bakerstreet | i'll crawl home to her.

(Preferably returned too)

[ Voicetesting. Cross-canon and OCs OK.

Logan is the returning party, clearly. ]

[ everyone leaves.

it's a truth that dorothy's known all of her life. everyone leaves in the end - her biological mother hadn't bothered sticking around, patients die all the time. dorothy leaves a lot, too, because it's easier to leave first than to be left again. she doesn't let herself linger, doesn't let herself fall. she has her fun and then she gets out.

she doesn't get the chance to leave first with logan. not the first time, not the second, not the third, either. she wonders why she keeps putting herself into positions where he can leave, why she lands in his bed again - though the truth has a lot to do with his gruff nature and his broad shoulders and his stamina. she wonders, too, why he keeps coming back.

that's the thing. he keeps coming back.

like today: there's a knock at the door of the farmhouse and he's standing in front of it when dorothy opens, a bag slung over one shoulder. em and henry are both out, henry in the fields and em in town, and dorothy thinks about slamming the door in logan's face, about not letting him in this time because it'll mean that he can't leave.

instead, she steps into his space and moves up on tiptoes, fitting her lips over his. ]

[ Dorothy isn't home to him, but like many things in Logan's life, he's not sure what is. He'd apologise for it, but a predator doesn't apologise for taking its prey; Xavier tells him that he's more than an animal, but sometimes he really wonders.

Even now, with her mouth against his, her scent so familiar, her body so soft -- he wonders, for a split-second.

But the split-second passes. The lucidity gives way to want. And without much fanfare his hands slide down Dorothy's sides, over the gorgeous swell of her hips, over the softness of her thighs to lift her and press her body to his own.

He doesn't have to tell her to wrap her legs around him. All Logan has to do is part her lips with his tongue, his blood burning hotter than it already does.

The wall just by her doorframe -- still outdoors, because she hadn't invited him in, and that's just as well (you don't let wild animals in the house, do you?) -- is solid enough for him to pin her against. Logan breaks the kiss only to scent Dorothy's jaw and the skin by her ear, his breaths leaving him in quiet pants.

I missed you. That's what a normal person would say.

But Logan isn't a person, not really. So he sucks a mark in her neck instead, a hand anchoring her by the hip and the other stroking the skin just beneath the hem of her shirt: a silent question of permission to touch more.

Always more. ]

[ there are so many things dorothy doesn't know about logan: why he comes back, why he sometimes seems more animal than man, why he is the way he is. maybe that's why she keeps letting him back in - not necessarily into the house, but into her space, literally into her body. (not into her heart; she tries not to let that happen.) he's more than this little town, than the farm and her life. she knows she's outgrown this place, wishing for more, that she could be more. logan is a lot.

he kisses her, deep and demanding, and somewhere between one stroke of his tongue against hers and the next, he's lifted her. she wraps her legs around his waist and moans into the kiss when he pins her against the wall, tipping her head back against the wood when his mouth and nose find her jaw, her neck. her fingers curl in his hair, the other hand mapping the muscle of his neck, his shoulders, his back as far down as she can reach.

he's a lot, and he's damn hot as well. maybe there's her answer.

his hand hesitates by the hem of her shirt and dorothy tightens her legs around him, pulling him - impossibly - closer, her hips pressed tightly against his. she doesn't bother with verbal encouragements, just a soft noise of pleasure when the press of their bodies offers some friction, some pressure where she most wants it. ]

( prefs! either role works. )

[ either role is possible, depending on canon point. ]

(the returning)

( she could really be either role. )

[ More likely the one returning, but could be either. ]

[ It's 1985.

It's 1985 and Lucius Malfoy has not seen the sun since 1983. It had begun so well, he often thought while in the walls of prison - not Azkaban for him but Nurmengard, and isn't there an irony there? The Dark Lord had fallen, most of his friends had been sentenced to Azkaban and Lucius had escaped that only by the skin of his teeth, with convincing lies and money in the right hands. Then, even though their were always eyes on him, he had worked quietly to bring Voldemort back. He'd worked with the likes of Peter Pettigrew to do it, simply because there were few other options. The Dark Lord had risen again. Their friends were released from prison.

