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Sexy Time
Topic Started: Feb 10 2011, 02:23 AM (1,102 Views)
Darcy Bishop
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Darcy had a knack for dangling herself within deaths reach, only to be snatched back at the last moment. That was not the case here, for he was staring at her now, eyes alight with dark intensity that sent a shiver of excitement up her spine.

Hello Death, I’m Darcy. Big fan. Nice to meet you.

He snatched her up as easily as if she had been a babe, spun her about, the closet a blurred whirlwind, combining with anticipation to make her dizzy. She fell, carefully, lightly, descending on discarded clothing, mixing forbidden on the floor. A grin snaked its way across her lips, chest rising quickly with each gulp of sweet air, heavenly mixed with his scent. It caught as she found him again, his lips curling in a sinful smirk, the words that issued from it promising pleasurable punishment.

“Well, if you’re having a moral dilemma… darling, I suppose I’ll have to be snake enough for the both of us.”

An arched brow was deployed, a hopeful cover to mask the way her body actually responded to his words and the wicked eyes that drank in her curves. Lust exuded from him in waves, combining with her own to almost become tangible, the taste of it on her tongue. She smiled a challenge. He responded with an artful touch, head dipping as he met her stare through dark hair. How was it possible for him to be so sexy? And how had he found her, the un-sexiest person on the planet?

“Starting… here, I think,” he considered, causing her to decide she couldn’t care less how unevenly their sexiness meters matched as long as he kept—oh!

“That was for the shirt,” he told her calmly, the tone in stark contrast to the rough removal of the rest of her clothing. Somewhere hidden beneath the longing, Darcy wondered how exactly she had been divested of her wardrobe first, when she had been winning so smoothly before. His eyes roved her nude body, scorching the quaking flesh with a nearly corporal touch. Which wasn’t at all fair, she wanted to see him, all of him, so very badly.

But that wasn’t in the plans, apparently, as Alex’s guttural voice filled her ears, “And this… is for everything else.” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, even as her body yearned to arch up into him, needing contact so badly, she thought she would die from want. A warmth about her wrists drew her focus to her arms, slowly being drawn above her head, making her mind race with images of punishment and pleasure and both. She struggled because that was part of the fun, enhanced the effect, and gave her an excuse to brush herself against him. He expected it, she knew he would, his fingers an iron cage about her flesh, dragging them further and further until he hovered mere inches from her, his lips brushing delicately against her ear.

“If you’re not going to be nice, you’re not allowed to touch,” he admonished with a mouth she could practically feel curving immorally.

Her heart stopped.

Fucking hell!

She was in deep shit now. Her cheeks flushed with her desperation. Skin that itched to be touched, skimmed, scraped, pinched… And then it was, a lazy, fiery trail of tongue and lips, tracing veins, sliding along bones, nipping at pounding pulses. She forgot to breathe as his trek placed him at her breast, teasing and torturing her until she had no choice but to arch her back and moan an almost sob deep in the back of her throat. Her arms fought against their prison, needing to do something to allay the spiked arousal that threatened to overwhelm her.

And then, miraculously, they were free, free to tangle in silky locks as Alex moved further down, his breath hot on her stomach, her muscles jumping, hardening at his ministrations. Warmth pooled at her very center, as Alex maneuvered his way between her legs, muscles bunching as he braced himself on either side of her, relaxing again as his fingers encircled her thighs.

He wasn’t going to… oh fucking hell he was. She gasped, unable to suppress it, uncertain as to the need to restrain it.

“Fuck!”

He plunged into her heat, wielding his tongue with skillful grace, calm precision, driving her relentlessly towards ecstasy. Her eyes slid shut, mind a hazy field of blank pleasure, her body writhing wildly against him, into him, small noises erupting through parted lips, emitting from somewhere deep inside her. They turned into a frustrated whimper as he stopped, backing her away from the brink of pleasure he had just forced her to. She was going to kill him, she was going to fucking kill him. She even propped herself up onto her elbows, eyes flashing, a menacing sight of disrupted lust. But he was too busy to notice his impending doom, occupied as he was with removing his pants, the boxers, giving her the glimpse she had wanted of him. Hers, it was all hers, and she gazed appreciatively, enraptured by ivory skin, darkened with desire.

She slid back down, his body flush atop hers, eyes closed briefly as skin brushed against skin, nerves jangling helplessly, the feel of him pushing her towards the edge again. Fuck, to think he hadn’t even entered it yet, was going to come undone from his touch alone, those glittering blue eyes that pierced her very soul. Her lids fluttered open, finding that blue, pulse racing as she read everything in them, completely open for the first time. She drowned, caught in the pouring tide of emotions he had long held in check, swept under by their strength, the profundity of this moment, one she would hold dear to her forever.

I love you, Alex.

There had been a time in Darcy’s life when she had vowed to never fall in love. It was a pointless endeavor, she assumed, wrought with heartache and despair. Girls offering their fragile hearts to boys who ripped them open, just to see it bleed. The following days of pitiful weeping and isolating oneself until her cheeks were dry and cracked and her eyes were permanently red and swollen. Darcy had seen these girls, rolled her eyes in disgust, and promised herself she would never do anything so foolish as to completely, truly love a man.

But then there was Alex, long fingers dipping into her chest, tugging at her strings with quiet persistence. He cut her. She bled. He sewed the wound back together, and she remained. Pushing and pulling, heated yells and soft murmurs. Perhaps love and pain were one; perhaps the one couldn’t survive without the other. Love caused her to reach dizzying heights, let her walk on the very air itself, but the pain reminded her that she was alive.

Her world was fragmenting, splitting into two halves, and as he entered her, hard and shameless, confident in that non-boasting way; Alex brought a close to the first half of her life. There was pain, grounding her, making her hiss through barely parted lips. Her nails bit into the tendons of his back as she breathed. Alive, she was alive with a shiny new path glittering before her, wide enough for two. She breathed again, inhaling the husky aroma of lust and sweat, deeper, crisp and cool, the wind against stone, Alex. Her body reacted immediately, loosening, relaxing from its initial urge to tense against the intrusion. No need to fret, she trusted him, he blanketed her in protection. She was safe.

She moved. Her nerves, enflamed with pleasure, urged her on, a quick and steady pace, a synchronized chorus of movement, a rhythm that played out its unique tune—their tune. Her heart beat wildly, battering ribs that already ached, sweat creating a glowing sheen over her ivory skin. Kicking the remaining vestiges of her skirt off, legs wrapping around his waist, fingers scrambling down his flesh, her arm rising above her head, clasping his hand in hers, bracing him, bracing her. Another sense of togetherness, one that seemed to make the moment that much more special.

He was her, she was him. So close, so entangled, it was impossible to tell where one stopped and the other began. Endearments were whispered into her ear, a tender caress meant only for her. She responded in turn, muttering words that transformed to moans, her brain detached from her mouth, blissfully blank of everything but what she could feel.

Lust and passion, the strong undercurrent of love and reverence. Her skin blazed, blue irises electric, and had she cared, Darcy would have wondered how she hadn’t burst into flames. She shuddered in his arms as the world faded away, the closet becoming that stereotypical cliff. There was a stilling within her, incredulously, now that she had reached the peak of it all. She gazed up through the haze that surrounded her, sought out her precious blue with a gaze smoldering with the depths of her emotions. Desire coursed through her veins, but it was love that squeezed her, ardent adoration that surged against him that one last time. His name slipped through her lips, an erotic moan, an affectionate promise. Her heart burst, she fell against the intense onslaught that erupted from her core, clung to him as she drowned in pleasure so pure it burned.

Oh gods.

Alex.

Slowly, she became aware of things she had overlooked before. The hard dig of the stone floor in her back, Alex’s weight crushing her from above, his fevered skin slick with moisture where it rubbed against hers, the pants that shattered the stillness of the air, the lingering echoes of pleasure that tingled through exhausted nerves. And even this part was perfect. There was no sudden feeling of wrongness, no regret that came to claim her in the aftermath. Sated. Content. Peaceful (as peaceful as Darcy ever could be).

She was painfully aware when Alex rolled away, mourning the loss of contact with an inexplicable clenching of her throat. The chill of the room moved in fast, combating the burn of her flesh with an icy caress. For a moment it seemed the entire world held its breath, even though her chest continued to rise and fall.

Something needed to be said, something that wouldn’t shatter the perfection they had created. But more than that, she needed to look at him, confirm that he wasn’t closing himself to her again, ensure that there was no shadow crossing his face. If there was, she would forever break, a fallen girl sitting amidst pieces of trust betrayed and a soul forsaken.

Bravely, boldly, she turned onto her side, propping herself up on a bruised elbow, bangs falling into her searching eyes as she gazed upon him, chestnut locks falling in waves down her chest, strands tickling his. Cheeks flushed, a sweat-soaked brow, raven strands splayed out to merge with the midnight robes... Darcy caught her breath, mesmerized by his beauty, helpless but to stare.

How could this god have ever chosen me?

It was then, eyes laying her as open and bare as her nude flesh sprawled out before him, that Darcy fully surrendered. Affection. Fervor. Rapture. Call it what you will. It pooled deep in her stomach, danced from her eyes, curved her lips into a brilliant smile, light and effortless and pure. Fierce devotion, the urge to shelter him in her arms forever, the insistence to never leave this room. Food and drink were frivolous needs compared to this new hunger he had awakened in her. He had ensnared her, body and soul.

