#anyone could look at that sheet and look in the cooler and confirm that i did it so she was just blatantly lying to all of my coworkers | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gretchensinister · 4 years

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I’m Your Boogeyman

A tense summer. A hot night. The need for touch, and the need to stop worrying about what’s normal.

A man in his late twenties is living in an apartment with a boogeyman, but naturally he doesn’t know that. The boogeyman is wildly obsessed with him, though, and one night when Zander lets his leg hang over the side of the bed, they finally meet. And a lot more besides. Classic meet-cute, right? 13,314 words. A whole lemon.

***

Zander had always run hot. That was the problem, and there was really nothing to be done about it. Oh, sure, there were mundane ways of addressing the issue—sleeping in just his shorts, getting a fan, making a dry cold-pack with rice and a couple of old t-shirts. He told himself if he ever got rich he’d set the air conditioning to whatever he honestly needed it to be at night and to hell with everyone else.

But right now he wasn’t rich. He lived in an apartment that was the west side of the second floor of a massive, venerable Victorian, and while there were many lovely details about it that had survived the renovations that made it into four homes instead of one, the large windows in his bedroom did not seem quite so lovely when they gathered every bit of the sun’s heat on long summer evenings. Even insulated blackout curtains didn’t do much to help his bedroom stay cool, which both baffled and frustrated him. The reason he’d had such curtains in the first place was because he’d lived in Texas for a few years before moving much farther north. They’d been effective there! But then again, a lot of buildings in Texas, even old, shitty ones, were built so that the people in them could easily shave a few degrees off the interior temperatures. If you didn’t do that, you just died.

Zander would concede that the place he lived now regularly experienced long periods where if your house didn’t retain as much heat as possible, that would be the situation where you just died.

Still, when he tried to sleep during the summer in his current apartment, he very much resented that the original architect had been so good at their job. If he had just needed to be a little cooler to sleep well, maybe running hot wouldn’t have been so much of a problem. Fans did work wonders when much of his body was bare, and the rice bag in the freezer was extraordinarily soothing when laid across his wrist where his all-too-warm blood rushed by so near to his skin. But his needs were not just about temperature. Zander needed to be cool to be comfortable as he slept, but to feel safe enough to sleep in the first place, he needed to be covered.

He wished he could let go of this feeling, he really did. He’d even tried to slowly ease himself out of the habit: falling asleep with one arm outside the sheet, then both arms, then his chest, but habits and instincts were harder to break than that. Whenever he woke up, usually from being too hot, he would be completely wrapped, even tangled, in the sheet.

The thing was, he suspected he might have been able to succeed in learning how to sleep without covers if it hadn’t been for…something…about his bedroom. Nothing had happened in it to make him feel unsafe. (Nothing much had happened in it at all, to his great disappointment, if he was being honest.) But there was something undefinable about it. After the sun went down, it always seemed a little darker than it should have been, no matter what kind of lightbulbs Zander put in the lamps. Sometimes, as he was getting into bed, the quiet of the room seemed expectant. Which was a bananas thing to think or say to anyone, so he didn’t.

He had asked his landlady about the history of the house. She’d only shrugged. “A few people have died here, I guess. Nothing crazy like a murder. But people mostly died at home back in the day.” When he’d asked her, she’d been out in the backyard, chain-smoking. “If you can get or fake some halfway decent ghost evidence, I’ll knock fifty bucks off your rent. Love to know there’s an afterlife with a habit like mine. But if you find a way to quit that sticks, I’ll knock a hundred bucks off everybody’s rent.”

It had been an unhelpful conversation, to say the least. He couldn’t stop thinking about paying for her cigarettes for weeks.

Anyway, he didn’t really believe that his room was haunted, nor that a standard bedsheet would prove a barrier to any sort of ghost. Whatever was off about the space probably had to do with old walls falling slightly out of true, and wiring that was somehow incompatible with modern technology (it was not his area of expertise). Or maybe he subconsciously hated being alone so much that he couldn’t get totally comfortable in the room he was alone in.

I wouldn’t have been such a big deal, except for the heat that made his compulsion almost unbearable.

And what good could it possibly do? What protection did a bedsheet possibly offer if there really was something malevolent about? (Which there wasn’t. Couldn’t be.)

***

It was a creature of instinct more than intellect. This was mainly due to the fact that it didn’t exist continuously. While it was intelligent, it was difficult to understand the world and form opinions about anything in it when it didn’t have a solid form most of the time.

It vastly preferred existence to non-existence, though, and the hours it was most coherent all took place in the presence of its otherbeing. It was aware that there were many otherbeings, even sensed that it existed because of otherbeings, but distinct memories were a luxury of form. It hadn’t had a form for a long time before this otherbeing moved into its territory, so it didn’t have many clear memories. When coherence was brief, only the broadest strokes of physicality returned—limbs, teeth, eyes. Only the memories, only the thoughts, necessary for survival. But when coherence lasted longer, as a more stable state—as it did when its otherbeing was close by—that was when it gained details: skin texture, claws, memory, continuity.

Its otherbeing was often close by, and the creature had become, to put it simply, obsessed. It knew every different way the otherbeing’s breath sounded, it knew every subtle variation of the otherbeing’s heartbeat, it knew the way the otherbeing smelled just before washing and just after, it knew every scent that was just the otherbeing, separate from anything the otherbeing brought in from the world outside. It knew the sound of the otherbeing’s voice, and could pick it out from any of the cacophony of sounds the otherbeing was often surrounded by, even though, for a very long time, the otherbeing rarely spoke at all. It knew the way the otherbeing moved, all the fantastic shapes the otherbeing was made of, the colors of the otherbeing’s skin and hair in moonlight and starlight and streetlamp light and indoor lamp light (even if it was uncomfortable to observe anything in such brightness).

All this knowing felt mostly normal to the creature, though the way it brought it so much joy did not seem typical—but then, there were no others like itself present to confirm its strangeness.

But maybe that was better! If it was a creature that was not supposed to feel this way about its otherbeing, it would rather not know. It did guess that some kind of line had been crossed, because it had spent enough attention to know that this otherbeing was a he-otherbeing named Zander. Sometimes the creature would whisper the name to itself, when it and Zander were in the places that felt most right: Zander sleeping in his bed, the creature curled on the floor beneath it.

Sometimes, the nights like that were so lovely and peaceful that all the creature’s instincts faded away, and it even fell asleep during the precious hours of darkness.

But the real line that it had crossed had been more recent, only several months ago (how sophisticated it felt for thinking of months rather than moon-cycles! So proud in its knowledge of Zander’s world!). It had still been winter, then—a wonderful season for the creature, when the nights were longer and Zander was more often indoors. But inevitably, the nights grew shorter, and the creature felt terribly, terribly cheated. Not of coherence. In a strict sense, it could survive with very little of that. But of its time with Zander. And in defiance of all its scant knowledge of itself, of the rules of its existence, it held itself together through the slow flare of sunrise, huddling in the greying dark under Zander’s bed, saying his name over and over again. It hurt to do this, and that was a warning, wasn’t it, that the creature was endangering itself? But Zander was still sleeping so peacefully, with such good deep breaths, such a steady heartbeat. How could it be expected to fade in the middle of that?

And in a thoughtless and sublime expression of desire, it had clawed its way up the side of the bed in the searing sunrise. Indirect, weak winter sunlight fell from the large windows upon Zander’s face, and the creature had thought it looked like the ultimate contradiction: the sun, but safe and beautiful.

What an irrevocable instant! Its being flooding with unfamiliar emotions, its physical body burning with pain it could never have imagined—it would have howled if the sun had not forced its dissolution in the very next moment.

That night, when it formed again, the memory of Zander’s sunlit face had returned immediately, sharper than any teeth it could form after such a harrowing morning. And it curled its vague form into a tight ball and held its head and shook.

Before, it had known that it lived and cohered because of Zander—the fine aether of his unease, the miasma of his nightmares: these were ultimately its daily bread. But now it also knew that it lived for Zander.

It had no idea how to face a craving that could draw it into the sun.

For a time, all it could do was continue as before, though its scrutiny became bolder and more reckless—enough to glut it on its actual sustenance, but doing nothing to appease its other pangs.

It took to exploring Zander’s bedroom as soon as it got dark, storing up memories, storing up knowledge.

It would stand in the shower behind the curtain, smelling the shampoo, the soap. What would it be like to use the shower, as if it was a being like Zander?

It would watch Zander watching movies on his computer in the living room, standing just inside the doorway of the bedroom. It would have the courage to approach and watch him from behind the couch soon enough—and that was but another sign of its derangement. The risk of being seen would be so great, and being seen was dangerous. It would…it would produce too much fear to process, and risked driving Zander away.

The problem with that was that it couldn’t know when another otherbeing would move in, and it could be consigning itself to nonexistence for a very long time. But the bigger problem was that it didn’t want to lose Zander, and if it did…it found it didn’t really care if any otherbeings ever moved into its territory or not.

The sun continued to gnaw away at the night, but not many days before it consumed over half the day, something wonderful happened. Zander started staying home much, much more. He started using his computer to talk to other otherbeings much more, giving the creature more of his voice to listen to and remember. His dreams and nightmares grew more powerful than ever, and the creature thought that if it had been normal for its kind, it would have been the most content of them all: strong, well-nourished, with peculiar otherbeing things to observe all the time.

Unfortunately, despite gaining much happiness from this new routine, it started to dwell on what it could not have of Zander.

It could not touch. It could not taste. There were rules to its existence that were truly impossible for it to break. Bearing the touch of the sun was excruciating, but there might be reasons for a creature like it to do so—moving from hiding place to hiding place, perhaps. But other choices didn’t result in an action and some accompanying pain. They resulted in nothing at all, as if the creature had not even thought of moving.

For example: the otherbeing was never to be touched with the creature’s mouth. The creature understood this. It didn’t feed with its mouth, and didn’t have a digestive system like that of a continuously corporeal creature. Bites and mouth-touches might produce sustaining terror, but as in the case of being seen, this terror might be enough to overwhelm a creature, or it might be enough to drive a creature’s otherbeing away. Mouth details, like fangs, were for…well, this particular creature had no idea what they could be for, when it tried to think about it logically. Just another instinct. (Though this one could be overcome, at least partially. For a while now, when the creature re-formed at dark, it had been experimenting with how small it could make its fangs. It had managed to make them small enough to easily speak like Zander did, which was interesting, and exciting, even, until the creature remembered that it would never have the need to speak this way.)

But the strongest instinct of all, and the strongest prohibition, was this: no matter how perfect the opportunity, no matter how dark the night, no matter how deeply the otherbeing was asleep, the creature could not touch any part of the otherbeing unless two conditions were met. The first condition: only parts of the otherbeing that weren’t covered by bed-fabric could be touched. The second condition: only parts of the otherbeing that extended over the edge of the bed could be touched.

The creature had lost count of the times it had stood at the side of Zander’s bed and tried to make itself reach out—to touch his face, to finally learn the texture of his skin and hair! But it could never move. It didn’t matter if its muscles were newly formed or if they were hours old, if it tried to concentrate on the action or move without thinking about it. Nothing. More than anything else, this prohibition seemed inherent to its very being. It was the kind of creature it was because of this.

Did any others of its kind feel that this was cruelty? That their existence as substantial beings depended on bonding with one particular otherbeing, and yet it was all too simple for this otherbeing to remain forever untouchable?

Then again, perhaps it was not such a problem for others. Perhaps Zander was an exceptionally careful otherbeing.

***

It was August, and Zander was pretty sure he was losing it. He understood that this was not a particularly unique feeling, but it still wasn’t good. His vague weird feeling about his bedroom had progressed into a full feeling of being watched, which occasionally hit him in the bathroom and the living room, as well. He would swear that sometimes his things had been moved, just slightly, as if someone had been picking them up and putting them down for some reason. None of the lights seemed to be as bright as they should be.

He toyed with several explanations, and tested each of them. Could there be another person secretly living in his apartment? A thorough search produced nothing. Could he be experiencing carbon monoxide poisoning? The two detectors he ordered online showed the same very low reading. Could he be developing a diagnosable mental illness, not just “losing it”? He was a few years past the average onset age of schizophrenia for men, but times were weird. This one wasn’t as easy to rule out, but he didn’t have any family with the illness, and as far as he could tell, he didn’t have any symptoms during the daytime. At least, no symptoms that were notable, considering the isolation. He decided he couldn’t dwell on this and if he saw or heard anything really off, he’d follow some advice he’d found and try recording it on his phone.

His phone had acquired a few new apps during the whole investigation. An infrasound detector told him that he was not being affected by infrasound. A sleep monitoring app remained unused.

It remained unused because even if he knew he wasn’t being haunted, because ghosts didn’t exist, it still seemed…foolish, somehow, to pay extra attention to whatever might be happening while he was asleep. He was waking up every morning, after all. But then again, how was he supposed to find answers if there were means of investigation that he was deliberately ignoring?

Return to the first premise: he was simply losing it.

He entertained the possibility that he was losing it and there was something strange in the neighborhood, so to speak, but this only led to more questions about how he was supposed to respond. He certainly wasn’t going to pay for a psychic cleansing over Zoom. Not with what only amounted to weird feelings, anyway.

But probably there was nothing weird going on, not in a supernatural sense, anyway! He was just losing it because the only people he could justify seeing face to face were his coworkers, and screw them, if he couldn’t be around his friends he certainly wasn’t going to voluntarily be around not-friends for eight hours a day; he was losing it because even if he could be around his friends what he wanted was to be held and sure everyone was queer and cool but he’d never been able to ask before all this so why did he think he was going to be able to ask afterwards, when he would doubtless be even weirder than five months (and counting) had made him?

And he was losing it because in order to keep whatever it was, he needed to sleep, and that was so often the most difficult thing about his day, because of the heat!

So he lay awake in his astounding solar oven of a bedroom, staring up at the ceiling with the sheet pulled up to his neck, while his fan failed to act on his sweat and his little animal thoughts chased their tails in his mind.

I need to be cool. I need to be covered. I need to be held. I need to be cool. I need to be covered. I need to be held.

Somehow, he always drifted off eventually.

And one night, he drifted off with the sheets less firmly anchored under the mattress than they usually were. As he floated off into sleep, the higher order of his thoughts that insisted on the necessity of covering quieted well before his body’s insistence on reaching a comfortable temperature. He shifted and turned, gradually freeing himself from the sheet, slipping ever deeper into dreams. With the sheet discarded, his body discovered one more helpful adjustment: with his leg hanging off the mattress, the airflow around it helped his body release heat very well.

***

A pounding heart, a dry mouth, even overwhelmed tears—these are all things that belong to continuous bodies. But the creature could tremble, and it did, even as it reached out, hardly able to believe its good luck, hardly able to believe this incredible blessing that had finally been bestowed on it.

***

It was from an instantly forgotten dream and to the unfamiliar, unexpected, and uncanny sensation of a light, cool grip on his ankle that Zander awoke. Fuck, I knew it! was his first thought, followed by a nervous, panicky negation. This couldn’t be happening. This was the remnant of a dream. In a few seconds he’d realize he’d misinterpreted the sensation.

Moments passed, huge moments where the grip on his ankle didn’t change at all, and Zander soon felt like he’d never been so awake in his life. And then the…hand? It did feel like a hand, with fingers on one side and a thumb on the other—had he missed someone living in his house somehow? The hand began to slowly move up his calf. Carefully. Gently. It was…it was honestly a caress, and Zander had no idea if that made it better or worse, more or less likely to be a hallucination. But the fingers and thumb were long enough that even at the midpoint of his calf, they almost wrapped around his leg entirely, and that meant that this hand was definitely not human.

This was bad, probably, but it was also something that he was sure no one expected him to just put up with and carry on through, and that felt like a relief. His mind cleared. First thing: determine if this was a hallucination. He lifted his phone from the windowsill, thumbed open the camera, and aimed it at his knee, where one…claw? Oh God. One claw was carefully poking at the scar from a childhood bike accident. The screen showed nothing he could see at this angle, as the only light in the room came from the phone itself or the line between the curtains where the streetlights shone faintly in. He tapped the screen.

The auto-flash worked just as it was supposed to. It also completely disoriented Zander, but not before he caught a glimpse of a gaunt humanoid figure with a mouth far too large and full of fangs crouched by the side of his bed. One or both of them gave a horrible yelp, and Zander was mentally confronting the possibility of being eviscerated when he realized the creature’s hand was still wrapped around his knee, unmoving.

***

Awful, awful, the sudden light! Zander must have seen it, but it was an accident, it was not breaking its rules. There was no light-pain anymore, in fact the light-pain had probably been a good thing, as healing used up much of the energy it was getting from Zander’s fear right now. And so it did not let go. This might be its only chance to touch Zander, and it was not yet satisfied, only ever more curious from its touches so far. His leg was so much softer than the bottom of his foot, and covered with hair, too. It was fascinating, and it suspected that this was far from the only fascinating thing about Zander’s body.

But it was so unlikely now that Zander would indulge it by leaving the bed. Or! If he did leave the bed he would leave forever, and there’d be no point in having a form ever again because there wouldn’t be Zander to watch and listen to and touch.

Unconsciously, the creature gripped Zander’s knee more tightly. Was there anything it could do? Was tonight to be the culmination of all its hopes, and the threshold of an existence of nothing but void? Had it been worth it to face the sun, when it would all end like this?

But! Oh! This was the power of memory. It had faced the sun. The things it felt were different. It was different. It could do things that were unaccounted for in the rules of its existence.

***

The image on the phone screen showed a dark gray entity with a huge mouth full of fangs, a collection of slits for a nose, two very large round eyes, and pointed, animal-like ears on the sides of its head that were probably bigger than Zander’s hand. It had a long skinny neck and long skinny arms connected to a torso that was, probably, also long and skinny. It didn’t have any hair. It looked very solid, blocking the view of his desk in the picture like any real thing in that location would. It also kind of looked…surprised?

You and me both! Zander thought. He found he had no idea what to do now that he had evidence that there was really something in his room. Something that was still holding onto his leg. Something that was, in fact, an actual fucking monster!

No, no, no, part of his brain chanted, a desperate negation, a call for the world to be as it had been. It’s not a monster, there’s no such thing as monsters, people see things and misidentify them all the time, it’s usually something like a starving bear with mange, that’s what this must be, a starving bear with mange, something that at least EXISTS—

Zander stifled a wild laugh. This wasn’t a bear of any kind, for one thing, and for another, how would it possibly be better if a starving bear with mange was in his apartment and holding onto his leg? That would be an almost certainly fatal situation. A monster, though? Well, who the hell knew?

“Zander. Please don’t leave.”

He dropped his phone. That had to be—that had to be the monster talking to him. And it knew his name, knew how to speak English, and knew how to be polite. And it was asking him to stay? Okay. Okay. Sure. This gave him something to work with.

“Why do you want me to stay?” he croaked out. “Are you going to kill me?”

“NO! No, no, no! I only want to touch you! I’ve waited for so long, and this was my first chance!”

“Wh—what do you mean, so long? How long?”

A short pause. “Since you became my otherbeing. My…human. Since you first dreamed in my territory.”

Zander’s mind raced. Did it mean since he’d moved into the apartment? That was almost four years ago! “Why…was this your first chance?”

“Because of the rules,” the monster said. “You have to be asleep. You have to be uncovered. You have to be off the mattress.”

Just as he’d always suspected. The part of his mind that had suggested the mangy starving bear tried to tell him this situation was weird and incomprehensible and was sending him slipping and spinning into totally unknown territory. But the thing was, if he accepted the scenario totally and completely as something that was happening, it was easy to understand. “Do you live under my bed?”

“Yes, or at least I did. As I got more and more curious about you I moved around more. I learned many things. And now that you’re around more, I have more energy to keep my form. I can remember more things.”

“You don’t always have a body? Where does your energy come from?”

“My energy comes from your nightmares and your waking fears, though there is a danger of waking fear being overwhelming. I am not sure how I withstood your reaction to seeing me. There is a correct level of energy for taking a form at night. It takes much more energy to maintain a form against light. It is…by instinct it is impossible to keep a form in sunlight. It is very painful. But I did it once.”

Zander stared up at the ceiling, which he could now make out the edges of thanks to the faint light from the streetlamps. He might be feeling like he was starting to understand this situation, but looking at the monster again—yeah, that would really loosen his grip on things. “So you…feed off my fear, but only a little at a time. You can only exist in the dark. You live under my bed. You can’t touch any part of my body that’s on the mattress and covered. You honestly sound like a childhood boogeyman, except that I’m not a child.”

“It is hard to remember, but I believe I came to exist because of a child. When a child dreamed in this room. I think there may have been other children, also. Others of my kind. But formlessness erases memory, and I was formless for what I think was many years. But then you came. And now I’m no child’s boogeyman. I’m your boogeyman. Only, only yours.”

Zander took a slow breath. Two things were occurring to him.

