Who has two thumbs and has been crawling out of the depths of illness back into the world of streaming? This corg! It's been an arduous journey and I'll be a bit less eloquent as I wade back in following my MS relapse (boo aphasia!), but here I am with stream 2 of my return! www.twitch.tv/icywebs
I'll be playing Chrono Trigger for some alternate endings today and just vibing I think :)
The raffle prize for a winner from this year's #FFxivWrite2023 !! Big thanks to @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast for hosting the event! I had so much fun drawing this cat boy #FFxivWritePrizes
"Are your nostrils photodisinfected? Is your workplace outfitted with the best air purifiers and Far UV lights on the market? Have your friends and coworkers been PCR tested today? Do you have a driver who wears a mask around you, a watch on your wrist that knows you’re sick before you feel anything, a trained dog to sniff the crowd of people you’re about to join? Are your kids in private schools with upgraded ventilation systems? Do you have access to the best doctors and plenty of paid sick leave? No, of course not. So I have to ask: why have you ditched your mask?"
They are doing this because Biden and the democrats PASSED A LAW capping insulin at $35. This isn't voluntary out of the goodness of their hearts. Democrats need to start being loud about their accomplishments on behalf of the American people.
Now that you got assigned your pocket healer, remember two things:
-MITIGATIONS (aka any shields for yourself and party, and debuffs on enemies- and use them wise, not all at once)
-use AOEs on packs to keep aggro from them all and save your lovely party's butts
As someone who’s reported alt-right harassment and rhetoric on various social media sites and been told “there’s nothing here that violates our TOS,” seeing what RPGnet is doing is a welcome breath of fresh air.
this feels like if all of humanity were to reset and humans had forgotten how everything worked and had to teach each other what things were. this is the Wall turorial
Today went well overall. Lots of great conversations took place alongside some... very silly ones lmao.
Here are some highlights from this morning’s lesson:
Me: *removes the wooden dicks from my bag and slaps them on the table*
Students collectively: o_O
That one student: nice
—
Me: *demonstrating how to put on a condom*
Also me: *puts it on wrong the first time, even though I practiced twice beforehand* So everyone, here we see what not to do. Let’s try that again
—
Me: *finished demonstration, holding a sheathed wooden dick* so what questions do we have about condoms before I unleash you all to practice on the models?
Student: *raises hand* yeah, I’m wondering how you’re feeling about your life choices up until this point?
Me: o-o
—
Student 1: *raises hand* miss, why are the condoms so... slimy?
Me: thats lubricant, it helps get rid of friction that might cause discomfort during intercourse.
Student 2: *raises hand* can you use lube on a slip and slide?
Me: *genuinely considering the possibility*
—
**Edit for clarification: we’d previously been discussing the importance of condoms that fit, and issues that arise when condoms are too big or too small. The below scene is NOT me trying to tell students that one size all fits all. We both know that’s not true—make sure you’re wearing the right size condom folks.**
*during a conversation about excuses people have heard for not wearing condoms*
Student 1: I had a guy tell me he was too big to fit in a condom
Me: *opens a condom, puts entire forearm inside and pulls it up to my elbow* here’s why that’s not true
Student 2: I once saw a video of somebody that put an entire watermelon in a condom before, so unless that dude’s got a watermelon shlong, that’s cap.
Me: *slowly losing composure behind my mask* you have the right idea, but let’s refrain from using the word ‘shlong’ in class, please.
—
Me: what are some ideas of things we can say to people who try to pressure you into having unprotected sex?
Student 1: tell them you don’t want their penis cooties!!
Student 2: penis cooties? Pretty sure that’s just herpes
Me, internally: like... you’re not wrong
—
Me: alright everyone, time to return the wooden models up front. Remove the condoms by firmly grasping the base of the model and sliding it off. Don’t forget to throw it away please!
Student 1: FIRMLY GRASP IT
Student 2: idk if I can return it now, miss. I’ve become attached to mine(the wooden dick)
Student 3: yeah, most men are
Me: *trying to keep a straight face*
—
Student 1: miss, why are the wooden dicks so shiny when you take the condom off
Me: oh, that’s just the lubricant from the condom.
