you're too young & eager to love

This is a warm-up! Blowing off cobwebs and whatnot so that I can hopefully finish this Augusta piece that I've been working on, here and there, for a few months. Thanks to my Muffin who, as always, came through like a champ and requested some Sun and Roman war-time AU. Moral ambivalence and all that.

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“You know what, sometimes it seems to me we're living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what's good and what isn't, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves... And then we spend our whole lives struggling with what we have invented for ourselves.” – Olga Tokarczuk

“I am a phantom built out of pain.” – Olga Tokarczuk





If weariness had a smell, it would be this—gun oil and blood, dirt-rot, the nauseating sweet-stench of death and mustard gas. It’s Roman’s smell now too; he knows it, he’s aware, and it doesn’t matter how many showers he manages or how long he takes scrubbing the dirt beneath his fingernails, the trenches have become a part of him. The war is something he wears. He can’t wash it away, so he’s learned to accept it, to stop fighting for unattainable change.

Before the accident, before she loses her leg, Sunniva’s smell is medicinal: sterility, the metal of a syringe, blood and antiseptic, the lemon soap all the nurses seem to use. Roman finds it refreshing, and he marvels at the way her hair always smells clean, but he never tells her this. Instead, he brings her tiny trinkets whenever he returns from a stint in the trenches. Sometimes they’re literal trinkets–silk handkerchiefs (which she has no use for), a delicate silver ring that fits her pinky finger (equally useless but somehow charming), a lighter made from a used brass bullet casing (more practical). This time, he brings her a brown chicken egg, a handful of blueberries wrapped in a woman’s checkered dish towel, and a tin of molasses candy.

She looks up from where she’s washing her hands in a basin of red-stained water when he walks into her tent and raises her eyebrows. “How did you get this bounty?”

“I fished a boy’s body out of a well in Verdun.”

“That’s terrible,” she says, without any real emotion in her voice.

“He’d been fouling up their water. The mother was in hysterics. Her shoes scraped the pavement the entire time her husband was dragging her off.”

“What an interesting detail to remember.”

Roman shrugs as Sunniva wipes her hands dry, then she takes the food. She’s the most careful with the egg, tucking it gingerly atop some towels within a little metal bowl before nestling the blueberries in an empty coffee tin. The candy she opens, offering one to Roman. He shakes his head and takes a seat on her empty cot.

“You’ve been gone a while,” she says while unwrapping one of the molasses pieces. The candy is dark and shiny between her fingertips, just barely sticky at the top.

“Not so long,” he lies, lighting a cigarette. The smoke wafts up around his head, and she can tell how tired he is by the way he stretches his legs out in front of him and rolls his head on his neck, once, twice, a third time, his eyes closed. Something at the top of his shoulder, near the base of his neck, pops, and he cringes.

She sucks the piece of candy into her mouth and lets the warm, smoky flavor sit on her tongue. It’s a small delicacy, but beneath the sweetness she thinks that she can taste something else—a sickly treacle taste, like rotten fruit.

“So how did you really get it? The food?” she asks after a moment, rolling the candy from one side of her mouth to the other.

Roman’s eyes are still shut, and he doesn’t open them. He sucks on the end of his cigarette instead, hard. “The candy is from a dead Boche’s pocket. The blueberries from the side of the Voie Sacree.”

“And the egg?”

“For fishing the boy from the well. That part is true, except the father said he had half a dozen eggs, not one. What do I do with one egg? I asked him when he came back with it, after he dragged the woman away. I didn’t haul a corpse out of a well for one egg. He said a bunch of ugly things in French then, but you know how their language is. Even the ugly bits sound pretty. ”

“That’s why you did it, then, for the eggs.” It isn’t a question, and she looks at him blankly, at his relaxed posture, the dirt smeared across his face, the cigarette dangling between his thin lips, and the thatch of scruff covering his jaw and climbing up the sides of his cheeks. She can see the chain of his dog tags against his neck, the tags themselves tucked beneath the faded olive-brown of his open uniform collar. It’s as dirty as the rest of him.

He doesn’t reply to her, but he rolls his head on his neck again. Feels the same stiffness in his muscles.

When the candy is small enough to bite through, Sunniva crushes it between her back molars. Roman opens one eye, pitching the cigarette to the dirt floor. He grinds the tip out with his boot. “Does it taste like it came from a dead German?”

“No more than the egg will taste like grief.”

“Sehr gut,” he murmurs, and pushes himself to his feet.

He doesn’t say goodbye.

Here we go, the final set of shorts, the second half of the thank-you gift! daintiestmartyr, I hope you enjoy!

Notes!

* There’s some repeat kiddos in this second set of shorts, but I intentionally tried to make them differ completely in tone, mood, and, well, even the subject matter. Also, it’s okay to have favorites. There, I said it!
* The Haven and Luke short is toxic as hell. It’s essentially a drunk fight-and-fuck scene, but things get nasty and violent. I also begin in the middle of it, so there’s not much context as to WHY they’re fighting. I just wanted them to fight. Fair warning.
* In an effort to not write sex scenes for every single short (I have to practice writing something else, damn it), I accidentally get Margot and Jasper into a bit of a tiff. So sorry. They deserve better. I don’t know how to write happy scenes! They're so boring! I said that too, okay!
* Harper and Oriol’s short is set a short time after they’ve started getting physical as a trio with Zane but before they’re going behind Zane’s back together due to their ~pair bonding~.
* Introspective!Palmer is the hardest thing to write. He really doesn’t get enough time/attention in my brain, so I struggled to, well, think about what he’d think about.
* The final short introduces a new set of characters! As a surprise! I kept it all vampire-centric to avoid stepping on fleshing out the nun’s personality and details and all that creative licensure. I’m also really digging the idea that older vampires “claim” territories, so Gideon gets to claim Linemell, running off lesser vampires and defending his turf until some bigger baddie comes in. If that ever happens.

( so Eden sank to grief )

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).