One: this boogeyman had kind of a nice voice, low and a little scratchy. It sounded like it had a bit of an accent, too, but that was no doubt because of the fangs and maybe—maybe never speaking to anyone else before? That seemed unbearably sad, but maybe it was normal for its…species? Kind?

Two: Maybe he didn’t have as good a grip on this situation as he had hoped.

“Do you have a name?” Zander asked. “And, um, I’m a he, other humans are she, or they, or…well, there are a lot of options. What about you?”

“No name,” the boogeyman answered immediately. “And I…I am an it.” It sounded puzzled with this last statement. And why not? thought Zander. Surely if I admitted to secretly living in someone’s house for four years, I wouldn’t expect them to ask my pronouns! There’d be other, more relevant, questions!

“Do you want a name?” This wasn’t one of those more relevant questions. But it was the only one that came to mind at the moment.

“Zander…you would give me a name?” The pure wonder in its voice. Had anyone ever said Zander’s name like that?

“Only if you want a name.” What was he doing? Why was he doing it?

“Yes!” It sounded a little different, now. As if it was shaking? “Zander, name me!”

“I—” He finally let out a little laughter. “I want to give you a good name, but I can’t hardly think now. Could I just—could I just nickname you ‘Boo’ right now, and come up with something better, later?”

“Boo,” the boogeyman said. “I am Boo!” It really sounded delighted, and Zander wondered if anything would have bothered it. Maybe not, as long as he had good intentions.

When the boogeyman—Boo—spoke again, it was quieter, more subdued. “I do not think that having a name is a usual part of being what I am. What you call a boogeyman.”

“Is that…a problem?”

“I don’t know. I like it, though. Anyway, it is not the first strange thing I have done since becoming your boogeyman.”

The mangy bear part of Zander’s mind posited that everything the monster had ever done was strange, because it was too strange to exist in the first place. Zander told that part of himself to pipe down. It was past time to accept that Boo was real, and as a being of a certain type, some things would be strange for it and others would be normal. Boo had even mentioned one, earlier. “Yeah. You said you braved the sun, once. Why did you do that?”

The hand around Zander’s knee twitched nervously. Oh. Yeah. Best not to forget about that. The claws, very close. (And also, Boo’s one stated desire so far: to touch him.)

“I was…curious,” Boo said. “No. That is not the right word. I wanted to know more of you than I already did. It shouldn’t matter to a boogeyman, but I liked watching you, whether you were uneasy or not. I liked knowing how you looked in different amounts of moonlight, in different colors of lamplight. You’re my favorite thing to look at. But I can only do that at night, when we both have forms. Last winter when I noticed that the nights were getting shorter I felt like you were being taken away. I wanted every sight of you I could hang onto. I hadn’t ever seen you in sunlight. An ordinary boogeyman wouldn’t have thought of it. But I did. I wanted to see your face in another kind of light, and sunlight was the only kind of light left. And I managed to endure it, and now I know what your face looks like in the sunlight.”

“Was it…was it worth it?”

“Yes.”

Zander’s first impulse was to push the story away, to tell Boo that maybe it needed to see more faces if it thought Zander’s was worth pain, but he held his tongue. Because there was something about what Boo had done that seemed understandable, familiar. To see someone and then begin to desire and to act in previously unthinkable ways—to irrevocably abandon normal—to risk pain for the sake of joy that it seemed so few others would understand—oh, he’d done it. If Boo’s experience was at all related…he didn’t want to make it seem small.

“You’re being strange for a boogeyman right now, too, aren’t you?”

“I was never supposed to talk to you,” Boo said. “I didn’t understand human language so much before I started paying attention to you. I couldn’t speak it. In the form I have by instinct, my fangs are too big to make all the sounds correctly.”

Are you FUCKING kidding me those are your SMALL fangs? Zander’s fear returned in a rush, and he heard Boo shift by the side of his bed. He forced himself to take deep breaths and did his best to push his fear to curiosity. What did it feel like to Boo, to be feared all of a sudden like that? Would it be like sipping water through a straw and then having someone pry your jaw open to dump a gallon down your throat? But maybe there was no metaphor, because the physical was always a limit for a human, and that didn’t seem to be the case for Boo. Unless Zander was totally wrong and it did need large fangs to chew up nightmares.

“You okay, Boo? Guess I wasn’t as calm as I thought.”

“I am okay. I will have to expend this energy soon, but that will not be dangerous to you. If I don’t find a way to use it myself, the excess will manifest as darkness. The lights in your apartment might not work for a few hours. It is enough energy to seek a new territory if a human leaves the original territory after seeing one of my kind. I did not understand this before, because leaving my territory had never occurred to me before you saw me. Another instinct. But you should also know that my fangs are only for the frightening appearance. No bites or mouth-touches are allowed. I have no digestive system. Any bites would be pointless.”

“Mouth-touches,” Zander repeated. It was an odd phrase for someone who otherwise used English so well. It sounded like a little word-veil, drawn between them so that they could both ignore what mouth-touches not part of eating would be. Or maybe that was a completely bonkers interpretation. Boo wasn’t human. Who could say how it would use language?

The obvious thing to do was ask for clarification. Zander closed his eyes for a few moments. He was going to have to come at this from an angle, and he wasn’t sure he was up to it. If he was wrong, he would create an awkward roommate situation that couldn’t be equaled, and if he was right…well, what did he plan to do?

“Anyway…you’re not supposed to be talking to me, but you can. I get that, it’s a new thing. Your instincts don’t have anything to tell you about it. But what about the way you’re still touching me? Is that also strange or…what am I not getting?” He felt a faint twitch from Boo’s hand once he fell silent.

“I can touch you because touch could make you more afraid,” Boo said. It sounded like it was trying to pick its words very carefully. “But…yes. This is also strange. And I am surprised that no instincts have made me let go. I think…it is better for a boogeyman if its human is not sure if it is really there. So touch should be fleeting. It is not…a need. But maybe that doesn’t matter. You must be very certain I’m here.”

“Yes,” Zander said. Oh, he had to be careful, now, very careful. Just because Boo would undergo the worst of boogeyman agonies just to see his face in the sunlight didn’t make his half-formed idea good. But then again, even if what he was thinking was a bad idea, at least it was fully his own bad idea. And he’d been buffeted around enough by other people’s bad ideas lately. So…let it all come together. Survival and need and want and…touch. “But maybe…maybe your instincts don’t have anything to say to you now because you don’t have any needs right now—is that true? I mean…from what you’ve told me. You have my fear, and that gives you energy to hold your form and do whatever else, and you’ve got the dark.”

“That is all a boogeyman needs.” Boo sounded troubled. “Zander…it does not feel like these are my only needs. Not when you are here.”

Zander swallowed. “Well, it sounds like you have some really strong wants, then. I think that’s…that’s part of being alive. Wanting more than the bare minimum of what’s needed to survive. I mean, that’s one of the first things you said to me.”

“That I wanted to touch you. Yes.”

Boo drew out this last word into a hiss, and shiver ran down Zander’s spine. Sure it was fear, Boo was a creature formed to scare—but that wasn’t all of it.

“I still want to touch you,” Boo said. “Much more than I already have. Now that I know that I can while you are awake, while I am talking to you—I do not know if any other boogeyman has wanted a want like this. And I don’t care, because you are my otherbeing, my human, my Zander. Everything I have of you only makes me want more, and it doesn’t make any sense, and I don’t care, because even getting a little bit of what I want is wonderful. If you were all the way out of your bed, all the way uncovered, I—I don’t know if that would satisfy me. I don’t think it matters, I want that anyway.”

Zander’s heart beat faster—how could it not, when being talked to like this, even when he’d seen the terrifying form the pleasant voice belonged to? It was clear that Boo had no concerns about approaching this subject delicately. He took a deep breath, trying to clear the feeling of lightheadedness that had come upon him. It didn’t really help. This was weird! Very weird! But it really boiled down to this: Boo wanted to touch him. He wanted to be touched.

And he was starting to get curious, now, to see if Boo would like to be touched, and how.

“Boo, I think I want to have you touch me, too.”

“Zander! I…” In contrast to the declaration of its desire, Boo now sounded shy, even a little confused. “I want to make sure I touch you in a way that won’t make you leave. I don’t want to have to be anyone else’s boogeyman.”

“Yeah, we can talk about that, we can figure it out,” Zander said. “We’ve got all night, don’t we?”

“Yes!” Boo said, and again the word turned into a hiss.

This time Zander was able to find it more fascinating than frightening, though now he guessed that being frightening was the whole point. Whenever Boo didn’t think about what it was doing, it would probably end up doing something scary. It was probably the best way for a boogeyman to survive as a boogeyman, even if it was doing something unusual like talking—err on the side of scary. Zander smiled a little, just at the idea that something as strange and incredible as Boo should exist in the first place.

“What are you feeling?” Boo asked. “It’s because of me, but it’s not fear.”

“W—wonder, I think,” Zander stammered. So Boo could feel any emotion it caused, not just fear? That was bound to get interesting.

“Wonder. It feels good.”

Very interesting.

“Boo, before you get to touch—two things: Would it be safe for you if I opened the curtains a little more? To let in the streetlights? It’ll help me be less afraid if I can see what you’re doing, at least a little.”

“The streetlights won’t trouble me—but I don’t understand. It has become less frightening to see me?”

“Well, surprise adds a lot to fear,” Zander said. “If I can see your movements, I won’t be surprised when I feel your hands.”

“I see,” Boo said.

“And the other thing is—you did give me a good scare earlier. I have to go to the bathroom before we do anything else.”

“All right.” Boo made no move to let go of his leg.

“That means you have to let go of me for a couple minutes.”

“Oh. But I could come with. I’ve been in your bathroom lots of times. I like being behind the shower curtain.”

The thought so sometimes there actually WAS something there clashed with has Boo watched me pee?! and Zander pushed them both aside. It was time to focus on the now, and he didn’t want to fall down a rabbit hole of wondering what Boo might have seen him doing. Though, to be very, very honest, there was a sort of dirty little frisson to think that Boo could have seen him taking himself in hand—he really had lost it, hadn’t he?

“But you’re not coming with me now,” Zander said. “Hey. You know that bathroom doesn’t have any windows. I’m not going to run away.”

There was a pause, and then Boo gave a sigh. The hand at his knee slid back down his calf, over his ankle and foot, and then was gone.

“Please don’t grab my ankles when I step on the floor,” Zander said. “I’m guessing that might be—it might be another instinct.”

When Zander had taken a few steps away from his bed, Boo spoke again. “You were right. It was.”

Zander grinned, even as his ankles tingled with the apprehension of touch, and continued into the bathroom.

When he returned to his bedroom, he found that Boo had already opened the curtains. Zander had left the light off in the bathroom (after all, he knew the boogeyman wasn’t in there at the moment) to keep his night vision. Now, the orange glow from the streetlights outside was more than enough to reveal everything in his room. Including Boo.

At first, he couldn’t take another step forward. The sight of Boo pressed buttons older than wonder or sympathy or even curiosity, and he had to close his eyes before he could even pull himself together enough to speak. “Boo, can you say something? I’d gotten used to your voice, but, uh, seeing you was still a surprise.”

“I did use my time alone to use some of my extra energy to change my form,” Boo said. “I wanted…I wanted to try out hair.”

Zander sensed that this was not the whole truth, but he wasn’t going to get into that now. He took a deep breath. That was Boo’s voice. He’d talked to Boo. He’d—well, he’d really liked hearing that confession of desire from Boo. And yes. Boo was a monster. And when he opened his eyes, he was going to see Boo, and step closer to Boo, and check out Boo’s brand new form with hair. The seconds of preparation helped, and when Zander opened his eyes, fear gave one last jolt before swiftly receding in favor of wonder.

He walked forward slowly—his legs still felt a little weak from the first shock—never taking his eyes off Boo. To look at Boo properly barely seemed possible—to look away and back again? Absolutely not.

When he got within Boo’s reach, he paused and tried to take in as much detail as the streetlights allowed. Boo was the same color as before, that dark gray. Its skin was more matte than a human’s. The body that skin covered was very, very tall. At least seven feet, maybe a little more, it was hard to tell how close Boo’s head was to the ceiling in the low light. And still—Zander’s stomach lurched like it did when he looked out from the top of a roller coaster—from his earlier brief look, Boo had probably been even taller before. Whatever shapeshifting it had done had included changing its proportions so that it looked a little bit more compact, a little bit more human, now. But really, only a little.

Zander wondered if there was some mass Boo had to take on when it solidified, because in addition to being shorter than the first picture indicated, Boo now had a little more muscle and flesh on its body and limbs. Though it still made you wonder if it was hungry enough to make you its next meal. Too, the slight musculature it now had was…off…in some indefinable way. Zander had never made a study of human anatomy, but what Boo’s said to him was that it wasn’t an elongated human, but something else entirely. And there were other, far more obvious differences. Boo had only four toes on each foot, each of which ended in a sharp black claw. It had no navel, and the area between its legs appeared as smooth as a mannequin. And its hands, the hands Zander had invited it to touch him with…well, they had five fingers each, but he was almost sure each finger had an extra joint compared to a human finger. They definitely all had significant claws. But, perhaps…he wouldn’t know until Boo touched him again, but he thought maybe Boo had done its best to tone down the claws.

After all, Boo had done quite a bit on its fangs.

Boo’s face was what he had seen on his phone, and Boo’s face was where the changes it had made were clearest to Zander. Though its jaw remained somewhat prognathous, its fangs were now small enough that its lips closed over them easily. Its ears, too, were much smaller, even if they were still much larger than a human’s and still pointed. But they didn’t remind Zander so much of a bat anymore. But even with these changes, some things about Boo had stayed the same. Its nose remained as it had been, just a slight protrusion with two large nostril slits framed by two smaller, additional slits. Boo’s eyes were still enormous, and very round. They had no whites, but in the lamplight Zander thought he could see the distinction between iris and pupil. Incredible, that this faint light would cause such a contraction.

And, yes, finally, Boo had hair on the top of its head, now. It was black, several inches long, and quite messy. Of course, it has been formed rather hastily. It made Boo look—well, it was hard to say. Less alien. More uncanny.

Zander knew that most anything with hair or fur liked having it groomed. Would that be a built-in side effect of his boogeyman’s changed form? Who knew? No one, absolutely no one, and that was the most wondrous thing about this moment. They were both so far outside, and so hidden from any norms that either of them knew, that they were both looking at each other completely as themselves.

And this was where, and how, they were going to touch each other. It might be glorious. It might be terrible. It might simply be monstrous. But most of all, it would be theirs, and only theirs.

“Zander,” Boo said, and Zander saw its long, clawed hands flex, “now can I touch you?”

Zander realized that Boo must have been studying him with the same intensity as he had been studying Boo—perhaps even more, considering that Boo could see much better in the very dim light. And still this was its reaction: this desperation, this desire.

Seeing Boo’s whole form had not made Zander any less vulnerable to being desired. And, hey, some part of his mind that couldn’t let a numinous moment stand pointed out, you’ve always liked lanky guys.

He smiled, and Boo’s already-wide eyes went wider. “Boo, I was thinking. Your rules say you only get to touch me when I’m uncovered and hanging off the edge of the bed, but now that I know you’re here—now that we’ve got an understanding—well, is that still the case? What I’m saying, is…can I invite you onto my bed?”

Boo visibly shivered, but not, Zander thought, with revulsion. Anticipation, maybe.

“I have no idea,” Boo said. “I want to find out.”

Zander took a deep breath and another step forward. “Take my hand,” he said. “It might make it easier.”

Boo reached out, and Zander, focusing only on the wonder of it, found it easy to reach back and put his compact, soft hand into Boo’s spindly fingers. Its skin was smooth and dry—no natural oils like human skin, Zander guessed, since it didn’t really have that biology to maintain from day to day—and barely seemed warmer than the ambient temperature of the room. He must feel much different to Boo; would that be good, bad—?

“Your warmth,” Boo breathed. “It’s the first wonderful thing about touching you.”

Ah. Good, then.

“Well. Warmth I can guarantee,” Zander said. “It’s why I had my leg sticking out in the first place.” Keeping hold of Boo’s hand, he eased himself back into bed. “So far so good, huh? Nothing made you let go, even though I’m completely on the mattress.” He smiled up at Boo, and Boo blinked down at him, its lips twitching in a tentative answering smile. Sure, there was something unsettling about it, but also Zander guessed that most expressions might not come naturally to Boo. It probably learned them…from him. Astonishing. “Come on up, however you like, though you might end up getting another shot of fear if you—” He broke off, as Boo immediately took his invitation and climbed onto the bed.

And on top of Zander, which was what he’d expected, because it was the most frightening way to get close. Boo moved in a rather spidery way (of course) and when it stopped moving it had its hands planted on either side of Zander’s head, its knees to either side of Zander’s legs. The light from the streetlights no longer helped so much to see Boo’s face, though he could see a glint of eyes and oh, again, the fangs. Boo was grinning as it was poised above him.

“Comfortable?” Boo asked, and Zander immediately wanted to giggle. He held back, though, because despite all the absurdities in this situation, he didn’t want to risk Boo feeling laughed at in this moment—the first time it’d gotten into bed with someone it really, really wanted to touch.

“Yeah,” Zander answered softly. “You all right with that jolt I gave you just now? I couldn’t help it.”

“Yes.” Boo sounded thoughtful. “I am less worried about having too much energy now that I’m not trying to escape your notice. And you are still wondering at me more than anything else.”

“I suppose I am,” Zander said. He stretched out his arms and legs under Boo. Had he ever even been this vulnerable to another human being? Sure, he still had his boxer shorts on, but that was pretty insignificant compared to the fact that Boo knew him better than literally any other human being. Also, if Boo had been lying about itself and what it wanted—if those fangs and claws were about to be put to their more typical uses—he’d basically served himself up on a silver platter. Though that image did cause some sparks in some crossed wires in his brain.

He took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “All right, Boo,” he said. “You can touch me.”

Boo immediately lifted one spindly hand and cupped Zander’s cheek. It was a bizarrely human gesture, but it lasted only for a moment. Boo didn’t have any script to follow; all it knew was that it had been given permission to satisfy its desires, its curiosity. And still, Zander felt as though some kind of tightly wound spring inside him was easing with such a simple touch.

Boo’s fingertips poked gently at the softness of Zander’s cheek, and its claws were noticeable, but not in an uncomfortable way. Boo seemed to have the intent to treat Zander as carefully as it could, as it found his cheekbones and jaw and traced them, as it circled his ear and brushed across his forehead, as it investigated the shape of his nose and eyebrows.

And then Boo held the side of his face again, and slowly dragged its thumb over Zander’s lips.

“Boo?” Zander whispered, when it left its thumb at the corner of his mouth and hung over him, perfectly still, just looking.

“I think I’m changing, somehow,” Boo said. “Like when I become substantial. But I already am. I don’t understand.”

“Does that feel good or bad for you?”

“I think…good. But I’ve never felt anything like it before.” Boo shivered, a familiar motion made unfamiliar by the undercranked-film quality of it. Still a boogeyman. “Zander. I am going to touch you more, now.”

With only that much of a warning, Boo bent down and pressed its face against the side of Zander’s neck. Zander’s heart raced, some part of him still convinced that Boo wanted to rip his throat out, the rest of him clamoring that Boo was kissing him, actually kissing him on the neck. He could feel Boo’s lips moving gently against his skin, and though he could also tell that there were fangs behind them, he didn’t care at all. He hadn’t been kissed at all, anywhere, in so long, and if this wasn’t really kissing, but rather what Boo had distantly called ‘mouth touches’ earlier, well, it was impossible for his skin to tell the difference.

Boo didn’t stay at the side of his neck. It made a line of kisses up to his jaw, over the lower part of his cheek—and there was really no denying now that they were kisses, kisses from a being very new to the practice of kissing, but kisses nonetheless—

And then Boo kissed him on the lips.

Does Boo understand? Does it? Does it? His mind whirled while Boo lingered at his mouth. Maybe? Probably! He answered himself, as reality began to supersede any of his earlier half-formed fantasies. You were the one torrenting classic Disney to combat depression and the creepy feeling in your apartment!

It was really so absurd. And yet he still felt as though his heart was being cracked open like an egg, and instead of yolk and white flowing out there was all his loneliness and his curiosity and his fear and his wonder and his desire. There was so much of all of it, more than he’d ever realized he was holding onto, and it made it impossible to think lightly of kissing Boo.

Oh well.

He kissed Boo back. He kissed Boo back and raised his hands to touch Boo in return. It had said it liked his warmth; let it have the warmth of his hands, then, roving along the smooth, dry skin of its spindly form, back and waist and shoulders.

