Chương 395: Day Three Hundred And Ninety-Three

Dear Diary,"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." - Isaac Asimov Look, bish, when did I ever claim to be competent at anything other than breaking shit? Like, you're not wrong, that is my last refuge, but it is also my modus operandi, my default solution, my area of expertise, and my fetish, so I'm guessing I'm pretty solidly in the 'incompetent' category for life. I wonder if I can get some kind of tattoo with '#ViolenceSquad4Life' or some shit on it?

Stupid fuckin' quote to put in a stupid fuckin' self-help book for stupid fuckin' me.

Anyway, yesterday after Saffron reminded me that I did not even know the fuckin' name of the dude I'd yoinked back not just from death, but from living his best life as an Undead specter of some kind, because in my Glorious lack of Wisdom, which might be a problem for, y'know, the Primordial Deity of Wisdom, even as it also kinda explains a few things about the world, I thought that was not, in fact, his best life, I went looking for the happily reunited couple. No joy.

I kinda guessed that they'd holed up in one of the 'bunkhouses', although calling a pair of fucking apartment buildings 'bunkhouses' was such a Lancaster thing to do I could only chuckle about it as I stepped back inside.

"So, what are their names?" I shook my head and pulled her in with an arm around her waist.

"No joy. I think they're in the bunkhouses, but they seemed a little intimidated by me or something." She smiled at me, obviously incapable of completely hiding her laughter, then said, "you could scry on them?"

"Nah. Like I said, I think they're scared. I don't want them getting all creeped out by acting like some kind of creepy stalker person." She leaned her head against my chest.

"Worried they'll run away, or worried they'll offer themselves up to be the next on your growing list of conquests?" She Translocated us up to the Dining Hall before I could reply.

"Hey! That's, like, one person." She smiled, pulled herself up for a kiss, and whispered, "two," into my mouth. As we walked to the table I chewed on that, but couldn't come up with an answer, so after we both sat down I chucked a, who? at her brain. Saffron Rae definitely joined in at one point. I honestly had zero idea how to feel about that at this point.

On the one hand, some not so tiny neopuritan remnant in my brain hollered about 'consent', but I smothered it with the sure knowledge that I'd absolutely given Saffron blanket consent to just about anything to yeet that fucker out of my head for good. It then fell back to the old 'cheating' bullshit, but Saffron had been, like, right there the entire time. Were you okay with that? We were borrowing her husband, and to say the two of you were 'into it' would be something of an understatement.

I can totally see why she wanted a turn. As Marie set a roast chicken in front of me, I leaned up and gave her a peck on the cheek.

"Thanks, Marie." I mean, he's her husband, I'd feel some kinda way if somebody were going at it with you and I couldn't join in. I didn't mean with him. I had zero idea how to respond to that, so I just nommed and let it simmer. When I finished, I thought, d'you mind a quick chat in private? Just a chat? I smiled across the table at the wicked gleam in her eyes. Maybe. Depends. On? If I can get my head to stop twisting around itself?

A moment later something brushed across the back of my neck, and then Saffron and I sat on the divan in the Love Shack.

"What's wrong, love?"

"I... I don't remember that, and I'm not sure how I feel about it." She just nodded, shifted both of us around until I lay with one leg hooked over the back of the divan, the other stretched out down its slope, my head propped against the padded arm. She propped herself up with her elbows on my abs right below my breasts, her hands under her chin, listening attentively as she stared at my face, my eyes.

"I mean, I'm not mad. Not angry. I said do anything you needed to do, and," I thought about a return trip, like right now, one or both of us just seeing how many finishing moves we could apply on the two of them before they collapsed not unlike Raymond had done on my birthday. I barely felt anything negative at all, although thinking about what I'd done, what we'd done, still tugged at Bad Things. Probably because some part of me knew that anything with Saffron Rae and Raymond wasn't going to happen spontaneously.

"I don't know, it might. They were both very taken with you. By you." She grinned up at me.

"Were you listening to me think?" She smiled, lowered her face to kiss my cleavage, then lifted her head back up to smile at me.

