♥ hourofthewitch wrote Frozen 2/2 for mng042197
Title: Frozen 2/2
Author: hourofthewitch
Summary:Spoilers/Warning/Triggers: I don’t want to give too much away, but expect some sexual situations, mild horror/spooky stuff, and dealings with (mental) illness.
Author Notes:First and foremost, I want to thank jandjsalmon for her tireless efforts towards making this exchange work and her limitless patience. It was (at times) a rough ride, with more bumps than I’d anticipated but I couldn't have asked for a better moderator along the way. As for the writer I wrote this for, I sincerely hope you enjoy. This fic is AU, though I tried to subtly incorporate elements from canon here and there. I hope I did the characters and your prompt justice! I was heavily inspired by the song you provided, along with this image I found.
( Frozen 1/2 )
~*~
“You’re really missing out, you know.”
“I don’t think so.”
Two days before the doctor visits again. Even though the library still seems to make Kyle uncomfortable and he’s yet to pick up a book, they spend a significant amount of time in there. Together.
Zoe knows Cordelia approves; rather than getting angry, she smiles at her whenever she rushes through an assignment lately. She also knows her mother isn’t of the same mind. She hovers, sometimes, checking up on what they’re doing. At the table, she doesn’t really speak to Kyle, barely even acknowledges his presence. She tolerates him, but that’s about it.
All it does is make Zoe want to be even closer to him.
“No, seriously, listen to this.”
She rolls over onto her belly and casts a look up at Kyle. He’s dragged an armchair up to the window and is staring out at the garden, hands resting in his lap, his blond locks catching the last dying light of the day. She’s on the floor in front of the fire place. A picture perfect scenario, if it hadn’t been for the forlorn look on his face and the invisible ball and chain around her ankle.
“You'll be sick or feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for the first time in your life. It won't matter. Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you'll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all.”
Outside, it starts to snow again. Miniature clouds of fluffy crystallized water. They come by the thousands, have been putting the country under siege for well over a week now. Ice moves fast and like it has a mind. Like it knows it killed the world once and has a taste for murder.
“For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you.” Zoe glances at Kyle to make sure he’s paying attention. He is.
“Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how.”
Kyle shifts in his seat, tugs at the sleeve of his sweater. His hands, like the rest of him, are big somehow. Weathered. They look rough, like he’s been doing intense manual labor out on some field for months, instead of trailing behind a spoiled girl in a mansion.
“Do you think something’s shifting inside you?”
“I hope it is,” she replies instantly, her own dainty fingers stroking the page of her book, furling the edge of it. “I hate the place I’m in right now…” she swallows, “I hate the way I am.”
“I don’t,” he offers softly, and tears his black eyes away from her again before she can follow up the sudden way her jaw goes slack with a reply, turns them back on the garden, the trees of the Northern wood in the distance.
Zoe’s heart skips a beat. Her bones suddenly feel too heavy. They drag her down, make her melt slowly into the plush carpet.
~*~
The heavy gate separating the vast property that over the years has grown too small to contain her, too familiar to satisfy her sense of wonder and curiosity, creaks dangerously when Kyle pushes it open. He struggles with it, as if the damned thing is pushing back. Unyielding iron versus strong arms. Right before he manages to get it open enough for a person to go through, it almost screams, the hinges protesting her new-found freedom.
Freedom.
Zoe’s shivering with excitement, her limbs tense and eyes expectant. She feels a strange stillness inside of her that doesn’t match the way her heart is hammering in her chest. She’s waited so long for this moment, now that it’s finally here she’s almost afraid to grab hold of it and make it hers. She can feel her mother’s eyes burning holes in her back, even though she and Kyle have long since disappeared from sight; the mansion is so far removed from the front gate, it’d be impossible for her to see them even through the window in the attic. Her witches den.
She’d wanted to come with, of course, but Zoe had thrown her a look so foul it had, for once, stopped her in her tracks.
Kyle grunts, pushes hard, and the gate finally surrenders, opens all the way.
The gravel makes a crisp sound under the soles of her laced up boots as she walks forward. It’s like music to her ears.
“Holy shit,” she breathes, looking up at the sky. It’s completely white, an endless blank canvas that matches the one beneath her feet perfectly. The thick scarf around her neck and her wide brimmed hat can’t prevent her cheeks and nose from growing cold and she can’t believe she’s actually feeling it. Feeling the cold outside, rather than in her own little wonderland prison, and if it’s the same exact cold, she doesn’t care. To her it isn’t.
“I’m out!” She spins around to look back at Kyle and realizes she’s only five steps removed from the gate. They’re five incredibly important steps, though.
“You are,” he agrees with a smile, rubbing his hands together because even though they’re both dressed for winter, they stupidly forgot gloves. “Ready to go see the lake?”
She eyes the white skates around his neck and her whole face lights up when she smiles back.
“So ready.”
~*~
She’s flying.
The blades of her skates are etching swirls and lines into the milky white ice. Skitch shhhhhh, skitch shhhhhhhh. Like smoothly dragging the point of a knife over glass. Zoe’s eyes are going teary and the cold wind bites at her nose and ears, but her chest feels like it’s going to burst at any given moment.
Kyle’s sitting on the edge of the lake, his boots on the ice and elbows on his knees, arms hanging loosely between them. He laughs when she whooshes past him, strands of dark brown hair flying after her, getting in her face when she glides into a sudden stop and turns her body around to face him.
“Are you freezing your ass off yet?” She’s been skating for what? Half an hour?
“Starting to feel like it, yeah.” He squints up at her and raises a hand to shield his eyes from the rays of sunlight that are managing to break through the canopy of clouds. She’s pleased to see that the corners of his mouth are turned up.
“Maybe you should get up here, then.”
“I don’t have any skates.”
“I can see that.” She cocks a brow, gives him a grin. “You should still get up here. Come on, I’ll help.”
When she gracefully crosses the short distance between them and extends both of her hands, a flicker of doubt crosses over Kyle’s face, makes his nose crinkle and Addams apple bob. Zoe chuckles, wobbles a little when she bends down to grab his hands.
“It’s okay. Nice and easy.”
She draws him up on the ice with her. It’s clear that he doesn’t trust the way it feels under his boots, just as hard as the frozen ground but infinitely more slippery. He’s careful when he attempts a step forward, and she can feel his fingers clench around hers as he slides his foot towards her.
“I don’t like this,” he tells her, matter-of-fact. His eyes are fixed on his feet. Another step.
“Don’t be a baby. You’re doing great.”
Kyle lets out a doubtful noise, something between a groan and a whine, coming from deep inside his throat.
She gets him halfway to the middle of the lake, anyway, because if there’s one thing Zoe has learned in the time she’s known Kyle it’s that -apart from reading books- he’ll do pretty much anything to please her. The knowledge makes her feel giddy inside, comfortably warm despite the winter chill. Safe.
He doesn’t let go of her. If anything, he moves even closer, placing his hands on her shoulders as the air between them turns into a smoke-like swirl of mingling breath. Looking at him so closely makes her feel a little light-headed, and it throws her so much that she almost hopes it’s her illness striking again, rather than the strong line of his jaw and the freckle on the tip of his nose.
“You’re steady on your feet for someone who hasn’t skated in a while.”
Zoe smiles and looks down between them.
“I’ve dreamt about it enough. More times than I can count. I guess it’s like riding a bike, you know? Once you’ve learned how, all it takes is getting on one to remember.”
“I guess. No one’s ever taught me.”
“No one’s ever taught you how to ride a bike?” She snorts, incredulous.
“No.” The look in his eyes when they meet hers combined with the way he says it makes her sober up quickly.
“That’s kind of sad.”
Kyle shrugs. “I know how to do other things.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
He gives her a boyish, lopsided grin and takes her bare hands in his.
“My hands are cold.” It’s possibly the most stupidly unnecessary thing she’s ever said.
“I know.”
He doesn’t seem bothered, just draws them up to his face. His chapped lips brush over the side of her fingers, so soft and brief that she might have dreamt his touch had she not been so startlingly and suddenly awake, aware of every little detail.
His eyes are like Medusa’s. She’s transfixed by them, frozen in place much like the Greek heroes of old who crossed the Gorgon’s path. Doomed.
Her fingers tingle slightly as they’re made instantly warmer by his breath. He’s blowing on them, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips. Zoe opens her mouth but says nothing. Can’t.
