I. What A Good Boy, What A Smart Boy

CAST: Tucker North (hesitantlyyours@aol.com), Beth Lyons (lyonsoffire@aol.com)
SUMMARY: Tucker seeks comfort in Beth after an unannounced visit from his biological father, who he hasn't known for most of his life. His emotional coital murmurings make the promise ring he offered the fearful Lyons the previous week look like a consolation prize. Dual conflicts that don't seem to have a thing to do with one another wind up with partial solutions that very much bind them by the end of the night.
TW: language, rough consensual sex, NSFW

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[Tucker] He needed to see her.  He needed to see his Bethy.  The emotional wounds were fresh and stinging as much as the ones on his back, the ones where his wings had burst through.  They had burst through and they were still there, great leathery things that hung from the tattered remains of his striped long-sleeved shirt.  He'd called, of course.  He always called before he just dropped by to see Beth, unless he was intending to surprise her.  He knocked on the door.  Mackie escorted him in with her usual sense of la-la-happy-happy that she always had, not even blinking about the wings on his back or the bloody tatters of his clothes.  She smiled and bounced right off to go do whatever the hell it was that she did, and then Tucker was left to his own devices, knocking on the door of his girlfriend's room.  "Bethy?"  It wasn't a particularly happy sound, his voice.  There was something raspy in his voice that wasn't normally there, like something had snagged smooth silk and pulled its threads apart.  "Beth, it's me.  Sorry I'm not lookin' real...presentable.  There's, uh, there's kinda been an incident..."  And he opened the door.  Not too much, just enough to peek his head in through the crack and offer her a tiny smile.  Alright, so the face didn't look any different.  Just a little awkward, a little sheepish, and there was some pretty intense exhaustion in those brilliant blues, even though it had been maybe half an hour since his father had departed.  It was only once the door opened more and he stepped inside that the changes were obvious.  His wings were awkward, they smacked into the door frame, and he winced in pain.  "I can't put these bloody things away, Bethy.  I'm sorry.  I'll try not to break anything valuable, yeah?"  The wings, the posture, the defeated way he held his head...now that was evidence that something was not right.

[Beth] She liked it, the way he always called before he came through. It wasn't because she had anything to hide from him or because she needed the extra fifteen minutes to put on her face. It was the thought that counted. The thought that maybe, just maybe, her time and space belonged to her, and that she got to say when it was open to others. It was respectful of him. However, there are some circumstances under which she wouldn't dream of batting an eyelash if he just showed up wherever she was, and the kind of emotional distress she could see in the lines of his forehead as she rounded the corner to finish opening the door is definitely one of them. The witch with the warm, wide eyes almost instantly recoiled, startled by the wings that followed her lover into her room. She'd never seen him like that, before. She knew what he was. Until just then, she'd never given much thought to it. Stories heard through whispering teeth in her childhood pulled goosebumps up her spine. "Tucker?!" Beth gasped, planting a hand atop a nearby dresser to steady herself a few seconds before swallowing hard and reaching out to curl sweatered arms around his neck. "Tell me what's happened."

[Tucker] Beth's space was her space and Beth's life was her life and Tucker was just happy to share it with her.  She didn't belong to him.  She was her own person, despite some of the wording that he'd used with his half-sister.  But that was only because he didn't want Freya coming along and putting the sexy act on.  No.  Freya did not get a crack at his Bethy.  The wings sort of waggled a little bit as though in acknowledgement of his girlfriend's wandering eyes, but Tucker's own gaze was merely on the witch who came to embrace him.  Arms came around her first, around her waist, holding her close to him, and then the wings, oddly enough, followed suit.  They folded around Beth and encircled her in a warm, smoke-and-leather smelling darkness, but it was Beth's scent that he was more interested in, his head dipping to bury his nose in her hair.  There was a long moment during which he said nothing, just stood there and tried to digest everything.  But she had to ask, and he had to tell her.  "My dad."  That was the best way to start off.  "My dad came.  Nineteen years, Bethy, and I hadn't seen him.  I don't even know his name.  Nineteen years and he shows up and tells me he's gonna teach me to...I dunno, harness my powers or somethin'.  Like he's just gonna start treatin' me like his boy now that I'm twenty-one...and then I got mad and now I can't seem to get these bloody things to go away..."  At least the mouth full of needle-sharp weapon-teeth were gone, and it was replaced with his normal mouth, those familiar lips that were now pressed briefly to Beth's own.  "I wanted to see you.  I dunno what to do, Bethy."

[Beth] Oh! Oh, well... that was... different! Beth's eyes continued to widen as Tucker's wings closed around her, but the way they warmed the air around her and filled her nose with the way he smelled was a treat. Maybe she would learn to like the wings, you know? A hand slipped up one of the sides of his neck to put the comforting stroke of a thumb against his pulse. She let some of the tension in her leave by way of heavy exhalation that ended with a kiss to a teeshirted collarbone, and our Chatty Cathy said absolutely nothing until after her distraught half-demon felt it time to explain himself. He couldn't see the way her face contorted with the beginnings of other-righteous anger when he was through because she'd hidden it in his shoulder. Anger wouldn't help him, would it? Would words help it, either? The linguist couldn't think of any that might off the top of her head, so she just clutched at him some more in helpless silence. The kiss he sought from her mouth was granted. "That's a lot to swallow, love," she offered in what should have been Hannah's speaking voice, but wasn't. "Come lay with me." Beth pulled away, careful to wait for Tucker's wings to part before she did it so that she didn't disturb them and hurt him. "Come lay with me, and we'll talk." They needed to talk. About a lot of things, really. This one came out of nowhere to land right on the top of the list of priorities, though, hadn't it? Her hand never left his and her guide toward the bed they'd spent so many nights laughing and loving and telling secrets in was an impossibly soothing thing.

