Nadine Pascal-Said was sneaking in her bedroom window, the better to pretend she'd come home hours ago. She was not lucky enough to live in a house with a tree branch to the second story, but the tacky metal columns on the porch were perfect for climbing. The roof outside the window was littered with cigarette butts, and there was always a panic when it rained to clean them from the gutters. The room itself was almost a nest, piles of blankets and pillows and clothes both dirty and clean. She threw her shoes across the room to bury themselves in a nook that might have been a closet; she'd had to remove the impressive black platforms to climb to her room.

    She had her own attached bathroom, and it was as much a mess as the rest of her space. She shuffled inside, standing on the hem of her pants as she took off her glasses and scrubbed the black makeup from her lips and eyes. It hurt more than usual, but too late to worry about that now. Her hoodie, full of burn holes, was discarded by the foot of her shower. No point showering just yet: the only people in this house with noses sharp enough to smell the smoke couldn't talk. She put the thick-rimmed lenses back on to navigate out to the hall.

    The second story of the house was essentially hers. She'd had to share it with the cats, for a while, but years of the prodigious application of a water pistol had taught them to stay away. She could tolerate wrinkles and the smell of smoke, but cat hair and piss was where she drew the line.

    She came downstairs with heavy steps, which took effort when a person was as skinny as Nadine.

    "Nadine? Is that you?"

    "Yes, Gran."

    "When did you get home?"

    "Same time as always."

    "It sounds like you're wearing those horrible tent pants again." Gran appeared from the living room, her cross-stitch set aside, and soft arms engulfed Nadine in a sturdy hug. Engulfed was the only possible word for it, Gran being taller and weighing as much as perhaps four or five Nadines. She was wearing one of her floral dresses, the one that looked like it had been made from a quilt. One of the ones, rather. Gran had skin the color of rich soil, and her black hair was stiff and straight and untouchable. She'd tried straightening Nadine's hair, a few times, but the impatient girl had instead decided to chop off as many of her curls as she could stand. There was only an inch or two of them now, and they defied gravity, unstraightenable.

    "Jesus!" Gran gasped, "What happened to your eye, girl?" Nadine grimaced, wishing today had been one of Gran's napping days.

    "We played dodgeball in gym today," she lied, and it seemed a plausible enough explanation for the purple circle that trapped her eye in a squint.

    "Did someone do this on purpose?" Gran demanded, bristling with righteous indignation.

    "No, Gran," she lied again, with an exasperated sigh. "I just wasn't paying attention. Suzanne apologized a lot and she gave me her chocolate milk to make up for it."

    "You're never paying attention," the old woman scolded, releasing Nadine to rummage in the freezer. Her previous sympathy had been forgotten. "You get hurt more than your father ever did when he was twelve, and he gave me more trouble than I care to remember." Nadine only grunted as Gran gave her a bag of frozen corn to place over her swollen eye. "Sit yourself down at the dinner table and I'll get you something to eat. I swear, if your parents came home right now they'd think I was starving you." Nadine grunted again, taking the chair with the legs carved to resemble paws – her favorite. Gran always took the chair with the cushion that looked like a daisy. "You must get that from Nadia, because I know my Marcel never looked that skinny." Nadine did not even bother to grunt at this – she'd heard it enough that it was barely worth acknowledging.

    "They're probably going to call today," Gran added.

    "Keep me updated," Nadine replied, same as always, even though they both knew there would be no phone call.

    "How's your French coming?" Gran asked, hopeful, as she began dumping leftovers into a pot.

    "C'est merde."

    "No cursing in this house," her grandmother admonished, "in any language." Gran snorted in disgust, stirring the pot with a wooden spoon. "I bet that teacher's still speaking English in the classroom. I tried to tell them that immersion was better than just learning word lists, but no one ever listens to me." She glanced at her granddaughter, sitting slouched in her chair with a bag of corn on her face. "I'm going start teaching you myself," Gran assured the girl, who tried to look enthused. "I didn't get a dang master's in linguistics so my granddaughter could only speak English." Nadine thought that grandchildren had probably not factored in the decision at all, and refrained from mentioning Gran's constant assertions that one could be a monolingual linguist. She seemed to really be hoping that Nadine would love language as much as she did.

    "Want some tea?" she asked as she set the bowl of stew before the preteen.

    "No thanks."

    "It's good for you," she coaxed, as if this was something that had ever worked on a child.

    "I know."

    "What about some raspberry kombucha?"

    Nadine hesitated briefly, considering a shrimp sitting in broth on her spoon. "Okay." Each always felt they were winning a victory when Nadine had kombucha: Gran in the name of health, and Nadine in the name of drinking things that tasted vaguely alcoholic. Setting the glass bottle in front of her, Gran patted her hair affectionately.

    "Now you eat as much as you want," she urged the slender girl. "I'm gonna be in the living room with my boys. Come get me if you need anything." Nadine never needed anything, but she nodded as she swallowed a piece of broccoli.

    Nadine only ate one bowl, same as ever, leaving enough kombucha in the bottle to safely avoid the floating bits. It wasn't a reflection on Gran's cooking: Gran's food was amazing even constituted into a soup, just the right amount of spicy and savory. Nadine just couldn't eat much. The rest of the pot was being finished off by one of Gran's boys, a cat with long white hair and a massive pair of testicles. She returned the corn to its place in the freezer.

    "I'm gonna do my homework and go to bed," she called into the living room, before bounding up the steps.

    Checking the time, she scowled as she realized it was too early. If she'd actually gone to school today, she might have been tempted to do her homework. Instead, she flopped into what was probably her bed, digging a dirty magazine out from under her pillows.

    She'd rather have a magazine full of naked men, she mused as she considered a frightening looking pair of fake tits. She didn't have any friends she could steal those from, though. Nadine was still waiting to hit puberty, having not realized that her minimal hips and b-cups were as good as it was going to get. When she did realize it, years later, she'd wonder how she managed to be the only woman in her family that could still buy bras in stores. Tossing the magazine aside, she clambered over her mess to make it back to the bathroom, reapplying the black makeup she'd just washed off. While there was no point adding any to her swollen eye, a bit of rummaging found a sheet of gold star stickers, which she applied artistically to the purplish bruise. "Hard fucking core," she grinned to herself in the mirror, putting her hoodie back on. Her glasses hid some of the stars, but that was okay.

    Tossing her platforms into the yard, she followed them down, the sun just beginning to set. It was dark by the time she made it to the bowling alley, trudging along in her platforms and smoking. It was the parking lot behind it that was her destination, the gaggle of sixteen and seventeen year olds loitering by the ashtray. It was a long time yet before she'd come to realize that any older person who wanted to hang out with a twelve year old was the last person a twelve year old should hang out with. Sure, they told you not to in school, but they never explained why. That was the sort of lesson a girl had to learn on her own.

    "Holy shit, Dean, what the fuck happened to your fucking face?" asked Smurf, the gangly teen with the blue mohawk. He was some kind of Native water elemental, if she remembered right, so he tried to be the bluest punk she'd ever seen. It seemed a bit like bragging.

    "Fucking seriously, you look more fucked up than usual," chimed in Hams, the chubby blonde who was not actually chubby enough to deserve his nickname. He could fly, but he looked stupid doing it, so he didn't get much use from it.

    "I was at the gas station trying to get that ginger kid to let me buy a pack," she explained, flicking her lit cigarette at Hams, "when that fat fuck Jones offered to buy me a fruit pie or some shit because I was too fucking skinny for his liking." She left out the part where he'd tried to corner her by the soda and touch her hair.

    "What a fuckin' pedo," the scruffy and skinny-jeaned Slim Jim snorted. He was Filipino, the only other human in the group.

    "I know, right? I told him everyone looked too fucking skinny when your ass is that fat."

    "So he fucking punched you right in the fucking station?" asked Mozz incredulously, the unspoken leader of the little group. Nadine had every intention of losing her virginity to Mozz someday, with his leather jacket and pompadour and tight white tank top. To say nothing of his tight blue jeans and pretty blue eyes. Only Asian kid she'd ever met with blue eyes, and damn if they weren't pretty. He also had some kind of super-strong invulnerability powers, Superman style, but he mostly used them to steal from convenience stores. He was the kind of punk that was a dime a dozen in Las Ballenas, too tough for the cops and too small-time for the real supers.

    "Nah, I was heading outside because the smell was getting to me," she smirked, pretending she hadn't had to slip away and flee. "He followed me out and said I had a big fucking mouth and I should suck his dick with it."

    "Fuckin' pedo," Slim repeated.

    "I told him I'd go right ahead if he could find it and I kicked him in the nuts, and that's when he fucking punched me. My glasses'd be fucked if I didn't take 'em off to get cigs."

    "He didn't, like…" Smurf trailed off, looking faintly worried and uncomfortable.

    "Naw," Nadine assured him, "he grabbed me, but I set his shirt on fire with my lighter and booked it." She left out the part where he'd grabbed her by the hair, where she'd been terrified and her voice shaky the entire time, where afterwards she'd hid in an alley and cried while her eye swelled and changed color. That part didn't make for good storytelling.

    "Fuckin' pedo."

    "I'm amazed he didn't go for your nose," Mozz laughed, grabbing her by the offending beak and pulling her further into the group with it. "It's pretty hard to miss."

    "My nose would break his fucking fist," she sneered, and the gang of boys all laughed derisively.

    "Maybe you're just too irresistible with your glasses off," Smurf suggested, snatching the glasses from her face. He tossed them to one of the others – she couldn't tell who, without them – and she sighed with a roll of her eyes as they snickered. She didn't bother trying to get them back – that'd just make the game of keep-away more fun.

    "I still don't think I'd want that on my dick," Hams scoffed, and she flipped off the pale blonde blur.

    "That's because I'm not Mozz," she spat back, and the other blurs laughed and punched him accordingly.

    "Hey Dean!" Slim chimed in over the sound of a zipper, "can you tell what this is without your glasses?"

    "Fuckin' sad is what that is." Slim zipped back up to laughter all around, and Mozz put her glasses back on her. She stuck her tongue out at him instead of looking grateful, but it backfired when he waggled his eyebrows at her.

    "Did you ever get your cigarettes?" he asked, reaching into the pocket of his leather jacket.

    "Nah," she admitted, "I just threw my last one at Hams"

    "That's a fuckin' waste," he observed out half his mouth, the other half busy holding two cigarettes. He lit them both, then handed one to her, which she took nonchalantly. She was disappointed when it didn't taste like him.

    "We should kick that guy's ass," Smurf stated with a sage nod, always looking for an excuse to punch someone. Secretly she thought he might be jealous of her black eye, as if he no longer looked punk enough.

    "Damn right you should," Nadine agreed with a drag of her cigarette. Her eye was throbbing, and if it started to water she was going to die of embarrassment.

    "No one fucks with our mascot," Slim declared, ruffling her hair a bit too hard.

    "Except for us," pointed out Hams, but this only got him punched in the arm by Smurf.

    "Jones is usually down at the Corner Pocket around now," Mozz said thoughtfully, blowing smoke rings in the air. Nadine attempted to emulate him before pretending she'd meant to blow smoke blobs. "If we want to go defending Dean's honor we can walk there in about fifteen minutes."

    "Or we could take your car," Hams suggested, but now Mozz was the one punching his arm.

    "You assholes don't get to ride in my fucking baby," he told them, referring to the cherry red '57 Ford Thunderbird convertible that was his pride and joy. Nadine knew nothing about cars, but she'd learned everything there was to know about that car nonetheless. He began walking towards the pool hall, and everyone else followed without question, a line of cigarette cherries of varying heights in the darkness. When he stopped, everyone else stopped, surprising discipline from people with such poor posture.

    "Can you walk in those fucking goth shoes?" Mozz asked Nadine suddenly, as if it hadn't occurred to him until he heard the rubber soles scuffing the sidewalk. Her face turned slightly red in the dark; she liked to hide her shoes under wide-bottom pants with too many straps, in the hopes that everyone would forget she was short.

    "I walked here, didn't I?" she muttered defensively, ignoring that her feet felt raw. Nadine was good at pretending she wasn't miserable.

    Mozz scoffed, bending down on one knee. "Hop the fuck on, dumbass. Don't need your short legs slowing us down anyway."

    "Hams has short legs, too," she pointed out, even as she dropped her cigarette and nervously wrapped her arms around Mozz's shoulders.

    "Hams is flying like an inch off the ground because he thinks we won't notice his fat ass can't walk."

    "Fuck you!" He was, indeed, floating just above the sidewalk.

    She restrained a girlish squeal as Mozz stood, her feet dangling off the ground. He took her ankles and wrapped her legs around his waist for added security, and she hoped he couldn't feel her heart racing through his back.

    "Dean!" he exclaimed with some surprise, "when did you get tits?"

    "Fuck you!" The red tinge to her face was hidden in the dark, and she was trying to avoid touching his hair, not wanting pomade on her face.

    "Dean got tits?" Smurf exclaimed excitedly, and she tried to turn and look at him to glare.

    "We've had tits available this whole time?" Slim asked, sounding chagrined, and she couldn't seem to turn and see him either.

    "Obviously," she snarled. "Hams hasn't fuckin' gone anywhere, has he?" She heard Hams make a disgruntled yelp as presumably someone groped him. Mozz patted her leg reassuringly, and she tried not to think about the fact that he could feel her chest against his back as they headed towards the pool hall.

    "So you haven't figured out smoke rings yet?" he asked her quietly, and she hated that he'd noticed.

    "I'll figure it out eventually," she mumbled.

    "Smoke rings are easy," he explained, a bit louder for the benefit of other members of the group who found them troublesome. "It's just like sucking dick." He blew a ring as if to punctuate his point.

    Not only was this not helpful, it raised more questions than it answered. "You gay, Mozz?" Nadine asked finally, trying to quash the unhappy scream building inside her.

    "Don't have to be gay to know how to suck dick," he replied cheerfully, and it spoke of the kids' respect for him that no one questioned this. Nadine tried not the think of Mozz sucking dick, and failed as miserably as was possible.

    There was silence for a moment after Mozz kicked in the door to the pool hall, the door collapsing into splinters. If Nadine hadn't been wearing glasses, a few probably would have gotten into her eyes. Mozz wasn't very good at thinking these sorts of things through. "Where's Jones?" he asked, his voice booming in a manner too commanding for his seventeen years, and it hurt her ears slightly. It was a bit rhetorical, as they could see the fat forty-something sweating in the back of the room, clutching his pool cue.

    "Who's asking?" asked a bearded biker, stepping forward with his hands glowing a faint red. She looked to her sides in surprise as Smurf and Hams took their unofficial places: Smurf with swirling handfuls of water and eyes glowing blue, Hams floating in as intimidating a manner as he could manage. Slim came up beside Hams with a switchblade, not wanting to get left out. Mozz, meanwhile, kept his posture relaxed, hands in the pockets of his jeans.

    "We are, obviously," he snorted, cigarette hanging off his lip. "Fuckin' pedo gave a kid a black eye cuz she didn't want to suck his dick." He nodded towards Nadine, though because she was hanging off his back, this almost knocked his head into her nose.

    "This true?" asked the leather clad man, the glow disappearing as he looked to Nadine. She nodded solemnly, making a show of clinging tighter to Mozz as though frightened. When he reached up to give one of her hands a gentle squeeze of solidarity, she found herself briefly breathless, her stomach twisting itself into knots. This crush was getting out of control.

    There seemed to be no question that this was something Jones would do, and the crowd separated so that the biker who'd taken charge could escort the protesting man to the front. "You gonna kill him?" the biker asked before he let Jones go, watching Mozz carefully.

    "Are we?" he asked, turning to Nadine, and she realized with some surprise that he was completely serious. She looked from Mozz to Jones, the pathetic shivering thing with sweat stains appearing under the arms of his t-shirt. A woman in leather took his pool cue away, lip curling in disgust.

    "Just fuck him up," she said decisively. Then she looked to the biker, hints of suspicion on her face. "Are his people gonna try and avenge him on us after?"

    "We're the closest to people he's got," the biker grumbled, shoving Jones in their direction. "He's earned what he's gettin'." Mozz shrugged Nadine off of his back, and she felt a twinge of disappointment at not having him between her legs. He grabbed the blubbering Jones by the collar of his shirt, dragging him back out to the parking lot. Smurf helpfully put an arm around her shoulders to escort her outside, and she elbowed him in the ribs as he tried to cop a feel.

    "It's only fair," he protested quietly into her ear, lest the bikers think them hypocrites. "You can touch my dick if you want." She elbowed him again, harder this time, so he shoved her away and made a face.

    "You can keep water outta people's lungs, right, Smurf?" Mozz asked, holding their victim on his hands and knees by the back of his neck. It took him as little effort as holding a chihuahua by the collar.

    "Shit yeah, I can. What are you thinkin'?"

    "Shove some water in his face," Mozz ordered, and Jones actually looked like he was crying. "Make him feel like he's drowning. That shit's supposed to suck."

    "One magical waterboarding, coming right up." Nadine watched with detached fascination as Smurf wrapped a bubble of water around Jones' head, like a reverse diver's helmet. His eyes bulged and his mouth gasped open and shut like a fish, and it only dissipated to soak his shirt when he looked like the might pass out. He vomited, and the gang of delinquents universally expressed disgust as their victim collapsed on his back in his own mess, gasping and heaving.

    "Couple more times, I think," Mozz suggested easily, stroking his chin as if observing a work of art.

    After the third time, Jones wheezing and soaked in a mixture of water and urine and vomit, Smurf whined, "Can I just punch this asshole now?"

    "Go for it," Mozz conceded, shoving his hands in his pockets to supervise. Smurf hit Jones with a deluge of water, cleaning the vomit and the piss from him before he'd lay his hands on him. Smurf began laying into him, Hams floating high enough to kick him in the head whenever he tried to fall to the pavement. Slim joined them now that there was plain old punching going on, and Nadine wrapped her arms around herself, trying not to show weakness and look away. Mozz sidled up next to her, lighting two cigarettes again and handing her one with an arm wrapped casually around her shoulder.

    "Feelin' better yet?" he asked, watching the beating like a show. There were wet noises and heavy thunks, Jones kept trying to vomit but he had nothing left. She tried not to feel bad for him, thinking instead of his sweaty sausage fingers yanking her curls away from her scalp as he tried to drag her who-knows-where.

    "Kinda," she lied, thinking it would have been more satisfying if this had happened right at the time, when she was still angry and hadn't had time to compartmentalize. The smoke wasn't much helping to suppress her nausea, and she blew it away from Mozz, an excuse to look away from the violence.

    "Wanna help?" he asked, and she looked at him to see he was offering her a pair of brass knuckles. Why the fuck does a guy with super-strength have brass knuckles?

    "Naw," she answered coolly, "I'll let y'all get your hands dirty." Mozz snorted derisively as he pocketed the weapon. There was a sickening crack, and Nadine looked over to see that Jones' nose had been smashed into his face, bleeding profusely. She had turned her head just in time to see Slim drive a fist into the man's eye, letting it match Nadine's.

    "A'ight," Mozz declared, removing his arm from Nadine, and the other's stepped away to allow Jones to fall to the ground. "I'll finish him off."

    She wondered briefly if he'd forgotten that she hadn't wanted him dead, and she couldn't help wincing when Mozz put out his cigarette on the fat man's arm, the sizzle and the scream. "You're not gonna wanna watch this, baby girl," Slim warned.

    "Yeah she is," Mozz contradicted, giving Slim a dangerous look. "She needs to be able to handle this kind of shit." So Nadine watched, tense and frozen, as suddenly and without warning Mozz ripped Jones' right arm off. The screaming was deafening, blood everywhere, and Jones passed out in a pool of his own blood. Mozz threw the dismembered limb at Hams with a cocky grin, and Hams caught it with a horrified look on his face. "Bring that into the pool hall, they're gonna wanna help this guy out in a hurry. They've probably got a healer."

    "You just make me do this cuz I'm white," Hams accused petulantly, drifting closer to the establishment.

    "Hell yeah we do, you honky-ass motherfucker," Slim agreed cheerfully. "You wanna join Diversity Squad Alpha, get your fat ass a wheelchair." He lit up a cigarette of his own, his knuckles bloody, then held out his hand to accept Smurf's enthusiastic low-five. Hams chose to pretend nothing had happened as he carried the bloody arm away.

