#so i feel like. i should snag maybe one of the boxes the sharps containers come on

[vampirebiter]

maybe i should start stealing the big cardboard boxes from work so i can make better shelves for my dolls and figures when i move my stuff out to the cabin....

[austerulous]

◈   @tlacehualli said:  

❛ She speaks up the moment Dez enters, voice half-distracted. "Oy, cangura, viete aqui." The hacker's seated at a desk and there's a veritable pile of assorted parts in front of her which she didn't even bother to look up from. It's mostly circuitry - old school motherboards, one very shiny very new chip off to the side in a little plastic container, and a lot of what looks like old portable gaming systems; Vitas, Gameboys of all kinds, 3DS's, Switches. Directly in front of her and what she's currently working on is a 3DS in near perfect condition, surrounded by the most choice parts she's pilfered from the rest. The shell's banged up but the innards are in surprisingly not completely fucked, so the modifications she's attempting are going smoothly.

"Think you can hold one of these things without breaking them apart?" She swivels halfway in the chair to consider Odessa and then snorts a little bit. The other woman was nearly as tall as Akande and talking to him for too long gave her neck problems. "Shit. Huh. Maybe I should have picked something with bigger buttons. Here - " Sombra picks over different parts in front of he and picks out a GBA with a completely shattered screen (but functional buttons) and passes it to her. "See how the buttons feel. Different model but the buttons are a similar enough size..."

The next part is relatively easy compared to all the soldering - she's just transposing game codes into the new chip, along with some of her own custom software tweaks. Old tech like this was super familiar to her so the process was pretty seamless - twin, razor straight hardlight beams in magenta beaming data directly from one to another. "Hijo de la puta madre. Please tell me those buttons are fine or this little project is gonna take all fucking day into tomorrow." ❜

Sepia light and sand leaked through the ventilation shafts. Dust-coated fan blades creaked, casting columns of shadow. Even in the vaults of Junkertown, in the echoing chambers of its decaying heart, Odessa seemed to fill the room, always eating up too much space. Just as Sombra always dipped into her native tongue. Sharp, resonant, soulful. Like music. It didn’t matter how ugly the words might be in their meaning, not when they sounded so beautiful, not when they were being spat in her direction.

A smirk died on the queen’s lips before it could draw its first breath. Stalking nearer – but not too close – Odessa surveyed the small scrapyard of gadgets, their cracked screens black-eyed and blind. Communication devices, she supposed. Like those the outsiders brought, clutching them like pearls, their entire lives consolidated and compressed into one fragile, soulless box.

One device was selected and thrust unceremoniously into her grasp, her expression spasming into one of confusion – and curiosity. Its screen was shattered, devastated in a way Odessa could understand. Any Junker knew the value of broken things. Humming softly, she turned it over in her broad, long-fingered hands, and obediently tested the buttons.

Such a simple thing, and yet it caused a thread inside her to snag, pull, dredging up a memory long buried. One of her sitting front and centre on her mother’s lap, a similar device held aloft, hovering. Her sisters walled her in on both sides, huddling close, watching in awe, spellbound by adult dexterity and focus. Their mother had been the slayer of boss monsters, puzzle cracker extraordinaire. When they got stuck, she would blaze the way into the next level.

In that splintered screen, Odessa’s own reflection suddenly came into sharp focus. Familiar features appeared detonated, split into pieces, fractured and distorted almost beyond recognition.

Yes, she had to believe in the value of broken things.

Magenta beams of hardlight pierced the gloom, proving a welcome distraction. Sombra dealt in the intangible, her abilities almost akin to witchcraft. What else could it be, when she was able to reach beyond veils to pluck information unseen, files falling into her hands like ripe fruit, her fingers unburned by even the most ferocious of firewalls? Odessa was getting old. It was beyond her to understand. Her language was of the physical, of sputtering engines and diesel fumes, of bullets and blood.

“I mean, yeah, they seem fine.”

The device was returned to the table, nestling among its equally defunct siblings. Junker Queen leaned in, looming on the periphery of Sombra’s personal space. Experience told her that to trespass was to invite that delightfully melodious language to become jagged, pointed, sharpened into a knife on the tip of Sombra’s tongue.

“Goin’ to all this effort for me, when ya ain’t even one of my subjects? I’m flattered.”

[loveafterthefact]

Love After the Fact Chapter 74: Stellar Nucleosynthesis

The future is uncertain, but then again nothing ever is.

First  Previous  Next

“Hey. Beloved. Hey.” Lips brush against Keith’s, fingertips traveling down his bare side to cup his hip. “Beloved, wake up. Your mom’s here and I’m pretty sure she wants to cook and eat me.”

“You’ll be fine. You’d taste terrible. She knows that already.”

“It’s pregnancy test day… We kinda need you for that.” Lance kisses his cheek, cuddling up close behind him. “Don’t you wanna know if we’re having a baby? If there’s gonna be a tiny, miniature Keith running around?”

Keith sighs, lacing his fingers over Lance’s to keep the man’s arm around him. “I’d rather they looked like you.”

“What? No way!” Lance pouts.

“I hope they at least have your eyes. I love your eyes.”

“Aw-w, Beloved. I love your eyes.” Lance kisses his shoulder. “But before we can start arguing over inherited traits, we should do a pregnancy test.”

“We can argue now. But,” Keith says with a heaving sigh. “I guess we should take a pregnancy test. Before Thace straps me down and bleeds me by force.”

“Keith.” It’s Krolia, clearly having gotten impatient listening to Lance coo over him. “You have a package waiting from Thace.”

“Okay, I’m coming.” Keith sits up, Lance sitting with him.

“Your hair is a mess.”

“That’s your fault.”

“Yeah. It is.” Lance snickers, kisses his cheek. “I think Krolia got breakfast started, so whenever you’re ready, come join us, okay?”

Keith nods, spends a few minutes finding the energy to deal with Lance and Krolia in the same room and find out if he’s pregnant. He’ll be exhausted before lunch.

Krolia’s cooking breakfast when he emerges. Lance is patting out dough for flatbreads. They’re a little uneven, still a little wonky around the edges, but he’s got a proud little smile on his face. Keith swears he falls in love all over again when the Altean holds one up for his inspection.

“My good man, they look beautiful.” Keith wraps his arms around his mate’s waist, kisses his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re having fun.”

“I know you’re lying to spare my feelings, but thank you, beloved.” Lance sprinkles more flour on the table, starts on another lump of dough. “That came for you.” A long, thin finger indicates a parcel wrapped in paper. “Thace makes paper, doesn’t he? It’s like a hobby or something.”

“Yeah, he does. It's how he and Ulaz fell in love, actually. Thace used to write all these letters for him. Still does. And for his kits.”

Keith takes a deep breath, unwraps the parcel. Inside is a small case about the size of his palm, made of dark, brushed metal. He blows the breath out through his cheeks.

Lance opens up an accompanying slip of parchment. “Okay. He left instructions. Step one, open the case and remove the test strip capsule and packaged sanitary wipe.”

Keith opens the box. Inside, there’s a small, metal device of matching color with a narrow screen at the top and a glass capsule containing a thin strip of silver material with a tiny depression at one end. He pulls out the capsule.

“Unscrew the lid of the capsule, removing the test strip. Insert the flat end of the strip into the port at the bottom of the device. Put the lid back on the capsule. Carefully clean the selected finger. Then, pull on the lip of the capsule to expose the needle punch, set it to the side of the pad of your finger, and press down quickly. You should feel a sharp prick. Squeeze a small amount of blood from your finger and put it up to the sample plate at the bottom of the strip. Press the button on the device and wait- Fifteen doboshes?!”

Lance groans. Keith shakes his head, smiling despite his stress. “I suppose we could wait two more movements and I could pee into a capsule and we could have results in one dobosh instead.”

“No, we’ll just do it now,” the Altean grumbles.

Krolia chuckles. “Be grateful you have a test you can take. I just had to wait until I could feel you. Besides, this device will also screen for any deficiencies Keith may have accrued during his season, and send the data directly to his reproductive care physician, in the case Thace.”

Keith bites his lip, staring at the capsule, before handing it to Lance with a pleading look. Lance sits beside him at the table, finding the sanitary wipe and unwrapping it, cleaning Keith’s left index finger, though not before squeezing it to watch his claw extend. Just for fun.

“When you say ‘wait until you could feel him’, what do you mean?” Lance asks, pulling off the capsule lid. The outer dome pops off to reveal a smaller, similarly shaped piece of metal beneath, with a hole at the bottom.

“After a phoeb, I could press down on my lower abdomen and feel a hardness where my womb would be.”

“I guess fifteen doboshes doesn’t sound so bad now, hm?” Keith asks. Lance kisses his cheek. The Galra smiles, opens his mouth to say something else, only to let out a surprised squeak when Lance presses the pricking device down on his finger. “There we go. All done.”

Lance squeezes a bead of blood from the tiny wound in the side of Keith’s finger, presses it to the sample plate. He looks back at his husband. “Whenever you’re ready, beloved.”

Keith hesitantly presses the purple button on the device, eyeing the Galran text on the screen:

TEST: ANALYZING…

“Now what?” Lance whines. “I wanna know.”

“I mean, the chances of me being pregnant are not in our favor.” Keith says, accepting some steak and eggs from his mother. “It’s my first season, and my family has a history of fertility issues. Plus, even if I am pregnant, the chances that I won’t miscarry are also not in our favor for the exact same reasons. Best not to get our hopes up.” The Galra shrugs, scooping his breakfast onto a piece of already cooked flatbread, sprinkling it with salt and spices, and shoving it in his mouth. “Besides, I was spotting for a couple quintants after my season, so-”

“That happens either way. You know that,” Krolia prompts. At Lance’s confused looks, she explains. “It’s not uncommon to spot blood following season.”

"Come on now, beloved. Let's try to be optimistic, okay?" Lance watches Keith’s enthusiasm for his breakfast fade before his eyes, ears drooping. He places a hand of his husband’s shoulder. “Hey, why don’t you go take your bath while we wait? The test will be done when you get back and you can keep yourself busy with this mess.”

Lance tugs at a tangled lock of hair. Keith nods, worrying his lip. “Yeah. Yeah, okay… You won’t be mad, right?”

“Not even a little. And I won’t peek. Pregnant or not, you’ll be the first to know.”

Keith nods, resets his demeanour. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

Watching him retreat into the bathroom, Lance turns to Krolia. “He’s going to be devastated if we’re not pregnant.”

“Oh, absolutely. One hundred percent.” She sips her tea, forwing after her only child, a worried furrow to her brow. “Totally crushed.”

Lance nods, snatches up the uneaten half of Keith’s breakfast, sets it back out by the fire to keep it warm. Now he just needs to keep himself busy until Keith comes back.

“I should get packing,” he muses. “We’re leaving tomorrow either way, and Keith has managed to acquire many presents.” He turns back to the warrior at his table. “Will you kindly bring yours tomorrow? It should make leaving easier on him.”

“Certainly.” Krolia sets down her borrowed tea cup, rises to her feet. “I assume that is a dismissal?”

“A soft one, but please, if you don’t mind. Whatever the near future holds, let it be ours, first.” Lance inclines his head. Krolia nods, leaves, leaving Lance to his waiting.

After fifteen doboshes, the device on the table beeps. Lance lungs for it, misses at the last tick. “No, no. I said he got to see it first-” Lance groans, cards a hand through his hair. “Okay. I’m okay. I’m a grown up. I can be patient.” One tick. Two. Patience is not Lance’s strong suit. “I’m just gonna…”

Keith’s still in the tub, hair still tangled, knees tucked up to his chest.

“Hey, beloved. The, uh. The results are in, if you want to come take a look.”

“O-Okay.” Keith begins raking fingers frantically through his wet hair, cursing when they snag on the knots.

“Whoa, hey.” Lance gently coaxed Keith’s hands into his lap. “Let me do that, hm? Before you hurt yourself.”

“It’s just hair,” Keith whispers.

“Not to you.” Lance kisses the top of his head before pouring a lightweight creme into his hands, coaxing it through Keith’s hair. “Though I’ve noticed you don’t braid it so much anymore. Isn’t that what your father did?”

“Yeah. But I’m not my father. My father is gone… I could be becoming a father right now.” Keith draws in a rattling breath, tugging on a detangled lock of hair.

“Yes, we both could be.” Lance starts on another section of Keith’s hair, wrinkling his nose as loose strands tangle around his fingers. Their servants must hate cleaning their bathroom. And their quarters for that matter, given Keith’s fur. “Beloved, are you alright? You don’t seem like yourself.”

“I’m… scared.”

Lance’s hands pause for a moment, then continue their progress, working up and up until they eventually comb all of the tangles out of his hair.

“Me too. It’s… a lot. I know. And even more for you than for me. But listen.” Lance scoops a pitcher of water from the adjacent basin, pours it slowly over Keith’s head to rinse the creme from his hair and the many loose strands from his hands. “All that test tells us is whether or not we’re pregnant. There’s plenty of time for us to change our minds if-”

“You changed your mind?!” Keith whirls, alarmed.

“What? No! Not at all. But if you have, then-”

“I haven’t. I just- I know I'm the one who has to carry the kits and all that, but if you wouldn't mind helping? Just maybe picking up a few extra duties here and there, stuff like that.”

"Of course I will. What else would I do? You- I couldn't possibly do enough for you," Lance whispers. Keith’s violet eyes meet Lance’s, resolved, but still somehow soft. Lance nods, presses their foreheads together. “Are you ready then?”

“I think so. Can you get me some clothes while I dry off?”

“Sure.” Lance kisses Keith sweetly, hands him his towel. “I love you.”

“Love you too.”

Doboshes later, Keith’s staring at the little device like touching it might kill him. It’s certainly killing Lance. Finally, with a determined huff, Keith snatches the device off the table, looking down at the screen. There’s a long pause, an agonizing stretch of silence, ears full of static instead of the rising bustle of the village outside.

A tiny breath escapes through Keith’s mouth, eyes gaining a dangerous shine to them as they fill with water. He tips forward and melts against Lance's frame, arms loose by his sides, head resting against his collarbone.

“Woah, hey.” Quite worried, Lance wraps his arms around his husband, holding him close. Lance kisses his fluffy ear, rubbing circles into his back. “Are you okay?”

Keith nods, snuggling closer.

“Do you, uh…” Lance clears his throat, tucking Keith more beneath his chin. “Do you want to give me a hint? You’re killing me here, beloved.”

Keith sets the device in his hand, wraps his arms around Lance’s waist. Keeping on hand on the small of Keith’s back, Lance lifts the device so he can see it, turns it right side up so he can translate the Galran properly.

TEST: POSITIVE

“Oh, my- Keith!” Lance drops the device, ignoring when it skitters over the floor in favor of holding his husband in a tight embrace. “Oh, Keith. ”

Keith pulls away. “I can’t believe it. It was so easy! I did it!- Wait, you did it? We did it?”

“Who cares! We’re having a baby! We’re gonna be parents-” Lance tears up. “I’m finally gonna be a dad.”

“Lance you’re not even nineteen.” Keith shakes his head, more fondness than anything else.

“Yes, but I’ve wanted it all my life,” Lance sniffles.

Sighing, Keith draws Lance in for a gentle embrace, though not before a tender kiss. “Now let’s hope I can carry it.”

“I know you can, beloved. I have absolute faith in you.” Lance kisses the crest of his shoulder. “And I’ll be here to help every step of the way, I promise you.���

“I figured as much. You’ll definitely be a thorn in my side more often then not.”

“A thorn is a starving man’s arrowhead.”

“I- What?” Keith pulls back, baffled. “What the fuck does that even mean?”

“A pain in the ass can still be invaluable in the right circumstances.”

Keith snorts, breaking into giddy laughter as he snuggles back in. “Alfor taught you that one didn’t he.”

“No. Coran did. I was the thorn as a child, screaming for attention to rescue him from probing questions about when he and my father began seeing each other… I was a very well-trained son once upon a time.”

Keith laughs again. “I can imagine!... My good man, I love you.”

“I love you too, beloved. So very much.”

“Can we- Can we just go and curl up together? I know we need to pack, but please?”

“Yes. We can definitely do that.” Lance presses their foreheads together, feeling a stir of pride when he hears Keith start to purr, that anxious/excited trembling in the man’s body settling at the loving gesture. “Nothing would make me happier this day.”

Lance’s hands find Keith’s, twining their fingers together.

“Nothing at all.”

[semperintrepida]

The Sellout, chapter five

five: the changing levels

Kyra awoke with something hard jabbing into her thigh. She pulled the sharp corner of a book away from her leg, and blinked back the veil of sleep while she regained her bearings. The chair she sat in was uncomfortable and unfamiliar, and she shifted positions, feeling wool under her fingertips, concrete under her feet. She was still in Kassandra's condo, and this hadn't been some stress-induced dream.