[Tucker] "I don't wanna play house with a man who left my mum to raise me by myself.  Bad enough Freya's here.  My half-sister.  We were separated when we were teenagers, she went to America, and she got herself expelled from Auburn so here she is.  He sent her here.  So I could look after her."  Freya wasn't a bad person.  He quite enjoyed her company.  But it was the pretense under which she had been sent to Shepherd that got him riled and agitated.  The silence was enough to soothe him, oddly, because Beth was here and that was enough for him.  She had a way of soothing the rough edges and making him less agitated.  It was why he had come here in the first place.  "He didn't come when I got beaten half to death in sixth year," he noted wryly.  "I seduced a ruby player's girlfriend and he got me damn good."  It hadn't left any visible scars, but that hospital stay hadn't exactly been enjoyable, nor had the occasional stabby headaches he got for a year or so after.  "And there was no sign of dad anywhere, but now he shows up blowin' smoke out his ass about teachin' me to...I dunno, to cambion properly or somethin'."  His wings opened to allow Beth to slip out of them, and he followed, though carefully.  Maybe overly-carefully, considering his wingspan and his ungainly movements with them.  Down he settled, after pausing long enough to toe off his sneakers, and he slid himself so he was resting with his head on the pillows and his wings sort of draped over the side of the bed.  "I'm sorry, Bethy.  I know you've probably got enough on your mind already, yeah?  What with the whole...conversations we've been havin'."  And not having.  The one that hung over their head like a little black kitten-shaped cloud named Lucy Lyons-North.  The second she was settled enough, close enough, his arms were around her once again.  "And then I show up lookin' like this with my own set of problems.  These damn things are problems, if we're gonna be honest.  I gotta go shoppin' tomorrow, how am I gonna look walkin' through Tesco with these things?"  Tucker please.

[Beth] Speak of the devil. There came Lucy, trotting out of Beth's bathroom like she owned the place. The little black kitten plopped down onto the floor a few feet away from Beth's bed, cocked her head to the right and stared at Tucker with sapphire blue eyes. What's with the long wings, Dad? Oh, great, the cat has a sense of humor. Beth, on the other hand, had crawled over Tucker so that she could be the big spoon. He needed big spooning, she'd decided, so she pressed close behind him, burying her mouth and nose against the back of his neck and wrapping an arm around his torso. She even snuck her hand up the front of his shirt so that she could give his belly a rub. "Play house? He's not on about moving you in with him, is he?" Her response was muffled. "You've got a perfectly good room, here at Turner. Maybe it's not so much playing house as it is finally having someone to ask about things like..." And she drew her chin in the direction of one of his wings. "Hm?" The hand that had been tracing idle shapes around Tucker's belly button lowered to pat at his ass.  "I'm sorry that you got your ass beat as a boy, love, but that's what happens when you seduce other peoples' girlfriends." Oh, great, the witch has a sense of humor, too. "What if you took him up on it as a... sort of an internship, and took the familial piece out of it for yourself -- hold on, you've got a sister? There are two of you?" Could he feel the blinking behind him? The brush of soft, dark eyelash against his skin? Once, twice, three times? "Oh, cor save us all," she whispered. "This campus will be a writhing orgy by sun-up." Yes, she was ignoring the elephant in the room; the kitten on the floor and what conflict its name churned in her gut. Yes, she'd completely glossed over Tucker's apology and his inferences. This wasn't the time for any of that. "Look, we'll... we'll lay here a while, and see if we can't get you to soothe some, yeah? Maybe you'd have better control if you weren't so upset? Maybe they'd just sort of go off." Beth had no Earthly idea, honestly. "If we can't figure this out, I'll find myself some wings at the costume shop. We'll go as a couple of those really interesting alternative lifestyle people who think their spirits really belong in animals, maybe be featured on People of Tesco." Oh, Beth. What are you even doing? You're not the funny one.

[Tucker] Oh.  There was Lucy, the kitten that was not a child.  But that was their child.  Sort of.  Tucker smiled sort of humorlessly and waggled his digits at her.  "C'mere, Lucy.  You been a good girl for mum?"  She responded by biting his finger harmlessly.  "'Course you haven't, I brought her home a bloody pint-sized tyrant, I have."  He extracted his digit and smoothed it over the top of that soft, furry head, before leaning himself lazily back against big-spoon Beth.  "No, no, he doesn't want me movin' in, and even if he asked I'd tell him no.  I don't wanna be that far from my classes, and I don't wanna be that far from you."  His wings pressed flat against his back so Beth could get nice and close, and you know?  The wings did feel kinda nice, like stroking a soft, worn leather couch, but warm.  And they smelled like him.  They smelled more like him than he did, somehow.  "Yeah, I uh...half-sister.  Same dad, different mums.  Conceived on the same night, born ten days apart.  I'm older."  Beth, as a twin, would surely understand that little badge of pride, right?  And maybe that was a little bit of insight as to why Tucker had been so quick to comfort her when she lost Doc.  Being separated from Freya wasn't the same, considering she was alive, but there was definitely a little wedge in his heart the day they shipped her off to Georgia to live with her aunt.  It had to be like that but ten times worse.  At least her teasing brought a laugh out of him, and he slid his hand over hers, sliding it up his torso under his shirt so that it was placed over his heart.  "We ain't goin' as otherkin or whatever they're called, Bethy.  I ain't gonna go 'round tellin' people I'm batkin and they gotta respect that."  But his laughter fell a moment later, became a sad sort of sigh, and he turned about to face her.  He wanted to look at her.  "I guess I'll take him up on it.  But I don't want him thinkin' I'm gonna go stickin' my dick where it don't belong for the sake of bein' more like him.  I've already found where it belongs, and it ain't strayin'.  'Cept when it's allowed.  See, Bethy, I think I know a few things that he doesn't, on account of my bein' half-human.  Like I know that this goes here..."  He pressed his lips to hers, lightly.  "And I know that this goes here."  Tucker slid his hand down her side, just for the sake of touching her.  "And I don't think I gotta tell you where other parts of me go.  Unless you'd like a refresher course."  Wink.

