bakerstreet | That moment between waking... (Nightmare meme)

Entry tags:

That moment between waking... (Nightmare meme)

the nightmare meme

"So on his Nightmare through the evening fog
Flits the squab Fiend o'er fen, and lake, and bog;
Seeks some love-wilder'd maid with sleep oppress'd,
Alights, and grinning sits upon her breast."
- Erasmus Darwin, "Night-Mare"

Everyone has nightmares right? The dark thoughts lurking in the depths of our minds. Our fears out of our control. At least they only occur in our sleeping hours... right?

This meme is designed to wretch that comfort right out from under you.

Your character is stuck in their worst nightmare and worse yet, someone is stuck in there with them. Whether it's a familiar face, a stranger, intentional or accidental, you have to dig your way out. Good luck lost souls. And remember. The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.

Feel free to use the prompts below as a jumping point, or make up whatever you want. As a warning this meme will possibly contain TRIGGERS and MATURE CONTENT. Read ahead with caution.

Prompts:

i. the WEAVER (the nightmare)

001 - waking nightmare - wake up. Wake up. Wake. UP. The only sure guarantee out of a dream. And yet when your eyes open, the fear still surrounds you. The nightmare has its hold. You've woken up to your own nightmare. Why hasn't it gone away?

002 - stuck - Slowly, you begin to realize this is all just a dream. But you can't get out. You're stuck to the whims of your subconscious, unable to escape. Completely aware that this is just a nightmare, but unable to escape.

003 - pursuit - You're being chased, endlessly, by something, someone. Maybe it's a boogey monster, maybe it's only a metaphor. But you're out of breath and places to run.

004 - the end of your world - The apocalypse. Brought about around you. Maybe it came slowly, like a slow burning fire-- or perhaps it was a conflagration. Your entire world is falling apart around you and you can do nothing to stop it. Or perhaps even worse, you're the cause.

005 - your greatest fear - Maybe your greatest fear is something common, like spiders, or something which seems completely mundane, such as the color yellow. Whatever it is, it's surrounding you. Keeping you in it's embrace.

006 - ground hog day - It starts out harmless. One day, not unlike any other. Except, it's repeated over. And over. And over. And over. Until slowly your mind just.... slips away.

007 - i have no mouth and I must scream - slowly, against your will, you're transforming. Turning into a creature unlike yourself. Perhaps a monster, maybe a pile of goo. Whatever it is, you're helpless to stop it.

008 - free style - take these prompts and throw em' out the window. Do it however you want.

ii. the THREAD (why the other character is there)

001 - the devil on their chest - Maybe the dreamer was someone in your way, someone who had done harm to you or someone you care about, maybe it’s just for shits and giggles. But you are the one who has stuck them in this nightmare, and you want to watch them fall victim to their own mind.

002 - mind link - for some reason you share a connection with this person. Perhaps it's just the passing of the stars, a jolt of electricity, or their mind reaching for yours. But now you’re stuck here, trying to get them out.

003 - experiment - Just a quick injection, maybe a little sting, it won't hurt. That's what the men in coats said. But look where that got you.

004 - save them - you've been tasked to save this person, no matter the cost. Maybe they're a stranger, maybe they're your closest friend, even your greatest enemy, but you have to save them.

005 - just following orders - It's a job, and you've been tasked to it. They may have some info you need. Or maybe you have to keep them in for the benefit of someone else. It doesn't matter. It's only a job. Right?

006 - we have ways of making you talk - They have something you need. And it's time you squeeze it out of them.

007 - free style - take these prompts and throw em' out the window. Do it however you want.

In order to make this meme a bit easier when it comes to tagging out we have written up a short little form. If you could fill it out and stick it in your characters opening comment, along with the usual character name and series header, it would be helpful to everyone in order to find someone appropriate to tag! Plotting is more than encouraged!

