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always-a-king-or-queen · 4 months ago

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The ache will go away, eventually.

That was what the Professor told them, the day they got back. When they tumbled from the wardrobe in a heap of tangled limbs, and found that the world had been torn from under their feet with all the kindness of a serpent.

They picked themselves off of the floorboards with smiles plastered on child faces, and sat with the Professor in his study drinking cup after cup of tea.

But the smiles were fake. The tea was like ash on their tongues. And when they went to bed that night, none of them could sleep in beds that were too foreign, in bodies that had not been their own for years. Instead they grouped into one room and sat on the floor and whispered, late into the night.

When morning came, Mrs. Macready discovered the four of them asleep in Peter and Edmund’s bedroom, tangled in a heap of pillows and blankets with their arms looped across one another. They woke a few moments after her entry and seemed confused, lost even, staring around the room with pale faces, eyes raking over each framed painting on the wall and across every bit of furniture as if it was foreign to them. “Come to breakfast,” Mrs. Macready said as she turned to go, but inside she wondered.

For the children’s faces had held the same sadness that she saw sometimes in the Professor’s. A yearning, a shock, a numbness, as if their very hearts had been ripped from their chests.

At breakfast Lucy sat huddled between her brothers, wrapped in a shawl that was much too big for her as she warmed her hands around a mug of hot chocolate. Edmund fidgeted in his seat and kept reaching up to his hair as if to feel for something that was no longer there. Susan pushed her food idly around on her plate with her fork and hummed a strange melody under her breath. And Peter folded his hands beneath his chin and stared at the wall with eyes that seemed much too old for his face.

It chilled Mrs. Macready to see their silence, their strangeness, when only yesterday they had been running all over the house, pounding through the halls, shouting and laughing in the bedrooms. It was as if something, something terrible and mysterious and lengthy, had occurred yesterday, but surely that could not be.

She remarked upon it to the Professor, but he only smiled sadly at her and shook his head. “They’ll be all right,” he said, but she wasn’t so sure.

They seemed so lost.

Lucy disappeared into one of the rooms later that day, a room that Mrs. Macready knew was bare save for an old wardrobe of the professor’s. She couldn’t imagine what the child would want to go in there for, but children were strange and perhaps she was just playing some game. When Lucy came out again a few minutes later, sobbing and stumbling back down the hall with her hair askew, Mrs. Macready tried to console her, but Lucy found no comfort in her arms. “It wasn’t there,” she kept saying, inconsolable, and wouldn’t stop crying until her siblings came and gathered her in their arms and said in soothing voices, “Perhaps we’ll go back someday, Lu.”

Go back where, Mrs. Macready wondered? She stepped into the room Lucy had been in later on in the evening and looked around, but there was nothing but dust and an empty space where coats used to hang in the wardrobe. The children must have taken them recently and forgotten to return them, not that it really mattered. They were so old and musty and the Professor had probably forgotten them long ago. But what could have made the child cry so? Try as she might, Mrs. Macready could find no answer, and she left the room dissatisfied and covered in dust.

Lucy and Edmund and Peter and Susan took tea in the Professor’s room again that night, and the next, and the next, and the next. They slept in Peter and Edmund’s room, then Susan and Lucy’s, then Peter and Edmund’s again and so on, swapping every night till Mrs. Macready wondered how they could possibly get any sleep. The floor couldn’t be comfortable, but it was where she found them, morning after morning.

Each morning they looked sadder than before, and breakfast was silent. Each afternoon Lucy went into the room with the wardrobe, carrying a little lion figurine Edmund had carved her, and came out crying a little while later. And then one day she didn’t, and went wandering in the woods and fields around the Professor’s house instead. She came back with grassy fingers and a scratch on one cheek and a crown of flowers on her head, but she seemed content. Happy, even. Mrs. Macready heard her singing to herself in a language she’d never heard before as Lucy skipped past her in the hall, leaving flower petals on the floor in her wake. Mrs. Macready couldn’t bring herself to tell the child to pick them up, and instead just left them where they were.