[Beth] "Bloody pint-sized tyrant is the understatement of the year," she muttered into a soft laugh. "She's done something awful to that little crocheted outfit you like. Might as well be a fraying shammy, now, I'm afraid." Beth would get used to the wings, really. They were kind of nice. They were just... unexpected. Sort of like falling for someone who didn't speak proper English and making time for the kitten he gave you the night he frightened you right out of your writer's brain with a little sparkle of green. It was still on her left hand, by the way, that little sparkle of green. "Good, good, then. I'll not have some strange demon taking off with you." Beth loved the way that Tucker smelled. She always had. Leather and woodsy smoke, like being in the thick of a dance around a festival bonfire. Like everything good and sweet and raw and honest at the same time. Her hand followed his, back up over his belly, his ribcage, pleased with its final destination over his heart. She laid it sort of concave against his chest, as though his heart might protrude from it, somehow, and need extra room before it fell into her palm. "I'd love you even if you were batkin, you know," she confessed quietly. "Even if I had to become batkin to be with you. I'd grow you the prettiest set of wings you'd ever want me to wear." And when he turned over with more srs bsns, she wriggled a snuggle into him, so close that the bridge of her nose might have crashed into the bridge of his nose if she hadn't tilted her head just so. "This Freya, I get to meet her soon." That was supposed to have come out as a question, but she forgot the upward inflection on the end of it, which made it sound more like a sure thing. Beth wouldn't know anything about that badge of honor -- Doc was older than she was by just minutes. She never got to wear it. It got lorded over her head for twenty-one years. "And this father of yours, too. I'll want to impress upon him the seriousness of our agreement before he gets any ideas about you sticking your dick where it doesn't belong for the sake of being more like anyone. I rather like you being like you." A little tug at Tucker's waistband pulled his hips into hers to emphasize her agreement with his point that other parts went other places while she was returning light kisses and murmuring her appreciation of sliding hands. "Everything'll be all right, love," she exhaled, tipping her forehead forward to meet his. "We'll survive the wings and the sister and the father, we will."

[Tucker] "Oi! I thought you didn't have that outfit anymore! You said some strappin' thing tore it right off you. After I left. Instead of, y'know, spendin' the whole night between your thighs like I should've. I would've left it on, mostly, just sorta nudged the fabric out of the way if I could." Of course Tucker knew that Beth was absolutely full of shit about that night, because he had claimed her V-card. But seriously. That outfit was amazing. It was the one that had made him think of her less as a conquest and more as a...thing that he wanted to hold and touch and smear berry-stained fingers all over. "Oh, you'll meet Freya," he murmured against her mouth. "I've already told her 'bout you. Told her she doesn't get to try wrigglin' her way into your knickers 'cause I'm already there, and that you were the most gorgeous thing on this campus, you pretty creature. As for dad..." He sighed, slightly, but it was pretty hard to be unhappy about anything when Beth was tugging his waistband until their hips collided. "You'll meet him too, I suppose. And you and I can tell him that I'll be happy to learn to control wings and whatever else, but I ain't learnin' to seduce people for fun and profit anymore. I have my fix, and my extra fix every couple months." He knew there was another festival soon. He'd looked it up. He was looking forward to seeing what sort of trouble they'd find themselves in this time, what sort of pretty thing they could have come between them in a rather alarmingly literal sense. But what he also enjoyed was this. Just being here, sort of hovering over Beth now, his nose bumping gently against hers. "I know. I know we will. Y'know you make me feel like I'm gonna be able to take on the entire world, right?" He rolled a bit, until he was propped up over her and peering down, brushing his nose delicately against her own before favoring her with a kiss that was considerably more, uh, incendiary. God, he could take over the world like this, he thought, wriggling himself a little more comfortably between her thighs. He could handle his father. He could handle his instincts. He could handle his wings.

