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monstersandmaw · 6 years ago

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Mothman x male reader (sfw) - Starfall Springs

Edit which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Whoop! A story! An actual full-length story! I'm sorry it's been a bit quiet lately - I've had a lot going on, and doing all those hand-written thank you stories and cards took it out of me a bit last month.

But! We're back on track again! And here's an adorable mothman to celebrate!

So, without further faff, here's Fitz' story (here's his colouring and sketchy doodle in case you missed it over on Patreon). Don't forget to let me know what you think of it!

Content: 4,445 words, sfw, reference to high-school bullying and there's the appearance of a face from Fitz' past who brings back bad memories.

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“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”

“You… ok?” came a hesitant voice from behind you.

You jumped, turning your back on the mess behind you as the lab door swung closed with a soft hiss and your heart sank. Not only was the subject of your every waking (and sleeping) fantasy standing before you, but he was observing the absolute, catastrophic, and apocalyptic cock-up you’d just made of the test samples.

The mothman tilted his dusky head slightly and then allowed his delicate antennae to waggle before, to your surprise and evident relief, allowed himself a tiny chuckle. The sound wheezed out of him in a little squeak and he fluttered his twin wings to make a soft buzzing sound. His two sets of silvery brown arms waved in a pacifying gesture and he stepped closer on his impossibly tiny feet and murmured, “It’s ok. Those are the samples of varnish from the furniture conservation lab, right?”

You nodded disconsolately, no longer worried about concealing the mess of broken glass and flakes of ancient, decrepit varnish behind you. “They were…”

He buzzed his wings again and grinned, his dark, fuzzy face splitting into a frankly adorable grin as his mouth parts moved. “It’s fine. My friend is head of furniture conservation. I’m sure she can take some more samples for you. Relax… You don’t want to know how royally I fucked up on my first day here.”

“But it’s not my first day,” you mumbled. “Or even my first month…”

“I know. You’ve just been storing it up for now…” Fitz laughed and took you gently by the arm, steering you carefully away from the mess of shattered glass and out of harm’s way. Your hands were shaking. He tilted his head and frowned, his huge eyes unblinking and yet somehow full of concern. “Hey, you ok?”

You took a huge sigh and shook your head. “I… I just wanted to do ok here, you know? And I’ve fucked up already. My three month probation period isn’t up yet… They can just fire me, and there’s nothing I can do…”

To your surprise, he laughed again, but it wasn’t unkind. “It’s fine,” he said, his small hand coming to rest between your shoulder blades as he guided you away from the mess towards the door. Instinctively you leaned into the touch before you’d even realised it, and he smiled again when you jerked your chin up to look at his face. “Accidents happen,” he reassured you. “Come on, let me take you to the break room and get you a cup of tea.”

“Really, you don’t need to -” you began, but he only smiled. “I mean, I should clean this up first…”

“It’s non-toxic and it’s just you and me in the lab today. I’ll lock the door behind us. Besides, I’d like to get a cup of tea with you. You don’t have to come with me though,” he added, taking half a step back, “If you’d rather not.” It was then that you noticed just how delicate his tiny feet were, and he did another little shuffle as your eyes landed on them. He was barefoot, and they were fuzzy.

“Sorry,” you muttered. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

He smiled and led you away. “I haven’t had much chance to chat with you,” he said conversationally in his rasping, musical tenor, and as he turned you saw that in the downy fur on his hunched, dusky shoulders were the markings of a skull. You guessed that he was a privet hawk mothman, given that his wings and body had a glorious pink banding on, and as he glanced back over his broad shoulders, he caught you staring at the dusky brown wings that hung down his back, shuffled them ostentatiously and smiled. “I’m guessing I’m the first moth boy you’ve met, right?”

“Right again,” you said, flushing hot.

Fitz chuckled again, a sound like a whickering horse, and he said, “And you’ve not been in Starfall Springs all that long either…” It wasn’t a question.

You shrugged. “Few months.”

“Where are you living?” he asked, holding the door open for you with one left hand and ushering you through with the other.

“In a caravan on the outskirts,” you said. “It’s all I can afford right now, and I don’t have a lot of stuff so…”

“Oh,” he said, his antennae perking up. “Have you met Saph then?”

“Saph?”

“Guess not. She’s one of the conservators who works at the workshops across town but she lives at the park too. She’s a feisty little goblin - if you’d met her, you’d remember her,” he snorted, quickly adding, “But she’s great.”