The owner of the book and uncomfortable chair and concrete floor was still sleeping on the couch nearby, blissfully oblivious to her presence.

Kyra glanced out the windows. What time was it? The skies outside were chalkboard black, the city winking back at her through the glass. She touched the screen of her phone awake. Two-thirty in the morning. Opening the shop in three hours was going to suck.

She only had herself to blame. She was the one who'd offered to drive Kassandra home. She could have ignored Kassandra's protests and called an ambulance. Let the EMTs haul her away. Problem solved.

That there was a problem to be solved at all was also Kyra's fault. She'd left the front door unlocked, and the shop's bright lights had drawn that tweaker inside with the gravitational pull of the sun. If she hadn't done that, he wouldn't have been able to attack her, and Kassandra... Kassandra wouldn't have put herself in danger by stepping into his path instead.

The incident took no more than a few seconds. Kyra's memory of it flickered past in still frames from a blurry video, but there was no mistaking the central figure in each one.

Kassandra.

She'd done Kyra a reckless, foolhardy kindness, despite Kyra's best attempts to give her every reason not to.

Kyra looked at Kassandra again. She really was gorgeous, stretched out like a slumbering lion across the couch. Kyra shook the thought away and studied the book in her hands, with its thick cover and mix of heavy paper and vellum pages, hefty for an otherwise small volume. Anne Carson's reimagination of Antigone. I like a good argument, marrow versus marrow...

The moment Kassandra had fallen asleep, Kyra had gone to the bookshelves and found a collection of tomes as tasteful as everything else inside this concrete box of a condo. All the titans were there, from Atwood to Zola, Booker prize-winners rubbing covers with Pulitzers, their spines uncreased and bookstore-fresh.

None of the books had been read. It was as if Kassandra had arranged to fill her bookshelves with a cross section of capital-L literature without bothering to crack them open even once. Kyra had a vision of Mars as seen through an old telescope, its surface cloaked with dark expanses once mistaken for seas until closer inspection revealed them to be as barren as the rest of the planet.

Kyra had rolled her eyes at the fakery, but then her gaze snagged on a book unlike the others, and she realized that her first glance may not have been entirely accurate. Then curiosity took over, which was how a copy of Antigonick had ended up in her hands. Apparently, there was life on Mars after all.

With hours to fill, she'd settled in and started reading, flipping pages in a book so worn that its cover flopped open flat on its own.

Now it was two-thirty in the morning in Kassandra's home, with Kassandra's book in her lap, and she remembered how the Greek chorus in that book sang accusingly at the god of desire: You change the levels of a person's mind.

She stood up abruptly. She returned to the row of shelves, slid the book back where it came from, and studied the others, looking for signs of wear, looking for signs of life.

She was snooping and she didn't care. Kassandra slept on, none the wiser, as Kyra found worn covers on predictable heavyweights like Wolf Hall and The Prince mixed with surprises like Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others and a copy of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius that was so tattered from use it nearly fell apart in her hands.

She never would have thought Kassandra a stoic. Spartan maybe, given the simplicity of her surroundings, but not stoic.

The surprises kept coming: in the amount of poetry contained in Kassandra's shelves and in the fact that the poetry was more likely to have been read than the prose. And then Kyra hit paydirt, in a heavy, library-bound tome with "Ψάπφω" embossed on the cover, filled with pages of photographic reproductions of what looked to be papyrus fragments.

And in the margins of each page were annotations written in a forceful, propulsive scrawl. English mixed with what looked like Greek. Kyra would have to take the words written in English at face value; despite her Greek heritage, she'd never learned the language or any of its ancient forms.

among mortal women, [know that?] you could release me from every care

Kyra couldn't read the book's title, but she still had a good guess what it was. She turned the page, then the next, skimming translation after translation, some crossed out, others given a second attempt, and then she spotted one that leapt off the page:

someone will [did??] remember us I tell you in another time

The book in Kyra's hands was Kassandra's attempt at translating Sappho.

If studying Kassandra's bookshelves was snooping, this suddenly felt like reading her diary. Kyra shut the book, the covers closing with a loud snap, and she winced and held her breath while Kassandra stirred on the couch.

A momentary rustling, then silence again. Kassandra hadn't woken up. Kyra returned the book to its home on the shelf and went to the windows. There wasn't just life on Mars, but an entire hidden ecosystem, and now having discovered it, she wished she could forget it existed.

She frowned into the darkness. Somewhere to the east, Mount Hood was waiting until dawn to make its grand entrance onto the cityscape. Kassandra's view would be spectacular, as a view from a penthouse should.

Kyra's frown deepened. Penthouse. "PH" in the private elevator that serviced a private garage. Follow the trickle of money down to the space-age car, the hand-tailored suits, the twenty-dollar lattes. She'd missed the obvious, over and over.

A place like this couldn't be bought with a VP's salary — even one at Starbucks. It would take real money, fuck-you money, the kind of money that cascaded from one generation to the next in an endless flow. Kyra looked back at the couch and the woman sleeping upon it.

Kassandra wasn't just rich — she was fucking wealthy.

It made sense now: the careful curation of Kassandra's social media, the steady stream of favorable press, her reluctance to call the cops. It was how someone with vast amounts of money could hide in plain sight, floating through life without needing a security detail to protect her from the crazies like Bezos and Gates did.

But with all that money, why did she even bother with work?

Kassandra would take Kyra's shop, not because she needed to make a living, but because she simply could, and it didn't matter if she liked Marcus Aurelius or read poetry or translated Sappho. She'd do the job and Kyra wouldn't be able to do a damn thing to stop her.

Kyra didn't belong here. Maybe in another time things could have been different. In this one...

She walked across the room and knelt by the couch. "Kassandra. Hey."

Kassandra's eyes blinked open.

"You alive?"

"No," she said, then smiled. "Yes." She glanced around the room. "What time is it?"

"Almost three."

"Shit. I'm sorry." She sounded like she meant it.

"What time's your alarm set for?"

"Five-thirty."

Good. Kyra wouldn't need to stay much longer. "You've lasted this long, you'll probably survive to hear it."

The smile faded. "You sound disappointed."

"Get some sleep," Kyra said. "Five-thirty's coming up fast." She got up before Kassandra could answer, moved back to the chair, sat, and tried not to think of anything while Kassandra's gaze bore down on her with the weight of a hydraulic press.

It took forever before Kassandra's breathing finally relaxed and deepened with sleep, but when it did, Kyra quietly moved across the room and slipped out the front door. Her debt to Kassandra's inexplicable gallantry was paid in full.

The elevator whisked her to the building's lobby, an airy chamber of blonde wood and minimal metal, warm and smelling faintly of lavender. Then she pushed open the glass door, stepped into the cold, damp, river bottom air of the real world, and left Kassandra and her gleaming tower far, far behind.

.oOo.

Eleven o'clock and the Sunday morning brunch rush was still underway. The flow of customers had been steady since she'd opened at six, but as nice as it was to ring up sale after sale, she was running on fumes.

Pete could tell. They'd bumped elbows once and had a few near misses behind the bar, and after that he kept giving her sidelong looks.

She was pulling a shot under his watchful gaze when her patience with him finally frayed. "Say whatever it is you want to say."

"Take a break after this drink. Fifteen minutes would do you good."

And give every person standing in line an excuse to whine on Yelp because their drinks took a few minutes longer than they wanted? "Not yet."

"When?"

She lifted the pitcher of steamed milk, then stopped just before the pour. Her hands were shaking, and she couldn't get them to stop.

He stepped into her space, his bulky powerlifter's body towering over her, and gently took the pitcher from her hand.

She watched silently as he finished the drink for her, and when stillness returned to her hands and forearms, she picked up a to-go lid from the stack and gestured for him to put the drink down on the counter. "When Phoibe comes in," she said.

"Kyra..."

She snapped the lid onto the cup and handed it to the customer waiting on the other side of the counter.

The man sipped his drink and gave her a grateful nod, now fortified with enough caffeine to wait two hours in line for a seat at the diner up the block. Pete was already talking to the next customer, but before he could tell her what to make, a flash of color pulled her eyes to the front door.

A tiny, black-haired Korean woman bustled into the shop, dwarfed by a sprawling bouquet of flowers in her arms. Every eye in the shop turned to watch her walk up to the counter. "Are you Kyra?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"For you, lucky girl." She placed the glass vase at the edge of the counter and stepped back to inspect her work.

Kyra's hand slid into her back pocket for her wallet, but the woman wagged a finger at her and said, "No, no. All taken care of. Enjoy." Then she smiled brightly and disappeared out the door.

Kyra eyed the slice of meadow that had appeared as suddenly as spring: sprigs of white serviceberry blossoms hovering over matte green leaves, pink clusters of sea blush, all nestling contentedly in a bed of ferns, the serrated fronds twined with sweetpea vines in full bloom.

They were the real life inspiration for the tattoo that wound around her right arm, every plant and flower growing wild in Oregon. They'd greeted her every spring, after Nia had taken her in and they began spending the warmer months up at the homestead in Estacada, its lush forest and sparkling river a shocking change of scenery to a gutterpunk who grew up in the grey grime of Portland's streets.

A card peeked out from the greenery, its handwriting familiar. She could almost hear Kassandra saying its words out loud.

Thanks for the ride home — and for looking out for me.

-K

Kyra's ears buzzed and her head swam dizzily as she floated on a curious feeling of elation. Then she blew out the breath she'd been holding. It was the lack of oxygen making her feel loopy. That's all.

So Kassandra was observant. All hunters were. And Kyra would be a fool to think otherwise, that this was anything other than a ploy to soften her up.

Kassandra would be back. The only question was When?

.oOo.

It wasn't Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, and after Thursday crawled by and Kyra had begun to hope that maybe, just maybe, her prayers had been answered and Kassandra had moved on to richer hunting grounds, the door to the shop clanged open five minutes before close.

This time, she didn't even turn around when Kassandra walked up to the counter. She just kept spinning the cup in her hand against the towel she'd been using to dry it off. "How's your head?" she asked.

"Much better, thanks."

She put the cup away with the rest, then turned to Kassandra, noting her lack of suit jacket and the extra button open at the neck of her dress shirt. Working late, perhaps. "I got the flowers."

"Good." Kassandra's face gave nothing away, her answer too short to offer any clues about the purpose of her visit.

"They were beautiful," Kyra said. "Where did you find them?"

"I've been exploring the city in my off hours. Sometimes I end up at a farmers' market and find a Korean family selling the most amazing wildflowers. Sometimes I end up in coffee shops where I find more than I bargained for."

Kyra tossed the towel next to the rack of cups. "Why are you here, Kassandra?"

"You keep asking me that."

"You never give me a good answer."

"I like the way you make coffee."

Kyra folded her arms.

"Ahh, you're not really asking about me then," Kassandra said with an air of amused patience.

She'd guessed wrong, but Kyra didn't correct her.

Eventually, she sighed into the silence. "Like I said, a new flagship store. That's the plan."

"There's already one in the Pearl." A massive shop, three stories high, a layer cake of espresso counters and seating and retail encased in a shiny frosting of glass and steel.

"Seattle has more than one, San Francisco does too. Time to add another on this side of the river. Little Portland's growing up."

Kyra stepped out from behind the counter. This time, she locked the front door before doing anything else. "You'd be better off at the Convention Center than all the way down here," she said over her shoulder.

"Probably. But I wouldn't be doing my due diligence if I didn't know the landscape of the entire east side." Kassandra moved to the windows and began helping flip stools onto the bar. "My offer still stands, by the way."

Kyra stopped mid-flip, then put the stool in her hands back down on the floor. "Suppose I said yes. What do you think I'd do with myself then?"

Kassandra didn't have a ready answer for that. She tilted her head, squinting at Kyra as she thought. "I don't know," she said. She seemed surprised by her own admission. "Take a vacation?"

"You're damn right I would. Someplace nice and sunny with enough five-twelve routes to keep me climbing for weeks. And afterwards, I'd come home and... what then?" She ran her hand along the bar. Ten years ago, she'd rescued the oak plank from the collapsing ruin that had once been the homestead's workshop. She'd attacked it with a sander, finished it with shellac, installed it against the window with her own hands. "Selling this place would net me — what, a hundred thousand if I'm lucky?" Ten years of work, only to end up with less money than she'd started. "That money won't last forever."

A rattle at the front door turned both their heads at the same time. A woman stared back apologetically through the glass. Just someone looking for a last-minute caffeine fix. Kyra mouthed a Sorry and nodded up at the inert neon sign above her head.

"You could open another shop."

"And bust my ass starting over from scratch while waking up every day wondering if today's the day another suit like you is going to show up? That sounds fun." She was tiring of this conversation. "But worrying about things like that isn't something you'd understand."

"What do you mean?"

"How much does a gallon of milk cost?"

Kassandra's eyes narrowed. "Between three and five bucks a gallon around here. I know the price of bananas too in case you think I'm too out of touch to know that either."

The question had pissed her off. Good. Maybe she'd go away sooner. Kyra started sharpening another volley of words, knowing that Kassandra would raise her shield, and look at her with that mirror-finished glint in her eyes she'd used to turn Kyra's pointed remarks aside before. Kyra's heartbeat sped up, ready to rise to the challenge.

Instead, Kassandra's shoulders sagged and a strange expression slumped across her features, one that took Kyra several moments to identify as hurt. It scattered Kyra's snark, and left her with a pounding heart and nothing to say. She stared at Kassandra as the silence grew second by second, and when she was finally able to muster some words, they snuck out from her with a weary softness. "You didn't come here to talk about work, did you?"

"No." Kassandra turned away, straightening the stool she'd lifted onto the bar so its edges were lined up square. "I was hoping to get your help with something."

It was bait. It had to be. The longer Kyra let this conversation keep going, the more likely it was that she'd do something stupid. "My help with what, exactly?" she asked, while her brain howled in frustration.

"I've been invited to a... gala of sorts."

Kyra didn't like where Kassandra was going with this. "A gala," she said flatly. "Like ballgowns and dancing?"

"Not really. More like Patagonia fleece vests and fat wallets bumping into each other."

"And?"

"Will you come with me?"

"I think you're asking someone from the wrong social strata."

Hurt flickered through Kassandra's eyes a second time, but she smoothed it over with a faint smile and didn't miss a beat. "On the contrary, you'll fit in better than you think. It's a fundraiser for the Multnomah County Library."

"Surely I'm not the only person you know who reads books."

"You don't just read books. You climb."

An oddly specific combination. "You're plotting something."

"Nothing shady, I promise. Just come with me and talk to people. It'll only be a couple of hours — and there'll be an open bar."

Kyra was half-tempted to lie and say she didn't drink. "You actually think I'll say yes to this? I don't even—" Like you, she meant to say.

"It'd be an excellent opportunity to expand your network," Kassandra said, but then she shrugged off her own suit-speak with a grin. "Anyway, the Library wants to build a new children's wing, and I'm on a mission to separate some people from their money for a good cause. I think you can help me do that."

Think of the children. Kassandra's audacity seemed to have no bounds. "When is this thing?"

"Saturday night."

Shady or not, Kassandra was up to something, and saying No would cut Kyra off from any chance of finding out what it was. "Fine. Two hours, then I'm done," Kyra said. Against reason, against her better judgement, brain still howling as—

Kassandra's face lit with a triumphant smile.

The kind of face that made Kyra do stupid things.

Chapter five of The Sellout. Continued in chapter six...

Author's Note: The translations of Sappho herein are loosely reworked versions of Carson's, from her foundational translation "If Not, Winter."

"among mortal women..." is a snippet from fr. 23.

The "did??" in Kassandra's translation of fr. 147 is a reversal of Casaubon's commonly-accepted emendation that changed "did remember" to "will remember". (Oh, to have a photo of the original papyri so I could puzzle out what the text actually said, but I'm no classics scholar...)

[my-brothers-corrupted]

Happy birthday, Reina! You’re one of the most supportive readers I have for this blog and my other one too and I also just think you’re amazing as is. Wanted to pay you back a little for being a friend and always leaving such amazing tags on my writing - so I went through some of them to find inspiration for a snippet I could write you :) hope you enjoy this nightmare.

“You can’t be here,” he whispers, and he hears his voice shake.

Blue eyes regard him like the pupil of a bird fixated on a toad struggling in its talons.