More days and nights went by. One day it was Peter who went into the room with the wardrobe, bringing with him an old cloak of the Professor’s, and he was gone for quite a while. Thirty or forty minutes, Mrs. Macready would guess. When he came out, his shoulders were straighter and his chin lifted higher, but tears were dried upon his cheeks and his eyes were frightening. Noble and fierce, like the eyes of a king. The cloak still hung about his shoulders and made him seem almost like an adult.

Peter never went into the wardrobe room again, but Susan did, a few weeks later. She took a dried flower crown inside with her and sat in there at least an hour, and when she came out her hair was so elaborately braided that Mrs. Macready wondered where on earth she had learned it. The flower crown was perched atop her head as she went back down the hall, and she walked so gracefully that she seemed to be floating on the air itself. In spite of her red eyes, she smiled, and seemed content to wander the mansion afterwards, reading or sketching or making delicate jewelry out of little pebbles and dried flowers Lucy brought her from the woods.

More weeks went by. The children still took tea in the Professor’s study on occasion, but not as often as before. Lucy now went on her daily walks outdoors, and sometimes Peter or Susan, or both of them at once, accompanied her. Edmund stayed upstairs for the most part, reading or writing, keeping quiet and looking paler and sadder by the day.

Finally he, too, went into the wardrobe room.

He stayed for hours, hours upon hours. He took nothing in save for a wooden sword he had carved from a stick Lucy brought him from outside, and he didn’t come out again. The shadows lengthened across the hall and the sun sank lower in the sky and finally Mrs. Macready made herself speak quietly to Peter as the boy came out of the Professor’s study. “Your brother has been gone for hours,” she told him crisply, but she was privately alarmed, because Peter’s face shifted into panic and he disappeared upstairs without a word.

Mrs. Macready followed him silently after around thirty minutes and pressed an ear to the door of the wardrobe room. Voices drifted from beyond. Edmund’s and Peter’s, yes, but she could also hear the soft tones of Lucy and Susan.

“Why did he send us back?” Edmund was saying. It sounded as if he had been crying.

Mrs. Macready couldn’t catch the answer, but when the siblings trickled out of the room an hour later, Edmund’s wooden sword was missing, and the flower crown Susan had been wearing lately was gone, and Peter no longer had his old cloak, and Lucy wasn’t carrying her lion figurine, and the four of them had clasped hands and sad, but smiling, faces.

Mrs. Macready slipped into the room once they were gone and opened the wardrobe, and there at the bottom were the sword and the crown and the cloak and the lion. An offering of sorts, almost, or perhaps just items left there for future use, for whenever they next went into the wardrobe room.

But they never did, and one day they were gone for good, off home, and the mansion was silent again. And it had been a long time since that morning that Mrs. Macready had found them all piled together in one bedroom, but ever since then they hadn’t quite been children, and she wanted to know why.

She climbed the steps again to the floor of the house where the old wardrobe was, and then went into the room and crossed the floor to the opposite wall.

When she pulled the wardrobe door open, the four items the Pevensie children had left inside of it were missing.

And just for a moment, it seemed to her that a cool gust of air brushed her face, coming from the darkness beyond where the missing coats used to hang.

#oh also I want to clarify just in case - the 'offerings' left by the pevensies aren't meant to be anything weird #they're just little mementos that were special to them that they left there in case the wardrobe ever opened again #so whoever was on the other side could find them and maybe it would be somebody they'd known and loved during their time in narnia #i do have someone in mind who found the items but I'll leave whoever it is up to you :)#i just thought it would be nice for them to have a way of saying goodbye to the narnia they knew/creatures they loved during the golden age #sort of a way to let go of it and also leave something behind as a memory #narnia #tcon #the chronicles of narnia #lucy pevensie #peter pevensie #susan pevensie #edmund pevensie #mrs macready #digory kirke #the lion the witch and the wardrobe #cs lewis #ramblings from the void

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guiltreservoir · 8 months ago

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in spite of the way that it is ✧ read on ao3

