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The Menace of College Campuses Everywhere Bridget Corey - Valesport - 3 years before present
Bree was not a werewolf.
She was often mistaken for a werewolf, because she spent her evenings as a canine.
But she wasn’t a were-anything. And sometimes that was one of the most inconvenient parts of being a magically cursed shifter.
You know. Besides all the other inconvenient parts, like being five pounds and your mother having panic attacks at the sight of you.
She wasn’t sure what she smelled like to werewolves. They always smelled like sweat and brown and wolf to her. Translation was difficult. English didn't really have the words to convey it. French fell sadly short too, though she'd tried. She knew she smelled like something to them, though, because they recognized her, every time, without fail. Sometimes other supernaturals recognized her, too, although most mistook her for a werewolf when they did.
Sometimes, though it was less common, werewolves mistook her for a werewolf as well. This was why she suspected her smell must be similar. Either that, or they took her as a shifter of some kind and were open to experimentation. That was also very possible, given the sorts of people she seemed to run into.
“Hey, babe, got a whiff of you from downstairs and I like what I smell.”
Bree went rigid, mostly out of shock. That was not the sort of thing one heard regularly. Bree didn’t tend to get leered at. She dressed poorly, on purpose. She was trim and muscular with broad shoulders and a strong back. She wore shitty hats. All the time. Her default expression was barely-concealed disdain.
She wasn’t very surprised when she turned around and got a nose full of brown and sweat and wolf. She wrinkled her nose, once again displeased at the suggestion that she probably smelled something like that herself. If only she could stand the stench of perfumes, she might try to do something about it.
The boy in question was probably another college student. He didn’t look old enough to be a professor. He was white with brown hair in that sort of boring way that a lot of college boys were. It made them, quite frankly, sort of indistinguishable from each other. And they so often reeked of Axe body spray, so she couldn’t even smell them apart. It was one of the many reasons Bree did all her rare socialization with women. They smelled better, and had enough of a tendency to wear makeup and different styles of hair that she could at least tell them apart without relying on her nose.
“Awww, don’t be like that,” he leered, mistaking her disgust for... disgust, but still managing not to be discouraged by it. “You're in your cycle, right? Bet you could use a helping hand to scratch that itch.”
Bree closed her eyes and took a deep, slow breath through her nose to control her anger. Werewolves were tricky, she reminded herself. Strong by default. Fast, though often still not as fast as her and never as good at navigating the urban environment. This sort of thing took finesse. She couldn't just go punching all of her problems in the nose.
“C’mon, pretty puppy--”
She punched him in the nose.
Knowing what he was let her put her full force behind it, something she never did when punching someone in the face under normal circumstances. His nose crumpled satisfactorily.
Never one to take unnecessary risks, she proceeded to push him down the stairs.
He'll be fine, she informed herself as she listened to his yelps of pain as he crashed head over ass down the stairs. Werewolves are very hardy.
“Oh you fucking CUNT,” she heard, a few moments after the crashing stopped.
Way too hardy, really.
And then she was bolting up the stairs in long strides, three at a time. She could have headed for the roof, gone down over the side full and comfortable with the knowledge he'd be too much of a bitch to follow her. A light smirk played across her lips at the thought of taunting him from a ledge he didn't have the balls to access, but instead, she kicked open the door onto the fourth floor and peeled through. Down the hallway, dodging expertly around people as if they were simply stationary obstacles. She could hear heavy feet pounding behind her. What a determined little boy. Ah, well, you knew how dogs got with a scent. And men chewed their own bone more voraciously than any real dog could manage.
She burst through the doors at the end of the hallway, knowing full well where they led. A flight of external stairs; she'd never known why they bothered. It would be easy to throw her ass onto the rail and slide down. Instead, she gripped the rail directly in front of her with both hands, vaulting over it. She heard at least one shout of alarm and smiled.
She didn't release her grip on the rail. Instead, she hung on, twisting her body as it fell to launch herself onto the third story landing. Where she yanked open the door and proceeded to tear back through the building.
She lost him somewhere on that floor, she was pretty sure. She couldn't be one hundred percent certain, because she kept running for the hell of it, back to the stairwell, sliding down the rails and admiring his bloodstains as she did.
She ran all the way to the bus stop, vaulting unnecessarily over fences and spinning around posts just for the joy of feeling her body move. She wanted to keep running even then, but it was getting late in the afternoon. She needed to get home, faster than she could run.
She let out a long sigh, plopping down on the bench to let her body rest. She checked and then readjusted her hat. It hadn't come loose, because she wore hats with the full knowledge she might be backflipping in them. It was one of her shopping criteria.
She replayed the satisfying crunch of his nose against her fist, slow motioned his expression as he'd toppled backwards down the stairs.
Mr. Cupcake and the Rat: A Sense of Danger Ren - Real World AU.
Ren had a poorly developed sense of danger. It didn’t understand things like scale. Or equivalent exchange. For most people, for example, there was nothing under the sun that could get them to tolerate being around someone who was, frankly, one the scariest looking people to ever live. What that meant for Ren, however, was that she’d do it for a single tossed biscuit, because you could live with mortal terror but you could not live without food.
This was probably why she’d taken to coming around the bakery every day like a stray cat. All the homeless hit up bakeries and restaurants around closing time. It was an easy way to get free scraps before they hit the dumpster. But staking out a place like that was damn hard and involved a lot of physical strength that Ren lacked. She was barely over five feet tall. She had essentially never not been homeless, so she took 'malnourished’ to a lifelong extreme. She didn’t have a canine or feline ally, because the only creatures that seemed to like her were rats.
In homeless terms, she was the bottom of the barrel.
So when she’d stumbled across a bakery that others left alone, it didn’t matter that they did so because the owner was almost certainly a serial killer and/or serial rapist. Food was food.
She’d started off in the dumpster, not willing to risk making herself evident, because the other homeless avoiding him meant he was likely the kind to take violent exception to that sort of thing.
Then, one day, he’d caught her at it.
He’d dragged her out of his dumpster by her collar, and she’d felt her life flash before her eyes. He’d towered over her as she’d cowered on the pavement…
And he’d given her some day-old cupcakes.
There had been more, after that. Baked goods left out in the alley, normally because some sort of mistake had been made. She began to check back multiple times per day, because sometimes she could get things remarkably fresh. She made the ten or twenty blocks around his shop her new haunt. When she’d found the little window into the attic above his shop, left unlocked because no one could possibly climb up to it or fit inside or even find it–she was frightfully skinny and frightfully good at climbing and frightfully curious–it was a done deal. She was sleeping in his attic when it rained and eating his food and the shop was officially Hers.
He was leaving her lunches now. In little brown paper bags
She’d been drawing on the bags, with a sharpie she’d found somewhere. The drawings decorated her little corner of the attic.
He was still a very scary man, and she still suspected some kind of inevitable trick. To find out he was luring her closer to do something terrible to her. That was always the case; men had many uses for women who wouldn’t be missed. But Ren had a poorly developed sense of danger. And she could no longer live without cupcakes and bread that hadn’t risen right and sandwiches made with good meat and real vegetables.
If it killed her tomorrow, at least she would have gone out full and dry, surrounded by little drawings of rats and flowers and cupcakes on brown paper bags.
Mr. Cupcake and the Rat: A Letter Ren - Real World AU.
Ren had settled into something akin to a comfortable routine, as much as anyone on the streets could possibly hope to. Every day brought new chaos. The bakery she had staked out as the center of her territory was on the rougher, poorer side of town, and she never knew when violence or cops would spill into her attempt at a peaceful existence.
She’d been heckled while digging through a trash can. When she hadn’t reacted, they’d thrown a bottle at her head. Her hat, an oversized beanie the same dark color as the dirty, matted hair it covered, had kept any glass from digging into her skull, but she had a hell of a headache and was dizzy. That was the sort of thing that made every day different from the next.
But there were some comforting constants.
She swung by the back alley by her bakery. She was quite late, and it was Sunday, so he would already be closed. But no one else came by, which meant... yes.
A little brown bag sitting on the step by the door into the bakery. She snatched it up quickly, stuffing part of it into her mouth so she could use all her limbs. Teeth clenched around the top of the bag, she clambered up onto the dumpster. In a practiced movement, she backed up to the corner, ran forward, and leapt. She caught the bottom rung of the fire escape on the next building, then hauled herself up. She climbed up another two stories on the fire escape, then, bag still dangling from her mouth, leapt onto the bakery roof. She landed on all fours, scrambled across the tile to the end of the house where the roof was at its highest. She slid off of it automatically, arms, then head, then chest and body, feet catching briefly around the edge as she swung herself down. The window was unlocked, because she never locked it. A metal ruler she left sticking out of the bottom made it easy to pry open, and then she slithered in.
The whole effort took less than thirty seconds.
She was getting very good at it.
The attic above the bakery was dark, but that didn’t bother her at all. She’d found a flashlight in an old box, and she had very good night vision. She clambered over bare plywood to her little corner, by the window, hidden behind a whole host of old, dusty boxes. There was a thick pile of blankets on it. She prodded at it a few times to figure out where all the rats were, moving some of them aside, before settling in.
She flicked the flashlight on and opened the bag. Inside was a saran wrapped sandwich, something wrapped in tin foil, two children’s juice boxes, and... ooooh, eclairs. She pulled it all out excitedly, using one of the boxes as a makeshift table. She started with the sandwich, unwrapping it and then carefully sticking the saran wrap around the existent ball of the stuff she was collecting. She didn’t know what for yet. Inside the foil were some sort of puffy baked things, folded and fluffy and filled with white poofyness that might have been cream cheese or something, and flecks of green. She poked at them. Lettuce? She didn’t know. It was too dark to be lettuce, she was pretty sure.
Curiously, she took a bite.
It tasted good, savory and creamy at the same time. She shrugged. It didn’t matter what was in it if it tasted good.
The juice boxes contained soy milk. One was chocolate. She drank that one first.
She fed the dozen or so rats in her blankets little pieces of bread and meat from the sandwich, which was full of some sort of chipped meat, and a vinegary sort of... cabbage maybe? Or a weird pale pickle. And cheese. And some kind of sauce. She didn't rightly know, but it was good and the bread had a pretty, swirly design on it. The rats didn’t like the weird vinegar cabbage so she got to eat all of that herself. She really liked it. She wondered if she’d ever get to eat it again.
After she and the rats had devoured every last crumb, and the foil had been safely balled up around her Ball of Foil, which sat next to her Ball of Saran Wrap on her makeshift shelf, she flicked on her flashlight and grabbed the empty bag. It was a little greasy at the bottom from sitting for so long, but she could still use the sides. Eagerly, she went to tear it, then paused.
Something was... already written on the side?
She squinted at it, shaking the flashlight to get it to light up better.
“There is an Oktoberfest party today a few blocks away. Please watch out for drunks. Did you know otters have a special pouch where they keep their favorite rock?”
She tilted her head to the side, running a thin finger over the words, written in an unfamiliar scrawl.
Had Mr. Cupcake written this, then? He had never written her anything on a bag before. Except the first time, when he had written LUNCH in large letters.
A party... drunks. That explained the belligerence and the bottle.
She stared at the words for a while longer then flipped over onto her stomach, grabbing the sharpie she used to draw little pictures on the bags after she had eaten.
In careful letters underneath, she wrote, “One of them hit me.” She paused. “With a bottle.” That seemed like it might be an important clarification. Then, below that... “I did not know that. Did you know that rats laugh when they are happy?”
She stared at the words on the paper for a while. She doodled a little rat, laughing, the words HA HA HA over its head. She stared for a while longer. She had never written anyone a letter before. She was pretty sure this wasn’t how you did it. She wrestled with indecision for a while longer, before she tore the bag, carefully, so that the words didn’t rip. Then she taped it onto the slanted roof above her make-shift bed, with her other paper-bag doodles. This was paper bag lunch number fourteen.
She hoped tomorrow would be fifteen.
She hoped tomorrow would have more words on it, too.
She yawned, stomach gurgling and full, and curled up, pulling one of the many blankets over her head. The rats settled in around her, and she drifted into sleep, very full and very warm.
How to Spend $100 on a Gargoyle Ren - Valesport - NSFW (but I mean not like a lot)
Ren looked down at the remaining money in her hand, grimly. $100 had felt like so much when she got it. You could last a while on $100, if you were careful. And used to surviving on spare change or nothing. But medicine had knocked her out $35, frosting another $3. (The best $3 she ever spent, arguably.) Food had set her back another $5 and change.
She had a little more than $50 left, after just one day. She’d been intending to make it last.
Resigned, she went into the pharmacy first, a different one than she’d gone in yesterday. The pharmacist there had given her a look. She knew she would have been recognized.
The alarm on the face of the clerk when he saw the blood was palpable. She assured him she’d just fallen down some stairs. He wanted to call the hospital, kept talking about stitches, but she refused over and over, instead buying proper bandages to replace the strips of cloth she’d bound her leg with the night before.
She also bought three towels and rubbing alcohol.
Twenty bucks lighter, she wrapped one of the towels around her waist and headed to a dollar store. She managed to avoid alarming the clerk there, thanks to the towel covering her shredded, blood-soaked pants. She could change into something ‘clean’ later, but she would need to get all the blood off first.
Cloth gardening gloves, a cheap but solid wooden brush... then, after a pause, a second one. A bundle of five pairs of men’s boxers in extra-small, because she was going through underwear at an alarming rate and they could double as pants. Several forms of all-purpose cleaner. A huge pack of a dozen cheap towels. Four gallons of water. An additional tub of frosting, this time cream cheese because she felt like ‘pink’ was a shitty flavor and demons needed to expand their horizons. And, after a bit of math in her head, a box of granola bars and a jar of peanut butter.
She had two dollars and fifty-four cents left when she left the dollar store, all in change. She glared at it for a while.
Well.
Easy come, easy go.
She headed back to the church, climbed in the window on the first floor where it had been broken.
The creature was, hopefully, where she’d left it, though she expected it to come swooping down at any second.
No one had been by, by some pleasant miracle. It was a side of town people seemed to give a wide berth, nothing here but transients like her and abandoned or collapsed buildings. Still... lucky.
She looked down at the mess.
Her stomach lurched.
An esophagus, completely torn out.
Coaxing his hand against her neck, trying to get him to squeeze harder, trying to get him to use it as leverage to fuck her.
A man’s head completely backwards, neck snapped.
His hand buried into her hair, firm, demanding, leading her where he wanted her to be.
Entrails ripped out, spilling onto the floor.
His palm against her stomach as he fucked her from behind, feeling the way he spread her, the way her body ached to contain him.
Half a human spine, exposed to the cold morning air.
Claws running down her spine, not even breaking the surface of her skin, making her shiver and moan.
Half a skull turned to liquid and slime, smashed so hard against the stone floor.
The way he cradled her face, running thumbs along her cheeks. His lips on hers, hard and soft and gentle and rough.
...
It didn’t bear thinking about. She could not stop.
She took a few steps into the church, setting her backpack down on the remains of a pew. She rummaged through for the bandages, paused to re-dress her wound, properly this time. Or at least... with real bandages. She didn’t really know what she was doing. It hurt. A lot. Especially after limping around town on it. Fortunately, her threshold for pain was pretty damn high, or else she wouldn’t even be walking, and the bullet wound would be the least of the reasons why.
Then she pulled on the cloth gloves, eyed the chunks of bodies... and sighed.
She’d noticed the Highly Suspicious Brazier in the basement earlier, while looking for possible places to bury bodies once it had become clear that her ‘demon’ did not, in fact, eat people. Well. Not dead people anyway. He’d been pretty enthusiastic about eating in general last night.
Fortunately, the church had no shortage of old wood. Dragging the bodies was... well, unpleasant was a laughable understatement. She’d never handled bodies like this before. She’d lived a hell of a life, but nothing had prepared her for this level of sheer mutilation and gore. Hard to believe it was the same creature who--no, actually, scratch that, it really wasn’t. He was pretty fucking scary even when he was doing things she arguably really enjoyed.
She tried to pretend they were dead animals. Rats watched curiously from the corners as she worked. At one point or another, a squirrel stopped in as well. She didn’t pay them much mind, which was probably how they knew it was serious. She knew they’d stick around anyway; no building she made herself present in remained rat-free for long.
She piled up the bodies with some wood, then headed back to the temple area, where she proceeded to learn which cleaning products best worked on blood. She used the water as sparingly as possible, since she had no idea where to get more. There was a fire hydrant a few blocks over she could probably bust open if she really needed it, but that would attract authorities, which was never good. Least of all when you were in the process of destroying the evidence of three extremely gruesome murders.