    Nadine, normally thrilled by a chance to bully Hams, was busy staring blankly at the body staining the concrete red. She ought to have been more freaked out, more nauseated, more anything, but it was hard to accept it had actually just happened. That wasn't real, what Mozz had just done, that was a finishing move from a video game. It was simply too absurd to be disturbed by.

    "We should probably split up before the cops show up," Mozz pointed out, blowing smoke rings again. Nadine again failed not to think of him with a dick in his mouth.

    "You just don't want us fucking your game up while you're picking up cheerleaders," Slim accused with a grin, though he and Smurf began walking off together. "You comin', Dean?"

    "I got Dean," Mozz assured them, and walking backwards, the two boys simultaneously jammed their tongues between their first two fingers.

    "Fuck you!" Nadine called after them, flipping them off and blushing despite herself. Everything was remarkably normal, for having a man with his arm ripped off lying in front of them. "Hey!" she yelped in surprise as Mozz suddenly picked her up with one arm, lifting her onto his shoulder so that her legs dangled over his back and her arms were draped over his chest. "The fuck is this?" she protested weakly, the air knocked out of her, but rather than admit that she took a drag from her cigarette as if this was normal.

    "This is easier," he explained shortly, taking long strides back to the bowling alley.

    "This is bullshit," she retorted, tempted to try putting her cigarette out on him. He probably wouldn't even notice. Invulnerable asshole.

    "You can live without me between your legs for a couple minutes, ya skank," he mocked affectionately, and Nadine attempted to punch him in the ribs. "Don't do that," he scolded seriously, even as she tried to shake the pain away in the night air. "You'll break your hand."

    "You'll break your dick."

    "My dick will break you."

    "Stop being creepy!" she whined, flailing her legs in protest, feeling entirely too hot and tingly with goosebumps on her arms. He snatched her cigarette away from her, putting it out between his fingers and dropping it to the ground.

    "You fuckin' love it," he asserted correctly, dropping her unceremoniously into the passenger seat of his convertible.

    "I thought I wasn't allowed in your car."

    "I'm making an exception." He climbed in next to her, and she wondered how much self control it took not to leave fingerprints in the metal. She realized, as they pulled out of the parking lot with surprising caution, that he wasn't driving towards her house.

    "You're not taking me home?" she asked casually, refusing to betray that her heart was beating against her ribs.

    "I thought we could hang out without the douche squad," he explained simply, shrugging his leather-clad shoulders.

    "That's cool," she nodded, hoping she sounded indifferent instead of squeaky. She felt very small and very thin, and thoroughly inadequate with her gigantic pants and hoodie and short curly hair. The only way she could possibly cope with the fact that someone so absurdly handsome was paying attention to her was with heavy bravado, an unearned swagger and an air of aloofness. I know what's going on, her posture said, I am a worldly and experienced twelve years of age. I drive around alone with manwhores who can rip arms off all the time.

    "There's some marshmallows under the seat if you want some," he offered, all chivalry. She pulled the half-eaten bag out with some confusion before recalling the beach bonfire of last week.

    "Thanks," she said nervously, shoving one of the sugarbombs in her mouth and swallowing it.

    "Did you even fucking chew?" Mozz asked after a moment's silence, and Nadine turned to look out the side of the car, wind sliding through her hair and over her scalp.

    "I eat fast," she shrugged defensively, and she heard Mozz snort.

    "It's no wonder Jones asked you to suck his dick," he scoffed as he took a turn towards the woods.

    "The fuck?" Nadine's head whipped around to stare at Mozz incredulously.

    "You look like you'd be good at it, is all. You could blow some bigass smoke rings."

    "Fuck you," she muttered, though she had a sneaking suspicion that he meant it as a compliment. Mozz just shrugged. The convertible pulled down a dirt road, into a clearing with the remains of innumerable drunken fires and a single old couch. The couch was probably moldy.

    "We can smoke here," he explained, and she let herself out of the car with an unseemly speed. Her companion lit two cigarettes in his mouth again, pulling a box of bottles and cans from the back of the car. "You want a beer, or some girly shit?"

    "Beer," she responded automatically.

    "Fuckin' stupid," Mozz chided, and she refused to flinch despite her inclinations. He stepped around his car and stuck his spare cigarette in her mouth, handing her a can of something that looked like it was meant for old rednecks. "Should've said girly shit. Now you've got to pretend to like this garbage." She was surprised to see him take a swig from a bottle full of something fluorescent red; at least, it looked red, in the light of the moon.

    "I don't have to pretend to like anything," she insisted, cracking open the beer.

    "You don't have to," Mozz agreed, staring up at the crescent moon, "but you will." Nadine flipped him off, sipping at her beer and holding back the grimace that might otherwise have prevented itself.

    "It tastes fine," she lied, "you just like girly shit."

    "Yes I do," he agreed, and he had Nadine at a loss once again.

    "Why do we call you Mozz?" she asked finally, sipping daintily at her horrible beverage and chasing away the taste with smoke.

    "Because my little brother can't pronounce Fonzarelli. Says Mozzarelli instead. It's cute as fuck."

    Nadine had never thought of Mozz as having a little brother. As having a family at all, for that matter. It was weird to think about.

    Suddenly Mozz was bending down to kiss her, and Nadine thought she might have a heart attack.

    He was probably trying really hard not to hurt her, she realized, since if he kissed her too hard he might snap her neck. The thought was more exhilarating than it ought to have been. He didn't actually seem to be very good at what he was doing, his tongue flailing back and forth in her mouth like he was looking for his keys, but it was nonetheless the greatest fifteen seconds of her young life. He tasted like an ashtray mixed with the color red, and he smelled like a cheap cologne sample from a men's magazine, and Nadine wanted to wrestle him to the ground and shove her tongue down his throat. It would never work, thanks to the super-strength, but she really wanted to try.

    The greaser looked thoughtful as he pulled away from her, considering his bottle. "You're a virgin, aren't you?"

    "I'm twelve," she said flatly, unable to think of another response. Mozz winced visibly.

    "Fuck. I forgot. I thought you were fourteen or something." Nadine looked down at herself, clearly puzzled by this statement. "I mean, it's not – you don't act twelve. You're too old to be twelve." Mozz massaged his temples with his thumbs, clearly feeling confused. "You're sure you're a virgin?"

    "I'm twelve."

    "I don't fuckin' know!" Mozz exclaimed, throwing up his hands defensively. "Maybe you got molested or somethin'."

    Nadine made a face of puzzled disgust. "Yeah, Mozz, you got me, my grandma diddled me so it's safe to stick your dick in me now. Real fuckin' classy, asshole."

    "Shit." Mozz sighed and took another swig of his strawberry something-or-other. "I forgot you don't have parents."

    "I have parents," she corrected, blowing smoke at him. "They're just busy."

    "The fuck are they busy with that isn't bein' your parents?"

    "Science. They're scientists. They're doing important research." She sipped at her pisswater and didn't look him in the eye.

    "Right. Great. I'm not fucking a twelve year old. I'm gross, but I ain't that gross." Mozz started to blow another smoke ring before thinking better of it, blowing it towards the stars instead.

    "I don't think you're gross," Nadine protested, but he only sighed.

    "Course you don't. You're a kid that wants to get laid. When you're older, though, and you're out of this shithole, you're gonna look back and think why the fuck did I hang out with those nasty pieces of shit."

    "My birthday's July 5th," she offered, changing the subject.

    "I'll get you some discount fireworks."

    "Sweet. I'll be thirteen. A teenager." She was staring him down intently, green eyes locked with his blue ones.

    "Fine," he surrendered, "for your thirteenth birthday I'll get you my dick. It'll be fuckin' magical. Maybe you'll have bigger tits by then."

    Nadine grinned wide, tossing back her beer without a care in the world – there were better things to think about than the taste of it, right now. "I'll have huge tits," she declared, blowing smoke at the moon, content.

    Nadine Pascal-Said was fourteen years of age, and she was smashing the window in her hospital room with a chair. It hadn't really occurred to anyone to put her in a room with bars on the windows or the chairs bolted down, but they probably should have. She wanted out. She wanted gone. No more hospitals and no more police, no courts, no trials. She'd have burned the place down if she could have, faked her own death and maybe caused a few real ones.

    They were going to call her grandmother. They were going to call her parents. She'd have to go back to Las Ballenas. She'd have to see Mozz, and Slim, and all the rest of those stupid assholes. And between that and whatever the hell it was she was doing now... she'd take whatever the hell. Something. Anything but that. Free and gone, that was what she wanted.

    Smashing a window with a chair actually took forever. They made it look easy, in movies, but the protagonists in movies weren't usually as waifish as Nadine. She didn't have time to make it clean, to clear away with glass so it'd be safe, so she was just going to have to avoid it instead. And if she didn't – well, chicks dig scars. She propped up the chair next to the broken window, and leapt off it and into the sky.

    Falling several stories when you were small and frail and human was fucking terrifying. But she grit her teeth and jammed her eyes shut so she couldn't see the lawn coming up to meet her, the courtyard that during the day was full of geriatric patients. For all her attempts at stoic silence, she couldn't stop a ragged, roar-like sound from escaping her when she landed, her leg breaking with an impressive crack.

    This might impede her escape plans.

    She didn't bother trying to pull herself to her feet, pain radiating out from somewhere around mid-calf. Tears were in her eyes, and she didn't bother trying to wipe them away: if she got caught, she could use those. She was still in the shitty school uniform, clothes something like forest green scrubs. With her shaved head and her BCGs, she looked astonishingly genderless.

    Nadine was trying to pull herself with her arms over to the bushes, to somewhere less open so that she could try and hide, when an unnatural breeze passed over her. She still wasn't used to feeling the breeze on her scalp. Some strange instinct told her to roll onto her side and look, and for this effort she was met with the sight of…

    It's motherfucking Dracula.

    "Are you going to kill me?" Her voice had the decency not to waver, not to make her sound like a coward. Just a matter-of-fact question reasonable for the situation. The Dracula situation.

    "You're a little girl." His voice was more feminine than she'd expected, but she didn't know what she'd expected, a pale man with black sausage-curls and a cape. "I am not so monstrous."

    "There a lot of Draculas around here?"

    "I am – I am not a Dracula, you insolent thing. I am a vampire. You may call me Archibald, if you wish."

    Who the fuck says ‘insolent' that isn't a movie villain? Archie the vampire, apparently. "Are there a lot of vampires around here, Archibald?"

    "No. I am… alone," he admitted mournfully. He turned his head from her, giving her a better look at his face in the moonlight. She couldn't tell if he was posing intentionally, or if that was just something that happened when you were pretty. A single dark tear escaped one eye, and she couldn't imagine he wasn't doing it on purpose.

    "You don't have to be." Offering herself up as a vampire's sidekick wasn't the dumbest idea she'd ever had, but it probably came close. Couldn't have been worse than jumping out that fucking window. She felt nervous and anxious and she had goosebumps from the pain, but Nadine quashed all that, lying in the grass in the dark with a broken leg. She'd fucked in exchange for protection, before. All she had to do was try to cheer this guy up, maybe let him chew on her a bit, and she'd be free. Out of here. She'd have entered the adult world for real, in a way. It wasn't as if he wasn't handsome, as if he didn't look like someone she'd be perfectly willing to share a bedroom with. Then again, she couldn't imagine she looked terribly alluring. She was just going to have to hope he'd be interested in anyone with a pulse.

    He wiped the dark tear from his face with a gloved hand, looked at her with just a touch of horror. "Are you suggesting…? But, no! I couldn't possibly! You are a mere child, girl, you know not what you ask."

    This ain't no motherfucking Shakespeare, asshole, Jesus Christ.

    Her disdain for his melodrama was tempered by a certain appreciation for his manner of speaking, of dress. He seemed refined. He seemed adult. He had the allure of someone who knew things that she didn't. Nadine was still fourteen, after all. "I am asking you if you would like to feed on me," she said patiently, trying to sound as poetic as he did. She was desperate to be seen as his equal. "I am asking if you would care to have a lover – or failing that, a companion and caterer." She hadn't actually used that word, lover, before. It made it sound so elegant, mashing two bodies together; he seemed like the sort of person that could make fucking into something elegant.

    "You cannot imagine what it is you are asking. I am a monster, dear girl. I would feed not only on your blood, but on your very soul. You would be unable to deny my monstrous whims, my passions. Under my power, you would do things to which you would never agree, could never." His gloved hand clenched into a fist at his words, as if it were her that he was crushing. He could not have looked more like a character in a play, but Nadine was not old enough to see this as a red flag.

    "What's the catch?" Still in pain and still terrified, Nadine nonetheless could not help but wonder what exactly these monstrous whims might be. She could only imagine so many ways to fit two bodies together, could not imagine anything more interesting, anything she might describe as monstrous. Was he suggesting he planned to cut her open and fuck the wound? She didn't think that was it, with how sexy he made it sound, but her imagination only went so far. Perhaps he was suggesting the use of implements.

    "If I take you with me," he warned, kneeling down beside her in the grass, "there'll be no turning back, for you. You shall be trapped in this life that you have chosen."

    We'll see about that.

    A scream sounded, and Nadine looked up to see a nurse peering out from the broken window. "Better hurry," she suggested, reaching up an arm as if to wrap it around his shoulders. "And be careful with the leg. I think I broke it."

    It had been almost a year. A year, trapped in this horrible pseudo-castle full of dust and regret. He was making her wear the dress again, the moth-bitten flapper dress that made her look even younger than she was. It stank of formaldehyde.

    Tonight was the night she was going to get away. That was Nadine's hope, at any rate. At midnight, she would be fifteen, and her hope was that this milestone would provide her with a chance to escape.

    He'd said it would be forever, when he'd taken her. She hadn't really believed him. He'd be bored before then, surely, she'd rationalized. But though it'd only been a year, it already felt like forever. Perhaps she shouldn't have expected much, from a man named Archibald who looked like Dracula.

    "I'd like to see my birthday fireworks tonight," she announced, hoping he couldn't tell how desperately she needed him to agree.

    "Your birthday…? Oh! Yes, very clever. Birthday's tomorrow, is it? I suppose we might be able to manage that." He was patronizing her again, the way he always did, lounging on the dusty couch and reading a book with a shirtless male model on the cover. It had been amusing, the first time, the sight of a man in a cape reading a cheap romance paperback, but now it was simply a relief. It was better that way, when he was ignoring her. He curled his fingers lazily, a summons, and she felt herself getting pulled towards him as if by a thread. Nadine didn't bother trying to fight those, anymore; it simply upset him, and then she'd spend hours with him crying bloody tears into her shoulder, wailing about how she must despise him. She did, but she'd have to lie anyway, because the alternative was even more crying.

    Nadine didn't even flinch anymore, when he hiked up her dress to sink his teeth into her bruised hip – it had never healed enough to scar, was always sore and aching. One hand wrapped around her waist, and she realized he was holding his book behind her back so that he could read it while he fed.

    You're such a fucking asshole, Archie.

    "There's a hill that overlooks town," she said instead, "where we should be able to get a good view of the fireworks. Teenagers usually go there to make out, so it's relatively secluded." Archibald's teeth slid out of her flesh so the he could give her a stern look, her blood still on his mouth and dribbling out the circular wound.

    "Nadine," he scolded, "you know we can't be out where there are people." This said, his tongue traced its way up her thigh to clean the trail of blood, lapped at the holes in her skin where it would continue to bleed for a while yet. She'd become very good at not letting him know how dizzy it made her, lest he have another pity-party about how dreadful he was.

    "There won't be many people," she assured him. "Everyone tries to keep it a secret, so the cops won't come, and it will be dark. Everyone will be too busy with each other to notice us."

    "I suppose I can make an exception for your birthday," he decided, still licking at her hip. "I won't be making a habit of it, however."

    You won't have to.

    "Thank you, my lord." He loved it when she called him that, when she lowered her gaze all demure; he let her dress fall, setting his book down.

    "I'm sure you have better ways than that to show me how grateful you are." He was trying to purr, she could tell, but he only sounded smarmy and awful instead as the invisible thread pulled her down and landed her on her knees. If she hadn't been determinedly looking demure, green eyes hidden behind her thick lashes, they'd have rolled right out of her head.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

    "Is it all that you'd hoped?" Archibald asked, half-simpering, one hand on her shoulder. He was patronizing her again, but it would be over soon. There was a couple in their car getting dressed, clearly getting ready to leave; at the bottom of that hill was the bad side of town, the side that didn't get included in pictures of the view.

    "Yes, thank you," she assured him, though she'd barely looked at the explosions in the sky. She reached into the bag he'd allowed her for a snack, trying and failing to keep her heart from racing.

    "Feeling romantic already?" he hissed into her ear, and she was both grateful and repulsed by how little he knew her.

    "There's something I'd like to show you," she declared, technically true, and he allowed her to pull away from him, put some distance between them.

    "Oh?" He cocked his head to the side, clearly amused, as if she were a dog about to do a trick.

    "Yes." And with that, she upturned a bag of rice between them – not as large as she would have liked, but large enough. He stared at it, taking a moment to process what exactly she had done.

    "You bitch," he hissed, clearly itching to chase her even as he fell to his knees, fingers moving from one grain to another as he began to count them all. She didn't bother taking time to gloat as she sprinted to the car of the couple she'd been scoping out, pounding on the driver's window and giving the teen within a heart attack. As soon as he'd rolled down the window, she leapt in – thankful, not for the first time, that she was so thin. With much screaming and yelling and flailing of limbs, she managed to get the door open and kick the boy out, starting the car as she closed the door again. She was halfway down the hill when the girl in the passenger seat bailed, having apparently figured out that screaming would do nothing in the face of inertia.

    It was sheer luck, when the car crashed into the bar by the train tracks, that Nadine emerged unscathed, slithering out the open window the same way she'd gone in. She reached back in to grab her glasses from where they'd landed on the dashboard, one lens missing. The car hadn't actually gone very far into the building, so presumably the people within wouldn't hold it against her too badly. She needed to hurry; Archibald was quick, after all, even when it came to counting.

    "Did you just crash a goddamn car into my bar?" She scrambled to her feet, looked over the car at the presumed proprietor. Old, scarred, well-muscled, he didn't look like he'd put up with a lot of bullshit. Then again, he was a bit blurry – maybe he was just fat and baffled.

    "Do you know anyone that kills vampires?" she asked, cutting straight to the point as she scrambled over the mangled hood to reach him. He was not, in fact, fat.

    "What?" She could see him softening as he got a better look at her, at her short and bouncy black curls and stick-thin legs, her childish figure under her shapeless dress, as tall as she'd ever be at 5'4".

    "Vampires," she repeated, passing him now to look around the corner and into the door to the place. "I have a vampire problem. This seemed like the sort of place that would have people who kill them. Do you kill them?" She turned back to look at him over her shoulder, and he was looking between her and the car.

    "I don't – get inside, then, for fuck's sake." He ushered her inside, the hand on her back light, as if he was afraid he'd break her.

    "If you can't kill vampires, I don't know that I'll be that much safer inside." No one inside seemed to have taken much notice of the bumper poking through the wall, preoccupied with drinking and in one case punching each other.

    "What's that about vampires?" She didn't jump when the man appeared by her side out of nowhere – Archie did that trick, too. Assuming he'd been doing a trick – maybe she just hadn't seen him without that missing lens. The proprietor's hand went to her shoulder protectively, and she could feel the calluses on her skin. Whoever this guy was, he did not seem well-trusted.

    He seemed to fancy himself a cowboy, with a tanned leather jacket with fringe and a Stetson, five o clock shadow and beat up boots under wrecked denim. "Do you kill vampires?" she asked, though the height of one thick eyebrow spoke to her disbelief.

    "You got a vampire needs killin'?" There was a half-smoked hand-rolled cigarette hanging from his lip, and Nadine rose up on her toes to snatch it from him, taking her first drag in what was almost a year now. Her head swam, and she couldn't help smiling at the pleasant ache in her lungs.

    "Hopefully he's still up on the hill," she shrugged, exhaling smoke as she spoke. "If he hasn't finished counting rice yet. Easy enough to find, since the motherfucker looks like Dracula." The proprietor's hand was still on her shoulder, an unspoken bodyguard, and she took another drag.

    "I'll have him dead by sunrise," the cowboy assured her, pinching the cherry of her cigarette to put it out before ruffling her hair and stepping outside.

    Goddamn patronizing motherfuckers.

    "Who the hell was that?" she asked finally, shrugging off the unnecessary hand and spitting the cigarette butt to the floor.