Via:

waitingforsin

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The ground shudders along the fault lines of that rusty heartbeat and Geralt turns his head, ignoring the slow well and drip of his blood onto the ground. His gloved fingers draw nonsense through the soft earth as he pushes himself up onto his knees, listening. There is... something. A desperate pitch against the back of his senses. Something animal and base. Something that he should ignore because nature can take care of itself without his help. And yet.

His hands take hold of the upward thrust of metal that had cut him and pull; chunks of earth tumble themselves easily away, leaving him with scrap and forming the soft indentation of something below. Geralt digs without thought--where had he been going anyway? And he might not like the feel of this place, but when had that ever stopped him before? It is his job to be in the places that push others out.

He mounds earth up and away and finds a warren, or a piece of one. Metal and dirt, some sort of torturous run that he can't even assume the purpose of. The gears groan softly through the fog. There is something trapped, then. Predatory hunger wars with not-his-business and the juxtaposition of those two things freeze him where he is. His instincts are... not always his instincts, now. Not always just his, but also the raw thing that Robin has helped made him.

Robin.

Geralt stiffens. His nostrils flare, brief and wide. Bright. Green. Ivy. Veravine.

And just that easily the world fractures. Geralt swears and lurches to his feet as nearby a massive tree uproots itself and tears from the earth, the tangled base sending a huge crown of soil toppling across the area. Dark dirt spills over Geralt's boots and he falls onto his ass before stumbling to his feet. A dream. A fucking dream. But where is Robin? This is no bower, no winter-bare wonderland, no diamond incrusted sky overhead. He can't even see the heavens for the tangle of darkened canopy above.

"Robin!"

As if it matters. The dream ends; they both wake up. And yet... the trees are wrong, here.

And. It's been awhile.

Something cracks and everything lurches. He's sliding, a shifting of gravity that barely translates to movement because there's no room for it. It's still enough. It's enough that he remembers his own weight and shape and space, how to take it up and how to take it back. With a quiver that grows to a shudder, he stretches his limbs and shakes the walls that keep him pinned. That voice galvanizes him. It gives him a name; it turns all his panic into urgency. His body coils and thrashes, battering at the seams of the closed trap and slowly, strike by strike, forcing them apart.

He forces his fingers through the breaking solder, past the edges of metal, into the crumbling soil. This is a dream, this is a dream, why can't he grab hold of it with both hands and turn it rightside-up like a tilted bowl? This time, the sound he makes is a pure animal snarl. His fingers claw into the dirt until they push free into open air.

"Geralt!"

He's groping from the darkness and he might be reaching into something even worse, but if he can grab onto Geralt with both hands, he won't give half a damn. He'll endure it. His shoulders ram against the box's corners. The walls groan and grind and unfold like petals of jagged steel in a flower long dead. With another whine, Robin struggles his other hand free and reaches out with that one, too.

Edited (icon change w00t) 2021-08-20 01:22 (UTC)

He can hear something, muted, thudding, and Geralt turns in a circle trying to figure out where it's coming from. Around him the branches of trees shiver and moan but he's getting used to the world falling down and it's stopped bothering him. When the hand-- slender-fingered but dirty-- shoves through the earth it is a lucky thing that it's not underfoot. The distance between the Witcher and the very Drowner-like protrusion provides a necessary moment and saves Robin from being parted from his digits. Just a dream (the ground heaves again; a second hand pops free) but it still would have been unpleasant. For all that their dreams will fill with darkness from time to time, mutilation has always been one step behind them.

Focused on the hands, Geralt drops back down to his knees and swipes free the loose soil that has spilled across the ground like a dog digging at the start of a hole. His own hand grabs one of Robin's, delivering a comforting-- if rough-- squeeze before letting go again. How in the hells did the faery get himself below the earth? For now Geralt sets aside the rusty march of that dilapidated heartbeat and the trees that surround him; he is bent to the problem of getting Robin free.

