craning her neck around. Andy had her hands buried in the pockets of her jacket, smiling faintly.

"Some things, nobody can pick for you," she said. She picked up one of Nile's polished sabers and admired the sheen along its blade. "Your last-ditch weapon, least of all."

Nile already had a secret favourite of all the swords, but what she found herself saying was, "I want us to do some training in de-escalation."

Andy looked aside from the blade. "Sorry?"

Nile took a deep breath, her heart suddenly pounding like crazy. "That's what I was trained in, aside from combat. De-escalating conflicts. When I was a security guard, we... I got a course on mental health crisis from a guy who does hostage negotiation. I want... we should practice it."

She was ready to be seared by Andy's instant, caustic sarcasm. By a reminder that they were a specialist unit brought in when negotiation failed. Instead Andy looked back at the sword, twisting it to catch the light. "Was it useful?"

"Yeah," Nile said, trying not to let the breath shudder out of her in one long exhale. She didn't want Andy to know how nervous she'd been. "There's a... a lotta conflicts that don't have to turn violent, if you just approach it in..." She ran out of steam for an instant, and shrugged. "If you know how to respond."

"See if there's a webinar," Andy said, which flabbergasted Nile so much—coming from Andy!—that she didn't have anything to say while Andy set the saber down and sauntered back out of the building.

Nile sat for a good long while after that, surrounded by swords on a floor stained with her own blood, and got her breathing under control. Eventually she took her knife out of its sheath and looked it over.

It felt silly, to take a sacred oath on a Ka-Bar knife.

"I swear to almighty God," she said to it, anyway, "that I will use you as my last resort. Not my first."

#nileweek2020 #nile freeman #the old guard #my stuff

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phantomwarrior12 · 5 years ago

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Potentially Personal

Her right shoulder.

It doesn't matter where she is. Elevators. In the midst of a conversation. It's always that right shoulder that she rolls. Her left hand braces the joint as she rolls it in a slow semi-circle. Even after her resurrection by Cerberus, she still moves it cautiously, favoring it in the field.

Garrus has never asked what caused the injury, never brought up how often or how reflexively the Spectre seems to do it. Though, he admits that the curiosity is beginning to get the best of him.

He never got to see Shepard's back before her revival, so, if there were a scar, it's no longer there. But there are certain privileges in being this close with the Commander, in being the only one she allows to spend long hours in her quarters going over intel. In being her confidant and dearest friend, though Garrus often wonders if they could be more.

So, when Shepard leans back in her chair, arching her back to stretch, Garrus lifts his gaze from the data pad in his hands.

"Needing a break, Shepard?"

"No," she returns, tossing him a reassuring look, "We have a limited time to go through these Cerberus files. I want to make the most of your hard work."

He offers a shrug, leaning back on the couch as he props one leg atop the other, "Their system isn't as difficult to crack as they'd like to think. Still, they're bound to notice eventually." He regards her form, vibrant blue tracing along the sturdy curves of her frame, trailing ever higher until she leans back in her seat and rolls that damned right shoulder.

He can't take it anymore.

He sets aside his datapad, "Shepard?"

"Yes, Garrus?" She tears her eyes away from the screen once more.

"Can I ask you something...potentially personal?"

He watches her brow arch, her features contorting into somewhat of a mix of curiosity and amusement before she offers a shrug. "I guess you've earned some prying rights," she stands, striding across the room, much to the Turian's surprise and takes a seat on the other side of the couch, "Shoot."

He uncrosses his legs, shifting to face her and he studies her features. She's completely relaxed, no trace of tension, no subtle flare of distrust, just...calm. It's not an expression he's used to from his Commander - from his friend - but it's a nice change of pace, especially after Alenko.

Garrus sits up a little straighter, clearing his throat as he searches for the most delicate way to address the question that's been plaguing his mind in the three years they've been friends - granted, two of those she'd spent in a coma in a Cerberus facility - but he's getting off-topic now.

"Garrus, I promise to give an honest answer provided you can spit the question out."

She's teasing of course, she'd give him an honest answer regardless - she's never lied to him. The thought draws a small smile from the Turian and he meets her gaze, "There is no delicate way to ask this."

"We haven't come this far with delicacy, now have we?" She props her elbow on the back of the couch, resting her cheek on her fist.

We.

His eyes flicker downwards as the smile broadens slightly. He can't quite put into words how much he likes the sound of that, but he's getting distracted again. Damn his - smitten, was it? Was that the word Joker had used? Yes. Damn his smitten mind.

"Garrus?"

He looks up to see a shadow of concern creeping into the Commander's features. Brows drawn together. Lips parted. Her hand--

He looks down and her hand is on his, squeezing gently. There's a warmth that flourishes through his chest, chasing away the idle chill of the room as his eyes flicker back to hers and he offers an innocent: "Yes?"

"Are you okay? You seem a little out of it."

Out of it. Yes. That seems like the only logical explanation as to why his mind keeps getting side-tracked. Why he keeps getting lost in his thoughts and forgetting he wants to ask about her shoulder - oh. He's done it again, hasn't he?

He shakes his head to clear it, "I'm fine. Too many boring case files, I think." He's very aware of her touch, every fiber of his being vibrates beneath her warmth and he has to remind himself to breathe. "But back to the topic at hand--"

"Yes?" She quirks a delicate eyebrow and Garrus can almost see the amusement in her eyes as they study him.

"Your shoulder," he blurts out at last.

"What about it?"

"The right one. I've noticed you roll it a lot."

Her head tilts and there's almost a shadow over her features for a moment. She doesn't want to talk about it, it's written in bold text all over her face.

"I can see that that's a sensitive topic. Forget I asked, we should--"

"No." She interjects abruptly, holding up her hand to silence him.

He stares, "No?"

"No. It's a good question and it's damn near time someone knew."

"Shepard--"

"Garrus. You said it could be personal," there's a softness to her features and something inside the Turian aches in response, "It happened on Akuze."

He nods slowly, everything that's happened to the Commander seems to stem from Akuze, why would this one injury be any different? He almost feels stupid for not considering that the planet could be the source.

"What happened?" He leans forward, intrigued by the potential tale.

"When the Thresher Maw attacked, we were taken by surprise. The vehicle I was in was hit, one of their tails lashed out or something, sent the damn thing spiraling across the terrain. Dislocated my shoulder, tore a few ligaments but I made it out. I ended up killing the one who tried to splatter me and then fought my way to a transport. Couple of them got smart, I took another couple of hits. In the end, medics had a hell of a time trying to decipher what muscles attached to what tendons."

Garrus visibly flinches at the image, "But Cerberus rebuilt you? Wouldn't that--"

"You'd think," she chuckles softly, shaking her head, "The scar is gone, but the damned thing still gets stiff all the time."

Garrus regards her for a long moment, trying to decide if he'd be out of line to offer - oh, to hell with it. "I could try and help with that?"

"Chakwas--"

"I'm sure is very helpful, but perhaps a massage?"

It's her turn to regard him and Garrus tilts his head in mild amusement.

"Can't hurt, right?"

She sighs, the skepticism ebbing as she nods, "No, I guess not."

It's a small victory as the Turian adjusts his position on the couch before Shepard turns, unzipping her hoodie enough to allow the sleeves to sag off her shoulders. A small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth; he loves to admire the freckles that speckle her skin. They're like tiny stars with constellations all their own.

"You gonna stare all day? Or are you gonna help?" She laughs softly, stealing a glimpse over her shoulder at him.

"Right, sorry," he gently rests his hands on her shoulders.

"It's only the--"

"Relax, Shepard, I've got this." He scolds and the Commander holds up her hands in mock defeat.

Her skin is so soft - for a soldier. His fingers ghost over the scars left behind by Cerberus'a reconstruction and he can swear he felt her flinch. He can't imagine the memories that are linked to them, even if she had been in an alleged coma. So as he gently, yet firmly massages the muscles along her neck and shoulders, he's conscious of the scars, careful not to touch them.

Her chin sags against her chest, eyes falling shut as he works and a small smile tugs are the corner of his mouth - until her comm buzzes.

She lifts her head with a sigh as Garrus pulls back, reaching over to press the answer button.

"Shepard, what the hell have you done now?"

Shepard and Garrus exchange an amused look. Lawson is furious.

"I'll be right there, Miranda." Shepard shuts off the comm with a sigh. "No rest for the weary."

"No, I suppose not," he watches her stand and adjust the hoodie before zipping it up.

"Thanks for the massage, Garrus, it did help a bit."

"Glad to be of service. Perhaps next time we won't get interrupted," he reclines against the back of the couch and she smiles. Spirits, that smile of hers. He doesn't get to see it often enough.

"Maybe." The smile fades just as quickly as it appears, "Well, time to go diffuse Lawson."

"Good luck. I'll finish up here."

"Oh no, if I'm getting both barrels for this, you're coming with."

The Turian snorts in amusement as he gets to his feet, "Yes, ma'am."

"Might need another massage later," she presses the call button for the elevator, stealing a glimpse towards him.

His heart skips.

"I look forward to it."

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midnightartemis · 4 years ago

Text

Chapter Two

On A03

TW: Attempted Assault, Abuse, Language

The Past, Time Uncertain

There were two things that I remember about passing through time. The first was the feeling of falling, though I could see nothing around me to signify my fall, just black, murky darkness. The second was the sound, muffled language that passed quickly by me, too fast for me to comprehend what was being said or sung. It was as if I was hearing every snippet of conversation spoken to the rocks since they were first placed there to stand as silent guardians.

My fall was ended suddenly as I hit the ground, dazed and confused. Had I passed out? The sky above me was now dark violet and filled with stars. There was nothing that I could remember that would have caused me to faint, so did someone hit me with something? Had I been robbed? I looked down at my finger to see that my simple wedding band was still there. Where there was once a small diamond, it was now missing. I sat up suddenly and scrambled my fingers through the grass searching for it desperately. The small band with the tiny diamond had been all that Henry could afford on a soldier’s pension. He had always promised to replace it with a bigger, better ring, but I had refused. It was our wedding ring. I didn’t care how much it cost or what it looked like as long as it meant that him and me became a we. But now the diamond was gone.

Did I lose it on the hike up the hill? Or worse, somewhere along the road? Even in the bright light of the full moon, it was hopeless trying to find it. We would have to come back tomorrow and search for it, even if it was so tiny that we would never be able to find it. I had to try. We had to try.

I hurried down the gravelly path, desperately trying to get back to my motorcycle and back home. I didn’t really know what time it was, though if I stopped to stare at the sky, I could probably figure it out. Navigating by the stars had become like second nature to me during the war.

If I hadn’t been so eager to get back home, perhaps I would have noticed that where there once was a fence for the pasture, there was now nothing. And the path that I traveled on was less worn down and muddier than before.

Maybe I would have gone back to the circle to see if I had gone the wrong way. Maybe I would have kept searching for my diamond. Maybe I would have touched the stone once more, and my time trespassing into a different life would have been brief and unnoticed.

My feet raced down the path until it ended suddenly and my confusion began. The road should have been there. My motorcycle should have been not two meters away. I turned around trying to orient myself again. Had I gone down the wrong path? Taken a turn that I hadn’t seen before on my way up?

A gunshot ripped through the air and the ground beside me exploded. My next reactions were ones that had been ingrained in me nearly every day for the last four years. Run. Hide. Cover. No time for thinking. Thinking means death.

My eyes search the skies for bomber planes as I race towards the closest available cover, the thick trees of a heavily wooded area. Had I been in my right mindset, I may have noticed that these trees were much older and thicker than the modern forests of Scotland. But it was hard to think when all I heard were the muffled sounds of gunshots and men’s yells that echoed through the forest. I kept running, kept moving, until the land descended to a stream bathed in moonlight, but otherwise hidden by large juts of rough, mossy stone.

I pressed myself against the rock and tried to calm my breathing. I could still hear the gunshots and yells, but they sounded more like pistols than machine guns. One shot at a time, long pauses between. But the war is done. The war is over. My brain tried to think rationally. I knew that the Scots didn’t really like the English, but much of the tension was between the Irish and the English. And who would call for infighting so soon after the end of the Great War?

None of that much mattered when they were shooting at me. It didn’t matter why if I was just going to get shot anyway and die.

See? Think later. Run. Hide. Cover. I was about to make my move to skirt through the forest and around the edge of Craigh na dun to find my bike and get the hell out of here when I heard the undeniable click of a hammer being pulled back.

“Turn. Slowly.” The voice is rough but oddly familiar.

I slowly raise my hands and turn to face my attacker. The moonlight is faint, but my eyes have adjusted well enough to see the man standing in front of me holding a gun to my head. “Henry? Henry, what the hell?”

He was dressed very strangely in what seemed to be an old British uniform, though this one seemed brand new. His eyes were hard and furious. “What’s an English woman like you doing in the middle of the woods?”

“What do you mean? Henry, what are you playing at? This isn’t funny.”

“Henry? There’s no Henry here. Don’t tell me you’ve fallen in with those Scottish scum,” he eyes me with a leering eye and I slowly take a step back. “Though you are half-naked in strange clothes. Don’t you miss a British man? Refined? Less hairy? Or maybe you prefer wild savagery.”

“Henry, please stop, you’re scaring me.”

“My name is Captain Johnathan Snoke.”

My heart stops completely and my feet turn to run, but he’s on me before I can take a step. He throws me against the ground, and I scrape at the dirt to get away but he’s on top of me and tearing at the top of my pants and there’s a hand on my mouth to keep me from screaming so I scream on the inside. “Prancing around the Queen’s countryside pretending to be a man won't keep you-“

A loud crack above me cuts off his words, and his weight is lifted from me. I don’t have a second to think or breathe before I’m hauled to my feet by a different hand and dragged through the dark forest. I desperately try to pull away from my rescuer, but his hand remains firm around my arm. He’s a giant beside me, nearly seven feet tall, all bushy hair and wild-looking in the dark. He’s not wearing the British uniform, but something darker and more rugged.

“Stop yer fussing if ye don’t want a bullet to your head or a cock in your cunt.”

I freeze, but this only prompts the man to tug me harder along with him. “I’ll scream.”

“Do that and I'll leave ye here for the dogs. Ye come with me quietly and I can at least keep ye safe 'til morning.”

More gunshots ring out in the distance and it takes me an instant to realize that if I am to survive the night and wake up from this nightmare, then I should comply with this beast of a man. I let him lead me through the dark woods which he seems to know like the back of his hand and it isn’t long until we come to a small dark cottage. He opens the door and throws me inside, and I’m suddenly basked in candlelight. A dozen eyes focus on me.

“Who’s this.”

“British lass. Caught her being attacked by none other than Captain Jack.”

“I hope ye sliced his throat for me.”

“No chance.”

My mind is racing to take in the information that is surrounding me. There’s nothing but a group of men, but they’re unlike any men I had ever seen. They seemed to be playing dress-up, wearing knives and swords and pistols and clothes that looked like they were pulled out of a history book and dragged through the mud.

“She could be a spy.” There’s a short, dark-haired man leaning against the wall of the small stone house. He moves in a way that tells me he’s the leader of this lot.

“I’m not a spy,” I say and the reaction in the room tells me that they’re surprised I can even speak. “Did no one tell you that the war is over and it wasn’t against the British?”

A hearty chuckle goes around the room and I’m beginning to move beyond scared and into pissed.

“The war is just beginning, lassie.” Another man chimes in.

The leader of the group sends him a look that could kill and the man immediately shuts up and turns his eyes down. The leader takes a sip of something that I don’t think is water. “Would ye tell us what a young English woman like yourself is doing dressed as a man in the middle of the woods at night in times like these? Speaking to Captain Jack of all people?”

“I wasn’t speaking to him. ” I spit out.

The man’s eyes narrow. “That dinna answer my question, lass.”

“I was at Craigh na dun. I took a wrong path down the hill and before I could trace my steps back, I was shot at. So I ran.”

“Nearest town is more than a fair walk away.”

“I rode.”

“Where’s your horse?”

“My horse? No- I rode a-“

A sharp cry of pain interrupts me and I stop to look at its source. There’s a figure by the fire doubled over in seemingly grand amounts of pain. I watch as the leader goes over to him and touches the figure’s shoulder. The figure winces. In the light, I can see now why he’s in so much pain. Dislocated shoulder.

“Let’s put that back where it belongs.” The leader takes the man’s arm and he groans in pain. He’s doing it wrong. He’s going to-

“Stop!” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. All eyes in the room turn to me, including the man at the fire. His eyes are dark and intense, wet with the pain he’s holding back. “You’re going to injure the tendons and muscles even more. Let me.”

I step forward and am met with a wall of heavily armed men about ready to place their blades in my side. I stop and eye the leader, completely unsure as to why I’m even bothering to help my now kidnappers. “I’ve been trained in first aid. I know how to reset his arm correctly.”

The leader eyes me for a moment then nods. I slowly inch forward until my hands are on the injured man's arm. He groans as I slowly maneuver his arm into the correct position. “I’m going to need you to resist me. Push when I push, okay? I’m not strong enough to do it on my own. And it’s going to hurt. A lot.”

The man says nothing, just quietly nods. I take a deep breath and still myself. “On three. One… two… three…”

I push with all my might and he pushes back, groaning as the joint slips back into place. His dark eyes are watching my every move. “Is there a long bit of cloth for a sling?”

Someone hands me a bit of dirty cloth and I suppose it’s the best we’ve got right now. I fashion him a sling. “Rest your arm for a few days. No strenuous activity or you’ll hurt it further.”

“We’ve best be going. Won’t be long until those bloody bastards find us again.” The leader says and all the men begin to move. I head toward the door ready to make my way through the night and back to the stones to find my bike and get very, very far away from here.

“Where do you think you’re going?” A hand grabs my arm and I yank away. I was getting very tired of strange men grabbing me whenever they pleased.

“Back to Craigh na dun and far away from you lot.”

His eyes narrow and I can tell he doesn’t like my answer. “I think you’re coming with us, lass.”

“Like hell I am.” I spit at his feet and this time blades are actually drawn. The leader of the group just laughs.