    "Jed," he said simply, passing her to slide behind the bar as she followed. "He's one of those self-hating hybrid types. Only ever hangs around long enough to start trouble."

    "Ah." She pulled herself up onto a barstool, tried to look like she belonged there. "One of those." She had never actually heard of those, but his tone suggested that this was a type, and she always liked to seem knowledgeable.

    "Yup. You got a name, little girl?" He slid a glass of tonic water in front of her, and she picked it up and examined it with a touch of disdain.

    "Dean. You got the gin half of this equation, big man?" The bartender scoffed, but did not provide the asked-for liquor.

    "Name's Chris. Dean's a bit of a tough name, for a kid."

    "I'm fifteen," she said flatly, "and I've spent a year gettin' fucked by a dead guy. I think I've earned a drink and a cigarette."

    Chris said nothing, but he did pour some gin into her glass. She sipped it, and did an admirable job of not making a face. "This vampire of yours hard to kill?" he asked finally, handing her a cigarette.

    "If you weigh over a hundred pounds? Probably not." Nadine leaned forward to let him light her up, taking a long drag.

    "I'm assuming that's not your car." Chris pointed to the bumper through the wall, and she looked over her shoulder at the damage.

    "Nah," she shrugged. "Some kids." Probably older than she was, but she felt like they were kids. "Learned a valuable lesson about underage drinking." She felt almost herself again, drinking and smoking, as if she hadn't spent a year as a doll on a pedestal.

    "You sure you're okay with Jed killing your vampire? Hard not to get attached, after a year."

    Nadine wasn't sure she was in the mood for a bartender playing psychiatrist, but she probably didn't have a lot of options. "Eh. He didn't age well. Might have been upset if it had happened early on, but not now."

    That was a lie. She'd never given a good goddamn about Archie. But that made it more embarrassing, not less.

    The door slammed open: the cowboy was back. Nadine drank down the rest of her gin and tonic, face twisting as it burned down her throat. "Dead already, or did you give up?"

    "Dead," Jed confirmed, and Nadine wondered what it had looked like, how it had happened, what he had said. She didn't ask.

    "Awesome." She took another long drag of her cigarette, but then he was there again, putting it out. "That shit was old the first time," she snarled, attempting to smack his hand away. When he grabbed her wrist instead, Chris grabbed his, and she watched with detached bemusement as they stared each other down. With her glasses back, she could make out Jed's face a bit better – he looked older than Archie had, younger than Chris, though looks were almost always deceiving. Late twenties, early thirties, he might have been handsome if he hadn't been halfway to turning his skin to tanned leather.

    "Let the girl smoke," the bartender said finally, lighting Nadine's cigarette back up. She sucked on it gratefully, turning it away from Jed to make it slightly more difficult to put out.

    "She's too young," Jed grumbled, releasing her wrist. "It's bad for her."

    "She's old enough," Chris rebutted, relaxing now that Jed appeared to have surrendered. "and there are worse things. Let her have something that makes her happy." Jed did not seem pleased by this, but accepted it, taking a seat just a bit too close to Nadine for comfort. He smelled like smoke and whiskey and something sour, none of which was as sexy as it sounded.

    "Could I get a Rob Roy?" Nadine asked, sliding her glass back across the bar.

    "You like Rob Roys?" His voice spoke of more amusement than disbelief, replacing her glass with a new one and providing the asked-for drink.

    "More'n gin and tonic, apparently." She sipped at the beverage, finding it more agreeable than the last one, noting out the corner of her eye that Jed had asked to keep the bottle of whiskey.

    "You a babysitter now, Chris?" Jed asked with a sip from his bottle, and she turned to level him with a glare, exhaling smoke through her nostrils like an angry dragon.

    "You got a problem with me, asshole?" she demanded, jabbing a cigarette in his direction.

    "As a matter of fact, I do," he confirmed, setting the bottle down and giving her a glare of his own. "You're a kid playing at being grown, and if you don't cut that shit out you're going to get yourself in a whole world of trouble. I'm sure you think this is loads of fun, but this ain't a fucking game you're playing here."

    "Fuck you," she spat, taking a long swig of her drink. "I am done – fucking done – with patronizing old assholes treating me like I don't know what the fuck. I have not spent the last fuck-knows how long sucking on dead dick to get treated like a fucking child, okay? Sure as shit didn't ask you to kill him so I could hear all about how I ought to be livin' my life from a man who can't seem to figure out how soap works, so you feel free to fuck right off with that." Having said her piece, she retreated back into herself, elbows on the counter and sucking discontentedly on her cigarette. Jed seemed to consider this disrespect to be beyond the pale, storming out of the bar without another word.

    "That might not've been the cleverest thing, ki – Dean."

    "You gonna lecture me too, Chris?"

    "Wouldn't dream of it. Jed's just got a temper, and holds a grudge."

    "Good for him." Chris took her shortness as a cue to leave her alone, which it probably was. Not that Nadine wanted to be alone, but she wanted a specific kind of company that she couldn't quite pin down. Her hip still ached, and she wondered if it would ever heal. It was tempting to shave her head again, just so her hair wouldn't smell like old. She was free, now, she was supposed to be doing all the things she couldn't have before. "I'm… I'm gonna go," she muttered, finishing off her drink and sliding off the barstool. The cigarettes and alcohol were perhaps not a good idea after a period of forced sobriety and blood loss, but she did her best not to make it obvious how off-balance she felt.

    "<span></span>You sure that's a good idea?" The concern on the old man's face was genuine, but she waved him off.

    "Course it's not. Never stopped me before."

    "You're free to stay here as long as you need." Nadine did not bother to acknowledge this, stumbling out of the bar and into the dark of night. What she needed now was sleep, far away from vampires and their overstuffed unwashed comforters.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

    When Nadine awoke, curled up next to an abandoned train car, someone was trying to pick her up. "Fuck off," she tried to snarl, too bleary to actually be threatening as she waved an arm at the blur.

    "It's just me," said the voice, and she realized it belonged to Jed, though his tone was different than before. Placating, like he was trying to calm a spooked horse.

    "Is that supposed to help?" Nadine scoffed, finding her glasses in the grass and sliding them back on. It took her a moment to realize what had changed. "Did you leave to take a shower?" she asked incredulously, trying to pretend there wasn't heat rising over her cheekbones. Jed, it seemed, cleaned up nice. Ashy blonde hair, brown eyes, strong jaw – his eyes had looked sunken, before, but now she could see it was just the light casting shadows beneath thick brows. He looked… smouldery. Attractive and male in all the ways Archie hadn't been.

    Goddammit you drunk asshole why the fuck are you pretty.

    "Yeah," he admitted, having the audacity to look adorably bashful. "I know I've got a bit of a temper, so I thought I should leave – figured as long as I was gone I might as well try to clean myself up. I… forget about that sort of thing, sometimes."

    "And you were trying to pick me up because…?"

    "It… didn't feel right, leaving you sleeping out here. I wasn't trying to hunt you down or anything, it just happened. You've… got a distinctive smell." She could see the glint of sharp white teeth as he spoke, fangs less dramatic than Archie's had been, but fangs nonetheless. Her hip still ached.

    Nadine sighed, held up her arms like a child waiting to be carried – which, theoretically, she was. "Are you kidnapping me to somewhere with a shower so I can get rid of it?"

    Jed hesitated for only a moment before gathering her up in his arms – very large, very warm arms. She didn't bother resisting the temptation to wrap her arms around his neck, to rest her head on his shoulder and close her eyes to pretend that he was hers. "You can shower back at my room, if you want," he acquiesced, and she wondered why she didn't notice earlier how lovely and gravelly his voice sounded. It rumbled in his chest magnificently, like his ribcage was an amplifier, and she resisted the urge to press an ear to his sternum.

    "I want," she breathed, and the way she said it probably made it a bit too obvious she wasn't talking about the shower, but… well. She could hardly be expected to be a nun.

    "I didn't catch your name," he observed, perhaps uncomfortably, his stride surprisingly gentle.

    "Dean."

    "Bullshit."

    "Fuck you."

    "What's your real name?"

    "None of your fucking business, Jed. It can be Dean if I want."

    "You got a real filthy mouth, Dean."

    "I do a lot of filthy things."

    "That is not even close to what I meant."

    "Mmmph." Emboldened by his discomfort, she drew herself closer to his chest, wrapped her arms tighter around his warmth. It had been so long, now, since she'd been with someone warm. She hadn't realized what a difference it made, to feel warmth and a pulse instead of cold dead flesh beneath her skin.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

    Nadine emerged from the bathroom in nothing but her skin, and Jed turned away so quickly he should have had whiplash.

    "The fuck do you think you're doing?" he demanded, and she took his hoarseness as a good sign. She bent a knee and crossed her arms over her chest, a nod in the direction of propriety.

    "I don't have any clothes," she explained flatly, watched impassively as he swore and scrambled to retrieve something, anything, from his bags. Finally he threw a shirt blindly in her direction, which she slipped over her head more languorously than was strictly necessary.

    "Did he do that to you?" Nadine pulled her head free of the shirt's collar to find Jed holding the hem above her hipbone, brown eyes fixed on the angry wound.

    "Every day around noon," she confirmed with a shrug, pleased that he was close enough to see with her natural vision. His heavy brows were furrowed, his normally shapely lips a fine line.

    "And the dumb fuck never thought to heal you?"

    "I'm sure he thought of it. Just never saw much point, when he'd only be opening it up again." Her wide mouth couldn't help but curl into a small smile at the anger written on the stillness of his face. She rose to her toes again, this time to grab the brim of his Stetson in her fingertips, depositing it atop damp black curls. "It's a good thing I had a handsome cowboy to kill him for me." He released the hem of the shirt to fall down to her thigh, perhaps realizing what it might look like. "And anyway," she added, hat falling crooked on her forehead, "he could have killed me."

    Jed responded to this defense with an unhappy grunt, sinking one of his fangs into the pad of his right thumb. "Drink this," he commanded simply, offering the digit and the blood welling thereupon.

    "Is that the hand you jerk off with?"

    "Don't be a goddamn pervert –"

    "– just shut up, stick it in my mouth and suck?" she finished dryly. Before he could protest, she ran the tip of her tongue over the droplet, slid her mouth over the rest of his thumb to suck gently at the wound.

    "You only had to lick the damn thing," he muttered, a visible flush to his face. To this she merely shrugged, making purposeful eye contact as she continued her ministrations. He hesitated just a moment too long before he pulled his hand away, sliding his thumb over her lower lip as he did so. "You can't – you shouldn't do shit like that."

    "I'm sorry," she lied, pulling the Stetson from her head to drop it on the floor. "It's just been so long since I've been with someone warm. Someone alive." She slid the hem of her shirt slowly upward again, just at the one side. "You did heal me," she offered, dropping the cloth after just long enough to see the freshly scarred skin.

    "You're too young for me, kid," he rejected gruffly, and Nadine's eyes followed his despite his attempts to avert them.

    "Would Chris have tried to protect me from you, if I were too young?"

    "Chris can go fuck himself."

    "And he will," Nadine agreed, stepping closer, her hand finding his arm with a feather-light touch. "That doesn't mean you have to."

    "I can't…" He trailed off, closed his eyes, but didn't brush her hand away. She took this as her opening, closing the gap between them and sliding her arms around his waist. He stiffened, but she only squeezed harder, pressing her chest against his abdomen and clinging desperately.

    "You don't have to," she murmured, even as she was appreciating how wonderfully solid and warm he was. "Just hold me. Please? Just for tonight. Just one night with someone living, someone safe." It was an agonizing moment before he relaxed in her arms, one hand moving to run through her hair.

    "Just one night," he repeated quietly, and she smiled into his shirt.

    Nadine Pascal-Said was lounging backstage when the door to Lola's dressing room opened, halfway through the show. The head that poked its way through was pale, heart-shaped, freckled with a long blonde ponytail. Blue eyes met bespectacled green ones, and the stranger's eyebrows lifted just the slightest bit.

    "If you're an admiring fan, you picked a bad time," Nadine teased, lounging upside-down on the couch, black curls hanging to the floor and a cigarette in her hand.

    "I just wanted to see," said the stranger, sliding inside, and Nadine didn't bother pretending that she wasn't sizing her up. Stocky was the word, or maybe reubenesque, or voluptuous, or something else that brought to mind an hourglass too wide; broad hips and broad shoulders and thick thighs and large breasts. She wasn't dressed like a fan, in army boots and jeans, a black leather jacket over a white tank top. She was trying to act shy, whoever she was, and it didn't fit right over her face or her body language.

    Nadine was intrigued.

    The sixteen year-old righted herself, stood to eyeball the blonde again. That she was shorter than Nadine was saying something, as Nadine was only 5'4?. Then again, the heels helped, pink platform confections that matched the lace of her dress and the bows in her hair.

    Lola had picked it out. Nadine didn't mind it. She sucked on her cigarette with a half-smile on her too-wide lips.

    "You're Lola's assistant?" asked the blonde, and Nadine gave her a cheshire grin.

    "Fuckbuddy," she corrected, and as she began to circle the stranger, the stranger began circling right back, all pretense of innocence dropped. "You didn't know anyone would be here." It was not a question.

    "I don't mind the company," the blonde assured her, and now she was grinning, too.

    "You don't look like you're here to get laid," Nadine observed.

    "It wasn't my goal, but I don't mind detours."

    "Flatterer. What were you planning to do, if I wasn't here? Wait for her to get back, so you could pounce?" Blue eyes darted ever-so-briefly to the jewelry scattered across the makeup table. "Petty thievery?"

    "She's not human, you know."

    "Yeah, thanks. I hadn't noticed. We only fuck, and all. You some kinda bigot?" Nadine didn't want the blonde to be a bigot, because Nadine had decided that she liked the shape of her mouth.

    "Just makin' sure you knew. She hasn't earned it, all she's got."

    "Ain't nobody rich that's earned all they've got. You Robin Hood?"

    "I was always more of a Little John."

    "So what exactly's the plan, now that I'm in the way?" They were still circling each other, eyes locked, grinning predatory grins.

    "Ideally, you'll get out of my way."

    "And if I don't?"

    "I'd hate to have to knock you on your ass."

    "I'd like to see you try." The blonde accepted this as truth, because it wasn't said the way a threat was said, the way a bluff was made – it was a promise, a request made sweetly.

    "Maybe I'll just take you, too." Nadine accepted this as truth, because the blonde was sizing her up, assessing how difficult she might be to carry like a viking taking a bride.

    "That'd be some theft. What would you do, with your ill-gotten gains?"

    "Spend it all on cheap beer and sex toys."

    "… what's your name, Li'l John?"

    The blonde mulled over the question for a moment, considered it from all angles. "Billy," she answered finally, and Nadine held out a hand to shake.

    "Hello, Billy. I'm Dean." Their palms met, and Nadine yanked, pulled the surprised girl against her and caught her lips with her own. Billy, apparently quick on the uptake, wrapped her arms around Nadine and dipped her into the sort of kiss that Nadine had only seen in movies. "Wanna fuck on the couch?" Nadine asked as they came up for air.

    "Mmmph. I would, but the boys are waitin'."

    "The boys can't wait?"

    "… I s'pose they'll keep."

    "How'd you like to get married?"

    Nadine eyeballed the cheerful blonde suspiciously, currently sprawled naked beside her on their blanket on the floor. Nadine liked the way that Billy sprawled, liked the way that her body settled itself, liked trying to count her freckles when she wasn't looking.

    "To who?"

    "To me, dumbass."

    "Part of a con?"

    "Not really, no." Nadine was now confused. Billy had never much seemed the marrying type – had most definitely never seemed the monogamous type. But she trusted Billy, and so she waited for Billy to say something that would make this notion make sense. "There's this cult, downtown – Cult of Lilut. Some kind of apocalypse thing – you know how cults are. And everyone in it, every damn one, is fucking gorgeous. Like, not gorgeous the way supermodels are gorgeous, but they've all got this… unf. And the thing with Lilut is, their big thing is orgies. Just… all these people, all different kinds of people, fuckin'. Orgasms are supposed to be sacred. And there's all kinds of ways to join, but one of 'em's to get married in one of their big orgy ceremonies. So all these couples go – or triangles, or stars, or whatever, because they give no fucks about monogamy – and they get married, and then they consummate the marriage by fucking everyone. Or, like – whoever you want to have sex with. Because they've got all these rules about consent and safety and shit, and if you break them you're out of the club. So it's like a swinger's club that isn't all full of creepy old assholes. And I know it's got to be good, because the other day I heard some shithead in a fedora complaining about how they kicked him out, and I was like, I have found my people."

    "Billy – Billy, seriously." Nadine sat up, took Billy's hands in her own and gazed deeply into her lover's eyes. "You had me at orgy."

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

    "I don't like this cult shit."

    "Yes, Jeff, you said that already," Nadine sighed, braiding Billy's hair into something that would work better with the flowing white robes they were both wearing. Flowing white robes were not mandatory orgy attire, but both girls agreed that they liked the ambiance. And the easy access.

    Jeff, meanwhile, was pacing back and forth across the floor of the bar, stroking his salt-and-pepper beard anxiously. "What if it's – what if it's some kind of rape gang? If they're lettin' in teenagers-"

    "Age of consent is sixteen here, Jeff," Billy pointed out, but this did not seem to help.

    "Goddammit, Billy Dean, I'm not joking! Ain't no grown man gonna fuck a sixteen year-old that ain't a pedophile."

    "We sure do know a lot of pedophiles," Nadine observed dryly.

    "Don't I know it," Jeff muttered, brows furrowed and face dark. Jeff chose to take a very fatherly role with his little gang, and it was rare that he approved of the girls' antics.

    "If it turns out to be a rape gang, we'll let you know so you can burn the whole place down," Billy assured him, but this did not stop his scowling.

    "Ain't even legal, marryin' sixteen year-olds."

    "We don't really need it to be legal," Nadine began.

    "Since we don't exactly pay taxes or have health insurance," Billy finished.

    "Don't you go drinkin' anything, neither. If I hear you went and killed yourselves in some mass suicide bullshit, I'm gonna be pissed."

    "Yes, Jeff," the girls intoned simultaneously, with simultaneous eyerolls.

    "We oughta be celebratin'," came a voice from the door, and Jeff froze as Maria strolled into the bar with a cherry red grin to match her bottle red hair. "Our girls are gettin' married." She gave each girl a pat on the head in blessing as she passed, leaned against the counter with a saucy wiggle.

    "You know what we should do," Nadine began.

    "Take you with us," Billy continued.

    "Then y'all can get married, too." Nadine finished.

    Maria blushed prettily, looked at Jeff through the fake eyelashes on the eye not covered with a patch. Jeff blushed much less prettily, stammered and crossed his arms. "I ain't gettin' involved in no cult bullshit," he said finally, sidestepping the issue of his longstanding infatuation with his occasional second-in-command.

    "That's all right," Billy comforted.

    "You wouldn't know what to do at an orgy anyhow."

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

    The priest, or priestess, or perhaps shaman, was speaking in what might have been a language and might have been gibberish. Perhaps xe was speaking in tongues. Billy and Nadine were holding each other in a sea of color, of whites and reds and blues and pinks and greens. Some of it was robes, which everyone seemed to have agreed was appropriate without any prior planning. Some of it was skin, in colors as varied as the earth and the sky. Nadine thought she saw an orc, and she wondered who he was marrying.

    "I brought this," Billy whispered in her ear, and Nadine was surprised when she slipped a ring onto her finger. She brought it close to her face to examine it, having left her glasses behind for fear of losing them. A Claddagh ring, in silver; Nadine smiled despite herself.

    "A for real ring?"

    "No reason we can't be for real married."

    "How monogamous of you."

    "Didn't say nothing about monogamous – just married."

    Nadine mulled this over as the androgynous voice droned on, considered the thought of her being a wife. Of having a wife. Of being Mrs. Billy Dean. It didn't chafe, the way she thought it would, didn't feel too small or too tight. But then again, they were already Billy Dean. One name – a unit. It wasn't as if they could get more married than that, ring aside.

    "I wish I had a ring for you," Nadine said finally, and she felt Billy smile against her skin.

    "I got my own," she said as she slipped it into Nadine's hand, and there was a pleasing finality to it when she slid the matching gold onto Billy's finger.

    A cheer rose up through the multicolored crowd, and it took a moment to realize that it was not for them alone. With a giggle they fell into each other's arms, kissed like they were each other's only source of oxygen. Somehow it was surprising when they realized that they'd fallen to the ground, that they were sliding each other's clothes off in an ocean of people sliding each other's clothes off.

