flixpii

[flixpii]

i’d rather see you in this chaos

and your love be so demanding

than see you in the séance 🕯️

[flixpii]

i’m so late

i asked the server to send some fics to show me the jimmy appeal & they didn’t disappoint 😩

i WILL be reading the other parts tmr

Heavy Lies The Crown

Chapter I

Sir Jimmy Crystal x fem!reader

summary: Decades after the Rage Virus devastated the UK, the infected have thinned but the world remains lawless and brutal. You’ve been surviving on your own until you’re captured by patrols from a notorious compound hidden in the Scottish Highlands: Eden. Its soldiers are strange—clad in random mismatched tracksuits, long blonde hair hanging tangled and wild like heathen halos, each armed with beautifully maintained bows. Silent. Precise. Unsmiling.

And then there’s their leader. Sir Jimmy Crystal. A gold-chained, tiara-wearing, crushed velvet zip-up psycho with a God complex thicker than his drawl. He doesn’t want to kill you. He intends to keep you.

wc: 6.3k

a/n: So I started absolutely gooning for Jimmy from the moment he drawled “ugh fuckin��� geaux” in the ninety seconds of screentime he has and now here we are. And if you came to shame, save your breath—I already talked about the discourse around him here. My k-hole tracksuit cult-leading princess lives rent-free in my brain, and I’m charging him for every second. Stay mad. Stay wet. Stay blessed. Now ugh—fuckin geaux. Big shout out to @amaranthine-enihtnarama for beta reading, thanks pookie!! NO SMUT in this chapter it's all setup, sorry guys <333

warnings: dark!romance, post-apocalyptic setting, cult dynamics, abduction, forced proximity, authoritarian/power dynamics, God complex, psychological manipulation, ritualistic obedience, choking, breath play, breeding kink, creampie, corruption arc, sexual tension, mentions of blood and decay, mentions of death and violence, intimidation, d/s dynamics, forced bathing, captivity, worship themes, verbal degradation, possessive behavior, choking from behind, unsettling atmosphere, cult rituals, light threat of force, elements of stockholm syndrome, highly charged sexual context, dubcon overtones

likes, comments, and reblogs are always appreciated please enjoy!!

Fic Masterlist/Main Masterlist

Chapter I: Annointed

The air here smells like wet iron and peat. It clings to your throat, heavier with each breath, as if the land itself wants to remind you what’s been spilled on it. A silence rests over the hills—not peace, but the uneasy stillness of something watching. Listening. Holding its breath.

You haven’t seen another living person in days. Weeks? It’s hard to keep track when the sun rises behind a haze of ash and dusk always comes too soon. Even the sky seems starved. The clouds hang low and bruised, heavy with rain that never falls.

The forest stretches ahead like a mouth left open too long. You step lightly. Leaves rot wet beneath your boots. A broken fence curls under moss, the last gasp of an island that once had tidy borders and polite signs. You pass rusted-out trailers on cinder blocks, windshields shattered, doors long gone. The doors always go first. People rip them off in a panic, thinking it’ll help. It never does.

The cold bites through your clothes. Not sharp. Just damp. Soaks into your bones. Makes the ache constant. Your breath ghosts in front of you as you walk, and for a second, you pretend it’s cigarette smoke. You used to hate the smell of it.

Now you’d kill for it.

Your stomach hasn’t stopped making noise. You ignore it. You’ve become skilled at ignoring it, the same way you’ve learned to ignore your own smell, the taste of metal in your mouth, the dull throb in your calves from days of walking with no real destination. You’re looking for food. Shelter. A map. Anything.

You cross a clearing and crouch low in the grass, just like you’ve done hundreds of times before. You survey the landscape: a ruined farmhouse collapsed under its own roof. No movement. No dogs. No smell of death and decay that you've grown almost nose-blind to. Could be safe. Could be worse.

Everything could be worse now.

You move. Cautiously. Deliberately. The earth here is soft and the wind carries no scent—just the musk of damp bark and pine needles. Still, something feels…off.

You pause and tilt your head to listen.

Nothing.

Too much nothing.

Birds don’t sing out here anymore. The ones that do don’t last long. Sound gets you noticed. Attention gets you killed. And this silence is the wrong kind—the hollow kind, as if the trees themselves are waiting for a bloodcurdling scream.

You take another step. A branch snaps beneath your boot. Loud. Too loud. The noise cracks like a warning shot through the quiet.

And that’s when your spine prickles.

Not fear; not yet. Something worse.

Recognition.

You're being watched.

The hair on your arms stands up before your brain can catch up.

You don’t run. You don’t call out. You listen.

The kind of stillness around you isn’t natural. It’s curated. Like someone hit mute on the world.

No birds. No bugs. Not even the soft flit of wind threading through branches. The entire forest has gone tight—drawn taut like the string of a bow, pulled back and trembling, waiting for the moment it breaks.

You slowly lower yourself into a crouch, hand pressed into wet moss. It gives under your palm with a faint squelch, soft and cold and alive with decay. The loamy scent rises up, thick and rich and sharp in your nostrils. Earth and blood smell too close sometimes.

Your heart thuds once, a heavy pulse.

Your fingers curl tighter into the dirt. Grounding. You’ve learned to trust instinct over logic. Instinct kept you alive when logic said the people you loved wouldn’t turn. Instinct taught you how to sharpen a stick into a weapon. How to scavenge rats. How to sleep with one eye open.

Instinct is telling you now: you are not alone.

You shift your weight slowly, inching backward through the brush. One heel catches on a vine. A small sound, but loud enough to make your skin go cold.

Your breath starts to pick up. Not fast. But deeper. Sharper. Your throat feels too open—too vulnerable.

You scan the trees. Nothing.

But the feeling doesn’t go away–it grows.

That same prickle at the back of your neck starts to burn. You can feel eyes. More than one set. You don’t know how—you just do. You feel them drinking you in. Not hungry. Not even curious.

Calculating.

You stand and backtrack carefully toward the collapsed farmhouse, thinking maybe you’ll duck behind the stone wall, find higher ground, get a better vantage point.

You take one step. Another. Then freeze.

Movement. Not in front of you. Beside you.

The sound is barely audible—just the faint rustle of fabric, the smallest crunch of gravel.

Your lungs go tight. Your mouth floods with the taste of copper. Your fingers twitch toward the handle of your rusted blade, tucked beneath your coat. Useless. Too slow. You already know.

Whoever—or whatever—is out here with you? They’ve been watching for longer than you realized.

And they’re close. Too close.

The sound comes first.

It doesn’t ring like a bullet or howl like a holler. It hisses. A sharp, slicing whisper that splits the space beside your filthy cheek and buries itself into the tree behind you with a heavy thock!

You freeze, breath clinging to your lungs.

The bark splinters. Chips rain down against your shoulder. A sliver catches in your collar, warm with friction. You feel it there, resting against your skin—proof that the shot wasn’t a miss.

It was a message.

Your pulse explodes behind your ribs. That thin line of stillness you were standing on? It breaks. Snaps. Shatters.

You wheel around, instinct gripping your limbs. One foot twists in the underbrush. You catch yourself against the tree trunk—the same one the arrow is now buried deep in, vibrating slightly as if it’s still alive. The shaft is black, smooth, and handmade. Fletching dyed dark green. No markings. No blood. Not yet.

You reach for your blade without thinking.

And then you see the second arrow—already drawn.

A figure steps out from behind the trees. Slow. Graceful. Like they’ve had all the time in the world to decide what happens next.

They wear a tracksuit—top unzipped, fabric torn at one sleeve, the color somewhere between piss-yellow and vomit-green. Their hair is long, tangled, hanging in ropes around their face. Their skin is streaked with dirt. Mud along the jaw. Ash on the hands.

And they don’t say a word.

Another shadow moves behind them.

Then another, and another. And another.

One by one, they emerge like ghosts stepping out of the woodwork—blonde, dirty, silent—clad in mismatched tracksuits stained with smoke and rain. Each one armed. Each one watching.

Some hold their bows. Some notched and ready. Others just stand with knives visible at their hips, bone-handled and used.

The archer who fired first tips their head to the side. Curious. Unbothered. Like you’re not a threat. Like you’re already theirs.

You don’t breathe. Your lungs refuse.

Another arrow hisses past you and strikes the ground by your foot. Close enough to kiss your boot.

Still no words.

Just eyes. Watching.

Measuring.

And then one of them smiles, just a little

It’s not warm.

You don’t plan it. You just move.

One moment you’re frozen, breath snagged between ribs, and the next—your muscles snap into motion like a trap springing shut. You pivot on your heel, throw your weight into the turn, and take off into the trees.

Branches slap your face. Mud sprays up the back of your legs. The forest blurs.

You run like you’ve never run before—like the ground might open beneath you if you stop, like air is poison and the only cure is speed. Your lungs seize in protest. Your legs burn. Your heartbeat crashes against your eardrums, a war drum in your skull.

Behind you, the forest doesn’t make a sound.

No shouting. No chase.

Just the sick, humming quiet.

And that’s worse.

Because it means they don’t need to run. They already know where you’re going.

Your boots slip on a slick patch of wet leaves. You catch yourself, barely, skidding through brambles that catch your clothes and tear at your arms. You don’t care. You don't feel it. All that matters is forward. Get to higher ground. Get to somewhere—anywhere—they can’t surround you.

You vault over a fallen log, fingers skimming the mossy bark. The scent of rot is thick in your nostrils. Dead wood. Old things. It clings to you like a second skin.

Somewhere up ahead—there’s a break in the dense canopy of trees. Light, maybe. A clearing. A way out.

You bolt for it, lungs screaming. Every step is thunder in your bones. You don’t look back.

But the air changes again.

A shadow flits past your periphery—too fast to track, too quiet to follow.

Another.

Then—

Crack.

Your foot catches on something taut and hidden beneath the brush.

Not a root.

A snare.

The loop cinches around your ankle, and before you can scream, your body slams sideways into the ground with a sickening crunch. The air punches from your lungs. You taste dirt. Cold. Blood. Pine needles jam under your nails.

Then—snap—a figure descends from the treeline like a wolf from a perch, boots landing heavy in the earth.

You try to scramble. Slip.

A hand grabs your arm.

Another closes around the back of your neck.

Then a voice. The first one you’ve heard.

Low. Calm. Male. Fucking delighted.

“That’s enough now, wee thing. Eden’s got ye.”

The hand at the back of your neck doesn’t squeeze.

It doesn’t have to.

It just settles there, heavy and final, fingers splayed wide like it’s already mapping your bones. It holds you in place—not hurting, not pinning, just claiming. Like you belong on your knees, pressed into the mud, spine curved and breath coming in sharp, humiliated bursts.

You twist. You kick. But the snare’s still wrapped around your ankle, biting into the skin. Any movement pulls it tighter.

You try to reach for your blade.

Another hand wraps around your wrist. This one is colder. Slimmer. It doesn't yank—it just presses, thumb digging in just enough to tell you: don’t.

You look up.

They're all around you now.

Six. Maybe seven. It’s hard to count through the blur of leaves and light and pain, but they stand in a wide circle, mismatched tracksuits streaked with earth and soot, hair hanging in matted ropes, eyes like damp stones. None of them speak.

One of them—barefoot, bow still drawn—grins, flashing a mouthful of decay. Some teeth are rotted through, black at the roots. Others jut out at odd angles, twisted by years without mirrors. One is missing several along the top row, exposing pale pink gums when they smile too wide.

“Slippery wee thing,” someone mutters from behind your shoulder. The one who caught you. The voice is deep. Smooth. Oddly kind.

You flinch when he touches your hair. Just a graze. Fingertips through the strands. It’s not affectionate. Not cruel, either. It’s closer to curiosity. A priest handling a relic.

They murmur to each other in low tones, too quiet to make out. The sound of their voices doesn’t feel like a conversation. It feels like a ritual.

One of them kneels beside you and cuts the snare loose. It snaps back into the undergrowth like a live wire.

You think—now. Move. Fight.

But the blade is already gone from your belt. You don’t even remember the moment they took it.

The realization sinks in slowly that you never had a chance. They weren’t hunting you. They were herding you.

You try to speak. A demand. A threat. A plea.

But all that comes out is a ragged breath and the taste of copper.

One of the archers—an older woman, face half-shadowed by dirt—leans down close enough for you to smell her. Woodsmoke. Sweat. Blood.

“He’s gonna be so pleased with ye.”

You’re cargo.

They move with purpose now.

The man behind you grabs the back of your coat and hauls you upright. Not violently. Just effectively. Like lifting a sack of flour. You stumble, one leg still half-dead from the snare. He steadies you with a hand to your spine, then turns you sharply toward the trees.

“Come along now,” he says, rancid breath hot against your ear. “Wouldn’t keep Him waitin’.”

They don’t blindfold you.

But they might as well.

The forest that follows looks like no place you’ve ever walked before. The path isn't marked—but it’s known. Worn bare by repetition. Sinewy footprints in the muck. Grooves dug into the soil from dragging something—or someone. The trees here lean inward, heavy with damp and time, their bark split and bleeding sap that smells sickly sweet.

The archers fall into formation around you, wordless. You hear their breathing. One whistles tunelessly through a gap in his teeth. Another pulls a long rag from her waistband and begins to wrap your wrists together—not tight, but tight enough.

“There. Now ye don’t get lost.”

The woman smiles. Three teeth. All bottom row.

You walk.

The cold bites deep now, not just into your body, but into your understanding. This is a procession. And you are the offering.

With each step, the terrain shifts—brambles give way to packed soil, then mud, then flattened leaves stamped down by boots. You spot bones underfoot. Clean ones. Stripped bare. Not fresh.

Not all are animal.

Someone carries a lantern ahead of you—oil-burning, the flame shielded by cracked glass. The light it throws is golden but small, and it doesn’t reach far. Enough to see the tracksuits shimmer damply in the gloom. Orange. Burgundy. Baby blue. One glittery purple jacket with rhinestones across the back that read PRINCESS.

It would be absurd if they weren’t so quiet. So coordinated.

So devout.

The deeper you go, the more the woods shift.

There are things hanging from the trees now.

At first, it looks like refuse. Rags. Rope. Plastic. But then you pass beneath one and realize—it’s a tracksuit jacket, tied by the sleeves, dangling like a flag. Faded. Bloodstained. Bullet holes across the front.

Another hangs beside it.

And another.

Rows and rows.

You keep walking. Your stomach clenches. Something between fear and nausea. The woman beside you leans in close as you walk.

“Ye smell good,” she mutters. “He’ll like that.”

Ahead, between the trees, a shape rises out of the fog.

Too square to be natural. Too still. A low wall. A break in the forest. Stone, maybe. Cracked and overgrown but not abandoned. Smoke curls from behind it. Not rising—crawling. Slipping through gaps like it knows how to sneak.

Then you see it—Eden.

Not a village. Not a home. A ruin made sacred by madness.

You’ve reached the edge of something ancient and wrong.

And He is waiting.

They lead you through the gate without ceremony. They don’t speak. They don’t need to. Two archers bracket you like a pair of looming, mismatched statues come to life. One takes your elbow, fingers firm but not brutal, guiding you forward.

The other falls in step just behind your shoulder, close enough that you can feel the faint whisper of hot breath brushing the back of your neck. Together, they move like a single, breathing thing—as if this ritual of capture has been practiced countless times before.

The gate itself is little more than a broken arch of crumbling stone and rusted metal, tangled with ropes and strips of torn tracksuit fabric. You step through it like a witness passing into a holy site. The air inside is different. It’s thicker. Heavier. The smell of damp earth, old wood, and smoky oil threads itself around you.

Your guides do not march. They don’t shove. They don’t drag. They flow, forcing you to match their pace until your body finds its rhythm between theirs. The hand on your elbow doesn’t grip harder when you falter, it merely corrects, a quiet pressure that steers you along the path. The one at your back doesn’t guide with force, but with presence, an overarching warmth that reminds you any move backward would be met with a wall of muscle and sharp steel.

Each footfall becomes an announcement. The sound of your soles scuffing stone is echoed by theirs, precise and orderly. Not a word is exchanged. Not a glance thrown. But every movement feels orchestrated—as if every hand that guides you, every step that matches your own, is serving the same silent god.

They lead you through the gate, and you realize it’s not just an entry. It’s a threshold.

A point where belonging is no longer a choice. A moment where obedience is the only language you’re allowed to speak.

There is no archway. No guard tower. Just two leaning stone pillars draped in mold and rot, bound at the top with torn strips of tracksuit fabric, knotted into fluttering banners that shiver in the breeze. The wind shifts, and the smell hits you like a wet slap—woodsmoke, sweat, burned meat, something sour rotting under it all.

No one says a word as you cross beneath it.

Inside, Eden is...wrong.

Not abandoned,not thriving. Held together by will alone.

Shattered cottages lean against one another like drunkards. Doors hang from rusted hinges. Roofs are patched with sheet metal and broken crates. Every building is bruised and sagging, but still standing—as if the place refuses to die simply because someone commanded it not to.

There’s no power. No lights. No hum of life. Just the hiss of smoke and the wet slap of boots in the mud as you’re marched forward.

You pass people. Not many. Maybe a dozen.

They don’t wave. Don’t smile. Don’t ask questions.

They just stop what they’re doing—sharpening blades, scraping hides, pulling weeds from cold soil—and watch. Some lean against walls. Others crouch like animals. One man gnaws on a charred rabbit leg, letting grease run down his chin, his eyes never leaving you.

Their hair is tangled, matted, stuck to their foreheads with sweat or filth. Their tracksuits are soaked, stained, misbuttoned or zipped up all wrong. Their teeth—what’s left of them—gleam yellow or black or don’t gleam at all.

And yet, they glow. Not with health, but with devotion. The same way a fanatic glows just before the end.

They know where you're going.

And what you’re going to see.

Someone lifts a shard of glass as you pass, using it as a mirror. Not for themselves—for you. You catch your reflection. Brief. Blurred. Strangers’ hands on your arms. Mud on your jaw. Cold in your eyes.

They pull you toward the largest structure still intact. A chapel, maybe,or what was once a manor. The stone is cracked, the windows shattered, the doorframe splintered where something once forced its way in. Ivy curls up the side in long, choking ropes. Animal skulls hang from the guttering, bones threaded with string and beads and bits of plastic like wind chimes.

The archer beside you speaks for the first time in miles.

“Head down. No talkin’. Only answer if He asks.”

A door creaks open. Your feet hit stone instead of soil. The temperature drops. The smell shifts again—woodsmoke thickened by incense, something sweet gone bad. The air is full of it,like a mouth that’s never closed.

The inside is dark. Not pitch-black—just heavy. Filtered. Lit only by oil lamps tucked in alcoves, their glass streaked with soot. The flames flicker low, throwing long shadows that stretch and collapse as you walk.

The room isn’t empty.

Figures move at the edges. Not many. Two, maybe three. They stand still, but not relaxed. Like they’re waiting for a command. One of them holds a cloth. Another holds a bowl of water—brown and lukewarm, the rim charred black. A third has something folded in their hands. Clean fabric. A tracksuit. Less torn than the one you wear.

They don’t speak to you; they don’t smile.

They just wait.

The woman who cut the snare finally lets go of your arm and gestures forward, toward a wide wooden door. Someone’s carved symbols into it—crooked, hand-cut, messy but deliberate. A crude crown. A sun. Teeth. A flower.

“He’s in there,” she says. “Be grateful.”

Your wrists are untied.

No one grabs you again: you’re expected to walk through that door on your own.

Hesitantly, you step forward.

The wooden door groans open under your hand—warped from time and rot, but still standing. The sound it makes cuts the air like a blade.

The room beyond is dark, but warmer than the rest of Eden. Firelight licks at the walls from a hearth in the far corner, casting everything in flickering gold. The scent is sharper here. Not just woodsmoke. Something burned. Something sweet. A perfume made from candle wax, dried herbs, and rot.

Your boots echo across uneven stone. It’s quiet. Not silent—calm, in that same unnatural way a hunting trap is calm before it snaps shut.

He’s there.

You feel him before you see him.

He’s sitting in a long chair that might’ve once been a throne, might’ve once been a pew. It’s covered in scavenged fabrics—torn blankets, netting, old lace yellowed with age. His legs are spread wide, one elbow resting lazily on the arm, the other hand rolling a cigarette between two fingers.

His face is in profile.

And even that profile is chaos.

A cracked tiara tilts across his brow, nearly lost in the mess of long, greasy blonde hair. One eye is framed by an old smear of soot or charcoal. There’s blood on his tracksuit jacket—dry. Flaked. A constellation of it across his collarbone. His neck bears the weight of several gold chains, the slow pendulum swing of an inverted cross briefly snagging your attention. Rings stacked on every finger. A small, curved blade rests against his thigh like it belongs there.

When he turns to face you fully, he grins.

And it’s nothing like a human smile.

His teeth are uneven—some chipped, some yellowed, one gone entirely. But that doesn’t dull the power of it. That grin could lead armies. Could make monsters kneel. It beams at you like he already knows what you are and what you’ll be.

“Fuckin’ look at ye,” he says, voice thick and Scottish and sharp-edged with delight. “Fresh out the trees. All wild n’ twitchy.”

He leans forward.

His eyes are blue, but not bright. More like cracked ice over dark water. Alive with something violently unhinged and cruelly amused.

“Ain’t touched, are ye? Not claimed? Not branded?”

You say nothing.

He smiles wider.

“Even better.”

He tips his head, brushing the long, tangled hair from his eyes, and the faint glow of the room catches the gold and molten red at his throat. His voice drops into something almost intimate, almost holy.

“Name’s Sir Jimmy Crystal,” he tells you, the words tasting like a threat and a promise all at once. “Remember it, s'the only name that’s gonna matter ‘round here.”

The silence that follows is thick. Final. As if the room itself has memorized it.

He stands slowly—not towering but imposing, filled with the kind of presence that reaches. That carries. He steps down from the platform, boot heels scraping stone.

“Come here, then.”

You don’t move.

His head tilts.

“What’s the matter, love? Nobody ever asked ye polite before?” He chuckles, the tension in his shoulders radiating all the authority of a leader. “You’ll find I’m a very gracious host.”

Then, quieter—yet no less impactful—“when I want t’be.”

He closes the distance without waiting.

One hand comes up and brushes your jaw with the backs of his fingers. His knuckles are scraped, bruised. There’s blood under one nail. But his touch is almost soft.

“They said you fought,” he says. “Said you ran hard. Nearly got one of Jimmy Jimmy’s boys in the eye.”

He leans in, nose close enough to scent you.

You don’t flinch.

He smiles like that’s a gift.

“Yer not a Jimmy, though. You’re…somethin’ else.”

He steps back, hands on his hips. Studies you.

Then, finally:

“Petal.”

The name hits like a hot nail through the center of your chest.

“That’s what ye are, ain’t ye?” he continues. “Pretty wee thing, soft ‘round the edges, got thorns when you’re pressed.”

He gestures wide, like unveiling a painting.

“You’re mine now, Petal. Eden’s newest bloom.”

He steps forward again, crowding you slightly—he wants to see what you’ll do. What you’ll become under his heat. His shadow. His name.

“Say it,” he murmurs then reiterates, “say it back to me.”

Then nothing.

No further command. No raised voice. No gesture to prompt you.

Just his eyes—locked on yours, heavy and unwavering, his body stilled like a predator mid-pounce. All that earlier swagger, the grin, the biting charm—it drops. Slips off his face like a mask tossed aside.

What’s left is something still and unblinking.

His stare is pure scrutiny. Not rage. Not even anticipation. Just…expectation.

The kind that doesn’t account for refusal.

The fire crackles somewhere behind him, casting gold along the worn-out throne behind his shoulder, and still he doesn’t move. His jaw ticks once, slow. You see the faintest twitch of his fingers at his side—restless. Not angry. Just ready.

He doesn’t speak again.

Because Sir Jimmy Crystal doesn’t ask twice.

The room stretches.

You feel it in your chest first—tight, tense, a coil winding up behind your ribs. Your throat is dry. You don’t remember when your breath last came easy. You’re too aware of your heartbeat. Of the way your wrists still bear the red ghost of rope. Of the mud drying on your ankles. Of the way he’s looking at you.

Like he already owns you.

Like this is just a formality.

Your mouth opens.

And for a second, nothing comes out.

Then:

“Petal.”

Your voice sounds strange. Foreign. Like it didn’t come from you but was breathed into you. You don’t recognize how soft it comes out—how it hitches a little. How it lands in the air between you like a stone dropped in a still pool.

His head tilts. Just slightly. One corner of his mouth lifts—not a grin. Something quieter. Possessive.

“Good girl.”

The words land like heat across your spine.

He steps in again. Closer now. His boots bump yours, but he doesn’t touch you yet.

He just inhales. Deep, deliberate, like he’s dragging your presence into his lungs.

“I knew you’d be easy, underneath all that bark,” he says softly. “They always are.”

And then his hand comes up. Slow. Measured. He touches your jaw—not rough, not even possessive. Just assertive. His thumb brushes the edge of your lip, like testing the softness of something before he bites.

“Petal,” he repeats, voice lower now. “Gonna hear that name moaned through these halls, aye? Gonna have all of Eden know who the prettiest thing in it belongs to.”

The silence that follows is not awkward.

It’s complete.

He leans closer, nose brushing yours, voice barely above breath.

“Say somethin’ else, then. Something better. Say thank you.”

The words land soft, but they split your ribs open.

Not a bark. Not a threat. Not a demand, even. Just spoken like it’s inevitable.

His hand remains on your jaw. Fingers resting just beneath your ear, thumb dragging slowly over the corner of your mouth. The pressure isn’t enough to hurt. But it’s not gentle. It’s training.

You try to breathe, but your lungs won’t take it in right.

The room feels too small now. Too close. The air clings to the back of your tongue, hot and damp and sour-sweet, like you’re breathing someone else’s exhale. Smoke, rot, and something metallic. Something intimate.

You feel your spine go stiff, shoulders rising like you might pull away—but your feet don’t move. Not because you’re frozen. Not exactly.

Because you’re listening.

And you’re waiting for him to say it again.

He doesn’t.

He just watches. That calm stare. That awful patience. As if there’s no doubt at all that the words will come.

Your mouth parts slightly. Not to obey. Not yet.

To stall.

To feel what it would be like to say it—to give him what he wants and taste how it feels in your throat. To feel how it might curl against your tongue and rot something inside you.

You don’t want to.You do.

Your heart punches the inside of your chest.

You blink—once, slow—and then tilt your head forward, just enough that your lips brush against the edge of his thumb.

Not a kiss.

Not yet.

But the reaction is immediate.

His nostrils flare. His hand tightens, just a breath, enough to tilt your chin higher.

“Go on, sweet thing,” he murmurs. “Don’t make me think you’re ungrateful.”

And something breaks. Not loudly. Not violently. But with a quiet, traitorous tremor in your stomach.

Your tongue is slow to cooperate. Your voice doesn’t come easy. But it comes.

“…Thank you.”

Your voice sounds like a betrayal.

It sounds like submission.

It sounds like you meant it.

You hate that. You hate how easy it is to say.

You hate how it feels good to give it.

His smile widens—not wild. Not cruel.

Pleased.

“That’s my girl.”

The words are barely a whisper, but they hit like a nail through silk.

He steps even closer now—flush against you, chest to chest. You feel the heat of him. The weight of him. His free hand comes to rest on your hip, fingers curling just above your waistband.

“We’ll make a proper little thing outta you yet.”

And then, voice lower:

“Say it again. Like you mean it this time.”

He’s still touching you.

One hand cupped along your jaw, thumb grazing your lower lip with the intimacy of a lover, the calculation of a surgeon. The other hand low on your hip, fingers curling with idle pressure. Not possessive. Not yet.

Just poised.

Waiting.

His voice has that same half-smile cadence, but the edge is sharper now—threaded with something heavier. The kind of weight that comes before a strike.

He wants it again.

And this time, he wants it perfect.

You feel your mouth go dry. Your muscles ache from how still you’ve been forced to hold yourself. Your wrists itch where the rope had left its imprint. Your brain is screaming for space—but your body doesn’t move.

Not because you’re weak, but because you’re calculating, too.

You don’t say it right away. You let the silence stretch, just a breath longer than it should. Just long enough that it starts to feel wrong. You see it in his posture—the slight twitch of his hand, the flicker in his eye.

And that’s when you give it to him.

“Thank you…Sir.”

You say it sweet.

Too sweet.

You tip your head a little as you say it, lashes lowering like a smirk in motion. You speak with the kind of sugar-coating that’s almost mockery. Just enough to make it unclear.

Polite. Playful. Dangerous.

His thumb stills on your lip.

Then lifts—slowly, deliberately—tracing the curve of your mouth before sliding down your chin. His other hand firms against your hip.

And he doesn’t speak.

He just stares at you.

That same silent intensity from before—hot enough to blister. A fire without flame.

“You think I won’t know the difference?” he says at last, voice low and sharp as a knife dragged across bone. “Think I can’t smell when a thing’s just performin’?”

His grip tightens—not to bruise, but to remind.

His eyes roam your face like a wolf studying a lamb that forgot it was meat.

“You will mean it, Petal,” he murmurs. “One way or another.”

He leans in again—closer now. Lips near your ear, voice so quiet you feel it more than hear it.

“And when you do, it’ll drip off your tongue like prayer.”

You feel the press of his breath against your jaw, warm and patient and ruthless.

Then he pulls back—not far. Just enough to look you in the eyes again. Holding you in place by your silence.

“Now,” he says. “Be sweet. Try again.”

He pins you down with just his gaze.

The heat of his body radiates into yours—smoke and oil and something darker, like the breath of a house right before it catches fire. His hand at your hip has grown still, but it hasn’t let go. The other hovers at your jaw, no longer cupping it, just near—like he’s giving you space to hang yourself.

You feel the words curl in your throat like smoke before a scream.

You could obey.

You could soften your voice. Bow your head. Let the praise come warm and slippery from your mouth like honey melting over hot stone. Let him believe you.

But you don’t.

Not yet.

Instead, you tilt your chin up. A small gesture. Barely there. But it shifts the whole balance of the room. His fingers still in the air near your throat. His nostrils flare—just once. You don’t miss it.

And when you speak…

You lace it with venom.

“Thank you…my King.”

You make it sound filthy.

Not reverent. Not frightened. Not grateful.

You say it like it’s a joke. Like you’re daring him to earn it.

His mouth parts just slightly—no smile now. Just breath.

You watch something dark flicker behind his eyes. It doesn’t rise, doesn’t lash out—but it pulses once, slow and dangerous. You’ve struck a nerve. Not one that makes him angry.

One that makes him hungry.

He steps closer, boot between yours. His chest brushes yours. That awful stillness in him thickens, slows, sharpens.

“That what I am to you already?” he says, voice hushed. “Your King?”

His hand moves again—slow, deliberate. The backs of his fingers trail down your throat.

“Careful, Petal.”

Your heart is a hammer in your ribs now.

He moves around behind you without warning, slow as smoke, one hand dragging across your collarbone as he passes.

You don’t turn.

You feel him behind you. His breath against your hair. His voice just behind your ear.

“You keep speakin’ like that,” he murmurs, “I’ll start to think you want to be ruled.”

You can’t see his face, but you hear the smile in his voice.

“And you don’t want me to think that.”

A pause.

His hand settles at the base of your throat—not tight. Not soft. Just there.

“Because if you do…I’ll give you the crown myself.”

His hand stays at your throat for three long breaths.

You don’t move. You don’t speak. You don’t give him the satisfaction of swallowing beneath his palm. But the silence that stretches between you is not victory.

It’s ritual.

You feel his body behind you—heat and weight and tension, close enough to make your skin tighten, far enough to make you ache. His breath grazes the curve of your ear like a blessing dressed in threat.

And then—

He pulls back.

The absence is as sharp as a slap. The cold rush of air across your neck feels like exposure, like being unwrapped. You almost—almost—step back to reclaim his heat.

But you don’t.

You hold your ground as he moves around you again, slow and loose-limbed, like a lion circling the last twitch of a dying thing.

When he stops in front of you, his grin is back. Soft. Filthy. Relaxed.

But his eyes are still locked on you like a snare.

“That’s enough for now,” he says, almost gently.

He reaches out and brushes something from your shoulder—a bit of leaf, a smear of dirt, it doesn’t matter. His fingers linger longer than necessary, then drop.

“You’ll need rest. Food. I’ll see to it.”

He turns from you like it doesn’t hurt him to look away.

“We’ve got time.”

He takes two steps toward his throne before glancing back over his shoulder.

His smile is lazy now. Pleased. Possessive.

“You’re not gonna leave, Petal. Not because you can’t.”

He sits down. Spreads his knees wide. Drags his hand along his jaw, watching you like he’s already undressing your soul.

“Because by the time I’m through with you…you won’t want to.”

He gestures lazily, and the room stirs like a beast waking from slumber. Figures shift from the walls, rising soundless as mist. Two of them move toward you—a man and a woman. They don’t ask questions. They don’t hesitate. They only bow when he nods.

“See she’s bathed,” Jimmy says, brushing a hand down the arm of his chair like he’s brushing dust from a relic. “Get the stink of the woods off her. Put her somewhere warm. Somewhere quiet.”

A tiny shift goes through the room—almost imperceptible. A glance exchanged. A breath held. Not protest, no. Not that. Not with him. But surprise. The kind that doesn’t rise from disobedience, only from obedience so deep it doesn’t comprehend difference.

He doesn’t name them. Doesn’t call out by their variations of the same holy name. They just know.

They step closer and one of them takes your hand. Not roughly. Not lovingly. Just certain. The other moves to stand behind you, brushing the snarl of your hair from your neck like she’s making way for a blade. Not because she’ll use one. But because she knows he can.

They lead you toward the door, and the room doesn’t speak. Not a word. Not a shift. Not a glance that doesn’t already belong to him. They accept it the way soil accepts a seed falling from a hand that can choose where it grows.

“Go,” he says finally, voice soft and sharp as steel. “Rest tonight, Petal. You’ve a long road ‘fore you.”

And then he leans back, sprawling in that long chair like a man resting between victories, brushing the pad of his thumb across his lower lip as if tasting the air your name has changed.

“An’ don’t worry,” he calls after you as the doors creak open, voice rising just enough for it to fill the space between the walls. “I’ll be seein’ ye soon. Real soon.”

No one questions. No one speaks.

In Eden, when Sir Jimmy Crystal chooses, no one ever needs to ask why.

[flixpii]

was thinking abt thisᵎᵎ & started thinking abt how remmick would react after discovering that he can procreate AND the baby comes out fine.

warnings (mdni 18+) : breeding kink, breeding/impregnation themes, pregnancy mentions, primal behavior, very brief mentions of sex, tenderness, mentions of children/family building

because remmick after realizing he can give you a baby?? yeah he’s ruined. it’s over. she’s the center of his world, proof that something good and pure could ever come from him.

but it doesn’t stop there—because now he knows. and it’s like a switch flipped in him, some primal, endless hunger that won’t let up. he can’t look at you without seeing it all over again: the swell of your belly, the miracle of you carrying his child, the way you bore her into the world and made him more than what he thought he was.

it’s in his blood now, this craving to try again, to bury himself inside you until you’re trembling and aching and filled with him. doesn’t matter if it’s the bed, the tub, pressed up against the wall in some quiet corner—he’s gonna have his hands on you, voice rough in your ear, whispers against your throat that he’ll give you another, and another, until the house is full of little heartbeats.

and the worst part (the best part) is the way he softens after—forehead pressed to yours, whispering about forever like he’s already holding it in his arms.

please forgive me for drawing some freaky shit out of the wholesomeness of that one-shot …

[flixpii]

This whole blog is just so

ARRRRARARRRRRAAAAGHHHHHHH

THE BANANA

thank you sm bby 😭🫶🏾

[flixpii]

just reread this and whew i collapsed again 😩

blessed be the whore - part 1

Priest!Remmick x fem!reader

summary: The old priest in your small town has died a gruesome death. The new one has an... eccentric way of doing things. 18+ READERS ONLY PLEASE!!!

word count: 6.3k

warnings: smut, sacrilegious actions, blood, praying, quoting the Bible during sex, sex in a church, sex on an altar, P in V, Oral F! Recieving, cum play, reader's first time, religious themes/imagery, blood play, blasphemy, abuse of a rosary, drool, squirting, degradation if you squint, praise kink, allusions to murder

a/n: HELLO! I have been working on this fic for weeks, and I finally came to the conclusion that it just needs to be a two-parter. I want to keep this A/N short and sweet because I have so many people to credit, all from Rosie's lovely Discord server! Firstly, my two beta-readers, @confetti-cakemix and @fuckoffbard! LIZ, YOU ARE MY NORTH STAR WHEN I'M WRITING, THE BESTTT, and CONFETTI!!! YOUR DESCRIPTION OF IMAGERY, EVEN WHEN YOU'RE JUST BETA READING, IS PEAK. Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to tag each and every person in the server that also gave me suggestions and helped me in ANY way! @spikedfearn @somnolenthour @citrinedigital @eternalstrigoii @le-temps-viendra36 @iceemochaa @hyoscyxmine @otxiycohcoy @flixpii @faestunna Clown (also not sure if they have a tumblr but that's my twin!!) @cherryxhaze. If I forgot ANYONEEE please please comment or DM me and I'll add you immediately! I got so much help in the server, and I had to scour through almost a month of messages to find everyone!

tags: @moyavsemoya @slasherflickchick @reneeswrld @made2wait @horror-moviehoe @arminstopguy @weirdblob21 @writersp3n @endofradio @thecontortionistsportal @notabot2 @spikedfearn @fuckoffbard @madkingcrowley @manyimaginativemuses

The new pastor of your quaint village church was strange.

