“…He needs someone to protect him.”
“And you think that that should be me?”
“I think it probably shouldn’t be me. And you need someone who isn’t me.”
“You don’t get to decide what I need anymore.”
From Kuro_Neko’s commissioned continuation of the Ceinwen-and-Thorburn-in-Year10 story
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/574506.html. You can comment here or there.
Timora
24.) What might your character’s ideal romantic partner be?
Timora wants a white knight. She wants a truly nice man who sees her for the lovely soul she is and doesn’t mind that she doesn’t look like the popular girls; she wants someone who wants long walks on the beach and gentle kisses and will rescue her and carry her off on his horse.
They read you Cinderella
You hoped it would come true
That one day your Prince Charming would come rescue you
http://www.elyrics.net/read/j/john-michael-montgomery-lyrics/i-can-love-you-like-that-lyrics.html
Failing a fairy tale, she wants a nice guy who likes spending time outdoors and won’t make fun of her.
Ceinwen
25.) Describe your character’s hands. Are they small, long, calloused, smooth, stubby?
Ceinwen had long, skinny hands with long, skinny fingers. Her hands are calloused across the palms, but her nails are always done and the tops of her hands are smooth.
Noam
26.) Second day of favorites!
Favorite comfort food: potato chips and French onion dip, washed down with Mountain Dew.
Favorite vice: skipping classes. Skipping anything.
Favorite outfit: his comfortable jeans and his worn-in Henley, both faded blue.
Favorite hot drink: He doesn’t like hot drinks. His favorite cold drink is anything sweet, the sugarier the better.
Favorite time of year: Summer, just after finals, when it still feels like you’re skipping school not being there.
Favorite holiday: Memorial Day, or anything that gets him out of classes, esp. anything with a picnic. Ice cream!
Garfunkle
27.) Pick two songs that describe your character at two different points of their life, and explain why you chose them.
As an angry, frustrated teenager who had trouble fitting in at school, the then-retro lyrics of Skid Row’s Slave to the Grind and Youth Gone Wild suited Gar well, as well as the just-as-angry Linkin Park’s In the End.
That song take on new meaning for him as he comes to Addergoole, as well as Hate Me by Blue October.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/397523.html. You can comment here or there.
Ceinwen
4.) How vain is your character? Do they find themselves attractive?
“A bit?”
Ceinwen is not an hours-in-front-of-the-mirror sort of girl, but she can, on a special occasion, be an hour-in-front-of-the-mirror sort of girl. She buys clothes for a combination of comfort and appearance, and does pay attention to current trends in fashion, although not slavishly; she understands how to buy clothes to fit her figure, and does so.
In terms of money spent, Ceinwen spent, before school, a significant portion of her after-school-job money on clothing. She grew up relatively poor(*), with a single working-class mother, and so clothing she likes has always been a luxury she’ll go out of her way for.
(*) Regine’s stipend for the first-generation parents covered food, clothing, and a portion of rent in an averaged high-end working-class neighborhood. Ceinwen’s mother spent some of this unwisely, saved some of it wisely, and chose to live at the standard she had been living at before to teach her daughter responsibility.
Garfunkle
5.) What’s your character’s ranking on the KINSEY SCALE?
Gar walks into Addergoole thinking he’s hetero, “0,” on the Kinsey scale. There is some small denial there; he’s probably a one to two in reality, but he’s also a late bloomer and was only, as he entered school, beginning to express an interest in pretty girls. He had small crush on Penestemon that he never did anything about, and an even less-expressed beginnings-of-a-crush on Pania, before the first week was over. He’s rather fond of Timora, but wouldn’t describe it as sexual attraction, at least not yet.
Also, he likes tails.
Kheper
6.) Describe your character’s happiest memory.
A vacation with his parents, far away from the city, sitting outside their RV, staring at the bonfire.
Most of Kheper’s pleasant memories involve fire in some way. There was the time he almost set the school on fire. The time he almost burnt his house down. The four small arsons in non-populated areas. The discovery of Bunsen burners in science classes. The candlelight dinner with a girl, Amelia, a year behind him in school.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/378044.html. You can comment here or there.
After Three-Way, the Duet.