“You can’t be here!” he repeats, in a scream now, and he tears forward like a wild thing, his teeth bared, and his body shifts. He is a dog, he is a deer, he is a man, he is a mistake. And by the time he is lunging at the boy’s throat as he has lunged a dozen times before, the cold and unscarred hand of his creator snaps out like the strike of a snake and grips him by the throat.

He is a sheep now and he hears himself bleat, terrified by the transformation. He shifts to a bird, but it’s a dove instead of a hawk, and the hand on his throat squeezes down on white feathers. He shifts to a snake, but its scales are dull with lack of venom and his jaws are locked in by the grip of the long white fingers. He shifts into a ferret, hoping to squiggle away, but another hand lashes out and squeezes his writhing little body in its place.

He stares up with black eyes, tiny squeaks falling out of his throat, and he is humiliated, yes, humiliated to be forced into animal bodies with so little prowess – but moreover, he is afraid, he is afraid, he is afraid.

He changes back into a man. The hands shove him to his knees and he chokes. Blood runs between the fingers of the boy and he hears a dry sob escape his throat as he scrabbles at the horrible flesh, gagging out the names “Dapper! Red! Trickshot, anyone!”

Protect me, protect me!

“You,” pants his captor. “You. You stole. You stole my boys from me.”

Anti wails with rage and with terror, throwing his head as far back as he can, til he feels the wound in his throat squealch and open wider. He gasps as he neck begins to slide off his spine and a hand reaches up to snag his hair instead, shoving his knees down into the sopping mud of the forest floor.

“Where?” cries his captor, and he looks up, weeping, to see tears in the blue eyes, tears coursing down his face. “Where did you take them? Give them back to me! Give them back to me!”

“You can’t have found me,” screams Anti, and his form begins to switch again, wildly, randomly, in the man’s hands – mongoose, cat, tiger, boar! – but they do not once loosen or tremble, and there is no animal strong enough to throw them off. No, no. He has him. He has him. He’ll kill him. Or worse. There is a flash of lightning through the black weeping of the night and Anti sees illuminated at his sides the bodies of his puppets, staring down at him, motionless. A dry choke leaves him and now he can feel his eyes running like a mortal man’s, tears soaking into the rain on his face. The blue eyes are consuming and destroying him. He wheezes.

“Red! Red!”

He can see him standing close, too close, that old fighting staff gripped in his hands, and Anti’s heart constricts. At his side, Blue appears from the darkness, his eyes glowing, his mouth slightly parted, waves of his long, beautiful hair waving around his face, his hands lit with a soft and swirling magic, severity and grief in his face. On his every side, the sound of a clock ticking, louder and louder, begins to fill his ears up.

No, he can’t relive that night – that night when Red pressed him down, down, down into the mud, and Blue’s power wrapped around him like a vice, and he felt himself shredded down to essence. It was all he could do to choke and flee and find the first physical body that could keep him alive: the squaling body of the raven bird, its horrible flesh consuming and sustaining him, trapped in the blackened body like a parasite as his little brother was stolen out of his box, away from him, and he was alone for so many long years afterwards.

“Red!” He turns his eyes up to his enemy, to his brother, to his slave. “Red, obey me, obey me! Make him stop! Blue, make him stop! Dapper, change this back! Protect me, protect me!”

Someone laughs. He doesn’t know who. He wants it to stop. No, he can’t do this again, he can’t! He can’t have found him! He’s supposed to be safe! Dapper, change it back! Change it back!

“You should never have taken them from me, Anti,” whispers his captor. “You should never have done so many of the things you chose to do.”

“You made me like this!” howls Anti, and at last he manages to sink dog’s teeth into the boy’s hands. His captor cries out but does not release him, throwing his head back to reveal a twin scar laced across his white throat. “You made me to be this way! You knew what I was and you couldn’t stop yourself from creating me! Stupid fucking boy! You were the one who turned on me! You were the one who tried to bury me in the mud!”

“And now,” pants Jack, and Anti feels his whole body freeze over as one of the blue eyes of his creator turns a bright and vivid green, illuminating the darkened night. Lightning crashes over them and ignites the wood of the forest, and then Jack’s whole body is consumed in fire, but he does not move or flinch or cry out, that green eye still burning through the fire. “Now I will do it again. This time, Anti, I will make it permanent. Now I change the story. I am the creator and I will break and make anew.”

Anti screams, writhing as he is pressed down into the earth and his body begins to change. If he could focus, maybe he would notice that Red, and Blue, and Dapper are gone, and Jackie, and Marvin, and JJ have replaced them, laughing as though they don’t see him there. Jackie lifts Jameson into his arms and pulls him to his chest, promising him he will never be a captive again. Marvin is kissing the both of them, his face warm with magic as the black branches of the forest burn. Somewhere beside him, he hears Henrik and Chase and the high voices of children, and he hears them all chattering and laughing and whispering I love you’s, and as distantly as he notices it all, still he understands: none of them will save him. None of them ever really loved him. He was just a captor.

Bones shatter in his body. Flesh squirms and tears along his muscles, shrinking and sprouting the sharp barbs of black feathers.

“You can be an animal,” says Jack, smiling at him as fire burns his image away. “Because you refused to be a worthwhile man. Anti, why didn’t you just try to be a part of me? Yes, you were a mistake. That doesn’t mean I didn’t want you.”

Anti can feel the flame on him. Anti is burning alive.

“But it’s too late now, isn’t it?”

Anti is a bird, his neck broken in Jack’s hands, and he cannot shift, he cannot change at all; he is stuffed within the body of the bird. Wet, grinding musculature, calcium prison bars, and the electricity of nerve endings can contain him for the rest of his life. Around him, his puppets are laughing. Around him, his brothers are free.

He knows it’s a dream.

It’s always, always, always a dream.

But that never seems to make it less frightening.

“You can’t have found me,” says something in the bird’s eyes, in the bird’s fluttering death throes, in the bird’s broken, bleeding, burning neck. “You can’t have.”

“No,” answers Jack, as they turn to ash together. “No, I haven’t. But one day, Anti - I will.”

[polarisavi]

when eliott stirs awake, eyes opening to a dark and quiet room, he is alone. it takes a few moments for his thoughts to articulate that odd twinge near his collarbone, for coherency to be dragged out of a tangle of feelings. it’s strange to be waking up alone in the middle of the night, because he no longer lives alone. this apartment, this bed, he shares with lucas. who isn’t there. and something about that twinge tells him it isn’t because he’s getting water, or in the bathroom.

eliott stretches out a hand. the other side of the bed isn’t warm anymore, is bordering on actual cold. which - eliott bites in the inside of his cheek and stares up at the small network of cracks on the ceiling. it’s warm, will be boiling up to summer soon, and the lone sheet they’re using as a blanket twists uncomfortably around his calves, catches almost spitefully on his feet when he tries to kick his legs free.

he strains his ears but the apartment is silent. no clinking dishes, or spraying water, or low hum of a tv. lucas - lucas can be loud, attention grabbing and shameless and boisterous. loud with his joy as well as his anger, but he is very good at being quiet when he needs to be, when he wants to be, when some thought snags on the edges of his thoughts and makes his energy run low. they have that in common. somewhat, at least. and maybe he wants to be alone right now but, well, eliott exhales, sits up, slides out of bed.

he finds a hoodie on the ground, a deep green one that supposedly belongs to lucas but that eliott has always suspected is one he stole from yann however long ago. it’s oversized on lucas, sleeves falling past his hands to make paws, but almost cozy on eliott, and he shrugs it on before making his way out of their room.

none of the lights are on. lucas isn’t in the bathroom, living room, kitchen, or that odd half sized room branching off of the kitchen that is too small to do anything useful with and so contains a single set of shelves they’ve shoved every miscellaneous object they brought with them onto. he eyes the front door. it’s not technically impossible that lucas left in the early hours of the morning to stroll around paris, but the last time he did that he shoved eliott out of sleep to bring along with him. he turns around, intending to grab his phone from the nightstand, when he notices the window leading to their tiny balcony open wide.

which makes more sense.

instead of walking over, though, he goes back into the kitchen and flicks the kettle on, its gurgling almost rude in the quiet spill of night. shuffles through their cupboards, newly decided and their contents not yet habit, until he finds a cheerful pink and green box of the tea lucas likes, some chai blend the lallemant’s must be fond of because a box was in his mother’s kitchen the last time they visited. he scoops out two mugs and stares blankly, biting the inside of his cheek, until the water boils. lucas doesn’t sleep well, hasn’t for as long as eliott has known him, but there’s usually a build up, or a reason why sleep skips over him. a soft layer of guilt starts prickling at his skin, but he closes his eyes and tries to force it away, force it to stop, to rescind, to grow back to nothing. talk to lucas first, guilt for potentially missing something later, if necessary. talk to lucas first.

getting himself and two mugs of boiling water through the window and onto the balcony with no spillage or first degree burns is trickier than expected, but lucas there, of course, in boxers and his romance hoodie, knees raised and hair flopping over his eyes and hands restlessly running over and over and over his shin bones.

eliott pauses. pauses to feel unsure, concerned, confused, and moves again when lucas turns his head, eyes dark shadows and cheekbones sharp with only the streetlights to illuminate him.

“hey,” eliott says and hands over one of the mugs. lucas folds it between two hands and cradles it to his chest but doesn’t otherwise move or talk.

“do you want me to go?” he asks carefully, but lucas shakes his head.

“sit down with me?” he asks, and eliott gratefully folds himself down beside him, knees curled to his chest, mug placed somewhere on his right, gaze on the side of lucas’ head.

“do you want to talk about it?”

“soon, maybe.”

“okay.”

“okay,” lucas returns, shooting him a soft look before staring out at their neighbourhood again. apartment blocks, mostly, and trees, and splashes of colour where people still have their lights on. lucas shuffles, moves closer, tucks himself under eliott’s arm, their sides pressed up together and breathing a little out of sync, both of them still save for taking sips of tea.

eliott drags his hands though lucas’ hair, moves his fringe out of his eyes, plays with the ends and lucas sinks deeper against his side, melting into the spaces between them. eliott presses a kiss to his temple, his forehead, the curve of his cheek, and when he leans back lucas’ eyes are closed.

his mug is empty by the time he starts talking.

“do you think we inherit things from our parents that we can’t do anything about? that we can never fully change or escape from? like underlying persistent remnants of them, forever, sitting in our dna.”

eliott breaths deep and uses the hand still on lucas to massage small circles into his scalp. “did something happen with your dad?”

“please just answer my question.”

“okay. i - i don’t really know. maybe, but there’s lots of stuff we get from absolutely nowhere. i don’t think the things we inherent are more...powerful or more dominant than the rest. not necessarily.”

“not necessarily,” lucas repeats quietly, looking down at his hands, the small collection of plants they’re trying to nurture, at the window across from them gleefully decorated with neon orange curtains. not at eliott, though. he curls over, rests his forehead on lucas’ head. lucas shudders, a little. “he’s not a good person. but he was. at some point he was good enough for my mum to date and fall in love with and marry him. and it wasn’t a lie, not all of it.”

“is that what you’re afraid of?” eliott asks, not giving up his grip.

“i think i’m scared that whatever...caused him to become that lives in me too, and that i’ll turn into someone awful without realising it, and that i’ll hurt you. hurt you badly, and on purpose.”

eliott swallows heavily, tongue weighed down with uncertainty. if there’s an easy way to navigate this conversation he doesn’t know about it. he bites his lip, chooses a direction, hopes for the best.

“will you hit me if i say you should take it minute by minute?” he asks and manages to inject an edge of teasing to tilt of his voice, ribs tight with the knowledge that he might’ve fucked up. the seconds between his question and lucas’ response are weighed down, stretching a small moment out to an eternity.

lucas huffs out a breath, a something, not really laughter or anger. “i’m serious, eliott.”

“so am i,” he says. lucas doesn’t respond, his face set like something sculptured out of marble, so eliott keeps talking. “i don’t - neither of us know what this is going to look like in twenty years. and you’re not the only one here that could break us. as we know.”

“you could never hurt me, eliott. not like that.” lucas’ response is quick, automatic. eliott leans over to catch his eyes, flicks up an eyebrow.

“i was thinking the same about you.” lucas bites his lip. eliott continues. “if you can say that so easily even when i have hurt you, please believe me when i say that - neither of us know who we’re going to turn into but whatever remnants of your father’s personality that you may have gotten, it doesn’t matter, not -” he stops, tries again. “it’s not going to wholly determine anything.”

he cradles lucas’ face, makes sure he doesn’t look down, look away. it’s hard to read his face in the low light. there’s a not inconsiderable chance he just fucked that up, that he’s made lucas feel worse.

lucas sighs deeply and gently removes eliott’s hands so he can tilt his head back towards the sky, skull resting on the wall.

“maybe,” he breaths out after a few minutes

“maybe?”

“maybe you’re right, i don’t know. i shouldn’t - you’re not my therapist, i didn’t mean to put that on your shoulders, make you give me an answer on the spot.”

“it’s okay,” he says and watches lucas’ shoulders drop, his eyes fall close, neck still arched up.

“do you want to go back to bed?” he asks after a few minutes, and isn’t surprised when lucas shakes his head, rocking the back of his skull against the wall.

“can we stay out here?”

“of course, whatever you need.”

lucas nods, face still a bit unhappy, but calm. at some point he tugs eliott closer, rearranges them until lucas is sitting between his legs, eliott’s arms around his waist. they stay like that until the sun starts to come up, hints of a blushing sky between buildings and lucas dozing in his arms, cheek pressed up against his chest.

[ilovejared]

Wincestmas Day 2

The smell wakes him up, permeating through the motel room, overpowering the previous scent of wet dog that had been lingering. It’s a sharp, minty smell, but not a pleasant one, like the candy canes he’s been sucking on all week. This smells menthol-y, like cigarettes, and he has a flash of memory, dredged up from somewhere deep in his brain, of Sammy at fifteen sneaking menthols in the bathroom, going crimson with embarrassed rage when his father and brother didn’t scold him, but simply laughed their asses off. 

“Menthols, Sam? What are you, an eighty year old granny?” Dean is laughing so hard the tears are streaming down his face, while John looks on, grinning wide. “No no, I know: you just had one buy them for you, is that it?”

Hilarity of the memory aside, the menthol smell is really getting to him. It’s enough to propel him out of bed in search of the source. 

The room is self-contained aside from the bathroom, so that’s the only logical option. The door is closed, but it swings open abruptly as he approaches, causing him to stumble back a few steps to avoid being smacked in the face. 

Sam pauses in the doorway. He’s dressed, thankfully, the damp tips of his hair curling around his ears. His cheeks and jaw are freshly shaved, and peering past him, Dean can see the can of shaving cream from their makeshift Christmas. The can with the green lid.

Ah. 

The gas station hadn’t had a lot of options - Sam usually got the red-capped regular cream, while Dean preferred the teal one, for sensitive skin (it was easy for Sam, oh he of the perfect golden skin that never went red or blotchy or spotty, to poke fun, but razor burn was nothing to laugh about). Neither had been on the rusting shelf beside the cash; only a single green can sitting forlornly next to a dusty box of off-brand tampons. Dean had wavered between the two for a full minute, but ultimately went with the marginally useful choice (instead of the funny one). 

Now, the lid sits askew on the can, the menthol scent mingling with the steam that still lingered in the air. It’s wrong. All wrong.

His discomfort must be written on his face, because Sam quirks an eyebrow. “Everything okay?” 

“Just checkin’ you hadn’t drowned,” Dean says easily. “Takin’ so long.” 

“Wasn’t expecting you up for a bit.” Sam moves past him and the smell follows along. It’s not really a terrible smell, but the wrongness is making his stomach twist uncomfortably.

“Hungry,” he says blankly. “D’you mind picking up breakfast while I shower?”

“Sure.” Sam is easy, mellow; still coasting off the warm feelings from last night, Dean can tell. Good, he’d prefer that over the Boy Who Hates Christmas schtick. “Whatcha feelin’ for?”

Dean shrugs, one eye on the damned can. “Surprise me.”

“Cool.” Sam snags the keys and is gone in a whirl of damp curls and gods-be-damned menthol. 

“Finally,” Dean breathes. He crosses the bathroom in two long strides and snatches up the can, jamming the lid on it. He stuffs into his jacket pocket - he’ll dump it in a garbage can at some point. 

He’s not being weird. He’s not. He’s just…never liked change, and especially not now, not with the last year of his life looming ahead of him. He wants everything to stay the same for as long as possible. He wants Sam to stay the same. Everything, including his smell. Not that Dean makes a habit of smelling his brother.

It’s not weird. 

————————————————————————————————–

“Dude, have you seen my shaving cream?” Sam sticks his head around the bathroom door, looking grumpy. 