Student 2: so you know you put the condom on right if your dick is shiny after?
Student 3: yeah! If your dick is shiny, you’re doing it right
Me: *trying to keep my composure pt. 36716159* uh, yeah that’s not necessarily the case. You see, these models are wooden. Penises are not.
Student 3: then why is it called morning wood?
Me: *internally self destructs*
—
Me: *casually wiping off the lube from wooden dicks w/ a paper towel before returning them to my bag* so what questions do we have about the use of contraception?
Student: miss can you please not make eye contact with us while you do that?
If you stuck it out with me, thank you. Please, remember that reblogs are sometimes the only way for my writing to get out there - I tried Blazing my Marcus and Aire story and it was rejected.
As always, if you have the time, I'd love to know if you liked it. If you hated it. If you want to spare me a few moments, I'd love the questions below answered.
Favorite Character.
Favorite scene/moment.
Least Favorite Character - either because they were boring, or a Character you love to hate.
Alyss ran out of the chamber, and then came to a dead halt when he realized it was dark and cold and quiet everywhere. The night breeze was a hushed whisper through the streets of the Refuge. Here and there, guards armed with night-time equipment were flashes of motion in the starlight-touched dark. There were more dark windows than those marked by golden light, and for the first time since he'd been brought to the Refuge, Alyss was free to go and do whatever he wanted, answering to no one but himself.
He hurried along. He remembered little of his life in the Refuge, it had been a nondescript time of coming and going between Michaela's ward and his lessons. His parents kept no home in the angelic citadel, there had been no retainers, no staff, no friends or guides other than his teachers, and Alyss had been a shy creature. He'd never roamed. Which meant he had a vague idea of where Raphael's compound was, but it was exactly that: vague.
He bounced impatiently on his feet. His vampire was there! Close enough to touch, to kiss, if only Alyss could find him. "He's probably warm, too," he muttered, the light cloak he'd been given not doing much against the cold at that altitude. "Agh!"
"Are you alright?"
Alyss turned and immediately jerked away in instinctive caution. He could see nothing of the angel speaking to him except he was huge, built like someone who swung small trees around as weapons. "I... think I'm lost," he admitted sheepishly.
"Lost," the angel repeated, his voice calm and even and only a little unimpressed. "In the Refuge."
"I never really left Michaela's ward when I was growing up," Alyss rushed to say. "I know, I know, curiosity and all that. I just didn't feel the drive, it was home for my lessons and to the library for my lessons, back and forth and back again and that was fine, I didn't mind, I didn't care, but ever since I got here I've only been coming and going between my cell and the Council Chamber -"
"You're Alyss."
"Um." Alyss ran out of words. "Oh, it's so strange to have people I don't know know me. Well, I've always not known them, but. Yes, that's me, thank you. Pleasure to meet you. Do you know where Raphael's ward is?"
The angel examined him in perfect silence and perfect stillness for a long moment before he pointed.
"Thank you!" Alyss hurried away, sparing a moment to think that the Refuge had, perhaps, been filled with nicer, more helpful people since he'd left it.
He found the guards at the entrance to the compound, who confirmed for him that he was at the right place, and were decent enough to try and hide their amusement at his relief. One of them offered to find him a guide to Kliman's designated quarters; Raphael had not designed his compound to be a maze for the sake of defense, as some of the other Archangels did, but centuries of growth can make any place into a labyrinth. Alyss grudgingly accepted the delay while she called for help; he'd already been found lost by one angel, it'd be even more embarrassing if it happened again inside the ward of the very Archangel he was meant to swear allegiance to. While he waited he wondered if anyone would let him have a computer; he needed to get in touch with Evie, he had to start rebuilding the pipeline intranet. There was so much work to do.
