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Character of the Season
Frail in body but dangerously quick of mind, Nikandr is the sort of character who proves that curiosity can be just as perilous as any weapon. A necromancer, inventor, and problem-solver with more ambition than self-preservation, Niki approaches the world like a puzzle box begging to be opened, even when what’s inside has teeth. Blunt, dry-witted, fiercely independent, and carrying a history best left partially buried, he has a knack for making even failure feel fascinating. Whether he’s raising the dead, moving across Caido to King's End, or experiencing a hangover for the first time, Nikandr brings a wonderfully strange spark to Caido, and we can’t wait to see what trouble his brilliant mind wanders into next.
Congratulations, Niki!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
OG Skinning provided by Kaons, with functionality and many custom plugins made by Neowulf!
01-18-2025, 03:47 PM (This post was last modified: 01-18-2025, 03:47 PM by Flora.)
candlewax & polaroids on the hardwood floor
"Don't you threaten me with a good time," she purrs. Unlike the captain or Cassian, apparently, Flora's body had no cool-down period built into it, such that if he was going to continue to intentionally try and steal her breath away, he'd find himself with her thighs pressed against his cheeks, silencing him for long enough until other parts of him were ready to be used again.
Shooting him a look which was a mixture of lust and playful annoyance, Flora turns her attention back to the countertop and the ingredients set out upon it. Snatching the recipe from his hands with a flourish, she glances at the measurements. "Butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon," she repeats, her voice soft and sing-song as if weighing the enormity of the task. "You’re not worried I’ll mess it up?" she teases, already setting her mug down. "That’s a lot of responsibility for someone with my, let’s say, track record." Butter softens under her fingers, sugar glitters in the morning light, and cinnamon clouds in the air like perfume as Flora combines the ingredients.
As she works, a streak of cinnamon sugar ends up smudged across her cheek, but she doesn’t notice, not as she grabs a whisk and begins to meticulously combine the ingredients together. "You think that seer, Alys, ever saw this in the cards?" Glancing over her shoulder at him, Flora raises her eyebrows. This of course being a strange moment of normalcy that felt wildly out of character for both of them, and yet somehow deserved just the same.
"I don't make threats, love. I make promises," Jack purrs in response, his back purposely to her as he continues to sift through and mix their dry ingredients, though she'll likely be able to sense his catlike smile without a need for telepathy or even to see his face. His hand lifts to allow the theft of the recipe card, and as she goes about making the cinnamon sugar - filling the kitchen with sweetness and spice as she does so - Flora isn't the only one suddenly boldly aware of the domestic nature of their morning.
"I don't think anyone could see this in any card," he admits. "Not you or I, or Alys. Maybe not even that nonna of yours." Moving onto the other ingredients and combining the butter, milk and yeast, he raises his eyebrows to her, noting the almost deliberate streak of sugar on her cheek. "If you mess it up, the worst that'll happen is they won't taste like cinnamon, or they'll be lumpy. And you're more likely to complain about that than I am."
Adding the ingredients together along with the crack of an egg, once they're appropriately mixed, Jack transfers the dough to the counter and kneads it with the sort of precise movements that might actually belong to a baker rather than the captain of a ship. "C'mere?" he asks her suddenly.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
Flora paused mid-whisk, her aqua eyes darting toward Jack, narrowing just enough to be playful without losing the heat simmering beneath her expression. "Yeah right," she murmured, her lips curling into a slow grin that could melt butter faster than the stove. "We both know you absolutely do make threats." Just normally not to her, and certainly not about all the sorts of things they might get up to.
Her gaze roved over him—sweatpants slung low, muscles flexing with every deliberate motion of his hands kneading the dough—and gods it was a toss-up whether the temptation to slide her finger along the band of the sweatpants was stronger than her desire to feel his clever fingers work her the way he currently was touching the dough. The contrast of domesticity and the devilish sharpness of him was nearly too much, and Flora swore she could feel her pulse thrumming in her ears.
