I’m back to writing Bookends and it feels so gooooooood
Here’s a snippet from chapter 13
Safi was busy getting ready when Iseult entered their apartment.
“So what book is it again?” Safi asked, pulling her shirt off over her head and disappearing into her room. Iseult stared after her.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Of course, I am.” Safi reemerged wearing a different top, a loose low-cut blouse that would look lethal paired with her leather jacket. She inspected herself in the mirror, posing at a couple different angles before giving her reflection a satisfied nod of approval. “I’ve heard you gush about this book so many times I didn’t even have to read it.”
Safi slipped on her jacket and tucked her long hair out from under the back with a flourish that, had they been out on the street, would've caused several heads to turn. She looked especially good for a night of discussing the machinations of reclusive witches and their covenants.
Safi noticed Iseult staring as she dabbed on some lip gloss. “What?”
“Nothing,” said Iseult with a small shake of her head. “You just look nice.”
“Should I change into my wimple?”
“That won’t be necessary.” Iseult dropped her apron onto the small square of counter space that acted as their kitchen table and shuffled into her bedroom. She stopped in front of her closet and stared at its contents. Several minutes passed.
Iseult had planned on just wearing what she already had on, but watching Safi making eyes at herself in the mirror she was suddenly self-conscious of the loose threads at the cuffs of her wool sweater and the ever-lingering smell of coffee beans that clung to everything she owned. That aspect of her being couldn't be helped regardless of whether or not she changed, but she could at least look like she hadn’t been out in a field shepherding a herd of sheep all day.
“That’s nice,” Safi said, watching Iseult inspect a plum colored sweater from the door.
“Mm maybe.” Iseult passed on a couple more unremarkable shirts before stopping on something else. It was a dress. An especially pretty dress, in fact. It had been tucked out of sight for so long she’d honestly forgotten she even owned it. It was simple in its design, long sleeves and a high neck collar that made up for its noticeable lack of length, and made with a soft velvet that tapered off at the waist. The thing Iseult really loved about it was the nearly imperceptible stars stitched into the fabric with gold thread that winked like the night sky when the light hit them just right.
For Iseult, shopping was rarely ever an inspiring experience, but she remembered falling in love with the dress the instant she saw it. There was a small hole on the underside of one of the sleeves, which was the only way she was able to afford it. Even with the discount, she remembered how guilty she felt after taking the plunge and walking out of the store with it. Spending a chunk of that week’s paycheck on a dress that she’d likely never have an occasion to wear.
Iseult took the dress off the hanger and draped it onto the bed.
Summary: A fluffy Safi/Merik one-shot set in the Bookends verse.
Inspired by this ship meme ask: Who tries to start role-playing in bed?
Answer: Safi, but it only ends in a fit of laughter. Safi is a terrible actress and they both know it.
Ships: Safi/Merik
Read on AO3: here
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Safi adjusted the sequined torture contraption plastered to her thighs for what felt like the hundredth time since she shimmied into it. It wasn’t really meant for torture, but when something dissolved the use of her legs and made her feel like a sausage casing, torture didn’t seem so a far-reaching.
This was supposed to be sexy.
She tried shifting her thighs, glued together by sweat, to no avail. She was beginning to think that maybe she had gone about this the wrong way. A mermaid seemed like the obvious choice when the idea had popped into her head. Merik had a strong connection to the ocean, having grown up in Nubrevna, and for as long as she’d known him - which, granted, wasn’t very long - he’d find any excuse to talk about his years spent sailing and adventuring on the high seas as a boy. But now, with legs tightly gift wrappped in shimmering spandex, it seemed stupid to have eliminated, in her most humble opinion, her best features - if only for the supreme discomfort she was in. Her boobs weren’t faring much better. The vinyl shell-shaped monstrosity strapped across her chest would soon become a permanent fixture on her body if Merik didn’t turn up soon. This was, of course, for him after all.
