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impertinences) wrote2021-02-15 05:43 pm
impertinences) wrote2021-02-15 05:43 pm
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This is a thank you to my dearest of dears, daintiestmartyr, who made me one of the best gifts I have ever received: a character-themed personalized calendar. Since she gave me 12 character-themed months, I am doing the same! … Except with writing rather than visuals since I have all the artistic skills of an undertaker.
I've been having a bit of trouble with my writing, probably because I haven't been keeping up with it as well as I should, so I tried to focus these as shorts and go off of the idea of focusing on a moment rather than having each short tell an actual full narrative. So! That's the idea.
Part One! 6 more to follow (eventually).
Part One:
1.
Augusta calls the summit home a woodshed ironically. It’s not a compound or a military base, so it is more humble in terms of sheer size, but the cabin is built into the mountain terrain—the southern side is hidden within the very walls of the mountain as though some gigantic steel monster had taken bites out of the earth and left a cavernous gap, while the northern side is nothing but sheets of tempered glass to catch the rising sun and make most of its warmth. It isn’t really a cabin but some long forgotten property of Maximus’ that Augusuta had found the deed for before her marriage to Baldric and had managed to include in her dowry (since all of Maximus’ children had a set price). It is the only property she can now truly call her own and because it gives her such freedom, to add to the irony, she is rarely able to occupy it. Albtraum, or Harrow, requires too much managing while her role as Minister of Propaganda keeps her unendingly busy with trips to compounds throughout the entire Eastern seaboard, and the journey to the coast from the summit is treacherous, requiring too much valuable time to traverse the unclaimed desert wastelands.
Still, when she can, she retreats into this hidden lair, and Radomir watches the way her many selves seem to sluff off of her the moment they enter. Each of her personas collect, like carcasses, at her feet until she is maskless and true. It is not a subtle transformation but immediate, as though one footstep through the frozen security gate and the steel security door breaks her cocoon. Augusta sweeps a hand across the back of his neck more gently, her blunt nails lingering behind the sensitive curve of his ear, and she sighs a relief before shaking the snow from her hair, her coat, her gloves.
The home is not divided into rooms but one mass open floor plan with a large central hearth capable of churning enough fire to warm the entire space. Radomir makes a fire without being asked, just as he checks the security footage and replenishes their stores without needing command; he is single-handedly the bodyguard, the butler, and the cook. He considers it a privilege.
Augusta showers, staying under the heat for a long time, until the chill has left her bones. She dresses in a man’s burgundy sweater, the long sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and fleece-lined sweatpants best suited for the weather. It is the most casual he ever sees her, unless she’s wearing nothing, which she rarely does at the summit on account of the cold climate. Radomir watches as she brushes her dark, damp hair free of tangles in long steady strokes before she collects it all into a braid with deft fingers. He waits until she’s drinking a glass of whiskey in front of the fire, her eyes heavy with tiredness, discarded government pamphlets near her feet, to ask.
“I’d like to do a sweep of the perimeter.” He’s careful not to actually pose a question; Augusta likes strength, confidence, even in language.
She doesn’t look at him. “You checked the security footage, yes? Is there a concern?”
“No.”
When Augusta looks at him, her eyes are amber in the firelight, similar to his creature’s. She thinks for a moment and then her thin mouth twists. He can’t tell if she’s smiling or scowling.
“Tired of this skin already?”
“I can wait.”
She flicks her free hand, the one not cupping the whiskey, dismissively and turns her gaze back to the fire. He’s already at the door when she tells him to wait, her voice as ice-cold as the winter winds whipping against the glass walls.
“I want to watch.”
It isn’t a question.
She’s human and, as such, her senses will never be as keen as his, but she can feel the electricity in the air all the same. Faintly, she thinks she can smell it too, a smell of thunder and storm and sand, but something beyond that, deeper, something musky, the distinct scent of beasts.
Radomir is a hulking brute of a man. His hands are large enough to span her waist, and she’s seen him crush skulls with those same hands in the fighting pits. He is packed muscle, his height and width as imposing as the mountains this home is carved from. If he’s uncomfortable or undone by her request, he does not show it. His movements are calm, deliberate, and he keeps his eyes on her as though he’s reading her face for any detection of displeasure or disappointment, however miniscule. Reaching behind him, he hooks his shirt by the collar then pulls it off, tossing it to his feet. Kicks off his military-grade hiking boots. Undoes his pants, a little slower when he imagines she smirks and flicks her eyes, however fleetingly, towards his crotch. He steps out of his pants, unabashed in his nakedness, and the fiend inside of him rakes, scratching at his skin, teeth bared.
Augusta thinks the transformation looks painful. She’s seen it before, but she sucks in a small breath of surprise all the same. It’s as though his bones break and mold anew beneath his skin but that too is shifting, changing, replaced by golden hair, no, not hair, fur and his two legs become four, his nails thickening, sharpening into claws. His eyes become amber feline shapes while his tail curls, long and full, behind him. The mountain lion sits where the man had previously stood, the discarded clothing by its massive paws looking almost comically small now.
When she makes a noise, some small, unintelligible response from the back of her throat, he cannot decipher if Augusta is proud or repulsed or both. He slinks closer, distinctly aware of her lack of fear, and pushes his white muzzle against her fingertips.
2.
“What are you thinking about?” Luke asks.
Haven briefly lifts her eyes from the glossy magazine pages she has not been reading. She’s folded into a wide, cracked leather armchair, her long legs dangling like a child’s over the side, her ankles crossed one over the other. Luke notices how brightly painted her toenails are, the pink reminiscent of bubblegum and babydolls. Since it’s Sunday and neither of them are bound to the estate or their respective cons, she’s in her trademark denim shorts, the ends frayed and cut and clinging to her thighs so tightly that he assumes they must chafe. Above that, Haven’s wearing one of his old Nirvana t-shirts, the sleeves rolled up an inch as though she’s waiting to tuck a pack of Marlboros under the fabric. She isn’t wearing any makeup. He hasn’t seen her so fresh-faced and natural in weeks.
“Nothing,” Haven lies and turns one of the pages of Cosmopolitan. It’s the first time she’s turned a page in ten minutes.
Luke rubs his knuckles across his jaw, eyebrow flicking up.
She can feel him continuing to watch her, so she uncrosses her ankles, keeps her feet a few inches apart to let his gaze appreciate the path up her calves and higher, till the curve of the armchair and fold of her legs block the view. She turns another page.
“And yet you seem so far away,” Luke says, not quite a grumble, and a little bemused.
“You don’t get access to everything going on up here.” Haven taps her temple with a nail as pink as the color on her toes.
“Since when?”
She shrugs, and Luke notices the way her shoulder jerks with tension. Haven’s always sharp in her movements when annoyed. She tosses her hair back, off of her shoulders, and curls deeper into the armchair. She crosses her ankles again.
“Is it David?” he says the name more loudly than he had intended.
“Is it David?” she mocks, her voice going nasal and obnoxious in pitch, her petulance making Luke’s own annoyance pinch suddenly between his eyes.
“Okay.” Luke rolls his eyes and grabs the remote for the TV. He uses his thumb to punch the down button, scrolling mindlessly through the daytime programs.