“There,” he says when he’s done, when he’s effectively chased away the bite of winter from her flesh and bones. Her heart. Zoe swallows the lump that has started to form in her throat and gives him a weak, watery smile.
“Thanks.”
Kyle’s cheeks dimple when he gives her a smile of his own and rather than letting go of her hands again, pulls them into the holes of his jacket, his sweater. For someone who’s not dressed as warmly as she is, his body radiates heat like a furnace. Zoe sighs, puts fingers around his lower arms. They’re firm, like she expected them to be.
“That’s really nice.”
He cocks his head at her. There are curls falling into his eyes.
“If you’re getting too cold, we should probably go back.”
“No!” The word rushes past her lips. “Just… just a little while longer, please.”
He hesitates. “Are you sure? Your mother…”
Her mother will kill Kyle if she gets sick or they stay gone too long, and probably her with him, she knows. Especially because she didn’t really want them to leave the property in the first place. Easier to make a corpse stay put than a teenage girl.
“Don’t worry about her.”
“It’s kinda hard not to.”
Inside the sleeves of his sweater, her fingers tighten around his arms. “I’ll trade kisses for minutes.”
Because she wants to shackle the hands of time and make the moment of freedom last. Because she’s been curious about this too, whatever it is. More than anything else. Raging teenage hormones, sexuality, love. Because she’s fairly sure it would piss off her mother and she wants to know what it feels like to be a rebel at least once in her life.
Because his lips have been tempting her for a while now and she’s read once that the only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.
Kyle’s eyes open a little wider and so does his mouth, but his is not the shocked expression -the jaw dropping bewilderment- she was expecting and sort of hoping for. Zoe inhales deeply, her breath shuddering a little on the exhale, and waits.
“Okay.”
She arches a brow at him -can’t help herself, really- because there’s nothing of the sheer nervousness she’s feeling in the way he says it at all. But then he’s leaning in to collect, and her mind goes completely blank. Her heart takes over.
It’s not her first kiss, not technically, but it’s the first one that makes liquid fire rush through her veins. Kyle kisses the same way he looks at her when she feels the walls closing in, the same way he very nearly stands at attention whenever her mother waltzes into the room: strong, calm, grounded.
There’s nothing of the clumsiness she’d come to associate with kissing, or the awkward, wandering hands. Just lips, slick with spit and dragging over hers a little when he pulls away only to descend on her mouth again and be placed slightly more to the left or the right. The push and pull, the pressure, makes it easy for Zoe to melt against him. When she feels the tip of his tongue press against the seam of her lips, begging entrance, she surrenders willingly.
Wind and snow particles whip around them, the coldness tearing at their exposed cheeks, but she doesn’t care; his lips are warm.
~*~
She knows.
Zoe doesn’t have the slightest clue how it happened -how it is even possible- but her mother knows.
At dinner, she keeps her eyes on her plate. Eats quietly and without protest, even though Moira’s cooked Brussels sprouts and the mere smell of them makes her want to gag. Kyle’s quiet, too, at the other side of the table. He pushes his vegetables around a little on his plate before he eats them, but eat them he does.
They don’t talk. They don’t play footsie under the table. They barely even look at each other, even though Zoe finds it almost unbearably hard not to.
Perhaps it’s that eagerness, that longing even when she’s focusing on her dinner, that’s showing on her face and giving her away, because her mother turns to her and…
“My, you’re glowing.”
Zoe looks up at her, doesn’t take her eyes off her mother’s face as she takes another bite, and she acts about a million times calmer than she’s feeling.
“I went outside today. Of course I’m glowing.”
“Nooo,” her mother draws out the word, flashes a little smile that makes Zoe want to scream because it’s so knowing and clearly meant to make her squirm on her chair, “that’s not it.”
Zoe clenches her jaw. Her heart’s hammering inside her chest.
“What else would it be?”
Her mother says nothing, though Zoe swears she sees the arch of her brow twitch ever so slightly before she turns back to her food.
“Good grief, this tastes like something the cat hacked up. Moira!”
For the first time since they sat down for dinner, Zoe chances a look at Kyle. At his face, not just his hands. He glances up from his plate almost immediately, as if he’s able to feel her eyes on him. Has trained himself to.
Zoe knows that her mother knows, but in that very moment she also becomes painfully aware of the fact that she’s not going to give him up. No way, no how. She’s the one who brought him into her life; she can’t very well blame her for digging her nails in and holding on to him now.
As Moira walks into the room, pristinely white towel in hand, Zoe extends her leg under the table and aligns the sides of their feet.
He doesn’t pull away.
~*~
Despite all the disapproval and discontent that seems to drip from her mother, slow and steady like resin down a tree, they venture out more. Zoe teaches Kyle how to ride a bike, which is no small feat considering the weather and the size of him compared to her own small frame. It takes some effort and a lot of snow shoveling but they manage.
“Don’t go so fast!” She’s peddling after him, breathless. Her lungs hurt as much as her cheeks do. She’s smiling so wide. Laughing.
Kyle predictably loses his balance when he tries to look back over his shoulder at her, and steers himself right into a snow bank.
“Kyle!”
She doesn’t bother to actually put on the brakes, just hops off and leaves her bike to land where it falls. She pushes a strand of hair back behind her ear as she carefully approaches him, crouches down so she can see the damage up close and personal.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
He’s fine, just pulls his leg out from under his bike as if nothing happened and hoists himself up into a sitting position. There’s snow sticking in his hair and to the side of his face.
Zoe bites her lip to keep from grinning.
“Nice going,” she teases.
Kyle shrugs good-naturedly and reaches for her, tugs at the cinched belt around her waist, and it’s her turn to lose her balance as she falls into his arms. He rubs his nose against hers and it’s such a ridiculously tender and sweet gesture, Zoe feels like she needs to suck his lower lip between hers just to balance things out. So she does, and he lets her, whimpering slightly when she introduces her teeth to the mix only seconds in. She drags them over the inside, gnaws at his lips a little and coaxes his tongue out. It’s sloppy, intense.
Tender and sweet aren’t for her.
~*~
Hands under sweaters and fingers on heated skin.
Stolen touches in the library, the hallway, against a tree in the Northern wood, against her tree. Far removed from prying eyes, the freckles of which would align perfectly with her own, because they’re more alike than Zoe would ever care to admit.
She craves the taste of him like an addict and takes her kisses from him like she’s getting her fix.
~*~
Whoever first came up with the phrase “nothing good can last” was a major cunt and also completely and utterly right.
She’s sick again. Violently so.
Cordelia only leaves her bedside to get fresh towels. Kyle bites the nail of his thumb and wants to help but mostly just gets in the way. Her mother’s nowhere to be seen.
She works up a fever high enough that it makes her hallucinate. It seems to burn through her, makes her stick to the thin blankets Cordelia keeps covering her with, in spite of her weak protests. She wants them off, wants the windows open so the wind is free to sweep snow inside her bedroom.
There are carrion birds instead. They shatter the glass, make it explode into a million sharp grains of salt that pop and ping as they bounce off the walls. Somehow they get under her door, too. Their beaks are smeared in blood and the noise they make is unbearable. Zoe tries to cover her ears with her hands, but she can’t move. There are thorny vines protruding from her mattress and coiling around her limbs like boa constrictors.
She opens her mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. She’s mute, soon to be blind because there are birds landing on either side of her pillow, waiting for the light in her eyes to dim so they can pick them out of her skull.
Her mother appears at the end of her bed, dressed all in white. This is how she knows that she’s ailing, dreaming even though her heart is beating inside her chest at the speed of a colibri’s wings and she can feel her insides curl into knots. It all feels startlingly real but it’s not, none of it is; her mother would never wear any other color than black.
“Zoe.”
She’s never heard anyone spit out her name like that, like she’s something foul and bitter tasting.
Again, she opens her mouth to speak but it’s useless. Tears start to well in the corners of her eyes.
“Zoe… Zoe!”
When she opens them, it’s Cordelia she sees. She’s hovering over her, a cool hand placed on her forehead. There’s no mistaking the way her brows are furrowed together and her eyes widen. She’s worried.
“Hey,” she croaks and smiles weakly in an attempt to comfort her. She looks over her sister’s shoulder. Kyle’s standing right behind her. She smiles at him too, or at least makes a valiant effort to.
