#Then booking it out of there like the debt collector knocked.

[bookburners]

I don’t think the upperclassmen see Neil as sad and traumatized as much as they see him as a feral but deadly cat or chihuahua that they fed a couple times and is now theirs forever.

#I mean their introduction to him was him yelling at KEVIN IN FRONT OF ANDREW! #Then booking it out of there like the debt collector knocked. #And Kevin had coached them for the past year so you know this man was a stupid hero in their minds #they watched the Riko roast #and the Riko Roast 2.0 more faster more furious #aftg #all for the game #the foxhole court #the raven king #the kings men #neil josten #the upperclassmen #dan wilds #matt boyd #renee walker #allison reynolds

[demonlovingsheep]

Let’s be real, dating ANY of the brothers IRL is going to be a struggle. Some more than others, but still will get you to rip your hair out due to frustrations.

Lucifer: He is the type to be hella busy due to his work. He is swamped with paperwork and his student council meeting that he doesn’t have much time to spend with you. Also being his partner, people’s expectations of you are also high. Imagine you tripped on a rock in the middle of the street, next day on social media everyone is going to talk about how “Lucifer’s partner tripped on a rock. How can he be with such a klutz. He deserves better.” While Lucifer doesn’t care about what other says because you are perfect for him, and even find those people who is quacking behind the screen, it will get to you that you would crack.

Mammon: Oh boy this one is a doozy. Yeah he is sweet from time to time, buying you sweets, flowers, and accessories from time to time and calls you the only one for him, his baby boo. Yeah your also the only one to bust him out of jail due to his crime. Good luck carrying his debt too, he got debt collectors knocking at his door getting him to cough up the money. All the more he is gonna continue to spend, and your house is going to be filled with items that might look pretty as decorations, but no other use what do ever. Oh and where did that 20 dollar bill in your wallet go? Also isn’t this your 40th time apologizing on his behalf for the problem he caused? Oh but it will be alright as Mammon give you his adorable puppy eye and all is forgiven.

Leviathan: This is the 125235th time you heard the Hana Ruri opening song. You have so many game accounts on games that you practically have no interest in but he begged you to login daily so that he could get his rewards and stuff. He rambles a lot about the newest anime or idol concert. You try to add your two bits but he keeps talking over you. If you show little interest, he will sulk thinking that of course you wouldn’t want to listen to him since he is a gross otaku. This in term will make you feel guilty and trying assure him that he ain’t. You have to do a lot of assuring, he gets jealous of so many things and cry, you’re the one with pants in this relationship. He also spend a lot of time in his room to do a game marathon that he doesn’t keeps up with his meals and have bad hygiene. It’s your job to tell him to go touch some grass. Even though his money managing skills is slightly better than Mammon, it still doesn’t prevent him from spending a ton on an ultra rare Hana Ruri card or figurine. Also you might feel jealous over his goldfish Henry.

Satan: He has poor organization skills, just look at the piles of dusty books in his room. If you ask him about it, he’ll just say that it’s how he likes it. You have to be the one to pull him away from arguments so that nothing escalates. You also don’t know where his boundaries are. He could be fine when you poke his chest or face, put will get a mad if you poke his arm or head. We all know one boundary that you should never cross which is comparing him to. However he always overthink your words, thinking you did compared him to that bastard when you just trying to give him a compliment. Pray to Diavolo that there is a cat somewhere around you. He might be calm and collective, but that can go from 0 to 100 real quick. I hope you don’t fear yelling.

Asmodeus: It’s always about him sweetie. See that photo you took at the beach the other day. He looks absolutely gorgeous under the sun’s rays. Oh you look great too daring, but not as much as him. Every time you go out with him, he will take a hour to get prepared. He will bring you to so many clothing shops and jewelry shops to try out so many items that you spent the whole entire day there. Yeah it may be fun to try out new clothings, but having to pick out outfits, heading to the fitting room to put the outfit on, stepping out for him to make a judgement, head back to the dressing room to undress, and the cycle repeats itself for like the hundredth time. After your done, good luck carrying the bags of clothes him because his figure isn’t made to carry all that heavy stuff. It’s bad for the skin. Also you can never really correct problems he caused, he always blames it on because he is too beautiful and not really getting your point. Then there are his fans who is constantly going up to him, begging for a selfie and his attention. In a club, he is going to be dragged away by his fans leaving you behind with some of them and they sneer at you or pick on your appearance. They don’t think your right for him, and will tear your self-esteem apart with every flaw you have. You never know if he truly loves you sometimes.

Beelzebub: The main problem is his hunger, which he can’t control. You try to be understanding, but having to stock the fridge for it to be emptied the very next day can really tick you off. Like you wake up one morning excited for bacon and eggs, but it’s all gone. There is not even ice cubes for you to munch on. Oh well guess you just have to order take out, but make sure to get 100 large supreme pizza please. Total: $1,672, +tip and tax. Oh and don’t forget to do groceries in the afternoon too. Good news is that he comes with you so you don’t have to carry it all, bad news is that he keeps eating the ingredients in the bag and he made you visit many food stands along the way. Rip you’re wallet. You’re also kicked out of many restaurants due to Beel bankrupting the store for eating too much, and getting angry that he isn’t allowed to order more. Also, where did that expensive golden truffle chocolate, or that new flavored newt chip that you were looking forward to eat?

Belphegor: Being lazy is a cute trait but not a useful trait, the floor isn’t going to clean itself. He always 30 minutes late on the times you agree to meet up because he overslept. He’ll fall asleep any place any time. Belphie we’re riding a roller coaster, don’t fall asleep.. ahh he is out like a light. It’s your duty to wake him up while the staff and other people in line yelling at you and him to get off already. Yeah if only you can wake him up. It’s embarrassing but at least it’s not a dangerous situation like the time he fell asleep during lab and your cauldron starts bubbling like crazy! Also he is only wide awake for 8 hours a day, and sleep the other hours away. He also likes to annoy you on purpose just to get a rise out of you for the fun of it. Nothing too serious, but it does get annoying.

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me belphegor #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me lucifer #obey me asmodeus #obey me satan #obey me beelzebub #obey me headcanons #obey me nightbringer #obey me dating sim

[the-yuri-librarian]

Hi..... if you don't mind, can I ask, your top 10 (or top 7) favorite GL media (can be books/ manga/manhwa/baihe/ anime/movies/tv series)? And why you love them? Thanks if you want to answer....

I don't mind at all! In fact, putting together a top ten has been on my to do list for a while but I haven't done it yet because it seems real daunting. But, I'll try my best here. Spoiler alert, my #1 spot is a tie. I love both titles and I can't pick between them:

1a. Pulse (manhwa):

Premise: Mel is an expert surgeon at an esteemed hospital, and she is happy with where she is in her life. Her work is fulfilling, she has tons of sex, and everything seems to be generally going her way. But, she has no real emotional connections. Mel believes that love is a foolish game, so instead of dating with any real seriousness, she chooses to bounce from hook up to hook up. But, that all changes when Mel meets Lynn. Lynn has a fatal heart condition and desperately needs a transplant. But, she wants Mel to be the one to perform the surgery. As Lynn entangles herself in Mel's life, the stone of Mel's heart begins to crack....

Why I love it: the story in Pulse is incredible. Mel's character arc is perfectly developed, and her backstory is very interesting when you finally get there (she's also very hot lol). Lynn is equally well developed, fighting for her life while also contemplating it's value. The ups and downs of their relationship is gripping, and the ending left me in tears. I do think there is a pretty major flaw in the story near the end, but I won't get into it here as I plan on doing a review after I reread it in February. CW: sexual assault. It is a bit of an age gap but not a huge one. Also this is very spicy

1b. Love Thy Neighbor (manhwa):

Premise: Doyeon seems to be perfect. She has a large group of friends, a perfect GPA, and is sailing through med school with ease. But, she has one problem: her neighbor keeps her up at night. Whether it is debt collectors pounding on the door at all hours of the day, or the neighbor crying into the night while the TV plays, Doyeon can't get any sleep. Eventually, the debt collectors get physically aggressive, and Doyeon has no choice but to pull her neighbor into her apartment to save her. The neighbor, a woman named Jin Joo, ends up staying at Doyeon's apartment for her own safety. This is all fine and well, but why is Doyeon starting to have sex dreams about her?

Why I love it: so, three things here right up front: 1. there is also an age gap in this story (which I think is a coincidence), 2. It is very spicy and 3. it is incredibly toxic (to the point that consent between the two characters becomes murky) and not for the faint of heart. With all that out of the way: I love this story. Doyeon is so incredibly interesting as a character (and might be a genuine sociopath); all she wants to do is be loved unconditionally and she never gets it and that internal tension is incredible. The plot is also very dramatic, and it makes it HARD to put it down (also I've read through season 1 like 3 times in 4 months). I literally count the days between chapter releases. I didn't think I would enjoy a psychological drama so much but this one really knocks it out of the park. This drama has the effect of, murky consent aside, making the sex scenes electric. They are so well written, carrying significant narrative weight while also being genuinely very hot. There is this constant battle for control between our romantic leads that leaks into their sex, and it's just chef's kiss. I cannot stress enough how much I love this story. Season 2 just started releasing a couple weeks ago so now is an excellent time to jump on board. (PSA: if anyone my mutuals or followers starts reading this PLEASE send your live reactions to my DMs I will love you forever I wanna talk to someone about this story so bad)

3. Qualia the Purple (manga)

Premise: [Redacted]

Why I love it: so this is by far the weirdest love story I have ever read, and it is terribly sad. How far would you go to save the person you love most? The lengths Yukari wuld go to save her love are endless, and her desperation is what makes this tale worth reading. I really don't want to say too much here because this story is best experienced knowing as little about is as possible before you start reading it (also why I didn't include a premise). As a heads up: this story is deeply philosophical and may make you cry. Be sure to read the afterword

4. Nevermore (webtoon)

Premise: Lenore and Annabel Lee both wake up on a distant shore with no memories of who they are. Chased by bizarre spirits, they flea until they stumble upon Nevermore Academy. Here, they are told that they are dead, and that they are here to compete for a second chance at life. Also, they can turn into ghosts with superpowers. As they being to move through the trials, it becomes increasingly clear that their previous lives were deeply tied together. But the question remains: what are they to each other?

Why I love it: the real allure to this story is the mystery. Who is Lenore? Who is Annabel Lee? What is the truth behind Nevermore Academy? The list of questions is never-ending. Also, Lenore is an incredibly charming protagonist, whose quick wit and determination makes it impossible to not cheer for her. The is also inspired heavily by Edgar Allen Poe's work and the gothic literary tradition (and aesthetic). In fact, Lenore's name, as well as Nevemore Academy's name, comes from the poem "The Raven," and Annabel Lee is named after the famous poem of the same name. Coincidentally, both this story and the poem "Annabel Lee" take place "in a kingdom by the sea." As a literature nerd, this is a HUGE plus for me. Especially recommend this story for those who like to try and figure out what's going on before the characters do (so, if you were in the red string brigade while The Magnus Archives was airing this is a must read)

5. Her Tales of Shim Chong (manhwa)

Premise: This manhwa is a historical, girls' love retelling of classic Korean novel The Tale of Shim Chong. It tells the story of Shim Chong, a beggar who is desperately trying to make ends meet to feed her and her blind father, and the soon-to-be second Madame Jang, who has been sold into marrying the Chancellor to give her family a better position. After a chance encounter, they build a friendship -- and eventually more -- that transcends class boundaries. But not everyone is happy with the Chancellor's new wife, and Chong's presence is far from welcome in the royal palace. When the Chancellor falls into a mysterious coma after the wedding night, his children make plans to oust Madam Jang, and it may be up to Shim Chong to save not only their relationship, but their lives.

Why I love it: I think the premise of this story is so so romantic; it drives me crazy. Madame Jang is essentially trapped by the narrative, and Shim Chong is the only one who is able and willing to break her out. The premise creates the perfect setting to critique not only the historical politics of Korea, but also the treatment of women within Korean culture (disclaimer: I am far from an expert here but I think the theme is very prevalent). It is also probably the only yuri I've read so far that would qualify as magical realism, which ties in to the folktale setting with ease. There is not a lot of physical affection in this story, but when it's there, it's so sweet I can't help but swoon. If you like historical fiction, I would recommend starting here out of everything on this list (or start with the next entry).

6. Goodbye, My Rose Garden (manga)

Premise: Hanako is a Japanese woman who has come to England in search of her favorite author. In the meantime, she looks for work as a maid and is eventually hired by a noblewoman named Alice. But, Alice has an unbelievable request for Hanako: she wants Hanako to kill her. Hanako immediately begins trying to find out why Alice wants to throw away her life, and as she does she finds a hidden side of the noblewoman kept deep under wraps...

Why I love it: this story is so romantic, and tense, and dramatic that it has become critically acclaimed - and for good reason. The depiction of historical views on homosexuality are really well done and is juxtaposed well next to Hanako's sapphic awakening. I really think that this yuri is a must read, not just because of the romance, but because of the historical perspectives portrayed within. I wish I could say more but it's been a while since I've read it, and I plan on rereading it and posting a review sometime within the first half of this year

7. Mage & Demon Queen (webtoon)

Premise: In a world where demons and humans are at constant war, Malori has survived childhood and become a powerful mage..... because she is totally in love with the Demon Queen, Velverosa. In fact, Malori would do anything to spend time with her, and she means anything. Day after day Malori climbs the Demon Queen's tower to try and win her heart, and day after day she is defeated. Will the Demon Queen ever love her? Or, will Velverosa be slain before their relationship has time to blossom?

Why I love it: ONE OF THE ROMANTIC LEADS IN THIS STORY IS A TRANS WOMAN (it's Vel lol). But also: this is by far the funniest yuri I have ever read. Whether is is on the cheesy side or the genuinely hilarious side, the humor in this story is baked all the way through, giving it an adorable charm. Additionally, Vel's slow decent into love is so fucking adorable that I often find myself going back to reread her confession; it's just so sweet. If you like a wholesome, light hearted story, or are a big fan of RPGs or isekais (it's not one but it's close enough), then you MUST give this a read. I'm afraid Webtoons.com is putting it behind a paywall soon (against it's creator's wishes), but you may be able to find it else where possibly.

8. Sunstone (American comic)

Premise: in this erotic romcom, Lisa is a writer and, more importantly, a submissive. Ally is a well-experienced programmer and considers herself a dominatrix. They have one thing in common: they have never done BDSM in real life. One day, they meet in a virtual chat room and become fast friends. This friendship evolves as they begin exchanging DMs, and eventually they decide to meet up. They hit it off just as well in person as they do online, and their one time sexual encounter becomes much more, changing their lives forever.

Why I love it: this comic features probably the most realistic depiction of a BDSM relationship - and BDSM sex - that I have ever seen. The characters are complicated, and messy, and so human that you can't helped but be sucked into their lives. It also features one of the most romantic confessions I have ever experience in yuri. Just top notch writing from top to bottom, while also treating the subject matter with dignity and care. The writer has a lot of experience with BDSM in real life, and it really shows with the way the series treats consent, safe words, and after care. If you've never read this story, you need to change that asap. You're really missing out.

9. Whisper me a love song (manga)

Premise: On her first day of high school, Himari watches a band play at the opening ceremony, where she immediately "falls in love" with the lead singer. The next day, she runs into that singer, Yori, and tells her so. Yori's response is unexpected: she says, "I love you, too." Quickly, and awkwardly, Himari realizes that her platonic feelings are being met with Yori's romantic feelings. As their friendship develops, she begins to wonder: what does it mean to love someone?

Why I love it: I really love music, especially rock and punk music, so a romance story based around a musician is automatically going to appeal to me and this one is no exception. Himari's struggle with her sexuality feels so real, and Yori's determination to win Himari's heart naturally compels her internal conflict forward until she has to decide. This manga is so so so cute, especially considering Himari's puppy dog like energy, and this story is almost guaranteed to make you swoon. It is ongoing and getting an anime this year, so please read it and support the official release!

10. Bloom into You (manga)

Premise: Bloom into You tells the story of high school freshman Yuu, as she discovers herself and tries to gain an understanding of "love," which all of her friends seem enamored with. She has never had someone who felt special to her in that way, though she desperately wants to. This all changes when she meets sophomore Nanami, who has also never fallen in love. As they get to know each other, Nanami begins to fall in love with Yuu, though Yuu does not understand why. At the same time, Yuu thinks her chest may be starting to flutter, a feeling that she has longed for but still does not understand...

Why I love it: so there was no way that this wasn't making the list, right? It is the standard for high school yuri, and for good reason. Yuu and Nanami are perfect for each other, and Yuu's slow decent into love is incredible to watch. If you have never read yuri and you want to know where to start, the answer is right here. It is, in fact, required reading. If I were to teach a semester long university class on yuri (a fantasy situation I think about alot), this would be the first story I would assign. The romantic tension is mesmerizing, the supporting cast is top tier, and the ending is immensely satisfying. There is also ace/aro representation, arguably in the main character and canonically in the supporting cast. I am currently doing a live blog/analysis of Bloom into You if you want to follow along with me, though I am very behind on it (I swear I'm gonna continue it, and I'm sorry to my followers :( the new year has not been kind to me lol).

I have done reviews and analysis of some of these series, and have borrowed summaries from those posts. I am linking those down below in case you haven't read them. However, if you read the Qualia the Purple review before reading the manga I will find you:

Her Tales of Shim Chong Review

Qualia the Purple Review

Bloom into You Ch. 1 Analysis

Bloom into You Ch. 2 Analysis

Edit: I just realized that you asked for girls lov books too, so I guess that is going to have to be a separate post....

#long post #asks #yuri #girls love #yuri posting #manga #manhwa #webtoons #recommendations #seriously sorry its so long #I feel like I'm always saying that #anyway #please send me more asks! #request reviews #ask me my thoughts about what i've read #tell me to read obscure yuris no one has ever heard of! #my inbox is always open :)

[nanowrimo]

30 Covers, 30 Days 2023: Day 5

Here's day 5 of 30C30D! Today, we have Par for the Course by Erika Riley, a Mainstream novel that's a hole in one. This novel cover was designed by the amazing returning artist, Christine Mau!

(For those of you who don’t know, 30C30D stands for 30 Covers, 30 Days in which 17 Wrimos and 5 YWP Participants get the chance to win a professionally designed cover! The rest of the days are being filled by community features. We’ll be posting a cover a day throughout November, so make sure to check them out!)

Par for the Course

Recently laid off and drowning in medical and student debt, 26-year-old Gemma Proctor jumps at the chance to move out of New York City when she inherits her grandmother's coastal Maine house in her will. But there's a big caveat -- Gemma also inherited the dilapidated mini golf course that her grandmother, Dot, owned. When debt collectors come knocking, she knows she should sell the land she inherited -- but something is telling her not to. That something may or may not have to do with the incredibly gorgeous man who manages the mini golf course, or the promise of buried treasure somewhere on the land itself.

About the Author

Erika Riley is a former news reporter and freelance writer who currently works in an editorial position, but in her dreams, she writes fiction all day. Fiction-writing has been her favorite pastime and passion since she was a child, supported by her parents, the owners of a comic book store. When not writing, she enjoys working on other hobbies, including rock climbing, ice skating, sewing, and petting dogs. Erika is a long-time NaNoWriMo attempter and a two-time winner. Born and raised in New York, she now lives in Chicago with her partner. She is still getting used to the pizza.

About the Designer

Christine Mau is an award winning children's book illustrator. She has also enjoyed illustrating paper goods and consumer products for brands like C.R. Gibson Company, Kleenex and Huggies. You can find her most weekends playing with inks and dyes in her studio.