“I don’t ask you about .... what’s her name? The wife? Rowena?”
“Because there’s nothing to tell. Yet.”
“It’s not my fault she moves like a snail. Or, I don’t know, the recluse that she is.”
Luke ignores the statement. “This was your idea, remember?”
“Sure, but I’m still allowed my privacy.” Haven closes the magazine and tosses it onto the dingy coffee table between them with a flurry of pages.
“You like him.”
It’s Haven’s turn to roll her eyes. She swings her legs down from the chair and faces her brother more directly, her elbows on her knees in a mild imitation of their father’s favorite confrontational stance. “No, but I understand him.”
Luke doesn’t say anything. He’s learned over the years that silence more often than not will weigh her down. She’ll buckle under its pressure as though her golden shoulders are incapable of upholding anything other than her own pretense.
“Fine,” she admits after a few moments. “I like him. He’s handsome and funny and richer than God. I like him. Sometimes. Happy?”
“You can like him,” he tells her, as though she needs his permission, as though he’s unbothered by her confession. “But I still want to know what you were thinking about. What you’ve been daydreaming about all morning.”
Haven bites her lip, a quick, childish nervousness washing over her face before she sighs and leans back into the chair. The sharpness has left her body. She’s feigning calm but her hands flutter, uncertain how to be still, before eventually resting on the tops of her thighs. She fingers the hem of his t-shirt and looks away towards the wall of windows where the brightness of the sun makes her squint.
Finally, she says, “I was thinking about fucking him, about how he fucked me. Bent me over the kitchen counter after kicking my ankles open and didn’t even bother with a condom. I could feel him dripping out of me the rest of the night. When I came home, I took a shower, and then you went down on me and I don’t know which makes me wetter—him not knowing about you or you not knowing about him.”
When Haven grins, it’s full of teeth, like a crocodile, and Luke feels the old familiar twist of lust and shame low in his groin.
3.
“Should we be worried about this?” Sunniva asks, lifting her eyebrows in Eda’s direction.
Eda is barefoot, curled on the edge of the wading pool, her gossamer pink dress damp and the same shade as her visible nipples. Mac sits besides her, his feet also bare, a hand on her thigh as they whisper softly together. They are happy; there is an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about them, a conspiratorial quality that deepens when Mac brushes a wet lock of hair from Eda’s cheek.
Palmer leans against one of the marble columns opposite the wading pool, Sunniva near his left as they survey the couple. He shrugs, his mouth curving into an arrogant grin. “How much competition do you think that boy is? We’re still her favorites. Well, I’m her favorite, you’re the runner-up.”
Sunniva’s face is blank. She doesn’t reward him with a smirk or an eye-roll or even a clipped tone. “I’m not jealous although I’m glad your perception is still as dim as ever. You know who that boy is.”
“We’re out of reach of Vries territory. They can’t clamor down here and start rounding our employees up. Or you, for that matter, Sunshine. It’s-”
“Against the law? There is no law. We’ve survived so far because we’re too far away for them to be convenient.”
“And yet, the fox is in the chickencoop.”
Sunniva’s response is interrupted by Eda’s bright, shimmering laughter. She makes a mental note to remind the girl not to feign such adoration so easily, to prolong the moment, to let the client long for such unveiled displays of earnestness. Then she realizes that Eda’s response is candid, genuine, and she feels a slight twist of nausea in her stomach.
She tilts her eyes up at Palmer and sees that he’s noticed too. “What were you saying about favorites again?”
4.
Roman’s hands are in her hair, cold and smooth, sending shivers up her neck. Lene feels uncharacteristically flustered, the blood beneath her skin ripening on the vine, but she turns her face into the crook of his shoulder and fists his shirt in the center of his chest as an attempt to both press herself closer and simultaneously pull him nearer. The animal inside of her is giddy; if it could yip, she thinks it would be. She’s vaguely annoyed by this turn of events, by her own unbridled, irrational lust and the possibility of—she cuts the thought off before she can travel any further down that path, choosing willful ignorance in the heat of the moment.
How long has it been now? Three days? Two weeks? A month? Sometimes she gets so feverish so can’t remember before. Before his teeth and her blood, before she had ever heard his name or seen his smug face, before she knew of the Compound and the Insurgence and secret plots. It would bother her more than it already does if he wasn’t so compliant, so easily ready, so obviously wanting too.
Lene wonders if this is what a blood craze must feel like, a hazy, hungry ache that makes her mind unable to focus on anything else, and if as on cue, Roman pulls her neck back by a fistful of her blonde hair and drags the tips of his fangs across her neck with careful, teasing precision.
She bites back the whimper that tries to struggle past her teeth and forces herself to still, willing herself to be as stubborn as stone. She thinks about trying to explain to Anders how something so unnatural, something that had disgusted her before, is now something she craves. The thought makes her chest knot with shreds of shame like the beast inside of her is embarrassed to so revel in her own vulnerability.
He doesn’t bite and she swallows her disappointment. Lene feels the scratch of his beard against her collarbone and then the press of his mouth, faint as a ghost. He releases her hair and cradles the small of her back in his hands, letting her bow up against him so that he can nudge the underside of her jaw with his nose and lick the salt from her skin. His right hand crawls around to her front, circling her hip, rubbing the fabric of the ridiculously feminine dress Arletta had insisted she wear to the evening’s dinner, before tugging it up in an imitation of how she’d fisted his shirt. When he traces his fingers between her legs, Roman can feel how wet she is.
In the next room, there’s a clatter of excitement. Arletta squawks in a laugh that Harrow responds to with a snigger. His sister, Augusta, murmurs something that even Roman’s preternatural ears cannot decipher. There’s the shivering sound of shifting bodies within the adjacent room, and Roman steps away from Lene so quickly that she’s left feeling exposed despite being in the shadows, her hand hovering in the air where Roman’s chest had been.
Roman swipes his cold fingers back through his oak-colored hair, smoothing the strands to respectability, then rubs his shadowed jaw. He flashes a shark grin to greet Radomir as the Minister’s bodyguard turns the corner. Roman’s grin is the exact style of Harrow’s, a wide-mouth stretch full of teeth, like a predator gleaning at its prey. Lene’s face dissolves into a blank mask, as perfect and vapid as a china doll, and she presses herself tight against the wall.
Radomir, more out of a place in a suit than Lene is in a lace dress, runs his eyes from Roman to Lene. He finds her in the shadows without effort, but he doesn’t let his gaze linger as Roman is already heaving a theatrical sigh while reaching for the fresh bottle of bourbon haphazardly sitting out of place on the narrow table lining the hallway.
“They’re asking for that,” Radomir says, his voice low and deep, like muddy river rocks. He gestures with his head towards the bottle.
“Sorry. I was sidetracked by other delights. Can’t blame a man, can you?”
Roman leaves them in the fog of his departing smug laughter, unphased, moving around the massive man in front of him without a hint of fear. From where the party is eating, Lene can hear Roman slap Harrow on the back, but the joke he must say is muffled by Arletta asking for her. Radomir, ever the sentry, does not move but he glances thoughtfully around the hallway before pointedly stopping his gaze at Lene.
She clears her throat and runs a hand down her dress, smoothing imperceptible creases, before leveling her eyes to his. They don’t speak, but Radomir gives her the tiniest of nods, allowing her permission to leave.