He pulls clumps of soil away only for more to tumble into the divot. Geralt switches to trying to clear the arms attached to the hands, to follow them down, but more earth comes. Something is fighting him, or he's not enough. Teeth bared, chin streaked with dirt and cheek bleeding sluggishly, Geralt growls at the back of his throat. He hangs his head; white hair curtains his face.

Fucking dream.

There's a whisper at the back of his mind, an illogical wisp of a thought that is hiding beneath his learned instincts to be ordered, and it says, yes, but it is Robin's dream. Robin's dreams have their own rules. Robin's dreams are fey things. And the next time Geralt sets to dig again, the earth is carved back by large white paws that quickly dirty-- but are much more suited to the task.

The squeeze of that hand, warm despite the glove, settles something in Robin's chest even as a lump rises into his throat. There comes a shift, a lightning-swift vibration through the earth and in the air--that sensation of unreality as part of the dream turns fluid, molded by a consciousness and willpower not his own. Geralt's hands return as paws. Those broad feet furrow the earth until one arm, then two, breaks free of the soil, and Robin can pull his head and shoulders loose with a shuddering gasp. He gets an arm around Geralt's neck and spends a moment with his face buried in the soft space beneath the wolf's muzzle. White fur tickles against his closed eyelids.

His chest swells with a surge of fond pride, useless and silly as it might be, because Geralt can't always succeed in changing his shape once he realizes they're dreaming. This counts as a success.

So does wriggling himself free of the scraps of buried metal. Robin abandons the remnants of his wings with a pang, because that dull ache of loss never entirely leaves him, even in the relative safety of his own subconscious. Scratched and bruised but mostly whole, he wrenches himself out of the dirt and crawls for solid ground. He's filthy and Geralt hasn't fared much better, but Robin, at least, will always be at home in the soil. Pushing his toes into the welcoming give of it does him more good than harm.

A contemptible part of him is grateful not to have to squirm under the judgment of Geralt's eyes, at least for the moment. "Thank you," he mutters, as relief gives way to humiliation with every slowing heartbeat. "It's...difficult to get out of those. Once I'm in." Miserably, he suspects that's because he's never entirely left that place at all. He's internalized it, instead, and he can't rip himself free without cutting out parts of himself in the process.

He's already lost more pieces of himself than he cares to admit.

Tilting his head back, he runs a hand through his hair and grimaces at the damp slide of dirt between his fingers. At least he has the shape of this, now, and he can work his will into the substance of this place to do with it what he likes. Pity that he isn't sure just what he would like, except to be away from the long trough in the earth and the metal trap still broken in its depths like a coffin. There's a red smear of blood staining the fur beneath one of Geralt's eyes, and Robin rubs it away with the pad of his thumb.

Success is far from Geralt's mind, unless it comes as the wash of green that is Robin's familiar scent. He stays still as arms wrap around him and is content to stand and provide strength until Robin has found his own. When the fey decides it's enough Geralt's teeth and long nose help as they are able-- success, perhaps not, as getting back out of this shape might be more than he can manage. Still... the world hasn't broken apart; the trees still shiver and whisper but the ground is still and he supposes that is something.

Golden eyes are still golden eyes, still Geralt's, and he stares at the ancient young man lying upon the heaped, sullied earth. "You do this to yourself." It's not really a question, that voice that doesn't move the large white muzzle. They've agreed to this thing between them and piece by stolen piece, they've parsed little bits of each other. Geralt still doesn't look too closely at any of it; he's decided that it is far easier to let it be and only glance from the corner of his eye. When Robin's hand slides away from his fur, Geralt lowers himself onto his haunches and looks into the hole of dirt and torn metal. He supposes that if he manages to stay alive for as long a time as Robin has, perhaps he'll find himself chasing his own tail as well. A shiver runs through the white, muscled body and fluffs the dense fur at the thought. Too long, even though he knows the fey must parse the time differently than humans.

The grind of that distant metal heartbeat pulls him from his thoughts and his ears twitch and swivel as lips slide away from teeth.