Cordelia doesn’t say anything, just strokes her hair.
“The doctor will be here soon.”
It’s her mother’s voice. Zoe sees her come into the room out of the corner of her eye.
“No!” She wants to shout but the word’s barely a whisper.
Cordelia bows her head and looks away. There’s tension around her mouth and in her shoulders.
“He’ll fix this. Just you wait.”
~*~
He fixes it, alright. Of course he does.
He fixes it by pumping her full of medicine and putting an end to her little trips with Kyle.
No amount of glowering, screaming, protesting or crying helps to change her mother’s mind about the strict orders. Not that she ever really expected it would, but it’s nice just to get the frustration -the helplessness- off her chest.
~*~
“Look!”
Zoe glances up at Kyle. She’s perched on the edge of her bed, hair swept to one side so she can make a fishtail braid, or attempt to, anyway. Only half way through and she’s already losing her patience; her hair’s too shiny and the strands keep sliding through her fingers.
Kyle’s juggling three cups in the air, his eyes fixed on the fragile China.
“You’re actually doing it!” Zoe chuckles, though the wide smile she gives him doesn’t quite reach her eyes. Her mood, like the weather, has been getting progressively worse. Too long she’s been cooped up inside again. She never thought she’d be able to forget four years in captivity, but somewhere along the way she had. It was strange, just how quickly she’d taken the outside world -being able to be part of it, at least in some ways- for granted again.
Kyle catches the cups -two in his right hand and one in his left, though all three could have easily fitted in one of his palms- and beams at her. Zoe lets the braid slip from her hands and bites her lip. She appreciates his efforts to cheer her up, to offer her a distraction, however brief, from the situation she’s in, but it isn’t enough.
She wants to feel the way she did that day they went ice skating, or the morning they rode their bikes to the local market.
She just wants to feel something. Anything but this endless tristesse.
“Come here.”
She holds her hand out for him to take, reaches for him the same way she’s done countless times before and just like each and every single one of those times, he comes. Willingly and eagerly; the cups can’t be placed aside quickly enough.
From the way he looks at her as he approaches, it’s obvious that he thinks he knows what she wants.
He’s wrong.
Her hands find his shirt once he’s close enough and tug him towards her, until he’s standing right between her spread legs with his knees pressed against the mattress. There’s adoration in her eyes when they meet his, but mostly there’s lust. Smoldering like hot coals behind her irises.
She doesn’t take them off Kyle’s face as she slips both of her hands under the worn fabric of his shirt and starts the slow ascend of her palms on his skin. His abdominal muscles instantly tighten and flex, and she thinks she can hear him let out a soft, shuddery sigh.
“I want you to do something for me.” Her voice is slow like molasses, a lot more steady than the beat of her heart.
His lips part slightly and she sees him swallow, interrupts before he can say anything.
“You don’t have to read. Actually, it’s something I read.” She doesn’t even realize she’s dragging her teeth over her lower lip. “Can you-I want you to get on your knees.”
Kyle raises his brows and his eyes shine with something she can’t quite place. Mischief, perhaps… definitely interest.
“That’s it? Just that?” She feels like he’s teasing her and it makes her bolder, because she’s the one who’s calling the shots, or she’s supposed to be anyway.
“I want you to get on your knees and kiss me.”
“You want me to get on my knees and go down on you,” he corrects.
She drags her nails over his skin to mask the way her fingers tremble, but she can’t hide the sudden flushing of her cheeks. She doesn’t know why she’s surprised by the fact that he’s taking initiative -he’d been the first to lean in that faithful day on the lake, after all, and had clearly known what he was doing too- but she is a little.
“I…”
“What book did you read that in?” He asks, giving her a crooked smile but his voice is significantly lower than it was seconds before.
“I thought you didn’t want anything to do with books.”
“Fair enough.”
He goes down carefully, letting his hands run over the top of her thighs, her stockings. Zoe sucks at her teeth and feels her hands go surprisingly clammy now that they can no longer rely on the flat expanse of his belly and chest to keep them steady. Kyle picks up on it before the tips of his fingers reach the hem of her skirt.
“It’s okay… I want to.”
She didn’t realize consent was an issue before he brings it up, because if the butterflies he’s been giving her are more like ravenous bats in intensity, he’s still employed by her mother. He’s still there to protect and look after her and she highly doubts this was what Fiona had in mind when she gave him the job.
She wants to call the shots, but she doesn’t want to be in a position of true power.
“I really, really want to,” he breathes, and pushes her skirt up until it gets caught around her waist, hooks his fingers in her stockings next and drags them all the way down her legs. She needs to lay back on the bed in order for him to do so and while the nerves rushing through her system are almost enough to kill her, the only thing she’s ever anticipated more was her freedom.
Zoe doesn’t look down at him, just keeps her eyes firmly fixed on the ceiling above her. She focuses on a handful of glow in the dark stars she put up there when she was little, with a little help from Cordelia. They’re the only things keeping her grounded when she feels his lips ghost over her sex, his hand gently drawing her right leg over his shoulder to give him more room.
She’s touched herself before - of course she has- without shame and often, but the tip of his nose brushing through the small tuft of hair makes her feel as if it’s the first time. As if she’s only just now become aware of the fact that she has a cunt, that it gets wet and hungry for friction. That it’s a gateway to paradise when touched just right.
Kyle knows how to touch her. It’s scary, but he does.
She feels his tongue, warm and wet and surprisingly firm bear down on her and her toes curl already -pathetically because he hasn’t really done much of anything yet but God.
“Hm,” she utters softly, the tension inside her body subsiding a little as he repeats the motion, moans against her slit in kind and it’s all just a slippery slope downhill after that.
When Zoe comes eventually, it’s with both of her arms above her head, one of her hands flat against her headboard, pushing at it. When she comes eventually, she’s way too loud and her legs tense around his head, shake with the intensity of her orgasm.
When she comes eventually, it’s with her eyes cinched shut and the image of him burning on the back of her lids.
It’s nothing compared to the way he looks when she comes back down to earth and musters up the courage to raise her head a little and look down between her legs. His lips and chin are slick with her come, with his spit. His hair’s damp and sticking to his forehead and he’s grinning, is looking at her like she’s the center of his world.
Maybe she is, but he’s the one who keeps hers spinning.
~*~
She gets so caught up in Kyle the following weeks, that she doesn’t notice. She doesn’t notice the worried look that slowly seems to engrave itself on Cordelia’s face, or the way her mother retreats to her room more and more often.
She doesn’t notice until she walks in on the both of them almost by accident. They’re sitting across from each other, each on their own thousand dollar sofa and not saying a word. Her sister has one of her hands over her mouth and is looking out the window. Her mother’s nursing what looks to be an alcoholic drink. She’s slumping, legs laid out in front of her; Zoe’s never seen her do that before.
When she notices her standing there in the doorway, she snorts almost inaudibly and gives her a rueful, little smile. “You’re killing me, kid.”
It’s not meant to be funny, not meant to be a joke. It’s the most hurtful thing she’s ever thrown at her head, and there have been many harsh words said on just as many occasions. Zoe combats the way her lower lip shivers for a split second by grinding her teeth together.
She doesn’t know the context, but she doesn’t need any. Is sure that it’s just another one of her mother’s crazy illusions. Ideas.
“Not fast enough.”
Cordelia whips her head around to face her at that, shocked, but Zoe’s gone before she can say anything. The sound of her mother’s laughter haunts her all the way up the stairs.
~*~
Ravel filters through the walls. Downstairs, her mother is drowning herself in despair and brandy but Zoe… Zoe has never felt more alive.
O joie de mon âme ( *)
The dim candle light throws shadows over his bare torso, his face, transforms him into something terrifyingly beautiful or beautifully terrifying. Her bodyguard, her lover, her first. Zoe shivers as she kneels up on the bed and draws her nightgown over her head. A sudden shyness overcomes her, unexpected and unbidden, because her body is just that: hers. Not too skinny or too small or too plain, and she has shared it with him before.
This is different, though. This feels infinitely more important.
Joie de mon cœur
She blushes and looks down, the tresses of her dark blonde hair falling forward and aiding the shadows in her attempt to hide her face from him. Kyle is having none of it, however; he reaches for her chin and tilts it up, looks right through her and into her soul when their eyes meet. Zoe lets out a small sigh and goose pimples appear on her pale skin, her nipples pebble.
