DragonNarrative Writes

Soap caught him at it in the mess — Simon parked against the far wall with a coffee going cold in his fist, focused on watching you eat. Soap followed the line of his stare, found you at the end of it, and grinned like the cheshire cat. "Oh, her," he said, delighted. "Aye, she's one of the hybrids. Mantis." He said it the way you'd mention someone supported the wrong football team. Then, because Soap cannot leave fuck-all alone, he leaned in and cheerfully added, "You'll want to be careful there, big man. Mantis females, ehh— they eat the fella after. During, sometimes. Bite the head clean off and finish the job. Read it somewhere once." He clapped Simon on the shoulder. "Best of luck."

And then he left. Wandered off to find some grub, whistling.

Simon stood very still against the wall, then. Felt the information go into him like a splinter you can't find to pull.

Bite the head clean off?

He looked back at you across the room — you'd tilted your head to listen to the person beside you, smooth and too far round, big dark eyes catching the strip-lights — and the want did not go anywhere, that was the horror of it, the want stayed exactly where it was and the new knowledge simply moved in alongside it and started rearranging some things.

He wanted you.

And being Simon, he did not do the sensible thing and walk away. He did the research.

The thing about dating Simon, you would learn, is that you have never in your life been so well fed.

You understood it maybe six weeks in, when you opened his fridge expecting the usual bachelor wasteland and found it stocked like he was provisioning for a siege. Yogurt. Three kinds of cheese. A bowl of cut fruit under cling film. A tin labeled ‘FROG LEGS’.

It was risk management dressed up as romance, which in fairness is mostly what romance is… Isn’t it?

He'd taken Soap's splinter and built a guideline out of it. He knows — he has read, in studies he will deny owning — that the trouble starts when you're hungry. Or stressed. Or both, which is the cocktail that turns a nice evening into something a coroner writes up.

He has constructed an entire relationship on the single principle of never ever letting you get to that point.

You'll be reaching for him on the sofa, hand sliding up under his shirt, mouth at the hot pulse in his throat, and he'll go rigid and say, in that flat  rumble of his, "When d’you last eat?"

"Simon," you sigh,

"Tha’ s’not an answer, love."

"I'm not hungry–,"

"I saw you skipped lunch."

He watches a lot. He watches you eat with open, naked satisfaction, the way other men watch football, and the first time you caught him at it you'd put your fork down and said ‘did you want some?’ and he'd said ‘no, you have it,’ and meant it with his whole strange heart.

The man can produce a plate of food out of thin air, and there's no point arguing, because he'll simply outlast you, planted there immovable as a boulder until you've eaten enough that his shoulders come down from around his ears.

He's never once said the word out loud. Cannibalism. He skirts it like a tripwire. Early on you'd tilted your head at him a degree too sharp while he was shaving — honestly just affection — and caught his eye in the mirror, and he'd nicked his own jaw and not flinched at the blood at all, only at you. Razor frozen halfway up his neck. The muscle in his cheek jumped and his pupils shrank to pinpricks and you'd thought: Oh. He's frightened. Big, terrible Ghost, who garrotes men in their sleep, scared witless by the tilt of your head. 

You felt bad for almost a full minute.

You have, in fairness, never confirmed or denied a thing. When he goes still and careful you let him. It's the most romantic thing anyone's ever done for you, this grim devout terror, and you're not about to spoil it with reassurance.

Soap, for the record, has really no idea what he started. He'll see the two of you in the canteen, Simon angling the better-fed plate toward you and think, good lad, taking my advice.

Simon had you down — the eyes that hold on him no matter where he moves, that dark point in each one that stays, tracking, while the rest of your face goes soft and human; the too-far head-turn; the way your hands fold up against your chest when you go truly still, wrists tucked, prayer-shaped.

He did not account for the wings.

You hadn't told him because you genuinely forget they're there — folded flat along your spine, a faint seam under the skin, a sheen across your shoulder blades he'd assumed was an old scar. You can't really fly. You never thought to mention them. Plus, it seemed like he knew plenty.

But now he's got you under him with your shirt long gone and his mouth working at the junction of your neck and collar, and there's none of the careful bracing tonight — he fed you an hour ago, he made sure, he watched you finish — and now there's just his weight and his hands and the husky sounds he makes against your skin. One big palm splays flat on your stomach and slides lower, fingers finding you already slick, stroking slow over your clit until your hips chase it on their own. "So soft, love," he murmurs, like he's not shaking. He gets two fingers inside you, curls them, and your whole spine bows off the mattress.