It wasn’t that things had grown stale in the bedroom. Quite the contrary. Safi found herself spending more and more time with Merik than ever before. Skipping her morning classes was becoming all too much of a habit to the point where her sociology professor had personally reached out to her by email asking if everything was alright. Embarrassed, Safi had quickly replied thanking her for her concern and assuring her that she was ok. More than ok (though she’d left out the finer details as to why in her response).
And yet.
She couldn’t help but feel as though something was out of place. Between him and her. They hadn’t had “the talk”. Yet. And as Merik had proven on more than one occasion that he was just as maddeningly stubborn as Safi, they never would. But that didn’t stop her from having many long-winded and, ultimately, unproductive talks with herself. She was growing discontent with the one-sidedness of it all, especially when she was all too painfully aware of what she was thinking. She wanted to know what the real Merik was thinking, not the fantasy version she carried around in her head all day - the one that wanted more than the whatever they were doing now. Because on the days she opted out of her morning class, she wasn’t hanging around for just a tumble in the sheets. I mean, that certainly wasn’t a deterrent. Merik was living up to every bit of expertise he’d so boorishly boasted when they’d begun dancing circles around each other. But that wasn’t all there was to it anymore. Most mornings when her cell alarm woke her up after spending the night, the desire to stay tucked against Merik’s chest and wrapped in his arms far outweighed doing anything else, and in the last week, she was almost positive she’d picked up on his reluctance to do the same. This was highly unusual. When they’d first started hooking up, he’d be showered, dressed, and halfway through eating a banana - what he called breakfast, the barbarian - all before she’d even hit the snooze button on her alarm the first time in a long series of snoozes. Now, all of a sudden, Merik was following her alarm’s example and snoozing right alongside Safi. Not so long that he missed class - he hadn’t gone through a complete personality transplant - but enough that Safi awoke to a thoroughly eye-opening ‘good morning’.
Which was exactly why she was laying across Merik’s bed, her bottom half squeezed into the glitziest mermaid tail Amazon had to offer with her top half covered in plastic seashells and glitter like a beach craft project gone wrong. The plan had seemed sensible enough: if they tried something new in the bedroom, then perhaps it would inspire him to try something new outside the bedroom. Like, eat bacon and eggs for breakfast. Or try role-playing as something else. Her boyfriend, perhaps.
Under such a premeditated salacious scenario, it all sounded so childish now, but it was too late to back out. With a look of determination setting on her sparkly face, she tossed her long blonde hair over her shoulder and adjusted her boobs with renewed commitment. Tonight, she would initiate and complete. She wasn’t entirely confident that she’d be able to get herself out of her tail without Merik’s help anyhow.
She hadn’t come over mermaidified. Kullen had let her in, eyeing the multiple bags of supplies hanging from her arms warily and having the decency to listen to her rambling explanation without question when the plastic leaf garland she planned on using as a vine of seaweed flopped out of one of the bags. About ten minutes later, he announced that he was heading over to Ryber’s and wouldn’t be back until late tomorrow. Smart man.
Safi stared at the bedroom door, a perfect beached mermaid, waiting for her sea captain to walk in and ravish his scaley catch. Yes, this was good. This was not at all insane.
5 minutes went by.
Safi wetted her lips, resisting the urge to roll off the bed and refile through her makeup bag. It would be just her luck for Merik to walk in as she was reapplying a fresh coat of lipgloss. It wasn’t worth the risk. He’d be too distracted by the fish tail replacing her legs to notice that her lips had lost their sparkly sheen from two hours ago anyway.
Another 10 minutes went by.
These sequins were going to leave permanent indentations in her ass if she didn’t move soon.
25 minutes.
His last class was supposed to have gotten out over an hour ago! Where the hell was he?
30.
That’s it. She was going to text him.
Then, suddenly, the door swung open and there was Merik, his dark hair tousled wet and his cheeks rosy, like he’d gotten caught in a snow flurry on the way home. He stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of Safi, his hand gripped around the door knob. She had turned to stone the moment the door clicked open. With her torso twisted and arm strained backwards frozen in midair as she tried to acrobatically reach for her phone from the nightstand, their eyes met.