Trésor qui m'est si cher
Kyle leans in to kiss her, reaches down to take both of her hands in his and places them on his body. He’s firm to the touch, solid, and Zoe lets her fingers roam, trails them over his chest, his shoulders, his biceps. She likes how her touch leaves his muscles clenching in its wake, because her own belly is sucked in, tight as a coiled spring where he’s touching her.
He slips his tongue into her mouth and she loses herself, isn’t even mad or scared about it.
Joie de l'âme et du cœur
He pushes her down on the mattress and they try to find an understanding, searching for some middle ground between the last of her reservations and his complete willingness. The sheer weight of his body on hers makes her whimper, and she hitches on leg up around his waist, her heel bearing down against the curve of his ass.
Toi que j'aime ardemment
Kyle reaches down between their bodies to guide himself inside of her, rubs the head of his cock back and forth once over the part of her that’s wet for him, that aches, before he pushes all the way in. Zoe gasps and arches her back, feels like she’s drowning, leaves finger-shaped marks on the broad expanse of his back and buries her face in the crook of his neck because she doesn’t think she’ll survive if she looks into his eyes.
Tu es plus beau, plus beau qu'un ange.
There’s no space left between them, between their slick skin, not even a breath, and it’s more meaningful a conversation than any she’s had before, without so much as a single word being said. All she needs are Kyle’s muffled groans against her temple, into her hair, the way his hips rock into hers, the sound her headboard makes as it bangs against the wall. The want and desire and desperation behind his thrusts.
She doesn’t need to look at the ceiling in order to see stars that night.
~*~
Asleep, Kyle looks ethereal in the moonlight, otherworldly. In the early morning sun he's even more beautiful, light catching on the sharp angles of his shoulder blades, turning the curves and twists of his body soft, gentle, his skin warm beneath Zoe’s open palms. She lets her hands roam over his body, over every part of him. She works her way down his nape and shoulder blades, lets her fingers dance over the dip of his spine and squeeze his ass. Waits.
When he turns in his slumber, she repeats the process with his front. Drags gentle fingers down the hollow of his throat, around his nipples, down the downy trail of hair running along his lower abdomen. She fondles his flaccid cock before she sits up, letting the sheet fall down her naked body as she does so, and moves her hand down his legs. She bends to press a soft kiss on each of his knee caps and works her way up his left leg, nuzzles at the crease of his thigh, sucks gently at his hipbone. Directs her attention to his balls, cups them as she runs the flat of his tongue over the thick vein that runs along the underside of his cock. Tries to be delicate when she wraps her lips around the head, but eagerness makes her sloppy.
He wakes quickly after that.
~*~
The sun is bearing down on what little remains of the heavy snow winter brought with it. It’s dripping from the branches in thick drops and small streams, resulting in a steady and relaxing noise, a natural beat. If she closes her eyes, Zoe can imagine herself standing in the middle of a rainforest, surrounded by exotic plants and vibrant colors, by heat and untamed life.
She isn’t, though.
She’s standing on the edge of the terrace, her heels inside the house and her toes just out of it. Cordelia threw open the doors earlier - “To let in some air, the winds of change”- and Zoe instantly took to them like a moth to a flame, claimed the space for her and Kyle alone.
Kyle…
The sheer, white curtains in the doorway are blowing gently in the winter breeze, at times falling in front of her face like a wedding veil. She steps into them, lets them cover her skin, kiss the tip of her nose and her lips as she tilts her chin slightly up.
He’s watching her. Even through the curtain, she can see the blond shock of his hair against the winter paleness and the bright green of a spring waiting to be born. He’s throwing seeds and dried berries for the birds, some of the last they will get this season. Once when she was little, she’d asked her mother why they couldn’t just feed them year round. The answer had been that if they did, they’d grow lazy and too plentiful. Typical for her.
Survival of the fittest.
She spreads her arms and wraps them around the curtain, brings both of her hands up to her chest in a pose similar to the ones she’d seen the old statues in the graveyard in. The weeping women and guardian angels.
Kyle drops the last of the berries from his hand and walks over to her, seeks out the shape of her face with his fingers. Her eyes close and so do his; they don’t need them. Not for this.
Before he tilts his head down, before his lips descend on hers through the curtain -her makeshift veil- warm and familiar, she whispers three little words. The words.
“I love you.”
~*~
She doesn’t get sick again. On the contrary, she starts to glow with radiant health. Feels stronger than she ever has before. More joyful and alive.
Before long, the day comes she and Kyle inevitably make the long walk up to the gate again. Doctor’s orders: get some fresh air. When she looks up over her shoulder at the window of the attic, she thinks she sees movement behind the curtain. Just a brief glimmer and then it’s gone.
~*~
Her mother’s death falls on a Wednesday.
Cordelia informs her after she and Kyle return from town, immediately tells her it’s better that she doesn’t see the body when she asks about it; better to remember her the way she was in life instead of in death. It’s overwhelming just how easily Fiona slipped through the cracks… how easy any signs of her impending demise had been to ignore during those last few weeks. Zoe always imagined her mother would go kicking and screaming, if she ever would. Not quietly, as if she was never even there.
How could someone like Fiona Goode simply fade away?
She feels like she should want to cry, should want to seek comfort in the arm Kyle wraps around her and the soft words he whispers against the shell of her ear. Like the ground of the Northern wood and her windows during her last winter in captivity, however, her heart is frozen. She feels the indifference her mother would have applauded her for had she still been around. The strength of the Goode women she’s never been able to grasp until now.
Arrangements need to be made. Are made.
They put her soul to rest, or what’s left of it. Her mother is buried in sand and her sister in paperwork, at least for a while. Neither one of them wants the mansion; Zoe because it holds too many memories, Cordelia because it doesn’t hold enough. So all the rooms are cleared, and the attic with it or so Zoe assumes -she hasn’t gone back up there, doesn’t feel the need to- and Kyle opens the gate for her for the very last time.
She turns as he closes it behind their backs, tells him to give her a minute and stays rooted in place as Cordelia waits in the car for them.
A beat, as she looks at her makeshift prison, her golden cage, one last time.
“I’m out, you’re in.”
~*~
Prologue
She walks through the Northern wood one last time, after her children are grown and their children. Her feet still know the way, remember all the paths -beaten or not- and guide her effortlessly to the front of the mansion, to the garden where her tree stands. Abandoned now, after the last owners died more than ten years ago.
Though anyone will say it’s impossible, like her it has shrunk. Its branches bending heavily under the weight of its leaves. Memories come flooding back, of the winters she spent in captivity and the one that changed everything. That brought her Kyle. That took her mother.
Her mother…
She’s convinced in the last years of her life even more than she was in the first of it, that Fiona somehow found a way to poison her. That for whatever reason, she intentionally bound her to the mansion, kept her from the outside world. Cordelia never spoke a word about it, never confirmed or denied her suspicions. She took that secret to her grave, if it was ever hers to have. Possibly their mother had worked alone, like she’d lived the better part of her life. With insanity as her sole companion. Eyeballs and toads in the dark.
You had your madness, but you failed to make it mine.
She walks up to the tree, runs a wrinkled hand over the bark. When she looks up at its crown, she thinks she sees a curtain move out of the corner of her eye, behind the glass of the highest window. Her fingers trail down the trunk of the tree, find the scars her mother’s axe left there so long ago.
The same as those on Kyle’s back.
-FIN-
PROMPT GIVEN TO AUTHOR:
1. Please List Preferred Characters and/or Pairings: Tate/Violet or Zoe/Kyle
2. Squicks or characters/pairings you do not want in your gift: No Madison or Asylum
3. Possible Scenarios/Themes/Lines to incorporate:
Possible themes: AU Kyle and Zoe?
(additional information: Maybe something AU where Zoe is Fiona's midlife crisis baby and Zoe meets Kyle before she knows she's a witch...
maybe like she thinks her mom is just crazy and rebels with Kyle and then realizes she's a witch...
maybe sans the poisoned vagina though.)