She loved him. And even that didn’t seem enough. The depth of her feeling terrified her, the notion that she had willingly handed him her heart, frightening. Darcy dealt with it the only way she knew how, through indifferent tones (which at this moment came out far more teasing, far more suggestive), and bored frowns (completely at odds to the elated grin she currently bestowed him with), and wicked stares (that never mixed with the hint of vulnerability, as it did now).

“I might have to forget to carry Knuts with me more often.”

Please, Alex, still love me.
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Alexander Flint
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It was, at once, an end and a beginning. Wounds healed. Hope revived. They found a cadence they could cling to, a trembling accord in each other’s arms, and the wreckage that lay behind them – the hearts rent, the pain dealt, the harsh lies and hollow distance – only served to make them stronger as their bodies resolved what words could not.

Alex came alive. She was the electric current in his veins, a buzzing hum beneath his skin, and it was as though he’d been lying dormant all these years, waiting for something strong enough to spark him. Waiting for her. Surely they’d been crafted with the other in mind. It was harmony, their fusion; a rhythm so in sync their fingers threaded without breaking time, without thought, clasped tight against the storm that tore the world away around them, until nothing remained but truth and heat. Nothing to lose but himself inside her.

The present disbanded. Her breaths rushed soft and sweet in his ear, her fingertips luring surrender, dark and hungry, from the hollows of his spine. He breathed her name like a prayer, a ragged benediction, and dragged his lips across sweat-slick skin to feel the hot thrum of blood beneath, like beating wings, a pulsing sun. Straight into the heart of her fire, he dove, seeking the warmth of that vibrant, beautiful thing that made Darcy so unparalleled, so blusteringly, loudly, zealously human and wondrous and unlike anyone else he’d ever known. Deep, deeper, a gasp, a moan, until he felt apart of her in a way that burned and filled and brightened, a death and rebirth all at once, a rise from the ashes, a flame anew. He found salvation in her sighing bones.

He found freedom. She made him a man unfettered, Alex as he should have been had life been kinder, more forgiving. Undeserved, of course – she was porcelain cradled in his calloused thief’s fingers – but she’d stolen him, too, in a way, torn him from the dark and a past written in blood, a future scribed in war. Days made brighter now that she would be there to fill them, there to catch him when he splintered off from the shadows and came to her in defiance of the mark that branded him to others.

An ebony-inked lie. He’d always been hers.

They winged towards the heavens. Faster, together, gathering trembling strength in a litany of love and tempered, shining trust; bone and hot-silk friction. She rose against him, soaring, cresting like a wave set to break upon his shore. Hold, love, he breathed, guiding her until they flew together, reached the edge in tandem. Until the center was a white spot, whiter than white, blazing fierce and hot and pulling him in, irrevocable and irresistible in equal measure, and the whole of the universe warped around his trajectory, building, breaking, bursting

Darcy.

Entwined, they fell, spiraling into the glow.

The haze cleared slowly. Even after he collapsed beside her – boneless, one arm splayed across a glistening stomach that rose and fell with each rapid, ragged breath – he could still feel it. That slow, euphoric burn blossoming in every single nerve inside him, remnants of her lingering in every ravaged beat of his blazing heart. His eyes closed, reveling in it for just a minute more, hardly believing a sensation so staggering was even possible.

Hardly believing she was even possible.

Something had shifted. He realized it, then, as his pulse began to level, and passion’s heat settled slowly down to sated warmth. Something inside him – the place in his heart where she resided. A place he knew was permanent now, never to be conquered or matched, home for a love that spanned as wide as the sea and just as deep. Impossible he could feel more strongly for her than he already did, but somehow, miraculously, it was true. Undeniable. The air itself had changed, brightened, atoms infused with a magic so pure and powerful it almost hummed, terrifying and glorious all at once.

And unlike the haze of lust that clouded their heads and veiled their eyes, it didn’t fade at all as the silence settled down to soothe them.

At his side, Darcy stirred, a brush of warmth against his arm, her skin’s sweet scent kissing him as she shifted. He could practically hear the unabashed smile in her bantering tone when her voice sounded above him, the first to break the tranquil quiet.

“I might have to forget to carry Knuts with me more often.”

He followed it with a laugh: deep and husky at the edges but ringing just beneath with perfect, utter contentment. “Love, after that, I’d be willing to make it my sole endeavor in life to personally rid the world of Knuts entirely.”

He lifted his lids to meet her stare now that he'd regained his breath, but nothing could have really prepared him for the sight his eyes fell upon; the beauty she assailed him with. Her ruby-tinted lips curving effulgently at the corners, the flush that lingered stubbornly across her silk-smooth skin in a vibrant bloom of color, the dark of her hair as it tumbled down in wild, ravished tresses to brush whisper-soft against the hard contour of his shoulder… it stole his breath all over again. How striking she was. How incomparably lovely.

But he looked a bit closer, caught something in her eyes she couldn’t hide entirely, not from him, and his own smile faded a fraction in its spotting. Faintly, hardly there at all, a glimmer of uncertainty flickered somewhere deep within the blue he loved so dearly; a vulnerability that made her seem fragile in a way that was almost startling, if only because it was an expression her features never wore. And at once, he understood why it was there, recognizing the magnitude of what they’d just shared together, the momentous impact it had made on them both, and how anyone would feel a little less composed in its resounding wake.

It twisted his heart. And the affection that rose inside it made him want to hold her forever, make certain she never felt unsure or unsafe or unwanted again.

“Come here,” he uttered softly, hand already sliding around to the small of her back, gentle as it urged her down to join him. He settled her there, in the crook of his arm, wrapping her tightly in his warmth, protectively against him, and turned to hold her gaze in his as he reached up with a thumb to trace the delicate slope of her cheek. In the dim light, her eyes looked so deeply blue they were almost violet.

“I love you,” he whispered, stark and soft. An unadorned truth.

He’d never get used to saying it, he knew, but nothing had ever felt so right, or so wondrous, and it made him want to say it again and again, day after day, year after year, until his voice gave out and he breathed no more. All for her, his fierce companion on the road ahead. His equal. His ally. A place he could call a home.

His thumb found her kiss-swollen lips, trailing a feather-light path along their lower ridge. And if he’d had doubts before about how thoroughly things had changed, they vanished the moment something quite akin to mirth began to settle in the soft glint of his stare.

“So much, in fact,” he continued, tone shifting to one that was so gravely serious it could only be an attempt at humor, “that you need only say the word, and not only will I purge the world of pesky Knuts,” his hand slid with playful, possessive comfort over the curve of her waist, thumb brushing her ribs as he leaned in to nuzzle a grin across her cheek, tickling her with the scratch of stubble, “I’ll rid it of every last one of those feathered things you object to so violently, while I’m at it.”

All things considered, that particular avowal probably portrayed the depths of his love for her more than the actual ‘I love you’ had.
Edited by Alexander Flint, Apr 20 2011, 01:01 AM.
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Darcy Bishop
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“Love, after that, I’d be willing to make it my sole endeavor in life to personally rid the world of Knuts entirely.”

Teasing words eliciting such a response of emotion, Darcy felt suddenly claustrophobic. That wasn’t right, either, for joy bubbled to the surface, happiness gave her wings, and elation let her fly. She soared high above the desolate, weeping salty tears, and she laughed. Because she knew that in this world you had to grab happiness with greedy fingers whenever it came, and you had to fight to hold onto it for the remainder of your days. She had. She had struggled and kicked, punched and bit, fought dirty whenever the chance arose. Triumph erupted in her chest, as delicious as Alex because she had won. Evil had clutched Alex to its bosom, but Darcy had said “Fuck no!”. A white knuckled grip, a fiery display of stubbornness, eyes flashing murderously at the shadowed hold until she had pulled him free. And now he was laughing. Alexander “40-year old brooding man” Flint was laughing. She watched transfixed as years of despair faded, as horrible deeds were pushed away, leaving his face alight with youthful pleasure, his eyes free of the nightmarish acts they had seen. Her heart sped, straining, growing until it hurt, until she thought her ribs would bend and it would burst from her chest.

She loved him, she loved him, she loved him, she longed, liked, lusted, loved him.

Without her permission it had spread, covertly slinking through veins, embedding its roots deep within her, until every nerve, every fiber had been corrupted. It sang now, a phosphorescent glow emerging in the wake of her epiphany. Greater than triumph, much larger than joy, encompassing her very being. She had thought she was alive before, she had never considered herself a particularly sad person. Under the onslaught, she knew she had been deceived. Her head felt light atop her shoulders, her stomach no longer clenched in anxiety, and hope was a blazing beacon above her head. The glittering world slid past her eyes with new precision, while flesh became sensitive to the slightest contact. Raven locks laced with mahogany strands unseen before, throbbing veins aquamarine against ivory skin, gaze a coalition of blues— azure, cornflower, cobalt, sapphire, sky. The silk below her dripped like liquid between her fingers, the skin of his side rougher, clinging to her errant finger slightly, pliable and yielding to the barest touch. Every breath she inhaled brought firm resolution; every exhale had the hint of his name upon it. She wanted to scream with it, just to hear the laughter in her voice. This was what she had been hunting for her entire life, a constant search for the one place she really belonged.

This was home.