Dean has, in fact, seen his shaving cream - most recently in the garbage can outside the gas station (not the one he’d bought it at). But he just shrugs. “Nah.”

Sam frowns, those perturbed dimples popping out. “You’re the only other person in here.”

He’s treading on thin ice, he knows, but Dean Winchester is nothing if not stubborn. “I didn’t touch it, man. Maybe housekeeping?”

Those dimples and furrowed brows scan the room, taking in the general disarray. “Really, Dean? Housekeeping?”

“It’s just shaving cream, Sam!”

His little brother’s face goes from Bitchy to Sad Puppy so fast Dean nearly gets whiplash. “It’s not. It was your Christmas present.” 

…shit.

He steps in close, like they always do, like they always have. The menthol scent is faint, but still present. He claps Sam on the shoulder. “Use mine, for now.”

Puppy eyes still in effect, Sam nods. “Okay.” 

————————————————————————————————–

By the time they get to the next case and the next motel, Sam’s shaving cream has been replaced - with the proper red can. The next time Dean leans in over his brother’s shoulder, the fragrance that wafts up from Sam’s smooth cheek, so close to his own, is finally right, the same as it has been since Sam started shaving.

As it should be.

————————————————————————————————-

Howdy! Glad you liked my last bit of silliness. This is a bit more serious, with just a little bit of pining. Enjoy! 

[treya-barton]

souyo + “I saw this and thought of you.”

Yosuke was making his way through the shopping districtafter hanging out with Kanji after class. It was so strange seeing the huge change in Kanji and how serious he wasabout his goals, and if Yosuke was being honest with himself, it made him feela little anxious about his own lack of motivation.  Sure, he was studying harder with the vaguegoal of meeting his partner in Tokyo for college…but if he was honest withhimself, he didn’t really have a set plan for what he would study or what heeven wanted to do.  Seeing Yu was reallyhis true motivation, and it was starting to make him feel a little nervous forhis future.  Yosuke let out a sigh andkicked the toe of his shoe against the street as he mulled over hisdilemma.  He was just resolving to worryabout it later (of course), when his thoughts were interrupted by the sound ofsomeone calling for him.

“Hey! You!  The Junesboy!” someone nearby was shouting, and Yosuke immediately flinched.  He tried his best to brace himself, for whilehe hadn’t been experiencing as much hate since the fog had lifted from thetown, he still heard the occasionally muttering behind his back.  Yosuke looked around until he spotted amiddle aged man standing next to one of the shuttered stores on thestreet.  He recognized it as the oldhobby shop that had shut down not long after Junes had opened in town.  Yosuke felt that old tendril of guilt creepup his spine as he walked over, trying his best not to appear as nervous as hefelt.

“Hey…I mean, hello,” he said, bowing slightly.  He was trying his best to be polite.  “What can I do for you?”

The former shop owner appeared to have caught onto Yosuke’snervousness and was also able to intuit why, because he quickly reassured himwith a smile.  “I just wanted to askabout your friend – that gray haired, quiet kid?  How’s he been doing?”

Yosuke couldn’t help but feel relief and amusement overencountering yet again another person in town whose life his partner hadmanaged to touch.  It seemed at somepoint he had interacted with everyone, leaving a positive, lasting influence onthem that sometimes, like now, Yosuke managed to somehow benefit from.  He let out a small chuckle before saying, “He’sdoing great!  He’s one of the top inclass at his school in Tokyo and seems to be as busy as ever.”  Yosuke was a bit bummed about that since itcut into their texting time, but he was genuinely happy Yu seemed to be doingwell.  Even if it did occasionally remindhimself about his own shortcomings.  He wasworking to overcome that by taking cram school classes on the weekend in Okinaand being more serious about studying this year.

“I’m glad.  He was agood kid.  Hey, do you know if he’s stillbeen building models?” he asked hopefully, and Yosuke suddenly realized whereYu’s odd hobby came from.  ‘Of course,’he thought before pulling out his phone and scrolling through their textconversation.  He found the picture hewas looking for and handed his phone to the hobbyist.  

“He sent that to me a few weeks ago.  He had been working on it for a month when hefound time,” Yosuke said.  He watched theolder man’s face light up at the picture, and couldn’t help but feel goodhimself at helping make the man’s day, even if it was indirectly.  

“That’s a difficult one,” the man mused to himself.  “He’s really got skill.  Nice to see a young man with so much patienceand attention to detail.”  The man handedYosuke back his phone with a ‘thank you’ and Yosuke pocketed it before smilingback.

“No pr…I mean you’re welcome,” he said.  “Partner certainly does have loads ofpatience.  I mean, he deals with me,”Yosuke chuckled, and the man looked at him thoughtfully.

“How would you feel about giving it a try?” he asked, andYosuke stared at him in surprise.  Thisman, whose business probably shut down because of Junes, wanted to give himsomething?  Before he could say anything,the man disappeared into his old business, before reappearing moments laterwith a small model kit in his hand.

“This one is pretty easy and would be a good place to start,”he said, handing it to Yosuke.  “What doyou say?”

He looked pretty excited and hopeful about it, so Yosukedidn’t have it in his heart to say no.  “Heckyeah!” he said, taking it from the hobbyist and glancing at it.  It looked like it was probably from one ofthe Gundam series, but he hadn’t watched any since he was a boy and couldn’t identifyit.  ‘Maybe Yu would want it,’ he thoughtto himself before waving at the older man and heading home.  Once he got home, he took a picture of itwith his phone and sent it to Yu with a message, “I saw this and thought ofyou.”

Yu immediately replied asking, “Are you getting into modelingtoo?” and Yosuke snorted.

He then messaged back, “Yeah right,” before starting abarrage of text messages back and forth with his partner.  He didn’t realize the wide grin that hadspread across his face until Yu messaged that he had to get to studying,causing Yosuke to set down his phone.  Heput his hands on his cheeks, suddenly feeling foolish at how just texting hispartner could make him so happy, before he glanced again at the model kit.  Honestly, he should also get to studyinghimself, but…  All that talk with Yuabout building models had gotten him curious.

Yosuke carefully cut the shrink wrap from around the boxbefore lifting the lid and looking inside. There was an instruction sheet along with a few different colored piecesof plastic that had the model pieces already cut into it along with a fewstickers for decoration.  Yosuke pulledout the instruction sheet and looked over it before glancing back at thesheets.  It looked like each sheet had aletter and each piece was numbered, which made it very easy to follow,especially since the instructions also contained pictures for each step.  ‘I think I can actually do this,’ herealized, while also thinking about how surprised Yu would be in a few weeks ifhe brought the completed model with him during his visit.  He was going to check out college campuses inthe area…although honestly it was mainly an excuse to see his best friend.  

Yosuke bit his lip and checked his clock, making a mentalnote of when he would need to stop in order to get a decent amount of studyingdone.  He then went to work, finding thefirst two pieces and carefully twisting them off the plastic before snappingthem together.  He frowned upon realizingthat just snapping off the plastic piece left a little plastic hanging off, andhe headed downstairs to see if his mom had a sharp knife or an x-acto knife forhim to use.  When she asked what for, helied and said it was for a school project before triumphantly heading backupstairs with the x-acto knife in hand and his mom shouting after him to becareful with it.

When Yosuke returned to his room, he sat back down at hisdesk before carefully using the x-acto knife to scrape away at the bit ofplastic sticking out until it was smoothed down.  He grinned, giddy at the fact his ideaworked, before moving onto the next piece. After about 10 minutes, however, Yosuke lost his enthusiasm and set downthe x-acto knife, suddenly wondering, ‘How does partner do this?’ and leaning backin his chair.  His hand felt a littlecramped, and he felt himself fidgeting from sitting still that long.  He looked at the few pieces he had assembledalready before packing everything into the box and sliding it into his drawer,afraid that if he left it out Teddie would get into it on one of hisvisits.  He travelled back and forth fromthe Shadow World and knew that the Hanamura household was always open to himwhenever he felt like being in the human world for awhile.

Yosuke then pulled out his books, surprised that somehow thethought of studying appealed to him morethan finding an excuse to procrastinate. His enthusiasm for his bright idea began to wane and he suddenlywondered if he really would finish this project by his visit to Tokyo.  Yosuke shook his head and pulled out his mechanicalpencil before glancing at his math book and jotting down a few equations topractice.  He ended up not touching themodel kit for another day since he had work after school, so it was two dayslater that he tentatively pulled it out again and winced at what littleprogress he had made.

Yosuke decided to give it another go, however, and he soonhad himself set up after checking the time to see how long he had to work onit.  Afterward he got to work, gamelyforging ahead and doing his best to focus and brush past his wandering attention.  He played music this time, finding havingsomething to listen to actually gave him more focus, not unlike his experiencein the Shadow World.  After about a halfhour of making pretty decent progress, he suddenly hit a snag as a piece he wastrying to cut out from the plastic broke off in his hand.  Yosuke froze, staring at the broken piece in horrorbefore glancing down at the instruction sheet, panicking as he tried to figureout if this was repairable.  Not only washe mentally letting Yu down (even though the gray haired teen knew nothingabout his surprise), he was also letting the hobbyist down, and Yosuke couldn’thelp but internally berate himself at screwing up yet again.  He set down the pieces carefully and pulledhis headphones down to his neck as he tried to think.  The piece wasn’t a hinge, so while it wouldbe noticeable and wouldn’t be pretty, using a little glue probably wouldn’t hurtit.  It certainly couldn’t be worse thanit was right now.

Yosuke got up and wandered downstairs, heading to the drawerwhere his parents stored miscellaneous items and felt relieved when he found asmall bottle of super glue.  He headedback upstairs and sat back down, trying his best to steady his shaky hands ashe carefully dabbed a tiny bit of super glue onto the plastic.  He slid both pieces together and held itfirmly for several moments, feeling relief when it held and didn’t fall apartagain.  He realized that it was actually moredifficult to tell than he had thought that the piece had snapped off, and oncehe firmly clicked that part into place on the leg he realized he didn’t screwup as badly as he thought.  He was stillemotionally drained after that ordeal and decided to yet again put the kit awayfor another day.

Yosuke continued to slowly chip away at the project, findingthat while it wasn’t particularly exciting or even that enjoyable to him, hewas finding it easier to get absorbed in than it had been originally.  More importantly, he felt like he wasstarting to understand some things about his partner and his weirdhobbies.  While Yosuke liked more instantaneousforms for gratification, he could see how Yu could get satisfaction out ofcompleting a project that took more time to do. In fact, while he didn’t exactly enjoy the process of building themodel, he was looking forward to it being done and could appreciate the amount ofeffort it was taking him to complete it.

He had also learned to slow down and take his time so hedidn’t accidentally snap another piece and so the stickers were alignedproperly when he put them on.  He hadperused a few forums for model building tips as well and had a few more toolsat his disposal such as a q-tip and small pliers to aid in the process.  There was a lot that went into building thesemodels, Yosuke was learning, and people often painted or in other ways enhancedthem after they were built.  He knew hedefinitely didn’t have the skills for that, but suddenly wondered if Yu with hisattention to detail had ever done that. He’d have to take a closer look at his models when he went to visit.

Fortunately, Yosuke ended up finishing the model with a dayto spare before his trip.  He couldn’t helpbut feel a sense of accomplishment at actually doing it, and while he didn’treally have a desire to take on such a project again, he was still proud ofhimself and couldn’t wait to give the model to Yu.  He knew his partner would be impressed andalso touched Yosuke would take the time to do something like that for him.  The thought had Yosuke in a pretty good mood,although he had to admit a lot of that was also simply the fact he’d be seeinghis best friend the next day.  He haddifficulty sleeping the night before due to being so excited, and he ended upgetting up early the next morning and arriving far too early to wait for the trainto the city.  He had the model carefully packedaway in its box in his bag, and he was trying to decide if he wanted to show Yuthe model himself or wait for him to open it up and see the completed modelinside.  

He fidgeted even worse than usual during the trip and keptgetting up and walking around, glad that at least the train this far out wasstill pretty empty so he didn’t get too many odd stares.  Ironically, once they got close to Tokyo, hewas glued to his seat, his eyes straining out the window in anticipation forthat first glimpse of his best friend. The moment the train pulled toward the platform for his stop, he saw him,and he couldn’t help but grin and begin waving wildly.  Yu also spotted him right away and wavedback, before stepping toward the door Yosuke would be exiting from in order towait for him.  The moment they were infront of each other, they high fived in greeting before Yosuke surprised bothof them by suddenly pulling Yu into a hug. Yu warmly returned the embrace, however, and when Yosuke pulled awaywhile flushed in embarrassment, he didn’t say anything.

“Are you ready for me to invade your place?” Yosuke asked,waggling his eyebrows as Yu carefully took his bag.  Yosuke frowned slightly, looking worriedlywhere he knew the box for the kit was tucked away, but did his best to soothehis anxiety.  He knew Yu was trying to behelpful and honestly was far less clumsy than he was.

Yu pretended to contemplate his question for a moment whilecounting off on his fingers.  “I havedinner simmering on the stove, your futon already set out, your favorite snacksand games set out for the evening.  Am Imissing anything?”

Yosuke’s eyes widened in surprise.  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you werepretty excited about me visiting,” he commented with a slight chuckle, and Yu lookedaway.

“I believe you know the answer to that,” he replied softly,and Yosuke felt something tighten in his chest at his words.  He shook his head before clapping his hand onYu’s shoulder.

“You can’t be as excited as I am,” he said, his eyestwinkling.  “Coming to see the collegesis honestly an excuse.”

Yu shook his head while giving Yosuke an exasperatedsmile.  “Being happy to be back in thecity isn’t the same thing,” he teased, and Yosuke blinked in surprise.

‘I’m not excited about being in Tokyo,” he replied.  “I’m excited to see you.”  To his surprise, Yu appeared to take a misstepafter that, and Yosuke had to quickly move to catch him before he stumbledover.  He felt his heart racing, bothover Yu almost falling and possibly getting hurt, and with the realization itcould have damaged his gift as well.  “Youok?” he asked, and Yu quickly nodded his head.

“Yes,” he replied.  “Imust not have noticed where I was going.” Yosuke glanced down, noting that he didn’t see anything that looked likesomething Yu could have tripped on but shrugged his shoulders.  It wasn’t his place to question it.  The rest of the walk to Yu’s apartment wentby smoothly, and soon they headed inside. Yu’s parents had left the apartment to him for the night, deciding totake a date night out in order to give him some privacy with his friend, so itwas just the two of them.  As Yu went togo check on their stew for dinner, Yosuke went into his room to set his bagdown and pull out the kit, glancing inside to ensure the model was still ingood condition.  

He also took a moment to peruse the ones Yu had on hisshelf, noting that the one Yu had finished recently did appear to have somedetails painted on as well.  Now thatYosuke knew first hand how much work went into building the models, he couldn’thelp but feel amazed at Yu’s skill, and he suddenly felt nervous about givinghim his model after seeing how much better Yu’s looked.  But. Yosuke stood a little straighter. He had a plan and he wasn’t chickening out now.

Yosuke wandered into the kitchen where Yu was wrapping up ontheir dinner, stirring the stew he had simmering all day while two bowls of steaminghot rice were already set out for them. He turned his head and raised his eyebrow when he saw what Yosuke washolding, and he dished out the stew while asking, “Did you bring that for me?”

“Yeah,” Yosuke said, bringing it over to the kitchen tablewhere Yu already had drinks set out for them; Yosuke noted that his was hisfavorite soda while Yu had tea.  Yu setdown their food before reaching over to pick up the box, noting that it hadalready been opened before lifting up the lid. He then stared in surprise for several moments.

“Did…you assemble this?” he asked, gingerly picking it upand peering at it closely.  

Yosuke jiggled his leg and nodded until he realized Yu wasn’tlooking at him to see it and cleared his throat.  “Uh, yeah, I did.”

“This looks really good,” Yu grinned at him before settingit down.  To Yosuke’s amazement itactually stood on its own and didn’t immediately fall apart.  It did look pretty cool standing there with abuster sword in one hand and a shield in the other.

“I have to admit, I have a newfound appreciation for whatyou do,” Yosuke said, a fond tone creeping into his voice as he spoke.  “This one took forever and the hobby shop guysaid it was supposed to be an easy one.”

Yu chuckled.  “Myfirst one was quite difficult for me as well,” he admitted.

Yosuke shook his head. “No, you don’t understand.  You’regood at this and obviously enjoy it since you kept it up.  I don’t think I can do it again myself.  But,” he trailed off for a moment.  “I’m glad I did.  And got to experience a little bit what itmust be like for you.”  Yu was watchinghim carefully as he spoke, and he looked pleased at his words, although it wasonly barely noticeable in the way the corner of his eyes crinkled slightly and thea small tug on the corner of his lips.

