#thanks for spending time with me
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It's been a while since I've gone on a long ramble or posted a writing snippet. I'll just mosey on over to my tumblr and see what sort of asks I've got waiting for me in my inbox and...
Wait.
I...
Wait, wait, hold on, wait... I need a minute here.
Seriously though, I'm amazed and humbled to have reached reached this milestone of 1000 followers.
I always thought that if I got to this point I'd make a big pretty picture to celebrate or do a raffle or something, but between being unable to draw due to health reasons (don't worry, it's nothing serious), focusing on the Phantom of Sunny Day Jack project, and already owing a story from my poll results... I suppose a bunch of cat gifs and older art of my avatar reflecting how I feel is the best I can do with the spoons I have right now. That and a bit of a ramble.
Thank you, all of you, for following me. Thank you for liking, reblogging, and especially commenting on my work. For as much as I have a tendency to ramble, I find myself lacking the words to convey just how much your positive feedback means to me. It means the world to me that so many of you enjoy what I create so much that you want to keep up to date with what I'm up to, even if it's just reblogging cat memes or silly shitposts.
Thank you, every single one of you. Thank you for sticking around and listening to me. I hope you all continue to enjoy following this silly little writer with her rambling headcanons and stories. I love you all.
#My Art#I hope this silly edit conveys even a fraction of my feelings#you're all just so sweet#thanks for spending time with me#I love and appreciate you all
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I know those eyes.
[First] Prev <–-> Next
#poorly drawn mdzs#mdzs#wei wuxian#wen qing#wen ning#Sibling similarity but you only see it when you realize they have the same soggy eyes.#These two always struck me as a bit of a play on Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli for 'siblings who contrast each other.#But after spending a lot more time marinating on Wen Ning I actually think they are way more similar that is initially apparent.#Sure their surface level personality traits are pretty contrastive. But they both are so willing to risk their lives for what's right#Who raised them? In a story so full of examples of how parents shape their children - why are these two lacking in parents?#I imagine that Wen Qing is the older sibling and so her morals of 'help those who need it no matter who they are' got passed a long.#But how did *she* arrive there? Was that instilled within her or was it a reaction against bearing witness to callousness and cruelty?#We'll never know..the only thing I can say for certain is Wen Qing is *so* soggy in the audio drama.#She's like the ant with the bindle. It's a hell of a way to bring a previously sharp tongued character back into the narritive.#Side note: Thank you all for being so patient and kind while I took my break!#It's been a very chaotic few weeks and I didn't realize how bad my burnout was getting. I'm back and ready to keep drawing again!
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「 Round and round it goes. 」
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY IN STARS AND TIME!! This game is absolutely fucking phenomenal and you KNOW I had to conjure up something for it's first birthday. Wipes a tear. They grow up so fast
I HONESTLY WASN'T SURE THAT I WAS GONNA FINISH THIS ONE BUT I SURPRISED MYSELF AND DID!! RIGHT BEFORE THE SIFFRIN PLUSHIE DROPPED TOO!! Sorry I'm excited I haven't done anything big-ish like this in a LOONG time go my screenshots
I have a version of this where it's JUST sasasaapFrin and the star because my sibling said it'd make a good phone background, so I'll throw that in here too :]
#zoc scrambled#zoc artwork#in stars and time#isat siffrin#isat loop#isat mirabelle#isat odile#isat isabeau#isat bonnie#isat spoilers#I know I've beenn spamming my friends with the progress but#I swear I didn't actually spend that long on this#THANK YOU COSMO DOLL-FAC3 FOR HELPING ME WITH THE HANDS#I like the expression I drew for Loopfrin on the sketch better but#I NEED TO STOP PROCRASRINATING AND POST THIS#SORRY#I'm so bad with like#writing . Things on posts
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cute little requests!!
#didnt spend a lot of time on these but i had so much fun they make me wanna scream#thank u guys for entertaining me#prompts were: hugging/sonic->shadow belly rub (losing my shit at how fucking cute that mental image is)#sonadow#my art#sonic the hedgehog#shadow the hedgehog#sonic#doodles#feel free to go wild in my inbox (as much as tumblr allows-)
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hey pooks wheres pt7 its been a week 😢😢
I am a just one woman with a job and limited free time 🥰 I promise I’m more eager to share it than anyone else 😘😘😘
This is the schedule of release of the next parts for those wondering:
#answers#schedule for next parts of radioapple nanny au#genuinely said with love#I appreciate the enthusiasm#but in the competition of who wants me to post the parts asap MORE???#I win by a long shot#I mean I AM the one spending the most time on it#sincerely thank u for your interest engagement and patience!
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while teen while goblin while aroace while injured while doing your best
#fantasy high junior year#fhjy#riz gukgak#figueroth faeth#sklonda gukgak#dimension 20#this. mmmmhhh this is so. I did Not know how to draw this really.#I am very normal about riz (<- lying)#it's a brennan-dm d20 campaign the bad guy is always capitalism (I am saying this with clenched teeth)#riz out of all of them being aroace fucks with me SO bad. bc its also established that elmsville specifically and probably the#majority of solace is not. made for goblins. and that becomes sklonda being worked to the bone and pok dying on the job#and riz spending all his time trying to keep his friends together. maybe to the point of it being injurous#like. do u get what I mean. its an economy of time it takes your time it eats up your time#not just the gukgaks but everyone you have to spend time to get to live and you don't have a lot of time left in a day#and you have to spend it carefully. you have to prioritize#you're somewhere without an established community and companionship is bought with your time spent working#this place doesn't take care of you. at the end of the day who do you have who'd prioritize you. do you understand me#the evolved aroace loathing where if your friends and family are granted more time nobody would have to choose. we live in a society#holds ur hand we live in a society. idk if Im making any sense#anyway . uhhh riz is my favourite that's my statement thank you for listening. au revoir
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"little miss prairie faerie" is a cute name actually... (but I won't use it if she doesn't like it)
#neopets#illusen#aquanutart#thank you faerie festival for letting me support my childhood fave#even though i stumbled into the festival five days in and was randomly assigned a team because i was too late to choose#i was like yesss i can get rid of all my junk from the plot--wait i can get a faerie doll??#nevermind. i have to do this RIGHT#okay! time to rediscover my addiction to cheat!#...okay! time to restrain myself from spending all my free time on cheat!#i used to sit there obsessively playing cheat! on dial-up back in the day#also due to the festival i won at cheeseroller for the first time in my entire life. then i was too happy with my honey cheese to donate it#as a kid i didn't know how to play cheeseroller because i didn't know what cheese name to enter#i just sat there staring at the empty input box trying to think of a name of a cheese out of my head. it was very frustrating#i kept playing cheeseroller after i won because i was so happy i finally figured out how to play but i haven't won again since then#my one honey cheese remains my treasured prize. no i did not donate it#anyway my determination to farm 8-point items ended after one day when i realized how much time it takes to play cheat!#and i switched to 6-point but then missed a day and wound up with not enough points to get the staff#but i had actually been agonizing anyway over how i wouldn't end up with enough points to get the staff AND the faerie doll#simple choice now. i can have faerie dolls guilt-free
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Day 7 - Only the Lonely Survive
But I'd rather hurt here than be happy somewhere else No one will scar me like you do But no one will ever be compared, compared to you.
#that's it folks see you all next Fakiru Week o7 this has been a fun challenge for me to work through them all in certain limitations#its made the artworks more consistent n less time consuming as it was the previous year. thank god i didnt spend 10 hours on a comic prompt#now to take a break and work on some private comms. enjoy the Fakiru art we've all made y'all!#fakiru week#fakiru week 2024#fakiru#princess tutu#ptutu#fakir#ahiru#art#fan art
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I’ve grown to appreciate the aus where Shen Yuan enters the story as “Shen Yuan” - same name, probably similar face, generally able to interact with PIDW as himself and change the story through his added presence. I like the sense of “if only you’d been here, things might have been better the first time around” of it all.
And I was thinking, it’s a funny coincidence in that scenario that someone named Shen Yuan gets put into… another Shen Yuan. What are the chances? What a weird twist of fate that Airplane would pick out the name that his most dedicated critic could slip into seamlessly.
What about a version where it’s not coincidence at all?
Airplane goes to school with a kid named Shen Yuan. He’s prickly and hard to approach and a little intense, but Airplane is persistent. In fairness, Airplane is relentless - and maybe it’s a good thing that they end up being friends, because they’re a little too much for anyone else to handle. They balance each other out. They’re the “weird kids” in class and they’re okay with that, because even when they don’t have any words for it, they know they’re not like their classmates, not really. That’s okay; they don’t want to be.