That's when they snap open.

In the dark it's monstrous; a sudden unfolding of something unknown and far too wide for the room, fanning from your back in a wash of color he can't quite name in the half-light. A deep iridescent purple shot through with flares of red, eyespots blooming towards the tips. One instant flat girl, the next a thing twice your size.

Simon goes to stone, shuts down, every system offline. This is it, he thinks — this is the bit where she takes the head. His fingers still inside you. He holds his breath, bracing.

You make a small strangled noise and pull them back down.

They fold away almost as fast as they came, gone into brackets around your spine, and you throw an arm over your face and refuse to look at him. Your ears are hot. He can feel it where his jaw rests on your cheek.

"Sorry," you whisper. "That just— happens sometimes. It– it doesn't mean anything bad, I swear… just… you… just feels good, is all.”

The single most dangerous woman he's ever shared a bed with has flashed her startle display because he got two fingers knuckle deep inside of her, and now she's mortified, hiding her face like a kid. Four months of Soap's splinter works its way loose, pushing out of his muscle, and falls out somewhere in the dark, and Simon — who has never in his life felt safe and certainly never expected to find it here, of all the deranged places — starts to come softly apart with relief. He pulls himself back to look at you.

"Le’me see you," he says, and peels your arm off your face, and when you do his eyes are doing something you've never seen on him: wet at the edges, wide open, not afraid of you at all. 

Worse than not afraid. Pleased with himself.

He leans back down and kisses you hard, pushing his fingers deeper and says it against your mouth because he’s got nothing left to lose: "Do it again. Want to watch."

So you do. 

And Simon fucks you slow and then not slow at all, and every time he tips you over they snap wide behind you and fill the room with color, and by the third time he's stopped flinching and started hunting it, smug, learning the exact angle that does it. When he finally comes it's with his forehead pressed to yours and your wings open around the both of you like something out of a church window, and he's saying something into your jaw, rough and ruined, that takes you a second to parse as all mine, there she is, there's my good girl.

Afterward you bite him. Just a little on the shoulder, just to be a menace, licking the taste of iron from your canine. 

He doesn't even twitch. "Knew it," he says into your hair, wrecked and grinning where you can't see. "Tellin’ Soap he was right."

Your mind, reputed to be quite empty and flowery, has spent the better part of this year thinking about your knight. Your ʿuqabi. He is, of course, not yours, but your heart feels glad to think of him as such.

Father purchased his services before the cold came, and the man has seemed to fill every wine-red arch of the keep since then. He speaks freely with his fellow knights; to your ear, it is a stiff and rigid language, but you enjoy watching his mouth move.

As the middle daughter of a gerad, you are all too acquainted with the notion that your father and your sisters consume most of the oxygen in any given space. As gerad, your father is a rare figure to glimpse, but no less imposing for his absence. His absences have grown longer once your mother passed several years ago, as you became a woman.

The eldest sister, Yodit, is betrothed, her wedding ceremony scheduled in one month's time. The preparatory festivities have allowed you to roam the keep, largely unattended and unnoticed.

Eleni, your younger sister, is kept busy as she is still a child. Although you enjoy her companionship at times, she would spend a whole evening painting pictures with her words instead of letting a room breathe.

Your knight has a strange name, Ser Garricke. Your tongue practices the sounds in the privacy of your bed after nightfall.

He hails from England, and you heard tale that he travelled with his fellow knights through Egypt. The sights he must have seen! The women and girls he must have dazzled! He's terribly grand in stature, a mountain to your pebble, and your body is overcome with shivers when you are in close proximity to him.

He is forbidden to speak to you. That fact is only a spark to the flame in your heart. If his tea-amber eyes should fall upon your person as you walk the halls, he will quickly evade them. It does not remove the sensation that he is still, somehow, watching you.

One of many nights of festivities takes the keep by storm, and you are filled with gratitude that all attendees are focused on Yodit. When permitted to move freely about the room, you slip through the clusters of brightly layered fabrics and scents of honoured guests, wishing to remain unseen.