    "I love you," Nadine murmured into her wife's mouth.

    "I love you," Billy murmured into her wife's mouth.

    "Oooh, I want the elf."

    "Aww, but I wanted the elf!"

    "We can always share."

    "Hmm – no, nevermind, I just spotted a girl with cat ears. You know me, I could never resist a girl that purrs."

    "Meet up with the boys in the morning?" Nadine Pascal-Said was seventeen, and kissing her wife goodbye as they split up to get laid. She could not imagine that there was anyone in the world happier than she was, watching the freckled blonde stride purposefully toward the aforementioned cat-eared woman. She tore her eyes away after a moment – fun as it was to watch Billy work, she had her own pointy-eared goals to attend to.

    "That's a nice necklace," she observed as she slid up to the bar, doing her best to look seductive as she wrapped a curl around one finger. The elf was even prettier up close, but then, his type always was. He was so pale he glowed, cheekbones even sharper than Nadine's, dressed in a suit just fashionable enough to avoid being trashy.

    "It's not a necklace," he sneered, and he even managed to do that attractively, "it is a crystal."

    "Well then," she continued, undeterred, "that's a nice crystal." She grabbed a nearby fluorescent drink that had gone too-long ignored by its dancing owner, taking a sip and watching the elf. I wonder if he glows under blacklight.

    "It's not just nice," he corrected, though he seemed to preen under her interest. "When it is complete, it shall form a star, and then I shall take my true place as–"

    This speech went on for quite some time, and though Nadine did a very good job of pretending to be interested, she switched gears almost immediately to listening to the music instead. The important bits seemed to be that it was some kind of quest item, and he seemed very smug about it. She thought it would look nice nestled between Billy's breasts while they fucked tomorrow.

    "You still haven't told me your name," she pointed out when he finished, and he had the good grace to look abashed.

    "Chet."

    "… your name is Chet."

    "In the superior elven tongue, it is more like Che'tt. I have Anglicized it in order to be considerate."

    Motherfucker, how you gonna be smug about the shittiest white-boy-plus-apostrophes name I ever heard?

    "I'm Dean," she said instead, sipping at her pilfered beverage.

    "I noticed you kissing the girl in leather," he said, nodding his head towards where Billy was grinding against the feline female. "You rolling with Jeff's boys?"

    "I roll with a lot of people," she shrugged noncommittally, though she was thrown off by the fact that he was familiar with Jeff at all. She generally did not think of them as a group to acquire infamy.

    "I bet you do," Chet smirked, and she gave him a smile to indicate yes, that was the joke you moron.

    "I got a bag full of condoms if you've got a room," she said, cutting right to the chase. She was eager now to get him into bed before he ruined it with talking. He already had, quite frankly, but the thought of giving Billy that necklace made her forgiving. It didn't hurt that he was pretty.

    "Baby, I've got the best room in town." Before she could recoil at his unironic use of the word baby, she was whisked into a limo that was more sleaze than class and taken to a suite with the same sense of style. Or rather, lack thereof.

    "You've got a bed shaped like a heart."

    "It's great, right? You're probably not used to this level of class, hanging with those scumbags." Chet seemed quite pleased by the amount of leopard print and satin in the room. To say nothing of the chandelier.

    "No, this certainly is… different."

    "You really should think about joining up with my–" Nadine interrupted this surely idiotic train of thought with a finger to his unfairly perfect lips.

    "Let's see if you're any good in bed, first, shall we?"

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

    Chet had, unsurprisingly, been a disappointment in the sack. Self-centered men almost always were – and it was so hard to find a pretty man that wasn't. The whole thing would have been a wash if she hadn't managed to flee while he snored, nabbing his little quest crystal in the process. Closer examination showed that it was two pieces, snapped together. Didn't really make it very far on your fucking quest, did you, asshole?

    Nadine was heading back to the bar that the boys were currently calling their own when she stopped at a gas station for a fresh pack of cigarettes. This would have been a brief detour, but the boy behind the counter was her age, and ginger, and he ran track. It was too nostalgic to ignore.

    They'd just finished fucking in the restroom out back – the sort of clumsy and enthusiastic sex that only teenagers were really capable of – when Nadine heard yelling in the strip mall parking lot.

    "Where the fuck is she?"

    Buttoning up her little black dress, she cracked bathroom door just enough to see before shutting it again. "Goddammit," she hissed, and when the ginger tried to see she smacked him away. Chet was in the parking lot – Chet and a few of his gang or whatever the fuck those sleazy looking motherfuckers were. They'd boxed themselves in with semis – are they a fucking trucker gang, what the fuck is this shit – but Nadine could still see them from the shitty little bathroom. If it had just been them, that would have bad enough, she might have been able to work with that, but they had Billy and now she had no idea what to do. "Do you have any powers?" she asked, and when the ginger responded in the negative she swore again.

    It had been a long time since Nadine had felt this helpless, had felt this panic washing over her like cold water. She wanted to scream or cry or vomit, or maybe all three at once. She balled her hands into fists to stop them from shaking, but it didn't seem to be working as well as she would have liked.

    I need to go out there. I need to give him his stupid fucking necklace back and then he'll let her go and she'll get Jeff and everything will be fine. I need to stop this before she gets hurt.

    Her hand was halfway to the doorknob before she stopped, swore again.

    It doesn't fucking matter if I give it back. He'll fucking kill me. He'll kill her so she can't get Jeff. He'll fucking kill us both, either I let him kill her or he kills us both and this is a fucking bullshit no-win scenario.

    Visions played in her head of her going out there, of teaming up with Billy to take down the whole lot of sleazy assholes, of turning the tables and shooting Chet right in the heart for even daring to threaten them. But while Billy was strong, she couldn't punch faster than a fucking gun. And Nadine wasn't even strong. Wasn't strong, wasn't fast, wasn't any of the things that could even remotely help.

    She is going to die. If she's lucky, she's going to die. She's going to fucking die and there's not a goddamn thing I can do about it and I need to come to terms with that right now because there is nothing I can do. Not a thing, not a fucking thing.

    Nadine cracked the door again, because if nothing else she had to see, had to be sure, whatever happened. She didn't stop the ginger from looking, too, this time.

    She couldn't hear what they were saying, but she could guess. Chet was angry. Chet wanted to know where Nadine was, so that he could get his stupid rock. Chet looked like an asshole waving a gun around. Billy thought he could go fuck himself. Billy looked lovely and defiant and not at all frightened, even though she must have been, even though Nadine was fucking terrified. There was an ache in Nadine's chest, a wild hope that at any moment there'd be the roar of engines as Jeff and the boys appeared to save the day. And then the barrel of a gun was pressed against Billy's chin, and Billy wasn't Billy anymore.

    Nadine shut the bathroom door as the ginger began to panic. "Shut the fuck up," she hissed, "do you want to get us fucking killed?" It was strange, the way the fear had left her, the way a weight had been lifted the instant everything had gone to shit. There was nothing to lose now, nothing but adrenaline and the need to get the fuck out of dodge.

    "You run track, right?" She snapped the little crystal in her pocket in two, stashed away the smaller piece and draped the necklace around the ginger's neck as he answered in the affirmative. "Well you better fucking run."

    It would never have worked if she hadn't had surprise on her side. The ginger could have overpowered her easily, could have held on and dragged her with him, could have done any number of things – but it simply hadn't occurred to him until it was too late that she'd be willing to open the door and kick him out of it, slamming it shut before he could even protest.

    She took deep breaths as he pounded at the door, as the shouting started, as the voices moved away at high speed. When she thought it was probably safe she slid out the door, didn't look at where they'd been, didn't look to where the body must be. She needed to get away – couldn't go find Jeff, not now, not after what had happened.

    Nadine hopped onto the first bus she found, ignoring the fact that it wasn't at a stop and had no passengers. "Is this the bus out of town?" she asked, breathless, and the driver looked her over as if she were a particularly unpleasant specimen.

    "It can be," he answered finally, and Nadine noted uncharitably that he had a face like a weasel.

    "I don't have any money," she admitted, pulling the Claddagh ring from her finger without thinking too hard about what she was doing. "Can I pay you with this?"

    The weasely man took the ring with as much disdain as he had for the rest of her, and she'd have told him to fuck off if she hadn't been busy being scared shitless. "You'd give up your last token of love lost so easily?"

    Bile rose in her throat, her blood cold. How the fuck does he know what the fuck does he know. "I – I'm sorry? I got that ring at a thrift store. It's not – I mean, it should be worth a bus ride, but it's not anything special." Nadine was a very good liar. She could even believe it, if she didn't look at it, didn't think about Billy sliding it on her finger with a kiss, didn't think about Billy at all.

    "You think you're very clever, don't you?" The driver clearly disagreed with this notion.

    "I don't – I'm just trying to get a ride out of town. Can you help me, or not?"

    The driver slipped the ring into his pocket, closed the door with that unnerving hissing noise. "I'll take you where you need to be," he said impassively, and Nadine dragged herself to a seat in the very back, where she watched the scenery turn into the blackness of a dreamless sleep.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

    "Here's your stop."

    Nadine was still bleary, sleeping surprisingly well under the circumstances, when the bus driver began ushering her out. "Can you give me a minute to wake the fuck up?" she protested.

    "I'm afraid not."

    She stumbled out of the bus and into the night, swiveling about as the door closed and the vehicle resumed going… wherever it was going. Somewhere without roads, apparently.

    Did that motherfucker drop me off in the middle of the fucking woods?

    "Are you fucking shitting me?" she asked after the bus disappearing into the trees, arms wide with bafflement. "I don't think this is legal!" she yelled for good measure, but it was no use: her only method of transportation had disappeared. She groaned, adjusting her glasses and rolling her head back.

    Then she froze.

    "Are you fucking shitting me."

    There were two moons in the sky. One bigger than the moon she knew, and one smaller; neither was familiar. She stared at them for a long time, a familiar welling of panic rising up in her throat.

    When I said I needed to get far away I did not mean this what the fuck what the fuck.

    "Did you seriously just bring me to another fucking planet?" she asked the absent bus driver, gesticulating wildly at the foreign satellites in the sky. "Is this even the same fucking dimension? What the fuck is this you insane old asshole oh my fuck what is this." Her legs were starting to wobble, and she buried her face in her hands, falling into a crouch and rocking back on her heels. "I can't fucking take this shit right now," she muttered, voice muffled by her own palms. Part of her hoped that at any moment, she'd open her eyes and be back in the bar with Billy.

    Nadine didn't believe in karma, but the universe made it very difficult sometimes.

    "Please don't do this, please be okay!" His voice was mocking, sneering, cruel. She thought she might vomit.

    Nadine Pascal-Said was eighteen years of age. Or, she thought that she might be. She wasn't sure. The days weren't the right length, here, and there were never any seasons. Every day ran into the other, because every day was another day of wandering in a wilderness that never seemed to end. She'd tried keeping track, once, with a stick, but it was never very effective. It might have been months, and it might have been years, and she could as easily believe either.

    She was covered in the skins and the blood of dead animals. The skins were rabbits, one of the few things she knew how to catch, how to kill, how to skin. Jed had taught her that, out in the desert, and she'd hated him for it. It wasn't the sort of skill she'd ever have admitted to, if she hadn't thought she was alone. If she hadn't thought she might die. The blood was that of a bear, of a lion – lions and tigers and bears, oh my. There were no tigers, yet. Not unless this man was a tiger.

    He was tall, too fucking tall. Spotless. Bloodless. Dark skin, pointed ears, epicanthic folds to his brown eyes. Long brown hair was braided around his head, covered in gold. Wide pants, a tunic with aspirations toward being a kimono. And gold, everywhere gold, on his wrists and ankles and fingers and weighing down his earlobes. She felt tiny, filthy, disgusting. She was. She despised him utterly.

    "Who the fuck are you?" she spat, and her right hand inched back toward her dagger, back towards the bloodied ursine corpse. He stopped her with his foot, crushed her wrist painfully to the ground with a grin so lovely and so awful she wanted to break his perfect white teeth.

    "Isn't it obvious?" he asked with a flourish, and she ground her teeth as he ground down his heel and her eyes watered. "I'm Prince Charming – here to sweep you off your feet."

    Maahes.

    I kissed Maahes.

    This is some fucking frog bullshit.

    "You were the lion?" she asked, as if she hadn't given him a name, as if she hadn't treated him like a carnivorous diary, as if she hadn't bared her soul in front of what she'd assumed were the eyes of an unknowing animal.

    "Oh, not entirely," he assured her, as he picked up her crude stone dagger with his fingertips, barely deigning to touch it. Her weapon out of reach, he took his foot from her wrist, and she refused to give him the satisfaction of rubbing it. "I wasn't in control – or I assure you, we'd have been having much more fun." She tried not to think about what that might mean, what a man like this might do if he'd the body of lion. Did it make it better or worse that he'd never really been her imaginary friend? That whatever force had made him agreeable had disappeared the instant he got opposable thumbs?

    "That's nice, and all, but I'm not much in the mood for being swept by some motherfucker in Hammer pants." She was fairly certain he didn't know what that meant, but something in his eyes made his grin look sideways.

    "Don't you know how this works, little heathen? Do they not have stories, where you're from? You kissed a lion, and now you marry a prince."

    "Yeah, I kissed a lion. If I'd known there was prince involvement, shit might've gone down different. I ain't the marrying type." Nevermind that she was widow, technically speaking – she didn't like to think of herself that way, didn't like to think about that at all even still.

    "You seem to be under the impression that you get to say no." He fiddled with one of his bracelets, and she realized it was some kind of technology, some kind of something. It pulsed blue, and his smile grew yet more self-satisfied.

    "Is saying yes not part of the process, here?"

    "I am Crown Prince Sado Atahualpa of Ala Ma, little heathen, and my blood is the blood of a god. There is no answer to a god but yes." Her blood ran cold and her limbs still felt weak, and she wanted so badly to stand, to run, to get away and hide in the woods forever. He observed her like a specimen of insect, and she wished that she could make him afraid.

    "I am definitely not agreeing to any goddamn theocratic bullshit."

    "I could still hear you, you know," he said suddenly, dropping into a crouch before her, his eyes gleaming. She resisted the urge to recoil, to scramble away. "All of your blathering and your nonsense. You thought you were giving secrets to empty ears, didn't you? But I heard every silly little word. Nadine. Such a strange name. Are they all as small and as helpless as you, where you're from? I'd like to visit a place like that."

    He was threatening her with his eyes and humiliating her with her own memories and everything about him was repulsive, utterly, except that she'd been alone so long and he was so calculatingly attractive that something visceral inside her couldn't help but respond to him. She hated him for that, too. Her clothes, insofar as they could be called clothes, were little more than a loincloth and a vest; she wanted to cover herself further, but didn't want to give him the satisfaction. That was always the conflict, it seemed, never wanting anyone to know that they'd made her feel something against her will.

    It had been too long, was the problem, had been too long since she'd had to be something for other people. Too long since she'd had to put on a face, too long since she'd had to pretend to be anything other than barely sane. It would be so much easier if she had practice, to say the right things and act the right way. Defang his attacks and defend her autonomy.

    I am so fucking cool, she told herself. I am too cool for this shit. This shit ain't even interesting. This shit is boring. I don't even fucking care. I am cool and hip and so aloof I intimidate the shit out of everyone else in the bar. Try to fucking impress me. I am already bored of your favorite band and I liked everything you like when I was twelve. Because I am so fucking cool.

    It shouldn't have worked. But it helped.

    She let herself collapse to the ground the way she'd been wanting to, threw her hands straight out to her sides like she was making a snow angel. "I'm tired," she pouted, looking at the treetops through her half-broken spectacles, heartrate lowering now that she wasn't looking him in the eye.

    "Are you trying to insult me, Nadine?" It sounded wrong in his mouth, something about the way he hit the consonants, something about the name her parents had given her.

    "Were you going to try and fuck me, or are we just gonna have a heart-to-heart about dick all?" Yes, this was how it worked. It was coming back to her, how to be herself. Make the implicit explicit, make nightmares into inanities. Admittedly, it was easier when she had someone large to hide behind.

    Mozz isn't here and Jed isn't here and Billy isn't here and Jeff isn't here and there are no knights in shining armor to protect me but it isn't as if I can make it any worse.

    "What a filthy little heathen you are," and the disgust and disdain in his voice was almost oppressive. She wanted to be better than this, be glorious and resplendent and rub his face in how much better she was than him. But she was wrapped in dead rabbits and blood and dirt, so she'd cloak herself in his disdain and in her loathing like a force field. He tore through it easily, of course, pulling her to her feet by her ponytail so that she snarled while he sneered. "But I already knew that, didn't I? I've heard your heresies and your guttermouth, and I've seen you – oh yes. Seen you in the moonlight, when you thought my eyes unseeing, seen you writhing and heard your little noises. Is that what you'd like, to rut in the dirt like an animal?"

    This isn't real. None of this is real. None of this counts as real life. This is a game, a quest, a test. Level one, chapter one, the woods. Solve the puzzle of the lion. Pretend you're the protagonist. None of this matters. Beat the game and finish the story and go home, back to real life and away from fake bullshit like princes and magic lions and happily ever afters.

    It was like a weight lifting off her shoulders, like an out-of body experience. There were no consequences now, not really, only things that brought her closer to and further from freedom. All she had to do was not die. Not dying was easy. She'd been doing that her whole life.

    "With you?" she asked, flirtatious, as if he weren't threatening her, insulting her. "I mean, it's not my first choice, but it's not as if I've got a lot of options lining up." Was that satisfaction in his eyes as he pushed her away from him, let her fall back to the ground?

    "You will have to beg more nicely than that," he noted, and she decided that his voice was too high to be attractive, even though that doesn't seem to be stopping her from being attracted to it. "But that will have to wait until we are married, little heathen – and until you are bathed. That I would touch you at all, as you are – you ought to count yourself fortunate. More fortunate still that I would take a feral little heretic to wife. I would never be able to get away with it, you know, if I were not going to be King. Mine will be a heathen Queen, who never cries and never screams." He smiled dreamily, fiddling with her little knife, and the fingers of his other hand danced over something like a scepter at his belt. "Do you know, I couldn't have planned this better if I'd tried? You will be mine and mine alone – no god in you to give you power, no faith to keep you safe. If I married as I ought to have, you see, my Queen would have been infallible, untouchable. But I can touch you as I please, godless little alien."

    "I can't wait," she drolled, but the remark was less biting than it could have been. She was trying to see herself through his eyes, through the eyes of whoever he ruled; tried to imagine someone alien and small, too delicate and boney, all the wrong shape and color. Nadine was used to strange bodies, to bodies large and small and in all the colors of the earth and sky and ocean, to features ill-fitting and the wrong number of limbs. Did that make it easier or harder, to wonder what she looked like? She was practically xenophilic, if there was such a thing, fascinated by the strange, obsessed always with finding something new and interesting to entertain her. Why did she care, whether he found her form pleasing?

    "You think that you're lying," he observed with a smile, "because you think that lying would be better." There were a number of things he might mean, but she didn't bother to dissemble them all. He leaned down, plucked the glasses from her face, the glasses she had managed to cling to against all the odds, on an alien planet in a forest dressed in nothing but dead things because her real clothes had all gone. "What a silly thing you are, that can't even see." Where he put them, she could not say, but she pretended to be unperturbed by this development. There was a sound like fire, then, and she turned her face back to the sky; a blur, bright blue, descended. "Our people have come to return their beloved prince to his rightful place," he preened. "Do try not to bite them, Nadine. I will try to warn them not to make any sudden moves. Shall we have the bear stuffed, do you think?"

18
NSFW - noncon

    "We are wed, and you are bathed," her groom observed. He was even more resplendent today than he'd been the first time she saw him, a glittering jewel in his wedding finery. Her clothes, too, were fine: a bell shaped skirt and a woven top with sleeves down to her knees. They'd pinned up her hair with sticks of shining gold, covered it with a crown adorned with peacock feathers. Everyone but her seemed to have hair that weighed as much as she did, as long as she was tall.

    Nadine ignored her husband and gazed around the suite that was theirs. That was his. That she wanted nothing to do with. There was a notable overabundance of mirrors. "You're very vain, aren't you?" she deflected, observing the tapestries and glass and plants with a detached fascination. Oddly familiar, all of it, and yet all of it wrong.