Tapping the whisk against the edge of the bowl with a deliberate rhythm, she set it down carefully and wiped her hands on a nearby towel, though the cinnamon sugar remained stubbornly smeared across her cheek. "Wrong," she teased, voice low and syrupy as she crossed the small distance between them, her hips swaying just enough to be on the far side of subtle. "The worst thing that'll happen is I'll make you do all of this again until we get it right."
Stopping just short of him, Flora lifted her chin. She was close enough to breathe him in—the salt, the spice, the sea—though not nearly as close as she'd have them be were this scene to play out the way she was inclined to imagine it.
"I rarely make a threat I don't follow up on," Jack fires back, a touch of petulance in his voice that he entirely blames on hanging around in Flora's mind for so long. All but feeling her eyes bore into the back of him as he continues to knead the dough, the captain does flash a glance at her over his shoulder, brow raised in mock confusion, blue eyes like shards of the sky in the morning light streaming through the window.
"Would that be the worst thing?" he wants to know; standing in the kitchen drinking coffee and flirting with the arguably gorgeous Queen of Torchline? Jack can think of much worse ways to spend his time. "Granted," he adds, wiping his own hands off as she draws up beside him, "if we had to keep remakin' 'em, some liquor might accidentally find its way into the dough." Just a minor addition to Vai's recipe, you know.
But then Flora is before him, Jack reaching out to grasp her chin in warm, calloused fingers, so he might lean in deliciously close and proceed to lick the sugar from her cheek. "Tastes fine," he determines with a wolfish smile, releasing her again.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
"But you do make threats," Flora countered, her voice full of mock accusation as she waggled the whisk at Jack for good measure lest he forget who'd just point that particular point. "Gasp, oh no." Flora's blue eyes widened, full of a mischief that reflected in prismatic shards through her mind, colouring all of her thoughts in bright splashes of colour. "Not liquor in the dough!"
Expecting his lips to find hers, the feeling of Jack's tongue against her cheek had a surprising ripple of heat purring up from her core, leaving Flora blinking a touch dazedly. "Oh," was all she managed at first, her voice barely a breath as he pulled back. Her lips parted, caught in that fleeting space between surprise and a clever retort, but Jack’s deliberate mischief had short-circuited her entirely. In her mind, colours swirled—lavender haze and gold fire, spiralling wildly, leaving her struggling to find even a fragment of coherent thought.
She blinked, her tongue pressing against the inside of her cheek as she fought the growing smile threatening to bloom across her face. Finally, after a beat, Flora shook her head. "Fuck you," she laughed, the words just as affectionate as they'd been when Jack had whispered them against her skin that morning.
Rolling her eyes, she set the whisk down and crossed her arms. "If you wanted to throw me off my game, congratulations," she added, a grin finally breaking free as she threw a hand up in the air. "But now you’ve just made things unfair. You’re going to have to take the lead on this whole baking thing, because I’m far too distracted to focus anymore." She raised an eyebrow, the heat in her expression still simmering as she gestured vaguely at the counter. "You're up, captain."
Conceding the point if only because Flora's persistence has inevitably won out against Jack's interest, the captain is already considering accidentally adding some liquor to this batch of cinnamon rolls when the Doubletake's thoughts burst into full bloom. Oh indeed, Jack turning back to the counter - though not without a brief glance over his shoulder at her - and not bothering to hide the smile that remains curled across his lips.
"That's a real long-winded way of sayin' you're done helpin'," he quips to her, and though the spirals of gold and lilac in her mind threaten to have him up in more ways than one, he dutifully returns to the work at hand. Whether Flora will find it easier or more difficult to maintain her composure while Jack manhandles the dough isn't something he can control, though rest assured, his mind remains sharp to find out which.