4. Youtube link a SONG to describe the overall theme you would like:
Sweater Weather, the Neighborhood
5. Preferred Rating: Any
6. Strictly Canon, AU, Doesn’t Matter?: Doesn't Matter
Author: hourofthewitch
Summary:Spoilers/Warning/Triggers: I don’t want to give too much away, but expect some sexual situations, mild horror/spooky stuff, and dealings with (mental) illness.
Author Notes:First and foremost, I want to thank jandjsalmon for her tireless efforts towards making this exchange work and her limitless patience. It was (at times) a rough ride, with more bumps than I’d anticipated but I couldn't have asked for a better moderator along the way. As for the writer I wrote this for, I sincerely hope you enjoy. This fic is AU, though I tried to subtly incorporate elements from canon here and there. I hope I did the characters and your prompt justice! I was heavily inspired by the song you provided, along with this image I found.
( Frozen 1/2 )
~*~
“You’re really missing out, you know.”
“I don’t think so.”
Two days before the doctor visits again. Even though the library still seems to make Kyle uncomfortable and he’s yet to pick up a book, they spend a significant amount of time in there. Together.
Zoe knows Cordelia approves; rather than getting angry, she smiles at her whenever she rushes through an assignment lately. She also knows her mother isn’t of the same mind. She hovers, sometimes, checking up on what they’re doing. At the table, she doesn’t really speak to Kyle, barely even acknowledges his presence. She tolerates him, but that’s about it.
All it does is make Zoe want to be even closer to him.
“No, seriously, listen to this.”
She rolls over onto her belly and casts a look up at Kyle. He’s dragged an armchair up to the window and is staring out at the garden, hands resting in his lap, his blond locks catching the last dying light of the day. She’s on the floor in front of the fire place. A picture perfect scenario, if it hadn’t been for the forlorn look on his face and the invisible ball and chain around her ankle.
“You'll be sick or feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for the first time in your life. It won't matter. Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you'll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all.”
Outside, it starts to snow again. Miniature clouds of fluffy crystallized water. They come by the thousands, have been putting the country under siege for well over a week now. Ice moves fast and like it has a mind. Like it knows it killed the world once and has a taste for murder.
“For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you.” Zoe glances at Kyle to make sure he’s paying attention. He is.
“Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how.”
Kyle shifts in his seat, tugs at the sleeve of his sweater. His hands, like the rest of him, are big somehow. Weathered. They look rough, like he’s been doing intense manual labor out on some field for months, instead of trailing behind a spoiled girl in a mansion.
“Do you think something’s shifting inside you?”
“I hope it is,” she replies instantly, her own dainty fingers stroking the page of her book, furling the edge of it. “I hate the place I’m in right now…” she swallows, “I hate the way I am.”
“I don’t,” he offers softly, and tears his black eyes away from her again before she can follow up the sudden way her jaw goes slack with a reply, turns them back on the garden, the trees of the Northern wood in the distance.
Zoe’s heart skips a beat. Her bones suddenly feel too heavy. They drag her down, make her melt slowly into the plush carpet.
~*~
The heavy gate separating the vast property that over the years has grown too small to contain her, too familiar to satisfy her sense of wonder and curiosity, creaks dangerously when Kyle pushes it open. He struggles with it, as if the damned thing is pushing back. Unyielding iron versus strong arms. Right before he manages to get it open enough for a person to go through, it almost screams, the hinges protesting her new-found freedom.
Freedom.
Zoe’s shivering with excitement, her limbs tense and eyes expectant. She feels a strange stillness inside of her that doesn’t match the way her heart is hammering in her chest. She’s waited so long for this moment, now that it’s finally here she’s almost afraid to grab hold of it and make it hers. She can feel her mother’s eyes burning holes in her back, even though she and Kyle have long since disappeared from sight; the mansion is so far removed from the front gate, it’d be impossible for her to see them even through the window in the attic. Her witches den.
She’d wanted to come with, of course, but Zoe had thrown her a look so foul it had, for once, stopped her in her tracks.
Kyle grunts, pushes hard, and the gate finally surrenders, opens all the way.
The gravel makes a crisp sound under the soles of her laced up boots as she walks forward. It’s like music to her ears.
“Holy shit,” she breathes, looking up at the sky. It’s completely white, an endless blank canvas that matches the one beneath her feet perfectly. The thick scarf around her neck and her wide brimmed hat can’t prevent her cheeks and nose from growing cold and she can’t believe she’s actually feeling it. Feeling the cold outside, rather than in her own little wonderland prison, and if it’s the same exact cold, she doesn’t care. To her it isn’t.
“I’m out!” She spins around to look back at Kyle and realizes she’s only five steps removed from the gate. They’re five incredibly important steps, though.
“You are,” he agrees with a smile, rubbing his hands together because even though they’re both dressed for winter, they stupidly forgot gloves. “Ready to go see the lake?”
She eyes the white skates around his neck and her whole face lights up when she smiles back.
“So ready.”
~*~
She’s flying.
The blades of her skates are etching swirls and lines into the milky white ice. Skitch shhhhhh, skitch shhhhhhhh. Like smoothly dragging the point of a knife over glass. Zoe’s eyes are going teary and the cold wind bites at her nose and ears, but her chest feels like it’s going to burst at any given moment.
Kyle’s sitting on the edge of the lake, his boots on the ice and elbows on his knees, arms hanging loosely between them. He laughs when she whooshes past him, strands of dark brown hair flying after her, getting in her face when she glides into a sudden stop and turns her body around to face him.
“Are you freezing your ass off yet?” She’s been skating for what? Half an hour?
“Starting to feel like it, yeah.” He squints up at her and raises a hand to shield his eyes from the rays of sunlight that are managing to break through the canopy of clouds. She’s pleased to see that the corners of his mouth are turned up.
“Maybe you should get up here, then.”
“I don’t have any skates.”
“I can see that.” She cocks a brow, gives him a grin. “You should still get up here. Come on, I’ll help.”
When she gracefully crosses the short distance between them and extends both of her hands, a flicker of doubt crosses over Kyle’s face, makes his nose crinkle and Addams apple bob. Zoe chuckles, wobbles a little when she bends down to grab his hands.
“It’s okay. Nice and easy.”
She draws him up on the ice with her. It’s clear that he doesn’t trust the way it feels under his boots, just as hard as the frozen ground but infinitely more slippery. He’s careful when he attempts a step forward, and she can feel his fingers clench around hers as he slides his foot towards her.
“I don’t like this,” he tells her, matter-of-fact. His eyes are fixed on his feet. Another step.
“Don’t be a baby. You’re doing great.”
Kyle lets out a doubtful noise, something between a groan and a whine, coming from deep inside his throat.
She gets him halfway to the middle of the lake, anyway, because if there’s one thing Zoe has learned in the time she’s known Kyle it’s that -apart from reading books- he’ll do pretty much anything to please her. The knowledge makes her feel giddy inside, comfortably warm despite the winter chill. Safe.
He doesn’t let go of her. If anything, he moves even closer, placing his hands on her shoulders as the air between them turns into a smoke-like swirl of mingling breath. Looking at him so closely makes her feel a little light-headed, and it throws her so much that she almost hopes it’s her illness striking again, rather than the strong line of his jaw and the freckle on the tip of his nose.
“You’re steady on your feet for someone who hasn’t skated in a while.”
Zoe smiles and looks down between them.
“I’ve dreamt about it enough. More times than I can count. I guess it’s like riding a bike, you know? Once you’ve learned how, all it takes is getting on one to remember.”
“I guess. No one’s ever taught me.”
“No one’s ever taught you how to ride a bike?” She snorts, incredulous.
“No.” The look in his eyes when they meet hers combined with the way he says it makes her sober up quickly.
“That’s kind of sad.”
Kyle shrugs. “I know how to do other things.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
He gives her a boyish, lopsided grin and takes her bare hands in his.
“My hands are cold.” It’s possibly the most stupidly unnecessary thing she’s ever said.
“I know.”
He doesn’t seem bothered, just draws them up to his face. His chapped lips brush over the side of her fingers, so soft and brief that she might have dreamt his touch had she not been so startlingly and suddenly awake, aware of every little detail.
His eyes are like Medusa’s. She’s transfixed by them, frozen in place much like the Greek heroes of old who crossed the Gorgon’s path. Doomed.
Her fingers tingle slightly as they’re made instantly warmer by his breath. He’s blowing on them, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips. Zoe opens her mouth but says nothing. Can’t.
