#✞┊❛ a shadow in truth ❜ ( visage )

[onigiram]

TAGS. i didn't like the other ones asjbfjbsdjgb

[themissilesilo]

Tag Dump!

[muntitled]

𝘽𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣 & 𝙃𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙩

: ̗̀➛ Mattheo Riddle x Fem!reader | Brief!Harry Potter x fem!reader

: ̗̀➛ Summary: Jealousy makes the heart grow fonder.

: ̗̀➛ Warnings: Alcoholism, Dark!fic, Ravenclaw!reader, Bullying, Unrequited Love, Shy!reader, Toxic Relationship, Jealousy, Narcissism, Weaponizing!Harry (sorry boo), Fluff, A bit of Angst, Smut +18 (Minors DNI), DubCon, Semi Public sex, Unprotected Sex, Oral Sex, Masturbation, Dom/Sub, CNC, humping, Spitting, Degradation, Dacryphillia, Choking, Gagging, Subspace, Slapping, Sadism, Breeding Kink

5k words

A/N: Hell truly is empty. I apologise in advance.

You have made peace with the incomparable fact, long ago, that if the muggle God existed - if he is known to shepard Muggles and Wizards alike, then he was far too busy to attend to you. There is just too much going on all at once. The wizarding world is caught in its archaic intolerance of Half-Bloods. On the mortal side, you were informed from your private tutoring with Professor McGonagall that their smartphones are threatening devolution.

“It’s the closest thing they’ve got to a wand, Lovie, so we can’t really fault them on that, can we?” 6 years into your schooling at Hogwarts and you would continue to shadow Professor McGonagall, hoping you might one day soar to her heights of academic prestige in the wizarding world. You needed to be a Professor as much as a mortal needs to breathe….

You cannot let him, of all people, ruin things. Your reputation is a fragile, flammable thing - and he is freaking Kerosene.

It's difficult to pinpoint when it started or how your sensibilities rushed away from you so swiftly. One moment you’re planting your textbook on the face of a wooden desk - the sound reaching the rafters in the highest peak of the deserted classroom…

“A Guide To Advanced Transfiguration.” Mattheo read the title aloud with a tedious uninterested drawl. “Seems a bit presumptuous to shove this down my throat so early on. Shouldn't we be starting from the beginning?"

You ignored him promptly, using the silence to arrange your colour coordinated stationery on your desk beside Riddle's,

“I had no idea," You began, brushing off your blue lined robes and flattening the invisible creases on your skirt, "-That the person residing under my tutelage would be a first year."

Riddle stabbed the inside of his mouth with his tongue, while his eyes rolled to the back of his head. Your face remained passive as you continued, "You are a sixth year, correct?” You asked with a snide tilt of the head before planting yourself on the desk beside him.

“You are a big boy capable of understanding big boy books,” Unbeknownst to you, your words managed to stir something foreign within Mattheo but he conceals it with his usual veneer of arrogance as he swings his head lazily in your direction.

"May we begin?" You asked, with your back straightened - inches away from his hand now hanging on your chair.

"In a bit…" he says, "Just..." his voice trails off as his eyes scan over your visage, likely assessing it like an unseen tapestry. The truth is, Riddle did not know you prior to being forced under your tutelage. His droopy brown eyes appeared even more so as he broke the distance between you two and studied you closer. A tense silence grew pregnant in the ancient classroom, and your resolve was beginning to slip. Only one thought inflated a puddle of anxiety in your stomach:

Could this be your first kiss? Is this what first kisses looked like? Could this be your very first brush of intimacy overall?

Your brain failed to rationalise and compartmentalise his attraction, but your heart pushed your head closer.

"Call me a big boy again..." He had whispered… which evidently led you here.

Your lesson had ended with your hand covered in his release and a breathless smirk painted across his face. "This goes without saying," he breathed out with a satisfied smirk, "But tell anyone about this, and you're dead."

Ever since that day, your tutoring has been but a veneer of something much more sinister. When you were thrusted into the light of day, Mattheo overlooked you as did lots of his Slytherin friends. Besides the occasional threat and vague insult, you mean nothing to him.

When you two are alone, however, as you are right now, he would enchant you into servitude, lightly pushing your head down while he kissed you silly until your knees were planted on the hardwood floor.

Mattheo briefly opens his eyes to peer down at you. It is then when you notice the fresh bruise dotting the side of his face, and his pillowy lips split by a small incursion. He had very clearly gotten into another fight..

“Your mouth feels so fucking good when you're not using it to be a smart ass,” His words illicit a bubble of heat inside you.

Despite all this, you are clearly aware of the fact that you should not be enjoying this at all. Not one bit. For starters, you can feel the old wooden floors digging into the meat of your knees and the crisp winter chill is unkind to your scantily dressed state. Your shirt is unbuttoned because Mattheo was like a moth to a fucking flame when it came to your ample breasts and his hand is buried tightly in your kinky curls, forcing his cock even further down your throat. The very bones of Hogwarts seem to be in vehement protest of your blatant whorishness.

3 silver chains hang from his neck as he plants his other hand against the wall behind you, blocking your kneeling frame between both him and cold, hard stone. You crane your neck back, keeping a half lidded gaze on the jewelry that drives you feral with lust. You are content imagining that perhaps, when he is getting ready in the slytherin common rooms, he wears the silver for you. A fanciful thought but one that consistently has your intestines weaving themselves into knots.

That, paired with his striking, jet black blazer, which is discarded somewhere in the abandoned classroom, has you keening and fighting to take even more of him into your mouth. Perhaps you were peacocking a little - flatting your tongue so his cock slid seamlessly to the back of your throat while you fought to ignore the pain blossoming on your scalp. He had turned you from an inexperienced nun to something you're not quite ready to examine yet.

"You're finally putting this head of yours to good use…" Despite his feigned arrogance you're utterly delighted knowing that only you can bring Mattheo to such an utterly restless state. He does not really know what to do with himself.

Not when you took so much of him, so well.

You clench your toes.

Feeling himself get too close, Mattheo eases his cock fully out of your mouth, languidly stroking himself but still assuming a firm grip on your scalp. He is operating on that very specific plain of narcissism that was special to Mattheo. He is aware of your presence, physically, but his words are spoken into the open air, like you are an inanimate object. A glorified toy.

"Are all Ravenclaws as compliant as you are?”

You bring a crisp white sleeve up to your lips, wiping away the excess drool as you remain kneeled in front of him, knowing he has yet to finish.

"If you ever think of finding out," your voice is hoarse, "this will be the last time I offer you any free study sessions."

"Is money all you seek?" He attempts to feign composure, continuing to languidly stroke his cock. "How utterly greedy. I thought- fuck… - I thought you were far more philosophical than that"

You watch hungrily as Mattheo bites on his pillowy bottom lip. He is prolonging the release, taking his time as he usually did... "If you plan on edging yourself in my mouth instead of actually finishing the job, I do have other commitments to attend to-"

He ignores you... his brows furrowing and smoothening at odd intervals as he continues to touch himself while studying you.