Recesses and breaks are consumed with the elaborate stories that Airplane wants to tell, and all the holes Shen Yuan pokes into them. It’s not mean-spirited, though, even though Shen Yuan isn’t the kind to temper his words. It’s passionate. He cares about those stories the way Airplane cares about them, and it can’t be mistaken for anything else when they lean together conspiratorially across the lunchroom table. They’ve both got notebooks filled with details and characters and monsters. Shen Yuan’s practically got a whole bestiary sketched out in wobbly childhood attempts at art, entries fervently scrawled beside them. Airplane prattles out plots nonstop, always with the promise of shining eyes and being asked “what happens next?”
They come up with a whole world together. Airplane’s going to write about it someday. Shen Yuan is going to read every word.
Shen Yuan misses school. Shen Yuan starts missing school a lot.
Airplane goes to the hospital room instead. He doesn’t think to worry, because Shen Yuan is okay - that’s what he says. He looks okay, and he’s a kid, and it doesn’t feel real that anything bad should happen to a kid. He doesn’t think to worry. He doesn’t think to say goodbye.
It’s one of the older Shen brothers who catches him on the way up to the room one day, in the hallway just outside - snaps at him to go the fuck home, and when Airplane hesitates, pushes him into the elevator and tells him not to come back. “Tells” is a generous way to describe the way the words come out - a growl, a hiss, the sound an animal would make when a hand got too close to a wound.
(It’s not fair to name a villain after him, even if the name never really comes up in the story. He wasn’t trying to be mean. He’d lost a brother minutes before, and he was getting his brother’s friend out of the way so he didn’t have to… see. It isn’t fair, but then, none of it is fair.)
Death feels very real after that.
The notebooks get shoved into a closet, and it’s not until Airplane’s moving out and one falls on him from a high shelf that he thinks about it again. He’s written things, lots of things, but nothing as ambitious as this - nothing as important. It could be good, he considers. He’d promised. Shen Yuan wanted to read it.
The problem was that no one else does, not for a long time, not until Airplane has whittled himself and his art into a corner and into such an unfamiliar shape that he has to wonder how it’s still his own face he sees in the mirror. He has to eat. He has to pay rent. Shen Yuan would yell at him, but Shen Yuan isn’t there to yell at him, and who cares. Who cares if it could have been better? The people who actually are here love it, and it’s paying his bills, and sometimes stories don’t go the way they’re supposed to and the world is fucking unfair. It doesn’t matter.
(It does. But he shoves that thought away along with styrofoam cups and soda bottles to the bottom of a garbage bag.)
Authors are not gods and their power is limited, but Airplane exercises just a sliver of what he’s been granted and gifts an inconsequential sort of immortality. He thinks about making him a rogue cultivator, maybe the kind that goes around documenting beasts and compiling his findings. He thinks about making him someone too powerful for death to touch, or too important to threaten, but when Airplane looks at the world he crafted and everything that’s become of it, it feels like the kindest thing he can do for Shen Yuan is a childhood where he’s loved, and a death that’s peaceful. What does it say about that world, that he’d kill off his best friend too early again instead of making him live there?
(The best writing he ever does is the only, shining moment of humanity that his scum villain ever displays: a lament about death that comes too early, about a brother gone too soon. The commenters praise him. The commenters flatter over how real the emotions feel. The commenters don’t get any response from Airplane on that chapter.)
Death is incredibly real when it comes for him too early, too, still hovering over his keyboard with the story technically finished and incredibly incomplete. Airplane could tell himself that’s because the written version can never be the version in the writer’s head, always shifting and with every possibility still on the table, but he knows better than that. The System knows better than that, with its condescending message about “improving” his writing and “closing plot holes” and “achieving his original vision”...
…and he’s a child again. He’s a child in his own story, he’s Shang Qinghua now without the benefit yet of a peak or cultivation or anything, and maybe he’s a little bitter, and a little scared, and…
And Shen Yuan - with longer hair, with robes, with a couple of older kids watching him from across the street, but undeniably the prickly little boy who used to sit down imperiously across from him and tell him everything that was wrong with the chuck of writing that had been handed to him last period, but with that smile that said he was only invested because he knew it could be better and they were going to make it better - marches up to him with a fire in his eyes and a frown that warns of a coming tirade.
“You told it wrong,” is the first thing he says.
Shang Qinghua wants to ask how him how he’s here, how this is possible, or maybe laugh because, yeah - yeah, Shen Yuan has no goddamn idea how wrong he got absolutely everything.
(Shang Qinghua wants to say “I missed you” and “why did you leave so soon” but he’s here now. He’s right here.)
“I know,” he says instead. “I’m sorry. It all kind of… spiraled out of control.”
Shen Yuan frowns, but then it dissipates the way it always does, and his eyes shine with ideas the way they always used to. “That’s okay,” he relents, grabbing for his hand. “We’ll fix it. We’ll make it what it was supposed to be.”
#scum villain self saving system#svsss#shang qinghua#shen yuan#airplane shooting towards the sky#this got more into the feelings than i thought it would#surprising no one#anyway just! childhood friends au! as a reason for a shen yuan insert!#obviously he is not going to die as a child in this version#shang qinghua would not have that nope not again#also pls consider poor shen jiu who looks at this child that shen yuan has picked out for a best friend like '...really? that one??'#(it's up to you if he's shen yuan's actual brother from his first life)#(put there's a part of me that likes the idea that shen jiu also gets a second chance to spend more time with his brother)#a second chance for them to grow up together!#THAT SAID#RIP TO SHANG QINGHUA#WHEN SHEN YUAN IS OLD ENOUGH TO LEARN ABOUT ALL THE PAPAPA#the LOOKS shang qinghua is going to get#anyway here have a thing because I CANNOT add another au to my drafts thank you and goodbyyyyye
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If you've ever said a kind word to me I appreciate it.
#hard night#gonna try and sleep though. thank you#there's some people here who regularly just. respond to me and show me kindness. i don't#think i deserve it. but it means a lot to my that you spend time to talk to me or be nice.#goodnight
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🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️ outgrown clothes try on video going up on loyalfans tonight
#i know my vague claims that i'm going to do something don't always pan out but i am going to make more than one post next month 😬👍#the rescue & the general dire kitten situation is taking up a lot of of my time#but i wouldn't be able to spend so much time and effort volunteering without u guys supporting me 🥺#so really really really thank you 💕💕💕💕💕😭🫂🫂🫂🫂
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Masquerade
You've come to this masquerade ball to finally dispatch the man you've wanted dead for nearly ten years, but he's always ruining your plans, one way or another.
Contains: 2nd POV OC (sorry about all the blushing), werewolf MMC (sadly he doesn't do any fun werewolfy things he's just a guy with sharp teeth here), vague fantasy setting, murder attempts/reminiscence of murder attempts, a long and storied history only alluded to, what do you do when your bitter enemy turns out to be a silly little guy who just wants you to love him?, oral sex (w receiving), P in V sex, this spawned a whole ass novel and it's so so different but this lowkey holds up.
See end for Notes
~10k words - NSFW - 18+ MDNI
“My, don’t you look exquisite,” a voice purrs in your ear.
You freeze in place, glad that the mask hides the colour that springs to your cheeks. You feel like a naughty child caught with your hand in the cookie jar, an unwelcome guest at his masquerade. You thought you could escape notice, slip through the crowd of finely dressed nobles and plunge your knife into his chest at last. But he had managed to find you first. You weren’t ready. You hadn’t been to the garden to pick up your hidden cache of weapons, you had nothing but your silver hair-stick to dispatch him with.
His heavy hands land on your shoulders. “Don’t muss up your pretty hairstyle just yet, darling,” he whispers in your ear, his voice rasping like sandpaper. It’s as if he can read your thoughts. Or perhaps, after all these years, you’re simply predictable. “There will be plenty of time for that later.”
You flinch at the cold press of his mask against your bare shoulder. You shouldn’t have disguised yourself as a guest. You feel defenceless, wrapped in silk and sheer chiffon, a neat little morsel delivered straight into the wolf’s jaws. He could shift in a second and shred you into little pieces, like he had threatened to do so many times before. You try to still your frightened, thumping heart, and pull away, turning to face him at last. “I’m afraid I’m not sure what you mean,” you say, because it’s worth a try at least, but he’s laughing before you can even finish, the smiling mouth of his gold wolf mask mocking you. His yellow eyes glitter from it’s depths, watching you.
“Oh darling, I would recognize you anywhere. I hoped you would be unable to resist my invitation.”
“Your invitation?”
“Yes, dearest. All of this was for you. I knew you could not resist the chance to get so close to me again.”
“To kill you,” you remind him hoarsely.
He chuckles and takes your hand. “Perhaps. For now, a dance, I should think. You haven’t danced all night.”
You dig in your heels, trying to resist his insistent pull, but he simply wraps an arm around your waist and tugs you closer. “I don’t dance,” you tell him sharply. “Let go of me.”