The village itself was old. You’d grown up with wrinkled hands drawing ash crosses on your forehead, strings of garlic hanging on doorways, barefeet in hot, red dirt. When you were younger, you were never allowed out after dark. No exceptions. Kids who went out after dark went missing. Their names became prayers on the congregation's lips at each church service.

The old pastor, Monsignor Quinn, had been so kind. He’d listen to your panicked confessions, fleeting feelings of lust with a boy from school. Brushes of fingers against skin that kept you awake at night. 

He’d died so suddenly. He hadn’t been very old, not even past his thirties. And the weirdest part - the local sheriff wouldn’t tell you or anyone in your village how he died. You heard rumors of blood-streaked walls and screams that had only been heard by those awake that late into the night. You watched people cross themselves as they passed his boarded-up house. Little children crossed the street to avoid passing it.

And now, you were shaking the new pastor’s hand, rough and firm. Father Remmick. His lips curled like he could tell what you were thinking, his tongue running through the folds of your twisted mind. His eyes, calm and clear blue, never left yours when he introduced himself. Your father’s arm rested protective and heavy on your shoulders, the heat radiating from him comforting you like a blanket.

“Pleasure to meet y’all.” Father Remmick drawled, hand still wrapped around yours. His accent was strange - deep, and Southern, but mixed with something old that you couldn’t place. Something thick and gooey, honey falling slowly off a wooden spoon. “I’m sorry for what happened to Monsignor Quinn. Tragic… truly.”

He didn’t look sorry—not really. His other hand pressed to his chest in sorrow, but his eyes shone with a playful gleam that was sinister, bloody, and cold. 

Your voice was dry when you spoke to him for the first time, having to turn your chin up to look at him. “What happened to him?”

“Oh,” Remmick’s smile fell, but the concern didn’t feel real. It felt mocking. You felt his thumb stroke your knuckle. “Nothing that needs to fall on ears as sweet as yours.”

Your father’s arm tightened, and you were grateful for his presence. When Remmick released your hand, you fought the urge to wipe your palm on your dress, to wipe him off of you. His crooked grin remained, and his tongue slowly ran over his bottom lip, licking the sweat from his chin.

“I can’t wait to get to know you.” He looked away from you like he had to force his eyes away, like it was painful not to be looking at you. His gaze left you feeling naked, the inside of your body tingling like someone had dug around inside and pulled out everything sacred.  “All of you, of course.”

His sermon had been even stranger than he was. He said all the right words, but they came out of a twisted mouth. A serpent’s tongue ran over the words of God, words meant to comfort and uplift, but coming from him, made your stomach twist. Your fingertips ran over the silver rosary underneath your shirt as he spoke, his eyes never drifting down to the Bible before him. He knew the words by heart, and they still sounded so wrong. 

When you got on your knees to pray, you felt something so deeply, internally wrong in your chest. You couldn’t help but look up while everyone else’s heads were down, their lips moving silently in prayer. You found Father Remmick, hands wrapped tightly around the lectern, looking at you. His knuckles were white, his eyes roaming over you ardently. A rust color flashed over the blue of his eyes, like the nictitating membrane of a reptile. His gaze violated you, drilled a hole through your chest.  

For a single heartbeat you kept your gaze locked on his. When he smiled at you, you swore you watched something crawl under the skin of his forehead, two points—like horns—begging to poke out of his skin.

That night, and for many nights onward, you dreamt of Father Remmick.

The church was empty, save for you and him. His clerical collar glowed against the black of his button-up shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal veiny forearms and slender fingers following it. Fingers that reach for your rosary beads, let them clatter to the floor. He spoke in a language you didn’t know, touching you in a way you’d never felt. A way that felt too good to be holy.

When you woke, you prayed. You prayed for hours into the early morning until the skin on your knees was raw and your eyes were sore from being squeezed tight. The rosary left a red and stinging imprint on your hand that would be there for days. 

But what frightened you most was the throb between your legs, pounding rhythmically and making you yearn for… fullness. After every hour of prayer it seemed only to get worse. 

At church, you couldn’t listen to the sermon. You couldn’t even look up at Father Remmick. Not without images flashing behind your eyes, sounds so vile and loud in your ear that you couldn’t even hear the words he was saying.

Throaty moans. A hot, wet tongue between your legs. The feeling of rhythmic thrusts, something pressing into a spot inside of you that made you feel more euphoric than God himself ever could. You felt weak every time you looked at him, your fragile body giving in with every glance. 

“My child-” His voice echoed through the rickety church, but you knew he was speaking to you.

“You look distracted.”

Your throat ran dry as you stared at the scabbed-over skin of your knees, just below your dress. You could feel your father's demanding elbow digging into yours. Be respectful.

A flash of something else when you looked up at him again. Something softer, something tender. Lips pressed to your skin, dragging against the top of your breasts. 

“What could be more important to you?” He was smiling. Smiling like he knew what you’d seen, and the devilish things you’d heard. “Than worshipping and praising God with your community… with me?”

His tongue ran over his bottom lip as he raised his arms to grip the sides of the lectern. The muscles under his shirt tensed, and your eyes lingered. By the way his smile widened, he noticed.

“Be sober-minded and alert, Miss.” He nodded his head toward you, like some kind of twisted teacher. “Your adversary, the Devil, prowls around like a roaring lion…” His eyes, gleaming again like something inhuman. “Looking for something to devour, like a lamb wandering from the flock.”

Remmick paused, smiling to himself. “Be glad that I arrived here at the right time, to lead you down the path of righteousness.” 

Your skin had grown cold, like spiders were running up your arms and the back of your neck. But it wasn’t just what he’d said that made you rigid, a dripping of cold sweat rolling down your spine. It was the agreeing hums of the congregation, like they knew what you’d been thinking.

You couldn’t sleep that night. The pillow's satin fabric was coated in sweat, which clung to the back of your neck and made your butter-yellow nightdress stick to your back. You stood from your bed, bare feet pressed against the hardwood of your bedroom floor. As you left your room, you knew every creaky spot to avoid, opening the door with close precision to keep it from making a sound.

You could hear your father snoring from the cracked door of his bedroom as you slipped through the hallway like a ghost. You blindly slipped your feet into slippers in the dark, your hand wrapping around the gold door knob of your front door. 

The cool breeze of a late July night kissed your skin, making your hair prickle against the fabric of your nightdress. The sky was black, stars spilled across it like bleached sugar against molasses. 

The walk to the church was by memory, your feet crunching above the gravel road in the cool dark of your village. No light was lit in anyone’s homes; the only sound was the cicadas whining in the trees surrounding you. As you passed Monsignor Quinn’s home, the foundation seemed to creak before you, the sound almost like a weeping in the air. You didn’t cross the street and kept your head forward to pass by it. It was just another house. Just another death. 

The church was dark but buzzed with an energy that made the air feel electric. You could see its indent in the darkness. It was made of white siding sun bleached from hundreds of years under the sun of the South. The smokey-colored brick spires reached out into the dark sky, pointing to the stars. Their elegance had entranced you as a child. Now it just made you feel sick. 

A rectory with a gabled roof and dead bushes surrounding it stood next to the church, just a few yards away. There was no light to be seen, no sign of life. Father Remmick would be asleep in there, sleeping soundly despite his completely taking over your mind and your body. 

As you entered the church, you didn’t make a sound, creaking the door open just wide enough to slide your body through.

You moved blindly down the pews, hands running across the cool wood, hoping it would comfort you. It didn’t. You fumbled around until you found a box of matches and lit the candlesticks at the table behind the altar. It didn’t provide much light, but you could at least see the flickering expression of Jesus on the crucifix before you, He who had died for your wretched, terrible sins.

Knees hit wood, your hands gripping the fabric of your nightdress as you prepared to grovel. But you wouldn’t get the chance to. Not to God, at least.

“Couldn’t sleep, sugar?”

A voice that echoed through the dark like it- he owned it. You stood, turning around and searching the dimly lit dark for him. 

Father Remmick was sitting in the pew furthest from you, legs crossed and arms stretched long behind him. He was smiling; crooked,pointy teeth nearly glowing in the dim light. Your eyes roamed over the clerical that remained against his neck.

Your throat had gone dry. You swallowed hard, one hand reaching out to steady yourself on the altar rail. 

“You could say that, yeah.” 

Remmick’s legs uncrossed, spreading out in a way that felt like it couldn’t be anything but disrespectful. His eyes didn’t look blue in this light. They seemed almost amber, gleaming and ever-changing in the flickering candlelight. 

“In peace, I will lie down and sleep,” Remmick said quietly, a teasing little smirk on his face. “For you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.”

Your knuckles had turned white against the altar railing, and the sudden realization that you stood before him in nothing but a nightdress made you freeze. You should have felt empowered by his words, but instead, you felt like prey under that violent gaze. You kept your expression blank. 

“Yes, I will perhaps follow those words when I know peace.”

Remmick’s head cocked to the side, like a dog sniffing out a treat. His eyes rolled down your body, stopping at your bruised knees. 

“You troubled, darlin’?”

He didn’t sound concerned, not really. He sounded starved the question dripping off his tongue like drool rolling down a chin. He looked at you with mock-concern, eyebrows just a little too furrowed, his lips just a little too downturned. 

“Have somethin’ you’d like to confess?”

His eyes flickered to the confession booth. Two purple, velvet curtains opened to a small wooden box—one side for the priest, the other for the sinner. 

You didn’t know what it was. Maybe it was the throb between your legs, or the puppy-dog shine of his eyes in the candlelight that made them look almost like melted caramel. Or perhaps the way his voice lingered in the room like steam after a hot bath. But you nodded, quicker than you’d meant to. 

Remmick stood on long legs, the sleeves of his black shirt rolled up to reveal curling veins that traveled along his forearms. He gestured toward the booth, lips curling deviously like he’d won something. Like he was collecting a prize he’d been patiently vying for.

“Ladies first.”

The confession booth was dark, except for the little light that flickered through the intricate carvings on the wood door. The worn leather cushion sank beneath you, full of cracks and creases from years of use. You could hear Remmick shuffling on the other side as you closed yourself in. You could hardly see him through the lattice-patterned window separating him from your booth, just the shadows cast over his face and the bright white of the clerical covering his throat. 

Your hands were tangled in your lap, your leg bobbing up and down under your nightdress. You listened to Remmick’s calm breath as he settled into his seat, closed your eyes for a moment, and envisioned his hands running over his pants, his head bowing in silent prayer. The thought of it made more heat travel down your body, your heartbeat loud in your skull.

“Sign of the Cross, yes?” 

His voice seemed even deeper, even more irresistible in the dark—something as velvet as the curtain before you. Your hands trembled as you made the Sign of the Cross over your face. 

“Bless me, Father,” you paused, licking your dry lips. “For I have sinned. It has been… far too long since my last confession. These are my sins.”

Remmick was smiling. Hands clasped in his lap, burning eyes staring into the wood of the booth. He could hear every shift you made, every breath coming from your heaving chest and out of your beautiful throat. The throat that pulsed with your heartbeat. The heartbeat that hadn’t left his mind since he’d laid eyes on you. He thought of your blood pooling in the dip of your collarbone and shifted in his seat.

Your chest was heaving, your nails digging into the seat's leather. You pressed your legs together, glanced at what you could see of Remmick’s face.

“Father, I have impure thoughts. I fear that the Devil has his hold on me, making me yearn for…improper things.”

Remmick’s smile curled, teeth sharp against his lip. You were right where he wanted you. Hot, pulsing, panting. His hands unclasped, his palm pressing into the seam of his pants. His head fell back, eyes slipping closed at the pressure against him.

“Improper things?” he asked you, his voice leveled as much as possible, but you caught the hitch. “Do you think the Lord would accept this confession… if you can’t even say what sin you’re thinking of?”

Your throat bobbed as you realized he was right. You were a sinning coward, unable to tell God what He needed to forgive you for. Your hands left sweat marks on the seat, palms raised to grip the rosary around your neck. The marks on your knees from groveling for God had started to sting, as if the Devil himself scratched down your legs. Reminding you of who you thought of and who you wanted to be on your knees for.

“I think of someone… touching me. Their hands against my skin, defiling me in a way that-”

A sound, guttural and desperate, left Remmick’s throat. His hand had continued to press against him, thick tendons and veins straining under his skin. His eyes opened, pupils nearly flooding his entire iris. All that was left was a ring of red on the outside, the color of blood stained on satin white sheets. He was silent, marinating in how you gasped at the sound he’d released. You were so deliciously untouched.

“And who is that you think of?”

The question lingered in the air, heavy and charged with something dangerous. It felt as if the rosary in between your hands were being tugged from your grasp, until you looked down and realized that it was just you releasing it, letting it clatter onto the floor.

The point of no return. Letting the Devil take you by the hand and dance you into Hell. You’d called to God so many times and He’d never answered, but Remmick was here. Real, tangible, beautiful. You dug your nails into your palms, prayed for your soul one last time before diving into the deep end.

“...I think you know, Father.”

Silence, at first. Something that made the air hot, that made your breath catch in your throat. 

The wood groaned as Remmick shifted, his feet scuffing against the floor. You could hear the screech of metal rings against a rod, Remmick pushing the curtain open. 

He didn’t ask for permission. He pushed your curtain open slowly, filling it with his broad frame and slender fingers. His fingers gripped the velvet, and a brass ring around his finger caught the light. He was a wolf in wolf's clothing, teeth sharp and bright in the dim light. 

One hand left the curtain, reaching out to touch the lines of your collarbone. He ran his nail up your neck to rest the pad of his finger against your pulse. 

“I do know,” he hummed, applying pressure to the pulse, just enough for you to feel him there. “And I always knew you’d come.”

His other hand flew from the curtain with a speed that didn’t seem human, fingers gripping your hair and tugging your head back to expose your throat. 

“God.” You moaned low in your throat, breath ragged as Remmick lowered himself enough to be straddling your lap, thighs warm and solid on top of yours. He leaned forward, his mouth finding your ear. You felt his tongue run over the shell of it, something long and cold like a serpent.

“Not sure your God is here, sugar.” His voice was low and sweet, rattling the inside of your body. “He woulda saved you by now, right?”

Remmick looked down into your nightdress, lip caught between his teeth. He was quiet as he raised his hands to the fabric, gripping it tightly before tugging. The nightdress split apart as easily as tearing paper, your skin prickling with goosebumps as the cold air hit your naked chest. He looked at you like a sinner did the cross, eyes nearly glowing. He waited; waited for your invitation to touch you, thick drool rolling down his chin like a rabid dog. It dripped onto your chest as you nodded, your hand shaking when you wrapped your fingers around the white clerical collar at his throat. You tugged it off, letting it fall to the floor beside your rosary. 

“Touch me, Father.”

Remmick was on his knees in a second, tearing away the rest of the ruined nightdress from your body as he nestled his shoulders between your thighs. The only thing that remained between you and him was a thin pair of underwear, lacy trim at the edges that he ran his fingertip over with a twitching smile. 

The pad of his rough fingertip pressed over the fabric of your underwear, firm against your clit. Your body jolted forward, legs falling open for him as the pleasure traveled up your spine. 

Remmick laughed, his head thrown back and mouth open wide.

“So wet for having never been touched, little lamb.” Remmick’s fingers hooked into the waistband of your underwear, tugging it down your smooth legs. “Do you want to be worshipped, as your God is…” He tucked your underwear into the back pocket of his black pants. “Or ruined, like the Devil would do to you?”

“I want…” Your words cut off with a whimper as he pulled his finger from you, only to open your legs wider. “I want what you want, Father…”

Remmick hummed, weighing his options. “Lil’ bit of both then, I reckon.”

His head dove in between your legs like he’d been starved of water for years, and you were the first drop of salvation he’d found. He groaned, deep and low in his throat, that sent a vibration through you that had your hands flying to the dark waves on top of his head, pulling him against you.

His hands gripped your thighs hard enough to bruise as he licked against your cunt, long tongue rolling around your clit like he’d been made to worship it.

“So sweet,” Remmick smiled against you, warm and wet for him. “Like the Lord made you just for me.”

Remmick’s hands left your thighs, palms searching the floor as he continued to suck on your clit, pushing his tongue into you, curling it up in a way that didn’t seem possible. When he found what he needed, he pulled away, looking up at you through half-lidded eyes and your wetness dripping from his lips.

His hand raised, your rosary beads tangled between his fingers. With careful precision, he lowered the necklace against your cunt, the coolness of the beads making you shiver and scratch marks into the leather seat beneath you. As the beads pressed on either side of your clit, your head fell back against the wall, heat traveling up your neck as if the flames of Hell were already licking against your skin. 

“Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.” He cocked his head to the side, eyes penetrating and sharp on your face. He could sense your impending release, the way your heartbeat quickened, your back arching off the seat.

“Don’t.” 

Once low and ragged in the dark, his voice had become clear. He closed your legs with one large hand and dropped the rosary beads back to the floor so he could lean forward, pressing his other hand against the wall next to your head. His face was inches from yours, and his breath was hot on your neck. 

“Not yet, darlin’. Not ‘til I say.” His lips found the pulse point on your neck, nipping before kissing tenderly. “The Lord teaches patience, lamb.” 

Remmick’s hand left the wall to grip your hair again, tugging your head back. It made your scalp sting in a way that made you want more, your mouth parting to whimper against him.

“That bein’ said,” A crooked smile - lips baptized in your essence. “I’m bettin’ you sound real pretty beggin’.”

His tongue was long and rough against your cheek as he tasted your sweating skin, a deep rumble in his throat as if he was tasting the sweetest nectar. He stopped at your temple, placing a gentle kiss there. His lips remained there, teeth grazing skin.

“So go on, darlin’. Pray for me to fuck you.”

Your breath caught, your entire body going hot from his words. He laughed against your skin, like he could feel the very chemistry in your body change, the way you grew slicker from his twisted request. The way you knew that you would do it for him. You’d pray to be spread open by him, explored in a way not even God could do.

“Oh, you will do it, won’t you…” 

It wasn’t a question. Remmick knew you’d beg; he knew how far gone you were. He laughed against your skin.

“Doesn’t matter how good of a girl you are… how much you love Him. You’ll give it all up just to get off, won’t you?” 

Remmick pulled back, hands sliding down to hold firm on the flesh of your hips. He lifted you from the seat like you weighed nothing, turned both your bodies around until you were straddling him. Your naked core rested against the rough material of his pants and made your body shiver. He smiled.

“Go on… hands together in contrition. Do it right…” His rough hands grabbed your wrists, pulling your hands flat together between your bodies. When they were pressed together to pray, he let his fingers linger on the bare skin of your thighs, fingers just too long and nails just too sharp against your skin. 

Your lips were dry, and Remmick’s eyes drifted to them like he wanted to lick across them, make them wet again. 

“Heavenly…”

 Remmick hummed in glee already, just from a single word. His head bowed, as if to join you in prayer, his eyes slipping shut.

“Heavenly Father… forgive me for what I am about to ask of you. I know I do not deserve such a blessing as being touched…” Your words faltered as one of Remmick’s hands slid up your thigh, gathering the slick in between your legs. His finger pressed against your clit, and you gasped, hands pressing together tighter. “As being touched by someone so good, so…”

Remmick’s finger pushed inside of you, pressing up to a spot that made your throat close up, the only sound coming out a pathetic squeak of a whine.

“Aww, darlin’, that’s so sweet of you. But you don’t have to lie.” His body leaned forward, his wet mouth pressing against your ear. “Tell your Heavenly Father what I am. What you know I am.”

“I’m…” You continued the prayer, voice deep and rasping. “I’m going to fuck the Devil… and Lord, I beg you to have mercy on my wicked soul.” 

Remmick laughed against the skin of your neck, drawing thin beads of blood with the sharp points of his teeth.

“Are you now? Going to fuck the Devil?”

All you could do was whine at the pleasurable pain in your neck, your hands shaking with the desire to pull them apart, to grab at his skin and his hair. 

Remmick hummed to himself, pulling his finger out of you with a slowness that made you bite the inside of your cheek. His cold hands slid up your arms, pulling your hands apart from their prayer. 

“Get up.” He said quietly, with that same thick, gooey voice he’d had when you’d shaken his hand for the first time. You did as he asked, spreading your legs and backing off his lap. His eyes traveled up your bare body as he stood, towering over you inside the booth. With a firm hand on your hip, he nudged you toward the curtain.

“To the altar.” 

Remmick’s breathing was heavy behind you, his gaze burning holes into the bare skin of your back as you slowly walked to the altar. You looked to the cross just above, and you felt no remorse, not anymore. Whatever God could do to punish you, you were sure Remmick could do worse. Maybe you wanted him to. 

You ceased walking once you had reached the altar, your belly just close enough to feel the cool wood against your skin. Remmick was behind you, his breath hot and wet on your neck. His eyes ran over your skin, from the top of your head to the balls of your feet. The expanse of a human body that he was now free to ruin. That he’d be begged to ruin. 

With one swift movement, he grabbed your wrists, raising them and placing them flat on the altar. Your fingers brushed the closed Bible there as your breath hitched. Remmick made no effort to remove it. He only slid one hand down your body, as soft and languid as a serpent, and pressed down on the arch of your back. 

“Look at you…” Remmick murmured, fingers sliding into your folds, finding you warm and wanting there. Your legs quivered at his simple touch, so his other arm found its spot under your belly, assisting in holding you upright. “So nervous… shaking. You must honor God with your body, little lamb.”

Two fingers entered you, pushing in and out with a torturous speed. Your legs spread wider, your nails scratching into the leather-bound fabric covering the Bible before you. 

“Please..” Your voice quivered as you tried to keep it level. Your head fell against the Bible, leaving sweat marks. “I need you inside me, I need it more than I need God.”

Remmick’s fingers pulled out of you, and you heard the faint sound of his lips licking his fingers clean. He moaned at the taste of you, his other hand pulling the clasp of his belt buckle apart. “Aw, sweetheart, that’s so kind of you.”

By the press of him against you, hot and pulsing, you could tell that Remmick was big. But nothing could have prepared you for the way it felt when the head of his cock began to press inside you, hardly able to breach your entrance. He pulled back, body lowering to press lips against your sweat-slick spine.

“Gotta open up for me, baby.” He said against your skin, running the length of himself against your folds. His tongue was cold and barbed as it ran up the expanse of your back and to the shell of your ear. “Take me all at once, and maybe I’ll make you see Him. Denying yourself would be the true sin…” Remmick tried once again, his cock slowly able to start stretching you, inch by torturous inch. Only babbles came out as your mouth fell open, tears beading at the corner of your eyes from the sheer size of him.

“Haven’t even fucked you good yet,” He groaned as he pushed in. “And you’re already speaking in tongues.”

When he’d bottomed out inside you, pressing deep on a spot inside you that only made a guttural sound escape your throat, his large hand pressed against your belly. 

“Feel all that pain, lamb. You’re just getting used to me… your body will learn quick.” He slid back slowly and pushed back in with just as much resolve. Your legs nearly gave out, hands scrambling for purchase on the lectern as he fucked into you. “Soon, all you’ll feel is me.”

Remmick was right. 

Soon, the only feeling that remained was deep, wicked pleasure. Every thrust of him inside of you felt like another ring lower into Hell, the souls eternally damned there shaking their heads at you as you made the same mistakes they did. But the problem was - you didn’t fucking care.

A whine escaped your throat as Remmick picked up the pace, just a little bit. One hand on your belly, the other gripping your hip so hard you were sure you felt the cold prick of blood on your skin. Every thrust was hitting something inside you that somehow made you wetter, something that had you dripping onto him like some kind of deranged baptism.

Remmick was grunting, getting louder with each thrust into you. He tried to hide with honeyed words, but you felt too good around him.

“So easy, aren’t you?” Remmick was grabbing one of your arms, pulling your hand into his to press onto your own belly. You felt the bulge of him with each thrust in, and the pressure on your stomach made your cunt flutter around him. He groaned, words faltering as you squeezed around his cock. “You…” He nearly whined, hand gripping yours on top of your belly. “Just a few words about your corrupt God and you... you spread your legs for me?”

He laughed, hand leaving your stomach to grab at your hair, tugging until your head reeled back just enough to see him. He was beautiful like this, pupils blown out, and the first few buttons of his clean shirt popped open. Blood streaked down the corner of his mouth from the wound on your neck, and his tongue was unnaturally long as it unraveled out to wet his lips.

“Do you know something, sweetheart?” He asked, dark eyes meeting yours. “Your God isn’t here.”

A whine broke through your mouth as he rolled his hips in a particularly torturous way, hitting the spot in you that he’d found with his fingers in the confession booth. There wasn’t anything you could do but let your body go slack against him, head kept in place only by his grip on your hair. 

“What would your God say, hm?” Remmick asked, pressing into that spot again, making your vision go white. “If He saw you split open for me?”

Remmick released you, and your head fell forward to the altar. He leaned forward, and you felt the cold press of something against your neck, a chain or something of the like.

“Do you still believe in Him?” He asked against the nape of your neck, pressing deep into you. He nipped at you again and lapped the blood up with his tongue with a soft moan. 

“Maybe you should apologize to Him, hm? How does that one go again?” Remmick pulled out, almost entirely. You felt the cold air hit the wetness of your cunt, and you whined at the loss of contact from him.

“Forgive me my sins, Oh Lord,” Remmick spoke, moved both of his hands to your hips, and thrust in with one swift move that made you cry out in shock, in pleasure, in shame. “The sins of my youth.” Another deep thrust, and back out again. “The sins of my soul,” Another. “And the sins of my body-” 

The last push inside of you made you see streaks of color in your vision, your mouth hanging open, and your lips wet with drool. You felt something like a spool form in your stomach, desperate to unravel. It was an odd feeling that you’d never felt before, akin to the feeling of nearly wetting yourself, and it made your face burn with embarrassment.

“Father,” Your voice was gone, raspy and unrecognizable. “Father, I feel…” You whined as the feeling grew, doing everything in your power not to let the spool unravel. “I think I‘m gonna pee… it feels like-” Remmick chuckled, increasing the speed of his thrusts. 

“Oh, my poor baby.” 

You could hear the smile in his voice. He was the Devil himself.

“You don’t even know what your sweet little body can do, do you?”

 And with that, Remmick was reaching around your body, pressing two of his fingers against your clit and rubbing, coaxing something out of you. The more he coaxed, the tighter the spool wound.

And then it snapped.

You didn’t recognize your voice as you came, nails scratching into the altar so hard that the wood began to splinter, piercing the tips of your fingers. Remmick was laughing as wetness coated him, the front of his pants and the fingertips at your clit. You’d provided an entire baptism for him, and he wouldn’t let it go to waste.

He pulled out of you, gripping your hips tightly and whipping you around so your back hit the altar. Remmick’s knees hitting the floor and his tongue diving inside of you happened in one action, in one second. He licked up everything you gave him, your essence leaking onto his face and dripping down his chin. 

His cock remained hard, long, and red below you as he sucked on your clit. You wet your lips, a shaking hand lifting from the altar to grip at his auburn waves.

“Touch yourself,” You whimpered, voice coated in overstimulation. “Please… let me see the image He created you in…” 

Remmick’s eyes slid open, peering up at you needily. His nose brushed your clit as his tongue pushed up inside you, and he grabbed at his cock with a strong, blood-covered hand. Immediately, he was moaning, the vibrations in his throat traveling through your entire body and making your head feel airy. His hand was so beautiful pleasuring himself, pulling up and down the length of his cock and making himself leak. His hips thrusted up into his fist, and you found yourself longing to see the muscles that flexed beneath his shirt. 

Your trembling hand scratched at his scalp, and Remmick sighed happily underneath your touch. He wasn’t even eating you out, not anymore, just nuzzling his face into your skin and breathing you in as he touched himself.

“Beautiful…” You whispered to him. “Like an angel.”

Remmick growled, hand tugging on your thigh and yanking you to the floor. Your back slid against the altar as he pressed the head of himself against your cunt. His forehead pressed against yours as he came with a groan. The warmth of him spilled against your clit and downward, and Remmick’s fingers gently pressed into you, making sure it stayed tucked away inside you.

Your body trembled as Remmick pulled his forehead from yours. His thumb came up to brush against your lips, and for a brief moment, he pushed it inside, humming as the pad of it pressed against your warm tongue. He leaned forward, replacing his thumb with his mouth. A small squeak sounded in your throat at the feeling of his tongue pressing against the roof of your mouth, licking away the last of the prayers that stuck there.

Remmick’s lips remained connected to yours as he helped you stand on shaking legs, his hands pulling you up effortlessly by your waist. His hand reached behind him, grabbing the underwear he’d tucked in his back pocket as he’d prepared to stick his tongue between your legs. 

He leaned down, untangling the delicate material and holding it out.

“Step in, sweet thing.” He peered up at you through half-lidded eyes. “Gotta keep everything I gave you inside… keep you close to me.”

Your hand gripped his strong shoulder as you stepped into the holes of your underwear. Remmick pulled them up slowly, leaving soft kisses on your skin as he went. When they were fully up, getting soaked with the mix of Remmick’s and your release, he straightened. His lips pressed against your forehead for a brief, sweet moment.

“I’ll see you at Sunday service.” He said as he pulled back, his voice just as fucked out as yours had been. 

“Front pews. Don’t think you can hide from me in the back.” 

His hand grazed your arm, almost innocently.

 “Or anywhere, for that matter.”

pls comment if you’d like to be tagged in part 2 <<3

[flixpii]

thank you for the tag 🫶🏾🥹

F - family tree (intro) by ethel cain

L - lovers from the past by mareux

I - i was never there by the weeknd

X - xxx by kendrick lamar

P - pour it up by rihanna

I - i lied to you by miles caton

I - i only have have eyes for you by the flamingos

npt! @iceemochaa @faestunna @kentblvd @hatethysinner & anyone else who’d like to join !

Thank you @winemilflover for the tag!!

I was tagged to spell my url or my name w songs 😌

W - Where is my mind? by Pixies

H - Horse with no name by America

O - Over the rainbow by Judy Garland

D - Disease by Lady Gaga

O - Operate by Peaches

E - Each tear by Mary J. Blige

S - Same deep water as you by The cure

N - Nada by Juanson

A - A forest by The Cure

T - Tears by Itou Kanako

A - A dónde va el viento from the ‘Nadie nos va a extrañar’ soundtrack

L - Lithium by Evanescence

I - I got you by Hed (Planet Earth)

E - Escaped by Janet Jackson

H - Happy house by Siouxsie And The Banshees

A - Abracadabra by Lady Gaga

V - Valentine by Fiona Apple

E - Eres by Café Tacvba

Tagging 💟 @dykexenomorph @lunarzomb @erodingsinner @panisfetch @haeva @baked-potatoes-rule @detnylaharper @earlbamber @daniirosie @phasersonstoned and anyone else who wants to join in 🤸🏼‍♀️

[flixpii]

the night i chose you

fem!vampire!reader x human!remmick

word count : 25.4k

synopsis : mississippi delta, 1930s. you, a centuries-old vampire, find yourself drawn to the quiet life of a young irish immigrant who has nothing but his music, his work, and his trembling kindness. you tell yourself you will only watch. but each night you come closer—until you have him beneath you, kissing, touching, breaking, feeding. he doesn’t know it yet, but he’s already yours.

a/n : dropping this straight outta nowhere … i started this in june and just finished it yesterday 😭 now working on the pegging request along with the college dorm mate request from my pookie.

warnings (mdni 18+) : sub!virgin!remmick, soft dom!reader, slow burn, stalking, vampiric feeding, predatory obsession, tension/unease, implied intent to kill/turn, brief mentions of immigration, manipulation, teasing, dryhumping, premature ejaculation, reassurance/comfort after, praise kink (light), first time sex, virgin tension, fingering (f!receiving), oral fixation (sucking fingers), nipple/breast stimulation, handjob, unprotected sex (p in v), gaeilge slips, guiding/teaching, drool, biting/feeding during sex, blood, aftermath care, turning process/body horror implied, newborn vampire hunger frenzy, remmick is hella touch-starved and inexperienced

The rain comes down in thin, slanted sheets, blurring the edges of the storefronts and turning the gaslamps along the street into smudges of yellow. You’ve seen nights like this more times than you care to count—centuries of them, each one the same. The streets emptied quicker when the weather soured, and you’d learned long ago that the best feedings were found where no one wanted to linger. Men drunk and stumbling home from the juke joints. Women clutching their coats tight, ducking under awnings. They rarely looked up until it was too late.

That has been your rhythm for years. For decades. For lifetimes. Pull one into the dark, drain just enough to be sated, then let them collapse into the gutter. The faces blurred together, a tide of nameless, forgettable offerings. You didn’t linger. You didn’t watch. You didn’t remember.

But tonight, as the rain slicks the cobblestones and the storm pulls smoke from the chimneys down into the street, you see him.

He steps out from a narrow shop with its windows fogged from within, the faint sound of strings and brass still clinging to the door before it shuts behind him. He carries a case tucked under his arm, careful like it holds something delicate. He pauses under the awning, pushing the wet from his brow with the back of his hand. Even at a distance, you catch it—the slight hesitation in his gait, the way he squares his shoulders as though reminding himself to look sure of where he’s going.

You know the type. Young. Alone. A little out of place. They’re easy. You can already picture it: wait until he turns down one of the narrow lanes, until the lights thin and the shadows press closer. You’d done it a thousand times before.

And yet, something about him catches. Not his face—you’d seen handsome and plain both, enough to know neither mattered. It’s the way he walks, as though trying to be someone he isn’t. Like the lilt of his tongue has been traded for another man’s voice. A borrowed skin.

You find yourself moving before you can think, slipping into the rhythm of the hunt, your feet soundless against the wet ground as you begin to follow.

You slip into the rain as though it parts for you, the shadows gathering close, softening your steps to nothing. The boy—no, the man, though still young enough that you could sense the rawness clinging to him—walks with a strange tension.

He keeps the case pressed to his side as though it might be stolen, his fingers curling possessively around the worn leather handle. His hat brim sags under the weight of the rain, but he doesn’t lift it, doesn't fuss with it. He moves with a deliberate kind of quiet, a rhythm too careful to be natural. Every few steps, you catch the faintest drag in his stride, as though one leg doesn’t quite trust the ground.

Men hurried when they were alone in storms like this. They ducked their heads, shoulders bent, eager to get inside. Not him. His pace isn’t fast, not slow, but steady—like he has taught himself to move at that tempo, borrowed from others who belong more here than he did.

You caught his mouth once when he passed a lamp, and the way his lips moved even as no sound came. Practicing something, maybe. An accent. A word. The shadow of a tongue that is his, hidden beneath the mimicry of the Delta.

You should be thinking of where to take him. Which alley will hide the body best. How close to press your mouth before the first warm pulse spills down your throat. But instead, you watch the way the water slides down the back of his neck, darkening the collar of his coat. You count the times he shifts his grip on the case, cautious, careful, always with that same strain of someone trying not to be seen for what they were.

The storm wraps the streets in muffled quiet, and still you can hear him. The scuff of his sole on stone. The slight hitch in breath when he adjusts the weight of the case. You match his rhythm step for step, letting the thrill hum low in your chest.

He’s so unlike the others. Not because he’s harder to catch, but because he doesn’t even seem to know he ought to be afraid.

The rain hasn’t let up by the time he turns onto a quieter street. Houses crouch low to the earth here, porches sagging under the storm’s weight, lamplight spilling weakly from behind thin curtains. His pace slows, and you know he’s close—close enough that you can almost taste the heat rising from him, the faint scent of wood polish and brass clinging to his clothes.

Your hunger sharpens. Centuries of practice coil in your muscles, a certainty that this moment will end the way it always does—with your mouth at his throat, the rush of blood, the silence that follows. You step nearer, close enough that if you reached out you could brush his coat sleeve. The rhythm of his heart beats like a drum in your ears, steady, tempting.

He climbs the steps of a narrow porch, his case shifting in his grip. You ready yourself, already picturing the pull, the warmth, the release—

But then he stops.

A shift in the air. His head tilts, just slightly. You still yourself at once, body locked in the rain, but the sound betrays you—some small scrape of your shoe against wet stone, a whisper in the storm too human to be ignored.

Slowly, he turns.

The lamplight catches his face in profile first—sharp nose, rain-dark lashes, mouth pressed thin with some unspoken thought. Then his eyes find yours.

And you freeze.

It isn’t fear staring back at you. Not suspicion. Something else—something softer, sharper all at once, like a hand pressed against glass. He looks at you as though you’ve stepped out of the rain not as a predator, not as a stranger, but as someone lost. 

Your throat goes tight. The strike dies in you quicker than breath.

“Miss?” His voice cuts through the downpour, careful, uncertain. The lilt you noticed before is there, frayed at the edges—his tongue trying to hold steady against the pull of another accent beneath. “You alright? You lost?”

For the first time in longer than you can remember, you don’t answer. You only stare, your hunger cooling into something unfamiliar, something you can’t name.

The rain patters heavy between you, filling the silence you cannot break. His eyes don’t leave yours, steady despite the storm soaking his hat, despite the chill sinking into his coat. Any other man would have hurried inside by now, shut the door, let you vanish back into the dark. But he stays there on the porch, looking at you as though the world hasn’t blurred to rain around him.

You can see the effort in him—the careful set of his jaw, the way his voice had smoothed itself into the local cadence. But under it, you sense the truth, something rougher, truer, straining to break through. It makes him look vulnerable, not in the way prey does, but in the way of someone who carries more of themselves than they know how to hide.

You should move. End this moment before it twists you further off the path. Yet your body won’t obey. For the first time in centuries, the hunt does not feel like instinct—it feels like hesitation, like being caught.

The storm presses down harder, and still he waits. Patient. Concern etched into his brow.

You make yourself breathe, shallow and careful, and you let the smallest movement answer him.

You nod.

His shoulders loosen, almost imperceptibly, as though he hadn’t realized he’d been bracing for something else entirely.

