A self-imposed challenge of my own creation, running from February 1, 2016 to February 29, 2016. I only plan to start these stories (producing around a thousand words for each), not to finish them within the month.
This was originally intended to be Steel x Rowan dubcon, heat.
Title: Holding Peace title inspiration (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpeakNowOrForeverHoldYourPeace) Pairing/Rating: Steel/Rowan NC-17 Challenges: Summary: Steel takes advantage of Rowan's heat. Perhaps he thinks that if he gives Rowan what she wanted to begin with, it'll be enough to convince her to leave Ares. (How he gets her away from Ares during her heat, of course, is another question entirely.) Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. Warnings: dubcon (heat/rut), attempted forced impregnation
Title: Pairing/Rating: Sparrow/Frost M Challenges: S-61. secret [lover100 (http://norienchronicle.livejournal.com/11105.html)] | 9. distraction [runaway-tales (http://norienchronicle.livejournal.com/18484.html) | Fudge Ripple (http://norienchronicle.livejournal.com/20471.html#fudgeripple)] | 26. restraint [runaway-tales (http://norienchronicle.livejournal.com/18484.html) | Chocolate Chip (http://norienchronicle.livejournal.com/20690.html#chocolatechip)] | 25. perversion [runaway-tales (http://norienchronicle.livejournal.com/18484.html) | Dark Chocolate (http://norienchronicle.livejournal.com/21143.html#darkchocolate)] Summary: It wouldn't take a genius to figure out what's going on, and the fact that it's easily the worst-kept secret in the room only makes it better.
He had made her a complete and utter pervert. But it could be worse, she supposed; this could have worked out the other way around, and Sparrow would be eternally grateful that it didn't.
If there was anyone left in the room who hadn't noticed what was going on, Sparrow would have been immensely surprised. These people--the entirety of the Circle--was so steeped in this kind of perversity that there was no way they couldn't see the signs, not when she could so clearly see them herself; sure, she knew exactly what to look for, being the instigator--however accidentally--of this whole thing, but she didn't doubt for a second that plenty of these men and women had done the same in the past. And when they had done it, she was sure, Sparrow had been the only one in the room who hadn't realized what was going on.
Not tonight.
For his part, Frost was clearly thrilled with it all. He'd said it before, told her three years ago what he wanted, though he'd practically made her drag it out of him at the time; if there was anything in the world that could clearly show the Circle that he'd won--that he'd made her feel something vaguely romantic for him, though she dared any single one of these fuckers to call it love--it was this. The rest of it could be written off, and it could be written off very easily at that. There was a good argument to be made that she had only stayed with him--only returned to him--out of fear and that she'd only married him thanks to bribery or blackmail or even something as base as greed. This, though... this proved that whatever there was between them, at least part of it was exactly what Frost had insisted was there all along. She wanted him after all.
And so it was rather odd, sitting there on the couch with her hand in her jacket pocket while Frost mingled on the other side of the room. That alone, of course, was the first giveaway that something unusual was going on; it was so rare for him to so much as step beyond her tight bubble of personal space, let alone let her out of his sight, and surely everyone here realized that if he was doing it tonight, it was either because they were in some kind of fight--which was unlikely, since neither of them seemed anything resembling upset--or...
Or they were doing something like this.
They really weren't being subtle, after all. For all Frost was more thoroughly ignoring her now than he'd managed even once in the past three years, Sparrow's attention was entirely on him, which even she could admit was rather suspect in and of itself; but more telling than that, of course, was what Frost was doing. The man was barely paying attention to anything, attempting as he was to carry on a conversation with a patriarch Sparrow recognized but still couldn't name after all these years; he was standing just a bit awkwardly, and if that wasn't a dead giveaway, the occasional slip in his careful restraint certainly was. It wasn't anything too obvious, but she could tell he was distracted even from across the room, struggling to pay attention to whatever was being said to him while she occasionally toyed with the dial. Once, Sparrow had even seen the other man glance in her direction, and she had to admit that she was rather pleased with the distinct hint of disbelief in his expression as he did. If the self-satisfied smirk she offered him in response didn't give them both away, Sparrow knew nothing else possibly could.