3-Way originally posted here and on LJ,
continued here (LJ)
and then here (LJ
and then
Here (Duet) and Here on LJ
And the “Preferences” (LJ) and
“9 Things I Hate About You” (LJ)
For cluudle, for being awesome.
Content warning: this relationship borders on emotionally abusive.
Thorburn released Ceinwen slowly from the hug. It seemed as if he’d been holding her forever, since he’d agreed that now was not the time to talk about the elephant in the living room, since he’d said they had room for negotiation. She’d thought he’d forgotten. She wasn’t quite sure he hadn’t fallen asleep; she wasn’t sure she hadn’t, either. It had been a long day, and it was late.
“You were right. I said you could earn your clothes back, your things. And I never told you how. I admit, I didn’t think about how much.” He stroked her arm. “I like the things I put you in. And I like you naked next to me.”
She wasn’t sure if now was still the time for talking, but she tried. “I wouldn’t mind, if it didn’t feel so demeaning.” Like she wasn’t a person enough to get clothes.
He nodded slowly. “If I don’t wear anything to bed…” He stopped what he was going to say, but she could see the shadows around him. “then you will be getting more waking up in the middle of the night than I think you’d prefer. Boxers and panties?”
“Am I getting a say?”
“I do want you to be happy. And I’d say for helping Basalt out, you deserve a reward, wouldn’t you?”
“I…” She twisted her lips. “‘Good girl, have a gold star?'”
He frowned at her. “You’re not a child, Ceinwen, but you are Mine, and that does mean I get to reward and punish you as I choose. I’d rather work out rewards, give you things for pleasing me. Would you prefer I punish you when you irritate me?”
“The way it seems lately, you’d be punishing me all the time and never rewarding me anyway,” she muttered. She had just a second to realize she’d pushed him too far before he picked her up and bent her over his lap, her wrists pinned at the small of her back. He pulled her skirt up – always skirts, he’d taken all her pants – and his hand came down hard on her ass, one cheek and then the other.
She yelped at the first hit, struggling against his hands, and then whimpered at the second. After that, she froze, hoping he’d stop. She could feel his erection against her stomach and ribs, which made the whole thing more humiliating, more terrifying, more arousing.
He leaned down until his lips were near her ears. “I’d like doing that every time you mouthed off,” he whispered. “But I don’t think you would. So I’ll reward you, and I’ll tell you what will earn rewards. And maybe, sometimes, then, I can just spank you for fun.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/245865.html. You can comment here or there.
From rix_scaedu‘s commissioned prompt.
A continuation of Creeped, originally posted here and on LJ
Faerie Apoc, Addergoole Year 9 – landing page here (or on LJ)
Ceinwen scrambled for a handhold, anything to grab onto, her fingers finding nothing but water and more water, her feet finding nothing at all, even though she’d been on solid ground just a second ago. A pond. A sinkhole? This was ridiculous. She scrambled some more, flailing and trying to keep her head above water. She couldn’t see anything except the water and, what looked like a long way away, the hall. She couldn’t see the man like a tree at all, even though, even now, she wasn’t sure she wanted his help.
A strong hand, nothing like branches at all, grabbed her wrist and pulled her out. She flailed, trying to get her other hand around the wrist, managing just as she felt as if her arm would pop out of its socket. Thus hanging from a very strong-feeling wrist, dripping, over the impossible endless pool, she looked around.
She knew the guy holding her. Unlike everyone else around here today, he still looked human, normal, for a certain definition of normal; Thorburn was a big guy, especially for someone still in school, tall and broad-shouldered. In a school with sports teams, he’d probably have been a football player. Right now, he, dressed in a long-sleeved button down rolled up past his elbows, appeared to be playing fisher, with her as the fish.
“Easy, easy,” he murmured, pulling her to solid ground and setting her down next to him. Paying no attention to how wet she was, he held her against him, his hand settling across her lower back. “The halls aren’t safe during Hell Night.”
“I’m beginning to see that,” she panted. The guy with the pine needles was coming closer, walking around what looked like a very small sinkhole. Just small enough to nearly drown her.
“She looks tasty, Thorburn. Let us have a nibble?”