“Is that so?” he mused. “Well, I’m glad to see you tried my hobby at least once.  I really appreciate it.”  He moved to put the model back in the box,and Yosuke shook his head.

“It’s yours.  I madeit for you,” he said.  “You’ll get moreuse out of it than I will.  Also, I kindof read up a bit on modeling to get some tips as I put it together, and I haveto say I’m really impressed by that one you finished a few weeks ago.  I can really see the detail you put intoit.  Must have taken you a lot of time.”

“Yeah, it did,” Yu nodded.

Before he could say anything else, Yosuke spoke forhim.  “But that sense of accomplishmentcan’t be beat, huh partner?” he asked, and Yu looked a bit surprised.  His eyes widened slightly, and his eyescaught Yosuke’s for a moment as he studied him.

“You hit the nail on the head Yosuke,” Yureplied honestly, and they both turned to focusing on their meal as theycontinued their discussion.  Yosuke couldn’thelp but feel a little bit of pride over the fact Yu would keep his model anddisplay it with his much better ones, and he was happy that his plan worked outas he hoped it would.  Yu also appearedto be in a really good mood, and Yosuke hoped at least some of that was becauseof him.  He thought back to all of thethings he had learned about Yu over the days he worked on the model kit, and hecouldn’t help but steal a glance at him. Maybe, once they were roommates, Yosuke would try his hand at anothermodel kit.  That is if he and his partnerbuilt one together.  Yosuke grinned tohimself at the idea, and he decided he’d go talk to the hobbyist to see whatwould be a good one to try next while letting him know how well the firstproject went.  He was sure Yu would alsolike the idea, and Yosuke was looking forward to surprising him with it.

[renegadesrpg]

Dark Angels: Creation. Part 41: Witch hunter; Hunter Witch Part 1. Adrian and Bryn

Adrian: *Sean throws Bryn a sharp look, his own troubles momentarily forgotten as he turns from worried male back into Sin’s reaper first lieutenant, but Zav shakes his head at him and then jerks it towards the ancient church. His deep, rich mental voice tags my brain as he silently speaks to all of us. ‘Let them work it out Sean. Even as a human Bryn could handle any witch ever born. As a reaper it should be like shooting fish in a barrel for her. We’ll go out to her workshop so I can teach you what you need to know. She’ll call us if she needs us.’ Sourly, I frown at him and ‘path’ back ‘Thanks for throwing me to the wolf here Zav.’ He just throws his head back and laughs as he mists away. Sean gives a mental chuckle, which I am actually kind of glad to hear, given where he’s at in his head right now, and sends out some soothing vibes as he adds his two cents. ‘Don’t worry, she hardly ever bites. Unless you ask her to. And even then she has to REALLY be into you.’ ‘Ha, ha, very funny,’ I answer back as he demats out right behind Zav. With a sigh I look at her dubiously.*

Why is it always me you snag for these crazy ideas? I’m a soldier, not a hunter. Give me a battlefield and I’m your guy, but hunting’s a different kind of fight. Sean’s better as a hunter, or even Zav.

Bryn: *Hands on my hips, narrowing my eyes and tossing my shaggy black hair back as I narrow my eyes*

Think of it as guerilla warfare. Even you’ve learned that forming ranks isn’t always the best option. *Huffing* And besides, it’s /not/ always you. Usually it’s Zav. But he’s busy and I don’t think he can help me with this anyway. You’ve got something special and I need it.

Adrian: Fine. What do we do first?

Bryn: First? Strip.

Adrian: *My eyebrows raise in outrage.* What do you mean, “strip”? I’m not taking my clothes off for you!

Bryn: *Snorting a laugh* Oh, relax, lover-boy, your virginity’s safe with me. I need to look for an anti-witch mark. I think you’re somehow invisible to the witch. We’ve been working in pairs, with another reaper, since this began. The only attacks that have occurred have been when you were the only reaper paired with another. I’d say that whoever is in charge of spying on us can’t see you. So drop your pants, at least down to your boxer briefs.

Adrian: I’m not a virgin, for Creator’s sake! *Jesus, women!* And I don’t wear boxers, briefs, or any combination of that under leathers. Just a jock strap.

Bryn: So much the better. If I need to see the full package, I’ll let you know.*Smirking, Now drop the pants and ditch the shirt.

Adrian: Fine, *I snap* But I’m not doing this down here. Sin and Declan could mist in at any second. My room will do.

*Without waiting I dematerialize upstairs to the room I took as my own for the duration. A quick glance around assures me it’s in shape just as Bryn’s black mist reforms in the doorway.*

Bryn: *I just knew he was going to be a pain about this. He’s always been more standoffish than Sean and Zav. With a sigh I mist up to the doorway to his room. Once my form has re-manifested I take a careful look around. The place looks like a military barracks. You could bounce a dime off of that bed. There are no personal items, no keepsakes. The only things that hang on the walls are his sword and dagger, tools of his trade, I guess.*

Well, you live up to the billing. *stepping inside* This place is certainly Spartan.

Adrian: *I give her something between a smirk and a frown… I never know how the hell to respond to Bryn. I’d had more contact with her since we started this rebellion in the ranks than I’d had since Zav recruited her and still I was awkward as crap around her. But then, I’d never been good with women. Even my human wife had given me a wide berth after fulfilling her duties as a Spartan wife, which had suited me just fine. Normally I treated female reapers the same way I treat male ones -- like I would have a lower ranked soldier when I was human -- with respect, but also with the expectation they’d keep the appropriate distance from a higher ranking officer. But by rank Bryn was my peer and in terms of power, hells, she could probably put me down by raising her eyebrow if she got pissed. I don’t know what one of those fireballs of hers could do to a reaper, but I didn’t want to give her an excuse to use me to find out. Finally, stalling, I ask,*

So what would this mark look like? After all this time I think I’d know if I had one.

Bryn: It could look like a birthmark, a mole… a weird configuration of freckles. Or it might not be visible to the naked eye at all. Whoever put it on you had talent, power, and imagination. I strongly suspect your grandmother. Even though it was before my time and well away from my country of origin, I’ve studied the lore and I’ve done some time... we’ll call it internships… with magical mortals and immortals during my leaves from the corps. *At his skeptical look I add,* What, you think I just take off for a few weeks and amuse myself with boy-toys? Give me a break. Men are more trouble than they’re worth. I learned that lesson early on as a reaper. Now lose the clothes.

Adrian: *This time I don’t have to think about how to react. A dark frown crosses my face as I let my clothes disappear, at least down to my jock. My skin heats as she starts to circle me and looks at me appraisingly*

I feel like a stud being examined before he services a mare, *I grumble.*

Why would you think my grandmother would do that?

Bryn: *Clinically, I look over every exposed inch. His skin has that tan that modern human women give themselves skin cancer trying to achieve and it ripples over a well-defined six-pack. The black back straps of the supporter grip well-developed glutes and the front… well, let’s just say I bet he had to specially design this particular bit of apparel. The pouch covers the necessities –barely- but even with its larger than normal proportions there’s quite obviously no room for any kind of protective cup. There’s barely room for him. Apparently Apollo’s genetics ran true through his descendants. But there are no marks on him that I can see. No freckles, no birthmarks, nothing. Just wide expanses of smooth, golden skin.*

The first Oracle of Delphi was mad strong magically and notably protective of her descendants. Oh, she had to let them choose their paths from the Fates’ choices, but she did what she could to protect them from harm from god’s and other magical entities... I’m not seeing anything…. Is the form you manifest as a reaper identical to the one you had as a human?

Adrian: *Nodding* It’s exactly as I was before I died. Does this mean I have to lose the supporter, too? I mean, why would my grandmother have put the mark on my, uh, private parts?

Bryn: Maybe because no one but someone you trust would ever see it. But don’t ditch the jock yet. There’s another possibility. She could have branded it soul deep the way Freya did the Inguz on Sin. I’ve never seen Sin naked, but I’m betting it doesn’t show itself unless invoked. It probably flairs if the Horseman tries to reach him through their link. If we left the wards and the witch is scrying for us then it would probably show itself.

Adrian: I am /NOT/ going outside this room like this, let alone outside the wards!

Bryn: Chill!

*Ok, I’m getting impatient with this modesty thing…*

We can mist to some place remote. If I’m right, the witch won’t see you, just me. You can manifest, let me take a gander, and then hide and get fully dressed, including weapons, until they send someone. We’re a match for the Horseman’s bully boys. We just need one alive when it’s over. I’ll force mental rapport and find out what they know before we stuff them in a Dybbuk box. We’ll know all he or she knows. If it’s demons we might have to get more creative. And if I’m wrong and they see us both, then we just have to kill them and try something else.

Adrian: *Snorting* You make it sound so easy. As they keep losing grunts, they might suspect we’re dispatching them too easily and send more than a couple this time.

Bryn: So?

*Hands on my hips, challengingly. A little conflict is getting him past his embarrassment and, hey, I’m always up for an argument in a good cause.*

You held off 10,000 men with a group of 300 at a mountain pass in Greece. You afraid of a few reapers? Where’s that Spartan attitude?

Adrian: We all DIED, in case you forgot. And no, I’m not afraid. I just want to be sure we aren’t “ambushed” with overwhelming force. They have to realize by now that the ones they have sent out aren’t coming back and that we /are/ still coming up on their radar. They haven’t called demons back in since the initial attack, but if they still could.

Bryn: *it’s a good point, I have to admit.*

But I can’t see the Horseman asking Lucifer for help easily. It shows that he’s weak. Sean took out DeAndre and that has to rankle, IF he knows about it. There’s no guarantee of that. The Horseman tends to let his “underlings” run things for him. If he didn’t, we wouldn’t have been able to position ourselves as well as we have. But if someone has slid into the power vacuum created when DeAndre and his crew didn’t return they don’t want the Horseman to know they’ve failed to contain us or even to take a civilian important to us. *Thinking out loud now.* In fact, I bet the Horseman isn’t aware of any of this. Not that he’s above rape and murder, but it’s not the smart move right now. Trying to take us out before he’s ready to make HIS big move isn’t any smarter than it would be for us to go on small random offensives just before we make OURS. It's in his best interest to keep us unsuspecting until he’s ready to take out all of the holdovers from Sin’s era and that he’s not quite there yet. New leadership is probably keeping him in the dark as much as they can. The reaper souls haven’t left a mortal plane yet, just been stashed in Dybbuk boxes for safekeeping, so the Horseman wouldn’t feel them gone. Lucifer might be missing the random demons that attacked you and Sean, but if they were low level cannon fodder, I doubt it. No, it’s the witch that will be more of a challenge than we’ve seen before. I can only think of three witches besides myself that could manage this kind of thing solo and I don’t like to think any of them would be in the service of Lucifer.

Adrian: *My embarrassment is gone. Bryn’s pretty much all business at the moment. She’s not above teasing any of us when the moment is right but she gets this isn’t the moment. And that makes it easy for me to focus on the task at hand as well.*

What makes you say that? And why not any of those three witches?

Bryn: It’s a massive operation to set up magical 24/7 surveillance on several beings who simply wink in and out of any location on the mortal plane and that’s how it would look, like a blip on a very big map. Scrying is usually done on a small scale for one physical being in a suspected general location. To see one of us popping up anywhere in the world, and doing it seemingly from nowhere, because with us behind wards that’s how it would appear, requires more than physical observation. It requires something that mentally tags the practitioner so they can catch it. Add to that our physical appearances are simply manifestations of our souls, and it means it has to be someone with enough juice to track a soul, not just a body. *Sighing, now, because the answer to the second question is harder.*

As for why those three? Well, two of them are my sisters. They died in the battle before my last one and I always assumed their souls had moved on to new lives, probably multiple times by now. Something would have had to go very, very wrong in one of those lives for either of them to end up pledged to Lucifer. As for the third… he’s very, very strong, and he very manipulative. And…*hesitating* we have history. Of all the human “boy toys” you guys have teased me about taking for a spin as a reaper, he’s the only one that I actually did.

Adrian: *If my jaw could hit the ground, it would have. Bryn’s as tough and pragmatic as they come and she’s always avoided emotional entanglements of any kind. Someone that could get past that tough exterior was either very special or very devious. A thousand questions run through my head.*

What do you mean “took for a spin”? Was this a short term fling or something more? Just how powerful was he? Enough to pose a problem for you?

Bryn: *If looks could kill a reaper, Adrian would be headed for the Long Sleep right now.*

We were involved for 20 mortal years, so maybe you’d call that a short term fling in a reaper’s gauge of time, but for that 20 years I thought I’d found what Sean and Zav have. I wasn’t sure how it would go when his time as a mortal passed, but I thought perhaps he could be recruited to become one of us. I had only been a reaper a few hundred years. I wasn’t aware of all the vetting Sin put in before he took one of us on even just as an ordinary reaper. Emrys would never have made the cut. He wasn’t entirely mortal for one thing. And he had an overpowering ambition for power that I didn’t realize until we’d been together most of that 20 years.

Adrian: “Not entirely mortal?” What does /that/ mean? Witches are mortal. Essentially just gifted humans.

Bryn: But Emrys wasn’t totally human.

*Looking away for a moment, embarrassed now at how naïve I’d been.*

Emrys’ father was a demon. His mother had been human. I’m not entirely sure, but I got the impression that his conception hadn’t been willing, and after he was born she confessed all to a priest. He convinced her the child was an abomination that had to die, but of course he wouldn’t get his hands dirty and she couldn’t bear the thought of doing it, so she swaddled the babe and left it in a sacred oak grove. Christian priests were just beginning to make inroads in Wales back then. Druidism and goddess worship were still predominant and the druids found the infant. The high priest was no fool. There was no reason an apparently healthy male child would be abandoned back then. He investigated and found the mother but she was too afraid to take the child back so he adopted him and raised him. I’d thought that upbringing had been enough to counteract his demonic heritage, and maybe his lust for power was just a normal human failing. But if it wasn’t….

Adrian: If it wasn’t, he could easily be behind this. *I finish for her.* How did you meet him? Did you teach him magick?

Bryn: He found me. Up until I moved everything here I kept my workshop in the crystal cave in Wales where I’d learned my craft all those centuries ago. It was remote and I had never had to ward it against intruders and then one day when I’m off role and working on a spell this drop dead gorgeous young guy just appears at the entrance. He said he’d been exploring. “Exploring”, my ass. *snorting* He’d felt the power as I worked the spell and had scryed to find the location. Then he just “appeared”. He said he was on a spiritual quest and just happened to find the cave. It took me 20 years to work out that he could translocate like a demon. Granted, I wasn’t with him all the time, but every leave I got, I spent with him and every night instead of staying with the corps I decamped to his bed. *Shaking my head,* I was so blind to what he really was.

Adrian: *She’d deny it, but you didn’t have to have Sean’s gift to feel the pain in her voice. This asshole hurt a woman I called sister, and now I want to deal out some pain to him. Didn’t matter if he was already dead. A reaper can get to anyone, anywhere, anytime.

So what happened?

Bryn: A baby was born in Cornwall. A dragon, a comet with a flame red tail, filled the sky that night. *My eyes grow distant as I remember.* He was almost manic with excitement. He said he’d seen it, that it portended the birth of king who would unite all of the kingdoms under one rule, but that he needed to be there. It was only with his power that it could happen. By that time the Rome I’d fought against had long since left Britain. Vikings ravaged the coasts at will, and for a time, they’d succeeded in establishing a foothold on a large part of the island. When grown, this new king, according to him, would see the Vikings gone and Britain ruled by Britains.

*Sighing wearily as I drop down to sit on Adrian’s bed*

What he didn’t say was it wasn’t about uniting the kingdoms. It was about being the power behind the throne. There was nothing altruistic in this. He saw the future and wanted more power. He already had magick…. More than anyone else I’d ever seen and I’d taught him how to use it. Now he wanted a different kind of power. And he wanted me to help him. As a reaper I could take out anyone that stood in his way, make sure he had access to the child. As a witch I could combine my power with his and create a world that was his to command. I was appalled.

We had a fight, a huge one, and it all came out. He never loved me. He’d used my body the way he wanted to use my power – to bind me to him. If I’d had none, if I’d even just been a mortal witch, he wouldn’t have looked at me twice. I cast him from my cave and warded it against him so thoroughly that he had no hope of ever gaining entrance again and then I turned my back on him. He followed through and I guess it worked for a time. But in the end other mortal weaknesses caused the death of this savior of Britain and the kingdom fell. Emrys died, walled away in his own cave by his fallen king’s enemies, led by a witch with some significant power of her own. Zav reaped his soul. I never asked what happened to it. Being half demon it could very well have ended up at Lucifer’s disposal.