“Yer a feisty one,” he chuckles. “Until I get the truth of who ye are and whether or not yer a spy for the British, yer not going anywhere.”

“And what if I chose to go somewhere?”

“Then ye will be forcibly readjusted to the correct course.”

My heart pounds as I stare at the wild men before me. None of this made any sense. My head rebelled at the possible conclusions to this mess that I had already drawn. If that truly was Captain Johnathan Snoke back in those woods and not a horrible prank by my husband, then that meant that I was no longer in the safe hands of 1945. That somehow I had been transported through time to the mid-1700s.

Impossible.

It was all impossible.

My mind clung to the last possible sane explanation, that this was all a strange dream. And soon I would wake up in the too small, too squeaky bed of our bed and breakfast. I would roll over and tell Henry about the strangest dream I just had.

And then I remember that I hadn’t gone back to the bed and breakfast. That this couldn’t be a dream. That this all felt very, very, terrifyingly real.

#reylo #reylo fanfiction #kylo x rey #rey x ben #reylo fanfic #reylo ao3

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fantasmalforces · 4 years ago

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Some more Piper Headcanons for your soul

// She lives in my head rent free

Piper thumps and she thumps loud. Regardless of the material she is standing on, the sound will reverberate and travel a great distance. This is because the bones of Rabbitfolk feet are solid at the heel and along the flat and much thicker than most species. Their tendons and bones have a thicker layer of synovial fluid at the joints their leg bones in particular (which are also much thicker than the rest of their bones) are shielded by a spongelike layer of connective tissue that absorbs the powerful shock from the impact. They throw down their heels followed by an even and firm slap of the flats of their feet to created a loud thump! (You can try this too! Compare stomping down on the flats of your feet to stomping down on your heel. You can hear the difference— and feel it too.)

Piper mostly thumps to convey displeasure or fear. When she’s upset, she tends to thump occasionally until she is acknowledged or the problem bothering her is taken care of. Fearful thumping is a repetitive act. She thumps numerous times in a motion similar to how humans shake their legs to warn others that there is danger. It is also used to alert the danger that it has been spotted and that she is aware of its presence. The sound and the energetic motion acts as a deterrent. Many tigers and leopards have turned tail between the thumping and the hissing.

Oh yeah— Piper can hiss like a wolverine / badger. Her tail gets all frizzy and she bares her teeth when she does. It’s a terrifying sound coming from someone so small and cute and unassuming.

Piper has trouble regulating her body temperature. This mostly applies to cold weather. Growing up in Australia and working in Rook has allowed Piper to adapt well to hot weather. She is able to regulate her body temperature by flapping her ears or lightly wetting them with a damp cloth. However, much like her mother species, Piper is far less good at keeping warm. If it gets too cold, she loses heat rapidly and will try to stop moving (something she can’t do because she’ll risk freezing to death). In cold weather, warm drinks, earmuffs, and heated clothing is incredibly important for her.

Piper isn’t a picky eater. She’ll eat whatever you give her (including snakes and bugs— she loves those!) However, she’ll often take fresh food like leafy greens and cooked meat fresh from a hunt over processed and “fast food” if given the choice.

Piper loves having her ears gently rubbed.

When she’s excited or otherwise pleased by simple physical contact (headscratches, rubbing noses, cheek nuzzling, ear pets, tickling, etc.) Piper starts lightly thumping.

Piper relies on body language and touch a lot to convey intimacy. Rabbitfolk press or touch their foreheads with their loved ones (essentially it’s their version of kissing, romantically or platonically respectively), nuzzle their cheeks together, thump, move their ears around, and flop/lean against the ones they care about to communicate their deeper emotions.

On the other hand, badgers communicate through a lot of chattering and vocalizations, hence why when Piper talks she talks a lot and she talks fast.

Going off of that, paired with her time in the military, Piper can get very loud. She often addresses the Privateers under her like a commanding drill sergeant. It’s more difficult not to hear her when she’s on duty. (But she can still sneak up on people. Especially when they’re slacking off.)

Piper is very alert and easily alerted by loud noises. Generally they only catch her attention for a moment or two and don’t bring her alarm for more than a couple of seconds since that’s all it takes to determine if something is a threat, but certain sounds (glass shattering, leather smacking, wooden doors slamming extremely hard) will put her on alert for anywhere from a couple minutes to a couple of hours.

Piper’s rarely scared by many things. She’ll take on tigers and bears no problem and won’t flinch. But when she is truly afraid, her nose twitches.

Piper’s animal form claws never stop growing. They’re semi-retractable and need to be cut twice a month to avoid being a nuisance.

#{ keeps their moet et chandon in their pretty cabinet : headcanon }#{ ‘’ never looked back never feared never cried ‘’ | piper }

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tenspontaneite · 5 years ago

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Boundless (Chapter 2/?)

Chapter warnings: Body horror. Dysphoria? Some level of dysphoria and dissociation.

Spoilers for s3e2.

(Chapter length: ~9k. Ao3 link)

---

He woke up to the sound of Rayla cursing quietly over his head, and stirred. “Rayla?” He mumbled, incoherent and slurred from the edge of sleep. “Whas’wrong?”

She was silent for long enough that he opened his eyes, blinking blearily to resolve the shape of her, to see what she was doing. “…Sorry for waking you.” She said, softly, as if still trying to preserve his slumber. “You can sleep a little longer, if you want.”

He was a little more concerned about the barely-leashed fear behind her eyes. He fought towards alertness, and pushed himself up, and-

The new-limbs slid across his back.

Heavy. Heavier. Larger than he remembered – enough that he shot up the rest of the way in alarm, hands coming around to feel one, and-

“Holy-“ He yelped, cutting himself off more from shock than anything else. “Rayla, is that – did it really-“

“They’ve grown.” She confirmed, tightly, and shuffled over beside him, seated on her knees. “A lot.”

Still a little numb with shock, he took it by the base of a clawed finger and pulled it out from his side. It had felt so disgustingly heavy and meaty and foreign last night, when it was comparatively tiny, but now?

Now, the thing was – it had to be nearly as long as his arm, if perhaps somewhat slimmer. And the other one undoubtedly matched it. He wasn’t entirely clear on how big they’d been when they came out, but – if they hadn’t doubled in size, they couldn’t be far off it. “It’s only been a few hours.” He muttered, reeling, and stared at the skin of it in the merciless light of day. Maybe Rayla had been able to see this, what with her better night vision, but – it really was kind of disgusting. The skin was a dark fleshy pink, and disturbingly translucent. He could see the lines of blue veins running along the limb. He could see muscles, and – and tendons, and… “What are those?” he wondered, a little confused, and poked at what looked like a strange black dot underneath the skin, one of many arrayed against the outer edge of the limb. They extended all the way along the longest finger on the hand-joint, too, but not either of the other fingers.

“…Your guess is as good as mine.” Rayla said, voice strained, and reached out with a wavering hand. “Can I…?”

He blinked, almost surprised that she’d asked. “Of course.” Slipped from his lips, a reflexive response, and a little embarrassing for it. Still, she reached out to touch at one of the many black dots, and frowned a little.

“There’s something under there.” She concluded, after a little prodding. “I thought I saw these last night – but they’re more obvious now. They’re poking at the – your skin, a little.”

His stomach twisted. “So not only are things bursting out of my back, but they’re bursting out of the things that burst out of my back.” He said, a little sourly. “Great.”

She shrugged. “At least you can’t feel it?” She offered. And then-

Then, as if solely to spite her-

The limb twitched.

She jumped back from it as if it were a snake, rather than a limb of dubious and unpleasant provenance. He did more-or-less the same thing, but as it was attached to his body, this was not especially helpful. The end result of this was that he ended up half-fallen over on his side, staring at the ugly fleshy limb hanging over his side with wide and wary eyes.

“Did that just-“ He started, at the same time as she said “It moved!”, and they stared at each other for a moment of mutual astonishment.

“…Can you feel anything?” She ventured, after several seconds had passed, and the limb was still laying there placidly.

“…Not that I’ve noticed?” he answered after a moment, and pushed himself back up. After all, he’d just been pretty much squashing one of the limbs, and hadn’t felt anything, so he didn’t exactly expect that to have changed. Still, though….Cautiously, he reached out and poked it, and…still felt nothing.

Rayla eyed it pensively, and then, without warning, reached out and pinched its skin sharply between her nails.

It twitched violently away – spasmodic and uncoordinated, but….moving. Moving and responsive. As if it were capable of responding to pain that he couldn’t actually feel. He eyed her, not certain whether he should be peeved at the pinch or not. After all, he hadn’t actually felt it, but…

“…You really didn’t feel that?”

“Not at all.” He said after a second, admittedly bewildered, and poked and prodded at the limb some more. It didn’t provoke any new response, though, until a few seconds later it just sort of twitched mildly on its own. One of the clawed fingers at the end flexed in a spasming, jerking movement, and then went limp again. “…That’s kind of disturbing.” He observed, as clinically as he could when it concerned something growing out of his own body.

A second later, their observations were interrupted as Zym, apparently oblivious to all of his, rolled over in his sleep and onto his right wing. Both of them quieted, reminded that one of their party was still trying to sleep, and then communicated in a series of wordless glances and pointing gestures the need to remove themselves to a little further from the sleeping dragon.

They ushered themselves further over by the water, leaving Zym nestled amongst their bags. The back-limbs swung on his back as he walked, and as he came to a stop, twitched all-over in a spasmodic motion that fluttered against the skin of his back.

Rayla looked at his back at the same time he craned his neck to look over his shoulder. “…Do you think they’re going to start moving on their own? Like, properly?” She wondered, as if speaking an idle thought aloud, and he shivered.

“I really hope not.” He expressed fervently. “That would be beyond creepy.”

“…You’ll probably be able to move them eventually.” Rayla offered, in a sentiment that would have been more reassuring if she didn’t sound so uncertain about it. “They’re still pretty…red and raw-looking. They’re probably still…developing.”

He eyed the limb at hand with dislike. “I mean, they do still look…baby-skin-ish.” He agreed, deeply sceptical of his (alleged) own flesh. “But I’m pretty sure babies’ arms work. Maybe these will just…hang around uselessly forever, making it stupidly hard to wear shirts.” He contemplated his own ongoing shirtlessness, wondering how he was meant to actually wear clothes, now. Surely the addition of two giant stupid back-arms would make shirt-wearing a challenge?

“Twitching?” She suggested, looking as if she were trying very hard not to find morbid humour in the situation.

“Twitching through shirts,” he agreed, with deliberate levity, and saw her suppress a smile. “Everyone will think I’m hiding a couple of lizards in my jacket, or something.” He recalled some of Ezran’s more audacious attempts to bring animals into the castle, and the corners of his lips turned upwards.

She huffed, amused, and shook her head. “Well, I’m sure we’ll find out soon, if nothing else.” She said, which cast something of a pall on what little lightness he’d managed to muster. She was right, of course. The things had doubled in size in a few hours, so if they were likely to develop further…it’d happen soon. Sooner, probably, if he used any spells.

He frowned, suddenly, something about that thought prodding at him. “…Rayla,” he said, slowly, and her eyes went a little more alert, chin rising to look at him questioningly. “How long do you think it’s been? Since I, uh, cast a spell the last time?”

She blinked, tilted her head as if focusing on something, and ventured “Around five hours?”

Unease settled like a leaden weight into his gut. “….It was maybe a couple hours between the first two times I had to cast a spell.” He said, mostly to himself. “And then…longer, maybe? Three hours? And now…”

Understanding dawned in her eyes. “You didn’t wake up.” She realised, following his track of thought. “That weird…sky-magic-breath-thing – it’s not happening again?”

Callum took stock of himself; of the breath in his lungs, the Sky filtering leisurely into his blood, the arcanum within that welcomed magic in every time he inhaled…

There was magic in him. There was magic everywhere in him. But it wasn’t too much. It wasn’t building, wasn’t pooling, wasn’t stretching his lungs out until they felt fit to burst…

Slowly, like a foregone conclusion, he became aware of where exactly it was draining. To his fledgling magic-sense, the Sky was in him, and flowing through him, and…draining, very efficiently, into the new limbs in his back. It was disconcerting to be able to feel the flow of magic inside their blood-supply, when he couldn’t feel them at all by the more native sense of touch.

“The magic’s going into them.” He said aloud, nonplussed by this perfectly logical turn of events. It made sense, what with how everything had happened, but still… “It’s like…before, it had nowhere to go – or it did, some of it was going into…these things, but – it wasn’t flowing right? There wasn’t enough…room? I don’t know.” He puffed out a breath, frustrated by the difficulty of putting it into words.

Rayla frowned at him. She was far from the most magically-learned person in the world, but she at least tried to understand his arcanum-and-magic stuff, and he appreciated that. “…It drained it all out when you cast those spells, though.” She pointed out.

“Maybe that’s because some of it went out through the spell, so there wasn’t….a blockage?” He suggested, a little helplessly, then shook his head. “No, that’s probably not right.” He sighed.

Gingerly, she patted him on the shoulder. “They’re your weird-arm-things, Callum.” She said supportively. “And your Sky arcanum. I’ll do my best, but…” She shrugged. “Not exactly my area of expertise.”

He smiled half-heartedly at her. “Yeah, I know. Thanks.” A horrible thought struck him, and he stilled. “I wonder if my spells are even going to work, now.” His own words set his gut to squirming with awful, sickening dread.

She blinked, clearly not following. “…What?”

“The last two times I cast a spell – it didn’t really come out right.” He recalled, thinking of a wind-breath that barely gusted, a lightning-bolt that barely sparked, a spark that barely fizzled…

“I thought that was because you were out of breath and panicking.” She said, and then frowned with him. “But – no, that last time yesterday, you were fine. Well, fine, except for the…” She waved at his back. “You-know.”

‘You-know’, indeed. He supposed there weren’t a lot of diplomatic ways to say ‘the limbs that grew under your skin until they started tearing their way out of you’. “It was like all the magic went into these, instead of into the spell.” He remembered, uneasily, casting a look to the one in view. He lingered, uncertainly, knowing what he should do but not quite managing to find the nerve for it. “Like…there wasn’t any magic left over to do anything. So it…didn’t come out right.”

“Are you going to try it?” She asked directly, cutting straight to the heart of his newest anxiety.

He twitched. “…I should.” He said, as if to himself, with deep reluctance. Rayla looked at him expectantly, and he twitched again. “It’s not that easy, though.” He defended. “What if-“ The words caught in his throat, for a second, and then came out sounding uncomfortably afraid. “What if…it doesn’t work?”

The fear hung in the air along with the words he’d uttered, unexpectedly galling.

What if it didn’t work? What if, after everything he’d been through, and everything he’d gained – he couldn’t even cast spells anymore? What if the things on his back just…sucked it up, and always would, and he’d just be a weird magical human with weird magical limbs who could still never have the magic he actually wanted?

Rayla looked at him, sympathetic and firm at once. “Try it.” She said, offering her hand. “There’s only one way to find out.”

He took a deep breath, reached out to clutch at her fingers, and exhaled. “…Okay.”

With her other hand, she reached out and patted him on the bare arm, and abruptly he almost forgot to be afraid because he was too busy being self-conscious about the amount of skin he was showing. He felt his cheeks heat, and he looked away, reminding himself that he’d been shirtless all morning and all night and he should be used to it by now, and really it wasn’t like he could help it…

“Okay.” He said, more firmly, at least half to put a stop to his rambling thoughts. His gut clenched tight with dread that he tried not to focus on too much as he – not thinking about it, not thinking about what it’d mean if he failed – extended his hand to draw a rune into the air.

Aspiro, this time. His first spell. His easiest. The one he knew in his breath and blood, now, knew in the spark of a Primal nestled beside his heart. To his new understanding of the Sky, it was a perfect spell, a reflection of what the magic was in its purest form. He breathed into the Sky, and the Sky breathed into him. He understood this spell, now, in the same instinctive way that he understood the beat of his heart.

It should be easy. A spell that spoke to the breath of the Sky….it should be the most natural thing in the world.

He touched his finger to the air, inhaled magic, and-

The rune-light came as easily as it ought. The word, when he spoke it, came easy, too. The magic coming in from the Sky, coming in through his arcanum – it flowed like the unhindered wind. Easy, open, effortless, full of the pure exhilaration of the open air. But that was where the ease ended.

It started as it ought. The magic followed the spell into his breath, pooling in his lungs and following it up the centre of his chest as he began to exhale, chasing the air-

And then it stuttered, falling from the breath like a stone from a cliffside – and where it fell it was snatched away. It only took an instant. Just that. Nothing more than a second…and the things on his back, quick and remorseless and greedy, stole the magic away. All of that power, all of that boundless, exhilarating energy…just gone.

He blew out the breath anyway, even knowing that the spell was broken, even knowing it wouldn’t work. The air tumbled from his lips, and was nothing more than itself. Just breath, rather than Breath. Just air, rather than the issue of the Sky. Just empty, barren, powerless air.

The sheer, gutting failure of it hit him like a physical blow; he crumpled forwards, and hardly noticed the weight increasing on his back.

He only realised he was crying when Rayla took him by the shoulder and turned him around. He only had a second to blink at her through tears, only a second to realise that there were tears, and then she pulled him into a hug. He shook a little as her arms closed around his back – surely having to negotiate around the presence of those awful, magic-stealing things now – and buried his face gladly in her shoulder.

“It didn’t work, Rayla.” He mumbled, distraught, into the fabric of his own scarf around her neck. “It didn’t work.”

Her arms tightened. “…I know. I’m sorry, Callum.”

“It’s gone.” The words tumbled out of him, all misery, all hopelessness. “My magic – I only had it back for – for maybe a day. And it’s gone.”

A beat, and then she drew him back from her, as easily as if picking up a ragdoll. He blinked at her, eyes bleary and cheeks tear-stained. “Hold on a minute, let’s not go that far.” She said, voice firm, but carefully gentle. “Your…Sky arcanum. You still have that, right?”