    "Wouldn't you be?" he preened, and as he came close he ripped the crown from her head and tossed it aside like so much nothing. "Come, now – we are alone, let us see that whore's hair of yours." She made a note, as he pulled out the pins, to find out whether he meant the curls or the length. If she was going to look like a lady of ill-repute, she might as well know why.

    "Your father seems nice," she observed mildly, deflecting again, not looking up from the weaving over his sternum.

    "He will be dead soon," Prince Sado said bluntly, "and then I may do as I please. Princess Nadine Atahualpa, the tiny future Queen with a mouth too big for talking. Do you think there will be rumors? Do you think they will make up stories about the filthy things you do?" He ran a finger over the round shell of her ear, perhaps exotic compared to his long points.

    "Do you not already get to do as you please?" She was being formal, too formal, and it felt like falling into a trap, a spider's web.

    "He lets them out of the dungeons," and she did not plan to ask who they were, "and he will not let me lay a stern hand on his subjects. But you are not his subject. You are mine, and mine alone."

    "That must be awful for you," she said all monotone, and she did not specify to which hardship she was referring. He pulled at her hair idly, the way one might pull the chain on a ceiling fan, and her heart beat ever-so-slightly harder. She thought then of Slim, who she hadn't thought of in years, of how he'd tried to teach her to fight. They'd only ended up beating the shit out of each other in the junkyard, and whoever lost had to be on the bottom. She'd rarely won. Nadine had played that game with Billy, sometimes, but not very often. Not like with Slim, where beating the shit out of each other had been an integral part of the relationship. But Slim had been slim, and where Sado did not look large beside the other peoples of Ala Ma, beside her he was so very large.

    "It is," he agreed seriously, not the slightest hint of irony. "But there are ways around it." He bent down and smiled sweetly, in that way that made his eyes gleam with malice, and she refused to recoil. "The pakala does not count, you see, not on common flesh." She chose not to ask what the fuck that was, because she thought she wouldn't like the answer and because she refused to admit to ignorance. His perfectly-manicured index finger traced the jutting curvature of her aquiline nose, slid back up to slide the spectacles off her head. "Your eyes might be pretty, if they weren't defective," he decided, and it annoyed her that she could still see his face.

    "Your face might be pretty, if it weren't yours." Oh my god I did not just fight back with ‘your face' what the fuck is wrong with me. But the stupid little jibe made annoyance flicker in his eyes, and that pleased her greatly.

    "Strip," he ordered suddenly, standing to full height, and the frisson of pleasure that traveled up her spine frustrated her.

    Now is not the time to be fetishizing heteronormative gender role bullshit.

    "I don't know how," she said instead, spreading her arms wide to convey helplessness, and it wasn't entirely inaccurate. He made a high-pitched noise, a sort of nnn, and it was off-putting and strange in a way she couldn't articulate.

    "Useless little savage," he scolded, taking her suddenly by the wrists. His grip was tight and painful and unexpected, and it was more unexpected when he held them above her head, lifted her in the air so that gravity pulled at her arms and threatened her shoulders. "So small!" he declared gleefully, and shook her, and it didn't seem fair when he wasn't even that big – not really. I've fucked orcs bigger than you, she might have said, but she didn't. A stray curl fell before her eyes, and she realized her mouth was cutting an unhappy line across her face. She wished she could rip his throat out with her teeth.

    "I don't think that this is how undressing works," she said instead, realizing too late that she was talking through gritted teeth. He set her down, but instead of – well, whatever she'd thought he might do – he knocked her to the ground, grabbed her and lifted her in the air by her ankles. She could not help the indignant, strangled noise that escaped her as her skirt went inside out and covered her face.

    This is fucking humiliating caveman bullshit and it is beyond the fucking pale you awful piece of shit, you awful fucking thing.

    She ground her teeth and kept her thoughts to herself as she swayed, as he carried her, humming high and tuneless. Then she swung harder, and he tossed her, and she swallowed her scream as she landed somewhere soft. "Try not to tire yourself out," she snarled, attempting to sit upright and pull the cloth from her face.

    "You wouldn't be worth it," he assured her, which was not reassuring so much as it was insulting. She supposed that was the point. Goddamn misogynistic bullshit, hateful piece of shit. She realized she was turning flush with indignation as she felt his weight on the bed, and she got her skirt off of her face just in time to watch him begin ripping her clothes off. She wished her vision was worse, because it was a very pleasing sort of a thing to watch. He was literally ripping them off, no regard for the fine nature of them, but she supposed he wouldn't care. Sado was a prince. Sado was a thoughtless, inconsiderate, selfish asshole.

    Nadine hadn't had sex in so, so long.

    He pulled the bracelets from her wrists so carelessly that he hurt the knuckles of her thumbs. She thought her heart might pound its way out of her ribcage like a cartoon.

    The last time I had sex, she realized with a sudden and awful clarity, it was barely satisfactory with a boy I probably killed.

    Nadine was laid bare, no clothes or jewelry or even glasses, and he hadn't even let his hair down. He was awful. His scrutiny was awful. It made her feel loathsome and the fact that it aroused her made her feel even more loathsome. "You've been marked," he said, and one of his fingernails traced the bite-shaped scar on her left hipbone, dug into the skin to scratch.

    "I didn't like him, either." She didn't know why she told him that, but his hands wrapped around her throat in response. He is going to fucking kill me. He did not. His hands only waited, there, did nothing but rest against her skin. She stayed very, very still – except for her heart, which continued to attempt its escape.

    "You don't know your place in this world," he said finally, quiet and deceptively calm.

    "Of course I do," she countered, because she had to say something. "I've always known where my place is supposed to be. I just don't care."

    He slapped her, suddenly, hard across her face, and she was so surprised that she didn't even make a sound. Almost didn't register what had happened, until there was nothing left but the stinging in her cheek. "Heresy," he hissed, and when she would have spit in his face he covered her body with his to kiss her.

    Fuck you. Fuck you. Why do you have to feel so fucking good, you unbelievable throwback?

    Sado's weight pressed her into the mattress and his clothes felt hot and strange against her skin. His mouth tasted like rice wine and his teeth felt sharp against her tongue, sharper still when he bit down, when her mouth filled with warm copper. Any noise she might have made was lost in him, his hands still wrapped around her throat, and some kind of madness made her bring her hands to his. Hers were too small to be any threat, but it was the thought that counted, as her blood filled their mouths and rushed in her ears.

    When his lips left hers it was with the smuggest sort of sneer she thought she'd ever seen. "You taste like filth," he told her, "like crude metal and dirt." She tried to headbutt him, then, but he choked the notion out of her and left her struggling beneath him. Nadine wanted to make him bleed, wanted in a way she never had even with Slim, wanted to lay him low and use him and make him feel used.

    She pretended that she didn't feel cold and bereft when he rolled off of her, off of the bed. Pretended that she didn't want to cover herself so that he couldn't see. She lounged, languorous, stretched out along the bed as if it were comfortable to do so. "Finished already?" she teased, because it didn't matter what planet she was on: men did not like to be accused of premature ejaculation.

    "When I've finished with you," he replied, voice slightly high with annoyance, "you will know it, because you'll wish that I wasn't." When he came back he was holding something, though she couldn't make out what.

    "Brought reinforcements?" she asked, as if it were a silly thing, as if it were not a potential threat. He was close enough to see, if only barely, and his eyes raked over the length of her.

    "Brazen little beast," and whatever was in his hand glowed blue at one end briefly. "All bones and useless little limbs. Barely even breasts, hips."

    "And you're a space elf caveman that doesn't know how kissing works," she struck back. She could see now that the thing in his hand looked like his scepter from before, writ small. Such a harmless looking little thing. Her gaze lingered too long, and when it returned to his face he was smiling.

    "Do they have the pakala, your people? I don't suppose they do, if you are this savage. If you do not care about your place." She stayed very still as he climbed back into bed, because the alternative was that she would flee. "Perhaps I can civilize you," he offered, as if to do so would be a gift.

    "I doubt your abilities," she said quietly, and she didn't mean to be quiet except that she was looking at the little golden talisman as if it were a cobra. His free hand took one of hers, held her hand all sweet and gentle and smiling, and pressed the end of the pakala into her wrist. For a moment there was nothing, and then it lit up blue.

    It was an ache, a soreness, an awful pain that made her jaw clench as she tried uselessly to rip her hand away. As if the veins there had shrunk or the blood had gone thick, as if the joint of her wrist had gone arthritic, as if the muscles were torn and worn and her bones turned hollow. When the light dimmed, when the pain disappeared, her relief was immense and immediate. "What do you think?" he purred, and she realized that he had a knee between her legs and an erection pressed against her thigh.

    "Better than being slapped," she lied, a lie because at least that pain was fleeting, at least that pain could feasibly be sexy. It was making her angry, now, angry because he'd found a way to hurt her that could not even appeal to the occasional masochistic tendency. Just hit me, goddamn it, why can't you just fucking hit me.

    "I wouldn't want to spoil you." His clothes were sliding off, and she thought he might be posing as he stripped; it seemed the kind of thing that his vanity would require. Part of her thought it might be justified, because she wanted to run her tongue along every contour of his body. She imagined it, so vividly that it was almost real, having him tied down and at her mercy such that no amount of struggling would set him free. Chained to the headboard while she fucked him with a disproportionately large strap-on, and he'd squirm and squirm and squirm. She flushed at the thought, practically quivered, but he misinterpreted this as his own doing and smiled like black silk. "You're a needy, pathetic little thing, aren't you?"

    Sado only barely stopped Nadine from hitting him in the balls with her knee, and secretly she was grateful. He wouldn't be much use if his dick didn't work. She resisted the urge to admire his genitals, even if they did seem quite nice.

    He spread her legs and slid between them, fire and rage in his eyes. She braced herself, the pakala still in his hand, but his fingers ran over her ribcage instead. He toyed with her nipples and teased her with the head of his cock, until she found herself moaning and throbbing and arching her back. Close, so close – and then pain. She quieted immediately, froze as if she'd turned to stone, because the pakala was pressed against her side and made her feel as if her organs were turning inside out. Her hands gripped the blankets and she forgot all about enjoying herself, because suddenly it seemed like a much better idea to vomit and then die. Nonetheless, she did neither.

    When it stopped this time, she went limp, and realized with revulsion that he'd entered her while she was paralyzed with agony. It was her turn to slap him, although she didn't realize she was going to do it until it was already done. He didn't stop her, didn't turn away, only smiled placidly. He hadn't bothered to remove his crown, to let his hair down. That bothered her, somehow, even while he was thrusting into her.

    "So small," he sang, and she hated that the observation pleased her this time, in this context. "So stupid," he added, taking her chin in one hand, "that it didn't learn its lesson the first time."

    "Any time," she corrected, and she did indeed feel stupid. Trapped beneath his body as he moved, as his hands wandered again, she tried to brace herself. Tried to think about the pain, but it was difficult when it was gone and his body lingered. Her clever solution was to slap him, again, harder this time. This backfired immediately as the sting in her hand and the angry set of his jaw stoked fires previously unexplored, and she wanted to wrap her legs around his waist and ask for more and harder – except that this might please him, and she couldn't possibly have that.

    Then the pakala was between her breasts and it felt like it was giving her a heart attack. Frozen again, because even though the rational part of her knew that moving would not make it worse, the fire in her nerve endings wouldn't listen to reason. She wished that she'd slapped him more, slapped him harder, wished she'd broken his nose with her fist. He was still moving, but she couldn't focus on anything but the effective distraction of feeling like dying.

    I will fucking end you. I will watch you bleed. I will shove your stupid little stick up your fucking urethra and your sobs will be so fucking perfect. You will regret ever touching me, you will regret ever doubting that I could make you feel regret. You will suffer and I won't even bother to laugh because you will be so utterly beneath me, so thoroughly contemptible. I will make Hell real so that you can burn there for all time goddammit why won't it stop make it stop you fucking fuck.

    Sado stopped the pain just in time for Nadine to feel his final thrusts, just in time for him to be buried deep inside her and twitching. Heat spread through her insides, the pleasure she couldn't seem to help at a job well done, and suddenly she wished that he'd kept the little blue light glowing. At least then he would have ended on a low note. At least then she wouldn't feel the frustration, the dissatisfaction, of a job half-done.

    "Acceptable," he declared, as he pulled himself out of bed, and she thought that she might murder him.

    "I beg to differ."

    He smiled, and the smile came into sharper focus as he slid her glasses back on her nose. He wanted her to see him, all sweaty and slick and pleased with himself, while she was left tired and wanting. The little pain stick had been set aside, and he took her chin between two fingers. "You will beg for many things," he promised, bringing his face close to her own. "With your words, instead of just your eager body. You will beg even though you will know it won't work, it will never work because – and pay attention, little heathen, because this lesson is important – it doesn't matter what you want."

    "It's so cute," she replied, "that silly face you make when you finish. Makes the whole thing worth it, really." There was a flicker of an expression across his face, and he made that noise again, that nnn. He stood, turned, swept out of the bedroom like a man with a mission. For a moment, she worried that he was going to get the larger scepter that she'd seen before. But then he returned, and lifted her out of bed properly – not by the ankle, this time. Which was almost pleasing, until he carried her into the bathroom and dropped her unceremoniously into the full tub.

    "I am going to shower," he announced, as she sputtered and tried to recover her bearings, "to wash your filth from my skin. You may bathe while I do so, that your presence might be slightly less offensive to me while I sleep."

    She would have rather had the shower. She would have rather had a waterproof vibrator. She would have rather shoved his head beneath the water so that he could pleasure her or die, and make her happy either way. She smiled, bared her teeth, feigned sweetness. "You're so considerate, Sado dear. Whatever would I do without you?"

    "Wallow in your own foul wretchedness."

    "… of course."

    He patted her on the head patronizingly, an insincere reward for insincere behavior. "Good girl." Sado disappeared into a shower the size of some studio apartments, and Nadine attempted to scrub her skin and think of England. Of baseball. Of other things that did not involve cute accents and balls and wood. She did not want to sleep next to her husband.

    Maybe if I fall asleep in the tub, he'll just leave me here.

    As it turned out, he did not.

    Nadine hated this place for all the same reasons that she hated her husband: she might have loved it, if it weren't so awful. An arcology, of all things, a pyramid impossibly large made of alien metal and something that couldn't have been glass. Greenery everywhere, vines and trees and flowers, and she couldn't help wondering what her father would have thought. She thought that he'd have loved it, though she had no way of knowing. She'd never really known her father. It didn't really bother her, any more than all the other people she would never know. Genetic similarly did not a relationship make.

    A theocracy, for fuck's sake. How could a culture that lived in a city so magnificent still believe in gods? In a divine right to rule? How could anyone believe in a divine right to rule, when her husband was the man that he was?

    The view from the top of the pyramid was grand, and from here she could see the Wild Wood, see how deceptively small it was. Of course it was magic, to have been so impossibly large. Nadine hated getting involved in magic. It made her feel like she was tainted by it. Like attracts like. Like attacks like. She didn't want to be on the this world, where she was magical and strange.

    "Enjoying your new kingdom, little heathen?"

    She tensed despite herself at the sound of his voice, high and pretty, but she didn't turn to look at Sado's approach. He seemed to delight in calling her that, in treating her like an oddity, a pet. In waving her in the face of his family, his subjects. I have returned, and I shall do as I please, and nothing has changed. "Why wouldn't I?" she asked, because this was her game, now, pretending that he wasn't making her life a hell. He came up behind her, pulled the pins roughly from her hair so that her curls fell almost to her shoulders.

    "So scandalously short," he clucked disapprovingly, and she gritted her teeth with the expectation that he would touch it, that he would run his fingers through it, pull it. But he didn't, and maybe that was worse. His hands hovered over her hips, so close, never touching. Why did that make it worse, that he didn't just touch her? "Tell me you love me," he ordered easily.

    It should have been an easy lie. It caught in her throat, and she said nothing as she stared out at a sky the wrong shade of blue.

    He made a noise, a sort of mmm, the sound he made when he was amused. "You can't do it, can you? Little liar, little savage, little heretic, but still you won't say it. You used to talk about it, didn't you?" Her organs rebelled, low in her belly, tightened and writhed like snakes. This was the worst thing, when he threw her own words back at her, words he was never meant to hear. Words no one was meant to hear. "Trying so hard to pretend you aren't broken. Even among your own people, aren't you? A broken, nasty little thing." He leaned down, because he needed to lean down to get so close to her ear. "Do you think that I want your love?" he hissed, accusatory, and she thought her heart spasmed.

    "I don't presume to know what you want," she replied, but there was an edge to her voice, because she had assumed. It was the only power she had, the power of being something he wanted. It didn't make sense if he didn't. He didn't make sense. She didn't like people who didn't make sense.

    "Do you hate me, Princess?" He knew that she knew that he knew – she didn't like to hate. Didn't like hate as a concept. Too much energy and thought to spend on something she didn't like. A stupid thing for stupid people to do. But she did: she hated him. Hated him in the strangest and most satisfying, frustrating way. She didn't want to think that she was capable of hatred this strong, because what did that say about her? If she couldn't even love Billy the way other people might have, if she couldn't even love her enough to hate her killer – surely she shouldn't be capable of proper hate at all. It was irrational. It was awful. She hated him.

    "Whyever would I?" she asked in return, even though she knew he would find a way to answer.

    "Because I didn't let you enjoy yourself. Because you would have loved it, you filthy wriggling little savage, if I'd let you." Another verbal punch to the gut, and she felt her face turn hot as she remembered his hands on her, as she remembered the pain that kept pleasure at bay.

    "Aren't a lotta men that'd brag about not bein' able to satisfy a woman," she mocked, and perhaps it struck home, because he wrapped his hands around her neck feather-light.

    "It is not a matter of able," he assured her, and she ignored that he was right, "it is a matter of control. Why would you deserve to enjoy yourself?"

    What a fucking asshole. What a colossal fucking asshole.

    "And you? Did you enjoy yourself?"

    "Whyever would I?" he parroted. "Small and skinny and squirming and shapeless. They call you the Fearless Princess, you know. They don't know, the way I do. But I know. I know that you are weak and frightened, too weak to admit to your own weakness and too frightened to admit you're afraid."

    "You're frightened of me." A stab in the dark, wild and vicious and flat. It struck true, because his fingers tightened against her skin, made breathing difficult. She'd drawn blood, and it was sweet.

    "So arrogant, to think you're anything to fear. To think you're anything to me."

    "I'm your wife," she pointed out, quiet and breathless. "And I'm afraid of you." Not your blood or your gods or your magic.

    "You're frightened, and you want me. Maybe you want me because you're frightened. Is that how it works, on your godless world?" His grip grew tighter, until she could no longer breathe, until her vision began to fade and she scratched at his hands despite herself. It was only when her limbs grew weak that he released her, twisted her around as she gasped for air and captured her open mouth with his. She didn't mean to struggle, but it happened, the heels of her palms slamming into his chest. He lifted her off the ground like she was nothing, not because he was strong but because she was small, and she kicked both her legs into his stomach. He hadn't expected that – wasn't used to the idea that anyone would hit him, that anyone might dare. He dropped her as the breath was knocked out of him, and she scrambled to her feet with wheezing gasps.

    "You're an awful kisser," she lied with a grin, and they were looking at each other with hate in their eyes. Just let me go, she wanted to say, if you hate me so fucking much then why wouldn't you let me go? She didn't say it, because heaven forbid he knew that she wanted something. His hate was stupid and irrational, like hers, but his hate manifested itself differently. She could see that, now. His hate was an awful, wanting thing. It's about control, he'd said, and now it was so obvious she wondered why she'd needed to be told.

    "I will give you such pain," he hissed, and the tone of his voice made fear and anger roil in her. "I will make you want and I will leave you wanting and you will beg."

    "But I'll never be yours," she countered, and a laugh bubbled up inside her because it seemed so wonderfully clear. "I'll play the good girl but my thoughts'll still be mine and I'll make faces when your back is turned because I'm not a fucking horse to be broken." It was wonderful because it was true and it was wonderful because he knew it.

    "It is heresy," he said, voice stronger, "to strike the flesh of a god." He stood, and he might have looked like a god if she hadn't known better, wreathed in gold and woven cloth.

    "And I am a heretic," she admitted freely, voice hoarse. "Is it heresy to strike your wife, or is that shit fair game on this theocratic patriarchal bullshit planet?"