Boo gasped at Zander’s touch, and let itself sink down onto him, its narrow body pressing full against Zander’s soft and substantial chest and belly. Boo twined its fingers into Zander’s hair, and even that eagerness pierced his heart—his grown-out hair wasn’t neglect and isolation to Boo, it was something new and wonderful to touch. Zander closed his eyes, thrilling at the light touch of claws on his scalp and no longer trying to distance himself from any desire he felt. Boo was doing exactly what it had told him it wanted to do, so why not enjoy it? He hoped, oh he hoped that Boo was taking pleasure in these moments, because he was; he felt like he wasn’t just unwinding thanks to the ability to touch someone, but like he might unravel entirely, lose all the stress and constraint of having a form.

Maybe that wasn’t the best simile, considering Boo’s existence, but was he supposed to come up with a better one while making out with the thing under the bed?

He held Boo ever closer, and with very little conscious thought, slipped his tongue past Boo’s lips. He brushed up against Boo’s fangs, and his body tried to set off every alarm system that it had. However, most of his systems were already highly occupied, and all the signals of his nerves and hormones could only merge. He felt like he was blushing all over, like he’d been given a jolt of electricity just this side of lethal, and, oh yeah, his cock was now straining at the fabric of his boxers. He hadn’t gotten so hard, so fast, in a long while. His state would be immediately obvious to anyone familiar with hard-ons; the question was, did that include Boo?

Boo made a soft sound in its throat and pulled away from Zander just far enough to speak. “I—you—I can feel your desire,” it said.

That sounded way too much like a euphemism in a novel where the author wasn’t allowed to say “cock” and Zander was momentarily baffled as to why Boo was talking like that. But then—Boo lived off his fear. Boo could tell when Zander was wondering at him. So when Boo said it could feel his desire, that’s literally what it meant.

And was that a good thing? Well—

Boo sat up, laughing a little. It ran its long, strange hands boldly over Zander’s chest and belly, and Zander could see the glint of its terrible, sexy fangs in the streetlight as it grinned. “Zander. Zander. Zaaaander. You like it when I touch you and—I don’t know if any boogeyman has ever felt this. And I don’t care. It’s so good. I can’t tell if feeling your body under my hands or feeling your desire is better. What—what am I doing that makes you want me? I—I want to do more of that.”

“Boo—I—it’s easy to want you when you’re touching me like I’m the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen in your life!”

“You are,” Boo said, continuing to caress him with earnest hands. “And your desire…” It took a shaky breath. “I had noticed it, before. It was always faint because it wasn’t directed at me. But I was still curious because it was something of you.” Boo’s touches became lighter, but not teasing. It traced a claw around Zander’s nipple, almost shyly.

Zander shivered, but it felt like he was almost feverish, how hot he was. How much of a strange dream all this seemed. “Boo,” he whispered.

“I never realized what it would be like to have desire directed toward me,” it said. “I only hoped to touch you and try to satisfy my own desire, but now I—I think I might be insatiable.”

Zander reached out and covered one of Boo’s hands with his own. “Hey, Boo. We can figure it out. I mean—you’re doing things with your body, with me, that you’ve never done before. I mean, there’s probably some way you can be satisfied. You just don’t know it yet.”

“Yes.” Again, that alien sibilance, and Zander found that a monster accepting his promise to help satisfy it somehow only made him impossibly harder. And he should probably say something about that, but what? Boo had clearly been in the room, at least, while Zander had taken himself in hand, but how much did it understand about what he had been doing?

“Boo,” he began, “this desire that you’re feeling from me to you, it’s…there’s a physical component—”

“Yes,” Boo interrupted. “I’ve noticed it all. The speeding of your heart, but not in fear. The slight changes in your scent. The hardening of your nipples and your cock.”

To hear Boo say “cock” was nearly as disorienting as when Zander thought he was using a euphemism. But then, what other word would it know for penis? It would have had to learn from the porn Zander watched to associate any word with the actual body part.

“Okay,” Zander said, his feelings about Boo watching him masturbate much more ambiguous now that it had apparently been the case in reality, “then you probably know some, uh, other things.”

“Yes, and I…” Boo hesitated.

“Boo, if you don’t want to do anything with my cock, I, well, it’s not what my body’s hoping for, but I can deal.”

“No, that’s not…” Boo flipped its hand over and squeezed Zander’s, really seeming nervous now. “I’ve touched you, and you’ve touched me back, and it felt—it felt so good. I didn’t know the kinds of things my nerves could tell me. I don’t know to say all this. But I’m not shying away because I don’t want to give you the most pleasure that I can. Now that I know I can.”

“Well, all right, do you just need a little guidance or—”

“Maybe, but first I need to show you—” Boo broke off, and lifted itself up, moving forwards until its knees were on either side of Zander’s waist. Its fingers fluttered and it dropped Zander’s hand. “I changed myself when you were in the bathroom. I said I wanted to try hair, but that’s not all I did.”

Zander’s eyes widened. He didn’t want to look too surprised, considering how shy Boo seemed now, but if this was going in the direction he guessed it was, it seemed almost impossible not to be surprised.

Boo picked up Zander’s hand again. It guided him to the place between Boo’s legs. “I don’t know if I did it right. But I made this change before I knew how much you wanted me, because I knew how much I wanted you.”

Zander looked up at Boo, trying to get a glimpse of its face as he left his fingers gently resting against where they had been placed. But then again, what could Boo’s expression tell him that Boo’s actions didn’t? Boo had made an orifice, apparently on the wild wish of an off-chance (or so it had thought) that “touching Zander” would lead into “getting fucked by Zander.” He allowed himself a moment to ask himself if this was too weird but shoved the question away before answering himself. It was the wrong question. Tonight was about Boo and him, and if it was weird it didn’t matter. There were better questions. “Boo, do you want me to be inside you?”

“Yes,” Boo said, quietly, and with no hesitation.

Zander traced his fingers around the edge of the opening Boo had led him to, and he heard Boo pant above him. I wonder if I can make your nerves tell you some really incomprehensible things, he thought, as he continued to carefully stroke Boo. “Any particular word you’d like for this new part of you?” The question wasn’t just a courtesy. Zander wasn’t hugely experienced, but he had enough practical knowledge to know that what he was feeling wasn’t really like any human orifice.

“Oh,” Boo said, again sounding embarrassed even as it breathed heavily and tilted its hips towards Zander’s hand, “I—I don’t really know—it’s just a hole. Is that all right?”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Zander said. With his free hand he stroked Boo’s side and bony hip, doing his best to clear his mind of any negative reaction. Boo had claimed “it”; Boo had a hole. That was all there was to it. Nit-picking the language used by a wondrous, unknown creature was no way to proceed.

Especially not when that wondrous, unknown creature was relaxing and opening thanks to his fingers. “I’m going to put a finger inside you,” Zander said, and Boo made a soft sound in its throat, followed by another as Zander did exactly as he said. Inside, Boo was slick, wet—biological details that it had to have chosen. Zander didn’t know exactly how Boo formed their body, but this didn’t seem like something it had come up with on the spur of the moment. “I think you did really well, remaking yourself this way,” Zander said. It felt like another of his fingers could slip in easily, so he tried, and was right. Boo pressed its hips towards his hand, and when Zander started to gently thrust with his fingers, Boo soon started moving in counterpoint with him, seeking deeper stokes, seeking to be filled. Its smooth inner muscles wrapped around his fingers with a tight strength that made his cock throb and ache in anticipation.

But he’d be careful, no matter how much his body was screaming for Boo. He was giving it its first time, after all, and, well, he wanted to prove himself worthy of its obsession with him.

“Boo, tonight wasn’t the first time you thought about making yourself a hole, was it?” he asked softly.

“I thought about it but I—I couldn’t think about thinking about it,” Boo said. “A boogeyman doesn’t—but I tried to figure out how to construct myself for pleasure—the plan was ready in my mind when you said I could touch.”

“It feels like it was worth the effort,” Zander said. “You feel good to me, Boo. How wet you are, how tightly you hold my fingers—I just want to know if you feel good in yourself, like this?”

Boo took a shuddery breath. “I feel—wonderful,” it said. “I don’t have any way to compare this with my existence as an ordinary boogeyman. And still—the bodies I make have a lot to do with yours. The nerves I make are based on yours—you’re the only living thing in my space. So—is your whole body this attuned to pleasure, too?”

“You know, I think I read that humans do have some nerves that are just meant to feel good when we’re caressed,” Zander said. “Like this.” He ran his hand down Boo’s side, over its hip, down its thigh. Amazing that Boo could instinctively create all the complexity of a living body, that it could guide those instincts when it wanted to—when it developed new and strange desires. And was Boo still changing? During those first touches, Boo had hardly seemed to give off any heat, but now, now it felt distinctly warm, more alive, more fleshly, than ever.

“Then why—why are you not always touching?” Boo asked. Its hand slid up his arm and tangled in his hair.

Unexpected tears burned in the corner of Zander’s eyes. “We—we want to be. I think we really want to be. But sometimes we can’t.”

Boo bent its face close to his, as terrifying and wonderful as ever. “I don’t understand,” it said. “But I am here to touch you now, and you are here to touch me, now. We can have this pleasure of touch and touch-back.”

“Yes,” Zander said. “You’re right, you’re right.” He smiled a little; started moving his fingers in Boo again. Boo arched its back, raising its long body.

“This feels—I don’t understand, but I want more,” Boo said. “I—I showed you my hole with your hand to—to show you it was there. But I want to feel your cock inside me.”

That disorienting shift—from the alien first-timer to the pornographically familiar. Zander wasn’t sure he was getting used to it, but he was certainly ready to roll with it. “Yes—I—I think we’ll both like that.” Boo smiled and reached down between them, and with claws that Zander now realized must be much sharper than he had been thinking, deftly reduced his shorts to rags and tossed them away. It should have been terrifying, but Boo hadn’t dealt him even the slightest scratch. There was only delight in this destruction, and as Zander’s cock stood free, it was practically dripping, just like Boo’s hole.

Despite both their states, Zander reached over to the bedside table and took a small bottle of lube out of the drawer. It would never be a bad thing to have, especially in this uncharted territory. He slicked himself up more carefully than usual, trying to ignore any sensation for the moment. “All right, Boo,” he said, about to guide them back that crucial small distance, when a thought occurred to him. “Do you like the position we’re in now? You on top, and me underneath?”

“Does it make a difference?” Boo asked. “I’m ready. I want to be filled.”

So matter-of-fact when it said these things! It wasn’t trying to seduce him, and yet he was as seduced as he’d ever been!

“With you on top you have more control over how deep you take me. The—the pace, also. But if you were underneath me—how do I even put this? You wouldn’t have to constantly be deciding how to fuck? You could just let yourself feel, if you wanted to do that?”

“Oh,” Boo said slowly. “I think I like the sound of that.” It grinned. “I’ve spent a lot of time under you with the bed in the way. I’d love to find out what it’s like with nothing in between us.”

Amazing, Zander thought. Amazing. Humor, or a very near relative of it. Just another thing that a boogeyman wouldn’t strictly need to survive, but that this wondrous being was able to use.

With Boo on the bed, and only the streetlamp providing light, it was harder for Zander to see it than ever. But there were glimmers enough, of eyes, of teeth. There was suggestion enough, in the subtle variation of shadows. Boo’s new, messy hair spread out on the pillow. The long, narrow shape of its body, with all its suggestions of curiously attached muscles. And now, rising into the clarity offered by the streetlamp, Boo’s strange hand, with its fearsome claws. It cupped Zander’s cheek and he nuzzled against it.

“Even now that I’ve touched you, I’m still going to love looking at you,” Boo said. “I understand that now. I’d thought it was just something to go before touching. But now I know more about pleasure, and I know that looking is a pleasure, too.”

Zander quashed the impulse to laugh this off, to say something cliché about flattery. He didn’t want to build any barriers between them for Boo’s first time, for Boo’s sake. And for his own sake, he didn’t want to force any distance between himself and someone who so plainly and earnestly desired him.

So he didn’t say anything that went back to himself. “You’re the most astonishing being I’ve ever seen, Boo.” And he leaned down and kissed it. Boo sighed and arched up towards him, a vivid reminder of what they both so wanted. He ran his hand lightly down Boo’s body, traced the path of its hipbones, and again found that soft, wet opening. Boo had said it was just a hole, but it was incredible that it had made one at all—that it had gone so far outside its version of normality as a boogeyman in the hope of making a sexual connection. Zander could only hope that Boo would find it everything it’d hoped for. He eased the head of his cock against Boo’s hole, and, taking a deep breath, slid inside the body of his boogeyman.

Immediately, Boo grabbed his shoulders with its hands, its claws pricking against his skin. The tiny points of pain were immediately subsumed in the heat of desire, however, as Boo lifted its hips urgently against Zander’s.

“Am I really giving you this much pleasure?” Boo asked, sounding dazed.

Zander gave a single, breathy laugh. “Just you wait.” He hoped the connection between them would be strong, that it would help Boo figure out how it could find the satisfaction and relief that Zander knew he was going to find in Boo. He began to thrust shallowly, Boo at once joining him in his rhythm.

“Yes,” Boo said, a sigh and a hiss at once. “Yes.” Its hands crept over him in ever-greedy caresses, boldly grasping handfuls of his flesh with alien, yet ardent, delight and desire. Its wet heat held him close, inner muscles tightening around his cock every time he withdrew. It drove all thoughts of biological artistry from Zander’s mind, leaving room only for the thrill of this deepest, closest touch.

“Tell me—tell me what you want,” Zander said. “Want to make you feel—as good as I do.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know—” Boo wrapped its long legs around Zander and pulled him closer. “Just—more, more. Harder, faster!”

Boo’s groan of pleasure when Zander obeyed was nearly his undoing. He had no clear idea at all how he managed to hold back, save that he suddenly craved to know what other sounds he could coax from Boo. Every little moan, every little gasp seemed to speak volumes, but volumes that would contain only the simplest statements, over and over again. I want you. I need you. You feel good on me, you feel good in me. But what more needed to be said in the bizarre little paradise his apartment had become? It could never be shared, never be explained, but that didn’t matter. It only mattered that he was real, and Boo was real, and no matter how astonishing their first meeting, they were both finally getting the touch they had been so desperate for.

Zander bent to kiss Boo’s fanged mouth, their disparate bodies pressing together as if there was no reason for them ever to have been apart.

“Zander,” Boo said softly, breaking the kiss for a moment, and Zander smiled down at it and impulsively nuzzled his cheek against its. Then, “Zander!” Boo cried out, baffled and worshipful, arching up against him and clenching around him tighter than ever before.

The thought “did I just make my boogeyman come?” just barely had time to form in Zander’s mind before his thrusts lost their steadiness and his own orgasm washed over him in a bright wave of pleasure.

“Zander,” Boo murmured, once they had both collected themselves a little and were lying side by side, “I want to sleep here. In your bed. With you.”

“No going back, huh? I’m happy with that.” He lightly ran his hand down Boo’s arm. “But what if you sleep too deeply? I can close my blackout curtains, of course, but they haven’t worked great here and the sun might still get through. I don’t want you to get injured after all the—all the good things of tonight.”

“I’m not worried. I…even if I’ve changed, I’m still a boogeyman. I’ll wake when the light is too much. And I feel like…I have reserves of energy. Even more than I did at the start of the night.”

“Well, all right,” Zander said. “I’m going to guess that you won’t mind cuddling?”

Boo flashed a grin. “Oh no, never.”

When Zander woke he wasn’t disoriented that Boo was in his bed; he knew very well he hadn’t been dreaming last night. But he was surprised that he was able to see Boo so clearly. The sun wasn’t fully up yet, but it was undeniably dawn. And Boo was still sleeping peacefully, an absurdly elongated little spoon. Zander did want to spend some time looking at Boo, at the form it had made of both instinct and desire, but its description of the terrible effects of the sun made him reach out and shake its shoulder instead.

Boo blinked sleepily, as if it had a lot of experience with sleeping and not just phasing out of existence during the day. “The daylight, Boo! The daylight!”

It yawned, revealing every single one of its astonishing fangs. “Can’t be daylight,” it said. “You have more uncomfortable lamps.”

“Boo, really!” Zander started trying to move Boo’s miles of limbs around so he could get out of bed and get to the blackout curtains. Why hadn’t he just taken the time to close them last night? It wouldn’t have hurt, it might have helped, and now Boo was way too close to being burned by the sun for the second time because of him! And apparently it was too disoriented? Unused to waking up? To stop hindering Zander from trying to keep it safe—wow, how weird, to go from terrified to protective of one’s boogeyman within a few hours—wait. Did the boogeyman thing explain the situation he was having right now? He was afraid for Boo, Boo naturally did things that were scary, and so Boo’s arms and legs were trapping him in his bed. It was the same thing as not being able to run in a nightmare.

Zander flopped back down and tried to calm himself. Boo was a grown boogeyman, much older than Zander if he’d correctly deciphered its comments on when it had come to exist. If it was going to take these risks, let it! It had come back from the other sunburn just fine!

Zander had maybe three seconds of calm before Boo sat upright quickly enough to make the bed springs squeak. “This IS sunlight!”

“Yeah, and don’t you need to hide from it?”

“I…I hide from light because it hurts me. Or it hurt me.” Boo slowly turned one of its hands back and forth in the dawn light. “But I barely feel anything now. It’s just a tingle. I think the light still might be dissolving me, but somehow it’s so much easier to heal, now. More sunlight would probably still be too much. But I don’t feel any need to dissolve for the length of the day.” It frowned. “I have changed.”

“Boo.” Zander sat up. “How?”

“I couldn’t have guessed…” Boo spoke softly. “But then again, maybe I am the same. Maybe this is part of being a boogeyman, but a boogeyman that followed its instincts, a boogeyman without a Zander, would have only ever tasted fear.” It fixed its gaze back on Zander. “You wondered at me. You were curious about me. You felt desire for me. And now, this morning, you were afraid for me. All of these emotions…I think they are more powerful than your everyday fear. At least for me. At least when they come from you.” It paused, and when it spoke again a note of trepidation had crept into its voice. “Do you think you could continue to wonder at me? I…want to have continuity. In your space. With you. If I don’t have to worry about the sunlight so much, and staying out of sight…there are so many ways I could do more than just exist.”

“Boo.” Zander took its hand. “I think I’ll be wondering at you for a long, long time.” He paused. “Do you still need fear, specifically, now?”

Boo shrugged. “Nightmares are always enough for a boogeyman. I just…ended up different.”

“I’m glad you did,” Zander said. “I’m glad you ended up different with me.” Boo immediately sprawled around him in a clumsy embrace, and Zander laughed. “But it’s a hell of a time to start being part of the world, you know?”

“No, I don’t know,” Boo said.

Zander sighed, though he smiled, too. “Well. I’ll be here as you figure it out. Now, let’s find a safe place for you to spend the day.” And though he didn’t say anything then, the question still bloomed within him—if wonder can carry you through the dawn, what might love do?