Slowly but surely, the stench of blood was replaced by the acrid smell of bleach and soap. She was exhausted and filthy, her cardigan absolutely soaked in blood, her face and body smeared. She’d been sticky before she even started, but mostly with obnoxious, glittery semen. Blood was somehow even less pleasant, though less sticky in general.
Before bothering with herself, however, she climbed the stairs at the back of the church to get up to the balcony. The creature was where she’d left it, solid stone. The blood left on him had long since dried. Her shredded, blood-drenched hoodie was still strewn to the side, in a dried puddle of glitter that would probably also need to be cleaned at some point.
It’d probably be easier to clean him now, but she was skittish. His horn had broken at some point, right? What if she broke off a finger, or even just a claw? She’d feel horrible. So she stuck to large areas, using one of the brushes to scrub dried blood off his back, wings, legs, and loincloth. The glittery cum didn’t appear to have stuck to him. A useful trait she wished she shared. She stopped when she figured he was as clean as he could get safely; she could finish washing him tonight.
She caught herself mid-thought, horrified. Why was she just assuming she’d be here tonight?! Three people were dead, surely there was no one left who’d keep chasing her? She’d already spent all her money covering up his murders. She'd let him fuck her stupid, multiple times. Well. Let was a strong word. It had happened, anyway. She’d done enough to repay him for saving her life, certainly. Of course, there was the window... she should probably try to board it up, if for no other reason than to protect other people wandering through. But she had no supplies with which to do that, and no money with which to obtain them.
She sighed as she collected her hoodie and headed down into the basement. She washed herself off last, with one of the towels and rubbing alcohol and some all purpose cleaner, which hopefully included humans as one of its purposes because she’d neglected to buy actual soap. Blood drenched shoes, cardigan, pants, towels, and gloves went into the pyre. Clean of blood and relatively clean of semen--she could never seem to get the glitter off--she pulled on one of the pairs of boxers. T-shirt and boxers... Hey, it was something. She could put on some pants, later, if she was very sure they wouldn’t be ruined.
Then she pulled out the lighter the strange man--or possibly woman--from the other day had left her with. She doubted they would approve of using it for this, but that was hardly going to stop her.
She had one of their cigarettes while she watched it burn. The room smelled like roasting pork, making her once again bitter about spending all her money. She’d have to go dumpster-diving later, or beg outside of restaurants. Granola bars and peanut butter wouldn’t last, so it was time to start scrounging. Still, the cigarette tasted satisfying as she watched the strange brazier blaze.
It wasn’t a hydrochloric acid and bleach, but all told, she was a bit proud of herself.
Wet Dreams Bridget Corey, Valesport, 1 year before present
She sat on a bed with silk sheets in a dark room. She was dressed comfortably, like she was going out for a run, loose tank and shorts. She could feel the silk--or maybe satin? What was the difference?--against her bare legs and rubbed them along it and each other.
She felt hands along her shoulders, but didn't start. Didn't scream, or yell, or hit. It was comfortable. She was safe. They rubbed in little circles, an attempt at a massage, but she couldn't really feel it. It just felt like a warm, weak sort of glow.
The hands shifted, moving forward so arms could embrace her from behind.
“You are so beautiful,” a voice murmured in her ear, and she believed it and smiled. “I love you. Beautiful girl. Wonderful girl.” She basked in it, warmth like the sunlight sinking into her skin.
She felt a hand in her hair, stroking the top of her head, between her ears. This, she could feel vividly. It felt so good, so warm. She knew it had to be what love felt like, the warmest acceptance. Someone willing to touch her, wanting to touch her. Unlike the sensations before, it felt absolute and real, like the sharpest memory.
And that was when she realized it was a memory. Her great-grandfather, when she was so young that she barely qualified as a child and not a toddler. She'd brought him something, a drawing she'd done... macaroni glued to paper. He'd smiled and run a fond hand into her hair, petting her affectionately. And then her great-grandmother had come in, all in a fury, yelling at him for being condescending, treating her like a dog. She hadn't understood what she meant, but felt terrible for doing something that got her Pops into trouble. Worse still for enjoying something bad.
Yes, a memory... The only time in her memory someone had touched her like that, pet her. That was why, why she could feel it so well. Because this...
“It is a dream, jeune fille stupide,” came the voice from behind her. Loving hands turned into a cruel grip on one of her furry ears. It twisted, and she howled in pain. “Who could love a wretched thing like this? Who could stand to touch it?” The hand yanked her forward by the ear, bending her onto the bed, then released her ear to push on the back of her head, pushing her face into the sheets.
“An idle fantasy, the dreams of a beast. The only place you will ever be touched like this.” She twisted her head as he ground her into the sheets, peering back over her shoulder to see white-blue eyes and teeth like a shark.
“Why give me that look, you pathetic little thing?” he laughed. “Of course it was me.” She felt nails, sharp as claws, against her skin. “Who else do you know who could stomach that kind of lie?” She could feel his breath in her ear. “Adorable,” he mocked. “Have you not been spoiled, and told always what a joy you are to behold?”
“Please,” she sobbed, voice choked against the sheets.
“Ah, now that is what I like to see from a dog. Beg.”
She awoke with a start. Not bolt upright like in stories, but eyes suddenly wide open. She could still feel the ghost of a hand in her hair.
Her cheeks were wet with tears.
Cheeks... crying. She was human. It was morning. She must have fallen asleep on her bed.
She rarely slept. Rarely needed to... or rather, rarely suffered any ill effects from refusing to.
The dreams she had made her glad for that smallest of benefits to her curse.
She shifted to be lying more like a human and not like a dog who'd grown into one overnight. She found a pillow and dragged it under her head. She let herself cry into it for a little bit, pretending it didn't count.
She hated crying, because it felt so weak.
She hated crying when Lestrange was involved even more, because she knew he'd love it.
She wished she could stop dreaming.
Later, she'd wish she hadn't fallen back asleep.
“Sit.” The voice was firm, uncompromising. She brought herself to the ground, because she knew it was her only option. “Speak.”
“Please--”
A tsk of derision. “Useless thing cannot even do something so simple. Listen, you inbred little cur. Parler.”
Weakly, stammering, she let out a scared little bark. It felt bizarre out of human lips. Her cheeks were burning red with humiliation.
“Better. Now roll over.” She got halfway, onto her back. “Stop,” the voice said sharply. “Play dead.” She froze.
A cane hit her side. She winced, but didn't flinch, didn't move. It withdrew, then came down right next to her face. She didn't know what force compelled her to be so still, but she was, completely unmoving.
“Much better. Perhaps you deserve a treat after all.” She felt a hand along her stomach--her BARE stomach! How had she not noticed how little she was wearing? The hand traced down across her abs, to the waistline of her pants, then in. A warm, large hand cupped between her legs.
“Beg,” he whispered, shark teeth glinting in the shadows.
“Please--”
“Ah-ah-ah,” he chided. “Like the bitch you are. Mendier pour moi.”
So humiliated she was tearing up, cheeks aflame, she let out a weak little whimper, then a whine.
“Good girl,” he said, mockingly, and then his hand moved in and up and--
She awoke for a second time, and sincerely wished it was still just the cheeks of her face that were wet.
There were a lot of things that sucked about being five pounds and six inches.
All of them, actually. Bree hadn’t found a single upside. It was called a curse for a reason.
But right now, the one she was feeling most keenly was the general helplessness.
“Ah! Ah! Ah! Oh, Eric!”
And inability to wear headphones.
“Ohhh gooood yes!”
Bree dug her head under a pillow, frustrated. Her mother was breaking their agreement right now, but that wasn’t really unusual. It would serve her right if Bree started scratching at the bedroom door. Because that would be breaking their agreement too. Bree stayed in her room at night; period. Mom didn’t have anyone over at night. That was how it worked.
This wasn’t actually so that Bree wouldn’t have to listen to her mother have loud, headboard-banging sex in the next room, though that would definitely have been a plus. It was to keep Bree safe and her “condition” a secret. It would be very hard to explain to a nighttime guest why there was suddenly a small dog in the apartment. Technically, they weren’t even supposed to have pets.
Mom wasn’t supposed to have anyone over at night, and Bree wasn’t supposed to leave her room except to use the bathroom. Her mom mostly slept at night, so it rarely became a huge issue, but Bree was careful anyway. Her mother coming out for a glass of water and seeing her leaving the toilet was enough to give the older woman a small heart attack. Sometimes she actually screamed, especially when she was still half asleep.
You would think seven years would have been enough to get used to the concept... But it wasn’t. And Bree tried not to push the subject. ...Anymore. The first three years had been extremely tense, what with her mom’s drug use and the uncomfortable places where fear felt like it overlapped with hate.
But she made it work. They. They made it work. Bree stayed in her room, and tried very hard only to pee when the house had been quiet for a while. During the day, she never removed her hat outside of her bedroom, when she had her curtains drawn.
And her mom... didn’t bring people over at midnight and fuck them. Generally. It was a common enough occurrence, depending on how things were going with her boyfriend-at-the-time, of which there was always at least one. Things must have been going great with Eric, because this was the third time in a month.
Bree had met Eric. As a human, of course. She had mixed feelings. He was nice enough, and a carpenter and pretty handy with plumbing, which made him useful to her. That was a good quality in her mother’s boyfriends. He didn’t do drugs, which was even better. He was a bit old for her mom, at forty-six, but she understood that age gaps became less significant the older one got. He’d never made a pass at her, which was a necessity. He hadn’t even stared that one time when she hadn’t realized he was over and left her room in nothing but underwear and a tank top. He’d just politely focused on fixing the sink.
Overall, he was one of her mother’s best. She probably would have even liked him, if not for the fact she had to listen to them having sex so goddamn often.
Frustrated and getting no help from the pillow, Bree jumped down from her bed, which was mostly there for decoration. She had stairs to make this task less dramatic. She was profoundly less sturdy in this form, and a two foot drop would at least jar her. Not that she hadn’t done it. But she’d also injured herself practicing backflips off of it. Good decisions weren’t really a consistent part of her MO.
She slipped through the skirt under her bed, into her little doggy kingdom. Obviously, she was normally far too large to fit under her bed, but it was quite cozy as a six inch dog. She spent a goodly amount of her night down here, because it was very easy to hide dog-related things under her bed. There was a reading light glued to the underside of her bed, and a nice flat dog bed to make the floor more comfortable.
With some difficulty, she pulled her headphones--half as heavy as she was, easily--onto the pillow, and nestled herself between them. They were already hooked up to her tablet, and she had a lot of practice operating it with paws.
The tablet had been a huge splurge for her, coming directly out of the money she’d gotten from... selling her book. It was so much easier to use than her phone, and she’d told herself it was justified because she used it as a laptop at school.
She turned on music, as loud as she dared. It didn’t entirely drown out the noises from the next room, but at least it helped a little. Then she opened up her e-reader app and settled in to The Oldest Dead White European Males & Other Reflections on the Classics. Which had proved thus far to be at least passingly interesting. The author was almost self-aware. Almost.
Enough for her to finish the book, in any case. But that wasn’t really high praise; a book had to be pretty bad for her not to finish it.
After the sounds of sex and banging died off, she briefly paused in her readings to dart out from under the bed, over to her mini-fridge. She pawed it open with little difficulty, then pulled a covered plate off of the bottom shelf with her mouth. It had on it small piles of cracker sandwiches with meat and cheese. She kicked the fridge shut and dragged it back under the bed.
A little daytime preparation went a long way at night.
She just needed to be careful not to fall asleep under here, or lose track of time. It had happened before.
She finished The Oldest Dead White European Males and moved on to Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage, which was actually much more interesting. A fact she found both ironic and pleasant.
Fifteen minutes before sunrise, her alarm went off. She yawned, then stood and stretched. She glanced over the various things under her bed, then licked some cracker crumbs off of the ground while it was still appropriate for her to do so. No sense attracting ants. She dragged the plate out with her; the rest was close enough to the side of the bed that she could grab them just fine in human form. Then she climbed up onto her bed to watch the sunrise, waiting.
--
“Oh!” Eric said with surprise, starting as Bridget, his girlfriend’s daughter, came out of the shared bathroom. She was already up and fully dressed--mercifully--despite the fact it was eight AM. “I, uh, didn’t realize you were here,” he said, trying not to seem weird or awkward or like he’d been boning her mom. He was all of those things, so it was difficult. But he really liked Angela, and appealing to the daughter was pretty key in these situations.
Normally, kids liked him alright. But Bridget was already an adult, and already more educated than he was. She had a way of looking at him that made him feel like she knew more than he did, possibly about everything. They were also tied in arm wrestling matches. And it wasn’t because he let her win to earn brownie points.
It was possible he was somewhat intimidated by his girlfriend’s 20-something daughter.
“I am, in fact, here,” she said, in that way of hers that always made him confused as to whether she was being rude or not. Angela insisted she was just socially awkward, so he always wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, even when it sounded like she was being a sarcastic little shit.
He moved out of her way so that she could get into the kitchen. When he came out of the bathroom, she had settled in at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, which she had once informed him was not actually tea, since only some large, long word was actually tea. What she drank was “Tisanes” because she disliked caffeine.
It had been a very pretentious way to inform him she preferred chamomile.
She was reading a book, which she always seemed to be doing. He stole a glance at the cover as he walked past--the awkward had already happened. He might as well finish making breakfast. Just for, uh, three, instead of two. The book was entitled Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World.
He would take the book’s word for it.
Eric ran through what he knew of Bridget’s food allergies in his head--she was a very persnickety eater. No grapes, no chocolate, didn’t drink caffeine or alcohol. She was picky about citrus, which he’d learned upon offering her a glass of orange juice. She was always checking the ingredients lists of things, so he assumed there were other allergies he didn’t know about. But if he cooked using things in their house, he should be fine.
No one was allergic to pancakes, he was pretty sure.
She ignored him entirely as he mixed the batter, sipping her not-tea, but she perked right up when she heard the sizzle of bacon hitting a hot pan, glancing over as if just now noticing he was there.
“You got work today?” he asked, in a desperate bid for conversation. It was an obvious question--she was dressed in a black skirt and vest over a button up blouse, a fashionable sort of houndstooth hat on her head. Most of the time when he saw her, she was dressed in a style that probably had a name like “street grunge.” To him it just looked like torn jeans and tank tops designed for someone three sizes larger than her, but whatever. It wasn’t his job to judge what kids wore these days. He’d been a teenager in the 80s. He was not capable of throwing stones where young-person fashion was concerned.
“Mmhmm,” she replied, glancing back at her book. “Then class in the afternoon.”
“Oh? What class?” asked Eric, relieved for the obvious conversation topic.
She looked up at him. Her eyes were always sort of narrow and glaring. He was pretty sure it was just her face, and she didn’t mean much by it. After a moment of trying to detect something from his tone or posture or whatever it was she did when she stared like that, she looked back to her book and replied.
“Pedagogies of Reading and Writing,” she replied simply.
“Ah. Sounds... interesting.” Was she the type who would make up a word to poke fun at an old man?
Silence stretched. She was not holding up her end of this conversation.
“Will you be here this evening?” she asked after the silence had just passed out of the uncomfortable zone and into normal.
“Oh, uh... No, probably not,” he replied, focusing on putting bacon on a plate before it burned and not on the obvious implications of the question. He had a good stack going. Almost a full package’s worth. He was going to think about the bacon and not about whether or not she’d been woken up by his and Angela’s nocturnal activities. He’d been told she was at a friend’s house--clearly a conversation about her daughter’s boundaries needed to be had with Angela.
“Alright,” she said, folding her book shut and standing. She set her empty mug in the sink, and then walked over to the oven, where she picked up the entire plate of bacon. “If you are, however, please have sex more quietly.”
And then, while he was still stunned, she walked out the door with the entire plate of bacon in hand, a piece of it already disappearing into her mouth.
He glanced down at the skillet, which was sadly devoid of bacon.
Er... hopefully Angela liked awkward conversations about her daughter over just pancakes, then.
Ren was still pretty sure that Mr. Cupcake was a serial killer.
He kind of had to be, didn’t he? Otherwise, why would anyone avoid him? Oh, sure, he was tall and absolutely terrifying to behold... but he also wrote facts about otters on paper bags, paper bags which contained a different meal every single day. And he wore all that pastel and aprons with hearts on them and one time Ren had been on the roof when he came out to put her lunch down and she’d noticed he had a flower in his hair.
Who put flowers in their hair?
Probably just people trying too hard to convince other people they weren’t serial killers.
She had decided she wouldn’t mind, though. He probably could have killed her the first time he found her in his dumpster and hadn’t. Instead, he’d given her food. So either he wasn’t going to kill her or he liked to feed people for a really long time first. In which case, hey! She wouldn’t starve to death! Whatever he did probably wouldn’t be worse than starving to death, unless he was like, a really mean serial killer.