"We may not be studying… but I still intend to pass Transfiguration, hope you're aware." He punctuates his sentence with an breathless laugh- it blossoms across his usually stoic visage, raising his buttercup cheekbones towards his smiling eyes.

As he talks, you examine his scars and feel the slow essence of admiration seep into the pit of your stomach. An arguably pathetic feat, given that your feelings will not ever be reciprocated.

Brewing inside you is the need to take care of him. You knew the rest of the student body viewed Mattheo as a glorified parasite. Something that is only capable of thinking within the capacity of its own means. Something that takes, and takes, and occasionally jokes around, and takes. But how could he know anything different? You suspected that his home life was built on the foundation of survival, on needing to be the loudest, and proudest, and worst of them all.

"What the fuck are you doing?" The sharpness of his words slice through your thoughts, bringing you back to yourself. Mattheo's gaze is placed firmly on something down below. Throughout his mindless tirade, your hand had taken to rubbing soft, comforting circles against the leg of his pants, quite literally on its own accord. Mattheo is bent over, head tilted as he watches you questioningly. Seconds stretch to a minute, and your stomach sinks as time passes.

Eventually, he dismisses you. He shakes his head. "Whatever," He says, tilting your head back and lining your mouth with the head of his cock once more. His visage darkens into a cruel sadistic grin. "Tell me you want me to come in your mouth."

Almost instinctively, you do as he orders and like clockwork, you swallow his cum, wondering if he knew how deeply and truly your words actually were. There was a moment, perhaps imagined, in which his fingers gripping your hair, melted to the side of your soft, supple cheek. It stays there for longer than necessary, leaving bits and pieces of your composure scattered in its wake.

Mattheo soon straightens his posture, stuffing his flaccid cock back into his pants before making himself as presentable to the student body as they know him to be (which admittedly is not a lot) And before he turns to walk away, he leaves you stranded on a glacier with his ice cold words cutting deep into your beating heart.

"Tell anyone about this-"

"And I'm dead," You interject, "I know."

And with that, you pull your ruffled collar over your lint-free school jersey and check your reflection to assess the damage Mattheo and his iron grip might have left. You needn't wait for an extension on the conversation because your job here was done, (pun so malevolently intended).

As far as Mattheo is concerned, you are an easy conduit to release his frustrations through because your unpopularity makes you so incredibly inconspicuous. You blend into any given crowd at any given moment, your name seldom reaching the heights of ridicule among his group because you are so unforgettable… There had been no reason to point out your flaws, not because you did not have any, but because you were simply invisible.

It is particularly strange to have any social interaction beyond the bounds of group projects and class discussions… so Harry Potter gifting you even a sliver of attention had been violently unorthodox. So unorthodox, in fact, you failed to look up from the weathered pages of your novel when his gentle voice wafted in your direction during a rare free period in Study of Ancient Runes. Your professor has been summoned quite promptly by the headmaster and has yet to return. The class has been in a state of havoc ever since.

"I don't know if you're aware of this but…" A deep shadow over the pages alerted you to his presence, "They both die at the end."

It was incredibly rare that Potter, who sat at the desk directly in front of you, ever felt the need to strike up conversation that was not purely academic. Gryffindors made use of Ravenclaws as often as Slytherins.

So naturally, you peer curiously up at him…

"Sorry?"

"Y-Your book. It's a muggle book, isn't it? I haven't seen anything with a cover like that around here. It's refreshing. Everything in the wizarding world is ancient and leatherbound." He mumbles as his index finger slides into the collar of his red quidditch jersey. He finds himself suddenly overcome by a wave of embarrassment even though there was nothing at all to be embarrassed about… he turns his chair slightly in your direction, his eyes darting to the door and the empty teacher's seat before meeting yours once more.

"'They Both Die At The End." He says, pointing towards the title.

"Oh…" You affirm, rocking your head back and forth, "You were making a joke?"

"No," Harry snickers before waving a large hand in dismissal, "Evidently, the only thing I 'made' was a complete and utter fool of myself."

You're not sure when it happens but you feel the lower half of your face melting into what you suspect is a smile. You can feel your shoulders relaxing and your novel lowering imperceptibly.

"Work on your delivery next time and maybe we'll be getting somewhere."

"Is that how it is!?" Harry asked, pleasantly surprised by your banter, "- I could've sworn I had a shred of dignity before the start of this conversation. Now I'm not quite sure where that went."

Mattheo's feet pass over the threshold as soon as the sound of your laughter rushes past him. It is almost charming in its familiarity but incredibly curious in its rarity. He can't recall ever seeing you with your head thrown back while the instinctive sound of amusement races through your throat. He does not know he's staring until Draco shoves past him, to get to their own seats in the front of the class.

His eyes remain on you as he makes his way to his desk, hoping, perhaps, that you would turn your head infinitesimally, in acknowledgment of his presence.

You do nothing of the sort, and it not only fills him with a weird sort of dissatisfaction but it bubbles into full blown vexation when he realises who is capturing your attention so viscerally.

Mattheo has never prided himself on his patience or tolerance.

Overthinking is something he consistently lives without.

Most of his actions were spurred from things he felt in the now, and he was really fucking uncomfortable with what was happening now.

His glances at the front of the class before finding you once more in the very back corner of the class. He notices that Harry is stationed in front of you but the seat beside you is completely deserted.

Did you not have friends?

And more importantly; how did he never notice until now?

What if…

Perhaps if he…

"You didn't let me know we were having a picnic," The sound of a chair scraping against the tiles had both you and Harry rallying into silence. Mattheo appears at your side, pushing the chair against yours so he, too, sits facing Potter - who suddenly appears incredibly uneasy. Gone is the comfortable atmosphere cooked by easy and amicable conversation. Mattheo injecting himself into your little bubble created a suddenly charged and suffocating atmosphere. You cannot keep your wide eyes off Mattheo as he lowers himself to his chair beside you with his legs spread as he slouches down, like he always does.

"Don't stop on my accord," He exclaims, completely oblivious to the fact that your professor might walk in at any minute. "What were we talking about?" Your heart wrestles in your chest as you see him turn to address you. His slouching puts him a level lower than you, but it does nothing to lessen his intimidation.

"Maybe I should ask, Potter?" Mattheo turns his attention to the front, "What were you lot talking about?" There is not a trace of friendliness present in Riddle's tone. In fact, it's the very opposite. Your nerves, swelling with anxiety, only escalate into full-on panic when you feel him place a large hand on your skirt under the table.

Harry's voice is low and his eyes are trained on the floor, "Books-"

"Books!" Mattheo cuts him off with sarcastic fervour, "How utterly fascinating!" The hyperbolic wonder in his tone is utterly rude and unbecoming, but you look down at your desk in blatant anger. Refusing to be a part of whatever this is.

"And tell me, Potter, how many books have you read so far?"