If he would have her.

“Come here,” he urged gently through a concerned smile, perceptive gaze uncovering her self-doubt with practiced ease. A warm arm encircled her, guiding her towards his side. She accepted it eagerly, an abandoned puppy finding shelter in a warm residence. Within his protection she was free to scoff her earlier doubts, contemptuously toss aside the notion that Alex would feel any less about her now. It was fear that had allowed her to succumb to hesitation in the first place. A fear of the newfound knowledge of just how deep the lines of love ran, the terrifying realization that she would die without him. To take away the magnitude of her emotions, to separate it with a vicious tear from her body, would be to leave her an empty shell. He was everything to her now.

He held her, captivated her, really, and she basked in his attention, relished the gaze he bestowed on her. Tender. Affectionate. The barest brush of his thumb against her cheekbone.

“I love you,” he whispered, a measured pace, each pronounced word hanging delicately in the air. The last shreds of apprehension faded from her eyes as her lips curved in response. No matter how many times he said it, the words still felt special, rare. She supposed it had something to do with him being Alex. Who would attribute such a heartfelt phrase from a boy supposedly aloof and cold? It was how she knew he meant it, truly. It was how she could positively radiate with delight… even if she did pretend it wasn’t that noteworthy.

His thumb moved to trace against her lower lip, parting her mouth with its feathery touch. The hint of a grin tugged at the corners, mirroring the humor that now glimmered in his stare. Humor and Alex. Had she not known him so thoroughly, she might have wondered at the imposter wearing Alex’s visage. Yet, somehow she had known all along that this was what she would find once she delved into his core-being.

“So much, in fact,” he continued, his tone dipping into grave severity, “that you need only say the word, and not only will I purge the world of pesky Knuts, I’ll rid it of every last one of those feathered things you object to so violently, while I’m at it.” Her nose scrunched against the prickle of his stubble as he snuggled against her, hand brushing across her waist, securing her fully in his arms. Beaming, Darcy felt her chest squeeze tightly at the declaration. For her, it was far better than an “I love you”. A man willing to take on the beady-eyed devils spawn solely for her? Well, that was a man worth keeping.

Didn’t mean she couldn’t give him a hard time about it, of course. First thing first, however, she wanted to show her appreciation. For not pointing out her fear. For not leaving her. For giving this a chance. For loving her. She showed it with a kiss, for words would never explain the depth of her gratitude for him, nor would Darcy have been able to pose the phrase as sincerely as she might have liked. Cupping his cheek, she let her lips linger on his, tender and chaste, but suffering no decrease of passion and caring. Then, only when he understood, did she transform back to her devilish self.

With reflexes honed from Quidditch, Darcy gave a mighty shove, pushing him to lay flat on his back, while using the motion to fluidly maneuver herself on top of him until she was sitting, quite proudly, on his stomach. Her hands clenched his upper arms, pinning them to the closet floor, forcing her to lean slightly, bringing their faces closer to each other, enough for him to see the devious glint in her eyes. Right, as if a hearty romp could sap her of energy for that long. A few moments and Darcy was back to ensuring that she would be the death of the poor lad she perched atop of.

“Oi!” she growled, low and ominous, “Are you implying that I am not woman enough to take out those feathered wankers on my own?” The tone was perfect, a commendable inflection of “Oh no he didn’t!”, complete with snapping fingers. The dancing blue she held him with, not to mention the grin which she had thus far managed to pass off as a smirk, were less convincing.

Even while she did her darndest to appear angry, the merry glow of an adoring girl still managed to shine through.

Fantastic. She was one raucous cheer and an “I heart you, Alex” sign away from becoming a fucking fangirl. Oh… literally.
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Alexander Flint
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There was a reason love was a forbidden word amongst his kind. Why it was never said, or felt, or even thought of, shunned like it was something impure you might catch if you got too close, a disease you could suffer from. Weak, it made you. Vulnerable. Human. They are the fools, not us. They will stumble over their own feet for things like love, Alexander. They will die for it. Go blind. Err. But not you. Never you.

Words whispered to him since childhood. Lilting tones of praise. Pride had reared him, not affection, and it showed as the years passed and he grew taller, broader, colder, firm with strength, sharp with swiftness, a walking blade. And they don’t have hearts, do they, blades? Those weapons crafted with wounds in mind? If they did, there’d be no such thing as war.

War, which was, of course, the reason for everything. His purpose. Drive. No room for love on a path so fierce and narrow. No quarter here for hearts. That was the Way of Things for a dark like his, and he’d accepted it blindly, without protest or question; without even really grasping why it was such an essential omission in the first place, not truly, anyway, because people who have never experienced love can’t understand, you see. It’s not something you can imagine. A guess you can make. You don’t know until you know, and then—

Oh.

Oh.

It’s this. This is how it is.

No wonder they feared it so. Surely nothing was more powerful, more capable of dismantling an army made of steel. Love would burn them all down like paper. Bloom hearts into being. Instill emotion. Mercy. Kindness. Affection. These are the real enemies of war.

Alex knew why now.

Just this, the feel of her in his arms, was enough to siphon away tension, repel the things that made his eyes so dark out there, beyond this door that shut them away from the rest of the world. Just this. This potent heat that ringed and spiraled around them; the way she filled every cavity and hollow and dip and porous bone inside him with her name and presence and something so light and buoyant he was sure he’d be gravity defying were he only to try. How his nerves sang hymns, and how he could sense that under skin her blood shifted to match his, heart pressing forward, a collective pulse falling even. Two, four, six, eight. Connection. How even their biology willed it.

This was steel dismantling.

It should have disconcerted him, he supposed. Sentimentality had always been a weakness, after all. He’d been taught to scorn and shut down his emotions until he wouldn’t balk at the thought of waving a cruel curse or snapping bones beneath his fingers; undaunted by the notion of entering a fray and walking out of it stone-faced, covered in the blood of others, last one out. Last one alive. It shouldn’t have even been a threat to him, Alexander Flint, who’d been crafted in contrast, pale and dark and lean like a wolf with that infamous gaze of his heritage, that clear winter-blue. Pristine, one might make the mistake of thinking. Clean. Something to unnerve people just that tiny bit more. Just enough to make them feel the breath of a shiver across the skin at the back of their neck – something’s not right with that boy – the sort of thing that would make mothers take the hand of their child out of instinct were they to pass him on a path.

How could love touch something like that? How could it come near a person who even now could remember what he would have done had this scene occurred a year ago, when he was still that face of stone, that wolf: the place he would have bitten, the weak points in her armor, her beautiful neck; a pulse so vulnerable, so easily extinguished. Gods, he could sense the heat from that spot there, where her heart was bursting in tones he could practically hear through her skin, a pit-pat-pit-pat of movement that shocked him.

Shocked him, because it was music now. Not a call to arms.

Shocked him because Merlin, how he adored the noise of it, the very notion of firm veins beneath soft skin, perfect in how they continue and how they connect, bringing life to her, making her possible; to know, inexorably, that he would cover them with his own without thought if he needed to, protect them with layers of muscle and bone, just to keep them there, safe, forever. To notice something that intimate. To love it that dearly.

It was Darcy. It was Darcy who’d made this Alex possible.

This Alex had a heart.

And hearts will touch everything, you know. Hearts will touch everything, and know everything, and won’t be ignored, and this, this is why they are so dangerous to dwellers of the dark. The entire world had taken on a new topography for him, shifting plates, colliding continents, rearranging completely until she was the core that burned at its center. That heat… that light... it was the reason he could think things now he never would have dreamed of before. How he could even entertain the notion of finding redemption in her; that through proximity or diffusion or osmosis or airborne contagion he could somehow find absolution for being born a Flint, or mingling with shadows and crooked beings who bled ink from their arms and spat sulfur.

Hope.

Yes, that was it.

Hope.

You idiot. You almost let go of this.

Hadn’t though, and he held her now, and through some miracle she had taken him back after all he’d done to keep them apart. And here they were, entangled, smiling, her hands on his cheek, her lips closing in to meld with his, loving, tender, a soft and burning imprint.

It was all sensation, kissing Darcy. Warmth from the outside in; a thaw that ached as it brought life back into all his frozen depths, the summer to his winter; affection blooming where only thorns and bramble grew before; the slight dizziness of his blood being tugged at like the tides. Like coming back to shore after a long voyage at sea, bone-weary, falling at the feet of her. Relief in found shelter. Stillness. Home, home, home, at last.

That was what it was like. Every time. Whether passion or gentleness or remorse colored it, it made no difference. Somehow he suspected it would always be that way. She would always do this to him, seep into his senses, dark and warm, like wine in his veins, until he was half drunk on the feel of her moving against him. She did it now, and the moment became a long one, and then longer and longer, until they were standing in a miniature universe, a little landscape of time. That's what he’d say about it later: that it felt like everything stopped, everything except for them, and it was the happiest he'd been in years.

This confluence of them. This coalescence of light and dark.

That was the true miracle, wasn't it? When he thought about all the places they were touching, lips and knees and hands and hips, Alex had difficulty separating the "I" from the "she," as though they were one entity, not two, despite their opposing polarities, their differences, a sun and moon. But it was wonderful, this feeling of "us" and not "I," because it was a product of knowing that no matter what, somewhere in the great Out There, there would always be an Alexander Flint who lay one stolen evening in a locked room beneath the earth with a smiling Darcy Bishop in his arms. Whatever happened in the future, whatever the world would hurl at them, or take away, they would always have this. This event on the timeline of “us.”