( I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace ... )

I've had this sitting in my Drive for a few months now. I felt all inspired during the late summer, and then work sucked away my creativity. I did some editing and tried to wrap it up, but I'd completely forgotten where I intended to take this! Don't you just hate it when that happens? Seriously. Like how dare you, brain! Not being able to remember plans for months ago! C'mon!

I know it was supposed to delve more into Lene and Roman being AU good guys helping refugees and build to their relationship but ... nope. That's mentioned, but I felt like I needed another 8 pages to really explore everything that I was setting up. Lene doesn't even really clearly become the shepherd, which was the position she was supposed to take from Anders. Oh well!

( tired of things that break )

Writing! Woo! It's been so long.

Ignore the flashback where I clearly struggle with the correct tense. Fuck it. I proof read, but there's probably still some typos. You know how it goes.

Heeereeeee we goooooo!



( to die )

Thanks to Muffin for the idea/direction here! Let's hope my formatting sticks.

( nor are we forgiven )

So, I started this a month ago, and I never went back to finish it. It turns out that Roman and Emere are too similar to be interesting. No conflict. Nadda. Nothing.

Here's the bits I managed:


I want to give in
to my dark self destruction.
I will find you there.
- Anonymous

They’re trying to destroy
something inside that
doesn’t belong.
- Anonymous


At three in the morning, all he can hear is the hum of traffic outside their window and the sharp way she cuts then inhales, strikes then drags, drinks then sniffs. Emere’s eyes are red-rimmed and unfocused, like they’ve spent too much time knocking against her skull. There’s a shake to her fingertips. Her blood must be thin, coursing through her veins with all the ferocity and speed of a runaway train.

He isn’t much better, truth be told, but Roman has always been a king of composure. His hands do not shake. There’s sweat stains under his arms and a wild, James Dean glare in his eyes, but he’s otherwise collected. He leans forward, plucking the cigarette from her hand, taking a drag as she absently swipes her fingers through his loose hair before settling back onto the couch. She pushes her bare feet into his lap, one leg bouncing, the muscles in her thigh twitching beneath her skin.

“What time is it?” She’s smoked so many cigarettes, her voice has that match-strike sound, all grit and stone.

“A little past three.”

Her leg keeps bouncing. He pets her calf, stroking down to her ankle and back up.

“Are you tired?”

Roman stares at her, judging her seriousness, and grins when she smirks. “I won’t sleep for days. You?”

“I have a meeting at eight.”

He glances back at his watch. “Five hours.”

“Just enough time,” she murmurs, swallowing a mouthful of gin and vermouth before she rearranges herself and slinks into his lap, a dusky arm thrown over his shoulders, her mouth catching at his bottom lip, the scratch of his beard as harsh as gravel.





Their Mondays are like their Wednesdays are like their Fridays. Rinse and repeat. A copy of a copy.

She never smells like cigarette smoke or scotch or chemicals. He never looks tired or out done or misused.

Sometimes she sleeps against his shoulder in the back of a taxi, her dark hair tangled and tousled against his broad jaw. He keeps a hand on her thigh, his fingers brushing old scars beneath the hem of her dress.





She takes shots of vodka standing half-naked in the loft’s open kitchen, a hip cocked to the side, wearing one of his work-out tanks and nothing else. It’s five in the afternoon, but she shouldn’t be home - she has a list of appointments longer than the Hudson that have her booked for the next week solid - and she definitely shouldn’t be three sheets to the wind. It’s early, even by Emere’s standards, but she already has that feral cat look about her, the angry, ready-for-a-fight attitude she adopts steadily, hour by hour, as the day progresses into night. It’s usually worse after half a bottle of Ketel One. Roman considers himself lucky, even if the hair on the back of his neck stands up in warning.

He loosens his tie, sidestepping a knocked over vase on his way into the kitchen, and pours himself a shot. While he’s at it, he pours her another one, and leaves the cap off the bottle. He’s a whole head taller than her and he makes good use of the height, looking at the cabinets in front of him rather than down at her. Trying to catch her gaze would be like willingly looking into Medusa’s stare.

“Bad day, dear?” he asks.

Emere takes the shot as an answer and slams the glass down on the counter. “Fuck you.”

Roman lifts his own glass to his lips and tips it back smoothly, the burn settling down his throat and into his chest with the glow of an afterthought. He pours another round. She reaches for hers, and he swats away her hand.

“Hold on, let me catch up, and we’ll see what happens.”

He tips his shot back again, surprised by the sound of her laughter.

Inspired by this photo: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/d6/4e/5f/d64e5f73268f272bb3dbce2284a0ff50--karen-elson-my-photo.jpg




“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark?”
- Werner Herzog






On the first day of her absence, his hunger is a pinprick. A scratch down the inside of his arm. A fly circling fresh decomposition - he can still swat it away.

Three days later, the hunger simmers deep in the pit of his stomach, caught in the teeth of the demon inside of him. He’s gnawing at himself.

By day six, it is a pick-axe in his temple, a wedge of ice severing his brain. An infestation.

Roman can feel the pressure it causes between his eyes. His brows knit together. His mouth feels dry. He’s agitated at meetings, his usual sarcasm giving way to a quick temper and a streak of cruelty. When one of the familiar companions – a brunette he’s sampled before with easy enjoyment – slips into his lap after dinner, a quip on her mouth and a suggestion in her gaze, he pushes her away, watches her scramble on the floor in confusion. He knocks her arm with the tip of his boot. Makes sure she knows to stay away.

Later, in the darkness of his Spartan room, prone inside of his wide bed and sterile sheets, he tries to silence the cacophony of heartbeats surrounding him.

Closing his eyes, Roman thinks of starvation.









The singer is remarkable.

Hers is a remote beauty – a Gloria Swanson face with glacier eyes, her mouth the color of pomegranate wine, her eyebrows thin carved arches the width of a razor blade, her high cheekbones and square jaw framed by her full garnet hair. When she smiles, the severity of her beauty softens, the gaunt sharpness of her face relaxing, and she is made warm. But like stoneware reverting into clay - made pliable once more, all the preciseness within the finished product lost outside of the kiln - the warmth doesn’t suit her. She looks better stoic, statuesque, withdrawn.

