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 Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2023 7:29 pm
Splayed out on his bed, he gazed up at his reflection, overly pale with dark circles under his eyes. An icepack pressed to his side, hints of bruising already showing. He looked like s**t, and sometimes the point was to look like s**t, to end a night looking worn out and torn up and beautifully used. But it wasn’t very fun this time, was it?
His eyes focused on the hair that no longer draped across his pile of pillows and blankets, and he frowned in sulky dissatisfaction. Mom would cry again, thinking it was some sort of rebellion against her aesthetic tastes. The emergency stylist, called in at 3am from a dark alley and taking it in almost suspicious stride, had reacted with such alarm at the sight of the damage that Hybris felt rather gratified. Until it’d gone on overlong and became annoying. In the end, she’d assured him it made him look more masculine, but honestly, was that more useful? Was that more beautiful?
Thackery would probably worry until he decided it was very handsome, actually. Blaise would…well, the style was more on the trashy side of the spectrum, wasn’t it? Maybe that would be a reaction to look forward to, at least.
With a groan he arched his back, stretching into the pain and leaning over to
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Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2023 7:33 pm
Leaning over to peer past the curtains of his bed, he made eye contact with three sets of brightly glinting eyes. The boys wagged their tails together, nearly in time. After a prolonged silence he heaved a sigh and rolled over onto his back, giving the bed a pat. A scramble of paws backpedaling and leaping up followed, then the jostling of each to pick the Best Place to lean and flop against their human.
As they all settled down, he tried to return to the book in hand, a diary belonging to a housewife, through her divorce and on into her following a band she’d loved in high school as a middle aged groupie. Nudging noses and pushy paws put that plan to rest, and with a gusty sigh he put the book down, rousing another brief wag of tails.
Laying back, both hands massaging into black, fluffy fur, he looked up at the clump of dogs and human with a wan smile. The boys and their dog walker had made the past week a lot more comfortable, but then they made every week more comfortable for him, really. His eyes skimmed across their reflection, stopping only for a moment at his hair before affectionately tracing across the curled forms of each dog. Dirk, Day, and Darkest…and…
A fourth dark shape on the bed moved.
He slowly breathed in once and out once before shooting up in the bed to see what was there. The dogs hopped up in excitement and then tentative worry as he just sat there peering wildly around the bed. Jerking his head back to look up he found…the shadow still there in the mirror’s reflection. Shifting. And maybe…watching.
A moment later, and it was gone. With a shaky breath, his
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Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2023 7:35 pm
With a shaky breath his head lolled back, half lidded gaze flickering to watch their reflection on high, taking in his own almost smugly satisfied smile. His eyes traced down the beautiful back, muscles with their rolling flex and jerking shudder forming a silent piece of poetry he wanted to read again and again. The pale, almost glowing foot pressing against that back provided a pampered counterpoint that made his smile grow wider and…
The sense of being watched again. It was the sort of speculation he’d toyed with before, that the Mirror watched, especially the little court it had shaped into dark figures of power, draped in gauze and magic. But this felt…a little malevolent, didn't it?
He tensed and then that poem with all its little verses poured into him and out his mouth in a burst of
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Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2023 7:37 pm
A burst of hot breath hit his chest, and with a small laugh he started to say something but then the smell of smoke filled his nose and the words froze. Did the light in the room change? Were the shadows growing distinct and stretching longer and longer until…
There was a questioning sound below him, and he gave another little laugh, frustrated and with an edge of anger. It was her hair. She smoked, that was all. Again a question and then he was dipping his head down to give open mouthed reassurances even as his hands flexed and punished.
Later, staring up at their reflection, he idly decided that they looked good together and maybe he could forgive the little scare earlier. Fingers threading through dark hair, its former silkiness lost to sweat and manhandling, his thoughts paused as he watched the hair stretch and lengthen as he pulled his hand away. A dark spill of tendrils poured over the boy in the reflection, drowning him in its shifting shadow.
He met his own eyes, and they stared back strangely. He opened his mouth
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Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2023 7:38 pm
He opened his mouth in a messy groan until a hand roughly gripped his hair and jerked his head back. He briefly glimpsed his face, pale and stretched, before the intensity of fear and thrill overwhelmed. His vision turned white and he nearly broke his nose on the headboard.
There was a laugh behind him and the sound shifted and twisted into someone, something entirely else. His face hit the pillow and
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Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2023 7:40 pm
His face hit the pillow and he let out a soft whine. He’d had to step down from the part he’d spent the better piece of his summer working on, and his understudy was so ********> happy about it. It was disgusting to have someone else benefit from him suffering, but it was too hard to focus with every mirror offering a malevolent gaze. Not to mention any sudden shift in light or heat was enough to make him break character. He’d rather just not have the role at all if the only other option was risking a s**t performance. It had been his choice, but it was a galling one.
A light that did not belong shot out from under his bed and an iron hard bar of tension shot down his spine. It took a moment, breath frozen in his chest, for his mind to register the rattling whrrrrr of his phone vibrating against the floor. Tension and breath eased out of him, and he rose to pick it up with a quiet, chagrined laugh that was nearing the edge of some kind of cliff.
Running a hand through his hair, he looked at the screen. A text from Mina. Something was wrong with the mirrors.
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