[Beth] What, she should have told him that she'd gone home in tears, that night, instead? Did he really want to know how much it'd killed her to see him with Scarlett? No; she'd done the right thing in doing the wrong thing, she was sure of it. She'd also done the right thing in doing the right thing. "Those aren't the regrets I was worried you'd have," Beth smiled. There was something wistful in the shine of her eye. It could have been either eye; she hadn't closed either as Tucker came close enough to give accidental kisses every time he spoke. "Not to worry, love," and there she went making promises, again. "Your Freya, she won't have me. I've got my eye on a blue-eyed thing with the most perfect little heart-shaped ass a girl could ever hope to see or have. I'm certain you're the prettier sister." When you're a girl. Maybe not so much when you're a boy, but perhaps that was for the best. Pretty boys are so busy being pretty that they never bother to learn how to fuck properly. "Good, then. It's settled." Tucker would have his extra scoop of ice cream, so to speak, in only days. Mabon was just right around the corner, and as usual, the Lyonses had plans to celebrate Deity and Its blessings around a bonfire in the Grove. "We'll take on the entire world together, yeah?" She hadn't forgotten to include an upward inflection, that time, which made it an official question. He still wanted her, didn't he? Even though she was cursed and she was skittish and she hadn't exactly cried tears of joy upon being presented with a promise ring like she imagined most girls might? A flicker of uncertainty pulled at the apples of her cheeks and her gaze followed his movement, hands still coveting, tugging, begging for closeness. Begging for forgiveness for crimes against him that she couldn't guarantee she was done committing, yet. There was kindling in her response to the incendiary; something for those sparks to catch on and burn to cinders. Her head tipped back, forcing her mouth up into his, and she didn't waste his time playing coy. A hand was already pushing down between their bellies to try to make something of all that wriggling, giving Tucker's belt a sharp jerk.

[Tucker] Beth's eagerness to get his belt and his jeans undone were matched only by Tucker's eagerness to get her shirt off her. Fingers flew, tugged, clutched on to fabric. He had to force himself not to tear it off of her. She wasn't the sort of girl who would appreciate a perfectly nice sweater being ruined, was she? It would have been so satisfying, but in the end, just taking it off her like a nice boy had the same result. It bared skin that he was free to kiss. Down her throat, hot and open-mouthed things that were akin to him trying to swallow her whole, like he'd never get enough of her no matter how close they were, until he was inside her. Teeth grazed flesh. Never to hurt, no. Not to hurt. Bethy was not a thing that liked to hurt much. Fingers never stilled, only shifted, hands behind her back to pop open the closure of her bra with the sort of deftness that a guy like Tucker only could have gained from copious personal experience. The bra was snatched with a single finger hooking it between her breasts, and he tugged it free of her body and threw it to parts unknown because he didn't give a rat's ass about her clothes, only what was under them. Hips rocked into her touch. "Shit, Bethy. You're gonna be the death of me." He purred it against her breast, all scruff and heat, and then he was slipping down further, catching her nipple between his teeth and giving it the slightest of tugs. She stroked, and he moved, all but fucking her hand in his eagerness, until he remembered himself. Oh, there were so many other things to do to her. Why stop here? Whatever she was wearing on her lower half, be it jeans or leggings or anything, was tugged down with a roughness that he almost regretted. Almost. And those wings. They closed in all the more, until she was practically in their embrace. The unearthly glow about Tucker's eyes, the one that he always got when they were in this sort of situation, the brilliant blue that was too too bright, all but lit the darkness. "If I hurt you..." He breathed it across her sternum. "I'm sorry. Tell me. I'll stop. But I can't...I can't make promises like this." Not while the demon was out to play. It was always there, of course, it always bubbled under his skin. But it was so rarely allowed to come out like this, in a form made physically manifest. And with that warning, he bit. Teeth sank into skin, between her breasts. Not hard. No. Just enough for the very very faintest flashes of pain to flicker through her. It was more to mark than to hurt.

[Beth] There was something just a little bit strange in her soft laughter; something heady and curious and delighted all at the same time. Maybe it was even a little eerie, but it didn't result in a red light. Far from it. All signs, from the way her golden hair mashed itselt in frantic waves against the dark backdrop of Tucker's wings to the way her back arched and pulled a taut belly flat so that his mouth didn't have to work too hard to find any little bit of breast or sternum it wanted... all signs pointed toward go. "I didn't ask you to make any promises," was her mouthy reply, and had quite the double meaning all recent events considered, as teeth sunk into her and...! Oh. Oh. A breathy murmur, this one unintelligible, preceded the dig of sensible fingernails into masculine shoulder -- that beautiful thing, delicious contours strong everywhere she wanted it to be and gentle where she didn't -- to attempt more than non-verbal communication. It failed spectacularly, but the point of her effort was to consent to marking. He'd moved too far down her body, by that point, for her to have held on to that prize. Something of a disappointment, because she did love the way sliding a touch in toward that maddening little spot just inches below the half-demon's belly button filled up her hand, but what was this new adventure?

[Tucker] Mouthy. He loved it when Beth was mouthy, he really did. It made him laugh. And he would have been laughing under just about any other circumstances tonight. Probably would have thrown in an 'I see what you did there' type acknowledgement of her double entendre. As it was, he seemed to pick up on it. "I'm makin' them anyway, little witch." Pants? Goodbye. Useless to him right now and useless to her too, and he pulled himself away from her touch just to pull them down and chuck them halfway across the room. They draped over the salt lamp. Oops. As for the direction of this new adventure, its direction was apparently south. He slid down her body effortlessly, wings opening simply because they had to, exposing her to the light. It was when he was at her feet that he paused, on his knees, to look her over. He looked like a work by a very confused sculptor who found the line between art and pornography to be somewhere around Tucker's waist. Tongue slipped out briefly between dry lips. "You're so fucking beautiful." Sure, he told her that before. Probably told her that on the semi-regular, actually. But there was something about the way he said it now. His breath hitched and came out in a ragged sigh of appreciation and need. Tucker admired her like the worst sort of guardian angel, regarding her form, regarding the sucked-and-bitten mark on her chest that declared that she was his. And then he moved. Digits slipped up her left leg, followed by his mouth. It started at the little bump in her inner ankle, then came upwards, until his hand pulled away and rested beside her leg so he could use it to support himself. More of those open mouthed kisses were delivered, and surely Beth could determine where this was headed, right? Right up along her knee, her inner thigh. Knickers? Gone, he all but tore them from her so he could press his mouth between her thighs and savor her like he was starving. There were a lot of ways to say I love you. Sometimes he said it by feeding her when she was working too hard. Sometimes he said it by making her laugh. Sometimes he said it by holding her in his arms when she was sad or hurting and didn't know how to say it but it came out in her eyes all the same. Sometimes he said it with his tongue, sometimes through words, sometimes by running it over sensitive flesh with a sigh of bliss.