It is then that Riddle's once stationary hand begins the faintest trace of movement. He begins slow and tame, his callouses barely registering on the soft fabric until his fingers prod the lining of your skirt…

Your breath hitches in your throat.

Never had Mattheo ever displayed a desire to touch you. Not in the way he made you touch him. It was made explicitly clear that only he would benefit from your secret rendezvous' and so you were left to deal with your aching cunt alone, with the image of the face he made when he came, still burned into your mind. It had never been about you.

"A couple,'' says Harry, fighting to show this bully that he was unaffected by his intimidation. If only he knew that with every advance Mattheo's palm made, you were slipping farther and farther away.

"A couple books?" Asks Riddle for clarity. He remains lax and languid on the inside, but the nature of his wandering hand underneath the desk tells a new story.

He finally slips under your skirt.

His palm connects with the softness of your thighs and he seems utterly pleased by it. His hand is immediately restless to explore how far you would let him go. Which isn't very far.

Not at all.

If he thought he could suddenly touch you after myriad occasions of using you like a discarded toy… he had another thing coming.

The tips of Mattheo's fingers make gradually increasing strokes along your thigh until his fingers prod the stretch marks on your inner thigh. It is there when you stop him, clenching your legs together, blocking his hand from any further movement.

Mattheo's voice is strained as he says, "And you like reading, Potter?"

Sensing something brewing between the two of you - your withdrawn, hazy gaze, staring directly through the desk and Mattheo's overabundance in questions, has Harry reeling backwards.

"I asked you a question, Harry."

"I like reading."

"Good! That's really good!" Quite suddenly, Riddle tilts the ends of his half-moon nails into your thigh. His nails bite into your skin, forcing them to weaken and unclamp. Before you're even able to think, his palm is cupping your cunt through your panties- forcing an indecent yelp from your throat which you quickly (and very badly) disguise as a cough.

Mattheo is utterly pleased while he continues mindlessly stroking your cunt. Not for the purpose of any glorious stimulation. His hand is just there to show you (and perhaps maybe himself) that he has access to the most private part of you.

That thought alone has an unforeseen and sudden wave of lust coursing through his veins and surging straight to his hardened cock. He thinks of all the things he could have done to you but failed to do. He thinks about how, up until this point, he had ever been satisfied with using your mouth alone, not when he was denying himself the softness of your pussy all along.

He felt angry with himself, for being so fucking stupid, he is angry at Potter for seeing whatever it is he saw in you, way before he did and, possibly most harrowing of all is the fact that he is angry with you. And he can't help but be angry at you. How easily you whore yourself out to any and every man. If this thing with Potter had gone far enough, would you replace him? Had you even fucked Potter before?

You bite down on your lower lip as your head bows even further into your book. The words blend into one another, and all you can feel is a rise in temperature and Mattheo's suddenly restless fingers, pressing rudely against your clit - for the sole purpose of ripping an orgasm out of you right then and there, at the very back of an unsupervised classroom, with Harry Potter still very much a part of the conversation.

"You've got so many books to read in your lifetime," Says Mattheo. He sits up slowly, likely spurred on by the dampness seeping through your panties. "Don't cut your long life short by trying to entertain other people's girlfriends, yeah?" Gone are any traces of feigned friendliness. "Fucking Mudblood,"

Your skin feels like you are bathing in magma and you hope Potter could not see the slight tremor in your hand as you gripped the sides of your book with more force than necessary.

Mattheo's words… they have you shifting forward and widening your legs minutely. You crave for nothing more than to roll your hips in tandem with the circles he's pressing against your clit.

"Understood?"

Your orgasm is dangerously close, with the promise of sheer, disgusting shame and embarrassment if he continues. You feel Harry give you one final curious look, perhaps pleading for an interjection of denial at some point but you've taken to bouncing your knee under the table, hoping the vibrations might create enough friction to aid Mattheo's hands. He is keeping you trapped in a space of wanting. So much so, that this almost feels like a punishment.

Once Harry is turned back around and facing the front of the class, Mattheo lowers his lips to your ears. The damp smell of firewhiskey floods your nostril and you realise that he is completely drunk. In the second lesson of the day.

However, you're so completely stimulated, even the warmth of his breath as you fight the urge to hump into his hand like a lost little puppy until you make a mess all over his hand.

"You're such a fucking slut, you know that?" Your book drops to your desk - muffled by the sounds of the classroom cacophony. "You like being humiliated like this?" He asks, almost in complete awe. It takes everything in you not to moan outright.

"Fuck," You whisper to yourself, blinking your eyes shut, warding off the need but to no avail. His fingers are long and limber, and they have you nearly cumming right there, in front of your entire fucking class. Had it not been for your Professor's haphazard arrival into the class, and the swift removal of Mattheo's fingers from between your legs… you might truly have become the slut he labelled you as.

Instead of moving to his designated seat, Riddle raises his hand for the professor… the very same hand that has previously been in between your legs.

"Yes, Mr Riddle?" Asks the Professor, his voice as lacklustre as his appearance.

"May we be excused? We were excused by Professor Slughorn to assist him in-"

"Fine, fine," Says the professor with a wave of dismissal before turning his attention to the rest of the class. "The rest of you, open your textbooks to page 56."

Riddle's hand is clamped around your forearm, already leading you swiftly out the door in a long and wide stride. Had it been any other teacher at all, they might have recognized this for what it so clearly was.

"Here," you have barely made it fully into the boy's bathroom before Mattheo is stuffing his fingers down your throat, making you gag and yelp at the sudden intrusion. "Tell me how good you taste." He doesn't even bother to make sure you're truly left alone in the bathroom before pushing your front against the bathroom sink.

"Is that good?" His voice is as sweet as honey as he forces his fingers deeper down your throat, causing you to cough and gag around them.

Mattheo has half his sense to pull his wand from his back pocket, and without turning around, whispers "Colloportus," and the heavy doors snap shut.

You're supposed to be afraid because you've never seen him like this. Mattheo is always a ball of sarcastic energy between trysts, but it's usually an energy he can somewhat contain.

You don't know what to do with him, not when he's watching you choke on his fingers through the mirror, while his other hand fondles at your breasts and rips your bra down until your nipples are poking through your school shirt.

The figure in the mirror distorts as your eyes begin to water. Thick beads of tears grow pregnant at the ends of your eyes before rolling down the side of your face.

"My girl," Mattheo presses his face into your hair, breathing you in, pressing his body into your side. His hard cock in unmistakable through his school pants, "My messy little girl,"

You finally moan candidly while your fingers grip the countertops and your hips buck into nothingness. Your eyes plead with him in the mirror, hoping they relay how utterly useless with lust you have become. It would not take hard work to make you cum, you're sure one more flick against your material-clad nipples might send you over the edge.

"Fuck, why didn't I think of this sooner,"

This is all new, even for the two of you.

"Spread your legs." He commands, even though his feet are already kicking them apart.

"Come here," you break eye contact in the mirror to face the boy behind you. Mattheo removes his fingers sitting in your mouth, leaving a trail of sticky saliva in its wake before replacing it with a long and messy kiss- one that has his tongue forcing itself inside.