"You were thinking very loud. But yes. I do that when I can."

"I... don't know how to feel about that." I paused, considering.

"How would you feel if I did that to you?" How would I feel about my beloved wife, my Glorious Goddess, my lover, my Goof, my reason for being, slipping into my most intimate and private of spaces, suffusing me utterly, Body, Mind, and Soul? That thought came with a wave of emotions: anticipation, fulfillment, titillation, adoration, satisfaction, glee, and above and around everything else, a deep and abiding love that I almost didn't instinctively reject.

Right then I realized part of why I rejected it, and why I almost hadn't. That fucking shitty part of me that told me I wasn't worth a pile of dogshit on the street, that I didn't deserve happiness, or love, or even simple human contact and kindness.

"Wow. I... Did I say you could do that?" She lowered her gaze.

"You... you gave me the ability when you made me your High Priestess, beloved. I... I thought that you wanted..." I grabbed her arms and pulled her up, silencing her with my mouth. Her hands wandered, but before she could finish rerouting my train of thought to southerly destinations, I pushed her away just a little and said, "I didn't want because I didn't know that was even possible. But... I..." I took a deep breath.

I'd faced down fucking Gods and Dragons and the blessed concept of Privatives herself, I could talk with my wife about where our boundaries were.

"I don't even know what to accept or not. But..." She lay her head on my chest, slipping her arms under me and taking a solid grip.

"Butt?"

"Sixth." I laughed at my own damn dumb joke, tension flowing out.

"Boy please." He lay atop me, and I felt his insistent interest against my leg. Slowly sliding into motion. That awful conflation of guilt and shame and self loathing ripped through me.

"Down girl!" He grinned up at me, "but... not girl?" I frowned, and she lay atop me once more.

"Thanks. Yeah. Treatment still isn't done. So. Woman of my word. Until you rail me in a sundress so hard the last bits of that annoying bullshit burn up in their own juices, I'm yours to do with as you will. So yeah, Consent given. Not sure about eagerly. Gotta think about that." She tilted her head.

"After?" I felt the thrust of her question, and oddly felt her desire to emphasize it with a thrust of her hips, even though she didn't.

"Are you in my head right now?"

"A little. Mostly I'm just showing you mine, love. So you know, with no uncertainty, that my only goal is our happiness." I grinned and booped her nose.

"Not the Greater Glory of the Alliance?" She shrugged.

"That would give me the ability to drop the infant mortality rate in an ever expanding portion of the world. Which would make both of us happy. Especially you. Especially when you realized that I do it because of you, and can do it because of you." I just lay there, mouth dropping open. I'd never actually put that together.

"So I can just kinda assume that if I don't ask you for some privacy, you'll be right there in my head, along for the ride?"

"Would you rather I wasn't?" I shrugged.

"Not important. Global Consent given. I don't go back on my word." She lifted herself up, glared at me, let me see that she wanted to know, with no evasions.

"Would you rather I wasn't?" I shook my head, "I really don't know. Like I said, I didn't even know it was possible. Hell, I'm not sure I could tell one way or another." I thought about it a moment.

"I mean, you've been doing this for damn near a year, and I hadn't even noticed, except when you said shit and made it obvious. I've pretty much liked everything you did with it that I noticed. But knowing..." I sighed.

"Tell you what. I'll try to pay attention. I'll probably forget. But I'll decide whether I like it or not right after."

"After?" I pulled her up and plunged my thoughts, my emotions, my hunger as deep inside her as I'd ever been, and said, "after you make me scream so loud explosions and thunder and tsunamis and earthquakes say, 'what the fuck was that'." I didn't even try to stop her after that. Wouldn't really be fair, and you gotta be the change you want to see in the world, right? This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

After, I lay on my side on the deliciously padded steps at the foot of the bed, playing with the back of one of her knees where her leg flopped over the end of the bed.

"Y'know, I still don't remember that."

"What?"

"Saffron Rae."

