(no subject)

[sunbaked_baker]

Rae had to stop to tuck a stray lock of her hair, having gotten loose from the sunflower-dotted kerchief that was supposed to be keeping her hair out of her eyes, before she could put the last tray of muffins into the oven, reaching that top rack with barely a wobble.

Whew.

The ovens were going full-blast, the timers all set, and even the usually heat-tolerant Sunshine was beginning to feel the heat. It might as well have been August in there (though if it were August, Sunshine would have spent the noontime hours outside); the ovens of Milliways could probably give the big industrial-size oven of her bakery back home pointers on how to bake a room.

Others might wonder at her sanity, wearing a mere tanktop and jeans in the dead of winter, but she knew what kind of temperatures she would be dealing with, baking most of the afternoon and well into the evening. Though perhaps the electric-blue tanktop and the purple jeans hadn't really been the best of choices (nor the red sneakers), she thought idly, as she dumped the mixing bowls, whisks, spoons and measuring cups all into the sink and turned on the water. The faint dustings of flour that had gotten past her apron showed up annoyingly well on the vivid colors.

Especially the handprints on the fronts of her thighs, from where she had forgotten. The silver ward with its sun, its tree, its deer and its running water (...don't we outnumber...) in her front left pocket was there and reassuring in its weight, but the lack of corresponding weight in her right pocket still left her feeling vaguely off-balance. She absently patted at the flour on her jeans to mixed success before starting in on the dirty dishes.

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[sunbaked_baker]

"I don't want to be worshiped," she says.

Thinking of the coffeehouse regulars, the Cinnamon Roll Queen's loyal subjects.
Thinking of C- No. Not thinking of him.

Only once the pressure recedes from her thoughts does she step forward again.

[vojvode]

He watches her hand rise to close around the knife and his other hand moves, slow as molasses, stroking down the inside of her forearm, closing around her wrist. He holds her, delicately as any fine porcelain, but with a strength that cannot be denied.

He relinquishes the knife to her grasping fingers, but in return he takes her fist in his. His touch is gentle, savouring the rising heat of her power. She makes his skin ache, makes his bones burn, but he does not let her go. He bends, still holding her gaze and draws her hand to his mouth.

His breath is warm against her skin, and it seems an eternity before he finally closes the distance, brushing a chaste kiss across her knuckles.

[sunbaked_baker]

Her automatic reaction is to pull away, but caught in his grasp and in his gaze she cannot. Her fierce grip on the knife, her knife, turns her knuckles white.

For oh, though she is scared and caught like a bird in the gaze of a snake, her eyes wide and half-afraid to blink, she is angry. Angry at him, for existing and shattering the refuge that classic vampire literature had been for her. Angry at herself, for believing him enough to approach him.

The touch of his lips against her skin burns, if just in her rebellious mind.

[vojvode]

As quick as it began, the kiss is over and he releases her, hissing low under his breath. He holds his hands up in supplication, his eyes downcast and a wicked smirk on his lips.

"Oh but I am weak in your presence. Please have mercy, I beg you."

[sunbaked_baker]

Sunshine staggers away from him, backing towards the ovens, knife in hand. Her knife, where it's supposed to be. That flare of anger is still there in her eyes and her tone as she growls out, "Fuck you."

That had been a cheap move, kissing her (She's not thinking about it. She refuses.), and the sarcasm following it only made it worse.

[vojvode]

Dark eyed, the serpent raises his head, hood flaring wide. The air crackles with the energy of the storm and the shadows around him grow and deepen.

He takes a step towards her, the smile disappearing from his face, replaced by a savage intent.

"You dare speak to me thus?"

[sunbaked_baker]

Rae's anger falters as she sees the look on his face, and she takes an automatic step back, angling to the left. It rallies though, to keep her from running.

(They like their food frightened and very much alive.)

She knows she mustn't run.

"You were mocking me," she hissed. The whole time. Valiant, he had said. Brave. Beautiful. Deserving to be worshiped.

And despite all her efforts, on some level she had believed him. Sunshine had approached him of her own accord. (You have to say yes.) And he had stolen that kiss cheaply, laughing at her. It kept her anger alight in the face of fear. She mustn't run.

[vojvode]

He closes the distance between them, one hand raised as if to take her by the throat. When she doesn't move, he stops before her, long elegant fingers curling into a fist just beside her face.

In the back of her mind, a realisation brushes against her thoughts. He could crush her with a flick of his hand. He could overwhelm her psyche with the sheer force of his will, and bring her to heel, like some errant, fractious steed tamed by bridle and whip.

And yet, out of some misdirected sense of honour or propiety, out of some twisted respect for her, he has not, nor will he, harm a hair on her head.

His fist relaxes and he rests the back of his hand against her cheek. His voice is quiet and low, his lips curling in a sneer.

