29 Days of Smut 2016
Dec. 21st, 2015 05:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aftanithA 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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Evermore [1/?]
Date: 2016-02-13 06:01 am (UTC)When he had first heard the news, Avery's rage had burned white-hot through his grief, and his mind had been set in an instant. Myles and Susanne were dead, not six months after Rylan's resurrection, and there was no pretending that he didn't know why. For all he had hoped--had just short of prayed--that the game had ended with her loss, that he could even begin to dream of moving on from the deaths of the two women for whom he'd ever cared, Ion would never let that happen. In his anguish, Avery had strayed from the path Ion intended for him, and now his only other friends were dead.
He could only hope that Rylan hadn't been the one to do it.
The journey to the Pine Barrens took two days, and Avery made his way across the country fueled by only caffeine and fury. Once and for all, he was going to kill that fucking bastard, and if Rylan or any of the rest of those monsters killed him for it afterward, so be it. He probably deserved it at this point. Heaven knew he'd already let everyone down.
The forest took no pity on him, and it was another two days of water, drugstore sandwiches, and wandering before he managed to replicate the path he'd seen Rylan take so many times. Too many times.
But finally, even as a man who couldn't hear the Call, Avery made it to the Otherworld, and whatever qualms he may have had about his plan disappeared as he passed through the barrier into what might as well have been Hell. Ion was going to die, no matter what any of these people had to say about it. No one was going to be able to stop him.
And yet, as Avery marched toward the cottage where he'd last seen the two of them, he could feel his own resolve fading away. There were countless eyes on him, innumerable demons watching him pass through their midst, but they let him go on unimpeded. No doubt they recognized him by now, even if they hadn't expected to see him again.
Much to his surprise, Avery found Ion within minutes--or rather, Ion found him.
"Avery," he said in greeting, acting for all the world at of they were just estranged friends. As if what had happened with Rohan had somehow changed things between them. "What a surprise. I honestly didn't expect to ever see you again. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Try as he might to harness the burning hatred and wrath that he'd been steeped in for days, it failed him now, drained away by the Otherworld. Perhaps, he thought, he had best leave before it took any more than that; perhaps he could lure Ion out of the Other Realm somehow, so it would at least be slightly fairer fight.
"Myles and Susanne are dead," he heard himself say, succumbing more to the disassociation as each minute passed. "The last two people in the world I cared about were just murdered. You know exactly why I'm here."
Ion just looked at him with laughter in his eyes, as utterly dismissive as be could be. "We didn't kill your friends, Avery. In fact, the reason we're here, Rylan and I; she wants me kept very far away from anyone she might still happen to love." His lips curved into a small smirk. "She isn't going to be happy to see you like this."
Avery hesitated. The urge to see Rylan... the Other Realm was drawing it out of him, and he was having a hard time suppressing it. Dear God did he hate this place. "Will she try to kill me?"
Ion had the audacity to roll his eyes. "Please. She wants you alive--you specifically and your little friends to boot. She won't be happy to hear your news... And as a matter of fact, unless you are inclined to break it to her yourself, I fear I may decide to simply... forget it. A century from now, it'll hardly matter anyway."
Avery was about five seconds away from deciding he'd had enough and fleeing this Eldritch nightmare while he still had a chance. But he couldn't do that to Rylan, not even after what she'd become. She had to know about Susanne. If anything could get through to her, it was the thought that Ion had broken his promise. And the monster undoubtedly had, even if he seemed surprisingly reluctant to confess.
"I won't let you do that."
Evermore [2/?]
Date: 2016-02-27 04:44 am (UTC)A chill crept up Avery's spine. He had come here, perhaps foolishly, with a head full of accusations and half-formed notions of drawing Ion out of the protection of this nest of vipers, but somehow it occurred to him only now how foolish an idea this entire excursion really was. The world had changed significantly over the last year, and he had all but forgotten the gravity of it until now.
If Ion returned to the mortal realm... if he were tempted into starting back up his deadly game, Rylan would rejoin it, too. Only this time, she wouldn't be on Avery's side.
"She has to know."
For a moment, Avery waited, wondering if Ion would try to stop him--and wondering, more importantly, if he wanted to be stopped. But the monster did nothing, and so Avery set his jaw in newfound determination; if Ion didn't plan to put up any resistance, Avery certainly wasn't about to abandon his noble intentions. All he could hope was that they didn't backfire on him as badly as--
As he carefully suppressed his own self-wrought wince, Avery tried not to think of all the other things that had gone wrong in his life since Ion first begun to ruin it. Avery just needed to tell Rylan what had happened, just needed to see enough of her reaction to convince himself beyond a shadow of a doubt that she'd had nothing at all to do with their friends' murder, and then he could go. Then he could put these people behind him once and for all, severe the last remaining tie to the life he'd hoped--
Christ, this wasn't helping. "Where is she?" he demanded, voice gruff and tense and far too emotional, and Ion's easy smile was all the confirmation Avery needed to be sure that the fucking beast heard it, too. Avery was weak right now, inevitably so now that the last people in the world who he loved were dead and there was still the sneaking suspicion in the back of his mind that Rylan might have been the one to kill them. And so he had to be sure, and if that meant letting Ion see through the cracks, so be it.