#exophilia #monster lover #boogeyman #non-fandom writing #well I mean you know

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miss-tc-nova · 4 years

Text

Unconventional Wayfinders - Xehanort x Eraqus

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this one yet. I like the idea, but I’m wary of my execution. Oh well!

~~~~~

Fingers work their magic, gliding through ebony hair. The pampered would absolutely melt into oblivion if he could; instead, he just soaks in the sunlight streaming in through the window and indulges in the feeling of someone playing with his hair. So relaxed is the young man that he begins to drift away—that is, until the magic stops and a digit taps against his nose.

“Eraqus, aren’t you supposed to be reading?” Book aside, silver eyes—sparkling from that afternoon light—peer down at the lap in which the slacker rests his head.

The response is an unashamed grin. “Maybe.” A brow arches at him. “Come on Xehanort. I’m not bothering your studies.”

“So,” the studious replies sharply. “If you don’t study, when the test comes around, you’ll try to get me to cheat for you again and we’ll both get caught and get detention…again.”

Chuckling, Eraqus reaches up to swat silver bangs from the other boy’s face. “Maybe next time you should double check before throwing the most obvious cheat sheet right in front of the Master’s face.”

“Or—” The book snaps shut. “—you could study and do your test without getting me in trouble…again.”

“I thought you liked risk.”

“Sure, but I’m not a fool—you should know; you’re king of that field.” Fingers pinch at a cheek.

The boy in white pushes the fingers from his face, still smiling like the royal fool he is. Then something that’s been dancing through his thoughts for a long time slips past his lips. “Hey, get a piercing with me.”

Understandable is the look of shock on his partner’s face. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Granted, it is a very odd request, but there is certainly a motivation behind his suggestion; he can display his affection all he wants in smooches, snuggles, and sneaky spots, but those are things that can fade in the fleeting moments following said acts. That’s not to say Eraqus will ever forget his beloved’s greedy kisses or the embraces that make him feel like he’s more than just another face in a bloodline of world defenders, but those affections, filled with so much adoration, always leave him anxious that his happiness will one day vanish—all he wants is some physical proof that these moments happened. Having thought long and hard about the decision, this is the solution that emerged.

“Let’s go get our ears pierced,” he repeats, sitting up. “Come on. It’ll be fun!”

“I’m sure it’ll be painful…”

“Only for a while—Urd says it’s not that bad. Even Bragi got one.”

“Okay, first off, Bragi would jump into a hole for a bag of candy. Second, Urd is probably the one who threw the bag down there.”

An attempt to defend his friends is made, “That only happened once!”

“But it happened.”

“Just—come on! Please!”

There’s an initial resistance, but Xehanort cannot withstand his boyfriend’s puppy-eyes for long—Era knows; Era checked. The “simple request” has to be considered a bit longer than an average request but he does inevitably give. “Fine.”

“Yes! Let’s go!” Grabbing his hand, the excited boy drags the other out of the library.

“Now?!”

Yes, he wants to go now.

By the time they arrive at the tattoo parlor that’s been scouted out for a few weeks, Eraqus is sure his companion is only seconds away from reconsidering his life choices. Various art pieces adorn the ruby walls and black furniture is set to accommodate guests. There are tables and chairs behind the show-case counter with a variety of bottles and tools looking ready to torment someone at disposal.

“What can I do for you boys?” the man behind the glass counter.

“Hi.” A wave is added to the greeting. “We’re here to get our ears pierced.”

He’s far more relaxed than expected. “Cool. What do you have in mind?”

And thus they have approached the first obstacle. “Er, actually we haven’t decided yet.”

So the man goes over the variation of ear piercings, shows some example pictures, and explains how to care for new piercings. When there’s still no decision on the type of piercing, there’s a gesture to case, offering a look at the myriad of jewelry they have.

The second his eyes lay on the black bands, Eraqus knows which ones he wants to share with his boyfriend—it seemed like fate to him. His finger points into the glass. “These ones.”

They clink as they fall onto the counter for the two to inspect, but the instigator is already sold. “You sure you want these ones? Cuffs usually go in the cartilage which is a bit more painful than your usual earlobe piercings.”

Xehanort eyes the shorter boy who grins and declares, “Yep. I want these ones—one for each of us.”

“Alright. Who’s going in the chair first?”

Now in the face of imminent pain, Era starts to get cold feet. While he is a key bearer and is no stranger to pain, he’s not exactly a fan of it and prefers to shy away. He’s fully aware his reaction is a little silly, but good ol’ Xe heaves a sigh and announces, “I’ll go first.”

Stone eyes watch on as the first boy speaks with the piercer about placement of the ear décor as casually as talking about the weather on Scala. True to his persona, he shows no apprehensions.

“You wanna hold his hand?” the artist offers the onlooker.

This immediately brings up an objection from the first victim. “Pfft. I don’t need anyone to hold my hand. Let’s just do it.”

A sheepish grin via Era is given; the artist shrugs and turns back on the boy in the chair. The faintest hint of concern finally flashes in those silver eyes, detectable only by the boy who knows him best. Nevertheless, with a simple blink and only the slightest of twinges, the job gets done. Once he’s free, Xehanort looks to Eraqus—ear just starting to react to the piercing.

“How does it look?”

The gleaming metal brings about a strange happiness within the shorter male. In Eraqus’s mind, it’s a mark—a claim—and it makes him absolutely overjoyed. “It looks great…I guess that means it’s my turn?”

The boys swap out and the boy with black hair feels the nerves coil in his gut again. A marker taps against his ear and the placement is confirmed. As the needle is being prepped, his heart beats louder in his chest. His gaze turns on the other boy.

“Guess I’m not quite as brave,” he admits, hand upturned in requisition.

There’s a mock of annoyance but fingers interlock and hold firmly. “It’s not that bad, you wuss.” Nervously, the second victim just smiles.

There’s a warning and the muscles in his body tense, his fist curling tighter around his partner’s. A sharp bite takes hold in his ear but he knows better than to flinch away. Instead, focus goes to the reciprocated squeeze in his hand. It feels like forever but eventually the pain dies down, blood rushing around the spot which is unlikely to die down soon.

Elated and relieved, he hops up. “Phew! I’m glad that’s over!”

“Glad? You’re the one who planned this whole thing,” his boyfriend scolds.

“That doesn’t mean I go around poking needles through my ears in my spare time.”

The good-natured artist chuckles. “Alright.” A mirror is propped up for their viewing. “Wha’chu boys think?”

Once again, Eraqus is very pleased at seeing his shiny, new adornment, but that euphoria is nowhere near the hit he gets from each glance at the matching piece worn by Xehanort. Bleeding through his brain is the thought of how beautiful the mark he’s chosen looks on his dearest.

“It’s perfect. Thanks.”

Xe bounces his shoulders. Several more words of gratitude are given before the couple pays and heads home. The boy in white is more chipper than usual on their trek and his companion’s admiration of the light-heartedness is not missed.

Back at the castle, the pair ambles along the student dorms.

“So we’re supposed to spray this on our ears twice a day?” questions the boy in black, holding up a mini spray bottle.

“That’s what he said.”

A hand riffles through silver hair, only to quickly retract with a grimace; his ear is now notably upset at having been impaled. “Why did you have to pick a helix piercing?”

Despite his beloved’s griping, Era eyes the band with a little smile. “I thought it looked cooler. What? You don’t like the cuffs I picked?”

“Why cuffs?”

This is where the shorter boy feels a bit sheepish in admitting his cheesy reasoning—but if anyone would understand, it would be Xehanort. “Because they have stars in them.”

What Eraqus is referring to is the star-shaped holes in the black metal. Years ago, shortly following the arrival of the non-native boy, he told his classmates about a fruit from his home world that is rumored to bind two people’s destinies should they share one—it grows in the shape of a star. Now Eraqus had no way of finding Xehanort’s home world, let alone this magical fruit; so in hopes the symbolism will be enough—even if it’s just to remind these boys to take control of their own destinies—he chose the jewelry based on a fantasy.

“You’re such a sap.” This is no doubt Xehenort’s attempt to lighten the heavy implications. It’s worth noting the tint of pink bleeding across his nose.

With a childish huff, Era folds his arms and storms ahead into his room. “Fine. Don’t wear it. See what I care. You just had a needle in your ear for nothing.”

Just as he’s shirking off his haori, a pair of arms slips around his waist. “I said you were a sap; I didn’t say I wasn’t gonna wear it,” the taller hums, chin falling on a shoulder. “It’s cute that you believe in such fairy tales.”

Stony eyes roll. “You’re rude.”

He can’t resist the nuzzle against his neck. “You’re adorable.”

There’s little resistance to being pulled around, but Eraqus is in for a surprise when the hands against his shoulders push him down onto the bed. He has just enough time to sit up before the other straddles his lap. It feels like a balloon swelling in his chest as his face is captured and drawn close. However, the normally hunter-like gaze is surprisingly soft and warm.

“Silly, symbolic jewelry or not, no matter where our paths may take us, I’ll always find you in the end.” Even his voice holds that sincere emotion.

Xehanort is not one to blatantly lay himself out for anyone—even his partner sometimes struggles to reach through the indifference. But the moments where he does let his guard down tend to be most cherished by the shorter boy as he knows they are the most important. No matter what happens, he knows Xe will hold true to his words and maybe that’s all Era needed to keep his peace of mind. It’s still going to fill him with happiness to see his little tag on his boyfriend’s ear though.

The sweet instant is short lived, transitioning easily back to the wolfish nature more suitable for the boy in black. With a dangerous gleam, he leans closer. All tension melts in submissive boy’s anticipation.

“On the other hand, if you wanted some sort of proof of your claim, there are certainly other ways you could’ve left a mark,” the instigator whispers against pink lips, putting every strand of black hair on end.

“Wanna demonstrate?” His mind is already lost to the desire for affection.

With slow, deliberate draw of his tongue along the bottom lip, Xehanort lowly replies, “Oh you know I’m going to.”

He pushes his partner down onto the bed and indulges Eraqus in his greed.

#xehanort #eraqus #xehaqus #xehanort x eraqus #young master eraqus #young master xehanort #ymx #yme

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webcricket · 4 years

Text

Thursday’s Child

Pairing: CastielXReader Word Count: 2759 (Pt. 1) Summary: Part 1 of 5 - You met Castiel during his stint at being human and knew him as Steve, a sweet, albeit mysterious, man working at the local Gas-N-Sip with sad blue eyes that seemed to light up in your presence. That was eight years ago; now the daughter he fathered during your brief time together - the girl he doesn’t know about because he stole from your bed without a word and slipped out of your life before you knew you were pregnant - is asking for him. You realize, for her sake, it’s time to face the painful truth in order to find him. A/N - Part 1 is an angsty intro to the reader, the next part brings us up to speed on where Cas is at ...

Pt. 1

You walked into the Gas-N-Sip onto a scene a match stick strike short of complete chaos. Beyond the sea of customers waiting at the counter, the grumbled volume of their impatience rising like a storm’s tide breaking on a rocky shore, you saw not the blue-eyed sales associate you sought for, but the ragged figure of the manager, Nora, as she slammed her fist against the side of the cash register to compel its cooperation.

The machine spat its contents out in a metallic ding barely audible above the thunder of discontent. Nora flung a handful of crumpled bills at the gaping man stood before her and waved him toward the door with his uncapped cup of cold coffee without a word regarding well wishes for the goodness of the day.

The frazzled blonde jabbed a finger at her temple, peered blankly over the counter, and muttered, “Can I help whose next?” in a manner that made whomsoever was next dither in presenting themselves for customer service slaughter, and two people leave without getting the gasoline they came for - one of whom had trudged there on foot through the snow uphill in a pair of threadbare tangerine Converse after their car ran out of juice three miles down the road.

As the sea swelled in murmured confusion over who was next, you dove into the crush of shoulders and shoved a path through to the front.

Pressed into the counter, you jostled a carousel display of novelty keychains, the inconvenient disturbance of which, more than your voice, caught Nora’s strained attention. “Nora!” you panted. Caging the scattering of metal rings within your elbows to prevent their clattering to the floor, you ignored the nicotine-husked scolding of a wrinkled weather-worn woman sounding in your ear about cutting the line.

“Y/N?” A flicker of hope lightened Nora’s craggy sleep-deprived aspect at the sight of you. “Have you seen Steve?” Clutching at your wrist, she asked the desperate-toned question before you could, unknowingly answering yours in its sameness. “He hasn’t been in for two days. No call out. Nothing. That’s not like him.”

Cheeks paling, you agreed – conscientious to a fault, it wasn’t like him at all to just disappear.

The sickly sense of suspicion festering in your stomach during the last forty-eight hours that began upon waking to empty sheets and fattened itself not on food, because you’d barely eaten under the barrage of worried emotions, but rather fed on a gluttony of unreturned calls and texts, shuddered and flipped with enough weight to unsteady your feet; wrist yanked from her grip, you flattened your palm to the front of your jeans as an awareness of imminent ill shot sour bile up your gullet.

You shook your head; taking a second, you choked back the throat-searing fluid and fortified your dizzied balance against the confirmation he had indeed gone without a trace. “N-no, I haven’t-” you sputtered- “I-I was hoping-”

Cutting you off, unable to hear anything beyond the unhelpful news of your weakly uttered ‘No,’ frustration rutted her sweat-beaded forehead. “Well when you do see him, tell him he’s fired. He left me in the middle of a mess of inventory and I haven’t had anyone to open. For fuck’s sake, it’s the holidays! I’m in a real lurch here.” Wheezing to reach for the final bit of breath required to bellow out her contained fury, she gestured at the crowd and flashed the one or two nearest folks shocked by her expletive outburst a conciliatory service industry contrived smile.

“If-if you see him-” you attempted to request the returned favor through the burst levy of her rage as the woman spewing insults about your impudence wedged between you and the counter to demand immediate attention. Funneled in defeat to the center of the store, you broke for the bathroom before the wet brim of heartache flooded your lashes and a renewed heave of nausea hollowed your belly of its fill of woe.

<<<>>>

“Mama?” The girl outfitted in pastel blue and magenta feather-bedecked fleece footie pajamas curled on the bed beside you stirred sleepily in the crook of your arm; the friction of her minute movements and dry forced heat air of winter combined sparked a static shock where the soft warmth of her bare fingers brushed your own calloused cooler ones.

“Yeah, honeybee?” Swiveling your concentration from the pages of the storybook held above the both of you, you closed the pages and sniffed your reply ticklishly into the freshly washed soap-smell of your daughter’s scalp – the scent of her a welcome haven from the heady aromas clinging to you of yeasted bread, warmed spice, and browned sugar that otherwise denoted a hectic day spent toiling in the bakery and sweet shop you operated below the small apartment.

She squirmed and giggled beneath your unrelenting Eskimo kisses until, fidgeting sideways to evade and escape, she squealed mid-laugh a query so completely unrelated to the book you’d been reading aloud minutes before it took you aback. “Where’s daddy?”

Her innocent and wholly natural curiosity stilled your showering of affection, seized at the center of your chest to steal your breath, and skipped your heart a few agonizing beats, but only a few; you’d grown emotionally numb over many years to the hurt of not knowing what happened with her father, of trying to reconcile your questions with a lack of answers in order to figure out what you did wrong, if anything, to warrant Steve’s disappearance from your life – and his own - without a goodbye, a warning, or so much as an inkling of a reason.

Although you tried and mostly succeeded in tidily boxing up the train wreck aftermath of emotion in your brain, he remained nonetheless an enigma forever in front of you because she was his; she wore his smile, albeit a bit easier and more often than he did; she saw the world through that same shade of inwardly illuminated blue, giving everyone she gazed upon the benefit of the doubt; she treated everything she touched, too, with a kindness, carefulness, and consideration so like him.

He endured even in his absence as an end without an end - the only proofs of the brief love-swept spell of him having been in your life a blunted memory stonewashed by time to dull the jagged edge of loss in believing he was the best thing to ever happen to you, and the life he sparked in your womb, a little girl who turned out to be what he wasn’t – the love of your life.

Yet despite the distance of years and the layers of a life well-lived laid on top of past pain, and like the first time you met him, every once in a while, when you least expected it, in moments when you were most relaxed, his recollection had a way of taking you by surprise such that you forgot how to breathe.

Her inquisitiveness, however, did not; she asked after him on occasion, especially now that she was in school and of an age to notice and wonder at the differences between her family and those of her classmates.

“Max has two daddies.”

Her observation, spoken in an airy awe punctuated by a yawn, penetrated your reverie into the past.

“That so?” Shifting up onto an elbow to better study the seriousness scrunching up her nose, you smoothed her disheveled hair into a chestnut halo of bouncy ringlets encircling her head on the polka dot patterned pillowcase; your fingertips fondly followed a wild whorl rebelling above her ear.

“Mm-hmm,” she drowsily drew out the noise, blinking heavily-lashed eyes that danced over the neon glow of star stickers arranged in constellations on the ceiling. With a mumbled, “and a dog, too” -she tossed the blanket, burrowed face-first into the pillow, and fell soundly asleep.

Staying absolutely motionless, you praised in grateful silence the sudden seizure of slumber children are wont to succumb to for temporarily relieving you from an explanation; whatever she dreamed of would be better than the reality of not knowing you had to offer.

You slipped from the bed and into the hallway, flicking lights off as you walked the worn oriental carpet runner to your bedroom, and found yourself standing in front of the closet digging for a shoebox stuffed in the topmost corner behind a stack of spare sheets.

Extricating the box with a grunt, you sunk to the floor, pushed off the lid, and dumped the contents, those few physical scraps you possessed of Steve - notes, snapshots, and the crumbling petals of a pressed red rose he left behind besides the scars on your heart and her - into your lap.

Last season, perched on Santa’s lap at the mall, your daughter told the falsely bearded jolly supplier of holiday spirit and maker of childhood magic she wanted him to bring her daddy home for Christmas. The pitying frowns donned by Saint Nick and his helper elf upon hearing her request haunted you for weeks afterward. The bright pink bike you bought to place under the tree as her big gift that year seemed a paltry substitute for what she really longed for.

It also prompted you to hire a private investigator to track Steve down. You hadn’t looked for him before then – you’d gotten on just fine without him; but it was becoming clear she needed to know him, if not as the father figure she idealized, at least as a means for both of you to get some kind of closure.

Part of you supposed regardless of why he left he should know he had a daughter and it was unfair - however unfairly he’d treated you - to keep her to yourself when you’d created her together. Whether he wanted to be a part of her life once he knew he’d not only deserted you, but left you knocked up, heartbroken, jobless, and in deep debt holding a newly minted mortgage for a building in need of major renovations before you could bake up that first batch of blueberry scones and realize a long-imagined dream – a dream he inspired you to pursue - would be entirely up to him.

Maybe you’d hesitated to look for so long because you felt he would want to be in your lives out of a sense of obligation rather than any emotive attachment of fatherly feeling; whatever had happened, the Steve you loved was a good man – dutiful of responsibilities to a fault. But Steve chose to leave and you wondered if he’d feel more trapped than anything if he knew there was a child; that he would be there like a hare snagged in a hunter’s snare awaiting fate, but that he wouldn’t want to be there.

In terms of fairness, that consequence wouldn’t be fair to any of you.

You eyed the sealed legal-sized manila envelope folded in half and jammed in the bottom of the emptied box. The part of you that preferred not knowing and defaulted to pigeonholing pain instead of dealing with it stuck it in there a month ago when the backlogged and grandfatherly private investigator working for literal beans of the brewed coffee variety and a weekly doughnut delivery as a personal favor to you got around to handing his findings over along with the kindly-intended counsel that he’d uncovered enough of the big picture to deem the case concluded, and it was up to you to decide whether it was worth hunting the guy down for a face-to-face to fill in the remainder of the damnable details.

Tucking the document into your outstretched hand – the fingers suffering from a nervy tremble no amount of suppressive will would quiet - he strongly cautioned against the latter pursuit of an in person meet up on the basis of having had decades of not so positive experience with quote unquote, “This same sort of dead beat dodging child support.”

Bolstering your resolve to learn the truth with a lungful of air, you slid a finger into the glue affixed gap of the envelope; the flap sliced your flesh as you tore into the paper. Soothing the slash against the warmth of your tongue, you slipped free the sheets within and rotated the cover page to scan the paragraph typed thereon – it comprised a summary of the steps the investigator took, contained a list of contacts in South Dakota and Kansas – potential current states of residence based on credit card activity - should you want to trail him further, and provided a social security number along with a name in bold uppercase print: JIMMY NOVAK.

A noose of nerves cinched tightly at your throat. The last thing you expected was an outright lie.

Steve … no, Jimmy, he carried a sadness in the slouch of his shoulders, a something secretive that distanced his gaze sometimes; he told you he lost everything - his family, his home - that he started over with nothing save the two feet he landed on to build a foundation. You believed him, respected his fortitude to move forward, and loved him enough not to push him to talk about a past obviously painful to him until he was ready.

You never dreamed what he meant to say was everything you knew of him, everything he shared, was a fabrication built not to move on from the truth, but to hide it from you.

The whoosh of your pulse pounded in your ears; vision tunneled, the panicked pump of racing blood blackened the periphery of the white sheet when you turned to the next page.