It took Safi several beats of stunned silence for her to remember that she had lines. She jolted as though breaking out of a spell, the room filed with the rustle of sequins and (fake) pearl necklaces draped around her neck clacking against each as she gyrated back onto her side, all the while Merik still stood rooted in the doorway, his face bafflingly expressionless for a man who had just unsuspectingly walked in on a mermaid floundering on his bed.
Safi took a single deep breath and began…
“Oh captain, my captain,” she recited in a musical lilt. “To be caught in one’s net is but my kind’s greatest fear. But to be caught in a gaze such as yours, I cannot say. For it is a forbidden love we swim around. I dare not say what would happen to me if I were discovered in the arms of a land dweller for it is too gruesome to even imagine… but I know of a place where no one can find us. A secret lagoon that only I know of. Where the water is warm and… and… what are you looking at??”
Merik’s eyes were narrowed in a deep frown. Somewhere in the midst of her opening monologue, his attention had shifted to the rest of the bed and - more importantly - not her.
“This place is covered in glitter,” he said bluntly, looking around the room.
Safi blinked, momentarily stunned. “What?”
“There’s glitter. Everywhere,” he emphasized, still too engrossed with the contents of his room to even spare a look at her.
A shock of disbelief robbed Safi of speech for a moment. “Are you serious right now?”
“Yes, I’m serious,” he said, running a mystified hand through his hair and brushing the tip of his boot on a spot on the carpet that was no doubt fertilized with glitter. He scowled. “I’m going to have to burn this place down.”
Safi’s mouth puckered open and close, fittingly, like a fish. Heat flashed through her - and not the kind she was hoping he’d ignite from this encounter.
“Better start with the bathroom,” she jeered snidely.
At those words, Merik’s gaze finally snapped to her. His brown eyes widened half a fraction and, without a word, he bolted from the room. Safi listened for the telltale sound of the bathroom light being switched on and a smugness flitted across her pursed lips when she heard the satisfying gasp of horror that instantly followed after.
Angry footsteps sounded from outside the room and Merik reappeared.
“It looks like Tinkerbell was murdered in there,” he accused, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder. From her spot on the bed, she could see the red flush creeping up his neck that she had come to know so well from their many heated arguments - and the exhilarating reconciliations that followed. He planted his hands on his hips and stood over her like an angry parent. So not the role she was hoping he’d be playing right now.
“Safi, what the hell is going on?”
“Relax, Tink’s fine.”
“Safi.”
“What do you think is going on?” Safi hissed, sounding more like a murderous siren than the seductive mermaid she had planned on. Strangling him sounded just as pleasurable as sex at the moment.
“I don’t know!” Merik half-shouted, throwing his hands up. He looked Safi up and down in earnest for the first time since he walked through the door. Underneath the irritation radiating off him was genuine confusion and he struggled for his next words.
“This… is weird,” he finally landed on. His hands dropped to his sides and his shoulders slumped a little. He stared into Safi’s eyes clearly hoping she would say something, but she wasn’t in the mood to let him off the hook. Not when she could feel angry tears prickling at the backs of her eyes. This was such a stupid idea. What had she been thinking? She was an idiot for thinking she could pull this off. Before Merik, she’d hardly had any experience with anyone. Besides Caden.
Ugh, she mentally harrumphed. Chiseled Cheater. Just the thought of him set her on fire. Why after that trainwreck she’d entertained the fantasy of attaching herself more exclusively to another brainless cow was beyond her. Something was truly wrong with her.
When she didn’t say anything, Merik let out a rough sigh. “Safi, I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Nothing!” Safi snapped, breaking from her thoughts and suddenly finding her voice. Merik eyes widened.
“You don’t have to say anything at all,” she continued in a coldly polite manner, raising herself up. “I’m leaving. Have a good night.”
Safi flipped onto her butt and began to scooch across Merik’s bed, digging her bound heels into the mattress to pull herself forward and propping her top half up with her hands. She knew how undignified she must have looked, but she kept her chin held high, ignoring the way every piece of her ensemble made an ungodly amount of noise with the effort of her movements. Just get up, she screamed at herself inside her head. Just get up and get out and you’ll never have to see him ever again for as long as you live.