“You’re a liar,” he replies, spinning you into place, one hand on your lower back, pinning you against his chest, and the other still clasped around your wrist, sliding up to engulf your hand. He simply tugs you along with him as he moves, sweeping you along to the music, holding you so unbearably close. He could lift you off your feet with ease, if he chose to, and you don’t have enough power to resist. His scent clouds your mind, cedar soap and clean, animal musk, one of many hints of the wolf that dog him even in his human shape. “You forget, I knew you in your past life. Or have you forgotten that I once sat in your father’s halls? I have seen you dance.”
It was so long ago now, another life, before he was only the wolf to you, and before you were the thorn in his paw, that you almost had forgotten. You had hardly given him a second thought at first, he was just another visiting knight, here one day and gone the next, handsome, but beyond the concerns of the girl you once were. “You failed to make an impression,” you tell him sharply, although it’s not true. You do remember his yellow eyes watching you one night, though he never asked you to to dance. He never spoke to you at all.
Not until after. He saved you, of course, from the bloodbath, because he had claimed you. He hadn’t so much as said a word to you before he burst into your bedchamber, monstrous jaws dripping with your fathers blood, yellow eyes wild. You still remembered beating him back with the fire-place’s iron poker, and jamming the tip into his chest before you ran for your life.
“I knew you were mine from the first,” he continues. He seems frighteningly aware of your thoughts, as if his own version of the memory is playing out behind his own eyes. “My lioness, avenging her wicked father with a poker. I still bear your mark, just above my heart.” He presses your entwined hands to his chest for a moment. “I’m certain you remember that, at least.”
“Unfortunately.”
“The only unfortunate part,” he says patiently. “Is that I did not take you as my mate that night.”
His words lance through you like lightning, burning everything in their path. Your knees nearly buckle, and if he were not holding you so securely, you would sink to the floor in a useless puddle of silk. How dare he make you weak, after everything he’s done to you? But anger gives you strength, reinforces your spine with steel, and you wrench away, glaring at him, wishing you could set him ablaze with your eyes.
The music falters. You look up, at the musicians gallery, then around the room. Everyone watches, pretending not to, jewelled masks concealing furtive eyes and whispered words. Your own mask feels insufficient, lightweight and flimsy under the wolf’s eyes when your eyes return to him. He takes your arm, his grip tight, but not bruising, and guides you out of the ballroom, into the cold night air. The dark gardens are just a little too far for you to jump down from the wide stone balcony, and there are no stairs leading down. If you jump, you’d probably break your leg, and then you’d be helpless.
“What do you think of our home?” he asks. “Have you snooped around yet, my darling? Planned all your exits and hidden away your weapons and armour? I made sure you’d have plenty of opportunity. I know how you love to prepare.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t found them already.”
“I have been busy with other preparations,” he says mildly. “But I thought I smelled something of you in the corridor by the library.”
You flinch, only confirming that you had in fact been there, hiding your leather armour inside a large vase. “Preparations for what?”
“Your homecoming. The king has made it clear that it’s time to reign you in, or he will have someone else deal with you.” He pulls the mask off at last, setting the golden wolf on the balcony. Sweat glimmers at his temples, catching light from the ballroom behind them. He offers you a wry smile, his sharp white teeth flashing. “I’ve been too lenient with you.”
“Lenient?” you ask, incredulous. “I’ve been trying to kill you.”
“Those who attempt such things do not usually live long,” he reminds you. “I don’t often show mercy. I’ve allowed you to live free, in the hopes that you would come to me willingly, in time. Now it seems I can no longer afford to continue our little game. You will stay with me, or someone else will be sent to arrest or kill you.”
You press your palms into the smooth railing, wishing desperately that you could absorb the cool, dependable steadiness of stone through your skin. You look at him for a moment while he stares out over the dark gardens, his yellow eyes tracking movement you can’t see.
He’s always dressed in black, like a man in mourning, his black curls cropped short around his slightly pointed ears, beard neatly trimmed. He wears little jewellery for a man of his station, just the yellow-gold signet ring with it’s heavy, dark blue sapphire on his finger, and the gleam of jet buttons down the front of his tunic. You were more used to seeing him in his armour. The heavy black plate suits his brutality better than black-embroidered silk.
Silk offers no protection, no shield over his wicked black heart.
You pull the hairpin from your own neatly arranged curls and move fast, striking at his chest, but he catches your hand easily, his amber eyes meeting your fury with amusement. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?” he asks. “Stubborn creature.”
He plucks the pin from your hand and spins you around, pushing you into the railing with the oppressive weight of his presence. Your protests are weak and hardly noticed, but you fall silent when you feel the rough pads of his fingertips on the back of your neck. He gathers your hair up and pins it back in place, not as neatly as you had done earlier, but sufficiently.
“What are you doing?” you ask numbly.
He turns you around, still standing far too close. You stare forward, at the point where his skin meets the collar of his tunic, your eyes glued to his pulse. You wish for teeth as sharp as his own, so you could tear out his throat. His fingers curl under your chin, nudging your face up, forcing you to look him in the eye again. “Just returning your pin,” he says, smirking. “Why do you seem so flustered, darling?”
“Why don’t you just kill me?” you ask. Your hand lifts up to knock his away, but you touch him instead, fingertips ghosting over his knuckles. You know he’s capable of crushing you with hardly a thought. You’ve spent the last ten years learning all you could about him, hunting him down again and again and again with a single-minded determination. He likely could have killed you a thousand times over, if you’d been just a little less careful, or he a little less eager to capture you instead. He should have killed you. You don’t know how to stop anymore, you don’t know how to let go of the terrible anger that burns you up every time you think of him. You want him to suffer, to lose everything, to hurt the way he hurt you. “I’ll never stop.”
There is a flicker of sadness in his eyes, and it pings against your heart uncomfortably. “I never could,” he says, all traces of his smirking, superior air gone. His thumb strokes along your jaw. “I begged the king for your life. Your father may have been a traitor, but you were an innocent girl, and I do not enjoy killing innocents.”
“I’m not innocent anymore.”
“No, I suppose not. But you’ve committed no crimes that I cannot forgive.”
“I don’t want your forgiveness.” Your voice is hardly more than a hoarse whisper. You want to shout, but his hand on your skin seems to leech all the power out of you.
“You have it regardless,” he whispers back, low and intimate as a lover. He touches his forehead to your mask, his eyes boring into yours, twin suns scorching everything in their path. “And someday I will earn yours.”
“Never,” you hiss. You return to your senses and push his hands away, shoving hard against his chest. “I hate you. I’ll always hate you.”
He tugs your mask off and tosses it to the side, tired of pretense. “If you hate me so much, why does your heart beat like that?”
“I’m afraid of you,” you snap.
He laughs harshly. “No you’re not. You’ve never been afraid of anything, my darling. It is one of the things I love best about you.” He leans in closer, the tip of his nose just brushing yours. You can feel his breath on your skin, the sharp smells of whiskey and mint setting your nerves on edge. For a moment, you think he’s going to kiss you, and you freeze, heart pounding, face turned towards him, waiting for the axe to fall.
But he withdraws instead, leaving you to face the consequence of unrealized want. His words prick at you like the point of a sword. Love. As if he would know the first thing about it. As if he knew you.
But he does know you, you realize with a start. He made you. His actions had set you on your path, and his choice not to kill you, each time that he should have, had created the determined, single-minded, furious woman that you had become. The carefree girl who you had been was long gone, dead the first time the wolf’s jaws closed around your throat. It burns you to think that he’d shown you mercy all along, that you had escaped capture or death by his leave, rather than by your own cunning and skill.
His eyes remain on your face, reading your thoughts like you’re a book laying open, waiting for him to happen by and discover all your secrets. “You have become worthy of me,” he continues ardently, pressing your hand to his chest again, anchoring it with both of his own. “I would have kept you like a bird in a cage if I’d taken you then. A pretty thing to amuse me and adorn my halls. But you are no trophy, my love. You will not survive in captivity. Even now, with the king’s sword hanging over your head, I will not force you to stay.”
“Is this some sort of trick?”
“I used to wonder the same thing. A cruel trick of fate, that my mate would hate me so fiercely.”
“You killed my father,” you hiss at him. You yank your hand away, desperately stoking the anger that has kept him at bay all these years. Each time he calls you mate and darling and love your resolve quakes, and you have no sword in your hand to make him regret it, like you usually would.
“He was a traitor. I had orders.”
“And what comfort will that be when your orders are to kill me?” you ask, sneering up at him. “What will you do when your orders are explicit and undeniable, and you are to kill me on sight?”
“I’ll never see you again.”
You aren’t sure what you expected, exactly, but it always trips you up when he speaks plainly. “What’s that supposed to mean?” you snap.
