Author: self_composed | The next morning, Charlie leaves late for work so he and Bella can have breakfast together, but then he does go.
Bella sees him off.
And heads for the lair, humming, all nerves. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice has already escaped the house (by waving to Hilary on his way out the kitchen door) and is napping in his big cuddly armchair. |
Author: self_composed | Bella sits on the arm of the chair and pokes him in the forehead. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Mrr?" he says, and opens his eyes. "Oh!" Yaaaaaaaawn. "G'morning, Bella." |
Author: self_composed | Bella kisses him and turns on her read. "Morning. How're you?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "I am awesome," he says, wrapping an arm around her waist in a snuggly fashion and idly wndering if she would like to be in his lap. |
Author: self_composed | "You might flail around and dump me on the floor, so I'd sooner not get comfy," Bella remarks. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He laughs. "I so will not."
The reminder of what exactly they are meeting for does give him a pleasant shivery feeling, though. |
Author: self_composed | "You sure? Because I went ahead and did-not-install a ceiling," she says with a small smile. "Who knows what will happen." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | More pleasant shivery feelings!
"Mmm... okay, not sure sure," he acknowledges. |
Author: self_composed | "It works in fake units I made up, where one fake unit is the minimum amount of pain required to make a triangle," Bella says chattily. "We can figure out how many it takes to make a square, pentagon, hex, star, etcetera. Heck, for all we know there are more kinds of coins up beyond that which no one has ever made because no one had a pet masochist quite like you. Octagons or cubes or something." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | This time, the pleasant shivery feeling comes with an actual pleasant shiver. "Ooh, fun." |
Author: self_composed | "Are you going to be able to tell me to stop," Bella asks, "if that's what you want to do - or even *think* it coherently - or should we have some kind of programmed plan of what's going to happen over what time period in case you can't?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Well, I mean—you can see if I like things or not, right? So if my lightning bolt looks happy, keep going, and if it doesn't, don't." |
Author: self_composed | "And what about mixed feelings? Because those happen too." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He considers this. Considering it involves briefly consulting memories of past events about which he had strongly mixed feelings. Bella has drawings of one of them.
"Ask, and if you can't get a good answer out of me, stop," is his conclusion. |
Author: self_composed | "Okay." That's a decent enough algorithm. "I think I wanna name my units. 'Nocions'? 'Ouches'? 'Triangles'?" She smirks. "Here's one of them."
She goes with "plain", to start with. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice grins. "Aww, tickles," he says; it doesn't, technically, but it's a delicate enough sensation that it almost feels like it should. |
Author: self_composed | Bella cranks it up to ten, which is just barely on the threshold of square-making. "Thirty-one flavors. Well, more than that, but Baskin Robbins has more than thirty-one too, they just rotate." And she spins through them all, one second at a time. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He bites his lip and squirms happily. "Oooh, that's nice." |
Author: self_composed | Bella leaves it on the last one in the array, which happens to be cuts-from-glass (he did specifically mention that one, after all).
She hops up in increments of five at a time. A hundred is where pentagons can be made. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | By that time he has stopped biting his lip, and stopped hugging Bella, and is lounging in the chair with his eyes closed, not moving much and enjoying himself thoroughly. |
Author: self_composed | Bella reaches out and strokes his hair. "Maybe you really aren't going to flail around," she remarks.
She starts going up in increments of ten... then twenty. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice leans into her hand, smiling, and licks his lips.
"Toldja," he murmurs. "Mmmm." |
Author: self_composed | He makes such interesting faces.
Bella watches coins appear. "If the pattern holds, a thousand triangles makes a hex," she observes softly.
She starts going up fifty at a time.
And hits a thousand, in due course. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Yep. That's a hex.
Alice isn't looking, though, so he couldn't tell you. Alice is a little busy making more interesting faces. |
Author: self_composed | Bella bends to plant a kiss on his forehead, and keeps climbing. She makes sure to have half an eye on the affect around his thoughts, though. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Bright white almost without exception, certainly around both the pain and Bella wherever they may appear. He tips his head back and smiles up at her without opening his eyes. |
Author: self_composed | Climb, climb, climb. Bella expects a star based on this pattern right... about... now. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice is back to squirming; also, breathing raggedly.