The straggling remnants of the Order like to tell stories about good triumphing over evil, but that's not how the wind was blowing in 1983. Voldemort did rise again, and he and his Death Eaters did in a fit of rage and power take down the Order and the Order's Ministry. They did start the sacred process of purifying the wizarding world, and out of this rose a rival from across the ocean. Another war, and he knew that he and the others - he and Bella - they relished it, until the tide turned such that those who were never meant to fight had to take up their wands.

He watched Narcissa fall, Lucius used to remember as he stared at the gray walls of his prison cell. He watched Rodolphus fall, and almost all people would say that he and Bella had fallen in with each other far too quickly. But it was war.

They were losing. He couldn't let her go back into prison, and so ultimately he made sure he went instead. His turn, he told her with a ghostly smile, and when he was taken to Nurmengard he assumed he'd never see her again.

It's 1985. The doors of the cells at Nurmengard have mysteriously opened, and Lucius Malfoy has spent four weeks hiding in the Black Forest. His wand was, of course, destroyed, but in desperate times ingenuity is found. It's three tries before he manages to make himself an inelegant wand of hawthorn wood and unicorn hair, but once he does he slowly moves west. As he slowly moves west, his hair braided back and hidden beneath a hood, he begins to hear things - there's been no fall in power. Voldemort hasn't risen again. No one knows why the doors of Nurmengard have burst open, but the story in Germany and France and the shores of Dover when he finally makes it back to Britain is that the old gods are giving the resistance heroes to fight the war with.

His lips twist a little at the irony that they're heroes, he thinks. A few years before....but, well. The world has changed.

He intends to go to Malfoy House in Cornwall, a small place so far off the beaten path that most people forgot the Malfoys owned it, but instead he finds himself at one of the many Black Halls that litter the landscape of Britain. He remembers how to bypass the wards; by some miracle they haven't been changed, and his footsteps are silent as he walks the hall. Bella is here, he thinks. And she'll know someone has invaded. His hand goes to his wand as he turns into the library and finds her there with her wand pointed directly at him. ]

You look just the same.

( Eons ago, when her father was still the greatest authority she could picture in the world, and that world didn't really stretch beyond the manor she grew up in, Diagon alley, and assorted family estates, she'd played in front of her father's study. The family kneazle was alive, then, and she'd thrown him something – a ball, likely. It must have rained. Between her childish laughter and the dog's occasional barking, the noise was unbearable to Cygnus Black, and he'd left his study for one more lesson in the thing the Black family excelled at: show no emotions. He'd told her, and it stuck with her, because she'd been young enough to believe it then, and the absurdity of it in retrospect made it hard to forget: if you laugh too much, you'll run out of happiness. Mortifying to a child still mostly counting as a toddler.

If she were to run out of any feeling now, it would be grief. But the pit of it seemed to be endless, fed first by her Lord's demise, Azkaban, then by her sister, her husband, her Lord, again. Lucius had been a Restoration, an unrivalled surge of happiness among loss and a war that had... had gone from pleasure to something dark.

And Lucius alone knew she wouldn't live to see another escape, not with her one source of hope gone. She hadn't said it in as many words, but he had known, anyway.

He'd granted her time, and paid.

And she'd kept fighting, clinging with the same absurd strength that she'd found once in Azkaban, to the bizarre idea that somehow, Lucius would see daylight again.

She hadn't changed a thing about her wards – how else would he return, if he couldn't make it into her home?

Then Nurmengard fell, there'd been a plan, swiftly executed, though Bella hadn't been anywhere near that, she remained in Birtain, she was more use here. And then she had waited. Days. Weeks. Some former captives arrived, in a state, and told of executions, random killings. Her questions were met with headhshakes and unknowing, and she saw the glances they shot at each other, and were they talking about any other man, she would know to read them as 'most likely dead'.

But they are talking about Lucius, and if he isn't alive...

He has to be.

She's deluding herself, she knows she is deluding herself, but the nights are endless and the days are longer and there's a sound in the hallway, and if they're coming for her, then so be it, she can take them, or else be taken to him, one way or another. Her wand is raised. He's bearded, his hair is in braids when he lowers the hood, and he's alive, he's alive and she's wrapped around him in a show of affection he's likely never seen before. )

Lucius.

