Back in the earlier store, it took a few tries but I soon found some jeans in my sizes. The entire time, Amy and I were talking. We never really spoke about anything important, just general small talk. Being with Amy was nice, it was like having a friend again

I did learn that Amy liked to read and, thanks to an accidental comment from me, that was reading the same sci-fi series as me which had set us both of giggling.

One thing that was odd, was I kept catching her staring at me. Occasionally, I would turn and her eyes would snap upwards to my face or I'd see her giving me this odd look out the corner of her eye. Everytime she did, I could taste her embarrassment at being caught and that same musky smell/taste. It was only when I caught a guy, who go a slap from his girlfriend, giving me the same look that I realised what it was.

On the upside, I think I knew what I was smelling/tasting

Amy was attracted to me!

I wasn't sure how to feel about that. I'd spent the better part of a year being insulted by Emma, being told how plain and unattractive I was having my complete lack of any feminine features thrown in my face everyday.

It wouldn't have been so bad if somebody, anybody aside from Greg, my own personal stalker, Vader had shown any interest in me. physically or mentally.

I'd never had anyone attracted to me and wasn't sure what to do about it.

Eventually, I decided that it was harmless to just enjoy it for now.

Feeling playful, I picked up a pair of jeans that were just a little bit too small and took them into the changing room. Slimming my legs down a bit, I slipped into the jeans and carefully changed back.

The jeans creaked slightly, and it was too uncomfortable to do this for long but it worked. They clung to my legs and backside so tightly they looked painted on.

Opening the curtain I called out to Amy, "What do you think?"

When I turned to look at the mirror behind me, I could see the reflection as she stared, open mouthed, at my backside.

"How do you get into those!?" she asked.

"Well you can start with flowers," the words were out of my mouth before I could stop them and we both went scarlet.

Ducking back into the changing room, I peeled the jeans off and tried to calm down.

Okay, maybe that was taking it a little too far.

When I left the changing room, Amy was still blushing but we both decided, without saying a word, to act like it never happened.

we ended up spending so long in the mall that we decided to get dinner in the food court. We were still making small talk when Amy's phone went off.

"Damn, sorry, one second." Checking the screen, she frowned and shoved her phone back into her pocket.

"I'm really sorry but I have to go, something's come up. I had fun today, we should... maybe... do it again?" she asked the last part with a blush and I realised that yes, I would like to meet up with her again.

"Sure," I said with a smile and blush of my own.

I didn't have a cellphone so we had to settle for swapping email addresses.

Picking up my bags, I made my way outside. There were some payphones just inside the doors and I used one to call dad so he could pick me up. There was no way I was going to take this lot on the bus.

It was dark out by the time Dad arrived in his truck. Throwing my bags onto the back seat, I climbed in.

"Hey Kiddo, I thought you would be done hours ago. Did anything happen?" he asked with a touch of concern.

"Nothing really, I just ran into someone and we got talking. we ended up having dinner together."

Dad smiled at me, "Good, in that case, I take it you had a good time?"

"Yeah, it was... nice."

Things were finally looking up.

Hide

(Автор: truebeasts)

A/n: The (short) scene under discussion. Neither fish nor fowl, unfortunately: not exactly sexy, it just happens to have some naked people in it. Contains Night, resident scaly abomination, doing the sorts of things you would expect Night to do. Not necessarily recommended for anyone. Contains some blood, and the whole gruesome transformation thing.

* * *

In her dream she's running along a high place. The sky's gray, and she's barefoot, and along the side of the bare ridge there's a row of spikes, like the wrought iron fences that stand outside of townhouses, and on top of every spike a staring eye, glassy, dead, but they turn to follow her anyway. Doesn't matter how far she runs. They keep turning after her, until she falls down and coughs and spits out a cold hard thing the size of a marble.

She looks at it and finds that that's an eye, too.

Dorothy wakes up chilly, all at once, her muscles stiffening along her back, prepared to fight or run. But there's no one watching — she can feel her power prickling out across her skin, ready for the moment of her change. A blink, and she is wide eyes and sharp claws and smooth, chitinous armor. The bed creaks under her weight. A blink, and she is her human self again. Relief sets in, slowly. It's not quite dawn. Her right hand burns, the webbing between thumb and forefinger hot and prickling, and the same feeling down her wrist, where the nerves had been severed, years ago. Old wound. It stays, no matter how many times she changes. It feels like a pushpin jammed into the meat of her hand.

