#silversuit.

[goodnight-goodknight]

"...Ciaran, where did you even get that many jewels...?" mutters Artorias, as though trying to distract himself from the fact she's wearing nothing bloody else.

[flash-sweat]

[ DISPLAY ] sender touches themselves knowing receiver is watching. - for Artorias, from @apifacture

He watches her from his desk chair; work - his front of a day job, running through security checklists and rosters for Gwyn - lies scattered across his desk, now ignored for the sight on his bed.

There lay Ciaran, propped partially up on his pillows, grinning at him as she spread her legs to reveal that, somewhere between her car and his bedroom, she'd discarded her underwear, leaving her bare under her now hiked up skirt. The glisten of her heat in the warm light of his bedroom was more than enough to finally pull him away from his work.

They'd fallen into each other quickly, this last week or so. He'd known her growing up, of course - they'd both scrapped and scrabbled their way through the same neighborhood, and eventually into Gwyn's employ amid his meteoric ascent into the city's underworld. But it had barely taken a week of working closely with one another for mutual attraction to blossom into something hot, and eager, and affectionate in a way he hadn't been prepared for.

Artorias turns to watch as one slender hand teases over a bared thigh, toward the core of her, past the patch of blond hair and down to her center. A finger trails slowly over her entrance, and a little moan escapes her. He's not sure he's ever heard a sound he loves as much.

"Thinking about me, love?" he murmurs, watching fixedly as she strokes again.

"Perhaps," she returns, grinning breathlessly. "Why don't you come over here and find out?"

"Oh, I don't know, I'm rather enjoying the show," he says.

"Mm, are you? Then perhaps I'd best continue all on my lonesome," she says, feigning disappointment. "A shame, really, I'd hoped to discover more of what those lovely hands could do..."

"Ah - a proper tease, is it?" he says. He rises slow from his chair, approaches the bed, looms over her, leaning forward so that she lies back - but then plants his hands on either side of her. "I didn't say stop, love - let me hear you..."

[goodnight-goodknight]

we could eat spaghetti together doesn't it sound so lovely? and play vampires until the sun comes up if you're comfortable being the dessert you can be mine and i can be yours i can be your leftovers

--"vampires in love", a great big pile of leaves

[goodnight-goodknight]

The hotel was a nothing place – all sand-coloured laminate and halogen light, a coffin dressed in bridal satin. It stank faintly of antiseptic, of scrubbed sins and laundering done too late. For now, it was theirs. The sheets, still warm from the sun, clung faintly with the perfume of industrial bleach and the shadow of strangers. Ciaran liked that. She liked pretending she was one of many women, all hollowed out in the same pose beneath the same flickering lamplight. It made her feel eternal.

The television blared dumbly in the background, a crown of static noise and soft moans, absurd in its theatrics. One thumb-press and it had sprung to life, offering her an anaemic procession of flesh and silicone. She left it running. Not out of curiosity, but to laugh, or to sneer, or perhaps to stage herself in opposition. What could those women know of this work? Their pleasure was painted on like frost on a mirror, gone at a breath.

She was not one of them.

She was not faking.

He lay beneath her, that man of noble ruin, half-saint and all animal now. There was nothing of chivalry in the way his hands lay slack by his sides, trembling only when she shifted her weight, his face her seat. Thighs, sun-kissed and toned, tensed faintly around his head. A little cruelly, she rolled her hips. A flicker of protest, muffled and dear, but she knew he could breathe. She could feel it – the rhythm of his life, hot against her skin, laboured and adoring. He would die for her, yes, but she would never let him.

The air conditioning clicked and rattled, struggling to cool the heat they were making. Her long braid lay down the curve of her back like a noose, catching at her ribs. Her phone was discarded on the windowsill, reflecting the city lights like a sliver of moon in a wine-dark sky. Ciaran sighed. Deep, contented, unhurried. Her voice, when it came, was velvet crushed and smoking:

“Mm… I should leave you there, Artorias. Set a crown on your brow and keep you like this forever. My sweet martyr. My ruined king.”

The blue light of the screen cast a pale, flickering halo over the room, over her bared chest and freckled belly, over the fine gleam of sweat at her throat. She dragged one hand down over her ribs, over the flat plane of her stomach, over the notch of her hipbone. She touched herself lazily – not for climax, but out of idleness. A little gesture of dominion. Of luxury.

Her pleasure was not violent. It was not fast. It was a feast that came in waves. Long, slow-dragging breakers that built behind her eyes and pulsed out through her limbs. She did not moan like the women on the screen. Instead, she smiled. Thin-lipped. Glorious. Eternal.

— from @apifacture

There is only her, all around him: the warmth of her sex, inches from his mouth, the rise of her stomach ascending to the gentle curve of her chest, and the press of her thighs to his cheeks. Her king, she murmurs - and she, his kingdom, his home, here beneath her, where has always, always belonged. He watches her hand dip between her legs, spread herself wider, a thumb languidly passing over her clit. His tongue feels thick in his mouth.