( It takes a moment before she can withdraw enough to look at his face again. )

Neither have you.

( Not, at least, in ways that matter. )

Now that's simply not true.

[ His arms remain tight around her even as she pulls back. It's been too long, he thinks, since he dared touch another person, and it's been forever it seems since he could touch her. Before, even when they were the only two left, touching Bella was a bit like gentling a feral cat. She might purr and drape herself against him or she might hiss and scratch, and this tight embrace, this open affection that would be natural with any one other than them is almost too much.

He slips his rough-hewn wand back into the leather holster in his dark and ragged robes and frames her face in his hands. He knows well enough that there's little enough about him now that would remind most people of Lucius Malfoy. It's largely an advantage. It's what's allowed him to slip through Europe undetected. ]

Bella.

[ He seems to be practically drinking her in as he stares, his callused fingers skimming over her smoother skin. ]

I've missed you.

[ There's never been a greater understatement, and that knowledge is in his kiss as he pulls her against him again. They've always had a bit of a thing for libraries, the two of them. ]

( She's fully dressed – night and day hardly matter in the war, and she prefers to sleep in the grey light of morning. Somewhere in her mind, there are other things: the memory of the first time they had come together, in a library at one of the Malfoy estates, falling in together in a mixture of long-harboured desire and overwhelming grief. There is knowing that they'll need to acquire a proper wand for him, and the first buds of a plan to do so. But it's all overwritten by the kiss, by his hands on her skin, her body, her corseted waist.

Her own hands find him skinnier than she recalls, the hair longer, his face isn't shaved smooth, and still, it's him. He kisses her just the same, his hands on her, even if she struggles with the concept of touch more often than not, they're familiar. It's him, and she almost hurts with how much she'd missed him. )

You're back.

( It's so painfully obvious, but words were worse than affectionate touches. She shrouds her feelings, now consciously, in plotting. He'll need to rest. Then, a conversation with some of the other resistance fighters – not that the resistance stands quite so strong, divided as they are in Order, Others, Death Eaters. They all share one enemy, but it's easy to forget in the face of loss – the Longbottoms can't recognise their own son, which strains things, but in turn, Molly Weasley had killed Rodolphus, to name some areas of tension. )

I can't believe it.

( It's the truth. She has the one thing she wants, she has him back, her most bizarre hope realised, but she's very nearly certain she'll wake, having slipped away while reading a book. She kisses him again, because that ought to make it more real, no? She's pressed against him every bit as fiercely as she's done when all they had in each other was mutual loss and solace. )

[ He'll laugh, and it'll be bitter, to find that they're working with the likes of Dumbledore and the Weasleys. It had been Dumbledore, after all, with a ricocheting curse, who'd killed Narcissa, and he might have been regretful - but he wasn't, really. It didn't matter who fell as long as the end result was as Albus Dumbledore wanted it to be. In that, Lucius used to think, he and Voldemort thought similarly.

That's later, much later, and where in another time he would have pulled her to the nearest chair, now he merely pulls her with him to the floor. The thick-piled rug is far more comfortable than any place he's slept for the last two years, and waiting is just beyond what he's capable of just now. ]

I didn't think I'd ever be back. Not really.

[ Hope is too fragile a thing to survive too long in Nurmengard Prison, and hope was a fragile enough concept even before they'd been caught. It had been both of them trapped by the enemy forces in Malfoy Manor, and only one would fit in the secret passage that would allow escape. He'd shoved Bella away from him then. Now, he holds her like he'll never let go. His fingers fumble for a moment with the buttons at her back before he merely tears her dress. ]

Bella, I can't wait to have you. It's been too long.

( It's the moment that played over the most for her. That ghost of a smile when he'd told her it's his turn. Being practically pushed into the passageway, and then leaving. Leaving and not being sure if they really merely arrested him. It had taken weeks to find out that yes, indeed, they had, and he wasn't just rotting in Malfoy Manor, that he wasn't ... well, he might be gone forever, but he was gone and alive. She hasn't been their lead strategist, no, but that hardly means she can't come up with a workable strategy.