"Not on purpose," Robin retorts, because even in Geralt's voice and with barely any inflection, he's heard exactly those words from Oberon's lips too many times to accept them without a show of stubborn spite. It's the Summer King's favorite accusation--a needle that can slide into a joint, like a stick jammed through the spoke of a wheel--and it's designed to derail him, to knock him off balance, to drag him down between one leap and the next. It always works.

You do this to yourself.

He does; he doesn't. He blames himself but he blames Oberon, too, and all that bitterness and bittersweetness has become so badly enmeshed that he can only imagine the two of them as a tangled skein, threads felted together at the center. They've dropped stitches and doubled the wrong knots. They lost the pattern long, long ago. Too weary to explain, Robin forces himself upright and stares down into the pit, wondering what Geralt sees. The bristling of that white fur and the flash of fangs ripples up Robin's spine and prickles at the back of his neck. "It's just a dream. It's fine." He says it colorlessly, as if repeating it enough times will make it true, centuries upon centuries too late. That groaning pulse moves through his bones and aches in the broken connections at the backs of his shoulders. Appropriate to call those bones blades, because sometimes they hurt badly enough that he'd swear they're cutting through his skin.

Exhaling a heavy breath, he leans forward and opens both hands into the soil. He pushes the dirt back into the hole, covering the metal at the bottom handful by handful, unwilling to stare directly into all those jagged gaps and sharpened barbs. Better to bury it all again. Someday it won't be as raw, and he'll be able to bear dragging it out into the open.

Geralt snorts at the accusation that any dream can be fine. He lets any further insight into Robin's psyche go-- it's not his business, that tone that's a sword without a hilt, determined to cut the hand that holds it-- and while his ears still move, his attention comes back to their side as dirt is pushed into the gap in the earth like a particularly ill-attended burial.

"Something's wrong with the trees." It's a dream, it should be fine, but Geralt has been in Robin's dreams and beneath Robin's trees and these feel. Different. They feel... sharp. Accusatory. It's ridiculous and yet if he were in the real world and with his own hands and senses, he'd have a sign at his fingertips and a vial in his palm. Forests are not places to take for granted and that goes double for any forests that Robin's subconscious could call into being.

Maybe Robin's head is still in the ground. Geralt's tail lashes back and forth with slow, methodic swings. "Wake up," he says, under his breath. "Or pay attention." His hackles rise; at the back of his senses that rusted, metallic heartbeat is gaining momentum. Something is waking up.

"Well fuck you very much," Robin mutters, responding purely to the tone, but then he stops to listen and his head comes up, sharp and sudden, nostrils flaring as he scents the air and tenses from head to foot. The caustic burn of metal stings the back of his throat. He reaches out for the trees through the earth, baffled that he'd ever stopped listening in the first place. They do feel wrong, off in a way that sets his skin crawling and his teeth aching. Their roots reach back like rotten fingers, catching hold of him by the wrists and grasping inch by inch up his arms. The sensation of something wriggling its way up through his own ley lines, worming along the pathways of power that belong to him alone, makes his stomach lurch.

Now he can hear the trees. They're screaming in a high, discordant wail. He's never heard anything like it before and he would give almost anything never to hear it again.

Unnerved just past the edge of panic, he reverts to the shape in which he feels strongest. His hooves cleave the ground. His antlers furrow the dirt with a plunging shake of his head. He turns in place, hoof to hoof to hoof, because he wants to run but he won't leave Geralt. The ground has begun to vibrate, earth crumbling down into the remains of the pit as that grinding pulse quickens. The bottom gives way, opening a yawning crevice, and a smell like burning oil pours out of the earth. Robin has no idea what's stirring down there in the darkness, and he has no desire at all to wait until it emerges into the light.