    "You speak filth and nonsense words," he smiled, his composure recovered. His hand reached out, and she didn't flinch, but he didn't touch her. "Such vulgarity would be unworthy of me. You do not deserve that intimacy." He withdrew his hand, pulled the scepter-looking pakala from his belt – the larger version of the one she'd seen the night before, and she pretended that the sight of it didn't make her cold and clammy, didn't make her heart race.

    "Hittin's too intimate, but fuckin's just fine?" she asked instead, but to her chagrin she winced when he used the end of his pakala to lift her chin. She was bracing, despite herself, bracing for the pain that she was sure would come and that bracing wouldn't help. How does it activate, she couldn't help wondering, how does he even turn the fucking thing on?

    "Would you like me to fuck you, you disgusting wretch?"

    "Yes." It was a horrible truth, but letting it free stole the power from it, stole the shame. Secrets were a liability, an admission of guilt, and he knew her too well for all the wrong reasons. No secrets, no guilt, just the shameless baring of the worst of her. Then the tip of his pakala glowed blue, and the pain filled every inch of her at once.

    The little one had been bad enough, but that had been precise. This one was not precise, and it was stronger, somehow. It was an ache, an awful ache, like her bones were collapsing in on themselves and her blood had turned to hot lead. Her brain felt like it would burst from her skull, pushing her eyes out of her sockets, her fingernails felt like they were being ripped out. Were her organs turning inside out, were they bursting? Had every muscle in her body been torn? She couldn't help her eyes watering, but this wasn't like being struck – wasn't like being stabbed, being bitten, being lashed. This was an ache, dull and constant and everywhere, and that made it easier somehow to grit her teeth. She might have cried out, if he'd hit her, but this… this was different. She could endure this better than she could a beating, and that made it worse. She didn't want to endure it, but she couldn't help but endure it.

    It felt like forever before he turned it off, pulled it away. He looked so pleased as she felt her muscles go slack where before they had been tense, almost collapsing with relief. "Doesn't that feel just wonderful?" he purred, and it did, a magnificent absence of pain.

    "I feel like the prettiest fuckin' princess," she declared, weaker and more wobbly than she would have liked. With his satisfied smile he snatched the glasses from her face, the ones he'd had made for her so that she could see – but only when he wanted her to see. He seemed to like that, being able to snatch her sight away at a whim. So unbelievably fucking petty.

    "You are out of sorts, wife, and it shames me to see you so in the open. I insist, littlest one, that we return to our suite." He did not hold out his hand to her, made no guiding gestures, and she realized he wanted to watch her walk blind. Wanted to watch her flounder. Watch me, motherfucker.

    "But I'm so weak," she protested with a flutter of her eyelashes, and she realized her eyes were still damp. "I don't know if I have the strength." And then she fell to her knees, which wasn't difficult when she'd wanted to do it anyway, and she felt the grass crush into the fine fabric of her skirt to ruin it. It was so tempting, to just fall limp in the grass. Well then why the fuck don't I? She sprawled out, closed her eyes and took deep breaths. If she was going to be humiliated, then by god she'd do it her damn self. No one made her look bad like she did.

    "Shameless little savage," he accused finally, and his hands on her body were a pyrrhic victory. He lifted her up, and she snuggled against his chest spitefully, heard him make the high nnn of displeasure that was so close to his sound of amusement. "Your tears will be as sweet as your defiance is bitter."

    "I think later I'll fuck the gardener," she sighed, as he carried her back to their bed, to her prison.

18
NSFW - dubious consent

    Princess Nadine's husband liked to touch her when he thought she was sleeping. Or perhaps he didn't like it, but did it anyway, for what reasons she could not imagine.

    When Prince Sado was awake, he could not get enough of letting her know how utterly contemptible he found her. Unworthy of his attentions, be they affectionate or violent – and they were never affectionate, not really. Not until the wee hours, when his touch was gentle for nothing more than a desire not to wake her.

    She didn't notice it, at first, because sleeping was so difficult that when it finally claimed her she slept like the dead. She couldn't imagine how anyone could sleep comfortably, with arms wrapped around them and hot breath on their neck. There was no romance in the way he held her at night, only a prison; a reminder, first and last, that even sleep did not bring freedom.

    It was an unpleasant surprise, the first time she'd roused with fingertips tracing the shape of her thighs, the edges of her ribcage. She'd done her very best to give the impression that she was still sleeping, because she was sure that it was a nasty trick, a cruel new game. But he had only touched, very soft and still and quiet, and that annoyed her even more. Knowing that he could be gentle and sweet, that he could enjoy her and explore her and simply chose not to give her that satisfaction.

    Nadine had always found Sado's claims of disgust to be either specious or mad. She did not suffer from any lack of self-esteem, and his various humiliations did not dim her certainty that she was fucking fabulous. Perhaps that was what annoyed him about her.

    The moons were high in the sky, flooding their room with light, and he was touching her again. She wished that she could see the look on his face, wished she could do something about the arousal that made her skin prickle. Remaining still was difficult, as the pad of his thumb brushed over her nipple and his fingers followed the curve of her breast.

    You could be so fucking good, why do you have to be such shit instead?

    She imagined a world where he wasn't thoroughly loathsome, where he finished what he started instead of keeping her from climax. A world where he touched her like this while she was awake, a world where he rode her until she was done, a world without his goddamn pain stick bullshit.

    The imagining did not help matters, and neither did the erection pressing into her back. That was a first, and she tried not to recoil from it, tried not to make a sound that would reveal her consternation. He was wrapping her hair around his fingers, exploring the way the curls bounced, fell from his hands. It was the alien things that seemed to fascinate him, her hair and the curve of her ear and the set of her mouth. The tiniest of whimpers escaped her, and he froze, waited to see if he'd woken her. The night air felt cold on her back as he withdrew from her, and she couldn't help shivering as what felt like his knuckles slid down her spine.

    When he drew close again, wrapped his arms around her once more, she felt a faintly disappointed sort of relief. It seemed he had decided to go back to sleep, rather than risk being caught in untoward behaviors. Or, so it seemed before his hips started to move, rubbing himself against her skin as if he were a dog and she a particularly alluring leg.

    Are you fucking shitting me.

    His hand moved to cover her mouth, and she realized that he no longer cared about letting her sleep. No more secret touches, this night. Nadine pretended that it was this that had roused her, furrowing her brow and cracking her eyes open. She made a muffled, indignant noise into his palm, which he rewarded by pushing his thumb into her mouth. She responded by very sensibly biting down on the digit, and his displeased nnn seemed shockingly loud in the night.

    "Pretending you are not a little heathen whore will do you no good," he rasped, and she made a noise like harrumph and bit down harder. "Use that mouth properly, princess, or we'll be here all night." She groaned, and hoped that Sado thought it a noise of distaste, hoped he didn't notice that her thighs were pressed together tight. She loosened her jaw, wrapped her lips around him and sucked, ran the tip of her tongue over the divots in his skin that her teeth had made. She thought she felt him shudder, but it was difficult to tell. He slid the wet digit from her mouth, ran it over her lower lip and then over her breast once more. "Again," he ordered, "but lower."

    "Go fuck yourself," she said shakily, because she was still half-asleep and that made her too honest.

    "If I have to do that, then you really are useless." Nadine attempted to elbow him in the ribs, but his hands took her wrists and held them still, and squirming didn't help when he was still pressed tight along her back. "Be a good girl," he suggested, "and I'll give you a reward."

    It was an absurd and paltry offer, but her struggling stopped, processing his words with a brain made slow with sleep and desire. "What sort of reward?" she asked warily, when she ought to have been insulted to act like a pet in want of a treat. His mmm of amusement did not reassure her.

    "You'll find out when you've been a good little cocksucker, and not before." Despite this assertion, one of his hands slid between her legs, fingers drawing tiny circles in just the right spot to make her gasp with delight.

    It's a trick, it's a trap, he's going to disappoint me but oh god what if he didn't?

    "I'm not a good cocksucker," she said finally, as he rolled onto his back and she slid down between his knees, "I am the best cocksucker."

    This was, as far as she was concerned, completely accurate.

    One hand dug into his thigh, the other held her black curls out of her face so that he could watch her bob and suck and lick. She couldn't see the look on his face, but she imagined that it was unpleasant, the way it always was when he was secretly enjoying himself. The tip of her tongue followed a vein, and the noise that he made was one she hadn't heard from him before.

    "Is this what you did to the gardener?" he asked hoarsely, and her lips curled into a smile before wrapping around him again. "Take his filthy, common flesh into your heathen mouth? Swallow his seed as if you were no better than trash?" He was making it painfully obvious that she was driving him mad, and she was pleased beyond reason.

    "Am I not trash?" Nadine asked sweetly, fluttering her eyelashes and running kisses along his shaft. He made that noise again, as if she'd knocked the words out of him and he couldn't breathe.

    "You are worse," he hissed through gritted teeth. "Unruly savage, common whore, heretic. You should beg for my forgiveness, you should beg to be allowed to please me."

    As close as that, are you?

    "Would you like me to stop?" she asked, eyes wide with feigned sincerity, breath cold against his slick skin. He snarled and grabbed her by the hair, shoved her down so that the length of him disappeared into her mouth in an attempt to make her choke. She only barely managed not to laugh.

    "I own you," he declared, voice almost shrill, and she thought that he was trying to convince himself as much as anyone. He seemed to have realized that she was leading him by the cock – metaphorically speaking – and he was not pleased. "You cannot bewitch me, with that lying whore mouth." This time she couldn't help but giggle, and the sound made him release her – or perhaps the feeling. Laughing was not something she usually did while giving head, and so she hadn't the slightest idea what it might feel like.

    "Sa-do," she sang, elongating all the vowels as her fingers wrapped themselves tight around the base of his shaft. Her voice was husky and teasing, and she spoke between long licks of her prodigious tongue. "I don't have to beg, do I? Because you like it. Your wicked, wicked wife. You are bewitched. I bet you don't even know why you want me."

    "Liar."

    "Do you think your subjects know, Sado? That your princess turns to common flesh? Do you think they wonder where your deficiency lies?"

    "Their curiosity will rot their tongues. I will lock them so deep in the dungeon that they will see no light, I will have them in chains alongside anyone who touches you until they know not to debase themselves with thoughts of Sado's whore."

    "Sado the cuckold," she continued, as if he'd said nothing at all, and the way he squirmed and snarled with his cock in her hand almost made it worth it to hate him and want him so badly. "Sado, who married a whore and can't even please her."

    "I will drag you to the market on your hands and knees," he swore, and now he must have been angry, by the way that he yanked on her hair with a white-knuckled fist. "I will take you in front of everyone, the entire kingdom will watch you writhe and hear the noises that you make, and I will tie your spent body to the top of Ala Ma as a warning."

    "The other girls of your kingdom," she asked, hair still pulled back painfully, thumb tracing circles on the head of his cock, "will they debase themselves as shamelessly as a heathen? Will they bow before you with eager mouths, the other women you might marry?" This question loosened his grip, though only enough for her to slide her lips around the base of his shaft once more.

    "You are not being a very good girl," he accused, and she recalled that she'd been doing this for something other than the fun of it. Her retort was to keep bobbing, to make whimpering little noises that were muffled by his skin. Greedy, slavering, eager, pleading noises. His hips bucked and he made that strangled noise again, like music to her ears. "Yes," he breathed, "that's the tame little princess I wanted to hear. You can be a good girl, can't you?" It took a great deal of willpower not to bite him or make any smart remarks, and he shot acknowledgement of her success down the back of her throat. She swallowed, licked her lips, and narrowed her eyes incredulously when he ordered her to thank him.

    "Excuse me?"

    "You do want your reward, don't you? Rewards are for princesses well-trained enough to show gratitude."

    For far too long a moment, she actually considered it. "I was never actually going to like this reward, was I?"

    "You might have, if you'd kept your fool mouth full. You might still, depraved little thing." He was gloating, and perhaps the look in her eyes was a warning. Sado sat upright, pulled his wife into his lap so that her teeth would no longer pose a threat to his testicles. She squirmed less forcefully than she could have, and the sight of her impotent fury and frustrated lust almost had him hard again. For reasons not entirely clear, he grabbed onto her wrists, sunk his teeth into her shoulder until she was docile.

    There was something about her wrists, the slender shape of them, the way he could feel her bones and how easily they might break. They were fragile, like the rest of her, and his hands could engulf them totally. It shouldn't have been attractive. It wasn't.

    Sometimes Sado wanted her so badly that he thought he'd rather kill her instead.

    He admired the marks that his teeth had made in her dark brown skin, and hoped that she'd have bruises. Nadine was glaring at him, with her strange green eyes, and he wondered if she could even see his face. She was defective. It made no sense to want her.

    He draped her across his lap, held her still until he was sure she wouldn't move. It was tempting to run his fingers over her spine, to feel her shoulderblades, to see how the girl inside the body would respond to his explorations. He hated her for making him curious. He ran a hand up the back of her thighs and was pleased when she held her breath. "I could still be generous," he lied, "if it asked nicely." He could see her jaw tense, could imagine the twitch of her lip. Nothing infuriated her as easily as when he called her it. It was presumptuous of her to think that she didn't deserve it, when legally speaking she wasn't even a person. It was only his graciousness that made her his wife, when he could as easily have kept her on a leash.

    Perhaps he still might.

    "Go eat shit and die," she snarled, and he smiled. No one was so vulgar in his presence; no one addressed him that way. It was a novelty, and he wanted to beat it out of her.

    "Maybe this time you'll learn your lesson," he suggested, palm resting on the gentle curve of her ass.

    "Nope." Her defiance and her stubbornness made him want her again, and the wanting made him want to wring her neck. He raised his hand, brought it down with a sharp crack against her skin that made her cry out. He hadn't expected that, the way her back arched and her eyes went wide, the way her still-swollen lips went round. He struck again immediately, harder, wanted to see if she'd do it again. She tried not to, this time, but that only made the little sound more pained when it escaped her anyway.

    It was a blessing for a god to allow himself to hit someone of common flesh. It was why they weren't allowed to do it. But his heathen wife didn't realize how he was lowering himself, and so he was allowed to indulge.

    Again and again and again, and her skin turned red and hot, until she managed to swallow her sounds. Her breathing was ragged and he found himself wiping a tear from her cheek, licking the saltwater from his hand.

    "Now wasn't that worth the trouble?" he purred, and Nadine grit her teeth and thought about breaking his fingers. He was stroking his fingertips along the sensitive skin, and he felt cold against the heat of her pain.

    "I've had better," she said flatly, but he continued to pet her like a cat in his lap. His cock was hard again, and pressing into her stomach.

    "Would you like me to fuck you?" he asked cheerfully, and she might have lied if he hadn't slipped his hand between her legs to find where she was slick and swollen.

    "I don't see why I should bother," she grumbled. "It's not like you'll actually improve the situation." His fingers drew little circles, dipped inside her and curled, and it wasn't fair that it felt so fucking good.

    "I am feeling benevolent," he said loftily, and she didn't believe it for a second. She didn't bother struggling when he picked her up and laid her on her back. She just didn't have the damn energy to be angry, to be disappointed, to be frustrated. He spread her knees, paused with a frown right before he might have entered her. "You don't believe me," he said incredulously, and she barked a laugh at how offended he seemed. "Look," he insisted, holding up his empty palms for her appraisal, "no pakala." He took her chin between two fingers, and when she bit her lip he stared. "Nothing but my hands," he emphasized, as if those weren't enough.

    "If I wanted an orgasm," she explained spitefully, "I'd head to the bottom of the kingdom." His brow furrowed and his jaw set with an nnn; had she hurt his pride? She felt him slide inside her, the sensation growing familiar now, and she wiggled experimentally. His nostrils flared and he pinned her wrists above her head, thrust hard and deep in a way that made her ache.

    "You are a presumptuous little slut," he said matter-of-factly, and she tried to ignore that she was rocking her hips against him, pulling against the hand that held her arms in place. "Vulgar and base and treasonous – and so utterly desperate to get fucked that it is quite frankly pathetic."

    It was working, damn him, she was growling and arching and wishing she could get her hands on him. "You're pathetic," she countered breathlessly, "losing your shit the instant there's a mouth on your dick, can't even fuck a girl that fights back." She wished that she had fingernails, to claw at his back and make him bleed; he slapped her, not as hard as he could have, and it made her gasp and groan.

    "You can fight back," he said, though he didn't release her hands, "but I don't see what the point would be, weak little thing that you are." He let her go, leaned back, lifted her legs and drew back one hand to smack the still-sore skin of her ass. Nadine grunted, bucked her hips, hated him for the disappointment that was surely as imminent as her climax seemed. On impulse she launched herself upright, so that she was mounting his lap as she crushed her mouth to his and wrapped her fingers around his neck. He was surprised enough for his brown eyes to go wide, not surprised enough to stop pounding into her. She bounced in his lap with his fingers digging into her hips, and she ground herself against him, sucked at his tongue. He made a noise of shocked distress, and only then did she realize that she'd begun pulling at the pins in his hair, had started unraveling his braids. "Who do you think you are?" he snarled, yanking her hair and exposing her throat to his eager teeth.

    "Your wife," she cackled, as silky brown hair tumbled down his shoulders and back, trailed over her stomach. She grabbed fists full of it, wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed her chest so hard to his that she could feel his every contour. Someone was making noises, guttural and high, and it occurred to her that the voice was her own."You're awful," she was gasping, as the core of her exploded, as pleasure washed through her in wave after wave and light burst in her brain. "An awful, backwards, ignorant, arrogant, fuck you, oh my god, fuck you, fuck!"

    He was still biting at her neck as she started to come down, as she started to go limp, and she thought that she would probably have bruises. She did not bother offering any resistance as he kissed her, and so he wound up pushing her onto her back. Nadine forgot that she wasn't supposed to sigh contentedly as he buried himself deep and flooded her insides with heat. For a moment, everything was bliss.

    "And now," he preened, officially ruining the moment, "you'll know exactly what it is you're missing."

    "Go die in a fire."

    Princess Hwawan of Ala Ma was looking for her sister-in-law. Her brother Sado had sent her on the mission, and though it may have been beneath her, Hwawan generally tried not to anger Sado.

    It had been so nice, when Sado was gone. Jeong might have been King, then, and while he would never have been a great King – anything was better than Sado.

    At first, the royal twins had hated Nadine, resented her for bringing their brother back. But Hwawan didn't blame her anymore, not really. Sado treated her awfully, and even the King could not help her – not with her heathen blood. If she was honest, Hwawan might admit that she found the alien woman fascinating. Her eyes were green, her hair was blacker than night, she wore special devices to see, she was the smallest person that Hwawan had ever seen. She said the most heretical things, things that would have her killed if she were not Sado's wife. She had no apparent notions of respect, dignity, propriety; she laughed in Sado's face when she ought to have bowed.

    Princess Hwawan wondered what it was like, to be a woman like Nadine.

    Her search had brought her near the stables, and she thought that she heard voices. "Princess Nadine?" she called hesitantly, the foreign name sounding strange to her own ears.

    "Y – yes! O – oh! – ver heeEEeere!"

    Nadine did not usually have trouble speaking, and the way that her words emerged made Hwawan nervous as she came closer to their origin. Whatever she expected to find, the reality was far beyond anything she might have anticipated.

    The man who tended the stables was with her, and Hwawan could only see his back, see the slender legs wrapped around his waist and the arms around his shoulders as his body pressed Nadine's into the wall. Repeatedly. Vigorously. They had not even bothered to go inside the stables, were outside amidst the flowers of the gardens.

    Hwawan had never seen anything like it. Had never even imagined seeing anything like it. The very idea of such vulgarity was beyond her; it would no more occur to her than religion to a field mouse. She should have averted her gaze, should have retreated, should have gone and told Sado of his wife's indiscretions. Instead, she stared. Stared, and felt her face turn hot.

    "One mmMmminute," Nadine sang, and her body was covered almost entirely with that of her companion. "Be riiIiight there – oh god yes, right there!"

    Heretical and vulgar and common. Hwawan should not have continued staring. She did. Her ears burned with the sounds of screams and cries and sighs, and when the lovers stopped Hwawan realized that her heart was racing.

    Nadine sent the man on his way with a kiss, as if they had exchanged little more than sweet nothings. He bowed to Hwawan as he left, walked backward with his head bent low, and Hwawan marveled that he would worry about etiquette now.

    "Now what was it that you wanted?" Nadine asked, as she straightened her skirts. Hwawan tried not to think about what had just happened beneath those skirts, tried not to stare at her bare feet and the short curls that under other circumstances would mark her as musi.