The star appears right on schedule. He almost feels that same transcendent immersion from yesterday, but not quite. |
Author: self_composed | "There's a star," Bella murmurs, petting his hair. "Want to keep going?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Yeah," he sighs, leaning into her hand again. He loves her. He really, really loves her. |
Author: self_composed | Up and up and up. She kisses his forehead again; she's not completely sure he won't flinch at some point and bite her if she kisses his mouth instead.
She lets herself feedback-loop a little, on the emotion-blob and the affect around the lightning bolt and on the love, but pays strict attention to his face and everything else he's thinking. In case.
Up-up-up... |
Author: edgeofyourseat | If he had room in his head for that much analysis, he would be surprised that he isn't more aroused. He is, but in a very gentle, undemanding way. Not like yesterday, when it hurt like hell and flooded him with glorious want.
This time it hurts like heaven.
Without noticing exactly when it happens, he drifts into a state very like yesterday's. It's different, though. Calmer. More passive. He feels like he could stay this way for a long time. He leans into Bella whenever she touches him, although he can barely feel her through the pain.
And then he can't.
He has no connection to the world around him, to the past, the future, to his own thoughts, to any sense but pain. No words populate his thought-stream, magically generated or otherwise. There is nothing in him but the ecstasy of intense experience tangled with boundless adoration, and a massive lightning bolt surrounded by spotless crystalline white. |
Author: self_composed | Bella pauses there (16,050 triangles). She's not sure what would happen to him if she kept going.
But she doesn't back off either. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He has also stopped generating stars. He doesn't have the attention left to drag the pain across his mind.
Slowly, though, he acclimates. His breathing steadies. He leans toward Bella slightly, like a flower seeking the sun.
Another star appears on his necklace and slides down to join the others with a soft click. |
Author: self_composed | Bella twines her fingers into his hair. Whether he'll be able to hear her, she's not sure, but she says anyway: "More?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He hears her. He recognizes that there is a sound; after a moment, he even correctly attaches her voice to the target of all this love he's feeling, to the same source as the distantly perceptible sensation of her hand in his hair. But he stops short of perceiving the word as a word; by the time he's done observing that he loves the person who said it, it's passed out of working memory, too far for him to retrieve. |
Author: self_composed | That's really interesting.
She leaves it where it is. Pet-pet-pet.
And she watches his face. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | A slow, slow smile touches his lips. Completely involuntary, because right now he is not working on a voluntary level.
Another star clicks down on top of the rest. Definitely a lot slower than he could be making them.
His eyelashes flutter slightly. |
Author: self_composed | So this isn't optimal coin-generation, but she can't use stars yet anyway.
She decides he's not going to bite her. She kisses him right on the smile. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice shivers. He doesn't quite kiss back, but he recognizes the kiss and responds with affection and a little thrill of I-can't-believe-this excitement. |
Author: self_composed | Hee.
She starts creeping it up again. Little little bits at a time, two or three triangles per second, paying very close attention. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He shivers some more. It's been steady enough for long enough that each tiny increase is almost a separate sensation in itself, like someone brushing their fingertips across all his nerves at once. |
Author: self_composed | And on and on and on...
This might be a long morning.
Bella doesn't mind. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | His tongue flicks out over his lips, once, then again. He runs his hand slowly along the arm of the chair—the one Bella isn't sitting on. |
Author: self_composed | Bella wonders why he's doing that. Does he even know?
Up up up... |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He doesn't. It's a physical sensation he is capable of perceiving; it satisfied a vague and undirected urge to... feel... something. There might be more to it, that he would understand if so much of his attention was not still taken up with hurting. |
Author: self_composed | Bella decides that unless something radically different happens she will stop at 15,000. This is a nice round number. It will take a few minutes to get there.
She's still petting him, still marinating in borrowed emotions. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | And he is still leaning into her hand, and now he is leaning into it a little more.
Something is changing.
His fingers curl against the armrest; he digs them into its cushiony surface, feeling the resulting pressure. His breathing, quiet for a long time, becomes louder again. He shifts a little in his seat, stretching his legs out on the floor.