It was only when she watched Octavian Donahue break away from the conversation he'd been having and start heading very purposefully toward Frost, however, that Sparrow wondered if the latter had actually considered what he was getting himself into when he'd eagerly signed himself up for this one--and, perhaps more importantly, exactly what Donahue thought he was doing.
Eyes narrowing, Sparrow rose from the couch. Octavian, of course, knew exactly what was going on; the thought that he didn't was so painfully naive that she wouldn't even have entertained it three years ago, let alone now. But what exactly he thought he was doing, interjecting himself so purposefully into the situation, though, she had no fucking clue.
She made her way toward Frost just as Octavian did, wondering all the while if involving herself so directly in whatever was about to go down between them was really the right thing to do. But if there was one thing that Frost had truly achieved over the past three years, it was that he'd gotten her whole-heartedly on his side of the petty little rivalry he had going with Octavian. It wasn't exactly Frost's doing, of course, not entirely; Octavian hadn't needed any help to get himself on her bad side. Between what he had tasked Loretta with doing to her during that first year of her confinement and what he'd done to Seth less than a year later, he could have been Frost's best friends n the world and she still would have hated him with everything she had.
Frost noticed Octavian before he noticed Sparrow, and she watched his polite smile sink into a stoic expression that threatened to turn into a frown. The man he was talking to didn't miss the change; he glanced over his shoulder, obviously curious as to what had caught Frost's attention, and from the look on his face when he realized Octavian Donahue was headed in their direction said everything. Sparrow watched from just outside of hearing distance as the man made whatever excuse he could to rush off before Octavian got there.
She reached him just as Octavian did, and they seemed to notice her presence in unison; Frost looked a bit surprised to see her, but Octavian simply appeared amused. "Sparrow," he said, nodding to her, and then he turned to Frost. "Chancellor."
"Something I can help you with, Octavian?" Frost asked, voice tight.
Octavian laughed. "Always so unfriendly, Stelian. It's a party; I'm mingling. Surely that's not a problem?"
Before Frost had a chance to respond, Sparrow cut in. "And you wouldn't prefer to mingle with people you actually like?"
Octavian gave her a feigned look of surprise. "I thought that was what I was doing--catching up with friends I haven't seen it a while." He turned his gaze back to Frost, smiling like a hungry shark. "In fact, I only came over because I wanted to make sure you were alright. You looked quite uncomfortable talking to… whoever that was. A Freed cousin or some such?"
"One of the Childers, actually."
Octavian nodded. "Ah. As bad as Idris, then, I take it?"
Sparrow kept her face as blankly innocent as possible. "Idris," she said pointedly, "is our friend."
"Yes, it takes all kinds, doesn't it?"
Frost interrupted before the underhanded jabs could get any worse. "Nothing is wrong; I'm afraid I'm just preoccupied tonight."
"I'm surprised you're here, then," Octavian said, bothering for only the faintest hint of false sympathy. "The two of you are a rare enough sight in the Theatre that I wouldn't assume you'd be here if you didn't really want to be. You're not a particularly… public couple, after all."
Frost looked as distinctly unamused as Sparrow was herself, and with her hand still in her pocket, Sparrow rolled the dial of the little remote all the way down. Frost glanced at her, frowning, and turned back to Octavian. "We're not all quite as interested in putting on a show as you are, Octavian."
The Secretary grinned. "No, I suppose not. After all, you always were the kind of man who preferred to know he had a secret the rest of us didn't. Or at least to think he did." He turned those dangerously smiling eyes to Sparrow, and her skin crawled as surely now as it had for the past three years. "And what about you, dear? Enjoying yourself?"
I was, she knew, would be so unsubtle an answer as to tip this little interaction from passive-aggressive to actually aggressive, and she wasn't willing to let it go that far yet. Instead, she offered a simple, "More or less."
"Not getting any pleasure out of this, then?" he asked. "The party, I mean?"