And she tried.

For hours and hours, days, weeks, to see where they went so wrong. I she could have done something to keep this from happening. )

Don't wait then.

( But her dress is already gone, and she Vanishes his ragged clothing. Her hands roam him like she is desperate to reacquaint herself with him, and she is, but she is also trying for the truth of it. )

I've had this dream before.

( Perhaps as a means of an explanation for her disbelief. She kisses him again, and it's rougher, now, even if the overall sentiment is more gentle than anything that's ever passed between them before. Before, it's been violent and comforting and made to forget. Now, she is trying to remember every second of it. She's got him on his back on her floor, and she's straddling him like she's done time and time again. )

It's not a dream this time.

[ He doesn't think he can survive if this is a dream. If it is, where is he? Collapsed somewhere waiting for death and dreaming of the last person who made him feel alive? No, he cannot accept that. This is real. Bella is real, he really can feel her skin against his. He's really pulling her on top of him, she's really straddling his hips, their mouths are really fused together as he pushes into her without the long minutes of teasing and stroking that had characterized sex between them. Before.

It's been too long now, and he simply cannot wait that long to feel her tight around her. His fingers slip into and then tighten in her dark hair and he bucks his hips. He's not going back, he thinks. He can't go back, and the safest way to stay out of sight is not to stay in one place for long. But the idea of leaving her again is like the worst possible thing.

But that's not for now. It's for much later, and his breath escapes on a low groan as she starts to move on him. ]

Look at me, then it's not a dream, darling.

( He's inside of her, and it's instantly better than any dream her mind had conjured so far, and she needs it to be real more than she needs air. Perhaps she had taken Lucius' (temporary) loss the hardest in part because he had somehow reestablished a sense of normalcy after Narcissa, after Rodolphus, after Voldemort, or perhaps this has been coming on for longer than she can reasonably say. Whatever it is, it's almost healing, to have him again. It's like a resurrection.

Still, even as she looks in his eyes, something she would hardly have done before, when she'd instead have buried her face in his neck to leave her mark, or urged him to do the same to her, her idea of gentleness is rougher than that of most. And most would reasonably go a little slower on a prisoner of war. )

You're really back.

( She is convincing herself as much as she is convincing him. )

I'm not letting you go this time.

[ There would be a certain reason and logic to being gentle now. Bella survived a year in Azkaban, and she knows what wizarding prison is like. What Nurmengard lacks in a dementor infestation it makes up for with bored guards with nothing to do do but come up with new and interesting ways of torturing their prisoners.

It has not been an enjoyable trip to the other side for Lucius Malfoy, to put it mildly. ]

Don't.

[ He leans up, then, stealing another kiss as he bucks hard into her, and it is so, so good. It's everything he thought he would never have again, and his Bella is wrapped around him. His. ]

Don't leave me.

( She has heard rumours about Nurmengard, of course she has, but she won't ask him for confirmation just now. Maybe she won't even need to, maybe there'll be a sound, a movement, a spell cast, and he'll flinch and she'll know. It's not a topic for tonight. It's not a topic for at least the next week, not unless he needs it to be.

She rolls her hips and finds it in herself to laugh as if the notion of leaving is something absurd and forever unlikely, and not something they will need to plot around, soon enough. There's been enough death, there are enough properties between the two of them to hide him if need be, but it's gone too fast once before. But that's not for tonight, either. )

Never.

( Her teeth scrape against his lips as she kisses him again, and uncharacteristic still, she isn't looking to draw blood. She is, perhaps, looking to drive him just a little bit insane, and she is, perhaps, trying to drown out all conversation as she rides him harder and harder. Maybe, she's just trying not to think of losing him again. )

[ It will be something he'll want to avoid talking about as long as possible, and maybe they'll manage it forever. Or maybe there will be too many dreams, too many flinches, and it won't be avoidable. It's the last thing on his mind right now.

It takes little time, with the pace they've set, before he finds himself falling over the edge, when he hears her moaning his name in his ear as she follows him. When he can think again, it's to find that they're still wrapped tightly around each other on her floor - for a moment, at least, before he feels that telltale shimmer of magic as she Apparates them elsewhere.