Stupid, she thinks, admonishing herself as she sidles past and wills her heart to stop its hammering. When she enters, the small party inside is rosy-cheeked from the alcohol and oblivious to the atrocities happening all around them—in the kennels, in the arena, in the labs, even here, in the humans’ personal quarters, where they do damage to themselves and trade gossip like secrets to be bought and ransomed.
Next to Harrow, Roman is camouflaged in plain sight, his easy demeanor and casual camaraderie burying the ruthless predator he is. Not an animal, Lene thinks, coming to stand behind Arletta rather than sit at the table where she and her kind are not welcome. He is unlike all others, as she is with her own kind. In this, they are well-matched.
5.
After the fall, when the desert seems a landscape of opportunity, when Chason is no longer bound to his treacherous pack, they are lovers set adrift. They wander, aimless, and scarred.
He makes a fire outside of an abandoned, derelict house while Ita picks through the rubble. She comes back with an armful of musty bedding and together they pull an old couch to the edge of the fire then layer the blankets atop. Neither seem bothered by the smell, but they’re grateful for the warmth and each other.
“What do you think will happen?” Ita asks and tucks closer to his side. He’s thinner than she remembers, and they’re both blistered and rubbed raw from the sun and miles of travel. She breathes him in greedily, hungry for the closeness after the last tortuous year.
“Who cares?” He has a bitter angry tone to his voice, a sharp cackling quality she’s grown accustomed to, and she smooths a hand behind his neck to stroke his black hair and quiet the scavenger inside of him. Her thumb traces an old whip mark that tucks behind his dirty shirt collar. Chason has lines and scars and burns peppering his body beneath his clothes, and she knows he’s still fighting off the last remnants of the cocktails the doctors at the compound pumped into him regularly. His eyes aren’t as bright as they used to be and this, probably more so than anything else, saddens her.
After a moment of silence, he shrugs a shoulder, suddenly less irritable. “I bet the sister, the minister, she’ll take it all. Wear the crown and get all the adoration.”
Thoughtfully, Ita shakes her head. “I don’t think she wants adoration.”
“No? Isn’t that what everyone who has ever ruled wants?”
“I think she wants fear. To be feared. Harrow wanted that but he was small-minded … She’s ambitious. That should be terrifying enough.”
Chason’s mouth curls into a sloping grin and, seeing it, Ita pushes his hair away from his face so she can better gauge his expression. “Somewhere along the way, I’ve forgotten how to be horrified.”
“I haven’t,” she says quietly.
Chason chews on the side of his thumb nail and grunts, not unkindly, but he does not look at her. “I’m not a good man. Not really.”
Ita makes a noise, some kind of disapproving, disagreeing titter, but Chason continues speaking. “It’s okay. I’m not the worst there is, I know that. I think that’s my point actually.”
“You’re neither good nor bad?” Her pale brows push together, partially with amusement and partially with confusion.
“I’m better than him, I mean. I’ll always be better than him. Them. I won’t scare you.”
Ita’s smile is bright even though her lips are chapped. She shivers despite the fire and he pulls her into his lap. He holds her thin waist and kisses, slow, like he’s trying to drink her.
“I’ve missed you,” she tells him against the shape of his mouth, and he knows she’s blushing, the pretty quartz pink of a more innocent girl.
6.
“I cannot care for you again,” Abigail whispers, her soft voice shattering like glass, as Gerhard grabs a fistful of her sheer nightgown. She’s hiding the ivory lace beneath a bejeweled fur-lined cloak the color of twilight. It’s another gift from Renan and something Abigail would have adored in its beauty if only it had come from the younger Prince instead of the King.
Gerhard’s mouth is a twisted scar of pain. He looks as though he wants to laugh and cry at once. There’s still a flush of color on him from the evening’s wine and the many cups he’d had after. He is not a drinker, but he’s been wearing his pain so openly these past few weeks and few other than his sister Polina dare to remark about his uncanny thirst.
“As you cared once?” he asks. He means it to be a mockery but instead it comes out plaintive.
“That’s where you must leave it,” she murmurs, closing her eyes to the sting of tears.
It’s the wrong action. He ought to feel relieved that she had confessed her love and said it was gone. He should be glad that she had dismissed him, that she would no longer favor him now that the King himself had plucked her, like a rose, for his own enjoyment. He should, too, know that this move of hers, this strategic leap of upward mobility, was never Abigail’s game but her family’s. A woman like Abigail could not complain of the desires of the whims of the King, but Gerhard resents her some all the same.
“Better that I never saw you.”
“Don’t say that. I can’t endure that.” She’s crying now, softly, her hands in her face as he pulls again at her pretty shift and catches the hem of her robe. “He’s expecting me,” she protests, not quite urgently enough, her hands like broken-winged doves when he moves them away from her tear-stained face.
“I doubt it,” Gerhard murmurs, pressing his mouth to her upturned cheeks, kissing the salt from her skin. “This isn’t about you.”
“What?” she asks, confused even in her dismay. She can smell the drink on him. She can feel his pulse skip beneath his unbuttoned collar when her small fingers touch his throat.
“I don’t know,” he murmurs again, tilting her chin up, kissing her trembling mouth because he’s desperate for the familiar tangerine taste of her, for the citrus smell of her body once they’d used one another until fulfillment. Her her her. The only thing he’d ever had as his own, untouched and untarnished by his brother’s claim, until now. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”
She makes a whimpering noise that he’s always loved, and Gerhard pushes her back against the stone wall, their bodies draped in darkness as he fumbles with the opening of his breeches. She’s already looping her arms around his neck, leveraging her meager weight against him, until his hands find the backs of her thighs and the robe slips half-off her shoulders, caught between her back and the wall. When he enters her, she bites down on his shoulder, stifling a cry.
It will be the last time he has her, this drunken, clandestine moment of fervidity.
It will be the last time he has her, until it isn’t.
Renan cannot sleep. He turns around and around on the smooth linen sheets of his luxurious bed, getting more and more restless until the fever in his pulse heightens and the heat under his skin burns. The moon glows warmly, filtering in through the curtains, and he knows the hour is late. Too late.
He thinks of Abigail and her cherub’s mouth, how he likes the flash of her eyes beneath her eyelids and the absolute rigidity of her spine when she dips into a curtsey. Then he thinks of Gerhard and the cut of his cheekbones as his body finds solid footing into manhood, the expressive, coltish eyes, and the squareness of his jaw freshly patched with new stubble. He is acutely aware of how heartbreak seems to agree with his brother, to heighten his good looks, and then Renan’s acutely aware of how little this bothers him. In fact, it does the opposite, and he feels a stroke of desire smolder inside of him.
He goes down to the private chapel barefoot, the hidden alcove meant only for the family’s unencumbered faith and prayer, and lays himself down on the cold stone before the unadorned altar. He does not take a position of penitence—feet together, facedown, arms spread, like a prone crucifixion—because he does not feel like a sinner and he has rarely believed in the superstition of religion, but he likes the solemn atmosphere of the chapel and the lack of prying eyes. He presses his large hands to the cold stone floor and when he imagines the curve of Abigail’s cheek against his palm, the image somehow melts, like a fever-dream, to Gerhard’s bright eyes again and the flush of his anguished face when he’d seen Abigail in the royal jewels and the blue of monarchy. Even with the cold, his cock is as hard as iron, and Renan feels his desire like a pain.