Sparrow glanced over at Frost, wondering how exactly he was going to get them out of this meandering conversation. Octavian clearly had no motive here other than to bother them; what he hoped to accomplish with that, she didn't know. Perhaps he merely wanted to make sure they knew that he knew what they were doing tonight. And if that was the case, he'd certainly already made his point.
But Frost didn't seem to be ready to do anything, and so Sparrow turned back to Octavian with a surge of frustration. "Look, Octavian, is there something you want, or can I have my husband to myself now?"
The much larger man smiled down at her. "You know exactly what I want, my dear, just as surely as well know I'm not going to get it. But you're certainly getting bold these days, aren't you?" His gaze flickered to Frost. "And as for Stelian... well, the changes in him are simply fascinating. I am endlessly curious about how you managed it."
"Ask your daughter," Sparrow said coldly, and she hooked her arm through Frost's with obvious intent. "Now you'll have to forgive me, but I'm afraid I actually came over here hoping to be alone with him. I'm sure we'll see you again soon."
"Of course, dear. My apologies." His gaze flickered back to Frost, and he nodded curtly. "Stelian."
Frost didn't waste a moment in dragging her away from the other man, not sparing even a single second to bid him goodbye. "I hate him," Sparrow grumbled as they were out of earshot, and though she expected him to echo her sentiments immediately, instead he only reached down to where her hand was still in her pocket. His fingers coiled around her wrist, slipping beneath the fabric and obviously seeking the remote still clutched within her grasp. "You're kidding."
"I'm not," he said softly, shaking his head. "I'm not letting Octavian fucking Donahue ruin this."
"You're an utter pervert," she muttered, though the words had none of the bite or condemnation they would've had only a year earlier, and she turned the dial back up, giving in without a fight.
"Absolutely," he murmured back, and Sparrow couldn't help the tiny smile that touched her lips.
So, I don't like the direction this went in. I think I'm going to start again, branching off from the the end of the first part. Instead of Sparrow going to intervene while Octavian pesters Frost, she just keeps toying with him until he comes. Presumably, she feels a bit skeevy about it--but also a bit cruelly vindictive. Frost forced her to do plenty of things she hadn't wanted, so turning those particular tables on him for once isn't something she's going to resist unless he specifically asks her to stop.
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[lover100] S-61. secret | Sparrow x Frost
Title: Holding Peace title inspiration (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpeakNowOrForeverHoldYourPeace)
Pairing/Rating: Steel/Rowan NC-17
Challenges:
Summary: Steel takes advantage of Rowan's heat. Perhaps he thinks that if he gives Rowan what she wanted to begin with, it'll be enough to convince her to leave Ares. (How he gets her away from Ares during her heat, of course, is another question entirely.) Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.
Warnings: dubcon (heat/rut), attempted forced impregnation
Title:
Pairing/Rating: Sparrow/Frost M
Challenges: S-61. secret [lover100 (http://norienchronicle.livejournal.com/11105.html)] | 9. distraction [runaway-tales (http://norienchronicle.livejournal.com/18484.html) | Fudge Ripple (http://norienchronicle.livejournal.com/20471.html#fudgeripple)] | 26. restraint [runaway-tales (http://norienchronicle.livejournal.com/18484.html) | Chocolate Chip (http://norienchronicle.livejournal.com/20690.html#chocolatechip)] | 25. perversion [runaway-tales (http://norienchronicle.livejournal.com/18484.html) | Dark Chocolate (http://norienchronicle.livejournal.com/21143.html#darkchocolate)]
Summary: It wouldn't take a genius to figure out what's going on, and the fact that it's easily the worst-kept secret in the room only makes it better.
Secret [1/?]
If there was anyone left in the room who hadn't noticed what was going on, Sparrow would have been immensely surprised. These people--the entirety of the Circle--was so steeped in this kind of perversity that there was no way they couldn't see the signs, not when she could so clearly see them herself; sure, she knew exactly what to look for, being the instigator--however accidentally--of this whole thing, but she didn't doubt for a second that plenty of these men and women had done the same in the past. And when they had done it, she was sure, Sparrow had been the only one in the room who hadn't realized what was going on.
Not tonight.