He’d change none of it. Even the pull of her grin against his lips was something sacred, though it screamed of ill intentions, because he loved this Darcy too – the wicked, willful girl who’d likely drive him mad before their time was finished. But she pushed him back with a playful shove and a swift, nimble move that placed her effortlessly atop him, and he couldn’t help but think, as he gazed up at her, that perhaps he wouldn’t mind going mad very much at all.

“Oi! Are you implying that I am not woman enough to take out those feathered wankers on my own?” she demanded, brow arched in menace, hair wild around her half-obscured features, dark and fey, almost mythical in her beauty. A slighted siren.

But it was her eyes that gave her away, always was, and even now they danced with mirth as they met his, foxfire bright in the gloom; a look to match the tiny, brilliant thing that tempted each corner of her mouth until it formed that smile he’d never found an equal to, a sly, irresistible sunburst.

Quite impossible to keep his own lips from curving slightly in the wake of it. Of course, it was also impossible not to be affected by this new arrangement she’d placed them in, as well, though he managed to control himself enough so that his internal struggle was only visible in the dark glitter of his gaze and the taut shift of muscle beneath her palms; more a response to the havoc the maddening feel of her atop him was wreaking on his senses than any stirrings of actual restraint. Her fingers barely circled his arms, after all.

No, her power lay elsewhere. And Merlin, was he aware of it.

“Believe me, love, the merits of your womanliness are not being called into question,” he responded smoothly, a gleam of amusement coloring his blatantly assessing stare. She was, after all, quite open to his scrutiny at the moment, and scrutinize he did, tracing the soft curves and smooth planes that formed her perfect, feminine symmetry, delectably warm and positively unignorable above him. It made his lips edge a fraction deeper into his cheek, and his thumbs, free to do as they pleased, brushed at ankles just within his reach, idle and languorous; a wicked little taunt of a caress.

Two played the game, after all.

Speaking of which...

Very deliberately, he lifted his stare to hers again, a glinting, enigmatic blue, and continued on with an air of decorous surrender. “But very well, if the lady insists…”

The act didn’t last very long.

In a flash, he reached for her, striking in a warrior’s move that effortlessly switched their positions, lightning fast and light. He hovered half-above her, then, his forearm supporting him at her side, and felt his lips twitch as his gaze met hers very briefly.

“I’ll leave the birds to you, then, shall I?” he murmured, merging a grin with the edge of her jawline, entirely unable to resist brushing his lips across the tender spot just before the ivory slope met her ear as his voice turning to velvet; a low, suggestive hum. “I’m sure I can think of something else to hunt...”

He wanted her again. Desire set a course for his palm as it slipped to her waist, sliding over her hip, splaying wide when he reached the smooth side of her thigh…

And stopped abruptly.

Only then did a thought occur to him – infuriatingly ill-timed, but niggling enough to put a lock on his movements and lift his mouth from her skin. It was, he was loath to admit, a highly auspicious opportunity to bring up something he’d pushed to the back of his thoughts until now. And he also knew that if he were to continue, he’d likely not be in the right state of mind to address the problem at all – not for some while anyway, and it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing he was comfortable putting off. No, now was the time.

“There is… one thing you should leave to me, however,” he began as unobtrusively as possible, lifting away enough to meet her stare.

Though his tone was light and unassuming, a tense line had formed between his brows, and very little of the mirth he’d displayed before remained in the steady gaze that studied hers, as though gauging a reaction that hadn’t come yet. At her shoulder, where one of his hands had found a place to rest quite without his realizing it, his thumb whispered slowly back and forth over her skin’s smooth curve – perhaps the only real outward sign of his inner need to breach this subject as delicately as he could. Knowing that this was Darcy and nothing was ever simple.

“If I ask very nicely, will you do something for me?”

Why did it already feel like he was preparing for battle.
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Darcy Bishop
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She had been born dead. Her senses dulled to nonexistence. Odor was a caught whiff on the wind, touch was a rough scrape of flesh against surface, only murmurs pricked her ears attention, and colors reflected into her eyes, mute and faded. Perhaps she had known all along, maybe that was why it had become of greatest import to push the boundaries on her life. She sought the sharp taste of death on her tongue, allowed the fire to burn so furiously within her, she saw red, glaringly bright.

But there was a line, one that always managed to throw her back with a sturdiness that defied her every move. How silly, it seemed to taunt her, that she should try to reach absolute life through death and anger. Try again. And no matter how forcefully her fists struck that wall, it would not yield.

Until now. And instead of crushing it with a blow, she had danced through a gate, opened by the slightest touch of her finger. Love and life; she supposed this was why the two were interchangeable. For it wasn’t until she had met Alex that incandescent hues had assaulted her eyes. Electric blues and midnight blacks, satin pinks and shocking oranges. Taste was a cacophony of sensations whirling about her mouth, bitter mixing with sweet, tangy and sour curling her tongue. And touch, oh that was her favorite. Smooth, supple flesh contrasting with rigid muscle, the scratch of stubble as it brushed against her cheek, her neck.

This was the life she had been searching for. Him. Alex. He was her life.

The reality of it both shocked and dismayed her. Darcy had always prided herself on never needing anybody. Independent to the extreme, she preferred to rely on herself, having learned just by aging that she was the only one she could depend on. The only one she could ever fully trust. And while she acknowledged that it would be a lonely life indeed if she never allowed herself to confide in at least a few people, it was still grudgingly given. Those who received it were far luckier than they themselves probably believed. Kate. Jack.

Alex, though every fiber of her being had told her not to instill such devotion in him. Because see, see, look at what had happened when she did. Bound herself to him, body and heart and mind, twisting so thoroughly that there was no longer the distinction between his and hers. She looked for his heartbeat as much as she did hers, held her breath because he held his. Unconsciously. Unknowingly. A solemn wish to mimic, imitate, even death. And that terrified her, this selflessness. Knowing that she was willing to throw herself in front of a killing curse for him, to suffer mindless torture because of him.

That was where the problems started.

Her heart leapt into her throat at the glittering curve of his lips, the feral gleam in his darkened stare. Already she was beginning to feel that stir of excitement in her lower abdomen.

“Believe me, love, the merits of your womanliness are not being called into question,” he replied coolly, the hint of lust etched into the blue that roamed slowly down her curves, eliciting a slight shiver from her in response. Honestly, it was positively unfair how aroused Alex could make her with a look. When she felt the ghostly touch of his skin against her ankles, she nearly jumped even as the slow burn of flames began flooding her veins.

“But very well,” he continued nonchalantly, ignoring the deepening frown of her lips as she caught the sense that he was about to do something she wasn’t going to like, “if the lady insists…”

And with that she was on her back. Again. She actually pouted, if one could call what was attempting to break through her severe frown a pout. One of these days, one of these damned wicked days she was going to be on top. Even if she had to use Jack’s pink furry handcuffs to tie him down. Now, she didn’t mind being dominated by Alex, quite enjoyed it actually, as previously seen. But hell if she would allow him to every time. A girl had to take control every now and again, and right now, Darcy wanted him begging her for release.

Oh, but that was an enticing thought indeed.

Fuck this. She was going to be on top, and that stunt of his would cost him dearly.

“I’ll leave the birds to you, then, shall I?” he muttered, the hint of a dark chuckle in his voice as his lips brushed against her jaw, moving to her ear as he hummed, “I’m sure I can think of something else to hunt…” The spike of desire that erupted in her then almost made her forget about her mischievous plan as she momentarily forgot why being under Alex in this moment was such a dreadful idea. Felt rather nice, the warmth that seeped from his bare flesh as he hovered over her, azure gleaming as it moved across her body, drinking in each curve and dip. Knowing that those eyes only worshipped her skin thus. Hands too, as they joined his “hunt”, sliding with confident laziness across her waist, skipping across her hip, pressing against her thigh… Was that a sigh of contentment that had just left her lips? That wasn’t supposed to happen. She should not be satisfied right now.

Shut the hell up.

And that would have been the end of it, had Darcy not realized at that moment that Alex’s wandering touch had stopped. For a cruel moment, Darcy wondered if he had somehow read her wicked plan in her mind and was going to tease and torture her now, all the way through. He moved, pushing away slightly to look down at her, and when his mouth parted to speak, she groaned and nearly stuck her hand over her face.

Here we go.

“There is… one thing you should leave to me, however,” he started, the reason behind his halted movement now apparent. Darcy’s brow furrowed in wary curiosity, a steely gleam entering her eyes. She barely even felt the comforting touch at her shoulder, and blatantly ignored the grave look he was observing her with. It was never in ones best interest to tell Darcy not to hunt down something.

“If I ask very nicely, will you do something for me?”

Perhaps it was because she had never heard the whispered “I love you” from a hopelessly devoted soul. Naturally, there was familial love, but that was required. And in friendship, that was assumed. But other than that, people just did not love Darcy Bishop. Sure they liked her, thought she was a hoot, or hated, even loathed her. So for Alex, the epitome of all she stood against compacted into one perfect specimen of shadow, to love her was understandably difficult to come to terms with. And it was why she lashed out with anger instead of allowing him to explain further. It was why the fear of her vulnerability caused her to overreact almost immediately.