A young guard found him, reminding him vaguely of Rook with the sort of chiseled build that only hours of daily flight and combat practice could put on someone. He had dappled brown wings with hints of blue, and he had the same direct manner as the angel of Connecticut. As they walked in the silence and the dark, Alyss had to ask. "Do you know Rook?"
"Only by name," the angel replied. "He runs his domain well, and Kliman trusts him."
As if those were the only things that mattered. "You remind me of him. In a good way," Alyss hurried to add.
"There's a bad way?" The angel gave him a puzzled look.
Alyss, feeling heat creep over his face, hurried on. He could see lights in one set of windows up ahead and he made a beeline for them.
A hand caught the back of his cloak and yanked him to a stop, then behind one of those tawny wings. A choked, surprised squawk escaped him.
"The door shouldn't be open," the guard said, his hand on his sword. He touched the comm-bud on his ear. "Milia," he called out into the line, "something's not - Alyss!"
It was too late. Alyss had darted around that wing and sprinted into the apartment, panic making him blind to any potential danger. "Jean! Jean, Kliman, Lilah! " He dashed through a small open room that seemed to be a combination kitchen and dining area, and charged into the main sitting area. His heart went to pieces in his chest. Lilah had upended a chair when she'd fallen, and she was so terrifyingly still that Alyss couldn't bear to even glance in her direction more than the once. Kliman had crashed into a small table; the tea service on it had spilled on its tray, but it had not fallen. The angel was on her side, one wing crumpled under her body, the other twitching feebly.
"Kliman!" Alyss skid to his knees before the angel, dragged her into her lap just enough to see that she was conscious, staring at him, but unable to move or respond. Her chest worked as if every breath were a fight. "Call the healers!" he shouted at the angel outside.
Kliman croaked something unintelligible, her eyes rolling like a cornered animal's. "You'll be fine, you'll be fine," Alyss didn't have a single, solitary idea on how to reassure people, simply because his idea of reassurance was to pinpoint a problem and fix it. He didn't even know what was wrong with the older angel, let alone how to fix it. "You will! You have to be, I have the best news to give you. The healers will be here any mom -"
"Nt...." The old angel gritted her teeth until they squeaked, and then gritted them some more, until the muscles along the fine porcelain lines of her face were twitching visibly. It was the first conscious reaction she'd been able to get out of her body since the attack, and she would have cheered for it if she'd been able to. "H-rrieh. Nghr!"
"I don't understand you, I'm sorry!"
Small wonder, Kliman thought. She could hardly understand herself. She could get the fricatives out, but not the plosives. Whatever they'd been dosed with, the muscles that saw the most use were recovering first; that meant her tongue, but not her lips. She chewed furiously, until she felt drool threaten to drown her, but Alyss moved her on her side. "Lyss!"
"Alyss, yes, that's me, I'm here, I'm -" Kliman's hand shot out, grabbed the cloak and dragged him close. The young angel, instinctively trying to counterbalance, threw open his tattered wings and yelped in pain.
But then he was nearly nose to nose with the old angel, who was breathing in ragged little snorts. "Anh. Gree." Kliman put out each sound with utmost care, and then added a word that froze all of Alyss to his core. "Moss. Nee." She shoved him away. "Go!"
"Oh, no. No, no. Nonono. They were watching him, they were supposed to -" What could, should and hadn't happened wasn't going to help him. Alyss shook his head sharply. "Which way?" he asked of Kliman.
Her eyes answered him, and he sprinted out through the open door. There were shouts everywhere, voices calling out in the dark. Alyss rather figured the communications he wasn't hearing were even louder and busier. He dismissed them all, fell within himself, put a hand to his chest and curled it into a fist as if he were strangling his own runaway emotions. Jean needed him, and that meant Alyss needed the clarity of his mind as never before.
So. Moissani had outright kidnapped the vampire, attacking within the Refuge. The angel had to know his life would be forfeit if he were caught; he would have made plans not to be.
Alyss looked up; the night sky was full of wings.