For his part, Frost was clearly thrilled with it all. He'd said it before, told her three years ago what he wanted, though he'd practically made her drag it out of him at the time; if there was anything in the world that could clearly show the Circle that he'd won--that he'd made her feel something vaguely romantic for him, though she dared any single one of these fuckers to call it love--it was this. The rest of it could be written off, and it could be written off very easily at that. There was a good argument to be made that she had only stayed with him--only returned to him--out of fear and that she'd only married him thanks to bribery or blackmail or even something as base as greed. This, though... this proved that whatever there was between them, at least part of it was exactly what Frost had insisted was there all along. She wanted him after all.
And so it was rather odd, sitting there on the couch with her hand in her jacket pocket while Frost mingled on the other side of the room. That alone, of course, was the first giveaway that something unusual was going on; it was so rare for him to so much as step beyond her tight bubble of personal space, let alone let her out of his sight, and surely everyone here realized that if he was doing it tonight, it was either because they were in some kind of fight--which was unlikely, since neither of them seemed anything resembling upset--or...
Or they were doing something like this.
They really weren't being subtle, after all. For all Frost was more thoroughly ignoring her now than he'd managed even once in the past three years, Sparrow's attention was entirely on him, which even she could admit was rather suspect in and of itself; but more telling than that, of course, was what Frost was doing. The man was barely paying attention to anything, attempting as he was to carry on a conversation with a patriarch Sparrow recognized but still couldn't name after all these years; he was standing just a bit awkwardly, and if that wasn't a dead giveaway, the occasional slip in his careful restraint certainly was. It wasn't anything too obvious, but she could tell he was distracted even from across the room, struggling to pay attention to whatever was being said to him while she occasionally toyed with the dial. Once, Sparrow had even seen the other man glance in her direction, and she had to admit that she was rather pleased with the distinct hint of disbelief in his expression as he did. If the self-satisfied smirk she offered him in response didn't give them both away, Sparrow knew nothing else possibly could.
It was only when she watched Octavian Donahue break away from the conversation he'd been having and start heading very purposefully toward Frost, however, that Sparrow wondered if the latter had actually considered what he was getting himself into when he'd eagerly signed himself up for this one--and, perhaps more importantly, exactly what Donahue thought he was doing.
Eyes narrowing, Sparrow rose from the couch. Octavian, of course, knew exactly what was going on; the thought that he didn't was so painfully naive that she wouldn't even have entertained it three years ago, let alone now. But what exactly he thought he was doing, interjecting himself so purposefully into the situation, though, she had no fucking clue.
Secret [2/?]
She made her way toward Frost just as Octavian did, wondering all the while if involving herself so directly in whatever was about to go down between them was really the right thing to do. But if there was one thing that Frost had truly achieved over the past three years, it was that he'd gotten her whole-heartedly on his side of the petty little rivalry he had going with Octavian. It wasn't exactly Frost's doing, of course, not entirely; Octavian hadn't needed any help to get himself on her bad side. Between what he had tasked Loretta with doing to her during that first year of her confinement and what he'd done to Seth less than a year later, he could have been Frost's best friends n the world and she still would have hated him with everything she had.
Frost noticed Octavian before he noticed Sparrow, and she watched his polite smile sink into a stoic expression that threatened to turn into a frown. The man he was talking to didn't miss the change; he glanced over his shoulder, obviously curious as to what had caught Frost's attention, and from the look on his face when he realized Octavian Donahue was headed in their direction said everything. Sparrow watched from just outside of hearing distance as the man made whatever excuse he could to rush off before Octavian got there.
She reached him just as Octavian did, and they seemed to notice her presence in unison; Frost looked a bit surprised to see her, but Octavian simply appeared amused. "Sparrow," he said, nodding to her, and then he turned to Frost. "Chancellor."
"Something I can help you with, Octavian?" Frost asked, voice tight.
Octavian laughed. "Always so unfriendly, Stelian. It's a party; I'm mingling. Surely that's not a problem?"
Before Frost had a chance to respond, Sparrow cut in. "And you wouldn't prefer to mingle with people you actually like?"