For a second the question sounded absurd. Of course he had the Sky arcanum. She might as well ask him if he had blood or skin or hair – and then he managed to think past the utter depth of his arcanum to remember that he’d not always had it. That it wasn’t even really a day old yet. “Well…yeah.” He admitted, uncertainly.

“There you go, then.” Rayla nodded, with a small encouraging smile. “You’re still a magical creature, if you’ve got that, right?”

His eyes flickered down to his still-bare chest, as if he could see the Sky rooted there, as if it ought to be apparent as soon as anyone looked at him. It felt like it should be. It felt so much a part of him that he could hardly imagine that people would be able to see him without instinctively knowing that he belonged to the Sky.

“….I guess.” He admitted, more reluctantly. “But – Rayla – my spells. You saw – I didn’t manage to make anything come out. Not even a little breeze. These – things,” he bit out the word with something close to vitriol, waving over his shoulder in an almost vicious motion, “They just….take all of it. There’s nothing left for me to use.” Hopelessness encroached again, with the certainty of loss. “I’ve lost it.” Without spells – he might be magical, but…he wasn’t a mage.

Rayla looked at him, worried, brow lightly furrowed. “Well, you’ve only tried one of your spells so far.” She pointed out. “Do you think it’ll make a difference which one you use?”

Hope sparked for a second, but he quelled it, not wanting it to gain too much ground. Still, though… “I don’t see why it would.” He said unhappily.

She sighed at him. “Don’t be so pessimistic. Just try it.”

He wavered, for a while, staring back at her in consternation. He didn’t want to try it, he realised. He didn’t want to try it…because what if fulminis failed, too? As long as he didn’t try, as long as he didn’t know for sure…he could pretend that he still had the magic he’d fought so hard for. The magic that felt right. But, the second he drew that rune, and nothing came out…he’d lose that.

It was like the not-quite-secret of Harrow’s death, in a way. Something he knew, but…wasn’t at all ready to face.

Except he had to, didn’t he? He had to know whether he could cast spells or not. He had to. He had to try it, even if now…even if he was pretty sure that the unwanted limbs on his back would steal all the magic out of it.

He exhaled, feeling the magic travelling on the breath. Magic was in him, still. Coming in on the breath, filtering through his lungs into his blood, travelling along the slow path on his bloodstream to the magic-stealing limbs…and that was the passive way they drew in magic, wasn’t it? They’d sort of been doing that yesterday, he thought – taking some of the magical overload that had been building in him. But yesterday, there hadn’t been any way for the rest of the magic to drain. It had just…built up, an overpressure threatening to burst him. Until he cast the spells, and…it was redirected, somehow.

Now, the redirection wasn’t necessary. The magic had made its own pathways, beyond the slow natural journey of magic to breath to blood. And so…any magic that came into him, drained almost instantly away. Gone so quickly that there was nothing left for his spells.

It’s not going to work, he thought to himself, with something like grief. A day, he’d had his victory. Just a day, or not all that much longer. For a day, he’d been a mage again.

Still, he raised his finger to the air. Because he had to know.

“Fulminis,” he said, softly, like waiting for an axe to fall, and watched the rune-light sparking where his finger trailed. His arcanum sparked with it, opening wide as if to welcome in the Sky-

Magic crashed into his body, stronger than he’d ever felt it, and – and there was so much, a flood of it, the Sky poured in and in and in and – and as he’d expected, the new pathways channelled it straight into his back, straight into the wide channels of magic that each limb represented-

-But.

But…not all of it.

His eyes widened, the delay between speaking the spell and its inevitable failure widening, widening, widening – the magic finished crashing in from the Sky, and for a second, for just a second, there was enough of it that – enough of it to-

He pulled at the feeling of it with fresh desperation, the magic hot and electric alongside his blood, and what little had been spared followed the path he offered in a single searing instant. A lightning-bolt, thin and frail but so wonderfully bright, split out into the air.

“….Stronger spells.” He breathed, into the aftermath, into the lengthening moments of stunned quiet that sat between him and Rayla and the Sky. “That’s…that’s what I needed. Stronger spells. So there’s still magic left over from what these stupid back-things take.”

Quietly, Rayla reached out and took his hand, squeezing it. When he looked at her, she was wearing a smile, small but genuine. “See, sad prince?” She said, nudging him with her shoulder. “It’ll be fine after all.”

Callum exhaled, the relief shaking him to the bone. “…Yeah.” He said, quietly. “Maybe it will.”

The new limbs might be bottomless magic-hungry pits, sure, but…even they seemed to have limits. Maybe, if he used stronger spells, or figured out a way to draw in more magic at once, or to somehow control where the magic actually went…he’d be able to cast normally again. Even with these things on his back.

I’m still a mage, he thought, with a relief so heady that it was exhausting.

Then: “Hate to rain on your moment of triumph,” Rayla started, apologetically. “But you might want to take a look at your back-things.”

He paused, abruptly aware of the increased sensation of weight on his back, pulling around his shoulder-blades. Abruptly aware of, suddenly, the way that something prickled.

“…Oh.” He said, faintly.

---

In short order, they were examining his weird new limbs again.

“Arm out.” Rayla ordered him, and he complied wide-eyed as she pulled the left limb out by its longer finger to compare it to his outstretched arm. A very short while ago, it had been pretty much the same length, the tip of the longest clawed finger just about reaching the knuckles of his hand.

Now, it was almost a hand’s length longer, and already…it looked different.

The skin was a little thicker, a little less translucent. The veins beneath it weren’t so glaringly blue, and when Rayla pressed her fingers near the base of the whole thing, she claimed to find a strong and steady pulse there, as she would on the underside of his arm.

And, of course…the dark spot-things they’d both noticed had grown.

“They’re pressing through the skin now.” Rayla said, needlessly, as she’d pulled the limb around to demonstrate it to him. He could see quite well the way that the tiny dark spots had started growing outwards, like tiny rubbery spikes, almost translucent where they breached the skin. He pressed on one, gingerly, and found it smooth and cartilaginous. Behind them, a row more of dark spots had sprouted along the full length of both limbs, presumably to follow the progress of the first.

Rayla investigated the tiny row of spikes herself, following them along the edge of his back-arm to the elbow and then along to where the skin met his shoulder.

“There’s twenty-seven of these ones.” She reported, eyes narrowed on the foremost layer. “On both of them. Nine on the longest finger, nine on the wrist to elbow, and nine from the elbow to shoulder. Not sure about the rest.”

Callum tried to focus more on her words than the strangeness of watching her fingers on the rows of fine spikes. It was hard to pinpoint. Hard to identify. But…he could swear that he could almost feel the pressure of the spikes being pressed against the skin. He tapped the limb to check, and still didn’t feel that, but… “They’re so weird.” He said, helplessly, after a moment. “Are they – I mean….” He bit back any further words, mind whirling.

Too soon to tell, she’d said. But that was before. Was that still true?

“…What do you think they are?” He asked, eventually, when she failed to answer his poor attempts at articulating his thoughts. “The…limbs, I mean.”

Rayla didn’t answer that for a few seconds either, casting an indecipherable look over the limbs attached to his back. Still, though, she plainly heard the unspoken words, and knew what he was really asking. She poked at the tiny emerging nubby spikes, too, and he shivered. “…It’s not like I’m an expert in how wings work, you know.” She said, eventually, voice pensive, and the word wings set something in his gut to churning. “And I’ve not exactly seen a lot of winged toddlers around.” She hesitated. “I’ve seen baby birds, though. Their feathers, when they’re still growing…they look kind of like really long spikes, growing out of the skin, all in rows.” She trailed a finger along the line of emergent prickly nubs, pensive. “In rows like these, I guess, though you’ve only got two rows starting so far.”

He swallowed. “so…you think they are wings.”

She shrugged helplessly. “Either that, or you’re growing a set of weird spiky arms.”

Callum ran a careful finger over the tiny nubby spikes on the mysterious new limb, and felt words desert him.

Rayla noticed, and looked at him side-long from the corners of her eyes. “…You alright?” She asked, nudging him, and he exhaled.

“…I don’t know?” he expressed, conflicted, his maybe-wing still in his hand. She didn’t speak, just watched him, until he managed to find enough words to describe the mess of how he was feeling. “I just…don’t know. Like…it’s all happening so fast. A day ago – or maybe a little longer – I didn’t even have an arcanum, and now…” he pressed his thumb firmly into the flesh of the not-hand, and….and, he thought he felt something of it. Not a sense of touch as he was accustomed to, but a sense of pressure. “…Now, I might be growing wings.”

“Could still be spiky arms.” Rayla offered, in a plain attempt to be light-hearted. He couldn’t quite manage to smile at it, and she softened. “Well, at least wings are useful.” She said after a moment, as if trying to be reassuring. “If they’re anything like an elf’s, you should even be able to fly on them, once they’re done growing.”

He tried to think of the idea of flight. It couldn’t quite break through the numb shroud of shock of confusion that still hung over him, heavy and oppressive and bleak. “…I can’t even think about that right now.” He muttered, in the end. “I just – this is already…so much.” He raised a hand to his face as if to hide behind it, suddenly overcome in a way he couldn’t quite explain. It was just – so much. He’d not even adjusted to having magic, and then these things had started growing out of his back and they might be wings and he could hardly cast spells anymore and – and there was so much. What was he meant to think about any of it?

She regarded him for a few long moments, then took his hand. “It’ll work out.” She said, with a gentle smile. “Until then…” She squeezed his fingers, and nodded back to where Zym was still dozing in the morning light. “We’ve got a journey to make.”

The words were a breath of fresh air, in a way, and he laughed with dazed amusement. Because of course. He could gain an arcanum and have a pair of wings erupt bloodily from his body, but life went on. The war didn’t particularly care about his turmoil, and Zym still needed to get back to his mother. That, at least, hadn’t changed.

Rayla smiled a little more widely at him, as if sensing the near-calm the thought had brought him. Then she rose, pulling him up with her. “Come on.” She said. “Let’s wake up Zym, and get going. Lots of ground to cover today.”

As she said this, she looked out at the prevailing greenery with almost a hint of…excitement, or trepidation, or both. He would have asked, but she exhaled quick and fast, as though steeling herself, and pulled him determinedly off towards their things.

---

In the end, Callum did not like the idea of travelling through Xadia shirtless, so they had to delay setting off for a while longer to sort out his clothing situation. Given the increasingly large new limbs on his back, this was something of a conundrum.

His undershirt wasn’t even an option now, given it only had a couple of buttons. That had been fine when they were getting it off of a distended back, but was less fine now, when they needed to work around two significant obstacles. He packed it away, mournful, and turned to his sleeveless red shirt.

First they tried just putting it on as normal, essentially strapping the probably-wings to his back. This seemed like it might be successful, up until the right one twitched and the first claw poked cheerfully through the fabric of his poor shirt. “Okay, so much for Plan A.” Rayla said ruefully, as she peeled the shirt off him again to show him the hole.

He made a face at it. “Yeah, let’s…try not to actually wreck my clothes.” He said, with visions of entire clawed fingers breaking through his formerly-nice attire. “It’s not like I have a lot of them. So, er…” He frowned. “What else can we try?”

Dubious, they made a half-hearted attempt at a Plan B, which involved putting his new limbs through the shirt arm-holes, essentially putting the thing on backwards and buttoning it at his back. This let the new limbs hang out unrestrained, but left his arms pinned to his torso, which was decidedly not ideal. Rayla got a couple of chuckles out of that one, at least, so it wasn’t entirely a wasted effort.

“Okay, so maybe let’s not sacrifice your arms to the cause.” She said, lips still twitching as she removed the shirt yet again, considering. As she held it up, he was momentarily struck again by the commonality in colour between it and the scarf she still wore. He hadn’t thought she’d be keeping it, when she took it to distract Sol Regem, but with all the trouble they’d had with the Sky magic and his new back-limbs since then…well, she’d apparently forgotten to give it back. It sat well enough around her neck that he couldn’t quite make himself ask for it back. He smiled at her, gut fluttering in a not unpleasant way, and then belatedly remembered to focus on what she was saying. “But you know, I think we might be onto something, with putting it on backwards.”

He eyed it, and raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?” He folded his arms, sceptical, and experienced a brief moment of disorientation at the fresh reminder of how shirtless he was. It was so awkward to be so unclothed, especially outside, especially in the open, and especially in front of Rayla.

“Trust me.” Rayla insisted, seemingly oblivious to his renewed discomfort at parading around in front of her shirtless, and he sighed. Sensing his capitulation, she flashed him a smile and ordered “Arms out!”

Obligingly, he followed her directives, and she pulled his arms through his sleeves…again, with the shirt on back-to-front. He couldn’t see what she did next, but he could infer from the shifting of the weight of his new limbs that she was moving them around, and then…a little of the cool air on his lower back eased off, as buttons were fastened into place along his back.

He blinked, and turned his head over his shoulder to try to see what she was doing. “Oh,” He said, surprised. “I should have thought of that.”

It was a decidedly awkward solution, but…a reasonably workable one. She’d buttoned his shirt up to where the limbs emerged at his upper back, and then insistently pulled his collar and upper two buttons closed at the top. It left a gaping diamond of skin of his upper back exposed, with the still-translucent skin of the prone limbs hanging down over his back, but…

“…That could work.” He decided, surprised, and adjusted his shirt as best he could to make it sit a bit more nicely. Even if Rayla had managed to actually get it on him, it wasn’t exactly comfortable to wear it back to front, and not even fully buttoned. He reached behind him and tried to smooth down the line of fabric that kept the buttons mostly invisible. “…Are you sure there’s no way to tuck these in, though?”

He didn’t need to specify what ‘these’ were. Rayla considered it, then went rummaging in his bag again. After a moment, she extracted the black cloak she’d used for her Human Rayla impressions, and he shivered a little at the sight of it. In his weird dark magic dream-quest thing, his other self had been wearing that. But…he supposed he couldn’t fault the utility. “This alright?” She questioned, apparently noticing his hesitation.

“…Yeah, that’s fine.” He said, determinedly, and she slung it over his shoulders. It couldn’t disguise the pronounced lumps on his back, maybe, but at least he wouldn’t be walking around with them looking all exposed and fleshy and flappy.

He took a step, and immediately proved himself wrong; the wings swayed limply and swung briefly out of the cover of the cloak, jarringly pale and alien to look at. He sighed.

Rayla winced, and folded her arms. “Well, then….” She trailed off, frowning, as she tried very hard to figure out some way to stop his wing-arms dangling and flapping every-which-way as he walked. “Well. I think…you’re either going to have to carry them over your elbows or something, or…”

“Or…?” he prompted, leadingly, when she didn’t continue. She was staring at his back, brow furrowed.

“Or, we use your jacket to tie your wings down?” She suggested, after a moment. Needless to say, they’d not even tried to get the jacket on him, when the shirt alone had been so much trouble. He still felt a little strange and exposed without it, thoroughly unused to being all in red again, and to having his arms all exposed. It was strange to look down at his arm without seeing blue. But…well, the jacket might manage as an improvised restraint or sling of some sort, he supposed.

He sighed. “Well, at least that way I don’t have to carry it.” He said philosophically, and Rayla went around to enact the plan.

It was not especially elegant, but she did tie the wings to his back, the sleeves of his jacket tied around his front, and the hand-joint of each appendage hanging over the jacket-rim at his back. He put the cloak back over the whole mess, and walked in an experimental circle.

“You can see the lump under the cloak moving a bit, but at least you’re not flapping everywhere.” Rayla reported, almost satisfied. “It’ll do. Finally!”

He observed her familiar sort of impatience with a weary air. “Time to get moving?” He asked, and hefted his bag. He’d never been grateful for it only having one strap yet, given that tended to lead to one very sore shoulder, but in this case….in this case, it being a single-strap bag meant he could actually wear it. Carefully, he slung the strap of his backpack over the other shoulder, and straightened.

Rayla nodded, briskly, and ducked to the side to pick up Zym and thrust him into his arms. “Time to get moving.” She agreed, and ushered them onwards towards the distant forest.

---

Zym, when they woke him up, had proven exceptionally astonished by the growth on Callum’s back.

That astonishment had not subsided significantly since.

Callum sighed and bent his neck forwards as Zym, yet again, slung himself around his shoulders as though acting as a blue draconian replacement for his scarf. A blue, unusually active scarf. A scarf that kept sticking his nose down the collar of the cloak to nose at his new set of shoulders, and therefore, not really anything like a scarf at all.

“Zym.” He complained, without any particular animus, at the warm feeling of dragon-breath whuffling down his back, where a diamond of skin was still exposed. “Do you have to keep doing that?”

The dragonling surfaced briefly to croon insistently at him, and then promptly buried his face under the cloak again.

A moment later, he reached out with a paw to bat and prod curiously at the new limbs there, the backs of his own wing-fingers poking Callum in the back of the head. He tried to turn to look at him, and promptly took a dragon-tail to the face. Raya, pitiless, snickered at him behind her hand. “He’s really fascinated with them.” She remarked, all cheer and light-heartedness, which was all well and good for her, but she didn’t have a young and very curious dragon messing with her.

“It’s just wings, Zym.” He said, exasperated, over his shoulder. “Well, probably wings. You’ve got them too, you know.”

Zym determinedly ignored him, and batted at one of his wing-claws. Callum winced, and – well, that was the thing, wasn’t it? Zym was delightedly investigating the new appendages with all the brazen curiosity of a young child, and Callum…

…Callum could feel it. He thought. Probably.

It was inconsistent and weird-feeling and not-all-there, but….

He’d felt that tug, a painful shove of a joint in a direction it wasn’t supposed to go. He’d felt the draconian snout nosing at the skin, albeit in a rush of half-numb half-prickling trickles that didn’t feel anything like normal skin should do. And, increasingly, there was this sense of…pervasive numbness. He hadn’t quite realised it before, but numbness was in itself a sensation, and before now…well, he’d not even had that.

But now, he thought, the wings felt numb. Heavy and ungainly and weird-feeling, like a leg you’d been sitting on for so long it had lost all feeling.