“There,” he says when he’s done, when he’s effectively chased away the bite of winter from her flesh and bones. Her heart. Zoe swallows the lump that has started to form in her throat and gives him a weak, watery smile.
“Thanks.”
Kyle’s cheeks dimple when he gives her a smile of his own and rather than letting go of her hands again, pulls them into the holes of his jacket, his sweater. For someone who’s not dressed as warmly as she is, his body radiates heat like a furnace. Zoe sighs, puts fingers around his lower arms. They’re firm, like she expected them to be.
“That’s really nice.”
He cocks his head at her. There are curls falling into his eyes.
“If you’re getting too cold, we should probably go back.”
“No!” The word rushes past her lips. “Just… just a little while longer, please.”
He hesitates. “Are you sure? Your mother…”
Her mother will kill Kyle if she gets sick or they stay gone too long, and probably her with him, she knows. Especially because she didn’t really want them to leave the property in the first place. Easier to make a corpse stay put than a teenage girl.
“Don’t worry about her.”
“It’s kinda hard not to.”
Inside the sleeves of his sweater, her fingers tighten around his arms. “I’ll trade kisses for minutes.”
Because she wants to shackle the hands of time and make the moment of freedom last. Because she’s been curious about this too, whatever it is. More than anything else. Raging teenage hormones, sexuality, love. Because she’s fairly sure it would piss off her mother and she wants to know what it feels like to be a rebel at least once in her life.
Because his lips have been tempting her for a while now and she’s read once that the only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.
Kyle’s eyes open a little wider and so does his mouth, but his is not the shocked expression -the jaw dropping bewilderment- she was expecting and sort of hoping for. Zoe inhales deeply, her breath shuddering a little on the exhale, and waits.
“Okay.”
She arches a brow at him -can’t help herself, really- because there’s nothing of the sheer nervousness she’s feeling in the way he says it at all. But then he’s leaning in to collect, and her mind goes completely blank. Her heart takes over.
It’s not her first kiss, not technically, but it’s the first one that makes liquid fire rush through her veins. Kyle kisses the same way he looks at her when she feels the walls closing in, the same way he very nearly stands at attention whenever her mother waltzes into the room: strong, calm, grounded.
There’s nothing of the clumsiness she’d come to associate with kissing, or the awkward, wandering hands. Just lips, slick with spit and dragging over hers a little when he pulls away only to descend on her mouth again and be placed slightly more to the left or the right. The push and pull, the pressure, makes it easy for Zoe to melt against him. When she feels the tip of his tongue press against the seam of her lips, begging entrance, she surrenders willingly.
Wind and snow particles whip around them, the coldness tearing at their exposed cheeks, but she doesn’t care; his lips are warm.
~*~
She knows.
Zoe doesn’t have the slightest clue how it happened -how it is even possible- but her mother knows.
At dinner, she keeps her eyes on her plate. Eats quietly and without protest, even though Moira’s cooked Brussels sprouts and the mere smell of them makes her want to gag. Kyle’s quiet, too, at the other side of the table. He pushes his vegetables around a little on his plate before he eats them, but eat them he does.
They don’t talk. They don’t play footsie under the table. They barely even look at each other, even though Zoe finds it almost unbearably hard not to.
Perhaps it’s that eagerness, that longing even when she’s focusing on her dinner, that’s showing on her face and giving her away, because her mother turns to her and…
“My, you’re glowing.”
Zoe looks up at her, doesn’t take her eyes off her mother’s face as she takes another bite, and she acts about a million times calmer than she’s feeling.
“I went outside today. Of course I’m glowing.”
“Nooo,” her mother draws out the word, flashes a little smile that makes Zoe want to scream because it’s so knowing and clearly meant to make her squirm on her chair, “that’s not it.”
Zoe clenches her jaw. Her heart’s hammering inside her chest.
“What else would it be?”
Her mother says nothing, though Zoe swears she sees the arch of her brow twitch ever so slightly before she turns back to her food.
“Good grief, this tastes like something the cat hacked up. Moira!”
For the first time since they sat down for dinner, Zoe chances a look at Kyle. At his face, not just his hands. He glances up from his plate almost immediately, as if he’s able to feel her eyes on him. Has trained himself to.
Zoe knows that her mother knows, but in that very moment she also becomes painfully aware of the fact that she’s not going to give him up. No way, no how. She’s the one who brought him into her life; she can’t very well blame her for digging her nails in and holding on to him now.
As Moira walks into the room, pristinely white towel in hand, Zoe extends her leg under the table and aligns the sides of their feet.
He doesn’t pull away.
~*~
Despite all the disapproval and discontent that seems to drip from her mother, slow and steady like resin down a tree, they venture out more. Zoe teaches Kyle how to ride a bike, which is no small feat considering the weather and the size of him compared to her own small frame. It takes some effort and a lot of snow shoveling but they manage.
“Don’t go so fast!” She’s peddling after him, breathless. Her lungs hurt as much as her cheeks do. She’s smiling so wide. Laughing.
Kyle predictably loses his balance when he tries to look back over his shoulder at her, and steers himself right into a snow bank.
“Kyle!”
She doesn’t bother to actually put on the brakes, just hops off and leaves her bike to land where it falls. She pushes a strand of hair back behind her ear as she carefully approaches him, crouches down so she can see the damage up close and personal.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
He’s fine, just pulls his leg out from under his bike as if nothing happened and hoists himself up into a sitting position. There’s snow sticking in his hair and to the side of his face.
Zoe bites her lip to keep from grinning.
“Nice going,” she teases.
Kyle shrugs good-naturedly and reaches for her, tugs at the cinched belt around her waist, and it’s her turn to lose her balance as she falls into his arms. He rubs his nose against hers and it’s such a ridiculously tender and sweet gesture, Zoe feels like she needs to suck his lower lip between hers just to balance things out. So she does, and he lets her, whimpering slightly when she introduces her teeth to the mix only seconds in. She drags them over the inside, gnaws at his lips a little and coaxes his tongue out. It’s sloppy, intense.
Tender and sweet aren’t for her.
~*~
Hands under sweaters and fingers on heated skin.
Stolen touches in the library, the hallway, against a tree in the Northern wood, against her tree. Far removed from prying eyes, the freckles of which would align perfectly with her own, because they’re more alike than Zoe would ever care to admit.
She craves the taste of him like an addict and takes her kisses from him like she’s getting her fix.
~*~
Whoever first came up with the phrase “nothing good can last” was a major cunt and also completely and utterly right.
She’s sick again. Violently so.
Cordelia only leaves her bedside to get fresh towels. Kyle bites the nail of his thumb and wants to help but mostly just gets in the way. Her mother’s nowhere to be seen.
She works up a fever high enough that it makes her hallucinate. It seems to burn through her, makes her stick to the thin blankets Cordelia keeps covering her with, in spite of her weak protests. She wants them off, wants the windows open so the wind is free to sweep snow inside her bedroom.
There are carrion birds instead. They shatter the glass, make it explode into a million sharp grains of salt that pop and ping as they bounce off the walls. Somehow they get under her door, too. Their beaks are smeared in blood and the noise they make is unbearable. Zoe tries to cover her ears with her hands, but she can’t move. There are thorny vines protruding from her mattress and coiling around her limbs like boa constrictors.
She opens her mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. She’s mute, soon to be blind because there are birds landing on either side of her pillow, waiting for the light in her eyes to dim so they can pick them out of her skull.
Her mother appears at the end of her bed, dressed all in white. This is how she knows that she’s ailing, dreaming even though her heart is beating inside her chest at the speed of a colibri’s wings and she can feel her insides curl into knots. It all feels startlingly real but it’s not, none of it is; her mother would never wear any other color than black.
“Zoe.”
She’s never heard anyone spit out her name like that, like she’s something foul and bitter tasting.
Again, she opens her mouth to speak but it’s useless. Tears start to well in the corners of her eyes.
“Zoe… Zoe!”
When she opens them, it’s Cordelia she sees. She’s hovering over her, a cool hand placed on her forehead. There’s no mistaking the way her brows are furrowed together and her eyes widen. She’s worried.
“Hey,” she croaks and smiles weakly in an attempt to comfort her. She looks over her sister’s shoulder. Kyle’s standing right behind her. She smiles at him too, or at least makes a valiant effort to.