The next day, Gerhard avoids everyone until the evening dinner, where the hall is crowded with the usual courtiers and ladies. He sits beside Polina at the royal table and when he watches Renan clutch Abigail’s hand and press it to his knuckles, he has a sensation under his ribs that he knows must be his heart breaking.
daintiestmartyr, who made me one of the best gifts I have ever received: a character-themed personalized calendar. Since she gave me 12 character-themed months, I am doing the same! … Except with writing rather than visuals since I have all the artistic skills of an undertaker. I've been having a bit of trouble with my writing, probably because I haven't been keeping up with it as well as I should, so I tried to focus these as shorts and go off of the idea of focusing on a moment rather than having each short tell an actual full narrative. So! That's the idea.
Part One! 6 more to follow (eventually).
Part One:
1.
Augusta calls the summit home a woodshed ironically. It’s not a compound or a military base, so it is more humble in terms of sheer size, but the cabin is built into the mountain terrain—the southern side is hidden within the very walls of the mountain as though some gigantic steel monster had taken bites out of the earth and left a cavernous gap, while the northern side is nothing but sheets of tempered glass to catch the rising sun and make most of its warmth. It isn’t really a cabin but some long forgotten property of Maximus’ that Augusuta had found the deed for before her marriage to Baldric and had managed to include in her dowry (since all of Maximus’ children had a set price). It is the only property she can now truly call her own and because it gives her such freedom, to add to the irony, she is rarely able to occupy it. Albtraum, or Harrow, requires too much managing while her role as Minister of Propaganda keeps her unendingly busy with trips to compounds throughout the entire Eastern seaboard, and the journey to the coast from the summit is treacherous, requiring too much valuable time to traverse the unclaimed desert wastelands.
Still, when she can, she retreats into this hidden lair, and Radomir watches the way her many selves seem to sluff off of her the moment they enter. Each of her personas collect, like carcasses, at her feet until she is maskless and true. It is not a subtle transformation but immediate, as though one footstep through the frozen security gate and the steel security door breaks her cocoon. Augusta sweeps a hand across the back of his neck more gently, her blunt nails lingering behind the sensitive curve of his ear, and she sighs a relief before shaking the snow from her hair, her coat, her gloves.
The home is not divided into rooms but one mass open floor plan with a large central hearth capable of churning enough fire to warm the entire space. Radomir makes a fire without being asked, just as he checks the security footage and replenishes their stores without needing command; he is single-handedly the bodyguard, the butler, and the cook. He considers it a privilege.
Augusta showers, staying under the heat for a long time, until the chill has left her bones. She dresses in a man’s burgundy sweater, the long sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and fleece-lined sweatpants best suited for the weather. It is the most casual he ever sees her, unless she’s wearing nothing, which she rarely does at the summit on account of the cold climate. Radomir watches as she brushes her dark, damp hair free of tangles in long steady strokes before she collects it all into a braid with deft fingers. He waits until she’s drinking a glass of whiskey in front of the fire, her eyes heavy with tiredness, discarded government pamphlets near her feet, to ask.
“I’d like to do a sweep of the perimeter.” He’s careful not to actually pose a question; Augusta likes strength, confidence, even in language.
She doesn’t look at him. “You checked the security footage, yes? Is there a concern?”
“No.”
When Augusta looks at him, her eyes are amber in the firelight, similar to his creature’s. She thinks for a moment and then her thin mouth twists. He can’t tell if she’s smiling or scowling.
“Tired of this skin already?”
“I can wait.”
She flicks her free hand, the one not cupping the whiskey, dismissively and turns her gaze back to the fire. He’s already at the door when she tells him to wait, her voice as ice-cold as the winter winds whipping against the glass walls.
“I want to watch.”
It isn’t a question.
She’s human and, as such, her senses will never be as keen as his, but she can feel the electricity in the air all the same. Faintly, she thinks she can smell it too, a smell of thunder and storm and sand, but something beyond that, deeper, something musky, the distinct scent of beasts.
Radomir is a hulking brute of a man. His hands are large enough to span her waist, and she’s seen him crush skulls with those same hands in the fighting pits. He is packed muscle, his height and width as imposing as the mountains this home is carved from. If he’s uncomfortable or undone by her request, he does not show it. His movements are calm, deliberate, and he keeps his eyes on her as though he’s reading her face for any detection of displeasure or disappointment, however miniscule. Reaching behind him, he hooks his shirt by the collar then pulls it off, tossing it to his feet. Kicks off his military-grade hiking boots. Undoes his pants, a little slower when he imagines she smirks and flicks her eyes, however fleetingly, towards his crotch. He steps out of his pants, unabashed in his nakedness, and the fiend inside of him rakes, scratching at his skin, teeth bared.
Augusta thinks the transformation looks painful. She’s seen it before, but she sucks in a small breath of surprise all the same. It’s as though his bones break and mold anew beneath his skin but that too is shifting, changing, replaced by golden hair, no, not hair, fur and his two legs become four, his nails thickening, sharpening into claws. His eyes become amber feline shapes while his tail curls, long and full, behind him. The mountain lion sits where the man had previously stood, the discarded clothing by its massive paws looking almost comically small now.
When she makes a noise, some small, unintelligible response from the back of her throat, he cannot decipher if Augusta is proud or repulsed or both. He slinks closer, distinctly aware of her lack of fear, and pushes his white muzzle against her fingertips.
2.
“What are you thinking about?” Luke asks.
Haven briefly lifts her eyes from the glossy magazine pages she has not been reading. She’s folded into a wide, cracked leather armchair, her long legs dangling like a child’s over the side, her ankles crossed one over the other. Luke notices how brightly painted her toenails are, the pink reminiscent of bubblegum and babydolls. Since it’s Sunday and neither of them are bound to the estate or their respective cons, she’s in her trademark denim shorts, the ends frayed and cut and clinging to her thighs so tightly that he assumes they must chafe. Above that, Haven’s wearing one of his old Nirvana t-shirts, the sleeves rolled up an inch as though she’s waiting to tuck a pack of Marlboros under the fabric. She isn’t wearing any makeup. He hasn’t seen her so fresh-faced and natural in weeks.
“Nothing,” Haven lies and turns one of the pages of Cosmopolitan. It’s the first time she’s turned a page in ten minutes.
Luke rubs his knuckles across his jaw, eyebrow flicking up.
She can feel him continuing to watch her, so she uncrosses her ankles, keeps her feet a few inches apart to let his gaze appreciate the path up her calves and higher, till the curve of the armchair and fold of her legs block the view. She turns another page.
“And yet you seem so far away,” Luke says, not quite a grumble, and a little bemused.
“You don’t get access to everything going on up here.” Haven taps her temple with a nail as pink as the color on her toes.
“Since when?”
She shrugs, and Luke notices the way her shoulder jerks with tension. Haven’s always sharp in her movements when annoyed. She tosses her hair back, off of her shoulders, and curls deeper into the armchair. She crosses her ankles again.