Cover Design Process:

This year. we gave designers the optional prompt to explain their design process for the cover! Christine offers a photo of her WIP alongside her inspiration:

I decided to go for the feeling “whirling indecision” around the mini golf course.

#nanowrimo #nano #30c30d #30 covers 30 days #design #mainstream #christine mau #erika riley

[definitely-not-iorveth]

the men we become

"Would you like to become a Witcher, child?" He asks her.

She gapes at him, speechles at first.

"Aren't all witchers… Men?" She asks hesitantly. Vesemir nods, watching her carefully.

"So they are."

—

They say all Witchers are men, and it's true in a way. But not all of them need to have started as such.

written for @thepassifloradiscord trans week

ao3

A newborn baby cries out their first cry. The mother, her face red and puffy, looks desperately at the midwife.

"It's a girl!" The other woman announces with a big smile. The mother sighs with relief, almost in tears. A girl. It's a girl . They don't take girls, do they?

Her baby is safe, isn't she?

—

The girl grows up with two older brothers and a younger sister. The boys are very protective of them both—that's annoying but normal, she supposes. But the way her mother sometimes looks at her, with fear and sadness in her eyes. The way she hesitates before letting her out of the house, the reluctance with which she agrees to let her wander off down the mountain—even after her sister is easily allowed the same privilege—that is strange.

—

She loves reading books and listening to fireside stories about the travels and adventures of brave knights and scary witchers. She wishes she could be just like them.

She envies their freedom, she thinks.

—

She doesn't like spending time with the girls, not because she dislikes them or because they bore her, but because of how much she doesn't belong.

It's not even that they like different things, precisely—she just knows that no matter how hard she tries, she will never be one of them. She will never belong.

It's different with the boys. Whenever she's with them, she feels more true to herself, somehow. Occasionally, she gets mistaken for one of them and her heart flutters with joy.

Eventually, she thinks that she may like being a boy better, so she tries it out, crops her hair short and dresses like one.

Her mother doesn't seem happy about it, but she tolerates it—until she- he decides he does like it better, asks her to use the masculine pronouns and call him her son.

That's when something breaks inside her.

She pales, her mouth working silently, then suddenly begins to sob uncontrollably and yell. No and you can't, calling him my little girl as she tears the clothes off him and begs him to change back .

The girl is so scared she doesn't try to be a boy again.

—

Something changes after that. Her mother becomes more and more anxious to see her disappear from sight.

She tries to argue of course, but no amount of pleading or yelling changes that. I'm trying to keep you safe , her mother always says. You'll understand one day.

She doesn't understand.

She runs away a few times, but her mother always has such a wild look to her, cries so hard with relief when she's found, she eventually resigns herself to her fate and stops.

—

One day In the late afternoon, when she's eleven, there's a knock on the door. There's no one else at the house—her mother is tending to the animals and her father and brothers had gone to town, so she runs to open it.

It's a man, his hair long and starting to grey. He looks like a dangerous sort, wearing leather armour and two swords at his back, but his smile looks amiable enough and, more importantly, genuine. She looks at him questioningly, and he speaks in a kindly tone.

"Are your parents home?"

"Mother is at the barn."

"Would you fetch her for me? Tell her Vesemir has come to collect what he's owed."

That makes her more cautious—debt collectors are usually not a friendly lot—but that smile is still on his face, so she obligingly runs to get her mother.

When she repeats the stranger's words, her mother blanches and goes stiff, then hugs her very tightly.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," she whispers into her hair, stroking it lightly. "I tried. I tried to keep you safe." She holds her for a very long time and when she pulls away, her eyes are wet and puffy.

"What's wrong, mother?" She asks, but her mother only shakes her head.

"Perhaps you'll be happier there."

Where? She wants to ask, but by then her mother is already grasping her hand tightly and pulling her back towards the house and the smiling stranger—Vesemir, he had said his name was.

He nods at her mother.

"Is your son well?" He asks, but her mother shakes her head angrily.

"Spare me the pleasantries." She snaps, still tightly clutching her hand. It hurts, and she winces a little. "My husband thought he was saving my child, but it turns out all he did was exchange one for another."

Vesemir's smile turns sad, but he doesn't say anything. He simply waits. Her mother sighs and her hand slackens, then falls to her side.

"I will not fight you. I know there's no cheating destiny."

She looks questioningly between her mother and Vesemir. She doesn't fully understand what is going on, but she understands enough to know that it's something that will overturn her life. A deep sense of unease settles low in her stomach—but there's curiosity there as well.

Vesemir nods gravely at her mother.

"Very wise of you." He crouches in front of her, to be nearer to her eye level, and simply looks at her in appraisal for a long moment.

"Would you like to become a Witcher, child?" He asks her.

She gapes at him, speechles at first.

"Aren't all witchers… Men?" She asks hesitantly. Vesemir nods, watching her carefully.

"So they are."

Her heart flutters in her chest. Surely he can't be serious, and this is some kind of jest…? She blinks at him, trying to figure out his angle, but he simply continues looking at her with the same solemn expression.

"Yes." She finally says, her voice small and shaky at first, then repeats it with conviction. "Yes!"

Her eyes are wet. She hadn't noticed.

"It's a difficult process, and the training is harsh. Not all make it out alive." Vesemir says, his tone gravely serious. Her mother makes a choked off sound, but she doesn't care . If she can be a Witcher, if she can be a boy—it is worth all the risk.

Vesemir smiles and stands up, then reaches out his hand.

"Then come with me, boy."

She- he grasps Vesemir's hand. It is warm, warm like hope.

—

"What is your name, boy?" Vesemir asks as they walk towards his horse. Her- his heart almost leaps out of his chest with joy at those words—until the full meaning of them sinks in.

His face falls. His old name, a girl's name feels wrong somehow, and yet—what other name does he have?

Fortunately, Vesemir seems to notice his hesitation and, more importantly, to understand his dilemma even before he can articulate it out loud. He puts a heavy, comforting hand atop his head and ruffles his hair.

"Don't worry, if you don't have it picked out yet, boy. You will find the right one in time. You'll see."

—

Vesemir helps the boy cut his hair along the journey. It looks much better than anything he was able to accomplish by himself, and it feels so right when he sees his reflection that he nearly weeps with joy.

—

They arrive at Kaer Morhen after a few days, late in the afternoon. Vesemir shows him to a big room full of bunk beds. The boy counts 30, allowing for 60 occupants. It's empty when they enter, but many of the beds look to be in use.

"This is where you will sleep until the end of your trials." Vesemir explains. "If you survive, you will be given your own room in the castle that you will be able to come back to whenever you need or want to after your training finishes. It… Most likely won't be comfortable." Vesemir chuckles. "But it will become your home, if you allow it."

If you survive. A chill runs through the boy at those words—but he knew this beforehand, didn't he? He had made the choice voluntarily. He nods, trying to show a brave face.

"Okay."

Vesemir nods back, seemingly satisfied with this reaction.

"Today you can stay here. In your own time—which you will not have a lot of, starting tomorrow—you are free to explore the ground floors of the castle as you please. Other floors are off limits to new recruits."

Vesemir goes on about the training, about the meal times, about the special diet and many other topics.

The thing that the boy remembers best is that after all the trials, he will not yet fully be a Witcher (too much to learn still)—but he will fully be a man.

—

Mindful of Vesemir's warning concerning his leisure time, the boy spends the first evening exploring the castle's ground floor.

He meets a few yellow eyed men in the corridors. A couple of them are friendly. One ignores him completely. The others just give him pitying looks.

—

As he meets the other recruits, he makes many friends and learns that there are more sharing his circumstances than he expected—some already with new names picked out, others, like him, simply known as the boy.

There are four such recruits in particular he becomes steadfast friends with, all sharing his age—Geralt, Eskel, Janos and another boy.

The odds are against them, of course. After all, it is said that only one in ten receuits lives through the trials. They cover up their nervousness with humour, betting on who will be the last one standing. As the most sturdy of them all, Eskel is the favourite. Geralt, the poor sickly-looking sap, is immediately labelled the least likely survivor.

But it's Janos who dies first, his body unable to bear the strain of the preparatory diet of strange mushrooms and herbs.

Then the other boy dies in an unfortunate accident during training.

The fact that three of them make it to the Trials of Grass in one piece is still impressive.

—

They can't sleep the night before.

Plenty of the bunks are fully vacant by then, so they push two empty ones together and sit there, huddled up.

"When did you pick your names?" The boy asks quietly. It nags at him, that he still hadn't been able to find one that fits.

Geralt shrugs.

"Vesemir picked mine. I live in Kaer Morhen ever since I can remember. It felt… Right. "

"I found mine in a fairy tale." Eskel smiles and shrugs. "I just… Liked it so much, I've decided to use it."

The boy nods.

"It's a beautiful name. I wish I found it before you did."

Eskel grins at him.

"Why don't you use it too, then?"

The boy chuckles.

"Two Eskels from the School of the Wolf? I don't know, it sounds like a bit much."

Eskel shrugs.

"Well, I don't know if I'll be keeping it yet. Maybe a fairy tale name isn't such a great pick for a Witcher."

The boy laughs loudly, soon infecting Geralt and Eskel and waking some of the sleeping recruits. They glare at the three of them until their laughter subsides into quiet giggles.

—

It's difficult to face the Trial of Grass with optimism and a brave face, yet Eskel somehow manages to do so.

He squeezes the boy's hand and gives him a cheeky smile.

"See you on the other side!"

—

Passing out is a mercy.

Whenever he's awake, he can feel his body changing.

It's torture.

Fire is flowing through his veins. His bones are stretching, breaking and mending all at once. His joints and muscles throb with pain, as if he was overexerting them again and again. His insides feel like they're liquifeing and reforming over and over.

After a while, he starts hallucinating.

He sees his mother, sitting by him and alternately crying and singing an old mountain lullaby. Then his father and siblings, and then the other village children. They flit around, a face or two coming closer to tell him to be brave, to tell him that he's making a mistake, to say that they miss him. At one point he thinks he spots Janos and the other boy, but the pain makes it difficult to see and their faces are quickly lost in the crowd.

—

Eskel comes to him last.

He sits in the place previously occupied by his mother—that's when the boy realises that everyone else is gone, even the mages and elder Witchers—squeezes his hand and repeatedly whispers encouragement. You're almost there. Don't give up. Be strong. It makes the pain just a little more bearable.

And then, just once, he says, keep the name. It suits you. Then he kisses his forehead, waves goodbye and disappears through the door.

The boy loses consciousness.

—

He wakes up shortly afterwards, tired and in pain—but it's different than before. Much more subdued.

It's still an effort to open his eyes. They feel dry, like sandpaper.

The light is painfully bright, and everything seems somehow sharper and clearer—too much. It makes his head spin.

He notices he's no longer in the underground, but instead in a small room with a narrow bed he currently occupies, a bookcase, a wardrobe and a writing desk, a Witcher he doesn't recognize sitting in the chair.

He tells the boy that he's the third one to wake up, then forces some stew and a foul-smelling concoction into him.

"Tomorrow you'll feel much better." He informs the boy.

When the boy asks about Eskel and Geralt, the man is quiet for a long time. It's not a reply he offers when he finally speaks.

"Rest up for now, boy."

Too tired to protest, he falls into a dreamless sleep.

—

It is only later that he learns that Eskel had passed away during the trial.

—

Many years pass before he visits the desolate mountain village he came from.

They don't seem to recognize him—why would they, after such a long time? But an older woman with a braid like his mother used to wear beckons him close.

"What is your name, sir Witcher?" She asks.

"I am no sir, there's no need for formalities. My name is Eskel."

She nods.

"Eskel. A good, strong name." She simply stares at him for a while, and he grows a little uneasy. "Do you regret becoming a Witcher, Eskel?"

He smiles and shakes his head.

"No."

Her eyes are a little wet, but she wipes the tears away quickly.

"Then I am glad."

#the witcher #my writing #eskel #eskel (the witcher) #trans main character #cw: mild transphobia - non-supportive parents

[cjlinton]

January 2023 Recap: Read, Played, Watched, Listened

January flew by! One of my goals for this year is to more proactively talk about art that I’m engaging, so here’s a recap of January, as best I can remember.

Read

It was a pretty relentless couple weeks at work (keeping things running solo while my boss was out for two weeks), so less reading than I would have liked.

★ = favorite/most recommended

Books

Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities by Emily Tamkin The Candy House by Jennifer Egan Bloodstone Cowboy by Kara Jackson ★

Short Stories

"Alex Adams, the Dyke Who Wouldn't Grow Up," Marisa Crane in The Adroit Journal "The Narrative Implications of Your Untimely Death," by Isabel J. Kim in Lightspeed Magazine "Digital Faggot Suicide Heaven," by Jay Dragon on Patreon

Articles

Notable/subject-specific, beyond general news.

"Greener School Playgrounds Are An Overlooked Climate Solution," Marianne Dhenin for Next City ★ "LA’s Transit Infrastructure Can Always Get Dumber: Meet the Gondola," Kate Gallagher for Knock LA "The Mixed-Race Fantasy Behind Kawaii Aesthetics," Erica Kanesaka for Catapult "The Brilliance of Photographer Kadar Small's Black Queer Kisses," Wren Sanders for them ★ "These Were The Most Popular Books At D.C.-Area Libraries This Year," Colleen Grablick for DCist

Played

TTRPGs

All campaigns this month, and all games I’ve played before. Hoping to get in at least a one-shot in February—if scheduling works out I’ll get to play Nobilis, which I’m pretty excited for.

Cyberpunk: RED (4 sessions) Lancer (1 session)

Board Games

Currently tracking ahead of my unserious goal to play fifty-two different board games this year!

Doomlings (x3) Dominion The Crew: Deep Sea Mission Imohotep Terraforming Mars

Watched

tv and live performance is currently combined, but this will hopefully be broken out into categories in future months. People never take me seriously when I say I really would like to watch more tv, but I feel I'm missing out on some of the best media happening right now by watching so little of it as a category.

Episodes 12-14, Season 1 of The Unsleeping City "Empathy Bonus," Episode 2 of The Peripheral The Tempest, dir. Aaron Posner and Teller at Round House Theatre

Music (Just the Favorites)

I listen to far too much music to do a comprehensive recap, but here were some of my very favorites on repeat this month.

Albums

A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO FAKING YOUR DEATH – Jhariah Victory Lap (Deluxe Edition) – Propagandhi

Songs

"What If It Doesn’t End Well" – chloe moriondo "DEVIL AT THE CROSSROADS" – Ho99o9 "Lost Angeles" – The Aces "Debt Collector" – Jhariah "you’d never know" – BLÜ EYES "Dutch" – Dessa "Syrup" – Tkay Maidza "Mundane Magic" – A Story Told

#2023 #media recap #recommendations #i'll talk about dungeon23 in a different post when I have time to type it up

[gazrgaley]

Sin eater (part 3, chapter 1)

The subsequent weeks weighed heavily on Richard, each day stretching on as if time itself had slowed to a grinding halt. With every passing moment, the pit of despair that had taken hold of his soul grew deeper and more suffocating. Numbness, like a thick fog, enveloped his entire being, rendering him insensible to the world around him. Sleep became an elusive luxury, denied to him by the haunting specters of grief and anguish that plagued his restless mind.

Devoid of appetite, Richard renounced any pretense of being a human with basic needs. The mere notion of sustenance held no appeal to him, for he had lost the capacity to derive pleasure from the act of eating. Like a wandering specter, he mindlessly meandered through the streets of the town, his footsteps devoid of purpose or direction. His eyes, now glazed over with a vacant emptiness, mirroring the hollowness that consumed him from within.

Richard existed as a mere shell of his former self, disconnected from the rhythms of life that once sustained him. His body moved mechanically, propelled by some invisible force, while his spirit remained adrift in a desolate void. He resembled a lost soul, trapped between the realms of the living and the dead, unable to find solace or belonging in either.

In this state of profound desolation, Richard roamed the town, a haunting presence that stirred whispers and fearful glances from those who crossed his path. He had become a ghostly apparition, an embodiment of sorrow and despair, forever trapped in a twilight existence that bore no resemblance to the person he once was.

As Richard carried out his duties as a sin eater, his actions held no meaning, devoid of any connection to the solemn task at hand. He mindlessly partook of the essence of the recently departed, his senses dulled, scarcely caring for the sacredness of the ritual. It was as if a veil had been lifted, revealing the hollowness and emptiness that lay beneath.

The weight of his dear friend Joseph's betrayal bore down upon him with an unbearable force, tearing through the very fabric of his emotional being. It shattered his core, leaving him adrift in a desolate sea of emptiness and despair. The act of consuming the sins of others, once a source of solace and purpose, now held no significance. It was as if Richard himself had become a vessel drained of all meaning and purpose, lost in the darkness of his friend's ultimate betrayal.

Until now, Joseph had tended to their financial matters, and Richard was shaken to discover that he had been compensated for his role as a sin eater all these years.

Dwelling in Joseph's abode, he awaited the arrival of debt collectors, refusing to answer the door, cowering in fear when they would knock on the door. It was only when the men finally departed did Richard emerge, taking the notes that were pinned to the door. His eyes fell upon the scattered papers that started to pile upon the table, revealing the magnitude of his indebtedness.

With the funds he possessed, Richard could have easily settled the debt, yet he hesitated. Contemplating his next course, he pondered whether to cling to Joseph's tainted dwelling or retreat to the desolate wilderness he once called home. Each option rents his soul asunder, inflicting unbearable torment.

Remaining within the abode he had shared with Joseph became an anguishing torment, as every nook and cranny bore witness to memories besmirched by Joseph's final utterance: "I despise you, always have." Richard continued to drift through each day, his actions mechanical, oblivious to the world around him.

Night after night, he concocted plans for escape, only to find himself inexorably drawn back to the sole haven he had known for over four decades. On one such night, he sat motionless in the kitchen, bereft of the ability to discern the passage of time. The pounding on the door shattered his desolate reverie, and his mind inferred the relentless debt collectors, demanding their due. Richard still lacked the strength to confront them.

With the knowledge that he possessed the means to settle his debt, Richard found himself caught in the suffocating grip of indecision. Paralyzed by self-pity and sorrow, he remained rooted in his desolate state, unable to break free from the shackles that bound him. The relentless pounding on the door intensified, reverberating through the air, yet Richard could not muster the will to rise from his somber perch.

If only he could find the strength to hasten his movements, to confront the world outside, he might be able to immerse himself in the solace of solitude and despair, seeking refuge from the harsh reality that plagued him. The pounding persisted, accompanied by the urgent shouts demanding his compliance, yet Richard remained ensnared within his own inner turmoil, gripped by a paralyzing inertia that seemed impossible to overcome.

Then, with a resounding crash, the door splintered, sundered by an unseen force. Several men burst in, brandishing weapons. Richard was taken aback, deeming their excessive show of force incongruous with mere debt collectors.

"Where is he? Where is the demon?" barked one of the men, their words barely piercing Richard's clouded thoughts. It was in that moment, when one of them lunged forward with malicious intent, that the horrifying truth finally seeped into his consciousness like a chilling mist. These men were not driven by a pursuit of riches, but by an insatiable thirst for his very life. The realization struck him with a jolt. The demon they were looking for was him.

Instinctively, Richard sprung to his feet and kicked the chair he had been sitting in, sending it flying in the direction of one of his attackers. With a surge of adrenaline, he sought sanctuary behind a sturdy door, narrowly avoiding a thunderous gunshot that pierced the air. The cacophony of chaos grew as a relentless onslaught ensued, with a few more intruders forcefully breaching the front entrance. Blocking the second exit, Richard's only option was to scramble up the stairs.

