Fic: Stalked in the forest (Too close to hide)
Title: Stalked in the forest (Too close to hide)
Beta: jen_jm couldn't read the whole fic, so I should be blamed for any mistake and usage of improper language
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Iker Casillas/Sara Carbonero, Xabi Alonso(/?), some other people mentioned/present for a cameo.
Warning: english language, dragon-ified people, AU
Word Count: 1,533 (FDP)
Disclaimer: Not mine, not even the title (Hungry Like The Wolf, Duran Duran).
Prompt: nostalgia, COW-T @ maridichallenge
A/N: a spin-off - a prequel, indeed - for I set a course for winds of fortune (Hungry like the wolf), which I heartily recommend to read before this one. Happy birthday Jen ♥ I'm not that talented in English, but I really wanted to write at least a scene from your AU, because I always feel like I didn't appreciate enough your story. False.
Intro: About dragons' fine aging, important proposals and first encounters.
STALKED IN THE FOREST (TOO CLOSE TO HIDE)
“I’ll go for a while,” Xabi said, even if he didn’t explain often his intentions to Carles; the trainer noticed the unusual behavior of the dragon, but nodded silently to him.
“I’ll wait for you at the spring,” the dragon added, spreading his wings and librating himself very far from the refuge. Every time he flew above the flourishing forests and the tiny villages full of humans - who mostly feared the ones of his kind, leaving just a bunch of them fighting against his race or trying to overcome them in cunning or power, in vain - Xabi couldn’t help but thinking about the fate of dragons.
He never felt lonely: at least, not in the way humans do. Even if blooming times for his kind faded even in his centuries-old memory, and dragons didn’t fly in packs over the highest of the skies anymore, there was still plenty of friends, hiding themselves in dark caves and thick forests or living in the barren lands in the far north, or even in the moorlands across the magnificent Ocean and the Great Channel. But he often wondered about his choice to live, alone among his race, so near to King José’s court in his vast, yet unfriendly reign, opposed to his wizards but still despising the inhabitants of the dominion: as other old dragons, Xabi wondered about the possible dangerousness of his peculiar pride, and often asked himself if his choice was reasonable and, most of all, if he should have reconsidered it, reuniting to the dragons he could still call as ‘friends’ in the north-western heaths.
With a thwarted swerve, Xabi suddenly changed his direction and nose-dived onto a luxuriant swamp; he devoured a great stork from the large group he spotted, then he scratched terrain to make a comfortable bedding. He was almost asleep, when he heard noises growing louder as some people was approaching him: cheerful chattering, nervous giggles, loud steps. The dragon, annoyed, backed off into the depths of a thick wood, curious to find out who ventured in marshes for an outing.
*
“... where the hell are you taking me?” Sara held Iker’s hand to Iker’s more tightly than ever, trying not to fall into some rabbit hole or trip over obstacles; her eyes were blindfolded by a shining-black, silky cloth, conjured by magic, so she would never have had the chance to remove it by herself. She smelled the air and then she withdrew a little, wrinkling her nose and making a disgusted face. “It stinks of backwater and rotten plants here, it’s even worse than Cristiano’s den. Did you dare to take me in a swamp?”
“Irina would not be pleased to hear your mean words. You’re talking about her boyfriend, after all” he giggled.
“Oh, come on, I’m talking about her toadfriend. She likes him when he’s not transformed and he’s a good-looking boy, he’s handsome, but...” Sara blushed and didn’t finish the sentence, so Iker tried to dispel her embarrassment.
“I could be jealous if you keep describing Cristiano in such a flattering way. Irina’s not going to find him a lair elsewhere and Yolanthe is too kind to kick him out of your house, she wouldn’t do it even if he stank like a thousand swamps.”
“Maybe I like you more when you are jealous, after all,” she retorted in a charming whisper, then she started complaining again. “Come on, take this blindfold off, San Iker!”
“As you wish, m’lady,” he said, brushing the cloth with the tip of his finger and watching it fall on the moisten grass. Sara looked around her, discomforted to see the very same swamp he imagined by smelling, and she was ready to whine again against Iker’s lame, unromantic, bad-scented ideas when she glimpsed a golden flash in his raised hand.
“... is this what I think it is?” she said in her most husky, faltering voice.
“Maybe it is,” Iker answered, his face growing serious. “I would like if you took this as a token of my-“ he tried to say, just to find himself half-strangled by her hug and almost smothered with the deep, wet kiss she left on his lips. “I think it’s a yes.”