Her beauty becomes unimportant when she sings. Secondary to the crushing, poignant, impossibly rich voice. It seems inconceivable that such a small mouth could hold such a voice, one bursting with control, but evocative, sublime, heading towards rapture. Her voice pushes and assails, crowding into the minds and hearts of those who listen, fluttering their pulses, making them dizzy. Many within earshot cry.

Roman does not. He’s too hungry for emotion, too unfocused. The soprano’s performance of an aria (he knows it – he’s heard it before – it was famous once, in another lifetime, but he can’t recall the composer or the sounds of the instruments that should be accompanying the voice – he can’t hear anything other than pulses inside thin wrists and the scent of blood is everywhere – just out of reach) adds to the pain in his head. He keeps a hand on the tufted arm of his wingback chair, his fingers white and pressing into the fabric, the other holding a tumbler of untouched whiskey. Inside the glass, there’s a solitary ice cube melting, diluting the amber liquor, cutting the bite.

The chair to his left is noticeably empty. One chair further, Augusta sits as stern as a schoolteacher, her hulking bodyguard behind her. If she’s effected by the singer, her face does nothing to show it.

After a week, Harrow’s absence is beginning to become noticeable everywhere – especially now, here, where his nonattendance must be an insult to the soprano who has traveled by caravan from compound to compound at Harrow’s request, specifically for tonight’s private performance. Roman has seen the woman’s eyes stray to the empty chair on more than one occasion, the expression interfering with the performance required by the aria’s depth of sadness. Between lifting one ivory arm with a rising note and turning her face towards her shoulder, there’s an expression of anger that Roman understands well.

But Harrow is still recovering from his fractured cheekbone. When Roman saw him the day before last, his eye was still red from blood and broken capillaries. He could open it, but that side of his face was bruised, swollen. Physical proof of the injustice done to him. Harrow would not show himself in such a state, so his sister and his lieutenant have had to make due, hoping to placate the artist with their own presence and gratitude.

It’s a poor substitute. Augusta finds any art to be fanciful, unnecessary, a waste of resources. Roman’s charm should be enough to offset her cold professionalism, but every time the singer opens her mouth, all he can see is the wet, red column of her throat, her tongue inside a pink muscle that he would like to tear free.

Not for the first time, he thinks of Lene. Lene whose apt fist is the cause of Harrow’s foul mood, his fractured cheekbone, his absence. Lene whose smell suddenly seems everywhere, trapped inside of Roman’s rooms, impossible to ignore once she herself has vanished. Lene whose blood, ambrosial with its own preternatural strength and heady thickness, has been so easily offered to Roman month after month that its sudden disappearance has left him teeth-aching and gutted.

It’s his hunger now that makes him miss her, more than anything else: a hard, physical longing, like a craving for air under water. His thirst pounds over him in waves that leaves him stiff-jawed and sore, every vein inside of him keenly aware of its own emptiness, that useless organ inside of his chest a dry, dusty thing. When the waves wash back, Roman is barren. Empty. A husk.

Part of him hates her for this weakness she has caused him. He has not felt this type of ravenousness desire since he was a fledgling, eager to nip at every available throat, desperate to fill that seemingly insatiable thirst, and weeping at the incomparable pleasure of each new mouthful of blood that his fangs could rip from his prey. If he could think, he’d find his own hatred despicable – he knows the particular catalyst of events that led to Lene’s punishment within the desert box, knows his own accountability, knows that his missing of her should be more than just a biological response, that there’s a loneliness inside of him as boundless as the sea – but he can’t, so he doesn’t.

Distantly, Roman realizes the room has filled with applause. He tilts his head, the response of a marionette on tight strings.

Augusta is politely clapping. She glances at him with open disapproval as though he’s made some irrevocable social faux-paus and leans across the empty chair to whisper, “You had better look more impressed than that. She’ll be expecting to dine with you now. Considering the money Harrow has spent on this pointless fiasco, you might as well enjoy it.”

Roman clenches his jaw, the hand holding his whiskey tight enough to shatter the glass.









Harrow’s private dining room is intimate but gilded, a fire crackling in the stone fireplace, the wood floor gleaming in tones of amber and oak, the distressed walls opulent with their crown molding. The compound’s kitchen staff has prepared a spread of luxuries: charbroiled oysters, prosciutto-wrapped pears, sugar-sprinkled strawberries, walnut and ricotta crostini, soft boiled eggs with cracked pepper and arugula, and endless bottles of chilled sparkling champagne.

The scene has been set for a seduction. It’s as clear to Roman as it is to the soprano, but the smell of so much cooked dead meat and slowly spoiling fruit makes his stomach clench. If he was a different creature, he’d be sick.

The woman holds a flute of champagne with dainty fingers, standing near the fire, unimpressed by the display and the silence.

“I apologize, miss Fulton,” Roman says while clearing his throat, pushing a hand through his slick-backed hair, “for Harrow’s absence. He fell ill shortly before your arrival. I hope I can be a suitable replacement.”

His smile is a shark’s that makes the soprano raise an eyebrow. “Are you a fan of opera, mister …?”

“Roman, my name is Roman.”

She peers at him with the cold look of the Arctic. The same unimpressed, disbelieving expression and makes a hum of acknowledgement. “I only ask because you seemed to find my performance underwhelming.”

He places a hand over his heart and dips his head, deferring. “If it underwhelms me, miss Fulton, it is only because of my brutish upbringing. I’m afraid I am more suited for war than art.”

“Evianna. Enough with the miss.”

Roman takes the seat furthest away from the table of appetizers and watches her, trying not to stare at the pale column of her neck, the naked gleam of her shoulders above the sapphire cut of her rich dress.

When he doesn’t say anything, she laughs, mirthless and with a gesture of her fingers in the air. “Yes, I know. It’s a fiction, of course. I was told Evianna had a more elegant, refined quality. My real name is Coral. Like the color.”

“And what a color it is.”

She can’t seem to decipher his meaning, so she makes that humming noise again and sips from her champagne.