"The demon has been feasting upon the deceased! Seize him!" echoed the chilling cry of one of the men, piercing Richard's ears as he hurled himself through the narrow opening of the second-story window. The fragmented shards of glass shimmered in the moonlight, dancing momentarily in the air, before cascading to the ground below. As the wind brushed against his face, a stark awakening coursed through his veins, shattering any remnants of denial. The truth now stood irrefutable, casting a damning light upon his own careless actions and the consequences they bore.

Reluctantly, he acknowledged the harsh reality that lay before him, an unyielding truth that could no longer be ignored. The remnants of his shattered existence, like broken shards of glass, could no longer hold him. With a heavy heart, he made the painful decision to embark on a new journey, bidding farewell to the familiar abode that had sheltered him for so long. The place he once called home would now become a mere memory, a relic of a past life left behind in the annals of time.

#warm blooded vampire series #writing #vampires #gaz042 #wattpad #vampire #chapter 1 #part 3 #sin eater #my writting #gothic stories

[the-single-element]

Good morning.

Jesus, today, continues his sermon from last week. In this late stage of his career, he's fully into the mode of "teaching in parables", of telling stories - where people often behave bizarrely or cartoonishly, contrary to our expectations - which, together, can help us triangulate the position of truths that would have been difficult to see head-on.

Today we hear one such parable, the story of a dishonest steward, bookended with a series of rhetorical points about stewardship in general.

It's a funny story, to our ears. We hear about this guy who's getting fired for "squandering" his employer's wealth under management, and we immediately recognize "that guy". After all, news articles pop up all the time about some fund manager or CFO who got arrested for spending earmarked funds on buying himself a Lambo. We can easily imagine someone like that, fired and disgraced, trying to brainstorm some more elaborate scheme rather than have to ask for charity or get a "real" job.

But the leap of intuition that this steward comes to, the scheme he decides to enact, is much less familiar, and - in many ways - more impressive.

Because... imagine if this was a modern-day "dishonest steward". Imagine if, when he realized the gravy train was about to run out, he'd gone around to all those people, and instead of knocking 20% or 50% off of their debts, had just demanded the next payment early. He would've raised enough funds, by transitioning to outright embezzlement, to take care of himself for quite a while... maybe even move to a new city and start over with a fresh reputation. If there was so little oversight to his management that a double digit percentage change to the books would go undetected, then surely this type of shakedown would've been even more successful.

But our protagonist ignores the option of fleeing to Guam with the money. Maybe some part of him fears, now that the ground beneath his feet is crumbling, what might happen when those winnings run out. Maybe he's having that moment of clarity, like the prodigal son who Jesus just finished talking about, where he realizes that his "life of dissipation" was never sustainable, and that unless he changes his tactics fast, he'll quickly end up somewhere he can't survive.

So instead, he takes another approach: with no father to flee to, he instead flees to the community from which he once held himself aloof. If his authority is doomed to unravel, he can use the last shreds of it to earn a place in a different kind of family, who - out of their gratitude - will be happy to support him in this new chapter of his life.

It's debatable whether this was even cheating his master per se. Financial middlemen in first century Judea often added secret "commissions" on top of the prices they passed on, a practice that was especially notorious among tax collectors. It's possible that our protagonist was simply removing his own cut from the debts.

Or maybe it was brazen embezzlement, just on behalf of his employer's debtors rather than going straight into his own wallet. Maybe the master's reaction, when he later discovered the sleight-of-hand, was simply amazement and grudging respect for the audacity of the ploy, the same kind that we often feel when reading the news about an especially bold and inventive swindle.

In either case, though, the steward's actions were the same: after recognizing that his wealth and power was temporary, that it would soon vanish and leave him up a creek without a paddle, he - rather than using his temporary authority to seek more wealth, which could betray him just as easily - arbitraged that authority for something more permanent.

And that lesson - the lesson that the prodigal son learned in his hunger pangs, and the dishonest steward learned in his fear of destitution - is one of the themes that Jesus returns to over and over in his teaching... especially now, as the liturgical year begins to wane and Jesus approaches Jerusalem. There's a time limit. Our world and its logic is an unstable equilibrium. It's passing away, and we, ill-adapted for it as we are, pass away within it. The window of opportunity for us to transition out of this world's precarious and fickle situation, and into the Kingdom which has no end, is a window which will only be open for so long.

So if we have to jettison our devotion to earthly things anyway... if we know enough to recognize, like the steward, that it's a paradigm which will collapse on its own before long no matter what we do... then the best thing to do with it is to use it as rocket fuel, burned for delta-v to help escape the gravity well of death. If wealth is lying to us, falsely selling itself as "Mammon" (literally "that in which one trusts") and then extorting us into accumulating it, then what better way to divest of it than - like Elisha burning his plow - by spending it in a way that exercises our love for God and for each other? Then it can be, simultaneously, a first step towards establishing the habits that change our direction towards the Kingdom. Then we can unite what we do with where we're trying to go.

After all, trustworthiness in little things means trustworthiness in great things, right? Our practice at becoming the kind of people who can live in eternity can come from the simplest, most trivial gestures. We have this time, on Earth, to make that transition.

And just like the steward, those choices make it clear which world we truly want to live in, and can help us enter into the Kingdom, and pass beyond this world which is passing away.

[prose-for-hire]

Claimed

Part One // Part Two

Pairing: Angel x vamp!reader

Request: as promised I'd like to request a part 3 to So wrong it’s right/Natural attraction

[Desc: Third part. An old friend of Angel’s comes to town and makes him wonder where your affection truly lies]

Requested by: Anon

Warning: Swearing. Implied sex/sex reference. Biting. Blood. A little violence.

You let me handle the plot so, as always, things got carried away. The timeframe moving from the previous part is either a while later or diverges a little from the show depending on where your imagination wants to take you. 🖤���

You were slumped on the sofa in front of yet another re-run. So, incredibly bored. As if the lack of his presence had made life unbearably boring. When he was around he made you feel alive. Made you excited - as if you wanted to be someone he could hold affection for.

But all of this embarrassing hope had been dashed. You hadn’t seen him in so long, you only had the delicious memories of your last stolen moments with him.

But without him, the colour had been sucked out of the world again. It was so bleak that you were stuck inside moping over him hopelessly. God, when had you gotten this way?

It had been too long. You missed him so badly you ached. Yearned in this guilty way to be even just in his presence. This wasn’t just lust anymore. The excitement of sex or trading blows with him. Somewhere inside you knew that it was all of him that you wanted. Craved.

Mind, body and even that stupid soul of his.

He had crawled into your dead heart. Made a home there. Leaving you suddenly full of life. Wanting to be more. It still irritated you, at how much influence he now held over you. But you couldn’t fight it. Didn’t want to anymore.

But he had been away recently. Dropped you as soon as he heard some Slayer was in trouble. He had been away in some ugly little town called Sunnydale. She needed his help. You soon learned from Angel’s team this Slayer was his ex. 

You dropped in on them every so often now to check in when you were bored and thought you might as well help them save the world or whatever. You were fun to be around, you didn’t hold back and they couldn’t help but like your company. So you stuck around them, enjoying the feeling of having something close to a group of friends. 

It was new to you, but you secretly enjoyed it. You spent a lot of time sharing your knowledge and trying to make their lives easier. Something you wouldn’t have even considered doing. Not before him.

But he had left you sorely lacking ever since he skipped town without so much as a word. You had really hoped that he might tell you himself, not get Wes to pass on some vague message about his ‘weekend plans’. 

The television buzzed soullessly as you stared through it. The only vision you wanted to see being him. And you were just sat there. Not even having the heart (or the attention span) to open a book. All you could think of was him. You were so bored. You were even considering masturbating for the millionth time to distract you from the way you needed him.

You started to move as if to do just that, when there was a massive thud at the door. Someone was knocking pretty urgently.

Shit. Debt collectors. You owed a lot of people a lot of kittens. You muted the tv and stumbled over your feet in the opposite direction from the door. You decided for everyone’s sake it would be better if you disappeared. Pretended not to be in.

You were almost panicking a little, not really sure if you had the mental or physical strength at the moment to take on a fight. So you did something too embarrassing to even describe properly. You rolled under your bed. Hid.

After some more urgent knocking, whoever it was got bored of waiting and just kicked the door in. As you had been expecting. You were hoping whoever it was looking for you was either too stupid to check under the bed for you or thought better of you than to even consider looking there.

The door was broken clean off its hinges. And you stayed still. Hearing two pairs of footprints stomping through your home. You were considering sliding out the window and onto the ledge while they looked around your living room. But then you heard something.

“Y/n?” His voice sounded urgent. Your chest swelled at the sound of his voice. Angel.

You rolled your eyes though. At what you were doing. God this was embarrassing. It was either stay hidden and risk not getting to see him or admit you had just hidden under a bed like some soon-to-be-dead loser in a shitty horror flick.

You decided you would just have to bear it. You rolled from under the best giving him the best scowl you could muster (you couldn’t help smiling a little at seeing him again).

He had the decency not to say anything about you rolling out from under the bed, although he had to hold back a small smile about it. He would tease you later, he was sure. Hopefully if there was a later he thought to himself.

“Funny how a weekend trip can last the full fourteen days now, isn’t it?” You hinted. You had missed him. You wanted him. He had left you longing.

“Look, it’s a Hellmouth stuff happened-”

“Too bloody right-” Someone else spoke up but you cut the stranger off. You hadn’t noticed him at first, your eyes only on Angel.

“Who the fuck is this?”

“Look, he’s-”

“And why the fuck is he just stalking through my house like he owns it?” You snapped, snatching a rare book of yours back from his hands.

The pair shared a look at your outburst as if you were the unreasonable one. You smelled it then. They both had souls. You eyed them both, not sure how you had found yourself the only sane, normal vampire in a thirty-mile radius.

“Name’s Spike” he offered and you squinted, recognising the name.

“Oh. Old flame right? Did you go through every ex’s town on your way back from Sunnydale or just the ones you thought were attractive enough to make me jealous?”

“Spike is not an old-”

“One time! It was one-!”

“Well, that hit a nerve” You muttered, rolling your eyes. Great. You had more competition for Angel’s affection. And God, did you want all of his affection laid on you. You wanted him so badly that it almost made you throb with need just from this brief interaction.

You were just staring now as he spoke. The way his eyes glistened in the dim light. His features chiselled as if made just for you. He made you feel things you weren’t sure you could even name. Some long-forgotten emotion that made your chest swell and your stomach feel like there were baby bats in there.

“I thought you said they were a help. Fat lot of good this one is considering their fourth wank of the day in front of bloody Time Team” You snapped out of your Angel-induced daze to scowl once again at the blonde man and his, unfortunately, accurate depiction of the way you were currently living.

They turned conversation quickly to try to convince you that you were needed. There was yet another plot to take over LA. Someone had informed them on the Hellmouth. To reverse it, they needed three vampires, ones that have enough good in them. No human could stand the pain of it. Angel insisted the third one is you. 

He had faith in you. In some way, it made you fill with pride. But, again, this wasn’t your life. You had never wanted to save the world. He mentioned that there was a ritual you could do to check, to at least prove him right and to begin the reversal of this apocalypse was needed.

“And tell me again why I would want to go through all that pain rather than, say, relocate?” You muttered, already knowing you would agree. For him.

“Y’know... because you’re good now, right?” Even as he said it, Angel knew these were the wrong words to use. You scoffed at him. You had never claimed this. You just liked the company of the team. Enjoyed a good fight. Enjoyed… the proximity with him.

“I’m okay, thanks. Don’t care. Sorry. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out”

“Listen here, pet-” The other vampire appealed to you. Which was also the wrong move.

“Why is this Billy Idol impersonator talking to me? Is it a joke I’m too cool to understand?”

“Oi- look here-”

You didn’t speak this time, you just went to punch the man in the face. But Angel caught you before either of you reacted. Wrapped a strong hand around your wrist. Kept it there.

His grip tightening in a way that made you smirk. You had missed this. God, you had really missed this. He lowered your hand, his still firmly grasping your wrist. And you just stared at him as he did. Hoping he would lean in and catch your lips again. Tear the fabric of the walls apart just with a look.

“Enough” He warned. Touch lingering as his eyes did on your form.

You would let him wreck the house if you thought it meant you could have him pressed against you again even for a second. He was dangerous to you and you loved it. He, on the other hand was still more cautious of the way you navigated your relationship. Of how he showed just what you meant to him.

He thought about you all the time. More so, while he was away. He was addicted to you. The way you moved, spoke. Held yourself. Had such entrenched opinions and he might even deign to say morals (loosely, of course).

He thought more of you than he had ever done before. Dreamt about you. Thought about what you could be doing, wanting to know what you were thinking. What made you tick. He held on to every intimate detail he could discover.

Remembered it in such crystal clarity. Because it was you.

He decided to get you on side, he would appeal to the more logical side of you. Which, surprisingly, worked. He managed to convince you to put your un-life on the line. Because it would help your new sort-of friends. To save Fred and the others, you could try it.

You finally relented. You almost didn’t so soon, hoping that he might descend to fighting you over it. Some contact with your skin. It was needed after so long. You nodded though and they nodded and you started for the door. Stepping over it as you left.

“What a bloody delight” Spike murmured so that you could hear it.

“Can it, Blondie” You hissed as you strode behind them, your usual confidence evident to all around.

Angel side-glanced at you, a small smile tugging at his lips at seeing you again. Even if all of your barbs were being thrown Spike’s way. It was so good to see you.

Angel had never been so sure that he wanted you around. Permanently. He just wasn’t entirely sure how to admit this. To himself or you. You always left him wanting more. That demon part of you matched his. The demons had claimed the other long before either of you had embraced how you felt. 

Neither of you had dared ask the other how they felt. What they wanted from this relationship. It may shatter the illusion you both had. That there could be a future there. That at least some of your eternity could be theirs.

You were staring blankly at a carved tablet, one that Wesley had found in connection with this stupid apocalypse you had been roped into stopping. You weren’t really reading, just skimming it. You’d catch up later, you always did. Right now, you were thinking about Angel. He was all you were ever thinking about at the moment.

“What’s that? Picture book?” A British accent asked. Spike.

“No” you said shortly. God, he was dumber than a bag of rocks. What had Angel ever seen in him? He rubbed you up the wrong way. And not in an exciting way either.

Wesley explained what it was as you had a rant in your head, just staring at the tablet.

“All that eternity and you can’t even read. What exactly do you do?” You couldn’t help it. It slipped out. He was a fly you wanted to swat away. Squish into nothingness. 

You glowered at him, but knew there was some big stupid prophecy so Spike had to stick around. You did what the powers wanted just enough to save your own skin. And, well, if you staked him God forbid, they tried to make you a champion in his place.

Angel frowned at your words. He wanted you to be talking to him. Ragging on him at how he couldn’t read them either. Wanted the charged tension that always stretched between you back. But since he had returned you had appeared more distant. Less smug about the way you rendered him simultaneously infuriated and obsessed with you.

You were laughing with the team when Spike stalked in after calling up his precious Slayer and talking loud enough to wake the dead. Or, at least wake Angel who had been trying to sleep. Instead he had joined you and the rest of the team. Your face had lit up when Angel entered the room but he hadn’t noticed. Or, you thought he hadn’t anyway.

The laughter died when he entered and he scowled. Spike had enough of you. How nobody appeared to accept him but even with your ‘evil’ nature and lack of soul these people embraced you with open arms.

“Why’s every bugger hangin’ on their every word? Hello, I’m the one with the bloody soul here”

“Because nobody likes you Spike” Angel shrugged from the doorway.

“Yeah, because having a soul makes you suddenly likeable and some all-encompassing good right? You’re kidding yourself - choices are what make us not writhing around in the sand with some dumb demon for a couple months”

Everyone had braced themselves, expecting your usual rant about not having a soul not meaning anything. That you could make good decisions. You could do what you wanted and still not be evil. But you had decided to just make a cheap shot.

“Piss off. Like you could stand it anyway”

Angel had been watching with a frown. Didn’t like the way you gave Spike such attention. He thought it was the way you used to give him attention before you began to deepen your relationship. 

He wanted you to be focusing on him. Only him. He missed you. In his bed. The way you looked contorted in pleasure. His.

When he thought about it, truly thought about it, he missed talking to you. The way you could make him laugh. Speak to him the way nobody else could. You embraced every side of him. Even the parts that he struggled to embrace himself.

He found himself almost needing that interaction. Needing you. Desperately. Not just your body but your mind too. All of you in fact. He ached for it, quivered with need. He didn’t care you lacked your soul anymore, he just needed you. Thirsted for every side of you.

You kept glancing at each other. You weren’t his partner but he really wanted you to be. He was finally able to admit it to himself. He just didn’t know how to ask. How to tell you what he wanted. He wanted it just you and him. Not to have to smell any of the particularly nasty lingering scents of lovers you had taken since he had been away.

Angel kept making snide comments about Buffy and Spike at any opportunity. This always made you scowl because he seemed so bothered by them. Spike smirked smugly. Which made you scowl even further. It was mostly to distract himself from his feelings from you. But you didn’t know this. You wanted his mind to be on you again. He hadn’t even pulled you aside during any slow moments like he usually would.

On a particularly boring day, while they were taking a break from the research that was making everyone have a headache (except you and Wesley), talk turned to Spike’s new soul. And why he had fought for one. For this Slayer.

“I think it’s romantic!” Fred cooed as you caught on to what had happened.

“For love? You got a soul for love?! That’s so cute, did it come with a complimentary heart shaped box? A dozen roses?” You cackled and Spike looked like he was about to thump you. Pretty ruthlessly too. But Angel pulled you away before he could. Apparently he was the only one allowed to berate Spike.

He took you by the shoulder and pressed you against the wall in the corridor once you were alone. You smirked, face lighting up expecting his lips on yours. Just like the last time you had been close in this way. But he just half-heartedly chastised you instead.

“Cool it off” he warned. You were disappointed with his tone, you missed the way he would excite you. Mix with anger and passion the way you had missed so badly.

“Why? Because it makes you uncomfortable? It’s foreplay for us. You know it, I know it” You plucked the nerve just to see what would happen. Making his blood boil. You saw it then. That hint of jealousy. This flicker of the demon side of him, he wanted to claim you as his.

“Whatever. Do anything you want after the case, just not here” He consciously tried to even his voice this time, hide the growl. But his chest rumbled dangerously at even the thought of you and Spike. He was clinging to his human form as the demon protested.

This is what made you tug on the nerve, near severing it. You leaned into him, so that your lips brushed his ear. Your tone seductive, one he would usually enjoy.

“Don’t be jealous, baby, I’m very good at sharing myself out. Especially while you were away-”

You were cut off by his hands tightly gripping your shoulders. Even as a vampire, you were sure you would bruise. Your stomach flipped at the fire behind his eyes. The need for you to not stray from him. He slammed you back against the door you had just left out of, near shattering the glass behind you. God, you had missed this. So badly.

You couldn’t help smirking. You were ready to take him right here. Fucking or fighting. Either one would do it for you. So long as you received his full attention. Just you and him.

He had come back so disaffected. His face mostly neutral. You thought he had barely looked at you, let alone touched you. Even in this way. You would take what you could get and savour every second of it.

You didn’t realise just how hard it was for him to be back in Sunnydale or all of the baggage he had left there (some of it that he had had to bring back as well). Dredging up his past had confirmed something to him. That he wanted you with him. Wanted you to be his. He wanted something more than what you were already doing. It scared him. Made him nervous, which is why he had kept a distance from you.

Even though it guilted him that this was selfish and something that would make him happy. Even though you were rough around the edges and morally dubious. Even though you had never expressed softer feelings of your own.