The park he had given her directions to, drawn on the side of a paper bag, did nothing to dissuade her from the inevitable conclusion, because Ren had never seen such a wholesome park in all her life. What was it doing on this side of town? There was a place for people to run their dogs, and children playing in a sand pit and a group of mothers chatting and idly watching their children run and play. What did he even do here? Climb trees, really? Why did someone as big as him need to be taller? If she climbed him, it would be the same effect as climbing a tree.
Ren was aware of eyes on her. She wasn’t sure why. It could be because she looked weird. She tried to look normal, but she always had on too many layers of clothing that was too old. And she was dirty. She was never not dirty, pale skin with yellow undertones stained mottled brown in too many places.
Did it count as loitering if it was in a park? Parks were for loitering, yes?
Although from what she had been able to decipher, the crime of “loitering” was defined as “being homeless in public” so she might still get in trouble. It was a nice looking park, but they were on the poor side of town still. The poorer the area, the darker the populace, the less likely anyone was to call the cops. The more likely cops were to show up anyway.
It was a coin toss, as were all things in life, like living in serial killer’s attics eating their sandwiches. And, as with the serial killer attic, she’d already come this far. Might as well keep going. She meandered through the park, searching for the oak that Mr. Cupcake had written of. It wasn’t hard to recognize it once she saw it. An old tree, clearly, probably had been when someone as big as Mr. Cupcake was still small enough to go climbing trees in parks. There were a lot of assorted benches nearby, most of which didn’t even have people on them. There was someone with a dog at one of them, and she paused to gaze at it longingly. Dogs. The domain of people much higher up on the food chain than her.
Rather than go to the benches, or towards the dog--she knew she wouldn’t be allowed to pet it, so why bother calling attention to herself?--she beelined for the tree, scrambling up the rough bark effortlessly. Even with her overly-worn sneakers, she was able to get traction, mostly because she seemed to move too quickly for gravity to catch up with the fact it should be pushing her.
She climbed about halfway up the tree, finding a branch still thick enough to support her weight and be comfortable for her bony ass to sit on for a while. She settled in, back against the trunk.
Mr. Cupcake had been right. The oak was on a hill of sorts, and she could see very far from up here. She wasn’t even as high as she could have been, settling for a mere fifteen feet or so. High enough that people probably wouldn’t notice her up there right away, but low enough that the branches were thick and comfortable.
She pulled the sack lunch out from between her teeth, where it had comfortably hung while she climbed. What was she getting today? She was eager to see; waiting to open it had been sort of like a fun little game. Building up anticipation. She had a box of somewhat-improperly-baked goods in her backpack, as well, but she was always thrilled to see what sort of food he’d packed for her. There were overarching themes, like the little boxes of “soy” milk, but overall, it varied. She often wondered if they were his leftovers, or what.
A saran wrapped sandwich, as always, but also a little plastic container. She wiggled excitedly, pulling the plastic container out first and spinning it in her hands. He was not getting this back. He probably had no idea how useful one of these things was. You could put anything in it! Even liquid!
The contents were a mystery to her. They were sort of green and sort of brown and the steam on the sides of the clear plastic implied heat. She glanced back into the bag, then pulled out the sandwich. She was immediately as enamored with it as she had been with the plastic container. Just looking at it made her start salivating heavily. She could see the meat, so much of it, practically falling out of the sides. Little flecks of red and green and white, too, and smothered in what she took to be melted white cheese.
It looked like it was going to be one of the best things she'd ever put in her mouth, and given how many nice things were going in her mouth lately, that was saying something. She was practically tearing up at the prospect, sheer excitement.
She was just starting to unwrap it, too eager to save it for later and discover what the green things were, when she heard something from below. Floating in on the breeze. She paused, perking her ear.
Music. Some kind of music. Just one instrument, an airy sort of sound. Curiously, she glanced down and around the branch to see if she could see where it was coming from. The music was a strange sort of airy wailing, that made her almost immediately start wiggling her foot to the rhythm. She found the source, a man sitting on a bench very close to being underneath the tree, just maybe ten, twenty feet away from the base. He appeared to be blowing on something in his hands--whatever it was, it was making a pleasing, reedy sort of sound.
It was considered a bit rude to hang out near street performers--they wouldn’t take kindly to you possibly absorbing some of the cash in the crowd. But she wasn’t here begging--she was sitting politely in a tree. No one could possibly give her money. They would have to throw it. So that meant she could just stay up here and listen.
He thumped on the ground with his foot to keep time, and played a slow, sorrowful sort of tune, and she leaned back against the tree and unwrapped her sandwich. She took a whiff. Heavenly. Then a bite. She let out a low, pleased noise in the back of her throat.
If he was going to feed her like this, she didn’t even really mind if he was fattening her up to kill her and put in his cupcakes, or something.
The plastic container’s mysterious green contents turned out to be some sort of... vegetable. Green beans, she wanted to say, but they weren’t like the ones she’d seen, which generally came out of a can and were fatter and shorter. They’d been... she didn’t know, made crunchy somehow. Salty and crunchy and snappy and good. She munched on them and the sandwich and enjoyed the music from below, which had picked up into a more jaunty sort of tune that had her whole leg bouncing.
The sun was warm on her skin. The tree was beautiful, the sky was so blue between its leaves. The music made her brain hum and her body hop like an excited rat. The food was delicious, a constant pleasure on her tongue and then in her stomach.
When she died--whether from Mr. Cupcake or other circumstances--she thought she’d like to come here. To this sort of place, warm and full with good smells and tastes and sounds.
She stayed in the tree for a while after she’d finished eating, half-laying on the branch, enjoying the sun and the music and the sensation of being full. This was why street musicians worked so well. They could make the brain happy. She got it now.
It was generally considered polite to give money to a busker, she knew that. But she didn’t have money. Still, she’d been sitting here enjoying his sounds for what felt like an eternity. Taking without giving was what you did to those who could afford to throw things away. So she climbed back down the tree, slowly, leisurely, swinging from branch to branch, enjoying the slower, melodic tune the player had switched to. She hit the ground feeling like a hundred dollars, and she meandered over towards the man as she pulled her backpack off. She didn’t have money, not even spare coins, but she had something she figured was just as good.
She sat down on the bench next to the man, who she could now see was dark and old with silver-grey hair stark against his earth-colored skin. Just for a moment, so she could pull out the box Mr. Cupcake had given to her and rummage through it. It all looked good, but she spotted a single cupcake. That seemed appropriate. Cupcake from Mr. Cupcake. She would have liked to eat it herself, but it was definitely the best thing in the box, and she liked his music. So she pulled it out and set it on his leg.
The man paused briefly in his playing to look down, then over at her. She gave him a hopeful sort of smile. He looked sort of amused, then shrugged, and set down his harmonica briefly to pick up the cupcake and unwrap it. She grabbed a somewhat misshapen muffin for herself, and sat next to him while he ate Mr. Cupcake’s cupcake, feet still swinging back and forth with the memory of the music that had stopped. When he finished eating, she handed him the box of soy milk she was drinking. Wordlessly, he took a sip, then handed it back.
He started playing again, and she sat there on the bench for a while, eating muffins.
She couldn’t just hang out here all day, unfortunately. She had things to do. But she stayed for another long twenty minutes or so, and she left a scone on the man’s knee when she finally got up to leave, a cheerful bounce in her step.
Au Jour Le Jour Ren - Valesport - Storyline Spoilers
Useful Images: 1, 2, 3, 4
Things never quite settled into a routine for Ren, simply due to the chaos of life on the streets. But she had developed patterns, and found comfort in them.
She and her “roommate” saw the dawn together, so long as he didn’t carried away, which... had been known to happen. But his internal clock was better than hers, and normally they had long since given up on his dick out of sheer exhaustion on her part. Sometimes she fell asleep, but she tried to stay up and make as much progress as she could on her never-ending project to teach him words. He couldn’t make them, but it was clear he could learn what she meant by them.
He always settled into a position before dawn. She liked to be within his sights, at the very least. She felt like it gave him a sense of continuity. She had no reason for feeling this way, she just did. She often watched as he turned to stone with the first rays of the sun.
Then her day began. She tried not to nap immediately, because these few scant hours before most of the world rose were precious. First she would dress, because her roommate never really let her stay dressed for long. How she dressed depended on her plans for the day. Today, she needed to dress up--to a limited definition of “up”--and so when she opened her trunk of clothes, she selected something nicer. Something she’d gotten from Ruka, because god, people just... really liked dressing her up for some reason, she was basically making her living as a professional doll at this point.
Ruka’s sense of fashion was closer to Ren’s, or perhaps it would be more apt to say Ruka actually cared what Ren’s sense of fashion was. In either case, there was often clothing in the little boxes labeled “REN” Ruka had taken to leaving out in her kitchen. So that Ren would stop stealing from her kitchen. She acquiesced, because she loved being able to snag a box and leave quickly before something could find her. Things frequented Ruka’s bar, and so despite its place nestled in the safety of Old Town, she shied away from it, especially at night.
She picked out a shirt she liked that she suspected would satisfy, a black knit that covered her neck and chest but left her shoulders bare. It would show off her newest coat of glitter. Her skin never didn't shimmer, not anymore, and she took extreme pleasure in showing it off when she could.
She paired it with dark denim skinny jeans. They had been skinny jeans in name only when she first got them, but they fit a bit more snugly around the hips these days. She wasn't concerned. When they got too tight, she could give them to someone else. They had whole shops for that, and she did it quite often with clothing Ruka had given her that she knew she'd never use, or Jean had gotten her for his pleasure that his fickle nature decided he never wanted to see again.
She went back and forth on shoes several times before settling on a black boot, the kind with the red sole she'd become so fond of. It had military-style buttons all up the front, and it was a good height for these jeans. A wedge instead of a needle heel made it easier and more practical for walking around town.
She also shoved real clothing into her backpack for the day, a tank, an oversized black shirt, a hoodie, some leggings, and sensible sneakers Ruka had gotten for her because Ruka knew Ren's feet were primarily used for walking.
She resisted the urge to shove a granola bar in her mouth, but tossed a few in her bag along with two oranges. She never knew what the day would bring. She paused, and no more had to think before a swarming of rats came from every corner of the building to meet her in the large, central chamber of the cathedral. She set her bag down but only let Phoebe and Timothy in. The rest, she requested gently to take shifts watching over her roommate. She got nervous. There were over a hundred rats in the church now, though, so there was always someone to keep an eye on him.
Finally satisfied, she set out to face the day. She headed straight to Jean’s, which was the only reason she’d bothered dolling up like this. He’d probably put her in something else; he preferred pretty dresses and heels you could put a man’s eye out with. But he was notoriously fickle and there was no point in trying to predict his tastes for the day. It varied so widely, what he wanted with her, that she gave up on even trying to predict it. She just wore clothing that would offend him less than her average wear, and went to his house two or three times a week with a vague list of things she might ask for.
Today, it was food, because she was feeling those uncomfortable cramps she got when she hadn’t eaten enough meat.
She arrived at his house sometime past sunrise, climbed the fence around his backyard garden, and dropped in. It was nicer than waiting on his front steps. She settled in on his patio and napped.
The sun got higher in the sky as she drowsed on and off for an hour or two. As it got closer to time for his shop to open, she stretched and yawned. He wouldn’t be letting her in today. He wasn’t in the mood, or already had company. She took no offense; theirs was an arrangement of convenience--his convenience, mostly, but still. She knew if the situation was truly desperate, he would be able to taste it on her, and let her in.
She changed in the bushes, tucking her nice clothing back into her backpack and putting on things much more suited for the remainder of her day. Even if Jean wouldn’t be buying her a steak, it wasn’t as though she was out of other options.
She swung by the cathedral Ruka owned, but a few nearby rats informed her there was a shifter in the kitchen. A cat, to their distaste and hers both. No robbing Ruka today, either. Well, it was still early, and there were a lot of very nice houses in Old Town. She spent the next few hours digging through trash with a collection of her friends. She found a few things of value; her rats were very good at finding shiny when she asked, and a few things that were mostly edible, though very little in the way of meat. It was hard to find a combination of cooked, edible, and relatively fresh that kept meat safe to eat, but still something thrown into the trash. Her rats got plenty fed, at least.
She decided to head downtown. A walk, to be sure, and one she took cautiously. She was outside Jean’s jurisdiction when she crossed the river into downtown. There were things there, a lot of things, but she took care to be out long before sunset and kept to streets she knew. It used to be, her rats gave her a marked advantage over other homeless. Now? Most everyone else in her situation had advantages much better than hers. The others had all died, especially those who dared to call downtown their nighttime home.
She ducked into the library, glanced around for a familiar face. She found it behind the counter, the tan woman easy to spot thanks to her ever-present hat. She looked like she’d been up all night crying, eyes hidden behind thick frames and dressed in long sleeves. Either she hadn’t been the one with Jean, then, or she had been and it had been a less fun night.
Ren would never understand how those two got into it so much. Jean was so straightforward.
The sad little half-wave the librarian gave her implied that it might have had nothing to do with Jean at all, or if it did, she blamed herself more than him. Bree got very rough around the edges when mad at Jean. In any case, Ren waved right back and headed into the bathroom, where she changed. Again. She did a lot of that in the course of a day.
“Did you go to Jean’s this morning?” Bree asked, catching Ren directly outside of the bathroom.
“I did. He didn’t invite me in,” she replied.
Bree sighed, long, heavy, and dark. “Me neither. I was stuck outside all night.” She ran an exhausted hand across her face. “That motherfucker. He’d better just be in a mood.” She sighed again. “Thanks, Ren. Did you need anything today? I’ve got those print-outs you asked for.”
Ren brightened considerably at this. “Thank you! We’re making great progress on anatomy; I think it’s a niche he understands.”
Bree snorted, too loud for a library. “Yeah, I bet. Anything else?”
“I’ll probably be in and out,” she replied. “I’ve got errands.” Which was a nice way to say she’d be homeless-ing up downtown all day and needed a place to change and get clean water. “Would you like an orange?” she offered.
“I’m having a hard time imagining something shittier than accepting food from you,” Bree scoffed. She was rough around the edges even when she wasn’t mad at Jean. “I have class this afternoon, but if you’re still around here at noon, we can grab lunch at Moody’s.” Her cheeks flushed a bit with obvious pleasure. “Jean opened a tab.” Her moods were damn near as fickle as Jean’s. Mostly because of him.
“Alright, thank you,” Ren said cheerfully. A deli would be perfect to get her meat-needs satisfied, and she knew Jean wouldn’t object to feeding her under any circumstances. “I’ll be sure to stop by.”
“Don’t lose track of time,” Bree said sarcastically, which normally meant she was trying to tell a joke. “Any of your watches actually work right now?”
“Yes.” She paused. “Probably.”
“Alright, be careful out there. Don’t piss off anyone toothy. If you need a rescue, kite ‘em in here, you know I’ll give ‘em hell.” She would, probably. Also, Ren was fairly certain the head librarian was something terrifying. Possibly a vampire.
With lunch settled, she was free to spend her day a bit more leisurely. She still stopped by the pawn shop a few blocks down, the reason she’d come downtown in the first place. She had some nice things Jean and Ruka had given her, which she’d long since figured she could turn into cash. Coming in looking nice helped, because it looked less like she was a thief. Also, she kind of figured the proprietor didn’t actually care.
The object for sale today was a choker Jean had given her. He’d gotten it purely because there had been a salesman working with a very strong interest in her, and her neck in specific, who was driven halfway to madness by the antics Jean put her up to. He’d taken great pleasure in making the man tie half the chokers in the store around her neck before settling on one. He’d ask her how each one felt, in detail, and run his own leather clad hands over her neck, and even she’d been able to tell the poor salesman was desperate to run into the back room and jerk one off.
Jean was made happy by weird things, but that one had actually been genuinely kind of funny.
In any case, he'd purchased one of the necklaces, probably the one that most aroused the salesman, a choker with a link of thick squares covered in chips of diamonds. She couldn't remember how much it cost, because after a certain point the numbers stopped being quantifiable for her.
She placed it onto the counter with a smile. Ricky looked at it, ran a thumb over the diamonds.
"$100."
"Try again."
"Diamonds seem fake."
"Ricky," she said with a little smile, putting her elbows onto the counter. "Have I ever come in here with fake diamonds?" She had not. She had come in here with jewelry and old watches that ticked like new. Most of the time, she traded them for power tools. Ricky didn't ask questions, because he lived downtown.
He sighed. "$500, and only because I like you and your weird Twilight skin. You're the shittiest vampire I ever get in here."