Three glasses later, there’s a flush of pink on her cheeks. He’s distinctly aware of it, his eyes hawkish, sharp, following the line of her body as she walks the perimeter of the room, trailing her fingers over the woodwork and the molding. She has an elegant gait – something she’s surely practiced – and her strapless dress pinches her waist, outlining the smallness of her body. Weak. Vulnerable. When she brings her glass to her mouth, Roman can see the lines in her lips, the nearly imperceptible imprint of lipstick left behind on the crystal.

She’s been discussing her own fame, casually, without a shred of humbleness. It’s the type of speech he would expect to find in one of Augusta’s propagandist pamphlets, highlighting all the qualities that place man’s ability above a beast’s: the arduous hours she spent training as a child, the fear of losing her voice after a bought of sickness, the admirable blurring of innate talent and practiced skill that made her remarkable in a world turned wasteland. Unlike a beast born with God-affronting advantages, hers was pure, traditional, the archetypal story of self-made success.

“Does he do this with all his important guests?” she asks at the end of her monologue, pausing at the table to slip a strawberry between her lips. She looks like a woman eating a tiny heart, and the crush of her teeth into the fruit causes Roman an immediate pang of lust.

He has difficult following her non sequitur. “Who’s that now?”

“Harrow.”

“Does Harrow do what with all his important guests?” His thoughts feel like sludge, moving slowly, as thick as syrup, inside his brain. He’s aware of the way he’s snapped at her just now, impatient.

Coral grins at him, the first true expression of the evening, her mouth stained by the strawberry. “Wine and dine them. Like the old days. This is supposed to be a seduction.”

“Is it?” He unbuttons his waist jacket, and she grins more. “You seem acquainted with how this is done. I’m at a disadvantage.”

“I don’t believe you for a second.” She tips her glass back, head following suit, and drinks the rest of her champagne in one mouthful. Roman follows the dip of her throat as she swallows.

He wants to be more business-like when he stands, more efficient, a paradigm of self-control to match her earlier reserved nature, but he crosses the room in four steps, one hand catching her beneath the ear, his fingers tangling into her hair and pressing into the curve at the base of her skull, the top notch of her spine. She gives a startled cry of surprise, but it’s as artificial as her sweeping arms and turned face had been, another performance for an admiring fan.

Coral has to look up at him. There’s a tiny smirk on her face. She places a hand on his chest, below his shoulder, where his heart should be. It’s a damsel’s gesture.

He closes the gap between their bodies. When he kisses her, it is hard, angry, full of a week’s worth of tension. There’s a flavor on her tongue and teeth - strawberries and champagne and copper.

With their mouths together, he can taste into her heart.









She is pale moonlight. A blood ocean. A siren calling from the wreckage. There’s a beguiling, confident manner to the way she stretches herself across the wall, pressing her front to the crown molding, one arm poised above her head as though she’s already expecting to use that hand to brace herself, to claw away at the paint beneath her nails.

Roman ignores the shake in his fingers when he pulls down the silver zipper of her dress, splitting the fabric open, revealing the cream contours of her shoulders, the subtle half-hidden outlines of her breasts. He sweeps her hair to one side.

Stares at the spot where shoulder curves into neck.

He does not think.

He only feels.

Feels the nervous, excited beat of her heart inside the cavity of her chest, dimly protected by thin skin and fragile bone. Feels the sea-crash roar of her pulse points. Feels the way her blood travels through her like a musical score. Feels her hushed breathing as she waits, anticipating the strike.

He has not hunted in what feels like decades. He has survived on what has been given, what has been offered.

Inside of him, something deep and restless stretches its jaws.

His fingers over her mouth. The press of his chest against her back, his weight pinning her, a hand between her shoulder blades.

The smell of fear.









He tears into her throat the way wolves tear into a fresh kill. He rips her flesh and muscle at the apex of shoulder and neck, the blood flowing instantaneously, as red as sin against her skin, running down her arm, over her right breast, seeping into her dress, turning blue fabric purple. When she screams, his hand is a shackle across her mouth, silencing even a soprano’s power. She is liquid copper, tart as lemon, and when was the last time he’d tasted human blood? Base blood, but hot and sticky and powerful all the same, still churning with its secrets and desires and emotions, all of it funneling into his hunger, making him monstrous, making him ache with a different pain. A pain of splendor. A pain of power. Every frantic beat of her heart is the pounding hooves of wild horses. Every mouthful of blood is a carrion bird’s cry.









Her breath rattles.

He’s moved his hand from her mouth, is gripping her side again, pushing her into the wall. She slips like a doll between his body. A murmur or gasp breaks free from her pale mouth.

Her heart is a distant beat now.

Her fingers curl against the wall. She’s too weak to scratch.

The darkness inside of him tells him to drink, to feast, to swallow her life.

Roman pulls away with an effort, like breaking one’s own chain. His mouth is slick crimson. There’s blood across his jaw, matting his beard.

What’s left of Coral slips into the curve of his arm, the right side of her body streaked in red, her dress stained. Suddenly weary, as full as a tick, he places the singer in a chair, watches her head roll back on her neck, and surveys the damage he’s done with a clinical detachment. She gives another one of those rattling breaths, the whites of her eyes glaring beneath her cracked eyelids.

Roman removes his jacket. Rolls up the sleeves of his undershirt. He tilts her head more to the left. There’s a chunk of meat missing at the base of her neck, the wound seeping, wet and raw as gristle.

Coral whimpers.

“Oh, I know,” Roman soothes, speaking in a murmur, all the fierceness of his voice gone. It’s the tone used to calm lambs before the slaughter. “Hush now, don’t worry. I will fix this.” He feels the weakness of her pulse and says something in German, stroking the inside of her wrist.

Cradling the back of her head, he opens his own wrist, lets his blood slide against her cracked lips and into the cavern of her mouth.









“Coral.”

His voice like a beacon. Breaking through the fog. She blinks and feels some odd, displaced sense of dread fade away from her consciousness. When her vision focuses, she realizes she’s been staring into Roman’s eyes. A blush crawls up her neck, and she turns her head away, pressing the pads of her fingers to her closed eyelids.

Something there. Some flicker of memory in that darkness.