You meant something. Everything. And he couldn’t deny it now. Couldn’t begin to fight it anymore. He didn’t want to.

That was why he didn’t like you interacting with Spike. Because he felt this so strongly. That you belonged with him. Not with anybody else. But you had never labelled your relationship and he didn’t know how to even begin to tell you.

“If you’re not gonna do anything about it, let me go” You warned. Hoping he would do the opposite. He gripped tighter for a moment and you got excited but then he just let you go.

Disappointment washed over you and you frowned. You had so wanted to taste him on your tongue again. To have his body, hot with desire, pounding against yours.

As time went on, Angel began to get more and more jealous watching you and Spike interact. You began to notice it more. The way his furrow deepened whenever you glared holes in the man. Mistaking the interaction for something that excited you.

But he didn’t say anything. Barely looked at you. Which left you so sore. So needy for him.

So, you took it into your own hands. Of course, you didn’t actually speak to him about it. Oh, no. Instead, you dialled it up. Speaking to Spike much more. Making Angel so jealous he would shake. Aiming to make him want you more.

The ritual couldn’t be conducted for a few months yet, just before the steps to the scheduled apocalypse had begun. So there was a lot of waiting around and planning. However, your mind was less on that and more on how to get Angel to touch you again.

You had an idea. You gestured with your head to get the blonde vampire to come over and speak to you. The vampire was hung up on the slayer and you were hung up on Angel so neither of you had any particular interest in the other.

“Look I don’t like you, you don’t like me. But you wanna annoy Angel right?” You offered, giving him a knowing look. You weren’t stupid, Spike had an obvious and complicated past with your- the man.

“I’m listening” He squinted. And you didn’t waste any time, you whispered in his ear your suggestion.

Along with your obvious intelligence, you could be very persuasive. Near manipulative (it was how you had survived this long and gotten yourself out of many, many debts).

So, the next day you swung your plan straight into action. It wasn’t a particularly clever plan. But it was enough for you and Spike to know it could end badly wrong. Like, dust on the floor wrong should Angel be in a particularly bad mood.

You and Spike turned up to the building with his arm slung around your shoulder. You had asked to wear his jacket but he told you to sod off. So, you compromised and had him sling his arm over your shoulder told him to whisper something. Anything. Encouraging him to be as crude as possible. Implying that you had spent the previous night together.

You were speaking to the room but your eyes were on Angel the entire time. Watching the way his thoughts began to spin out of control behind his eyes. He was shaking with anger. Filling with pure jealousy. The way Spike was allowed so close to you. How he pressed against you the way he should be pressed against you. Natural touch that should be his.

He couldn’t just stand there. Watching. He just walked up to you, snatching your hand in his and dragged you from the room. If he didn’t he would have exploded then and there.

“Problem?” You asked, that infuriating tone you always used. He just directed you by the back of your head to move your ear next to his mouth.

“You’re mine” he growled and you couldn’t help the way your stomach flipped in excitement. Made you weak for him. Your eyes lit up. But you wouldn’t let him see you submit that easily.

“Prove it” You challenged. And he did just that. He pulled you into him, crashing his lips to yours. The rough embrace made your heart soar with happiness. He wanted you. He really wanted you.

As you made your way to the bed you stopped in your passion every now and again on the way. Slamming you into the walls, more furniture lost to your desire. You pushed him back onto the bed smirking down at him. He reached for you and pulled you down against him.

Lips crashing. Hands grasping. Skin slapping.

He claimed you as his. The feeling, it was shared. His eyes telling you that he was yours. He clutched you, while you grinded against his body. He made you feel alive. It was primal. This animal attraction never ceased. But this connection was deeper than anything either of you could name.

Your demon forms shifted, facing each other again. As they always did when you were together. They had missed their equal so desperately. You moved with him. As if you were one. He bit down hard, fangs embedded in your neck. You moaned in his ear and it made him bite harder still. 

Your blood tasted so good in his mouth. He hadn’t done this in so long. Hadn’t trusted anyone this way. This bond, it ran deep.

You directed his head further into you as he did this, grasping at the hair on the nape of his neck. It was pure pleasure.  Blood oozed down your chest as his mouth moved from the bite on the side of your neck. He pressed some open-mouthed kisses down your collarbone, following the trail of your blood. He licked slowly up it, catching every drop. His eyes bored into yours. Telling you what you already knew. You were made for him.

He pressed further into you, with a urgency that matched yours. He was finally embracing his demon. The way you had hoped he would for so long. You wanted all of him. To do this, you would have to give all of yourself. So, you did.

You stayed in bed together a lot longer than you usually might. You were just lying in bed together. You were on a slant, the bed had been lost to your passion. Frame splintering and collapsing. He would have to replace it. You were leaning on your side facing him. God, you had missed this. He had left you aching, empty without him.

He hadn’t so much as implied wanting to touch you like this since he had returned from Sunnydale. Just spent his time squabbling with Spike. So, this had been a needed release. Building up over so long.

“I missed this” You admitted, not quite meeting his eyes.

“Yeah?” He asked and you just nodded your reply. He found himself reaching for you, stroking your bare skin. You met his eyes, this tender touch he had never afforded to you before. It was alien but you wanted more of it.

“It was hard. Bein’ back there” He said slowly, referring to Sunnydale, “Seeing them both. Together as well, it hurt. Didn’t know what to do about it”

“Still hung up on them then?” You sighed, looking at a pull in the cotton. Twisting it in your fingers for something to do. Anything to distract from the way you had begun to hurt at the thought of him not feeling the same way as you did.

He shook his head but you didn’t see it. His hand stroking down your arm and resting on your hand. It was the most tender he had ever been. Action a lot subtle that you had ever shared. You found yourself wanting more of it.

“No. ‘Cause when I saw you again I, uh knew… knew that I’d rather be with you than anywhere else” He said slowly. He said it awkwardly, the words strung together as if they didn’t quite fit next to each other. But he meant it. He wasn’t sure if he had ever meant anything as much before in his entire life.

You didn’t know what to say to this so you just nodded. It was the best he could have hoped for. When you weren’t teasing, it was hard to reveal how you felt. You laughed though, mentioning you didn’t even like Spike anyway. You had just wanted him to pay you more attention again.

You then muttered something about not knowing what Angel had ever seen in him. Angel gave you a look but you didn’t get it (he felt that it was because you and Spike were too similar, that’s why you didn’t get on). Thankfully, he liked you a lot better than he liked Spike though.

You smiled at each other, both of you feeling even slightly more secure. You hadn’t been able to admit that you wanted to be exclusive, but you had both now implied it. Which was the best either of you could wish. You found yourself almost wanting to be his, the way he had hissed it in your ear. You couldn’t recall feeling that way before.

There it was again. That feeling that frightened you. Hope. It had crawled into your heart and only spread the longer you spent with him. An ugly thought popped into your head. One that embarrassed you immensely.

As you watched his face turn into that small smile beside you in bed. Understanding stretching between you. A glimmering hope that still frightened you more than anything else ever had. His jealousy still a delicious taste in your mouth. The wreckage of the room surrounded you but the atmosphere was almost... soft.

It was a thought he had already had himself and started to accept. You shuddered as you thought it though. Finding that maybe you truly had found your anti-soulmate. In Angel of all people.

#Angel btvs #Angel btvs x reader #Angel x reader #Angel btvs imagine #Angel imagine #angel btvs x you #angel the series #ats #ats imagine #ats x reader #ats x you #angel the series imagine #Buffy The Vampire Slayer #buffy the vampire slayer imagines #btvs

[i-see-no-whump-up-here]

Whumpmas in July (Day 6): Mistake

A/N: I’m working on introducing some of the characters I write with, so this is a whumpee’s start with one of my usual whumpers, a whumpee collector who (pretentiously) calls himself “The Master”. I don’t think this needs any CW’s, but please let me know if I need to add any.

Jesse took a deep breath, and he knocked on the big, wooden door. Barely a second passed before he heard. “Come in.”

“Mr. Donovan? Sir?” Jesse cautiously opened the door to an ornate office. Tall, walnut bookcases lined two walls so they framed the fine furniture between. Mr. Donovan sat at his desk, backlit by a large bay window. He didn’t look at Jesse, continuing to write in his journal.

“Have a seat,” The man said. Jesse stepped around the leather studded chair and did so gingerly. He didn’t speak yet, too afraid to mess up this opportunity. He still didn’t know quite what it was, but he knew that he needed it. Mr. Donovan finished his thoughts and then set his journal to the side.

“So, Josiah—“

“Jesse,” The younger man corrected. Then, he realized he interrupted, and he backpedaled. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to interrupt. It’s just a habit. Never been a fan of my full name.” He laughed nervously. Mr. Donovan raised an eyebrow.

“Right.” Mr. Donovan grabbed a manila envelope and opened it, pulling out a small stack of papers. He set only the top page in front of Jesse. “Fill this out.”

“Sure,” Jesse looked around. He started to reach for the pen holder but stopped himself. “May I?”

“You didn’t bring a pen,” Mr. Donovan asked— or said, rather. Jesse’s face turned red.

“No. Sorry— sir,” He wasn’t normally one for formal titles, but in this case, he thought it was warranted. A few days ago, he received a call from Mr. Donovan. The man found his resume online, and he claimed to have a unique opportunity for him. Jesse looked him up to make sure it wasn’t a spam call. His full name was Henry Donovan, and apparently, he was quite wealthy, worth several hundred million, but he couldn’t find much more about him. An elusive type— not a man who often socialized, as far as Jesse could tell. Some part of Jesse wished he could find more information on him, but he feared looking this gift horse in the mouth.

The man hadn’t said no, so Jesse carefully grabbed a pen and twisted the tip out. He wrote his full legal name in the right spots, and then he looked down the rest of the page. The form contained a weird mix of personal, legal, financial, and medical information. He paused for a moment, wanting to ask why Mr. Donovan needed this. He didn’t quite feel comfortable putting his social security number in, but surely if the man was asking, this was legal. He must have a team of lawyers watching his wealth, and this wasn’t some shady online website. He filled it in and answered the rest of the questions.

He wrote his current address. He lived alone. He didn’t have a current employment. He didn’t receive money from his parents. When he got to the medical part, he marked them as deceased. He didn’t have any allergies. He didn’t know of any current health issues. His family’s medical history was clean. The last box asked him if he told anyone about this opportunity, and to share who. Jesse forced himself to speak up. “What do you need this for? What exactly is the opportunity? Is it research or something?”

“We’ll get to that in a minute. It’s fairly straightforward,” Mr. Donovan dismissed. As Jesse signed the bottom of the page, he pulled out two more pages from within the stack. “Sign on these lines.”

“It pays well though, right?” Jesse scrawled his signature a few more times, but the papers were pulled away from him before he could see what they said at the top. “You said you knew I was behind on my rent, but I have some other payments to catch up on. I was wondering if we might be able to frontload some of the pay? Then I can take less later.”

“It’ll all be taken care of,” Mr. Donovan promised. Jesse nodded. Right. He probably needed to get the job first. Or did he already get it? He drove all the way out to this insanely fancy manor, so surely he did something right. Mr. Donovan started to get up, and Jesse sprung to his feet as well.

The man walked to one bookcase and pulled on a few books. Then, he moved a few more aside to reveal a pin pad. He typed in a code, and there was an audible click. Jesse startled as a bookcase slid back. Okay… that was unique.

“Ah. Cliche,” He gave a weak smile. Mr. Donovan didn’t seem amused.

“Classic,” He corrected. Jesse flexed his hands at his side. “I need to ask that you turn off your phone and remove anything from your pockets. It’s a security concern.”

“I can keep secrets,” Jesse promised, but he did as requested. He set his wallet and keys on the desk, and he turned off his phone, setting it alongside. As an afterthought, he made sure they sat straight and neat. Then, he joined his potential employer at the bookcase opening. A staircase was visible now.

“After you,” Mr. Donovan gestured toward the stairs. Jesse hesitated. The whole scenario felt off. Not by much, but Jesse was generally suspicious of wealthy people, and the whole secret staircase thing wasn’t helping his secret lair vibes. Although, it didn’t look evil and dingy, nor like a sex dungeon. The stairs were nicely lit with elegant tile and an indent in the wall that acted as a railing. Mr. Donovan quickly grew impatient. “I’m a very busy man, Jesse.”

“Right. Sorry. I appreciate the opportunity. I really do,” Jesse insisted. Even if he was nervous, that wasn’t a new feeling for him, and he needed the money. Whatever he was getting paid, he was sure it would help, and he figured it’d be worth the weirdness of this all. The sum he needed to fix his entire life was probably mere chump change to this man. He forced himself to start forward. Mr. Donovan trailed a few steps behind him. At the bottom of the stairs was a small junction, with hallways going forward and either direction to his left or right. Jesse waited for the man to catch up to him at the bottom.

“Left,” Mr. Donovan instructed. “The door on your right.” Jesse went down the left hallway. There was only one door on his right, and it looked to be made of brass. Mr. Donovan had to scan his eye and fingerprint. The whole place was very high security, and Jesse wondered again what he was getting into. The door unlocked, and Mr. Donovan motioned him in. “Fourth on your left.”

This hallway had at least a dozen doors, but they were all made of metal. They had closed metal windows-- like prison doors. Jesse hesitated. “What’s down here?”

“I’ll show you in a second.”

“Why is it all reinforced? What is this?” Jesse asked. Mr. Donovan took a step forward, and it spurred Jesse to at least step into the hallway, still debating how much he could question in this position. He had to be pushing his luck as it was, and historically, no one appreciated his questions.

“Go,” Mr. Donovan said sternly. “Unless you want to end up in prison from debt.” Jesse felt his heart beating faster. He didn’t, obviously, but he wasn’t sure he wanted whatever was happening here either. Were there exotic animals in these cells maybe? Was he comfortable with that? Could he be? For the right sum? He didn’t know.

“Fourth on your left. Last chance,” Mr. Donovan insisted. Jesse numbly walked forward. He watched as the man typed in another pin, and then he opened the door.

It was a cell. A small cell with nothing but a white trash bin in the corner and a white padded bed. Holy shit. Holy shit! No. Absolutely not. No no no. Jesse took a step back, but Mr. Donovan was already behind him. “Go inside.”

“No!” Jesse yelped. “You’re insane. Absolutely fucking bonkers!” He swiveled his head to Mr. Donovan and then back to the cell. “What the heck is this for?! Do you think I’m just gonna go in there?!”

There was a click, and Jesse looked behind him again. Mr. Donovan held a small pistol in his hand. His soul might as well have left his body. Guns absolutely terrified him, and he’d barely seen any, much less had one aimed at him. He tried to find words in his dry mouth. He opened and closed it like an idiot.

“Step back,” Mr. Donovan ordered. Jesse compiled without even thinking. The man took a step after him, and Jesse moved back again automatically.

“Please,” Jesse’s voice strained. “Don’t shoot me.” He continued to back away, eyes trained solely on the gun. Mr. Donovan moved his hand, and Jesse flinched. The hand found the door handle. Wait. Jesse hadn’t even realized he was in the cell now. He surged forward.

The door slammed shut just as he got there, his hands hitting the padded metal surface a second later. He slammed his palms against it. “Wait! Wait!”

The window cover slid open, and Jesse could only see out through iron bars. “Mr. Donovan, please!”

“Technically, I have a doctorate--”

“Doctor Donovan--”

“-- but you will just call me Master.” The window slid shut. Jesse hit the door again in panic. He searched for a handle, for a crack, for anything to grab, and he found nothing. He yelled. He squeezed his fingers between the padding, but it was bolted down. He slammed his shoulder into the door so hard his entire body hurt with the impact, and he fell backward onto the floor.

Down there, the walls felt so high yet suffocating at the same time. He got onto his hands and knees and stared at the unmoving door. No... What had he done?

#whumpmasinjuly #whump #whumplr #whump prompt #wij21day6 #my writing #writing #drabble #Jesse #my OC #henry donovan #the master #master #whumpee #whumper #manipulation #signing things without looking #ignoring all the red flags #really just a dumb move #mistake

[downwiththeficness]

In the Bond-Chapter 14

Summary: Lilah often wished she’d never said yes to working with the Gecko brothers—usually while dodging gunfire. At no time was she regretting that decision more than when she’s hanging upside down from the ceiling, staring down a group of hungry culebras and one (1) extremely powerful sun god.

Word Count: ~7,600

Warnings: Drugging, kidnapping, violence, gore, blood, heavy sexual themes

A/N: This is an AU of my Story In the Blood, which can be read here. Basically, this fic explores what would have happened if Lilah had met up with Geckos before she met Brasa.

Taglist: @symbiont13

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They were standing around the familiar slab of the conference room table, a lull having settled over the group as they finalized the last few details of their plan. Lilah fiddled with the hem of her dress, a deep blue off the shoulder body con that she was assured (by Kate) would fit the bill for what they needed. The heels were not too high that she couldn’t run, the ankle strap keeping them firmly in place. She’d borrowed the clutch that held a switchblade and a few other accouterments that she might need throughout the night.

Seth crossed his arms, his gaze on her, “Are we all on the same page?”

Lilah nodded, looking to Richie and Brasa, who were also nodding. The subterfuge that they’d decided on was a little more complicated than strictly necessary, but it gave the brothers Gecko the opportunity to do what they did best—steal. At least, that was what they hoped.

Brandon Lyle had been maneuvered into place as best as they could manage without actually getting into a room with him. Brasa had bought his debt. Lyle had been offered terms, now they waited to see how he would react.

Lilah had her own thoughts about it, thoughts that she’d voiced several times over. It surprised her how Brasa had sided with both Richie and Seth, the three of them forming a bizarre unit that assured her that the plan would go exactly how they wanted. She found herself outnumbered and out-reasoned over and over in a way that made her jaw clench.

Their mark was an idiot, and too dumb to know he was so stupid. He’d gotten in deep with some pretty big players and thought that his money, or his looks, or his brute force could get him out of it. There was only one way to effectively deal with this kind of person—a con.

It wasn’t even really a con, per se, though Lilah was certainly not one to indulge in semantics when it came to crime. It was just an elaborate distraction that would give both teams the time they needed to perform the real work. Seth and Richie would be on site, in case he brought the book with him. Brasa and Javier would be en route to his father’s house in case it was still in the hermit’s library.

Either way, they were getting that book tonight.

Lilah had been clear that Branden’s father wasn’t going to be harmed in this. He was an eccentric old book collector, an appreciator of the rare and the obscure. He wasn’t responsible for his son’s debt, nor was he responsible for the way in which it would need to be collected. She made no such advocacy for the younger Mr. Lyle.

Seth reached down and grabbed his jacket from where he’d draped it over the nearest chair, shrugging it on and shaking out the fabric, “Alright. Let’s go.”

“Don’t forget your comms,” Lilah said, pointing that them, “You guys need to be able to hear while we work.”

Holding up both hands defensively, Seth gave half a smile, “Alright, alright, we’ll put the comms in. Anything else?”

“Yeah,” she shot back, “Don’t fuck around. Get in, get the book, get out.”

“Yes, mother,” Richie intoned with humor.

She glared, but said nothing further.

Seth laughed and took a step back, “You coming?”

“Actually,” Brasa cut in, “I have a matter I’d like to discuss with Lilah. It will only take a moment.”

Richie was already moving towards the door, Seth hesitating as he watched Lilah for guidance.

She nodded, waving them off, “Go. I’ll head to the bar in a few minutes. I need to arrive separately, anyways. It’ll be good to have some delay.”

Watching as they both sauntered out, closing the door behind them, Lilah shifted on her heels and turned to look expectantly up at Brasa. He stood not too far away, looking at her with an inscrutable expression.