[Beth] Did it look like she was kidding? Beth had already had her fun at Tucker's expense, only moments ago, in fact. Of course, that all changed when his pants went flying and became a shade for her new lamp, which didn't need one. A hand clamped over her mouth, which was loathe to spoil the moment with its laughter, but there are some things that you just can't hold back a reaction to. Unexpected laughter and an unexpectedly rough scrape of scruff against soft inner thigh just before being eaten alive are two of them. The blue denim cooled the salt lamp's peachy-pink glow and cast wide swaths of shadow across the room. Her arms bent at the elbow, shoving back against her pillows and down into the mattress under them so that she could elevate herself. Beth cast those dark, expressive eyes southward, down between pretty little breasts, one of which fit just so in her hand while she toyed with it, and the dramatic curve of hips that shouldn't have come standard on such elfin framework. She watched him, so hungry, pupils dilating with a hot stir of affection and impatience. "You should have eaten before you came over," she murmured a smolder, without pulling away or otherwise denying him what he'd gone after of his own volition. If that was what he wanted, it was his for the taking, but there are times for sweet, sexy foreplay and there are times for... not. She'd decided not to be quiet about letting him know that it was time for not. "Get up here and fuck me. Like you mean this." And that toying hand left breast and aching nipple to trail down over the rapidly forming mark he'd left on her.

[Tucker] The colors were perfect.  She looked so good in that warm pink light.  Then again she'd look good in just about any light, so far as Tucker was concerned.  The one thing he refused to do was to make love to her with the lights off, in fact.  There was no need for darkness and secrecy, and he liked to look at her.  He liked to watch her expression change.  He liked to watch her breathe and shift and move, liked to observe the flush that came over her face and breasts.  Liked to watch that, that right there, when she toyed with her breast while he pleasured her.  Her teasing was met with a growl somewhere between her thighs, agile form shifting only enough for him to raise his head and peer at her over the soft curves and angles of her body, tongue flicking over his lips.  "What, you're gonna deny me a chance to taste you?  Cruel mistress, you are.  But..."  Again his wings opened, spread wide with a little less care taken than before.  Luckily he didn't knock anything down or break anything.  He just slid up her body as though pulled by invisible strings, until he was once again positioned perfectly to enter her.  "If you insist, Bethy.  I ain't one to deny the woman I love just about anythin'."  Yes, Tucker, this was purely an act of altruism, right?  Blues regarded her for a long moment, and he seemed almost unsure of himself.  But then it passed.  No, he knew what he wanted and he was going to have it.  He slid into her as fingers slid into her hair, hilted himself within her as he tugged on dark gold to get her to tip her head back.  "I always mean it," he promised her.  Poised over her, he held in place until the urge to destroy was too strong.  His first thrust was hard, maybe a little too hard, but his hand on her head prevented any painful collisions with the headboard.  It came with an unapologetic bite to the hollow of her throat.

[Beth] The only time Beth had ever felt shy about her body was the night of Litha, the first time Tucker had ever seen her outside of the semi-regular school day. Something about it didn't feel right, letting him see her like that, or looking at him the way she had, then, bare-chested, blackberry-mouthed and beautiful in the firelight. It was a cruel tease for both of them. A thing she'd re-imagined over and over again in a tub full of hot water and sweet-smelling bubbles with a hand fixed between her legs until she was able to get him there, instead. Nothing like the now, wherein most of the time she could hardly wait to get him undressed the moment she got him behind closed doors... and sometimes the moment before. Or several moments before. If we're really being honest, the door was optional. So was the bed. "Cruel, am I?" The teasing continued, naturally. "Because I want you inside me? You poor de --..." The rest of her sentence was a rough cry, though not exactly a thing of displeasure. Her hands grabbed at his hips, again curling, again digging as though she meant to pull him in further, somehow. The ravaged's throat was made bare for him by the fall of her head, and the warmth of the sole of her foot being drawn up the back of his calf, inner thigh sliding up over his outer until she could wrap a leg over her lover's hip was almost one movement. "Again," she begged. "Again."

[Tucker] All those moments when he laid eyes on Beth Lyons between the solstice and the moment he first kissed her had been something akin to torture.  What do you do when you see something you want more than anything, and you're used to taking whatever you want, and something in your heart tells you it's too precious for you to have because you'll just break it anyway?  Pretty much exactly what she had done, honestly.  A lot of closed-eyed memories while hands did what she couldn't or wouldn't.  Until she did, with hands and mouth and practically whatever else he asked for, or didn't even need to ask for.  Beth knew.  She always knew.  Doors, beds, none of it mattered.  A covenient tree out of view was suitable, really, though maybe a little scratchy for both parties.  This wasn't some frou-frou dainty courtly love affair, and his Bethy wasn't a delicate little flower.  He had yet to figure out how such a small thing could wreck him so beautifully.  Maybe he never would.  The movement of her foot, her leg gracefully wrapped over his hips, was nothing short of blatant encouragement to the point that her words were almost redundant.  "Yeah?"  His voice came out too raw and too needy, even as his body moved.  That slow pull back of his hips was designed to be torment, but the sharp forward movement, filling her again, would hopefully prove a sufficient reward.  "I know..."  There was a pause here for a repeat of that cycle.  Slow, then fast and hot and hard.  "...What I want to do to you."  Again.  "I want to mark you."  Again.  "So everyone on Wednesday."  Again.  "Knows that you're mine."  Again and again and again.  "...'Cause you want to be."  He didn't own her.  Beth had free will.  She chose him, and he was always so, so glad that she had.  Even if it took a lot of coaxing.  "And I want you to do the same."  Again, but that slow pace was starting to torment him as well, and now there was less art, more desperation.  "'Cause I'm yours."