Flying out was almost completely guaranteed to fail. Alyss ran a quick mental calculation, but every time he ran against the same inescapable truth: Moissani would have needed a small army of his own to fend off the Refuge's defenders. He rushed over to look down at the gorges and boulder-choked gullies below. The angelic citadel was meant to be impregnable from the ground; there was a single access point, one road, and it didn't reach all the way to the Citadel. Alyss had been exhausted at the time, in too much pain to realize it at the time, but while he couldn't remember it clearly, he did know his mind was telling him he'd arrived to the Refuge as any other angel would. That meant he'd been flown in.
That meant Jean would have to be flown out at some point. He looked up again.
A new variable added itself to the equation in his head: distance. The further Moissani could get away from the Refuge, the less likely he'd be discovered. In the dark, the angel's wings would make him basically invisible if he were on the ground. All he'd have to do otherwise is secure an insulated blanket, and he'd be invisible to heat-sensing tech. Did the guards have low-light tech? Would Moissani have accounted for it?
Alyss pursed his mouth. No. This was a gambit of desperation, a plan shaped on the fly, a contingency for a contingency.
He ran until he found a trio of angels that nearly ran him down, everyone coming to a startled halt. Alyss recovered first. "I need you to take me down to the gorge," he told them without preamble.
They blinked at him. "We d-"
"The angel who attacked Kliman kidnapped a vampire. She was never the target, he was. Moissani can't get him out by flying, that goes right into the negatives. He's walking. I need you to take me down there, now, before he gets any further away, because the greater the distance value the higher the escape possibility!" When they blinked at him without understanding, Alyss felt as if he were a youngling again, trying to learn to speak a language that had nothing to do with what went on in his head.
"I'll take him." A woman's voice said, and they all turned around. Alyss felt strong arms wrap around him.
“Wait!” Alyss cried out and pointed. “Can I have those, please?”
The angels stared down at themselves, as if they’d outright forgotten the part of their equipment Alyss was pointing at. One of them, more sensible than the others, yanked his baton out of his belt and stole one from his nearest companion, handing them over. “You’ll have short-range communication in the gorge, but nothing else,” he told both Alyss and his helper.
Before the young angel knew what had happened he was airborne in a powerful vertical take-off. "Do you know where?" she asked against his ear. Her voice seemed familiar, but Alyss had met so many people during the past few days that he could have been in an Archangel's arms and he wouldn't have known any better.
"Not too far," he told her. "The walls offer a decoy factor to the detection potential percentage and offset -"
"So close to the walls?" She cut him off, but there was laughter in her tone.
"As close as you can," he agreed.
She took him at his word; Alyss could have touched the stone as they plummeted down in a controlled fall, and he wouldn't have had to stretch his arm fully for it. When they touched down he nearly fell off wobbly legs, wheezing. "That was far more harrowing than I expected."
"You did say close to the wall," she pointed out mildly.
"I did. That's just much closer than I would have ever dared. You fly really well." Alyss was hearing the oddest rasping sound and, unable to place it, he couldn't focus.
"I had an excellent teacher." Suddenly a tiny beam of light cut through the profound darkness of the gully; the woman had a phone, and she was using it to illuminate their surroundings. Hardly any of the light fell on her, but Alyss was startled to see someone built much along his own lines, slim and fine-boned, her wings fleetingly gleaming like an oilslick. "What is that noise?" Shadows moved at the very edge of the beam of light, and they both rushed at them until they found what Moissani had left of his helper. Alyss surged forward, but the angel put a steady hand on his shoulder. "Don't touch him."
"But -"
"Moissani worked for Charisemnon."
Alyss took back his step.
"I'll get him help.” She turned off the light, fiddled momentarily with her phone, and offered it to the young angel once he was done tucking the batons into his belt. “Find your friend, Alyss."
He went stumbling away through the darkness in the gorge before he even realized she, too, had known him. "I am going to have to hire someone to remember people for me," he told no one, his tone mournful. “Or I’m going to be embarrassed forever.”