With a sprinkle of flour and a rolling pin in hand, he manipulates and rolls out the ball of dough into a square, turning to grab Flora's cinnamon sugar to spread it across the surface in a layer. That done, he carefully rolls it up and deftly slices through it, creating perfect little whirls of sweetness. "Well?" he asks. "You gonna grade me?"
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
Flora leaned back against the counter, her arms crossed loosely, her aqua eyes fixed unapologetically on Jack as he worked. The strength in his forearms was utterly captivating as she watched the muscles shifting under sun-kissed skin with every deliberate motion. His calloused fingers moved expertly over the dough, sprinkling flour and rolling it out into a perfect square, and she couldn’t help but marvel at the juxtaposition of him—wild and dangerous, with hands seemingly as accustomed to being covered in blood as covered in flour and sugar.
Her gaze lingered on the messy half-bun he’d thrown his hair into, a few loose strands brushing against his neck as he leaned over the counter. The sweatpants hung low on his hips, his movements casual but deliberate, and Flora was not above appreciating the way the soft fabric clung to him as he worked, her gaze trying to slip down the muscular v as if she might follow it like a drop of water.
The air was thick with the sweet-spiced scent of cinnamon and sugar, and Flora found herself smiling despite the heat still curling at her core from his earlier antics as much as his recent ones. She tilted her head, letting her curls fall over one shoulder as her gaze followed the deft motions of his hands slicing the dough into perfect spirals. "Mm," she mused aloud, her voice light but carrying just enough edge to let him know he hadn’t escaped her scrutiny. "You’re very...precise. I didn’t realize you had such an eye for detail." She did, of course, but she wouldn't have thought it would extend to baking. And if she were Feyre, she'd absolutely be thinking about painting him just like this.
Pushing off the counter, she stepped closer, her grin turning sly as she leaned in to inspect the little cinnamon rolls he’d laid out. "If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you’ve done this before," she quipped, aqua eyes flicking up to meet his. Reaching out, she lightly brushed her finger over one of the rolls to swipe a bit of the cinnamon sugar that had spilled onto the counter. With deliberate slowness, she brought her finger to her lips, tasting it as her gaze held his. "A solid nine out of ten," she teased, licking the sugar from her fingertip. "I’d give you a ten, but I feel like you’d let it go to your head."
01-26-2025, 06:06 AM (This post was last modified: 01-26-2025, 06:06 AM by Jack.)
JACK
"You just gave a nine out of ten to the only part of this that you made," Jack drawls, his blue eyes flat and amused as he glances sidelong at Flora's approach. His gaze lingers on her, then, at the flick of her tongue against her finger, the sweetness he knows he'll taste if he leans in. "Ain't nothin' worth doin' if it ain't done right," he adds, and while it might usually come out as a haughty protest, Jack seems more than a little distracted as he speaks.
Really, though, given the devilish scrutiny with which Flora has been watching him for the past few minutes, her thoughts growing molten and hazy, the captain refuses to accept the blame for his reaction. Reaching out with a flour covered hand to snatch it around her waist, he turns against the counter to pull her flush against him - enough that she'll feel the full, hard press of his cock against her through his sweatpants.
"I'm going to fuck you against this counter," he tells her casually, as if they're talking about a mildly interesting change in the weather. "Right in front of your kitchen window." Jack's voice pitches low, his free hand pressing against her side and up to cup her breast, thumb grazing over her nipple through her tank top.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
"Did I?" Flora wonders, raising a brow as if completely unaware of having praised her portion of the rolls. As he reaches for her, her breath catches audibly. The casual tone of Jack's words, paired with the heat of his touch and the firm press of his body against hers, sends a wave of molten warmth spiralling through her core. Her aqua eyes widen slightly, her lips parting as though to respond, but no words come—just a soft, breathy sound that betrays how thoroughly he’s unravelled her composure.
Her mind is a dizzy haze, her thoughts tumbling over one another in fragmented bursts; of his hands on her, of the impossible heat between them, of the casual audacity with which he claims her attention. Flora tilts her head back slightly to meet his gaze, her aqua eyes darkened with want, her earlier playful edge entirely replaced by a simmering hunger.