From across the room, sitting in the chair near the fire, fresh-faced and calm, Roman calls to her. “It’s the wine, I think. Goes to our heads too quickly. Would you like a glass of water?”

“Wine?” Her voice sounds different to her own ears. Vibrant. “You mean champagne.” She presses her fingers into her temple, rubs at the spot above her eyebrow, and looks at him with veiled confusion. It’s easier to regain her composure now that she’s looking at him. In fact, she hardly feels dizzy at all. Quite the opposite. If asked, she’d say she felt five years younger. She’d say she wanted to sing.

Roman barks a laugh, and Coral smiles without knowing why. “Wine. You spilled it. I’m afraid your dress suffered the worst.”

She can’t see any bottles around the room, but there’s a definitive stain on her dress. A sloppy spill, by the looks of it. At least an entire glass. She makes a noise of disappointment, tsking, running her hands over the contours of her waist, up the stitching on the side, fretting over the hemline.









He still has her blood in his veins when he pulls Lene from the desert hotbox, when he washes her, when he tucks her into the soft folds of his bed, when he brushes her hair back from her face, when she asks if he’s ravenous.

“I’ve taken care of it,” he says with a wave of his hand.

OUR FEARS CANNOT PROTECT US.
- Reyna Biddy


Dead man walking.

The expression means something different here – more literal than figurative. The pack murmur beneath their breath as he walks amongst them, as they step out of his path as though he were a pariah, which Roman suspects he is. An outsider. Unwelcome. Foreign with his lifeless heart, chalky skin, and mystic blood.

He’s unsuited for domestic life, although Moray Mountain is a harsh environment; it’s sun-bleached, dust-covered, rock-laden, but the pack has embraced the terrain and used it for coverage. Like animals whose motley hide and assorted feathers allow them to hide in plain sight, the pack has found a way to manipulate the landscape: well-worn trails seemingly disappear into boulder curves, thorny brush cover rusted vehicles, and the mountain itself has been carved into cabins and labyrinthine rooms. The pack is hard to find, intentionally so, and the homebase tucked into the middle of the mountain path is a fortress – stoic, unwelcoming, as stark as the bedrock of its foundation. It’s a home intended for one family, one audience. Roman is not welcome.

It is not so much his look that marks Roman as an intruder (the Moray pack is itself a hierarchy of variety: long-limbed colts run next to coal-skinned boys with bear hearts, women with skin made leathery by age hand freshly washed linens to men with crane-like heights), the hard manner in which he strikes his consonants, or even his careless powerful way of being. It is his foreignness: utterly alien, immediately noticeable. He has no scent for the wind to carry, no pulse for their ears to judge, no warmth. Worse yet, he does not lower his eyes. He does not beseech. He stands next to Lene with easy entitlement, tainting her grass-scent with the smell of graves.

Dead man.

Dead man walking.







“They don’t understand,” Lene tells him on their first night, self-conscious over the cold, distant welcome her family and friends have given Roman, assuming his silence is a sign of his discontent. Later, he will find some measure of kinship in the Moray’s children, but for now she’s the only one who stands close, who sometimes places her hand in the crook of his elbow, who finds the unnatural coldness of his skin a welcome difference against her own burning heat.

Roman wipes grit from his jaw, his hands covered in mountain dirt from where he’d climbed the ascending rocky path earlier. “Why would they?”

“Give them time. You have plenty of that.” She tries for a smile, lightly jabbing his side with her elbow.

He shakes his head. “They don’t need time, liebchen. They do not understand because they do not want to. That never changes.”

“Wait and see. Once they realize you aren’t going to try eating everything with a pulse–”

“Some things aren’t supposed to be mixed.”

Lene is silent for a moment, considering the implications of what he’s said, before she looks away from him. “We aren’t like that here. We aren’t one of the compounds, and this isn’t Albtraum. Anders isn’t Harrow.”

“A world of negations, yes? … And yet,” Roman murmurs, letting his unfinished sentiment linger while he turns his eyes up to the stark, fearless moon. He hasn’t seen one so bright in years. It isn’t comforting.

Lene follows his gaze. She feels cold although the night is mild.

“You broke their rules. Bringing me here.”

“I’ve been breaking their rules for years,” she says, trying to laugh. “Hell, who I am is technically an affront to our entire lifestyle. I’m an anomaly.”

“In a nest–”

“Pack,” she corrects.

“Those who refused to follow the laws were driven out in order to maintain stability. You have to deal with dissenters swiftly. Often violently. You have seen this, I think.”

It’s Lene’s turn to shake her head. “Anders is my brother. He won’t exile me. Besides, this is different. He knows you’re part of the resistance.”

“The resistance,” Roman sneers, shaping the word as an insult. “What do I resist? No, I am trying to survive.”

“Story of your life, old man. Survival covers all manner of sins.”

Roman watches Lene’s profile, her full lips pulled down in an expression of disapproval, her blonde hair catching at her jaw and sticking to the sides of her neck. She’s cherubic – disarmingly, misleadingly so.

He takes her hand, her skin hot against his, and she startles at the gesture. She can’t remember him ever having done it before.

“I don’t know what sin is,” he tells her, and she knows he’s telling the truth.







What the Moray cannot bring themselves to see is all the aspects of Roman that Lene has found herself surprised to value. (She hesitates to say love, as though mentioning this single word would shatter the unspoken commitment that has grown so steadily between them over the years, but in the back of her mind she knows where her heart is.)

She thinks of him after the fall, in the immediate wake of so much chaos and confusion, when Albtraum had been plunged into fire, screams, panic. He had been calm, eerily so, only his eyes had taken on a hawkish, predatory alertness. When he’d found her, two backpacks slung over his shoulder as though they were about to do nothing more than hike through an easy spring trail, she’d laughed at his impossible composure.

The emergency system within the compound had taken over by then, and his face had flickered between red and shadow. There was only one casualty as they hurried towards the location of the loading docks, Roman having already secured an old SUV for their trip through the desert, and it was a young guard whose face Lene couldn’t identify. He’d opened his mouth to say something to Roman – an order, perhaps, to go back the way they’d come, or a question about their whereabouts – but Roman had already approached him, and for a moment it looked as though the two men would hug before Roman’s hands snapped the guard’s neck. His body had crumbled, falling to the floor, as weightless as a feather. Roman had looked back once. Red and shadow. Eyes alert.