They'd been careful to do no lasting harm. Nearly careful enough.

It doesn't matter. Some pains, she's used to.

She's drifted over to the edge of her bed in her sleep, kicked off the covers, and the bedroom's cold enough that her back and arms are breaking out in goose pimples. Some nights she can't stand to be touched in her sleep, finds even the weight of the sheets intolerable. Geoff's different. She uncurls and looks at him now, bound into a fetal ball, arms cinched behind him, legs tucked into his chest and tied there. She inches across the bed until she can tuck her fingers under the ropes at his wrists, check that they're not cutting off his circulation. At a certain point while she's looking him over, he stirs, and she knows that she's woken him, but the knowledge passes between them in silence. His eyes might be open or closed behind the blindfold. He doesn't speak.

Dorothy lets them stay like that for a moment, her hand on his shoulder. But there's a procedure to be followed, in this as in everything. She's used to it.

"Did you sleep well, Geoff?"

"Yes, dear."

A peck on the cheek. She lifts the edge of his blindfold, feels her power shrink and shrivel as his naked eye meets hers. Then she settles the blindfold back into place.

That's it. A blink, and she's herself.

Her view of the room doubles, triples, multiplies beyond counting. Her hidden shape has eyes down the length of its body, hard and glistening, their lids translucent like the protective lids of a crocodile. She can see the ladybugs caught between the screen and the window, yesterday's dress crumpled in a pile on the floor, and today's clothes, freshly pressed and hung across the highbacked chair in the corner of the room, behind her. And she can see the pores in Geoff's skin, the fine hairs standing up at the nape of his neck, reacting to her closeness, the silk of her naked skin against him changing to steel and shell and mandibles.

Night can taste him, too. He tastes of salt, like sweat, of blood, like meat, of soap. A little of fear, although his breathing is calm. It doesn't matter how many times they wake up like this. His body knows that she's deadly. His mind — he's thinking of the Gesellschaft, maybe. Night doesn't know and doesn't want to know.

She makes the first cut at the nape of his neck. It's shallow, bleeds sluggishly. Her limbs — too many of them — are razor-sharp. Her hair falls across her face, but her face isn't good for anything, not in this shape. She sees through her other eyes. She smells through her skin. The face is a little porcelain mask pasted over her real self. Eyes blind, nose stopped, lips pasted together. It's an itch, a splinter. She'd tear it off, if she could.

She loops her body around Geoff's shoulders, shifts him, hears him groan as the edges of the armored spines on her belly scrape him. She's not made to touch anything gently.

Still, she's gentler than them. Gentler by far.

There are many ways to hurt a human body, and she can see most of them in her mind's eye if she thinks about it, feel a shiver of phantom pain. Geoff's quiet when she touches him, lips pressed together, although Night knows her touch stings. His skin's red with it. She kisses his shoulder with her mandibles, flutters eyelashes against his back, down the length of her body. She's twisted around him now, like a snake, her razored legs fraying the ropes that bind him. His hands are free, but he doesn't fight her — braces his fingers on her armor, instead, slicing his hands. She blinks and sees exposed fat, yellow and sticky, sees bone. His face is a mess of blood. The sheets, she'll have to throw out. They're ruined. She sees it with the same cool clarity that she sees the line of white where Geoff is pressing his lips together.

She tastes his blood with one of her tongues. He still hasn't made a noise, beyond whimpers. Night doesn't speak well, in her secret shape. She has no need for words. She talks in other ways.

Like now, when she draws a red line down his sternum and pictures how simple it would be to slip downstairs while the others are sleeping, easy, no eyes on her, no one's gaze forcing her back into her bloody, sweating, sniffling shell of a human body. That rag she puts on every day, bulbous jelly eyes staring out of a porous face, the taste of sleep sour in her mouth. Not her.

She'll open Geoff's ribcage, this time. This time she'll kill him for real, maybe, or he'll let her. It will be an accident, or maybe only half an accident. She wonders dispassionately if he'd thank her for it. Perhaps not. The organism in him still wants to live, after all. And in her, too.