⫘⫘⫘

when buck first brings it up, it's to everyone in the 118, or at least anyone who's willing to lend an ear. he saunters into the kitchen with a smile bright enough to account for the unseasonably grey weather outside, megawatt-beam elation radiating off of his body and bouncing into every corner of the station. the minute he starts blabbing about how tommy came to his place late last night, at least two ears are swiftly discounted — chim walks away with his hands firmly clapped over the sides of his head, saying, "la la la, don't want to hear it," much like a petulant kindergartener.

bobby finds himself suddenly very busy with noisily reorganizing the utensil drawer, but doesn't quite leave the area; hen immediately raises her brows and takes a pointed sip of her orange juice, knowing buck will continue unprompted. ravi, just coming up the stairs himself, has no idea what he's walking into, the poor guy.

and eddie — eddie knows better than to involve himself in this. he could easily extract himself now, fake a phone call with christopher's school, pretend like there's something imperative that he left in the locker room. instead, he remains parked at the table, piping mug of black coffee insisting that he needs mo' joe as it sits untouched in front of him. his own uncertain reflection stares back at him from the coffee's dark surface.

"i think i finally found someone who can match me," buck's declaring, cheeky grin still lighting up his face like a marquee sign. eddie can practically see the colorful bulbs flashing above his head, a giant neon arrow and the brazen announcement: this lucky guy got his brains fucked out last night!!

"bless that man," hen snorts, shaking her head a bit. ravi's brows knit together in confusion, and when he asks for details on what buck's referring to in the first place, hen's head shaking deepens. "ignorance is bliss, ravi, you probably don't want to know."

"buck got laid last night," falls out of eddie's mouth without him meaning to let it, and fuck, he hopes it sounded more casual than it felt, bubbling up his esophagus like bitter-hot bile.

ravi's, "...and?" is reassuring. eddie feigns a laugh, relieved his cover isn't blown. he glimpses at buck, whose gigantic smile hasn't faltered for even a millisecond, and ignores the mass of earthworms writhing beneath the tin lid of his breastbone.

"and it was seriously awesome!" buck pumps his fist into the air, triumphant and ridiculous, sunbeam personified, and god. buck may be the one getting railed into his mattress by his new boyfriend, but eddie is the one who's truly fucked.

⫘⫘⫘

when buck has eddie over for drinks at his place the next night and asks him if he wants to hear more about it, he convinces himself it's a fine idea. how much can really go wrong, anyway? it's just the man who cradles eddie's whole cowardly lion heart in his unknowing palms, telling him about the way that eddie's good, kind, unbearably hot friend fucked him so tenderly he cried.

it's fine. everything is fine.

buck's never been one to spare details, especially not when eddie allows him all of the space and time in the world to lay out how he got laid. the nearly-gone beer in his hand (on his lips, on his tongue, on the collar of his shirt where an errant drop landed) is fuel for his fire, rattling the confines of his inhibitions just enough to knock a few loose, get him spilling details like the belgian white down his throat.

"he was really good, eddie." the glint in buck's eye is evidence enough, but eddie wants more; he's curious, to a detrimental degree, a tabby cat scaling a tree to catch a sparrow whose wings will carry it to safety, leaving him hungry and without the knowledge of how to climb back down to level ground.

"yeah?" he presses, like he needs to.

"yeah," buck continues. the next pull he takes from his bottle is long, slow, draining it empty. eddie's eyes track the movement, the pink curl of his mouth over the bottle's rim, the wet flick of his tongue across the cusp, the bob of his adam's apple as he swallows the dredges. "it was like he could just... tell what i needed."

eddie's stomach drops. he blames the beer. his mind offers, silently, i would know what you needed, too.

he blames the beer.

"he made sure to take it slow, to start. he's— he's not a small guy, you know."

flashes of tommy's sweat-slick skin offer themselves up readily in the eye of eddie's mind. all thanks to their sparring during muay thai, he knows how it feels to be pinned beneath that man, to feel the heft of his strong arms and legs and chest against his own, to feel so utterly surrounded. he can only imagine what it's like to have tommy inside, too. he says, rougher than he means to, "i know."

buck clears his throat, ducks his head. when he meets eddie's eyes again, his cheeks are flushed. "i... i don't have to tell you about this, man. maybe it's too much. i mean, he's your close friend."

"you're my close friend," eddie says thoughtlessly.

the expression that settles on buck's features is complicated, to say the least.