“Not trying to set me up, are you?” you said, unable to keep the heat from your cheeks again, and Fitz laughed.

“If you want me to, I can try, but I’m no matchmaker. For that, you want someone like Crystal.”

You halted. “The goth faun from forensics?”

He bowed his head. “The very same.”

“No.”

He waggled his antennae in a way that reminded you of someone raising their eyebrows, and said nothing.

You snorted and said, “Well, thanks, but I don’t swing Saph’s way anyway.”

“Not into goblins, or not one for an interspecies relationship altogether?” he asked, a sudden and almost imperceptible quavering creeping into his husky voice, though when you glanced back over your shoulder as you entered the break room, he didn’t seem to show any sign of unease.

“Not into women,” you muttered, and the sudden rush of adrenaline that came with the admission nearly made your knees cave in. If you’d have admitted to being gay to a colleague at your previous job in the city, you may well have found your car tyres slashed at the end of the day at the very least. That had been a chapter of your life you’d been only too happy to leave well behind.

But Fitz seemed to relax and even laughed softly again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was absolutely none of my business. I apologise.”

“I’m the one who brought up matchmaking,” you countered jovially, pushing through your momentary stall. “It’s fine.” You filled the kettle and set it to boil while he went right up onto tiptoes to get a couple of mugs out of the cupboard.

He wasn’t as tall as you, perhaps half a head shorter, and when he turned round and caught you staring at the way his wings flexed slightly when he strained to reach the shelf, he seemed a little bashful. “Well, we can’t all be big graceful men like you,” he snapped quietly, clearly embarrassed. Excluding antennae, he was probably about 5’6”

It was your turn to laugh, “‘Graceful?!’ Did you actually see the giant mess I made back there?” you snickered, jabbing your thumb over your shoulder.

“Good point. Here,” he said, handing you a mug. “There’s an assortment of teas in the cupboard, and milk in the fridge. Sugar is in that pot there.” That last bit of information he added with particular relish, and you had to smile, knowing how moths essentially existed off nectar and sugar water.

“So what exactly did you do that was so catastrophic on your first day?” you asked with a twinkle in your eyes once you had your mug cradled in your fingers, and he threw back his head again and laughed, wings fluttering with merriment.

“I broke the portable XRF machine… Dropped it.”

Your brain stalled. Those things didn’t come cheap. “Wow, ok…” you said, fighting off a giggle. “That… That puts a few dropped specimen jars into perspective!”

“Right?” he said cheekily. “Oh man, the boss was angry about it, but, that’s what they have insurance for. It was fine, in the end. But I was banned from using any equipment except for a pencil for a week…”

Chatting with him over a cup of tea had precisely the effect that Fitz had hoped for, and you relaxed after the shock of breaking the glass, and didn’t feel so bad about the shattered containers and contaminated samples either. You got back to work not long after that, and he headed up to his office on the second floor with the promise that he’d have his friend collect a few more varnish samples from the antique furniture she was working on for you to run through the FTIR spectrometer.

Shortly after five, you had just switched the lights off and locked the lab door behind you when the sound of someone clearing their throat behind you in the dark corridor almost made you screech like a stepped-on dog toy.

Whipping around, you saw a dark shape in the dimly lit passageway, with hunched shoulders and a strange, cape-like silhouette. For a horrible moment your brain went blank with fear until you realised that it wasn’t a cloaked figure, but rather that the outline was in fact that of gently folded wings. “Fitz!” you hissed, “Fuck! You scared the shit out of me!”

“Sorry,” he said. “I forget that humans can’t see in the dark.”

“Or hear your adorable feet moving around,” you muttered.

“I’ve got good hearing too,” he said dryly, letting your awkward compliment slide by him.

“Of course you do,” you cursed. “What did you want, other than to make sure my adrenal glands are still functioning, which they are, by the way.”

He snorted a delicate laugh out of his fuzzy nose and stepped back as you walked down the corridor towards him. “I wondered if you wanted to get a drink after work, that’s all.”

You paused and frowned curiously at him. “Sure,” you said. “Alright. You have somewhere in mind?”

He nodded, suddenly shy. “Yeah. There’s a nice cosy little traditional pub on the north side of town.”

“That’s a bit of a walk from the trailer park, but I could use the exercise. Sure. You want to go straight there, or shall I meet you there later?”

Fitz shrugged a wing. “Up to you. It’s probably a good forty minute walk from here…”

You adjusted your rucksack on your back and said, “I’m up for it. It’s a nice evening.”