He blinks once, the rain dripping from the brim of his hat, darkening the collar of his coat. Your nod seems to ease something in him, but not enough to turn him away. His hand tightens faintly on the handle of his case before he shifts his weight, looking you over like he’s trying to gauge just how far you’ve wandered, just how alone you might be.

“You got somewhere you’re headed?” His voice is quieter now, softened by the storm, though the thread of that hidden accent pulls through stronger, unguarded. He clears his throat like he hears it himself, like he’s trying to smooth it out again. “A street you’re lookin’ for?”

The question hangs between you, unanswered. You don’t move, don’t blink, though inside you feel the old hunger scraping at your restraint, at war with the strange stillness that his gaze has forced on you.

After a beat, his mouth presses into a faint line. His eyes flick once to the rain washing over you, then back again.

“Well.” He shifts his case under his arm, free hand gesturing toward the door behind him. “Ain’t good to stand out in weather like this. You can wait inside a spell, if you’d like. Just ‘til it lightens up.”

You remain still in the downpour, rain dripping from your lashes, cold against skin that hasn’t known true chill in centuries. His offer lingers in the air, almost absurd in its simplicity.

You think of all the years, the thousands of faces that came and went. Men who clutched their wallets closer when a stranger neared. Women who crossed to the other side of the street if a shadow lingered too long. Entire towns that would rather spit at your feet than offer a hand.

And here is this one—standing with his door half-open, shoulders squared in quiet stubbornness, asking a woman he doesn’t know to step in from the rain.

Fool, you think. The word sharpens in your chest. A fool who doesn’t even realize what he’s offered. Doesn’t realize what might come crawling through his threshold.

You should turn, vanish into the storm the way you always do. Let him disappear into memory as quickly as the others. But something roots you to the spot—the strange pull of his gaze, the way he tries to bury his tongue beneath another man’s speech, the careful clutch of that case against his side.

At last, you let yourself move. A single, deliberate step forward, then another, the porch creaking faintly beneath your weight.

His hand lingers on the door, steady, waiting.

You cross the threshold.

The air shifts at once. Quieter. Heavy in its own way, but no longer filled with the weight of rain. The floorboards creak underfoot, their polish worn down by years of use. Your eyes sweep the space—narrow walls paneled in dark wood, a scattering of furniture that looks more functional than inviting. A small table stands by the window, its surface scarred with shallow knife-marks, stacked with yellowed sheet music curling at the edges. Against the far wall, a stand leans, empty, waiting for the case he still clutches to his chest.

There’s a neatness to it, though not the kind born of pride. More like someone who has little enough to keep, and keeps it close, careful. A thin thread of smoke lingers near the ceiling beams, the remnants of a fire recently banked.

You take it all in within a breath, every detail sliding into the centuries of catalog you’ve carried. But unlike the others, this place doesn’t fade to sameness. It holds shape. Texture. The sharp imprint of him.

Behind you, the door shuts with a muted click. He sets his case down gently, leaning it against the stand like it might break under the weight of carelessness.

“It ain’t much,” he says, voice low, almost apologetic as he pulls off his hat and shakes the rain from its brim. That lilt slips through again, softer now, unguarded. “But it’s dry.”

Silence folds over the room, thick as the storm still battering the roof. You stand just inside the threshold, the wet sliding down your coat in thin rivulets, pooling at your boots. He moves about quietly, setting his hat on the table, loosening his collar, as if your presence is no stranger than the rain.

You let your gaze sweep once more—the careful neatness, the scent of wood and smoke, the case leaned against its waiting stand. Every detail etches itself into you. For centuries, you have never cared to look so closely. Rooms blurred together. Faces blurred together. But here you linger, caught in the shape of this man’s life, in the way it settles around him like something he’s still learning to carry.

Only after a long, weighted pause do you let your voice break the quiet.

“Small,” you murmur at last, slow and measured, your words tasting strange in your mouth after such stillness. “But kept.”

Your eyes lift to him as you speak, catching the flicker of something in his expression—a faint tug at his mouth, uncertain if he should take your words as praise or mockery.

He shifts where he stands, one hand brushing down the front of his damp shirt as if that might smooth away the awkwardness. His eyes flick to the corner of the room, then back to you, mouth pulling faintly before he settles on words.

“Reckon it’s all I need,” he says, earnest despite the hitch in his tone. “Keeps the rain out, keeps me dry.” A pause, then a quieter add, almost sheepish: “Can’t say much more than that.”

The silence hums again, though this time it isn’t heavy. He clears his throat, gaze skimming over you like he’s searching for the right measure of courtesy.

“You’d like some tea?” It’s more of a question than an offer, but before you can shape an answer, he’s already moving toward the back of the house, his steps quick and sure on the old boards.

“Got all sorts in here,” he continues, his voice rising a little over the sound of cupboards opening, the faint clatter of tin. “Mam used to swear by it when I was sick. Ginger, lemon, chamomile—made me drink it ‘til I couldn’t stand the smell of it no more.”

Your head tilts at the word. Not mother. Not mom. Mam. The soft curl of the vowel, the trace of something older beneath the accent he’s worn like a coat. It lingers on your ear, more revealing than he likely intended, the slip of truth breaking through his careful mimicry.

The storm hammers on, and for the first time in longer than you can recall, you find yourself listening—not to the rhythm of a heart, not to the promise of blood—but to the cadence of a man’s voice in his own home.

You follow the sound of his voice, quiet in your steps, though there’s no need for silence here. The kitchen is small, its counters worn smooth from years of use, the cupboards stacked with jars that catch the lamplight in muted gleam. He moves through it with a kind of practiced clumsiness—like someone who knows where everything lives but still handles it as though it might crumble in his hands.

He sets a tin on the counter, then another, lining them up without much order. His coat is still damp, shoulders dark with rain, but he doesn’t bother to change. Instead, he busies himself with the kettle, striking a match to coax the flame alive beneath it. The flare of light paints his profile for a moment—strong jaw, the faint shadow of stubble he must not have had time to shave.

You lean against the doorframe, watching. For centuries, you’ve stood in kitchens just like this, though never to linger. Always to feed, to clean what mess was left, to slip away. But now your hands stay at your sides, empty, your hunger pressed low as you take him in.

He hums softly under his breath as he works, some fragment of melody that breaks off before it finds its shape. His fingers tap a rhythm against the tin lid, restless, and when he speaks again it’s more to the room than to you.

“Always thought Mam just liked keepin’ me quiet,” he says, prying open one of the tins. The faint scent of dried ginger drifts out. “But I reckon she believed in it too. Tea for the belly, tea for the throat, tea for whatever else was ailin’ you.”

Again, that word—Mam—softened, rounded, marked by a place far from here. The sound tugs at you, lingers longer than it should.

The kettle begins its low hiss, steam curling faint from the spout, and he busies himself with measuring leaves into the pot. You stay in the doorway, your gaze tracing the movements of his hands—careful, deliberate, but not with the ease of someone born to this place. No, it’s something learned, borrowed. Just like his voice.

When you speak, your words cut softly through the kitchen air, slow and even, though they carry the weight of certainty.

“You’re not from anywhere near here.”

It comes as a question on your tongue, the rise at the end giving him room to deny it. But you know it isn’t one. The truth sits there between you, plain as the sound of the storm beyond the walls.

He stills. His hand hovers above the pot, fingers curled around the tin lid. For a moment, his shoulders tighten, the set of his back rigid in the glow of the stove’s flame. Then he exhales, low, as if he’s been caught at something small but telling.

His head turns slightly, not enough to face you yet, but enough that the lamplight brushes across the line of his cheek. A faint smile tugs at his mouth, more rueful than amused.

“That obvious?”

He lingers in that half-turn, the kettle’s hiss filling the gap between you. You study the slope of his shoulders, the way his fingers tap once against the tin lid before setting it down. He isn’t practiced at being confronted. That much is clear.

Slowly, he shifts his weight, leaning a hip against the counter. His eyes flicker toward you, steady but cautious, as if measuring just how much to admit.

“Me and my parents,” he starts, the words slow, as though they’ve been tucked away too long, “we came over not too long ago. From Ireland.”

The word leaves his mouth with the faintest curl, unmistakable even as he tries to smooth it away. He breezes past it quickly, reaching for the kettle, adjusting it like the task will distract you from the truth he’s let slip.

Your gaze sharpens, quiet and unyielding. You’ve known men who tried to lie with their eyes and men who tried to lie with their voices. He doesn’t do either well. His truth lives in the pauses, the edges of words, the parts he tries to skip over.

Centuries have taught you to read the smallest tells. And everything about him speaks of a man carrying another skin, hoping no one will notice the seams.

Your eyes stay on him, unblinking, following the little slips he tries to tuck away beneath the ordinary motion of pouring water, rattling cups. He moves like a man who wants to be invisible but hasn’t yet learned how.

“You wear it,” you say at last, your voice soft but cutting, “like a coat that doesn’t quite fit.”

The words hang there, sharper for their quietness. His hand stills on the kettle’s handle. He doesn’t look at you right away—his gaze fixes on the curl of steam rising, his jaw tightening as though the remark had landed in a place he hoped you wouldn’t touch.

When he does glance over, it’s fleeting, uncertain, almost defensive. There’s no anger in it, not yet, but there is a faint flicker of unease, the kind that comes when someone sees too much too quickly.

“Suppose it takes time,” he murmurs, a poor shield, his thumb brushing absently against the rim of the cup. His tone aims for casual, but it slips in the middle, leaving the truth exposed all over again.

He clears his throat, as though the sound might scatter the weight of your words. The kettle hisses louder, and he seizes it like an anchor, pouring the water in slow, steady streams over the leaves. His movements are careful, as if focusing on them might stitch his composure back together.

When he speaks again, his voice is lighter, deliberately so, brushing past what you’ve just laid bare.

“Listen,” he says, setting the kettle aside, “if the storm don’t let up, you can take the couch tonight. It’s not much, but—it’ll do. You don’t need to worry.”

He glances at you, a brief flicker of his eyes, earnest despite the strain at the edges of his voice.

You almost laugh, though no sound escapes you. You don’t need to worry. Foolish man. If only he knew what stood across from him in his small, neat kitchen. If only he knew what centuries had honed your teeth and hands to do. He should be the one worried, not you.

But still, the words settle strangely in you. Not because they’re wrong, but because they’re offered. Because they belong to a man who, instead of casting you back into the rain, has opened his door, poured his tea, and spoken as though your danger is only the weather outside.

You let the silence stretch just long enough to taste his offer, to weigh it against the centuries of men who would have slammed their doors or crossed the street to avoid even brushing shoulders with you. Then, slow and deliberate, you incline your head.

“Thank you,” you say, the words measured, almost foreign on your tongue after so long without needing them. “For letting me stay.”

His mouth lifts faintly at one corner, more reflex than smile, but it softens him all the same. He nods once, quick, like it costs him nothing at all.

“No problem,” he answers, voice steady again, the strain fading under the ease of hospitality. He sets the pot down and wipes his hands against his trousers before glancing toward the narrow hall. “I’ll grab some blankets for you. Couch’ll be fine enough with those.”

You watch him move—uncomplicated in his intention, as though offering shelter to a stranger in the storm is the simplest, safest thing in the world.

You follow him into the sitting room, silent as shadow. He doesn’t seem to notice your quiet steps behind him, too busy tugging an old quilt from a chest near the wall and shaking it out with a soft thump. The couch is small, narrow-backed and worn smooth by years of use, but he bends to it with the care of someone preparing a guest bed that he rarely, if ever, offers.

He spreads the quilt, pats down the cushions with a hand, adjusts the fold once, twice—as though the smallest imperfection matters. A pillow follows, tucked at one end, his palm pressing it flat. For a moment, he steps back to assess, as if the arrangement might need approval.

Then it comes sudden: a sneeze that doubles him forward, his hand fumbling to his face. He mutters something low under his breath, sharp and quick, a curse that doesn’t belong to this place. The syllables curl strange and unfamiliar, thick with the cadence of a tongue you don’t know.

Your head tilts, listening.

He clears his throat, rubbing at his nose with the back of his hand. “Sorry,” he murmurs, a little embarrassed. Then, straighter, steadier: “I’ll be down the hall if you need anything. Cups are in the cabinet if you want any water.”

He gestures vaguely toward the kitchen, then steps back, giving the couch one last look as though to assure himself it’s enough.

The sound of his footsteps fades down the hall, each board creaking softer until the house folds back into silence. The storm still presses against the windows, but inside the little room is steady, warm with the faint burn of lamplight.

You stand a moment longer, watching the couch he so carefully prepared. The quilt lies neat, the pillow settled just so, touched by the weight of his hands. A place meant for rest. For safety.

Slowly, you lower yourself into it, the fabric faintly carrying his scent—wood smoke, varnish, the trace of rain clinging to his clothes. You stretch out, though you don’t need the comfort, don’t need sleep the way he does. But the act is ritual enough, a mimicry of the life you’ve long since left behind.

Your eyes close for a moment, and there it is again—that flicker in him. The careful courtesy. The slip of a foreign word on his tongue. The soft edge of a man who has opened his door to a stranger in the night with no thought for what it might cost him.

You’ve taken countless lives. Drained bodies in alleys, left them to the shadows without a second glance. That had been your intent tonight, as it always was. But you know, as surely as the hunger that still smolders low in your chest, that it will not be the end of him.

No—he will not be another faceless offering.

You’ve already made up your mind.

You will not kill him.

You will keep him. Shape him. Make him yours.

A few nights have passed since the storm. You’d left in the darkest hours before dawn, just as you always do, though that night your departure had not been like the others. Instead of vanishing without trace, you had bent over the small coffee table, the lamplight guttering low, and scratched a single word onto a slip of paper you’d found there:

Appreciation.

No name. No signature. Just the word, left like a breadcrumb.

By morning, he would have found it. Perhaps puzzled over it, perhaps tucked it away in a drawer. Perhaps thrown it out. The thought lingers with you, but not in the way it once might have. This time, it gnaws. This time, you want to know.

So you begin to watch him.

Not just once, but every evening. Always from a distance, tucked beneath shadow or veiled by the cover of streets that never seemed to notice you. He leaves the shop at near the same hour, case in hand, shoulders squared against the press of the town. Sometimes he pauses to light a cigarette before walking on, his head bowed, the smoke catching in the glow of the lamps. Other nights he hums softly, the same half-melodies you’d heard in his kitchen, cut short when he realizes he’s doing it.

He is a creature of habit, though not yet comfortable in his skin. You notice the way he touches the brim of his hat when strangers pass, a nod too formal to be native. The way his vowels slide back into shape when he is alone, unguarded. The way his hand always clutches that case, fingers tightening whenever footsteps echo too near.

Each movement etches itself into you. Centuries of hunting have made you adept at reading weakness, at mapping out every flaw a body carries. But with him, you find yourself memorizing the small things instead—the tilt of his head, the crease of his mouth when he’s thinking, the rhythm of his gait when he believes no one is near.

Every night you watch, you tell yourself the same thing: you will not drain him. You will not waste him. He belongs to you already, whether he knows it or not.

Tonight, the rain has given way to a heavy stillness. The streets lie empty, shadows pressed deep into the corners where lamplight doesn’t reach. You follow the familiar path, already knowing where he’ll be. He is a creature of rhythm—you could set a clock by his habits now.

The instrument shop sits at the edge of the square, its windows dim, the faintest glint of brass and string catching where the lamps outside spill in. You’ve stood across from it countless times, watching him lock the door, watching him tuck the case under his arm before heading home. You know the shape of his evenings like you know the steady pull of hunger in your bones.

But you’ve never crossed the street. Never touched the door. Not until tonight.

Your steps carry you closer, quiet against the stone, until you stand beneath the narrow awning. The wood smells of varnish and dust, of music not yet played. Your fingers brush the doorframe, though you cannot pass it—not without invitation. The law binds you still, no matter how many centuries have scoured you of other ties.

So you do what you haven’t done in lifetimes.

You raise your hand. And knock.

The sound is soft but deliberate, echoing faint through the quiet street. For a moment, nothing stirs. Then, from within, you catch it—the scrape of a chair, the shuffle of feet, the faint rustle of paper being set aside.

His voice follows, muffled by the door, touched with that softened cadence he tries so hard to wear.

“Store’s closed.”

A pause. Then, more cautious, closer:

“…Who’s there?”

You don’t move from where you stand, hand still poised near the wood as though you might knock again. His voice drifts through the door, wary but not sharp, the kind of caution that has not yet hardened into distrust.

You let the silence stretch a moment, then answer, your words slow, deliberate—measured enough to offer nothing, yet leave him reaching for more.

“Not a customer,” you say, tone even, almost quiet against the hush of the street. “Just passing through.”

The words could belong to anyone. A stranger caught in the wrong place at the wrong hour. Yet they slip from you with the weight of intent, each syllable chosen, steady, meant to pull rather than push away.

From inside, there’s another pause. You hear the faint click of something set down on wood, his steps shifting nearer. For a breath, only the creak of the floorboards speaks. Then—

“Passing through?” His voice is closer now, just on the other side of the door. A note of uncertainty curls beneath it, but curiosity threads there 

The lock shifts with a scrape of metal, then the hinges groan as the door eases open. A wedge of lamplight spills into the dark, stretching across the awning until it touches your feet.

He stands framed in the glow, hair damp with sweat from the strain of the hour, shirt sleeves rolled up, fingers smudged faintly with graphite or dust. The tension in his shoulders lingers for a moment—then breaks as soon as his eyes meet yours.

A breath slips out of him, audible in the quiet, as if he’d been holding it. Relief softens the line of his mouth, the cautious edge in his gaze ebbing into something steadier.

“Well,” he says, the word carrying on a low exhale. “It’s you.”

He leans against the doorframe, not quite smiling, but no longer guarded either. “How you been?”

You tilt your head just slightly, your gaze steady on him. His question lingers in the air, waiting, but you let it pass you by. Instead, your voice unfurls slow and even, carrying no more weight than you choose to give it.

“And you?”

The silence that follows presses back against him, urging him to fill it. He shifts, thumb rubbing absently along the edge of the doorframe, as though grounding himself. For a moment he seems almost caught—then words begin to spill, easy in their honesty.

“Busy,” he admits, glancing back toward the dim shape of the shop behind him. “Too much so, sometimes. Been doin’ repairs more than anything—folks bringin’ in fiddles with strings near broke, horns that haven’t been cleaned in months.” He huffs a quiet laugh, soft, self-deprecating. “Ain’t glamorous work, but it keeps me fed.”

His eyes flick back to you, studying your stillness. He shrugs faintly, filling the space again before it can settle. “Nights get long, though. Quiet. S’pose I don’t mind the company, even if it’s just someone knockin’ at the door.”

You shift forward, one deliberate step, then another, until the lamplight folds over you fully. The shop air reaches you—wood shavings, metal polish, the faint tang of resin and oil—thick with the breath of instruments that have lived in other hands before his.

You do not cross the threshold, not yet. Instead, you let your presence press closer, filling the narrow doorway as though to test how far he’ll bend.

His gaze lifts to meet yours, steady but flickering at the edges. He doesn’t step back, doesn’t bar the way. If anything, his hand loosens on the doorframe, a subtle slackening, like he’s caught between courtesy and the tug of something he can’t name.

“You want to come in?” he asks at last, his voice quieter now, unpracticed, as though the offer has surprised even him.

The words curl in the air, an invitation laid bare.

Your lips curve faintly, just enough to acknowledge the invitation. “Yes,” you murmur, your voice low, smooth, carrying the edge of certainty rather than need.

And when the words leave his mouth, you move—gliding past him as though the door had always been meant to open for you. The threshold gives way beneath your step, the old boards sighing under your weight.

Inside, the shop breathes around you—rows of instruments resting in shadowed corners, brass dulled with fingerprints, strings trembling faintly from the shift in air. You drink in every detail, but your eyes are not on them. They’re on him. Always on him.

He closes the door behind you, the sound soft, final. For a heartbeat, he looks almost uncertain—fingers brushing the edge of his sleeve, eyes dropping briefly to the floor. But it’s enough for you. Every gesture, every flicker of hesitation, every attempt to steady himself feels carved just for you to witness.

You’ve lived long enough to see men in their thousands—bleeding, pleading, dying—but none of them lingered like this one. None of them pulled your gaze again and again, the way a starving thing might circle back to the same fire. You’d told yourself it was hunger, instinct. But even now, with his pulse thrumming steady beneath his skin, it feels like something else. Something deeper.

Your eyes catch on the damp curl of hair near his temple, on the way he squares his shoulders as though reminding himself he belongs here, in this shop, in this town. You feel the thought form and root inside you: he is already mine.

He clears his throat softly, as though to stitch together the silence that has settled thick around you. His hand gestures vaguely toward a small wooden chair near the workbench, its surface worn smooth by use.

“You can sit, if you’d like,” he offers, voice steady but a touch too quick, as if he’s grasping for normalcy. Without waiting to see if you’ll refuse, he pulls another chair from the side wall and settles into it himself.

The workbench between you is cluttered—tiny screwdrivers lined in neat rows, spare strings coiled into little nests, fragments of brass and wood polished to varying degrees of wear. He reaches for the instrument at hand—a battered fiddle with one string snapped loose, the body scarred by careless fingers. His hands move with slow confidence, not hurried, but practiced enough that you can tell this is his ritual, his way of filling long nights.

You take the offered chair, not because you need rest, but because it sets you directly across from him, close enough to watch the lines of his face shift in the lamplight. Every furrow of his brow, every faint press of his mouth as he leans over the instrument, etches itself into you like a scripture.

He doesn’t look up at first, his focus narrowed on the delicate repair. “Most folks round here don’t take care of their fiddles,” he says after a moment, voice softer now, filling the stillness with something steady. “Strings give out, wood splits—they bring it here thinkin’ I can make it new again.” His thumb runs along the edge of the bridge, testing it with a gentleness at odds with his broad hands. “Reckon I can’t, not always. But I try.”

The lamplight glints on the curve of the fiddle, but it’s his hands you follow, the way his knuckles shift, the care he gives to every fragile piece. That care—the same care he’d given to laying out blankets for you, to speaking softly through the rain—has begun to hook itself into you, deep, impossible to loosen.

You lean back slightly in the chair, the lamplight painting your features in warm shadow. His words linger between you, soft and earnest, as his hands continue to coax the battered fiddle into some semblance of wholeness.

“You care for them,” you say at last, slow and deliberate, your tone edged with curiosity more than praise.

The statement is simple, but the weight behind it presses, testing the truth of him.

He glances up briefly, caught by your gaze, before lowering his eyes back to the instrument. His thumb brushes a notch along the wood, thoughtful.

“Suppose I do,” he admits, the corners of his mouth twitching with something between humility and unease. “If I don’t, no one else will. Folks think a thing’s useless soon as it shows wear.” He pauses, shifting the fiddle in his grip, shoulders hunching just slightly as though he’s aware of how much he’s said. “Never did sit right with me.”

The words settle in you, curling tighter around the thought that’s been rooting deeper each night: he’s different. Not in strength, not in cunning, but in the way he holds fragile things like they matter.

Your eyes lower deliberately, following the slow precision of his fingers as they test the tension of the new string, as they smooth along the curve of scarred wood. There’s reverence there, even when he doesn’t mean to show it. You let the silence stretch until it threatens to make him look up—then you press.

“You don’t like to throw things away,” you remark, soft, measured. The words are more observation than question, but they settle with the weight of both.

His hands still for the briefest moment, a flicker so small another might have missed it. His jaw works once before he exhales, shifting the fiddle against his knee.

“No,” he says, quiet, almost wary in the admission. “Never saw much sense in it. What’s broken can be mended if you’re willing to take the time.” His thumb runs across the fresh string, drawing a faint hum from the wood, and his voice dips lower, distracted by the sound. “Might not ever be perfect again, but… doesn’t mean it’s useless.”

He doesn’t look at you as he says it, but the words curl in the air between you all the same. Something raw, unguarded.

You don’t answer.

Not because his words don’t stir something, but because they do. You let them linger, let them sink deep as you watch him test the string again, head tilted slightly to catch the sound. His fingers move with quiet devotion, steady despite the roughness in them.

You tuck the moment away—like you’ve done with each slip of his voice, each careless truth, each act of simple care. It’s another piece of him, folded into the growing collection you hoard in silence. A quilt he doesn’t know you’re stitching together, thread by thread, until the shape of him belongs entirely to you.

He exhales through his nose, the corner of his mouth twitching faintly as though relieved you haven’t pressed further. He bends again to his work, shoulders dipping, and the soft scrape of wood and wire fills the space.

You watch. You let him think the silence is mercy.

But inside, it is not mercy at all. It is claiming.

The lamplight has burned lower, casting the shop in honeyed shadows. His hands finally still, the fiddle resting whole again across his knee. The night has slipped by quietly, threaded with his murmured explanations, the soft hum of strings, and your steady silence.

You rise from the chair. The motion is unhurried, deliberate, and his eyes flick up at once, as though the shift in the air has startled him. He sets the instrument carefully aside, straightening where he sits.

“You’re leavin’,” he says, not quite a question, not quite ready to mask the faint drop in his tone. His fingers curl against the workbench, tapping once before he stills them. Then, with a breath that sounds steadier than it feels, he adds, “Thank you. For sittin’ with me tonight. Don’t… don’t get much of that.”

The words hang awkwardly at the edges, but his gaze doesn’t slip away. He swallows, jaw working, before pressing on with something almost too hopeful.

“Maybe we can do it again sometime.”

The storm outside is long gone, the air crisp and cool when you reach for the door. You pause there, his words curling warm and raw in the back of your mind. Another piece of him, folded neatly into your keeping.

You turn your head just enough for your gaze to catch his in the low lamplight. His hope is naked in the air, tentative but reaching, like a hand extended without promise it’ll be taken.

Your lips curve faintly, but the weight in your voice carries steady. “Perhaps.”

The single word is measured, offering neither certainty nor refusal—just enough to let him believe, to feed the spark he’s lit himself. You see it take root at once in his eyes, the faint uncoiling of tension in his shoulders, the smallest lift at the corner of his mouth.

You linger one beat longer, memorizing the shape of that expression, then ease the door open. Cool air rushes in, brushing your skin as you step into the night.

Behind you, he exhales again, softer this time, as if some small piece of him has been granted.

And you carry the sound with you, clutching it close like a relic.

Over the next two weeks, a rhythm settles in—first tentative, then inevitable.

Most evenings you arrive at the shop just after the lamps are lit. He learns the sound of your knock; the first night he hesitated, the second he smiled in surprise, and by the fifth his hand is already reaching for the latch as your knuckles touch the wood. You never enter until he invites you. He always does.

Inside, you take the same chair. He takes his. The bench between you fills with the small devotions of his trade—screwdrivers aligned like needles, strings looped into neat circles, a tin of rosin that dusts his fingertips with pale gold. He talks more now. About the woman with the cracked cornet who swore it had stopped playing in key on Sundays. About the boy whose bow hair had snapped because he stored it wrong in the summer heat. About his father’s hands, and how they were good with wood, and how he thinks he might have gotten that from him.

Sometimes he plays for you—only a measure or two, awkward at first, then braver when you say nothing at all. He watches your face after every note as if searching for a verdict, as if the slight tilt of your head might condemn or absolve him. You give him neither. You give him attendance. Presence. It is, he seems to decide, enough.

On stormswept nights, he makes tea again—ginger if your hands are cold, chamomile if your eyes look tired, as if either state could be true for you anymore. He still says Mam without meaning to; the word softens in his mouth and loosens the rest of his voice. He still tries to polish it away. You never stop hearing it.

Between these visits, you haunt the edges of his days. You learn the time he leaves the boarding house in the dim blue before morning, hair damp from a hurried wash, his collar misbuttoned one off when he’s slept too little. You learn the path he takes to the shop—how he skirts the muddy cut-through behind the bakery after rain, how he pauses at the corner to let the mule-cart pass, how he tips his hat to the old woman who sells thread from a tin box even though she never tips hers back.

You collect small facts as if they were beads on a rosary: he prefers the dry, reedy scrape of a fiddle warming up to the clean shine of a trumpet; he eats when he remembers to—bread, an apple, a wedge of cheese wrapped in paper—and forgets when he’s busier; he hums when he’s alone; he stops humming the instant someone opens the door.

You never lose him in a crowd. Even when the Saturday evening market swells and men bark prices and women argue over peaches, you can find him by the set of his shoulders—square, careful, as if he’s rehearsing belonging. When he laughs—rare, but it happens—it catches him by surprise; he glances down as if ashamed of the sound and then lets it out anyway.

Sometimes, at dusk, you follow him home again. You keep to the wash of shadow along the clapboard fences, to the slow seam of alleys where the lamplight fails. You watch him unlock his door with his shoulder pressed to the frame, as if bracing against a house that might not let him in. You stay until a single lamp brightens his window and a second follows, until his silhouette moves across the shades—coat off, sleeves rolled, hands scrubbing through his hair as if trying to erase the day. Then you leave him to sleep, the way you left him the first night: intact. For now.

Inside the shop, the intimacy of repetition does what seduction often can’t. He grows used to your nearness, to the way your gaze settles and does not flinch. He begins to ask small questions that mean nothing and everything.

“Do you like the sound of a low string better than a high?”

“Have you been to Vicksburg?”

“Do you believe people change when they cross an ocean?”

You answer sparsely, just enough to keep him talking. He fills the rest with stories—fragments of a ship crowded with bodies and trunks; a night sky that looked wrong the first month ashore; the first time he held an American dollar and didn’t understand its worth until it fed him. You file it all carefully away.

On the ninth night, he notices the way your eyes track his hands and goes shy, as if the attention were a touch. On the tenth, he brings a small tin of boiled sweets from the general store and sets it near your chair without comment. On the twelfth, he plays a simple reel and doesn’t stop halfway through; he lets the final note die and looks at you like the room might tell him what your silence won’t. You don’t applaud. You incline your head. He flushes anyway.

Your hunger does not fade. It sharpens. It learns the cadence of his pulse when he laughs and when he concentrates. It maps the hollow at his throat, the blue thread of vein that lies soft beneath skin. But it is not the swift, devouring appetite you’ve spent centuries obeying. It is patient. It is possessive. It wants him whole before it changes him forever.

You start to mark the places on him that will take your teeth best. The inside of his wrist, where the rosin dust collects. The tender spot just behind his jaw, where his accent lives when he’s too tired to hide it. The curve of his shoulder, where you will brace your palm when you ease him onto his back and make him look at you as he learns what you are.

He does not know that every evening he invites you further in—past his door, past his caution, past the skin of the life he’s patched together. He doesn’t know that you have stopped thinking in terms of nights and started thinking in terms of when.

And still, the pattern holds: your knock; his relief; the chair; the bench; the hush. A life being tuned, one quiet evening at a time.

By the end of the second week, when you rise to leave, he stands with you. He doesn’t say perhaps anymore. He says, “Tomorrow?”—like it’s the simplest word in the world.

You let him have it. “Tomorrow.”

And you mean it—because tomorrow is closer to the moment you’ll claim him, and closer to the soft, inevitable undoing he’s already begun to want.

It’s the last week of the month when the pattern breaks—though not in the way you feared.

The shop had emptied long before sundown, the last customer slipping away with a battered cornet cradled like treasure. He should have gone home then, locked the door and left the lamps to burn themselves out. But he stayed—mending a bow, wiping down brass, filling the silence with the faint hum of a tune that only faltered when he realized he was singing it aloud.

You watch from your usual perch in the shadows across the street, the glow of the windows painting him in gold. The hour stretches long, later than his habit, and when at last he sets his tools down and pulls on his coat, you’re already braced to follow him through the quiet streets.

He steps out into the night, pulling the door shut with its familiar creak, and his eyes catch on you almost at once—as if he’d already known you’d be there. No startle. No hesitation. Just that same soft exhale he always gives when the recognition strikes him.

“You waitin’?” he asks, voice low in the hush of the street. The brim of his hat shadows his face, but his mouth curves faintly at the edges.

You let the silence answer for you, the tilt of your head enough to tell him yes.

He shifts the case in his hand, then gestures down the street with a jerk of his chin. “Come on, then.”

You fell into step behind him, your gaze never leaving the square set of his shoulders as he leads you through the lamplit hush of the streets. The case swings lightly at his side, his stride steady, his head turning once or twice as though to assure himself you’re still there. He doesn’t need to.

When he reaches his narrow house, he mounts the porch steps and pushes the door open, holding it just wide enough for you. 

You cross the threshold without pause, the door closing soft behind you. His house is the same one you glimpsed that first night—but different now, because he’s the one who’s led you in.

The air is warmer here, carrying the scents of varnish and smoke, the faintest ghost of tobacco leaf pressed into the wood. The little front room is tidy in a way that isn’t fussy—everything in its place, worn but kept. The quilt on the couch is folded this time, not laid out for you. A stack of sheet music lies on the table, curling at the edges, weighted by a chipped mug.

He slips past you, setting his case gently in the corner, as though the instrument inside is more fragile than bone. He shrugs off his coat and hangs it on the peg by the door, his movements easy, unthinking, like this is the only space where he lets himself belong.

From here, you can see further than you did that first night. Down the narrow hall, a door stands ajar to a bedroom—only a sliver visible: a plain bedstead, sheets pulled tight, a single candle stub on the table. No excess, no softness. Just him.

He glances back at you, uncertain for a breath, then gestures toward the couch near the hearth. “Sit, if you want. Fire’s out, but I can strike it up.”

You take in everything—the neat lines of the place, the way his presence fills it, the fact that he has brought you here, into the marrow of his life. Your hunger sharpens, not for blood, not yet, but for the shape of him in this space. For the claim you’ve already decided is yours.

You lower yourself onto the couch, the quilt’s weight shifting faintly beneath you. The fabric smells faintly of cedar and smoke, the sort of scent that clings to things kept too long but cared for. You cross one leg over the other, hands resting loosely in your lap, your gaze tracking him as he crouches at the hearth.

He strikes a match, its brief flare painting the planes of his face gold before he tucks it into the nest of kindling. The fire takes slowly, coaxed by his patience, his broad hands careful as though he’s tending something fragile. It’s the same way he handles every instrument, every task—always with that quiet devotion.

The silence holds, filled only by the small crackle of wood beginning to burn. Then his voice cuts through, low and practical, though softer now that it’s just the two of you in this space.

“You want anything? Tea, maybe? Or water?”

He glances over his shoulder, eyes catching on you briefly before darting back to the fire, as though asking costs him more than the act of providing. His thumb brushes the edge of the hearthstone, restless, like he’s already bracing himself to rise and fetch whatever answer you give.

“I’m fine.”

The words leave you slow, deliberate, more a choice than a truth. You don’t need tea, don’t need water. What you need he cannot name.

He glances back at you at the sound, his eyes catching yours for a beat before flicking down again. The faintest nod follows, a small acknowledgement, though you can see the tension ease in his shoulders as if your refusal has lifted some imagined obligation.

The fire grows, throwing its first thin tongues of light across the room. He leans into the glow, coaxing it with another piece of kindling, the motion steady, practiced. The lamplight had shown him one way before; the firelight shows him another—his cheekbones sharper, his eyes shadowed, the quiet curve of his mouth softened by the orange heat.

You settle back against the couch, watching him as though every detail were a secret offered only to you. The way his hands move, the way his breath catches when the flames flare, the way he shifts his weight on his knees. Each motion feeds the growing pull inside you. Each one sharpens the thought that has taken root since the first night.

He lingers at the hearth a moment longer, as if reluctant to pull himself from the work of coaxing flame into steady burn. Then, with a quiet sigh, he dusts his palms against his trousers and stands.

His steps are slow, almost hesitant, but deliberate. He crosses the short distance and lowers himself onto the couch beside you. Not close enough to touch—he leaves a respectful space between you—but close enough that the warmth of his body mixes with the glow of the fire.

The couch dips under his weight, the quilt shifting slightly between you. He leans forward, elbows resting loosely on his knees, watching the flames lick higher, his profile lined in orange and shadow. The crackle of burning wood fills the silence, the only sound between you, settling into the hush of the room like it belongs there.

For once, he doesn’t rush to fill the quiet with words. He just sits, his breath slow, steady, the faint scent of rain and smoke still clinging to him.

And you watch. The sharp line of his jaw, the way his fingers rub absently together as if still carrying dust from the workbench, the subtle tension in his shoulders as though he is aware—keenly aware—of your presence beside him.

The fire snaps, sending a thin plume of sparks curling upward. He shifts on the couch, one hand dragging over his knee as though gathering courage, the other rubbing idly at his thumb.

“I was thinkin’,” he begins, voice low, meant almost more for the flames than for you. A pause, then he clears his throat, steadies himself. “I’m glad I met you.”

The words sit awkwardly in the air, unpolished, but honest. His eyes stay fixed on the hearth, as if looking at you directly might unravel the nerve it took to speak them. “Don’t… don’t often get someone sittin’ with me. Most folks just pass through the shop, say what they want, and that’s the end of it.” His shoulders rise, fall. “But you—” he falters a little, pressing his palms together. “You stayed. You come back. Means more than I can say.”

His voice dips softer at the last, nearly drowned by the crackle of wood, but not enough to hide the truth in it.

The words roll through you like heat, sharper than fire, older than any hunger you’ve ever known. It’s different from the blood-thirst you’ve lived with for centuries—deeper, more dangerous. The pulse of it shudders down your spine, sets your body alight. Every syllable he spills into the air feels like it was meant for you alone, and the rush of hunger that seizes you is almost unbearable.

You watch him, your gaze heavy, unblinking. The soft slope of his mouth, the nervous press of his fingers, the quiet hope he doesn’t know he’s offering—it coils inside you, makes your fangs ache against the back of your tongue.