    Musi was the nice word for it. Most people just said whore.

    "The Crown Prince requested that I find you," Hwawan murmured, her eyes lowered nervously.

    "He won't let me wear shoes." Hwawan looked up in surprise, found Nadine placing some kind of stick in her mouth. She wiggled her foot as if to show what she meant, and the feathers that hung from her gold anklets shook enticingly. "In case you were wondering," she added, before lighting the stick on fire.

    She is inhaling common poison.

    "That is… unfortunate." What else was there to say, about a prince who would force his wife to dress like a servant?

    "The hair, though – I let that down myself." She grinned wide, but then, that was the only way she could grin. "Seems to help convincing people to keep me company." A neat trick; any sensible person would refuse to dally with a princess, but a barefoot princess with hair that spoke of shame? Nadine blew smoke out her nose, adjusted the delicate gold frames on her face.

    "Does it taste good?" Hwawan asked impulsively, and Nadine's eyebrows shot up. "I mean-"

    "The cigarette? Eh, not bad. Haven't smoked in just about forever. Got lucky as hell that smoking's something people even do on this fucking nonsense planet. If you mean cigarettes in general, though – they taste fucking awful. But in a good way, if you're that kind of a person." She sucked on it again, somehow managed to blow smoke in the shape of a little ring.

    "Oh. I thought – I thought that it must taste good, to make the poison worth it." Hwawan felt very silly and very naïve, and she supposed that was because it was true. Nadine looked like she'd be born knowing everything about everyone and caring not at all about any of it.

    "The poison's the point. There a lot of redheads around here?" She gestured with an upward nod to the braids held on Hwawan's head with pins, and she found herself confused.

    "I… I am a twin," she said uncertainly, as if Nadine had not noticed.

    "Yeah, and that makes two – unless you mean that's relevant? The Venn diagram of twinsies and gingers is some kind of fucked up circle?" Whatever look was on Hwawan's face must have accurately conveyed her bafflement, because Nadine waved the question away, filling the air with smoke in the process. "No, nevermind, who cares. Just wondering." She grinned again, and this time it was conspiratorial, predatory. "I've always liked redheads."

    Hwawan felt her skin flush as she bowed her head, basked in the indirect compliment. "Your… friend," she asked finally, and Nadine snorted with amusement. "Do you not worry that Sado will punish you?"

    "Honey, I know he'll punish me – ain't nothing he'll do that'll be new or different. He'd've done it, anyway; might as well do the crime, if I'm gonna do the time."

    "I suppose, but… what about him? If he cannot punish you, he will punish him."

    "You speaking from experience, girl?" Hwawan recalled faraway, childish fantasies of romance; recalled the sound of the boy's screams. Could Nadine see the memory in her eyes? "Lemme let you in on a secret: that guy? The guy who was balls-deep just now? I do not give a flying fuck about that guy." If Nadine could tell how flustered her sister-in-law was at her language, it didn't seem to stop her. "Sado wants to lock that dude in a dungeon and cattleprod him for a while? Shit, ain't nothin' worse than he does to me, and I can handle it fine. I know your dad's not gonna let any decapitating happen up in here, so what the fuck's he gonna do? Besides, that dude knew damn well what he was doing. Shit, he probably knows the risks better'n I do. If he thinks it's worth it, who the hell am I to tell him he's wrong?" She shrugged, sucked on her cigarette contemplatively.

    "I wish I could be fearless," Hwawan confessed, and it came out more petulant than she'd intended.

    Nadine's eyes raked over her sister-in-law, and then she seemed to come to a decision. "A'ight, let's do this – it is em-effing bonding time, population princess." She seemed to collapse, fell to the ground carelessly so that her legs were splayed in front of her and her back rested against the wall. She patted the ground next to herself. "Sit yourself down, Hwawan, let us have ourselves a talk." Hwawan hesitated, and Nadine rolled her eyes. "How you gonna be fearless, you can't even sit in your own yard?" Hwawan seated herself more delicately than Nadine had, legs curled daintily to the side under her skirt.

    "You will teach me to be fearless?" she asked hopefully, hopes dashed almost immediately when Nadine scoffed.

    "Fearless is a mental illness. You don't wanna be fearless unless you wanna be dead. What I have is a similar, but distinct illness called gives no fucks, as well as its codependent cousin spiteful asshole. Spiteful asshole is more trouble than it's worth, and I couldn't teach you that anyway. Gives no fucks, however, is easy."

    "How do I learn to… give no fucks?" Nadine cackled at this, and Hwawan felt both shy and bold.

    "That, for starters. Sit in the grass and say bad words. Mostly, though: you break the rules, and realize the world didn't end." She gave Hwawan a secret sort of a smile, and her heart fluttered in response.

    "What sort of rules?"

    Nadine considered the smoke billowing up from her hand thoughtfully. "When I kiss you, inhale." Then she sucked on her cigarette and pressed her lips to Hwawan's. Hwawan, too surprised to do anything but as she was told, inhaled as the taste of smoke filled her mouth. Almost immediately, she collapsed into a coughing fit.

    "That was awful!" she accused, but Nadine only cackled again, took a drag and kept it to herself.

    "My kissing's that bad, is it?"

    "No, that was wonderful – I meant the smoke, I don't know why anyone would do that on purpose."

    "Wonderful, you say?"

    Hwawan flushed again, averted her gaze. "I thought so. I am admittedly not an expert in such matters."

    Suddenly Nadine was sliding into her lap, and the cigarette was gone. It was a startling reminder of how small she was, how light. "Hwawan," she said seriously, running her fingers over the other woman's jawline. "I have thought of a much better way to break the rules."

    Princess Hwawan had never seen her brother fly into a rage – not like this. Prince Sado was angry, certainly – angry, petty, cruel. But the behavior being described by the servants, the roaring coming from his suite, was a new thing entirely. She hoped, desperately, that he hadn't hurt Nadine. It was only for Nadine that she braved his suite now, only for Nadine that she made herself fearless.

    "Where is she?"

    It was obvious immediately that something was wrong. Prince Sado did not let his hair down. Prince Sado did not have hair the color of straw. Prince Sado did not wear clothes in disarray. Prince Sado did not have eyes of gold.

    And yet, this could not be anyone but Prince Sado, tossing aside the furniture with strength he'd never had and baring teeth with fangs unfamiliar.

    "Brother?" she ventured, hesitant. His wife was nowhere to be found – perhaps this had upset him? It certainly did not explain how he had come to be dipped in gold.

    Those yellow eyes turned to her, both familiar and not, brows heavy and nostrils flared. "Who are you?" he demanded, in a voice booming instead of shrill, and she might have asked the same.

    "Do you not recognize your sister, Sado?"

    "Sado! Sado the criminal! Sado the prisoner! There is no Sado, here!"

    Hwawan took a step back, her hand tightening on the doorknob. "Who are you, then?"

Quote:"What do you think of Maahes?" the girl asked, as if he would answer, as if he could. "Not that I want to be givin' you ideas above your station, name of a god, and all. But it's a pretty obscure god, I think. Not using it anymore. It's better'n Aslan, anyway."

    "I am Maahes! Where is the girl? Where is Nadine?"

    Princess Hwawan, at a lack of better options, retreated into the hall and locked the Crown Prince into his suite. "Something is very wrong here," she murmured to no one, straightening her skirts. She walked more urgently than was seemly, paused only to gaze out the nearest window. "The blue moons are in the sky, and Sado has turned bright as the sun. This has the feel of magic."

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

    The Witch of the Wild Wood did not bow before the royal family, because Witches bowed only when it suited them. Princess Hwawan found her unsettling and intriguing all at once, with her white skin and hair, her lavender eyes. She was a heathen, the way Nadine was a heathen, and their freedom gave Hwawan heretical thoughts.

    "Explain, if you would," King Yeongjo Atahualpa of Ala Ma asked, with more patience than one might expect, "what heresy you have done to the Crown Prince." It was not a command, because even the king could not command a Witch, but it was as close as he could get.

    "I have committed no heresy," the Witch explained loftily, "for I have not changed his blood nor flesh. I have simply granted a Wish, for a very powerful Debt."

    "And whose Wish could be so powerful, to touch a Prince?" Queen Jeongsun asked, eyes narrowed, calculating.

    "Why – that of his wife, of course." The Witch inclined her head to the empty seat, where the missing Princess did not deign to sit. Hwawan did not know if it was the sign of respect that made her twin gasp, or only Prince Jeong's fear of his sister-in-law's propensity for heretical acts.

    "What was this Wish that the Princess made?" the King pressed, and the Witch smiled a very small smile.

    "Perhaps I should start at the beginning," she suggested, and she did not wait for agreement. Hwawan wondered if it was wonderful, to be a Witch. "When Crown Prince Sado Atahualpa came to me, those years ago, with the Debt allowed to the royal family of Ala Ma – the Debt most of you are too clever to spend." The Witch smiled here, at her flattery and her slight, because she knew that Sado would not be defended against it – heresy or no. "His Wish was for a woman without fear – for what reason, I cannot say." Another jab, because they all knew why Sado wanted a wife who would not scream.

    "I decided, then, that the best way to do this was to transform Sado's body, to twist it into the body of a lion, that it might return to the body of a man only with the kiss of a woman. For surely, any woman brave enough to kiss a lion ought to be fearless enough for Sado to take for a wife. And I let him into the Wild Wood, for no self-respecting fearless woman could stay away."

    All lies, they knew, but no one disputed it. It ought to have been a prison of Sado's own making, trapped in an inescapable wood in the body of a lowly animal. Even the King and Queen, who ought to have loved their son, who ought to have punished the Witch as a heretic, had looked the other way. It had been his Wish, after all, even if the Witch had twisted it. It would have been so convenient – for the family, for the kingdom – if he had only stayed gone. If he had stayed trapped until his end of days. If there had not been, against all reason, a heathen from another world who would kiss a lion and set him free.

    "This is the story that everyone knows, of course, of the Prince who was a lion. But – for reasons of my own – I did not trust Sado with his new form." Who would?, Hwawan wondered, as she imagined her cruel brother with sharp teeth and deadly claws. "And so I gave the keeping of this body to a Spirit. It was this Spirit, in the changed body of the Prince, that was the Fearless One's companion. It was this Spirit, in truth, who earned her kiss – and having tricked her so, though it was not my intent, I incurred a great Debt. This Debt is how the Princess Nadine made her Wish – that the body of Sado be forfeit, and given as prize to the Spirit that had been her companion."

    There was a long silence as the family considered this, the implications both religious and practical. Hwawan thought Jeong might have a panic attack.

    "And Sado?" the King asked finally, and there was a wry twist to the Witch's mouth.

    "He is a Spirit, now," the Witch confirmed, "and shall be so for so long as he is able to hold himself together, until he collapses into the aether. I can, if you Wish it, find him another body." There was silence again, as the Witch knew there would be. Familial loyalty had its limits, and Sado was that limit.

    "So our kingdom is to be ruled by a dumb beast," Queen Jeongsun accused, but the Witch was not dismayed.

    "He said his name was Maahes," Princess Hwawan ventured, and she colored as the attention of the room turned to her.

    "A Spirit without a body to hold it," the Witch began slowly, "cannot hold itself together. It can only lose itself, piece by piece, until only its most essential quality is left. When it cannot hold even that, this is when it collapses. But a strong man makes a strong Spirit, and such was the Spirit I chose to keep Sado. Honor, was this Spirit, and it glowed brightly with it long after it should have collapsed. Given a body, it would have been able to grow again – and it is possible, without knowing it, that the Fearless One shaped him as a gardener does a tree."

    "Shaped him?" Hwawan asked, growing bolder.

    "A Spirit in body becomes what it thinks it ought to be. She called him Maahes, and so he was Maahes. Treated as kind, he would have become kind. Treated as a buffoon, he would be a buffoon." The Witch shrugged, as if the future ruler's personality was of no consequence. "There is no knowing what she made of him until we see what he is."

    "He's blonde, now," Hwawan offered, as if this might give insight. "He looks… different. The same, but… different." She was gratified when the Witch's eyebrows raised, at this.

    "She must have given him a very strong sense of who he was, then."

    "A beast cannot be Prince," the King declared with a forbidding sense of finality.

    "Can he not?" the Witch countered, as only a Witch could. "There is precedent, after all, in King Sunjo who lost his mind. No one denied that he was a different man, after the spear passed through his brain – but his blood was still royal blood, his flesh still royal flesh, and so his was still the body of a God and of a King. The Crown Prince may be Maahes where once there was Sado – but his blood is your blood, and his flesh is your flesh. Maahes has as much claim to the crown as did Sado."

    "I'm going to get him," Hwawan declared, before anyone else could respond to this statement. "If N – Princess Nadine made him, then I ought to be the one to speak to him, until the Princess can be found. I am closest to the Princess, after all, and we cannot make judgment until we know on whom we pass it."

    "I am close to the Princess, as well," Jeong muttered defensively, and Hwawan glowered at her twin.

    "There is close, and then there is close," she declared, before turning and moving with unseemly haste once more.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

    When Hwawan opened the door to Sado's suite, the yelling and throwing had stopped. Sado – Maahes – was crouched in front of Sado's many mirrors, staring at himself.

    "Crown Prince Maahes?" she ventured, and he looked at her, flared his nostrils again.

    "This is me," he stated more than asked, pointing to his reflection. She noticed that his nails resembled claws, and tried not to feel nervous.

    "Yes," she confirmed, and he stood, cocked his head to the side.

    "I have been without form for a long time." This again was not a question, and Hwawan realized that there were scars across his chest – scars that were not there, when he was Sado. "I failed in my duty. I could not keep the girl safe. I let Sado escape. Why have I been given a body once more, when I have already proven myself a failure?"

    His voice was deep, mournful, and for the first time in her life Hwawan felt stirrings of sympathy for her older brother. "She – Nadine. She missed you. She wanted you back." Yellow eyes turned to her, and he was so obviously a lion she wondered that she didn't realize it immediately.

    "The girl was safe? I did not fail her? Where is she?" He stepped closer to her, though not by much, and he seemed to fill the room.

    "I – we don't know, right now. She… leaves, sometimes." Hwawan turned red, thinking of her sister-in-law in the arms of a stableboy as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

    "She wanted me back, but did not wait for me?" Maahes' eyes narrowed, suspicious, and Hwawan offered her palms in supplication.

    "I don't think she knew you were coming," Hwawan offered helplessly, wishing Nadine were here to be… well, fearless. "She didn't like to be around him – around Sado. If she'd known it would be you, I'm sure she'd not have wandered."

    Maahes looked down at his hands, back the mirror. "This was the body of Sado."

    "Yes."

    "Do I look like him?"

    "Not… quite?" Hwawan pointed to one of Sado's many portraits, and Maahes squinted at it, looked in the mirror to compare himself.

    "I am much more handsome," he decided, and Hwawan swallowed a laugh, "but it is still his face. She will see him, when she looks at me. I do not like it. What did he do, when he escaped?"

    "… married her?"

    "He made her his mate?" he roared, incredulous, and she recoiled instinctively from his teeth, from his approach. "She was a child!"

    "She was a woman grown," Hwawan assured him, "and she's your mate, now."

    This stopped him short, and he appeared briefly dazed. "She is my…? Oh. Oh. My. Hmn." He retreated back to the mirror, looked at himself, looked at Hwawan, moved his hands as if measuring something. Hwawan realized that he was trying to figure out how large she was, now that he was not a lion.

    "She's about here on you," she suggested helpfully, holding her hand right above her breasts, Sado – and therefore Maahes – being only a few fingers taller than she. Maahes frowned, held a hand out at chest height as if resting it atop Nadine's head, furrowed his brow.

    "This presents logistical problems," he said seriously, and Hwawan swallowed another laugh.

    "It really doesn't," she promised, though she colored again at the memory of Nadine, of how she fit herself to a person. Maahes regarded her suspiciously, and she hoped he couldn't tell what she was thinking about.

    "You called me ‘brother'," he observed.

    "Your blood is my blood and your flesh is my flesh," she confirmed. "You are Crown Prince Maahes Atahualpa, son of King Yeongjo Atahualpa and Queen Jeongsun Atahualpa, brother to the royal twins Hwawan and Jeong."

Quote:"It makes sense that you're selfish," the girl explained, her fish on the fire as he ate his raw. "Same reason I am. I mean, one of 'em. We're only children, yeah? Being an only child's awesome. So's not having parents, really, but that's controversial for some fuckin' reason." She waited, as she always did, as if listening to a response he could not make, that he made only in her own mind. He did not mind, as he was a lion, and he enjoyed who she imagined him to be. He enjoyed that he made her happy. "You would say that," she snorted, "ya dingus. Haven't you heard the grass is always greener? Having a family seems great, right up until you realize you're stuck with 'em." She paused as she examined her catch, decided it was edible. "Then again, you are the sappy, loyal type. Maybe you'd be into that. You're still here, after all." She grinned at him, that half-mad grin, and when he roared it turned into a genuine smile of delight. She enjoyed it, when he pretended he could speak, and he enjoyed the way it chased the shadows from her eyes.

    "I have a family," he said slowly, a smile creeping to his face. "I have always wanted a family!" Hwawan cringed as Maahes moved to embrace her, and was surprised when he did so as gently as possible, as if fearing she might break. She had simply assumed he would sweep her up into a rib-crushing embrace, as boisterous as he seemed to be, but it appeared he was more careful than that. What a strange thing, that Nadine had made him cautious, that Nadine had made him gentle. That the Fearless Princess had made him safe. "I must see them, then! My family! My wife!"

    "You probably ought to get some clothes first," Hwawan suggested, disentangling herself from him. He looked down at his bare chest, at the loose trousers that he had torn when he had first became acquainted with his body. He looked at her, with her bell-shaped skirt and tunic, her red hair all in braids, the gold in her hair and at her neck and wrists and ears.

    "Yes!" he agreed enthusiastically, that booming voice of his. "There is much I need to learn, about this body! What does a Prince do? What is our kingdom? Why are there rocks in my ears? What is the purpose of pants?"

    Nadine did not have nightmares. But she also didn't have dreams. She never had, and she supposed that she never would. She considered it an even trade, to never wake in the night clutching at phantoms. It never kept her awake, the fear that she might see something behind her eyelids in the dark.

    She couldn't sleep, despite that.

    She brewed a cup of shitty motel coffee, and wandered out to the balcony to sit. She stared at the moon. At the single, singular, one and only moon.

    They'd asked her if she'd jumped, the people who'd fished her out of the harbor. She'd said yes, because she had. Into the Rift, into the light and the cold. They thought she'd been trying to kill herself. She'd left behind two moons glowing a radiant blue in the sky, and she'd never been so happy to taste smog.

    She'd pawned all the gold she'd been wearing at the kind of shop shady enough that she could also buy a fake ID. It said she was 21, which she was pretty sure was a lie. She hoped it was a lie. She didn't want to think she'd lost that much time. She'd used her money to buy clothes, stupid and ugly things, jeans and t-shirts. She was wearing the ugliest Tweety Bird nightgown she had ever seen in her life. She hated Tweety Bird. It had felt important, at the time. Symbolic. She should have bought something cute.

    She couldn't sleep.

    She'd spent so long waiting to be able to sleep in an empty bed. So long dreaming of a night that was her own. She lit up a cigarette, and tried to focus on it, empty her mind of everything that was not that moment and that flame. It didn't work.

    Ironic, that it had been so much easier when everything was unreal. When all she wanted was to survive and get home. And now she was home, as home as she ever wanted to get, and for the first time she felt acutely the absence of her mirror self. She should have been there, sitting next to her. Should have been holding her hand and finishing her sentences. It'd been a while since she hadn't had anyone. After Jed, maybe. She'd wandered a bit, then. But that had been different. This was different.

    So many things she wanted to be doing, but every single one of them reminded her of someplace else. Another time, another place, another person. She'd felt nostalgia before, but never like this. Never this ache like something important was missing.

    She couldn't sleep in an empty bed anymore, goddamn it all to hell.

    "Hate to ask," said a voice, "but can I bum one off you?" She looked, and noted with detachment that he'd do for a lay. Not in the fun way that she'd used to, admiring and thinking of pleasure she could give and take. Assessing, instead. You'd be an irritant, you seem like you'd want me, you seem like you'd take me, you could take a night of torture or two. All the evidence was gone, like it had never happened, but it didn't feel like never just yet.