[Beth] She'd always been a natural disaster waiting to happen. The shake of the Earth, the violent emergence of mountain top up through its crust, the volcano seething, ready to blow everything around it away; they were all part of her. There was no 'too' about the raw and the need in Tucker's voice for Beth. To hear him beginning to fray at the edges on top of her only fed her frenzy. The little lion roared louder, breaths like dull razors pulling jagged wounds through her that she loved the sting of. "Yeah," it was panted, as was everything after it. The half-incubus took another step closer to the ultimate claim on his ultimate conquest with every heavy crash of hip, and there was one blinding, white-hot second wherein the witch wondered why she'd ever let him go easy on her. Why didn't she feel like she could pull him close enough? He was inside her quite literally, over and over again, and she didn't feel like she could pull him close enough, take him in enough, be full of him long enough. An involuntary buck of the ribcage crushed it under its incoming counterpart: both cages of bone that kept hearts in bodies instead of letting them merge. Tucker wasn't alone in his desperation. "Anything," she whispered. "Anything you want, it's yours. Mark me. I'll wear any ring you give me. I'll give you as many babies as you can stand, I swear I will." Her words were spoken with haste that was afraid if it didn't push them out right that second, it might never break through her defenses and that Tucker might never hear her truth. "Anything you want."

[Tucker] Mark--demons--Hannah--marking--something?  The memory flitted through his brain for a hot second and then fizzled into nothing.  Something about a conversation he'd had with a redhead in a bar once.  There was too much Beth in his world for him to think of anything but her right now, but there wasn't enough of her, either.  He could drink her in until he was too drunk to stand and it wouldn't be enough.  Those wings, which had almost seemed to propel him forward, folded down around her again, around the both of them, trapping them in shadow and sensation and scent, in their own private little world.  Tucker's hips slammed into hers without mercy or regret, his movements quick now, uneven, ragged.  And he was just about to lean down to kiss her, to let her taste herself on his tongue, when she spoke.  That...there was a slight pause.  Blues, alarmingly bright in the darkness, alive with the energy he was drawing in and the desire that threatened to burn him from the inside out, blinked owlishly.  Any ring.  As many babies as he could stand.  She said it when she was vulnerable and open, when she had nothing left to hide behind, when she was stripped of snark and distracting techniques and nifty factoids about handfastings.  So it must have been the truth.  Tucker grabbed hold of her wrist, gently guided it above her head.  Then the other, above her head.  Crossed them neatly.  Clutched them both in his hand and pinned her as he destroyed and took and claimed and worshipped her all at once.  "I just want you.  Forever.  Til I die.  Nothin' will ever feel as amazin' as you wrapped 'round me."  Rings and babies, fine, yes, he did want them.  He did.  And it made his heart hammer, the sheer enormity of what she had just confessed, and he hid his surprise by crushing his mouth to hers, all fire against the warmth of the earth.  The bedsprings groaned in irritated protest beneath, at the force the cambion used.

[Beth] There was something oddly comforting about those wings, now. They'd startled her at first, but something about being encased in her cambion was... right. Soft and warm all around her, a stark contrast to the crush of mouths and the groan of bedsprings that suggested she should be sending a white flag up the pole. She couldn't. The Earth under Tucker grabbed at him, leaving white indents in his hips and lower back, hands climbing flesh and muscle until climbing was no longer satisfactory. Climbing became hard digging, fingernails leaving red trails that should have borne her name everywhere they rose into existence. His name became something at once innocent and vulgar on the tip of her tongue once she was free to speak again, but she still wasn't sure where her mouth ended and his began. Just before she began to fall down the proverbial rabbit hole, it happened; an almost animal look in her eye and a clutch that couldn't have even begun to express the metallic ring of the stake being pounded into place in her chest. It was possessive and greedy, two things Beth Lyons almost certainly was not on any regular basis and had certainly never been thus far in her relationship with Tucker, but it was a give and a take, not just a take. An offer and a claim. If only moments like those could last forever. She was rendered silent by caught breath, contracting muscle. Her world went supernova; how she loved it when light exploded.