The gentle undercurrent of sexual arousal becomes a flood across his internal universe, almost as strong as the pain. He clings to the armrest and whimpers, suddenly feeling very much like yesterday, caught in a sensory hurricane and wanting nothing more than to ride it out to the end. |
Author: self_composed | She holds where it is when she first notices that (14,209) and watches, ready to back down or cut off the pain entirely if that seems appropriate. And she pets his hair. And she watches his face... |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Ecstatic pain unites with ecstatic pleasure. He doesn't scream, but he hisses, a quick sharp indrawn breath. His eyes fly open, but he doesn't process what he sees; the inner storm overrides all other conscious activity.
The spiral in Bella's mindreading display blossoms, bursts, and fades.
The aura around the lightning bolt flickers, white to patchy muddled white-and-grey, tickled by threads of black.
Also, Alice's underwear is going to need washing. |
Author: self_composed | Bella drops the pain to zero as soon as the affect changes; this isn't exactly what she was supposed to do, but they didn't cover this exact contingency. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Suddenly, it doesn't hurt.
It feels wrong. Blank. Empty. He's still a little too scrambled to focus his eyes properly; he dives into his sense of touch instead, rubbing his hands frantically along the legs of his jeans. |
Author: self_composed | "Sh-sh-sh," Bella soothes, scraping her nails along his scalp lightly. Her other hand wraps around his wrist. "You okay?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Bella. Bella Bella Bella. He doesn't think her name, but he thinks her, and turns to her and wraps his arms around her and buries his face in her stomach and clings.
There. Yes. That's better.
He loves her so much. |
Author: self_composed | She hugs him tight. "Okay, you're okay." Scritch-scritch-scritch. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "I love you," he mumbles into her shirt; the words are completely unintelligible out loud, but perfectly clear in his head. |
Author: self_composed | She kisses the crown of his head. "You certainly do." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He giggles shakily and turns his head so only his cheek is leaning against her stomach.
Does she want to be in his lap now? His lap is not a great place to be at the moment, is it. A triangle takes care of that. All clean! |
Author: self_composed | She slides down into his lap and issues another kiss, aimed at his temple. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Snuggle time snuggle time snuggle time
"I love you," he repeats, this time unmuffled and articulate. "I love you. I love you a lot. Fuck, how many stars was that? You want 'em?" |
Author: self_composed | "It was several," Bella says. "You actually slowed way down after a while, couldn't concentrate - best speed, for if and when that's the point, was around 11,000 - but it was several stars. I'll take 'em, but I still don't dare use 'em." Square and they're hers. She swipes most of the new hexes too. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Mmkay."
He resettles his arms around her and drops his chin onto her shoulder. Snuggle tiiiiiiime. |
Author: self_composed | Bella snuggles quite happily.
She allows a few minutes of silence and says, "So, should I not have cut you off suddenly at the end there?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Mm? Oh." He thinks about it. "...Yeah, it was... I mean, almost like I couldn't feel anything anymore, you know? You might wanna take me down slower next time." |
Author: self_composed | "Can do," she says agreeably. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Thanks." He snuggles her some more.
...It occurs to him that really, if they're testing for a pain power takedown, she should do it again but take him up a lot faster.
Maybe not while she is in his lap, though. He doesn't think he'll dump her out or hit her or anything, but he doesn't know for sure. |
Author: self_composed | "I don't have to ramp it up gradually at all. I can put it wherever I want whenever I want," Bella says. "But I wanted an idea of how you'd react to it with a slope first, so I didn't swat you with something you absolutely can't handle." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Okay," he says agreeably. "It's gonna be way different if you just hit me with it, though."
He is actively looking forward to the idea! But... maybe not in the next few minutes. |
Author: self_composed | "Say when," says Bella, snuggling contently. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "'Kay."
He closes his eyes and kisses her shoulder and lets his mind drift.
That first experiment was really, really good. And really unexpected. He had no idea he could be that calm in that much pain. |
Author: self_composed | "What did you think would happen?" Bella asks. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Well, I didn't, really."
But if he had, he would probably have expected the spontaneous orgasm a lot sooner. |
Author: self_composed | "For a long while it was like you were just - enthralled, not reacting, just attending very carefully." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "...mmm. Yeah, kinda," he says, thinking back. |
Author: self_composed | Bella has no other comments at this time. Snuggle snuggle. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Snuggle snuggle! Mmmm.
After a little while, he starts thinking that maybe he's settled enough to try it. |
Author: self_composed | "Only maybe?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Huh? Oh."