He didn't have to run any numbers to know that Moissani would be trying to put as much distance between him and the Refuge as possible. How much would be enough? How cautious, or reckless, would the angel be feeling? Would he be close enough to hear the alarm being sounded? Would it make him stop and hide, or hurry even more?
Alyss was desperately trying not to put Jean's face on the horror that was the angel Moissani had left behind. Every time his thoughts tried to go that way every number in his head turned instead into a single word.
Jean Jean Jean Jean
He ran, stumbling and tripping and belatedly aware that Aegaeon had done him a favor: without his wings he wasn't getting caught on the boulders or the dark-leafed, gnarled trees that grew where enough dirt had gathered over the centuries. Moissani wouldn't have that benefit. "Ha!"
At that exact moment, the ground went out from under him. Not a problem if he'd been able to fly, but given his current circumstances he instead went down the unexpected slope exactly as gravity dictated, and fetched up against a rock at the bottom with an almighty impact that knocked both breath and sense right out of him. He laid there, gasping in pain; he'd gone most of the way down on his back, and his wings felt like they were on fire. Slowly, he rolled onto his back, then on his knees; a bout of dizziness hit and he nearly went down again.
Bird, you didn't eat today, that loving, rough voice said in his mind.
"I'll eat after I find you, I promise," he murmured into the dark. "You can make cornbread. I'll even drink your coffee."
The gorge, at least, allowed for only one direction to be followed, and Alyss rushed on, following the slope and flanked by the high stone cliffs. He lost track of time, he didn't know how far he might have come from the Refuge. At one point he looked up when he thought he saw angels fly overhead.
He saw a vast shadow coming at him like an owl after a mouse, and threw himself to one side.
Moissani crashed down to the ground, wings mantled to keep him from hitting too hard. He let go of the rock in his hands. "You are truly the most noxious, interfering, ignorant creature it has ever been my displeasure to meet!" he hissed at Alyss as he whirled around, trying to catch him with the flat of a wing. Alyss scrambled behind a rock, and Moissani yowled when his wing struck that unyielding surface instead. "You are an angel! Immortal! There'll be a hundred, a thousand like him in your life! You can even make your own!"
"There'll be none like him," Alyss replied, though he couldn't be sure the other angel had heard him. Louder, he called out, "Where's Jean?"
"Away from you," Moissani replied tartly. A moment later something came flying over the stone to shatter with a delicate tinkling sound, but Alyss was no longer there. "I will kill you," the angel declared. "I don't really care much if I must. But I will leave this place with my treasure."
"He's free. Zan-"
"I don't care. He's mine. One Archangel or ten can speak, he's still mine." This time Alyss' voice had come from close enough that Moissani dashed forward, aided by his wings, a blade glittering in his hands. He'd much rather make it look like Alyss' death had been an accident but dealing with the impudent young angel was costing him too much time. The attack on Kliman had been discovered too soon and every second of delay brought him closer to discovery.
But once again Alyss was not there.
"You haven't killed anyone yet, I don't think." Alyss wasn't moving around of a sense of strategy; he was madly scrambling around in the dark looking for Jean. "They might let you live -"
"I don't care what they might or might not let me do!" the other angel shouted. "I want to be left alone to do my research, that's what I want. I want to go home with my specimen, that's what I want. I spent nearly a hundred years cleaning him up, bringing him to the peak of physical perfection. Do you know how long it took to even find him to begin with?"
"You tortured him for four hundred years!"
"I did research for four hundred years! He's fine, he survived," Moissani scoffed. "I can do another four hundred years, probably more -"
Alyss barreled out of the dark in a blur of motion. The first baton caught Moissani directly under his sternum, where the bone's protection ended, and drove all the breath right out of him. The second whirled in an upward arch and the long, stiletto-like blade the older angel had been holding went flying like a piece of starlight into the dark.
Angelic batons were based on the oldest variant of the weapon, a millstone handle turned defensive tool. Each of the weapons Alyss had were a solid composite length with a textured handle at a perfect angle near one of the ends, rather than a straight club. Alyss spun one against the underside of his arm and caught a wild swat from one of Moissani's wings against it. The blow staggered him, but did not harm him.