[Tucker] It was a fight, you know.  A fight to see which one of them would give in first.  And Tucker's victory was hard won.  It was a wonder he even lasted as long as he did, with his little lioness fighting underneath him, tooth and claw.  Those nails dug into his back and marked him as her own, and he snarlhissed like something unearthly.  The next bite came higher up.  His teeth found her throat, right where her pulse throbbed quick and hard, and he dug in, suckling flesh into his mouth to mark and bruise.  He took Beth up on her offer; he claimed her as his own, and he followed her right over the edge so quickly he saw stars.  Hips crushed against hers one more time and he cried out softly against her throat, claiming her once again, this time by way of those pulses of liquid heat inside her.  When his teeth parted and he freed her from his clutches, Tucker was whispering her name like a hymn to everything good and right in this world.  An open-mouthed kiss soothed the burgeoning bruise, then caught her chin, then her mouth.  Vulnerable, frayed, raw, his body still a live-wire current and aching in a way that only she could ever fix, the words flowed open and fearless, because she'd given him the same.  "I want to spend the rest of forever with you," he panted, still catching his breath.  "There ain't nobody else for me, Beth.  Only you.  Only you."  The darkness of the wings began to receed.  In fact, the wings themselves began to receed.  They contracted, compacted, and it was hard to say precisely where they had gone, but they weren't there any longer.  There were just two thin lines on his shoulders, where blood oozed for a moment before the wounds began to seal themselves up like sutures on fast-forward.  With the counterbalance gone, Tucker wobbled and almost collapsed atop her pretty little pixie frame, catching himself at the last half-second with a hand on the bed.  At least there would be no otherkin Tesco outing in the morning, but that wasn't going through his head.  "All that stuff you said...rings...babies...it was true, yeah?"  The question was there, but it was a question that he already knew the answer to, and that was there in his eyes, in the warm little smile he gave.

[Beth] That strange, soft laughter found its way up out of her thoroughly loved-on throat, again. "Then we agree," Beth offered between breaths that were only then beginning to slow. Digging fingers eased their assault, became idle love transmitted via palmar contact. I love you? Did she really need to say it? Look at her, Tucker. Just look at her. Of course she loves you. She'll love you until the day loving you turns her to ash. Then her eyes went wide with the disappearance of his wings. "Oh!" Her gasp was... kind of accomplished sounding, actually. What? "Look, we've done it!" Well, yes, Beth, you do it all the time, you're both in heat almost constantly. Wait, that's not what you meant, was it? "Your wings have gone." The smile that settled onto her face was smug, no lie. At least it was smug until she braced the wobbling half-demon with careful arms that held him close thereafter. Then it morphed into something sweet and sleepy. She always looked that way, after, but there was something uncommonly serene about her, this time. Uncommonly... naked. "Yeah, love." Her sigh was palpable. "Yeah. It's me and you. It's us. We'll.... we'll figure it out. Tell me we'll figure it out." Quieter and quieter, she got, until she was little more than a whisper wrapped around a moan. Destroyed, and in all the best ways, including some that she didn't know about, yet.

[Tucker] He slid off her with that sort of lazy grace that he always had, though the fact that he had to pull out of her to do so looked like it was causing him a little bit of heartbreak.  Still, though, he had his Bethy close to him.  Sleepy little thing, she was.  Tucker was always revitalized afterwards, always alive and on fire, but he knew that Beth was not like him.  She didn't draw energy from the act the way he did.  And seeing her like this...you know, maybe drifting off to sleep with her was a better plan.  He certainly didn't feel like returning to his quad to face the people who heard him have a fucking meltdown at his father.  So why leave?  Why leave this bed, with this fierce little thing, this earthquake, this volcano that had silenced for now and was more like a peaceful, pretty little meadow on a sunny afternoon.  "Nah, you did it," he commented about the wings, flopping down on his back with a sigh of relief.  "C'mere."  Not that she had any choice in the matter, because Tucker was gathering her up in his arms, tugging her gently, pulling her so her head was on his chest.  "Of course we will.  You tell me what you know about this...family issue of yours, and then we can go from there.  Research has gotta give us somethin'.  I'll do whatever I gotta do.  Whether it's spendin' my off days in the library, or...I dunno.  Punchin' Cthulu in the the nuts.  I'll do it."  Punching Cthulu in the nuts?!  Maybe he was more tired than he thought.  "But let's not worry 'bout that now, Bethy.  You're tired.  I'm...unusually tired."  And in this sleepy, sleepy moment, their hearts and souls and bodies bared, Tucker finally whispered it.  "Marry me, Beth Lyons.  When you're ready.  Marry me."  Somewhere outside the bedroom, a feline meowed loudly, a bell jingled, a little blonde shapeshifter cooed over Clemens.  Inside the bedroom, Tucker just held on to Beth for dear life and let his eyes get heavy.

"When you invited me over to dinner, I was thinkin' it was 'cause you were worried about my leg, Mum.  Not 'cause you were gonna have dear old Daddy over."  Tucker's face was impassive, or as impassive as he could make it.  Inside, he was fuming.  "Bloody entrapment, that's what this is.  Entrapment.  Thought you were better than that."

Charlie's face darkened as she stood in the backyard with her son.  Or rather, she stood, and Tucker sat, his leg propped up on a second lawn chair.  It wasn't a severe fracture.  He'd gotten away with a walking cast.  He was aware that he was lucky.

"I am worried about you, Tuck."  Charlie leaned over and brushed Tucker's hair from his face, watching as his expression shifted a little bit towards something slightly less stony.  "What were you thinkin'?  Your dad's come 'round to teach you for a reason, and you know it's not so he can see you hurt yourself."

"And how many times do I gotta tell you I don't want his help?"  Tucker crossed his arms over his chest.  "I get it, I get what you are and I get what he is and that's why you'll never see an ounce of fault in that man.  He's got a spell on you.  I can do it too.  Difference between me and him, though?  I don't wanna.  I won my woman over right."