Adrian: *I cross to the bed and sit down beside her. Ignoring my nearly naked status, I put my arm around her shoulder and pull her against my side. It says something about how devastating this was to her that she actually allows it. As I look down, I can see a sheen of tears she refuses to shed gleaming in her eyes.*

So if it is this asshole, can I kill him?

Bryn: *A strangled laugh escapes me. Damn, Adrian is such a rock. Unshakeable and steady. And just what I needed. Not too much sympathy, just enough and the understanding that revenge is best served cold.*

Well one of us has to.

Adrian: And, *raising an eyebrow – damn, has Sin taught all of us that?* And if it’s one of your sisters?

Bryn: *Inhaling and pulling away from his side to sit upright as his arm falls away.*

If it’s one of my sisters, it’s on me. I’ll need to know what twisted them up so much that they went that way and then I’ll deal with them. But I’m hoping it’s a coalition of lesser witches. A group of three with some skill could also pull this operation off. But first we have to get to them. And to do that we need to interrogate a bad guy.

So. *clapping my hands on my thighs, and then standing, forcing the bravado back into my voice* Are you ready to go, studly?

Adrian: *Suddenly, I’m very conscious of my near naked state once again. It’s a more normal Bryn comment, and I’m glad to see her coming back to herself, but still, “studly” is a going a step too far. Face flaming, I blurt* Don’t call me that. And just /where/ are we going?

Bryn: Outside my crystal cave in Wales. It’s remote even by today’s standards, and it has plenty of trees for you to conceal yourself behind so we can get a drop on whoever comes. Plus, if you’re concerned about them sending greater numbers than they have previously come to pass, we can retreat into the cave and I can slam down wards they won’t get through. Oh, don’t look at me like that, *Seeing the dubious look on his face.* We’ll stay in the half world until you can reassure yourself there’s no one around to see you in all your semi-naked glory. But be aware if I don’t see a mark flare, you’ll be naked pretty quick so I can make sure grandma didn’t tat you in an even more concealed place. Once it does you can get dressed. And armed.

Adrian: *The sword from the wall materializes in my hand. Though I’d come to prefer the medieval longsword, for fighting naked a Spartan sword was a more appropriate length for potentially naked fighting.*

I’m going in armed. As a mortal I didn’t fight in much more than this.

Bryn: *Frowning* Then why all the “I’m not going to be naked” crap if you fought mostly naked as a human?

Adrian: Because I’m /not/ human anymore and leathers provide a little more protection. Plus you’re a girl. I didn’t /fight/ girls in battle. Now are we going or not?

Bryn: Don’t think of me as a girl. Think of me as a harpy. Vicious and lethal. It might help. Follow me. *with a thought I dematerialized into the fine black mist of the reaper and disappeared.*

Adrian: *Snorting*

Women. *following her lead, I dematerialize into the half-world and follow her to Wales.*

#TBC

#WitchHunterHunterWitchPart1 #DarkAngelsCreationPart41 #Renegades #RRPG #BDB #AU #Reapers #Angels #Vampires #Witches #Ghosts

[movedtosalamoonder]

Unforgettable ~ a Dan and Phil Fanfic [side 1a]

Imagine someone tracing back over your life and looking for the one thing that makes you stronger. The thing you couldn't live without. The thing that makes you feel smarter, braver, kinder, funnier, more you.Simply MORE than you were before.

Maybe someTHING is inaccurate. No, that should be someONE.

Imagine someone found that person in your life, and they ripped them out. I don't mean remove them physically, I mean rip them right out of your memories. Make it so you might as well have never met them.

Are you imagining it? Yes? Good. Unfortunately Dan Howell doesn't have to imagine.

Now imagine being on the other side. Imagine that the person who matters most to you in the world, your best friend, the reason you are better, has no memory of you. Imagine them trapped and terrified and confused...and there's nothing you can do about it. Well, almost nothing.

Unfortunately Phil Lester doesn't have to imagine either.

Genre: Angst, amnesia, horror

Wordcount: 1.6k

Warnings: Kidnapping, amnesia

A/N: This fanfic is a Within the Wires AU. I understand that the phandom is WAY bigger than the WTW fandom, and so the majority of people reading this won't know what Within the Wires is (it's a podcast made by the creators of Welcome to Night Vale). Soooo....go listen to Within the Wires!! Go!! It's so good and so underrated and it is incredible and creepy and heartfelt and oddly relaxing. (Oh, also, this fanfic contains spoilers for season one, so careful with that.) This fic has been a long time coming and I’m so happy to bring it to you finally ^.^

Side 1b | Side 2a | || Read it on AO3 ||

He wakes up cold and alone.

The floor beneath his fingers is smooth and slippery. Tile. His eyes burn whenever he tries to open them; the ceiling blazes with artificial light. Everything hurts. Color swim behind his eyelids.

He tries to speak, but no words will come to him and his throat contracts painfully. For a terrifying moment his mind goes blank and he simply gropes for something, anything, to hold on to. The fear propels him to his feet and as he stands, a rush of information in the form of images and emotions and an overwhelming panic washes over him.

Dan. His name is Daniel James Howell, and he makes Youtube videos, and he lives in a flat in London with–with–

Nothing. The memory has slipped from him like sand through clenched fingers. His surroundings slowly set in: a 10x10 concrete cube with a mattress in one corner. There's a doorway to his left, a small bathroom with bare hinges where the door should be. Directly in front of him is a door with a slot in it, like for letters, a tray of what looks like high school cafeteria food on the floor, and a small package wrapped in brown paper. Another pang of fear shoots through him. Is he in jail? What has he done? He can’t remember anything except going to bed Friday night. Is it still Friday? It feels as though it has been much longer.

Dan bends down and picks up the package. There's no writing on it, but when he turns it over he finds a typed out label reading simply “For Dan”.

A new thought occurs to him. Has he been kidnapped by a fan? Oh, dear God, he hopes not. That would probably be worse than being in jail. He digs his fingernail into the corner of the packaging, trying not to think about the possibility of having been captured by some psycho subscriber.

Inside the package is a clear plastic box, the kind organized people use to store things in their bedrooms. He scrabbles at the snaps on the sides, noticing for the first time that his nails are broken and bloody.

Inside the box is an old battery powered tape recorder and ten cassette tapes. Each of the tapes have the same kind of typed label as the one that is on the package, and has a number and a letter. Dan takes the box over to the bed and collapses onto it. He wants to just lie there and go to sleep for hours, but he's afraid that if he does he’ll forget more than what he already has. He takes the first tape out of the box and slides it into the cassette player and presses play. He pulls the tray of plastic looking food over to the bed as the initial white noise begins. He figures he’ll probably need some kind of sustenance if he's going to figure out this madness.

Cassette One, Side A: Stress, Shoulders (Ocean)

Welcome to your first relaxation cassette. In these tapes I will guide you through a series of visualization exercises. These tapes will aid you in your recovery here at the Institute. When you are finished with this tape, return it to your unit nurse and fill out the accompanying survey.

Breathe in.

Breathe out. Settle yourself. Forget where you are and how you got there; focus on breathing.

Breathe in:

Feel the air fill your lungs. Feel your body rise as you absorb the oxygen, as it rushes through your bloodstream, bringing life to every tiny corner of your body. Imagine you are an ocean, and your breath is the rising tide lapping against the beaches of the world. Imagine the way hundreds of millions of grains of sand feel beneath you. Imagine reaching out...and relaxing your grip, falling back to the depths, between each bit of sand and sea smoothed boulder and broken branch of coral.

Breathe out.

In this tape we will focus on breathing. You will trust only my voice and your body, to which you are subject.

Imagine you are on a plane. You do not like planes very much. They used to be something of an adventure, holding an air of excitement and novelty when you were in your younger years that has long since worn off. You have been on far too many planes now.

You have made your way through security half asleep, a travel coffee mug clenched too tight in your right hand. The coffee is scalding, but your mind is too busy to remember the last time you placed the rim against your lips, and so your tongue is numb and sore by the time your bags have been rifled through and your body wanded over.

You keep looking across the space of the airport, too big to be called “room” in your head. There is nothing to see, nothing but people and suitcases and scratched plastic chairs, but you feel as though you’ve lost something. You’ve lost something, and you have to keep looking for it.

Much like the coffee, it is something that won’t quite register in your hazy, before-ten-am mind. He’s not lost, you tell yourself. You do not have to look for him.

Still, your eyes wander across the terminal until they snag on a familiar figure, and then wander back lazily to the conveyor belt until they are drawn back across the space again.

The figure notices you looking, but pretends not to. He always does. He knows you want no further reminder of your need to cling to familiar objects, familiar faces, of your hatred of airport terminals with their heavy chemical air and too bright lights and barking security guards.

There’s some small holdup, some tiny detail of protocol that causes one of the officers to exhale through her nose unhappily and leave you fidgeting uncomfortably, sweating under the lights. You don’t know what to do with your hands. Your limbs are long and awkward and seem stitched onto your body, like an ill made measurement for a marionette with its strings left loose. You shove your hands deep into the pockets of your skinny jeans, scrunching your fingers against the thin lining of lint that’s collected in them.

“Just a minute,” the security guard calls in a clipped voice, and you nod. Your head feels disconnected from your body, the sharp movement somehow separate from your consciousness. The lights are hot and bright. You blink, trying to clear the spots from your eyes. Lint gathers under your fingernails and you hear the person behind you huff impatiently. The space is too hot, and too cold. Your skin films with sweat and the coffee mug comes automatically to your chapped lips.

There’s a sudden warmth on your left shoulder, a slight weight that hovers tentatively above your collarbone and the beginning of your shoulder blade. It anchors you, the gentle heat unknotting the nerves coiled in your upper body.

“Just a little while longer,” says the voice that belongs to the hand which has attached itself to your shoulder, and unlike in the security guard’s previous announcement, your ears are able to detect genuine concern for you. The presence stays slightly below and behind your shoulder, close enough for you to sense.

You do not turn around, but you place your hand briefly on top of the other. The swirling galaxies of your fingerprints read wrinkled knuckles, infinitesimally small lines of the keratin of a nail, the softness of skin made so much more obvious because it is not your own, all in the few seconds that you allow your hand to linger. Enough to lock in an unspoken message; don’t leave me.

So the hand stays, even when the security guard finally returns with your suitcase and it is time to leave, even though you no longer have to worry about the disgruntled woman behind you or the uncomfortable limbo of standing still in a place that is meant only for movement.

A minute later and there is simply an arm around your shoulder, and so you lug the suitcase behind you with one arm, even though it’s heavy. You wait in line like that, the quiet presence beside you instead of behind you, all your anxieties and tangled knot of worries unraveled and smoothed out like a ball of yarn, pushed along by a curious cat until the whole thing lies complicated but flat and still against a clean floor.

You board the plane and fall asleep, despite the caffeine feebly pushing at your consciousness, and when your head lolls over onto his shoulder he does not say anything, even though he can hardly move for the couple hours. He does not mind, because to him your comfort and security are much more important than his ability to move his arm.

(Here the voice pauses, and Dan could hear whoever was speaking draw a deep breath.)

Breathe.

We got away from the breathing, didn’t we? Breathe in. Imagine watching the ground drop away from you as sleep tugs at your eyelids, imagine somehow feeling as calm as though you are still tethered to the ground, because there is a well known hand on your shoulder. Imagine looking outside and thinking that you can almost see well enough to barely comprehend the slightest curve of Earth, how truly enormous it is.

Breathe out.

You are asleep now; you are safe.

Well; safe has many meanings. You are not whole, but for now no further risk will come to you than what already has. I do not mean to alarm you. We will work on you being whole again. It is very important that you remain calm.

Remaining calm is extremely important to your continued safety and eventual...release. The institute does not wish to harm you. Continue to practice your relaxation exercises, and your release will occur much sooner.

END SIDE A.

Side 1b 

[plotbunnyshipper]

Fundamental Cracks - Chapters 23 & 24

Ao3 Fundamental Cracks

Just need it in a fast reference window that my tablet won’t hate.

My mug is perched on the table, steam lazily dancing an irresistibly seductive siren’s call to me. My muscles ache as I wheel over to it, blowing over the rim and taking a test sip. Mmmm. I was up most of the night trying to force stubborn toes to obey my will. The battle was lost, but it doesn’t mean I won’t repeat it tonight.

“So, yesterday-” His voice is far too bright and cheerful for this early. Usually he’s on a run or off early to the office, and I get my caffeine fix in peace. Stupid Mondays!

“No talking before coffee.”

He rolls his eyes like I’m the crazy one, sliding a plate in front of me. I eye the eggs warily. “You need the protein.” Slices of fruit, toast, then a small bowl of yogurt are not so stealthily added.

“Stop, enough! How much of this do I have to eat for you to not frown at me all morning?” Or at least until he has to get to work.

He gives a bright smile. You haven’t won a business deal, answer the question. “As much as you want.”

Acting like a freaking Jewish-Italian mom with his food pushing! “Where’s your plate?”

He slides one across the table and settles in, taking a bite of kiwi.

We eat in silence. Around the paper I see him keep making subtle glances at my progress, but my stomach can only handle so much in the morning. Fruit and half the eggs are that limit, so I make the casual request for a coffee refill. As he makes his way to the kitchen I use my fork to drag his nearly empty plate across the table, pushing my own to replace it. “Hey!” his voice is sharp, otherwise silently returning with my coffee.

Busted. Nonchalantly I nudge it with the tines of my fork the last inch, not breaking eye contact and taking the mug, I dare you to call me out. “Thank you.”

He looks at my former plate, undoubtedly taking stock, then turns up that smile of his again, “If you wanted more all you had to do was ask.”

Before he can push any back onto the plate in front of me I mirror his grin, “I’m stuffed, but you should really finish that. You need the protein.” Felicity – 2, Oliver – 1. I reward myself with a big sip of coffee.

The under-his-breath mutter of defeat only makes the coffee taste that much better. “So, yesterday you said it had been years since your last happy ending-” He says it so blandly that I’m nodding along before the words click in my brain.

The mouthful of coffee paints the table. Oh my great Google-! I mean great googly moogly-! No, I mean- What?!

“Would you like me to order you something to help, with that?”

What did I say? I try to remember what I let my mouth get away with in that rather urgently stressful moment. No…oh no, no, no. I didn’t- Wait…did he say order? “Are you offering to get me a gigolo?”

He looks as surprised as I am, “That’s not what I…Do…Do you want me to hire-?“

I feel heat creeping up to my scalp, looking anywhere but him while interrupting, “Don’t! No! Don’t finish that! I mean, what-? Wait, that’s… none of your business.” My brain is spinning but no thoughts manage to catch. “Never mind, stop talking.” I shove, wheeling myself backwards so fast that I bump into a wall before frantically trying to navigate to the solitude of the room I’m staying in and pretend the last minute didn’t exist in the timeline.

“Felicity!”

“Nope. Wow it’s late, don’t you have to be at work? Better get moving, grooving, going.” I push the door shut behind me, listening for sounds from the main area.

}]}———}>

Hours later my toes are still refusing to cooperate no matter how much I try to coax, beg, manually push, and use electric pulses to force them into twitching again. So when the chime rings I’m not in the best of moods.

I evaluate the screen, asking the building security to leave the blandly logoed box addressed to me out there. When the guy is gone I retrieve it, pulling along the packaging tape as soon as the door is shut behind me. Maybe the new laptop parts that were on backorder…? No. definitely not parts.

I shove the small bottle and other item, in packaging splayed with bright stickers proclaiming ‘For Novelty Use Only,’ back into the box. My thumbs move faster than my thoughts, barraging Oliver’s phone with a set of messages as fast as I can type.

FS: Are you out of your mind? FS: You can’t buy things like that!

Well obviously he can and did…

FS: You can buy them. But not for me!

Oh wait, maybe they weren’t for me. A glance at the label again, that’s my name.

FS: Ignore those x3 FS: Oliver, your package arrived. You clicked the wrong recipient when ordering, it will be on the counter.

I’m trying to reseal the tape, having penned over the name already, when my phone chimes.

OQ:  No mistake. I know inapprop but you wouldn’t buy it for yourself OQ: Same as what you used to like

Why would he remember that, it was almost three years and a lifetime ago…I would have bought my own sex toys, I have bought my own sex toys, just not…just not when I’m like this. I still have trouble looking for more than a glance at anything but specific features in the mirror, the overall ‘me’ still looking sickly and weak, reminding me of the numbness, the boredom, the reason I was there, why I deserved to be in that cell. My shoulders hunch forwards, no one is here to see my self-loathing, but that doesn’t make it any gentler.