"I think you're a horror," the accountant said. "And I don't think I want you near my vampire."
Moissani lunged at him, bare-handed. Alyss, who'd remembered the unknown woman's words just before he lunged at the other angel in a fury, parried that attack, felt something hard hit one of the batons, and hurriedly stepped back, swinging instead for his opponent's knees. A wing got in the way.
Alyss had learned the counter to that maneuver the hard way; he twisted his wrist and redirected his momentum, and instead of going sideways he struck upwards. Black and dark green feathers went flying and Moissani reeled back with a cry of pain.
Alyss followed, relentlessly implacable. "You are a horrible person. You are rabid. You're mean!" he yelled. "You're not touching Jean, not ever again!" The batons were a blur, moving faster than Moissani could follow, landing blows that two pairs of limbs were somehow not managing to fend off. Instead, desperate, he threw his satchel at Alyss' face. "Ack!" Alyss swatted the thing off, heard too many things shattering inside it, and dove away from it. In a heartbeat, they'd lost sight and track of one another in the dark. "You are broken," he declared firmly, "and I don't think you can be fixed. I don't think you should be fixed."
"Genius is never recognized in its own time," Moissani declared, leaning low against a rock. He was stinging, and badly, from all the blows the young accountant had landed, not one of which he'd expected. "I don't expect you to understand."
"You're not a genius!" Alyss retorted tartly, "You just like hurting people and acting like it's science! You're not a scientist, you're a child with a magnifying glass!"
Moissani came flying at him from the dark. "How dare you!" One of those wings slammed into Alyss' defending batons, but the other caught him when he staggered and sent him flying, crashing hard into the ground. He scrabbled away before Moissani could follow up. "I am a student of the purest science. Unclouded by emotion. Untarnished by attachment. I am science!"
Alyss, who during this impassioned protest had taken the time to climb one of the boulders, dropped down on Moisanni from above, the batons leading. He hit the angel as hard as he could, no longer caring if he killed him outright. Moissani crashed down to his knees, but he was old enough to both survive twin batons to the back of the head and not be rendered fully unconscious by the assault. He flung his wings open and Alyss was briefly airborne before he crashed down into the darkness once again, forcing himself to roll back onto his feet and change position.
He needn't have bothered. Moissani was leaning against a boulder, dazed. "You... You..."
"You are so loud," Alyss panted. He groped in his pockets until he found the phone he'd been given, turned on the flashlight and set it on top of a boulder, pointing up. "I can't even figure out why you're still fighting. You can't win. All the math says otherwise. There's barely a possibility for you to get away anymore, none at all if you factor Jean in -"
"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Moissani yelled at him. "Who cares about math? You don't understand, nobody understands, I need him, he's my baseline, and I am not leaving without him. I will wring such secrets from his blood -"
Alyss charged him once again, but this time Moissani had found his dagger. They fought in a flurry of blows, the angel's wings giving him a brutal advantage that still got checked at every opportunity by the accountant. A blow slipped past Moissani's guard, caught him under the chin and sent him reeling back. He swung wildly with that dagger, forcing Alyss back, but the young angel merely dropped to a crouch and went for his opponent's knees again. There was a sickening crunch, and Moissani howled, stumbling badly. In desperation, he threw the dagger at Alyss.
If there had been full wings still at the accountant's back, doubtless Moissani would have hit something. As it was, the dagger sailed just over the young angel's shoulder and away. Alyss threw himself at the other angel with a wild, angry yell, and slammed him into a rock. A baton came up and the main bone on one of the green-and-black wings shattered. The other one came down on the other angel's throat.
Moissani shoved Alyss and slid down the boulder, clawing at his throat, unable to breathe. Alyss stared at him, breathing hard, wondering if he'd need to hit him again, but in the end the damage he'd done proved enough. Moissani slumped down, unconscious. When Alyss poked him with a baton, the angel dropped on his side in a boneless heap.