Sara replied with a wide smile and raised her hands, waiting for him to put the simple, gold ring around the finger. “Couldn’t you ask me that at our place? You know I’d have said yes as well.”
“I didn’t want to ask you in front of your housemates,” he said with an awkward smile.
Sara looked shocked at this affirmation. “I can’t believe you’re serious. Yolee and Irina wouldn’t have joked about you... they would have rather arranged some party for sure.”
“It’s here I wanted to take you.” Iker gestured vaguely towards the dark-green, bushy grass, commanding it to bloom into a lush flowers bed: the swamp turned into a magically peaceful haven bursting with life, sheltered by the same old trees which looked rotten and decayed until that moment. “I found this oasis a couple of months ago. I hope you like it.”
“You’re trying to seduce me in the deep of the forest, aren’t you?” Sara whispered, looking around as Iker’s magic enchantments concealing the blooming haven lifted off everything as a warm, feebly sparkly wave; she approached him again, untying the laces holding his tunic and leaving him half-naked while they laid out on the flowers, but their kisses were interrupted by a strong, enraged roar, and Sara screamed in panic.
Iker stood up swiftly, facing the woods from which the growl came, and called magic to widen the branches and fold the shrubs: the head of a massive dragon emerged among the leaves, stuck into the wood twine, looking at him with the scariest glance he’d ever seen. “Fu- O, mighty dragon, let me undo my spell. I visited this haven twice in the last weeks, but I didn’t know you were resting here,” he said with the most respectful tone he could, commanding the forest to free the beast from its strangling embrace.
“I see clear evidence of your business, wizard,” Xabi growled and raised his snout toward Iker, who blushed slightly when he heard a sort of laughter coming from the dragon. “Drop your respects and free me at once, your magic is even more disastrous than the one of your kind.”
“I’m sorry,” Iker muttered, removing the branches from the dragon’s wings, scratched and slightly damaged - he could see at least a couple of blood traces. “Let me do something for your injuries.”
Xabi shook his head when Iker’s magic suddenly sparkled on his wings, closing every wound, then he spread them to try them and he stood with a huge leap in front of the wizard, looking offended.
“I’ve never met a wizard who used magic on a dragon twice,” Xabi said, blowing steam from his nostrils and making Iker cough heavily. “We usually kill the ones of your kind after their first try.”
“I needed to heal your injuries, dragon,” he replied calmly. “Every wizard is different than the others, as dragons are.”
They looked into each other’s eyes for a long time, then Xabi exposed his teeth in a threatening sneer. “Correct. It’s very strange to hear wise words from a wizard, in times like this.” He walked slowly around Iker, a thumping step after another, amused by his tries to keep calm and look self-confident. “I could spare your life and root out your manhood, but your woman right there could disapprove that.”
Iker breathed heavily. “Sara doesn’t know nothing about dragons. She’s innocent” he lied, sure that the dragon would have not been pleased if he knew that Sara was a witch.
Xabi glanced at her on the edge of the wood, then he looked again at Iker. “You look alone among your kind,” he said. “You can love.”
“Everyone can. Men, wizards... dragons.”
“Are you sure of that, wizard?” Xabi did that half-laugh again. “I tried to kill every wizard who crossed my path, and I succeeded almost every time... Even Guardiola’s left shoulder should remember my claws.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t kill him. The world could live more happily without Guardiola,” Iker couldn’t help but grin. “I almost hope he would cross your path again.”
Xabi spread his wings, waving the tail as an enormous whip. “I don’t trust you as well as any other wizard,” he said, growling at the sun. As he flew away and Sara, still shaking, put the tunic on his shoulder, Iker understood the dragon was lying, because he was true: none of those beasts had ever spared a wizard’s life.
*
“Hey.” The red dragon greeted Xabi with a soft, pleased growl, flying at a slower pace to place side to side with him. “You didn’t cross the Channel since... well, it’s a lot of time.”
He didn’t reply and kept flying, looking at the thick cloud hiding the sun. The second dragon leant his head towards Xabi’s one, touching it slightly with the tip of his snout, and Xabi did the same, somewhat pleased.
“Come on, I’ll take you to our new den,” the red dragon said. “You missed a lot of changes since your last visit. I hope you can stay a little longer this time.”