You force your voice low, slow, steady, though the ache presses hard against it. “I’m glad to have met you too.”

The fire crackles, spitting sparks. For a moment he only breathes, shoulders rising as if those words have taken something from him and returned it in kind. Then—sudden, unthinking—he turns.

His body leans forward, closing the space between you in a heartbeat. His lips meet yours—warm, trembling, rushed—as though he’s been holding the impulse back for weeks and could no longer bear its weight.

The kiss is clumsy, raw, but it carries every piece of his earnestness. Every unspoken word he didn’t know how to give.

The moment his mouth touches yours, that hunger surges—flaring so fast it feels like fire in your veins, sharp and consuming. His lips are warm, human, fragile, and you want more. You lean into him, deepening the kiss, tasting the rush of his breath as if it might be enough to sate you.

And then—he pulls back.

It’s sudden, almost startled, as if the weight of what he’s done crashes into him all at once. His breath stumbles, his chest rising fast, his hand gripping the couch cushion between you as though anchoring himself. His eyes flicker to yours, wide and uncertain, caught between apology and desire.

The space he’s left feels unbearable, like something torn away too soon. The hunger inside you snarls against it, rising harder, sharper, clawing for the warmth you’ve just been denied. Your fangs press harder against your tongue, your fingers curling into your palms to keep from seizing him, pulling him back to where he belongs—against you, beneath you.

Every part of you wants to claim him now. To end the waiting. To make sure he never dares to pull back again.

His breath shudders out, uneven, and he drags a hand across his mouth like he can erase the kiss, though his lips are still parted, still trembling.

“I—sorry,” he stammers, voice rough, breaking on the word. “Shouldn’t’ve— I don’t know what I was—” His eyes drop to the floor, then jerk back to yours, guilt and want warring across his face. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean—”

You don’t let him finish.

Your hand lifts, slow but unyielding, brushing against his jaw as you draw him back toward you. His breath catches, body stiffening under your touch, but he doesn’t resist. The heat of his skin burns against your palm, and the hunger in you thrums hard and fast.

“You don’t need to apologize,” you say, your voice low, pressing against the chaos of his words like the final note of a song.

His lashes flutter, his lips parting as though he means to protest again, but nothing comes. He leans, hesitant but helpless, pulled back into the gravity you’ve set around him.

The fight leaves him in a single, trembling breath. His shoulders drop, his grip loosens on the couch cushion, and then he caves—collapsing back into you as if his body has decided for him.

The kiss is clumsy again, rushed, but there’s no hesitation now. His lips press hungrily to yours, trembling with nerves yet driven by something rawer, needier. His hands falter at his sides, then clutch the edge of the quilt between you, gripping too tight, like he doesn’t know where else to put them, like touching you fully might undo him completely.

You feel the heat of him pour into the space you left open, his breath mingling with yours, unsteady and sweet. Every nervous stutter of his mouth only feeds the hunger ripping through you—his inexperience, his sincerity, his eagerness to give despite not knowing how.

The sound that escapes him is small, caught in his throat, as though even this simple closeness overwhelms him. And still he doesn’t pull away. If anything, he leans harder, desperate to stay where you’ve allowed him.

You let him pour himself into the kiss—nervous, rushed, clumsy—and for a moment you drink it in, the rawness of it, the heat of him. His inexperience hums in every shaky press of his mouth, every uneven breath against your skin. It stirs the hunger in you sharper still, until you can no longer stand to let him fumble blindly.

Your hand moves, firm against his jaw, tilting his face to yours. He stills at the touch, caught, waiting—and you guide him, steady, deepening the kiss with slow precision. Your lips part his, coaxing rather than asking, showing him the rhythm, the weight, the way it’s meant to be done.

He follows without thought, pliant under your lead. His breath shivers against you, his mouth opening to yours, the tentative push of his lips giving way to the shape you mold into him. When he stumbles, you correct him—pressing closer, slowing him down, drawing him into the heat until he matches you.

A soft sound breaks from him, half sigh, half surrender. His fingers twitch against the quilt, desperate for somewhere to anchor, but he doesn’t move them without your permission. He leans into you instead, his whole body leaning, trusting you to hold him steady in what he doesn’t yet know how to give.

The hunger gnaws deep, but you keep it on a leash—for now. Control is yours, and he is already learning that.

The kiss drags deeper, heat spilling between you, and you feel the tremor of his want beneath every uncertain movement. You press him back, guiding him without words, your mouth dictating the rhythm, your hands framing his face as though shaping something raw and new.

When you shift, he startles faintly—a quick hitch in his breath as you move over him, your knees sliding onto the couch, your body straddling his. The firelight throws his features into sharp relief: wide eyes, lips parted, chest rising quick beneath you.

His hands lift instinctively, hovering uselessly in the air, caught between daring to touch and fearing to overstep. They tremble just shy of your waist, fingers flexing as though the ache to feel you is too much to still.

You break from the kiss just long enough to catch his wrists. His pulse thrums beneath your grip, frantic, human, delicious. Slowly, you guide his hands down, pressing them to your thighs.

The breath that leaves him is sharp, almost a gasp. His fingers curl against your skin, tentative at first, then firmer, clutching as though anchoring himself in the only place you’ve allowed.

The hunger rips through you at the sound, at the feel of him under you, pliant and eager, unsure yet desperate to follow where you lead.

You stay close, your mouth brushing his once more, drawing out the softness of his breath as your hips shift. The movement pulls a sound from him, low and startled, his hands tightening instinctively on your thighs.

You rock again, measured, pressing the weight of yourself against him. The hardness beneath you is unmistakable now, straining up through the fabric that does nothing to shield him from you. His whole body stiffens under the pressure, his chest rising sharp with each breath, eyes wide as though he can’t believe how quickly his body has betrayed him.

His lips part, the faintest stammer caught at the edge of his throat, but no words come. Instead, his hands clutch tighter, fingers digging into your skin as though holding on is the only thing keeping him from unraveling.

You savor it—the helplessness in his hips shifting upward without thought, the desperate way his body answers yours even while his mind fumbles. You set the pace, slow, grinding, making him feel every inch of your control, every intentional emphasis on the heat swelling between you.

His breath hitches again, a broken sound spilling from him before he clamps his teeth shut, as if ashamed of the noise. But the hardness pressing against you only grows, proof of what his body craves no matter how he tries to hold it back.

Your lips trail along his jaw, soft and lingering, before finding his mouth again. You kiss him slow, steady, letting each press of your lips match the rhythm of your hips as they roll against him. His breath stutters into yours, shaky and unrestrained.

Between kisses, you let your voice slip out low, brushing hot against his lips. “Don’t hold back.” Another kiss, deep and claiming, before you draw back just enough to whisper again. “Let me feel you.”

The words shiver through him, striking deeper than your touch. His hands tense on your thighs, gripping harder, his body jerking helplessly beneath you as though the permission alone has unraveled something tight in him.

You keep the rhythm unhurried, steady, savoring the way he begins to move with you—shaky, uncertain, but eager. Every brush of your hips grinds against the hardness of him, and every time, his breath catches louder, his chest pressing up into you like he’s desperate to give in.

His lips part, searching for yours, and when you meet him, the kiss is messier now—wet, hungry, breaking with small sounds he can’t quite stifle.

His breath is ragged, lips parted as though he’s barely keeping up with the steady pull of your body against his. You feel the tremor in him, the desperate tension in his hands still clinging to your thighs.

Slowly, you loosen your grip on his wrists, your fingers sliding up to cover his hands, coaxing them higher. He resists at first—not in refusal, but in hesitation, his touch hovering like he’s afraid to take what isn’t his. You guide him firmly, pressing his palms up along the curve of your hips, the shape of your waist.

The sound he makes at the contact is near voiceless, a breath sucked between his teeth, half awe, half disbelief. His fingers splay wide, testing the edges of what you’ve given him, gripping tighter when he realizes you’ll allow it.

Your mouth leaves his, trailing lower. Along his jaw, soft at first, then firmer as your hunger drives you down to the vulnerable line of his neck. The heat there coils against your lips, the thrum of his pulse pounding so close it sears into you.

The hunger spikes hard, sudden, so sharp you have to still yourself for a moment. Your fangs press, aching, the scent of him a storm against your senses. It would be so easy—too easy—to pierce, to take, to make him yours now.

Instead, you kiss the place where his pulse beats strongest. Once. Again. Slow, dragging your mouth along the column of his throat as he tilts his head without even knowing why, offering you more.

His grip on your waist tightens, needy, trembling. “God…” he breathes, barely a word, half prayer, half surrender.

You press your mouth harder to his throat, letting the heat of his pulse thrum against your lips, and your hips shift—this time with more force, a grind down against the length of him straining beneath his trousers.

The effect is immediate. His body stiffens under you, breath breaking into a sharp gasp that turns ragged, helpless. He clutches at your waist like he’s drowning, his head tipping back as a strangled sound tears from his throat.

And then—he’s gone.

The tension snaps all at once, his release spilling hot into his pants, soaking through in a rush he can’t stop. His whole body shudders with it, his chest heaving beneath you as the wave takes him.

The moment it ends, shame crashes into his face. His hands falter, falling back to the couch cushions, his head bowing forward as though he can’t bear to meet your eyes. The flush creeps high over his cheeks, spreading down his throat, his breath uneven.

“I—” His voice stumbles, breaks. He swallows hard, shaking his head. “I didn’t mean… God, I’m sorry—”

The words tumble out of him in a rush, choked with embarrassment, his hands twisting against the quilt as though he might fold himself away.

You don’t let the apology take shape, don’t let him drown himself in shame. Your hand slides back to his jaw, firm but steady, tilting his face up until his wide, guilty eyes meet yours.

“Don’t,” you murmur, low and deliberate, each syllable cutting through his stammered words. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

His breath falters, caught in his throat. He looks like he wants to argue, to shrink from the weight of your gaze, but the way your fingers anchor him leaves him nowhere to go. His flush deepens, heat flooding his cheeks, his mouth parting as though to protest again—but your thumb sweeps lightly over his lower lip, silencing him before he can.

“You gave me what I wanted,” you continue, your tone soft but unyielding. “That’s all that matters.”

The firelight flickers over him, highlighting the nervous tremor in his lashes, the way his throat works around a swallow. Slowly, some of the tension eases from his body, not gone entirely, but shifted—shame twisting into something else, something closer to surrender.

Your hand lingers at his face, your thumb brushing once more, gentler this time. “Do you understand?”

He nods, small and shaky, his eyes locked to yours as if afraid to break away.

You hold his gaze a moment longer, your fingers steady at his jaw, until the last flickers of protest die in his eyes. Then you lean in and claim his mouth again.

This kiss is nothing like his rushed, nervous eagerness before. It’s slower, deeper—each press of your lips carrying weight, certainty. You pour reassurance into it, but also command, sealing over his shame, leaving no space for it to fester.

He melts under it almost instantly, the tension breaking from his shoulders, his breath spilling shaky against you. His hands hover again, uncertain, before one finally rises, tentative, to settle at your waist. His touch is feather-light, cautious, like he’s terrified of breaking the spell you’ve cast.

You kiss him harder, tilting his head to fit him perfectly against you, letting him feel that you’re not finished with him—that you have no intention of letting him go. When you finally draw back, your lips just a whisper from his, you don’t give him the chance to speak, to apologize again.

“You’re mine,” you murmur, soft but absolute, as final as a vow.

The words leave him trembling, his breath caught between disbelief and surrender. His lips part, but no denial comes. Only a nod—small, helpless—because he’s already given himself to you, and you’ve made sure there’s no way back.

The days blur into something different after that night.

When he asked you to stay, his voice had been soft, tentative, as though the very thought of having you under his roof might be too much to hope for. But you hadn’t been able to refuse—not when the pull of him was already stronger than the rhythm of your centuries-old hunger. And so you stayed.

The first week.

You ‘wake’ to the sound of him moving through the house in the mornings—boots on the floorboards, the clink of a mug against the table, the soft clear of his throat before he steps out into the day. He looks at you every time before he leaves, half in awe, half still uncertain that you’re really there. At night, he returns to find you waiting, and relief colors his face so openly it makes something deep in you twist.

The second week.

You settle into his patterns as though they were your own. The shop in the evenings, his careful hands bent over brass and wood, his eyes lifting to find yours across the bench. The quiet meals he takes when he remembers to eat—bread, fruit, thin soup—and the way he nudges a plate toward you though he’s seen you never touch it. He tells you stories sometimes, in fragments—about the crossing, about how hard it was to leave behind what he knew, about the way people look at him here, like they can hear his difference even when he says nothing at all. His father’s laugh comes up, quick and shining, but quieter are the moments when his voice thins out speaking of the work his mother’s hands endured, or the nights he lay awake listening for familiar words in an unfamiliar place. He never lingers long in those truths, but you do—listening, storing every word.

The third week.

The space between you shrinks without either of you naming it. He grows braver, brushing your hand when he passes, sitting closer on the couch so your knees touch, leaning his head back when you kiss him instead of stiffening in surprise. His inexperience never fades, but it softens into eagerness, into trust. And each night, as the firelight spills over him, you feel your claim deepen, the thought of him as yours no longer a decision but a fact.

When you slip from the house in the hours before dawn, it is no longer to leave him behind. It is only to hunt, to keep yourself fed, before returning to him. Always back to him.

By the end of the month, the house is different. Not because you’ve changed it, but because your presence has soaked into its walls. The quilt on the couch still carries your shape. The air still holds the echo of your voice. His eyes track you wherever you move, as if trying to memorize what you’ve already claimed.

And each night, when the fire dies low, he looks at you with the same steady, trembling certainty as the first time he kissed you—like he knows you’re no passing stranger at his door.

The house is silent but for the slow breath of him. The fire has long since died to embers, shadows stretching soft and deep across the room.

He lies on his side beside you, his body turned unconsciously toward yours, sleep pulling his face slack. The worry lines smooth out in these hours; his mouth softens, no longer pressed into its quiet self-discipline. He looks younger like this. Unhardened.

You do not sleep. You never do. Instead, you watch.

Your gaze traces the length of him—the curve of his throat where the pulse thrums steady, the hollow of his collarbone, the rise and fall of his chest beneath the thin fabric of his shirt. The scent of him lingers, warm and human, sweat and smoke and something that is only his.

You lift your hand, slow enough that even the air doesn’t stir, and let your fingertips trail lightly over his skin. Along the ridge of his brow. Down the line of his nose. Over the faint shadow of stubble at his jaw. He twitches once, the smallest stir, but doesn’t wake.

Your touch moves lower, brushing over his throat, pausing there. The warmth beneath your fingers is almost unbearable, the beat of his life calling to you as it always has. Hunger curls sharp in your belly, but you don’t bite. Instead, you map him—inch by inch, as if pressing every curve and hollow into memory.

It is as close to admiration as you can give. Not worship, not love—something darker, hungrier, but threaded through with awe all the same.

Your hand rests against his chest at last, feeling the steady thrum of his heart. For centuries, you’ve watched them die. Tonight, you only watch him live.

You shift closer, the quilt whispering faintly beneath you, until your lips hover just above his ear. His breath is warm against your neck, steady in its rhythm, the kind of rhythm you’ve learned to recognize as fragile, fleeting, human.

Your fingers trace one last line down his chest, stopping at the rise and fall of his ribs. You lean in, your mouth brushing the air above his skin, and let your voice slip out low, careful, almost reverent.

“You don’t even know yet,” you murmur, the words threading into the quiet like smoke. “How much of you is already mine.”

He stirs faintly, a small shift in his sleep, his brow creasing as though he hears something just beneath the dream. But he doesn’t wake.

You let your lips hover a breath from his skin, close enough that if he were conscious he might feel it, and you whisper again—softer this time, meant only for the shadows.

“I won’t let you go. Not now. Not ever.”

His chest rises, falls, and the sound of his breathing fills the hush around you. You press your mouth to his temple, the barest ghost of a kiss, before leaning back just enough to watch him again, your hand still resting where his heart beats steady under your palm.

It’s late when he returns, the door groaning on its hinges as he pushes it open with his shoulder. You’re already inside, waiting in the lamplit quiet of the front room. His coat is damp at the shoulders, his hat in one hand, and under his other arm he carries his worn leather case along with a bundle of tools wrapped in cloth.

He looks tired, but there’s a brightness in his eyes as he sets everything down on the table. “Couldn’t leave it at the shop,” he says, voice low, half-apologetic. “Been meanin’ to get to it for weeks now.”

When he opens the case, the banjo gleams faintly under the lamplight—though its body is scarred, its strings slack, its head worn with age. It’s no prize piece, but the way he touches it is tender, as if he’s setting down something more than wood and wire.

He unwraps the tools with care, laying them out in a neat row: screwdrivers, files, a tin of polish. His hands move with that same deliberate patience you’ve watched countless nights in the shop, but here, at the small table in his home, the ritual feels more intimate.

You watch him from the couch, your body still, your gaze unblinking. The lamplight softens his face, shadows catching in the hollow of his cheek, glinting at the edges of his lashes. He bends over the banjo, thumb brushing along the frets, jaw tight in concentration. Every movement seems more fragile, more human, outside the safe order of his workbench.

“I’ll have it singin’ again,” he murmurs, almost to himself, his accent curling unguarded through the words. “Mam always said a house feels empty without music in it.”

You say nothing.

The silence is heavy, deliberate, wrapping around the room like a second skin. You sit motionless on the couch, eyes fixed on him as he bends over the banjo, his hands busy in the dim spill of lamplight.

He doesn’t seem to notice the weight of your watching, or perhaps he does and forces himself to ignore it. His thumb runs over the frets, his other hand tightening a screw, the tools clicking softly against the table in a rhythm all his own. His brows knit in focus, his bottom lip caught faintly between his teeth as he coaxes the instrument back into shape.

Every movement is careful. His fingertips polish over the worn wood like a caress, tracing scars left long before it was his. He hums once—soft, tuneless—cutting it short as though embarrassed, before returning to the work.

You remain still, feeding on the sight of him in the hush: the curve of his shoulders under his shirt, the line of his throat bending low over the strings, the way the lamplight gleams against the small sweat at his temple. The hunger rises sharp and insistent in you—not only the pull of blood, but the darker craving to claim every fragile piece of him, to mark him as yours in ways he cannot yet imagine.

The quiet stretches, filled only with the delicate sounds of him working, and still you do not break it. You only watch, as close to worship as you will allow yourself.

Later that night, the banjo lies back in its case, its strings gleaming faintly after his careful work. You had reminded him to eat—your voice soft, but firm enough that he obeyed, setting aside the tools to take bread, stew, and the last of the fruit from the cupboard. He hadn’t meant to finish it all, you could see it in the faint surprise on his face when the bowl was empty.

The meal sits heavy in him. Within minutes of stretching out on the couch, his head tips back against the cushion, lashes lowering, breath evening into the steady rhythm of sleep. Ten minutes, no more, and he’s gone, the wear of the day and the weight of food dragging him under.

You linger beside him a while, watching. His lips parted just slightly, his chest rising slow and full, the faintest line of stubble shadowing his jaw. In slumber he looks impossibly vulnerable, laid bare to you in ways no waking man would ever allow.

But the hunger inside you is sharp, pressing against the ribs you’ve kept it caged in. Watching him so close only stokes it, until your mouth aches with the need you’ve denied too long. Not him—not yet. But something.

You rise silently, the floorboards barely whispering under your steps. The night outside is cool when you slip through the door, the air heavy with the scent of wet earth and magnolia. The streets are quiet, lamps throwing long pools of light across the cobblestones, shadows deepening at their edges.

You vanish into those shadows easily, as you always have.

It doesn’t take long. A drunk weaving home from the corner tavern, humming tunelessly, his pockets jingling faint. You follow him until the alleys close in, the light falling away, and then you strike—quick, precise, a whisper against his throat. His warmth floods your mouth, rich and filling, quieting the ache in your body.

You don’t take enough to end him. Just enough to sate. Enough to return to the man sleeping in his home without the gnaw of hunger making your hands shake.

When you slip back inside, the quilt hasn’t moved. His breath still fills the silence, steady, innocent. You stand there for a moment, watching him again, your hunger quiet now but replaced with something fiercer—something that feels less like need and more like possession.

His face is slack in sleep, mouth parted slightly, lashes shadowing his cheeks. He looks untouched, unburdened—like a man who doesn’t yet know what he’s already given away.

The thought presses heavier than it ever has: turn him.

It thrums through you like another pulse, stronger than the blood you’ve just taken, stronger than the centuries of hunger you’ve learned to master. To make him yours—not just for a night, not just for the fragile span of his human years—but forever. Bound to you. Shaped by you.

Your teeth catch your bottom lip, worry it slow, then harder. The ache in you is too sharp, too restless, and you bite down until the skin breaks. Blood wells, thick and metallic, flooding your mouth with its iron tang.

You stand there with the taste of yourself on your tongue, your gaze never leaving him, as the idea roots deeper, heavier. His throat gleams pale in the lamplight, unguarded. His pulse beats steady beneath skin so thin, so easy to pierce. One moment—one choice—and he would never leave you.

You swallow the blood on your tongue, the copper sting only sharpening the want. Your hand twitches at your side with the urge to touch him, to tilt his head and feel that pulse beneath your lips.

The hunger shifts from ache to vow inside you: not yet, but soon.

At last you move, slow and deliberate, bending toward him where he lies slack with sleep. The fire’s embers glow faint in the grate, casting enough light to trace the slope of his cheek, the faint crease at his brow even in rest.

You press your lips there—soft, lingering. A kiss that is almost tender, though hunger edges every part of it. The faint smear of blood from your already healing lip marks his skin, a dark streak against his warmth.

For a moment, you leave it. The sight of your blood on him is a brand, a secret vow only you understand. Then your thumb lifts, gentle, wiping it away as though you’d never let it slip. His skin is warm under your touch.

“Remmick,” you whisper, low, coaxing.

He stirs, lashes fluttering before his eyes half-open, clouded with sleep. A soft sound escapes him—confusion, maybe, or simply the weight of exhaustion. You smooth your hand over his jaw, keeping him tethered.

“Come,” you murmur, steady. “Not here.”

He doesn’t resist when you guide him up, his body pliant in your hands, still heavy with drowsiness. His hand finds yours as you pull him gently to his feet, leading him down the narrow hall. The boards creak beneath your steps, the hush of the house wrapping close.

In the small bedroom, you ease him down onto the plain bedstead, drawing the quilt over him. He sinks into it with a sigh, turning instinctively toward where you stand.

His lips part as though to speak, but no words come—just the faint brush of breath before sleep reclaims him.

The days fall into their rhythm again, but something has shifted—subtle, unmistakable.

You see it in fleeting moments. A glance caught too long, the way his eyes linger on your mouth when you speak, or on your hands when they brush near his. Desire flickers there, raw and unpracticed, before he buries it under a cough, a lowered gaze, the busy shuffle of his tools. He doesn’t speak of it, but you notice. You notice everything.

It starts to grow bolder, though not by choice. He looks at you when he thinks you’re not watching—while you sit at the shop’s table with lamplight on your face, or when the fire paints your skin in the quiet of his home. His throat tightens, his hand fumbles, and he pretends distraction, but the want is there. It blooms in the small tremors of his body whenever you lean too close.

One evening, you stand at the sink, wiping your hands clean of water, and you feel his gaze burn across your back. When you turn, he startles, nearly dropping the spoon he’d been drying. His cheeks flush, his voice too quick: “I—wasn’t—” But the truth is already written in his face.

Soon, the slips come more often. He catches himself staring, then looks away sharply, his jaw tight, his lips pressed into silence. Sometimes he covers it with nervous chatter, sometimes with a too-long sip of tea. Once, when you leaned down to press your mouth to his cheek in passing, his breath stopped, his whole body locking in place. When you drew back, his ears were red, his eyes wide, his mouth slightly open as though he’d forgotten what words were.

You never call it out. You let him think he hides it well. But each look is another thread twining tighter around him, another proof of what you already know: he wants. He wants, even if he doesn’t yet understand the shape of it, or the way it coils into hunger just as dangerous as your own.

And with every glance, every falter, your vow sharpens—he will not be allowed to hide it from you forever.

The kettle hisses low on the stove, steam curling toward the ceiling beams. You stand over it, steady, your hand loose on the handle as you wait for the water to boil. The lamplight lays soft across the room, catching the faint gleam of your hair, the curve of your shoulder.

Behind you, he sits at the small table, the banjo resting against the wall, his work laid aside for the night. You feel his gaze before you see it—warm, heavy, too still to be casual.

You pour the water over the leaves, the faint scent of mint rising with the steam, and the weight of his stare burns hotter with every motion. You don’t turn. You let him look.

When you finally glance back over your shoulder, he startles, his eyes darting down to the table, his fingers fumbling with a stray scrap of sheet music as if it had always been his concern. But the flush at his throat gives him away, the quick rise and fall of his chest betraying him.

You cross the room with the cup, setting it before him without a word. He reaches for it carefully, though his hand trembles faintly around the handle.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, his voice thick, low, as though the act of you preparing it for him means more than it should. His eyes flicker up once, meeting yours for the briefest moment, and the want there is sharp, unhidden—before he blinks it away again, tucking it back behind his guarded expression.

You ease down onto the chair beside him, the wood creaking softly under your weight. The steam from the tea curls upward between you, carrying mint and warmth into the hush of the room.

He sits stiffly, both hands curled around the cup as if it’s the only thing steadying him. His gaze stays fixed on the dark surface of the drink, shoulders tight, jaw working faintly.

You lean just enough that your presence brushes against him, your voice soft, unhurried. “What’s wrong?”

The question is simple, but it lands heavy. He flinches almost imperceptibly, his fingers tightening on the porcelain. He doesn’t answer right away. His throat works around a swallow, and when he finally speaks, his voice is low, almost rough.

“Nothin’,” he says too quickly, too flat. “Nothin’s wrong.”

But you already know. You’ve seen it every evening—the way his eyes linger, the flush that rises when you lean too close, the hunger he thinks he hides. You know exactly what’s been gnawing at him, even if he cannot bring himself to name it.

Your silence in response stretches long enough that he risks a glance at you. And the moment your eyes catch his, he falters—guilt, desire, shame all tangled and bare in the flicker of his gaze.

Your eyes don’t leave his. You let the silence weigh down until it’s clear he won’t escape it, then you lean just slightly closer, your tone still soft—but there’s steel beneath it.

“Remmick,” you murmur, his name deliberate on your tongue. “You’re lying.”

His breath stutters, the cup shifting faintly in his hands. He tries to hold your gaze, but it falters under the weight of yours. His jaw tightens, loosens, then tightens again.

“You’ve been different,” you continue, your words slow, measured. “I see it in your eyes. I feel it when you look at me.” Your voice drops lower, pressing, though not unkind. “Tell me what it is.”

He swallows hard, Adam’s apple bobbing, the tea trembling faintly as he sets it down on the table. Both hands fall to his knees, clenching tight, his shoulders rising with the effort of holding himself together.

“I…” The word comes raw, uncertain. His eyes flick toward you, then away again. “It’s not somethin’ I ought to say.”

But you don’t let him retreat. Your hand finds his jaw, tilting his face back toward you, firm but gentle, forcing him to meet you again.

“You will say it,” you whisper, calm, inevitable. “To me.”

His lips part, his breath spilling uneven, caught in the trap you’ve closed around him.

Remmick’s whole body trembles beneath your hand, every muscle taut with the effort of restraint. For a moment, it seems he’ll swallow it down again, bury it where he’s tried to keep it hidden these past weeks. But your grip at his jaw holds him fast, and the command in your voice leaves him nowhere to run.

His breath breaks. His lips part.

“I want you,” he blurts, the words rough, ragged, torn from someplace deep. His eyes squeeze shut as if he can’t bear to see your face when he says it. “God help me—I want you.”

The confession shudders out of him, raw and shaking. His chest heaves, his hands fisting tight on his knees, every inch of him wound tight with the shame of it.

“I try not to—” he stammers, voice cracking. “I try, but I can’t stop thinkin’—” His head shakes faintly, as if the words are too much, spilling faster than he can hold them back. “The way you look at me, the way you—” He breaks off, dragging in a breath, trembling with the enormity of what he’s given away.

His eyes open at last, wide and terrified, the desire in them unmistakable now that it’s unmasked. “I want you,” he says again, softer this time, like it’s a plea.

Your thumb strokes once across his cheekbone, the smallest gesture of reassurance, though your eyes remain sharp on him. His confession hangs raw and trembling in the air, and you let it breathe there for a beat longer, savoring the way he quivers under it.

Then your lips curve, slow and faint, a hint of a smile that doesn’t soften so much as sharpen. “Is that all?” you murmur, voice pitched low, threaded with the faintest tease.

His breath stutters, eyes flicking wider, his flush deepening hot along his throat. He tries to speak, but the words catch, choking at the edge of his mouth. He shakes his head faintly, swallowing hard.

“You say it like it’s a small thing,” you add, leaning just close enough that your breath brushes his lips. “Wantin’ me.”

His fingers tighten against his knees, knuckles white, his gaze flickering desperately between your mouth and your eyes. “It—it’s not small,” he manages, his voice frayed. “It’s everythin’. It’s—” He breaks off again, trembling, caught in the snare of your nearness.

Your hand doesn’t leave his jaw; instead, you tilt his face up higher, holding him there, steady beneath your gaze. The smallest trace of your smile lingers as you lean close enough that your lips nearly brush his.

“Then say it,” you whisper, the words a quiet command. “Not just that you want me. Tell me what it is you want.”

His breath comes shallow, his chest rising too fast under the weight of your demand. His eyes flicker, panic and need warring in them, his lips parting but closing again as though the words are too raw, too indecent to let free.

You don’t let him look away. Your thumb presses at his chin, keeping him locked in place. “Say it.”

His body shudders, his hands lifting helplessly from his knees, hovering in the air before curling back into fists. His throat works, his voice breaking when it finally comes out.

“I want—” He stammers, swallows, starts again. “I want to touch you. To have you… closer. I want your hands on me, your mouth on me—” His voice falters, heat flooding his face, but the words tumble on, desperate and unrestrained. “I want you to make me yours.”

The last syllable hangs trembling in the air, his entire body rigid, waiting for your judgment.

His words are still trembling in the air when you close the distance. Your mouth claims his before he can draw another breath, a kiss deep and sure, silencing every stammer, every shred of doubt. He gasps into it, caught off guard, his lips parting helplessly under yours.

The tension in his body breaks all at once—his fists unclench, his shoulders slump, and his hands rise, tentative but desperate, clutching at your waist as though to anchor himself. The taste of his want is there in the way he leans into you, every shaky breath feeding your hunger.

You kiss him harder, guiding him, steadying his clumsy eagerness until he’s moving with you, pliant beneath your control. His soft sounds spill into your mouth, raw and unguarded, each one unraveling him further.

Then, without breaking the kiss, you rise, pulling him up with you. He stumbles to his feet, still dazed, still clinging to you as though afraid the ground might give way. Your hand finds his, firm and unyielding, and you draw him with you down the narrow hall.

His breath is ragged, his eyes wide as he realizes where you’re leading him. The bedroom door looms ahead, the plain bedstead beyond it. His steps falter for half a heartbeat—but your grip keeps him moving, steady, inevitable.

When you reach the doorway, you glance back at him, your lips curved with the faintest trace of command.

“Come.”

The door closes behind you with a soft click, the hush of the bedroom folding around the two of you. The lamplight is low here, golden against the plain sheets and the narrow frame of the bed. His breath comes fast, unsteady, as you guide him backward until his legs brush the mattress.

He sinks down onto it without resistance, eyes fixed on you like he can’t believe this moment is real. His hands fidget at his sides, restless, uncertain of where they belong.

You step into the space between his knees, close enough that your body crowds his, the scent of him rising warm and human into your lungs. His gaze flicks up, wide and waiting, his lips parted like he’s on the edge of words he can’t bring himself to say.

Your hands rise to his face, framing it with deliberate care. His skin is hot beneath your palms, the rough edge of stubble scratching faintly against your fingers. You tilt his head up to you, steadying him, and your thumbs sweep slowly across his cheeks.

The touch makes him exhale hard, the sound half a sigh, half a shiver. His eyes flutter closed for a moment, leaning into the press of your hands as though it’s the only thing keeping him from breaking apart. When they open again, they’re glassy with want, his lips trembling under the weight of your nearness.

“You’re mine,” you murmur, your voice low but certain, your thumbs brushing him once more. The words are a claim, not a question.

Your thumbs linger against his cheeks, holding him still, and then you lean down, closing the space with exquisite slowness. His lips part before yours even reach them, his breath catching in anticipation, and when your mouth finally meets his, it’s soft—unhurried, savoring.

The kiss is slower this time, each press of your lips coaxing rather than consuming. You feel the shiver ripple through him as his hands twitch uselessly at his sides, unsure if he’s allowed to move. His restraint only sharpens the moment.

You deepen the kiss by degrees, tilting his head just so beneath your palms, guiding him into the rhythm you set. He follows nervously at first, then with more confidence, leaning into you, the warmth of him seeping up through the space between your bodies.

The bed creaks faintly beneath him as he shifts, trying to steady himself, but you don’t give him the chance to retreat into nervousness. Your lips linger at his, then trail to the corner of his mouth, brushing along the rough line of his jaw. His breath hitches, his head tipping back to give you more, surrendering to the path you choose for him.

When you return to his mouth, his lips are trembling, parted for you. The kiss stretches, deepens, his soft sounds muffled into the heat of it. Every moment is yours to control, and every moment he gives you willingly.

Your hands slip from his face, trailing down the strong line of his jaw, the curve of his throat, and lower still. You move with care, mapping the warmth of him beneath your palms. His breath stutters, his eyes never leaving yours, wide and glassy with anticipation.

When your hands press against his chest, you guide him backward, urging him down onto the bed. He yields immediately, his body folding under your touch, sinking into the thin mattress with a low creak. His lips part, the sound that escapes him shaky, unsteady, but he doesn’t resist.

You lean over him as your hand skims lower, over the ridges of his ribs, the dip of his stomach. He jerks faintly at the touch, sucking in a sharp breath—and then you feel it. The strain of him beneath his trousers, hot and hard, pressing against the fabric.

Your fingers ghost over it, just enough to tease, and his entire body tenses under you. His eyes squeeze shut, his throat working around a ragged gasp that escapes before he can bite it back.

The hunger coils sharp in your belly at the sound, at the helplessness of him. He’s already trembling, already unraveling, and you’ve barely touched him.

Your palm presses down more firmly, no longer just a ghost of contact but an undeniable claim. The heat of him throbs against your hand through the thin fabric, and the sound that tears from his throat is broken—half a gasp, half a moan, muffled only because he bites down hard on it. His hips twitch upward instinctively, betraying just how badly he wants more, how little control he has.

You bend close, your lips brushing his ear as you whisper, low and steady, “Tell me what you want.”

His whole body goes still beneath you, save for the rise and fall of his chest. His mouth opens, closes. A flush burns up his throat, spreading to his cheeks. He hesitates, his tongue fumbling for words as if speaking them aloud would cost him something he’s never given away.

You press your hand against him again, harder this time, coaxing the tremor that runs through him. He chokes on a breath, the sound ragged, desperate. His eyes flick open, searching yours, pleading silently before the words finally break free.

“I… I want you to touch me,” he whispers, voice hoarse, small.

The admission hangs between you, raw and trembling. He shuts his eyes again, like the shame of it might consume him—but still, his hips lift faintly toward your hand, betraying his need all over again.

Your fingers curl at the edge of his waistband, slipping beneath with a slowness that makes him stiffen beneath you. His breath comes fast and shallow, his chest rising against yours as if every second you delay is a torture he can’t endure.

Then your hand slides beneath the fabric, warm skin meeting your cool palm, and you feel him—hard, straining, aching for this. The sound he makes is helpless, torn from him before he can stop it. His hips jerk upward, clumsy and desperate, seeking more of your touch.

You close your hand around him slowly, carefully, as though savoring the shape of him, and he whimpers. It’s soft, muffled into his bitten lip, but it’s enough to make hunger claw at your insides. He’s so sensitive, every twitch of your fingers wringing a sound, every stroke sending another tremor rippling through him.

His hand finally moves, catching weakly at your wrist, not to stop you but to anchor himself. His knuckles are white, his grip trembling, and his voice is barely audible when he pleads, “Please…”

You lean closer, your lips brushing the shell of his ear as you squeeze him firmer, stroking just enough to make his voice break again. “Please what?” you murmur, low, coaxing, savoring his unraveling.

You keep your pace unhurried, your hand stroking him in a rhythm that makes his body arch and strain against the mattress. Every movement is slow enough to feel cruel, slow enough that he has no choice but to feel each shift of your palm, each curl of your fingers.

He gasps, sharp and shaky, the sound falling into a low groan as his head tips back. His throat is exposed, pale in the firelight, tendons straining as though even the act of breathing through this pleasure costs him everything.

You drink in the sight of him—his lips parted, his lashes fluttering as his eyes squeeze shut, his chest heaving with every shallow breath. He tries to stay quiet, but the smallest noises slip through: a stifled moan, a bitten-off whimper, a ragged sigh that betrays exactly how undone he is.

You shift just enough to hover above him, watching each expression flicker across his face. Your hand moves in steady strokes, coaxing each sound, drawing them out like secrets he’s never given anyone. He squirms beneath you, overwhelmed, but he doesn’t pull away. If anything, his hips lift toward your hand, clumsy, eager, needy.

“Good,” you murmur softly, low and certain, as though you’re marking him with the word. “That’s it… let me hear you.”

His breath shatters into a moan at your words, his body trembling beneath your slow, merciless touch.

You bend closer, your lips brushing the rapid thrum of his pulse. His skin is warm, flushed, and the rhythm beneath is frantic—like a trapped bird beating against a cage. You kiss him there, feeling the shiver that runs through his body at the touch.

