[action | closed] burning into the night

[amberdrake]

Who: Sanzo and Amberdrake, then later Sanzo and Alleyana Lavellan.
When: OP and first thread: The first night of the curses, Oct 21st. Second thread: a week later.
What: OP and first thread: Drake arrives home after his first encounter with Ukoku to find Sanzo is a woof. Also-a-woof Alley shows up later to bark her frustrations at Sanzo. Second thread: Drake tells Sanzo about Ukoku creeping around his office.
Where: Drake and Sanzo's house.
Warnings: Drake's a bit suggestive in the second thread.

Amberdrake didn't allow his weariness to show until he'd firmly closed the front door of the house behind him, leaning back against it for a moment to collect his thoughts. The birds who had traveled home with him fluttered off and up the stairs.

Comments

[badly_behaved_priest]

To find Sanzo in an uncomfortable and embarrassing state. The curse had struck while he was asleep, unfortunately, leaving him covered in fur and quite trapped. Even as a wolf, not even a half-man looking beast, just a wolf, he was painfully thin, but that didn't help when it came to how his limbs had rearranged themselves. His clothes hadn't had the courtesy to tear when he changed.

A struggle had ensued, leaving him worse for wear. One foreleg was sticking straight out through the collar of his shirt, jammed up against his head and neck, the other caught in a sleeve by the elbow. Both back legs were tangled in his jeans and, later, the sheets as he'd flailed around in confusion. At some point he'd fallen off the bed and stunned himself.

Now he lay at the end of the bed, on the floor, the birds laughing and chattering in excitement at his interesting new shape.

"Drake!" he called, relief drowned by irritation. Drake had to be home if the birds were here.

[amberdrake]

Oh dear Gods had Ukoku done something to Sanzo already? Amberdrake quickly went up the stairs, feeling with his Empathy Sanzo's frustration. Surely he'd be worse than frustrated if the other Sanzo had paid a visit...

Drake paused in the doorway to the bedroom, and stared. "--Um."

There was just no preparing for that.

[badly_behaved_priest]

Sanzo couldn't even glare at him properly, this was a travesty. His head was stuck and sore, he had to glower over his own leg at Drake.

"Get me out of this and stare later!" he snapped. Any pretense of politeness had been thrown aside after the second hour he'd been trapped by his own shirt.

[amberdrake]

Amberdrake was startled into moving forward, shoving away his confusion for the moment. "Alright, okay," seriously though, what the hell? He knelt down beside the fallen Sanzo and drew his little belt knife. "Hold still," not that Sanzo... had a whole lot of choice.

He slit the neck of the shirt and then tore it open, releasing one foreleg and Sanzo's neck. "How did you even get one leg into the neck?" Honestly. Honestly.

Amberdrake did the same to the shoulder on the other side, and tore the rest of the shirt free.

[badly_behaved_priest]

"I woke up like that," Sanzo huffed, though the embarrassment he felt suggested he'd somehow done that to himself. It was confusing to wake up as a wolf!

"Thank you," he added quickly. He was grateful, he'd been locked in that position for hours and, ow, that started to hurt after a while. The sight of his hands, now paws, stretched out in front of him cut into the relief. Goddamnit.

"Get my legs. Please. I don't know why this is happening. I hate this place."

[amberdrake]

"You know," Drake wrestled the tangled sheets free of Sanzo's other half, and then started trying to puzzle out how to get jeans off a wolf, "this is not quite how I pictured getting your clothes off..."

Where was his tail? Stuffed down one leg of the jeans, it looked like. He undid the fly with awfully practiced fingers and then attempted to slide the sturdy bit of clothing off. It would be a lot harder to cut and tear if he had to!

[badly_behaved_priest]

"Shut. Up." Sanzo was frustrated enough about all this, he didn't want to think about how he was going to be effectively naked like this! It felt like being wrapped in a very odd blanket. Yet not quite.