Mattheo weaponizes your distraction to reach around and slide your panties to the side with one hand while he rubs your soft nub with his other, spit-coated hand.

You break away from the kiss, neck craning back and mouth hanging open while your eyebrows dissolve into crescents. You cannot look away from him, as you hump his hand.

"You wanna cum?" You nod enthusiastically. "And what if I told you, you can't cum until I've fucked that little pussy of yours? Hm? What then?" His words have you mewling from the sheer pleasure they bring and your orgasm threatens to snap once more.

"Fuck," He hisses, feeling unable to remove his hand from your wet cunt but needing to, in order to undo his belt and pull his aching cock out. "Don't you dare fucking touch yourself," He says in a deadly quiet voice before bringing his hand up to your mouth. "Spit." You don't ever think of disobeying him, not when you're swimming so deeply in your subspace, not when he's the one to bring you here.

Mattheo collects every bit of saliva you offer him before coating his cock in the stuff.

Deciding not to waste anymore time, he does what his body is screaming for him to do: he bends you over the bathroom sink and pushes cock right through your slippery folds. It's tense and painful and your voice is hoarse from doing all that screaming but the sudden contact strokes a deeply sated part inside yourself. His curved and pretty cock rams your insides with reckless abandon, all while he delivers small slaps against your cheek. Riddle keeps a firm grip on your throat. His mouth is inches away from you while his hips rut into yours. His words are being delivered through clenched teeth.

"You think you're so fucking smart but you're just my little whore, arent you? A little whore thst fucks anything that gives her the slightest bit of attention?" It doesn't even register that Mattheo wrongfully suspects that there had been something between you and Harry but you keep your mouth shut. For all his indifference in the past, this is how you would make him pay.

"Oh~ fuck." His cock bruises your cervix, leaving him balls deep and feral inside you. "Fucking Potter?! You wanna give what's mine, to fucking Potter?!" His voice is utterly depraved and animalistic and it has your orgasm cresting.

He is panting, while he mumbles into your ear.

"What would Potter think? If he saw you like this? What would he think? Would he still want your slutty pussy knowing I've been inside it? Knowing that I've cum so deep inside you? Completely ruining you for anyone else, huh?"

"You…" The tears threaten to spill, "It's only ever been you, Mattheo -oh my god! I'm so fucking close!" You fight down tears as the lava begins to bubble at the pit of your stomach.

"S-Say it again. Tell me you want me!" He exclaims, "Tell me you fucking need me."

"Oh my God, Mattheo, I fucking need you." You push your hips back to meet his thrusts.

His voice wavers after your confession. His strokes became sloppy. His mind is flooded with the tightest of your cunt around his cock- how someone so smart could possibly ever say they need him. It has a flood of heat pooling at the base of his cock. "You're so fucking pretty… my pretty girl - my pretty whore," He nods to himself while his heavy cock finds purchase in a specific clump of sensitive tissue inside your cunt. It has you clamping your own mouth shut, your arms wavering while your back arches towards him, only allowing him better excess.

"I need you," You say once more, swallowing a ball of saliva as you nod towards him through the mirror, "I need you to cum inside me."

"Oh my fucking god," Mattheo's eyes soften in their desperstion, "M'gonna fucking breed pussy right here- fuck!" His grip on your throat grows tighter until you're wholeheartedly cut off from your air supply. You hump his cock until you feel it twitch inside you.

"Y-Youre making me cum, baby- fuck-" You feel his hot cum spurting inside your walls, triggering your own orgasm that has you gripping his cock like a vice.

"So… so pretty" His hips stutter against yours until you've completely drained him of his cum. A sharp tremor settles over your bones and you gasp in vague increments, waiting for the overwhelming state of euphoria to subside… but it never does.

The weight of what you had done comes crashing back down but you are unable to feel anything besides an immense wave of satisfaction at having your deepest need satiated.

"I think I nearly killed Potter today." His voice is a hoarse echo within the school bathrooms.

"There is no Harry Potter," You say, watching him through the mirror, "In my whole world, there is only ever you, Mattheo."

And a part of him believes you, but he refuses to affirm something as emotionally stifling as that. Instead, Mattheo's eyes flutter shut as his nose finds your hair once more. His cock is still buried inside you, and you hiss as he moves his hips slowly, almost insitinvely. He loves being so wholly enveloped by you. He loves feeling you everywhere.

© to @mphountitled on tumblr; do not repost

[deathfavor]

TAG DROP 4.  The Fairy Tail Squad

[doumadono]

Silent Waves, Silent Wounds - Touya Todoroki x Reader

A/N: today's episode broke my heart and made me cry uncontrollably. With a nice prompt set for this week's challenge in a community I'm part of, I decided to combine the two. I just hope my Touya will survive. Gif was made by @gamergirl-niffler

MY HERO ACADEMIA

Touya's first breaths of freedom were laced with the sterile scent of antiseptics and the distant echoes of calamity.

Beneath the flickering streetlights of Musutafu, shadows twirled across the damp pavement, casting the world in veils of half-truths and murmured secrets.

It was upon a night cloaked in despair that Touya Todoroki, shrouded in the remnants of his shattered past, escaped the suffocating confines of what should have been a sanctuary. The hospital, ostensibly a bastion of healing and hope, had morphed into nothing but a prison, all under the malevolent gaze of All For One.

In a moment fueled by raw desperation and a primal urge for freedom, Touya, with hands trembling and heart pounding against the cage of his ribcage, ignited the very foundations that had ensnared him. Flames, hungry and unrestrained, licked upwards, clawing at the structure with a ferocity. Fire roared through the hallways, a fierce, unforgiving inferno that consumed everything in its path — medical charts, synthetic bed linens, the false promises of recovery.

As the inferno raged behind him, Touya stumbled into the cold embrace of the night.

The city loomed large and indifferent, its countless lights flickering like distant stars, unreachable and cold. Each step was a battle, his body a map of wounds both fresh and long endured, scars that told tales he could barely remember, tales of a mere boy who once dreamed of heroism but found himself ensnared in a nightmare of his father's making.

He moved through the shadows, a spectral figure haunted by the echoes of his past and the uncertain horrors of his future. Tonight, the world was both his enemy and his ally, hiding him from those who would seek to drag him back to that hellish place, yet offering no comfort from the relentless grip of his solitude and sorrow. His face, marred with scars that told stories of a tragic past and unresolved pain, was not one that people usually turned to for comfort.

As he navigated through the dimly lit streets, his eyes were cautious and wary of the stares that followed him like specters.

It was then he saw you - a girl sitting alone on the curb, your sobs cutting through the muffled sounds of the city like a siren’s call. You were young, perhaps no older than he, with tears streaking your cheeks and your shoulders trembling under the weight of your unseen burdens.