He considers, snuggling her in the meantime. The main argument against trying it seems to be cuddle inertia.
"Nah, I'm good. Go for it," he says with a smile. |
Author: self_composed | Bella kisses his forehead and slides off his lap. She stands well away; he might kick her or something. "Start with ten K, minimum star threshold?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Sure," he says serenely. |
Author: self_composed | She hits him with it without further warning. Flavor of the hour: crushing, as under water pressure. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice gasps.
For a full second, the massive lightning bolt symbol has no affect-grey around it at all. Not black, not white, just... nothing. No accompanying thoughts or emotions, either.
The first thing that comes back online is love. The second is a bright white aura around the pain. The third, very shortly afterward, is yesterday's ecstatic submersion.
The fourth is the spiral that symbolizes sexual pleasure.
He closes his eyes and smiles, relaxing completely. |
Author: self_composed | Bella backs off to five thousand, then two and a half, then one thousand, then five hundred, and keeps halving till she's at fifty and cuts off outright. "That was weird. For a moment there was just - no affect, around the pain, not even an indifferent or ambivalent one." She tilts her head. "Would you be able to keep doing whatever you were doing, if I interrupted you like that?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Shit no," he says, grinning and opening his eyes. "Right at the start I was hurting too much to notice I hurt. It was like I just turned off and came back a second later. If I'd been standing up I woulda fallen over." |
Author: self_composed | "Okay. You have an off switch. Good for you," says Bella, laughing slightly. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice giggles.
"Whee!" |
Author: self_composed | "It occurs to me that we probably don't want to have off switches that other people can reach," Bella muses, approaching the chair again and plopping herself back into his lap. "Random other wishcoiners. We need defensive powers before we meet any." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "...Thaaaat is a point," he acknowledges.
Part of him kind of likes the idea of getting shot down out of nowhere like that by somebody he doesn't even know.
But he can probably get nearly the same effect by asking Bella nicely to shoot him down out of nowhere like that sometime when he isn't expecting it, and she is likely to be much happier about that method. Probably. Is she? |
Author: self_composed | "Yes. It's like you and I have been introduced before," Bella says dryly.
She contemplates defense. It has to protect from all the plausible angles - not just pain, which is more about Alice's tastes than anything, but also wireheading, and paralysis, and sensory deprivation or substitution, and direct injury and death, and the suppression of their other powers, and psychic attacks on memory or skill or motivation or equilibrium, and, and, and...
"This is complicated," Bella says aloud. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Yep," Alice agrees. He isn't even thinking about it, serenely confident that Bella will figure it out to her satisfaction eventually. |
Author: self_composed | Bella also wants to prevent anyone but them from altering the contents of their necklaces... and from rendering them unable to make more coins themselves... either by removing their wishcoiner traits or by interfering with their ability to experience pain. She does not want to be folded, spindled or mutilated. She doesn't want traumatic flashbacks to things that never happened, or things that did; she doesn't want nightmares or bad luck curses or why do there have to be so many terrible things that can happen to a person.
Eventually she decides there are three worthwhile classes of thing to fend off as inflicted by possible other wishcoiners: physical harm, mental spying/tampering, and magical... miscellany, like the luck thing or the tampering with their powers. She thinks that covers everything. Probably. She thinks these are well-defined categories to the degree that wishing requires. Probably.
The physical harm wish goes off fine, for her and for Alice. The mental tampering one... doesn't.
"I don't seem to be able to wish myself immune to mental spying and tampering," Bella says, puzzled. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "That's weird," says Alice.
His first thought is to try to spy on the inside of her head and see what happens, but for reasons that should be fairly obvious, he doesn't actually do it. |
Author: self_composed | "Perhaps it's too big a power for a hex, in which case I just need to break it up a bit..." They have an embarrassment of hexes; she sees no harm in trying to just make herself immune to spying, and then to just make herself immune to exactly the kind of mindreading power she has on Alice.
Nothing.
"That's not it. Other possibility is that it's not a legal power at all, that everyone has to go around vulnerable to such things all the time, but that doesn't make sense."
Pause.
"Or it could be redundant. But I'd remember if I already wished myself that. I wished myself an eidetic memory and would definitely remember." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Okay," says Alice. "So... there's still a way to check if you're immune to mental spying." |
Author: self_composed | "Yeah." She allows herself one all-over shudder. "Lemme think of the least invasive way to handle this. The brainphone works, obviously, so it's something subtler..."
