#856 words

The blizzard had set the perfect mood for a nice quiet evening. An evening he planned on spending cuddling with his wife, watching some mindless movies and basking in the warmth of a fire. She had even complimented him on his foresight to bring some firewood inside before the snow began to fall. Of course, the fact that he had set everything up to be perfect for them didn’t stop her from demanding that they watch the Bloodbath trilogy. 

“Please, can’t we watch something pleasant instead,” he begged. “It doesn’t even have to be Snowman Hank! Why not Lone at Home? It’s a holiday classic! It… It fits the blizzard! And it is almost Christmas!” 

“It’s practically just Bloodbath for babies! And Christmas isn’t for over a month. C’mon, Drew, you’re not scared are you?” Shea tossed some popcorn into her mouth and stirred marshmallows into her hot cocoa. 

“Of course I’m not!” And he wasn’t scared- he was terrified. 

“Then prove it,” she whispered, her voice dropping low and sending all sorts of sensations through him. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to watch these movies without having nightmares for weeks, but she knew he couldn’t resist a challenge. 

“Fine! Bloodbath it is.” He tried to keep his voice even, confident even. It came out in a squeak. He popped the movie into the DVD player and before the title sequence even turned on he crawled under a blanket and pulled Shea into him as extra security. 

He spent the next three hours cowering, with his hands covering his eyes as they watched Bloodbath and Bloodbath II- Bolder and Bloodier. It didn’t do much to help since he could still hear the sounds of the characters being murdered and the nightmare-inducing laugh of Blade, the killer.

As the movie came to an end a sharp yelp escaped him as a character screamed in agony, and something jabbed him between the ribs. He felt a hot, tingling sensation course through his body as his vines shot out to hold Shea into him. 

“Who would guess that just a couple years ago you were an infamous supervillain hellbent on taking over the world?” she laughed, prying his trembling fingers away from his eyes. “The scary part is over, Drew.”

“It’s all scary parts,” he protested, but he let his hand drop anyway. There was no use denying how frightened he was now, he’d practically begun crying and it was nothing more than his own wife poking him. 

She was right about one thing—who would believe it now? Aside from the fact that they both very much had their mutations they had left villainy behind, even going so far as to revert back to their real names. For the most part. About a month after the Lowardian Invasion (a month spent fighting before they realized their true feelings) Shea Marie Go, better known then by the name Shego, officially became Shea Marie Lipsky. 

She kissed his cheek and, for the briefest moment, he thought maybe he’d escaped further mocking. Of course, good or evil, he would have no such luck. “It is not, you baby. I mean, you ever look in the mirror in the morning? That is scary.” 

“Shea! Th-” Before he had the chance to embarrass himself any further with what was sure to be a lackluster comeback, there was a knock at the door. Not even a knock, really but rather a frantic pounding. 

“Who the hell is knocking on our door at two in the morning?”

“Not to mention the blizzard… Should we get it?” 

Shea sat up as another round of knocks resounded throughout their home. His vines slipped back into place and he sat up as well. Each knock sounded weaker than the last, but somehow that terrified him even more than the booming banging on the door that had come before. 

“Whoever it is is insistent.” Shea stood and began walking toward the door. “C’mon, I’m guessing it’s not Blade looking for new victims. Might as well answer it.”

“Not funny!” Drew protested, scrambling after her in a desperate attempt to not be left alone ever again thank you very much.

The knocking started up again, even weaker than before. Shea barely turned the knob and the door flew open from the force of the wind. From the way her eyebrows shot up and she took a step backward into him he could tell she was just as shocked as he was. 

Staring back up at them was a startlingly familiar pair of bright green eyes. Except, for the first time either of them had ever seen, they were brimming over with tears. The girl before them pressed both hands into her stomach as snow fell over her, looking as if she had just stepped out of Bloodbath Four Christmas (the widely disregarded holiday special). 

It burned slightly. Ah, he really was low on energy huh? He answered anyway: “Mmmh… some kind of mob. Needed convincing I came… ah… ‘with serious intent’… or something. So they shot me, In the shoulder”

“… why were you dealing with the mob again?” More admonishment. And ere he was, for once kinda innocent. Which might be the problem.

“Giving them money to leave the indigenous people alone... aaaand keep the blackmarket trade of rainforest – I mean, how ridiculous… how ridiculous is that? - … in the know for me. So my campaign isn’t… completely pointless, yanno? Stopping the de-… deforestation? Because all the new books take… too many trees?” He took a break to whine a bit.

“…oh” She said.