“We shall see, Stevie,” Xabi replied softly. “We shall see.”
Beta: jen_jm couldn't read the whole fic, so I should be blamed for any mistake and usage of improper language
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Iker Casillas/Sara Carbonero, Xabi Alonso(/?), some other people mentioned/present for a cameo.
Warning: english language, dragon-ified people, AU
Word Count: 1,533 (FDP)
Disclaimer: Not mine, not even the title (Hungry Like The Wolf, Duran Duran).
Prompt: nostalgia, COW-T @ maridichallenge
A/N: a spin-off - a prequel, indeed - for I set a course for winds of fortune (Hungry like the wolf), which I heartily recommend to read before this one. Happy birthday Jen ♥ I'm not that talented in English, but I really wanted to write at least a scene from your AU, because I always feel like I didn't appreciate enough your story. False.
Intro: About dragons' fine aging, important proposals and first encounters.
STALKED IN THE FOREST (TOO CLOSE TO HIDE)
“I’ll go for a while,” Xabi said, even if he didn’t explain often his intentions to Carles; the trainer noticed the unusual behavior of the dragon, but nodded silently to him.
“I’ll wait for you at the spring,” the dragon added, spreading his wings and librating himself very far from the refuge. Every time he flew above the flourishing forests and the tiny villages full of humans - who mostly feared the ones of his kind, leaving just a bunch of them fighting against his race or trying to overcome them in cunning or power, in vain - Xabi couldn’t help but thinking about the fate of dragons.
He never felt lonely: at least, not in the way humans do. Even if blooming times for his kind faded even in his centuries-old memory, and dragons didn’t fly in packs over the highest of the skies anymore, there was still plenty of friends, hiding themselves in dark caves and thick forests or living in the barren lands in the far north, or even in the moorlands across the magnificent Ocean and the Great Channel. But he often wondered about his choice to live, alone among his race, so near to King José’s court in his vast, yet unfriendly reign, opposed to his wizards but still despising the inhabitants of the dominion: as other old dragons, Xabi wondered about the possible dangerousness of his peculiar pride, and often asked himself if his choice was reasonable and, most of all, if he should have reconsidered it, reuniting to the dragons he could still call as ‘friends’ in the north-western heaths.
With a thwarted swerve, Xabi suddenly changed his direction and nose-dived onto a luxuriant swamp; he devoured a great stork from the large group he spotted, then he scratched terrain to make a comfortable bedding. He was almost asleep, when he heard noises growing louder as some people was approaching him: cheerful chattering, nervous giggles, loud steps. The dragon, annoyed, backed off into the depths of a thick wood, curious to find out who ventured in marshes for an outing.
*
“... where the hell are you taking me?” Sara held Iker’s hand to Iker’s more tightly than ever, trying not to fall into some rabbit hole or trip over obstacles; her eyes were blindfolded by a shining-black, silky cloth, conjured by magic, so she would never have had the chance to remove it by herself. She smelled the air and then she withdrew a little, wrinkling her nose and making a disgusted face. “It stinks of backwater and rotten plants here, it’s even worse than Cristiano’s den. Did you dare to take me in a swamp?”
“Irina would not be pleased to hear your mean words. You’re talking about her boyfriend, after all” he giggled.
“Oh, come on, I’m talking about her toadfriend. She likes him when he’s not transformed and he’s a good-looking boy, he’s handsome, but...” Sara blushed and didn’t finish the sentence, so Iker tried to dispel her embarrassment.
“I could be jealous if you keep describing Cristiano in such a flattering way. Irina’s not going to find him a lair elsewhere and Yolanthe is too kind to kick him out of your house, she wouldn’t do it even if he stank like a thousand swamps.”
“Maybe I like you more when you are jealous, after all,” she retorted in a charming whisper, then she started complaining again. “Come on, take this blindfold off, San Iker!”
“As you wish, m’lady,” he said, brushing the cloth with the tip of his finger and watching it fall on the moisten grass. Sara looked around her, discomforted to see the very same swamp he imagined by smelling, and she was ready to whine again against Iker’s lame, unromantic, bad-scented ideas when she glimpsed a golden flash in his raised hand.
“... is this what I think it is?” she said in her most husky, faltering voice.
“Maybe it is,” Iker answered, his face growing serious. “I would like if you took this as a token of my-“ he tried to say, just to find himself half-strangled by her hug and almost smothered with the deep, wet kiss she left on his lips. “I think it’s a yes.”