It was horrible, the insecurity of love. How had she, not moments before, believed it was the greatest emotion in life? Clearly these over-perceptive senses were a curse. The sting of his betrayal, though she kept reminding herself that she wasn’t even certain it was that yet, scorched her skin like dragons breath. She felt suddenly, terribly self-conscious of her nakedness, both mentally and physically. She needed herself back, the gruff, sharp-tongued girl who never felt pain, who could take a bludger to the back of the head, fall off her broom, and still chase after the offender with her bat. The cool, self-assured brunette who boldly pushed others aside to create a comfortable niche for her doubtless presence in life, complete with place marker: Move bitches, Darcy exists here!

And love, this despicable word, this poorly chosen word— this rather stupid word now thinking about it because V’s were after all the outcasts of the alphabet, so why it was put into a sound supposed to encompass adoration was beyond her— which was supposed to free her was caging her, shackling her to the earth with leaden chains of suspicion, uncertainty nailing the links together.

She liked it better when Alex was merely interesting and infuriating, and rather delectable in the challenge he posed. Why couldn’t they go back to that?

Too late, too late… they had progressed, and now she was extricating herself from his touch, scooting backwards with narrowed eyes away and crossing her arms defensively over her exposure. If only she could do that to her mind as well.

“So… it was just a coincidence that this ‘favor’ sprang to mind at such a timely moment,” she stated evenly, tonelessly through a fearsome frown. But it was not enough. She needed to burn with fury, let it spill from between her lips with vicious precision, striking with lightning.

“And what?” she wondered aloud, passion entering her tone this time, “did you think you could just shag me and suddenly I would be at your beck and call? Was all… all this,” she spat, gesturing at the closest with a wildly flung hand, “just so that I would be amiable enough to do this favor for you?” A rudely pointed finger was thrust at him, as her voice darkened into that characteristic low, seething Darcy tone, “If so, then you have another thing coming, buddy.”

Knowing him as she did, he probably saw straight through the mask, clear to the sinister whispers that revealed, yes nobody says they love you unless they hope to take advantage of you in the future. Look at what she had done, allowing her guard to slip, allowing Alex to creep under, slithering into her heart like the snake he wore proudly on his robes. He was an excellent actor, after all, hadn’t she always known that? Foolishly, she had never considered his skill could extend to the manipulation of care and affection.

She didn’t want to believe it. Not even remotely. The idea of her even considering it was revolting.

Still, it lingered, taunting, tearing, leaving frayed heart strings in its wake.
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Alexander Flint
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Magic, Alex knew, was a straightforward sort of thing. You incant what you want, and you have it, and it’s easy and simple and fair. Cutting and clean. No frayed edges left behind, no tangled knots. Just precision. Order. Now you see it, now you don’t.

It wasn't anything like love.

Love was the most complicated thing of all. Love left mires in its wake, ripples that carried outward endlessly in a complex kaleidoscope of tangling patterns, wrapping hearts in knots so intricate it would take decades to unravel them. Nothing was ever easy, ever simple, ever fair. Mistakes couldn’t be mended with one mere spoken word alone, no matter how strong the intent behind it, how affectionate the tone, how remorseful.

Sometimes it would take a thousand of them. Sometimes words wouldn’t be enough. Sometimes nothing would.

He was starting to realize that now.

He, who was so new at feeling much of anything, let alone something as staggeringly potent and real as love. Up until this point, the strongest thing inside him had never had anything to do with emotion - that unheard of power in his core he’d spent years perfecting, honing to a lethal science. The kind of magic that could sever lives with one turn of his wrist, reduce towering walls of impassable stone to mere rubble at his feet, crush to dust anything foolish enough to get in his way. Power crafted for destruction. Chaos. War.

Not mending. Not for making things right again.

What did he know of healing hearts? This was an area Alex had never perfected, never been made for, and it had him feeling like he was stumbling through every moment of it, uncertainty reigning where cool assurance had always been before. He felt like he was holding some fragile, priceless, irreplaceable object in his trembling, sweat-slick fingers, and any moment now, any moment, it could slip, shatter, become yet another thing he ruined irrevocably.

Only this time he wouldn’t walk away without looking back, remorseless and unchanged; on to the next. This time it would bring him to his knees. This time, he knew, he would shatter too.

But then there were moments like this one, when he watched the walls slam back down over her eyes, saw her mouth form a tense, defensive line, and how even her skin seemed to flinch away from him instinctively, like it had come to its senses and remembered, now, that nothing good could ever come from his touch… and he wondered if it was already too late. If he’d already set something into motion he’d never be able to reverse or repair. If her heart had already begun its plummet to the ground at his feet, dropped from inept fingers that had never deserved to hold it in the first place.

Sometimes, in his mind’s cruelest moments, he wondered if she’d ever really given it to him at all.

He didn’t know which one was worse.

“So… it was just a coincidence that this ‘favor’ sprang to mind at such a timely moment,” she ventured in a crisp, colorless tone, though her stare pinned him with a look as cold as it was accusing from the corner she’d pointedly retreated to, arms crossed and posture rigid. A physical distance to go with the emotional one. Such a vast change from the intimacy they’d shared only moments before, how distrust leapt to fill the place abandoned by desire, startlingly sudden and…

Easy, his mind provided, soft and unforgiving.

Easy, like it had been there just beneath the surface all the while, waiting for a chance to break through again, take over, dispel the thick haze of their lust in one killing swipe. A chance he’d provided with his careful request.

Perhaps it wasn’t so startling after all.

Not when he realized he already knew what he’d find on her features were he to fully meet her gaze. The scorn he himself had implanted that night in the hall when he’d lied to her so convincingly, dealing wounds he wouldn’t be foolish enough to believe he’d ever be able to heal again. A wonder it had taken this long for them to remind her of their presence. A wonder she’d let him touch her at all. After what he’d done. What he was.

But it was a cowardly move, averting his eyes to spare himself the sting, and he had no excuse when a part of him had always known, however distantly, that this is how it would be. That he could never expect anything more than a fraction of her heart, fragments of bliss, did not merit any of it after all he had put her through, and with such a flimsy, dark, and hollow thing to offer her in return. There was no honor in hiding, and she didn’t deserve attention that was muted simply for his own sake, so he forced his gaze to rise and hold hers, taking the fiery hit of her ridicule in one blow. It was like ripping off a bandage, quick but still painful, no matter what your mother tells you (not that Alex's mother told him anything about bandages, except how to make other people need them.)

Darcy was proof of that.

“And what?” she continued, a ruthless fire burning in her blisteringly reproachful tone. “Did you think you could just shag me and suddenly I would be at your beck and call? Was all… all this just so that I would be amiable enough to do this favor for you?”

He held back a wince, smothering the pained twinge that tore deep in his chest. A reminder (as if he’d needed one) that she and she alone could break him, make him shatter at the scars into dozens of jagged, geometrical pieces that no one else would ever be able to reassemble.

Look at her, you wretch. Look at what you’ve done.

Another thing he’d leeched the light from. It wasn’t hard to reach that conclusion, for human speech is often marked by undercurrents, and this instance was no different. There was pain beneath her fire, a note of vulnerability in her diamond-hard voice, and something wounded lay buried deep inside those eyes that burned him across that empty space; air that felt uncomfortable now, charged, as if effused with a million pinpricks of crackling sparks, heavy with sin and betrayal, heartbreak and shattered trust.

You lied, was the unspoken continuation that hung in the air. How can I trust anything you ever say or do again?

He couldn’t expect her to. Of that much he was certain as he looked into that gaze he’d come to know so well. Vibrant as lightning, deep as oceans. A blue he could fall into forever. Blue the color of summer sunlight. Of beginnings and adventure and life, so much life it hurt to look at them sometimes, like he was some wraith who gazed out at them from a different world, some ghost who’d long-since forgotten how it felt to feel that way but knew from the phantom ache in his chest how badly he wished to remember. Or learn.

A richer, brighter shade than his. Better, truer even in their scorn, and he could never fault them for being so purely whatever it was that they were.

He could not fault her for this. For the incredulity darkening that azure to cobalt, a stormy, forbidding look that fueled the angry thrust of a condemning finger. “If so, then you have another thing coming, buddy,” she spat hotly, a repelling blow.

It nearly worked. But he’d come so close to losing her before, too many times, and he knew that feeling, hated it down to his bones, and he couldn’t allow her to slip away from his hold so easily again, no matter how selfish it was, how little he warranted her affection.

He didn’t know what would happen to him if she left. He was afraid of what he might become. Afraid it would be darker than what he’d been before, the kind of shadow that might truly belong alongside a man like Marcus Reed. The kind that no light would ever be able to pierce through again.

It was that fear that roused him. Fear and the need to soothe away the defensive creases in her brow, the damage in her damning eyes. Slowly, he, too, lifted himself to settle in a place against the wall, not far from her, but not touching either, though he ached to. She might flinch if he tried, he knew, so instead he breathed out a nearly silent sigh, a sound like the tide rushing in, and closed his eyes before breaching the strident stillness.

“Darcy,” he murmured, soft and a little left-behind, like he was trying to pull her back to him with a line made of her name, a line of voice and syllables. There was regret there, too, and guilt, and a mirthless kind of humor that pulled painfully at his lips, like some ironic secret he alone could understand. An infinitesimal lift that only served to tighten his aquiline features, make his eyes more solemn, less bright.