"Oh!" A memory slid into my mind, Raymond's garlicky tongue in my mouth, another entirely different tongue elsewhere. I blinked.

"That wasn't you?" Her thigh jiggled as she shook her head.

"Oh. No. I mean, we tried that position, I think it's why she joined in. Here." Another memory, and this one kinda baked my noggin a little. Two of me. One with Raymond's tongue as deep as it would go in my mouth, the other with my tongue exploring me, Raymond buried to the hilt in her. Me.

"Whoa. That's some trippy shit right... holy shit that was intense." She giggled again.

"I know, right?"

"Wait, were you on top there?" She thought about it, then shook her head. Weird being able to feel that when I couldn't see it.

"No, that was you."

"So you, ah, fucked Raymond too?" She Grinned at me.

"Oh, no, we had no, what did you call them? Fascina, but with straps to hold it to my hips? And shapeshifting would have rather spoiled the illusion for him." I rolled over to kneel next to the bed, propping my elbows on the bed next to her.

"Not what I meant, Kitten. And you know it. And I know you know it."

"But it was funny though." I chuckled.

"Okay, Roger Rabbit. Yeah, it was. But..." She rolled over onto her belly, her eyes inches from mine.

"Yes, Tabitha, Raymond and I fucked. As did Saffron Rae and I. As did you and both of them. To all of our satisfaction. To Raymond's utter satiation, in fact." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then looked back into my eyes.

"Are you okay with that?" I thought about it for a split second, then smiled.

"Y'know? I think I am. I kinda wish I could remember it better." For a moment, she looked around the bathroom where we were getting the kids ready for bed, then nodded meaningfully at Marie.

"Tonight, once the children are asleep, I will show you everything."

"Marie?"

"Would very much like to be here as well, to experience our little assignation as we did." I nodded.

"Y'know, I think that would kinda erase any last bad feelings I'm having about it. I was... kinda drunk, I think?" She pressed her lips against mine for a moment.

"As much as I could make you. I did everything in my power to empower your desire, and to disempower your inhibitions, so you could have a few hours of nothing but pure sybaritic pleasure." We lounged there, face to face, gently necking and murmuring about how we could feel each other's lips from both directions, until we and the kids were snuggled in a pile in bed and Marie showed up, lounging on the divan.

I glanced at her in the mirror, realized she was absolutely staring directly at my ass with no sense of self-consciousness at all, and laughed.

"Get over here, you big fuzzy fuzzball." She met my eyes in the mirror, then very pointedly ran a single claw into and back out of her mouth, then said, "Later." before lowering her eyes back down to my ass.

"Still sixth!" I laughingly barked at her, and discovered that with thousands or years of experience laughing your ass off is not in fact even a speed bump to self service. I turned to Saffron and said, "that... that thing, where I was feeling what you felt and vice versa. I couldn't tell which of us was which?" She nodded, and suddenly I stared into my own slit hazel-green eyes. While still staring at Saffron's dark ones.

I absolutely couldn't tell which of us had that little fire flicker to life in our belly, until I realized that it was both of us.

"Can you still tell now?" I nodded, then paused.

"Slap me?" Before either of us could do anything, my ass burned where Marie had smacked it. Definitely my ass. Definitely my ramped up tension.

"Not what I meant, but yeah, I can." Then I grabbed at my arms and pulled as my knees didn't reach the floor any more. Pulling and kicking, I managed to get the balls of my feet to barely touch the floor. Standing on tiptoes the bed took me right at that perfect bend point. I looked adorable the entire time, trying to keep from slipping off the edge as I watched, grinning, thinking of how delightfully helpless I looked, at how the position arched and bent everything so enticingly.

Right about then I also realized that the hair hanging into both sets of my eyes was bone straight and white.

"Can you tell which of us is which now?" I asked. I... absolutely could not. But I also absolutely could not resist that coquette on the bed, and when that awful guilt tried to rise up, we beat it down with a mutual thought of, WIFE. Then I got an irresistible impulse to try more of the features of our new bed, letting go of my hands, rolling over, and sliding one of those fascina out of its holder.