“Come on, Curry, you’re a herbivore. You’re not gonna chew on the girl.” Nevertheless, he was holding her tighter.
“I never said I’d eat her, but I might like a bite. She looks tender…”
“I’m not dinner,” she protested angrily, glaring at the guy… tree… thing.
“You’re already marinated and everything,” he leered. “Good thinking, wearing white.”
“Oh… Oh!” She clutched her arms over her chest, blushing, backing against Thorburn’s safe, human warmth.
“She does look good enough to eat.” And this was another voice altogether, gravelly, rocky… yes. She glanced up to see another big guy, and didn’t this school have any nice, skinny, small guys? She’d seen them, in her classes; they couldn’t have all Changed into monsters. She shrank further into Thorburn’s big-but-human strength as a walking statue, rough-cut of some black stone, thumped towards them. “Come on, Thorburn, cut us a piece.”
“No.” His voice was so very loud, this close to his chest. “No. Ceinwen is mine.”
“I’m what?” She twisted to look up at him; he was looking down at her very solemnly, very seriously. “Um… Ceinwen is Ceinwen’s.” Ug smash. Barbarian take girl. No thank you.
“You heard the girl,” the tree-man urged. Was that really Curry? He hadn’t seemed that nasty before. She stepped carefully away from Thorburn – the water was still right behind her – and glanced at the other men. Creatures. Maybe their nastiness was just hidden along with their weirdness.
“Yeah,” the stone guy agreed. “You heard her. If ‘Ceinwen is Ceinwen’s,’“ he quoted with a sneer, “then Ceinwen is fair game.”
“Fair game,” Curry echoed. “Come here, pretty girl. I wanna show you my cones. Then Basalt can show you his stones.” He giggles as if the horrible rhyming pun was the cleverest thing he’d ever said. Maybe it was.
“Um, no.” She stepped back towards Thorburn, just a little. “Not interested. Not big into the landscape features thing, sorry.”
Thorburn pulled her close again. “She’s mine, guys,” he repeated. More softly, he murmured to her, “It’ll make them go away. They’ll leave you alone if you’re mine.”
Basalt laughed loudly. “She doesn’t want to be yours, big guy. She wants us. She wants a real hard man.”
“A real guy,” Curry echoed, “not some cy-” the second man’s hand hit him hard across the jaw. “Ow, goddamnit! A real man. Send her over this way, big guy.”
Basalt glared at his friend for a moment, then turned back to Ceinwen, leering, beginning to come closer. “You’d have fun with us, pretty girl. And when we were done with you, well, there’s plenty of creeps wandering the halls. Plenty of guys who’ll want to have fun with you.”
“And some of the girls,” Curry leered, moving closer and closer, reaching out for her with an arm that seemed to grow.
“Leave her alone,” Thornburn rumbled. His hands were heavy on her shoulders. “I’ll take care of you, Ceinwen. Protect you from these creeps. From all the creeps.”
She turned to look at him, putting more distance between herself and the encroaching monsters. “Yeah?” she asked nervously. “You won’t let them touch me?”
He stepped forward, not sheltering her, but putting himself between her and them. “You’re mine,” he murmured. “I’ll keep you safe.”
“Aaw, don’t do that,” Curry whined. He was just a pine-needle away from her now; she backed up, scrabbling away from him, and found herself between Basalt and the water. Her foot slipped, and Basalt and Thorburn both grabbed for her.
Pulled between their two arms, she swung, scrabbling, over the pit. “Come on, pretty girl,” Basalt leered through a face like a landslide. “Come play with us.”
“She’s mine,” Thorburn yelled. “Let her go, Basalt.”
“I don’t hear her saying that.” Basalt tugged a bit, pulling her arms wide apart. Ceinwen bit back a whimper. “Come on, Thorburn, let go. Let us have our fun. You can have her when we’re done.” He licked his lips, even his tongue black and rocky. “Unless someone else outbids us.”
She lost control of the whimper, and it slipped out of her lips. “You’ll really protect me from them?” she asked, in a tiny voice. This was the twenty-first century; she wasn’t supposed to need a freaking chaperone. “I mean, I should be fine after today, but I’m… ow… sort of stuck.” She bit her lip, humiliated.