The minute he said it, he knew he shouldn't have.  His mother looked like she'd been slapped.  "Aw, c'mon, Mum."  Tucker held his hand out to her.  "Y'know I don't mean he doesn't love you in some way.  I'm just sayin' I'm pretty sure you'll think anythin' he does is just the best thing ever.  He left you to raise me by yourself, Mum, doesn't that take a bit of the shine off him?"

Charlie sighed.  She gently lifted Tucker's leg and sat herself in the chair across from him, then lowered his leg once again, into her lap.  "He wanted you to have a chance, Tuck.  A chance to be somethin' other than what he was.  He wanted you to choose, when you grew up.  You wouldn't have had that if he'd been here."

"Then why's he here now?"  It wasn't like Tucker to have a smart mouth.  Maybe Beth was rubbing off on him.  "What, is twenty one years and nine months some sort of magic number?  Whoops, left the cambion out too long, better bring him in 'fore he gets too human?"

"No, but he's seen you.  He's seen the way you behave.  The way girls look at you.  Boys too.  I told him about your grades in school.  Tuck, you know you could've done so much better, but you know what stopped you."

Tucker rolled his eyes skywards, like he was entreating the gods for some sort of an end to this night.  Dinner with his mother was usually such a nice affair.  She'd do his favorite, that lemon pepper chicken she made so well, served over rice, and they'd eat and talk and laugh.  If the weather was warm, they'd go for a walk together down the bicycle path that they used to walk every night when he was a boy.  Then they'd come back for dessert.  Tucker brought it.  It was his job.  He'd brought a box of cupcakes tonight.

This was not what he had signed up for.

"Yeah, yeah," he muttered.  "I know.  I was too busy fuckin' to learn, I know.  I couldn't help it!  Oh, don't look at me like that," he added when he saw the crestfallen way Charlie looked at him.  "It ain't your fault."

"We don't want you makin' the same mistakes at Shepherd.  You're doin' so well.  You're on track to graduate in December.  And we're both so proud of you.  Yes, Tuck, he is too.  I swear it.  But there are others around who are like you, and with Freya joinin' you...we don't want a repeat of the past.  We don't want to have to separate the two of you again."

Tucker bristled.  "Mum.  We were teenagers.  Horny, half-incubus teenagers.  Don't act like we've got some kind of secret lust for each other.  We're well past that."  He immediately hated himself for bristling.  He reached for his glass of lemonade on the table beside them, tipped it playfully his mother's way before he took a sip.  "Besides, I'll have you know I'm maybe a bit pre-engaged.  Promise ring."

"Really?"  Charlie beamed.  "Beth?"

"Of course."  He could feel the way his smile went soft.  "She's the one for me, Mum.  Only one who's ever gonna let me be what I am without questionin' or judgin'.  Think I knew it the day I met her.  Couldn't get her name off my tongue.  Beth Lyons."

There was a silence then.  Tucker blinked.  His mother looked pensive.  "Somethin' wrong?" he asked.

"No," Charlie replied, a little too brusquely for his tastes.  She gently nudged his injured leg off her lap.  "C'mon inside, Tuck.  Dinner's just about ready and your father's gonna be here any minute."

It was a strained experience, that meal.  His mother didn't serve lemon pepper chicken.  Tucker ate his dinner obediently, but every time he looked up at his father, he could feel himself growing angry.  His father just smiled.  Kind.  Patronizing.

Tucker hated him.

It was when he was getting ready to return to his dorm for the night, when he was coming out of the bathroom, that he overheard it.  His mother, talking to his father.

"Sebastian, did you know she's a Lyons?" Charlie asked in hushed, hissed tones.

"I most certainly did not," his father replied, his voice on the same level.  "My intelligence did not provide me with that information."

"What are we gonna do, then?  I'm not gonna break my boy's heart."  She pressed her hands to the man's chest.  Tucker rolled his eyes.

"You can either break it for him now, or you can let the Lyons curse do it for him."  Tucker pressed himself around the corner, flat, to the wall, listening.  "He'll father a child, Charlie.  My intelligence told me that once.  He wants children with the girl.  You know what that means, don't you?"  Tucker's mother was crying.  "Hush, bluebird.  Hush.  He'll hear you."

"Grandmum always said..."

"Mama Lucas said a lot of things."

It was only when Tucker cleared his throat and made his presence known that they stopped speaking.  "Ah!  Boy, come here."  Tucker's father made a grandiose wave, and his mother straightened herself and gave a fake smile that a toddler would see through without a second glance.  "Promise me you'll call before you attempt flight again, please.  That cast is not particularly flattering."

But Tucker's mind was already somewhere else.  The Lyons curse.  Intelligence.  Mama Lucas said a lot of things.

Did you know she's a Lyons?

Why did that even matter?

CAST: Tucker North (hesitantlyyours@aol.com), Jade "Jaycee" Cooper (verdantclarity@aol.com), Andrei "Ash" Popov (eatltup@aol.com)


TW: There's a domestic abuse joke in here somewhere.

---

[Jaycee] WHY GOD WHY








[Ash] Ash used the preschool ninja tactic of LICKING TUCKER'S HAND to get it off his FACE.

[Tucker] Ugh, gross. Tucker wiped off Ash's spit in that platinum hair of his.




[Jaycee] "No," she interrupted, not letting him finish.






[Tucker] Tucker called that the Miss G. Pumpkin spice but decaf and can you add some chai and a pump of sugar free vanilla and and and and







[Tucker] Falling from the sky and breaking his tibia was absolutely an accident.

CAST: Tucker North (hesitantlyyours@aol.com), Beth Lyons (lyonsoffire@aol.com)