Sara replied with a wide smile and raised her hands, waiting for him to put the simple, gold ring around the finger. “Couldn’t you ask me that at our place? You know I’d have said yes as well.”
“I didn’t want to ask you in front of your housemates,” he said with an awkward smile.
Sara looked shocked at this affirmation. “I can’t believe you’re serious. Yolee and Irina wouldn’t have joked about you... they would have rather arranged some party for sure.”
“It’s here I wanted to take you.” Iker gestured vaguely towards the dark-green, bushy grass, commanding it to bloom into a lush flowers bed: the swamp turned into a magically peaceful haven bursting with life, sheltered by the same old trees which looked rotten and decayed until that moment. “I found this oasis a couple of months ago. I hope you like it.”
“You’re trying to seduce me in the deep of the forest, aren’t you?” Sara whispered, looking around as Iker’s magic enchantments concealing the blooming haven lifted off everything as a warm, feebly sparkly wave; she approached him again, untying the laces holding his tunic and leaving him half-naked while they laid out on the flowers, but their kisses were interrupted by a strong, enraged roar, and Sara screamed in panic.
Iker stood up swiftly, facing the woods from which the growl came, and called magic to widen the branches and fold the shrubs: the head of a massive dragon emerged among the leaves, stuck into the wood twine, looking at him with the scariest glance he’d ever seen. “Fu- O, mighty dragon, let me undo my spell. I visited this haven twice in the last weeks, but I didn’t know you were resting here,” he said with the most respectful tone he could, commanding the forest to free the beast from its strangling embrace.
“I see clear evidence of your business, wizard,” Xabi growled and raised his snout toward Iker, who blushed slightly when he heard a sort of laughter coming from the dragon. “Drop your respects and free me at once, your magic is even more disastrous than the one of your kind.”
“I’m sorry,” Iker muttered, removing the branches from the dragon’s wings, scratched and slightly damaged - he could see at least a couple of blood traces. “Let me do something for your injuries.”
Xabi shook his head when Iker’s magic suddenly sparkled on his wings, closing every wound, then he spread them to try them and he stood with a huge leap in front of the wizard, looking offended.
“I’ve never met a wizard who used magic on a dragon twice,” Xabi said, blowing steam from his nostrils and making Iker cough heavily. “We usually kill the ones of your kind after their first try.”
“I needed to heal your injuries, dragon,” he replied calmly. “Every wizard is different than the others, as dragons are.”
They looked into each other’s eyes for a long time, then Xabi exposed his teeth in a threatening sneer. “Correct. It’s very strange to hear wise words from a wizard, in times like this.” He walked slowly around Iker, a thumping step after another, amused by his tries to keep calm and look self-confident. “I could spare your life and root out your manhood, but your woman right there could disapprove that.”
Iker breathed heavily. “Sara doesn’t know nothing about dragons. She’s innocent” he lied, sure that the dragon would have not been pleased if he knew that Sara was a witch.
Xabi glanced at her on the edge of the wood, then he looked again at Iker. “You look alone among your kind,” he said. “You can love.”
“Everyone can. Men, wizards... dragons.”
“Are you sure of that, wizard?” Xabi did that half-laugh again. “I tried to kill every wizard who crossed my path, and I succeeded almost every time... Even Guardiola’s left shoulder should remember my claws.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t kill him. The world could live more happily without Guardiola,” Iker couldn’t help but grin. “I almost hope he would cross your path again.”
Xabi spread his wings, waving the tail as an enormous whip. “I don’t trust you as well as any other wizard,” he said, growling at the sun. As he flew away and Sara, still shaking, put the tunic on his shoulder, Iker understood the dragon was lying, because he was true: none of those beasts had ever spared a wizard’s life.
*
“Hey.” The red dragon greeted Xabi with a soft, pleased growl, flying at a slower pace to place side to side with him. “You didn’t cross the Channel since... well, it’s a lot of time.”
He didn’t reply and kept flying, looking at the thick cloud hiding the sun. The second dragon leant his head towards Xabi’s one, touching it slightly with the tip of his snout, and Xabi did the same, somewhat pleased.
“Come on, I’ll take you to our new den,” the red dragon said. “You missed a lot of changes since your last visit. I hope you can stay a little longer this time.”
“We shall see, Stevie,” Xabi replied softly. “We shall see.”