For centuries Marsiel had told him that he'd never be able to recognized a fight until it kicked him in the ass. His teacher, however, had allowed Alyss to leave the Refuge for one simple reason: while his pupil would never start a fight if he could help it, he was entirely capable of ending one.
"You're nothing but a bully," Alyss declared primly. "Stop being one. Please."
27
Jean woke up with a desperate gasp. "Alyss!"
He immediately took a battered amber wing to the face. It had been resting on his chest, a threadbare blanket, and damn near broke his nose. "Oufh!"
"Oh, I'm sorry!" Alyss cried out, springing up to kneel on the bed. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you startled me!"
Jean groped blindly around, his eyes watering. He found an arm over his chest, grabbed it, followed the satiny skin of it along until he found a shoulder, a body, the scent of books and honey and high summer. He lunged up to wrap both arms around the angel. "My bird." His heart was a frantic drum in his chest. "My sunflower!"
"My vampire," Alyss replied, his voice as gentle as Jean's was urgent. One hand was supporting him, the other wrapped around Jean. "Here I am. Right here with you."
They simply held each other for a long time, Alyss drawing them both back down to the bed and pulling Jean close so the vampire could rest his head on the angel's chest. Gradually, Jean's heart slowed down and began to beat in time with the angel's, calm and steady and sure. He dozed again and woke up much later, calmer this time, aware enough that he could look at his surroundings. He was in a vast, familiar room overlooking a snowy, equally familiar landscape, the curtains open just enough to let in a partial view and the golden, slanting light of a beautiful sunset. Someone had put several blankets over him and Alyss. He was wearing an oversized shirt and nothing else, and he was once again under one of those tattered wings.
Not so tattered anymore, he realized, frowning, looking more closely. He could see new feathers peeking out from under the old, battered plumage. How long had he been out?
The chest under his head rose in a long sigh, and the vampire twisted up to look at his angel's elegant, delicate profile as Alyss woke up. The shadows under the sweet brown eyes made his heart hurt. "Are those for me?" he asked, his voice rough with lack of use, a hand reaching up to try and smudge those shadows away.
"Maybe a little," Alyss admitted, his voice tight. "They'll go away now," he promised, "with you awake."
"How long was I out... Kliman? Lilah?"
"Kliman's fine," Alyss assured him before his face fell. "Lilah didn't make it. It's been almost two weeks."
Jean gritted his teeth, felt his angel's arms wrap tightly around him. "Moissani?"
"He was executed."
For a long moment Jean couldn't speak, could hardly breathe. "It doesn't seem real," he murmured at last, "to think of him gone. Nightmares don't die that easy."
"Well, I don't know that it was easy," Alyss protested mildly. "But he was very much executed. I should know, I was there." He'd insisted; he wanted to bear witness for Jean's sake.
Jean found one of the accountant's hands and laced their fingers together, trying to find the courage for the most important question of all. "Did you forgive me?"
Alyss sank his free hand into the vampire's dark hair and tugged until they were close enough to kiss. He yielded everything in that touch, slow and sweet, the taste of honey matched to the scent of pine. Jean forgot everything in that moment, sorrow and fury, fear and confusion, it was all swept away until all he knew of the world was his angel. He gasped when Alyss pulled away.
Then the angel gave him a very earnest look. "You are free and safe, my vampire. Do you know what that means?"
"No," Jean admitted. "I never thought I'd be one or the other, let alone both." He leaned up to kiss Alyss again.
Alyss let himself be kissed. "It means you're getting therapy."
Jean froze, barely a breath from Alyss' lips. Then he started laughing, rusty but honest. "Fair," he agreed, pulling away just so he could see his bird. "And what will you be doing?"
"Paperwork. The pipeline's going legal. We'll be under Raphael's protection."
"Legal!" Jean straightened up minutely, eyes wide. "You won." Disbelief and shock went to delight in his lean features.
"I didn't win anything, they want me talking! To people! In public!" Alyss grew more and more indignant with every point, and he wasn't flailing simply because both his hands were busy. "Ugh!"