OQ: I’ll be out until 6 LMN if you need anything

The box stays on the counter, dangerous as a viper, so I throw myself back into PT exercises while streaming mindless videos.

}]}———}>

My shoulders hit the floor and I pant, catching my breath. The prickling itch of sweat demands I wipe it from my brow but the rest of my body insists that laying without moving here is the better option.

The knock comes again and my muscles tense painfully stiff in response. “Who is it?”

“Thea!”

"Go away." The thought of her energy is no friend to my exhaustion.

"Open the door, I'm taking you to lunch."

In that case, "Your brother already stuffed me before he left..."

There is a wordless noise, and based on experience I can just imagine her nose wrinkling, "No details please. I don’t need to hear-"

You Queens! Always taking innocently intended words the worst way. "Stuffed me with foo-“ Wait! Say it differently, “Made me eat a huge breakfast…of food! I’m not hungry. Go away I’m busy."

The door-muffled voice takes on a whine, "You stay cooped up in here all the time'"

So what if I do? “I do not!”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire...” The knob rattles slightly. “Shouting through the door isn’t working, I’m using my key”

“Key?” Of course she has a key. Ugh. I start to roll my sweaty gross self over to get to the couch, as I hear the door open.

"I was thinking Thai- You ok?” She starts almost jogging towards me.

I give her a wary look, “Yeah, why?

Her tone is like I’m deliberately ignoring something obvious, “Because you’re laying on the floor?”

"As opposed to levitating...?" I start lifting myself up, waving away the hands she offers as help, "Your brother let you try to do that when he was getting better?

She nods, eyes darting towards the balcony. “Mmmhmm.”

“And you call me a liar?” Scooting over and transferring to my chair, I push the wheels to coast over and get some water. A long drink later, I ask, "Why don’t you invite him out instead, he'd love to see you."

A fed up sigh “That’s not fair. He’s not you…” The silence stretches and we have a standoff of stares. “Fine, I’ll pick up stuff and we can eat on the balcony. You shower, I’ll be back soon.”

How did she win like that? I shower in cool water, muscles protesting when a soft tapping fills the room. Panic edges through me, but a glance at the window reveals the steady fall of rain continuing to spatter against the glass.

By the time I’m dry and dressed it is full on storming. At least that means the balcony is off limits.

Soon Thea flings open the door without knocking, laden with big bags of food. “It wasn’t supposed to rain today!”

I give her a wary eye. She is far too like her brother and I know a game of musical plates won’t work like this morning. "Planning on feeding an army?"

"Couldn’t decide what I wanted and took your advice."

I told you to go away, not feast. "What advice?"

"I invited Ollie."

Darting a covert glance between the package and the containers she’s pulling out, my words are slightly exasperated, "Then why didn't you just take him to lunch?"

"Because I miss you, Dummy.”

}]}———}>

Oliver strides in, umbrella in hand like a magazine model, not a hair out of place or a drop of water on his clothes. A quick hug and kiss near Thea’s ear, I’m sure whispering something out of my lip-reading sight. Surveying the spread of options his smile gets wider, “This looks great, thanks for the call.”

“Well Felicity said you’d want to see me, like we didn’t have dinner the other night, and it justified ordering the extra mango sticky rice and nuea ping.”

He looks over at me and I quickly correct her, “I said she should take you out, because I wasn’t interested and she was being all…” I wave my hand in her direction, “Thea-y.” My eyes give a pointed stare towards the package, still on the counter, followed with an unappreciative look at him.

Oliver just grabs a plate and starts filling it, “Thanks for inviting me anyway.”

}]}———}>

He gets a call partially through his fast eating, the leisurely pace of breakfast nowhere in sight. Checking who it’s from he sighs and grabs one more big mouthful before answering while walking towards the kitchen with his empty water glass. The frustrated, “Today?” carries back to us. A vaguely agreeing noise follows, “I’ll be there in 20.”

Thea starts packing one of the containers that held the food with as much of the types as will cram under the lid…surprisingly large amounts. Those two really do think on the same wavelength sometimes. A couple seconds later he is apologizing, snagging the container, thanking her with a hug and a goodbye, thanking me with a smile, then after grabbing his umbrella he’s off.

Thea sticks around, pushing food and failing to trick me into going out to a movie.

“Go spend your day off doing more than bothering me.” She won’t. Thea does join in on part of my routine when I start back up after the food is packed away, but she’s not really dressed for it. I get a huff of frustration mid-conversation, as I start on another set of reps and a short while later she leaves me in peace.

}]}———}>

When Oliver gets back from work he practically runs in, by the sound of it, to change before stopping by my room on his way out.

A knock which is odd because he usually just speaks through the door, and when I open it he extends a thick folder. “I’ll need you to sign these by Friday.”

Taking and opening the folder, I’m confused. “What are they?”

“Just tax things, one of the accountants made a mistake and if these aren’t resubmitted with original signatures by the extended deadline on Friday they’re pretty sure we’ll be on the short list for an audit. Which is not…when my parents were audited it was a big hassle, and I’d like to avoid it if possible.”

I bite back a laugh at his frustration with bureaucracy, "Of course you do." An amended return for four years ago…documentation from insurance and the hospital after I was shot skim past my fingers as I, flip the pages backwards seeing just how many pages there are. Getting to the last handful in the stack, I look from the front page, to the dates on it, then back at the checkbox. That’s not right.

"I can leave them now so you can read over them but again, Friday.”

“They made a mistake…”

“Where? They should be able to fix it first thing tomorrow, but you can read over the rest and then sign the updated one.”

I pull out the paperwork for last year’s taxes and hand them over. “This, this is wrong. They made the amendments for the prior year, but then they didn’t change it back after you filed the divorce.”

“Oh…yeah, that’s not wrong.”

The first minutes back at STAR Labs jump to mind. ‘I need to talk to my wife. Alone.’ Oliver’s demand to Barry from what feels like forever ago rings in my head like a taunting echo. No. No, that’s not… “Yes it is. Oliver it says we’re still married, if you want to avoid an audit that’s a pretty big flag-”

He slides the papers back into the folder, “We’re still married” I just stare at him, surely having missed a word. “What was it you said, ‘Surprise’ and ‘Mazel Tov,’ right?”

My head circles on a loop of confusion, "But- but- but it’s not valid anymore."

Oliver doesn’t reach out, doesn’t touch, if anything he inches backwards to give me extra space as I push myself back a spin. "Felicity, you know me, did you really think I'd blindly agree to walk away from-, bad choice of words, sorry. You think I’d just leave this marriage without even giving it a fighting chance."

But…but…but…"But we aren’t...the divorce..."

“Was never filed."

But I’m…But he’s…“You’re- you’re my- we’re-?”

A hidden smile shows in his eyes, at the corner of his mouth, and the lightness in his tone, "Yes, Wife."

"Stop that." He’s making fun of me. He’s not serious. “It’s not a joke! I can get the papers reprinted from the attorney and you-”

The smile disappears into his normal serious expression, “Felicity, you may have intended for this to be my second sham of a marriage, but we’ve consummated it twice since the date the license was signed by both of us, we made medical decisions for each other, we’re living together... Granted, we are going through some tough times, so our marriage-“

“Quit calling it that!”

He ignores the comment and keeps going, “-is strained, but we’re working on it.”

I shake my head, still not able to understand why he didn’t file the papers even after I got back.

He zips up his jacket and starts moving towards the front door, “We can even go to Bali for our honeymoon if you still want when you’re up for it, but for now I have to get moving. So please, read over, I need them by Friday.”

}]}———}>

The next morning is awkward. Or more accurately, it’s awkward for me. The folder rests in the center of the table, over Oliver’s briefcase. So obviously he’s seen the signatures…because he’s right they needed to be signed and unlike a couple months of retroactive marriage, a couple years of retroactive divorce would be tricky, especially since these tax returns were filed, State and Federal. Sigh.

Oliver sits eating, reading, nonchalantly having done another big breakfast, a serving bowl over a plate to keep it warm. “Oh don’t you act like there is nothing to talk about, Mr. Queen.”

He doesn’t look up, “You started this, I don’t know why you’re surprised.”

I glower, refusing to accept that as an excuse, but waiting until I’ve had a drink of coffee before responding, “Because I gave you your ‘out’ at the same time I told you! The marriage shouldn’t still be valid.”

A deliberate sip of water, and falsely innocent query, “Why not?”

“Because you- Because we weren’t really married! Because if you had just signed the papers and handed them off you would have been free of me.”

Oliver interrupts before I can argue my point, all the thoughts that debated in my head last night are conspicuously absent now that I’m trying to use them. “Felicity, why would you think I would want that?”

“You said it yourself, it was a sham. It was bait, and I exploited it to get you what you wouldn’t have accepted otherwise but needed and we both know it!” My palms swat at the table, making the glasses tremble.

He looks strait at me, absolutely serious, “I told you I wanted to marry you, and I think you’re starting to understand this is real for me.”

Is this why he’s letting me stay here? Some stupid sense of duty? Trapped into it by an overinflated sense of honor and code of what’s ‘right’ for him? “What about your family?”

A hand extends towards me, but stays out of my carefully spread bubble of personal space, marked clearly by glass and cutlery, “You’re part of my family.”

I clench then pull my hands into my lap to avoid the instinctive urge to touch. It’s awkward, so I run them to touch the water, the rim of the plate, the tines of the fork, anything to change up the sensations. “No, the family you’re making for William.”

He catches himself mid eye-roll, and repeats himself, slowly, “You. Are. Part. Of. My. Family.”

I glide backwards, then towards the table again, the closest I can do to pacing. Do I have to spell it out? “You and Samantha!” He just waits, raising his eyebrow instead of questioning my words. I lift my hands, extending my fingers out, palms up, in his direction, with a ‘come on’ gesture. Gritting my teeth I force out the awkwardness…the increased awkwardness, “I have done my best not to be a distraction from your…” Reunions, hookups, courtship – oh my god who even thinks the word courtship? “Your family visits.”

He nods, apparently not understanding the air quotes around the word, “She drops off William, then goes and enjoys her weekend, or week, or…” He trails off, tilts his head “’Family visits?’ Is that supposed to be…? You think I’m-, we’re-...Is that why you refuse to be here when William visits?”

This is right up there with the sex toy in topics I didn’t want to have with him face to face, heat creeps across my cheeks and I avoid the fingers that try to bump mine, “I don’t want to listen to you catching up.”

“I’m sure your stepson wouldn’t either, but she doesn’t stay, and her time here isn’t…” he searches for the word and manages to find a pair that are more my level of brain mashing – specific but weird, “conjugally intimate.” It was a trap, because as soon as our gazes meet he continues, “You’re my wife, I’m not about to knowingly commit adultery.” His eyes are practically electric with anger, “Thanks for that by the way. Great part of your out that made me out to be the boy I was before the island rather than the man I am today.”

The jab lands and my retort is as defensive as it is loud, shouting across the table, “I marked adultery on my end, not yours! It wasn’t even real-real at the point you were with Susan! I wanted you alive! Alive and free, and I gave you a way to be both!”

His voice loses it calm, “Well you got that half right!”

A silence hangs, both of us obviously pissed with how this conversation is going down.

Think. Logistics. “Who else knows about our- about the marriage?”

Another couple seconds of quiet, then Oliver is the epitome of calm again, “Quentin, but that was your move. My accountant, our medical team.” He thinks while ticking off fingers for those just named, “Barry now, I guess.”

“Thea?”

“No.”

“My Mom?”

“Not unless you told her, and you will be the one to share that with Donna.”

“John?”

“Everyone you’re going to name that isn’t on that list is a no…” he deadpans the thought, then stands to pace between the table and the kitchen, “Speaking of names, I left it how you had it in the paperwork, did you want to keep your maiden name, hyphenate – I would prefer Smoak-Queen over Queen-Smoak if we both change, or were you interested in the idea of picking something entirely new?”

“How are you so-? You were- when they first brought me back…and before, when you were going in for surgery you were…” shocked, pissed, ”you didn’t want to let it happen, you were going to fight me on it.”

“Your delivery of the information could have used some better timing, better discussion beyond ‘We’re married. I’m forcing you into surgery and sweet talking the nurses so they won’t say anything, here are the divorce papers, good bye.’ Yes, I was…surprised, and angry, and that helped fuel my recovery, but Felicity I love you. I never stopped.”

You’re wrong, “You can’t. I…” How can he not understand? “Look at-!“ I fight the urge to block his ability to do what I ask, “Just look at me.”

He does, slowly. “What am I supposed to be seeing that makes it impossible for me to feel the way I do?”

Squeezing over the slowly rebuilding muscle I cringe and stare away. “Don’t act like you don’t know. You don’t have to spare my feelings, don’t have to lie about it. I’m damaged. Broken, ugly-“

A harsh laugh cuts me off, “Do my scars disgust you?” He starts pulling off his shirt, putting it and the undershirt beside his suit jacket, revealing the patchwork of healed wounds.

At least one large one looks very fresh, and I try to keep my mind on what he just said and not trying to remember what I eavesdropped on the comms and in their records to try and place its source. “What?”

The words are soft, a genuine query, accusatory in the mimicked words, “What do you see when you look at me? Someone damaged, broken, and ugly?”

“Of course not”

“-course not.” He says with me. Oliver crosses his arms over his chest, “Did you leave because I was a paraplegic?” Before I can get out my confused question he continues, “You’re using that as a ridiculous excuse for me. It makes no more sense the other way around. Why would you expect me to think differently about someone like one of us than you do?”

“Because I’m-” different, not the woman you fell in love with, a killer, virtually an agoraphobic, sickly looking, depressive…Stop, change approach, “ You’re…you. Oliver, you’re a bil-former billionaire, the Mayor, insanely kind, protective, gorgeous, and a hero. Even if they don’t know just how important you are to this city I’m sure any number of people you date would-“

He leans over, and I pull back, “I’m married, I don’t date anyone but my wife.”

That argument again, like he ignores his options, “You don’t have to! You can get out of it. Find someone-“

“This is me telling you I don’t want to. Our differences are reconcilable. I contest your arguments. I won’t push you with what you’re not comfortable with, but I want to fix our marriage.”

We stare at each other. I know what he wants me to say, just like I know I can’t say it. ‘I want to fix this marriage too’ and, ‘I love you’ and any number of ways I could agree or apologize. I’m not even sure I’m capable of love like that anymore.

Oliver’s phone chimes a reminder tone, and we both glance at the clock. He’s going to get caught in traffic if he’s not out the door in the next couple minutes. “I could stay…?”

I can’t force myself to agree to that, “No. You’re the Mayor, that’s important.”

This is important.

I point at the folder of papers. “You have to drop those off. Go.”

[thebardandhispenliterature-blog]

Bequeathed by Moonlight - Dead by Daylight Fanfiction

           We were not sure how we wound up here, not in the least. But my friends and I had found us in a strange farmland outside of the middle of nowhere. The last thing I could recall was drinking at the local bar, chatting up a storm with my pals.

           Justin, Iverson, Jayda, and Cameron were all there. We were celebrating my success in becoming a published author. My latest novel had finally got published and was due on the shelves by midnight tonight. I am startled by the sound of my watch beeping. I gaze upon it.

           Yes, midnight. I was already late for my book signing. I grunted and tried to get up. But for some reason I found myself trapped inside a dark space. Darkness hugged me from all sides, hugged me like a long lost friend. My heart started to thud. The darkness wasn’t a friend, but a foe.

           I tried not to panic; panic was also another enemy of the mind. It made one do rash things. I take in my surroundings by feeling around me. My hands glide across whatever surface the darkness contained. I realized now that I’m in a box of sorts. Maybe it was a footlocker, one of those large enough to contain a person.

           I began to bang against the trunk, trying to pry it open. But it felt like there was something on top of it, something that was stopping me from getting out from my enclosure. I growled more and more with each attempt of trying to escape. But something made me stop.

There was shoveling outside. I could hear murmurs and whispers. Suddenly the scraping of a loud brick was heard, until PLOP! The brick fell to the ground and I was able to finally kick open the lid of the trunk. I felt myself rolling onto hard wood floor, I coughed and grunted.

When I did get up, at last, I saw my friends looking at me with concern.

“What the hell happened, man?” Jayda inquired. She had panic written all over her face. Sweat also dripped from her forehead as she frantically looked about.

But for some reason, I felt sick to my stomach. I threw up in front of them as I laid there on all fours, like a dog. My body began to increase in body heat, I felt like a radiator. The shattered beams of light of a full moon appeared through one of the broken windows.