Much to his horror, the jeans didn't want to come off now he had wolf legs stuck in them. He yelped, cursed himself, and scrambled at the floor with his claws to try to get some leverage to help get the damn things off. Thankfully, once past his knees, they popped off easy enough and Sanzo slumped on the ground, exhausted. He'd been struggling with that mess for ages.

"I hate this place."

[amberdrake]

Amberdrake allowed himself a tired chuckle, and scooped Sanzo up to deposit him on the bed. One of the main sentient races on his world were gigantic, telepathic wolves, so it wasn't like he was unfamiliar with the anatomy. Sanzo in this form was just smaller than a kyree.

He shrugged out of his feather-patterned robe and climbed onto the bed, too. Normally, he'd change out of his work clothes and ornamentation when he came home, but right now he just wanted to be near his Sanzo, even if his shape had changed.

"I'm sorry, ke'chara. At least I'm not blind this time. These worlds tend to do weird things like this, now and then. It should be temporary."

[badly_behaved_priest]

"It better be," Sanzo grumbled as he tried to make himself comfortable on the bed in this new body. He hadn't let himself worry about being stuck like this forever and he wasn't about to start. That was not extra stress he needed.

He sighed, it sounded all the more dramatic coming out of a muzzle, and curled up on a spot without blankets. After being tangled up for so long, he was leery of getting stuck in the blankets again. Those damn claws got stuck on everything.

"They'll tell us something about this shit tomorrow I'll bet." He laid his head down, looking at Drake. He still had his purple eyes and chakra, even as a wolf. Both looked entirely out of place against blonde fur.

"If it involves that horrible, broken down garbage dump I'll consider staying like this."

[amberdrake]

Drake reached out to soothe spots where fur had been pulled the wrong way by clothing, a little of the Gift making its way in with his fingers threading through Sanzo's fur. He kept petting after that was sorted, finding it pleasant. He gave Sanzo an experimental scritch between the ears.

"Mmhm, I'm sure there'll be a deluge of posts on the network about people getting caught up in whatever this is," he sighed, "but hopefully there will be something useful among all the complaining."

[badly_behaved_priest]

"I doubt it." Being positive was hard and he wasn't eager to be so. This was terrible.

His ears flicked back- it was so weird to be able to move his ears!- at the scritching. Seriously?! He gave Drake a dark look, or attempted to, it didn't look that scary now he didn't have eyebrows. Drake did seem tired? Stressed? He had just pulled Sanzo out of that tangle of bullshit, so maybe he shouldn't be a shit about it.

"What are you doing?" he asked instead of snapping for Drake to just stop.

[amberdrake]

"Petting my boyfriend," Amberdrake smiled, still scritching. "Your fur's very nice. Would you prefer it if I stopped?"

[badly_behaved_priest]

Sanzo dipped his head, nose pressing against his leg. He wasn't sure what he felt, embarrassed, pleased, or awkward? Weird, he at least could pick that one out. His face wasn't supposed to be this long.

"Do whatever you want," he grumbled without any bite, literal or metaphorical, to back up his words.

[amberdrake]

Drake came home after his second meeting with Ukoku and just climbed into bed with his nocturnally-wolfy ke'chara. He stayed on top of the sheet, as usual, but draped an arm over Sanzo's shoulder through it and made himself doze off soon after.

They needed to talk, but it would wait until morning.

[badly_behaved_priest]

Sanzo was half-dressed the next morning before he realized something wasn't quite right. Firstly, Drake would usually still be asleep, working late as he did. Secondly, he hadn't bothered to dress down before heading to bed.

He pulled on a shirt and gave Drake a look that was as suspicious as it was questioning.

[amberdrake]

Amberdrake politely kept his eyes shut until it sounded like Sanzo was dressed, then blinked them open and yawned. This was ungodly early, for him. He rubbed at his eyes and extended a hand toward Sanzo, silently asking him to come back to bed.

[badly_behaved_priest]

Sanzo complied without complaint, sliding back into bed next to Drake. He was too tired to bother with a rude comment or resistance. Without an active threat to snap him awake, he was slow in the mornings.