Octavian gave her a feigned look of surprise. "I thought that was what I was doing--catching up with friends I haven't seen it a while." He turned his gaze back to Frost, smiling like a hungry shark. "In fact, I only came over because I wanted to make sure you were alright. You looked quite uncomfortable talking to… whoever that was. A Freed cousin or some such?"
"One of the Childers, actually."
Octavian nodded. "Ah. As bad as Idris, then, I take it?"
Sparrow kept her face as blankly innocent as possible. "Idris," she said pointedly, "is our friend."
"Yes, it takes all kinds, doesn't it?"
Frost interrupted before the underhanded jabs could get any worse. "Nothing is wrong; I'm afraid I'm just preoccupied tonight."
"I'm surprised you're here, then," Octavian said, bothering for only the faintest hint of false sympathy. "The two of you are a rare enough sight in the Theatre that I wouldn't assume you'd be here if you didn't really want to be. You're not a particularly… public couple, after all."
Frost looked as distinctly unamused as Sparrow was herself, and with her hand still in her pocket, Sparrow rolled the dial of the little remote all the way down. Frost glanced at her, frowning, and turned back to Octavian. "We're not all quite as interested in putting on a show as you are, Octavian."
The Secretary grinned. "No, I suppose not. After all, you always were the kind of man who preferred to know he had a secret the rest of us didn't. Or at least to think he did." He turned those dangerously smiling eyes to Sparrow, and her skin crawled as surely now as it had for the past three years. "And what about you, dear? Enjoying yourself?"
I was, she knew, would be so unsubtle an answer as to tip this little interaction from passive-aggressive to actually aggressive, and she wasn't willing to let it go that far yet. Instead, she offered a simple, "More or less."
"Not getting any pleasure out of this, then?" he asked. "The party, I mean?"
"I rarely do."
"And yet you indulge Stelian anyway."
Secret [3/3]
Sparrow glanced over at Frost, wondering how exactly he was going to get them out of this meandering conversation. Octavian clearly had no motive here other than to bother them; what he hoped to accomplish with that, she didn't know. Perhaps he merely wanted to make sure they knew that he knew what they were doing tonight. And if that was the case, he'd certainly already made his point.
But Frost didn't seem to be ready to do anything, and so Sparrow turned back to Octavian with a surge of frustration. "Look, Octavian, is there something you want, or can I have my husband to myself now?"
The much larger man smiled down at her. "You know exactly what I want, my dear, just as surely as well know I'm not going to get it. But you're certainly getting bold these days, aren't you?" His gaze flickered to Frost. "And as for Stelian... well, the changes in him are simply fascinating. I am endlessly curious about how you managed it."
"Ask your daughter," Sparrow said coldly, and she hooked her arm through Frost's with obvious intent. "Now you'll have to forgive me, but I'm afraid I actually came over here hoping to be alone with him. I'm sure we'll see you again soon."
"Of course, dear. My apologies." His gaze flickered back to Frost, and he nodded curtly. "Stelian."
Frost didn't waste a moment in dragging her away from the other man, not sparing even a single second to bid him goodbye. "I hate him," Sparrow grumbled as they were out of earshot, and though she expected him to echo her sentiments immediately, instead he only reached down to where her hand was still in her pocket. His fingers coiled around her wrist, slipping beneath the fabric and obviously seeking the remote still clutched within her grasp. "You're kidding."
"I'm not," he said softly, shaking his head. "I'm not letting Octavian fucking Donahue ruin this."
"You're an utter pervert," she muttered, though the words had none of the bite or condemnation they would've had only a year earlier, and she turned the dial back up, giving in without a fight.
"Absolutely," he murmured back, and Sparrow couldn't help the tiny smile that touched her lips.
So, I don't like the direction this went in. I think I'm going to start again, branching off from the the end of the first part. Instead of Sparrow going to intervene while Octavian pesters Frost, she just keeps toying with him until he comes. Presumably, she feels a bit skeevy about it--but also a bit cruelly vindictive. Frost forced her to do plenty of things she hadn't wanted, so turning those particular tables on him for once isn't something she's going to resist unless he specifically asks her to stop.