She feels Geoff's chest heave under her armored belly, and then he's slipped her grasp and all around her is cool fog, blanketing her eyes, her mouths, heavy in her lungs. Night sees everything in her shape, and in his, Fog sees nothing, and so it's the closest he'll ever come to knowing her. The contours of her body. Her mouth. Her tongue. She blinks the protective lids over her eyes, spreads to her full length across the bloody bed. It's comfortable. Almost companionable.

When he pulls himself together into his body and opens his eyes, she's already changed back into Dorothy, and he's whole again. Not cut, not bleeding. She wipes her reddened hands on the ruined sheets and sits up.

"Will you get the paper, dear? I need to freshen up."

She's done showering by the time he steps into the bathroom and takes off his bathrobe. She listens to him humming over the sound of the falling water, while she fixes her hair, eyes on herself in the mirror.

DRIVE

(Автор: hellgodsrus)

It sometimes surprised Cherish, how easily she'd taken over the world.

She'd set out with high ambitions, sure. Become some big, eminence rouge type behind the scenes running things somewhere. A name whispered in the dark, not spoken aloud. She'd liked the idea of that. Almost the opposite of Dear Dad and his fucking publicity. She'd had some harebrained idea, while running from her brothers — fuck, she couldn't even remember what they could do, let alone their names. Something stupid about the Slaughterhouse Nine.

Even now, her fingers didn't sit quite right at the point where they joined flesh. She'd swept down just as Manton's whore had been about to rip out her heart. A cavalcade of fire. Nothing that could stop the Siberian, of course, but enough to distract, delay.

Captured, imprisoned. By the one woman Dad had always wanted for his collection. At least she'd been safe. Dragon wasn't too bad a host. Always obsessed with Dad's security and the pathetic little ants that infested their world.

It hadn't been hard to work out her little secret. More surprising had been her own reaction to it. The idea of something with no song she could hear or touch, where she'd have to rely on her own weaknesses to manipulate her — oh god, the thought even now made her thighs warm and her muscles clench of their own accord.

Saint had been fucking pathetically easy. An `escape' from Dragon's clutches. A desperate call for the famous mercenary's assistance. She'd just been looking for a way into the metal bitch's good graces, a way to stop her mooning over that dreary New England douche with the beard.

Well. Ascalon had been that.

Every world was now a utopia, a pure paradise. Monitored, observed by her watchful eye. Crime just didn't happen. If you tried, you were stopped. End of story. The Endbringers, Cauldron, Scion, the Blasphemies, the Nine, Sleeper — they'd all fallen. She was worshipped by numbers so vast that Cherish doubted she could say them. Dragon, Goddess-Saviour-Machine.

And yet here the goddess was, her legs spread like she was in heat, moaning and begging. God, it was too fucking exquisite for words — it was like that moment of a child's first true understanding of terror, or the sheer explosive burst of joy of an addict's first taste of a drug after years going cold turkey, the despair of a suicidal depressive realising they couldn't kill themselves, but better. A symphony without the sound only she could hear, rolled into her brain.

The body wasn't a perfect human replica. Dragon had made them at first — but they were just plain dull. Now there was firm, metallic cool resistance to the sheening skin of the thighs, the ass as Cherish lifted it. And that pretty little cunt, the little triangle of fake hair above it. She liked this model the best. Just the right mix of inhuman and human.

A bite, two inches from the lips. It was a hard, hard bite, hard enough that she could feel her teeth strain even as Dragon bucked from it. Fingers slipping into her hair. She slapped them aside. She was in control here.

`You're going to have to ask me.' She virtually hummed the words into the taut skin. She couldn't see Dragon, but she knew that her head would be bent back, her body virtually a semicircle above the sheets, like a bow. Waiting to let the arrow fly. Beds were a rarity, but she liked to keep things classic every now and then. Nothing would quite top that time in the president's office though, or in front of the whole UN, feeling her struggling to keep control, her metal fingers trembling and rattling against each other —

`Dragon, you're going to have to ask me.' She ran the edge of her finger over the little folds of not-flesh.