When he shifted, he thought he could feel the pressure of the jacket-tie around his wing-hands.

There was still absolutely nothing he could do about the twitching, though.

Callum winced as Zym – again – pulled one of the wing-fingers in a direction it did not like, and the whole set of digits jerked and flexed in response, sending the dragonling yelping back and up. He craned his neck to see around his shoulder, and surmised that Zym had gotten himself poked up a nostril by one of the wing-claws. He sighed, and coaxed the dragon off of his shoulders and into his arms. “Sorry, Zym, I didn’t mean to jab you.” He said to the little Dragon Prince, who suddenly looked pitifully betrayed. “I can’t control what they do, so…be careful, alright?”

Zym chirped at him, a little grumpily, reminding him uncannily of Ezran when he’d been told to keep his fingers out of some animal den or other. For a long, painful second, Callum fiercely missed his brother. Then he pushed it to the side with all the other stuff he didn’t have the time or wherewithal to deal with.

Luckily, it wasn’t long after that that they reached the edge of the towering Xadian forest, and then…well, then, he had plenty of things to distract him.

---

“These trees are gigantic!” He exclaimed to Rayla, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, as they passed between the towering tree trunks. The ones at the forest-edge weren’t that large, but he could see the way ahead; before them, the forest canopy towered so far overhead that he thought the trees would happily outsize the castles of Katolis, the uppermost leaves so far away that the light came down yellow-green and verdant, flickering over the ground. “This is amazing,” He breathed, a minute or so later, when he began to see the glowing mushrooms and colourful plants and luminescent motes in the air-

She smiled at him, tolerant, and patted him on the shoulder. “Oh, Callum.” She said, fondly. “If a few little trees get you excited, you’re going to have to raise your standards.”

“My standards are fine, thank you, have you seen this place?” He said, staring around every-which-way until he pulled something in his neck trying to look too far upwards. He winced, rubbed at the sore muscle, and then focused his attention on the middle-distance.

Ahead, the forest floor erupted into a twisting mass of tree roots thicker than most houses, each of them wreathed in ferns and mushrooms. There were beds of strange flowers everywhere, lines of strange mushrooms along every root and bough, everything was sheathed in thick moss or lichens or some sort of life, and – and he had no idea where to look. It was amazing. It was all amazing.

“I did grow up here, Callum.” She informed him, lips twitching, and led him up onto one of the arching roots. “Though I wasn’t exactly here-here much, since my hometown is down over a cliff, and it’s hard to get up here.”

He eyed her, fascinated, and realised she’d hardly spoken about her origins at all before. “….So, how are we going to get down there?” he asked, then paused. “If we’re going down there. Or are we…not going there?” He couldn’t imagine bypassing Katolis if it happened to be in his way, but, well…maybe there was a reason Rayla had never talked about home? Maybe she didn’t really want to go back?

His thoughts had about a second to start speculating wildly before she rolled her eyes and smiled. “I’m taking you home.” She decreed, with such easy certainty and cheer that all thoughts of her possibly having an unpleasant home situation vanished instantly. “So yes, we’re going down off the cliff.”

Callum squinted, a little wary at the hint of mischief in her smile. “….How?”

Her smile widened. “You’ll see.” She said, secretive, and reached out to pull him by the hand towards the nearby arch of another root. “It’s not far now.”

He shrugged, too fascinated by their surroundings to want to press the issue, and let her lead him onwards.

---

He was distracted enough by all the plants, mushrooms, magic dirt, three-tailed squirrels, weird birds, musical flowers, and foul-smelling flowers that he almost forgot the issue of the stupid unasked-for probably-wings growing on his back.

Almost.

In the end, it was hard not to notice things that felt increasingly numb and prickly on your back, especially when they twitched and flexed and moved without your say-so, and especially when you started to be able to feel the sensation of that movement in how the numbness and the tingling shifted. He reached over at one point to poke at the skin on a wing-shoulder, once, and was almost alarmed at how…sort-of-normal it felt. Prickly, yeah, like a dead leg, but…

He could feel it.

Callum did not tell Rayla about the rapidly-developing sensation in his wings. He didn’t need to, in the end. They stopped for a rest in the verdant tree-shadows of the ancient forest, and quite matter-of-fact, Rayla pulled his cloak over his shoulder so she could have a look at his wings.

“They’ve grown. The spikes, too.” She announced, to no one’s surprise, and then reached over to untie his jacket-sleeves.

The jacket fell away.

The wings…didn’t.

For a second, Callum was as astonished at the sensation of the still-folded limbs as Rayla was to look at them. Then she whirled to face him, demanding “Are you making them do that? Can you move them now?”

“What? No, I can’t move them at all!” He protested, and…well, he tried again, just to make sure he wasn’t lying. But it…it was like there was nothing to move. He could feel them there, maybe, all heavy and numb and prickling, but he felt no more able to move them than the skin on his body. He tried to describe this sensation to Rayla, and she listened intently, tilting her head.

“Kind of like ears, then.” She concluded, to which he responded with a very sceptical stare.

“How is it like ears?” he wondered, furrowing his brows at her, and she blinked.

“You know, they kind of move on their own, and you can feel it but not really control it?” She offered, and he stared.

“Human ears don’t do that, Rayla.” He informed her, thinking of the times he’d seen her ears shift in a new light. “I mean, I think. Not that I’ve noticed?”

“…Huh.” She stared at him, a little nonplussed. “I did think your ears were weirdly still, but I didn’t realise they don’t move at all.” She inspected something at the side of his face for a few long seconds, presumably his round human ears, and then concluded “Humans are weird.”

“Weird for having not-moving ears?” He asked, and she nodded firmly.

“Very weird.” She agreed. “Point is though, Callum, you can sort of learn to move your ears by focusing extra-hard on what it feels like when they move. Like this,” She concentrated for a second, and her ears twitched noticeably up and down a few times. “See?” Her face fell, then. “But, I guess if you can’t actually feel them moving…”

He shuffled in place, almost guiltily. “I kind of can now.” He admitted, and she straightened, eyes widening. “Sort of? It mostly feels….numb and prickly. Like a leg you sat on too long, you know? But…” he shrugged, and felt the wing-shoulders shrugging along, as if to reinforce the point. “I’m starting to feel them.”

Rayla stared wide-eyed for around two more seconds, then leaned slowly forwards with a finger outstretched.

She poked him on the left wing-shoulder, firmly. “Did you feel that?” She demanded, and he rolled his eyes at her.

“Yes.”

She moved her hand. “What about that?”

He blinked. “No? What did you do?”

“Touched the…wing under-arm? But lightly.” She pursed her lips, pensive, and the rest of their break turned into Rayla finding different ways to test the developing sensitivity of his wings.

In the end, it turned out he could feel pressure, temperature, moderately-light touch, and also could feel the first layer of protruding barb-things – now a good couple inches in length – pulling at something unsettlingly deep in the flesh. Like they went all the way to the bone. Light touch was still beyond him, though, and everything he could feel came across in varying degrees of numbness, prickling, and tingling. The closest to normality was the wing-shoulders, which only felt slightly weird when poked.

“Maybe it’s spreading outwards.” Rayla suggested, when she’d run out of ways to poke him. “And your wing-skin will start feeling more normal further and further out from the shoulders.”

“…Maybe.” He said, dubiously, and looked at her for a long moment. There was something strange, he thought, about how oddly fixated she was on this, on testing the range of sensation, on figuring out how his wings worked. She seemed almost more interested in them than he was.

Should he be more interested in them? …It felt like he should. Probably. He tried to imagine meeting someone else with developing wings, who was also a friend who wouldn’t mind being poked. He’d want to know all about those, wouldn’t he? How the joints bent and folded, and how they felt, and how everything lined up. If it had been Rayla unexpectedly growing wings, he’d want to know everything about them, right? He should probably be more interested in his own wings than he was. Instead, he was just…oddly blank-feeling on the whole matter, in a weird and distant way that implied he probably wasn’t dealing with the whole thing as well as he could be.

“Why are you so interested in them?” He asked, after a pause, to distract himself from his own thoughts. His earlier thought reiterated itself anyway: if it had been Rayla unexpectedly growing wings, he’d want to know all about them…

She seemed a little taken-aback at the question, and then frowned a little, as if seriously considering it. “I guess I have been asking a lot of questions, haven’t I?” She said eventually, with a troubled glance over his shoulders.

“Usually it’s me who’s the curious one, right? Kind of a turnaround.” He said, with a teasing smile, and she huffed at him.

“You’re still the curious one, trust me.” She said, dryly. “If I let you, you’d stay in this forest looking at dirt for the next three years, probably.” Well. That was probably fair. “But, I suppose, to answer your question…” She frowned again. “I don’t know. I think – they’re just…growing so fast. It feels like every time I turn around they’ve changed, and it’s…” She searched for a word.

“…Scary?” he suggested, because that was about how he felt about it.

She side-eyed him narrowly, and he recalled that she (and Moonshadow elves in general) had a Thing about admitting to fear. “…I suppose.” She admitted, begrudgingly, and shot his wings an indecipherable look.

He considered them himself, gut churning uncomfortably, and nodded. It made a certain sort of sense. She was coping with the anxiety of having two limbs grow violently from his back by keeping on top of absolutely everything that changed with them, and he…he was doing his best not to think about any of it at all. Especially how much they were changing.

Still. They were a little less unsettling to have, now that he could feel them. A little less like horrifying parasites growing out of his body, and a little more like…he couldn’t really say a part of him, not yet, maybe not ever. They were too…weird. Too frightening. Too expected and uninvited and jarring. But they at least had some level of sensation now, and that was…better, in some way that was hard to properly put to words.

As if to purposefully disrupt the vague positivity of that thought, the left one flexed out fully on his back, all three digits stretching, and then folded inwards again. He grimaced, both at the movement he had no control over and the rush of numb tingling that the movement sent through the wing. The hand-joint and its constituent fingers flexed on the right.

“Ugh.” He muttered to himself, stomach roiling, and shook his head. “Can we keep moving now?” he asked Rayla, and she looked at him. Her brows furrowed, eyes worried, and then she reached out to replace his cloak. The jacket-tie didn’t seem as necessary now that the things were holding themselves up. Her fingers lingered around his shoulders, arranging the cloak over his collar, and for a second, he vividly recalled how he’d adjusted his scarf on her before she went to trick Sol Regem. It felt similar. He stared at her for a long moment, feeling oddly bashful when she looked up to meet his eyes.

She still was wearing his scarf, wasn’t she?

Unbidden, he found himself reaching out, a strange gesture of reciprocity, and shifting the scarf around her neck. Just adjusting it a little, so it sat properly. It still looked good on her.

When he looked back up at her, her cheeks were a little pink. “…Didn’t you want this back, at some point?” She asked, after a moment, fingers moving to play with the scarf-tail. The way she looked at him was oddly hesitant, for her.

…Would it be weird to tell her to keep it? It was his scarf, after all. He’d had it for a long time. He…didn’t especially feel its loss, though. And…it made him oddly happy to see it on her.

“…Well, it’s your good luck charm, right?” he said, after a moment, cheeks strangely hot. “Maybe you should hold onto it for a while.”

That wasn’t giving it to her, right? That wasn’t weird? That was…a normal best friend thing to do?

She ducked her head, suppressing a smile. Her fingers wrung the end of the scarf a little more firmly, and though she was still looking away, she looked pleased. “…Thanks.” She said, in the end, and her eyes flickered up to meet his, just for a moment. “I think I will.”

That moment of eye contact lingered, stretching into something that felt as strange and charged as the first time he’d adjusted the scarf on her.

And then it ended, and she stepped away. “Best get going now, then, if we want to get to the cliff soon.” She announced, and whirled away to stride up along another root.

He blinked after her, wondering why his heartbeat felt so strange, and then ushered Zym along beside him.

He supposed he was curious to see what she had planned for this cliff-descent of hers, so…

Quiet, with the wings tucked tight against his back, he followed her through the forest.

---

End chapter.

Notes: The response to chapter 1 of this was surprising, to say the least. I suppose I’ll not underestimate the power of new-season-hype in the future. Glad Boundless has pleased so many of you; thanks for reading!

On ears: Callum and Rayla are kind of mistaken, in that human ears can move on their own. That’s how I learned to move mine – I felt them moving and learned to control the sensation of those muscles in use. Still, I don’t think it’s exactly common.

On the wings: hopefully this chapter clarifies things with regards to what kind of wings he’s growing. If you want to spoil yourself, check the boundless tag on my blog. You’ll find a reference image for the fully-developed wings that I drew around a month before s3 hit.

Future updates: We have now reached the end of pre-written Boundless content. The next update will correspondingly take a much longer time to come out. I have written more Boundless, but it feels more like chapter 4 than 3, so could be a while until this updates.

In the meantime, please do check out my other tdp fanfiction, Peace Is A Journey, which has been my top writing priority for like seven months now. It has now been updated to accommodate s3 context and information, and I’ll be working on finishing and publishing chapter 11 as soon as possible – which, for reference, I expect to be around 20k long. That story is a beast.

#the dragon prince s3 #rayllum #tdp callum #tdp rayla #wingfic #tdp fic #boundless

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creacherkeeper · 5 years ago

Text

It’s the early days and there’s a war, because that’s what people did in the early days (and the middle days, and the late days, but that’s another topic). It’s the early days, and Aziraphale isn’t soft yet, he’s an angel of God, a weapon in his own right, never mind the sword he swings with both grace and power. (In his own way, he’s always been soft, he’s been soft since day one, since the beginning, since before the beginning, but that’s another topic).

Aziraphale doesn’t like to fight, but as mentioned, it’s the early days, and that’s a lot of what angels did back then.

“In the name of the Almighty,” Aziraphale says, both in his celestial tongue and in a language the human before him can understand, “I order you to stop this ceaseless warfare.”

The human stops for a moment, blood dripping, most of them covered besides their wide eyes. They only stop for a second, trying to comprehend the not-quite-human, not-quite-not-human before them. And then, with a shout, they plunge their sword forward.

Aziraphale knocks it away with his own. And maybe it’s the glimpse he gets of their eyes when they come in closer, young and wide and scared and, oh Almighty, so young. Maybe it’s just because he’s tired. But he swings his sword, and the metals make contact, and he must have swung it wrong because something just snaps. Or it feels like it does. Something deep in his shoulder, muscle or tissue or tendon. It startles him, because he’s felt pain before, but nothing quite so visceral and unexpected. It hurts. Aziraphale doesn’t know what to make of that.

Later, propped on the edge of his latest bed, he places a hand over the injured shoulder and thinks heal. It’s warm. Both his shoulder and the magic that flows into it, growing hotter and hotter because, well, his wielded element is fire, after all. He winces and looks away and huffs a breath. But soon enough, something under his skin starts to shift. He can feel it growing and mending, healing itself in the way that angels do. And he thinks, well, that’s that.

But it’s not.

The next day his shoulder aches. He uses his other arm, only a touch clumsy. He fights, but he’s distracted. He’s felt this sort of feeling before. It’s almost like a stomach ache, which he’d started getting ever since that last day in Eden, ever since he gave away that flaming sword and thought for the first time, I think I messed this up. His hand keeps finding his shoulder, rubbing absentmindedly, squeezing it and digging his fingers into the joint. It’s something he can almost forget about, until he notices again. He keeps noticing. It’s there, hovering and uncomfortably warm, sort of a tingle and sort of sharp when he moves. It’s not often he notices his heartbeat. It’s mostly when he makes an effort to have one, or when he’s startled, or, like now, hot on the battlefield. There’s the rhythm within his chest, a familiar and foreign one two, one two. And then there’s another in his shoulder, a patterned throb, marching along and saying don’t forget—don’t you forget.

Later, he’ll sit again and focus his energies, pull his magic into the spot and say heal, damn you, heal. But there’s a problem. The problem is that there’s nothing wrong, not that he can find, it’s just that his shoulder aches and that, no matter what he tries, it never really stops.

After a while, it becomes one of the familiar things of his body, like anything else. He has two hands, with five fingers each, and he has blond hair, and his nose comes to sort of a rounded point, and his shoulder hurts. It just does. The years go by, and the ache stays, and it becomes part of his corporeal form like anything else. He favors his other side, he rubs it when he’s thinking, he doesn’t raise it all that much if he can help it. It’s just him. It’s just a part of his body, the hurt.

It’s the early days, but not quite so early, and he really should be paying more attention when he runs from the fire. It’s just that he’s crying, is all, and it’s hard to run and cry at the same time.

The library burns behind him and, really, it’s just unfair. So much knowledge, so much history, and art, and pure humanity. Soon it’ll be gone, and for what? Some would argue that hatred is a very divine quality, but it’s not a feeling Aziraphale has ever held onto before. He tries to push it away, now, but it clings against his ribs, presses on his lungs, and raises tears to his eyes.

He’s running, and maybe it’s a little clumsy. He hasn’t run in a long time, and there are scrolls clutched in his arms, and, as was mentioned, he’s crying. And also there’s the heat, pressing against his back even from here, and Aziraphale doesn’t know how he didn’t despise the element of fire from day one. All it ever does is burn.

He trips. He doesn’t mean to, obviously, and he gets up quickly enough. He notices the pain in his ankle right away, but it’s something he can brush aside for later, because there’s someplace he rather ought to be, and that place is ‘not here’. He keeps running, and as he runs the pain grows louder and more demanding. But he runs on it all the same.

When he finds a safe place and settles down, he thinks maybe he should’ve paid it more attention after all. The joint is swollen and bruised. He winces just to look at it, feels nausea in his gut at the little white shards of bone that he can see pressed against his skin. It’s broken, and badly. He heals it, and the purple fades, the swelling recedes until it’s only a little puffy, and his bones fit back into place with a decisive snap! He should maybe pray, too, but he’s too worked up. He’s worried his words might morph into a yell, into a how could you let this happen? and so he doesn’t. He lies back and props the ankle on some pillows, and he stares at the ceiling for a good, long while.