“Cause the libraries… remember? They n+eeded more trees and you weren’t happy. So now… there are trees… and hemp… I guess… soonish? I hope. Politics is weird” He huffed. And planted his face on the pillow again.

“Oh” said Trinity… and left.

“Noooooo, don’t leave meeeeee-eugh.” He made a note to self: Vibrations in shoulders are bad.

… he had at least hoped for an honest, actually joyful kiss.

Mnph.

Everything went bad this day.

Well, he had wanted to sleep, hadn’t he?

So, he closed his eyes.

And dozed off.

Until he felt something… soft on his head.

And he jerked awake, sitting up to stare, holding his shoulder. It was all a bit disorienting, until he saw… Trinity.

With thigh high, blue and white boots. Even two blue wings flapping at her ankles. Giving way to a tiny bit of thigh… and the shortest skirt one could imagine. A pointless black belt above, encircling her nice and soft waist, following up to a rather constricting bra, heart shaped hole in the front, being held at her neck. There were shoulder-pad ruffs. There were naked arms, but pointless, wide  cuffs, a nurses cap! And she wore her hair in pigtails, for Pete’s sake!

It was all he ever dreamed of seeing! It was wonderful! And cute and did bring out her boobs nicely and invited to touch and to kiss and grope and snuggle and nibble and-

With wide. Blinking eyes and her arms raised and… squeezing her breasts together, Trinity said in the ditziest way imaginable: “I’m the holy angel of charity, Metatron, so, are you in any pain or discomfort today?”  

…

And all the joy fell off of him.

Deflated, he fell back down into the pillows. He didn’t want to be made fun of on top of everything else, too.

He grabbed a blanket and pulled it over himself, curling in while being careful about the shoulder.

“… what. You always wanted me to wear that!” She sounded peeved.

“Mmmmhmh, and it suits you just as well as I thought,” which was incredibly well. And very sexy. And incredibly tempting. And… ah, whatever.

“So?” There was still peevedness.

“Well, you hate it” And he didn’t need this right now.  

“You knew that before already,” which was true, admittedly.

“Mmh… didn’t know how much, I guess,” shrugging was a bad idea. So he kissed slightly.

“This was to reward you, you know? You actually did good! You deserved a reward. You can enjoy!”

He glanced up at still grumpy her – still terribly attractive, really – and sighed: “I’m not… lust. I’m greed. I got lotsa minus points today… an… I always liked the stupid costume… cause it’s charity. Opposites attract… n all a that”

She still frowned: “It’s just… a thing with my name that… that very terrible people jerk off to! It’s disrespectful and plain awful”

Wth a deep breath, he nodded: “I suppose. Still be charitable now?” Richard held the blanket up “Some cuddles?”

When his arm twitched with a hiss of pain, her features softened and she slipped under the covers, snuggllng close to him: “You’re an idiot”

He very carefully put an am around her and pulled her close: “But at least yours”

She huffed and carefully nestled against him, giving him a careful kiss on the forehead: “But at least mine. You really did do good, you know?”

And he smiled at her.

After a few breathes and some more wriggling from Trinity, she stopped wriggling, frowing again: “… are you hard?”

“It is TERRIBLY sexy, okay? Like, if you didn’t do that voice…” It was nothing but a whine.

After a deep breath, she sighed and snuggled against him, anyway: “Be glad I love you. Now sleep”

“I love you… too” And maybe… the day wasn’t all bad.

At least I had thought it was ridiculous until I tried to scan or just photograph the book - that should have solved the problem, after all, right? Wrong. The pictures turned out to be garbage. There were no letters at all. Empty pages. No matter what the lighting in the room. The same was with simply copying the spells by hand. I tried. I really did. Sat down with the book and a sheet of paper and directly copied from one to the other. I looked it over, checked once again and then went over to the kitchen to grab a snack, paper in hand. When I look at the sheet there... it... was illegible. I had no idea what I had written. It certainly was no language I ever saw. Actually, I couldn't remember what language it was either. Definitely not Latin. Five years of study would have made it possible to identify. I hoped. So the quest to get out of the aura of dust continued with... recordings of me reading the book out loud. On mic or video. It simply turned to static. It was slightly distressing. And mysterious. ... I might have a thing for mysterious.