Lilah grew nervous under those eyes, her shoulders rising up towards her ears. He looked at her a few moments longer, his fingers curling into his palms. Though he wasn’t a man of very many words, his eyes could say a thousand things that left Lilah struggling to interpret. She shifted in her heels, eyes darting away from that penetrating gaze.

When he moved, it was a series of slow, even steps that brought him within a few inches of her. He took her hands, holding them lightly.

“I like this dress,” he murmured.

Lilah felt a warm rush rise beneath her skin at the compliment, “Thanks. I thought it might be a bit much to sell the grift, but I think I’d rather be overdressed.”

“No,” he replied, moving further into her space, “Its not too much.”

She smiled shyly, “Really?”

Brasa nodded, dropping a kiss onto her bare shoulder, following the line of muscle to her neck, beneath her chin, to her lips. He kissed her lightly, with a warm reverence that hinted at feelings she wasn’t quite ready to name.

More kisses followed, soft and sweet. He shifted his grip to pull her into his body by her hips. Lilah draped her arms over his shoulders, letting the slow press of his mouth lull her into comfort. She touched her tongue to his, traced along it, tasting. The hands on her hips squeezed into her flesh, a little moan sounding.

Breathing in, he deepened the kiss, teeth nipping. Lilah gasped when he nicked her skin, sucking on the tiny wound. He gripped her ass, hauling her upwards as he dove in for another searing kiss, a growl sounding from the back of his throat. Lilah held onto him, almost all of her weight held by the strength of his arms.

In a smooth, fluid motion, she was lifted and deposited on the conference table. Her body landed with a muffled thud, her legs dangling over the side. She braced a hand on the wood below as she caught her balance, her free hand digging into his button down to pull him closer.

Lilah was quickly becoming overwhelmed. He was everywhere—his taste, his smell, his body—he overpowered every sense that she had until all she could think was that she needed to get closer, needed to get more. Greedy hands traced hard muscle, her ankles wrapping around his calves as he stepped into the space she’d made for him between her thighs.

The tight hem of her dress, already straining, finally gave up and rolled upwards towards her hips. The fabric cut into her skin, every second of discomfort worth it to have Brasa pressed against her. Nose pressed into her neck, he licked at her skin, teeth scraping. His hands steadied her, kneading her curves,  holding inexorably to him.

“Lilah,” he murmured against her mouth, a kind of soft desperation in his tone.

She pulled back a little, catching his eyes and lifting her brows in question. His jaw was slack as he worked to find words, his gaze tracing over the curves of her face. Smiling a little, she cupped his cheeks, kissing him quickly.

When she leaned away, she asked, “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

It occurred to her that she could just reach out to him, as she’d done many times, but Lilah’s gut told her that whatever he needed to say needed to be said out loud. She waited.

“Lilah,” he started again, his hands reaching down and gripping beneath her knees. He unwrapped her legs and set them down on the table, fingers pushing on her inner thighs to spread them wide.

She let him keep pressing her open, biting her lip to quell the feeling of being so exposed. He let the weight of his palms rest on the tops of her thighs, his eyes focused on the strip of fabric covering her mound. Lilah squirmed a little, couldn’t keep still when he was looking at her like that.

He said her name again, then, “Let me serve you.”

Staring at him in confusion, Lilah was about to ask what the fuck he meant, but comprehension quickly dawned when he dropped slowly onto his knees. She sucked in a breath as her pushed her dress further up her hips, the leather of his gloves rubbing sensuously over the newly exposed skin.

Brasa looked up at her, his head cocked to the side. Lilah felt her mouth purse as she tried to figure out what he was waiting for when she it suddenly clicked for her that he was asking for her to tell him ‘yes’. Huffing out a soft laugh, she grasped his forearms and nodded.

He looked...fucking delighted. Smiling so wide that she caught sight of his dimples, he leaned over and kissed her knee. He moved to the other side, his lips rubbing over her inner thigh. Here, he slowed, eyes half closed as he nuzzled her. The scratch of his stubble tickling, Lilah stifled another laugh as she carded her fingers in his hair.

Brasa laid a little path of kisses upwards, his thumbs pushing into her hips to tilt them forward. Lilah leaned back onto one hand, relaxing into the direction of his hands—she’d go wherever he wanted to lead in that moment.

With a strong pull, he jerked her closer to the edge. Surprised, Lilah let out a yelp and grabbed at his shoulder, the following laugh cut off when he dove in and licked a hot stripe upwards, his teeth catching. He lifted first one leg, then the other, over his shoulders, moving from side to side with wet, passionate kisses.

Lilah felt like she couldn’t breathe, her body warm and vibrating with anticipation as he made his way up towards her center. His fingers worked beneath the waistband of her panties, tugging them down. As Lilah was lifting her hips to help him get them off her as soon as possible, a knock sounded at the door.

“Lord Brasa,” came the voice that followed.

Her eyes closed, knowing that Javier would wait outside as long as Brasa wanted him to, but more than a little self conscious of him hearing what they were doing. She let out a long breath, disappointed but not surprised at the interruption. Without even looking at her phone, she knew that they were already behind schedule.

Brasa, for his part, didn’t seem to notice. He tugged again on her, eyes turned upwards to cast her a look of frustration. She looked down at the inky black, her breath catching as his hands flexed on her body. They stayed in that moment, suspended, the air sparking in a way that gave her a whole body shiver. He felt it, one side of his mouth quirking up in a self satisfied smirk.

Another knock, another call for his lord.

She smiled, unable to do anything but laugh as Brasa rolled his eyes and stood. Taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger, he dropped a lingering kiss on her mouth.

“This’ll be a quick job,” she said as he helped her down, her hands righting the fabric of her dress. “We do stuff like this all the time.”

Brasa took her hand, “You will be careful.”

It wasn’t a question, it was a directive. And, unlike most directives he gave her, Lilah was inclined to obey him. She nodded, smiling as she followed him out to where her car was waiting.

When she made it to the bar, Lilah took some time to get a feel for the room. The place was full of twenty-somethings, the music loud enough that any kind of conversation had to be yelled directly into one’s ear. She sighed, it was exactly as she expected.

Lilah pushed her hair behind her ear, using the motion to double check that her comm was secure. She took an extra moment to lift her toes in her heels, ensuring that they were as fitted to her feet as possible. The last thing she needed was to take a fall in her approach of the mark. He had to think of her as calm, confident—and, most of all, attractive. The set up wouldn’t work if he didn’t like her.

Deep breath.

Lifting her chin, Lilah began her approach. It constantly amazed her how people reacted to confidence, and a determined stride. If they weren’t too drunk to notice, most people got out of her way. The few that tried to catch her attention were quickly dismissed with the coldest look she could muster.

The VIP section wasn’t really so much as section as it was a few tables roped off with a bouncer nearby. Branden Lyle was sitting with several other men, a glass of dark liquor in his hand. He was dressed in a deep navy, a flash of gold around his neck. She managed to keep from rolling her eyes, but channeled her internal disgust into giving the bouncer a hard stare.

To his credit, the man didn’t seem bothered. He had about eight inches of height and a hundred and fifty pounds on her. Lilah had to crane her neck to look at him as she drew near.

“I’d like to speak to Mr. Lyle, please,” she announced genially.

Lilah found that the polite approach was usually the easiest way to get what she wanted when dealing with security. Too often, these guys were threatened, spit on, and pushed around by hot shots trying to get their way. A little civility was almost always unexpected, and almost always welcomed.

“No guests tonight, just business partners,” was his answer.

She gave him a winning smile and opened her clutch, pulling out the business card Richie had drawn up to give her a little more credibility.

“I am a business partner,” she asserted lightly as she handed the card over, “Mr. Lyle owes my bosses a debt. I think he’ll want to discuss terms as soon as possible.”

The bouncer looked at the card and then back at her before motioning for her to wait a moment. Hands folded in front of her, Lilah kept her expression serene as she watched the bouncer interrupt Mr. Lyle’s conversation, showing him the card. When the mark looked at her, she smiled a little, and bounced in her heels.

He laughed.

The little shit laughed. Lilah felt her lips press together as she resisted the urge to glare. Despite his easy dismissal, Brandon Lyle stepped into the first of many traps her team had in store for him tonight. He waved her forward.

Lilah sidled past the other ‘business partners’ as they left the table, her attention as much on the mark as possible. She sat demurely, setting her clutch on the table in front of her and fixing Branden with a friendly look.

He took her in, saying, “Ms. Corbett, I don’t think we’ve met.”

She lifted a shoulder, “We haven’t, but I’ve been told quite a bit about you by Mr. Pickerelle.” Lilah let that sink in, watching as his expression soured, “The good news for you is that you no longer owe him sixty grand. The bad news is that you now owe that money to my employers. They intend to collect tonight.”

Branden reached out and picked up his glass. He brought it halfway to his lips and paused, “If you’re here to threaten me, I can at least offer you a drink to soften the blow.”

Shaking her head, Lilah said, “What I said isn’t news. You were informed of the transfer of your loan two days ago. You were also informed of what my employers want to clear the debt completely.”

“Ah,” Branden replied around a swallow, “The book.”

Lilah echoed the last two words, “Yes.: She leaned forward on a forearm and cast him a coy glance, “Have you brought it, as we asked.”

He ticked his head to the side, “I did.”

This was good. It meant that the night would end early—thank God.

“Excellent. Do you have it here, or…”

Waving a hand towards the back of the room, “I asked the manager to lend me the use of his safe. Its downstairs.”

Trap number two. He’d not only disclosed the location, but he’d put it in the worst possible place to keep it—at least, when someone like Richie was trying to get at it.

We’re on it, came through her ear.

She breathed deeply, making a show of leaning back in her chair, “I think I’ll take that drink, now that you’ve shown good faith.”

The mark had absolutely not done that, but Lilah needed to buy the boys time to get in and get out. She put it at five minutes.

“What’ll you have?”

“Bourbon, rocks,” she answered.

Branden flagged down the bouncer and put in the order.

“While we wait,” Branden said with a curious gaze, “How about you tell me how you got into this line of work.”

Lilah considered the question, considered lying outright. It wasn’t necessary to come up with an elaborate backstory for this grift to work. She just needed enough surface details to convince him that she represented people who now owned his loan (which, technically, she did). He would fill in the other details on his own. Still, she needed to stall, and he looked interested enough.

“Well,” she said, crossing her legs and pretending to recall a memory. “I started out as an assistant at one of those cash advance places—you’re familiar?” When he nodded, she continued, “I showed some...aptitude, and I was invited to join a more lucrative venture.”

Branden lifted his brows, eyes dancing with surprise, “Aptitude?”

She smiled, as if laughing at a shared joke, “Yes, aptitude.”

He smiled along with her, “Would you mind elaborating?”

Lilah’s attention was diverted momentarily by the wait staff arriving with her bourbon. Branden took it from them and handed it to Lilah. She thanked him with a small salute, then took a sip. Like Seth, Branden had terrible taste in liquor. Unlike Seth, he didn’t seem to know it. Fuck, but it tasted like old sweat.

She barely concealed her grimace around a cough, “I’m adaptable. Very helpful in this business.”

Branden acknowledged her assertion with a dip of his head. He lifted his glass, “To adaptability.”

Loathe as she was to take another drink, Lilah gave a toast and sipped lightly. Swallowing was difficult, but she managed it. Glancing down into the glass, she eyed what was left. They’d poured her a healthy shot, a single cube of ice clinking against the sides.

“So,” Branden said, “You have to admit that its not just adaptability that got you where you are.” He leaned forward once more, saying, “You’re also beautiful.”

Her initial reaction was to dry heave, but she held it back. Instead, she gave him a small smile at the compliment, hoping that she wouldn’t have to actually flirt with him in order to hold his attention long enough to get the job done.

Not in the safe. Initiating Plan B.

Lilah felt anger rise up. The man had completely wasted their time. She set her jaw, narrowing her eyes at him.

“You’re right. Adaptability is not my only skill. I’m also a keen detector of bullshit.”

She stood, and wavered. Blood rushed into her skull, her eyesight blurring. Stomach roiling, Lilah had to brace her weight on the table.

“Clearly not good enough. Mikey?”

Hands gabbed at her, hauling her bodily up and over a massive shoulder. Panicked, Lilah screamed, the sound noted and ignored by the other patrons. Her stomach lurched and her head spun. Lilah had just enough energy to send out a call to Brasa as she was carried out the back door and thrown into the back of a van. Body limp, she could only stare at the streetlights as they passed by at an ever increasing speed.

She came to with a voice yelling in her ear, “Answer me, goddammit!”

Seth. Angry.

Her head hurt, her mouth dry. She swallowed painfully, “I’m here,” she croaked.

“Thanks to whatever god we haven’t met yet,” he sighed. “What happened?”

Lilah’s brain moved like molasses, her thoughts sticking together, “Drugs, I think.”

Everything hurt, her body shaking as she tried to get her bearings, “I’m in a room. Its cold. Fuck, its cold. I’m...tied to a chair. There are no windows.”

She could hear Seth repeating the information, though she didn’t quite understand why. As the seconds passed, her mind began to clear. The headache stubbornly remained, but Lilah blinked away the pain as much as she could. There would be time to feel pain later.

Shoulders moving, she tested the bonds of the rope. Too tight for her to get out of it. At least her legs weren’t tied down. She rocked from side to side. The chair was, unfortunately, pretty sturdy.

“How do we track your comm?” Seth asked.

Lilah sighed, “You got your cell?”

“Yeah.”

This was good, “Open it, code is two, seven, two, seven, two. Tap the ‘find me’ app. Click on my name, it should have my location, on it.”

From the back of her mind, she felt him growl. He pushed and pushed, until she couldn’t ignore the weight of him.

Querida…

“I’m okay,” she said back to him, the words filtering soundlessly. “A little banged up, but okay.”

Can you focus enough to let me through?

Through?

Yes, he urged, If you concentrate on the bond, I can get through to you. Fully. I’ll kill them, bring you back here.

Lilah’s vision swam with the effort of keeping the connection, “No. I can’t concentrate.”

Then, I will be with you shortly.

Lilah had just enough time to feel grateful before the only door of the room swung open and Branden walked in, Mikey strutting in behind. Lilah steeled herself, not sure where this would go.

“I think,” Branden began as he stood in front of her, “That you might work for powerful people, but those people wouldn’t give a shit if I killed you right now.”

Breathe.

“I think,” Lilah replied in a voice that was as stern as she could make it, “That you don’t know how wrong you are.”

He laughed, a high pitched, genuinely amused thing that grated on her very sensitized nerves. Behind him, Mikey also laughed. She sighed and crossed her legs, attempting to project confidence.

“You don’t have much time,” she continued, “I think you had better let me go.”

Branden’s eyes narrowed, though he was still smiling, “I know a bluff when I see one.”

Clearly, he did not.

“No bluff,” she shot back, “You don’t know what’s coming for you.”

Even now she could feel him nearing, even now that heat at the back of her mind was growing hotter and stronger. He was enraged, livid that he had not been there to protect her. She quieted him as best she could, but she knew—she knew. Lilah could not save these men.

“What do you want with the book?”

She shrugged, “I don’t want anything to do with it. I’m just here to acquire it.”

Mr. Lyle cocked his head to the side, “You do. You’ve been asking about it. You’ve been threatening about it.”

She breathed deeply, feeling sweat bead at her temples, “I don’t.”

“Mikey, let’s refresh her memory.”

Grabbing her hair, Mikey pulled her head back so that she was staring at the ceiling, one big hand coming up to cover her mouth and nose. Her lips pulled back from her teeth, but she couldn’t get the leverage she needed to bite down.

“How much is it worth?” Mr. Lyle asked, his voice coming from near her left side.

Lilah shook her head, trying to free her face from Mikey’s grasp, her legs uncrossing. Her heels kicked outwards, hoping to gain purchase somewhere. Her chest burned. Lilah was going to pass out, and soon.

“Its expensive, isn’t it?”

She felt tears form at the corner of her eyes. Her body jerked, failing to loosen Mikey’s hold. The lights flickered above her as her vision began to narrow. Sweat ran from her temples down her face and neck. The air in the room compressed over her body, her muscles contracting, knees coming up to her chest protectively.

“Let up.”

Mikey released her and Lilah sucked in air, body crumpling in the seat as she dropped her head down between her legs. She took several large gulps of air, wheezing and coughing. Behind her, Mikey laughed. Lilah hated the sound of it.

Mr. Lyle grabbed her hair and forced her to look at him, “What. Is. It?”

“I don’t know,” she coughed out, blinking as she tried to focus her vision. Everything was showing in doubles.

He gave her a hard shake and she felt hair come loose from her scalp, “Liar. Tell me.”

Lilah shook her head, “I’m not lying. I don’t know what it is. I was just asked to get ahold of it.”

Mr. Lyle let go of her hair and Lilah sat back, her hands folded uncomfortably behind her. The collar his shirt was damp. She doubted that he was sadist, at heart. He didn’t really look like he was enjoying this. He did look determined. Determined was worse.

Mikey moved around to her right, standing near enough that he’d be able to swat her down if she moved. She gauged the room. Mr. Lyle was between her and the door. Mikey could very likely snap her neck before she got there. Lilah was well and truly fucked for the moment.

“How much are you being paid for this?”

Lilah hesitated, eyeing Mr. Lyle. Her brain was working at half speed, and she couldn’t get a plan together to distract him. Though she was successful in keeping the panic at a minimum, she couldn’t quite draw upon her mental faculties to keep herself alive.

His hands were cold, bony, rough when they grabbed and held her up to him. Lilah grit her teeth, wondering if she could get her heel off to use as a weapon.

“How much?!” He screamed, and Lilah reflexively shut her eyes, a small sound of fear escaping her tight control.

Branden dropped her, she landed off center on the chair, falling to the floor. Stuttering breaths filled her lungs, a tear dripping down her cheek.

Branden sneered, “Let’s let her think about that for a bit.”

And then they were gone, leaving her curled on the floor. Lilah took a moment to draw on her courage, her wrists working against the rope. She pulled and yanked, until she was able to get her hand through the tiny loop, her skin chafing.

She looked at the binding, unwinding it. It wasn’t quite a weapon, but she’d take it. Struggling to her feet, she made her way to the door and gingerly turned the knob. It wasn’t locked. Another breath and she was easing the door open and peeking out into the hallway.

Brick on both sides and dimly lit. Empty. Careful of the sound of her heels, Lilah eased down the hall. All the doors were locked, except for the one that was open at the end of the hall. From it, she could hear music playing, and voices.

Lilah peered around the corner, cursing to herself when she clocked at least six guys talking around a card table. She only recognized Branden and Mikey. The others might as well be Agent Smith—all vanilla white boy who thought he was tough shit.

Standing in that hallway, Lilah closed her eyes and felt for Brasa, comforted when he responded eagerly, the whole of her body lighting up with heat. He’d find her, as he promised. But, Lilah couldn’t wait around to be rescued. It just wasn’t her style.

Adjusting her grip on the rope, Lilah squared her shoulders and strode out with far more confidence than she felt.

“We got a lock on you,” sounded from her comm, “Brasa took off, might reach you first. You hang tight.”

Lilah was not going to hang tight. She was angry at being cheated out of her goal, and she was even more angry that she’d been duped by some trust fund dickbag in an off the rack suit.

They noticed her, one or two standing as she moved through the room. There was a pull down garage door behind them (closed) and what actually appeared to be an exit to her left (also closed). Lilah ignored Branden’s opening jab about her being ‘wily’ and headed for the door.

Her heels clicked on the cement floor, her stride hard and quick. She didn’t stop when someone yelled, didn’t stop when chair scratched as more stood. What did make her stop was the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked.