The mothman’s delicate mouth parts shifted slightly into his little smile, and the two of you left the building together. His stride was surprisingly short and dainty, but his delicate feet made easy progress along the road and down the hill from the research lab and down towards the rambling town of Starfall Springs below. The ancient trees of the forest which was known by locals simply as the ‘old forest’ whispered softly to one another and you could have sworn you heard half-articulated phrases drifting on the light breeze. Leaving the eerie, timeless place behind, you and Fitz rounded a bend in the country road and saw the sandstone buildings with their cheery terracotta roof tiles and lush, green spaces spread out like a fairytale tapestry below you.

You sighed contentedly and shook your head slightly with mild disbelief that this verdant paradise was now where you lived.

Fitz picked up on your shift in mood almost instantly, as though the wind had changed direction, and, antennae shifting back and forth slightly in alternating waggles, he asked, “Something wrong?”

You shook your head. “The opposite actually… This place is unreal.”

Fitz turned his head back to look at the same view, but something told you he saw a different scene. “I guess…” he said softly.

Quizzically you turned to look at him. “You don’t think so?”

He shrugged. “I’ve lived here all my life,” he said, letting the light breath of wind lift his wings a little before clamping them back down again. “I grew up here, went to high school here, moved back here after university… I mean, sure, it’s pretty, and it’s a haven for non-humans who’ve had a shit life in the city, but it’s not without its issues.”

“Like what?”

“Oh… you know… I don’t want to put you off or anything, but… it’s not just a case of ‘humans versus non-humans’… There are family feuds and deep prejudices amongst the rest of us too. Take the Silkfoots for example…”

“The driders up in the mansion on the hill?”

“Exactly,” he said, running his small hand over his fuzzy, dusky coloured head. “They’re alright, don’t get me wrong, but they’ve had this long-standing hatred for Rhae, you know, the reclusive lich mage in the tower, and his little so-called ‘gaggle’ of goblins… The miners hate the Silkfoots because they controlled all the trade and taxes in the area way back when and made a load of profit on it, and… yeah, I won’t bore you with all of it, but let’s just say there’s politics here too, right down to a seriously petty level.”

After a moment’s thought you said, “I guess I should have realised…”

He shrugged nonchalantly, though you could see that something troubled him deeply still; something long-ingrained and with great emotion behind it.

“How do you feel about more humans moving here?” you asked hesitantly.

Fitz took a moment to think about it, but after a sidelong look at you, he nodded and said, “I think it’s a good thing… It stops us non-humans getting too high and mighty and ‘better than thou’, way out here with no humans to hunt us or bother us or objectify us, and it opens up healthier communication between the species.”

“Back to that interspecies relationship stuff again,” you grinned, digging him lightly in his fuzzy ribcage and nudging him off balance for half a step.

His wings tucked in suddenly very tightly and he turned his face away, antennae flat to his head like a worried horse’s ears.

“Fitz? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable…”

A nervous laugh fluttered out of him and he risked another glance at you before laughing awkwardly and scratching the back of his head with his upper right hand again. The death’s head pattern on the thicker fluff of his stooped shoulders was disturbed for a moment before it rose like a werewolf’s hackles and settled back into place, as though he’d got the shivers for a moment. “Forget it,” he said, his hoarse tenor voice cracking a little. “I just meant that it’s nice to have some humans around who are actually good for us, for a change. My best friend in school was human.”

“Was?” you blurted before you could stop yourself.

You were nearly at the bottom of the winding road into town and the wide sweep of Starfall Springs beyond was beginning to melt into the dusky haze of late evening. Fitz sighed again. “‘Is’ human,” he corrected himself. “Just no longer my best friend.”

“Oh.”

He sighed. “He and I were so close. We never thought anything of the difference between us as kids. Then when he went away to university - Oxenbridge, no less,” he added bitterly, “He just… ditched me. Said that I ‘couldn’t possibly think he’d stay in contact with a dirty animal like me now that he’d escaped Starfall Shithole’…”

“Fuck, Fitz, that’s awful,” you growled, heat rising up your neck, fists clenching, pulse quickening to a gallop in your ears. “Ack, shit like that makes me so angry. It’s so unnecessary and small-minded.”

Fitz fixed you with a strangely sanguine stare and shrugged again. “I figured I’m better off without someone like that in my life. Still hurt at the time though.”