But she did want to see him. And she hated herself for it.
That was the last thought she had when her feet touched the ground, for when she stood and tried to take a step forward, she toppled onto the floor.
And then Merik was on the floor with her, his face rippling with full-bellied laughter. She’d never heard him laugh in such a way, so free and uncaring. It would have sent her heart soaring if not for the not so minor fact that her humiliation was its cause. Before she did something stupid, like grab his face and kiss him senseless, she reminded herself of that fact, then peeled her upper half off the floor and sent a venomous look his way.
“Merik, I swear, if you don’t stop laughing, I’ll-”
But what Safi would do, they never found out. Because when she tried to get back onto her feet, she’d fallen right back down and Merik crumpled into a heap on the floor dissolving into hysterics and clutching his stomach.
“Stop laughing!” Safi cried, but either Merik couldn’t hear her over his own howling or he didn’t care. The thought of the latter only made Safi angrier and with a strangled sob she tried to pull herself up by the bed sheets, wishing to get as far away from Merik Nihar as possible and forget that she’d ever met him. She’d give him an unflattering nickname and forbid Iseult from speaking his name ever again.
But then, without warning, she was in the air. Strong arms wrapped under her knees and around her back. Before she could protest, she was being gently lowered onto the bed, and the next moment, Merik had her caged underneath him.
He wasn’t laughing anymore.
Safi felt the tear that escaped the corner of her eye and slid down her temple before she could stop it. She looked away, blinking unseeingly at the ceiling and huffed in frustration. His face was drawing closer, so close that she could feel the warmth of his lips on hers. And then, he paused.
“You’re acting real crazy, you know that?” he murmured huskily.
An indignant sound burst from Safi’s throat and was immediately swallowed by his mouth.
It wasn’t this first time Merik Nihar had rendered Safi speechless. Sometimes it was with his stupidity. Other times with his bullheadedness. And then there were times when he kissed her and stole the very air she breathed.
This was one of those times.
The sound of his deep exhalation the moment after their lips met was the only thing that nudged Safi’s lungs to back life. The kiss was slow and deliberate and the arm still underneath her tightened its hold on her while the other kept himself propped up as to not crush her. There was something incredibly sexy about the way that coarse wool of his jacket brushed against her bare skin with every roll of his head and Safi wished not for the first time that evening that her legs weren’t bound. She cupped his face in her hands, dragging him closer, and finally he relented and lied down on her properly, the silken slide of their lips growing hotter, deeper. In a matter of seconds he had every nerve-ending inside her crackling to life.
The moment he stopped she wanted to grab him by the collar and yank him back down to her, but she restrained herself, too caught up in the softness of his eyes. He smoothed her hair back from her flushed forehead, fingers bumping over the seashells among the waves as he peered down at her. She had a feeling he wasn’t going to be the first person to break under the silence.
“I’m not crazy,” she finally said. Although her voice was soft, a familiar defensiveness rang through.
The corner of Merik’s mouth curled up. “I didn’t say you were crazy,” he countered, continuing to gaze down at her fondly. “I said you were acting crazy. Care to tell me why?”
Safi pressed her eyes shut and breathed in deeply - or she tried to. The combination of the constrictive nature of her outfit and Merik’s lower half pressed deliciously against her was making it hard to breathe at the moment.
When she opened her eyes he was, unfortunately, still waiting for an answer. She sighed.
“I just wanted to try something… new.”
Merik’s brow arched.
“In bed.”
“Oh.”
There was a pause. Safi willed her cheeks not to burn up. She focused on the masculine bump of his throat and watched it slowly bob up and down as he swallowed.
“Are you… bored?”
“No,” she was quick to answer, unable to stop herself from looking at him when she said it to assure him that it was true. Relief softened his eyes, but his expression turned serious again a moment later.
“Are you unhappy?”