He hadn’t been different in the desert. Lene drove, her foot pressing the pedal to the floormat, Roman covering the windows with old blankets, prepping for dawn’s approach. She’d found his confidence infectious, all her senses heightened, ready, and although her eyes kept straying to the rearview mirror – expecting to see a line of guards in trucks and similar SUVs, packed with guns and fully aware of the treachery played on them – all she could see was smoke from the burning building. All she could hear were screams. Even miles later, she’d thought she’d never escape those cries.

They ran out of gas with a day’s journey remaining to the rendezvous point. It was nighttime when it happened, the SUV gasping and choking its way towards death. Roman had cut the ignition then watched the sky, judging the distance, and in the near pitch-black, Lene could see the fine blue of his veins, the extreme whiteness of his skin. She wondered how he’d ever been able to pose as human.

They traveled by foot until the sun halted them. Lene had watched as Roman buried himself within the sand, his muscles straining and rolling beneath his skin, his hands shoveling away mound after mound, seeking the cool darkness of the deeper layers. She’d spent the day scouting, working away at the last of their provisions, calculating their distance with their crudely drawn map and her own memory.

When he emerged from the desert – a pale specter, coated in sand as a second-skin – he’d looked all the more inhuman. To Lene, he’d seemed strong. An ancient force, birthed from the belly of the earth itself.

That otherworldliness had only continued to grow. In the absence of humans, Roman’s differences shined all the brighter.

It’s that noticeable, marked distinction in him that speaks to her own alienation and plight. He’d told her once that he was not the only of his kind, that man’s desire to attack, destroy, and control preternatural life had forced his ancient line into hiding and deep sleep – a hibernation of self-preservation – but she’s yet to meet any other. Just as she’s yet to meet another quite like herself. Her pack thinks Roman is not the most deserving of her loyalty, of her affections – she knows this too, as she knows that her brother disagrees with her choice, whole-heartedly and without much attempt to reconcile the tension this has caused between them as siblings and as leaders within the community. Knight disagrees as well, partially to keep the peace between him and Anders, but because he wants more for Lene. Hers is a history of pain, a pain specific to that of the outsider, and she knows he thinks there’s no hope for healing those old wounds if she continues down the path she’s on. Where she sees a merging, they see disruption.

They all think it. He is a threat instead of a weapon. A liability.

Which now makes her one too.







Lene tells him as much as he drinks from her thigh, her fingers in his hair, his teeth sharp enough that she barely feels their presence – just the quiver of his mouth. It makes her back arch, her skin tingle, turn to gooseflesh. This is after. After her argument with Anders, after Knight’s silent disapproval, after the pack’s resentment towards her and her decision to bring Roman here, jeopardizing them, has turned from a simmer into a boil. This is after Lene defeated the first contender for her position within the pack, after she had to meet the gaze of her family and see them, suddenly, as strangers.

Roman opens one eye and glances up at her, one of his big hands stroking the skin behind her knee, the other at her hip. She’s sitting on her bed, wearing one of his shirts and only one of his shirts, skin smelling of salt and pine, and he’s kneeling between her legs, as naked as the day he was ripped from his mother’s body, Lene’s blood hot in his mouth, coppery with old secrets and bitter with unshared history. The sun still lingers, fresh as a wound, on the horizon, and he can feel its warmth from where his cheek presses against her thigh. Leisurely, savoring the rush of her blood, he pricks his tongue and licks the small puncture wounds, healing them before sitting back on his heels. There’s a glaze over his hazel eyes, her blood still circulating through him, making him punch-drunk, making him keen. If she reached down between their bodies, Lene knows she’d find him hard.

“Which do you think I am? A threat?” he asks finally, like he’s just now remembered the conversation, mouth still red, fingers more curious in the way they roam her leg and side. He’s distracted, reaching up under his shirt that she’s wearing to cup one of her breasts, a thumb idly tracing across her nipple.

“Are you asking me if I’m naïve enough to assume your life has been all fangs and fucking, old man?” She tugs on a chunk of his hair pointedly, making him dip forward until his mouth is back near her thigh.

He laughs. “That would sum up six centuries of living most concisely.”

When Roman slides his palms beneath her, she leans back, stretching her arms above her head. Looking up at the carved ceiling, she sucks in a breath of air as his mouth crawls further up her leg, his less dangerous, more human teeth dragging over her skin. She turns her face into a pillow. This is the room of her adolescence, the mattress firm with its quilts smelling of old cotton, so she should feel more comfortable than she does. Instead, there’s a tangle of knots in her stomach.

Lene pushes a foot into his chest, halting his progression up her body.

Roman quirks an eyebrow.

“I’ve never seen you …” she hesitates, searching for the words that gnaw at the back of her throat. All this time, but she’s sometimes uncertain how to talk to him.

“Tear a throat? Pull out a heart? Kill a child? Rape a woman? Break someone’s jaw and eat the tongue?” His voice is light, but there’s a fog in his eyes again. He sits back once more, catching her foot this time when she tries swiping at his head, cupping it between his white palms.

She props herself up on her elbows, studying his face. “You’ve done all that.”

It isn’t a question, but Roman only shrugs.

She frowns, and Roman rolls his eyes, digging his thumbs uncomfortably into the arch of her foot. She pulls free, annoyed.

“Not for survival,” she clarifies. “That’s what you won’t say, right? You’ve done terrible things because it’s your nature, because you can, because in the hierarchy of life, your kind is always on top and fuck everything else? It’s survival of the fittest.”

At times like this, Roman thinks Lene only entered his life to serve as the conscience he so desperately needs. He hears her in his head often, judgmental in a way that doesn’t sound judgmental, but philosophical, prosaic, even sometimes sarcastic, like the start of a mockery or a debate. He thinks he’ll always hear her, that he’s taken something from her that she didn’t know she was giving. An unfair truth, but a truth all the same.