“I bet,” you breathed. Acting on impulse, you reached for his lower left arm as it swung gently beside you as you walked side by side towards the river and the old stone bridge into the town. You touched him lightly above his elbow and let your thumb play back and forth over the fur there, the colour of wet sea sand, and he shuddered violently and then laughed.

“Mothfolk are pretty sensitive,” he murmured, voice catching in his throat.

“So I see,” you said, repeating the gesture just once more and withdrawing your hand.

After a few more paces down the road, he smiled shyly again and said, “Thank you,” and you knew he was referring to his story about his best friend’s betrayal.

“Did you love him?” you dared ask.

He nodded silently. “He was my first.”

“Ah, shit, I’m sorry. That makes it even worse.”

Fitz took a big sigh and stared off into the horizon.

“Hey,” you asked, changing the subject and looking at his wings. “Can I ask you something completely different?”

“With pleasure,” he said wryly. “Fire away.”

“Since I’ve never seen any mothfolk before, let alone met one, I have no idea if this is a rude question or not, so…”

“I’ll forgive you if it is,” he laughed. “You’re making me nervous. Get on with it!”

With a snort, you said, “Fine, ok, how come you get the bus to work in the morning instead of flying? Surely it’d be quicker, and more sanitary than public transport…?”

Fitz gave a beautiful laugh, and let his twin set of wings unfurl slightly, a sign, you’d come to realise, that he was feeling relaxed and trusting again. “You want to watch me fly? Is that what you’re really asking?” he asked, leaning in a little closer as the two of you walked through the emptying market square and out towards the northern quarter of the town.

The lich’s tower stood out above the pine trees in the distance, but your concentration was all on Fitz as your mouth went very dry and you realised that you did want to see him fly. Very much.

You nodded.

“Maybe another time,” he said, eyeing the tall buildings on either side. “I’m not the most graceful in takeoff; less ‘jump-jet’ and more ‘cargo plane’…”

“Aw, I bet you’re cute though,” you smiled, and his antennae bobbed bashfully.

Changing the subject away from himself this time, he raised his upper right arm and said, “The bar’s just up there.”

You caught a glimpse of the beautifully hand-painted sign hanging above the door which showed a kenku with a hood covering their dark head and an open beak, and below the figure, written in a curly, elegant script, was the name of the pub: The Kenku’s Aria. “Strange name…” you commented. “I thought kenku had no voice…”

“Ah, interesting story with this one,” he said, pushing the door open with his arm and letting you step inside first. It was nicely full, though not too rowdy, and you waited for him to catch up with you again to continue his explanation. “Turns out that the current owner’s grandfather fell in love with a kenku, who had no voice of her own, but she’d heard this beautiful orc singing an aria from an opera once, and she choice her voice to be her own, and she would sing the aria night after night to draw in the crowds.”

“Amazing,” you breathed. You glanced around at the bar at the back and saw what looked like one of the lizardfolk working behind it, but instead of being entirely covered in jade green scales, they had tufts of black feathers behind their temples and down their back. It was only then that you realised you were the only human in the bar.

“Not popular with my kind here, I take it?” you hissed at Fitz as he leaned on the unusual, copper-topped bar to wait for the lizard to look your way.

“Hmm?” he asked. “Oh, I… I didn’t even think about that…” he said, turning suddenly mortified, his antennae lying flat against his head.

“Relax, it’s fine,” you reassured him, putting your hand unthinkingly on his upper arm again and eliciting exactly the same full-body shiver of pleasure as the first time.

He laughed and this time he put his other left hand reassuringly atop yours. “Perks of having more than two hands,” he quipped with a cheeky tilt of his head that was definitely his equivalent of a wink, before turning to order a huge glass of honeysuckle nectar from the lizardfolk bartender and pausing to wait for you to order something.

“Oh, a beer please,” you said.

“Which one?” the lizard rasped. “Ale, beer, lager, bottle, cask…”

“Uh…” you said, raking your eyes along the taps. “That one,” you blurted, pointing to one with a picture of a minotaur with a war hammer in his enormous grip.

“Good choice,” the lizard grinned toothily and began to pour.

You and Fitz retreated to a table not far from the bar, and he sank onto a little three-legged stool that allowed him space to drape his wings behind him without squashing them. You talked more about yourself than you asked him about his life, mainly because he seemed interested in what you’d done before coming to the research lab in Starfall Springs, but partly because you thought he’d probably had his fair share of giving uncomfortable answers to you.