"And I never even bite," she replied cheerfully. "Cash today, thanks."
That would last her for a while. She could get something nice from that bakery near the river, Maria’s. Eclairs, maybe, because she wanted to see her roommate eat eclairs, the cream bursting out and surprising him and getting everywhere. Yes, that would be wonderful. And she wouldn’t even need the money for lunch, thanks to Bree.
It was nice to have friends, in a town like this, because she so often attracted trouble.
She sat at the corner near the library and ate her oranges, feeding the peels to Phoebe. Timothy sulked, because he couldn’t have oranges, but she gave him a kiss on the head and promised him leftovers from lunch for being such a sweetheart. She piddled away the rest of the morning, reading in the library and picking up a few things she needed that she didn’t want to pester Ruka or Jean with.
Lunch with Bree was... well, fun was never quite the right word for hanging out with Bree. But Ren could tell she was trying. It’s just that she wasn’t very good at it. She suspected this to be why the woman had so much trouble with Jean. She was rude, but you could tell she wasn't cruel. She ordered the entire left half of the menu, then proceeded to eat one sandwich and declare she wasn't as hungry as she thought she was and oops, she was running late, bye.
Leaving Ren with six extra sandwiches.
She wasn't as subtle as she tried to be.
Ren ate a second sandwich there, and then wrapped up the others in tin foil that she carried with her because you'd be surprised how often you needed tin foil. She gave the meatball sub to Timothy, for being such a wonderful little angel.
She headed back into Old Town early after making sure she'd done everything she might need to in downtown, stopping by Maria's on the way and picking up a box of eclairs. She ran about Old Town for the rest of the afternoon, picking up cigarettes and medicine and 2x4s. She couldn’t have wood delivered to the church, for obvious reasons, so she bought one or two planks of wood from a nearby hardware store essentially every single day. What they thought of her, she had no idea. Not many people had a “regular order” at a hardware store. They had suggested she buy in bulk multiple times before giving up and letting her walk cheerfully out the door every single day with a giant fuck-off piece of wood over her head.
She was settled back into the church by mid-afternoon, just in time for her exhaustion crash. She took a long nap by her roommate’s feet, in case she slept in and missed sunset--which she did. She awoke in a fluffpile of rats. She’d fallen asleep in her good clothes, sigh. She shifted, and realized her friend was awake, but hadn’t really moved. He was just watching her. He did that, a lot.
She shooed off the rats and sat up, yanking off her shoes. She fed her friend eclairs, which was exactly as funny as she expected it to be. They both got shockingly covered in cream, and then she barely managed to get her clothes off in time to get covered in another sort of cream. There was a break for dinner; she ate two more sandwiches, then pulled a third apart to tell him the names of all the ingredients. She fed him the bits he’d eat, nibbled on some herself, and tossed the rest to some of her rats. She didn’t need to feed them all; they could take care of themselves. But she liked giving back.
Then they got distracted again. Then she tried to show him the new cards she’d had printed, which worked for a while, but then he got distracted, again, and by then she got pretty damn distracted herself, and remained that way for the rest of the night.
She woke up half an hour before dawn, like clockwork, to see him to “bed,” and start her day anew.
This got ridiculously long so I put it behind a spoiler cut for the sake of those scrolling through.
Spoiler:
Logic and deductive reasoning skills had a way of only catching up with Bree after she’d left Jean Cernunnos’ presence.
For instance, a day after she’d left it for the second time in her life, she was laying nude in her bed, waiting for sunset, and running the fine gold ring she’d been unable to part with between two fingers. And it was only then that she realized she’d seen a safe full of cash--ludicrous amounts of cash, obscene amounts of cash. It was unlikely he’d cashed out a few million in the last few years, wasn’t it? It wasn’t like he would have gotten that from selling books, considering he’d traded six decently valuable ones for ten or fifteen very confusing minutes of her thinking.
Had he lied to her, before, when he’d said he didn’t have $50,000 in cash? But why would he do that? For an excuse to unload some of his gems and gold? That seemed stupid. Did he want to give her this finery, for some reason? Maybe he hoped she’d wear it, or it would prompt her to dressing up more. He’d brought her clothing up many a time during her first visit. She couldn’t write off the possibility he’d really just been that offended by how she looked.
This was the sort of thing she wound up thinking on, around in circles, for weeks. She read through the children’s books herself, and indeed wound up keeping the Hobbit for her own. She’d read the book a thousand times, but this was a very nice, illustrated copy. And her last visit wasn’t so tainted in her mind as her first. She could look at the book without getting fits of anxiety or nausea, like had plagued her for years after their fateful encounter during her senior year.
It was probably because she had so many unanswered questions that she showed up to his house again, over three weeks later.
She hadn't even... really intended to? She'd just been walking home from work, rather than taking the bus, as she sometimes did to save money, when the days were long and warm and she didn't have to worry about unfortunate incidents. She took a route through Old Town, even though it was out of the way, because she liked walking through Old Town. No one ever bothered her there.
Instead of taking her normal route of skirting a few blocks around his house, however, she found herself walking right by it. And then stopping, thoughtfully.
He'd said he'd be glad to have her again. A nice sentiment nestled in a horrible phrasing. She often wondered if he did it on purpose.
There is much that I would be willing to give you, if you are willing to let me take.
She still had no idea what the fuck that meant.
She gave herself a brief once-over. She was still dressed from work, a white and black patterned lace skirt that fell just to the top of her knees. Practical white button down with a rounded collar, short sleeves. As luck would have it, she was actually wearing the same damn hat she had been last time, black rim and patterned black and white top. It wasn't her fault; it went with the outfit. And being fashionable with her hats was the only way she got away with wearing them at work. Flat, strappy sandals, comfortable to walk in and comfortable to work in, but still decent enough to be seen in professionally. Not that anyone ever looked at her feet.
She was... fit to be seen. She looked professional. She looked like a librarian, almost certainly. She'd even switched from a backpack to a messenger bag capable of actually holding all her shit and keeping it organized, one in black "snakeskin" patterned leather. (It was actually 'dragon'skin. She had purchased it off a D&D website. No one could ever know. Look it held a lot of things okay)
She was just loitering outside his house at this point.
With a deep breath, she walked up to the door and entered.
He was inside, sitting at the desk near the entrance. One could almost forget how tall he was, when he sat. His suit was a silvery gray, his accessories white, everything trimmed in black like it had been drawn onto him in thick lines. It made him look a bit surreal, to her eye, sitting in the ludicrously luxe parlor surrounded by books. She was also uncomfortably aware that they matched in color schemes.
“Ah, Miss Corey!” he said when he took notice of her. He was glancing up at her over reading glasses she sincerely doubted he needed and was probably wearing just for aesthetics. He snapped his book shut, at which point she noticed the state of his gloves... which was, to note, he was wearing one, white leather on his left hand. His right hand remained bare, nails still as neatly trimmed as before.
She felt a bit of relief when he recognized her. She’d been halfway convinced he wouldn’t. Again.
She shifted a bit, uncomfortably, as she watched his eyes travel up and down, appraising her. She pulled her bag in front of her without really understanding why she was doing it. "And you have dressed yourself so well today," he said... until his eyes reached her hair. "Except... ah. But I should not complain, as I know that you are sensitive in that area. Ignore me. What did you want with me today?"
Right. Yes. What she wanted. Because she’d walked into his shop.
Without... anything even resembling a plan.
“The library was very happy with the books I got from you before,” she settled on quickly. “They’ve all been entered into the restoration program. There’s been a lot of talk about how best to preserve The Pink Fairy Book’s cover.” She paused, shifting. He waited for her to continue. “Before,” she continued on, haltingly, “You said you preferred trades. Does that still hold true?”
"It does. You are here then in a professional capacity?" He sounded a little too pleased, for her tastes.
“Um...” she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Why was she worried about the sort of half-lie it would be to just simply say yes? “Yes,” she finished. Then, unnecessarily, added, “Mostly.” What if he had some kind of special library rate? She didn’t want to find out later she’d been scamming him.
Out of... extra... thoughts, or whatever the fuck...
Look, she was just... she had morals, okay, when books were involved especially. Even if he was an asshole who made her very uncomfortable in many, many ways, she couldn’t just... lie about books. That was wrong.
"I see. Perhaps something caught your eye last time? But I suppose I ought not pry.” She didn’t really understand why not; they were his books. She supposed maybe he didn’t have a private versus public rate, then. “Take your time, and when you have found as much as you are willing to trade for, you may bring them to me."
Oh that was a little off-putting. How was she supposed to know how much they were worth? She could maybe try to use last time as a gauge, but she had paid first and then selected the books, that time. Which was... aheh... probably why they were switching the order out this time. She had grabbed six very nice books.
She felt a little awkward, perusing where he could see her, but perused nonetheless. Several books had, in fact, caught her eye before. She grabbed an old Winnie the Pooh that she’d regretted not being able to nab last time, right off the bat. Then she began to tour the nonfiction section. She absolutely could not find any rhyme or reason to it, so it was slow going. But she gathered up a few books, each one old and worn. "A Popular History of British Seaweeds" would no doubt prove to be absolute fascinating. And also, it had a very pretty design on the spine. "France And The French, Or Manners, Customs, And Historical Narratives Of The French Nation," written in London, would doubtlessly also prove to be illuminating, for multiple reasons.
A book called "The Magic Casement: An Anthology of Fairy Poetry" also wound up getting grabbed, mostly because she couldn't for the life of her tell if it was fiction or nonfiction. And a leather book that could only be described as a "tome" that didn't have a title, but appeared to be a case study about armadillos. Or fairies. Or fairy armadillos. She couldn't tell without delving into it, which was why she was getting it.
Oh, and a... romance title that had... caught her eye. Which she crammed in under the rest as she brought the six to the desk. Six seemed like a good, safe number. She set them down, delicately. She’d sort of been hoping that the romance title being so small and unassuming and also having a normal looking cover meant that it would go somewhat unnoticed in favor of other, weirder titles. Like, why was she buying a book about British seaweed? That was a very good question. One that he should have asked, instead of zeroing in on the most embarrassing book in the whole pile. He looked over all the spines, but the only one he pulled out of the pile? That one. Of course.
She probably stopped breathing altogether as he appraised it. The corner of his mouth quirked upwards, and she considered flinging herself out a window. She should have stuck to histories. But she had needs. Especially lately, for some reason.
He gave the cover a fond little pat. “I think you will like this one,” he said, looking amused.
Did that mean it was good, or that he suspected she had weird fetishes? She would never know, because she sure as fuck wasn’t going to ask.
“So, altogether, that would be, ah, we’ll round to $500. Unless you would prefer a trade?”
Urk. She always did have expensive fucking taste in books. “A trade like the last one?” she asked, voice sounding a little strained.
"Quite similar," he said. "A thought exercise, a little more formal than the last. Unless you can think of something else you would rather surrender?"
Seriously? Rather surrender? Who talked like that. He had to be doing it on purpose. She wouldn’t be surrendering anything to him, thank-you-very-much. "Uh... No. Thought exercise sounds... fine. Upstairs again?" Not that she was especially eager to see his office again. ...Man, that was a lie big enough she couldn’t even think it. His office was gorgeous. Being alone with him in it was kind of terrifying to think about, and once again the prospect of sitting up there, just him, with her eyes closed... set her heart to pounding.
"I think that would be for the best - unless you prefer a more public venue," he was saying.
“No,” she said, voice cracking slightly. She cleared her throat. “No thank you. Private is. Fine.”
This asshole. Ugh.
She followed him up the stairs, all nerves with a side helping of anticipation. His office was as beautiful the second time. He gestured to the window seat again. It was around the same time of afternoon, and the sun was falling onto the seat in glimmering rays. She sat down, and after a brief moment of watching him watch her, slid her eyes shut.
It was easier for her to begin to relax than she might have liked, with the warm sun hitting her hair, the pleasant, oaken sort of scent to the room, old books and wealth, and his voice speaking in a pleasing low tenor, soft but still perfectly easy to hear.
"This time, I want you to picture yourself in a place – it does not have to be real. It only needs to be a place where you would like to be."
A place where she’d like to be... Automatically, his office was forming in her mind, but with key differences. A big fireplace, like had been in her great-grandparent’s living room. It was decked out a bit more like her room... small places for her to crawl under, like her bed. More cramped, therefore more comfortable. Little ramps and steps so she could get up on places when she was six inches tall. Her mini-fridge was here, too, except fancy. Full of rich people snacks, or what she imagined rich person snacks were like. Except not avocado toast, because that was terrible and also would kill her.
But like... toast points instead of crackers. With goat cheese. Apples with peanut butter, all pre-sliced and ready to go, maybe some honey drizzled on. Yeah, fancy crap like that, to please her palate be she large or small. Relaxing music, violin music that she didn't need to think about the source of, would definitely be playing.
"It is a calm and peaceful place, where nothing can harm you. Maybe someone is there who is happy to see you? They are there for you, because this is your place.”
Her mind immediately rebelled from the concept of someone happy to see her, suggesting and then rejecting several candidates. But this was her fantasy, she argued with herself. Someone could be happy to see her if she said so. She was just... struggling to figure out what that would look like. She tentatively settled on her great-grandfather. From when she was young, back when she still hadn’t figured the world out entirely.
This was a version of reality where he was allowed to pat her head and neither of them would get yelled at, she decided.
“You are in control, and only the things you want can happen. Everyone here wants to please you, and everything is exactly the way you like it.”
Exactly the way she liked it, hmm? Well, someone to... feed her grapes, yeah! Grapes were sort of solidified in her mind as both “rich fancy food” and “things she could not eat.” So both at once! Someone to feed her grapes as she lounged by the fire, reading. She didn’t know what grapes tasted like, but she’d had grape-flavored stuff, so she just sort of imagined that.
Oh, it was Jean. Jean was feeding her grapes. Wait, no, yes, that was perfect! Her foot tapped idly as a smile crossed her lips. That rich asshole, pampering her. Wearing white gloves and a tailored suit... like a butler. Yes, he could be her servant.
"You are happy. You are calm. You are safe. Now, I would like you to think back to a time when you were hurt - but, it is a memory. You are in this place. This memory cannot hurt you. The people here will protect you, and nothing bad can happen. You can banish it, and be safe again, because you are in control.”
This threw her, mostly because the first thing that came to mind was Jean, again. There was a momentary, confusing kerfluffle in her head as fantasy-butler-Jean faced off against actual-real-life-drunk-asshole-Jean.
This was going to give her a headache. She needed to switch to something less Jean-related, in general.
Alright, start with the easy part. A time when she was hurt. Something the opposite of her little happy place came to mind... the fenced in backyard where she was sometimes locked at night. It was a last-ditch punishment of her great-grandparents; they didn’t like treating her like a dog, she knew. She didn’t think she’d ever explained to them how much she hated that yard, but she felt like they probably knew. Surely they knew. Couldn’t anyone tell? It was so dark out there at night, the only light the one by the patio door. Long winter nights got cold, even with her bed and blanket. Sometimes it would rain, and they wouldn’t wake up to let her in. She would have to choose between getting soaking wet by the light, or going into the dark underneath the patio to try and temporarily seek shelter from the rain. If it was raining really hard, it would get wet under there too, though, and muddy.
“Remember: this is a good place, and you are good.”
Right. This was her place, where no one would ever hate her so much as to leave her locked outdoors all night. The patio door opened, and she trotted inside to the office-bedroom-living-room amalgamation. Where she could sit by the warm, bright fire. Someone was there, and they pet her. She had very vague ideas about being pet; she wasn’t exactly clear on what it would feel like, but was very certain it would be good.
It wasn’t necessarily Jean petting her. Just some generic guy sent over from casting. Who just happened to have sharp nails that felt very good.
“You are good. You are safe. You can return to this place whenever you need, and it will be waiting for you.”
That was a nice sort of thought. Maybe she could think about it when she was stuck in her room, bored, with nothing to do but read and wait for the dawn. Would american cheese squares taste any better if she pretended it was goat cheese on toast points?
“Breathe. Take a deep, slow breath,” he said, and she did. “Fix this place in your mind, so that you may find it again when the time comes. Relax. And when you are ready, you may open your eyes.”
She kept her eyes closed for a moment longer, then opened them. Confused, a little out of place, but kind of relaxed anyway. She gave her head a little shake, and then her whole body, like she was trying to wake up.
Why the fuck was that worth $500?
What was she missing, here?
There was Jean, looking pleased as punch. He hadn’t moved, once again. “There, you have done wonderfully today! I will be in the hall if you need a moment, and then you can get your books.”