“What do you think it means?” He hurls the words back at you, his anger lighting from your own. “It means I would pluck my own eyes out before I’d kill you. If the king ordered me to hunt you down I’d stay one step behind you until we reached the very ends of the earth. If he came outside this very moment and told me to snap your neck—” He shudders, shaking his head like a dog shakes off the rain, and when he looks back at you the anger is gone, hidden away again behind his steely resolve. “Loyalty only goes so far. He knows not to make an order I cannot follow. If he truly wants you dead, he’ll ask another.” He glances over his shoulder, keen yellow eyes fixing on a point somewhere inside. “I hope it does not come to even that.”
“But why?”
He lets go of your shoulders and turns around, stalks a few feet away, and turns again, pushing both of his hands through his hair in frustration. Because I love you!” he snarls. “You had me the first day you tried to run me through. Oh I wanted you from the first moment I laid eyes on you, beautiful thing that you are, but it was the first moment that you tried to cut my heart out that I knew there could be no other. You have no idea what it’s like, to love such a stubborn, foolish, bitch of a woman? Do you understand what it will do to me, when you leave? But I have never been able to keep you by force.”
“But you let me go,” you say numbly. “You said—”
“Let you go?” He laughs, striding back towards you. “Oh my love, you misunderstand. Just because I couldn’t kill you does not mean I didn’t try to keep you. But you have slipped every chain I’ve placed upon you. I’ve never pulled my punches. I would not disrespect you so.”
“You called it a game—”
He inclines his head towards you. “I did. Perhaps I should not have. But it was easier to think of it as a game. A test of my own worthiness. I admit, I have always looked forward to your attempts on my life. It’s good, I think, for a man to be beaten once in a while, to keep him sharp. Otherwise he forgets to be vigilant.” He sighs, touching the edge of an old, silvery scar on your shoulder, brushing a loose strand of your hair out of the way. “Besides. We’ve both made our marks upon the other.”
“I’ve gotten you more times than you have me,” you say, lifting your chin imperiously. “Two or three times I really thought I’d finished you off.”
“Are you so certain of that?”
You think about it. “Yes.”
“Care to make a wager, dearest? If you’ve left more marks on me than I on you, you may ask anything of me.”
You draw in a steady breath. “And if I lose?”
He grins. “Not so confident now, are you? I only want what is freely given, so you needn’t worry. You can name your own penalty.”
“How magnanimous.”
“I can be,” he says. “Now, shall we inspect each other here, or would you prefer somewhere more private?”
The thought of being alone with the wolf makes you shiver, but it’s not revulsion that you feel, it’s something far worse. The dark, cold balcony seems a world away from the golden ballroom with all it’s legions of beautiful, elegant guests, but it’s only panes of glass that separates you from them, hazy from condensation, opaque enough that you doubt anyone can see through them. It makes no material difference, in the end, but it’s winter, and the cold seeps through your dress easily, your skin only warm where he touches you. “Ah, yes,” you say nervously. “Perhaps somewhere more private.”
“And warmer,” he adds. “As stunning as you look, I do not believe you are dressed for the weather.”
As if on cue, a snowflake descends from the dark sky. You reach out your hand, catching it against your palm. A moment later, the sky is thick with snow, fat, fluffy flakes catching the light and turning the world white. You look back at him. He looks softer, somehow, with that little dusting of snow catching in his thick curls, melting flakes glittering like diamonds on his shoulders. For the first time, you’re struck by how young he looks. He was a man grown at your first meeting, and you had always thought of him as much older, but you know now that he couldn’t be ten years your senior. You suspect it’s much less than that.
It changes something in your perception of him. Softens him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks, stepping in close again. Although you’ve hardly moved an inch since you came out to the balcony, he’s full of restless energy, moving away and back again like he’s tethered to you by some invisible string. He tilts his head to the side, his keen predator eyes practically glowing in the soft light.
You were glad your face was already flushed from the cold. “I was just thinking. You look so…” You trail off, thinking of the best way to phrase it.
“Handsome?” he suggested. “Strong? Irresistible?” He wiggles his thick black eyebrows, grinning wickedly, making you laugh despite yourself.
“I was going to say young, actually,” you say. “I was wondering what sort of boy you were.”
He holds a hand out to you. “I’m sure there’s a portrait somewhere, if you’re curious. Now come along, pet, I don’t want you catching a cold out here. I do have a wager to win.”
You hesitate. All the ancient, bitter anger and sadness wars with something new in your chest. It’s been so long since you wanted anything more than vengeance. Ages since the last time you felt deep, aching want for someone’s hands on you, if you ever even had. The obsession between you, at least, was mutual, and you had traded the excitement of romance for the thrill of the hunt, the clash of your sword against the wolf’s. His taunting sounded better than flowery poetry to your ears, and you could not help but seek him out every time the loneliness of your new life became too much to bear. He had been your focus, your centre, your reason for existing for so long that you can no longer deny what this is.
Love is not always kind. Between the two of you, it’s become a desperate, wretched thing, living on scraps of attention and hungry looks traded in battle.
His fingers close around yours, and you realize that you’ve reached out and taken the offered hand. You look at him, and he’s smiling in a way you haven’t seen before, half-hitched up on one side, almost shy.
He twines his fingers through yours and leads you back through the ballroom, slipping around the edges of the crowd like the wolf he is. No one seems to pay either of you any mind, although you feel curiously bare without your mask, as visible as a hare in a field to the eyes of a hawk. But your hunter is holding your hand, his thumb stroking over yours soothingly, like he can sense your unease.
Despite that small reassurance, you’re grateful when you step into a nearly empty corridor. A few well-dressed servants carrying trays bustle between the ballroom and the kitchens at the far end, but your wolf leads you the other way, through a few hallways littered with decorative items and portraits of long-dead nobles with eyes that seemed to follow you. You had been there only a few days earlier, but it looks different now. Perhaps it’s that you aren’t on constant guard for the wolf. He’s already here, holding your hand, pretending that he’s not watching you, just as you pretend to look at the portraits and statues and expensive looking vases you pass by, stealing glances at him only when you think you can get away with it.
The silence between you is almost comfortable, both of you too caught up in your individual tumble of thoughts to put anything to words. It’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking. You wonder if he feels like he’s won already, but there’s none of his usual taunting or his infuriatingly handsome smirk. He looks serious, black brows lowered in a sort of pensiveness that you’ve never seen from him. Of course, you had only once gone so long in his company without attacking him physically, and you had been tied to a chair, at the time.
“Do you remember, a few years ago, the hunting lodge just above Lake Pym?” he asks.
You laugh. “I was just thinking about it. Why?”
He stops in front of a door and leans against the frame. “Do you think you’ll be able to go as long without trying to stab me this time around?”
“That depends on whether or not you tie me up again,” you quip back.
“Don’t say such things,” he warns you, opening the door and holding it open, letting go of your hand for the first time in ages. Your fingers feel cold without his touch. “You’ll give me ideas.”
“You’ve made far too many confessions tonight for me to believe that you didn’t already have ideas,” you tease. Funny how easily that comes, like you’re old friends and not enemies. A tidy little fire burns in the stone fireplace, with a cozy arrangement of rugs and furs laid out before it. A low table sits ready, carrying wine and glasses and a few plates of the sort of interesting finger-foods that they had been serving in the ballroom. Raising your eyebrows, you look back over your shoulder at him. He hadn’t spoken to anyone on the way in, which meant that it had been all prearranged.
He closes the door behind himself and leans against it, grinning sheepishly. “I live in hope.”
The room - his room- is neat, a big bed with four posts carved like small trees, green-velvet curtains tied back neatly, is the first sign that he might actually like colour. You imagined him always in sombre black and white, dark hair, white teeth, dressed like the reaper and often so employed. But perhaps he isn’t as stark as you’d always thought. His furniture is solid and well-made of warm-toned wood, and the bookshelves that flank the fireplace are stuffed with books, the odd space cleared out for knick-knacks and trophies. You had never considered that he might like to read. It isn’t something that has ever come up before.
The wolf sits down on the furs and nudges a black lump by the fire. The shape uncurls into the biggest, fattest, blackest cat you’ve ever seen and pads over to you, sniffing your skirts suspiciously.
“You have a cat?” you ask, because it seems unlike the picture you’ve built up of him over the years. Another thing you missed. You had been so focused on him as an enemy that you had hardly stopped to consider him as a man. You sit, and the cat drapes itself across your lap, purring already in anticipation of a good scratch.
“I don’t have a cat,” he corrects you loftily. “Smudge is the matriarch of a proud line of excellent mousers, and she is a valued member of the household. One cannot own a cat, I have learned. One co-habituates with cats.” He leans over and gives the cat a little scratch under the chin, his knuckles just barely brushing your knee as he withdraws. “She isn’t usually very friendly, but she must recognize a fellow assassin when she sees one.”