Written there was the fact Jimmy had another family; had a daughter – Claire. He left them, too. He hadn’t lost his family and home, he ran out on them just like he ran out on you.

“Mama?” Dainty fingers tapped at the damp shine of your cheek; she crept in so quietly you hadn’t heard the tip-toe tread of her bare feet on the carpet. “Mama?” she said it again, a broken whisper verging on a sob, and tangled her limbs around your neck.

You shoved the papers off your crossed legs and pulled the ball of her body into your embrace. “What’s wrong, baby bee?” Blinking to staunch the sting of your tears, your piqued emotion surrendered to a roused motherly alarm as you folded the mess of her sweat-matted hair to your bosom where she could hear the reassuring thump-thump housed within.

“I had a bad dream,” she murmured and fisted the fabric of your robe.

Me, too, you thought, and snuggled her in tighter.

Glancing at the discarded report amid the box’s other trinkets, your bleary gaze landed on a glossy polaroid photo of you and Steve snapped at a holiday party you goaded him into attending with you when your original plus one ditched you at the last minute so you wouldn’t have to face alone a roomful of tipsy marketing execs you loathed.

That night, that moment, his fingers flirting hesitatingly at your waist, touches giving in to the pull of gravity as the night wore on to graze then hug your hips as if they belonged there - had always been there - a confidant and comfort tenderly testing the territory of more - you naïvely yielding like pliant putty to his touch - that was the point of no return; through the retrospective filter of the truth it became clear he seemed too good to be true, because nothing about him was true.

Part of you wished you could reseal the envelope and the truth with it and return to the comparative bliss of not knowing. Mostly you seethed, an unprocessed anger relegated to the back-burner ignited, inflaming mind and muscle until your entire frame radiated a heat of rage.

The girl quaking in your grasp, bend of her spine shivering as you skimmed it in soothing caresses, reminded you some nightmares do evolve to have happy endings; no matter what happened, or what would happen, you had her and he couldn’t take that away from you.

Wiping her fear and tear flushed features into your pajamas, she gasped a desire that plunged daggers through your heart. “I want my daddy.”

“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” you spoke in a whisper to shush her whimpers and calm the heated tempest of your nerves.

She went limp wrapped in the safety of your words and arms; you’d do anything for her, including suffer pain and swallow your pride to dredge up a monster from the past. You only prayed he wouldn’t hurt her, too.

Castiel tag list: (Closed, if you’d like to be removed please let me know!) @jeepangel @sammiesamness @willowing-love @blueicevalkyrie @im-the-nerdiest-of-them-a11 @thesugargalaxy @bluetina-blog @dont-trust-humanity @honeybeetrash @bucky-thorin-winchester @superwholockz @tistai @wordstothewisereaders @gill-ons @mrswhozeewhatsis @marisayouass @stone-met @castiel-savvy18 @samualmortgrim @trexrambling @magnificent-mantle @xdifsx @mandilion76 @rockfairy @peaceloveancolor @unicorntrooper @anisolatedship @itsilvermorny @aditimukul @kudosia @goofynerd-67babylove @uninspirationalsonglyrics @gray-avidan @mishascupcake @mishapanicmeow @praisecastielamen @roseyhxnt @jessikared97 @let-the-imaginationflow @warriorqueen1991 @sebastianstanslefteyebrow @hisnameisboobear @kristendanwayne @fuschiarulerinthebluebox @coolpencilpie @jenabean75 @luciathewinchestergirl @morganas-pendragons @heyitscam99 @fangirl-and-stuff @selahbela @realgreglestrade @splendidcas @pointlesscasey @i-larb-spooderman @thewhiterabbit42 @thelostverse @castieliswatchingoverme @beccollie18 @dragonett8 @dixie-chick @jtownraindancer @carowinsthings @passionghost @ladyofletters67 @futureparent @gabbie7-11 @myfandomlife-blog @dreamerkim @samael-has-arrived @shamelesslydean @earthtokace @neaeri @justanormalangel @lone-loba @supernaturalymarvel @lilrubixx @wings-and-halo @lilulo-12 @x-cassiopeia @thehoneybeecastielfollows @musiclovinchic93 @81mysteriouslyme @the-bottom-of-the-abyss @jaylarkson @missjenniferb @ayamenimthiriel @supervengerslock @jessiekay2010

#castiel x reader #dadstiel x reader #castiel x you #castiel #castielxreader #dadstiel #castielxyou #cas x reader #cas x you #castiel fanfic #spn x reader #cricket writes cas

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paradisobound · 5 years

Text

Sail Away With Me

Summary: It was a fluke. Dan shouldn’t have ever gone with Sam to a party on a yacht. He shouldn’t have trusted her to go. But in a chance encounter, he ends up in bed with Phil Lester, a billionaire CEO of a luxury clothing company. When he thinks he’s screwed up enough, he realizes he’s in way too deep. Because Phil Lester has fallen in love with him. The catch: Dan gave Phil a fake name and all Phil has to remember Dan by is the tattoo on his hip and the necklace he left behind.

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 2.7k

Warnings: Brief drug and alcohol mentions and an explicit sex scene

Pairing: Instagraminfluencer!dan and CEO!Phil

This is a chaptered work. Updates every Monday around 1pm EST

**Masterlist | Archive of Our Own | Wattpad**

Dans POV:

It was just after midnight on July 22nd. The stars were shining bright over the Amalfi Coast and Daniel Howell was stood at the railing of a yacht that he didn’t even know existed until two hours before. It’s rocking, a constant back and forth motion that was actually calming for his nerves.

Maybe he was out of place being here. He kind of felt it.

His indie brand swim trunks and last year Gucci shirt was enough to show that he didn’t quite belong in the same scene as the new Versace and Dolce and Gabanna swim suits everyone else was wearing. Even the ones that opted on just wearing the bottoms and not the tops. Dan doesn’t believe he’s seen so many naked females in his life until tonight.

Was this normal?

He wasn’t entirely sure.

He had a drink in his hand that he didn’t even want and the air was kissing his skin just enough to make him feel cold. He found this ironic. How could he be chilly in July in Italy?

Just for that thought, he takes a sip of the drink and winces at the strong taste of coconut and rum. He doesn’t even like coconut. He doesn’t even remember why he grabbed it. He just knew he needed a strong drink to make it through the night if his friend Sam was dragging him to this lavish party.

Speaking of, Dan doesn’t even remember where Sam went. He looks around both sides of his shoulders and takes note of how he doesn’t see his redhead mate standing anywhere near him. She’s probably off making connections with other men—or women. Sam wasn’t picky but yet again, Dan wasn’t really either.

Although, his plans tonight didn’t include fucking some random bloke on a yacht with the hope he might become his sugar daddy. As much as he would love to find a rich guy to pay his way through life, Dan is doing semi-fine with his partnerships on Instagram. Although they’re not paying nearly as much as he needs to help furnish his lavish trips.

The yacht is still slowly moving along the coast and if he looks out, he can see the lights of the houses and hotels blinding him in the distance. He lets out a long sigh, breathes back in the air, and finishes the rest of his cocktail in one gulp, wincing at the taste as it goes down. He’s no longer finished with the empty glass when another server is coming up to him, taking the glass, and giving him a new one.

This drink is peachy colored. He takes a sip and smiles. It takes like mango and melon with a hint of something strong. He much prefers this.

The music is still banging on the yacht and if he looks around, he can see the strobe lights of the boat bouncing every which way. Maybe if his anxiety hadn’t told him he needed fresh air, he would be downstairs with everyone else and maybe he could find Sam before she made some mistake that would surely be on a tabloid tomorrow morning. In fact, he’s sure if he looks on Twitter now, it would be a new moment saying ‘Paumpau Hotel Heiress, Samantha Pamupau seen partying on CEO Phil Lester’s Private Yacht’.

Dan doesn’t even know what Phil Lester looks like. He knows that sounds probably unbelievable but Dan doesn’t pay attention to much news. He doesn’t follow anyone other than top celebrities on Twitter. When Sam mentioned partying on a billionaires yacht, Dan just agreed and purchased his first Gucci shirt that night—ironically the one he is wearing currently.

He jumps just as soon as someone shouts something in Italian in the other direction and then a loud moan follows and fuck he needs a drink again. He takes a long sip and fights the cloudy feelings filling his head.

He reaches up and twists his necklace in his fingers. He always did this when he got anxious. It was just a small chained necklace his grandma had bought for him as a child. He’s had to replace the chain over the course of a few years but he’s never parts with it. It’s a part of every outfit.

Dan steps back from the railing long enough to head back inside the second story of the yacht. It’s not as busy up here, but he does take note of the person sitting on the couch with a bunch of other people, hunched over the table in front of them as they snort up white powder. He just looks the other way and continues on downstairs.

Dan sees Sam in the corner with another female, both of them handsy with each other as they down the rest of there cocktails and he pretends to not notice that Sam’s hand is essentially down the bottoms of the other but he’ll just turn the other way again and walk off.

As he turns, he slams into something and gasps as the cool liquid of his drink splashes against his chest. “Fuck,” he murmurs. This was his good Gucci shirt and now it’s covered in orange liquid. If he wasn’t slightly tipsy, he might have tried to find an unoccupied bathroom to wash it off.

“Are you okay?”

Dan lets out a sigh. He’s sobered up a bit now and he’s suddenly realizing how uncomfortable of a situation he’s probably just put himself into. He’s on a rich guys yacht and he just ran into someone and fucked his shirt up. Not to mention he thinks the glass just shattered on the floor—and yep, it has he confirms in his head as he looks down at the broken glass at his feet.

Of course his luck would run this way. And he didn’t even take any photos from tonight either to post on his Instagram. Go figure.

“I mean, my shirt is ruined,” Dan says, his words a mumble under his breath.

“It was last years anyway,” the man says, his voice a bit high pitched. “I’m sure you can get a new one tomorrow that is from this season.”

Dan just shrugged.

“Do you want help getting cleaned up?” He continued, lending out his hand. “I have a private bathroom this way that you can wash up in. Get the smell of the Peach Bellini from your shirt.”

Oh. It was a Peach Bellini…oops.

So much for the mango and melon he thought he tasted earlier.

“It’s not a problem,” Dan says. “I don’t need to clean it off. It actually looks a bit cooler this way.”

The man lets out a snort and reaches up, running his hand through his hair.

“Such a shame,” the male continues. “My plan didn’t work to get you half-naked.”

Dan looks up from where his hands are trying to smooth out the wet patch on his shirt. He cocks an eyebrow up and looks the man up and down. Sharp pants, fully ironed Versace top, clearly this seasons. Glasses sit prettily on his face that’s a sculpture of sharp, jutted cheekbones.

“Why? Is that something you’d want?” Dan asks, deciding to play along.

The male was beautiful, actually quite breathtaking. He knows he said earlier that he wouldn’t want to sleep with a random bloke but maybe plans change. And maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t mind crawling into bed with this random bloke.

“Is it something you’d want?” The man asks, reaching out his hand again and touching Dan’s arm with the lightest touch.

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“Where do we go?” Dan asks, biting his lip with a smirk playing on his lips.

“Follow me.”

Dan follows the man down a small path until they reach a set of doors and Dan swears he doesn’t believe he’s still on a moving boat and he’s not in some penthouse somewhere in London. The male pushes the door open and he’s being lead into a bedroom with beautiful decor and a round bed in the center, covered in pillows and various other decorations.

But it was nearly pitch black. All that he could see or make out was from the light of the windows from the yacht and the moon in the sky hanging over them. When he looks up at the male, all he can see is the reflection of himself and the blue eyes staring back at him.

The man turns Dan and suddenly he’s on the bed on his back and his shirt is being removed and tossed to the floor as their lips connect quickly. It feels real, it feels right. He feels the fire burning under his skin and the itch crawling up his spine.

As the man lowers his shorts and leaves him fully naked, he touches a spot on Dan’s hip and Dan hears him speak softly. “This is the prettiest little tattoo although your skin is much too pretty to be marked up forever.”

Dan forgets about his tattoo most of the time. If he’s being honest, he regrets getting it in a lot of ways. But when he was 18 and a few drinks in, he thought getting a tattoo of a delicate rose on his hip was a great idea.

“I was young.”

“How young?”

“Eighteen.” Dan answers, letting his words get lost against the other males.

“And how old are you now?”

“Twenty five.”

“Still young.”

Dan just chuckled against his lips and connected them again as they got more and more heated.

Maybe in hindsight, this was never Dan’s best decision. He should know better than sleeping with a random man at a party. But when a man this attractive begins to swoop in and steal him over, he can’t help but be ready to spread his legs and let the man do what he wants to.

So that’s what he does.

He moans louder than he should. His breaths get caught in his throat and the male is just so good at this. Good at sex. The way he moves, the way he touches. Dan has never felt so good in his life and he begins to feel a bit addicted to the feeling. He presses all of Dan’s buttons in the best way possible. He’s relentless, his thrusts not stopping in rhythm.

When he climaxes, his whole body feels it. His back arches and his arms go rigid as they grip at the sheets. His mouth opens in a silent moan as it’s caught by the mans expert mouth. When it’s over, the man fucks him a bit longer before pulling out and finishing across Dan’s stomach.

It’s dirty. It’s raw. When it’s over, Dan doesn’t feel as great as he did when it began. Guilt and shame begins to eat away at him at how easy he was to fall into bed with this random stranger who he will never see again.

The man kisses him for a little bit longer than Dan would like but he can’t deny that the sparks aren’t still there. It’s like fireworks are constantly going off above his head and he’s feeling the electricity in his veins.

But then when it’s over, it’s over. And Dan collects his soiled shirt and swim trunks and leaves the bedroom as the man begins to put his own clothes back on. He’ll probably bring another person into the room after Dan leaves and for some reason, that thought leaves Dan feeling a pit of vulnerability in his core.

Just as he’s about to open the door, the man stops him. “What’s your name? I didn’t get it.”

Without even thinking, Dan looks at the man and says. “Ethan.”

Then he opens the door and walks out. Ignoring the pang in his chest that told him it was a mistake giving the man a fake name.

The yacht is docked when he gets out and he manages to find Samantha outside against a railing with another handsy female. He wrenches her away from the girl with an apology and she shoots the girl an apologetic glance as they leave off the yacht and make their way past all of the people staring and getting photos of the party that was still in full bloom.

When they’re safely away from the water and about to get into a cab to head to one of Sam’s many family homes, Sam asks him, “What made you leave so fast? Something happen.”

Dan shrugged and crossed his arms over his chest. His shirt was no longer wet but it was definitely stained and it definitely reeked of bad alcohol now.

“I saw you go to bed with Phil Lester.” Sam said, hitting his arm. “Were you not going to tell me this?”

“I didn’t go into bed with Phil Lester,” Dan counters. “I don’t even know who he is.”

Sam turned to him, her eyes comically wide. “You’re yanking my leg.”

“I’m not yanking anything!”

Sam suddenly pulled out her cell phone and unlocked it to do a quick google search of ‘Phil Lester’ and as soon as his photo popped up, Dan’s mouth fell open and he felt like he was going to cry. “Fuck, Sam! I had sex with Phil Lester!”

“You guys fucked?” Sam asked, her vulgarity coming out through her disbelief. “How was he? Was he hung? Was he lame? All the rich guys are normally rigid as fuck.”

“He was bloody amazing,” Dan said. “But that’s not the point. I fucked up Sam.”

“How?” Sam asked. “How could you possibly have fucked this up? You took fucking Phil Lester to bed.”

The taxi pulls up and Sam opens the door to get in but Dan’s words stop her in her tracks.

“I gave him a fake name.”

Sam turns her head, her mouth agape. “You’re a fucking idiot!”

“I didn’t know!” Dan cried. “I didn’t know that’s who he was!”

She slapped his arm and he let out a soft ow as he rubbed where she just hit. “I still don’t understand how you’ve never seen Phil Lester.”

“Because I never paid any attention to him, Sam.” Dan moaned out. “He was never on my list of people to research. He makes clothing that’s too expensive for me to even touch.”

“So even when I told you yesterday we were going to a party on his yacht, you never once googled who he was?” Sam asked, her voice a bit incredulous.

“Being honest, no,” Dan said. “I just… fuck.”

Sam nodded. “I can’t believe you fucked this up.”

Just then, the taxi pulls up. But it’s not really a taxi, it’s a small black cab that Dan knows Sam’s family paid for. The driver gets out and opens the door for them and they get into the back. He reaches up and rubs over his face, down his neck, reaching for his necklace to twist but suddenly, he feels nothing.

“Oh my god, Sam!” Dan cried, sitting up, running his hands all over his chest. “My necklace is gone!”

“Your necklace?” She clarified, looking up from her phone long enough to make eye-contact with him. “The one your grandmother gave you?”

Dan nodded, feeling tears spring to his eyes. This night couldn’t have gone any worse and now he’s about to start crying over the damn necklace that was supposed to be around his neck. Fuck, it must have fallen off somewhere.

“Yeah!” Dan said. “I don’t have it on.”

“Did you take it off somewhere?”

Dan shook his head and the car sped off down the narrow road towards the cliffs. “No,” He whimpered. “I don’t know what happened to it.”

“Did you lose it in his bed?”

Dan leaned his head back against the seat and let out a loud groan because fuck he probably did. It’s probably laying in the middle of Phil’s sheets right now and he’s looking like a fool because of it.

“If you want to try and find it, we can turn back and head back to the party?”

Dan shook his head. “Phil’s probably fucking someone on it right now.”

He knew his words sounded bitter after everything that happened but he felt like he had to be bitter for a moment. It felt like the natural reaction to how his night has went.

“Hey, don’t get like that, hun.” Sam says, putting her phone into her Louis Vuitton fanny pack and comforting him. “I’ll get someone to contact Phil tomorrow and ask for the necklace. It’s not big deal.”

Dan nods and closes his eyes.

It’s not a big deal. He repeats in his head. It’s not a big deal.

#phan #phanfiction #phanfic #fluff #smut #angst #princesslexi763fics #sail away fic

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all-things-skam · 5 years

Note

prompt: ele and edo making cute travel plans in bed after THAT scene. also could there be something where ele makes some joke about how many girls edo has been with and edo is like lol no i haven't been with a girl since u called me out at school and ele is all OH OKAY

Incantava first time they say I love you.

Edoardo being all soft and cuddly with Ele after they had sex

I would love to read an incantava fic! Something fluffly

Title: Our summer together

Ship: Skam Italia | Eleonora Sava and Edoardo Incanti (Incantava)

_______________

She pushed a curl away from his face, a gleeful grin on her lips as she looked up at him, completely enamored. Edoardo’s whole face was smiling as he caressed her bare back, having reached nirvana.

“You okay?” he asked, his voice gentle and caring.

Eleonora nodded, tilting her head to kiss his collarbone, lips brushing the white gold of his chain. The delicate jewelry had always awoken her attention. He was never not wearing it which made Eleonora suspect that it wasn’t just a piece of jewelry.

“Do you want to go back to your friends?”

She didn’t want him to leave their love-nest but, it was his party. He’d have to go back at some point, he couldn’t leave his guests to themselves downstairs for the rest of the night.

“No.” Edoardo shifted, leaning to pull her against him and kiss her jaw tenderly. “I rather stay here with you.” He trailed his kisses up to her lips, hand sliding to her back when she hooked her leg on his hip, pulling her closer.

Breaking the kiss, he brushed their noses together, laying flat on his stomach, head on his grey pillow as he staregaze at the beautiful girl in front of him, still awestruck that she was [his] now. “I’ve waited for you for a whole year and, when I finally got you, we’re being forced apart.”

Eleonora bit her lip, sitting up on the bed, the sheets covering her breasts.

Since Edoardo announced her that he was accepted at an Ivy League college in America, she had shown nothing but proudness and joy but, deep down, his coming departure was worrying her. New York wasn’t next door; it was 4279 miles away from Rome. She was willing to give long distance a try but, you know what they say: far from the eyes, far from the heart.

“About that… I’m happy that you got accepted, but a part of me can’t help but be scared that you’ll find another girl in America.”

“Why would I want another girl when I already have the most beautiful one waiting for me at home?” he replied with a smug smile.

Eleonora rolled her eyes. “Stop it. I’m being serious.”

“So am I.” Edo propped himself on his elbow, dark irises smiling at her. “I’m crazy about you, Eleonora Francesca Sava. You’re all I see since the first time we met at Chicco’s barbecue…all I want.”

A scoff slipped past Ele’s lips and she spoke before she realized it. “Yet, you managed to bring five girls in your bed according to the trophy wall.”

Immediately, the mood shifted and Edoardo’s face blanched. He gulped thickly. “You’re right. I understand your doubts concerning my faithfulness. If I were you, I would have difficulty trusting myself too. But, I’ll tell you something: I haven’t had sex with anyone since you called me out last spring. It was tough but, I was determined to gain your heart. I was persistent but patient. Hell, I even messaged you every single day while you were in England without getting any answers. So, why would I destroy something I worked so hard to get?”

A silence installed itself, making Edoardo sigh as he waited for something he knew he wasn’t going to get. What could she say to this? He already knew her opinion about his past; he wasn’t proud of everything he had done but, no matter what he’d say, he still couldn’t change his past. What is done is done. The only choice is to move forward.

Surprisingly, his words got a small smile to form on Eleonora’s lips. It wasn’t fully there so he took her hand in his and brought it to his lips, kissing it. He watched her smile widen, knowing that the small gestures and touches meant a lot to her. Feeling like he was on a good lead, he continued his trail of kisses and waited until she was distracted enough to pull her down, making her laugh.

“Edo, no…” she said between laughs.

Edoardo grinned, knowing that making a girl laugh is the way to her heart.

The party had died down and Fede had kicked out everyone by now, leaving only Eleonora and Edoardo in the Incanti’s villa. While she put on a shirt to cover herself, Edoardo had gone downstairs to get them a late night snack, aka ice cream, and the brunette couldn’t be more satisfied when she saw the pistachio pot.

“So, have you decided yet?”

She furrowed her eyebrows, scooping a spoonful of the frozen dessert. “Decided what?”

“Our summer vacations,” Edo explained, extending his hand to play with Eleonora’s hair, thumb brushing her cheek. “Spain, Turkey, Paris, Croatia…we can go wherever you want.”

Gulping, Eleonora lowered her gaze, afraid to break his happy bubble. She wasn’t bathing in money like him. She couldn’t splurge on luxury trips across Europe, on a whim, whenever she wanted. Everything she had, she worked for it.