He left her alone in his office. She sat for a moment longer, luxuriating in the sun and the smell and all the knowledge and wealth around her.
What was he getting out of this?
That uneasy thought brought her the rest of the way out of relaxation, and she stood, somewhat reluctantly, to exit the office. He was waiting for her out there, gloved hand leaning on the doorframe. She stared at it for maybe a liiiittle longer than was entirely necessary, then just told herself it was because it was white, and he’d been wearing white gloves in her imagination, too.
He managed to get another comment in on her skirt, and another on her legs, and one last sly one on her hat, before she actually got out the door, though. And she had to see that horrible, horrible catalogue of his. It made her shudder every time. How she longed to sweep through here with a proper system. She would learn so much! She wondered, idly, how much she would have to give him to let him allow her to make that her graduate project.
---------------
She’d pace herself. That’s what she said. Six good books could last a long time, if she paced herself. But she was awake roughly twenty-two hours of the day, sometimes the full twenty-four. She could read very quickly. And they were very good books.
Every time she went to Jean’s he managed to embarrass her. Make her feel ashamed, uncomfortable... a little scared, a lot intimidated, and some other things that she didn’t like thinking about. Every time she left relieved to have gotten out with what little dignity she still possessed by the end. Even his compliments left her confused and reeling. She couldn’t deal with him.
And yet here she was, two and a half weeks later, outside his fucking door again.
She’d dressed down this time, on purpose. He had made one (three) too many comments on her dress. He had to have been making fun of her. What she was wearing was still very professional work attire just... a bit less flashy. A loose beige silk blouse, a fitted brown suit jacket. A looser skirt, fitted high around her waist with a thin belt. Brown-black leggings, simple black mary janes. A very plain brown hat.
It wasn't ugly. It was just very brown, and not very fitted. He would have a much harder time complimenting her legs, to be sure.
Of course, that meant she had to suffer through the trade-off. It seemed whether she dressed up or down, she’d be suffering through a multitude of comments on her appearance. As soon as he saw her--glancing over from where he was casually re-organizing a bookshelf that, to her eye, had never been organized in the first place--he frowned, giving her that same slow, up and down look, but this time with an expression of disappointment, irritation, and mild offense.
Honestly! He acted as though the way she dressed was a personal affront, done just to spite him! Well... it was, in this case, but he didn’t know that! She thought it was very telling of his personality, that he would just assume it was about him. Even if it was. This one time.
“Your tailor has not had time for a fitting?” he fussed as she tried to pick out her books in peace. He was lingering. She would very much prefer he didn’t, because he was wearing just a vest today, rather than a suit, and it was very trim and looked very good on him. “What an awful thing to do to such a pretty girl.” Pfff! Asshole! Pretty girl, yeah, sure... Like it was her clothing’s fault she looked like this. “Would you like me to send you to mine? She is a very quick stitch.”
“Normal people can't afford tailors, Mr. Cernunnos,” she said as politely as she was able--which wasn’t very--as she attempted to browse his shelves with him fluttering nearby.
“But you have managed so well before!” he protested. “The skirt you wore before was much more flattering. A lucky find, if it was not tailored! Then you must have the salesman fired who sold you this skirt. The hem is much too low for such fine legs.”
The legs again, really?!
She leaned closer to peer at a book’s spine, to hide her blush. “I bought this at thrift store,” she said shortly, pulling out a book she had no interest in to have something to hide her face with. “It was seven dollars. Please get your horror out of the way now and then let's move on.”
She could still see his pout over the edge of the book. She disliked it, because it was on his face. His stupid, unnaturally pretty face, that was like a foot too high up, so that she always seemed to be looking up at him no matter how far away she was. And she didn’t even have the advantage of being far away now. He was far too close. Not close enough for it to be called rude; not even close. A totally reasonable distance that still managed to be way too fucking close to her.
“Surely, if it was so inexpensive, you could use that money saved to have it fitted properly. You are sure you do not want my tailor? Your legs are so powerful; they are being wasted like this.”
P... powerful. She pulled the book up higher to more effectively hide the crimson she knew was spreading across her cheeks. She liked that adjective, especially re: her legs. She worked very hard to be as strong as she was. It was hard to find enough time in the day, lately, to stay as fit as she wanted. It was nice to have it noticed, even if it was by Jean Cernunnos. She briefly entertained the concept he might actually appreciate her legs, and then threw it out the window as utterly ridiculous. That was the sort of ludicrous fantasy better reserved for when he was paying her. Genuine appreciation was firmly the realm of fantasy-nice-Jean, who fed her grapes and rubbed her ears.
Never let it be said she didn’t know how to compartmentalize.
She cleared her throat. “My legs and I appreciate your concern but I'm here for books, not... skirts...” she trailed off as something caught her eye on the shelf behind him. She set the book she was perusing directly into his hands--a librarian’s instinct not to reshelf--and sidled by him, sort of ducking under his arm, one hand briefly on his side as she moved him out of her way. It was sheer force of magnetism. She would have shoved the devil himself out of the way, because a matching blue set had caught her eye.
They were below even normal eye level, way below what would be eye level for him. She dropped to her knees immediately to get a better look.
The Modern Eclectic Dictionary of the English Language, each book read in gold on pale blue. A full set of six. She could not have been more excited if the world's most attractive man had dropped trou in front of her and bent over. This was the kind of thing dreams were made of. Gently, her heart racing with wild excitement, she pulled the first one off the shelf.
1904. Oh sweet merciful christ yes.
The first page gave a beautiful and lengthy description of the contents, in that wonderful old rambly style. "Comprising also a compendium of the historical, biographical, geographical, scientific, religious, and sociological names," "complete summary of human achievement in the 19th and 20th centuries," etc etc... Illustrated with colored plates and drawings.
And he had all six volumes, in good condition, right here. She was practically salivating.
"These," she said, not even looking up from the page. "These, all six."
“Oh goodness, would you... like to get it in parts?” Bree briefly tore her eyes away from the page, and was suddenly extremely aware of how things lined up when she knelt. Ordinarily, she might be, say, about abdomen level. But Mr. Cernunnos was very tall. So she was... not. She needed to either get higher or lower, immediately. “It is eight hundred for the full set, you see,” he continued, seemingly unaware of exactly where her head came to.
“Eight hundred for a set of six,” she said, wincing. It wasn’t an unfair price, it was just a lot. Well... the last time had been $500, and that hadn't been particularly bad. "The same sort of trade?" she asked, frowning in consideration. She sat down on the backs of her legs, opting for lowering herself instead of standing. Both so that she could keep looking at the books, and because he was right there, and standing up right next to him felt awkward. Not that sitting on the floor while he was standing right next to her felt much less awkward, all things considered. She kept thinking he was going to set something on her head.
"It might be a little more in-depth, if that does not bother you?"
"That's... disconcertingly vague," she said, frowning deeper. Now would be the time he'd pull a switcheroo on her; she kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and now would be the perfect time. If she were dropping shoes, this would be her moment of truth.
"Always so suspicious!" he said, and she barely kept from rolling her eyes. Yes, who could believe she was suspicious, he was such a trustworthy, upstanding individual, asking for such straightforward things. “It has not been so much these last times, has it?”
True... And even if he had her thinking unpleasant things, it was just thinking, right? As long as he didn’t touch her, it wasn’t like... a thing. “Yeah...” And seriously, in what other world would she get the chance to get $800 worth of glorious books for sitting and thinking? When phrased like that, she couldn’t believe she was even hesitating. “Alright,” she agreed.
She stood, pausing only to carefully remove the other five books from the shelf. It was every bit as awkward as she imagined it would be. She went to put the books on the desk; rather than backing away, Jean simply stood to the side again. She eyed him sourly, but shimmied past, too focused on the books to care that he was being kind of a dick. It was Jean. He was always kind of a dick.
She set them down, then let him lead her back upstairs. Anticipation surged in her chest; she was nervous, but also... she liked his office, a lot. It was the kind of room she’d always wanted but never hoped to see, let alone possess. Frankly, she considered their sessions taking place there a huge bonus, not that she’d ever tell Jean that. She followed him through the door after he’d unlocked it, and went right to her designated seat by the window. Afternoon again, same as always, meaning the sun came right in to warm her.
She still had no idea what he hoped to accomplish here, what he gained. The idea had crossed her mind a few times that he might be a telepath of some kind, exploring her mind as she relaxed and explored her own subconscious. She hadn’t thought too much about it, because the concept was completely fucking horrifying on pretty much every level.
“Good girl,” he practically purred from his designated I Will Stand Here And Not Molest You zone. She pretended not to get a little thrill of embarrassing pleasure from the words. “Now close your eyes for me, and take a deep breath.”
She really wished he didn’t have to phrase everything so disgustingly. But she closed her eyes nonetheless, taking a deep breath in through her nose, soaking in the smell of old oak and older books. Her nose was sensitive even in human form, but compared to how things smelled at night, this was nothing. Shame she couldn’t smell this with a dog’s nose. But obviously, that was impossible on a number of levels.
“Just breathe. Slow, deep breaths. I am going to count down from ten, and when I am done, you will be thinking again of that place from last time, the place where you are happy and safe. Dix. Neuf. Huit. Sept...”
She felt herself sinking in warm water, floating back down to the little office/bedroom/living room hybrid that she was coming to associate with so many nice things. She’d tried going there a few times on her own, mostly when she was alone and bored at night. But inevitably, she couldn’t get the feeling just right. She was never warm enough, it was never quiet enough, she could never allow herself to fantasize that sort of ridiculous, indulgent nonsense without the pretense of being required to do so.
For example, butler-Jean was there again, and while it might be more comfortable to imagine him from the privacy of her own bedroom, she always felt patently ridiculous even trying.
“"You are calm. You are happy. You are safe. You are going to think of a memory again, but you will be safe here. The people here will protect you, and be here for you if you need them.”
She probably made a face, but she wasn’t very surprised. He had said it would be more in-depth. It was hard to imagine Jean, or her great-grandfather, being there for her. She had barely managed them being pleased to see her, last time, because it had seemed so frankly ridiculous. It wasn’t that her great-grandfather hated her, he was just...
Well. She didn’t have to think about that now, because this was supposed to be a place where everyone liked her and respected her and didn’t think she was a mangy little curse.
“The memory is of the first time you realized that you were not like other children.” She tensed. “But it is only a memory, and you are in a safe place, where you may be yourself without fear. It cannot hurt you.” That was easy for him to say. Memories were already coming to bear, hard and fast. She had been kept so isolated; she couldn’t remember any other children, not real ones. But pretty much as soon as she was old enough to consume media like books and television, she began to notice things.
She had begun to put two and two together, thanks in part to her great-grandparents’ over-protective natures. Not letting her play outside except in the backyard, keeping her locked up, away from other people. The endless reminders to keep her head covered at all times, even when it was just the three of them, so that she wouldn’t make a mistake in front of others. The first time she’d met a stray dog, and realized it was a dumb beast, not like her at all. That one was especially vivid, because it had growled at her, and she hadn’t been able to understand why it wouldn’t listen to reason, why it didn’t want to be her friend.
“What you must look at is the difference between how the people here in this safe place think about you, where you are in control, and how you felt at that time.”
She had to retreat from her own memories, for a moment, before she could even consider that. Scurry back into her happy corner by the fire, away from the doors and windows where memories peeked in, reminding her of the harsh reality of her life.
How she felt at the time was like a monster. Like a thing, like a beast, like a freak. Those things were all varying levels of true, mind. She didn’t consider herself a monster or a thing, but it was hard to deny “freak” and she was a beast about half the time. In her memories, her family could barely look at her, it seemed, because they knew what she was, too. Her mother was always the worst. She had scant memories of her as a child; she hadn’t really become even slightly active in Bree’s life until she was much older. And it certainly hadn’t been her mother’s idea for Bree to run away from home and crash in her apartment.
She’d let her, because, Bree could tell, her mother felt some guilt for the way she treated Bree. She always had. She didn’t want to be so disgusted by her, Bree suspected. Felt bad, feeling that way about her own child, but couldn’t stop. She tried to make up for it in other ways. Sometimes.
She could feel tears in the corners of her eyes, which meant it was time to focus on something else. How the people here think about her, he’d said. Well, her great-grandfather here would give her hugs and pats and say encouraging, grandfatherly things. Butler-Jean was basically just a replacement for all the people who hadn’t known how to talk to her, hadn’t wanted to, had refused to touch her. He thought she was amazing, and beautiful, and he and the various other generic men she sometimes pulled in loved pampering her, petting her.
It was a silly fantasy, really, but hey... she was being paid, sort of.
“You may let the memory go. It does not concern you now. You are in your safe place, and now you know how you feel here. You feel happy, and safe, and you can see why.”
Yeah... who wouldn’t? Anyone would like to be adored, to have supportive family, to be warm and safe and loved. She felt stupid doing it, but honestly, wasn’t this what most people wanted?
“Focus on those feelings of safety, and the feelings of those around you. Focus on that happiness. You can relax here. There is nothing for you to fear. You must remember this feeling. This part is important, and so you must focus. You deserve this feeling. You are calm. You are happy. You are safe. You deserve this.”
Her mind rebelled immediately. This was a fantasy. None of it was real, least of all deserved. Life was the opposite of this, a series of hardships to overcome with a handicap that made her ruin the lives of the people around her. She couldn’t deserve love when she’d ruined her mother’s life just by being born. Made her great-grandparents go through so much to raise her when she knew they didn’t want to. And then run away from them. Deserve? Deserve never played into anything.
She tried to wave that away and focus on the rest. The sensation of being happy and loved, at least in a fantasy. Calm, happy, safe. She’d ignore the last bit.
There was a disconnect in her head, between being a dog and being safe. She was never really safe at that size. Too fragile, too easy to break, too slow and too small. But here, she reasoned, she was indoors, in what was sort of becoming an amalgamation of ‘home.’ There were people here who loved her even when she was a dog. Still, she wound up just keeping herself human. She was pretty safe as a human; because she was goddamn strong and fast. She was constantly being scouted for sports groups on campus. She just didn’t have time, couldn’t dedicate herself to something that might require her to be out at night.
"Focus on your breathing. In. Hold. Out. And again. Soothing breaths. This is a safe place. This is a happy place. You have done nothing wrong. There is no shame here."
She breathed along with him. It was a nice sort of thought. She was kind of sure she'd been done something wrong and shameful just by being born, but hell, maybe here, she hadn't been. Not in any way that traumatized her mother. She'd inconvenienced no one by existing. Everything was fine.
"Imagine the safest and warmest place to rest in this place. Imagine yourself there."
By the fire, definitely, her head resting on a soft, warm lap.
“Breathe. Feel yourself relaxing. You cannot help but relax, in a place like this. Feel the muscles of your legs, your arms, your back. Feel them relaxing into this warmth.”
She was sinking into warm water, floating and comfortable. The heat from the sun and the heat from the fire and the softness of pillows and the softness of a lap. A hand rubbing her ear. She might have been rubbing her head on something in real life. That didn’t bear thinking about.
She had no where she had to be. Just here, relaxing by the fire, comfortable and warm, reading an interesting book. The person whose lap her head rested on had nothing they would rather be doing than being here, with her.
“Fix the memory of this in your mind, and know that it will be waiting for you if you need it. When you are ready, you may open your eyes.”
She kept them closed for longer than was probably strictly necessary. When she opened them, it felt like waking up. At some point, she’d pulled her legs up onto the windowseat, and was, in fact, leaning up against the frame. Her hat was still on, but slightly askew. She straightened, both it and herself. Jean was still standing where he always did. She didn’t like seeing him, because it reminded he was real and absolutely nothing like the fellow in her little extended fantasies.
“You have done better than ever!” he said, seeming extremely pleased. She had no idea what she’d done right. “Ah, what a good girl.” ...But she was glad she’d done well. ...Because books, yes, she had books downstairs, waiting for her. “I shall wait in the hall as always.”
She lingered in the office for longer than was necessary, again. She found she didn’t really want to leave. She kind of wanted to curl up right there in the sun and take a nap. Alas, this was no fantasy. This was not her home, and no one here would be happy to see her. With a sigh, she stood, stretching slightly.
She had books waiting for her, the most amazing books. It would almost be a shame to give them to the library when she was done, though she would. They could take better care of them than her, and as the donor she’d surely be able to go there and peruse them whenever she wanted. She could even petition to have a proper scan of the pages done, for posterity, and get a copy for her tablet. It wasn’t quite the same. But it was the right thing to do. She’d enjoy them herself, carefully, and then take them to the library so that others could love them the same way she did.