Your ʿuqabi, your protector, is standing guard under a distant archway, his large hand on the hilt of his blade. You shiver as you approach, but you approach nonetheless.

He is alone and you are alone, and he is still forbidden to speak to you.

"Ser Garricke," you greet. You do not speak to him, and he has never heard you address him as such, your tongue rounding out the sharp shapes in your mouth.

His eyes widen, then flicker down to your slippered feet.

"It is the eve of my sister's ceremony," you state. He would like you to please walk away, you can read it as if the script is sewn into his uniform. He will never say it.

You are your father's daughter and use this as your advantage.

"I do not feel safe walking back to my quarters unescorted. My maids are flush with drink and honouring our guests. Ser Garricke, I ask that you escort me."

He shifts side to side, the discomfort clear as the night's stars tonight. He should not leave his post, but he is at the mercy of the gerad, which extends to the daughters. You hold your breath, watching these conclusions flourish on his beautiful face, and then he is stepping out of his stance.

"Woizero," he says softly, their title for you and your sisters.

Escorting you back through the private halls, emptied now, to your quarters.

"Will you be able to have a drink in honour of Yodit this eve, Ser Garricke?" You ask softly. There is a playful teasing tone to your voice when you ask.

He must be on his own battlefield presently: he is forbidden to speak to you, but is it ruder to ignore a directly addressed question by a gerad's daughter?

"I will not," he finally says, firmly. That he means to put an end to any line of inquiries.

You offer a sweet hmm sound to this. When you reach the door to your quarters, his body pivots away.

"Ser Garricke?"

His body stills.

"With the volume of drink my father has offered his guests this eve, I should suspect that any manner of wayward guests might wander the halls of our keep. Perhaps someone who holds less chivalrous and virtuous intents in his heart? There would be no way of knowing if such a person could have stolen into my quarters without a servant's eyes catching them."

You point at the door sweetly.

His expression is of determination, soured by something in particular, although you know not what it could be. He opens the door, hand on hilt.

"Clear."

"And of my secondary quarters, just there?" Deeper in.

He hesitates, but moves further inward, and this is the first time that you have witnessed his body be held with such uncertainty. It is remarkable to see.

As he proceeds deeper and inspects your secondary room, largely for prayer and wardrobes, you shut the door silently behind you.

He emerges, and notices his exit has been closed immediately.

"Woizero—"

"Ser Garricke, how long have your eyes found me since you arrived? How long have your watchful eyes noticed mine falling upon yours?"

He looks pained, so you offer him relief by going to him quickly, soft-footed. "Please alleviate our mutual suffering. An honourable man of your title would grant such a reprieve to allow us to move on?"

As if he is quoting scripture, he extends the expected response. "Woizero, please. I ask that I take my leave."

"Ser Garricke, you are under my father's roof. In my quarters — where Yodit and my father do not supersede me — I hold authority over you. I do not give you leave."

Desperation in his honeyed eyes. No richer, sweeter wine.

You approach him and he is as rigid as a statue in the courtyard. You ply him with a benevolent smile, and press your hand firmly against the bulge under his layered dress. Your heart is feverent and fast-beating when you touch him; the layers are thick, difficult to make out what you seek to the detail you crave, but it is enough for now.

His expression turns tortured, agonized, under your hand's explorations.

"Woi—"

"You know my name, Ser Garricke. I demand you use it."

You go up on your toes, taking the layers around his chest in hand, and pull him down to your face. He is breathing as heavily as a horse might. He is pretending he did not grow significantly while your hand cupped his length. You bury your face into the exposed slope of his neck to breathe in his smell. He is spiced and warm, smoke and oil for his blade all in one long curling scent.

He is so still.

You turn your face slightly so your mouths are neighbours. "Please, Ser Garricke. Ease us."

You think he will refuse, but then his eyes close, dark and tender, and then his mouth seeks yours. Within moments, the time it takes to inhale, he is exhaling deeply and loudly into your open mouth, and your insides feel as though they are boiling. Encouraged, you draw your hand up and down his length, listening to him heave throatily.

He says your name, and you squeeze him.

Ser Garrick's whole body is wracked in shudders, and he lifts his hands to clasp your shoulders, tighter — almost painful; delicious — than you ever expect him to be. It is as if a bird of prey has landed on the tops of your shoulders, its pincers grasping your flesh.