He's not entirely surprised to feel crisp sheets beneath him seconds later, but it's still startling. Feather pillows and clean cotton sheets are luxuries he barely even remembers at this point, and he reaches up to push the tangled hair that's fallen out of his braid away from his face. ]

Putting me to bed now, my love?

Edited 2018-01-23 19:42 (UTC)

Something like it.

( She's just had two years of fear and worry and conflicting emotions fall away from her – sleep is likely to elude her for hours to come. He, on the other hand, has been quite literally through hell, even if his is different than hers had been, and after that, there had been weeks of hiding and slow, slow travel. She half-wraps herself in a blanket, then pulls his head into her lap, and summons a comb. It's the enchanted one, a purchase made necessary by her own stint in Azkaban. )

Rest. You won't feel a thing.

( Steady, clever, careful fingers begin to undo his braid, only occasionally stopping to brush against his cheek, as if she still can't quite believe it, even though she's aching just the tiniest bit from their encounter on the floor, and it ought to be proof enough to have him in her bed like this.

He'll likely doze off eventually. This is going to take her hours, and she doesn't really seem to mind. By the time he wakes again, it's with his hair undone, magically clean, and her fingers are still combing through it, for the pleasure of it.. )

All done.

[ For most of his life, he's worn his hair long - to his shoulders in school, a little longer after. It's never been as long as it is now, after two years of neglect in a cold prison. He barely paid it any mind there, and hardly more of that after he'd killed an unwary guard and stolen his cloak to slip out among the chaos.

His eyes slide closed as he feels her fingers undo the messy plait, pausing occasionally to brush against his cheek and the stubble of his beard. It does not take as long as it should for him to fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. It had been elusive - unsafe, even - to sleep in Nuremgard, and more so in the forest and as he slipped across Europe. It's been years since it was safe to sleep deeply at all. It still isn't, but exhaustion must eventually be answered.

He sleeps while Bella pulls a charmed comb through his tangled and knotted hair. He sleeps longer than he's slept since before Voldemort fell the first time, and when he wakes, he finds her fingers still brushing through his hair, and he smiles a little. ]

I assume, then, you don't want me to cut it off. I came so close to doing it too, when I escaped.

They would hardly expect you to keep it this long, would they?

( And of course, neither should she. It's, after all, his decision to make. But what it also is is so very, very soft after the magical untangling treatment, and she twirls one strand around her index finger before she finishes her thought. )

You can cut it, if you need to.

( Perhaps it's just that much of a distinguishing mark from everyone else she's ever –– that's where the treacherous notion of love rears its ugly head. Then again, she's happier she has been since his imprisonment, which felt quite like she wouldn't be able to recover, so perhaps...

Well, she can think about that later, can't she?

It distinguishes him, in a very immediate and physical way, from other men she had liked. And even that is conveniently explaining away the factual truth here: she just likes it. A lot. )

But if you were to keep it like this, well, I am rather fond.

[ They would not have expected him to survive, and Lucius knows this. It was both dangerous and of the essence to hide close by as long as he had - those who had fled faster were quickly caught and summararily executed, and by keeping out of sight for a month, it was easy for guards to assume he'd been caught and executed. He might have been powerful and dangerous, but were so many in Nuremgard. Lucius Malfoy was only distinguishable by guards who might have fought on the British front - and there were few enough of those.

If they'd been actively searching for him, though, they would have expected him to drastically change his appearance. Cut off his hair, certainly, dye it, do something to make himself less recognizable. But there'd been little time for it and the hood had sufficed, in the end. And he - they've - weathered enough change. His hair is a small, superficial thing, but he's always worn it long.

He laughs a little, not moving his head from her lap. It's not something he would do much before. For one, there wasn't time. For another, they both had too much pride to do something that smacked of needing someone. ]

I've always preferred it long in any case, you know that.

And I like the way your hands feel in it.

( There had been too much loss far too recently for them to really indulge in intimacies with no immediate release attached to them, and it doesn't help that, while Bella would call her relationship with Rodolphus 'good', it had been neither healthy nor wrought with affection. Mostly, it's been a lot of twisted mutual obsession with the Cause, with interludes of violent sex and murder.