“Is it David?” he says the name more loudly than he had intended.
“Is it David?” she mocks, her voice going nasal and obnoxious in pitch, her petulance making Luke’s own annoyance pinch suddenly between his eyes.
“Okay.” Luke rolls his eyes and grabs the remote for the TV. He uses his thumb to punch the down button, scrolling mindlessly through the daytime programs.
“I don’t ask you about .... what’s her name? The wife? Rowena?”
“Because there’s nothing to tell. Yet.”
“It’s not my fault she moves like a snail. Or, I don’t know, the recluse that she is.”
Luke ignores the statement. “This was your idea, remember?”
“Sure, but I’m still allowed my privacy.” Haven closes the magazine and tosses it onto the dingy coffee table between them with a flurry of pages.
“You like him.”
It’s Haven’s turn to roll her eyes. She swings her legs down from the chair and faces her brother more directly, her elbows on her knees in a mild imitation of their father’s favorite confrontational stance. “No, but I understand him.”
Luke doesn’t say anything. He’s learned over the years that silence more often than not will weigh her down. She’ll buckle under its pressure as though her golden shoulders are incapable of upholding anything other than her own pretense.
“Fine,” she admits after a few moments. “I like him. He’s handsome and funny and richer than God. I like him. Sometimes. Happy?”
“You can like him,” he tells her, as though she needs his permission, as though he’s unbothered by her confession. “But I still want to know what you were thinking about. What you’ve been daydreaming about all morning.”
Haven bites her lip, a quick, childish nervousness washing over her face before she sighs and leans back into the chair. The sharpness has left her body. She’s feigning calm but her hands flutter, uncertain how to be still, before eventually resting on the tops of her thighs. She fingers the hem of his t-shirt and looks away towards the wall of windows where the brightness of the sun makes her squint.
Finally, she says, “I was thinking about fucking him, about how he fucked me. Bent me over the kitchen counter after kicking my ankles open and didn’t even bother with a condom. I could feel him dripping out of me the rest of the night. When I came home, I took a shower, and then you went down on me and I don’t know which makes me wetter—him not knowing about you or you not knowing about him.”
When Haven grins, it’s full of teeth, like a crocodile, and Luke feels the old familiar twist of lust and shame low in his groin.
3.
“Should we be worried about this?” Sunniva asks, lifting her eyebrows in Eda’s direction.
Eda is barefoot, curled on the edge of the wading pool, her gossamer pink dress damp and the same shade as her visible nipples. Mac sits besides her, his feet also bare, a hand on her thigh as they whisper softly together. They are happy; there is an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about them, a conspiratorial quality that deepens when Mac brushes a wet lock of hair from Eda’s cheek.
Palmer leans against one of the marble columns opposite the wading pool, Sunniva near his left as they survey the couple. He shrugs, his mouth curving into an arrogant grin. “How much competition do you think that boy is? We’re still her favorites. Well, I’m her favorite, you’re the runner-up.”
Sunniva’s face is blank. She doesn’t reward him with a smirk or an eye-roll or even a clipped tone. “I’m not jealous although I’m glad your perception is still as dim as ever. You know who that boy is.”
“We’re out of reach of Vries territory. They can’t clamor down here and start rounding our employees up. Or you, for that matter, Sunshine. It’s-”
“Against the law? There is no law. We’ve survived so far because we’re too far away for them to be convenient.”
“And yet, the fox is in the chickencoop.”
Sunniva’s response is interrupted by Eda’s bright, shimmering laughter. She makes a mental note to remind the girl not to feign such adoration so easily, to prolong the moment, to let the client long for such unveiled displays of earnestness. Then she realizes that Eda’s response is candid, genuine, and she feels a slight twist of nausea in her stomach.
She tilts her eyes up at Palmer and sees that he’s noticed too. “What were you saying about favorites again?”
4.
Roman’s hands are in her hair, cold and smooth, sending shivers up her neck. Lene feels uncharacteristically flustered, the blood beneath her skin ripening on the vine, but she turns her face into the crook of his shoulder and fists his shirt in the center of his chest as an attempt to both press herself closer and simultaneously pull him nearer. The animal inside of her is giddy; if it could yip, she thinks it would be. She’s vaguely annoyed by this turn of events, by her own unbridled, irrational lust and the possibility of—she cuts the thought off before she can travel any further down that path, choosing willful ignorance in the heat of the moment.
How long has it been now? Three days? Two weeks? A month? Sometimes she gets so feverish so can’t remember before. Before his teeth and her blood, before she had ever heard his name or seen his smug face, before she knew of the Compound and the Insurgence and secret plots. It would bother her more than it already does if he wasn’t so compliant, so easily ready, so obviously wanting too.
Lene wonders if this is what a blood craze must feel like, a hazy, hungry ache that makes her mind unable to focus on anything else, and if as on cue, Roman pulls her neck back by a fistful of her blonde hair and drags the tips of his fangs across her neck with careful, teasing precision.
She bites back the whimper that tries to struggle past her teeth and forces herself to still, willing herself to be as stubborn as stone. She thinks about trying to explain to Anders how something so unnatural, something that had disgusted her before, is now something she craves. The thought makes her chest knot with shreds of shame like the beast inside of her is embarrassed to so revel in her own vulnerability.
He doesn’t bite and she swallows her disappointment. Lene feels the scratch of his beard against her collarbone and then the press of his mouth, faint as a ghost. He releases her hair and cradles the small of her back in his hands, letting her bow up against him so that he can nudge the underside of her jaw with his nose and lick the salt from her skin. His right hand crawls around to her front, circling her hip, rubbing the fabric of the ridiculously feminine dress Arletta had insisted she wear to the evening’s dinner, before tugging it up in an imitation of how she’d fisted his shirt. When he traces his fingers between her legs, Roman can feel how wet she is.
In the next room, there’s a clatter of excitement. Arletta squawks in a laugh that Harrow responds to with a snigger. His sister, Augusta, murmurs something that even Roman’s preternatural ears cannot decipher. There’s the shivering sound of shifting bodies within the adjacent room, and Roman steps away from Lene so quickly that she’s left feeling exposed despite being in the shadows, her hand hovering in the air where Roman’s chest had been.
Roman swipes his cold fingers back through his oak-colored hair, smoothing the strands to respectability, then rubs his shadowed jaw. He flashes a shark grin to greet Radomir as the Minister’s bodyguard turns the corner. Roman’s grin is the exact style of Harrow’s, a wide-mouth stretch full of teeth, like a predator gleaning at its prey. Lene’s face dissolves into a blank mask, as perfect and vapid as a china doll, and she presses herself tight against the wall.
Radomir, more out of a place in a suit than Lene is in a lace dress, runs his eyes from Roman to Lene. He finds her in the shadows without effort, but he doesn’t let his gaze linger as Roman is already heaving a theatrical sigh while reaching for the fresh bottle of bourbon haphazardly sitting out of place on the narrow table lining the hallway.
“They’re asking for that,” Radomir says, his voice low and deep, like muddy river rocks. He gestures with his head towards the bottle.
“Sorry. I was sidetracked by other delights. Can’t blame a man, can you?”