He stares at you, although his sight seems vacant, as though drawn into another realm altogether.

"Ser Garricke, that was lovely. I grant you leave. Perhaps I shall need an escort tomorrow eve. I expect that it shall be a long night and I will have my share of drink."

He stares as though he has been grievously injured. Nods dumbly, and wanders sloppily outside your doorway. He turns and continues staring until you close your door in his face.

"Goodnight, Ser Garricke," you smile kindly.

When their sheet gets circulated to your table to score, you see that there had been a clear difference of opinions on even the team name.

TF Trivia Fuckin Muppets The Price is Right Suds and All The Boys

It takes approximately three seconds of scanning the pub to find the The Boys: a table full of clearly military meatheads, wearing civvies.

Your friend is chatting with another table as you score The Boys, following along with the trivia emcee's answers broadcast over the microphone. It's a difficult enough task just deciphering the crazy shorthand used as their responses.

Current events: 4/20 Famous Feuds and Beefs: 2/20 Finish that Lyric: 8/20 Card Games: 12/20 Internet Slang: 6/20

You can hear them arguing across the pub as the answers are announced, the usual I told you, ya fuckin'— and Quit writin' em down before ye're ready—!

You make a 'yikes' face at your friend, showing her their score to make her laugh, before you walk the sheet back over to The Boys.

The one with bushy facial hair, looks the oldest, glances up at you as you approach their table. "Y'alright?"

"Here you go," you say lightly, trying to ease the sting as four sets of eyes land on their score of 32/100. You cannot prevent the light laugh from tipping out of you at their open-faced shock.

"Ye must be jokin'," a younger one with a mohawk and piercing eyes — Scottish — practically yelps, grabbing the paper from you.

The one next to him, also young and sweet-eyed with curly brown hair, is furiously scanning the page, as if it'll become obvious where you scored them improperly.

The largest of them all is slouched back in his chair, a cranky look on his face, watching you instead of the paper now.

"Maybe Round 2 will be better for you," you say with a grimace of empathy.

"What'd you score then?" The Scottish one demands.

You shrug; your sheet is probably returned, back on your table now. "Um, better…"

Facial hair barks a laugh. "Come join us then, help us out."

You laugh it off. "Rules are rules. Good luck." And you head back to your table. Sure enough, another table returned your sheet: 92/100. You high-five your friend, and in your periphery, catch sight of the large man staring grumpily in your direction.

--

round 2

You can't help but gaze over to The Boys during this round, fascinated to hear their squabbles and in-fighting before they get shushed by the emcee. You're so distracted, you have to wait to hear the questions repeated for most of the round. Your friend just laughs at you, taking over the role of writer.

"They're really terrible," you whisper to her. "Like they live in a bunker like that movie with Brendan Fraser."

"Encino Man?"

"No, the…other one where he's new to society, I guess."

Final question with a special wager. Category: Know Thy Weapon.

The Boys wager the full amount, you can hear them clear as day. Probably the only thing they'd agreed upon thus far.

They cheer obnoxiously loud when the answer is revealed.

Then boo obnoxiously loud when their sheet is scored and returned by another table, and they received a total of 45/100 for Round 2; 20 of 45 was their final wager.

Your team wins; your friend runs up and collects the $50 prize from the emcee, and the other tables clap cheerfully. The Boys glare.

After your friend heads out to grab a waiting rideshare, you ask your server to settle your bill. She tells you it's already been paid for.

"Oh, that's new. Part of the prize or something?"

"No," she chuckles. "Those dummies over there."

You definitely weren't planning to talk to them after their abysmal showing, especially with bragging rights, but courtesy persists. You slip your bag over your chest and walk over to their table slowly until they begin to make eye contact as you get closer.

"Ah, 'ere she is. Shinin' star," facial hair says. "Sit." An empty chair from the neighbouring table, now emptied, is yanked over by his foot. Right by his side.

"Oh, no, no," you demur politely. "I don't want to intrude. Just wanted to say thanks for covering the tab."

He clicks his teeth, his moutache vibrating. "Come on then. One more drink 'fore ya go. Winner's rights."

Your eyes roam to the other three men — nobody seems sulky any longer, no more glares, and as a bonus, the server will keep an eye on you if you get weirded out.

"One drink, I guess."

-