“I’m not much of an assassin, I’m afraid she’d be terribly disappointed in me. I’ve failed to kill my only target, and I have been at it for quite some time.” You give the cat a scratch behind the ears. “I’m sure her record is much more impressive.”
He frowns and looked at you in a funny way. “Have you never taken a life?”
“I’ve tried very hard to avoid it. You’re the only person I ever wanted dead, and I— I wanted to be better than you. I wanted my hands to stay clean, so I could beat you and still keep my sense of…” You look down at the purring black puddle of fur in your lap rather than at the wolf. “Oh I don’t know. Righteousness, I suppose.”
“So sweet that you wanted me to be your first,” he teases.
You know he means first kill, but you turn pink anyway, and there is no cold wind to blame for your rosy cheeks this time. There were many firsts that you had missed out on, in your bid for vengeance. “Perhaps I still do,” you snap, not thinking about the double meaning until after the words have left your mouth. You scramble to clarify. “My first kill— Not— Ugh.” He begins to laugh, and you cover your face with both hands, wishing the floor would open up beneath you and swallow you whole. “Stop laughing!” Your voice is muffled by your hands, but there is no way that his keen wolf’s ears don’t hear you perfectly. “That’s not what I meant!”
He snorts. “I know, pet. It’s a bit late for that, I should think.”
You peek at him between your fingers, and his eyebrows shoot up.
“Darling.” He leans over and gently takes hold of your wrists, prying your hands away. He is mercifully no longer laughing, but the look in his eyes only makes your face burn hotter. “Please don’t tell me that you’ve never taken a lover.”
“There was never a good time,” you manage to squeak out. It was half true. There had been offers, and moments when you’d been sorely tempted to share someone’s bed for the night, but the few fumbling kisses you’d shared with young men had failed to thrill you the way that crossing swords with the wolf did.
He sits back with a groan. “You’re always throwing wrenches into my plans.”
“How on earth could that have anything to do with your plans?” you ask hotly.
“Darling, don’t be so naive. My plans were obviously to seduce you into my bed so I could out-perform every man who had ever touched you, forcing you to admit to yourself that we belong together. But I suppose that would have been too easy.”
“Too easy!”
“I would never imply that you would be easily seduced, my love, only that I am fairly confident that you would have a harder time denying what we are if I were to employ my considerable athletic ability with the task of making you come undone.” He smiles ruefully. “But seduction isn’t fair if you’re a virgin. I’ll have to win your heart the old fashioned way.”
“The old fashioned way?” You stare at him, incredulous. “What, you’re going to court me?”
“I’m certainly going to try,” he says, turning toward the table to pour you a glass of wine. “It’s the long road, but you’ll find I’m usually more than willing to take the scenic route.”
“You’re insane,” you say weakly, accepting the offered glass. “You must be.”
“Must I be? Like you said, I’ve made far too many confessions tonight, you must know that I do not mean this as some passing fancy. I think it would be a waste to continue this bloody crusade of yours. For both of us. I confess my bias in the matter, as I rather enjoy living.” He shrugs, looking at you over the rim of his own glass. “Do you? Has your life been all you wished for, these past ten years? You’ve forgone comfort, education, friends, romance, children— Do you want none of those things?”
“Of course I do—”
“Then take them. Everything you want is yours if you stay.” He takes a sip of wine and winces, face screwing up like a child tasting something bitter. “Ugh, I hate wine.”
“I know. I was wondering if you were going to drink from that glass you’ve been waving around.”
“I just wanted to indicate that it wasn’t poisoned.” He sets the glass to the side, still grimacing. “Just in case you were wondering if I was still trying to trick you.”
“It had crossed my mind.”
“Perish the thought, my love.” He stretches out in front of the fire, propped up on one elbow. “I’ve laid down my arms. If you must end this once and for all to free yourself, so be it. But I do think my alternative is better.”
You set your wine to the side as well and reach back to pull the silver hair-stick from your curls. You consider it, for a moment, pressing the point into your fingertip, not quite hard enough to draw blood. He watches with an inscrutable expression, making no move to disarm you. The cat slips out of your lap and stretches, moving off into the shadows again, either unaware or uncaring of the danger to her house mate. Or perhaps she’s simply more aware than you that there is no longer any danger.
You reach out and place the make-shift weapon on the rug in front of him.
The crackle of the fire is the only sound for a long moment. The wolf was rarely rendered speechless— getting him to shut up was usually the more difficult task. But he simply looks at you, like you’ve performed a miracle in front of his very eyes.
You slide one of the plates of food off the table and set it on the floor between you, something to hopefully distract his attention a little. You pick up one of the little triangle pastries and take a bite, catching crumbs with your other hand. You eat two more, realizing that you haven’t eaten in hours, and wait for him to break the silence.
He sighs and rolls onto his back, tucking both hands under his head. Firelight dances over his skin, burnishing his features like well-polished bronze. Although you have known him a long time, you’ve never studied him like this, while his eyes are closed and his usual grin is smoothed out into a peaceful smile. He looks noble, like a hero from the epics you used to read as a girl, more like you remembered from the days before everything changed.
“You’re staring,” he says without cracking an eye.
“How would you know? You haven’t opened your eyes in ages.”
“And how would you know that, if you haven’t been staring?”
He has you there. “Alright, fine. I suppose I was. I was just thinking about… about before.”
He opens his eyes. “How long? We do have a rather storied history, don’t we, love? I myself have been thinking of Lake Pym.”
You smirk. “I bet you have. I had a feeling you were rather enjoying yourself.”
“I was. It would have been more fun if you were a more willing guest, or if I at least didn’t have to keep you tied to a chair the whole time.”
“You wouldn’t even let me feed myself,” you lament, though you can’t help the traitorous note of amusement in your voice. “It was terribly humiliating.”
“Revisionist drivel!” he snarls playfully. “I did untie you so you could feed yourself, and you tried to stab me. You forced my hand.”
You blink. “I suppose I did.”
He leans closer. “I suspected you just wanted me to take care of you. You were too proud to ask me for what you wanted, so you forced the situation. And snapped at my fingers the whole time like an absolute menace.” He holds up his right hand and displays a white mark around the first knuckle of his thumb. “That’s one, by the way.”
“I only bit you because you stuck your finger in my mouth,” you reminded him.
“Ah, I suppose I did get a bit carried away, didn’t I? There was just this moment when I touched your lip…” He reaches out as if he wants to repeat the remembered gesture, perhaps hoping for a better outcome, but he hesitates, dropping his hand. You almost wish he hadn’t. “Are you still too proud, my love?”
“Yes,” you whisper.
He senses your weakness. The way the answer drips with doubt like blood from a wound. “Will you let me kiss you?” He moves closer, anticipating your answer before it leaves your lips.
Your breath catches in your throat. “Yes.”
At long last, he closes the distance between you, hands cradling each side of your face. He just barely brushes his lips against yours, and holds you back when you try to chase him, his familiar wolfish smile lighting up his face. “Not so fast, my darling. You’ll have to ask nicely, if you want a proper kiss.” He unbuttons the cuff of his black shirt only a moment later, his eyes dropping away from yours for a moment, and then rolls up his sleeves. “Two and three, respectively,” he says, pointing out two more scars along his forearms. They were both from similar situations. Two times that you had disarmed him and made him bleed for it. You reach out and touch the silvery marks, feeling the smooth gap in his arm hair and the fully repaired muscle underneath the flawed skin. “You’re a better swordsman than I,” he says, reaching up to unlace the top of his tunic. “I might have had the edge of experience, at the beginning, but you quickly caught up to me, didn’t you? It was a good thing you were so scrupled about killing people other than me, or I’d have lost far too many good men to your blade.”
“You’re just trying to flatter me.”
“Is it working?” He pulls the tunic and shirt off in one go, baring his chest. There are a few scars there that you could not claim, and two that you can, although your eyes are drawn to one in particular. The ugly, uneven star right next to his heart, where you had run him through with the iron poker on the night of the wolf. “This one is my favourite,” he tells you, pressing one of your hands to the scar. “The first time you tried to kill me. Jon had to half-heal me himself, or I wouldn’t have made it to a proper healer in time. It’s partially why there’s such a scar. He’s always been terrible at the more subtle magics, but if you want something blown up, Jon’s your man.”
You laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Make sure you also note, in that treacherous little mind of yours, that he will not employ his considerable magical gift with the task of making me explode. He is still rather fond of me, even after all these years.”
“It is good, I think, to have a king that is so well-versed in the art of restraint,” you say mildly.
“Oh yes, I imagine it is.”
“So is it really just the five scars?” you ask. “That’s all?” Despite the truce the two of you had settled into, you felt strangely disappointed that your obsession with killing him over the last decade had resulted in only a handful of scars. It all felt like a waste. You try to console yourself with the knowledge that he heals more rapidly than most men. The scars you have left are despite that.