"Holy shit, that thing's as big as my fucking arm." I looked at me and said, "but my arm isn't fucking?" Right about then Marie spoiled that perfect view by reaching over and flipping the me bent over the bed ass over teakettle. I refused to complain, what with me landing right at my knees, head spinning with the motion. I paused.

"Do you want to review the other day now, or?" It turned out that not only was I completely willing to wait on the after action blow by blow, Marie took great delight in coaching. Very great delight, confirmed by her slipping her own perceptions into the collective me fucking around on the bed.

I've had some really awesome sex since I got to the here and now and got my new Isekai issued hot body, and part of me felt some kinda way about the fact that apparently some part of my brain was holding back or holding out or some shit, but while I'd frequently finished thrice in an encounter, I'd never done so all at the same time before.

"Kitten?"

"Yes, Goof?"

"Yeah, forget what I said earlier. I'm sold on the whole 'you two in my brain' thing." She literally rolled over and clutched at her stomach laughing for a bit.

"So... so you... so Goof. Bribed with sex. Bribed with one sex, even." I got her point immediately.

"Wait. No. Not sold yet. I need many, many more test drives to convince me. Frequent. Gotta have 'em. Mom taught me to be an educated consumer. Can't disappoint Mom." Saffron rolled around, grabbed me, then rolled and scooched us both into Marie's lap.

"You have saved more children in one short year than all the gods have in their millennia. I'm quite certain you have not disappointed your mother in the slightest."

"I dunno, I don't think she really was behind the idea of same-sex marriage." My weight shifted, a few pounds between my legs instead of on my chest.

"Whatever do you mean?"

"Not sure she'd like me being trans, or fluid, or whatever." He lay in my arms, his head pillowed on my ample bosom, which was bosoming amply once more.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." I couldn't help it. I laughed, squeezing her to me. So long as I didn't think about oh, shit, I'd just thought about the whole being railed thing, and she put her arms around me.

"It's okay, love. It's okay. We'll work our way through this." Before I could say anything, Marie swept us into a hug and said, "Yes."

"Now, would you two like just the highlights, or everything from the moment we stepped away to the moment we returned?" I frowned.

"Won't there be, like, a bunch of talking and foreplay and not sex stuff at the beginning?" She laughed.

"Thirty seconds at most, love. You were, as you might say, dying of thirst."

"Oh. Yeah. Okay then. Marie?"

"All." So courtesy of my Deific mind-link and my brilliant Kitten's apparently eidetic memory, we watched home made full sensory pr0n, stopping now and then when Marie of course had professional opinions or I added some off-color commentary. Then we all collapsed back to the cuddle puddle as we all fell asleep. Mimic dreamt of pole dancing with her Kraken and doing a Linda Lovelace impression with the tentacle formerly known as persona non gratis. Don't ask me, I just sleep here.

In the morning, Saffron and I both needed a bath. Marie just smelled more of Marie, maybe a little less of the sea. Her fur had mostly dried, but dried stiff in that SCP creepy form that made her look like some kind of half skeletal drowned cat. The kids, if they noticed, didn't seem to care; they played around just like any other morning. Speaking of playing, Maze stuck around to referee for the morning.

I Blended and ghosted alongside her until, during a particularly frustrating intervention between Liam and Alex, she muttered, "papa?" and I stepped in for her, sweeping her away to read for the rest of the day. As she pulled the book out of the shelf, I asked, "so am I papa now?" She looked up, grinned, and said, "no." I smiled down at her.

"You keep calling me that though."

"Yes." I laughed and carted her off to the toddler bed to read. Meanwhile back at Lancaster House I took refuge in the fact that I am, in fact, more stubborn than a pair of little kids. I went over The Rules they'd come up with for Tag, specifically the one about tagging being done with a hand, not a foot, or body block, and definitely not claws or teeth or horns or headbutt. Because all the kids not only knew Menace could have any or all of those, but were totally fine with it.