"Do not presume to know my heart, Sunshine."

[sunbaked_baker]

She flinches as he draws near, but refuses to yield. Her eyes, anger and fear in them mixed, are the blue of a flame's core.

The day is every bit the night's equal.

The knowledge brushing her mind of how easily he could kill her is nothing new to her; she knew as much when he appeared in the room with her. Rae grew up in a world where vampires are a constant threat, where children know not to venture out at night, where adults stay in groups when going out past sundown if they can, where reports of bloodless bodies being found are commonly heard in the evening news, where every home, every door and window is warded to the best of the inhabitants' financial ability.

(-the sunlight shone down upon the leaves of her tree, the sun-drenched leaves sighing in the breeze - yesssssssssss-)

The sense that out of some strange sense of respect for her the vampire has no intention of harming her does calm her fear, but only reduces her anger to a simmer. His respect does not win hers. He could snap her mind with the great power of his will; she knows this, and in this moment sees his need to impress this upon her for what it is.

(-her deer, a point of consciousness caught in the awareness of the moment of now, poised between shadowed forest and sunlit meadow-)

She had been spoken to with great civility by a vampire who had been starved for weeks upon weeks, driven nearly insane by repeated exposure to daylight and not being allowed to rest or return to his earth-place, who knew exactly how powerful he would have become if he had given in and drank her dry. But he had not. He had been civil, more than civil; he had not sought to frighten her unnecessarily, nor mock her. If a vampire so weakened can manage that much...

The muscles in her jaw tense as he rests his hand upon her cheek. Past the scents of good, honest baking things, she can smell roses.

(-the heavy rose blossoms nodded in the breeze, their dark red shadows singing of their love for the sun's life-giving light, and their love of the dark, their roots growing through the lightless mystery of the earth. 'You do not have to choose.' One will always seek the other-)

(-her tree sighed - yessssssssssssss-)

"What were you meaning for me to think, then?" she says, almost calm. All the mixed signals of complimenting, offering, capturing, mocking. "Just so's we're sheer."

[vojvode]

He holds her gaze, anger shifting again, fading, transmuting into something more dangerous. He hears the images in her mind far louder than the impertinence of her question. The memory of that pathetic shell of a creature is discarded for the sycophant he sees it as. Civility is a game played by the weak while the long knives are being sharpened. In his world, respect comes with power.

His power is real, vibrant and sensual, intoxicating and addictive. He listens to the subtle images, the yearning of her heart. Yes, there, in her memories, in her dreams. Roses become silk.

Crimson petals, thick with heady fragrance, drift down, melting into a sea of scarlet. Wet silk, warm and slick, sliding over her body, followed by the barest whisper of his breath.

He turns his palm to cup her cheek, his thumb brushing over her lips.

"I did not intend to make you 'think'," he drawls, bending close. "I wanted you -- to feel."

He does not hold her against her will, no, anything but. He leans in, determined to claim that sweet kiss, the one she's been keeping from him, the one a distant part of her yearns for, even if she doesn't realise it herself.

[sunbaked_baker]

Sunshine shudders involuntarily at the touch of his hand and of his mind. The images set into her thoughts are those of her dreams, the nightmares that have haunted her nights since that night months ago; but they have been twisted into something even more horrible, even more of an offense to everything that makes her human, and she can't get away from them.

What is worse, she doesn't know if she wants to.

(What does that make her?)

Her head swims, her eyes water, all thoughts of anger and terror, daylight and Con, humanity and wrongness overcome with the overpowering sensation and cast down into darkness. There are salt tears on her cheeks, but she cannot-

(Can she? Would she? Does she really want to-)

- pull away from him and that kiss.

[vojvode]

Another span of heartbeats spin out into the void. He savours the softness, the warmth and taste of her mouth (vanilla and honeysuckle and moon pale roses), the surrender and desire staining her thoughts like fresh spilled blood (sweet life, flowing just beneath his fingertips).

He feels the wetness along her cheek and pulls back, dark eyes intent. His thumb catches that simple essence on his skin. He brushes those tears away, crooning softly to her under his breath. One arm slips around her shoulders, steadying her, not restricting her movements.

"No tears, please. You're safe here. You have my word."

[sunbaked_baker]

Rae sways slightly as he pulls back, and some small part of her mind clears, a tiny wall of thought struggling to hold against the red tide of sensation and images planted in her mind, prickling her skin.

(How does one define 'safe' in the arms of a vampire? Safe from what?)

"You... don't understand." Tears leave wet trails down her cheeks, one catching at the corner of her mouth. She can taste the tiny drop of salt water, like a infinitely small fragment of the ocean.