Hands raised, the rope dangling, Lilah turned in a slow circle and faced them. Mikey had a handgun aimed at her, his finger on the trigger. Lilah glared at him, then turned her attention to their ringleader.

Branden was smiling as he approached, slowing about ten feet away, “Should have tied you up tighter.”

“Probably wouldn’t have worked,” she quipped.

He sucked his teeth, his smile morphing into something dark and angry. Lilah felt heat roll up her spine, a sharp burn that almost made her drop the rope.

“You have about ten seconds left to live,” she said. “Any last words?”

Branden laughed, “Funny, funny girl. How about I put a bullet in you and see if you have anything to say?”

It seemed he’d read the villain one-liner book, as well. Lilah rolled her eyes and waited for the inevitable.

The door behind her jerked off the hinges, air pushing hard enough at her back that she had to take a step forward to keep her balance.

“You’re not going to get that chance,” she rasped, her arms dropping.

A hand touched the small of her back, warm and familiar. Lilah leaned into it.

“Are you alright?” Brasa asked from over her shoulder.

She nodded, “I’m better, now that you’re here.”

Lilah could feel his gratification through the bond—that, and his anger. Fury, really. Hot, unrelenting fury.

Brandan was watching Brasa warily, his eyes looking to the door and back, “Boys? Let’s show ‘em what they’re up against.”

Lilah expected more weapons. She fully expected more posturing and some barbs back and forth. What she didn’t expect was a fucking semi-automatic rifle. Strike that, two semi-automatic rifles.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” she ground out even as she was moving backwards.

Gunfire is a weird thing. Its so loud. Disorienting. Your body moves without thought, jerking away from it, shielding your face. Lilah needn’t have bothered. Brasa moved, snakelike, turning her so that his broad body overtook her entire line of vision.

Bullets hit him. She could feel it. A staccato rhythm of impacts that had him grunting in her ear. He held her tightly, arms locked around her body so that he covered her completely. Face smashed into his chest, Lilah couldn’t do anything as the assault carried on—bullet after bullet.

Finally, when they stopped to reload, his arms fell away and he was turning to look at their assailants, “Out, Lilah.”

When she didn’t move, he turned his head and glanced at her over his shoulder, repeating the order. His eyes were blood red, looking angrily from under his brows. She’d never seen them like that before, and it opened up a dozen questions that this wasn’t the time to ask.

Knowing that she had no hope of actually helping the situation, Lilah ducked out of the room, sliding a little on the gravel as she went. More gunfire sounded, bullets breaking the windows. She covered her head and kept going until she rounded a lifted truck. Kneeling by one of the massive tires, she listened to the screams.

These weren’t screams of fear, not all of them. Lilah knew what a fearful scream sounded like. These were screams of pain. Lilah had seen that Brasa could tear a culebra in half with little to no effort. She didn’t really want to think about what he was doing to the human men who’d taken her captive.

While more guns went off, while the screams increased in volume and frequency, a familiar car came roaring up the drive. Relieved, Lilah stood up a little and waved to them.

Seth barely had the car in park before he was opening the door and heading for her, gun already in his hand. His face was a mask of worry, one arm outstretched to pull her into a hug.

“You’re not supposed to do this shit to us,” he exclaimed angrily.

Lilah rolled her eyes, pulling away enough to see Richie light a cigarette and salute her with it, “Its not like I planned to be drugged and kidnapped.”

The effects of the drug were wearing off—a product of either the low dose or the low quality. Lilah could still feel the fatigue beating at her, somewhat mitigated by the surge of adrenaline.

Seth held her by the arm and looked her over, “They hurt you?”

She shrugged, “Nothing I won’t survive.”

Mouth thin, his attention turned to the warehouse that had gone silent, “Brasa in there?”

She nodded, “Yeah. He, uh, looked pretty pissed off.”

Seth scoffed, “Not our fault that Lyle guy lied to us.”

Lilah gave another shrug and turned to see Brasa in the doorway, leaning heavily against it. He was hurt. Very hurt. She couldn’t even begin to count the number of bullets he’d taken for her, and Lilah knew that he had lost a significant amount of blood.

Feet moving, Lilah went to him, arms going around his waist as he struggled to support his weight. Even through his clothes, Lilah could feel the cold that confirmed what she already knew. He held himself stiffly for a few seconds, eyes squeezed closed, then let his arm fall to her shoulders as he took a step forward.

That step turned into a stumble, which turned into a fall. Lilah couldn’t hope to support him through it, landing hard on her knees, the gravel scraping.

She looked up at her friends, “I need help. He can’t walk.”

Richie flicked the cig away and stepped up to Brasa’s body. He lifted him with a choked off sound of effort and dragged him beneath the arms to the car. Seth reached down and helped Lilah to her feet. She followed Richie to the car, watching as he laid Brasa over the back seat.

“He needs a hospital,” was out of her mouth before her brain could catch up and tell her that the idea was so stupid that she should just shut up and never talk again.

Richie looked at her over his shoulder, “He needs blood. Lots of it, from the look of him.”

Lilah looked to Seth, “There’s blood at the bar. Javier will know what to do.”

Seth watched her face carefully, his eyes narrow, mouth turned down in a frown, then said, “Alright. Get in.”

Without hesitation, Lilah climbed in the back and knelt in the floorboard, reaching down to unclasp her heels. Her knees were bleeding, and her palms were scraped up pretty bad. She’d feel it tomorrow, no doubt.

The doors of the car slammed shut and the engine turned over, she rocked hard into the seat as Seth peeled out of the driveway. Rising up, Lilah touched Brasa’s face, tapping it a few times to rouse him. His shirt was completely soaked in blood, the material sticking to his chest. She unbuttoned it, hands hovering over his skin as wound after wound was revealed.

“I’m getting you a bulletproof vest for Christmas,” she grouched as she peeled up the fabric.

His chest contracted, flinched really, his voice coming out soft and scratchy, “I will heal.”

Lilah was half relieved that he was conscious and half angry that he seemed to have so little regard for his health, “You wouldn’t need to heal if you’d just, I don’t know, dodged the bullets.”

There was a definite sigh, and then, “Its only flesh.”

Incredulous, Lilah leaned over his body, grinding out, “I happen to like it when you’re not bleeding out in the backseat of a car, thank you very much.”

With a small smile, Brasa touched her cheek, “I am much harder to kill than this.”

“You don’t know that,” she said in a small voice, her fear coming through in the tone. “I don’t know that.”

Brasa dropped his hand and traced his fingers over hers where they lay on his still bleeding chest. His gaze was a little glassy, his breath slowing. She could see the remorse in his expression—she could also see that he was going to pass out.

“Hey, hey,” she called out, then to Seth, “How far away are we?”

Seth looked at her in the rearview, “Ten minutes, maybe fifteen.”

Lilah turned her attention back to Brasa, who was barely conscious, “Can you hold out that long?”

When he didn’t answer, she did the only thing she could think of to rouse him. She dug two fingers in to the bullet hole nearest to her. Brasa hissed, his body bowing, an angry growl sounding.

“Sorry,” she whispered, “You need to stay awake.”

Brasa inhaled through his nose, visibly trying to steady himself, “I’m fine, querida.”

“You are not fucking fine,” she almost yelled. “You’re bleeding all over the leather seats, you idiot.”

He gave a strained chuckle, “It was worth it.”

His eyes grew unfocused again and when Lilah dug her fingers into another wound, he didn’t respond. Lilah panicked, pushing off the floor of the car and straddling his body on the seat, trying to shake him awake.

“He’s not responding,” she said to Richie as he turned around to look at what she was doing.

Richie leaned further over, looking down at the sun god beneath her, “I told you. He needs blood.”

Lilah looked at Brasa, “I don’t…”

At a loss for words, Lilah struggled with what she needed to do and keeping some semblance of control in the situation. If he bit her, the venom would render her comatose. She’d already proven that she couldn’t cut herself open. She didn’t know how to heal him without breaking all the rules she’d set up for herself to keep her two lives separate.

“Here,” Richie murmured lowly as he reached for her arm. In his other hand was the switchblade he favored. “I’ll give you a little cut and you just hold it over his mouth. He’ll do the rest.”

Seth lifted a finger, pointing it at Richie, “She doesn’t have to do it if she doesn’t want to.” Then, to Lilah, “You don’t have to. We’re almost there. He’ll make it.”

The frigid body beneath her told Lilah that what he’d said might not be the case. She looked down at Brasa, then to Richie, and back.

“A little one,” she said, offering him her arm.

“I’ll be careful,” Richie assured her, his eyes focused on the blade in his hand.

It hurt. The pain of the cut spearing through the adrenaline running through her body. When it was done, Lilah had to stop herself from pulling the wounded limb into her body protectively. One hand on Brasa’s jaw to open his mouth, she held her arm over it and watched carefully as the blood dropped down.

It took far too long for Lilah to see the fluttering behind his lashes, for his throat to begin to swallow down what she gave him. Letting out a breath, she watched as he blinked his eyes open blearily his chin lifting in supplication.

Quick hands had her arm pulled down and his mouth fastened to the wound sucking hard. Lilah let out a yelp as she regained her balance.

“You alright?” Seth asked, his head craned around to see what was happening.

Lilah nodded, ���Yeah, just wasn’t prepared for it to work like that.”

Black eyes looked up at her, his hands wrapped securely around her arm. The leather was stretched over his wide palms, torn in a few places from the fight. Lilah held his gaze, too relieved to care that he might leave bruises.

He let out a low moan as the pull of his mouth slowed, his tongue tracing along the wound. Lilah swallowed, pushing down the bloom of arousal at the sound that she only heard when he was either drinking from her or kissing her. In any case, now was not the time.

His eyes closed in pleasure, Brasa continued to drink, though there was none of the initial urgency. He savored every drop, his body growing slowly warmer. Lilah let him do as he wanted, too glad that he was conscious and moving to care how it might sound.

When he looked at her again, there was something playful in his gaze. Confused, Lilah felt her brows draw together. She started to say something when she felt him press his teeth every so softly onto her skin. Eyes wide, she leaned back, fixing him with a stern look that said, ‘don’t’.

His chest shook with restrained laughter even as he let off a bit, returning to the slow pull. Lilah relaxed, checking on the others. Richie was texting. Seth’s attention was on the road.

With one hand, Brasa traced up the path from her knee where it was smushed into the seat to her thigh, his fingers pushing up the hem of her blood spattered dress to grasp her hip. Without letting go of her arm, he shifted up a bit, until she was sitting squarely on his hips.

He was more alert, and the wounds on his chest had stopped bleeding. Lilah guessed that all the blood left in his body was either soaked into the seat or filling the erection on which she now sat. It occurred to her that she would need to tell Kate that she was, indeed, right. Feeding and fucking was the base instinct of both culebras and Xibalbans, even when close to death.

Rolling her eyes at him, Lilah pulled her arm away, ignoring his sound of protest. He tried to sit up, and she pushed him back down. He gave no resistance, probably couldn’t even if he wanted.

“You just lay there until we can get you to Javier,” she ordered.

Brasa lifted a brow, but settled back into the seat, staring up at her sleepily. Her arm tingled a bit, a by product of the venom he may have inadvertently injected. She shook it out, eyeing the cut. It was still bleeding a little, but the trickle was slow, already clotting.

A gloved hand caught her around the wrist, bringing her arm to his mouth. Lilah’s jaw dropped as she watched his tongue snake out and run along the line of blood, circling to catch all of it. Beneath her, his erection pulsed and the hand on her hip flexed to pull her more firmly against it.

Lilah very much wanted to lean down and kiss him in that moment, but she could feel how Seth kept looking back at her. Instead, she reached out into the bond, sending Brasa all the feelings she could, all the want and the relief she felt. The bond broke open with his response, her body lighting up with the images he was sending her.

Brushed with red and oranges, she saw how he wanted to yank down the neckline of her dress so that he could suck on her nipples. How he wanted to reach under her dress and rip the gusset of her panties so that he could push two fingers inside to test her wetness. How he wanted to sink his cock into her and make her ride him hard until they were both spent.

Lilah gasped, her body shuddering as she bit her lip to keep what she was sure would be an obscene sound quiet.

Seth half turned, “You okay?”

She gathered herself quickly, “Yes, I’m fine.”

“We’re pulling in now,” he called back, the lights of the entrance filtering in through the windows.

Brasa let her rise up off him, but his eyes were filled with promises that Lilah was sure he was going to keep—soon. As the car pulled to a stop, she had the door open, waving Javier forward.

Brasa was barely standing, his shirt open and hanging loosely beneath his coat. Lilah watched as Javier spoke to him in what she was now recognizing as Xibalban. When they disappeared into the elevator, she turned to Richie and Seth.

“Let’s go. We’ve got a job to finish.”

Richie eyed her bloodstained dress and bare feet, “Don’t you think we’re done for the night.”

Lilah jabbed a finger at him, “I did not get drugged, kidnapped, and shot at all in one night to not claim the prize. You can do whatever you want, but I’m going.”

Seth was leaning against the hood of the car, hands in his pocket. He eyed her levelly, “You sure you’re good?”

Lilah nodded.

He pushed to stand, rolling his shoulders, “Alright. I’m in. Richie?”

Richie’s smile was nearly feral, “I love it when she’s angry. I’m in!”

#from dusk til dawn #from dusk til dawn: the series #Brasa #In the Bond

[claptraprights]

i’d love to read some timothy headcanons if you have any :D

Ah yes, Super Trauma Boy

- He has a love-hate relationship with The Man In The Iron Mask. It’s his personal (dis)comfort book. As a child, he loved the Three Musketeers and he was really excited when he found a collector’s edition copy in the trash on the Jackpot - but the first volumes had been damaged beyond readability which left him with that fucking boomerang of a book.

- Sometimes he stalks old college friends and even school friends on social media and many of them have good jobs and kids now or go on cool vacations and he feels like crying every time he looks at it but he just can’t stop doing it and it’s partly out of a ‘see what you could have had if you deserved it, if you weren’t such a fuck-up’-instinct but also a vague hope that someone might post something that implies they remember him, that weird shy freckled kid from college just to remind him that that was real, that Timothy Lawrence was real. He never checks up on his Mum though. He couldn’t bear to see her face. (He barely remembers it anyway.)

- Tbh he feels super conflicted about Elpis because...he was actually good at all that? Two months ago he was hiding in the university library under the table from some Student Loan Administration spy and here he is now on one of the borderlands-planets’ moons that you only hear rumours about at the edge of the galaxy in a semi-active war zone between to megacorps killing actual real life bandits like the ones you see in the films? And he is better at this than he ever was in his seminars? But at the same time, his face is gone and he doesn’t actually like killing (although...a part of him does which makes it worse) and he has no home to return to and he’s hanging around an Atlas assassin and a guy who wants to be a robot and honestly, it’s best not to think about any of this, gun goes brrrr and he doesn’t like the strange edge Jack’s voice gets when Timothy says he feels uncomfortable doing this or that thing.

- After the whole casino thing, he sometimes visits Moxxi when she’s in a bar off Sanctuary III (he’s not gonna show ‘his’ face around there) but he also disassociates when he sees a slot machine. He has enough of slot machines for the rest of his life (especially considering that he knew some that would come to life and attack you!)

- Listen. Debt in the Borderlands-universe? Is no joke. Even in the civilised areas. The University has its own goons, the organisations giving students money for tuition are have their own goons, if you are behind on your payments, both come after you and you never know when they’ll knock on your door at night and ramsack your apartment for anything valuable.

- In fact, they also have permission to access your accounts and they took his rent money so he was homeless for about two years bc he was ashamed to return home and admit he fucked up. Plus, if he did they might even come after his family.

- He’s just not that good with computers, ok? He wanted to become a writer, for crying out loud. He’s no software engineer, anyway. Jack always tried to teach him to make him more convincing in his role but this whole coding language stuff just never made sense to him and Jack really isn’t a patient teacher (it’s one thing to yell at him for two hours how he can ‘possibly be so stupid! So frigging stupid, how does that not go into your dumb little head, you absolute moron!’ but does he really have to ECHO him again at 2am for a second helping?? Really doesn’t boost your self-confidence.)

- Again, one from my fic, but he was actually kinda close with Meg* - she knew of him anyway - and sometimes they helped each other in their own little ways. *(Meg the secretary, not Nakayama’s garbage monster)

- He is so, so, so brainwashed, okay? Lots of his memories are gone, he was heavily medicated to deal with all the blood and violence and it made things even more blurry, and let’s not kid ourselves, pissing off Jack had horrible consequences. Sometimes electro-shocks and isolation chambers were involved as it got worse. Also the “DNA giving him Jack’s personality”-thing isn’t true and just gaslighting (or maybe the DNA-part is true but it doesn’t affect his personality.) (mostly bc I find the whole murder DNA idea dumb af)

- Killing scavs and soldier who want to kill you is one thing. But the first time Jack forced him to kill innocent, unarmed employees he couldn’t do it and got put through some desensitisation wringer (the gist of it was the lesson that if he doesn’t strangle some poor catering guy, Jack is going to hurt them far worse) Doesn’t really help with the nightmares though.

- I talked about this before but I am convinced that his mother didn’t actually laugh at the news of his death. Timothy actually seems to think of her quite fondly and it would be quite strange that a woman who...apparently was a good enough Mum for him to feel safe with her would laugh at her own son’s death. Instead, I think Jack and the doctors told him that (or maybe used altered footage) to make him more loyal and to burn all bridges so that he doesn’t feel like has anywhere to turn back to or someone who would hide him if Hyperion came after him.

- The first time he noticed his fear heights was at the age of seven, during a school trip to a science museum as a kid. There was a transparent platform that you could walk up on to watch an experiment from above and once he walked up there and looked down he immediately felt terrified standing on that glass with some Science Lightning Shit going on beneath him.

- He has flashbacks and nightmares to getting his face branded sometimes, especially when he hears noises of sizzling meat or smells burnt flesh (which is actually quite a common smell around the Handsome Jackpot)

- Ironically, there was a cartoon that he watched when he was really young where a monster steals faces (OK MAYBE IT WAS THE 10000TH AVATAR REMAKE LEAVE ME ALONE) and that shit was terrifying for him. And ... he mostly forgot about this as an adult (most things are blurry) but sometimes he has this...image in his dream but he can never quite lay his hands on it.

- It’s all stored in the right combination of being touch-starved and absolutely hating the idea of people touching your body. That doesn’t even feel like your body. That combination of thick hoodie under an actual leather jacket has big ‘don’t want to feel hands on me but still want to feel hugged’-vibes.

#I have another one from a scrapped fic of mine #but that one would be complicated #timothy #Anonymous

[notthatiwilleverwriteit]

I made “now” and sort of “what if” versions of our boys. What if they hadn’t met certain people? What if the direction of their lives hadn’t changed? What if they hadn’t said the things they said? What if they never found a limit?

The bar where Mo Guan Shan worked at almost got robbed one night but Mo Guan Shan knocked the guy out. The owner of the bar was impressed and told Mo Guan Shan about an illegal fighting ring. He could easily earn some extra cash with his skill. At first, Mo Guan Shan wasn’t interested but then his mother was hospitalized and suddenly he was facing hospital and medication bills. “You think I could really do well?” he asked his boss, telling himself that it was either this or asking someone for money and he wasn’t going to make that mistake again. His first opponent was easy and the prize money was lucrative. His boss praised Mo Guan Shan for getting the crowd going with his ferocity. “Just let me know if you want to earn easy money again,” he said and gave him a thick wad of crumpled bills. He fought another match about a week later. Soon, he started to gain a reputation. People called him the “Mad Dog”. His boss - now his unofficial manager who also hustled as a bookkeeper at Mo Guan Shan’s matches - even came up with the idea of the muzzle. "Showmanship, you have to have showmanship," he had said when Mo Guan Shan had frowned at the damn thing. "You gotta give them a show." It was snowing the night Mo Guan Shan beat up a kid much younger than him. The boy hadn’t even had a chance against him. After the fight, Mo Guan Shan threw up behind a dumpster and tried to wash off the kid’s blood with snow until his hands were red with cold instead.