Cordelia doesn’t say anything, just strokes her hair.
“The doctor will be here soon.”
It’s her mother’s voice. Zoe sees her come into the room out of the corner of her eye.
“No!” She wants to shout but the word’s barely a whisper.
Cordelia bows her head and looks away. There’s tension around her mouth and in her shoulders.
“He’ll fix this. Just you wait.”
~*~
He fixes it, alright. Of course he does.
He fixes it by pumping her full of medicine and putting an end to her little trips with Kyle.
No amount of glowering, screaming, protesting or crying helps to change her mother’s mind about the strict orders. Not that she ever really expected it would, but it’s nice just to get the frustration -the helplessness- off her chest.
~*~
“Look!”
Zoe glances up at Kyle. She’s perched on the edge of her bed, hair swept to one side so she can make a fishtail braid, or attempt to, anyway. Only half way through and she’s already losing her patience; her hair’s too shiny and the strands keep sliding through her fingers.
Kyle’s juggling three cups in the air, his eyes fixed on the fragile China.
“You’re actually doing it!” Zoe chuckles, though the wide smile she gives him doesn’t quite reach her eyes. Her mood, like the weather, has been getting progressively worse. Too long she’s been cooped up inside again. She never thought she’d be able to forget four years in captivity, but somewhere along the way she had. It was strange, just how quickly she’d taken the outside world -being able to be part of it, at least in some ways- for granted again.
Kyle catches the cups -two in his right hand and one in his left, though all three could have easily fitted in one of his palms- and beams at her. Zoe lets the braid slip from her hands and bites her lip. She appreciates his efforts to cheer her up, to offer her a distraction, however brief, from the situation she’s in, but it isn’t enough.
She wants to feel the way she did that day they went ice skating, or the morning they rode their bikes to the local market.
She just wants to feel something. Anything but this endless tristesse.
“Come here.”
She holds her hand out for him to take, reaches for him the same way she’s done countless times before and just like each and every single one of those times, he comes. Willingly and eagerly; the cups can’t be placed aside quickly enough.
From the way he looks at her as he approaches, it’s obvious that he thinks he knows what she wants.
He’s wrong.
Her hands find his shirt once he’s close enough and tug him towards her, until he’s standing right between her spread legs with his knees pressed against the mattress. There’s adoration in her eyes when they meet his, but mostly there’s lust. Smoldering like hot coals behind her irises.
She doesn’t take them off Kyle’s face as she slips both of her hands under the worn fabric of his shirt and starts the slow ascend of her palms on his skin. His abdominal muscles instantly tighten and flex, and she thinks she can hear him let out a soft, shuddery sigh.
“I want you to do something for me.” Her voice is slow like molasses, a lot more steady than the beat of her heart.
His lips part slightly and she sees him swallow, interrupts before he can say anything.
“You don’t have to read. Actually, it’s something I read.” She doesn’t even realize she’s dragging her teeth over her lower lip. “Can you-I want you to get on your knees.”
Kyle raises his brows and his eyes shine with something she can’t quite place. Mischief, perhaps… definitely interest.
“That’s it? Just that?” She feels like he’s teasing her and it makes her bolder, because she’s the one who’s calling the shots, or she’s supposed to be anyway.
“I want you to get on your knees and kiss me.”
“You want me to get on my knees and go down on you,” he corrects.
She drags her nails over his skin to mask the way her fingers tremble, but she can’t hide the sudden flushing of her cheeks. She doesn’t know why she’s surprised by the fact that he’s taking initiative -he’d been the first to lean in that faithful day on the lake, after all, and had clearly known what he was doing too- but she is a little.
“I…”
“What book did you read that in?” He asks, giving her a crooked smile but his voice is significantly lower than it was seconds before.
“I thought you didn’t want anything to do with books.”
“Fair enough.”
He goes down carefully, letting his hands run over the top of her thighs, her stockings. Zoe sucks at her teeth and feels her hands go surprisingly clammy now that they can no longer rely on the flat expanse of his belly and chest to keep them steady. Kyle picks up on it before the tips of his fingers reach the hem of her skirt.
“It’s okay… I want to.”
She didn’t realize consent was an issue before he brings it up, because if the butterflies he’s been giving her are more like ravenous bats in intensity, he’s still employed by her mother. He’s still there to protect and look after her and she highly doubts this was what Fiona had in mind when she gave him the job.
She wants to call the shots, but she doesn’t want to be in a position of true power.
“I really, really want to,” he breathes, and pushes her skirt up until it gets caught around her waist, hooks his fingers in her stockings next and drags them all the way down her legs. She needs to lay back on the bed in order for him to do so and while the nerves rushing through her system are almost enough to kill her, the only thing she’s ever anticipated more was her freedom.
Zoe doesn’t look down at him, just keeps her eyes firmly fixed on the ceiling above her. She focuses on a handful of glow in the dark stars she put up there when she was little, with a little help from Cordelia. They’re the only things keeping her grounded when she feels his lips ghost over her sex, his hand gently drawing her right leg over his shoulder to give him more room.
She’s touched herself before - of course she has- without shame and often, but the tip of his nose brushing through the small tuft of hair makes her feel as if it’s the first time. As if she’s only just now become aware of the fact that she has a cunt, that it gets wet and hungry for friction. That it’s a gateway to paradise when touched just right.
Kyle knows how to touch her. It’s scary, but he does.
She feels his tongue, warm and wet and surprisingly firm bear down on her and her toes curl already -pathetically because he hasn’t really done much of anything yet but God.
“Hm,” she utters softly, the tension inside her body subsiding a little as he repeats the motion, moans against her slit in kind and it’s all just a slippery slope downhill after that.
When Zoe comes eventually, it’s with both of her arms above her head, one of her hands flat against her headboard, pushing at it. When she comes eventually, she’s way too loud and her legs tense around his head, shake with the intensity of her orgasm.
When she comes eventually, it’s with her eyes cinched shut and the image of him burning on the back of her lids.
It’s nothing compared to the way he looks when she comes back down to earth and musters up the courage to raise her head a little and look down between her legs. His lips and chin are slick with her come, with his spit. His hair’s damp and sticking to his forehead and he’s grinning, is looking at her like she’s the center of his world.
Maybe she is, but he’s the one who keeps hers spinning.
~*~
She gets so caught up in Kyle the following weeks, that she doesn’t notice. She doesn’t notice the worried look that slowly seems to engrave itself on Cordelia’s face, or the way her mother retreats to her room more and more often.
She doesn’t notice until she walks in on the both of them almost by accident. They’re sitting across from each other, each on their own thousand dollar sofa and not saying a word. Her sister has one of her hands over her mouth and is looking out the window. Her mother’s nursing what looks to be an alcoholic drink. She’s slumping, legs laid out in front of her; Zoe’s never seen her do that before.
When she notices her standing there in the doorway, she snorts almost inaudibly and gives her a rueful, little smile. “You’re killing me, kid.”
It’s not meant to be funny, not meant to be a joke. It’s the most hurtful thing she’s ever thrown at her head, and there have been many harsh words said on just as many occasions. Zoe combats the way her lower lip shivers for a split second by grinding her teeth together.
She doesn’t know the context, but she doesn’t need any. Is sure that it’s just another one of her mother’s crazy illusions. Ideas.
“Not fast enough.”
Cordelia whips her head around to face her at that, shocked, but Zoe’s gone before she can say anything. The sound of her mother’s laughter haunts her all the way up the stairs.
~*~
Ravel filters through the walls. Downstairs, her mother is drowning herself in despair and brandy but Zoe… Zoe has never felt more alive.
O joie de mon âme ( *)
The dim candle light throws shadows over his bare torso, his face, transforms him into something terrifyingly beautiful or beautifully terrifying. Her bodyguard, her lover, her first. Zoe shivers as she kneels up on the bed and draws her nightgown over her head. A sudden shyness overcomes her, unexpected and unbidden, because her body is just that: hers. Not too skinny or too small or too plain, and she has shared it with him before.
This is different, though. This feels infinitely more important.
Joie de mon cœur
She blushes and looks down, the tresses of her dark blonde hair falling forward and aiding the shadows in her attempt to hide her face from him. Kyle is having none of it, however; he reaches for her chin and tilts it up, looks right through her and into her soul when their eyes meet. Zoe lets out a small sigh and goose pimples appear on her pale skin, her nipples pebble.