“There’s one more, on my thigh, but I imagine you probably don’t want me to take my pants off.”
You do want him to take his pants off. “Yes, that’s very thoughtful of you,” you say instead. “I suppose you’ve won, anyway. I have a lot more than six scars from you.” You had expected that his life as a warrior would have marked him more significantly. You’re covered in scars, faded and fresh alike, and there is no getting around the fact that you feel like you’ve stitched yourself up so often that you look as worn down as your oldest, ugliest shirt.
The disappointment in his eyes is gone so quickly that you aren’t entirely sure you hadn’t imagined it. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it, won’t I?”
“You’re just trying to get me out of my dress,” you say hotly.
“Obviously. You look very lovely in it, of course, but I have been hoping for the chance to peel it off of you.”
You shake your head. “I think you’ll be a bit disappointed.”
“Never. What would possibly deter me at this point, darling? If stabbing me through the heart didn’t erode my affections, what could?”
“Oh I don’t know,” you say thoughtfully. “I could have scales, or a tail—”
“I have a tail,” he reminds you. “And I’m quite positive that you’re human, so I’m not worried about scales. Or strange birth-marks or stretch-marks or scars, either, by the way.”
You take a deep breath and stand up, turning your back to him. “It would help if you could undo all these buttons for me,” you say, sweeping your hair in front of your shoulder. “There are so many of them.”
He jumps to his feet and scrambles to help. A few buttons plink to the floor, torn free in his haste. “I’ll have it fixed,” he says hastily. “And I’ll buy you new gowns. As many as you can stand.”
You glance over your shoulder, nervous laughter stilling on your tongue when you see the look in his eyes. You turn forward again, sliding your arms through the sleeves and shimmying the gown to he floor. He gives you a hand to steady yourself as you step free. “I— I don’t want— I won’t stay.”
He hums in response, gathering up the gown and laying it over the back of a chair.
“I won’t,” you repeat yourself, as if the words will sound convincing the second time. They don’t.
“I already told you, darling, I won’t make you stay. It’s up to you.”
He draws you back to your seats in front of the fire, and you offer him your arms. You’re riddled with fine scars, most of them faint, little nicks from his blade. His hands slide up to your shoulder and gently tug the capped sleeve of your chemise to the side, baring the imprint of his jaws. His thumb runs across the marks, his other hand landing on your knee.
“I wondered if I’d bitten you that night.” He moves closer, his tongue moving over his sharp canines as he sighs. His fingers trail down your arm as his touch drops away. “You never turned, so I wasn’t sure.”
“It doesn’t always take,” you say, using his shoulder to help you back up to your feet. “I think it depends on the moon. New moon, that night. If you were any other wolf you never would have shifted.”
“I suppose that makes sense.” He settles back on his heels, looking up at you. “I can’t say I’ve thought about why some bites take and some don’t. I’m not as observant as you, my love.”
Laughable, when his senses are many times greater than your own. It’s not his observations that are the problem, it’s the connecting cause and effect, thinking about consequence for more than a moment. He’s faced so few consequences in his life that it doesn’t come naturally to him. You, on the other hand, are a mess of consequence, action and reaction measured and weighed, failures poured over until you can see every mistake you’ve made, follow the tracks to how things could have been, if you’d done it all just a little differently.
You pull your skirt up so you can untie the ribbon that holds up your stocking, and he slides it down to your ankle. “This one’s only indirectly your fault,” you say, angling your leg so he can see the trail of pocked scars that wrap around your knee and up your thigh. “When I jumped down that ravine. Scraped myself up on the rocks.”
He tuts, hands reaching for these scars too. It’s just an excuse to touch you, certainly, but you make no move to stop him. You just hold your skirt up, giving him unfettered access to your skin. His amber eyes flick up to your face, and he leans forward, pressing his lips to your knee.
There’s no halting the soft “Oh” that falls from your lips, but he would have heard even the softest catch of breath. There’s no hiding from him, and it terrifies you, leaves you so unsteady.
His eyes flutter shut for a moment, his exhale warm against your skin. “You shouldn’t show me any more,” he tells you. “I find myself wanting to kiss every inch of skin you show me, and I worry that you won’t stop me if I try.”
You sink back to his level and pull your stocking back up, tying the ribbon around your thigh again. “Would that be so bad?”
He groans and lays back on the furs, hands neatly folded on his stomach. “I am trying to be a good man for you, darling. You deserve more than I can give in one night. I need at least a few weeks to make you fall hopelessly in love with me before I can do anything that would tempt me to take you to bed.”
You run your palm over his stomach, feeling the soft pelt of hair over his warm skin, letting your curiosity guide your fingertips. You feel the expansion and contraction of muscle as he breathes in and out, tucking one hand under his head so he can watch you more easily, his eyes barely open.
You have to admit, he is handsome, especially relaxed like this. Only a few short hours ago you would have found the idea of him kissing any part of you abhorrent, but now you find yourself similarly compelled. You take his hand and kiss his knuckles, the tips of his fingers, the palm of his hand.
“Come here, you little minx,” he growls, trying to pull you down on top of him. You pull back, and he lets go, still worried about pushing you when you’ve made so many overtures in such a short time.
You had expected him to hold on tightly, however, and overbalance, tipping over the other way with an inelegant little squeak. He laughs as he sits up, and you do too as he helps you back upright. He lays back again, and there’s no resistance when he takes you with him this time. He tucks you into his side, and you look down at him, chin propped on your hand.
“I rescind my earlier statement,” he says.
“Which one?”
“You don’t have to ask nicely for a kiss, darling. I worry that you’re too prideful to admit that you might like one, but if you can steal one whenever the mood strikes you, I might be lucky enough to receive a few impulsive ones that your good sense isn’t fast enough to stop.”
You huff. “Is this your way of asking for another?”
“It’s my way of asking for as many as you might want to give me,” he says. “There is, of course, a standing offer of anything you might like that is within my power to supply. I think it prudent to remind you.”
He’s a ridiculous kind of man. You’d always thought his tendency toward verbosity was just him grandstanding, but now you see it for what it really is. He wants to be understood by you so desperately that each sentence becomes overwrought, less clear for his efforts to imbue each word with meaning. Your own tendency toward blunt, inelegant language is an almost laughable counter. You say little, and hide everything you can, and he reads you plainly. He speaks like a poet, puts everything out in the open, and you misunderstand him on purpose.
Perhaps that’s why you didn’t see this for what it is a long time ago. If you were not so determined to make an enemy of him, perhaps you would have noticed the softness in his eyes, the way he looks at you as though you’re the sunrise and set, like you’re the moon and all the stars in the sky.
You kiss him, before he can open his mouth to speak again. There’s nothing lacklustre about the way your lips slide over his, the way your breath mingles, the way he makes little noises of satisfaction, unable to be quiet even with his tongue flicking over your top lip, encouraging you to open up for him. Angling your head to keep your noses from smushing together, you oblige, letting him lick into your mouth, his arms circling you, holding you tight against his body.
You can't put a name to the feeling that sparks between you, but it's the thing that's been missing from every kiss you've had before.
The heat, the need of it all burns away all that remains of your carefully maintained resolve. He loves you, fool that he is, and you're not sure you could survive without him now. Is that what love is? To mourn even the thought of their absence from you, to cling tightly and never let go? To sink into each other until you're one, two halves of the same whole?
He kisses you until you're breathless, lips swollen from the tug of his sharp teeth, jaw curiously sore from moving in a new way. You pull back first, braced on one arm as you look down on him. He's beautiful, more than human, wild-eyed and fey, but solid and warm beneath you in a way only a man could be. His imperfections make him dearer to you, not just the marks you've drawn on his skin, but the gap between his two front teeth, the way one brow arches a little more than the other, giving him that permanently skeptical look that had always made you feel he was making fun of you. The crooked smile, the notch in one ear.
You know his face more intimately than your own, but you still want to look at him, especially through this new lens.
“I don’t think I want to wait,” you admit. You’ve waited long enough, haven’t you?
“Are you certain?” he asks.
“I don’t see what difference it makes, really.”
“It makes a great deal of difference. I’ve taken enough from you, I don’t want you to regret it.” He gazes up at you, tracing along your jaw with careful touch.
Your heart races rabbit-quick in your chest, and although you're the one looking down at him, you feel pinned in place by the wolf's eyes alone. "Then make sure I don't," you say softly. "I can even promise not to make another attempt on your life until the morning."
"Darling…"
"Please. I don't know how I'll feel tomorrow, but tonight I think I want your hands on me."
"You think?" His fingers catch around the back of your neck, as though he's waiting for some cue before he pulls you back into his arms.
“I know.”