"Let's go," he says, low but urgent, the long line of his foreleg nudging against Geralt's steady shoulder. Running from his own subconscious? Sounds wonderful, count him in, he'll gladly contemplate the poetic irony of the situation from the safety of his waking life. "I don't care what it is, I don't want to see it, let's go."

Considering the smell, Geralt has no want to see anything that might be associated with it. His ears are flat back against his skull and he needs no further urging from Robin to take off headlong. Robin's transformation is something he's seen before and while in this shape he seems want to default to his baser desires, he understands how to circumvent such things-- at least when he knows where he is. Right now there's no problem in combining instinct with higher function; Robin goes, Geralt paces him, long legs stretching out to eat ground.

The hum-throb of the heartbeat continues and there is no looking back. He doesn't know where they're going, he's just following Robin's lead. Fear like a bitterness at the back of his throat doesn't stop the innate grace that winds him between trees and over undergrowth, but the forest seems to tunnel down around them and it isn't long before Geralt gets the sense that instead of running away, they're being driven. Herded by the forest. "Robin!" The snarled word is ripped out by the hard breath from his muzzle and there's more, but something whipcord agile snags his leg and Geralt is yanked to abrupt stop with a yelp of shock and pain that he'd never admit to upon waking. His shoulder is fire and without sense his teeth are coming down around the vine that's grabbed him-- only to get a mouthful of thorns.

Panting, snarling, bleeding, Geralt staggers to his feet to try and pull himself free.

They run.

In dreams, they've run together before, one of them chasing the other or keeping pace side by side, however the mood takes them. Robin loves those moments when he needn't think--just stretch out his legs and let his heart take flight in the way his body no longer allows. Fleeing like this, headlong and hellbent for a horizon that never comes, makes a misery of something he usually enjoys. He would resent that if he had the wits or even the willpower. Instead, terror weighs him down and leadens his hooves. Even the rough panting of Geralt at his side provides little comfort, since his current state of panic has winnowed him down far more to instinct than usual, and his nose is determined to read the lupine scent at his heels as enemy rather than Geralt.

The voice still reaches him, and that yelp of pain makes his heart lurch against against his ribs. His own momentum carries him another several yards before he can stumble to a halt, regain leverage, and spin on his front legs. Dream or not, Geralt's blood smells just the same, and Robin can hardly bear it. He brings both hooves down on the grasping vine. It goes all thorns for him, too, needles knifing into tender places and he blows out a breath of startled pain. This forest holds no love for him. Its rejection leaves him reeling, untethered.

He isn't in the habit of destroying plant life, no matter what dangerous shapes it takes. He brings his antlers to bear anyway. Ripped into long splinters, the vine caught around Geralt tears in two. Another shoots out, tenacious as anything hungry for blood. It winds itself around one antler and digs thorns into the branches until the velvet shreds ands bleeds.

Geralt stumbles free as the separated vine shrivels, making a high-pitched noise and oozing something dark that smells like whatever had been sitting in the earth and rotting; his foreleg is throbbing, streaked with red. The pain is pushed back, at least such base skills haven't abandoned him just because he's inside of a dream. Unfortunately such things do not seem to extend to helping Robin's entanglement in any way-- in this form Geralt has no way to guard against those thorns, just soft palette and skin. There is no weapon that he possesses that would do anything but get him sliced to ribbons. He snarls at his own impotence.

"Wake yourself up!" It's a throaty command, given as Geralt dodges the snare of another vine. "Robin, wake up!" Death in dreams means waking, but thorns and suffocation will be a potentially slow and painful version that he wants no parts of. Whatever has obviously gotten under Robin's skin since Geralt saw him last has obviously stirred up something subconscious, only his dreams are picking a rather more literal way of dealing with it.