Merlin, if she only knew. If she only knew how deep his loyalty to her went. The things he was willing to do. How encompassingly she’d saved him. How invincibly he loved her.

She’d never doubt again.

And yet he’d never be able to tell her. She wouldn’t believe it. Not fully. Not when lies had spilled so smoothly from his lips before. And he could never blame her for that, never see anything but reason in her hesitance, her lack of trust. Even when he knew those words would be the truest things he’d ever say. Ever feel. The truest thing about him. You’re the only part of me that’s real. I’ll love you to the end.

What a funny little tragedy they were.

But… not really, no, and it wasn’t enough to hold up his not-quite-smile. It faded easily, leaving something deeper behind, something quiet and a little weary, but he knew he had to try. He’d promised, after all. That was all he could do now. Grope blindly for her in the dark. The dark, at least, was something he could understand.

“I’m in your debt forever, Darcy.”

Gently, the words emerged from the silence. His tone had lowered, becoming even huskier now, more intimate, like a hand on the small of someone’s back. The starkest of truths in its careful timbre.

“My whole life spent at your feet would be too little. I could crawl through hell on my hands and knees for an eternity and still not merit the smallest portion of what you’ve given me. What you’ve done. You…” and he raised his glance, met her stare, shook his head as if hardly believing it needed to be said, “you beautiful, impossible girl… you owe me nothing. Your glance is more than I deserve. Let alone this.”

Cautiously, he reached over to merge his hand with hers. And oh, it burned, but filled him instantly, just this alone, and their fingers fit together like vertebrae. Like they belonged. And he allowed it for a selfish moment, stared at their bones entwined, swallowed back some thick emotion before he forced himself to pull away again; granting her the distance she’d sought. Unwilling to take yet another thing away from her.

“You’re the best thing I’ve ever known,” he told her, his tone as thick and fragile as the clouds that obscure the very highest of mountains, so easily wisped away to catch a glimpse of jagged rocks below. “I don’t think you even realize how rare you are. And a world without you…” he trailed off briefly, but his voice was stronger when it reemerged again, features tenser. “I can’t abide by that. Whether or not you feel the same about me as I towards you. Whether or not you’re willing to take my hand, look my way. Knowing you’re here, that you exist… that’s enough. That’s essential.”

His eyes found hers, recklessly open and caressingly soft. Wishing he was better at this. Wishing he knew how to fix everything, make her understand.

“Ever since that day in the clearing—”

But he had to stop, couldn’t continue, and his eyes drifted away before closing tight, repressing the urge to tremble even now, weeks later. The image would haunt him till his death. Her bound and bleeding in that circle of sharks.

Swallowing back the thickness in his throat, he shoved away those terrible memories. Forged on. “I knew that as long as it was in my power, I’d do whatever I could to never let a moment like that happen again. To never let you come close to an end I could have prevented. And I’m asking this favor of you now, because this is all I can do.”

Gravely serious, he fixed her with an unwavering stare, needing her to know, now, what his speech had all been for. Why he’d chosen this moment to make the request of her.

“Three nights from now, there’s going to be an attack. Here, at the castle. I can’t tell you more than that. It’s not safe for either of us, and even I’m not allowed to know everything. Not the best timing, I know, and I'm sorry, but given our… circumstances… I wasn’t willing to take the chance of letting you go on any longer without knowing about it. Not when I couldn’t be sure I’d have another opportunity to speak with you alone again.”

It pained him, having to say that. But it wasn’t the hardest part. That came next, and he braced himself with set shoulders and a deep breath.

“All I ask is that you stay in your dorm that night, Darcy. The corridors won’t be safe. Just… please,” he urged softly, a steely note of utmost importance in his tone. Already his heart felt like it was being painfully tugged at, the mere thought of her brashly charging off into the fray to come enough to scare the hell out of him. “Please keep inside. If not for my sake, then for your own. I’ll never ask anything of you again.”

The anxiety from all this would likely kill him before he could even try. Never in his life had he felt the need to worry this much about another’s well-being. It was such a foreign concept, sat so heavily in the pit of his stomach, a sick, leaden weight that could drown him if he let it, and Merlin, this was torture. Agony. Hell.

He had to fall in love with a Gryffindor.
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Darcy Bishop
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There were many ways to say a name. Syllables could collide sharply as the clang of bells or mesh in the soft cadence of a whispered sigh. It could come as a swift bark or a drawn out lilt. A crash of thunder or moaning wind. And hers liked to be combined with a furious growl (Darcy!), oftentimes an exasperated tilt (Dar-cee). But more likely, it would be her last name wrought with angry undertones and cool detachment.

So when it was spoken with laces of love and strings of remorse, entwining into a heavy ball of profound guilt, it was no wonder she was taken aback. Eyes wide and unblinking, forcing her stare to shift, alter beneath a creasing brow. One word and she was flooded with regret, made keener because it was alien to her. For a girl who prided herself on accepting the past, flawed or not, she was spending a good deal of time trapped in her mistakes. How she wished she could take back those hasty, spiteful words now. They had come from vulnerability so acute, she felt it in the very marrow of her bones. She had promised herself that distrust would never drive them apart again, and yet here she was, flinging suspicion at him as if it were glass. She was the problem, alternatively overjoyed and terrified of the intimacy he offered. It was her ego fueling her doubt, her inability to ever risk bruising her pride and breaking the heart she pretended did not exist.

“Darcy,” that shattered name sounded from beside her and she felt the chill seep beneath her skin, both from the tone and lack of contact as he shifted subtly. It was disheartening to the point that she seemed to sag slightly from it, a bowing of the shoulders, the weight of a warped spine. Further caused by the knowledge that it was her doing.

“I’m in your debt forever, Darcy,” he spoke, gruff and low into that awful, tense atmosphere. Her breath escaped her in a careless huff, barely stirring the bangs that stuck in sweaty strands to her brow.

“My whole life spent at your feet would be too little,” he continued with sincerity that seared her to the bone. “I could crawl through hell on my hands and knees for an eternity and still not merit the smallest portion of what you’ve given me. What you’ve done. You…” he lifted his gaze to lock with the stare she hadn’t even realized she’d been fixing him with. It jolted her, the anguish she imagined just beneath the surface of that crystal blue. “You beautiful, impossible girl… you owe me nothing. Your glance is more than I deserve. Let alone this.”

She wanted to slide her lids shut, block out the image that confronted her now. Did he realize that sometimes his visage was so haunting, so achingly beautiful that it actually caused burning pain? Merlin, when he watched her so it was as if he had dipped fingers into her chest, squeezed her heart until the blood refused to pulse. At this moment, touched by gloom, wrapped in a shroud of despondency with two pinpricks of the clearest sapphire studying her, it was impossible not to want to reach out, to touch this ethereal being, bury herself in his wraithlike loveliness. Can one so gorgeous truly be real? Her obstinacy faltered, resentment melting under the sheer affection he showered her with. It was entirely unfair.

The hand, bold, yet welcomed, that reached out for hers forced skipped beats, leaving a pitter-patter as that of raindrops in its wake. Immediately her eyes flew to the tangled limbs, marveled at the way in which flesh could so easily accept its brethren, trusting completely that it would never do harm. It prickled and yearned to be enclosed, protected and warm, fitting into the other as if it were a tailored glove. It was so easy to see, the proof stared her in the face a thousand times a day.

They were meant for one another.

And as he removed his fingers, she realized how the cold crept across her skin, how the delicate fingertips pressing into the stone looked terribly frail. Perhaps she had it wrong. Helplessness stemmed from loneliness. His selflessness shamed her selfishness.

Shit. She loathed being wrong.

“You’re the best thing I’ve ever known,” he informed her with a voice that constricted her lungs, rendering her unable to breathe. “I don’t think you even realize how rare you are. And a world without you…” he trailed off, agonizingly so, causing Darcy to glance back to him caught hopelessly on every heartrending word. “I can’t abide by that. Whether or not you feel the same about me as I towards you. Whether or not you’re willing to take my hand, look my way. Knowing you’re here, that you exist… that’s enough. That’s essential.”

Oh gods, gods, she hadn’t meant that. This. She never wanted to make him doubt her feelings towards him. Did he not realize that the root of the vile words she spat came from a love so deep, so pure, so enflamed that it petrified her? How she could hardly look at him without wanting to fall pitifully into his arms, never leave his embrace lest he be torn forever from her grasp? Did he not wonder why her gaze traced every dip and curve in his body as carefully as a painter examining his model? She memorized him in increasingly infinite detail, as if her memory alone could render him into existence when he was gone. He made her feel lost, took pieces with him when he walked away, chipping at the glue she held herself together with each time.

Love. Gods, Alex, she was radiant with it, the incandescence blinding her, manipulating every one of her senses until she drowned in it. She had always associated the emotion with weakness, the Achilles heel of women everywhere. Wrapping it in scorn, she shoved it away, sneering at its pathetic attempts to ensnare her. But it had, it had, and oh, it alarmed her, frightened her with how easy it had slipped into her sinews, as if it had been there all along.

“Ever since that day in the clearing—” he started, halting abruptly even as she winced, focusing on the tightly shut lids instead of the crimson field that pressed as a weight on her mind. She couldn’t go back there. Anywhere but there and the masks of contempt. Indifference. It pierced her still.

