crawling

Nurture opposed the nature of her sisters, but Evanuris had a soft spoke for the broken things of this world. The discarded and the disregarded, she wondered if Ayi'ig knew what she had with this one, or if she'd woefully underestimated him. Drow were born into their graces, their fates determined by how their ambition paired with their intellect and talents. It was not Evanuris' intent to soothe Harellan but to reforge him; if one happened to be a byproduct of the other, that could hardly be helped.

The question of who he should be was probably more difficult to answer than he could've ever anticipated. However, Evanuris always did have a way with words. She was ancient. She never spoke without intent. Perhaps that was why he hung onto her words so vehemently. Everything she ever said meant something to him. Not because she was simply saying it though. No, it was because she spoke to him as if he was no mere monster. People had feared him for seeing who he really was. He'd held onto that anger for decades upon decades, centuries upon centuries. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see that look on their faces because, to them, that was all Harellan ever could be. He'd been so reluctant to accept that he was a monster. He wanted to be anything but what they had made of him. However, when Evanuris looked into his eyes and spoke words so fiercely, he couldn't help but think that he was supposed to be that monster. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing.

@harellanx location: Lupercalia notes: kiss kiss

Harellan didn't really care about how this knockoff Slipknot band looked. Fur suits at Lupercalia seemed fitting so he didn't give it a second thought past Viktor saying something about it. Should he have bothered? He was still very much in his own head tossing things away and keeping things he wanted. It was a very tedious process, but his emotions were very clear. There was no grief for him to have. There was no anger. There was just...silence. And that wasn't a good thing when it came to Harellan. The nephilim next to him was lucky that he liked him in any capacity. He supposed that was an emotion he could keep. "Why are we here?" A breath left his mouth as he turned his head to face Viktor, arms folded. "We should do something else."

Blair's not a mom figure, she doesn't think she even falls into affectionate cousin anyone admired territory. She thinks she's more the one in the friend group that kind of just gives face behind everyone. The Posh Spice, that kind of person, when it came to friends and people. Viktor and Jonah are the couple of people close enough to her that she outright considers family and while she hadn't ever had a nuclear one of those, she knew it was something to be protected. Her eyes roll and she thinks it's more annoying that he's right. "He's all I have." It's an admit of defeat, he wins this round.

He's all I have. That just sounded fucking sad, but he also didn't care what she did or didn't have. For Harellan, she was of no use to him and he wasn't about to pretend that she was. Their only common interest was Viktor. If the nephilim didn't exist, the two of them would never have crossed paths. If she didn't mean anything to the halfblood, then who knows what mind tricks he would have played on her. A moment passed as he eyed her. Then he walked over and, as he passed her to get to the couch, he pinched her cheek quickly. "Best not to worry too much. Crow's feet only belong in cemeteries."

In recorded drow history the Handmaidens had razed no less than three cities that had drifted from the gaze of Lloth. Men who'd risen up, slaughtered their matrons and assumed control. That of course was the official story, but the truth of how a sect of only a few had the fortitude to cleanse an entire city was not a tale of power, but will. Children in their cribs, not only the men that begged for their life but the women who'd been too naive to see what was happening right under their nose. Before she bent threads to Lloth's will the Goddess had been her closest friend, children of a war so ancient that there were none but the Gods who'd survived.

Evanuris had never particularly been an open book. Neither was Harellan, but her mind was something that he never quite delved into. He'd never had a reason to for as long as they had known each other. When the hollowborn had first been brought to this court by the now deceased queen, he hadn't really needed to know anyone. He could easily figure out someone's entire life in a matter of seconds. However, that would only make him lose his own thoughts and memories even more. He could take and take and take, but it would always come back to bite him in the ass. So he was careful with who he used his ability on. He was always taking a memory or giving one to someone that would benefit him. That was what Ayi'ig had taught him. After everything that had happened when he was younger, he had to learn quickly who could be trusted and who could not be. And, within the world of the drow, he was always leaning more towards the latter.

She opens her mouth to speak only to abruptly shut it and take a deep breath, roll her shoulders back. Yelling at Harellan of all people isn't going to help, that'd simply be too easy. What's going on with Viktor is a delicate topic, one that she shouldn't have to explain to the man. "For some reason, he likes you. Maybe it's that sparkling personality of yours." He's actually a sociopath, she's almost sure of it. "You can't tell me you're not worried about him." On and off they might be, Blair thought rather begrudgingly that they did seem to genuinely care for one another in a way.

Viktor clearly hadn't made Blair privy to the specifics of their relationship, but that was just fine with him. Harellan didn't need anyone to like him. If they did, that was fine. If they didn't, well, he'd deal with it any way he saw fit. Whether it was changing their memories or killing them, it made no difference to him. He hadn't decided yet what he wanted to do with her though. Both the former and the latter options didn't seem fitting enough. Maybe the latter would be more pleasing. Then she would be out of the picture forever. He'd think about it. "Of course it's my personality. What's not to like?" There were other things that kept the two of them together, but the cambion didn't need to know that. "I don't need to worry about him. You do more than enough of that for the both of us, don't you?" If they both weren't as gay as Fletcher dressed in overalls at a Melissa Etheridge concert, then the hollowborn would've started to think that Blair had a thing for Viktor. Instead, she was just an overbearing friend. Harellan couldn't figure out what he would've preferred.

Harellan's mouth wrapped around him, in an easy stretch he took Viktor down completely and then held himself in place. Reflex had the nephilim putting his hand on the back of the other's head as his head craned back. Viktor was already moving hips before Harellan was pulling off and turning him over. While the nephilim had his fair share of assets, there was one that Harellan never seemed to get enough of.

As much as he would have loved to stop all of the foreplay and just fuck, he chose the opposite. Maybe it was the way the other moaned into the air around him that had him continuing what he was doing. Or maybe it was just the fact that he was oh so obsessed with the way the nephilim looked bent over in front of him. How was he supposed to just pretend he didn't want to stick his tongue so far in that it was sticking out of Viktor's throat? Well, he could probably do that if he wasn't in this form, but that was probably for another time. Instead, he still used the length of his tongue to fuck the other's hole, the moaning only spurring him on.

Truthfully Viktor had expected it to be gradual, like the slow pull of a string unravelling a thread, but the blanket that hung over him was there in one moment, and then gone in the next. His memory remained, a gift from Harellan perhaps, he could keep the memories but the pain that was tethered to them was gone. Viktor remembered his mother in every way, even the moment that he'd died in her arms. The difference now was it didn't hurt when he thought about her, despite that he remembered how it had. Where had all that pain gone? Grief wasn't something that could just be swallowed and spat out, which meant to say that the benevolent, the cruel, the misunderstood, and the despicable creature in front of him must be holding it all.

Grief was something that Harellan was all too familiar with. He could easily remember the first moment he had felt the emotion. When he had been younger, he'd been more privy to feeling things. He had been told to by Ranaghar to tap more into who he was as a fey rather than who he was as a drow. Wasn't he both though? He'd always thought that the darkness that permeated him should have been enough to be able to acknowledge that he wasn't simply just one or the other. No, Harellan was always going to be both whether he wanted it to be that way or not. However, that dreadfully fey part of him had been the part that had let him feel. He'd let go of that as soon as he had seen his father die right before his eyes. Grief. It was a horrible, horrible thing that he didn't want to feel so he had pushed it down as far as it would go. Digging into other people's minds made it easier to try and forget. Yet here he was taking Viktor's from him. The memory of the nephilim's mother would still be there, but all the sadness that came with her death? Harellan would have to carry that for now. That was what you did for people you cared for, wasn't it?