She was in an excellent mood as she went downstairs. Perhaps Jean really was pleased with her performance, though she still had no idea what she’d done so well, or what he was gaining from it. Because he was absolutely cordial and polite and cheerful as he wrapped her books up in silk--silk!--no side comments about her legs or her physique... Although, she noted, he slipped a business card for a tailor in with the books.
He didn’t even jump down her throat when she talked happily about her plans for the books, though she was almost certainly being annoying or rude somewhere in the conversation. She invariably was. Probably implying he was a miser for not sharing his books with the world, or some shit, without even meaning to. But he let any such slights pass, at least, and she left with a silk scarf of beautiful books, feeling relaxed and happy and very much looking forward to a walk home in the sun.
These books would take her a long time to read. But when she had, she was certain she’d find her way to his doorstep again.
And maybe next time she’d wear a nicer skirt. Since she was going to be receiving commentary either way.
Using Our Words Ren - That Steampunk AU - Possibly Non-Canon but who even knows at this point? Are you looking for stability out of this wonky AU? Don't.
This is also kinda long so SPOILER TAGS WOO.
Spoiler:
“You know,” Ren said casually, through a mouthful of reuben. “I always figured yer dad was like some big ogre demon that raped yer mom and that was why you were such a stickler for rules ‘n’ order, ‘cause you were scared of turnin' out like him.”
She was speaking to her boss, a giant asshole--or perhaps, more accurately, a giant dick. When he got angry with her, he sodomized her. She admittedly enjoyed this a bit, which was only part of why she was speaking to him in such a rude manner. The other part being that ‘rude’ was her default factory setting and no one had figured out how to get into the options yet.
He was clearly trying to ignore her, so she continued. “Turns out actually, yer mom was just a pervert professionally, which means yer a pervert, an’ you were such a stickler for rules ‘n’ order ‘cause you didn't want to turn out like her, but then you added fuckin' to it anyway cause the apple don't fall far from the tree.”
She didn’t not consider this to be an insult to his mother. It was treading the line, though, because that was what she did. It was enough to finally get a reaction out of him, however, a dour glare and a sharp admonition.
“I love my mother, and I am not ashamed of what she is. And what I do with my dick when I am not working is none of your business.”
Ren snorted, loudly, because nothing she did was ever quiet. “Right, cause it's working, what you do with me,” she said with a dark little laugh. “Part o' the job, right, that's why you do it.” Part of her actually suspected it was, despite her sarcasm. Obviously he enjoyed it, sadistic bastard, on a purely physical level. It was probably pretty emotionally satisfying for him to tan the hide of someone who caused him so much stress, too, but she personally thought that it probably didn’t go any deeper than that.
“If there's another way to make you behave, I have not found it yet,” he replied simply.
There was, of course. She could be given access to what she needed and allowed to do what she wanted. Then she would have behaved perfectly. But that sort of defeated the entire purpose, she was fairly sure.
“I'm like a wild animal,” she said blithely, taking another bite of reuben. “I wasn't designed to live in a cage. S’not my fault, it's in my nature. Just like how it's not yer fault yer solution to problems is to put your dick in it.” This was, as far as Ren could tell, his first solution to everything. She was often informed how she’d driven him to the end of his rope and left him without any other options but violent sodomy, but that certainly wasn’t how she remembered it.
“Like a rat, your natural state is pushing the boundaries of polite society until someone kills you for it, or possibly getting stolen by an owl,” Gareth replied snippily, and she bristled. As much for the insult towards rats as the insult to her. She was hypersensitive to accusations that she was some sort of beast, not fit for society, too dangerous to be allowed around normal people. This was unfortunate, because that very much was her boss’ opinion of her, so far as she could tell. He certainly told her often enough. It never stung any less. If anything, it stung more as time went by.
She kept thinking maybe he thought higher of her than when she’d started.
He never did.
“You the owl in this scenario?” she asked sourly, instead of cursing at him and/or insulting his mother, her two go-to methods for stress relief when she was angry with him. Not because he had anything against his mother, mind. She was a succubus and therefore more fun than him by definition. But it was the easiest way to get under his skin.
“No, I'm the man with the cage that feeds you and keeps the owls out,” he said pointedly. She rolled her eyes. Oh yeah, he was soooooo selfless.
“An’ puts his dick in me randomly, don’t forget that part.”
“If you don’t want my dick, I can keep it myself.”
She snorted again. “No, you can’t. It’s the,” she mimicked his voice mockingly, lowering hers as much as it could go and speaking in a stodgy sort of voice. “‘Only way you've found to make me behave.’” She glared over at him. “Plus everytime I bend over in this stupid skirt yer starin' at my ass and I dunno who you think yer kiddin'.” This was one of many reasons she hated the dress part of her uniform. It had taken him weeks of carrot-and-stick-ing her--his dick was both--to get her to wear it in its entirety even some of the time, and she hated every single second of it.
“Behave without dick and I will gladly stick it elsewhere.”
She scoffed, both because she didn’t believe him and because she didn’t want to. The implications were hurtful. “You got the ladies all linin' up to be spanked 'n' reamed, huh?”
“Yes,” he replied simply. She paused, squinting at him. Hard to believe. Who’d find that attractive? Or maybe he was less of a stuffy asshole outside of work? She couldn’t even imagine what he looked like in his downtime. He left every day at five PM, and presumably he went somewhere, but she had no idea where, or what he did. He seemed to live for work. Hell, they had sex on a pretty regular basis, and she’d yet to see him out of his uniform, even partially. Half the time she didn’t even see his dick.
“I gotta wonder what kinda ladies,” she said, trying to imagine the hypothetical person that would find an eight-foot-tall workaholic half-demon with a to-scale tree lodged up his ass attractive.
“A couple of very nice elves and a dwarf,” he responded, which didn’t even begin to answer her question, but did distract her.
“A dwarf?!” she exclaimed. “How she ain’t dead?!” Ren was hardly a giant herself, coming in a few inches past five feet, but she was no dwarf, and she struggled, quite literally, to contain his girth. Every inch was a practice in anticipation, fear, and stretching.
“Dwarves are extremely hardy,” he replied. It, too, did not answer her question, but she was imagining things now. They seemed painful. Or deadly.
“I’ll be...” she said, awestruck. “You sell tickets?”
“No,” said Gareth bluntly. “She’s very nice and sometimes she makes me dinner.” Ren felt something shift inside her, impressive mental images shoved aside to make room for the pressure on her gut. “It's not great because she's vegan, but it's the thought that counts.”
She was very nice and made him dinner. She was someone he enjoyed spending time with, put his dick in recreationally instead of as a form of punishment, or because it was the only thing he’d found she was good for. Her fingers tightened on her sandwich, which she was no longer eating.
“Hmph! Well, I see yer problem now, I'm keepin' you from all the real nice ladies in yer life!” she snapped, unclear on why she was suddenly so angry.
“Yes, exactly,” he said, a pleased little barely-there smirk on his lips.
She glared. She could feel a pressure building, one that could only be alleviated by yelling, violence, acting out, or rat-related shenanigans. She was trying to decide which one of them to go for.
“Anyway,” he continued. “Like I said. If you don't want me to fuck you just say so and I'll try something else.” She knew damn well he was full of it, because he’d repeatedly said that fucking her was his last ditch effort--though he may have been lying about that--and because he’d threatened to just let her hang on several occasions when fucking didn’t appear to be subduing her enough on its own. It was a terrifying, infuriating threat... because he could. Her keepers could, at any time, declare her a ‘lost cause’ and it would be back to the gallows for her. She knew her after-hours keeper would absolutely love to, which meant it was, at all times, just Gareth standing between her and a long fall from a short rope.
“Awright yeah!” she snarled, opting for yelling in an attempt to get the pressure out. “Let's try it with me fuckin' you instead; we'll just have to find somethin' bigger than the fuckin tree trunk you're used to havin' jammed up yer ass!” She felt better, slightly.
“See, now you're being belligerent again. And knowing you, you won't stop until you're full of dick.”
“I'm always belligerent!” she snapped. “It’s my natural state o' bein', like yers is a ginormous fuckwad!”
He fixed her with a look, one she was coming to recognize. It wasn’t bedroom eyes, because that would imply there had ever been a bedroom involved. It wasn’t quite a threatening look, but she felt threatened by it nonetheless. “You weren't belligerent when I was bouncing you in my lap by the neck,” he reminded her.
She fought a full body shudder and only half-succeeded. She did, in fact, remember. Vividly. She’d been facing him--a rarity in and of itself, as he normally preferred to rail her from behind, for whatever reason--straddling his lap as he sat sprawled out on chair designed to fit someone eight feet or taller. Straddling was perhaps not the right word, as it implied she had anything to do with her positioning. One hand on her hips, intermittently, sometimes thumbing her clit instead. The other hand wrapped entirely around her neck, a remarkable thing that he could do, thanks to how huge his hands were. And it was by that hand around her neck that he was forcing her up and down on his cock, using her whole body like a masturbatory aid.
That had been for repeatedly refusing to do the boring task he’d given her. He’d declared that if she was going to be wasting time, he had a better use for her. Then he’d done that. She hadn’t worked the rest of the day, but the next day she’d come right back and finished her work in a daze similar to the one threatening to overtake her now, if she spent any longer thinking about his cock and how it felt inside her, and how attractive he was when he was scary instead of just annoying and foppish.
“........Those were extenuatin’ circumstances,” she managed finally.
“Maybe I’ll try that again,” he mused, and she could feel the flush creeping along her neck, and lower. He smirked, just a little, probably at the look on her face. “C’mere.”
A small, traitorous part of her really wanted to. She’d often wondered what it would be like if she actually cooperated in having sex with him more. She couldn’t really imagine it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“No,” she said, crossing her arms. “I’m still mad at you.”
She was never not mad at him.
“But why?” he said, an obviously fake expression of surprise on his face. He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Could you be... jealous?”
That was it. She chucked the uneaten portion of her sandwich at him. He tilted his head to the side, and it missed him entirely, hitting the wall thanks to all the force she’d thrown it with. A rat scurried towards it, out of his line of sight. He was still smirking, a bit broader now. “Are you jealous of the girls who admit that they like my dick?” he mocked. “Because I have an easy solution.”
“Is it easier than fillin' yer closet with rats again, cause that's what I'm leanin' towards right now,” she snapped.
“Yes, because when I put them in cages you get distraught.”
“RATS DON'T BELONG IN CAGES, we been over this!” she yelled.
“Rats not in cages get eaten,” he reminded her. “And we let them out to play.”
Comparing her to rats was less dicey than most of his animal-related metaphors, but she still chafed a bit. She knew he didn’t think as highly of rats as she did.
“They're safer with me than in cages anyhow,” she grumbled. It was very true; she knew how to handle rats without the need for such ridiculous, inhumane treatment as cages, traps, and poison. If anything, the problem was that, much as with rats, no one had bothered to look at her as anything other than something that needed to be contained, controlled, or exterminated.
“Not if you put them in dangerous situations. Like my closet.”
“It'sa job hazard,” she said snidely. “Like yer dick.”
“Would you say that you're their boss?” he asked her, and she crossed her arms, frowning.
“I prefer to say we run a socio-anarchist hive of like-minded individuals,” she said, as rudely as she could. Some people didn’t need a strict and brutal class-based hierarchy to get things accomplished.
“Would you say that the rats listen to you when you tell them what to do?”
She shrugged. “I mean mostly. They're rats. They're kinda.” She waved her hand vaguely, before remembering that wasn’t technically a form of communication. “Finicky,” she said finally.
“Would you be pretty mad if a rat ignored everything you said to go eat some poison?” he asked, and she glared, seeing where he was going with this.
"That metaphor don't hold true, cause you think any time I break a rule it's eatin' poison.”
“You’ve exploded twice.”
“Just me, though!” she protested. That was within the acceptable explosion limits. She had been learning to mitigate explosion risks, mostly through relocating them to her person, because that way he couldn’t complain about her damaging equipment.
“The rat probably thinks you're being a drama queen about the delicious, delicious poison.”
She regretted having already thrown her sandwich. The only other things she had to throw were too large, too fragile, or too important. “Well if it wasn't poison, but delicious cheese, the rat would have a point!”
“The cheese is poisoned and you know it,” he said with a scoff. She glared. “But the rat won’t listen! The rat is tired of your rules!”
Okay, that actually happened sometimes, when she got too heavy-handed, but her reaction wasn’t to stick the rat in a cage! She didn’t even spank them, because who the fuck spanked rats.
“Well they'd be stupid rules if I went and outlawed all the cheese just cause they're poisoned like 78% of the time!” she snapped. Not that... that was a precise number she’d calculated for the cheese within the compound... or anything.
Look, when rats bring you cheese more than people, you have to learn to recognize which of it has probably been poisoned. If she got sick eating poisoned cheese left out for rats, she would never hear the end of it.
“That’s a lot of dead rats,” he pointed out, and she scowled, because he was misinterpreting her data. Rats were smart, they didn’t just eat all the cheese. And also! This was not about rats and cheese, it was a shitty metaphor for her and why she should submit to his iron-clad rules and not just his iron-hard dick. And as a metaphor it failed terribly!
“Maybe if I let the rat eat some cheese sometimes the rat wouldn't be so eager to jump on whatever poisoned cheese it could get!” she snapped, stamping her foot on the ground, an action which caused her ass to hurt, because sometimes it seemed like her ass would always hurt.
“I think I care about my rat more than you do,” he said, and she snorted. He didn’t care jack for her, except in all the ways he did, more than other people, but that wasn’t hard. Just by wanting her to not be dead, he managed to care more than other people, because pretty much everyone else, just, really wanted her dead. “I will continue to give my rat the safest muffins and hams.” She snorted again, but this time because that sounded just like him. If he could actually be persuaded to care about rats as individuals and stop seeing them as a vast, pooping hive-mind, he probably would feed them muffins and big, juicy hams.
He wouldn’t even feed her muffins and hams. He probably fed them to his girlfriends. Maybe if he gave her literal entire hams, she wouldn’t have to eat the questionable cheese her friends brought her--hey wait this was supposed to be a metaphor. And also that was the point of his metaphor. Why did his metaphor work better as reality than a metaphor.
She was not going to ask him for muffins.
There was a small chance he would actually give them to her, but an unacceptable risk that he would laugh at her. She would rather be muffinless then muffinless and mocked. If that happened, she would have to know, every minute of every day, that she could have been eating muffins if he didn’t hate her.
Also they were in the middle of a heated argument, or something.
“I think I trust my rat's judgement more 'n' you do,” she said, because it was true both of rats in general and of her in specific, and this was supposed to be a metaphor about her. “I think you treat yer rat like an idiot who can't be trusted around cheese.”
“That's because it keeps trying to shovel poison cheese into its mouth whenever I'm not looking.”
Well obviously. She grabbed desperately for any little freedoms she could get, no matter how small, whenever she got the chance to do so without being spanked--or punished by someone else in worse ways, because he wasn’t her only keeper. Only her other keeper saw to a number of people who were like prisoners only with varying levels of freedom, and their idea of hands-on interaction with an individual was instructing someone else to have her whipped.
She tried to articulate this within the metaphor of rats and cheese. “Because it's not bein' allowed any cheese! It's losin' it's mind! Rats can't live on muffins alone! Some cheese is necessary.”
“I think I tried to give my rat a safe cheese, and it responded by trying to take all of the cheese and some gratuitous cyanide. I think my rat is going to have to earn back limited cheese privileges.”
So people kept saying, but even when she was good--like with him, because she couldn’t stomach being good with anyone else--she had yet to earn back even a smidgen of precious “cheese.”
She gave up on the metaphor altogether, voice breaking into a frustrated whine. “But I ain't blown anything else up in weeks, just me.” Twelve days could technically be considered weeks. “I ain't even damaged a worktable cause everytime I do you declare it a 'fucktable' and we gotta fuckin' christen that shit.” There were worse things than being belted to a table and fucked, but it was a time sink and those worktables weren’t always in convenient locations.
“Don't blow up anything. Including you. Especially not when you're supposed to be helping assemble non-explosive equipment.”
She crossed her arms. He was speaking of her most recent explosion, which had happened yesterday. She still technically had burns from it, but they were hidden under her clothes so no one was fussing at her about it. She somehow imagined he’d be even more insufferable if he had tangible proof of the consequences of her actions. “It could be better,” she said instead, stubbornly.
“Your definition of better is explosive.”
“Nu-uh! That was just a side effect!”
“It was a parachute,” he said, sounding a bit strained.
“If I was allowed proper time t' experiment, like a civilized person, I could absolutely figure out the parachute improvements I'm workin' on with zero explosion risk.” She paused, doing some mental calculations in her head. “...Point five percent explosion risk. ...It’s a work in progress, is what I’m sayin’.”
“Then ask. Tell me what you’re trying to accomplish, and we will find time and work on it in a safe environment.” He sounded exasperated at this point.
“I tried askin’!” she protested. “They won’t let me in at the lab equipment unless you’re there.” They wouldn’t even just let him sign off on it. If it was just a signature, she might have risked asking. “An’ you keep goin’ home at five.” To his girlfriends. “I live here,” she grumbled. “I can’t just go home at five.”
She would kill another half-dozen people, on purpose this time, to be able to leave and go home at five.
“You haven't asked me to stay. I will stay and work on it with you. Obviously.” He ran a hand over his hair, a surefire indicator that he wanted to bend her over something and do something terrible to her out of sheer frustration. “Why didn’t you just ask?”
She blinked in surprise, wind temporarily taken out of her sails. What, just like that? Didn’t he have much better things to do than stay after work for hours so that she could do something interesting instead of being locked up in her room for 10 hours? Why would he do that?
This had potential.
But now she had to explain her “if you don’t ask they can’t give the humiliation of saying no” rationale.
“...I figured you'd say no to fuck yer vegan girlfriends or whatever,” she grumbled, face flushing slightly. She needed a better reason than that, because that sounded petty, even if it was true. “Also you'll probably stop me from doin' anything useful cause you always do that; I keep tellin' you I have to accept a small explosion risk for progress.”
“I will make time to help you with things that are important to you, and walk you through how to safely manage risk,” he said firmly. “It involves distance and blast shields.”
Her first instinct was to say that sounded very time-consuming. But she was learning--slowly--to consider her options before rejecting something outright. It helped that sometimes he gagged with things so she couldn’t talk right away. Because, the problem was she was made of time, after work. Even doing work slowly and kind of boringly was better than doing nothing at all.
“...Okay,” she said finally, arms still crossed. “...But if you get distracted fuckin' me, that don't count for my useful-shit time, ‘cause you said that counted as work!” She wouldn’t let that go any time soon.
“If we're working on your project, I won't punish you for getting distracted, because it's your time and you can do what you want with it,” he said, which didn’t seem to answer her question. He was the one who might get distracted. Maybe. She could, perhaps, have been flattering herself, but she did catch him staring at her sometimes. Especially when she had a limp due to a “work related injury,” which at this point was essentially just a nickname for his goddamn monster cock.
“We can fuck later, when you admit that you want me to fuck you,” he added, completely unnecessary. She flushed bright red and glared at him, seriously considering throwing something fragile at him.
“We was havin' a moment and you rubbed yer dick on it again,” she accused angrily, pointing a furious finger at him.
“You don't even have to wear your uniform, because it's off-hours,” he continued, completely ignoring her. That made her pause, though, her face losing its fury and turning excited.
“Wot? Really?” she exclaimed.
“Yes. All you have to do is ask me these things. I am right here and capable of being asked for things.”
“You keep sayin' no,” she said, pouting. She realized she was pouting, and attempted to switch it into a scowl. “How'm I supposed to know when yer gonna say yes and not just roll yer eyes like I'm bein' stupid...” Not that he had ever actually done that, but it was a persistent fear.
“I say no when you ask for things that are dangerous, or for things you're not allowed to do at work.”
“But that’s like, all of the things.” She wasn’t allowed to do anything fun. That was the entire problem, or at least a very large piece of it.
“It is not. It’s not, for instance, staying after work to help you with a personal project that you think might be helpful. ...Or even just staying after work so you don't have to stay alone in your room.”
She pulled her bottom lip into her mouth and chewed on it. A nervous habit. She was just self-aware enough to know she did it, and be annoyed by the tendency. “...It’s so borin’ in there,” she admitted miserably. “And then I use rats to steal somethin' interestin' and then they get mad at me like it's my fault there are rats everywhere. I mean, it is, but it's also their fault cause they won't let me do anything.”
“They don't let you do anything because you keep using rats to steal, and that does not engender trust,” Gareth chided.
“Why do I gotta be bored for a month so they'll stop bein' assholes!” she whined in response. “Why do they never do the trust thing first?”
“Because you lost your trust privileges before you even got here.”
“That’s not fair, though! They lost their trust privileges too, by kidnappin’ me!”
“I think they thought it would be kinder than killing you,” he said dryly, and she stiffened again. She’d never see this as a mercy, because they were the only reason she was slated to hang to begin with. Trumped up charges. Not exactly a first-time offender, but all her crimes up to that point had been normal homeless-kid stuff... petty theft, loitering, breaking and entering into sealed buildings and the like.
Her ‘yell and throw things’ instinct was acting up again.
She decided to try her words again, since that had a slightly better success ratio. And for some reason, she kept wanting him to understand her, even when he repeatedly didn’t. “That's not how it works, though!” she protested. “You can't just grab someone off the streets, tell them they're yours now and they have to stay put and do whatever with no reward for an undetermined period of time or you'll kill them and then be surprised when they hate you!”
“That's how it works when you commit deadly crimes that establish that you are unfit to safely function in society, and are a danger to normal people.”
Ah, yes. That was the reason she preferred being a hellion to communicating, in general. Using words led to more words, ones that were inevitably hurtful. Hitting all of her buttons like an obnoxious child in a lift. Unfit for society. A danger to normal people, meaning she was anything but.
“I committed one deadly crime and it was an accident that coulda happened to anyone, this is exactly what I mean!” she said, working her way back up to yelling again. “You all treat me like I'm a fuckin' serial killer!”
“It could not have happened to anyone,” Gareth disagreed, leaning back and raising an eyebrow. “You are literally the only person that has ever done what you did.”
She waved her hand, frustrated. “That’s just ‘cause no one else bothers to talk to rats.”
“We can't. That's just you. And I meant more of the dangerous theft of something that almost always explodes. Why did you think it was illegal?”
“It was not supposed to explode! And I stole tons of stuff that never exploded, you just never heard about those ‘cause it worked.”
“Is telling me that you stole huge amounts of things supposed to make it better?” he asked dryly. She paused, considering.
“......Yes,” she said finally. “Because I'm extendin' you trust that you won't be a dick about it. See.” She gestured between the two of them. “Trust exercise.”
“It has been added to the list of why you are dangerous to normal people, who just want to live their lives without worrying they will lose their stuff or explode.” Her scowl deepened. Normal people again. Must be nice to be normal and get protection instead of abuse. She wouldn’t know. “I don't think it's dickish to observe that.”
“I don’t steal from ’normal people’,” she snapped. “I steal from other thieves and also the government.” And occasionally some ultra-rich nobles, but they pretty much counted as government, in her opinion. They had nobility and more rights than everyone else, and got to hobknob and rub elbows--amongst other things, according to rumor--with the king. They also had more money than anyone really needed. “And if you think about it, isn't the government the biggest thief of all,” she added bitterly. She didn’t mean taxes, not really, although she was a bit bitter about that concept when all the government ever did for her was seek as many ways as possible to make it illegal for her to live. And to make it as difficult as possible for her to improve her station, despite her apparently being so useful she was worth kidnapping into forced labor.
“Other thieves will kill you without mercy if they catch you,” he pointed out. “Please don't try to argue for libertarianism with me. I pay my taxes because I enjoy roads.”
She rolled her eyes. It wasn’t libertarianism she argued for, it was anarcho-communism, which he’d know if he ever listened to her. It was a fine distinction, but one that was important to her, primarily because she’d had a lot of time to think about what she’d do differently when she was huddled up in an alleyway, freezing and starving and knowing full well that somewhere, there was someone, a lot of someones, who had seized the power to help her and then refused to.
“Well if all they did with it was roads, we'd be hunky-dory, wouldn't we?” she said sarcastically.
“Societies need more than roads to function,” Gareth pointed out, but she was already working her way up to a rant.
“If yer tryna tell me King McFuckWeed really needs all that shiny shit to be a proper leader, and nobles have more of a right to some shit than the rest of us... I mean, fer fuck’s sake! You can just grab me and fuck me against a table and even if I didn't like it, no one would care!” She knew this, intimately well.
“I would care, and if you were nicer to the other employees they would also care. They probably care anyway. I don't know if you've talked to them about it.” She paused, looking momentarily guilty, glancing down and to the side. “...Have you?”
“...I talked to Smithers about it,” she admitted. He was the boss’ assistant, and it had been fucking hard enough just to get in to see him. She’d actually just had some rats stalk him and then basically jumped him in order to get a word in edgewise. She couldn’t petition for an appointment without, guess what, going through one of her keepers. “But he said if I made a formal complaint, you might get fired.” Not that legal charges would be brought, mind, or that she would get anything in the form of apology, reimbursement for suffering, et cetera. Just that he might get fired. At the very least, he’d be reassigned.
“Yes. Because there are systems in place here to keep you safe if someone is hurting you. I am not supposed to hurt you.” He paused, this apparently being too much of a truth-stretch for even him. “Much,” he edited.
“It wouldn't even do me any good, cause I'd still be stuck here. Because there's no policy for 'well you keep gettin' fucked, sorry, our bad, we'll let you go as an apology,” she grumbled.
“No, but they would get you a new supervisor that won't touch you. Would you like me to not touch you?”
Like it even mattered. “They would get me a new supervisor that wasn't supposed to touch me sexually, an' how am I supposed to know if he'd even stick to that?” She waved her hand, frustrated. “Could be even worse. At least when you do it I li-” She managed to catch herself mid-sentence. She flushed, both embarrassed and angry with herself for the almost-admission.
“I'm pretty sure they'd transfer over Trinh, because she is asexual and also physically incompatible, but please continue,” he said, managing not to look too smugly amused, given they were mostly discussing her life, or lack of it.
“...my point,” she managed. “Is that as you keep pointin' out, my supervisor has the ability to declare me a lost cause and suddenly I'm a firm nod away from the end of the rope. Trinh, whoever the fuck that is, might decide I'm not worth keepin' around ‘cause she doesn't wanna stick her dick in me, and then where am I? Dead that's where.”
“You're allowed to argue your side,” he protested, as if any system with death at one end of it and the power all on one end could be fair and balanced. “If you've been working hard and you can find employees to vouch for you, you can defend yourself. It's only a problem if, hypothetically you've been a huge bitch to everyone and haven't managed to get a single thing done.”
She shouldn’t have to work hard and curry favors to not die, was her point. But she was tired, and frustrated, and sore, and it was just, looking so much easier to go back to ‘harassing people with rats and not expecting them to try and understand her.’ “That’s my point,” she said with a sigh, instead, slumping back on her chair. “No one else’s gonna put up with that.”
“If you just did the bare minimum,” he suggested. “You could get rid of me forever, and never be touched by me again.”
Oh, yeah, that sounded grand. A life full of dullery and boredom without the only thing that bothered to try managerial techniques other than corporal punishment and solitary confinement. She didn’t say that, though, because it sounded too much like a compliment. Instead, she just said, “Dun wanna.”
This was not enough to discourage him, it seemed.
“I think... you like me,” he teased, leaning forward slightly. She flushed angrily.
“I think I hate workin’.”
“I think you like it when I fuck your brains out.”
She flushed darker. She liked when he swore, when he was filthy, because it seemed more right, more like how a person who looked like him should be. Or maybe that was racist. Maybe she also just liked someone who was normally so uptight and stodgy dragging himself down on the base level with the rest of them. It was why it was sort of nice to think of him as someone who could lust after her; it made him more... well, human was the word, but that was definitely racist.
“No,” she said shortly. “Cause that'd be stupid because that's just work and no one would be stupid enough to like someone who only fucked them for work.”
“I told you. If you want me to stay after work, all you have to do is ask. And if you want me to fuck you outside of work, then do your job, and then ask me to stay and fuck you, and I will take you on a picnic so that you and the rats can enjoy the weather while I eat you out somewhere nice.”
She was probably bright crimson at this point, and didn’t even know which part was affecting her the most. The idea that she might ask him to fuck her outside of work, the idea of a picnic outdoors, or the turn of phrase and implication he’d be eating her on the picnic. She stumbled mentally, momentarily at a loss for words. It didn’t happen often.
“W-well, you're at least stayin' after work. So I can do stuff,” she mumbled finally.
“Is that asking? Is that what asking sounds like? I am genuinely asking because I can't tell with you and I won't stay if I'm not wanted.”
She glared, but it was a glare full of distress. “You already agreed!” she exclaimed, voice sounding mildly devastated. If talking around in circles had lost her that smallest, most precious of exceptions, she would never try it again.
“Okay!” he exclaimed, either surprised or exasperated by her hurt. “Okay. I will stay and help you with your exploding parachute. Okay?”
Phew. That was way too close.
She leaned onto the table, missing the last few bites of sandwich she’d chucked at him. They never fed her enough. Her secondary keeper had mentioned something about her caloric intake being calculated by her body mass. She took that to mean, she was fuckin’ small, so she didn’t get much food. The problem was, she’d been malnourished her whole life and was fully capable of eating an entire buffalo if allowed. ...Plus, her dinner had been the first thing to get struck down to punishment minimums. The only reason her lunches were so nice was because the work cafeteria was in charge of those. And even then, they weren’t enough.
“I should emphasize,” she said with a sigh. “S’not supposed to explode. It did that ‘cause I used the wrong gear box. Ideally, it’d let out a small downwards thrust upon opening, in order to minimize the jolt to the user.”
“That sounds like a great idea and I will be happy to help you with it.” She didn’t let out a pleased hop, because she did not do that outside the company of rats and rats only. She kept very strict control over her own body language, which was probably part of why she just glared at everything. “Would you like to help me fix this glider now? Will you let me tell you how I want it done instead of trying to do your own thing?” Like that, for instance. She glared at that. “If you think my way is wrong, then you can explain to me why you think it is wrong.”
She considered. “...Awright,” she said finally, grudgingly. “Can my rat that I know I'm not supposed to have but have anyway watch. His name is Timothy and he likes shiny things.” He was in her skirts, because she had to fucking wear skirts, and they didn’t come with pouches or pockets like her pants or belts.
Gareth eyed her, but then relented. “Yes, as long as he stays in a safe zone and not in or on the glider. He sounds nice,” he added, which struck her as probably being intended to be condescending.
“Okay. He’s pretty well behaved, on account o’ how he already lost a leg goin' where I told him not to.” Because she didn’t just lock rats up when they did stuff she didn’t like. “He's kind of an idiot for shiny things,” she admitted. “I'm makin' him a new leg.” Because just because he was kind of an idiot didn’t mean she shouldn’t try to help.
“...I see,” Gareth said. “Will he want some of this muffin?”
Hell, she wanted some of that muffin. She was still hungry. “You know damn well neither of us will ever say no to a muffin.”
“I made it. It's a cheesy corn muffin, with ham bits.”
She snorted, then giggled. She couldn’t help herself. Then she started laughing more in earnest. Gareth fixed her with a puzzled, mildly pre-offended look. Because if she was laughing, it was at him, not with him.
“Th-that's cause....” she attempted between gigglefits. “You insist on.... puttin' yer meat in everything pfffahahahahaha!”
“And you like it,” he said with a smirk, making her blush but not enough indignation to make her stop laughing. “...But don’t make this weird when I’m giving Timothy a muffin.”
“Pfffft.” She reached down towards the hem of her skirt, and Timothy popped out under the table and climbed onto her hand. She brought him up to the top of the worktable, still chuckling. “Can you even imagine? Your head is like bigger than his entire body, how would that even work.” She was not talking about the head on his shoulders. “Timothy is the only one here safe from yer meat,” she said, still giggling wildly.
“Please just eat the muffin,” he said, somewhat desperately.
“Heheh, awright. C’mere, Tim, try his muffin.” She giggled again, bringing her hand towards Gareth’s so Timothy could inspect the muffin. “He likes it when you moan while eatin’ it,” she advised, grinning.
“If you keep making innuendo toward the rat I will change my mind about staying here,” he said dryly. She was fairly certain he was joking. It was very hard to tell with him.
“Awwwwwww,” she whined. He never let her do anything fun.
“There is one living thing in this workshop that I like to hear moan,” he added, and she flushed a bit more.
“...Rats moanin’ would be creepy anyway,” she admitted.
“Yes. Yes it would.”
There was a moment’s silence as they both watched Timothy, perched on Ren’s fingertips and muching on chunk of muffin in Gareth’s palm.
His hands were huge compared to hers.
She kind of liked them, if she was being perfectly honest, which she hated doing. Wrapped around her neck or tangled into her hair or pushing into her, mouth or cunt or anywhere, really.
“So this vegan dwarflady of yers,” she said idly, watching as Timothy cleaned up the remaining crumbs, climbing briefly onto Gareth’s hand to do so. She kept hers raised, so he would have an escape route if he wanted. “If she’s vegan, how can she stomach yer meat?” Ren asked with a wicked little grin.