“I knew that as long as it was in my power, I’d do whatever I could to never let a moment like that happen again. To never let you come close to an end I could have prevented. And I’m asking this favor of you now, because this is all I can do.” She met his grave stare with veiled defiance, unwilling to be the shaken wretch that lay beneath her toughened exterior.

“Three nights from now, there’s going to be an attack. Here, at the castle. I can’t tell you more than that. It’s not safe for either of us, and even I’m not allowed to know everything. Not the best timing, I know, and I'm sorry, but given our… circumstances… I wasn’t willing to take the chance of letting you go on any longer without knowing about it. Not when I couldn’t be sure I’d have another opportunity to speak with you alone again.”

The surprise was evident on her features as he paused for breath, a million thoughts whirling through her head. But she didn’t really understand them, they never had a chance to sink in when they were so utterly unexpected, so impractical that they remained unattainable. Nobody attacked Hogwarts. There was no reason, and there were no means. If she had known then what she would later discover, she may not have automatically dismissed the idea. A part of her, somewhere deep down and selfless, knew he was telling her the truth, that she should run to Reynolds, warn him, but she didn’t want a part of it. She would rather not be privy to the wealth he willingly gifted her with.

And that was her flaw, her critical mistake. Her need to become invincible, to outwardly possess an immortal body made her ignorant to the mortality of others. The blemish stained her far more permanently than blood ever could.

“All I ask is that you stay in your dorm that night, Darcy,” he all but pleaded, and if she had been someone else, anybody else, she would have taken his words to heart. But she wasn’t. Stubborn to the end, ignorant to the realization that it would be her end. “The corridors won’t be safe. Just… please,” his gentle voice beseeched with the trappings of urgency. “Please keep inside. If not for my sake, then for your own. I’ll never ask anything of you again.” The steely undertone of his words lingered in the silence as his request faded into the oblivion that all syllables go.

Darcy fumed, quietly, internalizing the grudge she felt towards him for attempting to exude control. A logical part of her reasoned his good intentions. It was only that which kept her lips clamped shut, her tongue still from imparting such a lashing, it would have had them both reeling. Something gnawed at her, however, the passion that provided her ire fueling something else entirely as well. So when she spoke, it was with acid that barely stung.

“And where will you be during this attack?” she questioned with forced lightness that only made her voice tight, belying the inward turmoil that boiled her blood. “Do I get to tell you to stay in your common room too?” There was the beginning of disdain in her voice, but she couldn’t hold it as she continued.

“Or is it only me who is supposed to cower in safety?” The bitterness the crept into her tone then came from somewhere else, something that cinched her throat tight and threatened to place tears in her glare. She turned from him, allowing her gaze to seek the neutrality of worn stone. So it was that her next words were conferred to the ground.

“Just because I don’t… show it,” she offered haltingly with a rough cadence, “does not mean it doesn’t affect me as well.” The encrypted sentence offered little insight into her thoughts and so she attempted to remedy it. Open and honest, they were two qualities never quite suited to her. This possibly was the most difficult conversation she had ever been privy to.

“Sometimes, I wake up believing that I never made it in time,” she confessed, strained, her eyes lifting to stare at the wall opposite her though the far away gleam spoke volumes of what she actually saw. “That I’m back in Gretchen’s bathroom, staring at my reflection, at all the blood everywhere, your blood… in my hair, on my face, beneath my fingernails… how did it even manage to reach some of these places, I always wonder that, and which was the last drop that made you go—” She broke off with a cough, eyes blinking rapidly a few times, the only sign that tears had attempted to form in those drifting blue.

Her arms came up to wrap around her knees, her chin resting on the joints and she turned slightly, to meet his stare with a pointed one of her own, knowing, unfortunately, that her eyes told the story.

“But I don’t suppose I get to tell you to stay in your dormitory, now do I?”
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Alexander Flint
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It was easy, in the quiet of that little room, rapt as he was upon the girl beside him, and how the dim light seemed to limn each one of her soft curves and vulnerable angles in palest silver, to feel resolve building like a garrison behind his bound, blue gaze. Resolve that heeded little regret, if any, for the plea he’d been unable to stifle. It was easy to remember that she was small and real and here and human. That if you cut her, she would bleed. That she was mortal. That she was not untouchable, invincible, never-ending. That she would cease one day, and that this realization was infinitely, incomparably worse than the thought of his own inevitable end.

That he loved her.

That he loved her, and that barely more than a week had passed since Marcus Reed had looked into her eyes and condemned her existence with silken words and loving promise, like Death in man’s guise taking perverse pleasure in his life-thieving work. Drawing it out, simply, for the uncomplicated ease of it. Letting it dangle on a thread between his skilled, spinner’s fingers.

Everything. All of it. Every piece. Every facet. Every dark recollection and ruthless truth was made real and present again in that moment, hitting him in an all-at-once, blunt-force barrage until he was rigid beneath its weight, locked in tension sprung from bone-deep fear and worry, determination and desperation. Made worse, perhaps, with still-raw memories to fuel it (his feet pounding the earth, not fast enough, a Quidditch field and a hissed spell sibilant and grief-stricken between his teeth - a clearing, a cloaked circle, a wand gripped tight in his slick, trembling fingers, and a task to perform with it too horrific to bear), or maybe it was always this excruciating, this hard, and these were simply the ordinary consequences of love, present regardless of who they were, or what their past entailed.

Whatever the reasoning, there they were, prompting the warning he knew would not pass by without objection – not with Darcy, who’d proven time and time again that trying to steer her down one path would only ensure the absolute certainty of her stalking off down a different one entirely, on principle alone. On sheer red-and-gold willfulness. I can take care of myself. I don’t need you to protect me. I’m not weak. I’m not helpless.

No, she wasn’t. Anyone who’d spent five minutes with her (let alone fallen recklessly, irretrievably in love with her) would attest to that. Wasn’t it part of the reason why she’d arrested him to begin with? Why his usual bored, stoic gaze had sharpened one distant afternoon by a lake when she’d met it so readily with a challenge in her own?

Unafraid. Unimpressed. That was Darcy. She’d been resilient and vibrant and strong from the moment he’d laid eyes on her—as strong as a mountain in the face of a storm. Stronger than he’d ever be, he thought sometimes, even with this wealth of magic in his veins, the iron below his skin, behind his eyes, around his heart. She wasn’t a marionette on a string, didn’t cater to the expectations of others. And yes, she could take care of herself. Didn’t need him to protect her. Make decisions for her. He couldn’t refute that. Wouldn’t even try.

That wasn’t the point, though.

The point was that if it were the mountain he loved, and not a brash, wild-hearted girl, he’d stand in front of it, too. No matter how futile. How hopeless or unnecessary.

Because love has nothing to do with logic. That’s never been the case.

So he watched and waited and rued nothing in the long, swollen silence, even with the certainty of the fire to come, the flood she’d unleash upon him. He was soldier-still, jaw firm beneath a stare that implored her, however quietly, to be safe for once. For him. For herself. He readied, with grim acceptance, for a fight.

No wonder it shocked him when one didn’t come.

“And where will you be during this attack?”

Brittle and tightly calm, the words put an end to the silent stand off. No fire. No flood. She held his gaze expectantly, a defiant glint in the hardened blue, and Alex felt his stronghold start to crumble as his thoughts scrambled to rearrange their trajectories, fighting their way through confusion, the hint of surprise. She didn’t wait for him to catch up.

“Do I get to tell you to stay in your common room too?” It was a mocking parody of idleness—iron-edged and cold. “Or is it only me who is supposed to cower in safety?”

She turned from him, then, denying him the brightness of her gaze, until all he could make out across the dark space was the tension in the curves of her slim shoulders, the corners of her mouth as they tightened with something painfully withheld. Gathering strength, perhaps. Or losing it.

He hated that he didn’t know which. It was a reminder that even though they’d fought and bled together, rejoiced and cherished, shared secrets and opened hearts, they still had so much yet to learn. Of the world. Of each other. Intimate knowledge that would only grow with time, lessons to map out and chart across years of nearness (though, somehow he suspected that even if they both lived to be a hundred, she would still find ways of surprising him.) That was time he wanted more than anything.

It was also time they might not get.

The present, alone, was all they could be assured of, the only certainty they could count on, and right now Darcy wasn’t looking at him, and right now he wasn’t understanding some important, essential thing she was trying to tell him, and right now he wished (gods, gods, he wished) that he’d learned, somewhere along the road, how to decipher emotions on another’s face without the intent to attack and weaken and manipulate to guide it.

He floundered. Tried to stay surfaced though vestiges of a youth spent in a world very far removed from her own rose like a tide, tugged like a rip current. Fuck, it was so easy to feel like a monster.

No. Never again. Not with her.

Not with her. That vow was immutable, now – had been since that rainy afternoon when he’d breathed a promise against her skin – so he shut out the shadows, those hungry ghosts, shielded her from their view, and tried to determine, unaided and unpracticed, why the focus of the conversation was suddenly himself.

“Just because I don’t… show it,” she faltered, pushing on with a strange new hitch in her voice, “does not mean it doesn’t affect me as well.”

