are you ready for a perfect storm? any. {M}

[Reagan]

so you want to play with magic?
you should know what you're falling for.

She is a magician. She has been created to be adaptable to the world around her. That is how she has survived all this time. Reagan’s ability to recognize power, aside from her own, to forge her pathway through life, is why she has stayed relevant to those around her. She is always needed. Always wanted. But for what she is, what she can do.

Never who she is. Never that.

She had thought, that perhaps, the forest, those trees that she loved so dearly and had wrapped her life around, were going to be the end of her wandering. One mistake. One draw in the wrong direction, and it shatters around her feet like broken ice that drains to tears. The wolf that pushes into her heart and mind is a violent and almost constant endeavor that she screams to put away; that part of her life is over. She had tried. She had gone to him in the forest, and he had shattered her world when he turned away. Unwilling to listen, unwilling to accept. Unwilling to perhaps put some of the loyalty he espoused forward in perhaps giving back a little of that love that he said he felt. Instead she got nothing. Further, the scars that lined the side of her body were proof that maybe, just maybe, there had been nothing between them at all. Another childhood fantasy drained away in a puddle after it rains.

Offspring speaks, his warm voice vibrating against her skin as she presses into him. His words are quiet, but purposeful. And she can feel the tears continue to fall, openly this time. That she was so easily discarded. What is not meant to be will crumble… And she realizes, he is right. The words seem heavy, but she gives him the privacy of his own mind. His thoughts are his own. Perhaps one day, if he allowed her, she would find her way around his innerworkings. But for now… she does not feel comfortable in her own skin, let alone someone else’s. All she can be content with is the way he reacts against her. Molten heat singes her skin, but it does not burn. Instead, it ignites her soul, and her every thought of the past is swept away with the coming of a new tide. She feels him relax, and press into her, the manner of his body becoming less rigid, moulding around her as it shelters her from the sunrise, from the fire and the light. Anything to pull them back to the darkness. Anything to pull them back into the moment that can stop time. Reagan’s magic is powerful, but to stop time—it is something that is currently beyond her. The coming of the day was inevitable, and with it, real life. Lives and kingdoms, and children.

And estranged spouses.

The fire of his skin continues to bubble over, and she slides against him as a thick layer of moisture congregates on his skin, the internal agitation coming to the fore. Perhaps he is not as relaxed as he might have seemed. There is a turbulence inside his eyes when she levels her gaze with his once again, hungry eyes that she has seen time and again in her many years of walking this earth. She is no goddess, to be held to a higher standard. She just wants to end her days in the ways she was never allowed as a girl. To use her talents to her own whims. And perhaps, chase the dream of a normal life. But there is no peace in a normal life for creatures such as they. The only peace that can be had must be taken—must be decided on.

Their hearts thunder against their perspective cages, itching to be let free, and to soar among the clouds. Together? Maybe. But that is entirely up to him. Reagan’s eyes return to the horizon, and the way that the birds have begun their morning calls to their lovers. The seasons are changing, and the briskness of the morning has dressed the world in a blanket of white frost that hugs the ground, and she finds that his heat is a welcome blanket against the autumn chill. His eyes behind her, presumably looking at the water, but his breath. She can feel it all. The rise and fall of his knotted chest, the beating of his heart. But most of all, his breath. That warm pulse that shows that he is a man still very much alive, and that breath is blowing over the most tender parts of her. She shudders—a minute motion that ripples across her skin, but one that she feels to the deepest heart. And then when he presses his mouth to her body, she starts. She rakes in a desperate, heated gasp, but she makes no effort to move. Instead, she pushes further into him, moulding her curves to his body. Then he speaks of his worthless heart, and her body lurches, wanting to calm the storm she sees there. Knowing she could do all and more.

“If your heart were worthless, you would not find yourself in the position you do,” she says, her voice surprisingly upbeat and noncommittal for someone who is thinking about anything but politics. The cold waves lapping against her body would feel really good against her. Tender ripples licking her sides, stoking the fire…she gulps. Change the subject, she says to herself. “Thrice a king, a friend and confidante. Those who have been hurt by you are fragile creatures capable of killing themselves with the sunrise.” She speaks of herself then.. someone who has hurt many in her own life, and knows of what he speaks. “You cannot change yourself to please them all. If you are changing, and they do not change with you… that is not necessarily your fault. There is too much pain in pretending to be something you are not…for the sake of someone else.”

She stops then, drawing back from his slick body, a rush of cold air replacing the space where they had been pressed against each other. She misses his warmth immediately, but instead, she looks up at him, placing her velvety mouth in the cook of his neck, drawing her teeth carefully down the side of his profile and across the point of his shoulder. Her words are hushed, but they are heated. “If your heart truly were worthless, you would not have cared if I lived or died. Your fire may take life, but it also gives it.” She presses her mouth into his shoulder then, her eyes willing the sun to go down—but the peak of the star is warming up the forest and casting shadows across the trees. Her words are muffled, but she cannot help but touch him. She can’t not touch him.

“You don’t need to be afraid, any longer. You shouldn’t be afraid any longer.”She sniffs, keeping the emotion from her voice. She speaks not of the purchase price. She would have to prove that to him over time. Not one night next to a babbling river would prove such a thing, no matter how many words she tried to put to it. He would either eventually believe her, or he wouldn’t. For however long their acquaintance remained.

She once more takes a step, pressing her head against his neck. “I don’t know what I will do now. I have lived so long away from…well, anyone.” She gulped. “One thing I do know. I cannot stay in the forest any longer. But being away from you… it could be unbearable.”

Reagan