He can walk the next day, which is more than any human would be able to do. The swelling is gone. But there’s this little spark, a hot lick of flame around his bone whenever he puts pressure on it. It’s healed. It isn’t broken. But the thing is, the thing is, is that it never really goes away. He can ignore it, for the most part, and on the bad days he only walks a little crooked. But it hurts. It just hurts.

Time passes, in the way that time does, and there’s a rockslide. It wasn’t the devil’s handiwork, not even a lower demon. It’s just nature. Rockslides happen, sometimes, and sometimes they hurt people, because these things happen while the world continues to turn. The difference is, that this time Aziraphale was there to witness it.

“I can help,” he says, hands spread, heart thudding. The old man screams and struggles again, his legs surely already crushed. Aziraphale doesn’t know if he even feels it, if that adrenaline coursing through his veins is drowning out the pain. His dog barks and yowls, fat with puppies. She’s getting too stressed, and Aziraphale knows what happens when pregnant animals get too stressed. He also knows what happens to old men when they’re trapped and left for dead in the wilderness, just far enough from civilization that no one hears his screams. “Please, remain calm. I’m going to help. I’m here to help you.”

He takes a deep breath. He rubs his hands together, little flickers of flame sparking at the friction. The breath pushes out from him, and he braces his hands against the boulder. It’s heavy. It’s heavy, even for him. It’ll be a miracle if he can even move it at all, and, well, that’s exactly what it’ll be.

He tenses and starts to push. The boulder doesn’t budge. His eyebrows draw and his teeth grit and he leans in with all his weight. Not just the weight of his human body, but all his weight. Slowly, the rock starts to shift, and he keeps at it, straining and pushing and sweating through his clothes. His shoulder is stabbing in a staccato, screaming, please stop please stop please stop! He tries to lean more to his other leg, because his ankle might give out if he keeps bracing against it like that. He ducks in his arm and braces the boulder between the top of his shoulder and his neck, and he yells and it moves. The boulder rolls away and settles a little further down the path, and the old man is free.

The man doesn’t thank him. He doesn’t question why his legs are fine, why he can stand and gather his dog and run. Maybe he’ll forget about the whole thing, because humans do that sometimes. Aziraphale stands on the path and huffs and breathes. His shoulder throbs. His ankle grips in pain. And crawling up his back are two icy pillars, a cold network of needles pricking at his muscles. He could—should—heal it now, catch it before it even begins. He doesn’t know what use it would be. It’s not like it’ll stop it from hurting.

It’s the late days, not the end-of-days late, but getting there. It’s winter, and it’s cold, brutishly so. He’s been out of the shop all day, running errands, meeting with people, just bustling out and about as he sometimes does. He’s not human, but he can enjoy their luxuries: a crowded grocery store, too-hot tea in a noisy café, not the book he wanted to find but maybe one he can enjoy anyway. It’s the little annoyances that he so relishes of being something like a human—they make his joys all the sweeter.

Except today the little annoyances are more than a little, not the store or the noise or the book, but himself. It’s cold, as was mentioned, and he’s grown tense and stiff with it. The winter has seeped into his muscles, icing over his bones. For most people, this would be inconvenient, but to him it’s maddening. His ankle is so stiff that it no longer bends, which makes walking much the hassle and much the pain. His back is hot and cold at the same time, twinging and pricking as he moves. His shoulder is the most docile, as long as he doesn’t use it, but it’s being unfair on what it considers to be use. His shopping bags feel like they’re full of lead, and even the motion of twisting his key in the lock sends shockwaves into his chest and down into his fingers.

He dumps his bags and his coat right at the door and doesn’t even both locking it behind him. He should, in case a customer happened to wander in and find him in this state, but he doesn’t. He stumbles awkwardly into the backroom, snapping his fingers to light the fire in the fireplace, and, oh, he shouldn’t have used that hand. He sinks right to the floor in front of it. Now that he’s warming, his body remembers how to shiver. He wishes it hadn’t.

He doesn’t mean to cry, because, really this is nothing new. But he also cries because, really, this is nothing new, he’s been hurting and aching and twinging and growing stiff for years now, for decades, millennia, and he’s so tired. He’s tired of the hurt, he’s tired of trying to ignore it and trying to live with it and trying to manage it. He wonders if he started over, started with a new body, just threw himself into the fire until he burned to nothing and came back different, if it would hurt less. Maybe he’s just old, and this is what happens. Maybe there’s something fundamentally broken within him, and that’s why he’s never been able to fix it. Maybe this was part of Her plan, to make him hurt as the humans do, to make him understand their struggle. Or maybe it’s for nothing. Maybe it just hurts.

He doesn’t mean to cry, and he certainly doesn’t mean for Crowley to find him like that, weeping in front of the fire, sniffling and hiccupping and wiping his cheeks. The demon has seen him cry before, they’ve known each other for 6,000 years, of course he has, and Aziraphale isn’t one to be easily embarrassed. But he is startled. Crowley comes in with a blasé, “You really should lock your door, angel—” and then stops short. Aziraphale twists in surprise. His back seizes. He grits out some sort of sound, something deep and pained, and slowly turns back.

“Oh,” Crowley says.

“Sorry,” he sniffles. His back spasms and then starts to ease.

There’s a moment of silence, and then Crowley moves towards him. He hovers by his side, and Aziraphale doesn’t turn to look.

“Awfully cold day,” Crowley says, because he knows.

“Mm.”

“Bad one?”

Aziraphale takes a breath and wipes his cheeks. “Just tired.”

Crowley sinks down next to him, all limbs. Aziraphale can’t help it, he’s a little jealous of the way he sprawls, of the way he can move and lean back like there isn’t a thing in the world to stop him. He supposes there isn’t.

“Anything I can do to help?” he asks.

Aziraphale tames the little flare in his chest. Something like indignation, something like anger, something like want. His ankle twinges, and he shifts with a wince.

“No,” he says.

“You sure?” Crowley draws out the words, blinking at him over his glasses. He seems like he’s teasing. Is he teasing?

Aziraphale sniffles and wipes his face again. “I’m sure.”

“Shame,” Crowley says. “I guess there’s no one that will drink this, then.”

He reaches next to him, and from the air, pulls a glass. It’s filled with liquid, a clearish-white. Aziraphale eyes it suspiciously.

“What is that?”

Crowley shrugs, leans forward to sniff at the glass, his tongue flicking out briefly, and then holds it out. Aziraphale glares, but reaches out to take it with his good arm.

He sniffs as well, and though there isn’t much of a scent, it makes his eyes water. He puts it to his lips and takes the smallest sip. He spits it back out.

“Oh, that’s disgusting,” he says, face screwing.

“Drink,” Crowley demands, giving a stern tap to the bottom of the glass.

Aziraphale huffs, but, honestly, if Crowley wants him to drink it, it’s probably going to help (or it’s a prank, but even Crowley wouldn’t prank him on a day like this). And he’s willing to try anything. He’s in such pain that he’s grown dizzy with it, and if this disgusting beverage will take any of that away, he’s going to try. He’d drink a barrel of it to get a little relief.

He puts the glass to his lips again and downs the whole thing. He has to stop once to cough into the glass, and it burns all the way down, but he drinks it. He feels a little lightheaded afterwards, to be true, but very quickly he starts to feel better, if only a touch. His ankle feels looser, his back has started to slack, and no longer is there a pulsation of pain in his shoulder.

“What was that?” Aziraphale asks. “It was foul.”

Crowley smiles, looking away and scratching his nose. “You don’t want to know.”

“Crowley.”

“It was, uh.” He makes some sort of noise. “Ginger, capsaicin, lavender, about 1,600mg of liquid ibuprofen. The rest is flavored vodka.”

Aziraphale is silent as that sinks in. He feels a little nauseous.

“What flavor?” he asks.

“Orange creamsicle. Why, was it not good?”

“Oh, it was very terrible,” Aziraphale responds. “But I do feel better.”

Crowley slacks a bit, smiling. “Awfully cold day,” he says. “Probably a little heat would do you some good.”

“I already have the fire,” Aziraphale says, pointing, though he knows what he means. It’s not that he’s embarrassed, he just hates feeling like a bother.

Crowley holds up his hands, eyebrows arching a question, and Aziraphale’s back twinges, and he sighs.

“Well, alright, then,” he says. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.”

Crowley nods and slips off his glasses. Aziraphale looks at those instead of him as he scoots behind him and starts rubbing his hands together. Aziraphale can feel the warmth that comes off of them from here, can hear the little sizzles and pops that come off his skin. It’s an effort without moving his shoulder, but he manages to shed his waistcoat and set it aside.

“Ready?” Crowley asks.

Aziraphale nods.

And then there’s this heat pressed against his back, separated from him only by his button-up. It’s not like any normal heat, but something soothing and only adjacently warm. It’s more a feeling of heat than anything literal, almost a memory of it, though he knows that doesn’t make sense. It’s like changing into pajamas after being caught in the rain, or drinking honey lemon tea when you have a sore throat. Crowley’s hands start low on his back, drawing slowly up, taking their time. The tension in his muscles starts to unknit. There’s a particular spot that’s been bothering him all day, a knot of pain that keeps twinging and pulling. Somehow, Crowley finds it, his fingers digging in. It loosens. Aziraphale sighs.

“Helping?” Crowley asks.

“Yes,” Aziraphale sighs, eyes closed.

His hands climb, fingers leading up over the muscles, steadily rising. They pause once they hit his shoulder blades, press inward and up, then circle around and down. Aziraphale hadn’t realized how clenched he’d been keeping them, but his shoulders drop.

“Keep going?” Crowley asks.

“Please.” He doesn’t mean for his voice to sound quite so desperate. He clears his throat.

Crowley chuckles and continues his ministrations, hands sliding down his back to start again. He continues like this for a while, until Aziraphale grows doughy and soft and content. His back is sore, but the tight, cold pain is only a memory to him now.

Crowley pauses. Aziraphale points to his shoulder.

The demon snorts. “As you wish,” he says, and moves to get better access. He’s sitting to the side of him now, and Aziraphale can see him from the corner of his eye.

He raises his hands and presses them first against Aziraphale’s bicep. His thumbs start to work the muscle, coming together and apart in little circles. Aziraphale watches him. He looks … focused. Relaxed, one might say. Like he was suited to this.

“You’re very good at this,” Aziraphale says, blinking heavily. Crowley starts a bit and looks to him, then away.

“Don’t get used to it,” he says.

“I’m serious. You need to offer house calls.”

Crowley huffs and grumbles. “What is it that you think I’m doing now?”

Aziraphale smiles, pleased, and closes his eyes again. Crowley’s hands move to either side of his shoulder, one on his chest and one on his back, and starts to push from each side. Aziraphale can feel the warm magic surging between his hands, traveling through his muscles and tendons. He can feel something in his shoulder pull tight, but in a good way.

“Next you’re going to tell me this is a normal massage and I’m just drunk,” Aziraphale says, and it’s definitely the sudden calm of his body that has him slurring like that.

“Nah,” Crowley says. “That’s the ibuprofen poisoning.”

Aziraphale laughs. “I see. Well, it’s quite pleasant, at any rate.”

Crowley snickers and keeps up the pressure. Eventually, Aziraphale’s shoulder drops. His hands fall away.

“Ankle?” Crowley asks.

Aziraphale blinks his eyes open and twists his foot. “It’s okay, actually,” he says. “The fire did it some good.”

Crowley nods, and his hands fall to his lap. Aziraphale feels the loss. “You good?”

Aziraphale takes stock: straightening his back and slouching again, rounding his shoulder. “Yes,” he decides. “I am, actually. Thank you.”

Crowley nods again, staring into the fire.

“I mean it.”

His throat bobs. “Happy to help.”

Aziraphale smiles at him, soft, and then is taken by a yawn that almost cracks his jaw. When he’s finished, Crowley is smiling at him, just a shy little thing.

“I know you don’t sleep,” Crowley says, “but it might do you some good.”

Aziraphale nods, rubbing at one of his eyes. “Have to sleep off the ibuprofen poisoning.”

Crowley barks a laugh, surprised. “Yes. Yes, exactly.”

They’re still for a moment, and the fire calms and puffs out. The room grows darker, night twinkling outside the windows. Aziraphale isn’t sure what to say, what he could to show his contentedness. His muscles are sore, his body is tired, but he feels … good. He feels good. He hasn’t felt like that in a while.

He’s about to say something of the sort, and the “Crowley—” is out of his mouth at the same time Crowley goes, “Well—”. They both stop.

After a moment, Crowley continues. “I should be off. Places to go, people to … well, you know.”

Aziraphale nods, his tongue gone mute.

Crowley nods, slaps his hands to his thighs, and stands. He hovers for a moment, and then a hand is ruffling through Aziraphale’s hair, affectionate and still warm.

“Get some sleep, angel.”

He walks across the room, and Aziraphale turns to watch him. He can turn to watch him, now, and that’s a feat.

“Crowley,” he says, finally managing to find his voice as the demon pauses in the doorway. Crowley turns. “What did you come over for?”

Crowley stares for a second, and Aziraphale realizes he’s left his glasses, but doesn’t say anything. His nose scrunches, and he waves a hand. “Just to say hi. Don’t worry about it.” He leaves, and the sound of the front door opening and closing follows soon after.

Aziraphale turns, watching the last of the little embers flicker out in the fire. It’s like the memory of the heat is still on him, phantom hands soothing away all his aches and pains. He shakes his head and gathers himself, wandering upstairs to change and fall into his rarely-used bed.

He settles under the covers and pulls a pillow against his chest. Outside, he can hear the cold wind winding around the trees and rattling at the windows. But he’s warm under his blanket, and there’s warmth in his muscles, and warmth in his chest, and without the ache and the pain and the burn he can close his eyes and drift, without the hurt he can sleep, and he does.

#good omens #aziraphale #crowley #whump #i should maybe edit this before just slapping it up here but NAH #this is NICHE but i wrote it for me so i dont care #my body Hurts and my solution to that was giving aziraphale chronic pain and i think im valid #AZIRAPHALE BEING AN ANGEL DOESNT SAVE HIM FROM THE WHUMP MACHINE (microsoft word)#i'll slap it up on ao3 ........ later #pain has made me sleepy #ALSO CHILDREN PLEASE DONT TRY THE DRINK IT WILL KILL A HUMAN #honestly that would be enough to fell a baby elephant #just .......... make wise choices #better ones than me #ok bye

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nanamigatari · 4 years ago

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Sasori

So this was what all those Ascension Candies were about.

Granted, Nanami didn’t expect to actually have it affect her so quickly. By the time she was out the door and breaking the candy’s shell with her teeth to chew, she could already sense that something was wrong. The sugary mush in her mouth hadn’t even been swallowed yet, but she could already feel what seemed like several needles prickling her tongue. Her resulting coughing it wasn’t as bad as any of her usual ones, but it surprised her enough to allow a good portion of the wretched sweet to travel down her gullet.

Granted, she should have used better judgement, considering the location she had been imprisoned in for the last several months.

Wearing a costume was said to be the main focus of Halloween, she had been told. You wore the garb of another being to hide among the demons and spirits that were said to haunt the land of the living during the apex of the fall season. Some of the city-folk were already dressed so exotically that Nanami wondered why they would even bother with a costume in the first place. Yet she understood how that felt- trying to put a meaning behind something that presented itself as meaningless.

There didn’t seem to be any difficulty or deeper obligation to putting a costume on (other than having to partake social festivities, and that was already forced upon her anyway each month), so she decided to try it. Walking outside to see all the various colors and styles that her island life had hidden from her seemed better than hiding away in her room while in the darkness. All she had to really do was to settle her sights on what sort of outfit to wear and how to make it.

After remembering the strangely garbed ninjas she had met over a year ago, she decided to settle for an animal.

A scorpion.

True, the Maniwa had dressed as pure insects and a scorpion was an arachnid, but it would have felt boring to borrow their style so closely. Scorpions preyed on insects and their own kind, a fact that didn’t escape her notice. On her way to the costume shop, her hair already styled into a heavy braid instead of a ponytail, she recalled the fable she had scanned during her occasional browsing of Spirale’s modern literature.

It had been titled “The Scorpion and the Frog.”

Nanami had read other short tales before it, though it had stuck with her. The moral was something that she felt a bit of a connection to. And the more she had thought about it, the more ‘funny’ it seemed. It formed the basis of her choice, though there was also the fact that she had already seen her fair share of ghosts, zombies, and witches. Those were too on the nose for her... and she never minded sticking out.

Besides adjusting her ponytail to better resemble the stinger of a scorpion, she had parted her bands somewhat, combing and cutting them. Nanami had never given herself a hair-cut unless it was to keep the length of her hair down, always retaining the same style since her youth. Now, however, the sides of her hairline and bangs were trimmed down to look like the jagged limbs of a scorpion, claws and all. She could easily let wash out this gel and let more of it grow out if she decided that Halloween wasn’t for her. Not finished with her costume, she left her home and made her way to the costume shop down the block, on the look-out for make-up to complete the look.

Now here she was, her legs buckling under her as she stumbled into an alley, the cries and shouts of surprise behind her as other people were consumed by their own costumes. Black spots began to fill her eyes as her legs finally crumpled beneath her weight. A series of pops from her joints and even her spine greeted her ears. The latter felt like burning oil had been poured on it. Tendons stretched, muscles swelled, and bones snapped until it felt like she would vomit. When her saliva hit the dirt below, she heard a sizzling hiss.

Hyperventilating and still conscious, Nanami looked down at her own trembling form as the truth of the situation began to dawn on her. Now she could see why she couldn’t feel her legs anymore, much less her toes.

Nanami's whole lower half was that of a massive scorpion. Her human legs had shrunken inwards into her body, replaced by an armored carapace and six sharpened legs. Those legs were connected to a new green and purple abdomen, which sat just below her rear. It was almost like she was sitting on a throne of sorts. A segmented, arching tail jutted out of the end of her abdomen, tipped out with several barbs and a stinger that looked like a golden blade.