He Tian ended up working for his family, and his life was spiraling. He lived by himself downtown in a spacious loft apartment. Despite having money, the apartment was sparsely furnished. A double mattress on the floor in front of the wall of windows stretching a view over the city. At an arm’s reach next to the mattress was his laptop and an overflowing ashtray. A couch and TV that he rarely watched but had pretty much always on. A rack for his clothes that he didn’t just store in various piles on the floor. He worked as a debt collector. And he was good at it, too. He was good at finding people and putting the fear of God in them. It helped that you didn’t give a shit. Like how he had beat up this one redhead kid when he couldn’t have paid his monthly interest. The dullness made it easy, and it had set into him so deep you could see it in his eyes. When he wasn’t working, He Tian took the dullness out on booze, drugs, and women - sometimes men. Whenever his brother came to visit him, he narrowed his eyes at the fresh hickeys spotting He Tian’s neck and the empty beer cans littering the floor. “Disgraceful,” he always muttered. He Tian drag on his cigarette and told him to give him the intel on the new mark and fuck off already.

“Zhan Xixi, I like you. I’m sorry.” had been the last message Jian Yi sent Zhan Zheng Xi before his phone had been taken away and destroyed. As the big bodyguards had been relocating him and his mother, he had wondered if he would ever see Xixi again. He didn’t wonder that anymore. But sometimes it still caught him off guard. Something happened during the day and he snatched his phone, eager to tell Zhan Zheng Xi all about it, only to remember that these days his phone only had three contacts: “Auntie”, “Dentist”, and “Mom”. And neither of them was Xixi’s number - nor his aunt’s, dentist’s or mother’s. He was left alone a lot. Well, there’s always someone watching him, but he’s still alone. Jian Yi has started to spend more and more time in his dreamland. Imagining talking with Zhan Xixi even though he can barely remember his voice anymore. He’s terrified of the day when he can’t recall his face, too. Jian Yi is afraid he will lose a part of himself that can't be replaced. The minutes Jian Yi spends deep in thought easily stretch into hours. He is still being trained but he doesn’t fear the pain anymore. Brother Qiu had been right in saying that he would get used to it eventually. He's stopped holding back while training Jian Yi, and Jian Yi almost welcomes the bruises and soreness. For his birthday, Jian Yi wanted a floral tattoo on his neck. One day, he wants to once again feel Zhan Zheng Xi’s fingers knead the back of his neck.

“Zhan Xixi, I like you. I’m sorry.” That message is the center of Zhan Zheng Xi’s life these days. No matter where he is or what he’s doing, it’s always on his mind, occupying its every last nook and cranny. He wishes he had never received it. He couldn’t live without it. He works as a police officer, trying to be promoted to an investigator. He works 80 hours a week, but it’s not work for him. Not really. He’s learning, training. He’s getting closer to that message, he can feel it. His coworkers have long ago given up on inviting him along to drinking parties and get-togethers. You couldn’t have a better partner as an officer than Zhan Zheng Xi but damn the guy needs to let loose every now and then. They don’t get it, Zhan Zheng Xi thinks to himself while politely but firmly turning down one of his female coworkers nervously asking if he had any plans for the weekend. None of them get it. He’s getting closer. He knows he is. He has to be getting closer by now. Maybe the black-haired junkie punk he had caught the other night but hadn't booked finally has some answers for him.

She Li is searching, too. He’s looking for God himself. The same from when he pushed a red-haired kid against a wall, grabbed a fistful of his soft hair, and looked down at the watering eyes pleading him. A portal had opened that day, channeling energy that had overwhelmed She Li and taken over him. That God. But God had proven to be fickle. She Li had tried to connect with Him again but something had always been missing. He lives within She Li. She Li is Him, he just needs to find Him again. If She Li finds Him in himself, he can find Him in other people, too. He wants to turn them all into gods and feed on them. Be the God of gods. But he's been going about it all wrong. To find Him again, first, he must sacrifice himself. Before he was the marker but now he needs to let God come to him. Nothing of him can be left untouched, not sullied. Use him, push him down, mark him as His, so he can find Him again. He’s calling She Li’s name, telling him that he’s meant for great things.

Bonus:

He Cheng realized the error of his ways when he stepped over the gate’s threshold and smelled free air for the first time in 15 years. Released early for good behavior. All his life, He Cheng had thought he knew patience and humility but it had turned out, he knew nothing of those things. He had been arrogant and blind. But he had been a good student for over a decade and now he had enough patience and humility to properly enjoy destroying the parties responsible. He would thank them for this lesson in life by making every last memory of them ever even existing disappear into thin air. Across the parking lot, Qiu was leaning against his car, smoking a cigarette. For a second, his eyes widened when he spotted He Cheng and his buzzcut. The ragged scar under his eye. But he doesn’t ask. He doesn’t even ask about the neat line of vertebras tattooed along He Cheng's spine when he’s fucking into him from behind at the nearest cheap motel they had found. He just silently slides his wide, rough palm over it and sinks his teeth into He Cheng’s nape where the ink meets the soft fuzz.

Used Picrew

#19 days #mo guan shan #he tian #tianshan #jian yi #zhan zheng xi #zhanyi #she li #he cheng #brother qiu #qiucheng #my 19 days post #my edit #ntiwewi

[fanfiction-funtime]

Alexander Vodka lines

I did most of the characters, but some I don't know or genuinely can't think of anything. Hope this is good >-<

Hello: Hey there, your that Traveler fella ain’t ya? Hope I don't owe you copyrights for  the name. Hm? I don’t? Well then, what can I help ya with?

Adventures? Sure why not, I could use the inspiration.

Two names: You’re curious why I have two names? Well it's sort of a thing in Snezhnaya that officers and other high ranking people have two names, like how harbingers do. Since I’m a high ranking member of the Schneznayan authors association, well former member, I have the name “Eis Cay’zar” meaning “ice ruler”. And Alexander Vodka is a pen name. Hm? What's my resistance name and real one? Well now Traveler, a man must have some secrets.

Change of tone: Ah yes, people often find the way I change from more eloquent speech to more casual off putting. Well it's the same reason I wear two sets of clothes: sometimes I feel like looking like an old noir hero, other times I like looking like a new age caped crusader. Sometimes I like sounding high society, other times I enjoy sounding like I’m from Khaen’ria.

How do you know about Khaen’ria: Well I was looking for accents and found out about a place called “New York” or something, a bit of investigation and I discovered everything. My source? That's a secret, ehe.

Good morning: Mornin’ Traveler! What's in the mornin’ paper?

Noon: Lunch time, my favourite time of the day. Let’s go get some pizza, I’m famished!

Afternoon: Almost time to punch out, let's go knock some skulls first.

Night: *yawn* Today was fun, thanks buddy. Get some shut eye, or if you can't come meet me at (wanmin/angels share/the tea house), first rounds on me!

When it rains: I am so glad I got over my fear of contacts.

When it rains(with glasses outfit): Hey can we get under something? I can barely see!

When it stops raining: The smell that comes after rain has always been one of my favorites.

When it snows: Perfect weather to bundle up with a nice hot cup of hot chocolate!

When it stops snowing: Do you ever miss home, Traveler?

About freedom: I warned Barbados, you know that? I knew that as long as he saw it coming, Signora wouldn’t stand a chance. But he just looked at me and said, “good, when I’m gone mondstadt will be truly free of the gods”. That’s a man I’d follow to the depths of the abyss and back.

About Venti: Speaking of Barbados, he’s a great drinking buddy. Me and him knock back a couple hundred rounds whenever I’m in Mondstadt! Course I’m always paying the tab, but I consider it a way of repaying him for making songs about my books.

About Kaeya: The cavalry captain? He’s pretty cool if you ask me, modeled as Rex Mondoleon for the cover of a historical fiction book I made. But I’d still like to know what he’s hiding behind that smile.

About Diluc: Don’t tell him I told you this, but one time I found Diluc after he was hit by an abyss spell that made him drunk. While he was drunk he kept ranting about how sorry he is for kicking out his brother. The poor guy has all that forgiveness in him but he’s too afraid to let it out.

About Jean: The acting grandmaster of the knights is someone truly deserving of respect. She leads by being a good person and earning the respect of her people, and she has never once tried to cover up the mistakes of the knights. In fact if a knight makes a mistake she’ll rush out to fix it. Jean should be the grandmaster, not that crooked old bastard.

About Lisa: Lisa was my first friend in Mondstadt. She mailed me about getting copies of my books into the Mondstadt library, I said I’d do a signing to promote a new one, one thing led to another and now we have tea every ninth day of the month.

About Rosaria: Don’t tell anyone, but I’m very sure she’s a vampire. A nice one, but still.

About Barbara: Awe that little doll? I once saw her kill multiple fatui because they threatened some sick and injured travelers. So I think she’s a great person, takes compassion to save lives and guts to handle taking them as well.

About Bennett: Bennett? Yeah I know him, nice kid. He likes my books but kept breaking them, so now I make special enchanted ones so he can’t break them even if he tried.

About Razor: The guardian of wolvendom? He’s a weird one alright, but he’s not a bad guy. I taught him how to read and write.

About Fischl: That crazy kid? I don’t care what everyone else says, she’s nice. People need to learn to just leave people alone, she’s not hurting anyone with her persona.

About Noelle: You will never find someone more dedicated too...well anything than Noelle is too the knights and her training.

About Klee: Klee and I are great friends! Nothing is more stimulating than massive explosions!

About Amber: She always has interesting stories to tell, like one time where she got rid of some bandits by making a dummy merchant cart filled with explosives! Or the time she had to help a kid get her pet giant snake out from the cathedral!

About Zhongli: Heh, he thinks he’s slick, but I know he’s Rex Lapis. Gotta say I kinda hate him for just giving up his gnosis, however he did it to free his people so I can’t be mad.

About Ninnguang: Never much cared for economics because I don’t know much about ‘em, so I can’t say anything about her business sense. But I can say that she’s a great leader who puts her people first.

About Keqing: Haven’t talked to her enough to know much, but she’s dedicated to her people and that's enough for me. Her dislike of blind faith in the gods is definitely enough to make me want to get to know her better though.

About Qiqi: Qiqi’s a nice kid, I don’t care what anyone says her being a zombie doesn’t make her bad.

About Baizhu: Snake man? Nice guy, helps me be accurate in my books. Always worry about him though, one hot breeze and he’s out like a light.

About Xingqiu: Xingqiu always tries to hide his good deeds, and while I can respect anonymity I can’t let a hero go unsung. So I’ve written multiple short stories about him using a different name, and put in the beginnings that it’s based on a true story.

About Chongyun: His popsicles are great inventions, I’ve played around with the idea a bit and made flavored ones. So far I’ve got strawberry and grape down and am working on this weird fruit called a..Banananana? I think?

About Beidou: Captain Beidou is so cool! She tells me stories about her journeys out to see and I write about them, but after seeing her in action I can’t really say that I do her justice.

About Kazuha: Kazuha has suffered so much, yet he refuses to give up and curl up away from the world when he so easily could. I have immense respect for him.

About Xianling: You’d be surprised at how good slime and boar tusk can be.

About Xiao: I’ve written down many myths and legends of the yaksha, but sadly I've never seen him in person.

About Verr Goldet: Oh she’s great company! Good business sense, and always polite.

About Gorou: Many people rightly attribute the Resistance’s survival and victories to general Kokomi, but it’s wrong to say general Gorou isn’t a brilliant strategist. He knows how to rally his men against impossible odds, and how to keep them standing against them. I’d follow general Gorou into battle any day.

About Ayaka: Ayaka seems so lonely, I hope when this is all done she can have some form of social life.

About Thoma: Thoma’s as cool as he seems. He always has a level head, and solves problems smoothly and without issues.

About Yoimia: KABOOOM!

About Kokomi: One time I was doing an interview of her excellency, to boost morale and draw new members. I intended on asking for her autograph, only for her to ask for mine! I’ve been riding that high for a while now and still ain’t come down.

About Signora: I hate fatui, but without that she has some good qualities: most of her power is her own unlike most other harbingers, and she’s a sharp dresser. Plus she’s actually justified in her choice to join the fatui, not excused, but isolation can justify many crimes in my book. But no matter what I can’t forgive her. She attacked my friend without a chance for him to fight back, and was unfairly cruel. Nothing can justify that, and I will not forgive her as long as she remains unapologetic for her cowardly cruelty.

About Childe: Fatui are scum, but Childe’s probably the best of them: he personally tries to keep civilians and the weak out of fatui business, and he’s only in it to make sure his family lives well. He also is powerful on his own, but most of his strength is the Tsaritsa’s well deserved gifts. Still though, he’s just a single stressful day from losing all his morals. I can’t leave the fate of my homeland to a madman like him, not unless he gets therapy.

About Scaramouche: Scaramouche...that bastard, it’s been five years and he still owes me 30,061 mora.

About the Fatui: The fatui are really just people who are lost or genuinely believe they’re in the right, and while I can sympathize and respect many of them I can't agree nor can I just stand by and watch. The grunts usually aren’t that bad, honestly they’re more like underpaid graduates new to the workforce, but the fighters you see daily? Almost all of them are scum no better than raiders, and debt collectors are the worst of them because they’ll do anything they can to scam you out of everything in their contracts.

About us-commissions: You know, if you’d like to commission a biography it’s 100 mora per ten pages.

About us-inspiration: You’re a font of inspiration for me, ya know that?

About us-fellow rebels: I’ve been with ya enough to know that this path you’re on, the one to find your sis/bro, you’re fighting against something far beyond my ability to deal with. I won’t abandon you, I’ll be here every step of the way.

About us-friends: We’ve been through a lot pal, I’m glad to call you my friend. Please, call me my rebel name: it’s Belgrade, named after the city where some very brave men took their last stand against oppression.

Hobbies: Well you have reading and writing, otherwise? Can't think of anything.

Favorite food: Grilled tiger fish, come get it while it’s hot!

Least favorite food: I really wanna try it, but I can’t have almond tofu. Or any nuts. Closes my throat right up.

Something to share: Hehe, I got embarrassing dirt on all the harbingers. Signora? She has a Tsaritsa body pillow. Scaramouche? He knits sweaters for his pet pig, cute but he hates letting people know. And Childe? Hoo man, the pics I’ve got on him have put a pretty mora on my head.

About me: Hey have you seen my dice? I wanted to teach the mondstadt kids how to play them...hm? What?! No, not gambling! It’s, uh, a tad embarrassing...h-hey look! Literally anything else, let's pay attention to it!

About me II: Alright! These rolls are great, can’t wait to use them next game. I’m so proud of Fischl, so young yet so imaginative. She’s already-ah! T-traveler! What are you doing?..

You know I’m the one meant to be learning the secrets here.

About me III: Back in Snezhnaya, everyone looks down on things that don’t “conform” where even the most rigid of nations like Inazuma have stopped caring. Adults can't play games, men can’t wear dresses, can’t even have a “weird” sense of humor. No laws against it, but being outcasted is...it’s not good…

About me IV: I wish I grew up in Mondstadt. The kids there are so free to be themselves, and the adults aren’t pressured to be nothing more than working hands. It’s not perfect, after all people are rude to Fischl and Benny for being “different”, but it’s better that’s for sure.

About me V: Hey traveler...this is...no it’s not embarrassing. You’re my friend and I have no reason to be embarrassed by wanting to enjoy time with you! Fischl’s going to run a pen and paper dice game, ever played one? It’s super fun, you get to be anything you want really, and it’s a great way to bond.

You will? Great! I’ll help you make a character!

Alexander’s troubles: It’s so hard to find publishers these days. Noone wants an actual plot, they just want twist after twist. What’s up with that?! Shock value is no substitute for characters you love living fulfilling lives.

Happy birthday: Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday you crazy bastard, happy birthday to you! Seriously pal, you put yourself in harm's way every day it seems, we literally met when you were fighting an actual god! Actually, know what? No danger all day! We’re wrapping ourselves in blankets and just relaxing!

Feelings about ascension-intro: woah, somethin’ feels different. I like it!

Feelings about ascension-building up: man, I’m feeling inspired all of a sudden! Hey traveller, give me a prompt!

Feelings about ascension-climax: HA! I don’t know what high I’m riding but I like it, I just finished writing a whole book series!

Feelings about ascension-conclusion: WOO! YEAH! ULRICH MIKAEL KEEPS WINNIN’!-I-I meant Alexand-ah forget it, I’m feelin’ too good to care!

OCs:

About Louis: That crazy inventor guy from Fontaine? I heard he got used by the fatui, damn shame that. Noone deserves to have their heart played with like that.

About Spritefather: You ever heard of Spritefather? I’ve only heard legends, but the fanmail I keep getting tells me that sometimes things are only legendary until someone writes them down.

About the Storytraveler: There’s this woman who travels from universe to universe to fix things, she’s in Teyvat right now. You should meet her, really nice person. But her powers are a bit weird, why does she transform like that? It takes so much time!

_____________________

Tagging: @love-psxlm, @storytravelled, @genshin-obsessed, @golden-wingseos

#genshin #genshin impact #genshin oc

[its-my-little-dumpster-fire]

Ramblings of a Chronologically Displaced Dirty Rebel Wife: a continuously updated log of horndoggedness

For the purpose of not bombarding your dashboards with ridiculous nerd shit, this post is now a catch all for my thirsty thoughts while reading about Sam Adams.

This will go on my masterlist.

1. When John Adams went to Paris in 1779, the French declared that he was “not the famous Adams.” Rukiddingmeloooool

2. In 1775, that walking British cold sore Thomas Gage offered amnesty to all revolutionaries should they surrender. With two exceptions. Sam Adams and his sugar daddy John Hancock. The realest rebel.

3. Poor compared to the other founding fathers and was a critic of both extravagant personal spending by the rich (side eye John Hancock) and the influence of money on politics. Sam said eat the rich and we agree. Sam Adams is the founding father we need in 2020. Where’s his musical?

4. SOMEONE TRIED TO GIFT HIM A SLAVE AND HE WAS LIKE “wtf dude no”

5. EXTENDED PUBLIC EDUCATION IN MASSACHUSETTS TO GIRLS.

(Y’all........I’m sweating. I love him I love him I love him)

.......it’s nice to be recognized

6. Sam Adams was rebuked during his time at Harvard for oversleeping and violating the ban on distilled liquor by bringing in rum. OUR NATIONS FIRST FRAT BOY and he does not disappoint. #college

7. He wrote of his wife, Elizabeth, after she passed. “To her husband she was as sincere a friend as she was a faithful wife.” No thirst here, that’s just such a tender statement. My word, Samuel, my heart is yours.

8. IT IS NOT UNFREQUENT TO HEAR MEN DECLAIM LOUDLY UPON LIBERTY WHO -IF WE MAY JUDGE BY THE WHOLE TENOR OF THEIR ACTIONS- MEAN NOTHING ELSE BY IT THAN THEIR OWN LIBERTY —TO OPPRESS WITHOUT CONTROL OR THE RESTRAINT OF LAWS ALL THOSE WHO ARE POORER AND WEAKER THAN THEMSELVES. Sam Adams hears you, MAGA crowds, and he is disappointed.