And now she is petting Lucius' hair while his head is in her lap, and she is feeling... at ease. )

You'll tire of it eventually.

( Likely before she does. Maybe there's been one too many thoughts of this even while they were both still married to other people. )

But I admit, I won't. Did you rest well?

[ Before they had come together in furtive stolen moments, in the aftermath of loss and the aftermath of adrenaline. It may be the same way soon. He knows the war has not even come close to ending; if anything it's even more underground than it was. But he needs this time. Some might say he had too much quiet already, that he must never want quiet again, but then - those people have never lived inside Nurmengard or Azkaban. ]

I'd forgotten what it's like to really sleep.

[ Not that he was long asleep. A few hours, he thinks. Perhaps three? Still, it was deep and dreamless, and that he's not known for a very long time. He catches her hand and kisses her fingers. It's a romantic gesture. It's the sort of thing that's more similar to the light kisses on the forehead he used to give Narcissa. ]

Have you forgotten what it is to really sleep, Bella?

( ooc: either role, though if returned to expect lots of abandonment issues. )

Edited 2018-01-20 21:05 (UTC)

[ prefer to be the one being returned to...]

Even though the world had gone to shits, the shitbags making it a bad place before were somehow still around, making this shithole an even worse place. Somewhere along the way, Frank had made his peace with the new world order in which there was no order. Somewhere in there he'd made his peace with the fact that he'd probably never see any of his old mates again.

The anger was still there. The restlessness resulting from it drove Frank to venturing out to wipe those shitbags from the face of earth. Didn't matter they were all going to die soon anyway. What mattered was that he wanted to see their lifeless bodies, knowing that he had done that to them.

It was past midnight when a tired ex-soldier approached the house, dragging himself upstairs as quietly as possible to tidy up. The house was dark so Riya was probably out or asleep. Frank hadn't checked. He wanted to be somewhat clean before facing her.

It would seem that those who were damaged continued to survive. Be it before the world went to shit, or even after when they realized what they needed to do to remain alive, they just stuck around like a damn zit that wouldn't pop. Any hope that had once been in the former sheriff had died out years ago. Odds anyone she used to know were still alive? Slim. Riya just had that sort of luck.

Insomnia had recently become a good friend. Though darkness shrouded her in the bedroom, her light gaze was focused on the ceiling. Mind drifting back to happier times, a faint smile easing along her lips as lost love flashed through her mind, though was quickly snuffed out.

Then she was asleep. It was restless though, her slender body tossing and turning. Covers having moved down to pool around her hips, soft skin having a layer of sheen forming thanks to sweat. If it hadn't been for her fighting her own demons in her sleep, she may have heard him moving around.

(the returning)

[Returning.]

[TLJ compliant.]

i'll crawl home to her.

Rey | Star Wars | F/M

Cindy Aurum | Final Fantasy XV | M/F

ᴅᴀᴇɴᴇʀʏs ᴛᴀʀɢᴀʀʏᴇɴ | ɢᴀᴍᴇ ᴏғ ᴛʜʀᴏɴᴇs | ᴏᴘᴇɴ

Zed Martin • Constantine • OTA

handsome jack / borderlands

logan / wolverine | xmcu

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harley quinn | dceu

alyssa ( the end of the f***ing world )

Rey | Star Wars | ota

Eren Jaeger | Shingeki no Kyojin | M/M

Claire Bennet | NBC's Heroes | OTA

Mercy + Overwatch + OTA

bellatrix black/lestrange | hp

just making shit up as usual

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silliest icon for this

look. yes.

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jyn erso | rogue one | m/f for anything non-platonic

(Rule! 63) Rick Grimes | The Walking Dead | f/m

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Wolfgang Mozart | Amadeus | OTA

Nerdanel | The Silmarillion

Leto Atreides II | Dune Series

Prior Walter | Angels in America |

Gamora || Guardians of the Galaxy

Lup | The Adventure Zone

Rey || Star Wars || F/M

Nico Acosta | OC | M/F

Rey | SW | OTA (spoilers a-okay!)

Jyn Erso | Rogue One | OTA