“I’ll protect you from all the creeps,” he assure her. “You’re mine.”
“I’m… ew. Ug Tarzan, me Jane.”
“You can swing from my vine,” Curry sniggered.
“Nothing like that,” Thorburn assured her. “Just… you know, think of it like an upperclassmen taking care of a younger student. Sort of a big-brothers little-sisters program.”
“Yeah, I’ll.. nevermind.”
“It’s not brotherly you’re looking for,” Basalt laughed. “But we sure as hell aren’t looking for a sister sort, either.”
Ceinwen, her arms beginning to go numb, looked between the two of them. “Thorburn,” she gasped, feeling his grip on her slip and fail. “I’m yours!”
Basalt swung her into his arms with impressive strength and surprising gentleness, her feet barely touching the water. Just as gently, he passed her over to Thorburn. “All yours, bro.”
Thorburn gathered her into his arms. “Now,” he murmured, “let’s you and me go have a talk.”
“I’d really like to eat first,” she protested. “I appreciate the rescue and everything, but breakfast…?”
He smiled gently, but it seemed to have an edge to it. “Shh,” he warned her, and put a finger over her lips. “we’ll talk, and then you can have lunch. But there’s some things you need to understand first.”
“…” It looked like she really did. Her mouth wouldn’t open; sound wouldn’t come out. She struggled upwards in his grasp, staring at him, gesturing angrily: what the hell?
He patted her arm. “Calm down and stay still until we’re in my room. You’ve said you’re mine. Now I have to explain to you what that means, and what it will entail.”
She calmed down, her lips still pressed together, and settled in his arms, still. Her mind was running in little circles, but they refused to be even all that upset of little circles. He had told her what to do, and she had done it. There hadn’t been any choice involved. There hadn’t been any… anything involved. She was… his? What the hell did that mean?
Two of the older students had been having a talk the other day, just them and her in the beginning of a class. The words “be careful what you say” had come up no less than four times. At the time, Ceinwen had thought it odd. Now, she wondered if it had been a warning.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/180816.html. You can comment here or there.
From rix_scaedu‘s commissioned prompt.
A continuation Three-Way, Preferences.
3-Way originally posted here and on LJ, continued here (LJ) and then here (LJ and then
Here (Duet) and Here on LJ – and then here: Preferences (LJ)
She felt as if she’d kicked him, which made her feel bad, made her want to curl up in his lap and tell him everything was okay. She sat on her hands instead, shifting until she was sitting cross-legged, straight-backed and looking him in the eye. “Is this really about what I want, Thorburn?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?
“Because, up until now, you haven’t shown much interest in what I wanted.”
“I told you I wanted your honest assessment.” The hunched-unhappy expression was vanishing, replaced with growing irritation. “If you don’t want to tell me, you can just say that instead of bitching at me.”
“I’m not bitching,” she answered, as calmly as she could through her growing tempest of mixed emotions. “I’m…” She struggled against the urge t make him feel better and lost. “I’m just confused, Thorburn. Why now?”
“You’ve never said it wasn’t what you wanted before.”
She blinked at him. “I told you I hated you. I told you I didn’t…” She shouldn’t there. Something was wrong with him and sex. “…didn’t like the collar. Wanted clothes for sleeping. Wanted…” Well, if he took many more of her things away for complaining, she’d be left going to class naked. “That I wanted my stuff.”
His expression was a bit puzzled. “There’s a level of complaining that goes along with being Kept. I could have stopped you from complaining, or punished you more for doing it, but I thought it was better to let you get it off your chest. But you’ve never come out and said you weren’t happy with me… so I thought you were just uncomfortable being Kept.”
“Is…” Yes, there was a difference, wasn’t there? “So… ‘stop treating me like a possession’ doesn’t help, because the stupid Law says I am a possession.”
He nodded. “Exactly. And it takes a little while to get used to that. I didn’t want to overwhelm you, but you need to understand that, or you’ll cause trouble for both of us.”
“I don’t want to cause you trouble.” She was already in enough trouble herself.
“I know you don’t.” He smiled sadly at her. “You’re a good Kept.”
The praise sent an uncomfortably nice shiver through her. He thought she was good. He thought she was a good… slave. Well. “Thanks?”