Despite his fears and the fresh pain of his own memories, something within him stirred - a remnant of the hero he once aspired to be. Hesitant, he approached you, his voice barely above a whisper after he cleared his throat, trying to sound normal, even though he knew it was no longer possible. “Hey, are you okay?”

You jerked your head up, your eyes wide with a mixture of fear and surprise as they landed on his disfigured features.

For a heartbeat, Touya thought you would scream, run away, or recoil in horror.

But then, something remarkable happened - your expression softened, and your initial fright melted into a sad, understanding smile. “Not really,” you confessed, wiping your tears away with the back of your shaking hand. “My dad… he drinks too much. And my mom, she doesn’t really care. She threw me out tonight. Said she’d had enough of me being useless.”

The words struck a chord in Touya. Abandonment, pain, a longing for something better - themes that resonated deeply within his own life. Sitting heavily beside you on the cold curb, he offered you a timid smile, one that seemed almost out of place on his scarred visage. "I’m sorry,” he said, his voice a mixture of warmth and a chilling detachment born from years of conditioning under his father’s harsh regime. “I… I know what it’s like to feel like you have no one.”

You studied him, your reddened eyes lingering on his scars with a curiosity born from your own pain rather than judgement. “What happened to you?” you asked gently, perhaps too gently for the horror that his story contained.

Touya looked away, his eyes tracing the patterns of light and shadow on the ground. “I don’t remember everything,” he confessed. “But I know I was trying to prove something to my dad. It didn’t end well, as you can see.”

You sat in silence, the world around you bustling with life, yet oblivious to the shared moment of grief between two strangers.

People passed by, their glances sharp and sometimes filled with a disdain that neither of you were unfamiliar with.

Sensing Touya’s discomfort, you made a decision. “Let’s go somewhere else,” you suggested, a spark of resolve lighting up your tear-stained face. “Somewhere away from prying eyes. I know a nice place, if you'd like to join me.”

Touya nodded casually, “I think I’d like that. I have nowhere to be anyway.”

Without another word, you stood, holding out you hand to help him up. Your touch was warm, a stark contrast to the coldness he had come to expect from the world.

Together, you walked through the deserted streets, your steps in sync, until the city sounds faded into the background, replaced by the soothing rhythm of waves crashing against the shore.

Beneath the expansive canopy of the night sky, the beach lay deserted, bathed in the ethereal, silvery glow of the moon. The ocean before them transformed into a shimmering tapestry, each wave weaving threads of light across the dark canvas of water. It was here, with the cool sand cradling your steps and the vast, relentless sea stretching into infinity, that you discovered a fleeting sanctuary — a momentary escape from the ravages of your tormented existences.

As you settled onto the sand, the ocean's eternal murmurs surrounding you, Touya found himself unexpectedly comforted by the raw, natural beauty of the scene. Yet, he was taken aback when you revealed that it was not just chance that brought you to this tranquil haven in the dead of night.

“I come here often, especially after fights at home,” you confessed softly, your eyes reflecting the moonlight like fragments of a broken mirror. “The sound of the waves… it calms the storm inside me. Maybe it can do the same for you.”

Touya hesitated before his voice broke the silence. "I'm like these waves," he murmured, his voice tinged with a haunting sadness. "Crashing again and again, with no control, no end. I don't even remember why I started… what I was trying to prove." His gaze was lost to the horizon, where the dark sea met the darker sky, his face a mask of sorrow sculpted by the silvery light.

"It's hard, isn't it?" you said softly, pulling your knees closer to your chest, feeling the chill of the night seeping through your clothes. "Feeling like you're caught in a storm with no shelter in sight. I sit here, night after night, wondering if the screaming will ever stop, if there will ever be a night without tears, without all this emptiness."

"Does it help? Coming here, hearing the waves?" Touya asked.

"It doesn't stop the pain," you admitted, "but sometimes, it makes it bearable. The sea doesn't judge, doesn't demand. It just is. And for a little while, I can just be too, without worrying about the next wave that might knock me down."

"I wish I could remember what peace feels like," he confessed, his words blending with the whisper of the wind.

You reached out, your hand brushing against his, a small gesture of comfort in the overwhelming vastness of your shared solitude.

"Maybe we can't go back to who we were," you suggested, your voice a tentative whisper against the symphony of the sea. "But perhaps we can find new reasons to look forward to the sunrise."

Touya's hand trembled slightly under yours, but he didn't pull away. Instead, he gripped your hand, his hold tentative but needing the connection. "I'd like that," he said, a flicker of a smile ghosting across his lips, as fragile and fleeting as a wave’s crest as a single tear rolled down his cheek. "To look forward to something, to hope for something better."

[sleepydeprived]

A Chance for Redemption

—A mysterious high school student appears out of the blue, bearing the face of the late Martha Wayne and puzzling even Gotham’s greatest detectives.

[chapter 1]

| Platonic!Yandere!Batfam x Reader

| Inspired by the work of @e-nonsense “GHOST OF A LONG GONE WOMAN”

The Gotham City skyline stretched across the horizon, its towering structures standing as silent guardians in the night. Inside the dimly lit study of Wayne Manor, Bruce Wayne sat alone amidst shadows that mirrored the complexities of his own mind.

A sudden beep from the Batcomputer broke the stillness. Bruce glanced at the screen, and his piercing gaze narrowed at the news report flashing across the monitor. The headline sent a ripple through him.

"Wayne Heiress Emerges: Striking Resemblance to Late Martha Wayne. Who is she?"

His heartbeat quickened as images of the young girl filled the screen. The uncanny resemblance to his late mother, Martha, struck him like a blow. The gentle curve of her smile, the warmth in her eyes — it was as if a much younger version of Martha had been reborn in a face he had never known.

For a moment, the air in the study thickened with silence. Bruce's jaw tightened, and a flood of memories surged, carrying him back to the night of his parents' tragedy. He saw Martha's face, radiant and full of life, before the darkness took her away. Now, that same face stared back at him from the screen.

"What is this?" Bruce muttered to himself, his fingers tapping impatiently on the polished surface of the mahogany desk.

With a decisive gesture, he rose from his seat and moved toward the Batcave. Alfred, his ever-watchful confidant, observed the turmoil in Bruce's eyes.

"Master Wayne, might I inquire about the cause of your distress?" Alfred's calm voice cut through the tension.

Bruce handed Alfred a tablet displaying the news report. As Alfred scanned the images, the lines on his forehead deepened in concern.

"An unexpected development, sir. Shall I investigate further?" Alfred offered, his loyalty unwavering.

"No, Alfred. I'll handle this myself,"

In the heart of the Batcave, surrounded by the symbols of his dual life, Bruce Wayne accessed the Batcomputer with purpose, initiating a search that would unravel the truth behind the possible Wayne heiress.

As information unfolded on the screen, Bruce's stoic demeanor flickered with a kaleidoscope of emotions. The mystery of his potential blood-related daughter, bearing the face of his beloved mother, demanded answers that eluded even the World's Greatest Detective.

In the shadows of Wayne Manor, a silent storm brewed. All veiled behind the haunting gaze of a daughter who bore the visage of a long-lost woman.