"buck, i told you it's okay. you can tell me whatever you're comfortable with me knowing." eddie's can of worms burst opened wriggles and squirms, a slimy tangle mucking up his chest cavity. he catches and clings onto buck's gaze and adds, unequivocal, "i'll tell you if i want you to stop."

if buck's face wasn't already rosy, it would be now. his mouth falls open before his response catches up to him, and the spit-glint of his bottom teeth against his tongue makes eddie grit his own together, lest he say something he shouldn't.

"are you sure?" buck asks, back turning to eddie while he reaches into the fridge behind him for a third round. when he turns around again he's got two cold bottles in his hands, tilting one towards eddie, an offering that eddie accepts as automatic as breathing.

the fizzzzz-clink of buck popping the beercaps punctuates eddie's answering, "yes."

"alright." another generous swig of buck's drink bolsters his nerve. "i didn't think he was gonna fit at first, eddie. i swear to you, it doesn't seem like it should work. it's not like i haven't had anything up my ass before, i mean, tommy's even been warming me up for the real thing. but."

warming him up, jesus. buck's nonchalance is staggering, even when frankly, this isn't even the first time eddie's been confronted with such imagery. he wishes he could forget buck telling him about the times taylor had used her strap with him. not because it wasn't an appealing thought — eddie might have complex emotions around taylor, but the idea of buck getting dicked down by anyone at all has always been one that twists his guts into feverish knots. hence the desire for selective amnesia.

he fails not to wonder exactly what the thick line of tommy's dick would look like snuggled between the cleft of buck's asscheeks and swirls his beer in its bottle before knocking back a good-sized gulp, saying, "i'm guessing you made it work eventually."

because how the fuck else is he supposed to react while he's busy painting a vivid mural of his two 'close friends' fucking on the ceiling of his overenthusiastic imagination? he might as well be michelangelo with the way he's filling in the blanks with such inspiration.

the sputtering laugh that comes from buck has no right being as charming as it is. "he did indeed get his dick inside of me, yeah, great job putting those pieces together."

"thanks, it was difficult."

"i bet," buck responds. his gaze separates from eddie's and drifts down the length of his torso, catching on the steady rise and fall of the breaths expanding his chest before continuing down his past his bellybutton. he focuses just below eddie's belt before skimming back up to peer into his eyes again. "he took his time getting me ready with his fingers, and even still i felt like he was gonna split me in half. he got maybe halfway inside and i was already seeing stars. thankfully he kinda paused and gave me a second to adjust."

"come on, man." eddie's heartbeat threshes his ribcage and echoes all the way up to his eardrums, frantic and heady, bass drum kicking a chaotic rhythm. he can't help but imagine tommy's big, surprisingly gentle hands working buck open before slicking himself up with lube to nudge inside. he wonders if it made buck gasp, if he cursed and clenched at the blunt shock and slow push and steady tilt of tommy's hips. he wonders if tommy's got claw marks on him somewhere from buck scrabbling for purchase while curling his toes and communicating without words that he needed a minute.

"too much?" the way buck's half-mast eyes glitter reminds eddie of a tiger slinking low through moonlight silver-soaked grasses. all at once he can sympathize with the position of a lone antelope lurking just beyond through the open plains, vulnerable and enticing.

he perks his ears forward, tilts his head down, looking into the eyes of the beast who's about to consume him, and says, "no."

the antelope places its fragile skull straight into the tiger's hanging maw.

⫘⫘⫘

when eddie makes it through the next couple of days without jerking off about it, he considers himself victorious. he's been doing a fine job of distracting himself, hanging out with his girlfriend, his kid. he's been reading before he falls asleep to keep his mind from wandering too far. he's been working out more, burning off the extra energy that's been vibrating through his entire nervous system since buck drenched his subconscious — and his conscious mind, who is he kidding — with the most luscious, arousing descriptions of sex he's ever heard.

he's doing fine, until he's leaving the station with buck after a long shift and tommy's there to pick him up. he's standing outside of his buck's jeep, conveniently parked next to eddie's truck, eyes crinkly with delight at the sight of them. his voice carries through the atmosphere and shudders straight down into eddie's molten core, a simple and swift, "evan! eddie."