Roman leaves them in the fog of his departing smug laughter, unphased, moving around the massive man in front of him without a hint of fear. From where the party is eating, Lene can hear Roman slap Harrow on the back, but the joke he must say is muffled by Arletta asking for her. Radomir, ever the sentry, does not move but he glances thoughtfully around the hallway before pointedly stopping his gaze at Lene.
She clears her throat and runs a hand down her dress, smoothing imperceptible creases, before leveling her eyes to his. They don’t speak, but Radomir gives her the tiniest of nods, allowing her permission to leave.
Stupid, she thinks, admonishing herself as she sidles past and wills her heart to stop its hammering. When she enters, the small party inside is rosy-cheeked from the alcohol and oblivious to the atrocities happening all around them—in the kennels, in the arena, in the labs, even here, in the humans’ personal quarters, where they do damage to themselves and trade gossip like secrets to be bought and ransomed.
Next to Harrow, Roman is camouflaged in plain sight, his easy demeanor and casual camaraderie burying the ruthless predator he is. Not an animal, Lene thinks, coming to stand behind Arletta rather than sit at the table where she and her kind are not welcome. He is unlike all others, as she is with her own kind. In this, they are well-matched.
5.
After the fall, when the desert seems a landscape of opportunity, when Chason is no longer bound to his treacherous pack, they are lovers set adrift. They wander, aimless, and scarred.
He makes a fire outside of an abandoned, derelict house while Ita picks through the rubble. She comes back with an armful of musty bedding and together they pull an old couch to the edge of the fire then layer the blankets atop. Neither seem bothered by the smell, but they’re grateful for the warmth and each other.
“What do you think will happen?” Ita asks and tucks closer to his side. He’s thinner than she remembers, and they’re both blistered and rubbed raw from the sun and miles of travel. She breathes him in greedily, hungry for the closeness after the last tortuous year.
“Who cares?” He has a bitter angry tone to his voice, a sharp cackling quality she’s grown accustomed to, and she smooths a hand behind his neck to stroke his black hair and quiet the scavenger inside of him. Her thumb traces an old whip mark that tucks behind his dirty shirt collar. Chason has lines and scars and burns peppering his body beneath his clothes, and she knows he’s still fighting off the last remnants of the cocktails the doctors at the compound pumped into him regularly. His eyes aren’t as bright as they used to be and this, probably more so than anything else, saddens her.
After a moment of silence, he shrugs a shoulder, suddenly less irritable. “I bet the sister, the minister, she’ll take it all. Wear the crown and get all the adoration.”
Thoughtfully, Ita shakes her head. “I don’t think she wants adoration.”
“No? Isn’t that what everyone who has ever ruled wants?”
“I think she wants fear. To be feared. Harrow wanted that but he was small-minded … She’s ambitious. That should be terrifying enough.”
Chason’s mouth curls into a sloping grin and, seeing it, Ita pushes his hair away from his face so she can better gauge his expression. “Somewhere along the way, I’ve forgotten how to be horrified.”
“I haven’t,” she says quietly.
Chason chews on the side of his thumb nail and grunts, not unkindly, but he does not look at her. “I’m not a good man. Not really.”
Ita makes a noise, some kind of disapproving, disagreeing titter, but Chason continues speaking. “It’s okay. I’m not the worst there is, I know that. I think that’s my point actually.”
“You’re neither good nor bad?” Her pale brows push together, partially with amusement and partially with confusion.
“I’m better than him, I mean. I’ll always be better than him. Them. I won’t scare you.”
Ita’s smile is bright even though her lips are chapped. She shivers despite the fire and he pulls her into his lap. He holds her thin waist and kisses, slow, like he’s trying to drink her.
“I’ve missed you,” she tells him against the shape of his mouth, and he knows she’s blushing, the pretty quartz pink of a more innocent girl.
6.
“I cannot care for you again,” Abigail whispers, her soft voice shattering like glass, as Gerhard grabs a fistful of her sheer nightgown. She’s hiding the ivory lace beneath a bejeweled fur-lined cloak the color of twilight. It’s another gift from Renan and something Abigail would have adored in its beauty if only it had come from the younger Prince instead of the King.
Gerhard’s mouth is a twisted scar of pain. He looks as though he wants to laugh and cry at once. There’s still a flush of color on him from the evening’s wine and the many cups he’d had after. He is not a drinker, but he’s been wearing his pain so openly these past few weeks and few other than his sister Polina dare to remark about his uncanny thirst.
“As you cared once?” he asks. He means it to be a mockery but instead it comes out plaintive.
“That’s where you must leave it,” she murmurs, closing her eyes to the sting of tears.
It’s the wrong action. He ought to feel relieved that she had confessed her love and said it was gone. He should be glad that she had dismissed him, that she would no longer favor him now that the King himself had plucked her, like a rose, for his own enjoyment. He should, too, know that this move of hers, this strategic leap of upward mobility, was never Abigail’s game but her family’s. A woman like Abigail could not complain of the desires of the whims of the King, but Gerhard resents her some all the same.
“Better that I never saw you.”
“Don’t say that. I can’t endure that.” She’s crying now, softly, her hands in her face as he pulls again at her pretty shift and catches the hem of her robe. “He’s expecting me,” she protests, not quite urgently enough, her hands like broken-winged doves when he moves them away from her tear-stained face.
“I doubt it,” Gerhard murmurs, pressing his mouth to her upturned cheeks, kissing the salt from her skin. “This isn’t about you.”
“What?” she asks, confused even in her dismay. She can smell the drink on him. She can feel his pulse skip beneath his unbuttoned collar when her small fingers touch his throat.
“I don’t know,” he murmurs again, tilting her chin up, kissing her trembling mouth because he’s desperate for the familiar tangerine taste of her, for the citrus smell of her body once they’d used one another until fulfillment. Her her her. The only thing he’d ever had as his own, untouched and untarnished by his brother’s claim, until now. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”
She makes a whimpering noise that he’s always loved, and Gerhard pushes her back against the stone wall, their bodies draped in darkness as he fumbles with the opening of his breeches. She’s already looping her arms around his neck, leveraging her meager weight against him, until his hands find the backs of her thighs and the robe slips half-off her shoulders, caught between her back and the wall. When he enters her, she bites down on his shoulder, stifling a cry.
It will be the last time he has her, this drunken, clandestine moment of fervidity.
It will be the last time he has her, until it isn’t.
Renan cannot sleep. He turns around and around on the smooth linen sheets of his luxurious bed, getting more and more restless until the fever in his pulse heightens and the heat under his skin burns. The moon glows warmly, filtering in through the curtains, and he knows the hour is late. Too late.
He thinks of Abigail and her cherub’s mouth, how he likes the flash of her eyes beneath her eyelids and the absolute rigidity of her spine when she dips into a curtsey. Then he thinks of Gerhard and the cut of his cheekbones as his body finds solid footing into manhood, the expressive, coltish eyes, and the squareness of his jaw freshly patched with new stubble. He is acutely aware of how heartbreak seems to agree with his brother, to heighten his good looks, and then Renan’s acutely aware of how little this bothers him. In fact, it does the opposite, and he feels a stroke of desire smolder inside of him.