“I’m not sure I can afford any of that, I have to work this summer and-”

Edoardo shook his head, smoothing the creased on her forehead. “Don’t worry about money. Just tell me where you want to go.”

A blush coated her cheeks, suddenly feeling uneasy. Beside Filippo, no one had ever been there for her - not even her parents. All this was new and foreign to her. Someone who cared deeply for her, someone who would unhook the stars for her, someone who wanted give her the world. She didn’t know how to handle this.

“I-I can’t accept that, Edo. You spending so much money on me makes me uncomfortable.”

“A couple hundreds euros more won’t change anything to my dad’s bank account, Ele. I want to spend my summer with you; just the two of us.” He paused. “Don’t you want that too?”

“Yes, but-”

He shushed her, pressing his index to her lips. “What will our first destination be, Miss Sava?”

Ele sighed, giving in, and picked a country. “I guess we can go to Spain. I’ve always wanted to see the architecture. Everything so beautiful there.”

“It is. I’ve been once. You have to see Barcelona, you’re gonna love it. We can go see La Sagrada Família, Park Güell or even the Gothic quarters. There’s old gargoyles on the buildings and a magnificent cathedral.”

She had heard about every touristic attractions Edoardo talked about, but the way he talked about Barcelona so dreamily made Eleonora more excited to go and travel. She had seen those beautiful churches in thousands of pictures and was looking forward to visit them. She was also looking forward to walk hand in hand with Edoardo in Park Güell.

“And after Spain?” He stole a scoop of her ice cream and she narrowed her eyes, bringing the tub to herself, making Edo chuckle.

Eleonora pinched her chin. “Erm…maybe Croatia? It’s such an underrated country.”

“I heard the beaches there are breathtaking. The turquoise water, Plitvice Lakes national park…we could go zip lining or swim with stingrays.”

“Stingrays?” the brunette repeated, a bit surprised. “I would’ve took you for a shark person.”

Edoardo shook his head. “No. Sharks are overrated. Stingrays are much cooler,” he explained with a childish grin.

You could perceive Edo’s child heart through his words which made the brunette smile. Maybe he was one of those nerdy kids that loved to go to the aquarium and knew a bunch of facts about fishes and marine life? Or, maybe he never went to the aquarium. Maybe his parents were too busy to take him…just like hers.

Feeling a lump form in her throat at the thought of her childhood, Eleonora changed subject.

“Where do you wanna go?” she returned.

“Paris. I’ve never been to Paris…and this is the perfect time to go.”

“Why do you insist on going to Paris? So you can tell me the most cliché thing on top of the Eiffel tower?” She shook her head. “I refuse to go.”

He chuckled shaking his head. “I don’t need to go to Paris to tell you that.”

“Wha-” Eleonora whispered quietly, eyebrows furrowed as she looked up at him with confused eyes.

“I love you. I love you, Eleonora…you’re a part of my little family.”

The sincerity in his eyes almost made hers water. His little family. She was brought back to the radio episode: family has nothing to do with blood or time; sometimes just one person, even though you’ve known them for so little time, might become so special and important to be like family to you. She had always had a doubt that the last paragraph of the episode - the one Edoardo wrote - was his way of telling her he loved her, but this just confirmed it.

Before the emotions would take over her, she leaned for a kiss, tasting the pistachio ice cream on his lips.

“You’re a part of mine too.”

#incantava #edoardo incanti #elenora sava #edoardo x eleonora #incantava prompt #incantava fic #skam italia #skamit #skam italia fic

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365daysofsasuhina · 5 years

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[ 365 Days of SasuHina || Day Three Hundred Twenty-Three: Flip a Coin ] [ Uchiha Sasuke, Hyūga Hinata, Hyūga Hanabi, Uchiha Itachi ] [ SasuHina ] [ Verse: When Dead Walk ] [ AO3 Link ]

Well, it’s official: they’re no longer two pairs. They’re a group of four. A team.

Sasuke’s still not entirely sure how he feels about it. On one hand...he still can’t help but remain a bit wary. While Hinata and Hanabi - the two girls he found while scavenging for supplies two days ago - hardly seem a threat...you can never fully trust anyone. Not even family. But he’s hoping that their mutual goal of survival will allow them to build at least some kind of understanding.

On another, he’s worried about having more mouths to feed. He and Itachi had been going through enough supplies as it is. But with those mouths come hands that can help make lighter work. They’ll have to do more, find more...but doing so should, in theory, be easier.

And finally...he’s not sure he wants the liability. It’s clear the pair of them are decently skilled in staying alive if they’ve made it this far. After all, Hinata saved Sasuke’s life when they met quite by accident. She’s pretty damn good at wielding makeshift weapons, if her shovel skills are anything to go by. But having someone else around means having someone else to lose.

...and he’s not exactly eager to go through that again after so long.

But, they’ve made their decision. They all talked it over yesterday after the female pair stayed the night, and it was unanimous. They’ll stay.

Now they just have to get used to what precisely that means.

“All right...I think it’s high time we start fortifying this place,” Sasuke offers, tossing a notepad he’s been scribbling in on the dining room table. “There’s a hardware store in the town to the south. We can raid it and beef up our defenses a bit. We need to barricade the windows, make it so light doesn’t escape at night. Once it gets cold enough to use the fire, we’re going to have to focus on using it mainly at night so the smoke isn’t too noticeable. During the day, we’ll have to make due with extra clothes and blankets. We look to have enough wood for a few months so long as we’re smart about it. We should find supplies for the chickens if we can. They’ll likely be a main source of food. Which means protecting them, too. Any seeds we can find would be good for a garden next year. There’s a cellar under the house we can store some of it in.”

“Leave all that sort of thing to me,” Hinata offers. “I had a focus in flowering plants, but I know quite a bit about edible ones from my botany degree.”

“Perfect. Most of the food has likely already been looted from stores, so we’ll have to try houses for that. We can form teams and split up to get things done faster.”

“Is splitting up a good idea?” Hanabi cuts in, a skeptical brow perked. “I mean...isn’t part of being in a group safety in numbers?”

“We won’t be too far apart, and it’s already pretty clear there aren’t any other survivors living in town,” Itachi counsels. “We’ve been here for quite some time, and you two are the first contact we’ve had. And you were not in town, were you?”

“No...but still...there’s another pretty obvious threat in a zombie apocalypse…”

“I’ve got a plan for that,” Sasuke offers. “We’ll first go to a part of town we don’t need anything from, and find a car with a working horn or car alarm we can rig to keep going while we go back around to our hits. That should make it a lot easier to evade them.”

“...guess that makes sense,” she admits, leaning back in her seat with folded arms.

“I suppose all that’s left is to decide who goes where,” Sasuke then muses. “How should we split up? Sibling pairs?”

“...perhaps I could take Hanabi with me,” Itachi offers. “We could go to the hardware store, which has inventory in the rear in a warehouse. I could lift her to higher places to reach things we need.”

The younger brother’s brow furrows. “...are you sure?”

“Why not?”

“You’re not as strong as I am, and Hanabi is young. We should cover each other’s weaknesses.”

“True, but you and Hinata are both quick and strong. It makes more sense for you to go to the residential streets and move through the houses. I might not be able to get very far. And most of the walkers seem to be in the residential areas rather than around the businesses. We’d likely be safer.”

Sasuke nibbles his lip. “...I don’t like this.”

“...flip a coin. Heads we go by siblings, tails we go Itachi’s route,” Hinata offers.

“...all right. Anyone got a coin?”

“There’s a piggy bank in the room we were in last night...I’ll go get one.”

Watching her go, Sasuke turns to his brother. “You really think this is a good idea?”

“Technically speaking, leaving this house at all is rarely a good idea,” Itachi gently counters. “There’s danger everywhere. Humans, zombies, animals, the environments themselves...you can’t protect me forever. Besides, I won’t be alone.”

Sasuke wants to counter, but gives Hanabi a glance. He’s not so sure she’ll be as helpful as Hinata has shown to be...something tells him she hasn’t had to pull much weight as of yet. “...all right.”

When the elder sister returns, Sasuke balances the coin - a regular old quarter - atop his thumb. After a pause, he gives it a flip, catching it and holding open his palm.

“...tails,” he confirms, tone a bit edged.

“...all right, then. We’ll set up the noise distractions on the other side of town, and then come in from this side to get our supplies. We’ll load up whatever we find into the car and go from there.”

“Okay…” Still looking unsure, Sasuke flips to another page of the notebook, tearing off a page. “This is all I could think of that would be useful. We have some tools from the shed in the back, but a lot of them look pretty old, so...whatever we can replace, do it. Maybe grab doubles if you can in case something breaks. Otherwise, whatever we can get to beef up this place and make it more solid, grab it.”

“Too bad we don’t have a truck…” Hinata muses. “It would be nice to be able to haul more. Maybe some fencing, or sheet metal.”

“...well, maybe another time. We can hunt for a truck another day. We’re just getting started today, all right? Consider it a test run of the new team.”

“Understood.”

With that settled, the four of them make their way to the car, parked around the back to keep hidden further from anyone who might happen upon the house. Hinata takes the driver’s seat, revving the engine and checking the gauges.

“Hm...might need to find some gas while we’re there. It’s, um...getting a bit low.”

“All right...we’ll do that before we start the horns. Got hose to siphon with?”

“Mhm. I’ve done it a few times. That and a gas can are in the trunk.”

And with that...they head toward town.

The ride is mostly quiet. Hinata keeps her eyes on the road, Sasuke doubling the watch for trouble from the passenger seat. As before, Hanabi leans in between the front seats, looking bored. Itachi merely watches the scenery from his window beside her.

Taking a roundabout road, they approach the town from the back, going slow to help minimize noise.

“...here’s good. You three stay with the car - I’ll find one to set up. Get some gas and pull back around here. I’ll meet you, and we’ll all take off once we’ve got enough noise going.”

“Right. Be careful.”

“Careful’s my middle name,” Sasuke mutters as he slips out of the car and crouch-walks to a cluster of abandoned vehicles in a parking lot behind a tire shop. Keeping a hunting knife gripped in one hand, he decides to check out the shop itself first. It looks untouched - not like tires were anyone’s first thought upon the zombie apocalypse. Inside he finds little of import. Stale popcorn, a half-empty water cooler, and the cashier’s station behind the counter. Managing to pry open the tray, he takes the money - might as well. Some people might still place value in it for trade someday. After a moment of thought, he then takes a shelf out from the back of the counter - it looks about the size he’ll need to wedge into a seat and keep a horn pressed.

...he always liked the smell of these places.

Lingering for a bit, he heads back out upon hearing the hum of the motor. “Ready?”

“Whenever you are. Tank’s full.”

“Good.” Moving to the nearest empty vehicle, he opens the front door, fiddling with both the seat and the steering wheel. With the latter tipped down, he moves the former forward, the wooden shelf wedged into its crux. As soon as enough pressure is applied, the horn begins to blare, and he bolts back for the car.

Carefully, Hinata makes her way back around. In the distance, they can see walkers heading slowly off toward the noise.

“All right...that’ll work for now. Hinata will drop you two off at the hardware store. Gather what you can out front so we can pack it up quick. We’ll head to the nearest residential street and start raiding the houses. Ready?”

Hanabi gives a curt nod.

“Ready,” Itachi affirms.

“All right...good luck. And be careful,” Hinata impresses, watching them slip out the back doors. Once they’re inside, she glances to Sasuke.

“...let’s get going.”

.oOo.

(This is a sequel to days 197 and 270!) More zombie AU! Haven't done this one in a good while and for some reason it just seemed to fit the prompt well lol We have an official squad! Two pairs of siblings, now a little group. It's going to be an...interesting dynamic. And I know I cut off before much action, but it's VERY late and the drabble was getting long, so...hopefully I can do more soon. I already have another cliffie I need to remedy, whoops xD Anyway, it's late, I'm...very tired, so I'll call it there. Thanks for reading!

#sasuhina #uchiha sasuke #hyūga hinata #hyūga hanabi #uchiha itachi #when dead walk [ au ]#365daysofsasuhina

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fanfic-collection · 6 years

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Vampire: Loki x Reader - Pt 5

Tag list: catalinaacosta , starscreamloki , dream-reaper , hufflepuff-always-and-forever , portietomednalynn , all-these-wonderful-things , jayyx3oxo

Please comment, thank you, I appreciate hearing feedback from you guys! (I don’t like how this turned out but maybe if I reread it it won’t feel so bad... ok that’s my critique, if you have any thoughts let me know, I think you’ll see what bothers me)

In the morning, you woke, dressed in your newfound clothes and made your way down to the pantry and ultimately the kitchen. Thor was nowhere to be seen.

As before, the door to the basement was carefully locked and sealed. You tested the locks to be sure, not knowing what was down there and slightly fearful of it coming out. Part of you wondered when your caretaker duties would begin, where Thor's brother was located. A larger part of you already knew.

You shivered, looking at the sturdy door, so strained by whatever lived in the basement.

Moving on, you made your way to the pantry and assembled items for a small but satisfactory breakfast. It would be a nice change from the hospital cafeteria you had spent so much time at.

Living in this country as you had, your mother had often warned you of the dark magic that was said to circulate the soil. You wondered idly if that dark magic was finally entering into your life. Everything about the layout of the house promised as such, yet you still couldn't bring yourself to fully believe it. They had just been idle tales sprung by a bored housewife, yet your mother had not been the only one to warn you.

Many stories of people going missing in the night, creatures so pale with long teeth and clawlike fingers snatching children from their beds, the forests alive with beasts from ancient times, different rituals that one must follow – no matter how silly, everyone adhered to their strict guidelines. You thought of the forest in your home town, that no child entered alone, no grown man either. Visitors from outside lands laughed at the superstitions and the people of your village accepted the mockery, but even still, their ways did not change. Every third generation, or so, someone would ignore the warnings. They would enter the woods alone, cross the river that had been blessed and promises made to never touch, drink from the well that was considered sacred, something would be touched that should not, entered that should be left well alone, and they would go missing. Everyone would accept that they had left the country in the middle of the night, gone to new lands to start a new life fresh and alone. But it was known. In quiet corners of pubs, people would whisper, stories would be shared and sightings confirmed. That person was dead or worse and so the fear continued.

There were certain buildings, abandoned for centuries that you best not enter, and though you weren't certain if this was one, you felt by the renovations that something evil had been disturbed.

“Good morning.” Thor said, wiping his eyes from bleary sleep.

You startled from your thoughts, dropping your silverware with a jump before forcing a smile. “Morning.” You managed to reply evenly.

Thor sighed heavily and sank into the seat opposite you, he seemed to have slept terribly. You opted to ask him.

Nodding, Thor replied, “Not a wink. There's so much to tend to with this place and anyone that helps has to be flown in from other places, almost no local agrees to help no matter the price.”

You glanced at him wryly, thinking of your own price. “They're clearly not desperate enough. I'm sure if a harvest goes bad or a family member falls ill, they'll come around.”

“Sorry.” Thor muttered, standing up and finding his own breakfast.

You shrugged, “I was desperate, still am. Though I wonder what happens if I become less desperate.”

“If you stop valuing your sister's life?” Thor interjected.

You grit your teeth and turned your head slightly, the insult stinging. “Something like that.”

“Let's see how my brother takes to you first. Perhaps he won't like you and you'll leave.”

You raised an eyebrow at him. There had been no signs of other people before you. “What's wrong with him?”

Thor shifted uncomfortably, “He's ill.”

“You have money, why not take him to one of those hospital my sister was sent to?”

“Not that type of illness.” Thor mumbled, shirking away from you as he busied himself with the food.

“Uh-huh.” You nodded slowly, “An illness no doctor can treat? You know, even in this small country, we're aware of such conditions. They're different people but there's treatment of sorts, usually talking helps. Locking them away from the outside world does no good.”

Thor grit his teeth and glared at you, “This one is different.”

Again, you nodded slowly, “So what is it?”

“I'll show you tonight, for now, eat up and get some rest, it's going to be a long night.” Thor stalked out of the room, plate of food in hand.

You watched him go, seeing him pass the basement and absently check the locks before disappearing down the hallway.

Your mother's stories echoed loudly in the back of your mind.

For the rest of the day, you grazed on food as you felt hungry, or bored. You took naps and read in the library. There was an expansive collection, centuries of books and some in runes that you couldn't hope to decipher. You wandered the building, looking in old dust covered rooms with chairs covered in moth-eaten sheets. There was a laboratory of sorts and several studies. Dusty notes and chemistry supplies covering table after table. Truly a mad scientist could have lived here.

There was a television in your room, you found eventually, as well as a video player. You wondered if there might be any movies that you could watch but failed to find any. Perhaps you would ask Thor later, make a list of things that could entertain you if this was how your days were to be spent. Though, if your work were to mostly take place at night, perhaps your night and days would shift.

As you skulked through the many hallways, occasionally passing by the basement door – checking its locks absently – you wondered if there might be a way to get exercise equipment. If there were traditional caretaker activities, you wanted to be in peak physical shape. A treadmill wouldn't be too bad, in case you ever found opportunity to...

You pushed the thought away. Being able to run any distance would be an advantage, especially if the thing in the basement...

Again you pushed the thought away. Stagnation was bad. You left it at that.

In the evening, as the sun dipped past the horizon, you found yourself sitting on your bed, fully dressed. Your leg was crossed over the other as you sat propped up by several pillows, reading an old romance novel.

A knocking sounded at your door.

“Come in.” You called.

The door opened and Thor appeared. “It's time.”

Thor led you down the halls, across the house and to the basement door.

“We're going in?” You asked as he began the tedious task of undoing each lock.

“I said not to go alone.” Thor said over his shoulder, offering you a quick smile.

“Great, and the thing that did that damage?” You inclined your head towards the strained hinges.

Thor smiled but remained quiet, pulling the chains away and swing the door open. “Shall we?” He grabbed the briefcase and the lantern, slowly descending down the stairs.

You exhaled heavily, then started to follow him.

The air was musty and chilly, much cooler than the rest of the building. The gloom easily overwhelmed the light of the lantern, the small flame valiantly fighting back but failing miserably.

“Stay near the light.” Thor muttered. For a moment he reconsidered and handed the lantern over to you. “Follow me closely.”

You stayed near Thor, nearly hugging his shoulder, brushing against him as you followed after him, holding the light out. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, you looked down and saw fresh dirt mixed over the flagstones of the ground, as though parts of the basement had been freshly dug and other parts had existed long ago.

Thor continued on into the gloom, taking out a small lighter and lighting sconces as the two of you walked. The sconces struggled to life, casting your bodies onto long dark shadows that flickered and danced as the two of you walked.

“Loki!” Thor called, though his voice seemed to get swallowed by the darkness.

You glanced back over your shoulder and saw a trail of lights leading to the stairs. Then you looked back at Thor and saw that you were nearing an alcove of sorts.

There was a large green bed, looking sinfully soft. It was decadent and fancier than any you had seen, yet there was a fine layer of dust on it, as though it had not been used in a long time. Perhaps you would have to clean it. What a peculiar place inside such a heavily guarded basement.

Near the bed, there was a makeshift bathroom with no walls, merely a bath and a sink. No toilet you noted curiously.

Thor gently grabbed your wrist, if you had not seen him move, you would have jumped out of your skin. He angled the lantern light onto an ornate velvet lined coffin. A set of chains were fastened securely to the wall beside it. As you looked closer, you realized they disappeared into the dark parts of the basement that Thor had not lit up.

“I know you're there, Loki.” Thor called, his foot kicking the chains.

“You have him chained up?” You whispered horrified.

Thor looked at you pained, “You'll understand.”

You shook your head, “This isn't a beast we're talking about, some vicious animal that will attack without reason, this is your brother!” Your voice rose in pitch as you admonished him.

Cold laughter came from the shadows and immediately you regretted raising your voice. The hair on the back of your neck stood on end, goosebumps forming on your skin and you spun around, trying to find the source of the laughter.

“Like father all over again, new toys to keep me company.” A cold voice from nowhere and everywhere taunted.

“Loki...” There was heavy warning to Thor's voice. “I fed you yesterday, usually you do better the next day, what's wrong?”

“What's wrong, what's wrong?” The cold voice, who you assumed was Loki, taunted. “Bring new eyes to study the chained beast?”

“Loki, remember yourself!”

The chains rattled and hissed and then slowly a man came into view. He was tall and gaunt, eyes sunken, mostly green but tinges of red played on the irises.

The man was beautiful, you noted, your heart skipping a beat as you took in his appearance. Or rather once was... could be? It was confusing. He seemed to have neglected himself, something dried and red stained his mouth – juice you hoped – as well as his battered and torn shirt. You saw signs of fresh cuts and scars on his skin, as well as older long healed ones. His hair hang in curtains, unkempt and unwashed, needing a trim though it appealed to you at its current length, past his shoulders. Though there was a redness on the colored parts of his eyes – another disconcerting aspect of his appearance – the green entranced you; however they were dull and had lost any sheen they once held. The man held the appearance of someone who had lost weight quickly and in an unfortunate way, his clothes illfitting and hanging loosely on his frame.

Then your eyes trailed to his hands, clenched tightly but held in front of him by the heavy manacles inscribed with strange markings your mind couldn't decipher.

The man, Loki you presumed, tilted his head at you and smiled coldly – it didn't reach his eyes. “Do I frighten you, little lamb?” You saw the fangs protruding over his lower lip and stepped back involuntarily.