He pulls you down for another kiss, rolling the two of you so his big body stretches over yours, your underskirts bunching up as he slots his thick thigh between yours, pressing against your core. He holds most of his weight off of you, but you’re still trapped beneath him. For the first time in a long while, there is no panic, no desire to fight furiously for freedom. You feel quite content where you are, especially when his thigh flexes, rubbing against you firmly, sending a shower of sparks through your belly. You gasp against his mouth, your hands skimming down his sides gingerly. When he does it again, you dig your fingers into the muscle of his back reflexively, murmuring apologies as his lips leave yours and slide down your bared throat.
“Don’t,” he growls against your pulse, dragging his tongue roughly over your skin. “Don’t apologize. You won’t hurt me.”
His teeth graze the slope of your shoulder, finding the older scar from his lupine jaws. You let out a shuddering gasp when he bites down lightly, not even hard enough to leave a mark. There’s a part of you that wants him to leave a mark, a bruise if not something more permanent, but you’re not sure you’ll be able to convince him out of gentleness tonight.
He kisses down your chest, grinning up at you when he reaches the top edge of your corset. “You are still wearing far too much clothing, my love. Come here.” He stands in a smooth movement, and you’re untethered without the weight of his body against yours, but only for a moment. He helps you to your feet and leads you to the bed, taking a seat on the edge and pulling you between his knees, turning you so he can loosen the laces of your corset.
You shed the garment as soon as you’re able, as well as the extra petticoats. Your chemise is thin, loose material, obscuring little, but you leave it on while you sit beside the wolf, toeing your heeled slippers off and nudging them under the bed and out of the way. Hands folded, you wait, heart beating like a drum. You feel so strange, almost outside your own body, watching him unlace his boots and tug them off impatiently.
He stands to strip off his trousers, and you quickly avert your gaze, looking down at your hands rather than see him in his fully undressed state. You have a rough idea of what you’d find, you’ve been in the public baths more than a few times, and even doing your best to be respectful, it’s hard not to see something. But seeing something in a setting where everyone is minding their own business is a lot different than seeing something up close, especially when you might be expected to do more than just look.
“We don’t have to do this, love,” he says, kneeling in front of you, clasping his hands around yours. Your eyes fly back up, landing on his face. His chuckle makes your cheeks burn. “If you’re nervous—”
“No,” you say quickly. “I want to. I’m just— I hate not knowing what I’m supposed to do.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that darling. It’s your first time, I should think the responsibility rests on my shoulders. All you have to do is tell me when you like something and when you don’t.” He leans forward, forcing your thighs apart to accommodate the bulk of him, and kisses you, all sweetness. “And if you want to stop, we stop. Anything more than that can wait at least until the second or third time.”
It sounds so simple, put like that.
“Besides,” he adds, giving you a wicked grin as his hands move to your hips, the movement rucking your chemise up further on your thighs. “You’ve always been a quick study.”
Well, he’s right about that. His lips find your throat again, pressing languid kisses down your chest until he reaches the edge of your chemise. His eyes flick upwards, seeking permission before he goes further. You untie the simple knot with one hand, the other petting through his soft curls.
He noses aside the thin fabric to find your nipple, latching on with a contented hum. The act sends tremors down into your core, intensifying as his tongue flicks across. You pull in a shuddering breath, and your exhale becomes a whimper when his teeth nip at you, his other hand coming up to grope at your other breast, his touch warm and appreciative before his grip slides down to your hips and he tugs you to the edge of the mattress.
He pulls away from your breast and kisses you properly again. “Do you want more?” he asks. “Can I taste your pretty cunt, darling?”
The desire in his words sends a shiver down your spine. You nod, and he sits back on his heels and kisses all the way up your thigh, although he pauses and pulls back to your other knee, kissing his way up again, this time sinking his teeth into your inner thigh, not hard enough to really hurt, just enough to make you jolt, your pearl begging for any kind of friction. When he passes over your cunt to mouth at your other thigh, you whine, shifting even closer to the edge of the bed. You can feel your cunt dripping, the air strangely cool on your wet skin.
A pair of mischievous eyes glance up at you. He’s doing this on purpose. He started all of this, and now he has the gall to tease you. Glaring in response, you grip him by the hair and pull him in, determined to put his clever mouth to better use than smirking and biting you when you need him elsewhere.
To his credit, he makes no complaint and does what he’s directed, slipping his tongue between your folds, lapping up the slick arousal. His big hands push your thighs up so he can get a better angle, and he kisses your cunt with as much passion as he did your lips, if not more.
The feeling is electric. His mouth scorches, sets you alight in ways you’d never imagined, the occasional scrape of his too sharp teeth against you thrilling. It’s too good, has you fighting his grip even as your fingers are still tightly wound into his hair, holding him close. It’s too much, but if he stopped it would be so much worse.
If he minds your writhing, he doesn’t show it. You can’t help the sounds he pulls from you, but he’s louder, as though this is more for himself than for you. He groans when your hips buck against his mouth, pants when he lifts himself away enough to breathe, his amber eyes gleaming, fixed on your face, except the few times they flutter closed, just for a moment, savouring your taste.
His nose nudges your pearl as his tongue presses inside you. You grip him so tightly to your core, your hips shaking so hard that you’re surprised you don’t break his nose. The hot, molten cataclysm that’s been pooling somewhere behind your belly button overtakes you, sweeping you away, limbs seized, unable to out-swim the current. You can’t see past the stars in your eyes even after your legs relax and you force your hand to unclasp his hair, finger by finger, so you can lay back on the mattress, breathing hard.
He crawls up onto the bed and pulls you toward the centre, a self-satisfied grin on his face. His cock presses into your thigh, insistent for attention, the tip peeking out and leaking against your thigh. He ruts against you when he kisses you again, his close-cropped beard soaked with your arousal. You can taste yourself on his tongue, tangy and bitter-sweet.
You lay twined together, forehead pressed against his as you both catch your breath. One hand gently brushes up and down your spine, the other pulling your leg up over his hip. “How was that?” he asked.
There may not be words for what you feel. Maybe there are, but they’re beyond you right now, washed away with all the resistance in your body. You settle on nice, which makes him laugh.
“Only nice, hm? I suppose I’ll have to work harder.”
“Better than nice,” you assure him. “I— I liked it a lot.” It’s still insufficient, so you kiss him again, hoping he won’t ask any more questions.
He does, after a long moment. “Are you ready for more?”
“There’s more?” you ask. “Or— for you? Do you want me to—”
“No, there’s no need for you to do a thing, love. The next part is for both of us.” He rolls onto his back, taking you with him effortlessly. He reaches past you with one hand while he kisses you sweetly, tongue pushing into your mouth at the same moment you feel his cock slot against your entrance. He pushes in gently, halting when he meets resistance, fucking shallowly into you until you relax enough to let him bury himself deeper into your body.
You tuck your face down against his chest, focusing on the feeling of his cock stretching your cunt, so deep inside you that his presses against your womb. He tries to keep himself still, but his hips buck slightly, tearing a groan from your chest. There’s no stopping the way your cunt squeezes down on him in response, nor the way your hips grind against him. He makes a choked sound, breathing out shakily when you push yourself up to look at him.
The angle change nearly has you collapsing back down, but he takes pity on you and flips you both so he can take the lead. “Hello, pretty thing,” he says, giving you another kiss and a firm grind into you before he starts moving his hips, slowly working himself in and out of your cunt, lips settling against your ear so he could tell you how well you’re taking him, how good you feel around his cock.
Any ability to respond is quickly fucked out of you, your breath punched out with every deep thrust, your world shrinking down to a handful of sensations: his lips on your ear, the weight of his body and the delicious drag of his cock against your inner walls.
He works his hand between you to rub at your pearl, the heel of his hand pressing down on your lower belly. The thought that he can feel himself inside you with your hand is one of the last fully formed ones that cross your mind, because he growls and picks up the pace, unrelenting until you’re shaking and babbling and clinging so tightly to him that you’re certain you’ll leave permanent marks.
He drags you up another precipice and throws you over, his forehead pressed to yours, watching your face as you shake and cry out. He ruts into you, and you can feel him fill your cunt, his cock twitching, rooted firmly inside you. He doesn’t pull away, just throws himself onto his back, holding you tight to his chest.
His heart beats like a drum under your ear, slowing gradually as he catches his breath. His cock slips free, and you stiffen slightly as his spend leaks from your swollen cunt, spilling onto his belly. He pops his head up as soon as you tense, and huffs out a laugh, kissing the tip of your nose.
“Sex can be a bit messy. Come on, love. Let’s get cleaned up.”
Your legs wobble when you try to stand, but he happily slides a supportive arm around your waist, leading you into the adjoining tap room. Once you’re both cleaned up, he coaxes you out of your sweat-soaked chemise and wraps you in one of his shirts and you both sit back down in front of the fire.