"Something happen?" Something had gone wrong, he was sure of it. Or he was about to get teased for worrying.

[amberdrake]

Amberdrake was pleased to wrap his arms around Sanzo, even throwing a leg over the priest's much skinnier ones. He was a very tactile and affectionate guy, so this wasn't abnormal, at least. "Mmn, do you remember when I told you about the Haighlei Empire, and how I had to play the entire Court?"

[badly_behaved_priest]

Sanzo had gotten used to how very, very tactile Drake was. Sometimes he acted like it still annoyed him, but not in the morning. It took too much energy to get mad when waking up. At least when he couldn't get away with hitting anyone to vent his annoyance.

If he didn't complain, he didn't have to think about why it didn't bother him to be pressed up against Drake.

"Yes?" It had been a stressful story, so he remembered it well.

[amberdrake]

"Keep that in mind with what I'm about to tell you," Amberdrake pressed a kiss to Sanzo's forehead, and then sighed. "Ukoku has been to my office, twice now. I am perfectly fine," he was quick to add, "nothing has happened but talk. He wanted me to flee home and tell you, to worry you... drive you into a panic. But I am more than handling him. And if he attacks me, I will paralyze him on the spot. He has no idea about either of my Gifts."

[badly_behaved_priest]

That was the kind of threat to snap Sanzo awake. He was immediately tense but didn't struggle free, not yet. Ukoku wasn't here now, though Sanzo was still tempted to go look for him right away. The longer he had to prepare for whatever he had planned, the worse Sanzo's chances against him were. He didn't stand much of a chance now.

"Is that all he wants?" Sanzo asked stiffly. He stared at Drake without actually seeing him, his mind already running through possible plans the dark priest might have. If Ukoku wanted to kill Drake, there would be no time to fight back, he knew that.

[amberdrake]

"He's trying to gather information on me," Amberdrake carded the fingers of one hand through Sanzo's hair, trying to soothe the priest even a little. He could feel that tension, both physically and otherwise. "He wants to weaponize me against you, of course. He's utterly fixated on you. But I've kept him off-balance, and wary. And curious. That means he'll keep coming back, but it also makes killing me out-right a waste."

So few things interested the dark priest, even a little.

"Of course, I'm getting far more information out of him than the reverse. I'm telling you about his visits now, to take that tool away from him before he even has the chance to use it."

[badly_behaved_priest]

"Hn." Sanzo didn't know much about Ukoku, other than what an awful piece of shit he was. He had a hand in too many tragedies but it wasn't clear how much influence he had in the end. He was powerful, cruel, and clever. Here, he became Sanzo's problem, he couldn't justify leaving him be because of distance or a more important goal now.

Sanzo tried to push himself away from Drake and up out of the bed again. His mood was stormy, concerned. His group wasn't here, he'd have to plan carefully, if he could even handle Ukoku himself.

[amberdrake]

Drake allowed Sanzo to slip free, although not before pressing another kiss to his forehead. He radiated calm reassurance -- quite literally.

"Death isn't permanent on this world," he told the priest once he was free, "he wants to hurt you. Worry you. Anything he can to disrupt any good in your life. Don't let him get to you, dearheart. It's what he wants. I'm making sure he can't hurt me to get to you, and he can't make me hurt you, either. I'm reading him like a book every time he comes near... and it's not a very interesting book."

[badly_behaved_priest]

Sanzo leaned against the wall by the window, turned away from Drake. He pushed the curtains aside just enough to peer outside, squinting against the bright morning sunlight. There wasn't much outside to look at, not that he expected anything to be there. It was just something to do while he was here, lacking the skill and resources to handle the current threat.

He didn't know what Ukoku's deal was, why he was fixated like Drake said, he wasn't even sure what his goal was before he showed up like a black stain on this already frustrating situation. The transition to this world had even fixed whatever damage Sanzo had done during that hellish fight.

"So there's nothing to be done." It was a blunt statement, not one of defeat.