“What’s your point, liebchen?” He grabs his jeans, the ones he’d worn all through the desert, the ones that still smell of campfire and salt, and slides them on with an ease and casualness that’s infuriating. He’s still hard. He has to tuck himself into his jeans, and the look he gives her is pointed. He’d much rather be fucking than talking.

So would she, but Lene can’t untangle herself from the mix of emotions she’s feeling and the surrealness of being here, at her home, with a corpse as a companion. Instead of grabbing him by the loopholes of his jeans and pulling him onto the bed, she sits up, folds her arms over her chest in a defiant gesture that does nothing but make her feel childish. Why is she angry? Nervous? Sad? What is it she’s fearing? She’s not sure how to answer his question.

Her emotions resonate inside of him, more muted and dim, but still there – flickering like sparks inside of his veins. A result of the circle their blood makes, the connection thrumming, turning him into a receptacle. He blinks, trying to make sense of this most human of responses, and then Roman surprises her when he takes two steps forward, his hands on either side of her face, his mouth on hers, his tongue licking her teeth. She can taste her own blood. She drops her arms. Presses her hands to his bare chest.

“What is it?” he asks again, softer this time, his voice a whisper that lands against her lips. His forehead touches hers, his eyes challenging.

She takes a breath for reassurance. “… Would you be able to do those terrible things again? If you needed to? If it comes to that?”

It’s an easy answer.







The meeting is called a month later.

Anders sits at the start of the circle, his blonde hair pulled back at the nape of his neck, his elbows on his knees and his hands between them. It’s a position of calm, but Roman knows that every complaint his pack lodges, every dispute, settles like stone on top of his young shoulders and threatens to break him. His desire to lead them is a burden, and the effort it takes to lead them well is crushing him, slowly but acutely. Lene sits by his left, Knight at his right, and Roman stands a step behind Lene – not in the circle, but not far from it.

Only Lene’s mouth looks worried. She’s caught her bottom lip between her teeth. Her eyes are angry, and Roman thinks that’s good. Anger can be useful.

“He doesn’t belong.” Alec, middle-aged and greying at the temples, speaks for a third of the congregation that’s gathered to discuss, for yet another time, Roman’s presence.

“He hasn’t hurt any of us or brought trouble,” Anders responds, shielding the weariness in his voice. “He is a member of the resistance. I do not want to make a habit of rejecting members of this pack purely on …” He pauses, uncertain.

“Species,” Knight offers.

“Oddities,” Lene suggests, speaking for herself as well as Roman.

“He hasn’t proven himself,” A fox by the name of Jalyn says, her eyes like arrows that shoot past Lene’s shoulder and into Roman’s chest.

“But I have.” Lene’s voice is sure, confident, assertive without an edge of meanness. “And I speak for him.”

“You shouldn’t speak for any of us,” Jalyn threatens, turning her harsh gaze on Lene. “You shouldn’t belong either. We all think it.”

“You do not have the authority to speak for all of us present here, so guard your tongue,” Anders says.

When he intercedes as the leader, Jalyn has the grace to look cowed. “My apologies, Alpha.” Her subservience is a mask she brings to her face when convenient, but Anders gives a small nod of acknowledgement regardless.

“We do not doubt that Lene has done well for this pack or that she is capable of earning her position here,” Alec begins, placing a hand on Jalyn’s shoulder. “We’ve all seen how she can defend herself, how she works for our benefit, but Jalyn is right. One’s strength does not merit another’s placement. We all earn our right to be here. This outsider should earn his.”

Roman folds his arms over his chest, shifting his weight to his heels. He follows the conversation, although he’s already certain of where it will end. He’s lived too many similar moments.

“He should fight,” a faceless voice from the back of the group speaks up. The crowd murmurs their agreement.

“No.” Anders says, immediate, his hands still loose between his knees.

“Wait,” Lene says, placing a hand gently on Anders’ arm. “I will fight as his proxy. We can solve this in one shot.”

“No,” Roman says, speaking for the first time, his voice reverberating with his natural harsh cadence.

There’s a collective snarl from half of the pack, as though Roman’s interruption has struck them as distasteful. Someone near his left spits on his boot. He ignores it and does not uncross his arms or move from his place behind Lene. “I will fight.”

“It isn’t your fight,” Lene murmurs, turning her head to look up at him, a scowl slicing the lower half of her face. “It’s me they’re really upset with.”

The smile Roman gives her is indulging. “You know better than that.” He looks to Anders, nodding. “I accept.”

For the first time since the meeting began, Anders curls his hands into fists.

More WWI AU! Because why not?



----




The war is slow like cold syrup, like the white plague, like burning driftwood. It's slow enough to cause a bone-deep hurt, the kind no doctor's scalpel can cut free.

It gives them time, and time can be an abscess.






It's Calder who watches Roman with pity. This shouldn't be as surprising as it is - Calder's wife had died young, and although he doesn't speak of it often, Roman understands that Calder saw too much, so now he thinks friendship means sparing Roman the pain of a simile experience. But Calder has always been the one in their troupe most prone to silence, the one comfortable in it, easy and confident in his tasks but lacking the dangerous arrogance of a younger man. He has rejected the idea of glory, unlike Palmer, and speaks of redemption instead. With his hair silvering at the temples and his gaze steady, Roman had assumed Calder would finish the war fully aware that they were all simply treading water. Instead, he has turned into a red-eyed dog, endlessly gnawing at the same bone.

"Sunniva says it's her lungs," Calder begins one night, working the straight edge of a carving chisel into a smooth hunk of basswood. Like most men under duress, he likes to keep his hands busy and his mind focused.

Roman folds his arms behind his head and leans back, turning his gaze to the inky sky. The nights are becoming colder and he suddenly wishes he'd kept his coat even though there's a fire blazing like a beacon between them. Palmer, aware of where the conversation is headed, makes for his tent. He had liked Roman's tales of Paris prostitutes when they were full of laughter and filth, but he doesn't have the stomach for a story so clearly ending in tragedy. It's Sunniva that stops him. She holds up her hand and shakes her head. He sits back down, frowning, eyes dark, and takes the tin of lukewarm coffee she’d been drinking for himself.