Mercifully and strangely, she noticed that her hands hadn’t become pincers, a fact that was confirmed when she stopped touching her face and looked straight at them. They had still developed several patches of tough, scaly, green-colored patches of exoskeleton that reminded her of sores. Some even covered her face; she wasn’t sure about the rest of her body, though aside from some tears in her kimono, her torso was still modestly covered. She was somehow taller, too, much taller. That was a small comfort to her... Not that she would have been embarrassed at all, but she liked her clothes.

The more she observed the features of her new form, the less she knew what to think of it. In the end, she settled for smiling. It became a full-on grin before she struck at the wall next to her- a web of cracks soon formed along the brickwork. She was stronger, too.

Perfect.

Nanami didn’t need a puddle or a mirror to see anymore now. She shakily rose up to her full height (one that would have made her own brother short in comparison to her chagrin) and did her best to move. It started out as her dragging herself along before managing something of a crawl. Several new synapses were firing off in her brain at once, a plethora of new instincts beginning to awaken.

It was both liberating and repulsive at once.

You should be happy, she thought to herself, already noticing the other transformations around her. You don’t know how this body works at all. Maybe it will mar that technique of yours. Besides, now you finally look as warped as your mind. It’s funny, isn’t it?

Ignoring the stares and gasps around her, Nanami let a chuckle escape her. The ending of the fable repeated in her mind and she finally escalated into a giggle.

Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog's back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.

"You fool!" croaked the frog. "Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?"

The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog's back.

"I could not help myself. It is my nature."

Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.

#;My Story #Title is a reference to the ninja corps in her series who all used animal themed names #If only the Insect gang could see her now #isola event #;tw body horror

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miriamkperceptionblog · 4 years ago

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Week 7

Independent study

Come to your Senses: Investigate your own senses. Focus on the sense of smell, taste, hearing and touch (not vision).

Currently, as Im writing this I am sitting in my cold, and damp Wellington flat. I am sitting on my couch in my lounge. I am going to investigate my senses from where I am sitting. ( I always sit here while I do my design work). I have never thought of my surrounding in any other way than “just my flat” and never thought much about my surroundings in a deep sensory way. Im excited.

Smell -

I can smell my flatmates cooking their vegan hello fresh nachos. Along with the dusty curtains to my left, and a hint of the flowery perfume I put on this morning, which has now gone stale.

Taste -

I can’t describe the taste in my mouth… its just my spit.. I haven’t eaten anything in over an hour now and Its hard to describe this taste because I am so used to it.

Sound-

I can hear my flatmates food sizzle and the crunch of their coin chip packet, along with the occasional banging of the spatular on the edge of the pan. I can hear the fridge open and close and the sticking together of the magnets. I can hear the eco of our wooden floor under their feet as-well as feeling the vibrations each step makes.

The details of a touch/haptic/tactile experience-

Im currently holding my laptop on my lap. The metal was cold and hard at the beginning of my sit but is now warm and comfortable. I can feel the fan from my laptop spinning and vibrating my laptop against my thighs. My fingers on my keyboard feel a-little greasy and warn now. My track pad has a small blog of hardened glue on it and I can feel it every time I move my mouse. It feels sharp and hard.

2. Undertake some online research to learn about terms like proprioception, body awareness, haptic, equilibrioception, mechanoreception, balance, vibration.

Proprioception/ noun.

Perception or awareness of the position and movement of the body.

Proprioception refers to the body's ability to perceive its own position in space. Such as: Knowing whether feet are on soft grass or hard concrete, without looking (even while wearing shoes). Activities which strengthen you proprioception-crawling, push-ups, or squats. The sense though which we perceive the position and movement of our body, including our sense of equilibrium and balance, senses that depend on the notion of force.

Body awareness.

Body awareness is the internal understanding of where the body is in space. Body awareness is highly influenced by proprioceptive processing, the sensory information one receives from the movement and force of muscles and joint groups.

A person's understanding of his or her own body parts and their capability of movement.

Haptic.

Haptic perception is the process of recognizing objects through touch. It involves a combination of somatosensory perception of patterns on the skin surface (e.g., edges, curvature, and texture) and proprioception of hand position and conformation. Haptics is the science and technology of transmitting and understanding information through touch. “haptic” means anything relating to the sense of touch. (It's derived from the Greek word for touch.) Haptic can be used in design! Such as being used to engage people's sense of touch to enhance the experience of interacting with onscreen interfaces. For example, when an Apple Pay transaction is confirmed, the system plays haptics in addition to providing visual and auditory feedback.

Equilibrioception/sense of balance.

Is one of the physiological senses. It allows humans and animals to walk etc. without falling. Some animals are better in this than humans, for example allowing a cat (as a quadruped using its inner ear and tail) to walk on a thin fence.

This is the same as when you pedal your bike. The speed of the tires on your bike allows it to balance.

mechanoreception.

A mechanoreceptor, also called mechanoceptor, is a sensory cell that responds to mechanical pressure or distortion. There are four main types of mechanoreceptors in glabrous, or hairless, mammalian skin: lamellar corpuscles (Pacinian corpuscles), tactile corpuscles (Meissner's corpuscles), Merkel nerve endings, and bulbous corpuscles.

Balance/noun.

a state of equilibrium or equipoise; equal distribution of weight, amount, etc. something used to produce equilibrium; counterpoise. mental steadiness or emotional stability; habit of calm behavior, judgment, etc. a state of bodily equilibrium: He lost his balance and fell down the stairs.

Vibration/noun.

Vibratory sensation is the sense of vibration, and may refer to: Vibration as a modality of cutaneous receptors (on the skin), referred to as pallesthesia. Hearing, which is sensation of air vibrations.

Select 1x and design an exercise and then do it. The subject can be either yourself or someone you know - record observations, your/their experience, what did you notice.

Proprioception- brainstorm.

Investigation 1 Proprioception

Sensory information you are receiving from your muscles, tendons, and ligaments.

Using your muscles scenes to control your muscles to keep you upright. For examples-walking on sand. Your muscles are adapting to an environment where you aren’t walking on a firm service and your muscles send information to your brain to tell you the position of your ankles and your knees.

(Blind people rely on proprioception sense quite a lot.)

Everyday activity-turning the lights of in my room ( so I can’t see) relying on my Proprioception to find my door handle…or to walk to my bathroom. I will be replying on the information my brain is getting about where my arm is and where i’m walking. Proprioception is what will be giving me this information.

Recorded observations, your/their experience, what did I notice.

I asked my flatmate Ava to try find my doorknob while in the dark and blindfolded. She found this task easy as she knew which location/height my door handle was at but I observed the way she walked and put her arm up infant of her. This was interesting as she walked much slower and was unsure of herself. I noticed she was moving her feet in a way that she was almost using them to make sure she didn’t have anything in front of her such as a step. Her arms went up infant of her straight away as she was using them as a guide as-well. She demonstrated proprioception during this activity.

Resource task.

Browse through the online resources below, select 1 and be prepared to share your findings in a group discussion for next week.

Source - “Marres Maastricht - Education.” Marres, https://marres.org/en/education/. Accessed 15 Sept. 2020.

“In The Invisible Collection art-lovers describe their favorite works of art. Originally created by Mediamatic Amsterdam, the project aimed to help the visually impaired to imagine works of art based on audio descriptions by art experts. In 2019, Marres developed a new version of The Invisible Collection, in which we started to collect stories about art (broadly defined) by non-art experts.”

I think this is an amazing project-this is based around the sense of hearing/sound. Art is meant to be enjoyed by all and when you can’t see it or feel it, It must make it extremely difficult for the visually impaired to enjoy art. Using this method is extremely beneficial and can create a sense of the artwork in the minds of visually impaired. By being able to hear how people describe the art people may be able to envision their on interpretation of the artwork. I would defiantly recommend this source to anyone exploring sound as their sense as it gives an insight into how much people you can’t see rely on this sense.

Key Module Resources.

Source- Smith, Mark M. “The explosion of sensory history.”(2010): in the psychologist 23(10):860-863.

Creative Practices

Locate creative producers ( at least 1 in your discipline area) working with the senses or sense modalities.

“Why Graphic Design Should Engage More Than Just the Sense of Sight.” Eye on Design, 17 Apr. 2018, https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/why-graphic-design-should-engage-more-than-just-the-sense-of-sight/.

Kate McLean’s Sensory Maps

Kate McLean’s maps are visually stunning, peppered with colourful dots and morphing concentric lines. They could almost be galaxies. In actuality, they are Smell Maps, plotting data from various cities that visualises the distinctive smells from different neighbourhoods. Kate McLean generates this data by conducting “smell walks” throughout the cities she maps, asking participants to record odours and their location, intensity, description, and associations. Smells like “canal,” “leafy fresh rain,” and “laundry” are each given a colour and are indicated by dots on the maps. The distorted concentric rings depict the smell’s intensity and range as they're carried by wind, diluted by range, and mixed with neighbouring smells. By plotting her experiential data, Kate makes smell visual and geographical, and makes a case for what information designer Giorgia Lupi calls “soft data.” “Using humans as sensors is a method that aggregates personal insight”.

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lemonz-and-limez · 6 years ago

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The Night Terror

A/N: You can thank @casara123 for this one. Saw their post for a story about Sheldon helping Amy through a night terror and was inspired. Now, I like to credit myself with the title of worst writer in the fandom, so I apologize if this is a heaping pile of trash. Enjoy!

Amy hadn’t had a night terror since before they got married. Even then it was a rare occurrence when it did happen, and Sheldon could usually pick up on clues throughout the day that would hit at one later on. He was able to deduce her body language, attitude, and overall mood throughout the day to decide what kind of night it would be. High levels of stress at work or days leading up to her ‘lady time’ usually was an indicator of an impending terror.

However, that night, there had been no clues. No hints that Sheldon would wake to the bed shaking because she was quivering. No signs from her day at work or the calendar that Sheldon would end up having a bruise on his jaw because she punched him so hard.

It started with the quivering. Sheldon had thought she was cold; however, when he opened his eyes to look at her, he could see something different in the way she shook. It was a constant vibration, strong enough to rattle the bed, unlike the chills which have more of a staccato effect.

He next lifted his head off his own pillow to look down at her. She was not turned away from him, he could perfectly see her face that was trying to burrow its way into the flannel pillowcase. There was also pain there. Her eyebrows drawn so tightly it made deep creases in her skin. Her bottom lip trembling as a few tears slid from her eyes. Her neck straining, revealing to him the tendons in her throat.

And despite his lack of warning, Sheldon knew what was going to happen next. Her hands clenched into a fist in front of her and let out a scream. Her arms flailed about punching the air, a few swings making contact with his chest, jaw, and other extremities. One punch, in particular, made contact with his jawbone just hard enough for him to topple back slightly. He held a hand to his joint as he observed her. Her eyes were open, but he could tell that she was not aware of what was happening.

He knew better than to intervene, in fact, he knew it was dangerous to do so. Alternately, he dodged her blows and moved his hand gently to her hair. He intertwined his fingers into the long tresses of brown hair. Shushing her and smoothly running his digits along her scalp, her scream turned into sobs.

Her eyes closed again as tears rolled down her cheeks. The beating of her arms all but stopped as she brought them back to her chest, clutching them tightly to her chest. Her weeping was heavy; her breaths taking on no particular pattern as she tried to find the peacefulness of sleep again.

Now that she was no longer fighting him, he took the opportunity to move in close to her. His hand coming to rest on her hip while the other remained stationary in her hair. It was enough physical contact where he knew it would bring her comfort, but not enough to make her feel like she was restrained.

“You’re ok, Amy, it’s ok,” he comforted as her tears began to subside.

He repeated that phrase and similar ones as she came down from the episode. Her sobs turned into small cries, which then turned into sniffles. The way she snuggled closer to him, melting under his touch, told him that it was over. She’d gotten through it.

While she remained asleep, completely unaware of everything that took place, he could not find it in himself to back to sleep. He had to watch her, make sure she was safe; protect her from whatever monstrosity attacks her. So, he stayed, and watched, and protected until 6 am when he quietly slipped out bed to open his weekend with some Doctor Who. However, that morning, he deviated from his routine and left the door open 3 inches.

She never did wake up, at least not until 9:00 when her alarm went off as it did every Saturday morning. Even then, she did not emerge from the bedroom until 15 minutes later.

She mumbled good morning and moved to the fridge for a bottle of water. “How’d you sleep?” She asked before taking a swig.

He turned his head to look at her while also bringing up his hand as though to massage his neck even though he was really hiding the bruise she had left on his jaw. “I slept fine, you?”

She grimaced as she moved. “I think I stayed in one position for too long, I’m really sore this morning.”

Turning his head back to the TV, he ran his fingers gently over the purple skin. Sore was one way to put it. The discoloration on his face was not the only one left behind. There were other smaller ones on his chest and arms. But those would go away within a day, whereas the one on his jaw would take longer. She had really managed to get him when her fist made contact with the bone there. How he hadn’t made a sound loud enough to wake her up, he would never know.

“You ok?” Amy asked, now standing right next to the blue couch.

He snapped his eyes back to hers, his hand not following his face. It had only been a second before he snapped back and covered the contusion, but she had caught it. Of course she had.

Her eyes widened, and she rushed next to him. “What happened?” She asked, reaching out to gently touch his face. The skin was still tender and painful to the touch. He hadn’t meant to, but he jerked away from her loving caress.

“It’s nothing, really,” he assured her moving away from her slightly, but when he saw the hurt and worry beneath her emerald eyes, he retreated closer to her. “It’ll go away in a few days, it’s ok.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about, how did it happen?”

He sighed and looked down to her knuckles. There little evidence to suggest the panic of just a few hours prior. In fact, if he hadn’t known what to look for, he would have just ignored the slight discoloration of her hand as her natural pigment. He reached down and took her hand in his own. His thumb running over the red spots he knew did not belong. The knuckle that so clearly was the one that provided him with the shiner on his jaw.

When he met her eyes once more, he could tell she had grief. Her face contorted much like it had before… before when it was the eye of the storm.

“You had a night terror that’s all, it’s really nothing to worry about,” he said, trying to ease her troubled mind.

It didn’t. The anguish on her face deepened, as though she was upset that she had done it to him and not a third party. It was worse to her that he did it, she hurt him, causing him pain.

“I did this to you?” It was a soft utterance, delicate almost, but still incredulous.

Sheldon nodded. “But, Amy, please, please,” he begged, urgent to resolve what he believed to be a non-issue. “It is ok. You didn’t do it on purpose.”

“But I hurt you.”

“You did, yes,” he agreed but continued on. “But you didn’t mean to. It was a night terror; you had no control.”

“But-“

“No,” he cut her off. “There is no issue here, Amy. I’m not worried, distressed, or angry that you threw a few punches my way. You were not aware of what was happening, and to me, that automatically curbs any reservations I might have had.”

Pulling her hand away from his, she reached up again. This time touching the skin around the purple blotch. “Does it still hurt?”

“Only when you put pressure on it,” he said, making a face when she put the gentlest pressure on the surface of his bruise. “Or just when you touch it, I guess,” he shrugged, pulling her hand away.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized as he kissed the pads of her fingers.

“No need,” he waved off. “But it helps, I’ll forgive you anyway,” he said with a smile he reserved only for her.

She smiled back. “Thank you.”

They sat in comfortable silence for a few moments before Sheldon gestured to the TV where he already had another episode of Doctor Who queued up. “I was about to start another episode, care to join me?”

She snuggled up to his side, much like the way she had when she was upset over the dress shopping. However, this time, Sheldon wasn’t nearly as ridged and welcomed her embrace. He let his hand run through her hair in the same way it had hours earlier. He knew it then, they’d be fine.

“Of course I would.”

A/N: To everyone else who has sent me a prompt, I have them and am currently working on them... I’m hoping to have one up soon 😊

Thank you so much for reading!

#shamy #shamy fanfic

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dngrs-untld-hrshps-unnmbrd · 6 years ago

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A Very Merry Dornix

As snow and Dawning festivities enshroud the Last City, a civilian scientist smuggles a dead Eliksni Captain inside the Walls. However, he turns out to be less deceased than she first thought, and just as interested in her as she is in him.

“Lexana. What the hell have you got there?”

Flurries of snow were falling all around and Lexana’s cart had left deep grooves in the muddy, icy road. The motor had failed several miles down the road and she’d had to push it back to the Last City gates.

Lexana straightened and shoved her glasses up her sweaty nose. Nonchalantly, she leaned against the cart and put her hand on her hip. “Noth—nothing,” she panted.

The sentry’s eyes narrowed. Mav had grown used to her coming and going as she often collected plants and fauna from outside the Walls. If the Last City was to flourish they needed to accumulate more knowledge. This was her contribution.

And her personal obsession. She had to know everything.

Sometimes everything included a dozen rattlesnakes, which Mav had taken exception to. He started forward with two others to inspect the contents of her cart.

Lexana reached beneath the tarpaulin and pulled out a fistful of wriggling larvae. “Maggots! For my fish collection.”

All the sentries reeled back, their faces pinched with horror. Thank goodness she’d collected some maggots as well.

“You need a whole cartload of those things?” Mav asked, waving her through, the disgusted expression still on his face.

“I have a lot of fish,” she panted, pushing the cart once more, grateful that they hadn’t offered to help her. “Happy Dawning!”

“Get your cart fixed,” he called after her.

“I will! Thank you!”

Lexana lived alone in a run-down part of the City, but she didn’t mind the peeling paint and bad plumbing in her big, old house, and neither did her experiments. Mostly she worked with plants, as agriculture was her passion, but she enjoyed keeping all manner of creepy crawlies, fish and critters, too. If she came across a particularly interesting dead specimen she would bring it home to dissect it or stuff it.

As she had today.

Gleefully, she plugged her electric cart into the mains and it blooped into life. As she’d suspected, the batteries were just flat from hauling the heavy load. The maggots put carefully aside and her workbench clear, she punched in a few commands and the cart upended its contents onto the long table.

A dead Fallen Captain. It tumbled out, a mass of limbs and cloak and gleaming armour. What a beauty.