The words hung heavy in the dark. And still, she wouldn’t look at him, though Alex’s attentions on her grew more intent than ever, eyes sharp with concentration and concern as a desperate need to understand knit a crease between his brows. She felt far away, somehow, though she was right beside him. And even when her stare did finally lift, gazing ahead into the darkness, it was a hollow one—a pale echo of the canny, vivid blue he knew so intimately. The distance made sense now. She wasn’t in the room anymore. And her voice, when it came, rustled in the shadows like ghosts.

“Sometimes, I wake up believing that I never made it in time. That I’m back in Gretchen’s bathroom, staring at my reflection, at all the blood everywhere, your blood… in my hair, on my face, beneath my fingernails… how did it even manage to reach some of these places, I always wonder that, and which was the last drop that made you go—” Abruptly, she stopped, the words hurt and audibly bloodied, as if her voice had been run through with a sword, and Alex felt everything inside him tighten at the sound of it. Tension that locked up muscle and bone, cinching his throat and stuttering his heart, so fierce it burned, this reaction to her in such obvious pain, and its ache was everywhere, suddenly. And he saw, now. Now he understood.

Wouldn't he recognize that tone anywhere? The pain. The fear. Familiar things – unmercifully so, new as they still were to him – and here they were again, mirror-imaged in Darcy’s averted gaze, the fists she clenched too tightly, the memories of near-loss writing a tale of things torn and not yet mended across her pale, worn features in the dark.

You aren’t the only one with someone else’s life on the line here.

As stark as it was simple. Something he should have realized far, far sooner, too, of course, and yet even now it seemed to reach him dimly, as if through a slowly fading filter, or as if his senses were only just now awakening from a numbness that had previously prevented him from recognizing something as improbable as Darcy worrying about him as fiercely as he worried about her. That she felt it, too. Cared, too. It was still absurdly difficult, believing that, and it had never quite reached something more than half-real in his mind. Or perhaps he’d simply never let it close enough to become a thing entire, fearing it would disappear as soon as he allowed it to take shape beyond his barricades – this strange abundance of affection he did not know how to hold, or what to do with.

No one had told him being cared for could be just as difficult as caring for someone else.

That was the problem, wasn’t it. Right there. Why this was where he was clumsy, and ill-footed, and unprepared; why his mind couldn’t accept a notion such as ‘cared for’ without flinching instinctively away from it. Hadn’t he been taught to never expect anything from anybody, and least of all that? There’d been no one to tend to his wounds when he was a child. No one fretted when he was thrown into duels, or fistfights, when he was slashed or cut or pummeled, bloody lips and broken bones he wasn’t allowed to shed tears over or complain about. This will harden you, ready you for the world, you are lucky, Alexander, be grateful, Alexander, again, Alexander. He learned to take care of himself, fold inward, iron defenses around a heart smothered deep in shadows and secrets.

Who would have counted on Darcy? Darcy trying to stop him from bleeding to death in the middle of a cold hall. Darcy telling him to fight, but for her, this time, not cowled figures observing emotionlessly from the sidelines, because she didn’t want him to leave her, didn’t want him to die. Darcy crying. Darcy caring.

He didn’t know how to handle that. This wealth of emotion, the gift of her affection. It was like he’d been shut up in a dark cave for the entirety of his life and out of nowhere shown the sun for the very first time. Blinding him. Frightening him. Making him flinch away from the overwhelming brilliancy of it all. Its warmth and beauty. So unexpected and out of place and undeserved he thought there must have been some mistake. Surely it couldn’t be for him. He’d fooled her, or she’d confused him for someone else.

But here she was. Overcome with emotion, voice tight as she recalled the night he’d nearly died in her arms. It was staring him in the face, forcing him to recognize it for what it was, obliterating his defenses, what he used to believe about the world. About himself.

She cared.

And wielded it now, in the stare she turned on him once more, resting her chin atop knees she hugged just a little too tightly. The way a child might, in search of comfort. “But I don’t suppose I get to tell you to stay in your dormitory, now do I?” she finished, softly weary, almost without inflection. As if she knew already. Had no need of his response.

Small, too, the words, her tone. Small in a way she was not, and that, more than anything, prompted the low curse he emitted in the silence that followed after—a soft exhalation of shared pain, something almost penitent. And suddenly it was impossible to prevent it when the ache of it softened his gaze, and his body closed the distance between them out of instinct, almost without him even commanding it – as if every part of him were attuned to her now, whether he willed it or not. As if he were the arrow, and she his true North. No longer capable of distance—not when she looked at him like that, no, and not when he knew down to his core that he’d rather face entire armies than see her this way: alone and suffering, with eyes that glinted too brightly in the dark.

So he moved, and robes were grabbed—his, they were larger—and with care, he wrapped them around her slim shoulders and hunched, folded form before drawing her as close to him as he could within his arm’s tight, ballasting hold. Enough, he hoped, as his lips gently sought the crown of her head, to convince and comfort (I know, I’m here, I’m not going anywhere.) Share grief instead of letting her suffer it alone, or pretend, unjustly, that it wasn’t there at all. The braver thing to do, he knew (something she’d been teaching him, lately) – and yet it didn’t stop him from stealing a selfish handful of heartbeats to linger silently in her warmth, eyes closed and knotted against her, settling into nooks of familiarity in delay of the unwanted truth he knew would have to surface next. Only through a surge of sheer will did he finally bring himself back again, and even when he did he had to search painfully for the words, pick them out from the tangle of thorns that was his sordid heritage, his bound-by-blood duty.

Lifting one hand, he laid his palm very carefully against the curve of her skull, feeling her hair wisping like silk between his fingers. When he spoke, it was quietly – a near-exhalation of sound – so raw and remorseful he felt, for a moment, that they ached in unison, like a long, slow chord. “I don’t have a choice, love.”

It was the only honest response he could give her—an intractable truth that had remained cemented in his existence, unchanged regardless of recent life-shifting events, the upheavals his heart had endured over the past few months alone. Surface-wise, beyond this closet door, he was still a Flint, still cold and unpitying and charged with a mission he couldn’t stray even the slightest inch from without instantly alerting those with a vested interest in his progress. There would be no hiding in dormitories for him – not now, when the harsh reality was that the war was rapidly approaching its worst, its bloodiest, and he in the middle of it. Dead in the fucking middle. A Slytherin heir, royalty by blood, tied irrevocably to the man set to inherit the very Earth itself should his visions of a purer world be realized.

They could barricade themselves off in all the broom cupboards in the world, and that would still be true. Waiting for them on the other side.

No, there were no choices for him. Not with so much at stake, he knew, his hold on the warm, breathing girl in his arms growing almost unconsciously tighter. The most he could do now was share pieces of himself. Be as open as he could. Try and help her understand. It wouldn’t ease the pain, of course, but it would be another barrier broken down between them, maybe. Room enough, he hoped, for trust to grow.

“I know you don’t want to hear that,” he murmured, resuming the words’ gentle cadence, his voice’s rough-hewn timbre. “I know it’s not fair. I know. I’m sorry. If I could change this… fuck, Darcy, I’d walk away tomorrow if I could. I’d end it right now. This second. But I’m… his nephew.” Saying it aloud was still impossibly difficult, though she knew that particular, damning truth already, saw with her own eyes things he would have suffered endless ills to keep her from. “And before I met you, I was—" Inhuman. A demon. A devil. He ignored the thing that whispered still are. “I did things. Things that, over time, earned me his favor. And now more is expected of me because of it.” Then, more quietly, “I don’t have options.”

Only then, after a stretch of silence, did he shift his hold on her, drawing back enough to see her face, lift a hand to tuck a midnight-dark curl behind her ear, earnestness honing his features’ sharp angles. “But you do. Even…” he bit back a sigh, the words a struggle, but necessary, “even if that means not listening to me at all.” His resistance to the notion of her choosing not to heed his warning was obvious, and yet his gaze didn’t stray from hers once as he spoke, soft and incontestably honest. For this was too important to leave unsaid. Just as imperative for him to make clear.

“I’m not under any impression that I hold sway over your life, Darcy. I don’t want to control you. Stifle you. I don’t want you to be anything but what and who you are. That’s why I fell in love with you in the first place.” His fingertips skimmed the ends of the satin tress he had yet to release, something reverent in the motion’s subtle intimacy. “But I’m never going to stop worrying about you every second of every day, and I’m not going to stop trying to do everything in my power to keep… my life,” and that, too, stung on the way out, “from putting you in danger.”

It took a steadying sigh to ease away most of the vehemence that had woven its way into his expression, but he managed, tone growing soft again. “All I’m asking is that you be careful. Take what I’m saying seriously.” Again, he stroked the smooth curl within his fingers’ grasp, a subtle crease forming between his brows. “And don’t worry about me.”

Something caustic edged its way into the lines of his features, the pause that followed, and when he finished it was flatly, tone excised of all color. “Believe me, I’ll be fine.”

But there was more, wasn’t there. He knew it, too – knew it like the words rising darkly from the depths of his throat, the hard glint of something deeply buried emerging in his stare, resigned and bracing and almost wary, as if knowing the mere act of saying them aloud would be enough to break whatever spell she’d fallen under to want to be near him in the first place.

Somehow, as it always was with her, they came anyway. Perhaps it was her borrowed bravery again – though if now was the time for hard truths, he didn’t feel very brave, conjuring the words into the stillness, almost too quiet to be heard.

“I’m one of them, Darcy. You shouldn’t forget that.”
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