"And she won't see a doctor?" Calder prods, glancing to Sunniva as the nurse for confirmation.

When she is silent, Roman says, "I think she wants her dignity."

"Dignity," Calder scoffs with a note of wonderment, like he's forgotten the meaning of the word.
"There's none of that where she's headed. You won't know her anymore. In the end. You understand this, right? The pain will make her someone else entirely."

"Then I will love who she becomes," Roman says candidly, meeting Calder's gaze over the campfire.

Palmer looks surprised and uncomfortable by his friend's admission, like a child caught between bickering parents. He glances sideways at Sunniva, but her face is blank, as clean and cold as snow.
Calder grunts his disapproval, slicing another chunk of wood from the block between his hands. "You have no idea what you're saying."

"I think he does."

Three sets of eyes turn to Sunniva. Roman smiles, just a little, and she nods her head at him in that easy familiar way of theirs.

"He's a soldier, Calder. We're all soldiers. Roman more than any of us has never been afraid of death. You should know that. He’ll stand through it." She doesn't chastise him. Her voice is even, steady, but not angry.

Calder frowns. "But don't you see -"

"No, I don't," she interrupts, a note of finality creeping into her voice.

Palmer groans, sweeping his hands through his hair, and stands, brandishing the now empty tin of coffee like a child’s toy gun. "Who gives a fuck?" Despite herself, Sunniva laughs, looking up at him and his obvious disgruntlement. "I want to get home. Then we can all sit around and judge one another for our terrible choices. Preferably over a bottle a bourbon and a hand of cards."
Roman murmurs something that only Calder hears, but it makes the older man wince.

"I'm packing it up, boys.” Palmer tosses the cup to Sunniva who catches it easily before wiping his hands on the front of his pants. “I suggest you do the same. Calder, no more advice. Roman, maybe take a night off from fucking. Sunshine, I'll be in the third tent if you find yourself needing comforting in the middle of the night."

"Comforting?"

"From the nightmares, sweetheart."

Roman crosses one ankle over the other, stretching himself further into the grass beneath him. “Does that offer extend to everyone here, or just her?”

“Not to you, it doesn’t,” Palmer shouts over his shoulder. “You’re too fucking tall for the tent.”

Calder laughs first, melting the lingering tension in the circle, and then Roman, Sunniva joining last with a smile and a knowing roll of her eyes.






Two days later, the wind picks up, and Roman flips the collar of his coat against his face as he walks further away from the frontline. The Paris streets are cracked and ashen, but his feet know the way; he walks in long strides past the boulangerie with its fresh-bread smell, past the charcuterie where all the meats have long since been emptied from the shelves, past the wide-eyed kids in scuffed shoes playing hopscotch, and then he walks some more. He can feel the eyes of Paris on his back. The city has become a window, the stares of all the lost and distraught watching distrustfully behind curtains of faded lace and broken glass.

The Quartier Pigalle is far from the frontline, but the streets are squalid all the same, a dirty newspaper shade of grey. Overhead, the last remnants of light are fading, leaving the sky a dreary stone color. Roman nods at a homeless man sitting with his hands between his knees on a street bench and turns the corner.

The brothel with the blue door at the end of the street is one of many such establishments, but on Rue Blanche most of the shops have been boarded shut. Even debauchery is difficult to sell during wartime - the brothels that remain exist because of the soldiers, because dying men refuse to go to their graves as virgins, because a woman's flesh, even flesh you had to pay for, was comforting after a kill. As if aware of their economical purpose, there are already officers in uniform draping themselves against the sides of buildings, speaking into the ears of the early working girls, undoubtedly offering franc notes that are worthless thanks to the recent issuing of ration cards. Roman has seen the people of Paris dutifully lugging the small yellow squares to their corner markets, filling their hand-held baskets with whatever scraps can be found. He knows most of the girls will take the officers’ money anyway and hide the bills beneath floor boards or under mattresses, planning for peace and a better day.

He heads up the stairs to the blue door and knocks. His other hand stays in his coat pocket, fingers curled around a bottle of morphine.





Adira’s room smells like dead flowers. It’s a smell Roman associates with graveyards.

She has the window open to let in the cold breeze, and she’s brushing her damp hair, a flush on her cheeks. Perched on the edge of her solitary stool with a thin robe covering an even thinner dress, Adira looks cold and hot all at once. She rumbles a cough as a greeting, working the brush in short, quick strokes. Roman places the morphine on top of the oak chest, near her dwindling provisions, and she eyes it with immediate distrust, a scowl twisting her thin mouth.

“Qu’est-ce que c’est, soldat?” She asks.

“You know what it is.”

“It looks like pity.”

“Really? I think it looks like medicine.”

“Va te faire enculer.” She spits, slamming her brush down and pulling her robe closer around her thin shoulders.

“Say that again,” Roman quips, crossing the small room to throw himself onto the bed, the old spring squeaking in protest. “The difference between French and German is that your language makes everything sound romantic. Even insults.”

“Mon Dieu,” Adira sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose and closing her eyes. Another cough shakes her skeletal body, but it’s short – a tremor rather than an earthquake. When she finds her voice, she joins him on the bed, her robe splitting to show her legs. “Did you see Madame Beville?”

“Yes. She’s as relentless as a curse, that one. Were you aware, liebchen, that your hourly rate has doubled since last week?”

She laughs, the sound husky, and touches his jaw, feeling the smoothness of his skin. “You look better with a beard.”

He ducks his head, biting at her fingers until she swats him. Roman wraps his arm around the column of her waist and pulls her to him. When he tries to kiss her, she presses two cold fingers to his mouth.

“You probably shouldn’t kiss me anymore. Between me and the war, you will never get home.”

But he kisses her anyway, cupping her face as he likes to, tilting her mouth up for him to devour.






Adira is painful like the winding coils of a serpent, like the relentless crash of ocean waves, like the harsh rattle of death.

She is the war as much as the battle between the trenches. She leaves him just as scarred and twisted.