Your hand never falters, stroking him with that same patient, torturous rhythm. Each sound he makes vibrates against your lips where they linger at his throat. A sigh, a muffled gasp, the catch of his breath when your tongue traces lightly along the edge of his jaw.

He tilts his head without thinking, baring more of his throat to you, a silent offering. The scent of his skin—warm, alive—floods you, stoking the hunger that’s been simmering beneath every touch. You taste him in the smallest ways, lips pressing firmer, tongue slipping lower until you’re kissing just above the hollow of his collarbone.

He moans your name, the sound ragged and unsteady, his hands flexing uselessly against the sheets. His hips buck weakly into your palm, desperate for more friction than you’re giving, but still too hesitant to beg outright.

Your teeth graze his skin, just the faintest scrape, and his breath hitches violently, a shudder racing through him. His hand rises, trembling, and hovers at your shoulder.

Your hand stills for the briefest heartbeat when the words leave his lips.

“I want…” His voice fractures, low and hoarse. He swallows hard, then forces it out in a rush. “I want to be inside you.”

It strikes you harder than you expect. For all his trembling, his hesitance, his inexperience—this sudden flash of raw want burns through the room like a lightning bolt. You hadn’t thought he’d say it. Not like that. Not so plain.

Your hunger twists inside you, sharp and sudden. For once, you’re the one caught off guard. The certainty in his words cuts through the nerves that have knotted him for weeks, and for a moment you only look at him—his flushed face, his parted lips, his chest rising and falling like he’s bracing for rejection.

Then, you begin moving your hand again, slow and steady, grounding both of you in the rhythm. “Is that what you want?” you murmur against his skin, lips brushing the edge of his throat. Your tone is calm, measured, but inside you feel that flare of surprise pulsing alongside your hunger.

He shudders, nodding quickly, almost desperately. “Yes. Please.” His voice cracks, earnest and unguarded.

You can feel the tremor running through him, the helpless way his body arches into your touch. It thrills you. It unnerves you. And it leaves you with the undeniable knowledge that you’ll give in to him—not because he asked, but because you want to.

Your strokes slow until they’re barely more than a ghost of touch, dragging out his sharp breaths. Then you let your hand slip free altogether, leaving him aching, flushed, trembling under your gaze.

He jerks at the loss, a faint sound escaping him, but doesn’t reach for you. Instead, he props himself up on his elbows, his wide eyes fixed on you with something between desperation and awe.

You take your time, studying him, weighing him, letting the silence settle heavy between you. Then you tilt your head, voice low and deliberate:

“Are you sure?”

The question hangs in the air, a test, a last chance to turn back.

He swallows hard, Adam’s apple bobbing. Then he nods, quick, eager, almost boyish in his urgency. “Yes.” His breath stumbles out, shaky but certain. “I’m sure.”

The way he says it—earnest, raw, pleading—strikes something deep in you, something that feels dangerously close to hunger and possession twined together.

You step closer, closing the short distance between his body and yours until the heat of him is impossible to ignore. His elbows give way under the weight of your presence, and with a steady pull of his hands, you guide him upright, back into a seated position at the edge of the bed.

His breath hitches when you place his trembling hands firmly on your hips. They hover there for a second as though he’s not sure he’s allowed to hold on, but your grip over his knuckles insists—this is where you want them. This is where he belongs.

Leaning down, your lips hover just a breath from his ear, your voice low and deliberate. “Undress me.”

The command sinks into him like a stone dropped in water. His fingers tighten against the fabric at your hips, hesitation flashing across his features before eagerness takes hold. He looks up at you then nods once, swallowing hard.

His hands fumble at first, clumsy with nerves, but the weight of your gaze steadies him. You let him take his time.

His fingers bunch the fabric, tentative at first, testing the weight of it as though uncertain he has the right. You don’t move to help him—only stand steady before him, watching, waiting.

Slowly, he begins to lift the dress, his knuckles brushing the curve of your thighs as the hem rises. The sound of the rain outside and the fire’s crackle fills the silence between you, broken only by his shallow breaths.

When the fabric slides higher, revealing more of you, his eyes widen. He drags the dress up with careful hands, Every inch revealed leaves him caught between awe and disbelief.

The soft line of your thighs, the shape of you beneath—he stares as if he’s seeing something sacred. By the time the fabric reaches your waist, his hands tremble. And still he continues, peeling the dress upward, hesitant but obedient.

When at last the bodice slips past your chest, his breath catches sharp in his throat. His gaze lingers, unsteady, drinking you in. His lips part, but no words come. He looks at you like he might break if he dares to touch, as though the sight alone is enough to undo him.

By the time the dress clears your shoulders, you raise your arms just enough for him to draw it fully away. He sets the bundle of fabric aside with unthinking care, and when he looks back at you, his throat works as if he can’t swallow around the weight of what he sees.

You bend slowly, closing the little space left between you, and his gaze jumps to your face as if pulled there against his will. His hands still hover uncertainly at your sides, fingertips ghosting without daring to press.

You take his wrist, firm but not harsh, guiding his trembling hand upward. His breath stutters as you place his palm against the curve of your breast, your own fingers curling over his to keep him there.

“Here,” you murmur, low, deliberate. “Touch me.”

For a heartbeat he freezes, almost paralyzed by the permission, by the reality of it. Then, as though your command gives him the strength to move, his fingers shift, tentative at first—exploring the softness beneath his palm. His other hand follows of its own accord, bolder now, cupping, testing, as though trying to memorize every line, every weight, every give of flesh.

His lips part on a shaky exhale, his eyes darting between your face and where his hands rest. It’s almost too much for him, this simple intimacy, and you can feel the nervous want radiating off him in waves.

Your hunger coils tighter, watching him, feeling how quickly awe turns into something hotter under your guidance.

He shifts beneath you, almost unconsciously, as if the pull is stronger than his own hesitation. His hands, clumsy but sincere, keep their hold on your breasts, thumbs brushing experimentally over sensitive peaks.

Then—halting, unsure—he leans forward. His breath fans warm against your skin, and you can feel how he wavers at the edge of daring. His lips part, but he pauses, searching your face as though for permission he doesn’t dare ask aloud.

The closeness makes your hunger coil sharp and hot in your belly. His mouth so near, his hands tentative but eager—it’s a picture of a man fumbling toward something far bigger than he knows, and you, letting him, feeding the fire with your silence.

When he finally lets his lips graze your skin, feather-light at first. The tremor in his hands betrays him, but the want is there, unignorable.

it doesn’t take long until he breaks past the line of hesitation—his lips parting, and he leans in with a shaky exhale, closing over the soft swell of your breast. The sound he makes is half-need, half-relief, as though he’s been holding himself back too long.

His mouth moves timidly at first, testing, then with growing urgency, pressing open kisses that trail across your skin before circling back. When his tongue flicks tentatively over the peak, he lets out a muffled groan, the vibration running through you.

A sharp gasp slips from your throat—unexpected, unbidden. The noise makes him pause, wide-eyed for a heartbeat, but when he realizes what it was, when he hears that it was because of him, his hold tightens. He mouths at you harder, hungrier, teeth grazing faintly, and the wet sounds of him working against you fill the quiet room.

You arch slightly into his mouth, the rhythm of his learning turning almost desperate. Every small sound he pulls from you fuels him, and it’s as though he can’t stop, can’t get enough, his hands clutching as though afraid you might vanish if he lets go.

He lingers as though he’s starved for this—every kiss, every pull of his mouth an offering of devotion he doesn’t know how else to give. His tongue laps clumsily, but it doesn’t matter; what he lacks in skill he drowns in sheer want. Each drag of his mouth grows wetter, needier, his breath catching as if he’s drunk on the taste of you.

Your hand threads into his hair almost without thought, anchoring him there. He shudders when you tug, a tremor running through him, but he doesn’t pull away. Instead, he groans into your skin, low and raw, as though the sound is torn from somewhere deep inside him.

You feel his body shift restlessly beneath yours, his arousal straining and throbbing between you, but still he mouths at you like he’s worshipping, like every kiss is prayer. The noises he makes are unrestrained, sloppy, but achingly earnest—and each one sends a curl of heat through your own body, tightening your hunger until it’s almost unbearable.

Your fingers slide from his hair to his jaw, tilting his face up. He resists for a heartbeat—mouth still clinging, lips flushed and damp against your skin—but when your grip firms, he lets out a shaky breath and lets you guide him back. His lips glisten as they part from you, his breath coming quick and shallow, chest rising and falling like he’s just been dragged from water.

You let him linger in that dazed state only a moment before your hand drops lower, pressing lightly against his chest to ease him back onto the bed. His elbows bend, supporting him as he looks up at you with wide, waiting eyes, pupils blown dark.

Slowly, deliberately, your fingers trace down the flat of his stomach, feeling the twitch of muscle beneath thin fabric. When you reach his waist, his body goes rigid, anticipation shuddering through him. You pause at the button of his trousers, giving him just enough silence to feel the weight of the moment.

Then, with steady control, you toy with the edge of his zipper. The soft rasp of metal sliding down fills the quiet, and he exhales hard, his throat working like he’s trying to swallow words he doesn’t know how to speak.

Your hand stills at the half-opened zipper. Instead of finishing the work yourself, you pull back just slightly, your eyes meeting his. A silent command hangs between you, sharpened when you tilt your head and gesture toward his pants.

It takes him a moment to move. His throat bobs, his breath uneven, but then he swallows and reaches down with trembling hands. The sound of fabric shifting fills the room as he fumbles with the button, then peels the trousers down his hips. He kicks them free with a clumsy haste, leaving himself bare before you.

And there he is.

The sight of him fully now makes your hunger throb in a deeper place. He’s flushed, straining hard, his cock heavy against his stomach, already leaking from all the teasing you’ve drawn out of him. Vulnerability clings to him as much as arousal does; his legs tense, his hands hover like he doesn’t know what to do with them, but his eyes—wide and glassy—never leave yours.

You feel that flicker of power coil tight in your chest. He’s yours to guide, yours to ruin, and he’s laid himself open to it completely.

You reach forward, closing the distance before his nerves can unravel further. Your fingers wrap around him—warm, deliberate—stroking once, twice, slow and steady. The sound he makes is half a gasp, half a whimper, and it ripples through you like fire. You do it again, dragging your palm down the length of him, savoring the way he trembles under the simplest touch.

Then you release him.

Without a word, you move from between his legs, your body unhurried as you walk to the side of the bed. His gaze never leaves you—head turning, shoulders twisting to follow as though he can’t risk a blink. You slip onto the mattress, settling back against the headboard like you own the space, reclining in quiet command.

He hesitates only a heartbeat before he pushes himself up from the mattress, feet planting on the floor. For a moment he just stands there at the end of the bed, bare and unsteady, drinking you in. His chest rises and falls, his cock flushed and straining again from nothing more than the way you look at him. He removes his shirt slowly, maintaining eye contact with you.

You see the war in his eyes: hesitation laced with raw hunger. He’s waiting—for instruction, for permission, for you.

Your voice cuts through the tension—soft, but leaving no room for refusal.

“Come here.”

It’s enough. He moves, careful but eager, climbing onto the mattress with the weight of someone stepping over a threshold he knows he’ll never return from. His knees sink into the bedding just before you, his eyes wide and uncertain, yet burning with something that pulls him forward despite himself.

You watch him hover there, trembling on the edge, and then—without hurry—you part your legs. The shift of your body against the sheets is quiet, deliberate. The hem of your dress already cast aside, there’s nothing between you and his gaze now. You see the moment it hits him, the sharp hitch of his breath, the way his throat works as he swallows hard.

His eyes drag down, slow, as though he’s terrified he might be dreaming. The hunger in him is raw and untrained, spilling into his expression with no disguise. 

And you let him look. You lean back against the headboard, unashamed, spreading wider as if to remind him that this is yours to give—and his to receive only because you allow it.

His hand hangs in the air, uncertain, caught between the want in his eyes and the restraint in his posture. His breath comes shallow, like he’s afraid the wrong move will break whatever spell holds him here.

You don’t rush him. You let the hesitation stretch, let him feel the weight of it pressing down. Then, softly, you give him what he needs. “Touch me.”

The words jolt him. His fingers brush your thigh, tentative, testing. A pause. Then he moves a little higher, slow, like he’s finding his way in the dark. His hand is warm, unpracticed, but steadying as he dares to follow the path you’ve opened to him.

You tilt your hips forward just slightly, letting him know it’s allowed, that it’s wanted. His hand settles firmer, dragging up over the smooth line of your leg, stopping short of where you know he wants to go.

Your voice threads into the silence again, calm but edged with command. “Don’t stop now.”

He swallows hard, nods almost imperceptibly, and lets his touch wander higher, closer, his hesitation giving way to something sharper.

His fingers brush your cunt, light and clumsy, and the touch drags a sharp gasp out of you. The sound startles him—he jerks slightly, like he’s done something wrong—but you catch his wrist before he can pull away.

“Keep going,” you murmur, voice steady, though your hips already shift forward, grinding into his hesitant hand.

He swallows, and tries again. This time his fingers slip through the wet heat of you, grazing your slit, the pads catching on how soaked you already are. A shiver runs through him, like he can’t believe what he’s touching.

You bite back another sound when he presses a little harder, sliding his fingertips up until he finds that tender spot. Your thighs tighten instantly around his wrist, breath breaking into a sharper moan.

His lips part, eyes darting up to your face as though seeking permission, and you give it to him with nothing more than the way you push down against his hand.

“Good,” you whisper, but the word trembles now, your hunger straining at the edges of your control. “Just like that. Rub me.”

He obeys, slow but deliberate, dragging his fingers in small circles over your clit. The touch is messy, unsure, but every slip of his hand only winds you tighter. Wet sounds gather between your thighs, and his jaw hangs slack as though the feel of you is undoing him just as much as you.

His touch falters, then grows bolder—fingers sliding lower, slick with your wetness. He hesitates just at your entrance, the tip of one pressing as though testing the give of you.

Your breath hitches, hips tilting forward to meet him. That’s all it takes. He sinks a single finger into you, slow, careful.

A moan slips past your lips, low and rough, and the sound makes his whole body jolt. His eyes dart up to your face again, nervous, but you catch his wrist and push him deeper.

“More,” you whisper, and his throat bobs.

The finger works inside you, shallow at first, then deeper as he grows braver. Soon another joins it, stretching you fuller. His inexperience shows—his movements uneven, too cautious—but it doesn’t matter. The raw want in the way he touches you, the way his breath stutters every time you clench around him, makes it enough.

Your head falls back against the headboard, lips parting in a sharp gasp when his fingers curl, brushing a spot inside that has you tightening around him.

“God,” he breathes, the word breaking out of him before he can stop it. His free hand grips your thigh, clinging like he needs to anchor himself to keep from coming apart just from touching you.

His fingers push deeper, curling again, and the angle nearly knocks the air out of you. Your back arches, a moan ripping free before you can contain it. He freezes, but you grab his wrist and roll your hips down, forcing him to keep going.

“Don’t stop,” you hiss, breathless.

He nods, cheeks flushed. His hand is shaky, but he does as he’s told, fingers pumping inside you, curling every so often. The wet drag of his knuckles fills the room, obscene and sloppy.

You spread your legs wider, letting him in deeper, and he groans under his breath as though the sight alone is too much for him. His thumb slips clumsily against your clit, not even meaning to at first, but the jolt it sends through you makes you gasp loud enough to have him repeat it. Again. And again.

Your hips move of their own accord now, grinding down into his hand, chasing the friction he gives you. He bites his lip, watching your face, eyes blown wide as if he’s memorizing every sound that tumbles out of you.

“Jesus,” he mutters, almost to himself, “you’re so—” His words choke off as you clench harder around his fingers.

The pressure builds sharp and fast, your thighs trembling where they cage his wrist. Each curl of his fingers drives you higher, until the hunger in your chest nearly breaks loose. You bare your teeth without meaning to, a shudder ripping through your body as the edge closes in.

Your whole body trembles on the brink, the edge so close you can almost taste it—then you seize his wrist and still him. His breath stutters, confusion written across his face as your hips grind one last time against his hand before you pull it free.

“Enough,” you murmur, voice low but sharp with command.

His lips part like he’s about to protest, but you bring his slick fingers to your mouth. Slowly, you take them past your lips. The taste of yourself floods your tongue, and you hold his wide-eyed gaze as you suck—slow drags, your cheeks hollowing as you make sure he sees every motion.

His chest heaves, his whole body gone rigid as though he’s the one being undone now. When you let his fingers slip from your mouth with a wet pop, a faint tremor runs through him.

“You feel what you’ve done to me?” you ask, voice like silk but edged in hunger.

He nods dumbly, throat bobbing as he swallows, eyes fixed on your mouth as if he can’t look anywhere else.

You guide him up between your legs, tugging until he’s hovering over you. Then you shift, sinking back into the mattress, your head resting against the pillow. The firelight flickers over his face, catching the nervous flush staining his cheeks, the sweat starting to bead along his hairline.

“Are you ready?” you whisper, voice low, steady.

He nods quickly—too quickly—but the hunger in his eyes makes the eagerness real. You let the silence stretch, just long enough for the weight of your words to settle on him, then you part your thighs wider, dragging him into the space you’ve opened.

“Then guide yourself to me,” you murmur, the command both soft and inescapable.

His breath hitches, and his hand slips lower, trembling as he wraps himself in his own grip. The sight of him—hard, flushed, wet at the tip—makes your mouth water, makes the hunger coil tighter in your gut. He hesitates, hovering at your entrance, brushing against your folds with an uncertain stroke.

“Go on,” you breathe, voice laced with both promise and threat.

His tip presses against your entrance, trembling as much as his hand. The first push is hesitant, his hips jerking forward just enough for you to feel him parting you.

A gasp rips out of him—raw, unsteady—and he stumbles over words that are not the accent he’s been wearing. A string of Gaeilge, thick and choked, spills from his mouth before he can stop it. He doesn’t even seem to understand what he’s said, his wide eyes fixed on where his body meets yours, like the shock of being inside you has ripped him down to something he can’t mask.

You hold still, letting him feel the way you stretch around him, the way he’s fully claimed by the heat of you. The tension in his shoulders, the tremor in his thighs—it all coils together into a single fragile line, and you can see it: this is his first. The weight of it presses into you almost as much as the length of him does.

“Breathe,” you whisper, steady, commanding but tender all the same. “You’re doing just fine.”

His chest heaves, another broken word in that foreign tongue slipping out before he bites it back, his whole body shaking as he inches further inside.

He eases in bit by bit, every slow thrust forward dragging a strangled sound out of him. His breath stutters against your cheek, his hand clutching at the sheet beside your head like he needs something to anchor him. The tight heat of you wraps him in completely, squeezing down on every inch he gives, and it’s almost too much—his body jerks, a tremor racing through his thighs as though the weight of it might fold him.

You watch him unravel in real time. His jaw clenches, then falls slack, lips parting on a sharp inhale as another curse of Gaeilge bursts from him without thought. His hips stutter forward, then stop as though he’s afraid to break you, afraid of losing what he’s just begun to have.

The sound of him, the look in his eyes—shiny, undone, disbelieving—sinks sharp into you. For centuries, you’ve taken what you wanted without pause, without thought. But this… watching him fight against the flood of sensation, desperate to endure the way you draw him in—it’s almost intoxicating.

“Good,” you murmur, your voice steady against the rawness of his. “Just like that. Don’t hold back from me.”

His head tips forward, a groan breaking out of his chest as he gives another inch. He’s nearly buried now, trembling with every heartbeat, his breath hot and unsteady against your skin.

The moment comes slow, trembling. His hips press forward that last inch, and then—he’s fully inside you. Buried to the hilt, locked in the heat of your body, trembling so hard you can feel it in your bones. His breath shatters in your ear, a sound closer to a whimper than a groan, raw and unguarded.

You feel the shock ripple through him as his body seizes and then stills, his chest heaving against yours like he’s run a great distance. For a second he doesn’t move at all, frozen in the disbelief of it—your tightness wrapped around him, your body taking him whole.

“Christ,” he gasps, voice strangled, broken by the Irish lilt that slips through no matter how hard he tries to smother it. His hands clutch at you without direction, fingers splayed across your waist, then sliding up as though trying to make sense of you, to prove this is real.

Your nails graze his back, grounding him, keeping him where he is. You tilt your head, lips brushing his temple. “There,” you whisper, almost indulgent. “All the way. Do you feel that? How deep you are?”

He nods frantically, forehead pressing into your shoulder, another helpless sound breaking loose from him. His whole body is taut, caught between the desperate urge to move and the terror that he’ll lose himself too quickly.

He’s stiff at first, his body straining under the weight of too much sensation. Every inch of him trembles where he’s pressed against you, as though even the thought of moving might undo him completely.

You press a hand to the small of his back, steady, coaxing. “Easy,” you murmur, guiding the rhythm with the roll of your hips. “Slow.”

He obeys. Tentative at first, he rocks forward, then back again—so shallow it’s barely a movement, but enough to make his breath stutter in your ear. He clutches at you like he’s drowning, forehead pressed against your temple as if to hide his face, but he doesn’t stop. Another slow push. Another careful draw back. Each one smoother than the last.

Your body welcomes him, and he feels it—the way you tighten around him, urging him on, rewarding each small thrust. The tension still binds his muscles, his jaw clenched, but he follows your guidance, letting your hands on his hips, your whispered words, shape the pace.

A soft sound slips from you, and it nearly unravels him. He groans low in his throat, the sound thick with awe and strain, and rocks into you again, just a little deeper this time.

Your voice meets him in the dark—low, steady, coaxing praise that cuts through his nerves. That’s it… good. Just like that.

Each word seems to sink into him, loosening the knots in his chest, tugging him deeper into motion. His hips begin to find their rhythm, not steady yet, but strengthening, bolder. The sound of him—his breath breaking apart, the uneven grind of his body pressing into yours—blends with the wet, lewd noise of him moving inside you.

Every moan you let slip feeds his urgency. You can feel it in the way he clutches at you. The trembling man who kissed you weeks ago is still there, but beneath him now is the raw want he can’t contain, stretching out with every thrust.

And your hunger sharpens with it. Each time his voice cracks on a groan, each time your name catches on his tongue, the ache inside you pulls tighter, deeper. His inexperience doesn’t dull it—it sharpens it, makes the taste of him more intoxicating.

He pushes again, harder than before, and you feel the edge of your own restraint splintering.

It builds too quickly—his eagerness, his trembling attempts at control, the way he bottoms out with each thrust like he can’t stand the thought of leaving you empty. Every time he grinds deeper, his voice rips itself raw, half-moan, half-broken gasp. His body is alive with it, desperate, consuming, and it stirs something far older and far darker in you.

Your teeth ache. The hunger gnaws sharp against your gums, that telltale throb pulsing in time with his movements. It takes everything to keep your mouth pressed to his shoulder instead of sinking in, everything to breathe through the slick heat of his neck so close, so vulnerable.

His rhythm falters for only a second when a sound tears from him, a strangled groan that feels like surrender. You tighten your thighs around him, drawing him closer, and the edge of your restraint frays further.

Each thrust drives the point home—you could take him now. You could make him yours in every sense, bind him to you forever. The thought burns through you hotter than the pleasure itself, the taste of inevitability on your tongue as sharp as iron.

You force yourself to hold. To breathe through the sharp ache in your gums. To keep your mouth from finding the frantic pulse at his throat. The hunger is a drum in your skull, pounding louder with every deep, reckless grind of his hips.

He pulls back just enough to look down between you—his wide eyes catching the sight of himself splitting you open, pushing back in with a pace that grows faster, messier, more desperate. A strangled curse falls from his lips, accent curling around it, before his head drops forward again, as though he can’t bear to watch for long without losing what fragile control he has left.

Your own breath comes harder now, the pleasure winding sharp and low in your belly. You can feel him trembling against you, torn between restraint and the wild rush to chase whatever this is building inside him. His hands clutch at you—hips, waist, thighs—like he’s afraid you’ll slip away if he doesn’t hold on tight enough.

And still, your hunger claws at you. His scent is everywhere: the salt of his sweat, the heat of his skin, the life surging so close beneath it. Every thrust pulls a groan from him, and every groan makes your teeth ache sharper.

You dig your nails into his back, not quite piercing but close enough to make him gasp, close enough to anchor yourself in the moment instead of giving in to what your body screams for.

You tilt your head, lips pressing against the damp heat of his throat. The kiss is soft at first, as though you can trick yourself into believing it’s enough—just lips, just tongue, nothing more. The taste of his sweat slides against your mouth, and you close your eyes, forcing yourself to savor that instead of the vein that thrums right beneath.

His breath shudders, hips jerking harder, pace losing all rhythm as his release builds. You feel it in the way his body tightens, in the frantic little noises that spill from him—half moans, half whimpers—as if he’s almost frightened by the pleasure unraveling him.

Your mouth trails lower, teeth grazing his skin, just shy of sinking in. A groan rips out of him when you suck at the spot, his whole body twitching as if the threat of your bite sends him even closer to the edge. His hand fists in the sheets beside your head, the other clinging to your hip like he’ll be torn apart without that anchor.

The hunger claws up your chest, but you hold it. You hold it while his thrusts grow erratic, sloppy, desperate. You hold it while his voice cracks on your name—while his release slams through him, spilling hot and raw inside you with a choked cry.

Your lips press harder to his throat, your tongue sliding over the pulse you crave. So close. Too close.

He slumps against you, chest heaving, his body spent—but still, he tries. His hips stutter forward, cock softening but not leaving you, as though he’s terrified to let go. The gesture is clumsy, almost pitiful, and it rips at something in you, because it’s devotion in the rawest form. He’s giving all he has, even when there’s nothing left.

You slide a hand down between you, fingers finding your clit. The shock of it nearly makes your back arch off the bed, and you bite down on a sound that still spills out anyway—low, hungry, jagged. You circle yourself in steady, merciless strokes, eyes half-lidded as you watch him try to keep moving inside you.

He’s trembling with the effort, brows drawn tight, teeth catching his lip like it’ll hold him together. Every shallow thrust drags what’s left of him through your slick heat, and the combination—the pathetic insistence of his body against yours, and your own fingers working tight against your nerves—pulls a string of curses from your throat.

“Don’t—stop,” you murmur, half-command, half-plea. And he doesn’t. He can’t. He gasps, clings to you, pushes forward again and again, giving you every last shred of himself while your own body climbs.

The hunger spikes sharp, unbearable, gnawing up through your chest as your climax begins to crest. His pulse hammers against his throat right by your lips, and you’re not sure if you’ll hold back this time.

It crashes through you sudden and brutal—your fingers working that last tight circle, the soft, desperate push of his cock inside you, the helpless noises he spills into your neck. Your body seizes with it, thighs clamping around his hips as the wave of release rips itself from the pit of your stomach and pours through every inch of you.

But the hunger spikes with it, sharp as knives, an ache that rides your climax like a second pulse. Your teeth throb, gums straining, and the sound that breaks from your throat isn’t pleasure alone—it’s feral, guttural, as if something ancient claws its way up through your chest. His pulse hammers beneath your lips, frantic and vulnerable, each beat a drum that begs to be silenced in your mouth.

You gasp, arching harder against him, the taste of his skin almost enough. Almost. Your lips drag open along his throat, breath hot, and your teeth scrape—not enough to break, but enough to make him shudder. It’s excruciating to hold back. The line between ecstasy and ruin feels thinner than the edge of a blade, and every nerve in you screams to tear past it.

But still—you fight. Trembling with the strain, you press your mouth harder against his neck, swallowing down the urge as the last ripples of release leave you shaking under 

Drool slips, hot and slick, from the corner of your mouth as your fangs press harder against the soft skin of his throat. You can feel the sharp points just breaking past your lips, aching with need, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.

The hunger gnaws through you, more violent than the pleasure that wracked your body only moments ago. It curls and coils deep inside, demanding release, demanding him. The wet line trailing from your mouth to his skin shames you—centuries of control eroded by the fragile weight of a man trembling in your arms, buried inside you, still catching his breath.

He stirs beneath the drag of your teeth, not with fear but with a soft, confused murmur, pressing closer like he doesn’t understand what stirs in you.

Your jaw tightens, fangs hovering, drool spilling thicker now.

You break.

Your lips part wider, and your fangs pierce him with a clean, sinking push. The instant they slide into the heat of his throat, his body stiffens, his breath cutting off in a ragged gasp. Blood surges, hot and thick, flooding your mouth in a rush that steals the air from your lungs.

It’s exquisite—far more than you imagined. Centuries of feeding reduced to nameless faces, meaningless vessels, and now here he is: Remmick. His taste hits you with a burn that feels carved just for you, sweeter and heavier than any blood you’ve known. You drink deep, a shudder running through you as your body clenches around him, pulling him tighter, claiming him in the way you’ve craved since the first night.

He makes a sound—half moan, half whimper—his hands flexing at your hips, torn between pushing you back and pulling you closer. His heart hammers against your lips, every frantic beat feeding your hunger, your power, until you can’t tell where his pulse ends and yours begins.

The drool mixing with the blood streaks your chin, your chest. You drag your tongue along the punctures even as you feed, needing all of him, needing more.

And he lets you.

Trembling, gasping, his cock still softening inside you, he doesn’t tear away. He offers you his throat without words, as if some buried part of him already knew this was always what you wanted.

His body is still.

You’ve laid him back carefully, stripped away the mess of sweat and blood, wiped your own mouth until not a trace remained. Now, with his head pillowed in your lap, the silence of the room is broken only by the low crackle of the dying fire. Your hand drifts again and again through his hair, stroking, untangling, soothing—though he cannot feel it.

Unconscious, his face is pale, lips parted, breath shallow. His pulse is slower now, weaker, already shifting. You can hear it, faint but insistent, the sound of him being remade from within. Each beat stutters as the venom works, threading through him, unraveling his fragile mortality and knitting it into something else entirely.

You watch closely. His fingers twitch once against the sheets, then fall still. A shiver runs the length of his body, his brow creasing as though in some fever dream. You know the fire crawling under his skin, the burn in his veins that eats him alive before it rebuilds. You remember it—how it felt like death and birth together, like drowning and clawing up into air that no longer belonged to you.

Your thumb traces his temple as his lashes flutter briefly, his body straining before slackening again. A small smile touches your lips—not gentle, not cruel, but something in between. Admiration, possession, inevitability.

“You’ll be mine soon,” you murmur, voice low, steady, a vow more than comfort.

Outside, the storm has rolled on, leaving the world damp and quiet. But here, in this bed, you keep vigil, watching the first fragile stages of the change take root in him.

The turning takes days.

The first night, his body burned. Fever hot, sweat beading across his skin until the sheets clung damp beneath him. His muscles clenched and seized, his chest rising in short, shallow bursts as though he fought invisible hands dragging him under. You stayed through it all, unmoving, your hand combing through his hair when his cries rattled out like a man lost in a nightmare.

The second day, he quieted. His body weak, his lips dry, his breaths too slow. He looked as though death had already claimed him, but you knew better. His veins had already begun to darken beneath the skin, shadows threading like roots, evidence of the venom spreading, carving him hollow. When you pressed your palm against his chest, his heart still beat—but faintly, faltering, waiting for its moment to let go.

By the third night, the stillness had deepened. The fever broke, but so too did the last fragile ties of his humanity. He lay utterly motionless, no warmth, no pulse, no breath. It was the dead sleep of the change—the passage every one of your kind crossed before rising again. For hours, you watched him, your hand always hovering near, as if daring the silence to prove you wrong.

And then, sometime near dawn, it happens.

A sharp inhale tears into the quiet. His chest heaves, his back arches as if pulled up by invisible cords, his hands claw at the sheets, trembling violently. His eyes snap open, wide and unseeing at first, irises blown black until, slowly, the faintest rim of color reappears. He gasps, choking as though trying to remember how to breathe—before he realizes he doesn’t need to.

You’re there, steady, your hand pressing lightly to his chest, guiding him back down onto the bed. His body trembles beneath your touch, strength coiled in his limbs though he hasn’t yet learned to wield it. His lips part, a whisper cracking from his throat.

“What… happened?”

Your gaze holds his, a slow smile curving your mouth as you stroke back his damp hair. He doesn’t realize yet what he is—what you’ve made him.

He’s still trembling when he turns his face toward you, searching for an answer you don’t give.

The silence is thick, stretching between the two of you, only broken by the ragged sound of his unnecessary breaths as his body fights to understand itself. He lifts a hand, staring at it as though it belongs to someone else—the skin pale, the veins beneath gone dark like ink pulled too close to the surface. His fingers flex once, twice. Then, he jerks, startled by the sound of fabric tearing beneath his nails.

The sheets. Shredded where his grip had tightened too thoughtlessly.

He stares at it, wide-eyed.

Then comes the sound—the first true gasp. His head turns sharply, too sharply, to the side. He freezes, eyes fixed on the faintest creak in the house, the settling of wood. His ears catch it all now. The scratch of something in the walls. The far-off bark of a dog down the street. Even your breath, steady and measured, the shift of your clothing as you sit beside him.

It’s overwhelming.

His throat works around a swallow, but then it hits him harder: the hunger. The ache starting deep in his chest, coiling low in his belly, blooming sharp in his mouth. His tongue runs over his teeth, and he pauses when it meets the new points, the fangs he’s never felt before.

A sound escapes him—low, uncertain, half a groan. He presses a hand against his chest, as if that will keep the hunger down, keep the pull from clawing through him. His body arches slightly off the mattress, straining, wild without knowing why.

Still, you say nothing. You only watch, your hand smoothing over his hair again with the same steadiness you’ve kept since the first night.

He finally drags his gaze back to you, pupils still blown wide, hunger dilating every line of his face. His lips part. He doesn’t ask. He can’t.

He only stares at you as though you are the one thing in the room anchoring him to this new, unbearable world.

Your hand stills where it threads through his hair. For a moment, you just let him look at you—wild, lost, trembling beneath the weight of instincts that are bigger than him. Then, slow as the turn of a key in a lock, you shift, tilting your head to one side. The column of your throat is offered, bare and deliberate.

His eyes snap to it. His breath stutters out in a broken sound, and you can see the sharp swallow ripple down his throat as he fights it. He doesn’t know how to ask. He doesn’t know if he should.

You whisper anyway, low and sure, guiding him as you always meant to:

“Go on.”

The words unlock him.

He lurches, unsteady, his body moving before his mind can catch up. His lips brush your skin, trembling. The heat of his breath ghosts over your pulse, ragged, desperate, and then—fangs. They scrape at first, clumsy, unsure. He hesitates, and you can feel him shake with it, torn between fear and hunger.

You press a hand against the back of his head, not forceful, only steady. “It’s all right,” you murmur, your voice threading into the storm of his panic. “Take what you need.”

And he does.

The bite is sharp, unrefined. Pain sparks white before it melts into the pull, the deep draw of him drinking from you for the very first time. His entire body shudders against yours, a broken moan slipping from his throat as the hunger finally finds its answer. His hands clutch at you, one at your waist, the other fisting the sheets, grounding himself in the taste of you.

Every swallow is greedy, desperate, almost frantic—as though he’s been waiting his entire life for this without knowing it.You hold him steady, stroking his hair, even as your own hunger answers in kind, a dark satisfaction curling low in your chest. You’ve given him this. You’ve made him this. And now, with his mouth at your throat and his body clinging to yours, he is bound to you in every way that matters.

tags : @pathetic-remmick @avidreader73 @kentblvd @mintssanctuary

[flixpii]

we talked about it a lil on our episode, spookies, but what did you make of the comparisons between remmick and sammie’s father?

[flixpii]

⋆⭒˚.⋆ Thinking about Paddy Mayne with a spoiled!reader…

cw: mdni, slight cockwarming, creampie, squirting, p in v , I was horny okay? slight bratty!reader, I had @sinfulteeth read it for me and got their stamp of approval. wc-1.4k, if you see any mistakes- no you didn't :)

If you were to ask what was Paddy Mayne's favorite pastime — Besides shooting at enemy frontlines, that is—   he would probably say reading a good book with a nice bottle of rum at his side…or any bottle of alcohol at his disposal.

But that would only be a half-truth. 

The other truth is probably right here, tucked into a warm bed with your cunt wrapped around him. 

He loved having you sit in his lap, facing towards him, so he could watch those beautiful expressions contort when he scratches that itch that’s been bugging you for so long—marvel at the way tears spill down your face when you say it’s too much.

Somehow, Paddy doesn’t think you’ve had enough. 

It’s always when he gets back from being out there for too long, when he’s had enough of nothing but rough hands and harsh environments. 

Here? He relishes in the soft curves of your body, the warmth that isn’t from the smoldering sun, and the delicate sounds of your voice that he’s missed dearly. 

He gets so selfish when he has all of that right in front of him. 

Like now, of course. 

“I can’t—“ you pleaded, holding his shoulders tightly— nails digging into his skin for the fifth time tonight. 

He’s been home for approximately three hours and he only wasted ten minutes. 

One minute for walking past the door and four minutes for getting you up the stairs and stripped naked. 

“Mhmm— sure.” He responded, leaning forward to suck another bruise into your neck. Paddy wasn’t buying your cries, not when you said it before— twice — and damn near cried when he was getting ready to pull you off. 

“N-No this time— I really fucking mean it.”

“Aye, I believe ya.” Paddy nodded and kissed up against your neck until it stopped just against your chin. Like a moth to a flame, you instantly tilted your head down to try and capture his lips and he pulled back at the last minute. 

“Paddy—“

“Thought you said ya couldn’t handle it.” He teased. 

You frowned, “I can’t— but a kiss doesn’t count.”. 

“It does.”