He goes down to the private chapel barefoot, the hidden alcove meant only for the family’s unencumbered faith and prayer, and lays himself down on the cold stone before the unadorned altar. He does not take a position of penitence—feet together, facedown, arms spread, like a prone crucifixion—because he does not feel like a sinner and he has rarely believed in the superstition of religion, but he likes the solemn atmosphere of the chapel and the lack of prying eyes. He presses his large hands to the cold stone floor and when he imagines the curve of Abigail’s cheek against his palm, the image somehow melts, like a fever-dream, to Gerhard’s bright eyes again and the flush of his anguished face when he’d seen Abigail in the royal jewels and the blue of monarchy. Even with the cold, his cock is as hard as iron, and Renan feels his desire like a pain.
The next day, Gerhard avoids everyone until the evening dinner, where the hall is crowded with the usual courtiers and ladies. He sits beside Polina at the royal table and when he watches Renan clutch Abigail’s hand and press it to his knuckles, he has a sensation under his ribs that he knows must be his heart breaking.
no subject
I'm going to try to do this in some kind of orderly fashion (Me? Really?) Alright, lets dig in~
1. Augusta & Radomir
I love that Augusta calls it a "woodshed" but it's really made of mostly glass and stone and metal and is probably one of those incredibly chic modern structures found in architecture magazines. The sort that seem completely unlivable, where one would feel forever on display to the world outside. It seems very befitting of Augusta that her particular world stage would be a snowy, cold landscape. Eye of the barren storm. ...I don't know if that makes Radomir part of the storm, or the building. Both? Both. Both is good. /Road to El Dorado
"he is single-handedly the bodyguard, the butler, and the cook. He considers it a privilege." This is so his favorite time. Not just because Augusta sheds her skins (which jeez "Radomir watches the way her many selves seem to sluff off of her the moment they enter. Each of her personas collect, like carcasses, at her feet until she is maskless and true. It is not a subtle transformation but immediate, as though one footstep through the frozen security gate and the steel security door breaks her cocoon." come ooooon!!) but because he's It. The Only Living Thing. He's at her mercy. I realize in any other pairing it would be "She's at HIS mercy." but this is them. He is forever at hers. Even out in the wilds, where he could leave her to rot with no hope of survival. He's the supplicant. He's at heel.
"He’s careful not to actually pose a question; Augusta likes strength, confidence, even in language." I like this little call back to one of the things that originally caught Augusta's attention. Radomir as the teacher's helper, with his perfect grasp of words and languages. Startlingly intelligent standing behind a man who was half so.
"When Augusta looks at him, her eyes are amber in the firelight, similar to his creature’s. She thinks for a moment and then her thin mouth twists. He can’t tell if she’s smiling or scowling.
“Tired of this skin already?”
“I can wait.”"
Dude. Duuuude. The man puts his animal on pause for her! What is this control?! Freaking hell, my guys a zen master. He should be out there teaching classes. ...Sorry, I'm gushing about Rad instead of the writing. I just really love Rad okay?! *__*
Also that he assumes thats the right answer to her question. A non-answer. An offer to forget his needs. Anyway! I love the visual of Augusta's eyes flashing like his mountain lions. Sometimes the Vries are more vicious than the predators.
"When she makes a noise, some small, unintelligible response from the back of her throat, he cannot decipher if Augusta is proud or repulsed or both. He slinks closer, distinctly aware of her lack of fear, and pushes his white muzzle against her fingertips." I wonder, and this comparison makes me more uncomfortable than it should, if she's turned on like Harrow gets? Harrow forces Ita to change in the middle of parties, as a performance, and it definitely does something for him. The power - both his over her and hers over nature, and because there's got to be some beastiality tingles going on in this messed up world we've made.
Augusta's lack of fear is such a good character detail too. She's seemed to have decided fear was a waste of time and energy at a very young age and now she just... gets shit done.
2. Haven & Luke
My rereading of this to comment is now colored by what I'm writing in my response piece. Haven's a little bitch and I love her but god damn girl. God Damn.
"“What are you thinking about?” Luke asks.
Haven briefly lifts her eyes from the glossy magazine pages she has not been reading." Nooo never ask that of your sister, jaysus Luke! She might ask you to rob a bank while naked or something. And you'd do it, because you're a dope.
Haven and her denim shorts. It amuses me that she seems to avoid wearing them around David because she needs to portray a certain kind of girl. A certain kind of girl willing to help a man cheat on his invalid wife. Those kinds of girls don't wear short cutoff denim and Nirvana tshirts though. They wear sundresses and, like, gold bangles. It's a weird balance of Slutty But Not Too Slutty. While Luke is just looking at the shorts and thinking "clinging to her thighs so tightly that he assumes they must chafe"
Choose your date: A man who thinks you're TOO Slutty for wearing denim shorts, or a man whose worried about the comfort of your thighs.
"“Is it David?” he says the name more loudly than he had intended.
“Is it David?” she mocks, her voice going nasal and obnoxious in pitch, her petulance making Luke’s own annoyance pinch suddenly between his eyes.
“Okay.” Luke rolls his eyes and grabs the remote for the TV."
Haha they're such siblings. I kept expecting her to stick her tongue out!
"her elbows on her knees in a mild imitation of their father’s favorite confrontational stance." THIS MADE ME SO UNCOMFORTABLE! In a pairing about incestuous con artists, one sitting like the father the other hates is the thing that made me shift awkwardly in my seat. Luke's future boners died.
" “No, but I understand him.”
Luke doesn’t say anything. He’s learned over the years that silence more often than not will weigh her down. She’ll buckle under its pressure as though her golden shoulders are incapable of upholding anything other than her own pretense.
“Fine,” she admits after a few moments. “I like him. He’s handsome and funny and richer than God. I like him. Sometimes. Happy?”"
That was such a good description of Haven being unable to handle Luke's quiet. -chefs kiss- So smooth, so creamy, so delicioso! (...I ate Mexican food and it was fantastic. This was on that level.)
Also David isn't rich, Rowena is rich. Haven should be seducing Rowena.
"you went down on me and I don’t know which makes me wetter—him not knowing about you or you not knowing about him.”
When Haven grins, it’s full of teeth, like a crocodile, and Luke feels the old familiar twist of lust and shame low in his groin. "
1. Damn girl, get it.
2. Poor Luke, he should have married Betty.
3. All these people grinning with all their teeth. Are we shark dentists?
4. I'm actually mentioning in my piece how Haven can get away with not doing her job, as a maid, while Luke actually has to do his as a gardener/groundskeeper. Because David knows why Haven is there, but Luke needs to earn his keep. So while Haven's getting fucked over the kitchen island, Luke's trimming hedges. My boy even did research on proper garden care so he could be ~authentic~. Then Haven has the audacity to be like "You're taking too long to get with Rowena!" Bitch, he just cleaned the entire pool! /rant
3. Palmer & Sunniva
The moral of this story is that everyone should listen to Sunniva all the time. The End. Commentary over.
...
Okay, no, let's talk.
I love that The Emerald Isle is this big fancy place, but for """some reason""" Palmer and Sunniva always end up near each other. (Not just because we're the writers and we want them to interact. Lets be real, they float around each other when left alone too.)
"We’re still her favorites. Well, I’m her favorite, you’re the runner-up.”