[vaile-elenya]

listen... i have been thinking a lot about this post:

i don't know what it is exactly, but something about a frustrated Elrond almost yelling out, still gently, that he'd live for his love instead of dying for it, is very very touching for me.

last night i might have gotten a bit carried away, and i wrote a little something about that. it's my very first shot at writing a fanfic of my own so please bear with me!

it's under the break and on AO3 if anyone wants to read 🫶🏻

In the twilight of Imladris, as the stars began their nightly vigil, you stood on the balcony of Elrond’s chamber, your heart heavy with frustration and hurt. The air was cool and fragrant with the scent of evening blooms, but tonight, the beauty of the valley seemed distant, overshadowed by the turmoil within.

Elrond stood a few paces away, his serene demeanor a stark contrast to the storm that brewed in your soul. The gentle sound of the Bruinen river, usually a source of comfort, now seemed to mock the tension between you.

“Do you truly hold me in such low regard?” you challenged, your voice trembling with emotion. “Am I of such little consequence to you that you can remain unmoved as I bare my soul?”

Elrond’s eyes widened, a flicker of pain crossing his usually composed features. “You misunderstand me,” he began, his voice steady but tinged with sorrow.

“No, I understand all too well,” you interrupted, your words cutting like a sharpened blade. “You, with your timeless wisdom and boundless patience, have already revealed your true feelings. I ask again: would you be willing to lay down your life for me, for all of us, or does fear restrain you?”

For a moment, there was silence, the air thick with the weight of unspoken truths. Then, as if a dam had broken, Elrond’s composure shattered. His eyes filled with unshed tears, his voice rising in desperation. How could you not see? How could you not know that every moment with you was etched into his very soul? He could no longer hold back the torrent of emotions.

“To die for love is simple!” he nearly screamed, his voice carrying the weight of centuries of longing and regret. “A brief surrender of mortal coil to the embrace of eternity,” he added while the soft moonlight cast shadows upon his features, accentuating the lines of sorrow etched upon his noble visage.

“But to live, to truly live, is so much greater! For you, I would live instead of die,” he looked at you, his gaze piercing through your soul, laying bare his raw emotions. You felt the depth of his admission, each syllable heavy with the burden of his unspoken devotion, and the stars above seemed to shine brighter, as if bearing witness to his words.

“Do you not see the love, as brilliant as the leaves of Laurelin, that shines forth from my eyes each time I cast them upon you?” he asked desperately, on the edge of weeping. Elrond’s voice cracked, his eyes brimming with sorrow. “Are you blinded to it?”

Not awaiting your response, Elrond turned his gaze towards the lofty trees, their branches murmuring in the gentle breeze. As the night deepened, Imladris lay shrouded in a serene glow, its gardens veiled in shadows that swayed gently in the flickering dance of firelight and the soft embrace of starlight. The fading remnants of daylight whispered their farewell, surrendering to the celestial canvas unfurling above, adorned with the sparkling jewels of the heavens. The tranquility of the valley belied the weight of its history, a history that Elrond bore witness to through the ages. Memories of battles fought, kingdoms risen and fallen, and the relentless march of time haunted his thoughts.

Torches blazed brightly, casting dancing shadows upon the ancient stone, their fiery tongues licking at the velvety darkness with a fierce determination as Elrond’s mind drifted back to the tumultuous events of the Second Age, a time of great upheaval and sorrow.

“I have seen the glory of Númenor crumble beneath the weight of its own pride. Powerless I have stood as the Last Alliance marched to the very gates of Mordor, and I have borne witness to evils so immense that even the stoutest of our warriors could not withstand them,” he said, desperation building in his voice; his silvery eyes now shone with something you could not decipher. “I have gazed into the eyes of death countless times, her blades twisting within the depths of my wounded heart. So many of my kin have I lost to the ravages of war, their lives laid to rest in pursuit of a noble yet hopeless cause,” he took a step closer, his face now inches away from your own. “It is not the fear of death that prevents me from yielding to its embrace for you, meleth nîn.”

“You awaken within me the very spirit of endurance that Eru bestowed upon his children,” he paused, his gaze turning towards the fire illuminating the terrace. “A spirit that has waned over the long ages of my dwelling, and yet... your mere existence rekindles it.

“In your presence, I find a light that guides me, a reason to embrace each new dawn. My heart, though burdened with the weight of ages, finds solace and renewal in your faintest smile. To live for you is not a burden but a blessing, a path I would tread willingly, every day anew.”

Elrond’s hands delicately encompassed your face, and you felt the gentle pressure of his fingertips, each point of contact a deliberate caress. There was a steadiness to his touch, a silent reassurance as if he sought to convey a message that words alone could not express.

“For you I would find joy in the simple pleasures that weave the intricate tapestry of our days. Through the darkest of hours, I shall cling onto hope, tending to each seedling of kindness as a gardener tends to his beloved blossoms. For you, I would dive willingly into that terrifying inkwell known as existence, with all its uncertainties and fears.”

“I would live for you.”

[thebiscuitlabryinth]

"...We're two sides of the same coin, aren't we?"

The whispered confession falls clumsily out of Pure Vanilla's mouth, almost dragged out, bitterly sweet and strange on his tongue. The words are addressed to his own stained candy glass visage, spilling tendrils of bright blue light across the Solarium of Unity despite the almost suffocating darkness invading the rest of the space.

He knows this isn't really the Solarium of Unity, and he knows he isn't just speaking to a window. The lurking shadows, thick like molasses and blinking every once in a while, give that away. Even if it didn't, there is a haziness here that exists only in dreams, and a lack of the deep tiredness that has been plaguing him as of late.

"Oh, are you finally ready to admit that?" Sure enough, Shadow Milk Cookie's voice comes from all sides, far too cheerful. The candy glass melts and warps before him, the blues darkening until Shadow Milk stands in his place, far more detailed than the artisan silhouette he replaced. His grin is mocking as he looks down at Pure Vanilla, who cannot help but feel uncomfortable at the sight of their appearances blurring together like that, even though he had been expecting something along those lines. "Too bad though – you can't admit something that's wrong!"

"Huh?" It catches Pure Vanilla by surprise. It had been difficult emotionally, but logically straightforward to admit they were two sides of the same coin. He couldn't imagine how that could be wrong, and acting upon an old habit from his student days, he finds himself frantically unravelling that conclusion in his head again to figure out the issue.

Shadow Milk doesn't give him the chance, tutting as he shakes his head in mock disappointment. "You must have a brain in there, can't you use it?" He laments theatrically, contorting himself into an odd shape against the edge of the window pane. Then, again barreling on before Pure Vanilla can reply, "Look, think of it like this. To say we're two sides of the same coin means that we have similarities, even if we are otherwise opposites. That is true to an extent, but it makes our differences sound way more clear cut than they actually are. It may be easier for you to believe, but we aren't really opposites. That would imply I am not whole, and I can assure you, Soul Jam aside, I am just as I always was!"