Furtively, she twitched the curtains more tightly closed. It wasn’t as if she was breaking any formal rules, but people could get touchy about an Eliksni within the City, even a dead one.

Having shaken the snow from her hair and taken off her coat, she got to work. The armour had to be unbuckled and laid carefully aside, and then she snipped away at the alien’s underclothing until the creature was naked on the table.

Lexana surveyed her find. It was…well, it was beautiful. Thick through the arms and legs, with a broad chest and huge hands and feet. A reptilian skull with rows of shiny pointed teeth. She couldn’t tell if it was male or female as the sexual organs were somehow hidden. She couldn’t tell how it had died, either. There was no injury anywhere.

So, where to start? Those arms were fascinating. She’d always wanted to know what was going on beneath the Fallens’ exoskeletons and how their limbs moved. Perhaps it was hydraulics. She picked up a scalpel and hovered over one of the shoulder joints, wondering where and how to make the first incision in the shiny carapace.

A hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. A very large, clawed hand. Four bright yellow eyes were open and glaring at her.

Lexana stared back, frozen in shock.

The Eliksni opened its mandibles, revealing rows of devastatingly sharp, tiny teeth, and hissed.

Loudly.

Lexana screamed and dropped her scalpel.

The Eliksni sat up and slid off the table, tatters of uniform falling to the ground, limbs flailing. It knocked its pile of armour over with a crash and her tray of metal instruments went flying all across the floor. The Eliksni stood over her, growling. Slowly to her horror, it dropped into a fighting crouch, its claws undulating menacingly.

“I’m sorry!” Lexana said, backing away. “I thought you were dead. Oh, Traveler. Please don’t kill me.”

It picked up her scalpel and shoved it into her hand, and then dropped back into the crouch.

She put the instrument down hastily. “Oh—no—I don’t want to fight you. I’m a scientist. I just wanted to see how you worked.” She raised her hands in surrender, her eyes darting all over the room, looking for an escape. What was going to happen when it got loose in the City? If this Eliksni didn’t do it, Mav was going to kill her.

Seizing on the only thing she could think of, Lexana pointed at its arm and then flexed her own, indicating the tendons and muscles. “I just wanted to know how you worked. I’m a scientist.”

The Eliksni regarded her with narrow, suspicious eyes. If she could keep it quiet until midnight maybe she could sneak it out without anyone knowing. If she lived that long.

The Eliksni looked slowly around the room. At the workbench. The tanks of fish and insects, the sketchbooks and datapads. It’s head on one side, it turned back slowly to her and pointed at the ridges in its carapace, and then at her arm.

“Yes!” she said excitedly. “You understand don’t you? I was examining you, not trying to hurt you. You must have your own scientists on board your ships, I’m sure.” She pushed her glasses up her nose and then reached carefully for its arm. She ran her finger along one of the ridges, and then looked up at the Eliksni, questioningly.

It took her free hand and began examining her, seeming just as curious about her as she was about it. Together they peered closely at each other’s limbs and she was aware of it claws pricking her flesh. Maybe it liked science, too. Or maybe it was just sizing her up for a meal.

A moment later it pulled at her t-shirt and rucked it up, peering at what was beneath.

“Um—that’s not—”

The Eliksni pulled the t-shirt up over her head and Lexana felt her face heat. “Fair’s fair, I suppose,” she said with a shaky laugh, examining its shoulders. Her subject poked and prodded at her, touching her bones and stroking the flesh of her breasts over her bra.

“Handsy, aren’t you?” she muttered, before going back to what she was doing. She was touching a living Eliksni, probably the first of her kind to do so. It was a handsome creature, all elongated limbs and tough exoskeleton. There was something both savage and proud about it, and she thought back to the little she knew about the Eliksni. This was a captain who’d proved itself in battle and been allowed to grow large and strong and command other troops.

Her fingers travelled over its chest, its belly, looking for clues as to how their kind reproduced. The alien made a sound deep in its chest, its claws tightened on her ribs, and then something happened.

Oh, wow. He was male, then. Very male. Some plates between his legs had parted and she saw not one, but two, members emerge. Snakes had two pensises, so perhaps Eliksni had evolved from some sort of reptile ancestor that—

The Eliskni grasped her hand and wrapped it around one of his members, and then peered at her questioningly. He was fleshy and cool to the touch, and pleasingly thick in her hand.

“Oh! Okay them. Um. Very, interesting. Scientifically.” Lexana felt her face heat but she couldn’t look away from him. Science wasn’t supposed to be embarrassing. Science wasn’t supposed to make you feel all fluttery either, but seeing his large claws clamped around her hand which was wrapped around one of his erect cocks was making her feel like there were butterfly wings beating against her sex.

He made a clicking noise, and she felt a tugging on her pants.

“I think I’ve done enough science for today!” she said shrilly, pulling away.

The Eliksni paused, and then dropped his hands, drooping a little. Not his members, though. They stayed proudly upright and she couldn’t drag her eyes away from him. Not when her heart was pounding alarmingly hard in her underwear. Even though he was another species he was aggressively man-shaped, and the eyes that peered at her were sharply intelligent.

Lexana looked furtively around the lab. The doors were locked. They were just curious about each other. There was no harm in it.

No one needed to know.

Tentatively, she held a hand out toward his belly and looked at him questioningly. He took her hand and placed it back around his members, and made a little sound in his throat. When she slid her hand up and down he made the sound again, louder.

Biting her lip hard, she felt the heat in her sex pulse harder and a surge of wetness as she squeezed her thighs together.

His lower claws set to work on the rest of her clothing, muddling through peeling it off her body. His touches on her naked skin were not very scientific. Hers on his weren’t, either. They were…caressing each other. Like lovers. And it felt so nice to be touched this way.

She tapped her chest, and whispered, “Lexana.”

After she’d repeated it a few times, he got the idea and said it, too. When she touched his chest, he growled, “Dahhw-nig.”

It was difficult to make out the word sounds. “Dawning?”

He spoke more slowly. “Dornix.”

“Dawning. Door nicks.” She couldn’t roll her Rs like him. “Well, aren’t you festive.”

He bent down to her, put out his tongue and ran it over the tips of her breasts. Lexana moaned softly, and grasped the table behind her to support herself. Sometimes you had to lick science, such as when you were trying to tell rock from bone. Sometimes, it seemed, science licked back.

Dornix grasped her about the waist and sat her atop the table, running his tongue from her navel up to her throat and behind her ear.

“Hey,” she panted. “I’m supposed to be examining you.”

He snuffled in her hair for a moment and she giggled, barely noticing he was edging her thighs apart. Two of his hands were hugging her legs to him, and that felt nice. The tip of a pointed cock nudged her entrance, and then slid a little inside.

“Holy fucking Traveling Wilburys!” She grasped him by his massive shoulders and leaned back, staring down at her sex. He wasn’t very deep, and holy crap that looked strange, her familiar flesh wrapped tightly around his lower, thicker member, while the other was protruding up along her pubic bone. He got thicker closer to the base and was covered in rows of little bumps.

He didn’t move, only looked down at her questioningly, blinking his four bright eyes.

Then he moved his hips just a little, making that clicking sound again, softly encouraging, and she felt him shift around inside of her. A little moan of pleasure escaped her. He felt cool within her heat, and with both of them so slippery it was just so easy to imagine letting him go on and seeing what would happen next.

Dornix leaned down and snuffled in her ear again. A friendly, needy little sound, nudging at her coaxingly. His tongue flicked out across her throat. He was asking her to mate with him.

Maybe just—just a little bit more. For science.

She leaned back on her palms and wriggled her butt to the edge of the bench and his cock deeper into her. Oh, Traveler, that felt amazing. He began to move slowly, watching, fascinated, as his member sank into her, drew out, and sank again. This must be as strange for him as it was for her. She wondered what she felt like to him. What he made of her moans, her ragged breathing. His other member was rubbing firmly against her clit with each thrust. It was sticky and oozing something clear and making her sex tingle, which was interesting in and of itself, but all she could think about right now was fuck yes that feels amazing don’t stop Dornix please don’t stop.

She looked up at him through her eyelashes, her vision hazy and her lips parted. Her science experiment was mating with her. This was really bad science, but a really really good Dawning.

Lexana reach down to his other member, rubbing up and down his length and holding it tighter against her clit. Dornix seemed to like it and made a growling sound deep in his chest. His thrusts got deeper and more energetic. Her sex was easing up around him and she was amazing how much of his length was disappearing inside her with each thrust. Maybe it was that stickiness he oozed. Who cared right now.

Dornix took hold of her with all four of his hands, supporting the weight of her body as he fucked her vigorously. The pressure inside of her and against her clit was building and building. She tried to keep her cries down but couldn’t help the shout of pleasure as her orgasm burst through her. Her hand worked up and down on his member, harder than ever, and a moment later his come gouted up over her and covered her breasts. Inside, she felt him spurt, and he filled her quickly until he was dripping out of her and spattering onto the floor. He thrust a dozen or so more times, looking down between them at the sight of their joined bodies, and then stilled. Holding her tightly he gathered her close against him and pressed even deeper into her.

Lexana closed her eyes, enjoying his four-armed embrace and deeply lodged member. His breath stirred in her hair and he made a deep rumbling noise in his chest, like a purr.

A moment later he pulled away, and she looked around dazedly. Her lab was a mess. Come, clothing tatters and instruments were all over the floor. In a tank across the room, a large fish glubbed at her reproachfully. You mind your own business, silly old fish.

Dornix reached down and fitted his breather mask over his face and tucked a canister of something under his arm. Ether, presumably.

Lexana felt a thud of disappointment. He was leaving already. That was pretty callous of him.

Suddenly embarrassed, she reached for her clothes, but then felt herself gathered up against Dornix and bodily carried toward the door. He wandered through her house with her in his arms, seeming to look for something. Finally, when he found her bed, he dropped her down into it and sank down beside her.

“Oh, sleeping, are we?”

Dornix already had his eyes closed. Perhaps he was feeling his injury at last, whatever it was. Both of them could use a shower but Lexana found she couldn’t be bothered. It was dark outside now and more snow was falling. It was oddly comfortable, being nestled in his arms and listening to the faint hiss of his ether tank. A short while later, she fell asleep.

___

Gray light was peeking around the curtains when Lexana awoke to find four hands squeezing her thighs and breasts.

“Good morn—”

Dornix splayed her on her belly and knelt between her thighs, and then thrusted into her, hard and fast. Lexana cried out and flexed her hips up toward him. Oh Traveler. Morning sex. She’d forgotten how good it was when sleep was bracketed by bouts of love-making.

Dornix put two hands on her hips and pulled her up, angling her sex toward him. This time when she felt him against her she felt the tips of two cocks, not one. Slowly, deliberately, he penetrated her with both, taking care to go slowly, a question in his movements: was this going to work? Lexana squeezed her eyes shut and gripped the blankets, trying to relax. She felt like she was being stretched to breaking point but in the best possible way. He thrust shallowly at first, and then coaxed his way deeper, inch by inch. She came up on her hands and bore back against him, matching his thrusts. His claws raked her flesh and tangled in her hair, and she watched him over her shoulder as she rubbed circles on her clit. He was saying strange words to her as he mated with her, and his claws covered her hand briefly, as if wondering what she was doing. When he started massaging her clit instead she let him, and as she came she seemed to allow him even deeper, and he pulled her up and bore her down on his members as he came.

Panting, she collapsed back onto the bed, looking up at him through a curtain of her hair. “Maybe I can keep you just for the Dawning. Would you like that, Dornix? To spend the Dawning with me, just the two of us?”

Dornix scooped her tightly into in his arms and snuffled against her ear. There were so many experiments she should be attending to, but they could all wait. She was going to have a very merry Dornix instead.

Outside her warm room, the City was hushed, and the snow kept falling.

Happy Dawning, Guardians! Thank you for reading xx

#destiny fallen #eliksni #destiny forsaken #black armory #destiny 2 #the dawning #destiny fanfiction

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jashasedai · 6 years ago

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Tame AU: Pose

Author’s Notes:

After the Racing Drivers are freed, they take their match’s last names.

Pose

Alternate Universe- Tame Racing Drivers

http://jashasedai.tumblr.com/post/151392469153/summary-au-tame-racing-drivers

Fandom- Formula E, Formula 1, Motocross, MotoGP, WEC, Indycar

After they are freed, Andre Lotterer’s Merlin, and Stoffel Vandoorne’s Seven have both taken up photography as a hobby. They decide to showcase the things Racing Drivers have always kept hidden

Tags: Formula E, Formula 1, Motocross, MotoGP, WEC, Indycar, AU Tame Racing Drivers, Alternate Universe, slavery, abuse, scars, tattoos

Other featured characters

Ricky Carmichael’s Ratchet(NASCAR driver, most winning motocross/supercross rider of all time, 25x champion(most winning RD/RR of all time)

Mark Webber’s Rabbit(Formula 1, WEC Champion)

Max Chilton’s Freeza(Formula 1, WEC, Indycar) and Alexander Rossi’s Xerxes(Formula 1, Indycar)

Niki Lauda’s Grad(Formula 1 3x Champion)

Dani Pedrosa’s Duende(MotoGP)

Alain Prost’s Professor(Formula 1 3x Champion)

Maria de Villota’s Lucir(Formula 1)

Jean-Eric Vergne’s Jev(Formula 1, Formula E Champion), Jenson Button’s Sugarboy(Formula 1 Champion), Nico Hulkenberg’s Hulk(Formula 1), Paul di Resta’s Sweep(Formula 1)

Michael Schumacher’s Shoe(Formula 1 7xChampion)

Story is under the break

Pose

2019

Merlin Lotterer tapped his fingers on the desk and stood up. [I will call the journalists. I will speak with the woman at the magazine. I want to do it.]

Andre didn’t like the idea. He could see that.

It made him feel afraid.

It made him feel hurt.

[You do not have to help me.]

Andre cringed. [I do not want to....] He looked down into the coffee mug in his hand.

Merlin smiled at him and rested his fingertips on Andre’s shoulder. [It is alright. You do not have to.]

Andre nodded.

Seven Vandoorne clutched his stonework mug in both hands. There was mist coming off of the water. He was wrapped in a warm knit blanket. The coffee steamed. A long way off, a waterbird called.

[Will you do a self portrait? Of you, this time, not of me?] Stoffel asked.

One side of Seven’s mouth curled up.

He nodded.

[What kind of pose do you feel comfortable with?] Seven asked.

Ratchet Carmichael held his elbows to his sides and shrugged. He wasn’t really looking at Seven, he was looking off set, where Ricky was standing.

[Maybe this would be easier if it were just us,] Seven suggested.

Ratchet didn’t move.

His match took the hint. He picked up his jacket. [I will be outside when you’re ready, bud.] Seven waited until the studio door clicked closed.

The atmosphere became less tense.

[Maybe we can just start with some…]

Ratchet had turned around. He was yarding his shirt up over his back. The neon green came up off the dark cloth of his pants, exposing pale pink skin, sprinkled with orange freckles. Except for the deep, white, rigid scars that criss crossed his back from his ribs to just below his shoulders.

He dropped the green jersey on the ground and dropped to his knees. The toes of one bare foot touching the pad of the other.

He laced his fingers behind his neck, and drew them up the back of his head, until they were clear of the faded black barcode in the shaved smooth patch behind his right ear. He pulled his head down, with his hands, so only a little of the red orange hair was visible above his fingers.

His back arched, like he was in agony.

‘Can you show me like this?’

Seven took the picture.

[Are you ready?] Merlin asked.

Mark Webber squeezed Rabbit’s hand again and stepped out of the shot.

Merlin took his time adjusting the light properly, so it did not reflect off the X Ray sheet. Rabbit’s shirt was a little lighter than true Dark Blue, but it looked wonderful through the viewfinder, against the rich grey background and the black and white of the X Ray.

[Look into the camera, good. Now look at the tape on the floor. Think about when this happened.]

Rabbit’s face twisted from it’s usual statuesque calm, into a wide mouthed grimace. His eyes clenched shut.

The tendons in his neck stood out, like he was screaming. The shaved skin behind his ear tensed. His whole body tensed.

[I HATE THIS!]

His hand clenched tight around the X Ray, white lines shining across the black background and pale grey of his bones, where the medic had wired the teenage stallion’s broken jaw shut.

Merlin took the picture.

[It is alright. Be proud.] The White mare, Freeza Chilton, coaxed the stallion.

Xerxes Rossi tugged his black t-shirt lower, though his black shorts were perfectly decent, covering his legs to mid thigh.

[Put your right hand on my right shoulder,] She told him, [And your left arm around me, with your left hand just below the right.]

It was strange, sending all his instructions through her, but Seven was having no luck getting Xerxes to pay attention to his directions long enough to get posed. ‘Please ask him to move his leg farther to the side, so I can see his full tattoo,’ He sent to Freeza.

‘Now straighten your back and tighten your belly.’

She followed his direction.

‘This couch is tickling me,’ Xerxes commented, moving out of position to touch the antique velvet.

Freeza revved and he moved back into place.

He rested his chin on her shoulder, his mutilated hands still scarred, even after the surgeries that had been done to repair them. He sat behind her, with his right foot flat on the floor, left leg up on the couch with his ankle under his right knee, leaning forward against her back. His shorts displayed the tattoo over his right thigh. She sat against his shin, back straight, her knees together and her hands on them, framing the cesarean scar across her lower abdomen, visible between the white crop top and the white yoga pants she wore.

They sat sidelong to the couch, facing the wall to Seven’s right.

The final picture would be black and white, except for the pink of her scar, and the scarlet and green of his tattoo.

Their barcodes were starkly visible.

[Now look at me,] Seven instructed.

Both of them turned vivid eyes on him. They would remain colourless.

Seven took the picture.

The couch Merlin chose was modern. White. With sharp lines. It looked like something Andre would have in his home. Unembellished. Efficient.

Merlin thought it looked uncomfortable.

He thought it looked like a stable felt.

[Do we sit here?] Niki Lauda asked.

[Yes, please,] Merlin said. [Grad to my left. Niki to my right.]

They sat.