    Wordlessly, she offered him her pack, and he accepted. She even lit it for him, chivalrous as she was. For a moment, they sucked cigarettes in silence. She stared at the lonely moon.

    She used to be enthusiastic. It used to be fun. It could be again, maybe, when she stopped feeling numb. Numb all over, except the ache in her lungs. She wouldn't settle anymore, she decided, looking at the cherry of her cigarette. Only when she felt it and only for fun, only when it brought to mind future pleasures and not past pains. That wasn't asking too much, was it? That wasn't being too picky.

    "Always hard to sleep on a night like this," he said into the silence, the stillness in the air. She let it hang for a moment, and blew a smoke ring at the moon to frame it.

    "I don't want to have sex with you," she said abruptly. He said nothing. "But I don't think I can sleep alone, tonight." She took another drag of her cigarette. "You see my problem." He nodded, and followed her gaze to the sky.

    "Are you asking me if I want to cuddle?" he asked.

    "I suppose I am," she said, and she wasn't even particularly embarrassed about it. She sipped her coffee, and it was godawful. She savored it, until there was just enough swill at the bottom of her paper cup to drop her cigarette in after it.

    "I can do that," he said finally, and he tossed his cigarette in after hers.

    She took his hand, laced her fingers through his as if she liked him, as if she cared. His hands were rough, and she felt the first faint stirrings of something like interest. Something like it, but not quite there yet.

    Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would buy something cute, and she would drink something fluorescent red. Tomorrow it would be a bad dream, something forgotten, something frivolous and meaningless. Tomorrow would be smiles, and they would be fake until they didn't need to be. She would survive and she would be happy, and heaven help anyone that got in her way.

22
NSFW

    "Dean, huh? My name's Gabriel."

    A name like that on a pretty face like his could only mean trouble. Nadine knew better. But knowing better had never stopped her before.

    "How Abrahamic of you," she observed, cocking an eyebrow, sipping at a beer that was half water and half swill. He only smiled, all charm, and she could have sworn she saw a spot of light reflect off his perfect teeth.

    "A little," he admitted, and she was charmed by his restraint; his type had a tendency toward melodrama, and she'd half expected him to spread a hitherto unnoticed set of wings to let her bask in his glory. His hair looked gold – not blonde, but gold – and she wondered if the carpet matched the drapes.

    "You look human enough – you got all human parts, or are you missin' some bits?" She was never one to beat around the bush, but it wasn't as if the question were out of nowhere. He had to have come to a seedy bar like this for some reason, and he wasn't shy about checking her out, letting his unnaturally blue eyes roam over her figure. The way she was standing admittedly invited such appraisals, bent with her elbows resting on the bar, legs straight and backed arched.

    "Not all human," he said with a grin, having to lean down to speak with her, tall as so many metas were – six and a half feet, if she had to guess. "I like to think that what parts I have are… better." This made Nadine's eyebrows shoot up, adjusting her glasses and looking him over again. She ran her fingers through her hair, thick black curls falling to her shoulders with a bounce, considering the possibilities. When she stood suddenly straight, he mirrored her action and stood as well. She could tell he wasn't just watching her – he was watching the room, keeping an eye out for… something. She stood on her toes, feet clad in Converse, and held up a hand as if measuring his height. Then she lowered the hand to her own height with an impish smile.

    "I think you might be too big for me, Gabriel." Her tone was breathy with feigned awe, fluttering her thick lashes, clasping her hands behind her back and bending one knee in a coy pose. He smiled, all sweetness, leaning down again to look her in the eye – face only inches from her own.

    "Worried I'd hurt you?" he asked, and Nadine would never understand why so many men were thrilled by the notion of causing their partners terrible physical pain, so long as their dicks were to blame. Hardly anyone crowed about being able to tear women open with their fists, but apparently it was worth bragging rights if they used their cocks instead.

    "What would you do if you did? Hurt me, that is?" Her head cocked to the side, on alert for potential red flags.

    "That depends on whether or not you liked it."

    She grinned at that; he was a clever one. "Let's assume I didn't – just out of curiosity."

    He took the hand not holding her beer, kissed her knuckles as if she were a lady of class and not a bar-fly with nails chewed short. "Throw myself into the sun," he said seriously. She smiled despite herself, even if his reassurances were meaningless; he'd bothered, at least, and that had to count for something. She took another swig of her beer, set it down on the counter.

    "Is this how makeouts work where you're from, or do you kiss mouths, too?" Gabriel smiled his dazzling smile again, kissed along her arm like Gomez Addams before pressing his lips gently to hers. When he deepened the kiss, explored her mouth with his tongue, she didn't even mind that he was still watching the door. He tasted divine.

    Which was appropriate.

    When he finally broke the kiss, she was about ready to rip his clothes off right in the middle of the bar. It was doubtful anyone would even notice, judging by the couple in the corner booth. It was one of those places – which is to say, Nadine's favorite. He held her chin in his fingers to tilt her face toward his, and for one hopeful moment she thought he was going to kiss her again – but then his gaze went to the door, all pretense of focusing on her abandoned. "Dean?"

    Please don't ask me to do anything dangerous please don't say you're too busy with bullshit for a quickie c'mon now.

    His hand took hers, and he handed her something – a keycard, the sort from a hotel. "The hotel and the room number are on the key – can you wait there for me?" He nodded his head toward the back door, but her gaze went instead to the front, to see what exactly he'd been waiting for all this time. A black-haired man, as tall as Gabriel – she supposed she ought to have guessed. With a sigh she accepted the keycard, grabbed her bag and headed in the direction he'd indicated.

    "Try not to keep me waiting too long," she called over her shoulder; shortly after she'd left, the explosions started.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

    Gabriel had gotten larger in her absence – not that she was complaining. She supposed it was the fight that had done it, that perhaps he was one of those multiform sorts. She'd met his chatting up ladies face, and here was his face after getting it smashed in. His lip was bleeding, and when he kissed her he tasted like copper and gold – which would normally be quite the party foul, as far as Nadine was concerned. Strange bodily fluids were a one-way ticket to burning sensations, after all. But based on how quickly the gash in his side was knitting itself, she could only assume he had some sort of healing hoodoo.

    If nothing else, she could now throw caution to the wind and enjoy what other bodily fluids he had to offer.

    His skin had gone from white to gold, presumably around the time he'd sprouted up a foot. Had he always been able to wrap his hands around her waist and have his fingers touch? Not that she had that large of a waist, but it still seemed entirely too large and long-fingered for hands to be, as he lifted her in the air and kicked off his boots.

    The wings were a bit disconcerting, but it wasn't as if she hadn't dealt with those before. As long as he didn't go flapping them around to perform a mating dance, she couldn't care less.

    "Sorry about the delay," he apologized into her mouth, and his voice had gone deeper and had somehow acquired the accompaniment of chiming bells. She giggled as she licked along his lower lip, running her fingers along the sides of his face.

    "Why do I get the feeling this is going to sound like fucking a wind chime?"

    "Does that mean you've changed your mind?" he asked, still chiming along with his words.

    "Fuck no, son, I wanna know what fuckin' a wind chime sounds like." He fell backward onto his bed, carrying her with him and setting her on his stomach. His wings were folded on either side of him, and she wondered if it was uncomfortable to lay on them like that.

    "I am at your mercy," he declared, taking his hands off her and lacing his fingers behind his head. "Be the wind." She laughed, at that, loud and husky – such a serious declaration from a golden god in bloody trousers.

    "I'll try not to tip over your lawn chairs?" she murmured, unbuttoning his shirt with the quickness of someone with a great deal of practice. "Or maybe I will. I'm not really sure how the wind fucks, I'll have to find that out sometime." She'd half-undressed already, and her bare legs straddled him at she slid his shirt open, all evidence of his earlier altercation having healed. The spot where the gash had been was still slick with iridescent blood, and she wondered if tasting it would be weird. Almost immediately she did it anyway, running the full length of her impressive tongue along the spot where the wound had been, tasting copper and gold once more. He made a noise like church bells, hips bucking, and she had to hitch her fingers in his belt to keep from falling off him.

    "Sorry," he said, but somehow she doubted his sincerity.

    "How do your clothes still fit?" she wondered aloud, running her fingers along the leather of his belt; he shrugged, took his hands out from behind his head to wiggle his fingers in the universal sign for 'wibbly wobbly hoodoo bullshit'. She traced his muscles with her fingertips, occasionally following them with her tongue, noting with some interest that he didn't actually have nipples. Nevermind that it didn't make any sense at all for him to have had them – it didn't make sense for a lot of people to have nipples, and they had them anyway. It made his entirely practical anatomy fascinating, and she licked at the spot where they ought to have been. Combined with his lack of body hair – "You look like a trophy in a wig."

    He pulled her higher on his chest so that her mouth met his, a convenient way to quiet her gleeful cackling. "You're being very insensitive to my cultural differences," he scolded dryly, but his feigned indignation only amused her more. "You don't see me critiquing your anatomy."

    "What's there to critique?" She pulled her dress off over her head with ease, leaving her in nothing but a pair of black boyshorts, small breasts sitting high on her ribcage, almost worryingly slender. The look she gave over the frames of her glasses, eyebrow crooked, was a dare; he was sensible enough not to take it.

    "Absolutely nothing," he agreed, running his hands along her ribs, brushing her nipples with his thumbs. One hand went to her face to cup her cheek gently, and she took it as an opportunity to slip her mouth over his thumb, sucking at it eagerly.

    The size of his fingers made the prospect of actually getting into his pants a bit worrying, but she'd cross that bridge when she came to it.

    "I could watch you all day," he said earnestly, an undercurrent of sanctus bells, almost worryingly affectionate.

    "I don't know that I have the patience for that," she pointed out as she pulled her mouth off his hand, and he slid it down her chest, her stomach, rubbing idly between her legs in response. She groaned, grinding her hips and running her fingers through her hair.

    "No, I suppose you wouldn't," he agreed, sliding a finger under her panties and pushing it inside her. She gasped, tightening around his finger, and bent down to kiss him again.

    "Can I touch them?" she murmured into his mouth, eyes on his wings, even as the finger slowly sliding in and out of her made her slick and throbbing. He answered with a soft smile, wings flaring out on either side of him, tips pointed toward the ceiling. "How do they bend like that?" she wondered, trying to visualize the shape of his skeleton and the locations of his joints, as if golden men whose clothes grew with them were required to make sense. He didn't answer, only kept pumping his finger inside her and watching as she ran her fingers over his feathers. "Flight feathers… primaries… secondaries…" She pulled her hand away, rubbed her fingers together and noticed they were oily. "Motherfucker don't tell me you have a preen gland."

    He laughed at her incredulity, sounding like a bell choir, pulling her down to kiss him again; his finger was moving easily inside her now, and her hips were rocking against his hand, riding it even as she puzzled over his nonsensical anatomy. "Dean, do I look like a duck?"

    "Seeing as ducks are dicks," she giggled, "I sure as shit hope not, Oscar."

    "That is the worst nickname," he chided, emphasizing his point by pushing his finger deeper, harder, making her arch her back and flatten her palms against his chest for support. His free hand slid through her hair, moving the black curls from where they'd fallen over her face. "My name isn't that difficult, is it? Gabriel. Yes?"

    "Yes!" The exclamation may have been more general than an answer to his question, his fingertip massaging just the right spot as he curled it inside her to make her vision start dancing and light explode in her brain. "Gabriel," she groaned, and he smiled as he slid his hand out from between her legs. She grabbed his hand to lick it clean, and he cocked his head to the side as he watched her. "You're wearing too many clothes," she decided, rolling off him to slide her boyshorts off her legs.

    He acquiesced, pulling himself up with his arms to sit straight, wings flexing now that they weren't half pinned beneath him. There were already holes in the back of his shirt where his wings had burst through, and so he simply tore the rest off, discarding the shirt by the side of the bed as he stood. "Now," he said seriously, as he unbuckled his belt, "I understand completely if this changes things and you don't want to keep going. Okay?" He had his back turned to her, so she could see where his wings met his back, and she ran her fingers over the area curiously, admiring his musculature and where downy feathers transitioned to glittering golden skin.

    "Because your dick is so huge? Because you're smooth like a Ken doll? Because you've actually got an innie? Because you're a hermaphrodite? Because you reproduce by budding? Because you mate like a leopard slug? Oh fuck, do you mate like a leopard slug?" This last was said with such genuine excitement that he turned his head to give her a look over his shoulder, half impressed and half baffled.

    "Uh, no. None of those. Not the way you mean, anyway. Leopard slugs?" His voice was accompanied by pyeongyeong, and she wondered what sort of mood that indicated.

    Before she could explain the fascinating mating ritual of leopard slugs, his jeans fell to the floor, and she admired his unbelievably perfect ass before he turned around.

    Huh. Never seen that before.

    "Dendrophylax lindenii," she murmured, cocking her head to the side.

    "What?"

    "A ghost orchid. Your junk looks kinda like a ghost orchid. Not exactly, but… would not have predicted that."

    "Like I said, if you're not–" His considerate behavior was cut short when she reached out to touch one of the ‘petals', a long white tendril that then followed her hand. He made that noise like a church bell again, and she giggled.

    "Give a girl a minute to figure out what she's doing before you go putting your pants back on," she chided, and she pulled him closer. He sat on the edge of the bed, oddly gratified, as she slid to the floor to run her fingers along his skin.

    "I didn't mean to – it looks more human, in my other form, and I meant to use that form with you, but…"

    "Boooring," she sang, entirely serious. Not that she didn't enjoy cock, but given the option, she preferred to expand her metaphorical horizons. There were five of them, three shorter and wider, two long and twisting; she ran her fingers along each of them in turn, warm and smooth, biting her lip as they moved beneath her hands. Was she imagining things, or were the longer tendrils growing larger? She licked one of them, experimentally, and there was that church bell noise again as it wrapped around her tongue and then pushed into her mouth. "Mmph!"

    "It has a mind of its own," he apologized, like so many men before him. She sucked at it, tasting honey, and yes – it was definitely getting bigger. The other long tendril wrapped around each of her nipples in turn, and she raised an eyebrow. "… not entirely its own," he admitted with a grin, the tendril in her mouth sliding down her throat, throbbing. She might have been annoyed if it weren't intensely arousing. One tendril tugged at her nipples, the other pumped in and out of her throat, he ran his fingers through her hair and she traced heart shapes in his thigh with her fingertip as she sucked.

    It wasn't until two of the smaller and more petal-like tendrils gently cupped her face that she stopped, slowly tilted her head back to pull her mouth free. "That… might be a little too facehugger-y," she admitted, and he laughed his bell-choir laugh. He pulled her up and into his lap, tendrils dragging along along the length of her body as she rose. Straddling his legs, the longer tendrils wrapped themselves around her thighs, the shorter ones gently rubbing between her legs.

    "Whatever makes you comfortable," he assured her, kissing her again, apparently not bothered by the taste of honey on her tongue.

    "I don't know if comfortable is the word I'd use," she purred, before sucking on his tongue. Her groan was muffled when one of the smaller tendrils rounded itself out to push inside her, the other two stroking and undulating against her clitoris. The longer ones were still wrapped around her legs, occasionally stroking gently at her inner thighs.

    "You're taking this remarkably well." He had, it seemed, underestimated her willingness to ride cocks that were not actually cocks. She ran her fingers through his hair, spun gold in long waves; one of his hands held her hip, and the other fondled her breasts. His wings flared out, wrapped around them briefly so that feathers brushed her spine before folding to their usual position.

    "Taking things well is my specialty," she grinned. He answered her clever rejoinder with a buck of his hips, driving the tendril inside her deeper, making her buck in return. Between his fingers on her breasts, the tendrils on her clit, and the one inside her, it didn't take long at all for her to scream his name again; he answered with church bells, rolling her over so that he pinned her to the bed, penned her in with his wings so she could only see him.

    "Is it?" he wondered, and one of the long tendrils holding her knees up by her chest unwrapped itself, stroked her ass suggestively. That shorter tendril was still buried inside her, though the others had stopped their relentless stroking of her clit.

    "Got lube?" was her eyebrow waggling answer; she was glad she'd kept her glasses on, because the look on his face was positively adorable. The church bell sound he made when he was aroused was starting to turn into a two-octave carillon, and she stroked his cheek affectionately.

    "That sort of happens automatically," he explained sheepishly – and the tendril stroking her asshole did seem remarkably slick all of a sudden.

    She reached up with both hands to cup his face, a serious look on her own. "You're fucking magnificent," she said seriously, because he seemed entirely too self-conscious for a man with multiple self-lubricating dicks. She pulled him down to kiss her, moaning long and low onto his tongue as that probing tendril worked its way into her ass, the one inside her pussy slowly pumping again.

    It had started rather slender, but it seemed to be growing wider even as it pushed its way further into her ass, and she could feel it throbbing and pulsing. As if that weren't enough, she felt another of the shorter tendrils pressing against the slick entrance to her cunt, wrapping itself around the one already inside her.

    Curving his spine enough to suck at her left breast couldn't have been comfortable for a man his size, but he did it anyway, and she didn't bother trying to restrain her screams of delight now that she was no longer silenced by his kiss. He was large enough to fit her whole breast in his mouth, tongue tracing circles around her areola while his hand rolled the nipple of her other breast between two fingers. Wrapping her legs around his waist, two tendrils rammed into her pussy as he rocked his hips, the one in her ass still pumping away. When the third short tendril began gently rubbing her clitoris again, she found her nerve endings exploding once more, back arching and fingers digging into the bed.

    Once again her clit was left to recover, though he never stopped pounding into her, burying his face in her neck. His lustful groans were accompanied by a chorus of bells, and she reached out to brush his wings with her fingertips again.

    Why do I usually fuck humans, again?

    That second long tendril was prodding at her ass, and she felt the first one thin itself out, as if to make room. She cried out as the second successfully joined the first, tendrils winding around each other inside her, both growing thicker as soon as they were inside.

    "Fucking fuck," she gasped, both holes stretched to hold him, tendrils buried impossibly deep in her ass.

    "Too much?" he asked breathlessly in her ear, though he didn't stop pounding, the only tendril not penetrating her fluttering softly against her clit.

    "Never." She arched her back, ground her hips, and he laced his fingers with hers to pin them to the mattress beside her head. The tendrils in her ass began sliding in and out of her with his thrusts, and the fact that they were wound together made them feel ribbed and made her scream again. "You're fucking perfect, oh my fucking fuck you are so fucking good Gabriel, don't you dare fucking stop."

    He was ramming into her hard now, thick spiraling tendrils sliding in and out of her, wiggling inside her so that she writhed underneath him and cried out with each thrust. There was an increased urgency to his pounding, the sound of bells becoming cacophonous, until suddenly he drive his tendrils as deep as they'd go – too deep, too thick, twisting inside her and making her throw her head back to scream. They twitched and they throbbed, pumping her full of something hot and sticky that tasted of honey, a concert carillon ringing in her ears that drowned out his groan of completion. His wings were outstretched to their full span, like he might take flight at any moment, nearly touching the walls of the room.

    The feel of him shooting her full of something – save for the tendril that had been fluttering against her clit, now emptying on her stomach – pushed her over the edge a final time. It washed over her in waves, fireworks behind her eyes, and her screaming was loud enough that Gabriel kissed her again to swallow the sound. His wings beat a few times, perhaps as a reflex, fanning her with cool air as she slowly relaxed and became capable of thought again.

    Gently, his tendrils slid out of her, left her empty save for the stickiness and the soreness he'd left there. He trailed his fingers down her stomach, brought them to her mouth covered in something iridescent; she closed her eyes and sucked on them lazily, enjoying the sweetness as she came down from her high. She opened them again only when she noticed that his fingers had gotten smaller, and he slid them out from between her lips.

    "It's an adrenaline thing," he explained as he collapsed beside her, back to the human-looking form she'd met him in. She observed with a grin that he had nipples now, and his tendrils had shrunk and wound themselves into a shape that more resembled standard human genitalia. His voice no longer had that odd depth, and there were no more bells to chime with his words.

    "… so if I want to do that again, I'll have to punch you first?"

    He laughed quietly, kissed her on the forehead. "Doesn't work when I'm tired. After a good night's sleep and some breakfast – then you just have to ask nice."

    Nadine yawned, stretched like a cat before cuddling close to him. Unlike some other sluts of which she was aware, Nadine was never opposed to a good cuddle – but Gabriel made it even more tempting. He was like cuddling with a sunbeam, even when he tried to look human.

    "Fucking a wind chime," she declared, "is awesome."