He studied her. “You were saying,” he said, more gently than his norm and clearly a bit uncomfortably, “that I didn’t treat you the way you’d prefer.”
She nodded, nervous all over again. “I was. That… is not something a good Kept would say, is it?” She frowned at him, a spike of anger pushing through her desire to make him happy. “But it’s true.”
“But you think I’m nice to you?”
She sighed. They were sort of going in circles. “I do. You said you didn’t think I had context, but I’ve been watching. I’ve been listening. Talking to people, when they’ll talk to me.” Penny, mostly, and a couple other Sixth and Seventh Cohorts who were un-worried about Thorburn’s ire. “I watched Ahouva with Kendon… she’s my friend, you know. Or she was starting to be, before he got her.” She took a deep breath. This part was harder. “You’re gentle with me. You hold doors, and carry my tray in the lunchroom. You don’t yell at me, even when you’re obviously angry, and you’ve never hit me. No matter what Curry says, you’ve never let one of your friends… touch me… and you’ve protected me when someone’s gotten too close before. You take good care of me… and I know that not everyone does.” And she was beginning to believe, whoever had Kept him before, they hadn’t been nearly as kind.
He nodded, agreeing with all of her points, watching her carefully. “But it’s not what you’d prefer.”
She flinched. He was being very nice, but she still worried that there was a trap beneath the surface. “That part’s fine. I don’t mind being taken care of… I mean, it’s a little old-fashioned, but I can live with that. And I know that there really are jerks and monsters here, and that being protected isn’t a bad thing.” She trailed off, studying his expression nervously. “It’s not an either or sort of thing, is it? I mean… does the nice stuff go along with the stuff I don’t like?”
“What?” he frowned at her. “Well, that would be stupid. ‘Here, have a cookie and hold still while I beat you?’ No. I’m not that sort of asshole, Ceinwen.”
She relaxed. “Sometimes it seems like everything around here is a trap,” she explained and apologized all at once.
He seemed about to argue, and then nodded, with a rueful smile that she was fairly certain had nothing to do with her. “Okay, that’s fair.” He took her hands. “No more hedging. I promise I won’t punish you for it – now tell me what you don’t like about the way I Keep you.”
The air-twist of the promise slammed hard into the direct order, and Ceinwen spent a second trying to catch her breath, as the urge to answer pressed harder and harder on her. “The orders,” she spat out, just to make the pressure stop, and then flapped both hands at him, hurriedly. “No, no, I know that’s stupid but sometimes they make my head hurt, that’s all. I, Thorburn, sir, it’s really hard to be polite when you make me say things, I don’t like that you took all my stuff away. I don’t like sleeping naked. I feel helpless that way and you said I’d have to earn my nightgown back and then you never told me how to, so I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
She took a long breath, but the order was still pushing her on, despite the stunned expression on Thorburn’s face. “And my stuff. And this collar, which I suppose goes with the stuff, because it’s very pretty and only matches the clothes you bought for me or picked out of my clothes.” She shook her head. “That’s kind of petty, but it’s there, anyway and Thorburn could I please stop now before this gets really, really uncomfortable?”
He already looked pretty uncomfortable. He nodded, and squeezed her hands. “You can stop. But, tell me this – there’s more?”
She nodded mutely. Please don’t ask…
“You didn’t complain about the curfew, or not having time with your friends.”
She bit her lip. “Most of my friends are Kept anyway. I’d like to see them, I mean… but there’s classes? And I guess… isn’t that part of being Kept?”
He nodded, thoughtfully. “And there’s something that’s really bothering you, more than anything, that you were talking around the whole time.”
She gulped. Oh, no… She was nodding, though.
“Something you think will be even more uncomfortable?”
Another nod, her lips pressed as tightly as she could. Tears were already falling, but she couldn’t wipe them away. He was holding her hands too tightly. His face was doing something she couldn’t quite read, but it didn’t look good.
He took a deep breath of his own, looking more than a little worried. “All right.” He released her hands and tugged her against his chest in a massive bear hug. “I won’t ask. And when you’re ready, you can tell me. But for now – well. I think we have some room for negotiation.”
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