The dying shriek of that severed vine sends ripples of unease all over Robin's hide, twitching and trembling in the muscles of his chest, his shoulders, his flanks. It's worse than the pain of the thorns wrapped around his antlers. This is a dream. Robin knows it, he hasn't completely forgotten, so why does he keep losing his grip on the slippery starstuff that should form to his will? "I can't," he says, less a sharp retort and more a moan of desperation. He shakes his head hard enough to snap his teeth together, biting his own tongue in the process and huffing through his nose in pain. Instead of breaking him free as it should, the pain only drags him deeper, locking him into the illusion from all sides.

Geralt's blood fills his senses with a metallic burn. The scent blends with his own and he lunges again, body snapping back like the lash of a whip. Instead of breaking the vine, the movement cracks one antler, and Robin gives out a bugle of startled pain that vibrates through the earth and somehow strengthens the grinding pulse of that terrible heartbeat. The vines drag him down. They loop over his forelegs and spiral over the ridge of his back like tangles of barbed wire.

Around them and underneath them, the ground begins to churn. "Just go," Robin shouts, because now that the vines are preoccupied with keeping him pinned, they have far less energy to waste on Geralt. The rippling earth bubbles with something worse than mud--something that splits open and reeks of rotted blood--and the revolting pulp of it is sucking at Robin's legs and the underside of his ribcage. No matter how he contorts his hips or kicks his back legs, he can't break free.

The sound that Robin makes-- or perhaps it's the sound of that antler snapping-- sets Geralt ears flat against his skull and lifts the thick hair at the back of his collar. Panic rises and crashes down, shearing against his nerves and the impulse to either bare down with his teeth or flee is so strong that for a moment he is rooted to the spot instead, fading humanity fighting with ironic tooth and nail to keep himself from doing either.

The heartbeat vibrates against the pads of his feet, through the mutable earth underneath him, and Robin is covered in bramble. Geralt's tail is stiff, trembling, his lips peeled back in an awful rictus without thought. It's a dream. It's a fucking dream. Why didn't it fall down to start with? He's so fucking good at destruction and now the only thing in dreams that he's good at abandons him? This is his fault. Go? Go where? Go where?

His teeth snap at the air instead of the snaking vines that Robin fights. Impotent. One antler hangs, limp. It's grotesque and he can't change it, he can't change anything. Robin is being devoured by his own dreams and Geralt is helpless to affect anything, to stop this, to wake them.

To wake them.

The thought is immense and terrible. His teeth can't touch the vines without retribution but they can tear, and rend. His pulse echoes the ragged beat under his feet as he stands, staring at Robin, watching the struggle play out without reacting. He's sure it seems cold. Callous. But Geralt is slinking into those baser instincts that he's tried so hard now to ignore. Robin's blood reeks, sharp and thick and saliva wells between his fangs, dripping onto the heaving ground. Robin is prey

(he is not)

he is something to follow, to chase, to catch, he is

(Robin)

dinner, he is--

--Geralt leaps with a snarl, his muzzle finding its way with unerring accuracy through thicket and thorn, latching onto the stag's neck. A growl rumbles at the back of his throat and his back feet tear for purchase against a shaggy, heaving side. Blood fills his mouth and inoculates his nerves against the rot and stench. He snarls at his mouthful. He wants more. Geralt snaps his head from side to side; he rips and tears. Blood gushes.

This is the way it should be.

Everything here has been unusually vivid, even from the start, but the pain is lurid, etched across the backs of Robin's eye sockets in splatters of black and vermillion. He knows this kind of agony. He knows what it means to endure pain with no possibility of release. At first it burns, severe and shrieking, but then it becomes a gradual ache that grinds at all the senses, that punctures sanity again and again until the psyche fractures. Gathering those sharp splinters cuts into the wreckage that remains, afterwards, and opens wounds that never fully heal. Under those circumstances... The ripping pressure of Geralt's jaws is a sick kind of mercy. It promises an end. Those teeth are white-hot flame in his throat, that powerful body a weight that crushes him into the mud. All of it tangles together--the reek of blood and Geralt and Geralt's blood and his own thunderous terror, arterial, spraying across the earth with every pulse of his slowing heart--

He wakes with a sound of anguish. The sob tears at his throat, a pain that echoes the dream and makes it linger, pounding in the raw end of every nerve. His fingers go to claws and shred against the bark of the tree limb beneath him. A moment later and one hand clutches at his throat, groping for a wound. He feels something slick and wet-- But it's sweat, because he's drenched with it, soaked straight down to the skin. The skin is whole.