[I would like to take several pictures. I would like Grad to look towards that wall.] He pointed at the wall beyond Niki. [Niki, please look at the wall behind the camera.]

Niki looked towards him. He had bright blue eyes.

Grad broke into a grin. The laugh wrinkles around his eyes, green without the contact lenses, distorted when they reached his scar. He had no barcode anymore, though a dark smudge showed where a corner had been.

[When you are comfortable, please take off the hat, Niki,] Merlin said.

He looked sideways at his partner, with whom he’d shared his whole life, and took the red baseball cap off his head.

Grad giggled again.

Niki’s face broke into a wide smile as well.

Merlin took the picture.

[Do they hurt you?] Seven asked.

[Yes,] Duende Pedrosa answered. [The losses hurt more, though.] He grinned.

Seven looked down at the little Rider stallion’s frame, covered in only a tight pair of rust orange shorts. His tan muscles were interrupted by pink, puckered lines at every large joint.

He turned his head so his barcode was apparent, and raised his arms in the classic bodybuilder’s pose, flexing, so his heavily muscled body looked as hard as the farings of his motorcycles.

[I am too strong for pain to stop me.]

Seven took the picture.

[I want you to tell me about that day,] Merlin said.

Professor Prost looked down at the black and white photographs on the table in front of him.

They looked like pictures of war.

Hallways, littered with bodies.

[When we woke up, it seemed just to be morning,] The old stallion, said, [We did our routines. No one knew it would be anything different.]

He told the story of the day.

[Then Alain came, and we all went outside, I left them.] He ran his hand into his curly, thinning, hair. It exposed the barcode he still wore hidden.

Tears dripped onto the photos.

A loss deeper than any physical amputation.

Merlin took the picture.

[Are you sure you want me? I am not...important…] The blonde mare’s hair was beginning to grow out after her confinement. Her health hadn’t fully returned.

[None of us were treated like we were important,] The older mare told her. [This is something that should be seen.] She smiled a sad smile. She brushed her hand through the other mare’s hair.

The hair had grown unevenly around her scar, but Lucir was certain she wanted it cut, to show the scar better for the photoshoot. Ochre, the Yellow mare who had come along to support her, trimmed the hair with scissors.

She was careful to keep the cut strands from catching on the scar that continued down Lucir’s scalp, over her forehead, across the warped skin where her right eye had been, and back across her cheek. It fell, so blonde it was nearly white, onto the hairdresser’s plastic cape and slid off onto the floor. She brushed the hair off, and wiped with a damp cloth. She removed the cape, letting the rest of the hair fall, unheeded onto the floor. She moved off the set.

Lucir hunched on top of the barchair where she’d been given the haircut, with her bare heels hooked on the highest rung.

Seven examined the scene through the viewfinder. The mare looked scared, cold, exposed.

[The paper,] He said, as he realized she wasn’t holding it.

Ochre brought the paper and handed it to Lucir.

[Look to your left, please,] Seven said.

He made certain both her barcode and scarred eye were clear.

He let the camera focus, and made sure the words on the paper were clear. They were small, but the larger letters across the top, Certificate of Death, and the name of Lucir’s match would be legible to anyone who saw the full page photo.

[This is going to hurt,] Seven said, [But we want to show your emotion.]

Lucir de Villota nodded, unlocked her jaw, and got ready.

[What did you feel, when the handlers told you Maria was found dead, Lucir?]

The mare’s grind of agony expressed itself in her whole body.

Seven took the picture.

[Did I look that way?] Jev Vergne asked Jean-Eric.

Jean-Eric frowned and nodded.

They stood inspecting the large photograph projected onto the back wall of the set.

The picture was from the investigation FIA had done, after Jev had blacked out from hunger and fatigue on the weekend of a Grand Prix.

It showed a stallion, skinny beyond recognition, muscular, but with barely enough body fat to survive. Beside it, sized to match, was another, and 3 more after that.

In the studio, Rabbit Webber was standing beside the snack table, one arm crossed and the other holding up a plastic cup. Sugarboy Button was filling up a plate with ham spirals.

Hulkie Hulkenberg and Sweep di Resta were standing in the corner, whispering.

Of all of them, the change in Sugarboy was most dramatic. The younger stallions in the pictures from 2013 and 2014 looked emaciated. Sugarboy and Rabbit looked lean and stringy. Now Sugarboy looked like Hulkie’s namesake. He was muscled like a healthy tiger. Of all the pictures, Sweeps was the saddest. The naturally tall, blade thin stallion looked skeletal. He was pale. His ribs were showing. His stomach didn’t look trim, it looked empty.

Now Sweep was a fit young stallion, they all were.

[Everyone please get in line,] Merlin called.

The stallions lined up in front of their before pictures.

[Everyone smile,] He said.

The group of well fed stallions smiled.

Merlin took the picture.

‘I will not let you fall,’ Seven sent. He scooted closer, keeping a firm arm around the older stallion’s ribs to keep him steady. The soft comforter he’d laid on the carpet, to protect the stallion’s skin from any rubbing on the unpleasant surface, was becoming disarrayed, but he couldn’t move to fix it.

The camera was set up on a tripod, with the viewfinder pointed towards them.

Shoe Schumacher sent a feeling of amusement. ‘I trust you.’ He felt relaxed in Seven’s arms.

Seven had thought through a few positions, but decided that the best one was with Shoe facing mostly away from the camera, but not so far that his face could not be seen. He had to lay up against Seven’s chest to do this, his legs stretched out behind him, towards the camera, their depleted muscle looking unnaturally thin in the foreshortening.

They looked at each other, face to face.

The low cut shirt Shoe was wearing revealed the star shaped scar at the back of his neck, where the handlers had punctured his spinal column. His thinning hair stopped short at the place where his barcode had been burned off, leaving a pale scar and no evidence that he was who he was.

The scar on Seven’s jawline shone white in the light he had chosen.

The mirror behind them reflected the scars that ran just to one side of Seven’s barcode, up behind his ears. The caption of the picture would explain the paralysis, and the numerous surgeries Seven had gone through, to change his face from matching Michael’s son, to matching Stoffel Vandoorne.

He smiled at Shoe.

Shoe looked determined.

Seven took the picture.

Andre examined the article.

Hidden Wounds: The stories behind the scars of the Stigs you know and love.

Duende’s flexing was an excellent cover photo. His career had been notorious for injuries, and he looked triumphant.

Seven Vandoorne’s photographs were primarily black and white. The one with the Indycar mare and stallion, and the slight touch of color was very moving.

Merlin’s pictures were in color, and made more use of background and props. Andre’s heart caught at the picture of Maria de Villota’s mare. He remembered that crash, vividly. Most of the matches assumed the Racing Driver couldn’t have survived, that Maria’s passing was in response to sadness.

The loss of a match perfectly encapsulated what Merlin had told Andre he wanted to show everyone with this series of pictures. Seven had focused mainly on scars that the public had not been aware of, but Merlin showed the heartbreak of growing up as a Racer, up against impossible odds. Losing things that humans could only barely comprehend.

That was what he was showing, here.

Then Andre came to the two page spread.

The paralysed stallion, and the stallion denied his chance to ever be one.

[It was a team effort,] Merlin said.

Andre looked up with tears in his eyes. [I am so sorry you all had to endure this.]

He opened his arms.

Merlin took comfort in them.

[This is your best work,] Stoffel said, closing the magazine. He set it on the table beside his patio chair. [I am SO proud of you.]

Seven turned from the summer sun setting over the lake.

He stepped away from the rail, and settled on his knees, between Stoffel’s feet. [I did it for you.]

Stoffel smiled. The smile for when he was uncertain.

[I wanted you to understand.]

The uncertainty went away.

‘Thank you.’

Seven laid his head on Stoffel’s knee. ‘I love you, and I just want us to be together. I want to be matched with you. I am glad I am matched with you. Those stallions Merlin showed when they were hungry, they are better, now.’ He lifted his head. ‘I am better, with you.’

Stoffel got down on the deck with Seven. He hugged his Stig. ‘I love you.’

Seven took comfort in this.

#AU Tame Racing Drivers #Formula 1 fanfic #formula e fanfic #motocross fanfic #motogp fanfic #scars #physical abuse #fanfic

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feynites · 7 years ago

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@selenelavellan sometimes I worry about Des feeling left out, so I did a thing! <3

Fear is in a mood.

A mood which they have been contemplating and examining, allowing to simmer and settle, to drift throughout one day, and then on into the next. They keep one eye on it, so to speak. Emotional self-awareness is a necessity for them. Important for monitoring the effects of their medication and for catching themselves before they end up in unwanted obsessive spirals, or paranoid ones. Or paranoid obsessive ones, which are the worst.

But this is a different kind of mood, and it doesn’t take long for them to recognize it. Or to realize that it’s one they want to indulge. How they want to indulge it takes most of their time, but when they are confident in things, they do.

They start with the children in the morning. The twins are just small, and fairly easy with affection. Felasel blinks at the kiss dropped onto his head, and Darevas happily squirms and lets Fear hold him while they get the table set. It makes it take longer than usual, and then Felasel toddles over and motions for ‘up’, too, and, well. Fear can hardly set out dishes with both arms full. But they enlist Kel’s aid and then reward her with a kiss and hug, too.

She smiles. It’s not that uncommon for Fear to show physical affection to the children, after all. They make a point of it - just enough so that they don’t feel like it’s being withheld.

Selene smiles at them, too, from where she is making breakfast.

“You’re in a cuddly mood,” she observes. Quicker to catch on than Deceit, even. Fear inclines their head, and then comes over and wraps their arms around her from behind. They stand like that for a while. Even helping to flip a few pancakes, before it feels like enough, and they head over to break up a disagreement between the twins before it can escalate.

They catch Dirthamen with a hug on his way out of the shower, and watch some early morning cartoons with Deceit; pressed side-to-side, and warmed by the contact. Deceit catches on quickly and puts an arm around them, and rubs a hand up and down their back until they have to get ready for a recording session.

Des watches them with increasing interest.

“Selene said you’re in a cuddly mood,” he observes, before they leave.

“Hm,” Fear agrees.

Des spreads his arms invitingly. They pat him on the shoulder, but silently decline.

They have plans for that, they think.

Of course, Des pouts about it. When they get back from recording he sets himself up invitingly on the couch, and frowns when Fear settles into their usual chair instead. When dinner rolls around, he wears his ‘kiss the cook’ apron, and loudly muses that it would be nice to have some help at the stove. Fear keeps on reading an article on a new internet virus, while Deceit gets up and goes to help instead.

“What are you making that face for?” Fear hears them ask Des, from the kitchen. Followed by the soft sounds of a few stolen kisses, and some half-hearted grumbling.

After dinner, Des abandons ‘subtlety’ in favour of just sitting down directly in front of Fear’s chair, and leaning back against their legs.

They nudge him.

“Don’t sit on the floor like that, you will get pins and needles.”

Des sighs woefully. But after a few more nudges, he reluctantly gets back up again, and moves to sit on an actual piece of furniture.

“I can’t believe you wore out your cuddly impulses on other people,” he complains. “You didn’t even come find me. Me! Your own spouse! Once in a blue moon this happens and I missed the window!”

Fear turns another page in the book they’re reading.

“Who says I wore them out?” they ask.

Des perks up, like a cat that just heard the fridge opening. He levels them with an assessing look, that once again reminds them that however flighty he can be, Des is also no one’s fool.

“Well if you haven’t…” he begins, moving as if he is about to get up again.

Fear stops him with a look.

“...Later,” they say.

Des drums his fingers on the armrest of the sofa. Then he glances to where Kel is doing her homework, not far off. The splashing sounds of the twins getting their bath drift down from upstairs, along with Selene’s voice scolding Darevas to stop turning the tap back on. That child would flood the bathroom if he was given half a chance.

“Later?” Des repeats, after a moment. He drops his vocal tones, and runs a finger slowly across his bottom lip. “What kind of later? A my-room later or a your-room later? Or an ‘everyone into the pool’ later?”

Fear turns another page.

They didn’t actually read it. But sometimes it’s important to cultivate the right effect.

“...My room,” they decide.

Des settles down at that. If anything, even, he goes on his best behaviour, and leaves Fear to their own devices until it’s about nine o’clock. And then he makes a grand show of being tired, talking extensively to whoever will listen about ‘hitting the hay’, until Kel decides he’s trying to passive-aggressively up her bedtime and lodges a formal protest with Selene.

Selene gives them an entreating look.

Fear marks their place in their book, and gets up. They kiss their daughter goodnight, and bid everyone else a pleasant evening. They check on the twins in the nursery, and spend a few minutes more than they meant to just watching the two of them sleep, before finally heading into their room.

Almost as soon as they have the door closed, it opens again. Des crowds them a little too quickly, getting his arms around them and sealing a kiss to their lips. They tweak his ear in reproach, and prod him back again.

“I have to check the security feeds, first,” they say. “Get naked.”

“Always the charmer,” Des quips. But if he meant to criticize, it comes off as somewhat unconvincing, as even then he’s busily pulling his shirt up over his head.

Fear starts unbuttoning their own, as they move over to the household security terminal. There is, of course, a more elaborate setup in the panic room, but most of the day-to-day operations are easily handled from their computer. They check to make sure all the usual alerts are enabled and that the cameras are running, and security lights are all working. Good. They replaced the bulbs last week, so there’s no reason to expect otherwise, but Fear is not a big fan of letting their guard down.

“You’re teasing me,” Des accuses, as he stretches out naked onto Fear’s bed. “Don’t deny it. You’ve probably been getting off on it all day. Stringing your poor, adoring husband along, making me think you were going to leave me wanting…”

Fear’s lips twitch.

“Why would I deny it?” they wonder.

Des starts touching himself, at that.

Fear finishes up with the security, and then stands and carefully gets their clothes off. They take off their shirt and fold up their slacks, unwind their footwraps, and toss their underwear into the laundry bin. By the time they are fully undressed, Des is watching them through half-lidded eyes, and stroking his engorged cock.

“Want to watch me come?” he suggests, as he slows his strokes.

Fear pulls out a very large bottle of unscented massage oil, and shakes their head.

Des bites his lip, but after a moment, he takes his hand off of himself, and makes a show of holding his own wrists over his head. He looks very good like that, Fear thinks. Flushed and stretching, although he’s probably going to regret getting himself so worked up.

They take a considerable amount of massage oil onto their hands, and warm it between their palms before settling onto the bed next to him.

And then they start touching him.

Beginning with his shoulders, and working their way over his biceps, and down his chest. They rub the oil into his skin, in slow, methodical touches. Des bites his lips and shifts his hips, and makes pointed comments about other places they could be touching him. And then sighs at the look Fear gives him, and accuses them of being a horrible tease. But he doesn’t make any move to stop them, or to take himself in hand again, as they focus on their knowledge of anatomy and muscle structure, and physical therapy.

Des’ muscles get more knots than one might expect.

He gets cricks in his neck and he can pull the tendons in his calves, and when he suffers his own rare bouts of anxiousness, it tends to bunch in the backs of his shoulders. Where it’s harder for other people to see it. Fear bypasses his erection, and gathers more oil, and works their hands over the muscles of his thighs, and down to the joints of his knees, and all the way to his feet. His skin gets warmer and warmer beneath their hands.

When they rub his feet, he makes sounds as if they are fucking him anyway. Fear is not a foot fetishist, but they do like watching him moan.

He has been neglecting his arches, too. They suspect he might need specialized footwear, and decide to broach the subject tomorrow, as they press firm circles into the places where softer, more sensitive skin meets sturdy sole flesh. They are rewarded with several more moans, and a few curses, because the massage does not seem to be doing much to quiet Des’ arousal.

Not that Fear thought it would.

They take a little more time on his feet than they planned, and add some lotion to the skin there, too, before finally relaxing the muscles to their satisfaction. By then their arms are beginning to feel strained, but not too badly.

“Roll over,” they instruct.

“Fuck me,” Des swears, tone caught somewhere between request and curse, and does.

Fear goes slower on his calves, at first. They take some time to recoup their own energy by running their hands up and down his legs. Des’ hips squirm, and he needs to shift around a few times to accommodate the discomfort of his erection. Fear uses some pillows to prop him up more comfortably, and then start in on his other side in earnest. Carefully oiling and kneading problem areas, but also letting their touch drift over more innocuous places, too. They run their fingers over the soft skin of his inner thighs, and the backs of his knees. They coax the tension out of his lower back, but with strokes that drift across the swell of his ass, and give them the opportunity to seize a few handfuls of it. Des rocks his hips at that, and whispers some filthy requests.

Fear just keeps going, though. When they get to his shoulders, the area proves as popular as his feet. And his neck is much the same. They use more oil. It’s starting to show on their bedsheets, but they expected it would. They trail their fingers up into Des’ hair, and work out the knots that have collected near his spine, rub circles against the sensitive muscles that that control the movement of his ears. The ones that make him breathless and boneless when pressed just right. Their hands are starting to tire, but their desire is not spent. So they only slow down again, as Des turns into a puddle on their bed.

“Fear,” he mumbles, at one point. Their hands are rubbing his hips. So it is not very difficult to shift him around, a bit, and close one over his cock. They press themselves up against the smooth heat of his back, and stroke him off. Intending to go slow, but, he is very pent up - so he does not last long against their palm.

They kiss the back of his neck, and muster up enough strength to stand up. Des looks glazed as they pull the soiled topsheet out from underneath him, and fold it up to fit in the laundry basket. Fear feels pleasantly heated, and tired as if they had made vigorous love for hours - which, in a sense, they have. They dim the lights, and work the remaining blankets free enough to get themselves and Des under them.

Des flaps a hand.

“I’ll just… gonna…” he mumbles, utterly failing to finish the thought.

Fear snugs up to his back again.

“I love you,” they say. It is important to say it, sometimes. With words as well. “Do you feel good?”

“...mmhmm…” Des manages to reply.

Articulate responses will probably have to wait until the morning, by the looks of things.

“Good. Me too.”

#citrus #dirthalene #concert au

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