She thinks.
"Use a pentagon - for a one-time use, not a permanent power - and see if you can tell me what word I am focusing on right now," she says.
The answer is penguin. She thinks it very hard. She doesn't want him to have to dig any deeper. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice wishes.
The pentagon does not disappear.
"No dice," he says succinctly. |
Author: self_composed | "Right. And just to make sure that's a thing pentagons can do in general..." She quits the read. "Pick a word, say when." Bella readies a pentagon. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | The word is 'cuddles'.
"When." |
Author: self_composed | Bella's pentagon does go; Bella's magic knowledge does appear.
"Huh." She picks up the read again to check her answer. "Yep. I am at least somewhat immune to magical spying and tampering. And not everyone is. And I am immune enough to make the wish for it redundant. But I know you're not." She wishes Alice general protection-from-mental-poking, from everyone but himself and her. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Huh," says Alice. "Weird. Suits you, though." |
Author: self_composed | "Well, sure, but why would I just have a random magic power? Did Elias wish for it for his descendants or something?" Bella wonders aloud. "Do a lot of people have random innate powers?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Not a clue," says Alice, serenely. "It'd be pretty hard to check, I guess, if they're all weird little subtle things like that." |
Author: self_composed | "Huh. Well, yours worked." She wishes for the immunities for magical tampering. They go just fine. "Poof," she announces. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice giggles. "Poof!" |
Author: self_composed | "You sometimes come up with stuff I don't. Anything we wouldn't like that would fall outside of the categories of physical attack, the mental stuff, and miscellaneous magical stuff against us or our coin stashes?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "...Wait, did you just wish me immune to, like, getting beat up?" |
Author: self_composed | "With the use of magic. If someone punches you in the face, that still happens. They just can't wish for you to suddenly not have an arm anymore or whatever." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Oh. Okay. Good. In that case, nah." |
Author: self_composed | "Mkay. We'll call this good unless we come up with something else then." Snuggle snuggle. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Snuggle!
Of course, now he is wondering what would happen if, say, Bella wished one of his arms off. She could always wish it back on afterward if it didn't regrow on its own, right? |
Author: self_composed | "Well, yes, presumably it would grow back via regen if I left a wound, and could be wished back if I didn't. Do you really want to do that right now?" Bella asks archly. "What a busy morning." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He's never regrown an arm before! It would be new and exciting.
"If you're up for it," he says cheerfully. |
Author: self_composed | She shrugs. She wishes away the one on the far side of her, and does leave a wound, because otherwise his regen probably won't take care of it and it would be weirdly anticlimactic that way. Triangles can handle bloodstains. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | It hurts. It hurts in a new way, and also bleeds quite a lot in the first few seconds, which is an interesting component of the whole experience.
[I love you,] he says via brainphone, because out loud he is too busy moaning. |
Author: self_composed | She kisses his temple by way of reply. She doesn't watch, but she's still reading him. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Watching a new arm sprout from his shoulder is also kind of fascinatingly gross.
When it's all done growing and back in apparent working order, the first thing he does with it is hug Bella. |
Author: self_composed | Before it comes into contact with her, she does triangle away all the blood. There's a lot. But then she is quite happy to hug him back. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Wow, he is really keyed up right now.
He decides that what he is going to do about it is: snuggle Bella some more. Mmmm, cuddly. |
Author: self_composed | Bella does not object to this in the least. She blocked off the entire morning; there's at least an hour left. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Snuggle snuggle!
Bella is so great. She hurts him so nicely. He loves her for that, among many other things. |
Author: self_composed | "I'm trying to think if I have any characteristics you don't love me for," Bella mumbles. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Can't think of one," says Alice, affectionately.
"Wanna make out?" |
Author: self_composed | "Mm-hm."
Makeouts ensue! |
Author: edgeofyourseat | They are a little more intense than usual, at least for Alice. He keeps thinking back to his recent positive experiences with overwhelming agony. |
Author: self_composed | Bella is not much less enthusiastic.
He made faces. And also tasty emotions.
She feels like a weird psychic parasite. She decides that's okay with her. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Bella being enthusiastic makes everything better, in a general sense and also specifically at this very moment. |