A shiver races through her as his thumb brushes against her nipple, her body arching instinctively into his touch. "Jack," she finally manages, though her voice is soft, breathless, and far less commanding than she’d intended even as her every thought begins to curl at the edges with smoke and heat. Without hesitation she rises onto her toes, her body pressing teasingly against his as her lips crash into his. Her fingers tangle into his hair, tugging slightly as she pulls him closer; every ounce of teasing, every moment of anticipation, pours into the way she claims his mouth, her body melting against his with the sort of insistence that suggested she wanted nothing else than what he'd promised her.
Jack could blame her for this all he liked, but he was the one who dared to prowl around her kitchen with such sleepy domestication, who'd chosen to work the dough with the same maddeningly confident and deliberate fingers that he used to touch her. If her thoughts had spiralled into something molten and sinful, it was only because he’d decided to turn her kitchen into a scene straight out of her wildest fantasies (fantasies Jack would have too easily been able to pluck straight from her thoughts).
The hunger in her mind yawns like a hot and open maw that Jack would happily drown in, and as Flora's imagination collides and tangles with reality, it's difficult for the captain to really know where one ends and the other begins. Lucky for them both that he's got the anchor of her body to guide him, Jack playfully tweaking her nipple between his thumb and forefinger as if to encourage another breathless plea from her lips.
Well beyond echoing his name with her own, especially as she rises onto her toes and her body grinds tantalisingly against his aching cock, Jack meets Flora's lips as if the taste of her might be what finally fans her smoking thoughts into real flame. Something between pleasure and protest rumbles up in his chest and throat at the mischievous fingers that tug at his hair, both of his hands (still dusty with flour) slipping down towards her hips so he might tug at the tie of her sweatpants and push them down in a hurried motion that suggests he doesn't plan for them to undress more than necessary.
Panting as he tears his mouth from hers, Jack is as rough as he has to be to turn Flora and push her against the counter, leaning in to press a hot kiss to the back of her neck as he fumbles to release himself from his own clothes. "How do you always do this?" he nearly demands in a voice that's half a growl, fingers slipping between her legs to sample her slick heat, rolling tantalisingly against her clit.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
Flora melts into Jack’s touch, her body honed instinctively to every rough, deliberate motion he makes. The sharp tweak of her nipple sends another gasp tumbling from her lips as the bright pulse of pain reverberates through her belly and then lower still. Each stolen chapter of her private daydreams becomes something tangible under his hands, and it leaves her utterly undone as he pins her against her counter. Her breath shudders in her throat, her body arching as though offering itself to him without a second thought.
When his question rumbles out—a near-growl that vibrates against her neck—it takes her a moment to gather enough sense to respond. Her lips part as if to reply, but her thoughts are a sinful mess, each one betraying how thoroughly she wants this. Wants him. The teasing pressure of his fingers between her thighs has her biting back a whimper, her hips pressing back against him. Finally, with a sharp inhale, Flora forces out a breathless, incredulous laugh, though it’s threaded with the sort of shaky edge that speaks to how far gone she already is. "Me?!" she manages, twisting just enough to glance over her shoulder at him, her aqua eyes dark with a teasing mix of frustration and desire. "You—" Her words falter into a shiver as his fingers work over her clit, her head tipping forward as if she might find some measure of control in the counter beneath her. "You’re the one making me jealous of a fucking lump of dough," she nearly moans, her voice high and breathless, the accusation punctuated by the way her body shudders against his touch.
Jack’s ability to pull the threads of her most private thoughts and weave them into this molten, overwhelming moment wasn’t fair, but it was entirely him; the only thing missing was the ability to open the window directly before them. The curtains were parted allowing anyone who was strolling by to see in, but the panes had been closed to ward off the Deepfrost chill.
It'd be up to Jack to make her moan loudly enough to be heard through the glass.