It's not even that Sunshine feels she's not safe, but it's that she's there at all, in his arms, kissing him, being kissed by him. It is the worst sort of betrayal. A betrayal and perversion of everything it means to be human. Humans are not meant to be drawn towards vampires, yet she has been drawn to them as far back as she can remember. Drawn towards the darkness as inexorably as she has been drawn towards the light of the sun. It feels like the two halves of her life are pulling her in opposite directions, heading fast towards either horizon.

(There is no word for a human so sicko as to-)

(Sun-self, deer-self, tree-self, do we not outnumber the dark-self?)

She doesn't know what she is, whether she is even fully human any more. Or if she ever was. She had run away from it, and been doing well at not thinking about it. And this deadly, infinitely compelling creature brought it back to the fore.

What was she?

You are my Sunshine
My only Sunshine

[vojvode]

"Oh but I do," he whispers, infinitely gentle. (How devastating was his sword in battle, how strong his arm against the infidel, how savage were his methods in impaling them all, dipping his bread in their blood where the Turk's scouts could see and report back to his master. How great was the price he paid with his own immortal soul, that Christendom would not fall. How inviolate was his faith -- until the she was taken from him.)

"I do," he murmurs, pressing another kiss to her forehead, his hand stroking through her hair, his arm slipping to the small of her back, as if he could shield her from the terrors of her world.

The wash of crimson in her mind's eye fades, the colour bleeding away into shades of grey and white. Distant, not shadows, but curls of grey mist -- a heavy ocean fog blanketing the world in quiet. The promise of dawn hovering on some unseen horizon. A liminal space, neither shrouded in darkness nor blasted by the noon day sun.

"I am not a monster, Rae."

[sunbaked_baker]

You make me happy
When skies are grey.

Rae shakes her head, shivering. This- it is too much. The sun is well down and drifting away towards midnight, taking her ability to deal with worldview-shattering questions with it.

She cannot stand to think about any of it right now: to think about whether or not he is telling the truth and is not a monster from humanity's darkest dreams; to think what it means that she is standing here in his arms and being kissed by him; to think of her bond with Con and her feelings for him; to think of the century the daylit world has left before the darkness swallows it; to think of what is wrong with her and will inevitably go wronger because she must be some abomination against nature to do what she does and feel what she feels.

Rae can't deal with it. These questions are a tide kept at bay by sheer force of will, and now they are threatening to overwhelm her, so she pushes them away to save herself and her sanity. Pushes them and him away in rising panic, her flour- and cinnamon-dusted hands against his chest, her right hand - still gripping her closed jackknife - just above his heart.

You'll never know dear
How much I love you.

[vojvode]

He lets her go, makes no attempt to hold her captive, and with her release, the mirage fractures as well. The sounds of the kitchen flood back, the clanging of the timer driving away the last remnants of the dream.

If she turns to look for him, he's all the way across the room, standing in the shadows of the cellar door, one shoulder resting against the door frame. On the black silk of his vest, a single hand print in flour marks the point above his heart. He seems to have been cleaning his glasses and is only just now slipping them back on, as if nothing untoward had passed between them.

The moment takes on the weight and heft of normalcy, banishing the nightmare images back to the realm of dreams.

[sunbaked_baker]

Please don't take
my Sunshine
away.

Sunshine doesn't move apart from shaking for a long moment, her hands still held before her, her eyes shut, letting the sounds and smells of the kitchens anchor her, build up her walls again. Focusing on letting her breathing slow and her racing heart steady, letting her shaking subside and her thoughts fall back into coherent patterns.

Only once she feels half-normal again does she spare a momentary glance for him, wiping away the last of the tears and leaving a faint smudge of cinnamon on her cheek as she turns towards the oven, her back to him.

She cannot stand to face the questions she can't answer right now.

The first timer is telling her the Bitter Chocolate Death needs to be taken out before it dries and goes hard. It's not something that can really be given much lee-way; so she grabs an oven-mitt, opens the oven and removes it, leaving the many trays of muffins (lacking three minutes being done) to finish by themselves.

[vojvode]

He sinks back into the shadows, erasing himself from her awareness.




He watches her for a long time, watches her hands moving over the baked goods, watches her close her eyes and take a deep breath.


So beautiful. So alive.



And he is just a dream a nightmare. Just a man a monster.



Oceans of time.

[sunbaked_baker]

For the longest time, she only lets herself focus on the Bitter Chocolate Death, the multitude of muffins and trays of cinnamon rolls, of maple cornbread and orange-ginger teabread.

It's only after everything is out and arranged neatly for sale, the ovens slowly cooling, the feeling of there being a vampire in the room long gone, that she falters. Her fingers grip the cool counter edge as she seeks to still her suddenly shaking hands, still her shaken self. Her eyes close, her breathing deep and carefully slow.

Again, as many times before, Sunshine finds herself wishing fiercely that her grandmother were there with her. She just...

...wishes she knew what she's doing.