Safi’s heart thrummed against her breast, too powerful for even the bra so tightly bound to her chest to tamp down. For a moment she lost herself in his questioning eyes. The color on his cheeks gave him a boyish glow. She could lie. End this now and walk away in whatever humiliating capacity her mermaid tail allowed. Roll, hop, slither across the floor like a garden snake - whatever. The point was she would never have to face that feeling ever again if she wanted to.
“I’ve never been so happy with a man before in my life,” she confessed instead.
Surprise flickered across Merik’s face.
“So, naturally, I tried to change everything.”
Merik broke out into a chuckle, his eyes brightening with that rare smile of his that Safi was coming to adore so much, and his hand, which had been frozen for some time, resumed caressing her hair.
“By turning into a mermaid?” he asked, amused.
Safi nodded and Merik shook his head ruefully. He pulled away slightly and peered down. “How would this-” he gestured back and forth between their lower halves “-even work?”
A watery laugh broke through Safi. “I don’t know!” she moaned covering her face with her hands, embarrassed, but finally able to appreciate the absurdity of it all. Merik began laughing too, the sound soothing her jangled nerves, and he gently pulled her hands away so that he could see her.
“Did you have a costume for me?” he teased.
“You brag so much about that damn boat of yours I assumed you had one stashed away somewhere.”
“It’s not bragging. It’s talking,” Merik corrected evenly. He arched his brow. “Where’s Kullen?”
Safi rolled her eyes. Even with her half-naked underneath him he still couldn’t help his thoughts from wandering to Kullen. She knew she shouldn’t judge. She was the same way with Iseult afterall, but really, come on.
“He’s far, far away at Ryber’s.”
A wolfish grin spread across Merik’s face and to Safi’s surprise said, “Good,” then leaned into her and found that sweet spot between her neck and shoulder with his lips. Safi’s heart faltered.
“Seriously?” she breathed, arching into his touch nonetheless.
“You did go through all the effort,” he murmured into her skin, kissing a path along her collarbone. His hand traced a line down the middle of her chest, leaving a happy trail of goosebumps in its wake. His fingers spread along her ribcage, a searing handprint on her skin, and his thumb slipped under her bra, brushing the underside of her breast. A shiver ran through Safi. Hell-gates, it was going to hurt like hell when the time came to rip those seashells, but holy shit it would be worth it. Possessed with an urgency to anchor herself she plunged her hands into his thick hair and cradled him to her.
“Plus,” he said between kisses, “I don’t mind trying new things. Here or… wherever.”
Safi’s hands paused. She’d never know if he felt the flutter of her heart under his lips, but he lifted his head to gaze up at her from her bare collar. His dark eyes smoldered with meaning and somehow Safi knew what he was saying. They always did understand each other best when they kept their mouths shut.
“Really?” she sniffed, careful to put on an air of indifference. She may have been voluntarily bound beneath him, but she wasn’t about to give herself away entirely.
“Really.”
They held each other's gaze for a moment, then Merik’s face slowly lit up with a lopsided grin. Safi tried to contain the smile breaking out across her lips, halfway succeeding. It was enough for Merik, though, and pressing a tender kiss upon her chest, he returned to his exploration of her neck. She let her head fall back and a breathy sigh passed through her lips, fingers curling in his hair, only to be cut short by a startled gasp when he nipped her earlobe rather boldly.
“A little advice for the future, domna?” he said in a low voice, and her traitorous body stiffened at the seductive dominance honeying his words. His breath was hot against her ear as he took an insufferable pause no doubt for dramatic effect.
“Play to your strengths.”
In one graceful move, Safi pushed him off her and rolled him onto his back so that she was on top of him.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
If you enjoy my Witchlands modern AU fic Bookends, feel free to check out The Card Catalog, a collection of one-shots set in the Bookends verse! Sometimes I have a snap shot idea for a character in Bookends that doesn’t necessarily fit into the main story, but I want to write it anyway. This is where you’ll find such stories. Since every one-shot is different in its content, I’ll include a rating with each chapter. :)