"hi, tommy," eddie says at the same time that buck says, "hey, babe!"

evan.

babe.

eddie is going to dissolve into a cloud of nebulous vapor.

he autopilots his way through the rest of their short conversation, ears buzzing with static, cottonmouth setting in. he doesn't pay attention to the small talk, mind too busy reeling with potential. the moment he'd caught sight of buck's jeep, he was a goner.

where is tommy's car? did he stay the night at buck's, hang out at his place for the day just waiting to come play chauffeur and take him back home to pound him into the mattress while kissing him deep and lazy, like his lips are laden with ambrosia?

"catch you later, eddie," he hears tommy say over the ringing in his ears. buck knocks shoulders with him and nods agreeably, lashes fluttering and lips stretching into a pretty smile.

the best eddie can manage in response is a pathetic wave and a half-hearted, "bye, guys."

his drive home is thirty-six minutes too long. he relinquishes his willpower and allows the fog of his daydreams to creep in.

"tommy called me a good boy when he finally bottomed out," buck had told him around a drawn-out exhale, hops heavy on his breath, steaming the air between their faces. somewhere between the third and fourth beer the space between them had collapsed, eddie backed against the kitchen counter and buck looming over him, cool and collected and beautiful and dangerous, striped wildcat on the hunt.

"he told me how incredible it felt inside me, how i was all warm and tight. and god, eddie, you don't understand how crazy it felt. it was so much, but in the best way. it was warm and tight for me, too."

that's when eddie had spooked and bolted, yanking free from within the loose gape of buck's tiger fangs and nicking himself on jagged ivory edges. worms clustered and crawled up from his chest and into his throat as he stumbled away, wounded and wet. he'd choked out, "i can't," and buck had backed off without hesitation, no longer a fierce big cat but a helpless cub, saying, sorry and low, "i know, i know, i should've stopped sooner."

⫘⫘⫘

when eddie finally gets his hand around his dick, it's nearly enough to make him cry. the bittersweet reprieve of it, the way he's been craving his own attention while being even better at withholding it from himself — there's practically nothing he's more practiced at, but just because it comes fairly naturally to him at this point doesn't mean it is painless.

he sinks into a different brand of masochism found in the inviting expanse of his mattress, world narrowed down to the sensation of his slippery grip around his blood-rushed cock, to the white-hot fantasies splaying themselves out in the darkest meadows of his mind, absolutely resplendent. he tries to make his hand feel warm, tight, incredible, like buck's soft aching insides; he speculates whether or not tommy would talk to him like that, if they were to hook up. would he qualify as good, in tommy's eyes?

with barely a second thought, he brings his free hand down to play between his asscheeks, knuckle ghosting across the delicate skin of his hole. tommy's fingers are bigger than his, tommy's bigger all around. a moan wrenches itself free as he swipes up some lube from where it's dripping down his balls and presses a fingertip inside.

eddie's pace picks up along with his breathing, chest heaving like he's been running for hours, days, years. maybe he has been. maybe he still is.

"fuck," he grits out, rolling his hips up into his hand. his mind is playing through scenes of buck opening up for tommy, tommy so careful and confident, scenes of buck wrapping his limbs around him to draw him as close and deep as he can get, buck so open and wanting. buck, such a fucking good boy.

eddie's orgasm shreds through him gut to throat like the sharp starving blade of a hunter, come spattering across his stomach, stickying his fist.

there are real tears streaking down his cheeks, now, damp and unrelenting, a mix of relief and guilt and something else he can't figure out a name for.

he jams the heels of his hands against his eye sockets and thinks, i know, i know, i should've stopped sooner.

#buddie 911 #bucktommy #uhhh... eddie x tommy?#not really sure the best way to tag this one #but it's definitely buddie at its core #so. anyway #smashed this one out in a frenzy #time to release it into the void like i'm freeing a lion from the zoo #wild and unchecked into the world #that's the best way to wring any of this nonsense out of me #18+ please #not sfw #ao3 has proper capitalization btw lmao #buddie #kinkley #mine

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