The claws prick against the hinges of his jaw and he clenches his fingers, just enough to feel it.

"Fuck," he whispers. He scratches his hands up into the roots of his hair and pulls, hard enough that his eyes sting. "Fuck!" Both hands slam down against the branch with a surge of frustrated rage. The raw power, channeled through every pathway in Robin's slender frame and focused through both bracelets like quicksilver death, renders a terrible radius of wood into nests of thorns. He's the fulcrum: all the needles turn away from him in a spiraling thicket of dagger-sharp points. The sight of all that damage in the stillness afterwards appalls him, nevertheless, and he sags atop the branch with a shudder that ends in a whispered moan.

What in all hells was that? Bad enough that they can't fully escape each other when they wish, terrible enough that they can't prevent each other from looking into the blackest depths of memory and fear, but now they're faced with the possibility of making every nightmare worse?

And perhaps worse than that... He recalls with horrible clarity the sensation of Geralt's teeth meeting in the flesh of his throat. Is that what Geralt has always wanted from him? To run him down?

To break him?

The idea yawns within him like a pit. He can't comprehend its dimensions and he doesn't dare look down into its depths, because the abject fear of it might leave him witless. He draws his knees up to his chest and wraps both arms around his legs, forcing himself small in the midst of the destruction he's wrought. He's furious at Geralt, furious at himself, and still mired in that nauseating gratitude that Geralt did what he could not.

Robin struggles. It is natural; Geralt holds tighter. Robin fights, but Geralt is not going to let go. Not while his mouth is full of the thick, rich metallic taste of blood and the thing is unfinished. An end is needed but with all his sense brimming with want it's hard to even say what the end was other than (death) this inevitable conclusion. He snaps his head to and fro and clings tighter with the full reach of his limbs.

Pain.

Pain, bright and sharp, launches him into consciousness. Or-- later, he'll understand-- it wasn't the pain at all, but the dreamer waking. Robin, breaking their connection because of Geralt painting the landscape with his lifeblood.

Geralt's face blazes with heat and the high, sharp note of sublime discomfort and his eyes open to focus on someone below him. Someone round and soft with food and comfort. Someone with deep amber skin and honey eyes, bright with rage. Geralt startles as a fat drop of very red liquid hits her cheek. She has to smack him to cause him to move and her palm stings more than it should; Geralt pulls his hands away from the whore and she hits him again, and again-- even with the burnished shade of her skin he can see his fingerprints on her arms-- and he falls off the side of the bed to get away from her.

She's not yelling, which is good for him, but her teeth are shining white in the dim light in a way that is bad for his purse. He gives her the entire sack, far too heavy for a few bruises that another man would have put on her on purpose, and she leaves with his sheet while he's still on the floor, dazed, looking at his hands like he's not quite sure how they work. He can almost still taste the blood in his mouth.

Geralt touches his face; it is blood, his blood, dripping from a weal down the left cheek. The taste is like fire, like lust, and the way his anatomy tries to tighten between his bare legs sends him to the chamber pot on hands and knees.

At least the sick washes away any lingering memories.

Geralt slumps against the wall, his hair limp, his limbs limp, his cock-- mercifully-- limp. Fuck. He rubs a hand over his mouth. He has never been accused of having a lack of resource; the very fact that he is alive speaks to its direct opposite. And of course, he knows that he is cold. But this. This is new, some new and terrible depths as of yet un-plumbed and it sparks a small thing inside him that Geralt is not at all used to.

Guilt.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That moment between waking... (Nightmare meme)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject