Most but not all are 100 words, exactly. A couple are mini-vignettes. Some are adult, but I've quit filtering adult from non with my Wraeththu. Besides, they're hermaphrodites. ;) Many of these were prompt-driven and requests from friends.
Title: Behind the curtain
Characters: Velaxis, Arahal
"You beckoned?"
Arahal looked up from a sheath of papers, smiling at Velaxis.
"As a matter of fact, I did. Please, come in."
Velaxis didn't so much walk as glide from the entrance to Arahal's pavilion, fancying himself as a platinum-feathered swan. He sank gracefully into a chair opposite Arahal, an eyebrow raised in question.
"What can I do for you?"
A whisper of embarrassment flitted across Arahal's features and he took a deep breath, exhaling with purpose.
"Working with Swift the Varr has been draining. I haven't taken exercise like I should, and I've been asked to keep my focus solely on his caste training."
Velaxis looked on him with pity. "No aruna for you either, then?"
Arahal shook his head in resignation.
"That's a shame," Velaxis said. "I have some new gold clamps I was so wanting to see on you. The next best thing, then?" He was gratified to see a faint sheepish smile settle on Arahal's face.
"If you wouldn't mind, tiahaar."
"It would be my pleasure," Velaxis murmured with a voice like rich cream.
It was one of the privileges of being whom and what he was, the role he played, the pleasures he extended. After pouring Arahal some wine, Velaxis sauntered over to Arahal's temporary bureau, austere and forbidding. He retrieved the items he required and took up his place at Arahal's feet, still clad in his omnipresent black leather boots. As he removed them and rubbed oil into his finely-boned arches, Velaxis contemplated being the only member of the Hegemony and its staff to actually see the naked skin of Arahal's feet and know particular secrets behind the commanding officer's leather and enigmatic personality.
With a smile hidden by his long hair, Velaxis set to work, giving Arahal a pedicure.
Heartofoshun requested a Vaysh vignette immediately before or after inception. It became longer than a drabble, unsurprisingly.
Title: Into the Fire
Characters: Vaysh, OCs
"Police! Fuck! Estovan, come on, come on!"
Estovan thought Clive had pulled his arm out of his socket and he yelped in pain as his best friend refused to let go.
"I'm coming!"
At least he was in a minimum of clothes, all black, and it was night— he ran behind Clive, out of the club filled with the hot musk of testosterone, lust and danger, and wondered if tonight would be the one in which he got shot in the back. Thankfully Clive was an expert in navigating the filth-strewn alleyways, and staying out of known gang territory. After what seemed like hours, Estovan and Clive leaned against a brick wall, breathing harshly. Estovan wiped some of his sweaty hair out of his face, feeling his skin prickle. He felt he was being watched.
"Think we lost them?" he said in a low voice.
Clive nodded his response, still panting. "I don't know why they keep terrorizing us," he said, venom in his tone. "Being queer isn't against the law. Yet…"
His voice trailed off and Estovan was about to ask him what was wrong, but he knew. One after another, beings dropped silently to the ground from broken windows, gleaming teeth inexorably falling from a rotting mouth. Clive had bolted, but Estovan stood there: mute, not breathing, his stomach cramping with fear. The six were beautiful, incongruous apparitions, looking favorably at him.
When Estovan's lungs began to burn he gasped, vision clearing as he took deep lungfuls of rank air.
"You're—" he rasped, and tried again. "You're?"
One approached him. Silver chains hung on his gleaming tea-colored skin and he gazed at Estovan through almond shaped eyes. "We're what you're going to become," he said.
Estovan swallowed, coughed, and tried swallowing again.
"Have some of this."
One of the others, pale with a spiked fall of black hair gave him a bottle of wine. Estovan drank.
"Wraeththu. It's what we are. Humankind is dying, you'd have to be blind not to see it," the cat-like one murmured. "We're liberated. Libertines. There's some pain in the change, but you'll survive."
Estovan felt bile in his throat, the fermented liquid threatening its return. What future did he really have? Stealing? Living on the streets, getting men to buy his drinks in clubs, trying to keep from getting killed?
His hands shook. The pantherine gazed longingly at him, and took his trembling hand, raised it to his lips and kissed it. "You need a new name. We'll incept you now. Three days and it's over."
Estovan nodded, wondering at how he'd not become a shrieking pile of body parts. "I'm Estovan."
An elfin youth tugged on the almond-eyed creature. "How about Van?"
Shuddering, Estovan shook his head. He wiped at tears that had at last formed in his eyes and now streamed down his cheeks. He was scared to death.
"Vaysh. Yes. Vaysh it is. You come with us, now." That was the one who'd first spoken.
Estovan/Vaysh let out an explosive, laughing sob. "How much pain?" he asked, letting almond eyes drape an arm around his waist and guide him down the alley. Vaysh's legs had quit responding to his mind's commands.
"We have drugs that will help."
Vaysh nodded, a numb sense of inevitability steadying him, somehow. "You're armed?"
The elfin youth grinned menacingly. "Oh yes. But we're leaving this hellhole and going out of the city. We'll look out for you."
When they took out the knife, Vaysh bit the inside of his cheek to hold in his scream. Panic battered at his chest.
"I shouldn't do this yet, but hell." The feline beauty kissed him as the cut was made. Vaysh feasted on his lips, and saw leaping flames and tasted copper. Dazed, teeth chattering and vaguely aroused, Vaysh looked at his arm. One of the Wraeththu tried to hand him a cigarette, but he couldn't grasp it. He leaned over and licked the blood off of the creature's forearm. Exhausted, he slumped against his rescuer, or executioner, clutching to him like a drowning man.
"We've got you," he whispered into Vaysh's ear. "Just survive your althaia. You're too gorgeous not to."
With a gurgled mewl, Vaysh marveled that the hand basket he seemed to be in was full of lithe men.
"Flattery will get you everywhere," he said, and then, "Oh fuck," just before he threw up.
Title: The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game
Pairing: Cal/Cobweb
They circled each other like panthers: sleek, fierce, deadly.
"I know you're curious," Cal said, his voice a sultry wind on a summer's night.
"You know nothing," Cobweb hissed, his hair taking on a mind of its own due to static in the air.
"So Terzian's a Varr." Cal stopped prowling, grabbed one of Cobweb's hands and pressed it, hard, against the relative flat of his groin. "I was Uigenna. Run with a real wolf. Just once." He flicked out his tongue, ran it across the bottom of his top teeth.
Cobweb glared, eyes hard as diamonds. Dawning comprehension softened his expression from granite to sandstone; his long fingers probed along the leather, still finding him soume. Cal rocked sinuously, getting off on Cobweb's shock as much as the stimulation.
"I may have to gag you first," Cobweb said in a voice roughened by his desire. "You want to talk too much."
"But then you wouldn't get to taste this," Cal murmured, claiming Cobweb's mouth with a searing kiss.
Title: The Diviner
Pairing: Cal/Swift
I'd only just finished brushing down my horse and was walking to the back of the stable when I felt the air shift. I didn't even have time to turn around when I heard the whip crack, snapping mere inches from my shoulder blade.
"Fuck!"
I whipped around — perhaps not the smartest thing to do, but it was instinct — and snarled at Cal. Of course it was Cal, scaring the horses and causing my pulse to race.
"What the…?"
My words turned metallic on my tongue. Sinuously and with a surprisingly strong arm he lashed out again, the whip cracking near my shoes. He continued to advance. I stood my ground, knowing where this was headed. We were barbarous with each other, had been ever since my father and his army had gone. Unbridled lust was our feast and we gorged on it.
"Oh Swift, sweet Swift," Cal said disingenuously, rubbing his half-naked body against mine, walking me back against the wall and crashing his pelvis against mine with a jolt.
"Dangerous, unpredictable, insatiable—"
"Shut up," he drawled, dropping the whip and beginning to gnaw tenderly on my earlobe. "Flattery will get you everywhere."
Title: Untitled
Request: This is a birthday drabble gift for Rainwish, who loves Cobweb.
Nohar else notes this; it's not on any calendar that Forever would mark, not that there are any calendars in Forever. But Cobweb notes it. His son, the impossible; his Swift of limb and sprightly spirit and evidence that Terzian was once fiercely alive in his desire for Cobweb, that he holds to his heart, flighty within the cage of his chest.
"What's this?" Swift asks as he drags two fingers through the icing. He sucks on them, the sugar smearing against lips which were never human. A candle spears it; ludicrous, necessary.
"It's a birthday cake, beloved," Cobweb murmurs.
Title: The Cusp of Fulfillment
Pairing: Ithiel/Gahrazel
This is a gap-filler set directly after a tiny scene in Bewitchments when Gahrazel and Swift decide to get drunk and Swift goes to talk to Cal:
- "What? Gahrazel snorted. "Tomorrow we have no sheh, tomorrow we are sensible and shy. Do it now!" Spurred on by a
tide of drunken bravery, I cried, "Alright, I will!" and rolled onto the floor. Leaving Gahrazel giggling helplessly on the bed, I
went to look for Cal.
"Who gave you sheh?" Ithiel asked, his lips quirked.
"Swift." He paused, heart pounding. "Give me a kiss?"
Ithiel seemed to struggle, then relented. Sun-dappled cedar filled Gahrazel's senses; Ithiel's desires were a hushed, patient forest.
"Soon," Ithiel promised.
Title: Wanting
Pairing: Vaysh/Panthera
Absolutely unacceptable.
Vaysh's own hand is vindictive; he shoves the ouana-lim facsimile into his soume-lam, again and again. It's far larger than that of the har he imagines; being filled with a forbidden, outsized organ seems so human, so passé…
He clenches his inner muscles, swears at his past with the language of his boyhood, his youth; monosyllables.
"Just fuck me," he whispers, sandpaper on the pristine air of Phaonica.
Forbidden, answers him, by sheer rebellion.
"Fuck you, too," he gasps, riding the imitation, and groaning when the inspiration strides into the room.
"You're crass," Panthera says, shaking his head.
Title: Terra Incognita
Pairing: Vaysh/Velaxis
"This," Vaysh hissed, "is not at all acceptable. We're on a public beach, anyhar could see," he managed before his impromptu dance partner twirled him out, then in on the strand.
"I'd like that," Velaxis purred, canting his hips before dipping Vaysh into an indecent backbend and then shunting him toward his torso. "And you love it. Let them talk. Their imaginations would combust if faced with what we actually do."
Vaysh stood rigidly, white-knuckled fingers grasping Velaxis' hands. "What are we doing?"
Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Velaxis pondered, saw truth, tread softly.
"I'm walking down the path of your soul."
This drabble follows directly from Pell's comments at the end of chapter thirty of The Fulfillments of Fate and Desire, and Cal's so astute observation afterward:
- "Pick the glass from my skin first, Cal. I may be immortal, but not impervious to pain.
Here I am; yours. I always have been. Want to come home now?"
There were no shooting stars, no huge explosions. We didn't even know if we were truly in love as we'd once thought; only time would tell us that.
Pairing: Cal/Pell
Strangely soft fingers picked at the glass embedded in Pellaz's skin; it wasn't the calloused flesh he'd loved and then half-remembered, half-forced away from memory. This Cal burned with authoritative humility; ever a contradiction, but even to Pell's stunned mind, Cal was no longer at odds. Any witty reparte had been ground to pungent cinnamon on his tongue. Thirty years — thirty years — they were old lovers, clad in new skin.
Pell couldn't wait, and yet, he had forever. He eased onto his back, cautiously feeling for shards, his body yearning for completion, for the comforting, beloved physique.
Nodding, Cal descended.
Title: Incongruous
Request: Rue gets to know Cal once he arrives in Phaonica. No real pairing. Rue's POV.
Gypsy, interloper, no-good nightmarish devil.
* * * * *
Velaxis' head tilted; gracefully he'd sucked in his own finger and was making a grating, vaguely musical noise on his wineglass as he circled the rim.
Just as Rue was going to say something, Velaxis beat him to it.
"I don't trust him, either."
* * * * *
Evil, selfish…
* * * * *
Violet eyes ensnared him; there was no pretense, only solidarity. Caeru felt ice frisson down his spine.
* * * * *
Don't want.
* * * * *
"I belong to you both."
Title: Patrimony
Request: Ponclast
In Bewitchments, after Gahrazel and Swift get drunk and they go to talk with Cal, while there in Cal's room, Swift says this:
-
"Cal thinks we are monsters," I remarked to Gahrazel.
"My father thinks that too," he replied. "He often called me a little monster."
"Varrish brats," Cal said good-naturedly.
"All right, little monster. I'm sending you to Terzian. South. He has a son, too; you'll be better off there."
Gahrazel glared angrily at him, lips twitching.
"Yes, father," he spat.
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