9. It’s disputed whether or not Samuel Adams started the Boston Massacre- it was started unofficially when a snow ball containing a chunk of ice flew through the air and landed directly in the face of a British grenadier knocking him down which prompted him to fire his rifle into the crowd, but legend says Samuel Adams was the one to hurl said ice ball. Do I hold the personal belief that Sam invented baseball on a cold night in 1769? 🤫

10. Reading John Adams compliment then drag his cousin in the same sentence is one of my favorite things. “Samuel Adams rose with an air of dignity and majesty, of which he was sometimes capable...” that’s right, my love. We like a 60/40 split on our dignified actions.

11. Sam Adams said abolish the police and governor Hutchinson was like, uh how about half? And Sam said NO. So that’s the story of how my husband cleared the streets of Boston. At least temporarily.

12. Everyone knows that John Adams defended the British soldier who fired first at the Massacre in court... Sam doesn’t fault him for being a good lawyer and neither will I, those Adams boys believed in justice which includes a fair trial, literally bless them. BUT did you know that his co-council refused to act as defense attorney until our boys Adams, Hancock, and Warren paid him a visit. THEY RAN BOSTON and I don’t see any problem with it.

13. I’ve seen a few idiots on Fox News decide that Sam Adams and the sons of Liberty are their new mascots, but literally everything I read about him suggests he would have been at our BLM marches with us, so watch out for my new book about how Sam would have responded to the shit show of 2020.

14. “It is a glaring mistake to say the Soldiers were in danger from the inhabitants. The reverse is true. The inhabitants were in danger from the Soldiers.” Samuel Adams.... and everyone who has witnessed police brutality. Take that to the bank.

15. At least one historian has suggested that John Hancock put up the money to pay off Sam’s debts from when he was a tax collector. To which we all nodded and called Mr Hancock the great American Sugar Daddy.

[idlecreature]

a mountain is a lovely, cold thing to surround one

Barnabas Bennett and Mordechai Lukas have an... unorthodox relationship. 

Barnabas has debts, and Mordechai makes sure he pays them. 

Vampire!Mordechai for Jonah Magnus Week! Part 1/Part 2/Part 3 

Rating: Mature 

Relationships: Mordechai Lukas/Barnabas Bennett, Jonah Magnus/Barnabas Bennett 

Content warnings: Dubcon, Unhealthy relationships, heavy on the internalized homophobia, the Lonely, manipulation (hence the dubcon warning), Barnabas does NOT die in this fic, happy ending for Barnabas because he deserves it rrrr  

Fragments from a letter written circa Christmas 1814 

—and I am looking forward to fainting at the sight of his sweet little face, Jonah! The splendid mane around his neck! Your little tiger, king of his jungle, king Ceasar, his croaky battle-roar as he runs down the hallway for his cream—

*

Barnabas has a sixth sense for earthquakes. In the hours leading up to one, he feels odd jolts in his bones, like someone is reaching through his skin and rattling him. He feels them where he broke his zygomatic process when his mother dropped him as a toddler, just to the side of his left eye. If he had a soul, he thinks that’s where it would live: in the part of him that was first broken. 

When he and Jonah are thirteen and eleven respectively, he feels his skull itching and watches the trembling of their school’s pet rabbit and the anxious pattern of birds wheeling, and on their tea break, he leads Jonah outside and takes the other boy’s hand and presses it to a patch of bare dirt beside the rugby field. 

“Do you feel that?” Barnabas asks. 

Jonah’s eyes narrow in concentration. His hand scrapes nonsense patterns in the dirt. “Describe what I’m supposed to be feeling?” 

Barnabas shakes his head. How does a thirteen-year-old describe a sense of inescapable doom? It feels like standing outside his mother’s room unbreathing and counting down from twenty before knocking. It feels like being sucked under a wave and not fighting as hard as he knows he should to resurface. It feels like waking up on a grey morning crying. 

The quake, when it hits that evening, lasts for six minutes. An entire epoch for a child. And Barnabas understands it’s no use knowing about an oncoming earthquake if you are powerless to stop it coming on. 

At least he has Jonah, whose dirty hand wraps tightly around his own. 

Despite what Jonah believes, there are some things that just can’t be explained in words. 

*

His skull’s been prickling in recent months. 

It’s gonna be a bad one. 

* 

—It’s freezing cold, and, oh, you know I feel the cold most cruelly. I cannot make myself warm with double-socking, or blankets over my knees, or hot bread and soup... nothing warms me, only the morning sun as she shakes her fiery head. I cannot wait for summer-time—

*

Isabel Blackwood is a saint. 

“Another slice of Three-kings-cake, B....Barny?” Isabel asks, her knife poised in the air. There are two slices left, and James has already found the bean. Her four children stand at her elbows, eyeing the cake with hungry, dark eyes, but they, too, cede to Barnabas. Even the little king bows. 

“Mr. Bennett, if you please,” Barnabas replies, aiming for a terse-but-gentle tone. “And I couldn’t eat another bite!” He pats his stomach in emphasis. 

“Come on, Mr. Bennett, it’s Christmas!” 

“Leave off, Mr. Blackwood,” Isabel says to her husband. She smiles at Barnabas as she cuts the two slices into four and divides them amongst her children. 

“Don’t wolf it down or you’ll make yourselves sick,” Isabel warns the two girls, Frances and Annie. 

The Blackwoods are decent folk, letting him come over for cake on Christmas. They were the first to sign up for Barnabas’ family charity earlier in the year; he has since taken on half a dozen more, but his closest working relationship is still the Blackwoods. The charity pulled the eldest, James, out of the workhouse and into an apprenticeship, made co-payments on lodgings that are just a step above their old squalid tenement, provided them with new ill-fitting clothes. It seems pitifully little to Barnabas, but the Blackwoods seem to worship the ground he walks on. 

You can’t be too friendly with people like that. It’s unfair to you both. It’s awkward enough sitting in their smoky central room, the air smelling like damp and soap and sweat and charcoal, in a tailored suit that may as well have been spun from gold, hands soft from white-collar work, clear-eyed and ruddy-cheeked. Look, his appearance mocks, how the world could be if it were not so cruel. 

Before Barnabas leaves the Blackwoods, the littlest one, Henry, gives him a tight hug. Henry tries to wrap his entire body around Barnabas’ middle, constricting him like a snake, and when he doesn’t seem to want to let go Isabel has to pry him off. 

“Don’t be so clingy,” she chides her son. She looks at Barnabas nervously. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Bennett. He’s somehow got it in his silly noggin that you’re his Uncle.” 

Barnabas looks at her in mute horror. “I - I - I should go,” he says, and makes a hasty exit. 

*

Barnabas runs a finger down the perfectly neat columns of his ledger again, double-checking every minutia of his expenses. He’s made a mistake, he must have missed something. He’s fifty pounds short of where he should be. 

His hands curl into fists. The absence of fifty pounds shouldn’t be a big issue, not for him and his big house and servants and nice things. But the charity is obviously chewing through more of this month’s allowance than he’s anticipated, and he needs to make some adjustments if he wants to be able to keep all the nice things and pay the servants and keep the debt collector from his door. 

This is why he shouldn’t let people become attached to him. Because he ends up disappointing or hurting them. People could starve and it would be his fault. 

A thick splat of water lands on his ledger, making the perfect lines run, and that’s just great, isn’t it? What are tears ever good for, when are they ever useful? He is just a very small cog in a very big machine, and now he’s getting ground up in it like the rest of them. 

But what else can he do? He must participate in the world if he wants it to change for the better, even if it’s a marginal improvement. He could live in the margins. 

He’ll find the money somewhere. 

*

—did you get my copy of Queen Mab? The Vice Society has declared it OBSCENE MATERIAL, and I mustn't be seen with a copy of it in my house, but you do not rely so much upon a good reputation. I hope you keep it safe. I hope you read it and I hope you side with P.B.S. and I. A good world starts with a good person and a few choices that are made with the heart—

*

Barnabas’s game of solitaire lies forgotten as he stares at Jonah.

They are more different now than ever. Barnabas keeps the company of bankers and lawyers and politicians, and Jonah runs with crackpots and devils and the insane. Jonah has fourteen powers; Barnabas has a list of names in his address book. People he barely knows, who remain in his orbit because of his good breeding, his impeccable reputation, and they still only half-listen to his pleading and his petitioning and his politicking. The people with the power to actually change the world; people he wants at arm’s length.  

But there’s just something about Jonah that makes Barnabas want to touch. He flares to gold with an audience; but, even now, curled up on his couch idly scratching between Julius Ceasar’s whiskers, he is a dim and majestic copper. There’s something undeniably old testament about Jonah; the fire and fury of creation, the self-annihilating stare of Lot’s wife. 

Jonah’s close to buried under the Millbank proofs spread over his lap, sucking gently on the tip of his pen, occasionally darting down to make some arcane adjustment on the design—just a penstroke or puzzling scribble. Mostly he just stares at the paper, eyes wide enough to look like holes in his face. When he gets like this, Barnabas can balance teacups on Jonah’s head without him noticing. The record is three. 

“Still keeping the elevator?” Barnabas asks. It’s just one of the many strange embellishments that Jonah’s insisted upon, putting it far outside the budget of any public works project. The price of Jonah’s fancies must run into the tens of thousands of pounds. 

“In my dreams, there’s a glass elevator to the top of my tower, from which I look down upon the imprisoned and the powerless,” Jonah says. 

“Taking cues from your dreams?” Barnabas replies. “You know only the desperately mad do that?” 

“Or desperately inspired—savants and prophets and visionaries.” 

“And prison wardens, apparently,” Barnabas mutters. He bites his teeth together, unwilling to work through this old argument. “Who’s paying for your dream towers, again? Think they might lend me fifty pounds for a project that actually is for the public good?” 

Jonah finally unpeels his eyes from his proofs, and Barnabas’s throat runs dry. Jonah stares until he’s got Barnabas squirming in his seat, and then he says, brightly, “Oh, I’m sure he would. I’m sure I could tell you. But I don’t think I will.” 

“Jonah,” Barnabas says irritably. “That’s very unfair.” 

“Oh, pish posh, life’s unfair, Barny, and I can’t believe that you in your infinite wisdom and your even more infinite disposition to share it can pretend that it isn’t. That the evil in man has made life unfair, that it’s just not the natural order to put some creatures above others.” 

Barnabas counters him an instant later. “Obviously, you stupid little man, not everyone was created equal, but it’s the good in man to want to put things to rights, to create a system where unequal creatures can be equal. Are you trying to make me angry with you by playing the devil’s advocate?” 

“Just testing you,” Jonah says in his alloyed voice, silver-and-honey-gold. 

“Well? Who’s this rich man then?” 

Jonah sticks his tongue out at him. 

“Alright, it’s getting late,” Barnabas says. He tidies his long-forgotten card game and makes ready to leave. 

“Wait,” Jonah says. 

“It really is getting on, Jonah, I promise you can tease me about secret benefactors some other day.” Barnabas stands up and stretches on his stiff legs. 

“No.” Jonah shuts his eyes briefly. “It’s very late. You should stay.” 

Barnabas shakes his head and makes his way out of the fire-warm lounge and into the cold front room. Jonah springs up, sending the proofs flying and Julius Ceasar yowling in annoyance and surprise, and Jonah follows close on his heels. 

“It’s raining,” Jonah says more softly. 

“It is Edinburgh,” Barnabas replies, but cold apprehension curdles in his belly. “I - I need to leave. I - I already visit you too often, Jonah, and you know what people say about you, and they might think that I’m.... I’m some kind of...” 

Jonah steps closer. “Aren’t you, though? ‘Some kind of’?” He reaches for Barnabas’s hand where it is clumsily buttoning his coat. “I know you, Barnabas. Your morality has only ever been a thin cover for your shame.” 

The blood drains from Barnabas’ face. “That’s very cruel,” he whispers. 

“It’s true,” Jonah says. He cants his head. “Haven’t you thought about why your morals don’t ever make you happy? It’s because you wield them like a sword, to keep yourself away from the world. A world that won’t ever accept you for who you are. A world that wants you to keep waving that heavy, sharp thing until you give up and throw yourself upon it. That’s your pain, Barnabas, that’s your fear. Whenever I look at you I can see it as easily as I see your face.” 

Jonah steps closer again. His chin touches Barnabas’s chest, and Barnabas can see the pulse fluttering in his friend’s throat. “It doesn’t have to be that way,” Jonah says. 

“It does,” Barnabas says, stepping out of his reach. “Because - because I’m still afraid, and I still love the world, even - even if to live in it I must throw myself upon my sword and die and haunt my own life, all at the same time.”

Jonah remains silent. If he is stung by the rejection, his expression doesn’t show it. He’s got that crinkle between his brow he gets when he has to solve two maths problems simultaneously.   

“Mordechai Lukas,” Jonah says, eventually. “That’s my moneyed friend. Tread carefully with him.” 

Jonah wishes him no goodbye when he shuts the door. That’s fine with Barnabas. He’s not the only one nursing fresh wounds. 

* 

—I confess since I’ve been away this time my need or my wish for people has absolutely fled. I have learned to love solitude, and I forget what it means to be lonely.— 

* 

Mordechai looms as large as a mountain and is beautiful in the way a portrait is beautiful—two steps removed from humanity. 

He tilts Barnabas’s head to the side, impervious to the muscles in Barnabas’s neck straining against him. 

“Hm,” Mordechai says. 

“I take it you’re not convinced by the moral position, then,” Barnabas spits out. His cheeks are burning, but Mordechai’s other hand is wrapped around Barnabas’s hip, stopping him from stepping away. 

Mordechai laughs; a strange thing, guttering as it starts, in contrast with his unmoving, lifeless, beautiful face. His thumb strokes Barnabas’s cheek despite Barnabas trying to shake it off. “No. But there are certainly other positions to consider.” 

“We’re in public,” Barnabas hisses. He looks pointedly at two women walking down the other side of the street. 

“Are we?” Mordechai murmurs. He’s still circling his thumb on Barnabas’s cheek, but his fingers press down on Barnabas’s carotid artery, taking its measure, making Barnabas’s vision swim with silver fish. 

“What - what vile magic -” 

“Just a glamour.” 

Barnabas processes this new information rapidly. “They can’t see us?” 

“Would you like them to?” 

Barnabas tries to shake his head, but it is locked in place, pulled as taut as a bowstring. The pressure is starting to hurt, and he rests against Mordechai’s hand for a moment to ease it. 

“Good,” Mordechai says, and releases him. Barnabas takes several staggering steps backward, massaging his sore neck. “Spirited, aren’t you?” 

“I can - I can work up a repayment plan, we can sign it at the -” 

“No,” Mordechai replies, his voice heavy with finality. “I decide how I am repaid.” 

Desperation is a harsh master, and Barnabas nods. He’d prefer to keep it off the books, anyway. An agreement between Gentlemen. 

“You will find my terms very agreeable,” Mordechai says. 

Barnabas swallows and feels the heat of his blush creep under his hair. There’s something in the way Mordechai looks at him that promises danger, but Barnabas only feels the anticipation of a fight, so strong he can barely keep it down. He takes his time to make sure he doesn’t sound too eager when he replies. 

* 

In the dark of his bedroom when Barnabas finally wraps a hand around himself, he isn’t thinking about Jonah, his many dog-eared fantasies, tired and sad Frankensteinian conjurations of the few ginger kisses they’ve shared, memories of Jonah flushed, excited, exerted stitched together and his own imagination filling in the rest—they’ve been friends for so long it’s completely understandable if Barnabas’ thoughts occasionally (privately, every night) run to intimacy. He’s trying very hard not to think about Jonah. 

He’s thinking about that strange, death-pale, flat-edged face, the terrible pressure on Barnabas’s jaw, the feeling of compression on his artery, the voice both mocking and stern in turns. Its appearance in Barnabas’s thoughts elicits a new and fierce shame. 

Barnabas rubs his chin, trying to chase the feeling of Mordechai’s hand. 

It’s almost comical, how quickly Barnabas’s shame runs to pleasure. 

* 

His fifty pounds arrives with an invitation. 

* 

The first time Barnabas visits Moorland house, he expects Mordechai to be waiting for him. But Mordechai is not there, and Barnabas is expected to wait. 

Moorland is certainly a large and imposing estate, perhaps once opulent, but it has been left to ruin. The building’s beams sag with damp; its tapestries are delicately laced with powder-white fungus; there is an atrocious stuffed albatross over the mantlepiece with half of its feathers snowed around the room. The grounds are pale and bare; an empty wind roils through. 

Barnabas is fairly certain that Moorland has three servants, but they whip around or disappear through doors when he tries to approach them. Barnabas’s own house is much smaller, but he has just as many in his staff; he suspects that Mordechai is not a rich man at all, just someone with a once-impressive but dead family name and an estate too large to be managed on a pittance. He wonders why Mordechai pretends otherwise. 

These thoughts slip through his mind like freshwater fish down a stream, but Barnabas wanders through the house contentedly enough. After a week he barely even notices the servants’ presence, save for his changing sheets and pressed clothes and the serviceable meals prepared set and left for him in at the kitchen table, in front of the unlit hearth. He eats with blackened silverware and tastes the neglect. 

After two weeks, Barnabas sails through the house in fraying silk undergarments and dusty, pink-tinged mink he’s pulled out of a room he can’t remember, his days blurring together in their monotony. He stops to wipe a sleeve at one of the many ancient, spotted mirrors and squints through the smear of dust at his reflection, trying to reconcile the person standing in front of him with the person he thought he was. Wasn’t he supposed to have a purpose here? Wasn’t he needed in London? There is poverty, suffering; but it is far, far away, and he is in a place it would never touch him. 

There are as many mirrors as there are portraits of Mordechai’s family, all exactly alike, his haunting beauty and domineering presence. Barnabas drags a finger down the paint of one of them, leaving behind a thin white line. A tally mark to as many days he thinks he’s spent in this place. 

He’s sitting at the kitchen table, clipping pearlescent roses from the garden for a floral arrangement when he thinks about all those mirrors, and how a ghost could wander this house trapped forever. If he covers up the mirrors, then he could leave. 

*

Mordechai returns when Barnabas no longer keeps track of days and nights; when the mirrors don’t make him think of anything in particular, although he wonders why half of them are shrouded or turned to the wall. 

Barnabas drifts down to the coatroom and threads his arms through Mordechai’s. 

“Welcome home,” he says dreamily. 

“Hello,” Mordechai says. Barnabas makes a small, disappointed sound when Mordechai disengages himself to unwind his scarf. He scratches his beard. “You’re in a biddable mood.” 

“‘Course I am. I’m lovely,” Barnabas replies. He presses himself to Mordechai, enjoying the whole, solid block of him. Mordechai’s hands are worryingly chilly, and Barnabas gathers them and blows on them gently. Once he finishes the task he settles against Mordechai again, pleased with himself. 

Mordechai forgoes a response but for tipping Barnabas’s head back and sucking an open-mouthed kiss against his neck, working the skin with his tongue and the slick coldness of his teeth, and, oh, this is the touch that Barnabas has craved these past days. He’s felt so forlorn without it, only he never realized. 

He’s gasping and moaning by the time Mordechai splits his skin open and drinks his blood. It’s only then, with his blood being pulled out of him in long, deep strokes, that Barnabas remembers with ice-cold clarity why he’s here; to repay a debt; and that he should be feeling rather a lot of either shame, or anger, pain, or worry, but instead he’s trying to rut his puffed-up prick against the vampire’s body. 

Mordechai licks the wound closed and kisses Barnabas, sharing with him the taste of his own blood. 

“Happy new year,” Mordechai says. 

#the magnus archives #jonah magnus week #mordechai lukas #barnabas bennett #jonah magnus #second part up tomorrow it's just another 3k and my wrists are sore