“No, it doesn’t—Oh.“ You groaned loudly, the feeling of Paddy jutting his hips up made his cock press against that delicious ring deep inside. You forgot how deep he can get, how fucking big he was that it takes forever for your cunt to mold itself around him whenever he comes back.

Probably why he doesn’t waste time getting you back used to him, having you sit in his lap for hours at a time 

“It fucking does.” He punctuates with another thrust that leaves your mouth gaping open and moans dripping past your lips. “A kiss comes with the whole package. If not, then you don’t get anything from me.” 

“I’m gonna— oh shit.”

 Paddy can feel that familiar tremor in your legs, the telltale signs that you're going to clench around him and soak him— again. That usually happens when you’ve been sitting on him for more than an hour, already spent and still demanding more. 

You may not outright say it, but he can feel it. 

“There ya go again, squeezing around me like a whore.” Paddy comments and he feels your cunt pulse. ”Yer so greedy—“ Paddy thrusts his hips up once more and you throw your head back, your chest heaving. 

“Fuck— keep going and I might—“ 

“That’s what I’m looking for.” He interrupted. 

“Please Paddy, it’s too much—“ 

Paddy clicks his tongue, “Don’t fucking play with me.” He sneers and your head lifts instantly, his tone terrifying and yet it arouses you just the same. 

“But…But I’m so tired.” You whined, eyes glossy already. 

“I didn’t know you were such a baby. Tired? I don't think you are.” Paddy looks down between your bodies pressed together, “I can see ya droolin’ on me.” He mentions, grunting when you clench around him,  “Yer still tryin’ to milk me dry, dove.” 

“It’s your fault— You keep moving.” 

“Mouthy aren’t ya? Who said you can talk back to me?” His eyes bore into yours, his grip on your hips tightened, “Yer gonna milk me some more huh?” 

That wasn’t a question, it was a statement. 

Paddy wasn’t done with you, he doesn’t ever think he’ll be done with you. You fit around him so perfectly, your cunt a safe haven at this point. He takes delight in knowing that he has to reshape your inside so it’ll remember the sheer size of him, every single time. 

“Move those hips, dove. Maybe then you’ll get that kiss.”

Like a spark, you do what he says. Use his shoulders as support so you can lift and come back down. You lean forward, your eyes betraying your thoughts because you keep peering at his lips desperately. 

“N-Now?” You begged. 

“No.”

You lift your hips faster, that white hot need building into your stomach. You can feel tears threatening to drop, so overwhelmed and fucking full. 

This was the greatest torture he could give you. 

Paddy was in pure bliss. 

At some point he took the lead, using your body like his own personal fuck toy. Your hips lifted and dropped down onto his lap with so much force that the sounds bounced against the walls. The head of his cock kept hitting that spot again, bullying its way inside your cervix. 

“Oh—mhm, N-Now?” You cried, sucking in your bottom lip. 

 Paddy actually glared at you, like you were annoying him. ”Not fucking yet.” He sneered, “You don’t deserve it. I gotta do all the work for ya. How fucking selfish.” 

“I’m sorry— I’m sorry, I’ll be good. Promise!" You begged, giving him your best puppy dog eyes.

How cute, Paddy thought to himself.  

“Then work for it,” he commanded, his voice a low growl that sent shivers down your spine. 

You can never resist a command from him, he practically trained your body to the sound of his voice alone. You leaned forward instantly, your chest pressed against his— weight shifting to make it easier to lift and drop. Paddy’s hold was harsh, his nails digging into your hips, you were sure it was going to leave deep marks on your skin for days— weeks after he left for deployment again. 

But you didn’t care. 

That burn in your cunt was so fucking intense— too much and still not enough. 

Somehow he managed to slide his hand between your bodies stuck together—skin slick with sweat. He glided it lower and lower until he found your clit and pressed his thumb down hard. 

Your eyes popped open, your mouth going slack, a deep gasp escaping.  “P-Paddy, Fuck Paddy—“ you shook against him, grinding down hard.  “Please please please— “ 

“That’s it, dove. Don’t fight it— fucking soak me. Right fucking now.” He demanded. And because he trained your body so well, molded you just for him, your cunt follows his commands like a perfect little soldier. You came on him, squirting on his cock so hard that it practically sprays between your bodies pressed together.

Your so fucking wet and sticky that it didn’t matter anymore.  So much shame lost and abandoned, replaced with dying devotion all for him. 

Paddy finally kissed you. 

His tongue deep into your mouth, eating your moans away, and still demanding more from you.  

You pull back slightly to breathe him in, saliva pooling down the corner of your mouth, “Inside— please. Wanna feel you.” You panted into his mouth, pressing your lips back against his like you were dying and his mouth was the only thing keeping you alive.  

What he said was true.

You are greedy for him. 

Paddy decides to indulge you for once, too caught up and too focused on the feeling of you clenching around him over and over— your hips still bouncing on him. He knows what you're doing, using that perfect cunt against him by forcing him to his end but he doesn’t mind— Delights in the fact that you know how to get what you want even in this position. 

Paddy wraps both of his arms around the small of your back, locking you in place. His hips meet your pace and it doesn’t take long for Paddy to join you. He came with a loud groan, stuffing his cock to the hilt, making sure every inch of you was crammed up by him. 

You felt it.

His cock pulsing inside and then that delicious warmth soon after. 

You broke the kiss to rest your head against his shoulder, his cock still lodged inside— still being milked by your greedy cunt. 

Paddy grunts below you, his head turning so his warm breath can fan against your ear. “Tired now?” 

 “No.” You sighed. Voice tired and spent but that was okay. “Can we still like this?”

“You said that last time.”

“Please?”

Paddy just can’t refuse you. “Aye, sure we can.” 

Secret Admirer: @pearlstiare

[flixpii]

i see I SEE you guys’ requests (they are toooo good 😩)

i’m working on them yes

[flixpii]

why am i just now seeing this

these are too cute 🥹💗

Paddy Mayne who has a Darling Wife…

This is dedicated to my sweet Jude @sinfulteeth who lets me ramble about stuff and in turn they ramble back to me… Guys, I am totally Sane for Paddy Mayne.

୨ৎ Paddy Mayne who has a cute wife at home… Nobody knows who you are let alone knew that you existed. 

Paddy never brings you up—  keeping the details of you to himself because he thinks it’s better that way. He’s not embarrassed by you— why would you ever think that? It’s more because he’s a very selfish and jealous man. 

Why would he ever share his most precious jewel with people who may come looking for more? 

୨ৎ He met you randomly one Night… The men all went to an after-party after this boring ass Military Ball and for a job well done on the frontlines— they found a pub nearby. Paddy decides to join with nothing else to do besides drinking and drowning his sorrows. 

The atmosphere was off the walls, so late into the night everybody had 4-5 drinks in their systems already. People joined at the hip, singing common songs that echoed outside. Paddy tried his best to survey his men, make sure things were smooth and steady but tonight he just wanted to worry about himself. 

୨ৎ You show up, standing next to him at the bar with the shortest dress and this nervous smile…ordering a round for your friends. You kept glancing off to the side, consistently checking to make sure your dress wasn’t riding up your ass. Another man was beside you, eyeing you in a downright creepy way— the type serial killers give when they have a target. 

Paddy turned around, downing his drink in one go and slamming it down on the table— demanded that the bartender give him another refill or so help him—

a loud gasp alerted him.

He turns at the sound, catching sight of your stormy face— eyebrows drawn tight, your hand curled into a fist.

“Did you just touch me?!” you asked, your voice low and burning with fury.

“Touch you?” Paddy snorts. “As if I’d go near a wee girl like you.” He gives you a slow once-over, eyes dragging down until they catch on where your dress cuts off—well above the knees. “Christ— would ye look at that. Dress barely coverin’ yer arse. Walkin’ about like that, yer near askin’ for it—”

His head snaps sideways, the world tilting for a second as his vision goes fuzzy.

You just clocked him— Hard — Maybe the hardest he’s ever been hit.

Paddy is unable to react, all coherent thoughts thrown out the window. The music is still playing, people are still dancing and shouting to the music but the bartender is frozen– Looking between you two. 

You politely take your drinks and turn on your heel, giving him a nasty glare over your shoulder, and leave. 

୨ৎPaddy can't stop thinking about you…Someone so bold and rash but was nervous enough to order drinks was a wonder. 

୨ৎ He finds you again...by pure coincidence, it seems. He was at the same bar again the next night, same chair, same bartender. He didn't exchange any words with the worker serving drinks, just took his loss with pride and politely ordered the same drink from last night like nothing happened. 

He’s by himself, the crowd is dull tonight– perhaps all the party hoppers took a day off. 

He feels a tap on his shoulders and there you are, a nervous look on your face and a box in hand. 

"I... I heard it wasn’t actually you," you said, eyes darting nervously around the room, your voice barely above a whisper. Embarrassment burned on your cheeks. "I’m sorry!" you blurted suddenly.

A few nearby people turned your way, clearly irritated by the outburst, but quickly resumed their conversations.

"I, um… I baked these cookies as an apology—please, take them!" you added, shoving the box toward him a little too eagerly. “I um, have to leave– Sorry again!” You scurried out the door soon after. 

Paddy once again couldn't react, his eyes wide and a look of bewilderment stitched on his face. 

“She's a keeper.” The bartender commented, drying a glass cup in his hand. 

୨ৎ Inside the box, you had left a note…an apology letter, written thoughtfully over several paragraphs, tucked in with a batch of chocolate chip cookies– homemade might he add. When he turned the paper over, he noticed an address scrawled on the back.

You really were something else.

୨ৎ Out there, alone in his quarters, with nothing but the silence and the memories of fallen comrades… his thoughts drifted to you. 

He found your letter again in the front pocket of his uniform jacket, folded carefully. 

Paddy had no one else to write to. So, he wrote to you.

He wrote about the cookies— said they were too sweet, but good, and lightly teased you for pouring out a five-paragraph apology over something that hadn’t bothered him.

That was it.

He didn’t expect an answer. In truth, he didn’t believe there would be one.

...He finds a letter left on his cot when he comes back from drills.

୨ৎYou send letters back to him… It's been two months since he's been deployed and you both write to each other when you both can. Paddy looks forward to that familiar brownish-orange envelope nowadays, it's the only thing keeping him sane. 

You always start with writing about your day, what you do when you're bored, and other delicious treats you've started baking. You promise that when he gets back you'll bake those cookies again– and this time it'll be perfect. 

Paddy writes that you better keep your promise. 

୨ৎWhen he arrives back, a bag strapped to his shoulders and a scowl on his face… He finds you amongst the crowd. Waving him over with a box in hand, and a bright smile on your face.

୨ৎ Paddy has many ideas– terrible yes, but still, many ideas…You were sitting across from him, happily demolishing a bowl of ice cream. You’d invited him out—not a date, you insisted. Just something friends do. That’s what Paddy kept repeating in his head.

Over and over.

Like it would change how he felt.

He hadn’t touched his dessert. Not even a taste. He was too busy watching you—specifically, how quickly you were inhaling yours.

“What’s the rush, then?” he asked, leaning back in his chair, legs stretched out with one ankle lazily crossed over the other.

You stopped to eye him, a small portion of ice cream on the corner of your mouth. Paddy notices but he doesn't say anything. 

“Well, you’re leaving in a few days,” you said, frowning. “Then it’s back to writing letters that never arrive on time! I swear, it takes over a month just for one to reach me. What’s up with that?”

Paddy shrugged, tone flat, as though the answer should’ve been obvious. “GHQ only cares about letters from loved ones,” he said plainly, voice low.  “Saves them time and money sending the mail boys out to us. If it’s not your ma or your missus writing, it’ll sit in a pile till they can be sent.”

“Wait– really?”

“Aye, really.” He glances off to the side then back at you, a smirk on his face.  “Unless yer plannin’ on marryin’ me, don’t expect those letters to arrive on time. They’ll be late as hell, like always. Oh, aye. ”

You peer at him through your lashes, batting them innocently with a grin on your face.

“Marriage you say?”

୨ৎ Court house marriage was the plan…and it was probably the best day he’s had. You were so giddy, a small white tiara on your head that you bought from a run down costume store. You told Paddy that you should at least look the part. The process didn't take long, a few signatures here and a few “Yes, I do.” there and you both were married within thirty minutes. 

How did you two celebrate this important night? More ice cream of course. Same chair, same flavor and this time Paddy ate his ice cream. 

Secret Admirer: @pearlstiare

[flixpii]

i love these so much 😭

Hello! I like the new theme it’s a cute shade! Also what do you think the Jack characters would react to finding out they have a child somewhere? Like they had a lover in the past who left and then they find out they have fathered a child they never knew about. Who would be a good father, who’d want to be present, and who’d just show up from time to time?

CHARACTERS: oliver mellors, remmick, patrick sumner, lion kaminski, james cook

WARNINGS: maybe slight angst(?), mentions of abandonment, heartbreak/breaking up, brief one night stand mention, late-victorian era misogyny, stanley kaminski lmao

A/N: i doooo have a roy one shot/request on this coming out soon so that's why there's nothing for him, but i lowk wanna do a blurb for each of these LMAO it's just so fun to look into the characterization and their different identities, genuinely. thank you for requesting bby i hope you enjoy!

masterlist | taglist

likes, reblogs, and comments are always and greatly appreciated!

oliver mellors

he freezes, as any man would. the sight of you, breathtaking and just as stunned as he is, with a little boy in your arms. and the first thing oliver notices are the colors of the boy’s eyes—exactly identical to his. he then notices the other similarities, like the soft brown hair and the bridge of his nose.

what follows is a long, seated discussion--which inevitably turns into reunion. it isn't exactly smiles and laughter and kisses, though. it's oliver's heartbroken realization that he's missed five years of his son's life--his first steps, his first word, even his birth. it's your solemn and guilty apology for not telling him. but after a long two hours, he admits he never stopped loving you, and you admit the same. "dinna cry," he says as solid as stone. you've forgotten how much you truly missed that voice. “i’m here, now.

oliver is a grounded, present father. he reads to his son every night. they fight with sticks like swords in the grass. he carves him wooden figures for each of their birthdays. he teaches him kindness and tenderness. all the while, his love for you never wavers. and he worships you and your body for its true strength, almost as if surrendering to it, for you brought him the greatest joy in his life.

remmick

i have a bunch of soft dad!remmick in my drafts but let’s be real—this man wouldn’t know what to do at first. and yes, it’s partially because something like him isn’t exactly meant to reproduce. he’s terrified. so when he sees you catching fireflies in the field behind your house with a little girl who could barely walk, he runs.

there’s no intention of abandoning you. he just needs to give himself a moment; a moment that turns into a month—a month-long homicidal terror, miles away so that you cannot see his violence. but when he comes back, you can smell it off of him. he holds you and promises, "i ain't ever leavin' again, i swear it. and i'll be there for her, too." you don’t ask him about his true nature—you just need him to be present.

and he is. his change of heart makes him a fiercely loyal companion and a passionate father. and he's truly fascinated by solely your daughter's existence. he sees her as a gift for the suffering he’d endured. he’s afraid that something will come take her for the suffering he’d caused. but it only makes him hold onto her even tighter. he raises her to be strong-willed and outspoken, to know how to fight, to know her worth.

patrick sumner

now you all need to know how much i love patrick, okay? but if you've seen the north water then you'll know that...he's got a messy history with paternal figures/messy history in general. he'd see the child—how you wrecked your status as a woman for it—and wonder why you never told him. the boy looks just like him, there’s no denying it.

he does what a good-hearted, true gentleman would do: he marries you. he devotes himself to your side and works his way up in the medical field so that you regain your status. but he never promised to be the perfect father.

he struggles to speak to the boy at the dinner table. he won’t tuck him in and read to him night. he’s still as enamored with you as when you first met, but he struggles to feel anything but conflicted with the child. he’s away at work so often that he hardly even sees his son. he provides and cares for the boy but there’s no emotional connection between them.

lion kaminski

he’d be there, just not fully nor right away. it was a one-night stand after one of his fights; you kissed him goodbye in the morning and that was that—until it wasn’t. until he spots you hand-in-hand on the street with a little boy who has his hair. to lion it’s a simple moral to him—if that’s his son, his own flesh and blood, then he owes it to you to be there.

maybe stan gives him some shit for it. “why’re you attached, lion” and “they’re gonna drain you, buddy”, to which lion likes to say “who’s the one in prison?” he’s perfect in the same way he always has been—he loves his son more than anything. he chips in for everything. he never misses a call. he’s cooks dinner on the nights you come home from work too late.

lion’s a devoted father, there’s no other way to put it. and fatherhood does wonders for him. he stands up to his brother now. he’s gotten a well-paying job downtown. of course, he teaches his son how to fight, but that includes the dangers and consequences of it. the meaning of true strength, which doesn't come from bruises and violence but from love.

james cook

james cook is a changed man the next time you see him—your stomach, noticeably rounded and swollen. the connection between you two is just too severed, so it takes time to even become a central part of each other’s lives again. and you know what cook is like—everyone does. so you don’t expect him to even care.

but you couldn’t have been more wrong. even if it’s slightly awkward as ‘exes’, he makes sure to go with you to all of your doctors appointments, comes over to cook dinner when he can (he gets better the more he practices), and always calls to see how you’re doing. he even reads some of those pregnancy and childcare books he sees at the bookshop. when she’s born, he takes fatherhood extremely serious. “i get to be for her what i didn’t have,” he says.

and it isn’t entirely impossible for the flame to be rekindled. sometimes, you look at him—tickling her or cradling her or dressing her up in his style—and you remember the boy he used to be. you see him for the man he is now. very subtly, you’ve started to fall for each other’s again. “i don’t care about what we said or what we didn’t. that’s not who we are anymore. i’m gonna be a good dad for her—and i’m gonna be a better man for you.”

tags: @porcosjaw @bleedingsunlight @kentblvd @pearlstiare @jimmys-tiara @monty-bluebird @coldcrimsoncrypt @rizaazxx

© faestunna 2025.

[flixpii]

Could you pretty please make a Clark Kent scenario where he has to sit through a lingerie haul by his wife??

Also loved your workss

got something to show ya’ ⋆ ˚｡⋆ clark kent/reader

pairing | clark kent/hyperfeminine!reader cw | mdni !! suggestive, fluff, clark fighting every urge not to flip you over and ruin the lingerie you bought, reader is a tease, this is cute !!! // div by @bbyg4rlhelps

you hadn’t even told him you’d gone shopping. clark just came home from work, loosened his tie, and found you in the bedroom surrounded by pastel tissue paper and a suspiciously large bag from the boutique downtown.

“what’s all this?” he asked, setting his glasses on the nightstand.

“oh, nothing,” you said with an innocent little shrug, holding up a delicate cream lace bralette. “just… thought i’d update my drawer a bit. want to see?”

he opened his mouth to say something casual, but all that came out was a quiet, “sure.”

the first set was white, sheer in a way that made him clear his throat. “pretty, right?” you twirled slightly, letting the strap slip through your fingers before draping it over your shoulder. “feels very… bridal.”

clark nodded, a little too quickly. “yeah. very, uh… nice.”

then came the pastel pink one. silk. his jaw flexed when you held it against your chest. “you like this color on me?” you asked, pretending to study it in the mirror but watching him in the reflection.

“i like… everything on you,” he said, and you could hear the faint strain in his voice.

the light blue set made him shift in his chair. by the time you reached the cream one with the tiny satin bow, he was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, glasses dangling from one hand.

“this one’s soft,” you said, brushing the fabric over your wrist, letting him imagine it against your skin. “think it’s your favorite so far?”

his eyes met yours, darker now. “think i’m in trouble,” he murmured, almost to himself.

you just smiled, folding the last piece neatly. “good thing i like getting you into trouble, mr. kent.”

you were still tucking the last cream set into the drawer when you heard the soft scrape of the chair legs against the floor.

“c’mere,” clark said, voice low but warm.

you turned, eyebrows lifting. “yes, mr. kent?”

he was sitting back now, knees spread just enough, one hand resting lazily on his thigh while the other reached toward you. there was something in his eyes, half amusement, the other half something heavier, that made your stomach flutter.

you stepped closer, expecting him to just pull you in for a kiss, but instead he hooked an arm around your waist and tugged you right into his lap.

“clark—” you laughed, bracing your hands on his shoulders.

“you have any idea what you’ve been doing to me?” he murmured, looking up at you with that same darkened gaze from earlier.

“i was just showing you clothes,” you said, feigning innocence.

his hands slid up your sides, slow, deliberate, stopping just under your arms. “no, sweetheart. you were parading around in pastel lace and silk, biting your lip, pretending you didn’t know i was—” he cut himself off with a small shake of his head, smiling like he couldn’t decide if he was impressed or exasperated.

you tilted your head. “pretending i didn’t know you were what?”

he chuckled softly, leaning his forehead against your collarbone. “pretending i didn’t notice how hard i was trying not to just… stop you halfway through.”

your fingers played idly with the hair at the back of his neck. “i think you have great self-control.”

he looked up at you again, grinning now. “and i think you love testing it.”

a/n: ty for this request beloved !!! i had sm fun doing it <33

tags [comment to be added !!] @jimmys-tiara @dolleciita @budgiefeatherboa @flixpii @redhairedgardenfairy @faestunna @castielsonlyangel

© kentblvd | don't copy, steal, or translate any of my work

[flixpii]

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒌𝒚 𝑾𝒂𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑭𝒊𝒓𝒔𝒕 𝑾𝒊𝒕𝒏𝒆𝒔𝒔 (masterlist)

𝑓𝑒𝑚.ᐟ𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑝𝑒𝑟.ᐟ𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑟 & 𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑚𝑖𝑐𝑘 (𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑐)

✦ synopsis : it begins with a death that doesn’t happen. a choice that shouldn’t have been made. and a bond that should’ve broken centuries ago. but it didn’t. and now, something ancient lingers. they move through time like shadows—half tethered, half free—searching for something neither of them can name.

complete master list ! (will add as updated)

- part i

divider credits : @uzmacchiato

[flixpii]

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒌𝒚 𝑾𝒂𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑭𝒊𝒓𝒔𝒕 𝑾𝒊𝒕𝒏𝒆𝒔𝒔 (i)

𝑓𝑒𝑚.ᐟ𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑝𝑒𝑟.ᐟ𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑟 & 𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑚𝑖𝑐𝑘 (𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑐)

word count : 15k

✦ synopsis : it begins with a death that doesn’t happen. a choice that shouldn’t have been made. and a bond that should’ve broken centuries ago. but it didn’t. and now, something ancient lingers. they move through time like shadows—half tethered, half free—searching for something neither of them can name.

a/n : first things first -- this is a platonic fic (idk why i'm saying this like it isn't tagged as one above). i was initially doubting posting this, because it isn't an ‘x reader’ in the sense that we all know of, but i sat and had to remind myself that there are people who enjoy platonic fics (ik i do, and i was my biggest supporter throughout this whole thing). second -- i'm basing the time remmick was turned on post anglo-norman invasion. there is use of gaeilge, and i apologize if they're inaccurate 🥲 (i used the closest, reliable translator that i could find.) anyways, i hope you guys enjoy 🫶🏾

warnings (for entire fic) : major character death, minor character death, canon-typical violence, vampirism, blood and gore, supernatural elements, reincarnation, slow burn, emotional hurt/comfort, emotional manipulation, use of gaeilge, mentions of irish potato famine, unreliable narration (due to sickness/disorientation), power imbalance, spiritual decay, sickness and recovery, period-typical societal struggles, mentions of religious themes/the afterlife, depictions of death/dying process, grief/prolonged mourning, depersonalization/detachment, memory loss, implied mass death, unusual afterlife mechanics, time skips, historical references, soulmate themes, bittersweet ending, heavy emotional themes

divider credits : @uzmacchiato

“We are not born, and we do not die.”

“We arrive.”

“When a spirit is placed into a body—a child, a calf, even a crow split from its shell—one of us is assigned. You do not see us. You are not meant to. But we walk with you. From the moment your breath fogs the world for the first time, until the moment it stops.”

“We are not your protectors. We are not your gods. We are only your threshold.”

“Your spirit carries a mark. Always. Inked in the bone, written in the blood. It changes shape, fades, darkens—but we find it. We always find it. The mark tells us who you are. And when it pulses, we come. When death stands near, we wait in the doorway between your world and what comes next.”

“When you die, we guide what’s left of you to the place beyond the dark. Some are meant to return. Some vanish entirely. Some…”

“Some slip between.”

Something pulls you through the trees.

It isn’t a sound. It isn’t a scent. It’s older than that—older than bark or blood or breath. It hums just beneath your ribs, a tether spun from marrow and memory, tugging you forward like a reed drawn by the tide. Each step sinks into the sodden earth, swallowed by moss and root. The fog thickens the deeper you go, curling around your legs like fingers. The trees narrow. The light dims. Crows won’t come here.

And then, you see him.

He lies crumpled at the base of a moss-veiled rise, his body half-curled in death’s imitation of sleep, limbs splayed. One leg drawn close, the other askew. Head lolled at an angle that doesn’t belong to the living. His chest is still. His mouth is parted. His eyes, wide and staring, catch the moonlight like drowned glass—too empty. Too quiet.

You crouch beside him, your breath shallow. Your eyes trace the damage with practiced steadiness. You’ve seen death wear many faces, but this one feels crude. Not cautious, not deliberate—just wasteful. The throat is torn open, ragged and wet. Shredded like meat caught in a beast’s teeth. Whoever—or whatever—did this didn’t take from him like a creature that feeds. It took like one that destroys.

You exhale slowly. Something heavy inside your chest shifts, then settles.

Your hand rises, steady. Fingertips ghost over his face—cool skin, blood-matted hair, slack jaw. You cradle the back of his head like something precious. His weight folds into your palm, neck limp as seaweed. You tilt him gently, and the moon finds him again.

There. Behind his ear.

Faint. Half-hidden beneath blood and grime. A sigil. Yours.

Recognition prickles along your spine.

You brush your thumb just beneath it, the way one might test for warmth that isn’t there. Your voice barely scrapes past your throat. “Found you.”

You slide your arms beneath his body, mindful of the torn flesh, and lift. He’s light—unnaturally so. The weight of a man drained hollow. His limbs collapse inward as you rise, his body folding like wet parchment. You press him to your chest the way one might carry a drowned thing pulled from the sea. Blood seeps into your mantle, thick and dark, clinging like oil.

You begin to walk. Only a few steps.

The veil waits just beyond the treeline.

You feel it before you reach it—an unseen shift in the world’s breath. The air flattens. The trees hush. Moss muffles your steps. No birds sing here. No insects buzz. It’s the silence of the in-between. The threshold of elsewhere. You’ve crossed it more times than you can count. You never flinch.

So when the body in your arms suddenly jerks—coughs—your first instinct is disbelief.

A spasm. A breathless cough, wrenched from a throat that should hold no air. Wet. Muffled. Horribly alive.

You drop him.

Not in anger. Not in terror. Just—reflex.

His body strikes the ground with a dull, sodden sound. He curls inwards. Fingers twitch. Jaw tightens.

A sound tears out of him.

Not a word, not a plea—just a broken, raw sound torn from the ruin of his throat, as if some piece of him is still trying to speak despite the damage done.

You stagger back, staring.

This isn’t right.

The veil hasn’t opened. The spirit hasn’t crossed.

And now—now, with the fog still pressed thick between the trees and the weight of him settling into the moss—you understand.

He is not dead.

Not fully.

You don’t move.

The world sharpens and dulls in the same breath, the edges of stone and bark and shadow blurring around the impossibility at your feet. Everything narrows to this: the breath that should not be. The sound that should never have returned. A presence that exists in defiance of everything you were taught to shepherd.

You have passed many.

Newborn lambs, still slick with afterbirth. Old women, their fingers curled around yours as their last breath escaped in a sigh. Soldiers with split throats. Drowned boys with seaweed in their hair. Kings. Cowards. Children. You’ve watched their spirits rise, heard their names on the wind. You’ve never had to pull. You’ve only ever guided.

Because death, when it comes, does not waver.

It is a final thing. A closing of doors. A fading of warmth. A silence so complete it hums.

But this... this body just cried out.

You blink, as if the act will undo the sight. As if disbelief alone could push the spirit free. Your eyes fix on the hollow of his throat, where blood beads thick and glistening around the ragged wound. It yawns open like a second mouth. No body should live through that. The damage is too severe. Too deep. The tear too cruel.

There is no rite strong enough. No magic that old.

And yet—

“Ghh—!”

The sound rips through the clearing.

Your eyes snap down.

He gasps again—wet, broken, agonizing. His spine arches from the moss as though an ember has been shoved between his ribs. One hand claws feebly at the dirt, fingers curling against soil that will not soothe him. Another groan chokes loose, a guttural scrape forced through a throat no longer built for sound. It trembles the air.

You drop to your knees before you know it.

Somewhere between training and instinct. Between duty and dread.

Your mind claws at the memory of teachings, the scrollwork etched into your bones since before you were given a name. Reapers do not arrive late. The marked do not resist. No spirit clings to a body once the seal is placed. The mark is sacred. Absolute.

Your fingers tremble as they brush his brow.

His skin is fever-warm now, flushed and slick with sweat. His eyes flicker beneath their lids—red-veined, half-lost, blind. His lips part, but nothing forms. Only breath. Only struggle.

You draw a breath and force your hands still.

You’ve seen this before. Rare, but not unknown. Some spirits resist—not out of strength, but out of tether. A love unfinished. A vengeance unsated. Fear. Pain. Hunger. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that the mark gives you authority. That there are rites for this.

You press your palm to the earth.

The moss accepts you—cool, pliant. The earth remembers your hand. You close your eyes.

And you call. Not aloud. Not with breath.

With the deeper part of you—the part that walks unseen, the part that does not bleed or sleep, the part that does not falter.

“By the bond of the mark, by the seal of the veil, I summon the path and open the way.”

The world reacts. The forest stills. Something ancient leans in. Wind stirs—wrong, quiet, as though it breathes without lungs.

Around the man, the earth stirs.

The moss shifts like fur against a whisper. Pale threads rise from the ground in slow spirals, silver-laced and spectral, drawn upward like mist from beneath the world’s skin. They wrap around his limbs. His chest. His throat.

The mark responds, faintly glowing where your thumb once touched.

You speak again, louder now.

Commanding. Claiming.

“By the claim of the reaper, I call the crossing. The spirit is named. The time has come. Let the way open.”

The clearing hums. The shimmer thickens. It coils like smoke, delicate and silver, curling toward the wound at his throat.

You watch it gather—drawn to the ruin in his flesh, seeking to unmoor what lingers inside.

And then—it halts.

The threads freeze mid-air.

They flicker once, then shudder, stuttering like fire smothered by wet stone. A crackling hiss bleeds into the silence. And then—you feel it.

A pulse. Faint, but real. Not a heartbeat. Not magic. Resistance.

It presses against your chest like a second breath that isn’t yours.

Your lungs seize.

No.

Your gaze narrows. You reach again. You speak the words—not gently this time, but with command, with precision sharpened by disbelief.

“By the—”

The invocation is cut short.

A jolt surges up your arm—sharp, cold, and precise, like a needle made of frost jammed beneath your skin and dragged to the bone.

You jerk back. The ground rises hard to meet your palms as you stumble, breath escaping in a ragged gasp. The shimmer dissipates instantly, vanishing like mist at sunrise.

And the forest answers with silence.

It draws back from you in full retreat—leaves stilling, moss flattening, fog curling tighter around the trunks.

And he—he moans again.

A sound like wind caught in a broken instrument. His hand shifts. Fingers curl, feeble and twitching.

And in that moment, it becomes clear: The crossing does not want him.

No---the veil cannot take him.

Something is in the way.

Your heart thunders—too loud. Too fast. A pulse you don’t usually notice, now thudding against the cage of your ribs. You were not shaped for fear. You were not forged to feel.

But you do.

He still breathes. Barely. But enough.

You move toward him again, slower this time. Not cautious. Calculating. Observing.

Whatever has happened here—whatever is happening—it defies everything you’ve known since the day you took your place in the veil. The ritual failed. The path rejected him. The mark still binds. And yet he moves.

You lower yourself beside him, eyes fixed on the slight rise of his chest.

It rises. Falls. Shallow. Strained.

The motion isn’t natural. It’s not the rhythm of a soul held gently in a body. It’s the stutter of something being forced to remain, like breath dragged through a pipe clogged with blood. You reach for him again, your fingers moving without hesitation now. You cradle his head again, one palm beneath his jaw, the other steadying the side of his skull. You tilt him gently. The motion pulls a broken noise from him—a low, hoarse cry scraped from somewhere deep inside. His throat convulses around it, torn flesh flexing, leaking warmth anew.

You don’t flinch.

You do not soothe him.

That is not your place.

Instead, your gaze sharpens. You study the path of the wound, the dark saturation of blood, the raggedness of the tear. No blade did this. No man. No beast that feeds cleanly. This was a rending. A mauling. The kind that severs the spirit from the flesh before death can even name it.

And still—he remains.

Your thumb brushes under his ear again, where the sigil lies nearly hidden.

It glows.

Faintly. But unmistakably.

Your eyes narrow. There is no sign of the soul beginning to split. No mist rising from the mouth. No slackening of the limbs that signals release. His body should have become a vessel emptied. A shell. A memory. And yet… his skin is pale but not gray. His lips tremble, faintly, as if still aware of the cold.

You lean closer. Your fingers drift along the edge of the mark, inspecting it in silence—searching for warping, for decay, for the shimmer of foreign magic. There’s no sign of infection, no visible tampering. And yet… something is wrong.

You were taught that no one—not gods, not beasts, not even the oldest monsters—can alter a reaper’s seal. But something has.

You feel it in your bones. A wrongness humming low beneath your skin. Something interfered. And worse—something succeeded.

Your stomach coils. Not from fear. But from recognition.

A rule has been broken. Not cracked, not bent, but shattered—and it cannot be placed back as it was.

You pull away slightly, enough to see his face fully again. The moonlight touches his cheek. His lips part faintly. There is nothing familiar in his expression.

You think to yourself:

Who did this to you?

What are you now?

You rise.

There’s no point in staying. Not now. Not like this.

If he isn’t dead, he soon will be. The body cannot survive wounds this deep. The tear in his throat is too vicious. The light behind his eyes too dim. Whatever force pulled him back into himself—whatever hand snatched him from the crossing—will not hold.

And when the last breath finally leaves him, you’ll be there.

You always are.

That’s how it works. That’s how it has always worked.

You take a step back, brushing your palms against your robe in slow, practiced motions. The blood stains do not lift. The forest doesn’t stir. Even the wind has gone quiet.

Everything listens.

Another step.

“...Cabhair—”

The word slashes through the silence like a splintered bell.

You stop.

Your breath stalls in your throat.

The sound is faint. Rasped out between ruined tissue and clotted blood. A plea formed more from pain than from knowing. A word shaped by instinct, not will. It cracks in the air like a bone under pressure.

Help.

Not for you, perhaps. Maybe not even for anyone at all. Just pain, begging to be heard.

Still—

You do not turn.

You do not answer.

That is not your place.

Your duty is to the end. Not to the dying. Not to the in-between.

You close your eyes.

The veil is near. You feel it in the hollows of your bones, in the breath you haven’t taken in centuries. It wraps around your shoulders like a memory, familiar and soft. You’ve never needed to ask it to open. It simply does.

The return is always quiet. A folding inward. A melting into shadow.

You reach for it—

And nothing happens.

You frown.

You reach again—deeper this time, calling not just with thought, but with being. The way you always have. The way you were taught.

But the pull isn’t there.

The door is… gone.

Your brow creases. Confusion—a rare thing—presses cold against your ribs.

You begin the return rite. Slowly. Carefully. The cadence moves through you like a stream over stone. It doesn’t require breath, only truth. It has never failed.

Until now.

Nothing answers.

No shift in the fog. No echo in the trees.

Not even resistance.

Just—

Silence.

A closed door with no seam.

Your heart gives a slow, foreign thump. It shouldn’t. And yet it does—heavy, dull, uninvited.

You open your eyes.

The forest is unchanged. The trees stand as they were. The fog still veils the hollows.

But something—something—is broken.

You turn, looking over your shoulder.

He lies there, breath no more than a thread, blood still blooming into the moss beneath him.

He shouldn’t matter. But he does.

Because whatever broke the seal, whatever blocked the veil, whatever bent the old laws out of place—it’s bound you to him.

Your jaw tightens, and you press your palm once more to the space where the veil has always parted. The place between breath and dust. Between memory and mourning.

It does not yield. It holds—solid, cold.

The world has become stone.

And you—a shadow of purpose—are now the one pressing your hands against the glass.

You inhale sharply. Try again.

The return rite burns on your tongue, sharper now, desperate. You offer your name—your true name, the one no living tongue has spoken in centuries. You call upon the mark, the sigil etched into your being that grants you passage. You summon the Old Way, the First Way, the one given to the first of your kind when death was still learning how to walk.

And still—nothing.

It feels like pushing against the bottom of the sea. No give. No pull. Just pressure.

A binding.

You stagger back a step, heart hammering in your chest—a sensation you have not known in ages. Your body is built to pass through worlds, to exist in silence and shadow. Not this. Not weight.

Not feeling.

You glance toward him again, your jaw tightening.

He hasn’t moved---not much.

But the air around him has.

The fog doesn’t touch him now. It curls back, pulling away from his skin like a wounded thing. The moss beneath him has begun to wither, leeching pale, as if his very presence sours the earth. His breath rattles out again—rough, uneven, yet present.

You curse beneath your breath. A sound that doesn’t suit your kind.

Still, you take a step back toward him. Then another. Drawn. Not gently. Not kindly. But like gravity in reverse. Like the tether beneath your ribs has turned cruel.

You drop back to your knees beside him, movements stiff.

His brow twitches. His lips part, cracked and wet.

The sigil behind his ear pulses—like a star just before it dies.

