| 1. | [100moods] 92. Surprised | Sparrow x Frost, last-name basis | 2. | [15pairings] look who's on top | top!Simon x Frost not during groupsex | 3. | [50harlequins] Spoiled Rich Girl and Poor Boy | Circle!Sparrow x Victor!Frost | 4. | Alduin x F!DB x M!DB, corruption & Shout!Sex | 5. | [15pairings] indecent exposure | Galen x Frost, seduction |
| 6. | Avery x Rylan x Jackson, dubcon & sex pollen | 7. | Caderyn catches Charon x Adrasteia | 8. | [15pairings] men | Simon x Sam, first time | 9. | [citrus-taste | Kinkier Table] 44. masturbation | Sparrow x Frost | 10. | [alphabetasoup] Hades | Sparrow x Frost |
| 11. | Dark!Hera x everyone AU | 12. | demon!Rylan x Avery x Ion, dubcon (Susanne & Myles Die AU) | 13. | Dom!M!Dragonborn x slave!Ancano x slave!Ondolemar, mindbreak | 14. | Domme!Esmeralda x slave!Scorpius x slave!Octavius, noncon & mindbreak | 15. | Dom!Sigurd x slave!Charon x slave!Caderyn x slave!Zephyrus (+ Adrasteia) |
| 16. | [citrus-taste] K-2. table | Sparrow x Simon x Nadia | 17. | [citrus-taste] 26. harems | Harem/Parabellum Crossover | 18. | [paranormal25] 23. writer's choice, tentacles | 19. | Malene x Ancano, fantasy AU & arranged marriage | 20. | [Maze of Fiends] Mate or Die AU |
| 21. | M!DB x M!Werewolf, hentai physiology & urethral penetration | 22. | [over-look] play dead | Izzy x Octavian, necrophilia roleplay | 23. | [smut-69] oil | Sparrow x Frost | 24. | [smut-69] orgy | Sparrow x Frost x Simon x Nadia x Loretta x Izzy | 25. | [lover100] S-61. secret | Sparrow x Frost |
| 26. | [lover-100] S-27. threesome | Sparrow x Frost x Galen | 27. | [citrus-taste] K-47. in public | Sparrow x Frost x Galen | 28. | Zevran x Lyna x King!Alistair, roleplay/raceplay #1 | 29. | Zevran x Lyna x King!Alistair, roleplay/raceplay #2 |
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Inverted [1/?]
I also briefly considered putting her in a Loretta-esque role in which she would manifest as the daughter of an OC Chancellor, but I felt that came too close to the "never a self-made woman" stereotype (should I decide for her to become more political later) and also risked introducing another strong male figure (presumably but not definitely a sympathetic one) that could too strongly influence both her character and the plot. So, what I'm going with here is that Sparrow has a very Frost-esque background; she was born to an elderly man in the Circle (a previous Chancellor, in this case) and his much younger "trophy wife".
Their romantic roles, however, will be much the same. Frost is obsessive, aggressive, and much more sexually open, while Sparrow is cold and distant and though lacking in childhood sexual trauma still suffering from the unwanted affections of Octavian Donahue, who no doubt intends to use her as a way to strengthen his campaign for Chancellor.
So let's see how this works out.
Sparrow had been surprised when she'd heard the news. She wasn't one to pay much attention to the Culling normally; honestly, the entire thing sickened her, and it would probably be more merciful to simply let everyone that entered the arena die there. For every Isadora Bitya, there were five Nadia Sens, wide-eyed and innocent and scared and wholly undeserving of the fate they would suffer for the rest of their lives. The men and women who could, like Izzy, actually enjoy their new lives could be counted on one hand.
But the number of men and women like this one, on the other hand... well, she was sure there must have been more, but there weren't any she could recall. The Circle had a type when it came to the Culling, and that type hadn't varied much in the last few decades, as far as she knew. There was a bit more leeway with women, a healthy range of colors and sizes, though there of course wasn't an unattractive specimen in the bunch, but the men were held to much stricter roles; they all had the same dark features, the same fair skin, the same general build. And yet somehow this newest victor bucked the mold.
He wasn't even young she realized. Certainly, he wasn't as old as the current generation of patriarchs--no one that far along in life stood a chance of winning the Culling, after all--but he was probably about forty, more than old enough that she doubted the Circle had actually chosen him, and wasn't that a laugh? How long had it been since their plans to pick out the new victor had failed?
And, more importantly, what did it mean for the poor bastard who had the gall to win instead of whatever pretty little thing they'd chosen?
Sparrow sighed and stood, setting her glass of wine down on the coffee table, barely touched. German was up in an instant, setting his book aside and rising from the armchair diagonally across from the couch. "You can take it," she said reluctantly, gesturing toward the glass. She would've prefer to stay and finish it, of course, but there wasn't going to be any getting out of this tonight; it wasn't just a Debut she could "forget" to RSVP to. The Circle begrudgingly tolerated her disinterest in their system because of who her father had been and the rewards one of them might reap one day if they she so completely lost her mind as to marry, but they wouldn't let her avoid a Victory Ball. If she didn't come, her absence would be noted, and there'd be hell to pay.
And she certainly had no time for that.
Inverted [2/?]
"Pax no," Sparrow exclaimed, watching him disappear through the doorway on his trek toward the kitchen. "I might have to go to this thing, but I'm not putting myself through that kind of torture!"