Ah, so it's a matter of wording. Pure Vanilla isn't sure why he is entertaining this - no, it's because he doesn't want to give Shadow Milk the satisfaction of turning away from the truth. Even now, Shadow Milk's eyes squint cheekily at him, daring him to try and end the conversation.

"Then... we are made of the same components in a different composition." Pure Vanilla tries, a little frustrated with his own hesitance, but it is difficult to tell how Shadow Milk wants him to answer when he isn't making it blatantly obvious.

"So close!" Shadow Milk sighs dramatically as he snaps his head to the side so sharply it makes Pure Vanilla wince, imagining the cracks that would cause on any other Cookie. "But you're relying on technicalities. It's much simpler than that."

It dawns on Pure Vanilla, then, exactly what Shadow Milk is aiming for, the realisation making his insides crawl. He doesn't have to say it, not really, but he isn't sure what Shadow Milk will do if he doesn't, and he unfortunately doesn't have the ability to wake himself up on command.

So he takes a deep breath, fidgeting with his staff as he says, even less than a whisper yet twice as loud. "We're... We're the same. Is that what you wanted me to say?"

"Ding-ding-ding!" Shadow Milk trills, suddenly reaching through the candy glass to grip the window frame and lurching forward across the threshold, leaving a mess of shattered glass behind his head like a halo. It startles Pure Vanilla, who instinctively shifts his foot back, only to be instantly locked in place as the reaching shadows soldify around his legs, its eyes winking up at him playfully. His grip on his staff tightens, willing it to shed its light, the beginnings of panic stirring within him at the restraint. The staff does, but the shadows seem to eat the light without a problem.

Pure Vanilla is so distracted by the shadows that he doesn't notice Shadow Milk's hands until they grab his face. His heart jumps in alarm, and his eyes dart up to find half of Shadow Milk leaning down out of the window, far too close. He is grinning at him, wide and self-satisfied, and his hands are cold and harsh. "See, I knew you had a working brain! Yes, the right answer is that we are one and the same."

He pinches and pulls at his cheeks, and Pure Vanilla tries to cringe away, tries to manuver his staff between them. It doesn't work, if only because hands emerge from the darkness to anchor his staff too.

"But that isn't true." Pure Vanilla mumbles when he isn't able to wiggle his way out and Shadow Milk still shows no signs of stopping, hoping the argument will make him lose interest in his face. "I admit that there are similarities between us, but we aren't really the same."

Shadow Milk pauses, his grip tightening until it borders on pain, and for a moment, Pure Vanilla thinks he may have miscalculated.

But then Shadow Milk snickers to himself, releasing his face entirely and pulling back, his hands resting lightly over Pure Vanilla's shoulders. The brush of weight keeps Pure Vanilla from relaxing, but it is a bit of added distance, at least.

"Aren't we? Well, you are the biggest liar, so I should have expected you would lie to yourself too." Shadow Milk hums, almost sounding delighted at this turn in conversation. It unnerves Pure Vanilla, because he had assumed his disagreement would annoy him.

Instead, Shadow Milk smirks, his many eyes glinting gleefully at him. "Listen carefully, Vani, because here's the truth." He says, his voice dipping into a wicked purr that seems to shudder through Pure Vanilla's whole body. "All the things you hate that I have done, you have the capability of doing too. After all, you've already used people for your own gain, haven't you?" Shadow Milk leans closer with a condescending lilt to his words, shifting his hands so he can wrap his arms loosely over his shoulders, and Pure Vanilla freezes under the touch. "Oh, I know you think it was necessary, but you still sent those naive, tiny Cookies off to carry out your errands for you, regardless of the dangers. That's only a few steps behind what I've done, you know, making people dance to my tune. The only difference between us is severity and time."

The words sink heavily to Pure Vanilla's stomach, not quite true but not quite not true, and he feels a little lightheaded, fingers twitching against his staff. Maybe it's because of that, or maybe it's because of his discomfort from the close proximity, but he finds himself distracted by the way Shadow Milk is talking. He carries his usual air of showmanship, but it is nowhere near as exaggerated as during his brief takeover of the Faerie Kingdom. With his insistence of specificity, his mention of technicalities, his structured method of explaining things, he almost sounds like a–

"We are the same," Shadow Milk repeats, tilting his head to the side, the glow of his eyes burning holes through Pure Vanilla, "and one day, you'll end up just like me."

A scholar.

That makes sense – at some point, his virtue had been Knowledge, and nobody seeks it out as fervently as a scholar – but it still feels like a surprise. Pure Vanilla had always known that Shadow Milk was different, once, but only in the sense that the fact existed in the back of his mind.

"No rebuttal, hmm? Are you ready to accept that?" Shadow Milk asks smugly, slightly impatient with Pure Vanilla's lack of response, but mostly watching him expectantly, as if waiting for a bomb to go off.

Pure Vanilla has never thought about what Shadow Milk might have been like, before he became like this. There was no reason to even consider it. But now, he can't help but wonder, because while he cannot imagine this chaotic, brutal Beast, this great unknown evil, as anything else – Shadow Milk still carries echoes from a past life that he doesn't seem to notice enough to hide with his lies.

"...If we are the same," Pure Vanilla finally scrapes his thoughts together enough to reply, carefully, "then doesn't that make the opposite possible too? That, one day, you will become like me and return to the light?"

Shadow Milk blinks once, his face falling blank. He blinks again, all of his eyes in quick succession.

And then he throws his head back and laughs, the movement jostling Pure Vanilla in the process with his arms still firmly around his shoulders. It sounds unhinged, ricocheting across the room, but it is openly amused. It makes Pure Vanilla antsy, especially with how it rings in his ears like an explosion from their closeness.

He wonders if Shadow Milk's laugh was different, before everything. It must have been. He wonders what it sounded like, and immediately realises that he's being ridiculous. The realisation that a before exists seems to have opened the floodgates in his mind, and now thoughts of hypotheticals can't help flitting in.

"You say such silly, silly things." Shadow Milk bites out offhandedly as his laughter winds down, the lingering remnants still dancing on his tongue. Without warning, he pulls Pure Vanilla even closer, the darkness that had been keeping him in place swirling and shoving him forward. Pure Vanilla gasps, the sound catching in his throat, and one of his hands fly off his staff to reach for something to steady himself on. It finds an edge of shattered candy glass, flinching back and falling down to scrabble against its smooth, intact surface.

Shadow Milk is giggling at him and Pure Vanilla is mortified, horribly so. They are far, far too close, Shadow Milk's face taking up the near entirety of his vision and their upper bodies almost pressed together. It feels claustrophobic, which should be impossible in such a wide, open space.

Shadow Milk makes matters worse by pressing their foreheads together, the gesture weirdly tender and doing nothing to make Pure Vanilla any calmer. His bright blue eyes look directly through him, dissecting him piece by piece.

"Why don't you cut down the Silver Tree and find out?" Shadow Milk coos, his voice overlapping with the Light of Truth's in a deeply unsettling way. His presence is overwhelming.