“She'll only eat animal products from animals that ask her to. It limits her options.”
“Ohhhhh,” Ren said, nodding. This made perfect sense. “So since you ask her to eat yer products...”
“Yes.”
She laughed again. Ridiculous.
“Awright,” she said with a sigh as Timothy scurried back onto her hand. She set him down on the safest corner of the workbench. She’d be much more careful with someone important nearby, anyway. She cracked her fingers, stretched her back a bit, then tucked her feet underneath the stool and leaned forward on her very soft cushion. “Let's look at this fuckin' glider an' see how bad you fuckwads shitted it up this time.”
“Welcome to Starbucks, what can I get started for you today?”
The words came out of Kelsey’s mouth automatically. She had only been working here for a week, but she was already getting into the swing of things. She was a little proud of herself for that, actually, although she still had to desperately mouth to the other, more experienced baristas when some people rattled off increasingly complicated drink names.
Her headphones remained silent. She waited, thinking whoever was in the drive-thru just needed a moment to think of their order. A few minutes passed. “...Welcome to Starbucks, what can I get started for you today?” she repeated dutifully, assuming they had not heard her. Nothing. It was a slow evening, so she moved to check the outdoor camera feed. There was no car at the drive-thru. Huh. Weird. Why had the chime gone off? Ah, well... Probably... wind, or something. Even though it was weight-sensitive. She shrugged it off and went back to wiping down the counters, piddling away the last hours of her shift.
Bing!
“Welcome to Starbucks, what can I get started for you today?” she asked automatically. No response. With a frown, she checked the screen again. No one.
“Hey, Michael?”
“Yeah?”
“I think something’s wrong with the system, it keeps–”
Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing!
“Jesus!” she swore, pulling the headphones away from her ear. “Loud!”
“What’s going on?”
“The alarm keeps going off like there’s a car in the drive-thru, but there’s no one there,” she complained.
“Ohhh,” Michael said. “Must be Mrs. Taylors.”
“...Excuse me?”
“Hold on, I’ll finish this and show you how to make her drink. It practically requires its own recipe card,” her manager added, rolling his eyes.
“Uh...”
“It's a grande ristretto single shot 4 pumps sugar free peppermint nonfat extra hot no foam light whip stirred soy white mocha,” Michael said, moving to grab a cup. “She’s really particular about it.”
“Um...”
“Alright, first start with the soy, and–”
Kelsey’s protests went ignored as the complex drink order started. It was a hell of a process. She was pretty sure she’d need to practice a few dozen times before she got it down.
“And for the love of god, make sure it’s hot. She wants it practically boiling. Which is a huge pain, because when she doesn’t like it, sometimes she throws it at the barista. So once she takes it, close the window really fast.”
“UH.”
“Don’t worry, she loves me,” Michael said with a grin. “Watch.” He walked up to the still empty drive-thru window, opened it, and set the drink down. “Here’s your drink, Mrs. Taylors! Just the way you like it.”
Right before Kelsey’s eyes, the drink lifted itself from the counter and hovered out the window, and then away. She shoved past Michael, cramming her head out the window to watch it float idly away.
“What... the fuck,” she managed.
Michael shrugged. “Eh. It’s Valesport. You get used to it.”
Challenge Accepted Bridget Corey - Valesport - Evan Timeline, Sex Pollen AU
“Hey, Evan, I wanted to talk to you about yester–”
Bree stopped abruptly after entering Evan’s office, flinging the door open without knocking as she had since the very first time she showed up. Only this time, she was reminded that the office was, in fact, Evan’s place of residence. And as such, he would sometimes be... occupied, in a manner which required a visitor to knock first. Such as leaning back in his desk chair, feet up on the desk, fly unzipped, cock in hand.
He looked surprised for maybe two seconds, which was significantly shorter than Bree, who was quickly beginning the process of turning red from head to toe. Evan regained himself quickly, pulling his feet back off the desk and sitting down in a more normal behind-the-desk position, scooting forward so his legs would be underneath it. It was solid wood, so she couldn’t see, but the zipping of a fly betrayed that he’d tucked his dick back away. He then leaned his arms onto the desk and looked over at Bree, every inch the professor he pretended to be.
“Yes, what can I help you with, Bree?”
The way he addressed her did nothing for her embarrassment; she’d instructed him to “call her Bree” the day before, because his normal “Miss Bridget” had felt far too stuffy for their activities. She glanced away towards one of his many shelves, bright red, rubbing her nose in an attempt to stall for time and look less completely caught off-guard. She’d walked in on him masturbating. He should be off guard. But that was just how fae worked. Really, you’d think after all they’d been up to the entire day before, she would be less embarrassed by the sight of his dick. A lab accident had left both of them, uh, compromised, in the libido department. What followed had been quite literally inevitable. Despite that, however, she’d never thought about him masturbating, of all things. She was kind of astounded he even had to; she’d been under the impressions that fae only got erections when they wanted to.
...
Wait.
Her mortification faded quickly as her face lit up, a wicked little grin forming on her face. She looked back at Evan quickly. His expression hadn’t changed, but he probably could tell just by looking at her that she’d figured it out.
“You’re still under the effects, aren’t you?” she asked, way too gleefully for someone who was implying their friend was still under the effects of an accidental drugging. “You can’t control it!”
“You said you wanted to talk?” Evan prompted, fingers laced on his desk. Her grin broadened.
“It burned hotter for me,” she practically gloated, despite all the things that hotter burn had made her do the day before. “But it’s burning slower for you. You can’t make it go away!”
“Is this really what you wanted to talk about?”
“It is now!” she exclaimed, walking around his desk. He stayed where he was seated, legs–and crotch–under the desk, so she kicked at his chair a bit. “C’mooon, scoot back.”
“I don’t see why I should,” Evan replied, almost petulantly.
“You don’t want me to help?” Bree teased, bordering on mocking. “I probably ‘owe’ you, right?”
“I’m not interested in that as return payment,” Evan said firmly. Bree rolled her eyes.
“Fine then. I’ll just sit right here, on the floor, and we can have a perfectly normal conversation.” She plopped right down, as if sitting on his floor, hidden from the door by his desk, was something absolutely normal to do. Evan looked down at her, then away.
“What did you actually come to talk about?” he asked.
“So, what was your favorite part of yesterday?” Bree interrupted, kicking her legs out to stretch over the wheels of his desk chair, one on either side.
“Miss Bridget,” he sighed, but she continued as if he’d said nothing at all.
“To an objective eye, I think the obvious guess would be when you had me bent over the desk...” She gave it a fond pat, her own enjoyment of Evan’s barely-visible discomfort overwhelming how humiliated she’d normally be to talk about this sort of thing. “Since you seemed soooo enthusiastic about that. But actually, my money’s on when you had me in the armchair, legs pinned down, begging...” Evan was looking anywhere but her. “Because you like me begging, right, Mr. Jackson? You love it when I say please.” She walked light fingers up his thigh. It was rude, by fae standards–they were both supposed to ask before touching. But unlike him, she didn’t have any real consequences for rules she chose to break. “Can you say please, Mr. Jackson?”
“As you well know, the intricacies of favors and the asking and thanking for thereof is a complex and multifaceted–”
“Don’t try to distract me with lectures,” she said, a lazy grin on her face. It normally worked, but this time she knew what he was doing. He wasn’t on top of his game right now, which pleased her immensely. Fae were almost never off-balance, or at the very least never showed it. “You told me it worked different for sex. Not to worry about all the pleading, that I could say please as much as I wanted to. And you wouldn’t have told me that if you didn’t want me to beg.” Her wandering fingers had turned into a hand on his leg, running along his thigh. He hadn’t told her to stop. “You only tell me the things you need me to know, right? But then you regret it, because I can extrapolate.”
“That’s not true at all,” Evan said, voice tense. He still wasn’t looking at her.
“Which part?” Bree asked, shifting her legs back underneath her, hand still on his thigh. “That you regret it? Maybe you can’t regret it, because you like seeing me extrapolate? Sometimes I wonder,” her voice gained a curious sort of lilt as she paused briefly in her torment to voice something she’d been thinking about a lot lately. “What it is you like about me. Maybe you like seeing me think? You certainly come to the library to watch me work enough.” She put her other hand on his other leg, leaning forward to do it. Evan let out a half-formed noise of protest. “Well, here’s what I’ve extrapolated, Mr. Jackson. If I can beg you to fuck me, and it doesn’t count...” She pushed him back away from the desk, enough that she could spin his chair so that he was facing her. There was a very telling bulge, extremely visible even in his stupid baggy cargo shorts. “That means you can beg me, and it doesn’t count.”
She leaned forward, sliding herself between his legs, running her hands along his hips. “Well?” she asked cheerfully. “Do you want to play a game, Mr. ‘Good Neighbor’?”
“I think you’re overlooking something,” Evan said, his eyes finally dropping to hers. She felt a little flush of heat despite the fact she was ostensibly the one who was seducing HIM this time. He could look attractive when he wanted to; she had yet to figure out how he did it. Fae shenanigans, probably.
“Oh?” she said, keeping her voice cocky despite the flush rising in her cheeks again.
He reached down and ran a finger under her chin, from her throat to the very tip, then tilted her head up a little more before running a thumb over her bottom lip. Her slight flush turned crimson. “You begged because you needed to feel me. Needed release, needed relief. I’m not convinced you have the capability to make me beg for the same.”
Arousal mixed with embarrassment mixed with indignation, all of which made Bree turn ever redder. She pulled his thumb into her mouth, briefly sucking on the tip, running her tongue against it. He tasted of strange herbs, bitter and green. Then she reached up to push his hand away from her face. “Challenge accepted,” she said, a little smirk returning to her lips.
Lighthearted Emma - CAF Universe - NSFW, non-canon (proly)
Emma, as it turned out, was not a great person.
Well, she didn’t think anyone who’d actually known her–a slim few–had ever suspected her of such a thing, but still. Here she was, trying something different, something new. Another tactic, maybe one a little gentler. And instead of managing that, she’d wound up fucking the Commander General of the CAF.
Literally, she was pretty sure, it was impossible for her to sleep with the enemy any more literally than this.
But oh, the way he kissed her against the wall, and ah, the way he lifted her up, like she was a featherweight. The way his stubble tickled her neck. The way it made her laugh, a genuine sort of sound she didn’t hear out of herself often.
She’d already investigated him. It was in the course of that this whole mess had started, in fact. She knew he wasn’t corrupt, wasn’t what she was here for. So he didn’t have to be the enemy, right? He wasn’t human. He’d been responsible for the sudden onset diversification of the CAF. He was probably indirectly responsible for her even being hired in the first place–ah, no, she didn’t like to think about that. Didn’t like to think about all the little lies, direct and indirect, the knife she held behind his back and tried not to need to stab him with. Not now, not when he was filling her, hands on her ass bouncing her hips against his. Later, later, she could keep putting off considering ethical ramifications later, when he wasn’t running teeth along the length of her ear.
Veridian men, as it turned out, knew how to handle ears. She liked the little reminders that he wasn’t the white human male her mind wanted to classify him as the first time she saw him. Different, different, he could be different, and maybe she could be different, and she was thinking too much again. He could tell, something about the way her face moved. He stilled, pulling back slightly to look at her better.
“Are you alright?”
She was trying to be alright. It would be easier if he didn’t have to look at her with that nervous frown, gold eyes glinting in the darkness.
“I’m fine,” she gasped out. “I’m good.” Two lies for the price of one: she’d never been fine and she’d never be good.
“Are you sure–”
Frustrated, more with herself than him, she gripped his shoulders and used them as leverage to grind herself against him, at the same time leaning forward to mute his protests with a kiss, hot and heavy and maybe more aggressive than she should. She was supposed to be meeker, here. “It’s fine,” she lied. “Keep going. Please.”
Concern warred with hunger in his eyes. She pressed kisses up his jawline, a huff of breath into his ear when she was rewarded with a thrust. Hunger was winning; good. He shouldn’t be concerned about her. No more than she should be concerned about him. She wrapped her arms around him, tucking her neck over his shoulder so that she didn’t have to keep looking at his eyes while he fucked her. Not until she got her head back on straight.
Unprofessional Emma - CAF Universe - NSFW, non-canon (proly)
“This is intensely unprofessional,” hissed Commander General Darcy Weatherfare of the Covenant of Allied Forces. He was speaking to the woman under his desk. She was his employee. She was his employee’s employee. It was ludicrous, really, how far down the chain she was in comparison. That was one reason why she shouldn’t have her mouth wrapped around his dick, one of dozens. None of them seemed to be stopping either of them.
She pulled back briefly, blue-green eyes glinting mischievously up from between his legs. “Are you telling me to stop?”
“You should,” he pointed out.
“You could just give me the order,” she teased, then ran her tongue along the underside of his cock, from base to tip. His hands spasmed, clenching against the armrests of his desk chair.
“I shouldn’t have to,” he pouted, and Emma smirked. He just didn’t want to. He liked to keep the lines between “Commander General Weatherfare and Agent Gagnon” and “Darcy and Emma” nice and thick. It was impossible, particularly when she used her lunch break for this.
“What can I say,” she murmured, giving his rigid length a few strokes, watching the way his jaw tensed. “I’ve got a shit personality for military work.” She lowered her mouth back onto him, and he let out a long breath through his nose, but said nothing in response.
She really shouldn’t be pushing him this much. She suspected latent guilt was the only reason he let her get away with it. Perhaps it was a relief to him when she took control, because that meant he wasn’t abusing his. Of course, she had her own list of things she was abusing, such as his trust, but that was neither here nor there. This was a harmless sort of fun, one that she couldn’t seem to resist. Give Emma a collected, professional, military man, and her instinct was always to find his breaking point. She’d just done it a way they could both enjoy, this time.
“Commander General?” a voice sounded at the same time the door swung open. Emma froze, her mouth halfway down Darcy’s cock. She knew that voice.
“Agent Bell,” Commander General Weatherfare said. He didn’t glance down at Emma as she glanced up at him. Of course not. That would be a disaster. “It’s your lunch hour; what are you doing here?”
“Well, as much as I’d love to be enjoying lunch right now, you did say to report to you the second I had anything on the Sorenson case, sir,” Renton Bell replied, more sass than Emma ever tried to get away with even off the clock.
Hmm.
...It was just Renton.
Emma resumed movement, quietly, bobbing her head up and down over Darcy’s shaft, eyes up to watch his expression for any change. She could see the way his jaw tensed, but little else to betray what she was up to.
“Ah. Yes. Of course. Thank you.”
“So, it turns out the Sorenson name was actually just being used as a cover,” Renton began, and Emma heard the shuffling of papers as he set something down on Darcy’s desk. “And actually–”
“It’s all in the report, yes?” Darcy said, voice a little tense, but only just. “I’ll read it over.”
There was a pause. “Are you, uh... busy, sir?”
“I’m always busy, Agent Bell.”
Emma pushed her lips down to the base of his cock, testing herself for how long she could hold it as her throat spasmed desperately around the head of his cock. The Commander General made an aborted little noise that he covered by clearing his throat. Were his cheeks a little red? It was hard for Emma to tell from where she was. But she could feel him twitching in her mouth.
“...Well, if you’re very busy, sir, I wouldn’t want to bother you,” Renton drawled, and she suspected that he suspected. Suspected something, probably not her, specifically. He was a clever man, but she wasn’t the sort of person to do this. Until now, apparently.
“And yet here you are,” Darcy said, a little hoarse, as Emma pulled off lest she risk him coming right then and there. She ran her tongue lightly along his length, teasing. Seeing how much she could get away with tormenting when he really couldn’t stop her.
“Alright, alright, I can take a hint,” Renton said, voice full of fake hurt. “And after I burned my lunch break for you! Goodness!” With a fake little huff, he walked out of the room. Emma listened to his footsteps, and then to the door closing. The very second it snapped shut, Darcy’s hand darted under the desk, tangled in her hair. Shoved her back down on his cock, thrust into her mouth. She let out a surprised little “merf” sound, but he just gripped harder, thrust faster, and she was too busy enjoying it to be surprised or indignant.
He came down her throat with a quiet, barely audible groan. Her face was flushed as she watched him, his head leaning back against his desk chair, teeth clenched. He held her down onto him until he was finished, then released her hair with a sigh. She pulled off him, face hot, coughing quietly.
“I cannot believe you,” he said finally, sounding more tired than angry, to her relief.
“Get to know me,” she said with a bit of a smile, giving the tip of his no doubt over-sensitive cock a little lick, which made him jump a bit. “I’m full of surprises.”