At first you were speechless, struggling to respond. The stories your mother had warned you of, of course you had accepted and believed them, but only in theory, to actually see a creature like this before you? “You're not real.” You whispered.

“Oh I can assure you, I am very real.” Loki replied, stepping forward menacingly. “And why are you here?”

Of all the answers that flitted through your mind, you don't know why you chose, “My sister.”

Loki squinted at you, taken aback, physically recoiling at your words. “Your what?” He hissed.

You bit your lip. “Her name is Marcy, she's ill. Thor, your brother, promised me her health if I stayed with you as your caretaker.” Tears welled in your eyes, you didn't know how you could care for this creature, a being of darkness and evil. Your hands shook, the lantern swaying dangerously. You closed your eyes and shook your head, tears rolling down your cheeks as sobs wracked your body. All of what you had been through, the fear of losing your sister, the years of pain at her illness, then the hope of this strange man offering you what you so desperately needed and desired, only to end like this. “I'm sorry.” you sobbed.

Loki stepped towards you, cuffed hands held out. Thor moved protectively in front of you, eyeing Loki distrustfully.

Loki glared at Thor as you tried to see through the tears in your eyes. “You risk sacrificing your life for your sister?” Loki murmured, head tilted.

“You would hurt me?” You asked.

Loki looked away, “I don't know what I would do. I'm... I'm not myself. Perhaps I am more myself than ever.”

“Loki...” Thor said slowly, “if this is about that Jotun thing.”

Loki hissed suddenly, eyes flashing red and lunged at Thor. You jumped to the side as the two brothers fell in a heap, tackling and grabbing at the other. Loki hissed and growled, snarling as he tried to claw at Thor, his teeth gnashing as he lunged at any available part of Thor.

Lightning crackled in Thor's hands, his eyes going bright blue, and his fist slammed into Loki, making contact with his chest. Loki was thrown back, flying across the room and hitting one of the pillars with a solid thud. His head smacked against the pillar and he lay still, head lolling to the side.

At first you had taken off running but seeing the brothers fight, something in you hesitated.

Thor winced, rolling over onto his side and slowly sitting up, fresh claw marks on his arms.

You looked between him and Loki, barely illuminated in the gloom, then made a split second decision and dashed over to the fallen man. “Are you alright?” You knelt down beside him.

Thor called your name, “Wait, no! I can't protect you from here!”

Loki's eyes slowly opened as he looked up at you. He seemed dazed.

You reached your hand out and touched his cheek. Loki flinched at the contact, stiffening as your hand stroked his face. “Are you alright?”

Loki blinked up at you, struggling where he sat, muscles clenching and unclenching as he stared at you. Finally his head sank into your touch and his eyes fluttered shut and he lay unmoving.

“I think you really hurt him.” You mumbled over your shoulder.

Thor slowly walked over, hands out warily. He looked down at Loki and moved to check his pulse, sighing before his hand reached Loki's neck and pulling away. “I don't know how to tell, I'm still new to this.”

“Put him on the bed.” You ordered Thor.

“He prefers the coffin.” Thor muttered, “he sleeps in it during the day, I've seen it.”

“Well I can't look at him if he's in such a cramped place.”

Thor hoisted Loki up on his shoulder and carried him over to the bed, dropping him as gently as he could. A puff of dust rose in the air and you waved it away from your face, hoping to avoid sneezing.

Loki groaned, rolling on his back, his hands held tightly to his chest.

“These wounds are going to fester if you don't tend to them.” You pointed at the cuts.

“Do... do vampire wounds fester? What bacteria would feast on the dead like this?”

You bit your lip and looked at the raw skin under the manacles. “These conditions can't be healthy for him.”

“They're not healthy for me!” Thor snapped back, pointing at the myriad of scars and cuts on him. “This is to keep him from running out of here and going after the nearest village.”

You raised an eyebrow.

Thor looked away sheepishly, “That's what Analise said.”

“Analise?”

“The... the one who turned him.”

“You asked for him to be like this?” Your voice went shrill.

Thor shifted uncomfortably, “He had died.”

“You robbed him of a peaceful death, for what?”

Thor swallowed hard and looked away, “For me.”

You shook your head in disbelief looking back at Loki curled up on the bed. Your face softened, heart panging as you looked at him curled up in pain. “I don't know the anatomy of a vampire. Do they heal by normal means?”

Thor bit his lip. “I hadn't thought to ask, I didn't expect him to injure himself.”

“These are self inflicted?” Your horror grew. “Does he realize what you made him?”

“I think so.”

“Oh you poor thing,” you stroked his cheek with the back of your hand. His body seemed to unclench ever so slightly. “He looks kinda like Marcy on her sickest days. Body starving itself, barely a corpse, clearly not right in the mind. It's no wonder he attacked you.”

“You're saying I deserved that?” Thor looked at you indignant.

“You must've upset him!”

Thor opened his mouth to respond but instead snapped his mouth shut, angrily glaring at you.

“Perhaps this Analise has more information on... well vampires, how long since he turned?”

“A few months, she said such violent outbursts were not uncommon for fledglings.”

You absently brushed your fingers through his hair, trying to ignore the many knots. Pursing your lips, you looked at Thor, “I've heard stories that vampires regain their strength through blood.” The concept of doing so willingly had never crossed your mind before, more so a warning to prevent vampires from drinking blood.

“Would that work?” Thor frowned, “would we want him to regain his strength?”

“I don't know, he's your brother, if you did this to him on purpose, wouldn't you want him healthy?”

“Healthy, yes, attacking me, not so much.”

“Caring for a vampire.” You sat on the bed, still toying with his hair. Shaking your head you looked up at Thor, “I think we're going to have to collect any information on vampires we can find, including this Analise. Maybe there are better ways of dealing with a fledgling than locking it in your basement and chaining him up.”

Thor rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, “I was trying my best.”

You shook your head tiredly, “This is what you're paying me for I guess.” Biting your lip you pulled your hand away from Loki and set both of your hands in your lap. You looked back at Thor, “Did you mean to have him drink from me?”

“Yes.” Thor looked at the ground. “But only enough to sustain him, not to kill you, I meant for you to be his caretaker. I was hoping he might bond with someone in ways he had not with me.”

“Am I the first?” You feared the answer.

“I was quicker to introduce Loki to the others, and he didn't have another food source outside them.” Thor swallowed hard, “my sins are many, I know this, but I do not wish ill to you, and even if something should happen...” He trailed off.

You looked back at Loki then up at Thor, “This is for my sister. I know the terms that you won't let me leave.”

“No.”

“Then I'll do everything I can to help him,” you licked your lips, glancing back at Loki then up at Thor, “I think it's best we let him rest, get more blood hopefully in sanitary conditions and I'll see if that library has any lore on vampires. Then we can work on helping him. I can't believe I'm saying this but I'm going to help a vampire, as long as you heal my sister and I'm not allowed to leave, those are my terms.”

“Thank you, kind lady.” Thor bowed low. Loki wasn't moving and Thor winced glancing down at him, “Let's return upstairs, it should be nearing morning and he does not handle the day well.”

“This is handling things well?”

Thor chuckled, “I learned that fast.”

#Loki x reader #multi chapter

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pallasandthepeople · 6 years

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The world was more complicated than he thought

Rajan finds it easier to accept his wife is a sensate in love with someone else than that he might be falling for Wolfgang. And he, and she, for him. A lot of love all over.

Probably gonna post this on ao3 as soon as I have an account there again. I just needed more of a build up for Rajan and Wolfgang, so I figured I’d make it myself.

Rajan had been 10 when, while watching some silly cartoon he couldn’t even remember the name of, he realized a fundamental truth.

“Dad,” he’d asked, “the bad guys think they’re the good guys, right?”

“Yes Raj, of course they do.”

Manendra, busy as always with other stuff, didn’t give his son’s life-shattering discovery much attention.

“But what if we are the bad guys?”

Rajan had long used the story as a funny anecdote. It was something he told when the wine had been taken out of the cooler after a long business meeting and everyone finally sat back in their chairs. A personal note: “The moment Rajan became a man”. But at the time it had had a huge impact on him. The world was more complicated than he had thought it was, and there was no going back anymore.

He was reminded of that childhood memory when, on a sunny late afternoon in Paris, he stared at the eight people smiling at him peacefully. His thoughts kept tumbling through his head while Kala gently stirred him away from the group and slowly, very slowly, missing pieces started falling into place. The world was truly more complicated that he had thought it was.

He found the last missing piece when he asked about the missing member of the group.

“So, when this Wolfgang fellow is tortured…, you experience his pain?”

There was… something in Kala’s expression. A fear in her eyes, a desperation. A longing. It was then Rajan knew.

Rajan had given his relationship with Kala a lot of thought over the years. It had been difficult from the beginning and, while he knew she was trying, there had always been that emotional disconnection. The possibility of there being someone else, at least emotionally, had crossed his mind more than once.

He now had a confirmation. Yes, there was someone else, and for a moment he was consumed by jealousy. But there was more. A few hours ago finding out his wife was cheating on him might have shattered his world. His carefully structured world in Mumbai with rules he understood and followed couldn’t have taken the blow. And yet here they were, in Paris, and no old rules applied anymore. His world had been expanded, and there were few things he was sure of now.

What he did know though was that he loved Kala, and that Kala at the very least cared for him. But he also knew Kala was in danger now, and suddenly that became the main priority. What other choice did he have?”

“I came rushing to Paris for the same reason I married you. I love you, Kala.” It was almost a desperate cry, but he managed to keep his face straight. “And that feeling hasn’t gone away, or been changed, by learning that the woman I love is so much more than the woman I married.”

It was it that moment, seeing her face lighting up and the love radiating from it, that he knew he had made the right choice.

“My god Rajan, I married a good man.”

She went quiet. “But Rajan, there’s something else, Wolfgang and I…”

He put his hand on her lips and smiled with difficulty. It would take some time, but it’d be okay.

“I know. We’ll talk, later.”

There were more important things now.

Rajan didn’t get the chance to talk to Kala about anything not related to the plan anymore after that. He too got swept away in the wild ride that these people’s life seemed to be. But something had changed. With this many of her loved ones around her she suddenly seemed to always be at his side. Not just by his side, but actively trying to include him in the conversations between sensates, and always touching him gently.

It was a kind of prelude to the conversation they’d need to have eventually and Rajan didn’t want to read too much into it, but it felt… good. He knew for certain that she wasn’t being this affectionate out of guilt; he would have sensed that. They’d been together too long now for that. And so he just let it be and prepared to save the lover of his wife.

Everything in the club happened so fast Rajan hardly realized he was talking to Wolfgang, that the guy in front of him was Wolfgang, till Wolfgang grabbed his wrist and said: “Come with me.” In that moment he would’ve done anything the other man said. And when he did finally get to see Wolfgang properly in the van, with the adrenaline rapidly leaving his body and the exhaustion kicking in, the only thing Rajan could think was: “Oh. I get it.” It was probably the eyes, he figured.

Wolfgang turned to the rest and announced that Kala and the others were safe, and then he turned to Rajan in front of him and his startling blue eyes focused on him. Rajan felt slightly nauseous.

“Are we okay?” Wolfgang asked, in hindi.

Rajan swallowed and managed to recompose himself.

“We’ll talk later,” he said with a nod.

Wolfgang nodded back and smiled a little.

They arrived at Jean-Pierre’s house early in the morning and Rajan immediately got busy playing host. Pierre was an old friend from university and he had made well for himself, the house wasn’t exactly small, but it wasn't built for this amount of people either.

“Alright, Lito and company can go in the master bedroom as it has the biggest bed,” Rajan quickly decided. “Sun and Mun in that one, Amanita and Nomi can take that one… Capheus, you take the couch. There is one bedroom more upstairs, that one can be for Riley and Will.”

He looked at Wolfgang, who was watching him intently.

“There are some extra mattresses in the shed for us.”

Everyone was tired and soon only Capheus and Wolfgang were left. They walked to the shed in silence and Rajan handed Capheus some sheets and showed Wolfgang the two mattresses.

“Where to?” Wolfgang asked, one mattress under each arm.

Capheus quickly made himself scarce.

“We can put one of them in the hall and one in the study… Or kitchen even, but we can also put them both in the study… If you want we can even sleep with Capheus…,” Rajan rambled.

Wolfgang looked at him intently.

“Do you want to talk or do you want to sleep?”

Rajan smiled slightly. He liked Wolfgang’s directness. The nauseousness returned.

“I think it might be best to talk before Kala arrives.”

Wolfgang smiled back and headed to the study, somehow single-handedly taking the heavy things with him. Rajan came after him with the sheets.

“That’s gonna be hell to wash after we’re gone,” Wolfgang remarked as Rajan made up the beds. “So many sheets.”

“We’ll get a cleaning lady, don’t worry.”

“Of course.”

When everything that could possibly be done had been done they both sat down on their respective mattresses and faced each other. The room was dimly lit by the lights of the electric devices around them. It was quiet for awhile, and then Rajan decided to just start talking.

“Kala was the only girl at work that wasn’t after me,” he started. “I think… I think that’s what made her interesting at first.”

Wolfgang leaned back against the desk, and listened. Listened to Rajan describing their courtship, their engagement, what the marriage had been like for him so far. It was freeing in a way that Rajan could never have imagined. He didn’t really have anyone to talk about these things at home. Telling his friends his wife didn’t love him wasn’t exactly easy, and he felt like they wouldn’t understand the complexity of their relationship anyway. Especially not now. But Wolfgang did, better than anyone possibly could. Wolfgang understood. And then, slowly, Wolfgang started making some comments. Giving his point of view on matters (or maybe Kala’s, wasn’t that how this thing worked?), telling his own little anecdotes. Opening up. Soon they weren’t talking about Kala anymore, but about different things. Trivial and yet very important things, bits and pieces of their lives.

Rajan didn’t remember when he’d fallen asleep. He woke up the next morning facing Wolfgang, who was an arms reach away, and he was suddenly filled with a warm, happy feeling. It would be alright. This man and he, they understood each other. It would all work out.

They had a late breakfast all together in the sun, and Wolfgang soon walked up to him to offer him a glass of wine.

“Rajan,” Wolfgang said in a much more official tone than he had the night before. The others glanced in their direction with discretion. “Most men wouldn’t have done what you did for me.” Rajan knew Wolfgang well enough by now to know that was his way of saying thank you.

“I did what I could,” he answered awkwardly, but Wolfgang demanded his attention with his intense eyes.

“I’ll never forget it.”

Rajan felt the nausea wash over him again, and he quietly cursed the nerves from the whole trip.

Will be continued! On ao3 probably, as soon as I have that figured out. You can read part II here already. Let me know what you thought!

#sense8 #kala x wolfgang x rajan #rajan #kala #wolfgang #kalagang #ralagang #seasonfinale #capheus

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lenjaminmacbuttons · 6 years

Text

tl;dr: I’m staying alive.

(image source)

Earlier this week, a student fell from the fourth floor of the BYU N. Eldon Tanner Building in what was later confirmed as a suicide attempt. She was taken to the emergency room in critical condition, and today it was released that she died in the hospital.

The entire campus is shaken. Long, heavy conversations on the topic have been the focus of several of my class periods. Faculty and other students are fervently reminding of and encouraging toward the many mental health and counseling options available to help us (but that, apparently, weren’t enough to save this student). For me, it’s been a jarring catalyst forcing me to examine my own experiences and relationships with suicide--the deaths of people around me, and the thoughts and ideation I’ve personally had.

I don’t know who this student was. I probably never met her--I might have passed her on campus, maybe even exchanged a “hello” or “i like your shirt!” something; I don’t know. But her death has struck me much harder and more directly than any other, even though I can think of three different people who I knew much better who have committed suicide in my life.

The first person who always comes to my mind with this topic is Katira, a girl I knew from church back in Wisconsin before we moved. Katira was sort of an enigma to me; she was several years older and thus, I thought, much cooler than me, in an intimidating way. She gave deep, insightful answers in Sunday School classes, and she had gorgeous hair and great fashion sense. Her best friend and her older sister were cool in a more friendly way, joking around and sometimes reaching out to awkward twelve-year-old me as mentors. But whenever I interacted with Katira, I honestly remember her being kind of rude. My mom found out about her death through Facebook after we moved (if I’m remembering correctly), and when she told me, I didn’t know how to react.

A little while before that, it was Kaitlin, a classmate in my middle school orchestra class. Katilin and I both played violin, and for a few weeks we were stand partners, sitting next to each other and sharing sheet music. But we didn’t talk much, and never became friends, though she did have a bit of a special place in my mind. The day the teacher told us she’d committed suicide, he spent the rest of the class period locked alone in his office and had us all practice our music independently. For the final concert, we were playing a sweet little song titled “Lullaby”, and it was dedicated to her. My family moved away before the school year ended, though, and so I wasn’t able to participate in the performance.

Then there was Jasmine. I didn’t really know Jasmine any better than Katira or Kaitlin, but she was much more important to me. She was a sophomore (I think) when I was a senior, and apparently she had noticed me in theater or something while we were both in the school-wide play, and one day she snuck a piece of paper into my coat pocket with a note saying she thought I was cool and wanted to get to know me better. I was (still am) really confused by it, but I thought “what’s the harm” and she sat with me and my brother at lunch once or twice, and we exchanged emails. Finally, through email, she confessed that she had wanted to get to know me because she had a crush on me.

I panicked. I felt like I barely knew her, I didn’t (still don’t!) have any idea how to deal with people liking me, I was in the just-barely-baby-steps stage of being confident in being gay, I had no clue what I should do. So I reacted in probably the worst way possible: I ghosted her. I never responded to her email. When I saw her in the hallway, I pretended I didn’t. I avoided all possible contact. I think that I was hoping that eventually she’d confront me and I’d be forced to respond directly, or that somehow I’d magically figure out the perfect thing to say, but I never got the chance. And I never would: a few months later, after the school play was over, I learned that she’d died.

Hers was the only of these deaths I was able to really cry over. To this day I still struggle with the guilt, while simultaneously feeling incredibly self-centered to think that I had any sort of really important role in her life. Regardless, I know I did the wrong thing, and I could have helped her if I’d been honest and up front about my feelings--maybe I wouldn’t have been able to save her life, but I definitely could have helped ease her suffering in the meantime.

But this total stranger has made me more thoughtful than any of these. This student’s death has been especially personal to me because she did exactly what I thought about doing every time I was in the Tanner Building.

My thoughts of suicide are frequent, but passive and impulsive--based not on actual desire to stop living or to hurt myself, but on the idea of drama and tragic, aesthetic poetry. The Tanner Building is classy and open and tall, with grand windows and fancy fountains and glossy floors, and with lots of easy places to jump from. I wasn’t in there often, but every time I was I’d walk along the bridges and balconies and glance down at the floor far below and think “gosh, how would it feel to fall that far? It would be so easy to just climb over this little railing. How exciting would that be? How scary and cool? Just lift your leg up and then sit up on the edge, and then swoosh--”

And then splat.

I have no idea how Katira or Kaitlin or Jasmine died, but I am intimately familiar with what this student did. I know what might have been going through her head; I have an idea of why she might have chosen to do it that way. And now I know exactly what would have happened if I had followed through on that impulse.

Sometimes when I thought about suicide, I considered how people would react when they found out. I imagined some hapless rando seeing me and screaming and calling 911. I pictured my parents solemnly sitting my siblings down at the dinner table to tell them, and the littles cry and the older kids are silent or incredulous. I composed a little note in my head for my coworkers telling them thanks for all their help and happiness. And they’re all sad, but eventually move on. And maybe that one first person who found me is traumatized for a while, but they didn’t even know me, so they move on, and everyone’s fine in the end and I’m not responsible for anyone being permanently messed up or anything.

But I was wrong. I know now how people react when this happens--they’re all affected. This is something that’s going to last a long time, throughout the entire campus, and even beyond--all the friends and family, everyone who visits, everyone who comes in contact with graduates in the workforce. The Tanner Building was closed for the rest of the day after the girl fell, and students expressed that it would be hard for them to go back to classes there now. It’d be hard to sit back in the desk where they were when they heard her hit the ground, or to walk through the doors where they saw the paramedics. One thing I often consider when I think about killing myself is doing so super publicly--gotta get that attention somehow, right? And everyone who didn’t know me will just be like “wow, that’s crazy, the world is so messed up. On to the next news article about some horrific tragedy!”

The thing I’ve been neglecting is that humans as a whole aren’t like that. They take things to heart. They find connections and they empathize. No tragedy is isolated; every sadness felt by a human being is felt by humankind. No suicide is ever a failure of the victim--it’s a failure of humankind, of every individual, every institution, every societal convention that drove someone to want nothing but a way out. And so we all feel that death, and we all feel that guilt, and we all either sink into ourselves or reach out to each other in quiet promises, “We can’t let this happen again. We have to do more to stop this.” This is true for this stranger, and it was true for Katira and it was true for Kaitlin and it was true for Jasmine. The only difference is that now I’m old enough and wise enough to understand it.