You pick up your abandoned wine glass, holding it with both hands as you eye the wolf. He looks content, satiated, like he’s had his fill of you. There’s a little tremor of unease that settles in your belly. Now that the chase is over, will he still want you? Do you still want him to want you? At the beginning of the evening you had been determined to kill him, and now…
He looks back at you through half-closed eyes, and unfurls his arm. “You’re too far away,” he tells you, voice a warm purr. “And you’re thinking too much.”
It’s still unfair, how easily he reads you. An open book, pages left open for him to flip through at his leisure. Despite your trepidation, you walk forward on your knees and sit against him, knees tucked under his arm. His fingertips trail up your thigh, over your knee, down your calf, and back, over and over, as he waits for you to speak.
“What happens now?” you ask at last. “Do we go our separate ways?”
Hurt flashes across his face before he can hide it behind a neutral mask. “If that’s what you want.” His fingers continue retreading their path while silence builds between the two of you. At last, he pulls in a fortifying breath. “Is that what you want?”
There’s raw desire in his eyes, not tempered in the least by your coupling. He offers you everything so easily that it feels like it must be a trick, but he wouldn’t work so hard to hide his feelings if he didn’t care for you, if this were a trap. If you stay, it has to be your choice, not made because of his own want for you to remain by his side.
The anger that kept you warm in all your years out in the cold is gone. Killing him won’t bring your family back from the grave, it would just place another soul in one. The desire for revenge truly burned out a long while ago, and you couldn’t admit that only embers remained. It was why you were so desperate to end it tonight, to close the chapter and look forward to something new.
It’s so like your wolf to ruin your plans. This time, you’re not sure you mind.
“I’d like to stay,” you say at last.
He’s on you so fast that you drop your wine glass, spilling red over the furs. It’s hard to stop laughing enough to kiss him back, trying to point out the mess to him. He growls something about not giving a damn as he gives up trying to kiss you through your smile, and presses his lips to your pulse instead.
In the end, with all the history between the two of you, what’s one more mess?
It's been almost five years since I started writing this short story, and I had fully expected not to finish it. I was caught up in the story in the peripherals, the potential history between Cat and Valter. This scene no longer fits in the overall narrative, even if there are still threads of it that remain unchanged, so I feel like it's safe to share. I'm working on the third draft of The Night of the Wolf, sorting out the mess of my second draft (so many changes it might as well be a second first draft) and I think there's a very real possibility that I can actually finish it, and that's in no small way thanks to all of you. I have been writing for a long time, but it's only been in the past year that I've shared my work with anyone, and it's been a really lovely experience. Thank you for reading my silly fanfictions, thank you for reading this, and I hope to share more bits of original work going forward, if there's any interest. (But don't worry, I'm still gonna finish the fanfictions. I show no signs of stopping yet)
C. T. Cutter
(Also, special thanks to my best human person @dragonnarrative-writes for making me finish this and being so so kind to me about my work and encouraging me always. I am bad at accepting compliments but I appreciate them all the same)
Image Credits: 1 - 2 ~ Dividers by @/cafekitsune
#Cave Writing#original works#enemies to lovers but in a you can't hate someone without also loving them way#in a “I keep my nemesis' picture in a locket around my neck” way#Night of the Wolf#OC: Cat#OC: Valter#This is the sort of work that can happen when you dare to ask the question “What if Rahul Kohli was a hot werewolf?”#This is pretty much my one year writing and posting fanfiction-aversary! How time flies#I've written more this year than the previous 4 combined and it's been so much fun#And I've learned a lot#especially about putting myself out there#Writing other works definitely stretches a different muscle but fanfiction helps with dialogue and characters and writing sex lmao#I have sooooo many stories that stop right before a sex scene because I used to be so bad at writing it#But now? I'm all over it#Anyway these tags are not helpful to anyone I am just dithering to delay posting at this point#It's written in second POV because I was in the monster romance circles before the COD circles and it's popular there too#but I was never brave enough to post anything anyway lmao#Thanks for helping me be brave!#monster romance#but only kind of because when werewolves aren't actively shifted they're just some guy#He spends a lot more time being wolfy in the actual novel
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I came here for the silly haha doodles, but I've stayed for the absolutely blazing commentary in the tags. Your analysis of this story is so so so good! Thanks for all the work and thought you put into this!
I am just a silly little comics blog. I am not hiding anything in the tags, no way. Never.
#ask#digital art#I truly am grateful for the amount of people that not only read my journal-essay-thoughts on my comics#but also take the time to respond and/or write their own thoughts on the themes and scenes.#I really love taking apart stories and seeing how the threads weave together. Like flipping over an embroidered tapestry!#Some people thinks it ruins the illusion of what a story is - to me it *elevates* the experience to see the seams.#It's like knowing how they did the practical effects and stunts in a movie. It give you a deeper appreciation for the work that went into i#Thank you for acknowledging the work I put into every part of this project!#When I started drawing I....well...wasn't really the strongest with my visuals.#Humorously recapping scenes played off of my strengths (silly billying) and also just made the project *fun*.#But right from the start I also wanted to take my time and marinate on the themes and journal my thoughts.#I never really expected people to read them!#What might seem like a quick comic takes me several hours and I often spend a good bit of time with my tag essays too.#I owe so much to everyone who's dropped by to cheer me on and make this blog into part of the community.#to those who just lurk or drop by once in a blue moon - I thank you as well for coming along for the journey.#So even though it adds extra time; these little essays are a treat for you B*)
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Batfam AU where after Jason's adoption and him becoming Robin, he and Dick just don't get along At All. They basically can't even be in the same room.
Tim notices this because of his stalking and just can't let it go. Nightwing and Robin are his heroes, his idols, they can't fight! Reality doesn't fit with his imagined idealistic version of the Waynes who are a perfect happy family.
So naturally Tim decides it is his duty to do something about it. So he creates a series of elaborate plans to force Dick and Jason to interact and work together in hopes it will fix their brotherly relationship.
This does eventually work but Tim accidentally becomes Gotham's newest rogue in the process. Whoops.
#batfam#batman#dick grayson#jason todd#tim drake#nightwing#robin jason todd#dc comics#dc#tim joins the batfam early#because once they figure out the truth of this new “villain” Bruce just immediately adopts him#clearly he needs more adult supervision and guidance to use his brains for good is this is how he spends his free time#also bruce is just so thankful that tim managed to get his kids to act like brothers a feat he couldn't do#even in aus tim is saving this family from themselves#Tim is an accidental villain#does this fic exist yet? i have seen villain Tim and even a bit of accidental villain tim but nothing like this#if you know a similar fic please send me the link#my post
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feeling very normal about matthew and joe tonight :,)
i'll give you one fucking guess who he's looking at
the 2360 bond is so important to me... kniesy going up to joey when he first got called up to the team asking for Guidance and joey is like 'actually i just got here too :)' so they end up having to figure out what it means to be rookies in the nhl together. becoming such good friends they end up attached at the hip and you rarely see one without the other. sharing the same (ridiculous) nickname. coming up with silly little pregame rituals because i guess you need to spend time together before a game to feel settled. complimenting each other constantly. always standing up for one another. someone knocks into joey? kniesy is going to kill them and then loving help him to his feet. someone hurts kniesy? well okay, now no one is allowed to score. have fun getting shutout. planning to take cooking classes together. going to a bee exhibit because why not. figuring out what your future is going to look like together. being a solid support for the other to lean on. the most tender heartwrenching post game goalie hugs of all time. all very mundane things that we should all feel very normal about!
#the bee exhibit thing still kills me. i'm 90% sure that was kniesy being a supportive bf and taking an active interest in joey's hobbies.#thank you for this ask anon i too am feeling very normal about them#it's the way they balance each other out and seem to genuinely delight in spending time together that gets me...#(and of course the vaguely homoerotic post game goalie hugs that they REFUSE to show us half the time...)#2360#the asked and the answered
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have a nice day!!
((i'm sending congratulations in advance, because when I have your birthday, I will sleep soundly))
AWEAWEAWE ALL OF MY LIL GOOBERSSSSSSS ;;;;;
#AWEAWE SO CUUUUUTE#all my lil smellis ;;;;;;#THIS IS REALLY CUTE MY GUY THANK YOU FOR THIS!!#You guys are so cool I love you all;;#So many ebic gamers who have told me happy birbday;;;;;;;;;;;#SO HAPPY;;;;;;;;;;#Oh man if Robbie existed and he knew it was my birthday he'd swing me around like a rag doll and break my back--#I love ya Robbie but I ain't as resilient and sturdy as you are JDDHDBBD#Mari would spend more than half of the time staring at the round foil balloons (or the partially inflated rubber ones)#She gets a reward for participation 💔🥄🥄#Also stone and Harvey just talk about their divorce at my party LMAAOAAOOOO
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