He has never wanted anything more than her, and the ache - the delicious ache - sat low in his stomach, thudding through him, is enough to drag his eyes upward, traveling the expanse of her, to meet her gaze with his own naked need.

Before he met Ciaran, he never submitted to anyone, not properly. He took on jobs, and paid due respect to his employers, and made a point of being kind and helpful to anyone and everyone he could - but it was never submission. He never gave up control, just deference. Now: now he is hers, wholly, and he revels in the sensation of it - of being so loved, so desired.

The idea had once terrified him. Now, it thrilled him. She thrills him.

His hands ache, too, to touch her; she has forbidden it for now. If she were to glance back, she'd know the proud of arch of him stands thick and hard with need - he doesn't touch that either, as desperately as he wants to. He can see the television glow paint her in snowy florescence; he can see shadows dancing on her skin. A goddess, wrought immortal in the memory of his moment. He's sure of it. He's sure he'll remember the sight of her, watching him imperiously, awash in snowlight, for the rest of his living days.

The proximity between need and release sings in his chest, in his throat, a taut line throughout his body that feels so, so close to snapping. The tension is incredible, intimate. He's not sure he's ever felt so alive.

In a moment, his tongue will seek out the pleasure in her depths, swipe and caress the hollow of her until her dominion is complete. In a moment more, he will surge upward until she is on her back, and he will rail her into the mattress as they exchange control, and trust, and love. And in the moment after that, they'll tangle up in one another in the sweatslick cool of their hotel room, and neither one of them will have ever better understood what home feels like.

But for now, he watches the way she pleases herself, teases him with those wandering fingers, those breathy little explorations of her heat, and he gives her a helpless, loving smile.

"Keep me here, then," he breathes. "I am yours, Ciaran - to keep wherever you please."

[goodnight-goodknight]

I'll be there when your heart stops beating/I'll be there when your last breath's taken away/In the dark when there's no one listening/in the times we both get carried away

--(when your heart stops beating, +44)

[goodnight-goodknight]

In the night where I live, There's strange force in your kiss, oh All's divine in desire With an ire of philosophy Burning scrolls in the naked heat Oh how coy is your little boy Cause I know it don't Read that well, yeah I got (I got) buried (buried) But it won't be long, before I rise in I got (I got) buried (buried) But it won't be long, before I rise In song

--"I Got," Young the Giant

[goodnight-goodknight]

So don't let go My spine is slipping like a fault line If I go, I'll bury us all Don't close my door Don't leave me out With these mosquitoes, Trying to drink up all my wine Do you wanna know What my love is? Do you wanna hear How my song goes? Do you wanna know What my love is? Don't say no Don't say no

--"do you wanna know," alkaline trio

[goodnight-goodknight]

i saw it. it saw me back. i haven't been the same since.

There's strange things in the streets these days.

It would, of course, be more accurate to say there's always been strange things, and that people have gone and built around them, over them, under them, until they've boxed them all in dark corners and in deep alleys; until the strange things find themselves in strange places and suddenly eons of instinct and hunger and overwhelmingly certainty all coalesce into things that walk and talk like people, all wide-eyed, empty stares and grinning, grinning mouths. It's the grins that always give them away, these strangers, because they don't resemble a smile so much as the bright and brittle smirk of a bared skull.

Artorias has learned to spot them quickly, because what follows after is usually a brief and bloody skirmish and an irritated bout with Nito regarding a body disposal. To a man, these strangers seem intent on hunting anyone involved with magic; even those who simply worked for Gwyn have come under fire.

When Miriam describes a pair of oddly empty eyes and at the end of the street, just outside the house - shadows only defined by being deeper than the dark around them - and a shining, cheerless smile, Artorias realizes they've found her, too. Of course they would; you didn't get more magical than Miri. The girl might as well have been a Flame all on her own.

Things will get complex. Quickly.

He stands in the doorway, filling the frame with his own, and glances back at the street outside. No one present. Not right now, at least. One hand sneaks into his coat, closes around the handle of the heavy, bright silver handgun he keeps on his person. He looks out into the dark, down toward the end of the road, back up toward the other end; he watches the way streetlights carve and shape the dark into something heavier, thicker in the spaces between.

Something feels wrong. Wrong.

"Miri," he murmurs, turning back to face her. "Sweet girl - stay inside for now, alright? I know that's not what you want to hear, you're already stuck inside plenty as is, but I need you to stay put until I can sort this out with the boss, alright?"

It isn't fear, proper, but just on the edge of it - apprehension teetering on the brink of panic.

"Someone may be snooping around that shouldn't be, and he needs to know about it, and we need to handle it," he concludes. "So - just for a couple of days, I want you to stay inside. I'll bring you anything you need."

A trip up the block and back. That's all. Then he'll call Gwyn, and hash out a plan - either changing safehouses, or hunting these strangers down. Either way, things have escalated - they're too close.

Too gods-damned close.