My first reaction when I heard the news of this student was bitterness, almost envy. Any dramatic spectacle I could do now would be seen as an imitation of her. Sure, I didn’t have to do it exactly the same way--I could drown in that cool little pool thing by the Museum of Art with all the statues around it, or I could hang from that big beautiful tree by the Richards Building, or I could fall from any other of the plentiful bridges and balconies around campus--but the effect would be the same. The effect on the campus, on the community, on the world, would be the same.

I can’t do that now, because she’s done it first--and I know how it would turn out. And I cannot let it happen again.

So now I’m making promises. I will not let this happen again--at least, not to me. I refuse to be responsible for another tragedy. I will not be responsible for even one more individual feeling the way I do now. In those moments where thoughts of wonderful-things-to-live-for and goals-to-still-look-forward-to fall short, I will have my memory and my pledge: I will not let this happen again.

#talkyllama #byu tanner building #i dont know if that's a thing here but i know it's a hashtag on twitter so might as well #a lot of this has been. a long time coming. a lot of it i've never shared with anyone before #feels weird #feels good though. feels good to be open about it #feels good to write about it #and to come to better conclusions and convictions than before through the writing #a good reminder of why i chose to be a writer in the first place #lol though this is ridiculously long if u actually read the whole thing you're a ledge #hm. now ive got my heart will go on stuck in my head for some reason #like it's true...my heart Will go on.....#i just copied this into a google doc and it's three full pages long #almost 1700 words #if it were still november it'd be a daily nano win heyo #but yeah. tl;dr im stayin alive

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gabrielxreader · 6 years

Text

Hellish Angel

Request: Hi! I love your blog! Would you be able to a demon!reader one? Where she and Gabe flirt but she thinks she's not good enough for him because she's a demon

A/N: I don’t think this is exactly what the requester had in mind, but I think I still followed the request pretty well so I hope it’s still liked. :)

Author: Holly

Warnings: Some mild language, a little bit of canon-typical violence

Characters: Y/N, Gabriel, Sam, Dean

Word Count: 4,095

Y/N = Your Name

You weren’t really the “typical” demon. Sometimes it was okay, sometimes it was annoying. Most of the time, the hunters you helped out pissed you off, but at least you liked that they felt empathy. The Winchesters in particularly were the least upsetting, since they’d learned not to stab you in the chest whenever you happened to come to them. The first few meetings had been kind of rough.

“Maybe it was a ghoul,” Sam suggested while you lazed around, crashed on Dean’s bed just to piss off the older one. You tossed some popcorn up and snapped your jaw around it when it came back down to your mouth, delighting in the soft crunch.

“Not a ghoul,” Dean denied, giving one of your feet (which were hanging off the side of the bed) a rough shove to the side. The popcorn missed your mouth that time and you just let it lay in his sheets. Served him right. “No signs of them anywhere. Tell you what, though, that place was soaked with sulfur.”

“Yeah, yeah, blame the demons just because we’re warped and evil.” You complained and sat up. “Couldn’t’ve been demons. I couldn’t even get in.” Sam and Dean had gotten to investigate the crime scene without you, despite having asked for your backup, because there was a barrier keeping you from even getting inside.

A rush of power made you shudder. Demons were attuned to angels because they were everything that you weren’t, but you’d never felt like this before. Castiel wasn’t that strong, and he certainly didn’t intimidate you with his tree-hugging, human-friendly attitudes.

“Anti-demon warding, sugarplum. Keeps the naughty ones from having too much fun where they shouldn’t be going.”

You stood up from the bed and turned around to look towards the hotel door. Without it opening, an angel had found its way in. You narrowed your eyes – green canvas jacket, dirty-cuffed jeans, soft-looking blond hair and amber eyes. You didn’t let the vessel trick you, though. You looked pretty good yourself, when you were just counting the humanoid body you used to get around in. The sense of grace pouring out of the angel wasn’t painful, but it was alarming. That much grace had the ability to smite you into the floor in less than a second, and your survival sense told you to get the hell out.

“Well, there’s your extra backup, boys.” You put the popcorn down on the nightstand between the twin-sized beds. “There’s no need for me here any longer.”

You were just about to teleport yourself away before the angel snapped his fingers. Dean put up a hand quickly, flinching on impulse. “We don’t need any of the theatrics this time, short stack,” he warned.

“It’s no biggie. C’mon, boys!” The angel grinned at them, wide and confident, and sly enough to remind you of a serpent. “You know me.”

“That’s why we don’t want the theatrics,” Sam muttered.

He sauntered closer. You tried again to teleport, but found your feet still in the same place they’d been seconds ago. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the angel could identify you as a demon just by looking at you – the real you, the one living inside the vessel of a long-gone human girl.

“And who’s this naughty little thing?” He just about purred.

“Gabriel, stop it,” Sam objected, closing his laptop and scowling at you both. “Y/N, that’s Gabriel, the archangel.” You tensed at the title and the archangel definitely noticed – his smirk widened and he tilted his head cockily.

Dean rebelliously glared at the angel, the entity that embodied the polar opposite of you. “Arch-douche, more like.”

“So we have another demon pal now?” Gabriel crossed his arms, feigning amusement to cover up what you suspected was suspicion. “I say, why not? It went great the first time, didn’t it, Sambo?”

You recoiled at the mere reference to Ruby. “Oh, please,” you spat, disgusted. “I’m not that insane mega-bitch. Letting out an archangel to play? Teaching a hunter a better way to kill us? I may be a demon, but at least I’m sane.” To bother Dean and try not to seem so intimidated, you looked at the older brother and winked. “Relatively speaking, at least.”

Gabriel observed you critically for a second, then announced, “Anyone who Dean-o fantasizes about stabbing is a pal of mine. Until they try to take my strawberry syrup, in which case, they die.” The glint in his eyes was handsome and attractive in the way that you liked shiny jewelry, but you knew better than to take it at face value.

So you didn’t. “I wouldn’t want to cross an archangel. Like I said.” You tapped your head. “Sane.”

So… about your sanity? You clearly didn’t have it, because a few months later, your best friends were a hunter who used to kill demons (like you) and drink their blood and an archangel who could literally smite you into complete and utter nothingness without breaking a sweat. You reviewed your priorities a few times over the year and this was the time when you realized that you, like everyone else in the crazily messed up world of fighting the supernatural, must’ve lost your mind at some point. It just didn’t matter very much, though, because it didn’t stop you from hanging out with who you liked.

Gabriel had become someone whom you shared popcorn with. And candy, when he snapped it up, but usually you had popcorn with extra melted butter on top. You had a little saucer cup of melted butter, like seafood restaurants served with lobster platters, and you kept dipping your popcorn into it. It was a lot of butter, and you probably would’ve stopped by now if it didn’t bother Sam so much. He looked disgusted.

“What about a witch?” Sam suggested. Dean sent him a dirty glower for even suggesting his least favorite opponents.

“Nah,” you answered before putting another piece of popcorn in your mouth. “I’d have sensed if there were another demon around to power witchcraft.”

Gabriel took the bowl of popcorn away from between the two of you and put it on the other side of his lap. “But I would’ve sensed it first,” he established, taking a piece of popcorn and aiming for Dean’s head.

“How could you sense anything when you’re so busy being smothered in your own ego?” You retorted, teleporting swiftly to his other side to steal the popcorn back. If he really wanted you not to have it, you knew you wouldn’t, but you still felt like your victory had a little bit of meaning to it.

“Shtriga, then. Something that doesn’t rely on a demon to get its magic power?” Dean chucked a TV remote at Gabriel, who just caught it before it hit his head and handed it to you. You flipped the channel to something more interesting than that stupid, stupid hospital drama Dean liked. The hunter turned the TV off with the controls at the bottom and continued his thought. “Is there a record of this happening before in this state?”

“Not that I’ve found in the public records or on the Internet,” Sam reported, “Except for something seventy miles away, forty years ago, that doesn’t even match the MO.” He sulked.

“Ugh, you two are slow.” Gabriel complained, wrinkling his nose. “How long have you been in this fleabag roach trap? Three days? Four?”

“Four,” you confirmed, sticking your tongue out at Dean.

“Please don’t tell me you’ve been staying here, too.” Gabriel gave you a look and shifted over as if staying in the hotel had transferred its filth to you.

“Oh, please, I’d rather spend the night in a Chicago bus station.”

Gabriel snickered. Dean crossed his arms. “Hey, Thing One and Thing Two, can you stop being so high-and-mighty? We can’t teleport, jerkfaces.”

You and Gabriel shared a look with each other and shook your heads. “We can’t stop,” you answered, and Gabriel elaborated with plenty of snark that your feet were glued to your figurative pedestals… kind of like his and Sam’s had been in the Japanese gameshow. Both of you snickered and exchanged a fist-bump.

Fight scenes always look so much cooler on TV than they actually are in person. In reality, they move too quickly to follow along with what everyone’s doing. In TV, the audience sees a shot of one character throwing a punch, and the other dodging a kick, and it’s assumed that they’re happening at the same time. In the real world, things don’t move that slowly, and you can’t figure out, Sam’s over here and he needs help, but also I need to be right here and move my arm in this way to avoid being stabbed in the face.

Being a demon definitely had some advantages, though, and in a big fight like the one you were in, you enjoyed using them. A nest of vampires had started terrorizing a small, rural town that didn’t have enough police to figure out what to do, much less actually take them on, so that was where you, the Winchesters, and Gabriel came in. The angel said he was just bored, but you weren’t sure he wasn’t trying to make sure Dean and Sam didn’t die. He’d promised Castiel they’d be fine, and although Gabriel could easily resurrect them or heal any serious injuries, he’d have to deal with his brother’s disapproving stares if anything got that far.

You turned around on your heel, slammed the toe of your boot into a vamp’s shin, and grabbed his wrist over your head to push his arm away from you. The knife went to the side and the vampire twisted, turning and falling, and you lifted your knee up to slam him in the chest on his way down. You barely turned around before you raised a hand furiously, and another vampire went flying telekinetically into a wall, crashed through the sheetrock, and fell into the room on the other side.

The one you’d kicked and kneed was already getting up again. You rolled your sleeves up and flipped around the big hunting knife you had gracefully confiscated.

The fight was only a couple of more minutes, and you ended up taking out twice as many vampires as the human hunters had. It may have helped that you were able to use your powers to keep them held in one place while you picked them off. After you stopped hearing growling from the overgrown mutts, you dropped the knife and wiped your hands off on your jeans.

“Sammy!” Dean yelled from somewhere else in the house. It was a very old property, and in some places the floor was caving, but it was also a large property and the vampires had managed to split your group up.

Sam’s response let Dean relax. “I’m good!”

Neither of them asked about you or Gabriel. You turned back to the archangel, who had been idly standing by the doorway and watching with boredom. The first several times he had done this, you’d been irritated. Then you’d realized that he was an archangel, and if he joined the fight, then everyone else would be a moot point. Sam and Dean felt useful when they killed the monsters, so Gabriel let them, just like a parent would let their kids do something so they’d feel accomplished, even though an adult could’ve done it much faster.

You raised an arm to point before you said anything. “Behind-!”

The vampire lunging for the blond’s throat was halted when Gabriel gave you a knowing smirk. He snapped his fingers and the vampire seized. Its eyes glowed golden and orange, like it was burning from the inside out, and the remains crumbled to dust on the floor.

Not even you could do something like that. You’d known he was powerful, but… damn. This was the first time you’d seen him exercise that, and the destruction he’d caused without so much as blinking had you vanishing from the hunting party before anyone saw the shiver that went up your back. Now you fully understood what it meant when you called him an archangel.

Knowing what Gabriel was had always been on the back of your mind, but having it shoved in your face the way Gabe had once shoved a banana cream pie in Dean’s was like getting doused in very, very cold holy water. Every time you saw the Winchesters and Gabriel after that became more stressful.

One day, you were touching up your vessel’s lipstick (there’s no harm in enjoying looking pretty) but then Gabriel teased you about how you were already plenty noticeable already. You knew he hadn’t been trying to make a mean comment because Gabriel was many things but subtle wasn’t one of them. That didn’t stop you from suddenly, uncomfortably realizing that Gabriel didn’t just see your vessel – he saw the real you, too. The one inhabiting the vessel, the twisted, demonic “soul” inside.

You stopped and put your lipstick away slowly. You didn’t like the idea that Gabriel saw what you really were. It was easier with humans. Sam and Dean couldn’t see how ugly and warped you had become at Hell’s hands. They just saw the body you had picked up for a ride. No matter how you manipulated that body, with clothes or bright red lipstick or heels you could literally kill with, Gabriel was always going to see the twisted blackness within you.

It was hard to feel confident, knowing what you knew and feeling about yourself the way that you did. You couldn’t respond to his teasing. You couldn’t reply seriously, because that would give way too much information, and you couldn’t reply in jest, because it wasn’t something you could take lightly.

You’d been flirting with the archangel regularly, but now you were speechless; not because he’d won, but because you finally realized you had no business doing it, and you threw in the towel.

The Winchesters were aggravating, especially Dean. Where Sam could accept being wrong, Dean would scarcely admit to fault, or to blame, or to being incorrect – and he still had yet to apologize for stabbing you (twice). The last thing you ever wanted to do was play into Dean’s insufferable ego. You would never live it down. And you didn’t want to validate his poor manners – even Crowley had better manners than Dean, for Hell’s sake. You were ninety percent sure Lucifer had had better manners than Dean (when he wasn’t snapping his fingers and making people explode, at least).

The point was that you were never going to tell Dean that he had been just a little bit right when he’d said that going in alone was a bad idea, and that maybe you should’ve sat this one out. You’d thought he was just being his normal cocky self and liked the idea of getting rid of you for a while, but he had a point, you reflected, while you were pinned to the wall by your vessel’s throat and what felt like a brick wall of angelic Grace. Angels would hesitate to kill the Winchesters, but they would love the chance to kill a demon and they wouldn’t think twice.

It was kind of pathetic. You could survive Team Free Will for months on end, but not this stupid little cherub with a baby face and a literal child’s body. Even you thought that was skeevy. If it were a demon, fine. Demons are awful, blah, blah, blah. Angels, though, get consent first, and manipulating a kid into throwing their life away went against everything angels wanted humans to think about them, and that was a particular kind of disgusting.

The little Hispanic girl (twelve at most) raised the hand that wasn’t trying to crush your larynx. “It’s been a long time since I got to do this,” she rasped, and maybe some of Dean’s gallows humor was actually rubbing off on you, because such a grave sentence coming from such a non-imposing little brat almost made you laugh.

The force of Grace that had been holding you in place was suddenly lifted. You cherished the look of shock and sudden fear on the angel’s face in the split second it took you to disappear from under their hand and transport yourself halfway across the room, well out of throat-grabbing distance. The powerless angel looked up as the lights flickered and blew, sparks raining down on both of you.

While the angel looked terrified by the much stronger power flooding the building, you were somewhat comforted. You recognized it, and you knew you were safe with it. The other angel being so horribly undermined suggested something different where she was concerned.

The little angel’s eyes widened as she looked back at you, and then over your shoulder. You stepped aside to make a clear path between her and Gabriel, and the archangel stepped forward like a lion on the prowl. You were kind of smug.

“What did you do?” He demanded, sounding contemptuous and furious in that calm, quiet way that could make even a god shake in their boots. “Heal her mother if she gave her consent? Feed into the protective angel bullcrap?” Gabriel sneered and flicked his hand. The angel opened her mouth and raised a hand to her chest, struggling to breathe. You watched with interest, knowing that an archangel’s rage was something very few beings would ever live to tell about.

The angel fell to her knees and the hem of the girl’s cutesy sundress got dirty. Her eyes glowed a bright, bright, pale blue that made you flinch and move further back. You hadn’t known angels could be exorcised out of their vessels, but that was what seemed to be happening. To protect yourself from the Grace, you shielded your eyes, but despite the bright flash that followed as the angel was banished up to Heaven, you never felt an explosion of heat or holy power. Gabriel protecting you, you figured.

“What about the kid?” You asked when the light had faded and the child laid limply on the ground. Crossing your arms, you tried not to acknowledge that you’d developed what seemed to be a moral compass since you started running with the Winchesters. “Did it kill her?”

Gabriel stared down at the girl for a second, then shook his head. “She’ll be fine. I’ll take her home.”

After another moment of silence, you rubbed your neck and realized you owed him some gratitude. You’d been bacon for a few minutes there. You were a strong demon, but angels were just stronger. There was a reason they were fearsome. “Thank you.”

“Ah, well.” Gabriel held up a hand and gamely snapped his fingers. The body of the child disappeared and you guessed that when she woke up, she’d be in her bed at home, or maybe in a hospital with memory loss if he didn’t feel like tampering with the parents’ heads. “Next time someone tries to exorcise my girlfriend, they won’t get so lucky.”

Girlfriend? You took a quick, startled look around, but you were still the only one there. An archangel had just called you his girlfriend. That had to be wrong, on so many levels. Even at Gabriel’s worst, he was still an archangel, delivering justice with the full might of heavenly wrath. You were just a demon. A sick, twisted soul, who died in the Great War and let yourself be corrupted by monsters in the hundred years since.

You couldn’t be the girlfriend of an archangel. You were hardly a suitable girlfriend for anyone. Your feelings hurt and your head spinning, you were out of there before you even made the choice to leave. It was always primal with demons, or so Dean said – everything about fight or flight, personal gain, bloodlust. Well, for you, your best option was flight.

You should’ve known that there wasn’t really anywhere for you to hide, not if he really wanted to find you. It seemed like he did. He gave you about an hour to yourself and then, bam, he was up in your space, invading the quiet privacy of a peaceful cabin you’d found in the Colorado mountains. It was just so… unlike Hell. Regardless of where demons came from, Hell was hell, and there’s a reason demons are always trying to escape.

Gabriel stood behind your reclining chair while you stared at the fire burning in the hearth. The flames crackled and it reminded you of the kind of violent power that demons had. That you had. Angels were more like water. They could be incredibly destructive, but water also allowed for life in a way that fire didn’t. Just like fire and water, you were very, very aware that getting too close to the angel could hurt you, and maybe even extinguish you completely. Just because your soul was a repulsive husk of a human’s didn’t mean that you didn’t want to protect yourself. You shrank back at the idea of losing everything.

“I take it that was a breakup,” he eventually said, his voice cool and composed. “Suppose it’s better than getting a drink thrown in my face.”

“We weren’t together,” you mumbled, looking down at your hands. You liked your vessel’s hands. They were a good way of avoiding looking at people when you didn’t want to.

“I thought we had something. Was I wrong?”

You almost wanted to nod, but you had felt it. You had felt the potential. There was potential to have something, to become something good, but it was scary, and it was wrong, and things that were scary didn’t usually last very long. Especially not in the world of monsters and hunters.

“We couldn’t,” you responsibly tried to reason. The voice that came out of your mouth was quiet and soft-spoken, barely recognizable to you as your own. “We would never last. We’re not even the same species.” You snorted. If you were baring all, then hey, go big or go home. “Nowhere near the same league.”

Gabriel moved forward and stood beside your chair. He looked down at you. “This is because you’re a demon?” His tone was indignant and exasperated, and that was the last thing you had expected. You looked up quickly to his irritated face. “I’d kinda noticed. The fact that you’re hellspawn doesn’t matter to me, obviously, you stupid idiot.”

Huffily, you narrowed your eyes. “Oh, thanks. I feel so much better now that I’ve been insulted.” Your sarcasm dripped from your words thickly.

“What’s the point in judging by angel or demon, anyway?” He continued, starting to rant impatiently. “Half the angels have forgotten that we’re supposed to be the good guys and just kill whenever they feel like. There are demons now who are more trustworthy than angels. You’re a better person than hundreds of my brothers and sisters! Times change, people change, the status quo always changes, even in Heaven, and you want to act like everything is still in black and white? Haven’t you learned anything from this apocalypse?”

Interrupting him took courage when he was this upset, but you did it anyway and trusted that if he actually cared about you, you would be safe. “I’m better than angels?” You asked skeptically, snorting. You found that extremely difficult to believe, what with how horrific you knew you must look beneath your vessel.

Gabriel’s spiel was broken. He put one of his hands over yours on the arm of the couch and got on his knees, looking up to you intensely. “You’re not any lesser because of what you are. You didn’t do this to yourself. It was done to you. You don’t let it define you. You may be hellish, but you’re a hellish angel to me, and I mean that in the way the humans use it, not in the way that we know it to be.”

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