“Dude, what the heck is wrong with you?” Cameron asked leaning down to my side. I felt strange. My bones began to snap and crack, my spine extended as did my heels. I could feel my body morphing. I screamed and yelled in agony, my friends backed up in shock.

My face, it began to stretch! Fur began to sprout all over me. It felt…..felt so strangely. My heart was thudding a thousand miles an hour. My friends were backing up away from me. For a moment I could smell, even taste their fear. My ears stretched and my spine stretched out passed my ass and formed a tail.

What the fuck was happening to me? I felt so strange now; I was in a different body. My skin burnt away and was replaced with thick layers of dark fur. My eye sight had changed. I once saw color, but now saw black and white. My mind was being taken over as well.

My body began to take a mind of its own. I was unable to do a damn thing about it either. My fingers stretched out like tree branches, and my finger nails stretched out into sharp claws. After the transformation pretty much settled, I was less a man than I was moments ago.

My body looked about. I began to sniff and I smelt the one thing I seemed to thrive on now, fear. My friends had backed up into a corner and were thinking about bolting toward the exit. My claws glided across the floorboard. SCRAPE, SCRAPE, SCRAPE! They went as I walked toward them.

“Dude, what the hell?” Justin inquired curiously. “What the hell happened?” His voice was disoriented in my ears. I flicked them curiously and I kept approaching them. My flaring nostrils was practically between Justin’s crotch. He batted my nose away.

I snarl and lash out at him. My claws extend and clawed at his thigh. He let out a loud yelp of pain as blood began to trickle down from the open wound I caused. Drip, drip, drip went the sound of freshly fallen blood. My nostrils picked up a whiff of the scent.

My ebony black lips curled up into a snarl and my friends bolt off. I stalk them slowly. My nose to the ground at all times. I could smell their musky scent now better than ever. My eyes adjust to the dimness of the darkened area around me. A full amber moon hangs upon a tapestry of the shimmering diamond.

I hear my friends scatter around the area. But I decided to find a place to hide. For some reason, I feel threatened myself, a voice inside of my head whispers. “Kill, kill, kill.”

“What the fuck happened to him?” Justin inquired wincing at the agony in which was inflicted upon him. Cameron had found a trunk nearby and opened it. In it were a flash light, bandages, and a few other tools. He began to patch Justin up.

“I don’t know, I freaking don’t know what the hell is going on,” Cameron replied.

“Guys, what’s this?” Jayda inquired. She was standing in front of a large pole of some sort, extending from the pole was a beam and attached to the beam a sinister looking hook. The hook appeared to be stained with dried blood.

“That’s new to me,” Cameron said when Justin screamed in agony. He had gotten the needle in Justin and was stitching the scratches that were inflicted upon him.

 Meanwhile, I was sitting in a dark corner, panting. My tongue lolled out from my muzzle. The whispers kept growing more intense. They were about to drive me over the edge. But then I caught the sight of something. It was weird seeing what I saw.

There were red lines all over the place. I smelt the strange lines and could sense that they were made by my friends. Instinct began to take over me once again. I began in hot pursuit toward the smells. I hurtle myself through swampy waters and ruined buildings. My tail held high, my nose to the ground.

Ravens fly off in the distance, and the gang noticed. “What is that?” Justin asked.

“Probably something spooked the birds,’ Jayda said. “Could it be him?”

“I have doubts, but it could be, we should get moving,’ Iverson said.

“Yeah, agreed,” Cameron finally finished the last stitch on Justin’s wound. They gathered what tools they could. Jayda looked at her curiously. She had heard something that perked her interest so she strayed from the group to investigate.

She looked about her and noticed strange carvings on the wall. She pulled shrubs and twigs aside. There were more carvings on the walls. There was a full moon that centered a field and there were many hooks just like the one she saw.

She peered at a strange figure near one of the hooks. He appeared to be hoisting a body up upon one of them. Strange black claws came out from nowhere, they clutched the body and sucked it into a void, and then the figure howled to the moon.

“Guys, you might wanna come check this out,” She said. “G…guys?” She asked looking about. But there was no one there. I have reached where she was at. I had stalked silently through the grass. I soon launch my assault upon her.

My claws grip her by the neck, she lets out a blood-curdling scream as I lift her up into the air. She felt immense pain in her shoulder, blood poured out in crimson streams. She struggles and grunts. She looks to her right and notices a hook breaking through her flesh and bone.

She let out another scream the moment she realized, she was fucked. There was a strange tingling sensation that came over her. Suddenly the hook became alive! There were long talons that protruded from the wood, climbing up the pole and toward her! One of these strange wooden appendages shot forth toward her neck.

She managed to snag it just in time. The werewolf had gone, looking for the others. She whimpered, trying to scream but she was unable to. The appendage was sharp and was trying to pierce her throat. But she held it fast and was trying to wriggle out of the mess she was in.

 But she slipped, the sharp appendage came jetting toward her throat. She wasn’t able to scream because her throat slit open. Suddenly a portal opened above her. Before her eyes closed for the last time, more of that strange talon like appendages came forth and grasped her body.  

Amidst the horror was Justin who watched the whole thing. He was spellbound from pure and utter shock at what he just witnessed. Jayda’s body just disappeared and it was taken up into the sky, where that strange creature resided.

After having dispatched Jayda to the Entity, I began to search for the others. My nostrils flare, attuned to the scent of blood now. I bare my fangs and crawl upon all fours. I listen, my ears twitching. I hear a flock of ravens that someone has disturbed. I launch myself forward in a sprint.

Cameron, Justin, and Iverson were walking around. “Dude, careful where you step, we could lead the beast right to us,”

“That beast is our friend,” Iverson snapped.

“Whatever that is, it isn’t Tikaani anymore, it’s something dark and evil,”

“Hey, guys, what’s this?” Justin asked as he found a strange looking machine. It looked to be an old generator. He saw a note upon it. He grabbed it and read it out loud.

“Fix five of us to win your escape, fail to do so your fate is sealed and your soul is the Entity’s to take”

“What the fuck is the Entity?” Cameron said.

“I think it’s that creature that stole Jayda,” Cameron said. “That strange pulsating light that shot from the pole in which the beast stuck her on,”

I could hear them talking among themselves about what I had done. Although in my mind I mourned the loss of dear Jayda, the beast didn’t seem to give a fuck. I was trying to fight for control, but again it was pretty much useless, the beast held my body strong.

My eyes were focusing on Cameron. He was an extremely handsome red head of a male who stood easily 6’11 and had a muscular build. He had thick bulging biceps and a well-defined abdomen and washboard abs. Despite the fact the monster had my body, I still had my mind.

I had always had a crush on Cameron, something about him just always turned me on. I notice that I’m looking down between my legs. My sheath had started growing. The wolf dick was probing out gently and the sheath was swollen with arousal.

Cameron had heard something that distracted him. “I..I’m going to go and check that out,” He said. He began to walk away from the group who was working on the generator, trying to get it to start.

 I watched Cameron get further and further away from the group. My mind screamed for him to return to the others, but the wolf’s jaw remained shut. However, his dick increased and became longer.

I move forward, my body standing up on its hind legs. I flex my muscular shape and let out a low growl. I continue to stalk silently toward Cameron. Soon I can smell his strong musky scent. There was that mixture of fear and adrenalin that kept turning me on.

Suddenly Cameron gasped. He could feel muscular furry arms grab him and hoist him into the air. He struggled to break free from the entrapment, but it was mere impossible, the wolf was a mere tank!

I clutch the muscular form of Cameron, his back pressing firmly against my stomach. I grind my hips against him and he gasped. He felt my swollen sheath and I notice a hint of blush caress his tanned face. He didn’t speak, whether he was at a loss for words or wasn’t sure what was to happen next.

Pretty soon the lustful beast form grabbed Cameron, my paws gliding over his waistline and fondling his muscled body. Soon enough they found themselves clasping the white male’s ass, clinching each butt cheek firmly.

  He grunted and groaned softly, Cameron wasn’t sure what was going on anymore. He was confused and scared at the time. But then again, he knew who resided in the body of the wolf. Maybe it was Tikanni trying to get to him. He allowed the wolf to do what he wished, even if it meant death would follow after.

For some reason, I couldn’t resist anymore. My paws began to roam across Cameron’s form. My sharp claws rip across the tank top that withheld that godlike body. RIIIP went the fabric of the shirt. Soon it was in shreds and his bare skin was now accessible.

Cameron moaned softly, he pressed his back into me, embracing me. I began to lick his neck, my long wet dog like tongue slobbering all over that muscular hunk. My paws start at his chest, and then gently glide across toward his midsection. I could tell that he was getting aroused; his sexual musk was starting to increase.

I keep up my handy work. My paws soon find themselves groping between Cameron’s legs. I feel my fingers grasping at his bulging dick. Cameron was the biggest of the three other guys in the friend circle. He measured easily a good 9 and a half inches.

He had a thick penis as well, a good 4 inches in thickness. Those fingers wrap themselves teasingly around that big fleshy meat cannon. Slowly they began to stroke him to life. Grunts and moans escaped from the young man’s mouth.

“Tik….Tikanni,” He moaned softly. The werewolf growled and clutched harder on the man’s penis, almost harder than necessary. This caused the male to whimper in pain. But then he released. Yes, the man was trying to free Tikanni.

But of course, the two of us didn’t know the lore that if a werewolf’s name was called, it would free him from his cursed state. But the werewolf that held my mind was a strong one; more mature than a virgin werewolf. The wolf continued to fondle the man’s shaft. I kept stroking it up and down in quick motions.

Moans of erotic pleasure escaped Cameron’s lips. His body embraced the furry werewolf’s form. He turned himself to where he now faced the beast. “I am yours,’ He said and then fell onto his back against the grassy ground. He exposed his entire body to the wolf.

The wolf tore what remained of the man’s clothes, ripping his trousers all the way off and his undergarments until at last, the man was completely nude. My paws continued to caress the male, gliding down upon his thighs. I hear him exhale sharply. He smirks wide at me, that grin that sends shivers down my back.

My cock is almost half out. It was a long canine penis. It was perfectly shaped and had a beautiful knot about to pop out. I grab it with my paw and stroke it a few times. At last the knot does manage to shove itself free from my sheath’s capture. I growl lustfully.

I was massive as well, but not as massive as Cameron. My cock easily measured 7 inches with a 3-inch width. My knot diameter was also 5 inches thick, making it rather large. I growl lustfully at Cameron. My arms quickly snag at his legs and hoist them up my shoulders. I present his ass to my cock tip and growl.

He whimpered and whined as he leaned his head up against the ground. He stared into the sky, he knew that he was about to get fucked raw in the ass, it was going to be extremely painful. I prepare myself to mount. I have not a care in the world other than pressing myself into his anal entrance.

I can see it already, my hands eagerly grasp both of Cameron’s ass cheeks. I pull them apart and reveal his tight rosebud entrance. I slowly then hoist myself up forward, his legs moving up more on my shoulders. The tip of my cock slowly probes against his anal ring, I hear him exclaim in pure lustful desire.

I growl lustfully and began to shove myself into Cameron. I felt his anal flesh grip at the tip of my wolf dick. I continue growling, my heart thudded against my chest as his rosebud entrance began to spread slightly upon my dick’s impact.

Cameron grunts and moans. He could feel my dick pushing inside of him. His hands lay on his sides, gripping blades of grass and tarring them out from the ground. He gasped loudly and whined. The feeling of the wolf penis invading him caused his body to flex with each breath he took.

When that wolf cock pushed into Cameron, the anal ring of flesh began to stretch open wider. It began to swallow in the tip and then began taking it in inch after inch. I press myself onto his ass, grunting and growling as my cock began to vanish into him.

I hear him whimpering with lust, he was yearning for it, practically begging for it. I shoved myself further inside of him. I moan feeling the anal walls close in around my penis. My body shook and my breathing increased. My hips began to move forward, my cock entering and leaving the anal entrance.

Cameron laid there on the ground, getting fucked by a werewolf, no. Being fucked by his long time best friend, this was his dream. Sure his friend had turned into a murderous beast, but again he was taking what was being offered. He gasped and moaned more and more. He felt the werewolf’s ass ram itself deep into him.

I keep myself at a full thrust. Each thrust gave me a great feeling of pleasure. I was breaking him, stretched him far enough that my huge wolf dick was pushing further into him. My knot was barely grinding against the male’s entrance. With a few more thrusts I’d probably be able to shove it all the way into him.

A loud noise distracts me for a moment. I raise my head up and then realize that a generator had started up. Something inside of me told me it was a bad sign. I began to quicken the pace. My dick slammed inside of him faster and faster.

Cameron moaned more and more. His own large penis was throbbing and oozing thick layers of precum all over his muscle bound chest. He was loving the feeling of the wolf’s dick pushing deep inside of him.

I adjust myself a bit and move further forward, I gave a good hard thrust into the male and my knot popped right into him. He moaned loudly and my thrusts became harsher than ever. I grab the back of his head and yank him forward. My body quivers and I ejaculate inside of him. Thick streams of cum filled his asshole and he gasped.

The man laid there unconscious. I pulled my knot out, it slid out with a loud POP sound and my seed began to coat him in thick layers. Pretty soon though, the semen began to overtake him. My eyes blinked at what was going on. The white substance had begun to expand all over him. Covering every single inch of him until he was wrapped in a strange cocoon,

A portal opened above me, I gaze and hear the strange whispers of the Entity. The large talons come out and grasp Cameron’s body; soon it rose up into the air and disappeared into the void. I wasn’t sure what was going on. I wasn’t feeling remorse, I wasn’t feeling sympathy. In fact, I felt even hornier than ever.

Another loud banging sound causes me to flinch. I began to rush through the bracken and forest, my nostrils trying to smell out the rest of them. There was only one thing on my mind, fucking them. I had to get my dick up another ass, I had to do it soon.

My body rushes through, but I’m having troubles trying to find them. But then I catch them working on another generator. This one bings and a loud blaring sound was issued. I know now that their escape is near. I growl more and more and try to chase after Justin and Iverson.

Iverson was almost in my reach. My claws reach forth and nearly graze his shoulder. He tosses over a pallet that was nearby, I crash right into it and yelp.

Justin and Iverson could only doubt that Cameron had suffered the same fate as Jayda had. But right now their only goal was to reach the exit, the one that had just opened up. Their hearts thudded against their chest, sweat practically rushed off their skin.

Their ankles throbbed with pain as they sprinted toward the gates. Justin rushed toward the panel where he took off the lid and began to tinker with the switch, trying to activate the door.

Iverson gasps when he feels his hair be yanked back. He falls over on his back and I snarl in his ear. I turn him over. My claws scratch his back tearing off his shirt, turning into nothing but shreds. I didn’t bother with his pants, no.

I shove my huge wolf penis right into his ass, right past the fabric of his jeans. The pressure that I pushed into the young man made it rip a hole right into him. Iverson was a blond boy, skinny in form but still attractive though. I clutch onto his stomach and hoist him up and began to rape his ass.

Iverson moaned and screamed in agony. When my cock invaded him it stretched him greatly. He was trying to pry himself off of me, but I held onto him firmly. I kept thrashing my penis deep into his raw ass. His anal ring stretched incredibly wide.

Iverson did not believe what was happening to him, he was being fucked by a damn human/wolf hybrid! He can feel it, that thick throbbing penis of the wolf driving right into him like a drill driving a screw in a piece of wood. It was painful, fucking painful. Tears were literally coming out from his eyes it hurt so badly.

He was trying to pry himself off of me, but I held onto him firmly. I kept thrashing my penis deep into his raw ass. His anal ring stretched incredibly wide.

Iverson did not believe what was happening to him, he was being fucked by a damn human/wolf hybrid! He can feel it, that thick throbbing penis of the wolf driving right into him like a drill driving a screw in a piece of wood. It was painful, fucking painful. Tears were literally coming out from his eyes it hurt so badly.

My hips thrust faster and faster into his ass. The feeling of that tight asshole wrapping around my dick was driving me to the brink. I arched my back, a howl issues from my throat and I began to shoot thick wads of cum all into his asshole. I pulled my dick out and gasped.

  The seed that oozed out from him began to do the same thing to what it did to Cameron. After the Entity portal opened, the claws extended for the semen cocoon wrapped being and scooped it up in its talons. The Entity sucked his body up into the air, and suddenly I heard something.

The large gate of the exit slid open and Justin had a panic struck face. He lunged forward toward the exit. I try to lunge for him, I chase him toward the exit but then something happens. Large spikes protrude from the ground, preventing me from escaping. The man had gotten out.

He looked at me with fear in his face, My claws reach out, desperate to grab him and fuck him hard and heavy. He looked at me one last time, then ran for his life.