I guess prejudice is a learned thing after all. At any rate, I had Alex apologize first, because clotheslining Liam at the knees to keep him from touching her with his hand definitely went against the 'minimal contact' spirit of the rules. Then I had her apologize for just generally being a Karen during the argument. Just because you're right doesn't mean you have to be nasty about it.

Hell, if you're right, you've got less reason to be nasty, 'cause all you gotta do is stick to your guns and make your case and maybe bribe the judge to stay honest. Then I had Liam apologize for being, if anything, a bigger bitch during the argument, and finally I ruled in Alex's favor since, after all, he hadn't managed to touch her with his hand. Of course, ten seconds later when she still stood there, eyes closed, laughing, after everybody else had scattered, he slapped her on the arm, screamed, "you're it!"

and bolted for the steps. Kid's gotta learn.

'Gloat while running'. Still, kids are exhausting. Not gonna give it up any time soon, though, because I'm loving this shit. In the morning, I hopped over to Loki's place, and once he'd had me up on the table doing the general massage thing for a minute he rolled me over, sat me up, and said, "in the first place, you're still playing with the children. In the second, I see no evidence of the deaths you sustained the week before this last."

"Really? Weird." He tossed his head to the side in a weird shrug thing.

"Not really. Were you truly Mortal, your birthday celebrations might have simply been what they were for your wife; a joyous celebration of loved ones showing their love in return."

"But I'm not..."

"No, you are not, and the concentrated worship of over a million Mortals has erased any evidence of your deaths." I ran my fingers over some of my more prominent scars.

"Still hasn't fixed these though." He smiled, sadly, and I realized that I'd pointed out something he wasn't able to fix.

"No. No it has not." I went up onto my knees and put my arms around his torso, enjoying the chill of him.

"Not your fault. Nothing for you to feel guilty about, dad." Then Sigyn lifted me away, hugged me her own self, and set me in my chair.

"So, we've heard about Maze, but tell us about these others?" So I sat there through the day, while time flowed in the odd way it does in Loki's cave, chatting about the kids, both Loki and Sigyn making little comments, suggestions about how to help the kids understand how to be better people, really. Parenting advice. I was getting parenting advice. From a God of Hearth and Home and a Goddess of Marital Devotion. So cool.

Then again, at one point late in the day that last bit really clicked with me, and after trying and failing to speak like three times, I asked, "Sigyn?"

"Yes, Tabitha?"

"As, uh, Goddess of Marital Devotion, what do you think about what Saffron and I did on my birthday?" She kinda tilted her head, requesting explanation, and I explained.

"She and I kinda had sex with another couple. For like four hours." She snickered, snorted, then broke out into laughter. When it died down, she said, "well, at four hours I guess I can assume this wasn't a case of mistaken identity or some kind of bizarre accident in the dark?" I snickered a little my own self.

"You'd think, but identity issues aside, no, everybody pretty much knew what they were doing. I maybe might have been a little drunk. On purpose. Liquid courage and all. But nothing like, against my will happened." She smiled and laid a hand on mine.

"I'm well aware. You'd be asking us for absolution for killing someone if it had, I'm sure." She stopped, thought about it.

"Is your wife copacetic about what happened?"

"Fuck, it was her idea." When she sat there, quiet, I said, "yeah, not just her idea, she totally is still getting off on it. So she's good with it." Sigyn nodded.

"So you've naught to feel guilty about. And you?" I paused and thought about it.

"Yeah. Yeah, y'know, the whole thing was to help my sorry repressed ass out, so I'm good with it." I smiled.

"Hella fun, too." She nodded again.

"And now, afterward, do you feel any less devoted to her, any less close to her?" I laughed, "oh no. Hell no. Fuckity, fuck no. I think I can say with absolute certainty that we have never been fuckin' closer." She reached out and ruffled my hair.

"There you go then, daughter. I see nothing wrong, nothing that offends me, either as mother or Goddess. Be at peace with what has gone before, knowing that..." Right then Marie appeared, burn marks across both her hands and forearms, soot and blood and ichor splattered across her.

"Help."