All this certainly did convince me of the... authenticity of the book. And, curiously enough, I could at least remember the matter of the spell. And as long as I stayed close, I could even do what it asked me to. For example, the chalk-circle around the book stuck. At least in the cellar. Not in the second floor. Not on the ground floor. Certainly not on a chalkboard. Exclusively in the cellar. I couldn't photograph it either, but it was there, even if the book wasn't. So that was... somewhat good. Especially since it's a nice cellar. Isolated and heated and furnished, but still an underground room with barely any daylight. ... maybe that was a thing as well

After the cellar-rooms and the circle I also got the candles. That was one of the surprises: I actually needed candles. Or... at least fire. It was in the instructions. Candles were the safe option, though. Nothing to burn down if the demon knocked things over.

Right. The demon. I would summon a demon. An actual demon. I chuckled. This would certainly be a thrill. And it would certainly be a demon. It was rare, these days, and no one actually... admitted to this kind of thing, but... it happened. The demon summoning. And as it was, it seemed my great-grandmother had been... interested. That's where this book came from. The attic. In a chest. All classic-horror-story-alike. It could only opened by a female member of the bloodline. That's what the inscription on the chest said. My fellow students certainly had figured that much during the drunk night we had spend in this attic, looking into cob-webbed corners for a cheap thrill- It was an old house, after all. Halloween was perfect like that. I laughed about the inscription until the lock actually opened for me, easily, after the people capable of reading it - fans of the occult - had failed miserably.

This little fact had also no reason to be at all attractive. Because he already figured the day before that the marine biologist could throw him out the window without breaking a sweat. The skinny twig of a botanist should really not be able to do the same. But here they were.

And his brain did not register that as scary or unjust at all. As it should. No it went to... other things. That he should not be thinking about. At all.

Especially not with that massage that he had been threatened with.

For some reason – he could not at all recall how – he had said okay to the massage and get rid of the shirt. He does not recall at all. But... it might have had something to do with the groan that he had given when Raphael had pressed one point that had him completely blissed out and in an agreeing mood.

Fact was: now he was on the massage-table and Raphael instructed her how to take care of his headache for now. Not actually putting any pressure on and just lightly stroking his temples... and running her hands through his hair.

Henoch made a few grumpy noises. A token of protest. But... there was no heart in it. IT did feel good. Especially the treatment of his back. With oil.

… someone who was ot sure he was not attracted to was moving over his naked skin with oil. In circling motions... and does not actually hurt him. It was actually fine. He was... fine. Just as fine as laying on the bed. Except... you know... there were two scientists around him, touching him and soothing his body.

And he had agreed. And he just...  let it happen.

And when Raphael came a little closer when he grumped at him, he hissed: “How could you betray me so?!”

Raphael just raised his brows and then shrugged: “Well. I will start to do this properly... you need to relax... you're all cramped from the pain... and it will be more painful for a while... but it will help, alright?”

There was another grumpy agreeing noise from him. He DID want to get better. Just... not... with attractive people in his bedroom. Who take care of him and try to make him feel better. After he'd overdone sports. That's horri-

...

What was he even complaining abo-

“OW!”

“Sorry”. At least Raphael had the decency to sound actually apologetic.

Gabrielle, on the other hand, ran her had over his hair and murmured: “Be brave, big boy... it'll be all better tomorrow” and then chuckled. A tiny chuckle.

And that was it. Those people made fun of him. It was not fair. He had not invited them.

Just. Agreed to let them come here.

And not sent them out.

And taken off his shirt.

And sighed a few relieved times.

…

They had no right to be there, surely.

He groaned in frustration. This was getting him nowhere.  

And when a concerned botanist asked him if it was too bad, he just huffed and made a little gesture for him to continue. It seemed to be his fate for the day.

And so it was, for about an hour. At which point he was in pain, but also felt a little like he had  melted into the table. They had talked a little bit. About what? Henoch was not sure. Maybe yoga. The hands wandered a lot.

“You alright?”, a female voice inquired, petting his head.

There was a tiny hum. And something like a nod.

“Well then... sleepy time...”

Mh? That did sound good... it did sound like a... right idea.

They both lifted him fro the table and onto the bed.

His bed was a nice bed. Really nice. And he grabbed the pillow for cuddling. Just that it was: “... cooold”, he sounded petulant. Even to his own ears.

Still no reason to take his pillow away. He whined.

It got stuffed under his head instead. And then he got a solid replacement. One that was warm.And skinny. And shuffled his back against his chest. Well. Not much different from the morning of the day before.

“Awwww... how cute... can I join, too?”

Raphael made a questioning noise. And shrugged himself: “Sure?”

The only non-scientist in the room gnawed at his lower lip. And tried to move his head to look at Gabrielle. It hurt. So he let that be.

And shrugged, giving a non-committal sound.

She interpreted it as an agreement. And there was warmth on his back as well.

Well.