You narrow your eyes.

His mark should have begun to fade by now. Even those who resist always reach a point of surrender. But this? This is not surrender. This is defiance. Something inside him is fighting.

You lean closer, watching the line of his throat—where the wound, impossibly, seems less torn than before. Still raw, still brutal, but healing where it should not.

No spirit mends like that.

Not on its own.

You reach out again. Not to touch, this time. Just to be near. To observe.

You don’t know how long you sit there, watching him.

Watching a dead man breathe.

The night thickens. The fog curls tighter. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf cries out, low and long, but it doesn’t cross the boundary of the trees. Even the living things can feel it—that something here is wrong. Unbalanced.

Your gaze never leaves him.

Suddenly—he jerks.

Not in sleep. Not in weakness. But in violence. His back arches off the ground with a sickening crack of bone. A cry bursts from his throat—wet, raw, half-choked, more beast than man. His limbs seize, fingers digging into the dirt like claws.

Your body tenses. Instinct tells you to rise, to step back, to prepare the rites again. But something colder—deeper—roots you to the earth.

He twists again, groaning through clenched teeth, and you hear it: the snap of muscle, the strain of sinew reordering itself beneath skin. His jaw clenches. Blood foams at the corners of his mouth. His legs kick against the moss, hard enough to send up bits of soil and rot.

This is no ordinary death agony. This is becoming.

His breath speeds—too fast. Too ragged. His chest heaves like a bellows overworked. And then his mouth parts in a silent scream, every tendon in his neck pulled taut beneath the torn flesh. A vein swells, then darkens—no, blackens. As though whatever runs through him now is no longer blood, but something older. 

You lean forward despite yourself.

His eyes flash open.

Not fully. Not awake. But enough.

Just enough to show you what lies beneath the surface.

They are not the eyes of the dying. Nor the saved. Nor even the haunted.

They gleam faintly red in the dark—the iris contracting unnaturally in the moonlight.

You recoil, only slightly. Not in fear, but in recognition.

Not of what he is.

But of what he is no longer.

He gurgles, then gasps—a sound like drowning—but no air comes in.

Instead, his ribs crack inward.

You hear it. The shatter. The wet shift of bone realigning where it shouldn’t. The moan that follows is weak, broken, like the last breath of a child.

You grip your knees, hard enough to feel the strain in your arms.

You want to look away, but you can’t.

The mark behind his ear continues to flicker.

Still yours, but fading—changing.

You’ve never seen it shift like that. Not once.

It begins to warp, the edges bleeding outward like ink spilled in water. Your eyes widen. Your heart kicks again, sharp, like a bell struck in your ribs.

He goes still.

So suddenly, so completely, that the forest seems to hold its breath with him.

The convulsions stop. The gasps cease. His spine sinks back into the earth like a bow unstrung. One final shudder runs through him—barely a twitch in his hand—and then nothing. No groan. No breath. No movement at all.

Just silence.

You stare at him, your limbs locked in place, waiting—listening—for something. A sound. A whisper. A final pulse of energy that might tell you whether he has died or simply… stopped.

But the night gives you nothing.

He lies there like a corpse.

And yet your tether still pulls.

After a moment, you move closer, narrowing your eyes. 

You lean over, studying the vein beneath his jaw, the twitch of a lid, the flicker of breath across the lips.

Nothing.

He doesn’t stir. He doesn’t twitch.

You shift onto your haunches and poke at his shoulder.

Just once.

Your finger sinks into him through the stiff fabric of what’s left of a tunic. The flesh beneath is solid. Cold. He doesn’t react.

You wait. Still nothing.

You poke him again. This time in the ribs.

A bit harder.

No sound. No flinch.

You watch his face, expectant.

Still—nothing.

You scowl faintly, caught somewhere between irritation and… something else. Curiosity? Concern? You’re not sure. The emotion is unfamiliar, heavy in your chest like smoke that refuses to rise.

You press two fingers to the side of his throat. Not searching for a pulse—you know you won’t find one. Just trying to feel something. A thread. A whisper. A residue of the soul that might explain what he’s become.

But he’s a void now.

Closed.

And yet—he remains.

You sit back slowly, your hand falling to your side.

The fog thickens again. The forest holds its hush.

You do not leave him.

Not out of duty. Not out of pity. But because the bond still tugs.

Faint, constant, as if the space between your ribs has been stitched to him with thread made of ash and memory.

You rise and begin to circle the clearing, slow and silent, your eyes flicking back to him every few paces. The fog curls at your feet, shifting with the windless dark. He lies exactly as you left him—flat on his back, arms slack at his sides, chest unmoving. The blood has begun to dry, cracking along the edges of his torn collar.

You whisper another rite beneath your breath, just to see.

Nothing stirs.

No shadow splits.

No soul rises.

You sigh—not from fatigue. Reapers do not tire. But from something else. A kind of heaviness. Like the hush that settles over a battlefield long after the screams have ended. You pull your cloak tighter around your shoulders and settle against the trunk of a tree. Moss cushions the bark, soft and damp beneath your spine. Your eyes stay fixed on the clearing, on the man who should no longer be, while your mind begins to wander.

The night grows darker and the cold deepens.

Hours pass, or none at all.

Eventually, you rise again—not because of movement, not because he stirs—but because something in you aches for distance. Just enough to breathe. Just enough to think.

You drift. Through the trees, past stones etched with forgotten names, past streams that trickle with ice-cold water from the mountain’s belly. Your fingertips brush against leaves, against bark, against the bones of dead animals long since picked clean by time.

Still, you feel it.

The tether.

Even here, it hums through your center like a drawn thread, one end tangled in his chest, the other knotted deep inside your own.

You’ve never been bound like this before.

Not even to those whose passings you delayed—those who clung to life through sheer will, through fear or fury. Their spirits trembled, cried, even begged.

But none of them kept you.

You stop by the edge of a small glen, where the moonlight spills silver over the roots of a blackthorn tree. You place your hand to your own chest—just above the place where the rites were carved into you long ago. They should have protected you.

They should have freed you.

You wander longer than you mean to.

Not far—never far—but enough for the trees to shift, for the stars to change places above the canopy. Your thoughts unravel across the pathless ground, circling questions with no center. What is he now? What force remade him? And why, in all the realms that tether your order, does he still hold you here?

You pass a patch of foxglove. Pale bells glistening with dew. You glance at them without thought and keep walking.

The bond hasn’t lessened. If anything, it flares now and then—brief pulses in your chest, like the breath of a second heart. They startle you, though you show no sign. No gasp. No frown. But your pace falters when it happens. Each time.

Eventually, the trees thin and the clearing opens again.

Your eyes fall to the patch of moss where you left him.

Empty.

You stop mid-step.

The moss is dark with dried blood, pressed flat where his body once lay, but it’s bare. No body. No limbs. No torn shirt stretched over hollow breath.

Your fingers curl instinctively. You scan the clearing—slowly, methodically. Not out of fear.

But out of caution. Caution edged with something colder.

Then, you see him.

Near the base of a twisted tree, his back hunched, shoulders drawn inward like a man caught in the throes of pain or memory—or both. One arm braces against the trunk, as though it’s the only thing keeping him upright. The other clutches at his hair.

He doesn’t hear you. He doesn’t sense you. He is making a sound, though.

Low. Repetitive. Animal.

Not weeping, not growling—something in between. A fractured, trembling rhythm of grief and confusion that loops without words.

You step forward, cautious.

He doesn’t look at you.

But you see him clearly now.

His wounds are gone. No tear at the throat. No crack of ribs. Not even a bruise left behind. Flesh, once ruined, now smooth. Whole.

But the blood remains.

Dried at the collar, dark at the sleeves, crusted at his cuffs. His hands are filthy. His jaw is stained. The clothes bear every mark of the violence he should have died from.

You hover at the edge of the clearing, expression unreadable, cloak caught lightly in the wind. You do not speak. 

You simply watch him—this man who was supposed to die—come apart in silence beneath the crooked limbs of a tree older than any you’ve walked past in centuries.

He’s crouched low, knees drawn in, spine bent with the awful curve of someone trying to fold into themselves and disappear. One hand claws at the bark, nails scratching thin, erratic lines into the trunk as if trying to ground himself through pain. The other fists into his hair, tugging, pulling, knotting in desperation. He’s shaking—not from cold, not entirely—but from the overwhelming wrongness that is now his body.

He breathes in shallow bursts. The kind that sound like he’s drowning in air. And every few seconds, that sound spills out of him again—raw, cracked, helpless. Not loud. Not theatrical. Just… broken. Like a man who doesn’t know if he’s dreaming or damned.

You’ve seen fear before. You’ve seen it on the living, in the final seconds—when the blood drains from their faces and they realize no prayer can stop what’s already coming. You’ve seen it in the newly dead, too—those who wake on the other side still clinging to love, to vengeance, to names they can’t bear to forget.

But this is different.

This fear is rooted not in dying.

But in existing.

In still being here.

He tugs again at his hair, then releases it, both hands gripping his head now. His whole body shudders as he sways slightly, a groan rising up through his throat—long and low, cut off by the back of his teeth like it was too much to let escape.

He mutters something under his breath. A name, maybe. A prayer. You can’t tell. The words are slurred, warped by what’s left of his voice—hoarse, as if his throat still remembers what tore it open.

Then his hands drop.

He stares at them. Palms up. Trembling. Blood lines his fingers, dried and stiff. Some of it his. Some of it not.

He turns them over, slowly. As though they belong to someone else.

His shoulders begin to shake again. This time not with sobs, but with disbelief. A wild, wordless denial. His mouth opens, gasps, then closes.

Like he might scream. Like he might shatter.

And still—you do not go to him. Still—you watch.

Because whatever he is now, he is no longer a spirit meant to pass. He is not yours to guide, not anymore.

You fold your arms across your chest, cloak rustling softly in the night wind. Your gaze remains steady.

Let him break.

Let him feel it.

You are not here to soothe. You are only here because you cannot leave.

He shifts. Just slightly—shoulders tightening, breath catching. As if some part of him feels your gaze before his eyes find you.

Then he looks up. And he sees you.

Wide-eyed. Mouth parted. Breath hitching like he’s just surfaced from drowning. The forest is silent but for the shallow rise and fall of his chest, and the scrape of his knees against the earth as he moves.

Toward you.

His limbs shake beneath him, raw and unsteady, but he crawls forward, dragging himself across the moss. His hands are bloodied. His clothes hang torn and stiff with what hasn’t dried yet. But his eyes—his eyes are wild with terror. Wet with it. Lit from within by something raw and too bright to be reason.

“Le do thoil—” please—

His voice breaks as he clutches at the hem of your robe.

“Ná fág mé—le do thoil—ná fág mé mar seo—” Please don't leave me like this—

He folds forward until his brow presses to the earth at your feet, shoulders trembling like a hunted thing. The words spill out of him quickly now, thick and desperate, every breath an unraveling plea:

“Cad atá á tharlú domh? Cén fáth a mhúsclaím fós? Tá pian orm—ní féidir liom—níl a fhios agam cad atá mé anois—” What is happening to me? Why am I still awake? I am in pain—I can't—I don't know what I am now—

You do not flinch.

You understand every word. This is a language you knew when it was first given shape. You walked among the ones who carved it into stone and whispered it beneath the canopy. You remember when it was soft with worship, when it tasted of earth and wind and smoke from hearth fires long gone cold.

He begs you in it now.

His voice cracks.

His fingers tighten around your robe.

“Tabhair aire domh—le do thoil—cabhraigh liom—in ainm Dé, cabhraigh liom…” Please pay attention to me—help me—in the name of God, help me...

You look down at him.

The blood on him has dried to a dull, flaking rust. His skin is whole. His wounds gone. But his spirit is not. It is too loud. Too bright. Twisting in his chest like a thing trapped.

You do not speak.

The silence thickens. It lays heavy between you, like damp wool hung between two bodies, slow to dry. He’s still folded at your feet—knees in the dirt, hands clutched tight around the hem of your cloak, trembling. You can feel his grip flutter, knuckles white, palms slick with sweat and blood.

You don’t move. You only stare down at him.

You take in the curve of his spine, the way it rises and falls in uneven rhythm. His breath still hitches. Not like the dying. Not like the dead. But like something trying to understand its new lungs, its new flesh. The way his shoulder jerks now and then—reflexive, panicked—tells you the truth before he even knows it himself.

This isn’t a body fighting for life.

It’s a body that remembers death. And doesn’t know what to do now that it hasn’t come.

You tilt your head slightly, watching him the way you’d watch a fire in a forgotten shrine—half in worship, half in suspicion. Waiting to see if it will warm or consume.

He mutters again. A string of broken Gaeilge, trailing between breath and sob. His voice is quieter now. Thinner. As though he’s speaking more to himself than to you.

You catch pieces of it.

“…what am I… what did they do to me… why won’t it stop…”

His fingers tighten in the fabric again—then loosen, then curl again as though unsure whether to cling or release.

You remain silent. Because you are still trying to decide. You were not made for choices. You were made for endings. For guiding souls once the body has failed. Not for this.

Not for him.

The wind picks up slightly. Just enough to rustle the trees. His hair shifts across his brow, damp and clinging to his skin. 

Your eyes trace the place where his throat once tore open. Not even a scar remains.

And yet, he weeps.

Not with noise. But with presence.

With the way his body folds tighter. With the way he dares to press himself close to you, seeking refuge from a thing neither of you can name.

Still, you do not speak.

Because deep down, some part of you still isn’t sure—if this thing you’re tethered to is a man.

Or a mistake.

The silence stretches so long, it becomes a shape all its own. It presses into the space between you, dense and aching. Even his breath seems quieter now, drawn into himself as if fearing that even his presence might offend you. His shoulders remain hunched, his face hidden, hands still trembling against your robe.

You watch him. And you wait.

But he gives you nothing else—no words, no motion. Only that quiet, rhythmic shiver, like his body is trying to collapse inward on itself, inch by inch.

At last, you speak.

The sound of your voice cuts through the night like a blade dragged through frost.

“Why are you still here?”

It is not cruel. Not kind. It is simply the question. 

His breath catches.

You feel it ripple down the tether between you.

He doesn’t answer. Not right away.

Slowly, painfully, he lifts his head.

His hands fall away from your robe. One presses to the ground as he tries to steady himself, the other still curled as if afraid of letting go. And then—his eyes meet yours.

Truly meet.

And for the first time since this night began… you see him.

Not just the body. Not the mark. Not the blood or the evidence of ruin.

Him.

His face is drawn, the muscles around his mouth pulled taut with fear, like he’s barely holding something back. A thin crust of dried blood mars the ridge of his cheekbone, jagged and rust-colored, smeared down toward the corner of his mouth as if he’d wiped it with the back of a shaky hand. His lips are split, cracked open in places that sting with every breath, and his jaw clenches so tightly the sinew beneath his skin twitches. Then, without warning, it trembles—subtle at first, a quiver along the edge—before it ripples down his throat in a swallow he tries too hard to hide.

And his eyes—they are brown.

You see it clearly now, piercing through the fading haze like something remembered in a dream. Deep, warm brown, rich as rain-soaked soil after a long drought. They shine with a faint, unnatural sheen, but the color—the color is unmistakable. The color he was born with. The color that should have dulled in death, faded to something hollow or glassy. There’s a flicker in them—grief or recognition, you can’t tell—which makes his lashes flutter, slow and unsure, like he’s just realizing you’re really looking at him.

Something glows faintly beneath the iris now.

A dim, unnatural red—like coal buried deep beneath wet ash, embered but unextinguished. It’s faint at first, almost easy to miss, but steady. Unwavering. And as the seconds stretch thin, the glow pulses—soft and slow, like the echo of a heartbeat he no longer has. A rhythm resurrected in silence.

You’ve seen many eyes at the hour of death. Glazed with finality. Empty in surrender. Reverent with peace. Sometimes wild with rage, seething in their last defiance. But never this. Never eyes that burn with something waking inside them—something not quite human.

You stare, unblinking. And something about that gaze—his and yours, locked now across the distance between flesh and fate—stirs a wrongness deep in your bones.

You don’t look away.

Even as that faint red glow pulses again beneath his eyes—soft, rhythmic, unnatural—you keep your gaze locked to his, steady and unflinching. It flickers like candlelight behind glass, casting shadows that don’t belong.

He’s still on his knees before you, spine rigid with tension, like some part of him is bracing for pain—or permission. His face is tilted up, the angle exposing the vulnerable line of his throat, and his eyes…

They’re wide.

Too wide.

Filled with something that straddles the fragile edge between recognition and ruin. Like he knows you, and doesn’t. Like he’s trying to remember whether you’re salvation or damnation.

His mouth parts slightly, just enough to show the edge of a fang, but no words come.

You study him a moment longer, searching every trembling muscle, every twitch of fear or memory written across his face. 

And then, in a voice low and sure, you speak to him in his tongue. The one this land was born with.

“What did they do to you?”

The words fall from your lips easily—not dusty with disuse, but clean, sharpened by centuries of silence. His eyes widen further, surprised that you understand him, that you speak like someone who has never stopped.

His lips part.

No sound at first—just a breath, then a broken rasp as he forces the words through the rawness of his throat.

“I didn’t… I didn’t want it,” he whispers, answering in Gaeilge. The language trembles in his mouth now, softer than before, heavy with grief.

Your brow lowers slightly. You understand every syllable.

“I know,” you say quietly. “But that doesn’t change what you are now.”

His gaze drops to the earth between you, lashes lowering like a curtain drawn to shield something too raw to bear. His shoulders curl inward, just slightly, as though the weight of it all presses down again—old grief made fresh. His hands clench at his sides, fingers curling into fists tight enough that the knuckles blanch, tremble. A muscle in his jaw ticks once. Then again.

When he speaks, his voice is a little stronger—more grounded—but no less broken. It scrapes out low and hoarse, like he’s dredging it up from somewhere hollowed out.

“They said…” he swallows, lips twitching, “…they said they would save me.”

Still Gaeilge. Still the same old rhythm. But it stumbles now, even as it leaves his mouth—stilted, hesitant. Like a hymn echoing through the ruins of a chapel long burned to the ground. Something sacred, turned to ash.

You tilt your head, just slightly—an almost imperceptible shift, but it cuts through the silence like a blade. Your voice is flat. Measured. Stripped clean of sympathy.

“And did they?”

The question hangs there. Still. Heavy.

A pause. Long enough to feel like something dying.

His lips part, trembling faintly, like the answer’s trying to crawl its way out. His throat works once, twice. He tries to speak—but nothing comes.

Only silence. And the brittle, papery sound of dried blood cracking as his fingers curl tighter into his palms. It flakes away in delicate rust-colored fragments, dusting the earth like old ash.

His shoulders tremble—not with cold, not anymore—but with something deeper. Denser. The weight of truth finally beginning to settle in the hollow beneath his ribs.

He doesn’t speak again. But he moves.

Slowly—hesitantly—his arm lifts, stiff at the elbow, as though it aches to even rise. He reaches toward you, not with force, not with certainty, but with the kind of trembling desperation only the newly damned can summon. That fragile, aching hope that something might still pull them from the edge. His hand hovers in the space between you, fingers quivering, palm open. It’s a small gesture—barely more than a breath of movement—but it’s painfully human. Intimate in its restraint. Familiar in a way that makes your throat tighten.

This is not the grasp of a predator.

No hunger sharpens his reach.

It is the reach of a man drowning, who thinks he’s seen land in your eyes.

Your breath catches, held tight in your chest.

The tether pulses—faint, electric, inevitable.

And for one suspended moment—for just the space of a breath—you almost let him.

Almost.

But then—you step back.

The motion is slight, but deliberate. A quiet refusal made of muscle and instinct. A shift in your weight. The edge of your cloak dragging softly through the dirt where his hand no longer dares to reach.

His fingers falter mid-air, hover helplessly for a beat—then curl in, slow and inward, like petals closing after too much sun. They fall against his thigh with a soft sound. Hollow.

Your voice cuts sharper now. Not raised—but edged.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

The words fall between you like a dropped blade—too heavy for the fragile air, too final to take back.

His brow knits, mouth parting with the start of a question, uncertain.

“What—?”

You speak again before he can finish.

“You were marked. You were mine.”

He blinks at you. Once. Twice. The furrow in his brow deepens, lips slightly parted, his chest hitching on the inhale like he’s forgotten how to breathe. Confusion shadows his features, softens them. Makes him look younger, smaller. Almost innocent.

“I came to guide your spirit to its end,” you continue. “And instead, I found this—”

You gesture to him with a flick of your hand. “—whatever you’ve become.”

He flinches, just slightly. His eyes stay locked to you—wide, stunned, rimmed with something like disbelief. And beneath the deep brown, that faint red glow flares once more. 

You turn away from him. Not in cruelty. But in refusal.

You can feel his eyes on your back—wide, uncertain, desperate—clinging to the last thread of hope you’ve just begun to unwind. Your cloak sways behind you as you begin to pace the edge of the clearing, footsteps light against the moss, each step sharpening the fury brewing behind your ribs.

This was not the order. This was not the law.

You speak no answer to the trembling in his voice when he whispers, “Please…”

You do not flinch.

You only walk.

Circles. Patterns. You trace the same knot over and over through the trees, as though the path might unravel an answer. As though the wind might carry a correction from beyond the veil.

But there is nothing.

Only him.

Behind you, his voice fractures again—cracking open like old wood beneath too much weight.

“I don’t know what I am.”

You don’t stop.

“I can’t feel my heart—” He coughs, dry and brittle, like his lungs are forgetting how to function. The sound scrapes the back of his throat, thin and splintered. “I don’t have to breathe—”

The words hit the clearing like stones dropped in water, quiet but echoing.

Your jaw tightens. Your hands curl into fists beneath the long folds of your sleeves, nails digging into your palms—hard enough to hurt. You welcome it. Let it tether you. Still, you say nothing.

Because every word from his mouth is another proof of what’s gone wrong.

You’re trapped. A creature of passage, bound to something that refuses to cross.

Behind you, he begins to cry.

Not loudly.

Not pitifully.

But like a man unraveling—one thread at a time, each stitch loosening with quiet devastation. His breaths come in uneven gasps, catching between sobs, as though even the act of grieving is a weight too great—something that costs him more than he has left to give.

You stop walking. Only for a moment. The wind presses gently through the trees, but even it knows not to touch you.

Behind you, his breath stutters. You can hear him trying to hold it in—whatever sound grief is dragging out of him. It rattles in his throat. Sits heavy in his chest.

You turn. Just a half-step. Just enough to face him.

The movement is quiet, deliberate—like the slow turning of a clock hand. A shift in time. A shift in fate.

And he looks up.

His face is still streaked—rust-colored blood drying in uneven rivulets across his cheeks, mingling with the fresh glisten of tears that have carved their own paths. His lashes clump at the corners, weighed down by salt and sorrow. His hands rest uselessly in his lap, palms slack, fingers curled in on themselves like they’ve forgotten what they were reaching for. The red glow beneath his brown eyes has dimmed for now, but the sorrow there is no less bright.

He doesn’t speak.

He doesn’t plead.

He doesn’t lower his gaze. He only watches you. Like someone waiting for judgment.

Your gaze holds his for a single breath. Long enough for him to see what lies in your expression: not softness. Not pity. Just stillness. Something older than pain. Something he cannot yet name.

And then—you vanish.

No sound. No flash of light. Just air folding in around the place where you stood, as if your body was never there at all.

He jerks back, startled, eyes wide and glassy.

But there is no trace of you.

Not on the moss. Not in the wind. Not in the silence that swells up to fill the space you left behind.

You do not return to the realm.

You can’t.

The doorway remains closed. But there are places between.

You sink into one now.

Into the folds between the breath and the end, between dusk and the moment before dreams begin. A reaper’s sanctuary. A sliver of nothing that touches both worlds and belongs to neither.

Time slows there.

Your limbs grow light.

But even here, the tether hums.

Even here, he is still a weight beneath your ribs. And far below, in the living dark of the woods, he curls in on himself beneath the blackthorn tree—alone. His body folds inward, small against the gnarled roots and damp earth, arms wrapped tight around his ribs as if trying to hold himself together. The branches above claw at the sky, thorned and skeletal, casting broken shadows across his trembling frame.

Time drips slowly in the space between. It doesn’t move here. It folds. It shudders like breath beneath still water. And from within it, you watch him.

You don’t speak. You don’t return.

But you watch.

The first morning, he learns the sun is no longer his.

You see him wander from the woods, barefoot and staggering, face raised toward the sky like he’s seeking warmth or prayer or proof. And then—the moment sunlight touches his skin, he screams. The sound rips through the forest like a wound, wild and broken. Birds scatter. Leaves tremble.

He falls back hard, heels digging into the soil as he clutches at his face, at anything he can reach. Smoke rises instantly—thin gray ribbons lifting from his cheek, his forearm, the side of his neck where the light kissed him. Flesh blisters and cracks. The scent of it—burned skin—spools through the trees like incense from a desecrated altar. He writhes in the dirt, panting through clenched teeth. His fingers twitch violently against the scorched patches, nails scraping mud as if he could dig down far enough to escape it. He shakes his head in frantic jerks—

Like he can shake the fire out.

Like denial might undo what the sun has already taken.

You do not reach for him.

But you stay.

You watch.

The next night, hunger takes him. The slow coil tightening in his gut, winding like a serpent. The flicker of tension in his shoulders. The way his breath stutters—and then, suddenly, he flinches from the sound of it, as though even that is too loud.

Stillness becomes dread.

And then dread becomes panic.

His mouth floods with saliva he can’t swallow, thick and bitter.

His fingers twitch at his sides.

He stumbles into the woods like a man half-drunk, half-dreaming, feet dragging through moss and fallen branches, eyes wide but unfocused. His hands shake. His vision blurs.

When he finds the rabbit—small, gray, twitching at the edge of a fern—you feel his soul split down the center.

He lunges before he can think.

The snap of bone. The soft, helpless whimper. The wet, sickening tear of flesh.

When it’s over, he collapses. Falls to his knees like the act has gutted him from the inside.

He’s gagging.

Blood streaks his lips, his chin, smears across his cheek where his hand moves blindly to wipe it away. But the blood only spreads, darker now, soaking into the sleeve of his shirt.

He claws at the leaves as though he might scrub himself clean of the need.

Then, he is sick behind a tree.

You feel the shame as clearly as the tether in your chest. But you don’t move.

The third night, he calls for you.

He doesn’t say your name—not because he’s forgotten, but because he doesn’t know it.  Still, he calls.

He circles the clearing where he died—where you left him. Each slow step presses into the moss like a memory retraced, like he’s hoping his feet might find the imprint of who he was before.

He whispers apologies. He says he didn’t mean to become this. He says he doesn’t know what he is now. That he doesn’t know what to do. His voice cracks when he admits he doesn’t know what to do.

That sleep won’t take him, but dreams still come, and they’re all of you. Your voice—your eyes watching him without flinching.

He doesn’t know if he’s damned.

But he’s certain he’s yours.

He kneels in the moss, knees sinking into the soft green, hands curling loosely in his lap—fingers twitching with the effort not to reach.

You watch him look into the trees again, like he believes if he’s quiet enough, you might return. But you don’t. Because you’re still trying to understand.

The time wears differently over the weeks.

Not like the world of breath and bone. And not like the realm beyond.

The place where you are within—where seasons do not shift, but press. Where shadows stretch longer than they should. Where you exist without footsteps, without hunger, without weight. And from this still place, you continue to watch him.

The wounds never return, but the scars beneath his skin deepen.

You see it in the way he walks—less like a man, more like a creature learning how to wear flesh again. His steps grow quieter. His limbs more sure. The uncertainty doesn’t fade, not completely, but it hides behind instinct.

He doesn’t stumble anymore. Not through roots, not through shadow. He moves through the forest like he belongs to it. But he still weeps when he thinks he’s alone.

Soft, stifled sounds pressed into the crook of his arm, into the bark of a tree, into the moss beneath his knees. He hides them like bruises. But you hear them all.

He tries to resist the hunger.

The way he kneels by the stream and cups water in trembling hands, splashing it over his mouth, over his jaw, as if purity might rinse the blood from his tongue. The way he turns his head sharply when the wind shifts, when the scent of deer thickens the air. The flicker of pain in his eyes. The way his chest locks when a wounded bird flutters too close—how he holds his breath, shoulders straining, fangs just barely bared but reined in.

But in the end, he drinks. He always drinks.

From animals, never people.  Not even when he’s starving.

And afterward, you see the toll it takes.

The way his jaw tightens until the bones creak. The way he crouches low in the underbrush, back hunched, as though the shame might be carved out of him if he folds in small enough. His fingers tremble as he wipes the blood from his mouth—gentle, like he's ashamed to press too hard.

“It isn’t me. It isn’t mine. It isn’t who I was.”

Sometimes he repeats it like a prayer. Soft. Steady. A rope he clings to. And sometimes—

Like a curse.

Spat through gritted teeth, eyes flashing with something that barely holds its shape: rage, sorrow, hunger, all blurred into one.

His body changes. So slight, a stranger might not notice. But you do.

His skin no longer bruises. Not from falls, not from branches, not even when he grips his own arms too tightly in the dark. The marks simply don’t come. The hurt goes somewhere deeper now—somewhere unseen.

His eyes flash red when startled, when angry, when the hunger drags too close to the surface and threatens to take shape. But it fades quickly. He hides it well. Too well.

You see him learning how to be seen again—shoulders straighter, mouth quieter, more stillness in his presence.

As if trying to remember how it felt to be human. As if practicing. Over and over.

He speaks to you still.

Each night.

Sometimes aloud. Sometimes not.

He returns to the clearing where he died, where you first touched him. He lights a small fire there, not for warmth, but for something older—ritual, remembrance, hope. He says he doesn’t expect you to come back. But he waits.

The flame flickers low, casting amber against the curve of his cheek, the slope of his neck. Shadows move across his face like memories too old to name. He tells you the things he remembers now. The name of the girl who once braided wildflowers into his hair. The last thing his mother said before her illness took her. The name of the soldier who made him beg before they left him to die. He doesn’t speak like a man performing a ritual. He doesn’t speak like someone praying. He speaks like someone certain you are there. Like your presence still lingers in the space beside him. Like you are just beyond the firelight, listening in silence, the way you always have.

He speaks to you like you’re real. And you remain just beyond the veil, listening.

A year passes in pieces.

One night bleeding into the next. One unanswered prayer turning into silence. One desperate whisper rotting slowly into resentment.

And all the while—you continue to watch. From the space between.

You watch the way the clearing grows wilder with time. How the vines creep in around the edges, curling over the roots of the blackthorn tree where he once wept. You watch the ash pile from his nightly fires deepen, though he lights them less often now.

And you watch him.

He does not change. Not in the way mortals do. No beard growing in. No silver creeps through his hair as the seasons pass overhead. His body does not wither or waste. His face—though hardened by grief, solitude, and hunger—remains the same as the night he died. Brown eyes lit faintly from within. Lips worn red with old blood, soft at the edges but no longer tender. Skin pale, but not lifeless.

Frozen in the moment he became what he is now. A moment you were meant to shepherd him past. But you never did. And now—now, you stand at the edge of that clearing again.

The veil thins. Not with warmth. Not with invitation. But with inevitability. A split in the silence that lets you bleed through.

He is crouched at the firepit, coaxing the coals back to life, back turned to you. He moves with quiet ritual—methodical, restrained. You can tell he’s done this a thousand times before. More out of memory than necessity. Out of need to remember something human.

The fire is small, stubborn, its glow etched into the curves of his spine. He leans forward slightly, shielding it from a wind that doesn’t come, as though protecting something fragile.

The moment stretches.

Then—his body goes still.

You see it in the tightening of his shoulders. In the way his head tilts, just barely, as if his senses have caught something the wind failed to carry.

Slowly, he turns. And his eyes find yours.

The clearing does not shift. The fire does not flicker. But something in the air curls inward, taut.

He doesn’t gasp. Doesn’t rush forward. Doesn’t fall to his knees. His expression, at first, is unreadable. A blank canvas, smoothed clean by time and ache. Hollow. Flat. As though he’d buried hope too many times to recognize its shape.

And then—the edges of his mouth twitch. Not in joy. Not in awe. In pain.

A tremor of hurt dragged from somewhere deep—something he never stopped carrying.

“You finally came back.”

His voice is quieter than you remember. Rougher—like it hasn’t been used for anything but grief.

It drags from his throat slow and raw, like bone scraping through wet ash.

You say nothing.

He rises to his full height—not taller, not broader, not older than the man you left behind. But sharper. Like a blade honed against stone and self-loathing.

He’s the same.

And not.

“I thought maybe you were dead,” he says. “Or that I’d gone mad.”

He takes a step forward. Not hesitant. Not pleading. Just measured.

“Do you know how long I waited here?”

Your fingers twitch inside your sleeves. Still, you don’t answer.

His gaze sharpens—not glowing red now, but deep, dark, and edged with something you recognize too well: betrayal.

“Every night,” he says, voice low but steady, cutting through the quiet like flint on stone. “I came back to this place every night for weeks. Then months.”

Another step.

The fire throws a brief glint across his cheekbone, but it catches nothing warm.

“I called for you.”

The fire between you crackles. A spark jumps. Neither of you flinches.

“I begged you,” he says—softer now. Not broken. Just tired. “And you left me in the dirt like I was nothing.”

You close your eyes. As if that might shut the moment out, push it back behind the veil.

But it does nothing to block out his voice.

“You said I was yours.”

He isn’t asking for comfort. He isn’t pleading now. He’s just telling you the truth. And the worst part is—it’s true.

You open your eyes, and he’s watching you like he’s waiting for the sky to fall, like the moment hangs by a single fraying thread—one word away from breaking. There’s something brittle in his gaze, something straining. He wants you to speak. To say anything. A reason. A lie. A curse. But you only stand there.

Your cloak shifts with the breeze, brushing softly against your ankles like water around stone. The fire crackles between you, its warmth forgotten. You look at him for a long moment.

Long enough to see what it’s done to him. Long enough to feel the way the silence has carved into him like a second death.

He’s waiting.

Not just for an apology—though the ache for it clings to his every breath—but for something to make it make sense. Something to explain why you vanished when he needed you most. Why the one presence that tethered him to meaning left him buried in silence.

You could give him kindness. You could reach across the space and offer the softness he’s been chasing since the night he woke in the dirt. But instead, you offer the truth. The kind that cracks bone.

“I don’t owe you anything.”

Your voice is quiet. Clear as glass, and just as cold. It doesn’t need to rise to cut.

He blinks once. Slow. Like it takes effort to absorb it.

The fire between you spits suddenly—flame licking the edge of a blackened log, smoke curling toward the stars. The light dances over his features, catching the slight twitch in his jaw as it tightens.

“I didn’t choose this,” he says, barely above a whisper. His fists curl reflexively at his sides—fingers twitching, knuckles pale with restraint.

“No,” you reply, calm and cool. “You didn’t. But neither did I.”

He goes still. Stiffens like someone struck.

“You weren’t supposed to still be here,” you continue, and your voice is different now—cool, measured. Detached. Like you’re reciting lines from a story long over. “You died. I felt the end. I was summoned. I came to guide what was left of you. That is all I was ever meant to do.”

His breath catches in his throat. Sharp. Shallow. The kind of breath someone takes before breaking.

“But you didn’t die.”

Your gaze drops to the fire for a moment, as if the flames might offer a language more honest than your own.

“You stayed.”

You lift your gaze back to him.

“And I am trapped. Bound to a spirit that no longer knows its place. A soul without death. A mistake.”

He flinches at that word.

Just barely.

But it’s enough.

A flicker of something old, raw, and unhealed flashes across his face—not just pain, not just anger.

Shame.

And something that feels like betrayal turned inward.

“You weren’t supposed to remain in this world,” you say, more softly now, as if trying to convince yourself just as much. “There are laws. Rites. Paths that cannot be remade.”

The words drift out like smoke—formless at the edges, pulled thin by doubt. And then, after a beat:

“And yet… here you are.”

The silence that follows is worse than any cry.

Because he doesn’t yell.

He doesn’t fall apart.

He just watches you.

Like something inside him has quietly broken—again. But this time, he won’t beg. This time, he won’t reach. He just stands there, still and heavy and human, even as the thing inside him is anything but. He doesn’t look away. And when he finally speaks, his voice is low—measured, but not calm. There’s too much held beneath it for that. Too much scar tissue where trust used to be.

“You think I don’t know I’m not supposed to be here?”

His tone doesn’t rise. It doesn’t shake. But every word lands heavy.

“I wake up every night feeling like something’s missing. Like I’m stretched too thin over a body that isn’t mine anymore.” He takes a breath he doesn’t need. Not for oxygen—but to hold himself steady. 

“I go days without breathing. I drink blood from the necks of deer, like that makes me less of a monster.”

He steps forward.

Not threatening.

But unafraid.

Like the fire between you means nothing compared to what he’s already endured.

“And still I remember everything. The dirt. The cold. The sound my own voice made when it called for you.”

His eyes shine now—not from glow, but from wetness.

“And you were there. You were watching.”

You hold still—like stillness might make you less visible.

His voice dips lower, strained.

“I would’ve rather crossed. I would’ve rather burned.”

That stops you. Something inside you recoils.

His hands drop to his sides. His shoulders drop, just slightly. His voice, when it comes again, is quieter still.

“You talk about the laws like they’re unshakable,” he exhales. “But whatever did this to me already broke them.”

A beat.

“You just followed suit.”

That hurts.

Not like mortals do.

But it reaches you all the same.

He takes one last step, enough that the firelight dances between you now, flickering across the space that was once only silence.

“I didn’t ask to survive,” he says quietly. “But I did.” 

His throat moves in a hard swallow. His voice drops again.

“And you were the only thing left that still saw me.”

Another breath.