She heard him chuckling as he returned, sans glass. "Is there anything you'd like me to get you, then?"
Sparrow considered it a moment, then shook her head. "Just help me get my hair up once I'm dressed, and I'll be fine." He nodded, and she headed toward the bedroom as he sank back down into his chair and took back up his book. She would never understand his fascination with reading.
If Sparrow could firmly say that there was one genuinely good thing in her life, that would be German. She hadn't thought so at first, of course, but that was to be expected; when they'd first met, German had been just Sparrow's father's most recent errand boy, just another in a cascade of servants that neither cared about Sparrow or earned her consideration in turn. At least, he was just another servant until the late Chancellor had decided to assign him as Sparrow's own personal manservant.
Had her father been anyone else, Sparrow would've known exactly what that meant: that he was giving the young man to his even younger daughter, intended to let the thirteen-year-old to as she wished with him, whether what she wished was something technically legal or not. And upon their official introduction, it had been clear that German Etzel had not known that Sparrow's father wasn't anyone else; from the genuine panic in his eyes, the twenty-five-year-old had been thoroughly convinced for a few horrible hours that he'd just been handed over like a plaything to a little girl.
Luckily for him, of course, the Katharos family did not operate that way, no matter what the Donahues and Freeds of the world let their children get away with. German was to be almost everything to her--friend, confidante, assistant, and chaperone--but not that. And she was fairly sure they were both quite pleased to know that they still weren't, almost a decade later. They never would be.
The role German served, indeed, was much more important than something so petty; he had been her rock for years, to the point that she genuinely wasn't sure what she would do without him. She was as devoted to him as he was to her, even if there was a small part of her that still wondered how much of that devotion revolved around his paycheck. And, really, she didn't want to know that answer.
Tonight, she knew, German was going to be serving as her "date", for lack of a better term; she was well aware that the majority of the Circle was quite convinced that there wasn't anything remotely platonic about their relationship these days, whether or not it had ever been so in the past, and that was a surprisingly effective way to keep the majority of them from bothering her. They certainly weren't about to stop propositioning her altogether--she was the sole owner of a large fortune and without any heirs to her name, after all--but it deterred the worst of the so-called wooing, and for that, she couldn't have been more grateful. Some of these bastards were willing to go quite a long way in the name of pursuing a woman they felt was unattached. And since she was usually quite single, German found himself playing arm candy more often than not. She didn't think he minded, and if he did, he certainly never said.
Sparrow dressed quickly that night, putting the absolute minimum of thought into what she was draping around herself. Tonight it was a short, dark green dress she was fairly sure she'd bought for herself and whatever reasonably matching jewelry she could find in her mess of a jewelry box. She knew her mother would be rolling over in her grave if she could see her now, and, honestly, Sparrow took a certain kind of satisfaction in that. Her mother had been a vapid, vain woman with whom she'd never gotten along, nor even particularly known; she couldn't give less of a shit about the woman's judgment, hypothetical, postmortem, or otherwise.
Inverted [3/?]
Pax, she wished she didn't have to go to this thing. What Sparrow wouldn't have given to live in a world where there were no victors and no Circle to advise them was infinitesimal; dealing with this every year was excruciating, and there was nothing she could do to stop it from happening. All she could do in the end was try to ease the pain.
"Let's go," she said quietly, turning to German with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. She wasn't going to be able to his that, she knew, but by now and managed to create enough of a reputation for herself that the others would no doubt misinterpret it, as they always did. If anyone in the Circle suspected that the rumors about her weren't true, they weren't saying so publicly; she could only assume that they would take her disinterest in the Victory as a desire for privacy. But, as always, she would need the new victor's help to maintain that illusion.
That was her risk every year. Every time there was a new victor, he or she put the others in danger of losing what little she could offer them. If they cost to play along with her deception, if they choose to lie to the Circle like Simon and Nadia and the others before them had agreed to do, the new victor would share in whatever meager freedoms she could offer them. But if this new man refused--if he proved, as Izzy had, a devotee to the Circle--she would have to take care t be never caught on to what exactly she was trying to arrange. The rest of the Circle would not take kindly to learning that Sparrow's many "appointments" with the various victors are little more than covertly scheduled downtime they weren't supposed to receive.
"Alright." German, she knew, was as displeased by tonight's impending ordeal as she was--but he was much better at masking it. "Anything else you need before we leave?"
Sparrow shook her head. "Unless I've forgotten something, no--or unless you have, which I think we can both agree is even less likely." She signed, mustering up whatever fake enthusiasm she could. "And I'll apologize in advance for anything that goes wrong."
German have her a faint smile. "Everything will be fine."
She certainly hoped so.
Simon was not optimistic. He had been with this new victor for all of an hour, and he was fairly sure already that this was not a man he was going to like. From his reaction to Simon's cautious attempts to gauge him, Simon had gotten the distinct and uncomfortable impression that they might have another Izzy on their hands. Simon want she what Izzy had been like when she'd first arrived--she was the new victor the year before his own Victory--but this man certainly wasn't acting like either he or Nadia had. He seemed to answer that something was wrong--that something very bad was coming very soon--but he hadn't yet asked what it was, and there was something downright off about the was he looked at the two of them. No one outside the Circle had looked at him like that in a long time.
It didn't bode well at all.
Sparrow walked into the Theatre with German on her arm and watched a few heads turn in her direction. That they did proved the victor hadn't arrived yet himself; very few of them would've been looking at her if their new toy was in the room.