"Come with me," Ion said, and he turned his back on Avery so carelessly that for a moment, the hunter was half-convinced it was some kind of trick. Ion knew better than that, knew better than to give him such an easy opportunity to take him out once and for all, and yet Avery was so shocked by it that he didn't even move; perhaps that was what Ion had been counting on, he thought, or perhaps the demon was just testing him once again. Either way, Ion glanced back a few seconds later, a single brow raised in challenge. "Unless you think you're safer here with them?" He nodded vaguely in the direction behind Avery, obviously meaning the various fey that Avery knew were still watching them in idle curiosity--and perhaps waiting for the first sign that this opportunity might not be Ion's but theirs.
Bristling at the suggestion--Avery wasn't stupid, knew he wasn't safe here or anywhere else, not now that Rylan and Susanne and Myles of all people had been taken out so thoroughly--Avery obliged to follow him, and as Ion led him down a narrow path between two seemingly dilapidated but disconcertingly hard-to-focus-upon buildings, Avery was surprised by how easily Ion continued to put his back to the man who he must realize still intended to kill him if he ever got another good chance.
Perhaps it was merely that Ion realized Avery wouldn't dare attack here in the Otherworld. If so, he was certainly right; Avery wasn't nearly that stupid.
Evermore [3/?]
Date: 2016-03-05 04:45 am (UTC)Rylan stared at him a moment, a look of utter shock on her face--
--and then she turned her gaze on Ion, fury burning in her eyes.
"What the fuck did you do?" came a low, threatening rumble in a voice he hardly recognized as her own, and Avery was rather impressed with himself for stopping his involuntary step back. "I told you to--"
"I haven't touched him," Ion protested, as at ease as ever even in the face of her rage. "He came looking for you."
Eyes narrowing slightly, Rylan glanced between. "I don't believe you," she said, voice dismissive as she glared at Ion, and then she turned to Avery. "What happened? Are you okay?"
There was a single, sharp moment of focus when Avery became painfully aware of all the emotions he'd been suppressing over the past few months. Christ, he'd missed her, more than he was ever going to be willing to admit, and even if seeing her here like this made his heart ache in its despair--this wasn't the Rylan he knew--he still wanted nothing more than to take her back with him, to pull her into his arms and drag her back to reality if that's what it took to get here there. He would've given anything, he feared, if it meant he could fix what Ion had done.
"I'm... fine," he said stiffly. It was so strange to be talking to her again, something downright disturbing in the way they were talking as if they were just estranged friends instead of... instead of whatever the hell they were.
"Then why are you here?"
He shooed away the thought that there was something almost hopeful about the way she was looking at him; either he was imagining it, or it didn't mean anything good. And he certainly didn't plan to find out which. "I... I had to tell you. Myles and Susanne, they're... they're dead."
Avery didn't miss the way she turned her fierce glare back on Ion once again, and perhaps that sight alone made this whole trip worth it. She suspected him, even now, and that more than anything proved that some part of her, at least, was still Rylan.
"Don't look at me," Ion preempted her accusation. "I already got it from him, and that's enough, thank you. You know exactly where I have and haven't been for the past six months."
Rylan was still for a moment, then gave the slightest hint of a nod before she turned back to Avery. "Do you know who did it, then?"
"I... don't. I was hoping that--well..."
One dark brow lifted. "Were you hoping that we did it, then?" she asked, a hint of pained offense in her voice. "Or that we didn't?"
All he could do was give her the truth. "I don't know."
"Then what do you want, Avery?"
He could feel their eyes fixed upon him--Ion's and Rylan's and who knows how many others'--and everything seemed to come together in that one crystallizing moment. "I want whoever did it to pay."
Rylan's eyes widened, just slightly, and Avery watched her glance again at Ion. The demon laughed. "Are you sure that's what you want, A?" Ion asked, an almost mocking smile on his lips.
Avery stared at Rylan, a small part of him convinced that she was doing this on purpose, that she was drawing something out of him that he hadn't even realized was there before he'd arrived and that he wasn't going to be able to suppress now that she'd beckoned it to light. "Not you," he said quietly, his gaze flickering to Ion. "I don't want anything from you. But Rylan--"