Trésor qui m'est si cher
Kyle leans in to kiss her, reaches down to take both of her hands in his and places them on his body. He’s firm to the touch, solid, and Zoe lets her fingers roam, trails them over his chest, his shoulders, his biceps. She likes how her touch leaves his muscles clenching in its wake, because her own belly is sucked in, tight as a coiled spring where he’s touching her.
He slips his tongue into her mouth and she loses herself, isn’t even mad or scared about it.
Joie de l'âme et du cœur
He pushes her down on the mattress and they try to find an understanding, searching for some middle ground between the last of her reservations and his complete willingness. The sheer weight of his body on hers makes her whimper, and she hitches on leg up around his waist, her heel bearing down against the curve of his ass.
Toi que j'aime ardemment
Kyle reaches down between their bodies to guide himself inside of her, rubs the head of his cock back and forth once over the part of her that’s wet for him, that aches, before he pushes all the way in. Zoe gasps and arches her back, feels like she’s drowning, leaves finger-shaped marks on the broad expanse of his back and buries her face in the crook of his neck because she doesn’t think she’ll survive if she looks into his eyes.
Tu es plus beau, plus beau qu'un ange.
There’s no space left between them, between their slick skin, not even a breath, and it’s more meaningful a conversation than any she’s had before, without so much as a single word being said. All she needs are Kyle’s muffled groans against her temple, into her hair, the way his hips rock into hers, the sound her headboard makes as it bangs against the wall. The want and desire and desperation behind his thrusts.
She doesn’t need to look at the ceiling in order to see stars that night.
~*~
Asleep, Kyle looks ethereal in the moonlight, otherworldly. In the early morning sun he's even more beautiful, light catching on the sharp angles of his shoulder blades, turning the curves and twists of his body soft, gentle, his skin warm beneath Zoe’s open palms. She lets her hands roam over his body, over every part of him. She works her way down his nape and shoulder blades, lets her fingers dance over the dip of his spine and squeeze his ass. Waits.
When he turns in his slumber, she repeats the process with his front. Drags gentle fingers down the hollow of his throat, around his nipples, down the downy trail of hair running along his lower abdomen. She fondles his flaccid cock before she sits up, letting the sheet fall down her naked body as she does so, and moves her hand down his legs. She bends to press a soft kiss on each of his knee caps and works her way up his left leg, nuzzles at the crease of his thigh, sucks gently at his hipbone. Directs her attention to his balls, cups them as she runs the flat of his tongue over the thick vein that runs along the underside of his cock. Tries to be delicate when she wraps her lips around the head, but eagerness makes her sloppy.
He wakes quickly after that.
~*~
The sun is bearing down on what little remains of the heavy snow winter brought with it. It’s dripping from the branches in thick drops and small streams, resulting in a steady and relaxing noise, a natural beat. If she closes her eyes, Zoe can imagine herself standing in the middle of a rainforest, surrounded by exotic plants and vibrant colors, by heat and untamed life.
She isn’t, though.
She’s standing on the edge of the terrace, her heels inside the house and her toes just out of it. Cordelia threw open the doors earlier - “To let in some air, the winds of change”- and Zoe instantly took to them like a moth to a flame, claimed the space for her and Kyle alone.
Kyle…
The sheer, white curtains in the doorway are blowing gently in the winter breeze, at times falling in front of her face like a wedding veil. She steps into them, lets them cover her skin, kiss the tip of her nose and her lips as she tilts her chin slightly up.
He’s watching her. Even through the curtain, she can see the blond shock of his hair against the winter paleness and the bright green of a spring waiting to be born. He’s throwing seeds and dried berries for the birds, some of the last they will get this season. Once when she was little, she’d asked her mother why they couldn’t just feed them year round. The answer had been that if they did, they’d grow lazy and too plentiful. Typical for her.
Survival of the fittest.
She spreads her arms and wraps them around the curtain, brings both of her hands up to her chest in a pose similar to the ones she’d seen the old statues in the graveyard in. The weeping women and guardian angels.
Kyle drops the last of the berries from his hand and walks over to her, seeks out the shape of her face with his fingers. Her eyes close and so do his; they don’t need them. Not for this.
Before he tilts his head down, before his lips descend on hers through the curtain -her makeshift veil- warm and familiar, she whispers three little words. The words.
“I love you.”
~*~
She doesn’t get sick again. On the contrary, she starts to glow with radiant health. Feels stronger than she ever has before. More joyful and alive.
Before long, the day comes she and Kyle inevitably make the long walk up to the gate again. Doctor’s orders: get some fresh air. When she looks up over her shoulder at the window of the attic, she thinks she sees movement behind the curtain. Just a brief glimmer and then it’s gone.
~*~
Her mother’s death falls on a Wednesday.
Cordelia informs her after she and Kyle return from town, immediately tells her it’s better that she doesn’t see the body when she asks about it; better to remember her the way she was in life instead of in death. It’s overwhelming just how easily Fiona slipped through the cracks… how easy any signs of her impending demise had been to ignore during those last few weeks. Zoe always imagined her mother would go kicking and screaming, if she ever would. Not quietly, as if she was never even there.
How could someone like Fiona Goode simply fade away?
She feels like she should want to cry, should want to seek comfort in the arm Kyle wraps around her and the soft words he whispers against the shell of her ear. Like the ground of the Northern wood and her windows during her last winter in captivity, however, her heart is frozen. She feels the indifference her mother would have applauded her for had she still been around. The strength of the Goode women she’s never been able to grasp until now.
Arrangements need to be made. Are made.
They put her soul to rest, or what’s left of it. Her mother is buried in sand and her sister in paperwork, at least for a while. Neither one of them wants the mansion; Zoe because it holds too many memories, Cordelia because it doesn’t hold enough. So all the rooms are cleared, and the attic with it or so Zoe assumes -she hasn’t gone back up there, doesn’t feel the need to- and Kyle opens the gate for her for the very last time.
She turns as he closes it behind their backs, tells him to give her a minute and stays rooted in place as Cordelia waits in the car for them.
A beat, as she looks at her makeshift prison, her golden cage, one last time.
“I’m out, you’re in.”
~*~
Prologue
She walks through the Northern wood one last time, after her children are grown and their children. Her feet still know the way, remember all the paths -beaten or not- and guide her effortlessly to the front of the mansion, to the garden where her tree stands. Abandoned now, after the last owners died more than ten years ago.
Though anyone will say it’s impossible, like her it has shrunk. Its branches bending heavily under the weight of its leaves. Memories come flooding back, of the winters she spent in captivity and the one that changed everything. That brought her Kyle. That took her mother.
Her mother…
She’s convinced in the last years of her life even more than she was in the first of it, that Fiona somehow found a way to poison her. That for whatever reason, she intentionally bound her to the mansion, kept her from the outside world. Cordelia never spoke a word about it, never confirmed or denied her suspicions. She took that secret to her grave, if it was ever hers to have. Possibly their mother had worked alone, like she’d lived the better part of her life. With insanity as her sole companion. Eyeballs and toads in the dark.
You had your madness, but you failed to make it mine.
She walks up to the tree, runs a wrinkled hand over the bark. When she looks up at its crown, she thinks she sees a curtain move out of the corner of her eye, behind the glass of the highest window. Her fingers trail down the trunk of the tree, find the scars her mother’s axe left there so long ago.
The same as those on Kyle’s back.
-FIN-
PROMPT GIVEN TO AUTHOR:
1. Please List Preferred Characters and/or Pairings: Tate/Violet or Zoe/Kyle
2. Squicks or characters/pairings you do not want in your gift: No Madison or Asylum
3. Possible Scenarios/Themes/Lines to incorporate:
Possible themes: AU Kyle and Zoe?
(additional information: Maybe something AU where Zoe is Fiona's midlife crisis baby and Zoe meets Kyle before she knows she's a witch...
maybe like she thinks her mom is just crazy and rebels with Kyle and then realizes she's a witch...
maybe sans the poisoned vagina though.)
4. Youtube link a SONG to describe the overall theme you would like:
Sweater Weather, the Neighborhood
Click to view
5. Preferred Rating: Any
6. Strictly Canon, AU, Doesn’t Matter?: Doesn't Matter