Sunniva’s face is blank. She doesn’t reward him with a smirk or an eye-roll or even a clipped tone. “I’m not jealous although I’m glad your perception is still as dim as ever."
Palmer I love your dumb dumb smug stupid dumb face. And you know Sun is really worried/scared when she's not even clipping her tone. She actually sounds a little bored when she's terrified. A very strong nonchalance.
"They can’t clamor down here and start rounding our employees up. Or you, for that matter, Sunshine." Your looooooooove is showing Palmer~~ ...I feel like if someone went up to him and casually said "Your love is showing." he'd check to see if his fly is down? I don't know why that was the instant visual I got after I typed that comment.
Also Palmer literally beating someone up who tries to take Sunniva is really hot and she'd probably yell at him and fuck him. Just, FYI, future reference.
"“What were you saying about favorites again?”" Sun you sassy little shit. Lets be wed at once.
4. Roman & Lene
Always a good start to a Roman piece when it's just him with his cold hands all up in someone's business!
"the blood beneath her skin ripening on the vine" ...I love you so much it has turned to hate and back again. What is this? Why is this so good? Why didn't my brain think of this? How dare you steal my unthunk thoughts! Fuck. I... I wanna eat a sentence? What the shit.
"She’s vaguely annoyed by this turn of events" Lene's feelings towards everything in a nutshell.
"Lene wonders if this is what a blood craze must feel like, a hazy, hungry ache that makes her mind unable to focus on anything else, and if as on cue, Roman pulls her neck back by a fistful of her blonde hair and drags the tips of his fangs across her neck with careful, teasing precision.
She bites back the whimper that tries to struggle past her teeth and forces herself to still, willing herself to be as stubborn as stone." Yesssss!
Honestly this is a vast improvement to how I imagine the first time he tried to drink from her neck went. - He probably did the hair grab thing and went for the neck without discussion (not a place shifters are prone to baring to strangers) and she just... grabbed his hair and yanked his head back too. Then they were awkwardly stuck there. Stubborn as stone indeed.
"the press of his mouth, faint as a ghost" Affection? In my vampire?!
" Lene’s face dissolves into a blank mask, as perfect and vapid as a china doll" And to think the Insurgence wanted Anders to infiltrate! Anders!! Psh. Psshhh.
"Radomir, more out of a place in a suit than Lene is in a lace dress" Oh gosh, I wrote part of a thing where Lene wears an actual girly dress to a school dance and Radomir is there in a suit and they're both relieved that someone else there is as uncomfortable as they are. Rad is only a minor blip of an appearance in that, but this reminded me.
"“Sorry. I was sidetracked by other delights. Can’t blame a man, can you?”
Roman leaves them in the fog of his departing smug laughter, unphased, moving around the massive man in front of him without a hint of fear. From where the party is eating, Lene can hear Roman slap Harrow on the back, but the joke he must say is muffled by Arletta asking for her." Ah Roman, a dick as always. And you say it to one of the few men in the entire compound who won't sexualize Lene in the slightest.
I like that Arletta asks for her. It both implies that Arletta cares/noted her absence and that she already knows Roman is the cause of said absence.
" They don’t speak, but Radomir gives her the tiniest of nods, allowing her permission to leave." Okay, picture this: Kim, Radomir, and Lene. One giant who everyone fears and keeps their eye on, and the two tiny containers of violence ready to be unleashed. Just... silently chilling at a table, eating lunch, while their charges do stupid human stuff. Now thats a clique you want to be in.
5. Chason & Ita
Our babies *_________*
I don't have much to say because you made me too sad. I'm saaaaaddddddd!!
"His eyes aren’t as bright as they used to be and this, probably more so than anything else, saddens her." His eyes were the first thing that got her, remember? In the photos, and the hallway, and the intake cages as she offered her plan. The eyes. Aw. BABIES!
"“Somewhere along the way, I’ve forgotten how to be horrified.”
“I haven’t,” she says quietly." ...Why are you doing this to me? I feel like I should be listening to that old Natalie Imbruglia song about lying on the floor or something. Jesus.
"“I’m better than him, I mean. I’ll always be better than him. Them. I won’t scare you.”
Ita’s smile is bright even though her lips are chapped." ;__________________; BAAAABIIIIES!!
"He holds her thin waist and kisses, slow, like he’s trying to drink her.
“I’ve missed you,” she tells him against the shape of his mouth, and he knows she’s blushing, the pretty quartz pink of a more innocent girl." I'm not clutching my chest like someone in an Austen movie adaptation, you're clutching your chest like someone in an Austen movie adaptation!
6. Abigail, Gerhard & Renan
What have we dragged this poor girl into? Renan, get your ass in here and explain yourself!
"It’s another gift from Renan and something Abigail would have adored in its beauty if only it had come from the younger Prince instead of the King." I'm still recovering from Chason and Ita and you throw this at me?!
"He is not a drinker, but he’s been wearing his pain so openly these past few weeks and few other than his sister Polina dare to remark about his uncanny thirst." Okay, I just laughed at the visual in my head of Polina being like "Ger, this wine in NOT that good. Go weep on the moors like a normal person." While everyone else tiptoes around his pain.
"“Better that I never saw you.”
“Don’t say that. I can’t endure that.”" Moors! Weeping!
"“He’s expecting me,” she protests, not quite urgently enough, her hands like broken-winged doves when he moves them away from her tear-stained face.
“I doubt it,” Gerhard murmurs, pressing his mouth to her upturned cheeks, kissing the salt from her skin. “This isn’t about you.”" Okay, it's totally a 100% Gerhard thing to move her hands because he's all about ~faces~ and ~eyes~ and learn to control your longing for connection young man. And he kisses her tears while drunkenly being like "My bro wants to ruin my life and possibly fuck me as much as I want to fuck him... what? I didn't say anything."
"When he enters her, she bites down on his shoulder, stifling a cry.
It will be the last time he has her, this drunken, clandestine moment of fervidity.
It will be the last time he has her, until it isn’t." Does the bite leave a mark? Does the bite leave a mark?! Renan, Renan did you peek this shit later? Moors! Weeping!
"He is acutely aware of how heartbreak seems to agree with his brother, to heighten his good looks, and then Renan’s acutely aware of how little this bothers him. In fact, it does the opposite, and he feels a stroke of desire smolder inside of him." That's fucked up bro. I like it. Tell me more. (~Tell me more, tell me more, did you get very far?~)
Then he lays face down on the floor of the chapel with an erection and I'm torn between loving the visual and cackling wildly. It could go either way. That's the type of artwork I'd have on my wall and not tell anyone the details of and just... enjoy differently every single day. The gift that keeps on giving.
Also this reminds me of how I've been wanting to write about a nun? With like, an illicit affair with another nun, or a priest, or a rugged handyman drifter who's staying in the barn and might be a serial killer. You know, something. That's a random tidbit.
"The next day, Gerhard avoids everyone until the evening dinner, where the hall is crowded with the usual courtiers and ladies. He sits beside Polina at the royal table and when he watches Renan clutch Abigail’s hand and press it to his knuckles, he has a sensation under his ribs that he knows must be his heart breaking." ...I gotta... Polina, leaning over to Gerhard: "Moors, weeping."