Perhaps an hour later, you were leaning on the table between you, your chin resting in the palm of one hand with your elbow propped up on the tabletop, while Fitz carefully held your hand in both of his lower hands. It was a private, quiet gesture of mutual respect and understanding, and it gave you the closeness you’d craved for such a long time. The warmth of genuine affection that surged through you for this gentle being was almost overwhelming, and you swallowed the last of your second pint and looked away, eyes glassy.

The door opened and a breeze ruffled the shaggy fur of Fitz’ collar. Over his shoulder, you caught sight of someone who was so startlingly beautiful that it stole your breath for a moment. Fitz followed your gaze a moment later, and his shoulders dropped, antennae drooping, wings hanging limply down his back. “That’s Alec,” he said in a tiny voice.

“Who’s Alec?”

“He’s in fashion now,” you heard him say as you stared at the dazzlingly blue wings of one of the rare and exquisite lepidoptera, or butterfly folk, “But he was at high school with me.”

You turned your gaze back to Fitz and said, “Bet he was a right arsehole…”

Fitz nearly snorted his nectar back into his glass, and his adorable, curled proboscis sprang back into his mouth like a loosed spring as he fought off laughter. “Hit the nail on the head with that one. Actually, we were both kind of ugly… our caterpillar stages weren’t… all that pretty.”

“Oh?”

“I was bright green,” he said, clearly deathly embarrassed about it, though you couldn’t quite see why. “He was also green, and he was pissed that everyone thought I was like him, or - even worse - that he was mothfolk like me… He made my life hell, even after we had both metamorphosed…”

“Keep your head down then,” you said. “He’s looking this way.”

“Fuck.”

And sure enough, as though Fitz were a beautiful flower, Alec was drawn over to him, his fabulous, electric blue wings fringed with black splayed wide in a display of arrogant self-assertion. Your admiration for his beauty quickly soured as he sneered, “Well, well, if it isn’t everyone’s favourite little mothball. Fancy seeing you here, butt-fluff. I see you never left this little provincial backwater… Well, it was to be expected after all.”

Fitz took a long moment of utter stillness before he turned slowly to look up at the tall, slender lepidoptera who loomed over his seat. “We’re not in high school any more, Alec.”

“No, indeed,” he crooned. “Some of us have actually made a success of ourselves…” he said, reaching out with a black hand that reminded you of an opera glove and plucking at the thick, sensitive fur of Fitz’s collar with a snicker as the mothman winced and flinched.

You waited for Fitz to tell Alec to fuck off, or even bat him around the face with one of his fan-like wings, to inform him curtly that he had a PhD and worked at one of the top research labs in the country, but he didn’t move, didn’t speak.

“Come on,” Alec sneered after an uncomfortably long silence to the strange, wasp-like insectoid creature beside him who might have been a bodyguard or a crony, but it was impossible to tell which. “I’m bored with shagpile here already, and I don’t want to get fleas from his dirty fur… I only came here to speak to Anwen, and now that I have, I want to remove my beautiful feet from this vile, sticky floor as soon as possible.”

Your lip curled and you placed your hands on the table, intending to rise and yell at the obnoxious peacock, but Fitz shook his head subtly and implored you not to move without saying a word. Grinding your teeth, you respected his request and sat back in your seat, watching as Alec swayed away, as gracious and uncaring as a petal on the breeze.

“You ok?” you asked when he’d gone.

Fitz was trembling subtly. “No,” he said in a whisper. “Dammit. You can get away, you can go to university, you can get a job, but something can still tip you right back into being sixteen again and having selotape and chewing gum stuck to your new fur…”

“It’s a powerful thing, Fitz, but you showed him. He lost, and he knew it. C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

He smiled, his mouth parts shifting slightly and his eyes narrowing ever so slightly. “Where?”

“Anywhere. How about a stroll over the bridge on the other side of town? I bet the stars are nice tonight and there’s nothing but vineyards and farmland on that side of town for miles…”

For a moment you thought Fitz was going to refuse you. He still looked frightened and caged, but then he made an obvious effort to pull himself together and he nodded, visibly relaxing again. “I’d like that,” he said.

The two of you rose and threaded your way between the tables and out into the cool, summer night. The moon painted silver lines along the rooftops and delighted in her own reflection on the windows of the houses whose rooms were already dark, and as you walked towards the other side of town at a leisurely pace, Fitz slid one hand into yours and gripped it with surprising strength.

“Thank you,” he said again.

In answer, you squeezed his fingers back and said nothing.

___

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