Jean wouldn't laugh at his bird, but it was a close thing. Instead he kissed that grumpy mouth. "Get Maia to do it. Her contract with Evie's almost done. I bet neither of them would mind passing it to you."
"I don't need to be responsible for people."
"Hate to be the one to point this out for you, but you already are." Jean brought their laced hands to his mouth and kissed each knuckle. He sighed deeply before he spoke again. "I couldn’t help her."
"I'll take you to see her," Alyss said gently. "It's not far. My wings aren't that far along, I'd probably fit in a car. We can drive to Maine."
"Drive... We're back? Back at the lodge?"
"Yes. There was nothing else they could do for you at the Refuge. I didn't think you'd want to wake up in a hospital, even that hospital." When a shudder went through his vampire Alyss knew he'd chosen right. "Kliman's staying awake, but she's still passing New England to Evie. She invited us to move back in with her."
"I go where you go, my bird."
"I like it there. I met you there, that makes it a good place, all good numbers. And she's still a terrible accountant."
"You really do think in numbers, don't you. What do you see when you look at me, what's my number?"
"There isn't one," Alyss replied solemnly. "Everything else in the world is a number except you. You're Jean."
The vampire shifted and kissed his angel then, hard and possessive and demanding, pausing only once to let Alyss gasp for breath before he claimed again those exquisite kiss-bruised lips. The angel's hands caught fistfuls of the oversized shirt, then roamed up over Jean's chest and went diving through his hair, and a low, hungry growl began to rise from the vampire's chest. Jean yanked himself away with an effort.
"Oh, why always when it's getting good," Alyss whined.
"Because you do things to my self-control, bird," Jean laughingly replied. "And I'm hungry."
"So feed."
"Alyss."
"I am your angel. I saw you wearing my feather." Alyss' lashes came down just low enough to shade those rich brown eyes like a tempting invitation. "Besides, you know I like it when you bite."
Jean's breath burst out of him like he'd been punched. With it went a fairly sizeable chunk of his willpower. "This is a different kind of bite."
"And if I don't like it, I know you'll stop if I tell you to."
The vampire could only stare at that immense show of faith. "Why," he asked, touching his forehead to the angel's, "do you see only the best in me?"
"What else is there?" Alyss replied guilelessly. "You are the best of you, Jean. Even your scars."
"Every time I think I can't love you any more than I already do..." Jean buried his face against Alyss' chest. "He took the feather. Yanked it off me, threw it away, said something about being his treasure, no one else's."
"Well, what a rude thing to do," Alyss declared primly. "Here I was thinking you'd just lost it when he was dragging you all over the place. I got you a better one anyway. Real amber. If you... If you want it, I mean."
Jean wound his arms around the angel and twisted, so he ended up face-up on the bed, Alyss straddling him. Parts of him that had no right to still be functioning when he'd just spend nearly two weeks recovering roused immediately to gleeful attention. "I want it. I want it like I want breath and life and blood, my angel. I'll find you amber to match. But... can I still have one of yours?"
Alyss leaned down and kissed his vampire, his ears very red. "Yes. It's going to be a while, though."
Jean ran his tongue over the angel's throat, drinking in the scent of him, fangs sliding along the pale, sensitive skin there without breaking it just yet. "I can wait. I'll think of something to keep myself busy."
"Any ideas yet?" Alyss gasped the words out, goosebumps chasing themselves over his skin at the feel of those fangs.
Orders from my shop help me pay rent. Orders from my shop help me buy groceries. Orders from my shop help me pay for gas. Orders from my shop help me pay for a gift for my fiance that I might not otherwise be able to afford. Orders from my shop help me pay for my future wedding. Orders from my shop help me pay for therapy. Orders from my shop helped me leave a toxic household.
Shop small, especially if you can afford it. I know sometimes corporations have cheaper options.. but that extra $5 is far more useful to a small business owner. If you can afford it, shop small any time you can.
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