With a dark and breathless laugh, Jack glances fleetingly towards the windows, though he's understandably distracted by the way her hips roll back into his fingers, his cock teasing between her thighs in a way that he's sure is maddening for them both. "Challenge accepted," he says, his voice a rough whisper against the back of his neck, his free hand gliding up beneath her tank top. He could probably use his magic to open the windows if he really concentrated - alas, his entire mind is consumed with Flora and the tantalising spiral of her thoughts.
"You made yourself jealous," he points out, the words almost a moan in themselves as his fingers stop their teasing so he might grip her hips hard with both hands. Thrusting forward at the same time as he tugs her back, Jack enters her hard and deep, the captain biting back a curse at the feel of her all around him, let alone the livewire of thought and sensation that ricochets through his magic.
Wanting her in a way that leaves him feral and unsure of anything beside where their bodies meet and how her mind opens and unfurls for him like a blossoming flower, Jack forgoes sweet nothings for rough, fast fucking. Hissing in a breath that's a failing attempt at self-control, one hand leaves her hips to reach out and twist itself in the ponytail she'd tied her hair into, tugging back hard.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
Flora barely has time to brace herself before Jack’s grip tightens, his body moving in perfect tandem with hers as he pulls her back into him with a force that steals the air from her lungs. The sharp, relentless rhythm sends a tremor through her, her fingers gripping the counter as her mouth parts in a wordless gasp, her mind a tangled mess of pleasure and the raw intensity of him; the weight of his body, the rough heat of his voice, the way he knows every flicker of thought before she can even voice it.
"I'll always be jealous of anything you touch like that when it isn't me," Flora pants, and though gods it's absurd, such is the power he has over her. If he finds the consequences irritating, he only has himself to blame for allowing the love and lust of a 22-year-old to burn unchecked the way it has.
Flora doesn’t need to say anything for Jack to know how much she loves this—the dizzying contrast between control and surrender, between being pinned in place and yet utterly wrecked by every precise, calculated movement he makes, the way anyone passing by would have to be blind not to notice what was going on inside of her kitchen. The hand tangling in her ponytail wrenches a sharp, breathy moan from her throat, her back arching instinctively as she tips her head back, baring the long curve of her neck to him. Meganta fireworks collide with garnet slashes of arousal behind her closed eyes as her tongue traces the shape of his name against her parted lips.
"You’re—" The word catches, swallowed by another gasping moan as the pleasure coils tighter, sharper, the colours in her mind fusing into molten flame. Her fingers scrabble against the smooth surface of the counter, needing something, anything to ground herself, but there’s nothing, only him. Only him. "Fuck, Jack—" It’s half a plea, half a request, her breath coming in short, shuddering bursts as she clenches around him, as the wildfires in her mind and body threaten to consume her entirely.
"It's your fault for asking me to bake," Jack points out, his words wrapped in a brief smile that soon falls away as she clenches around him, dragging a rough groan from his throat. And if he ever finds these sorts of consequences irritating, rest assured there's an entire crew of sailors on the Ark ready and willing to slap some sense into him at a moment's notice. Jack doubts he needs to spell it out to Flora that she's the subject of more than one wet dream aboard his ship, though he imagines she'd like to know regardless.
It will have to wait, though; thoroughly consumed by the wildfire of her lust and the swell of her pleasure as it begins to simmer and surge through her body, the captain steps back from the counter and pulls Flora with him, allowing her to use the edge of the surface to brace against. "I'm what?" he whispers, his own voice clipped as his fingers tighten in her hair and against her waist. The snap of his hips is something brutal, driving his cock into her as deeply as he can manage, even as the first crackles of the inevitable begin to race up the backs of his thighs.
"Gods," he mutters half under his breath, glancing briefly to the window and to the buzz of thought he can hear from outside it. "People think you're so fucking hot," he whispers, smirking. "I'm tempted to - fuck - invite 'em closer to watch."
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