“And you left.”

He doesn’t spit the words.

Doesn’t lace them with hate.

Just grief.

And something far worse: understanding.

Because he’s not asking why anymore.

He already knows.

He just wishes he didn’t.

He doesn’t move again. Doesn’t demand anything.

Like he’s finally said everything he buried—A year’s worth of long nights, teeth grit against silence, words swallowed until they rotted. And now he’s laid them at your feet, bare and unadorned, and he’s waiting to see if you’ll bury them too.

You don’t speak.

Not right away.

The silence stretches again—but this time, it feels frail, not heavy. Like a thin sheet of glass balanced between two hands, too fragile to last, too precious to drop.

He watches you across the fire, but he doesn’t press. 

And somehow, that restraint—that quiet—hurts more than any accusation could have.

Because he means it.

Because he’s done begging.

And somehow, the quiet that follows his words says more than the words themselves.

You lower your gaze.

Just for a breath.

Just to get out from under the weight of what you see in his face—grief and endurance and something like mourning that never got the ending it deserved.

Your voice, when it finally comes, is softer than before.

Not kind. Not apologetic.

But softer.

“I don’t know what I am now.”

You lift your eyes to him again.

“To you.”

That admission tastes strange in your mouth. Like a thing not meant to be spoken. Not by you.

You’ve walked a thousand souls to their end. You’ve felt last breaths slip past your hands like morning mist. You’ve never questioned your purpose.

Until him.

“I was made to walk beside the dying,” you say. “To wait, to guide, to vanish when the path is taken.”

You take a small step forward, not closing the space, but bridging a fraction of it.

“You didn’t take the path.”

The fire crackles between you, low and slow.

You glance at the sigil still faint behind his ear, the mark that should have dimmed and vanished with his final breath. It still binds. Still pulses faintly beneath skin that no longer bruises.

“And now I’m here,” you finish.

There’s no ceremony to your words. No answer buried in them. Just truth. And the hollowness that comes with it.

You take another breath—out of habit, not need.

“Perhaps I was wrong,” you murmur. “To think I had a choice.”

You look at him, really look, and for the first time in a year, the distance between you doesn’t feel as wide.

“But I don’t know what to do with this.”

You don’t say with you.

But it hangs there, just beneath the surface.

He watches you as you speak.

Doesn’t interrupt. Doesn’t flinch.

But you can see it—how his mouth tightens at the corners, how something in his shoulders softens, just slightly. Not trust. Not forgiveness.

But something.

You let the silence settle again, this time without fear.

When he finally responds, his voice is quieter than before. Less sure. Like each word is placed carefully ahead of him, the way one might test ice they’re not sure will hold.

“I don’t know what I am to you either.”

His eyes drop to the fire.

The glow flickers against his cheeks, catching on the curve of his lashes.

“I thought I did. I thought… if I could just see you again, you’d explain it. Or fix it. Or… take it away.”

He shakes his head once. Not in anger. Just in resignation.

“But you can’t.”

You don’t correct him.

Because he’s right.

The fire crackles low—just ember and breath now. The light paints soft shapes across the forest floor, kissing the hem of your cloak.

And then, quietly, you move.

You walk around the edge of the firepit and lower yourself into a slow, careful sit—across from him, back straight, legs folded beneath your robe. The moss gives softly beneath you. Your hands rest in your lap. Still. Waiting. Unoffering, but open.

You don’t look at him.

But you feel his eyes settle on you.

The fire shifts again, a soft exhale of light.

And then, after a long moment, so does he.

He stands there for a second longer—wavering—before finally stepping around the flames. He lowers himself to the ground beside you, not too close, but near enough that you can feel the slight displacement of air when he exhales.

He doesn’t speak.

Neither do you.

You both watch the fire as it gutters and glows, rising and falling like a breath shared between the quiet.

The silence lingers. Not sharp. Not cruel. Just present.

And after some stillness, his voice comes again—low, careful:

“Will you stay?”

You glance toward him.

The question isn’t wounded now. Just tired. Just honest.

You return your gaze to the fire.

And offer the truth:

“I don’t have a choice.”

You expect a wince.

A bitter laugh. A word of protest.

But instead, he nods—just once. Barely more than a movement. And the breath he lets out feels steadier than any you’ve heard from him in a year.

Time no longer walks the way it used to.

Not for either of you.

In the years that follow, the path unravels like thread from an old garment—slow, fraying, without rhythm. There is no destination. Only forward. And so you move.

Not together, at first. But never apart.

It begins in the hollows of Ireland, in lands where the wind still speaks the names of gods older than prayer. You walk through stone-ringed pastures where the sheep scatter at the sound of your steps. The rivers run black in winter, swollen with rain, and he crosses them barefoot without complaint.

You keep to the forests by day, sleeping in the folds of ash trees and thick green hollows. He can’t stand the sun. You cannot feel it. So you wait in shadow, and he waits with you.

Nights are long. Quiet. Often, there are no words.

But there is always the fire.

Fires that burn low, like hearts that never learned how to blaze, only how to survive when coaxed.

He builds them—tightly wound, small, like hearts that burn only when coaxed. You sit across from him. Always across. Never beside. At least, not at first.

Sometimes he speaks. Sometimes you do. More often, it’s silence that holds the shape of your thoughts. The kind that settles gently between you, soft as moss. The kind that doesn’t ask for anything but presence.

Still, something shifts.

One night, without looking up, he tosses you a small, crumbling piece of bread.

Rough-edged. Stale. Stolen from the cellar of some monastery whose name he doesn’t bother to remember. You don’t eat it. You weren’t made to. But you take it anyway. Hold it between your palms until it crumbles.

And he watches.

That’s enough.

Months pass. Then seasons. Then years.

After the fifth year, something shifts.

It starts with a child—barefoot and wide-eyed, crouched behind the slope of a mossy stone. He watches you pass without blinking. When you glance back, he does not flinch. He only points. Later, when the townswomen speak of spirits, they describe your face too clearly. Say your hair moved without wind. Say your feet never touched the ground.

By the seventh year, the whispers grow teeth.

You catch the eyes of old women who cross themselves too late. Of shepherds who mutter prayers in tongues half-forgotten. Your body, once veiled by the grace of the in-between, begins to cast a shadow. You startle horses. When you attempt to blend in by drinking, the wells now dry. The moss refuses to grow where you sit too long.

The veil, thinned by time, can no longer keep you hidden.

You are seen.

Not fully. But enough for the world to remember you do not belong to it.

And still, you stay.

Because he does.

The trees change. The shape of the earth beneath your feet changes. The air tastes different—less wild. Less whole. You cross into the edges of what will one day be Wales, though no one calls it that yet.

The people there speak a language rougher than Gaeilge, full of throat and breath. He picks it up with a strange ease. You don’t. You don’t need to.

But you listen.

He trades with wandering herdsmen in the misty hills—salt for leather, flint for fish. His face never ages. He keeps his hood low, his eyes down. 

His face never changes.

Not a line. Not a mark.

And that alone draws suspicion. 

When they ask questions, he lies. When they ask too many, you’re gone by morning.

You don’t interfere.

But you never let him go far.

In Cornwall, you sleep in sea caves, tucked beneath cliffs carved by a furious tide. There’s salt in the cuts he earns after feeding from a wild boar that fights harder than expected—gashes torn into his side, jagged and deep.

He can heal. He always does.

But not always well.

He learned that the hard way.

When his wrist once mended wrong after a fall, bones knitting at odd angles. You’d watched as he grit his teeth, re-broke it himself, and splinted it with driftwood and torn cloth. It healed properly in a few hours. But he didn’t forget the pain.

So now—he sits still as you reach for him.

You stitch the wound without asking.

Thread pulling through skin that’s already starting to knit itself back together. Helping it along. Guiding it clean.

He doesn’t thank you.

But he doesn’t flinch.

And he doesn’t look away.

And that is enough.

You soon begin to notice things.

How he’s stopped wiping the blood from his mouth like it shames him.

How he pauses before killing a fox, but not a stag.

How he walks ahead of you now, sometimes. Never far. Just a few paces.

Just enough to feel like he’s leading.

But not enough to forget who follows.

In lands with no names—thick with fog and fern—you pass burial grounds left untouched by even the crows. You feel the stillness before you step into them. It hums beneath your ribs. It quiets the world. 

He doesn’t speak when you do. He knows what it means when your eyes darken, when your breath shortens, even if your lungs are nothing but form now, a mimicry of life.

You feel things there.

Spirits half-crossed. Bones disturbed. Graves that never learned how to rest.

He stands beside you, always, waiting until your hand lowers, until your gaze lifts again. He never asks what you see.

And you never tell him.

But still, he waits.

Years deepen the shape of his silence. But it changes, too.

It grows less jagged.

One spring, the rain doesn’t stop for three days.

He offers you his cloak when the rain won’t stop. You refuse. You don’t feel cold. He knows that.

Still, he leaves it near your feet. And you carry it the next day.

You never sleep.

But you rest. You sit sometimes, unmoving. You watch the wind move through grass.

He finds that odd. Says so.

“You seem so still,” he says one night beside a fire in the highlands, voice barely more than breath. “I thought you were made of motion.”

You stare into the flame for a long moment before answering.

“I’m not made of anything anymore,” you answer.

He doesn’t speak after that.

But he doesn’t look away.

Eventually, you forget how long it’s been.

The seasons blur. Time bends.

In some villages, they call him a shadow. 

A flicker seen in the woods too late at night.

A whisper that causes the dogs to stop barking.

In others, a curse. 

A pale man with eyes too old, who trades in silence and never lingers long.

Once, in a place so small it has no name,

A woman finds him near a well.

She presses a flower into his palm—soft, wilted at the edges—and calls him blessed.

Says he has the look of someone who’s seen both ends of life and still walks.

He doesn’t take it.

His hand stays at his side. His eyes flicker once, not with cruelty but with something like fear.

You take it instead.

Fingers brushing hers as you lift the bloom

He watches you thread it through your cloak.

And though he says nothing, his mouth tilts, almost—but not quite—toward a smile.

The path continues.

New rivers. New hills. New languages that twist the tongue.

But always the same two figures walking just beyond the edge of what the world can understand: one dead who won’t decay, and one who was never born at all.

Seventy years pass.

The land shifts beneath your feet, quicker now.

Faster than memory can hold. Faster than names can root.

You see it in the roads—how they harden beneath iron and hoof, then wheel and blade. In the forests—how they thin and break, felled by hands that do not ask. In the people—how they stand taller, speak sharper, move with coin in their palms and conquest in their gaze.

You and he remain unchanged.

But everything else forgets.

At first, he tries to carry it with him—his home.

The tongue of his childhood. The soil in his voice. The way his feet move more softly across peat and moor than they ever will on these new stone roads.

He hums old songs under his breath—half-remembered lullabies that once quieted lambs and babes. He recites proverbs to the firelight like they’re offerings, left for ghosts who no longer answer. Once, he even scratches ogham into a tree trunk with a dagger, slow and careful.

You don’t ask him why.

But you remember how long he stood there after, hand resting on the bark like he was afraid to let go. Like the tree might forget him, too.

By the twentieth year, the songs fade. The proverbs stop.

He still walks with you. Still hunts, still feeds, still disappears into the night before sunrise. But something in him begins to withdraw—not from you, but from the world.

The languages change around him.

New dialects. New rulers. Flags and lines drawn on land that never asked for them.

He hears the shift in accents. The soft vowels and breathy consonants washed over, replaced by harsher tongues.

And he begins to fall silent.

By the fortieth year, he no longer speaks the old words aloud.

Not even in dreams.

He keeps to himself more now. Wanders further ahead at night. You still meet again at each dusk, but the space between you grows. Not physically. Not tether-deep.

But soul-deep.

He stares longer into fires now. Walks longer without speaking.

You catch him once, crouched in the ruins of a stone cottage so old the roof has collapsed. The hearth remains. Barely. Its stones moss-covered. Blackened from use long before either of you reached it.

He says nothing.

But his hand rests on one of the stones. Thumb dragging slowly along its edge.

There are words carved there—faint, worn.

You recognize them.

But you don’t speak them aloud.

Neither does he.

By the sixtieth year, he avoids villages entirely.

“They don’t hear me right,” he mutters, voice more gravel than breath. “Not like they used to.”

You know what he means.

They hear his words, but not their shape. His name, but not its weight.

His voice no longer fits in the world around him.

And it eats at him.

Silently. Constantly.

Like a sun that never rises. That only ever lingers just beyond the hills.

By the seventieth year, his gait is different.

Still strong. Still fast.

But quieter now. Smaller.

He doesn’t speak unless spoken to. Doesn’t hunt with the same fury. Doesn’t reach for firewood until you already have.

There’s a night—deep in the Black Forest, or what the people call it now—when you find him with his back to a crumbling wall, his hand pressed to his face like he’s trying to hold something inside.

He doesn’t look up when you approach.

But he says, quietly, in perfect Gaeilge:

“I had a sister once.”

It’s the first time he’s spoken the old tongue in over a decade.

You don’t interrupt.

He lowers his hand.

“Niamh. That was her name.”

A pause.

“I haven’t said it in… I don’t know how long.”

He closes his eyes.

“Sometimes I forget the sound of her laugh.”

Your throat tightens.

Not from emotion. But from something like mourning. A mourning not born of love, but of pattern of watching the past unravel thread by thread inside someone who still carries it like a wound.

Because the past is still alive inside him. But its name is starting to rot.

You walk with him still.

Across rivers, mountains, borders.

But he no longer watches the land the same way. He doesn’t stop to press his hand to the soil, or smile at the sight of heather in bloom. He doesn’t collect stories from the elders in passing towns, or nod along to songs played by shepherds near the fire.

He’s forgetting.

Not by choice.

But by distance.

And even you, eternal as you are, cannot bridge that space.

Not even with both hands.

The night is cold and dry.

The kind of cold that doesn’t bite, only seeps. A stillness that nestles beneath your skin and settles there. The sky above is the color of ash, the clouds thin as gauze. You are somewhere near the edge of a border that didn’t exist when you first walked this land—another invisible line etched into soil by men who will not outlive the season.

The forest here is sparse. Just bramble and skeletal trees, their limbs brittle with frost, reaching toward the sky like bone fingers clawing for something long lost. The path beneath your feet is uneven, half-swallowed by roots, the air still as glass.

He walks ahead.

He has for most of the night.

You keep close—close enough to feel the gentle tug of the tether still strung between you, humming faintly beneath your ribs. But you do not call to him. He hasn’t spoken in days. The silence has stopped feeling sharp, but it hasn’t softened. It’s become something else—unsettled. A string drawn too tight, vibrating quietly under every step.

Just before dawn, the trees thin.

You reach a clearing.

He stops.

Not suddenly. Not deliberately. More like something has risen from the ground and wrapped around his legs—caught him mid-stride, mid-thought, mid-whoever he was trying to be.

He stares out over the hills.

Low and pale, dusted with frost. A few scattered stones buried beneath snow. The wind moves gently through the dry grass, but the land itself feels hollow. Empty in that particular way only time can make a place. It is nothing special. Nothing sacred. A place without a name.

But he does not move.

He stands still, shoulders slightly slack, hands loose at his sides. His lips part—not to speak, not at first, but as if the act of breathing requires remembering how. There’s something fragile in the way he holds himself. Like a man just beginning to notice he’s been bleeding.

Then, quietly—barely more than breath:

“I don’t remember the sound of my own name.”

The words fall into the space between you like snowfall—soft, disarming, but heavy in the places it lands. You don’t answer. You don’t interrupt. Because he isn’t speaking to you.

He’s looking forward, eyes unfocused, gaze fixed on something far away. Something you can’t see. Something he might not even remember.

“I remember my sister’s,” he murmurs. “Niamh.”

There’s a glint of warmth in his voice—a flicker, brief as candlelight—but it dies before it can hold. “I remember my mother’s, too.”

Then his voice thins, stretches.

“But mine…”

He falters.

Closes his eyes.

“I’ve heard others say it. Whisper it. Spit it like a curse. But it doesn’t sound right anymore. Not in their mouths. Not in mine.”

The wind shifts around you, brittle and tired, threading through the trees like a memory trying to find its shape.

He swallows, as if the air hurts to hold.

“And I think… I think I might’ve once had a song.”

His voice drifts. So faint, it almost doesn’t reach you.

“A small one. Something my mother hummed when I couldn’t sleep.”

Then—it breaks.

Not loudly. Not suddenly.

It cracks the way old beams do—quiet, low, the sound of something giving way after bearing too much weight for far too long.

“But I can’t find it,” he says. “I can’t hear it anymore. I try, but it’s gone. And I can’t get it back.”

His hands rise to his face. Not to hide it. But to hold it. As if the shape of himself might slip through his fingers if he doesn’t hold still. As if he might finally unravel into something unrecognizable.

“I thought I could carry it,” he says. “The land. The language. The shape of who I was.”

He breathes in—sharp, uneven. Like he’s trying to recall the air he once called home. Trying to remember what it was like to breathe before his body forgot how.

“But every year that passes,” he continues, “it slips further away. My voice—my thoughts—they don’t sound like me anymore. They sound like what I’ve had to become.”

His arms fall, slowly, as though even that motion costs him something.

“They sound like someone I don’t know.”

You say nothing. There is nothing to say.

Even breath feels too loud—an intrusion into something important.

Then he turns to you.

And for the first time in decades, maybe longer, the red beneath his eyes isn’t hunger. It isn’t rage.

It’s grief.

“I don’t know who I am without it.”

The words aren’t loud. They aren’t dramatic. They’re quiet—like a thought said aloud by accident. But they land heavy. As if the weight of it had been building for years and only now found a place to rest.

“I don’t know who I was, either.”

His arms fall to his sides. Loose. Unguarded. Like something inside him has simply let go. Not broken—just… released.

“I feel like I’ve buried myself,” he says. “One piece at a time. And now I don’t know where I left the last of me.”

He looks down, not at you, but at his hands—bloodless, trembling, empty. Hands that once held language like light. Like something precious. Hands that forgot how to hold anything at all.

“I don’t even know how to be homesick anymore.”

The confession is soft. But it hits like stone. Like the kind placed over graves. A marker with no name.

He stands in the brittle wind, unmoving. No longer reaching for memory. No longer trying to explain. Just standing there.

Hollow.

Waiting.

For what, you don’t know. Maybe for something even he doesn’t believe exists anymore.

The silence that follows stretches thin between you. Not cruel. But full. Like a room after something has shattered, and no one dares move—afraid even to breathe near the broken edges.

You don’t look at him right away.

Your eyes drift out across the clearing instead. The horizon rolls quiet and pale, strewn with bone-white grass and snow caught in the hollows. There is no altar here. No grave. No name carved into stone. Just open land.

Stripped bare.

And maybe that’s why he chose this place. To speak grief into emptiness. To let it vanish.

But he isn’t alone.

You are still here.

You take a step toward him. Slow. Careful. Your cloak brushes softly against the frost-hardened earth.

“I remember your voice.”

He looks at you, startled. Not sharply. Not with denial.

But with something quieter.

Something close to ache.

You keep your gaze forward. Give him the dignity of not watching him break.

“You don’t speak like them,” you say. “Not completely. Even now—after all these years. The old tongue still lives in your mouth. You carry it without meaning to.”

You glance toward him. His eyes are wide, rimmed with red, wet at the corners.

“You haven’t lost everything.”

Your voice isn’t warm. It isn’t meant to be.

But it’s steady. And it’s true.

And that, sometimes, is more enduring than comfort.

You let the quiet settle again. Let it hold between you—not a wall, but a pause. Then, with care, you reach into the folds of your cloak. Into the place where you keep what little the world has not managed to take. You draw it out.

A small bundle of cloth, frayed at the edges, wrapped around something thin and stiff. Your hands move slow as you kneel, pressing it gently into the frost. Your robes whisper over the grass as you crouch beside him.

You unwrap it.

Inside is a strip of bark. Aged. Darkened. But intact.

The ogham carved into its grain is crooked. Deep. The lines uneven, almost clumsy—but still legible. Still there.

“I took it,” you say softly. “From the tree. After you left it behind.”

He stares at it like he’s afraid it will vanish.

“I didn’t understand why you did it then,” you murmur. “But I knew it mattered.”

You rise again. No rustle. No sound.

“And I kept it.”

For a long time, he says nothing.

Then, slowly—he steps forward. Drops to his knees.

His hand reaches out, but it doesn’t touch. It hovers, trembling, as though he’s unsure if he still has the right.

Then, in a voice that doesn’t sound like his, soft and broken:

“It’s my name.”

You nod. Just once.

“Still here.”

He exhales like it hurts. His fingers brush the grooves, slow and reverent, like reading the lines by feel alone.

He closes his eyes.

His head bows.

His body folds—not in collapse, but in return. A posture you remember. A shape you’ve seen before. The man who knelt before the tree, who whispered his name into bark, hoping someone would remember it if he didn’t.

You do not touch him. There is no need.

Some moments should not be interrupted.

But you sit beside him.

Not as a guide. Not as a tether. Not as whatever the veil once made you. Just—there.

Close now. Closer than you’ve been in lifetimes. Close enough that the space between you no longer feels like exile. Close enough that your presence steadies the air, gives shape to the quiet. Not with words. Not with touch. Just with being.

He doesn't look at you. But when he breathes—slow, deliberate, not out of necessity, but out of need—you stay.

You both stay. Neither rising. Neither rushing the moment.

While the wind stirs gently through the hollow grass. While the frost holds fast to the ground like a secret not yet ready to thaw. While the sky begins to pale in the east—not sunrise, not yet, but the promise of one.

And there, in that stillness, in that thin, open ache—something inside him shifts.

Not loudly. Not all at once. But you feel it.

The way deep roots might feel the first loosened stone after centuries of silence.

Something buried—something long thought lost—begins to stir in him again. Not fully. Not entirely. Just enough to lift its head.

Just enough to remember that it once had a name.

if anyone wants to be put on the taglist for this, let me know !

[flixpii]

i have to read the other rockstar!remmick ones 😩

learning the ropes with rockstar!remmick

haiiigh tumblrinas. thanks for waiting for me had a busy weekend. not so much nasty in this enjoy some fighting.

You sit back on your haunches, blood staining your mouth and rolling in viscous rivulets down your chin. You spit up a feather. The ravaged pigeon in front of you never registered as a living thing, only as something still warm that your fangs– foreign and imposing in your mouth– could sink into and devour. You wipe at your mouth with the back of your hand. 

Remmick leans against the wall just outside the shower. 

“Good. Messy, but good. You’ll learn.” He takes the animal and throws it in the bin, watching you clean your hands, licking and sucking on your own fingers. Fledglings. Always so barbaric. 

You couldn’t feel more animal right now. The intense heat of your turning has subsided and you now feel icy to the touch. You sit on your knees in the shower of your home, completely naked. 

“You feed like this until you’ve learned how not to make a mess, sugar,” he told you, breaking the pigeon’s neck and tossing it to you. “Easy cleanup.”

You’re panting when you look up at him. Opening your mouth, only a thick strand of drool drips from your lips and joins the small splatters of blood on the floor. 

“How ‘bout you wash up ‘n we talk a little?”

Cleaned but still ravenous, you exit the bathroom in your robe, skittish and scared. 

“Shit. You still hungry, huh?” 

You nod.

“C’mere.”

With a clawed thumb, Remmick makes a cut on his chest and you lunge forward, lapping it up feverishly. You’ve never needed something so badly in your life. Your hands grip his shoulders and he pulls you into his lap. Your legs slide apart and you straddle him as you drink him down. It’s thick and rich, not like your own blood you tasted back at the stadium. It’s a heavy copper taste, like sucking on a penny. When his skin fuses together in a slow, sickly display, he pats your back even as you continue licking him. 

“That’s enough, now. You’re alright.”

He gently pulls you back by the collar of your robe, meeting your white, reflective eyes. 

“Y’so pretty like this. Blood all over your mouth. Cute ‘lil fangs.” Once again you try to speak and only drool leaves your mouth, staining the fluffy fabric of your robe. 

“That stain will never come out,” you whine.

“There she is,” he murmurs. “Missed you. Been dealin’ with a crazy kitten.”

You snarl at him.

“You’re such an asshole,” you huff weakly, getting up from his lap. You toss yourself onto your bed dramatically.

“Dear diary, I have the worst maker ever,” he mocks you, following you to sit at the end of it.

“Don’t call yourself my maker, I’m literally going to throw up,” you shoot at him. 

Your mind goes blank suddenly, and you blink slowly as you gaze at him sweetly. You shake your head and narrow your eyes. 

“Did you just fucking mind control me?” “No,” he lies, smiling at you. 

You grab the nearest thing– a plush pillow in the shape of a crescent moon– and hit him with it. 

“Don’t do that! Dickhead!”

The plush bounces off of his arms, crossed in front of him. 

“Hey! Quit that!”

“Let’s make some rules, right now.”

“Rules? I made you-”

“Without asking me! Without my permission, w-without me knowing what the fuck- you- were!” you punctuate each of your last words with a hit.

You hit him with the pillow one last time and he grabs it with his claws, tearing the fabric. 

“Stop it now,” he barks at you, the last word making you lose your grip, dropping it into your lap. 

“I said don’t do that,” you repeat, your voice shaking. You cradle the pillow. It had been a gift from Smarty. You almost start crying again when you think about the girls, about all of your friends and how you’ll never be able to face them like this again. If that was how you reacted to a pigeon, you shudder to think how you’d feel about a person. 

Remmick has a sympathetic expression on.

“Don’t pity me,” you croak.

“It ain’t pity. I can feel what you feel now.”

“So… it’s like… what?”

“It’s a hivemind-”

“Oh my God. Please say you’re kidding. Please use another word.”

He scrubs a hand down his face and shakes his head, sighing out of guilt.

“No.”

“So… it’s not a song about having an orgy, it’s a song about being a fucking monster?”

“You are not a monster-”

“Oh, I know I’m not. You are.”

Remmick finally sits up, his red eyes catching the light. You kick yourself mentally. 

How much more stupid could you have been?

He grabs your arm and suddenly you feel a weight on you. A cloud in your mind, an ache in your heart. 

“Feel that? Feel all’a that. That’s me. Decades and decades and fuckin’ centuries of me,” he snarls. 

You cry out, feeling another wave of anguish. 

“And that’s everybody else. Every person these pearly whites ever bit into, every single one that ever made that switch over to my side.”

“Stop, stop, make it stop,” you beg him. 

He releases your hand. It doesn’t feel like it used to, with the blood rushing back and warming the area. You just feel nothing.

“You still got blood,” he says, answering your question before you ask. “Hell, yours is still fresh in there. Mine’s old.”

“How old are you?”

He sits back and stares at you.

“Oh my God,” you sigh, face in your hands. “So… so what, am I some… some face that looks like your old lover?”

“I never had someone like you,” he murmurs. 

You lay back, grabbing a pillow from beside you to muffle your frustrated scream.

“What about my career?” you snarl.

“You jokin’?”

He smirks at you, all fangs and spit.

“Baby, you’re about to be the most famous girl in the world.”

After a very, very apologetic call to Marcia about how sorry you were about the 72-hour bender you and Remmick went on after going public, you– much to her annoyance– also inform her of your new hours of business. Strictly after sundown.

“Doctor’s orders,” Remmick jokes as you hang up the phone and shove him lightly. You intend for it to be light, but he goes back hard.

“Shit. I… sorry.”

You pull him back to sit up, gently this time.

“Gettin’ used to that new strength, huh?”

“I guess so.”

“Y’know you got some serious stamina, too,” he offers.

You notice his legs are spread wide and you can feel through that throbbing scar on your shoulder that he wants you. Your eyes wander to the bulge in his flannel pants.

“Fuck,” he breathes. “Fuck, baby, y-you always feel it like that?”

His hand reaches out– slow, cautious, like you’re a stray cat– and delicately splays over your tummy. 

“I-I never felt warm like this before…”

“I’m sure I’m not the first girl you sucked and fucked,” you snark dryly.

“I had plenty of girls, sure, but-”

“Don’t say some shit about me being special.”

“You are special.”

“Not without you. You’re half the reason I’m as famous as I am right now. Fuck, Rem, I might win my first Grammy because of you. B-because of the music I made about you.”

“You think I just turned you cause I can?”

His hand cups your face and he blinks at you slow. His lids are heavy–not from sleep but from how bad he needs you.

“Ain’t had you since I made you,” he says.

“You don’t even deserve it.”

“Gonna make me earn it?” he husks, his lips ghosting yours. “Can feel how much you want it… feel you- ngh- f-feel you clench up like that.”

You feel a phantom spasm and your shoulders jolt up. He chuckles.

“What was that?”

“Me twitchin’ for you.”

“That was so weird.”

“Yeah. Hivemind’ll get to you.”

He leans forward to kiss you. It’s new, it feels like your first kiss a second time over. You both hold each other, you’re aware of the coolness of his skin and the odd clammy feeling of your own hands. You’re all over each other, hands on him and yourself at the same time, pulling off clothes as he licks the inside of your mouth. Your fangs slide down and nick his lip.

“M’sorry,” you apologise quickly, drool dripping from one corner of your mouth. 

Remmick licks up the side of your neck and collects all that spit, his mouth latching over yours as his fangs bump against yours. You expect it to be painful but it almost feels good, a little too sensitive and too intimate. 

He moans in your mouth as he tugs you into his lap. You reach down to shove your shorts and panties down and he shoves up your shirt, latching his mouth to your breast as he shoves his own pants down. You peel your shirt off and feel his fangs graze your nipple, making you both shudder. Once you’re both naked he takes a shaky breath, holding your hips.

“Fu-ck, y-y’drippin’ on it,” he moans, watching your cunt just hovering above his cock. 

He pulls you down just slightly, just he can slip himself between your folds, just cradled in that wet heat as you slide yourself up and down him.

“I want it inside,” you beg him, trying to fight his strong grip.

“I do too, I know, y-you gotta just learn to take the f-feeling of us both,” he manages to say. “Fuck, baby,” he whimpers. “I-it feels so good, sugar, fu-ck, i-it’s so hard,” he gasps, feeling his head rub against your clit. 

“Is it th-that soft?” you ask him breathlessly.

He nods, eyes closed and bottom lip between his teeth.

“So soft, baby. Y’so soft, so wet… you’re tight like fuckin’- motherfucker,” he groans when you slip from his grasp and the tip of his cock catches on your soaking hole. 

“Oh my God.”

You are tight. So tight around his cock, but pulling him in all at once. It’s even softer inside, grip like a vice but soft, and soaking his cock, dripping down to his balls. 

“No more blood but this pussy’s so fuckin’ wet for me,” he growls, his hips bucking to meet you when he bottoms out.

You close your eyes, trying to focus in the overwhelming sensation of feeling him fuck you and feeling yourself wrapped around his cock. Your hands plant on his stomach and you slowly raise yourself up, trying to get the best angle to feel that spot inside of you. It’s just as soft, but less of a drooling muscle and more of a delicate spongy spot you can nudge against. He can nudge against.

“That’s it, pretty thing. You show me how to fuck you. Just fuck yourself on this dick… let it fuck you back.”

Eyes still closed, trying to tune yourself to his frequency, you both find a rhythm. You rock on him while he rolls his hips up, hands on your waist to guide you. You throw your head back and he suddenly sits up, sinking his fangs into your neck. Where your wound had previously gushed blood, it’s now a slow and steady pulse. He pulls a choked whimper from your throat as he sucks, drinking your blood. He lavs at the bite like an animal, his tongue pushing against the shallow lacerations. It doesn’t hurt, it feels amazing. You’re clenching around him as he does, your hands weakly gripping his flexed biceps as your cunt slips down on him again and again in a quick, punishing rhythm. You find he can be a lot rougher than before, and you’re panting with your tongue out as you feel your wound closing, the flesh resealing itself. You would have probably gagged at that in your first 24 hours, but now you’re reveling in how fucking strong you are. 

Remmick presses open-mouthed kisses to the side of your throat, heated and reverent and sloppy, drool spilling down to your breasts. Your hand curls into his hair and pulls him back from you. He’s panting like you are, and dives tongue first to kiss you. Without his arms holding you up, you fall to the side together, and he manhandles you onto your back. The softness of your thighs in his capable hands as he shoves you down onto the bed, hooking a leg over his hip while he drives into you.

“C’mon, dirty girl. C’mon, cum all over this cock. Cum on this cock ‘n make me feel how fuckin’ slutty you are,” he begs you, kissing your jaw and nipping at your earlobe. He gasps in your ear, whimpering when you hook both legs around him, locking him in place, only allowing him to rock his hips slightly, grinding into you.

“You’re mine, Rem…”

“All yours, baby. Make it yours. Cum for me, please. Please, baby…”

His mouth slots over yours again as a pitiful warmth pools in your tummy and you cry into his mouth, milking his cock. He bites your lip, licking the blood away, his arms shaking as he tries to stay upright but just ends up putting his weight on your body, rocking into you until he’s spilling into your cunt, head bumping your cervix. 

You both catch your breath and he pulls out.

“Can I still get pregnant?”

“Not anymore, sweet thing.”

“Do that again,” you demand, pulling on his arm. 

You check your makeup in the mirror.

“So… where does the mirror thing come from?”

“They used to be made with silver, so we couldn’t see ourselves.”

“I can’t wear silver anymore?”

“You can’t even touch silver, baby.”

You sigh and look at the sunglasses laid out on the vanity.

“They have to be dark or you look like a cat with the flash,” Remmick reminds you, messing up his hair with his hands. 

His effortless tousled look actually takes quite a bit of effort.

“I know, I know. Ugh, sunglasses at night is just… so not me.”

He comes up behind you, his lips pressing to your shoulder. 

“Fuck, you look so good.”

“Can you see my bite?”

“I can see where I’m gonna leave the next one,” he purrs, kissing your neck.

You wave him away and go back to musing over your eyewear. You hold up a folded pair and test it with your outfit.

“None of these work.”

You sigh and he slides his onto his face. You watch his red eyes disappear behind the lenses and perk up. 

“Got an idea?” 

“Do you have an extra pair?”

“For you?”

“Oh, c’mon, me wearing your glasses? They’ll eat that up.”

You come behind him now, your arms wrapping around his waist and your fingers dance over his waistband. This one is decorated with doodles, little hearts and stars you drew on the morning before he turned you. 

You’re frozen thinking about what you are now when he turns back to kiss your cheek.

“You’re gonna be hungry. You feel it, you just give me the word, we go to the bathroom and I’ll feed you.” 

You nod, trying to steel your nerves.

At the party, you hold Remmick’s arm tight. This is the first time you’ve been seen together since the show in LA, and that isn’t even what’s scaring you. The overwhelming pound of hearts had you almost wanting to bail out of the event, until Remmick had soothed you through the hivemind– and earned a slap on the arm for it. 

You sincerely hope nobody thinks you’re on drugs, but you can’t help the way you’re staring at people. You listen to blood vessels sending their blood from tops to toes of everyone around you, and you’re almost tearing into your skirt with how tight you grip it.

“All you gotta do is hold on for one more hour,” Remmick murmurs in your ear. “We eat at home, then I’ll fuck you right, sweet thing.” 

You whimper, a tiny, pathetic sound. He squeezes your shoulder.

“I know. I know, baby.” 

You feel the familiar 4/4 rhythm and hear the synth-heaving intro of Right to My Face, adding insult to injury. You’re starving, but you’re fiending for him just as bad, resisting your animal urge to drop on your knees and suck him dry. 

Another rocker comes over to Remmick and they start to talk about guitars. You put on your most polite smile and lean on his shoulder to listen, your eyes fixed on his jugular, and you can hear the blood in him moving. 

“Hey, congrats for you two. Your new stuff is pretty good,” he tells you.

“Thank you,” you nearly whisper.

He gives you a funny look.

“We went a little hard last night,” Remmick shrugs. “She’s still on a come down.”

The other guy laughs.

“Right. Later, man.”

“See you.” 

He squeezes your thigh.

“That was good. Just try to remember what it was like before.”

“How do you do it?”

“Sugar, every ten years or so I hafta relearn slang, I gotta change how I dress and how I act.”

“Really?”

“First time bein’ so public, but yeah.”

“What about… when people notice you aged?”

“‘Lil glamour for now. Soon enough I’ll be gone. I’ll say I retired or I’ll fake my death in a plane crash or somethin’. Pop up again in twenty-ish years, whole new me.”

One of the tour roadies passes you. You recognise him from the night you got turned, and your anxiety spikes. You feel his own anxiety through that bond, which pulls tight like a belt snapping against itself. Remmick shoots him a look and he scurries away. 

“What was that?” you ask, trembling.

“It’s like… feedback on a microphone. He’s the newest of us. Well, besides you.”

“H-how old is he?”

“‘Bout a month.” You whine, pushing your face into Remmick’s shoulder.

“How is he holding it together so well?”

“‘Cause of me.”

You look up and huff.

“Why can’t you do that for me?”

“You said no mind control,” he reminds you, his tongue flicking out on the L sound.

Fucking hot demon. It gives you a good idea for a song though.

“You ready to go?”

“I think so.”

You repeat your nighttime routine. Strip, devour, shower, and ride Remmick like your life depends on it. 

You sit on top of him, out of breath and bone-tired. You’re both exhausted and soaked in sweat, drool, and cum. 

“Sun’ll be up in an hour, sweetheart,” he murmurs, kissing your temple.

“I know,” you breathe.

“Got some good pictures of us tonight. It’ll be good. We work on that bad girl thing, shit, you’ll be a star.”

“I am a star.”

He kisses your forehead.

“Mm, my North star.”

taglist:

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[flixpii]

first part of the reaper wip ( the sky was the first witness ) will be posted tonight at around 8 🥲

it is a reader & remmick but it’s platonic please trust the process

it’s very much soulmate-ish