Pure Vanilla's eyes flicker downwards to escape his piercing gaze, and finds their chests so close that their Soul Jams are overlapping. Overlapping, and not touching, because Shadow Milk's Soul Jam seems to fizzle out of existence where the other makes contact with it, as if it were an illusion. Behind it is an empty space, black as the abyss. With the way they are lined up now, it is obvious that Pure Vanilla's Soul Jam would fit perfectly into the crevice with a little turning. He knew that already, but it still feels strange to see it.

Pure Vanilla sighs, a long, thin, shuddering sound. "...You didn't truly believe that would work, did you?"

In the edge of his vision, Shadow Milk smiles tauntingly, all teeth, but he doesn't say a word.

And Pure Vanilla wakes up, off kilter, exhausted and oddly cold.

[next]

[verstappensrealwife]

Off Track Desire - Oscar Piastri x Fem!Reader

smut, fluff.

approx. 1100 words.

warnings: SEX, p in v, oral (fem receiving), swearing.

oscar piastri masterlist - here. f1 masterlist - here.

As the anticipation mounted before the exhilarating sprint race in Qatar, you playfully bantered with your friend, Oscar Piastri, teasing that if he emerged victorious, you'd indulge in a more intimate form of celebration. Little did you anticipate that his performance would exceed al yourl expectations, but you found yourself not at all dismayed by the outcome of your playful wager.

With each rev of the engine, he poured his heart and soul into the race, his determination fueled not only by the pursuit of victory but also by the unspoken attraction between you both—a truth acknowledged by him, you, and the discerning eyes of Formula One enthusiasts worldwide.

Though he had openly expressed his desires, he opted instead to wait for the perfect opportune moment; it seemed that the chequered flag marked the perfect culmination of his ambitions.

As he soared past the finish line at breakneck speed, your jubilant cheers echoed through the air, a testament to the pride and elation swelling within you.

“Very nicely done everyone,” Oscar said in his radio, “Thank you, very much. Very Very well managed and uhh, yes, tell Y/N I still expect the gift she promised me.” He finished before the radio crackled. 

With the race behind him, Oscar emerged from his car, the visor of his helmet lifted to reveal a visage glistening with sweat—a detail inconsequential in the face of your overwhelming admiration. Rushing into his embrace, you held him close, your heart brimming with pride and affection.

"I am beyond proud of you, Osc!" you exclaimed amidst the cacophony of cheering fans, your words a testament to the depth of your admiration.

A mischievous twinkle danced in his eyes as he playfully inquired, "So, am I still entitled to my reward?" Though delivered in jest, the underlying sincerity in his tone left no room for doubt.

Your cheeks flushed with a vibrant crimson hue as you stumbled over your words, "I- Yes," the embarrassment evident in your voice, eliciting a smirk from him.

"I’ll see you later then, yeah?" he remarked, a playful glint dancing in his eyes. Your response was a silent nod, your mind still reeling from the exchange. "Oh, and wear something pretty for me," he added with a suggestive tone.

As the heat of your blush persisted, you could only manage a wordless acknowledgment, your thoughts consumed by the anticipation of what lay ahead.

Later that night, he arrived at your hotel room, rapping his knuckles against the door before you welcomed him in. His eyes widened in awe as he took in the sight before him. Clad in daring red and black lace that left little to the imagination.

With a swift motion, he shut the door behind him, his hand finding the nape of your neck, pulling you into a fervent kiss. Your breath hitched as his lips claimed yours, igniting a fire within you. The room was cast in shadows, the soft glow of the bathroom light providing the only illumination, while the moon's gentle rays filtered through the curtains. The king-sized bed, draped in delicate pink sheets provided by the hotel, awaited your passionate embrace.

"God, I would've killed to see you like this a few months ago," he murmured, his urgency palpable as he guided you towards the bed, his desire undeniable.

"What's the hurry?" you teased, a playful glint in your eye. "I'm all yours."

Pressed against the wall, his hands firmly gripping your hips, you could feel his arousal pressing against you. His lips trailed along your jawline, sending shivers down your spine as he nibbled just below your ear. "Tell me what you want me to do," he whispered huskily.

"You tell me," you moaned in response.

Before you knew it, you found yourself seated on the edge of the bed, his head buried between your thighs, his expert tongue sending waves of pleasure coursing through your body. Gripping his hair, you guided him, relishing in his every touch and groan.

After reaching the pinnacle of ecstasy once, twice, three times, he rose to his feet, shedding his clothes with haste. "Let me know if I'm too much," he breathed, his eyes ablaze with desire.

Propped against the pillows, you welcomed him, feeling him enter you slowly, eliciting a breathy moan from both of you. Each movement was gentle at first, his kisses sweet and his whispers tender. But soon, his pace quickened, his thrusts becoming more forceful and erratic, with no real rhythm, you love the feeling. His head falls back, abs flexing, satisfied moans falling out as his hips go back and forth. “So fucking good, baby. You’re being so fucking good for me.”

His hips flexed, his words a symphony of passion as you both reached the peak together, your cries of pleasure mingling in the air. "So good," he gasped, his voice trembling with satisfaction, as you surrendered to the intoxicating bliss of the moment.

He tells you how close he is and it pushes you over the edge. Both finishing at the same time, “Fuck- Fuck-Fuck.” his voice cracks a little as he finishes inside of you.

In the serene quietude that followed their passionate union, a gentle calm settled over them, punctuated only by the rhythmic cadence of their intertwined breaths. Lost in the tender reverie of the moment, they found solace in the comforting embrace of each other's arms, their hearts beating in harmonious synchrony.

As the moon cast its soft glow upon the room, Oscar's gaze lingered upon you, his eyes alight with a newfound clarity and determination. With a soft, hesitant breath, he brushed a stray lock of hair from your face, his touch lingering against your skin.

"Y/N," he began, his voice soft and earnest, "I know we've always danced around it, but… Do you wanna maybe be my girlfriend… like officially."

A flutter of anticipation danced in your chest as you met his gaze, the question hanging in the air between you. With a tender smile, you nodded, your heart overflowing with warmth and affection.

"Yes, Oscar," you whispered, your heart brimming with joy, "I'd love to."

A flicker of relief and joy danced in his eyes as he leaned in closer, his gaze locking with yours in an unspoken promise of affection.

el fin.

still cant write smut too well. im working on it shhh

[jokeringcutio]

would you ever write for TDK joker? craving something reader/ledger joker - would you ever write for him? maybe she asks to see him without his makeup and she’s totally dazzled by him, tells him how beautiful he is, touches his scars gently (I mean, he is heath ledger with some scars without it, so it tracks😍😅) and he softens

Yes. (Short Drabble follows below:)

Rating: Mature? No Explicit Smut (yet). Just some loveliness. ~*~

You watched from the shadowed corner of the hide-out, the dim light flickering across the Joker's slouched silhouette as he shuffled in. Exhaustion hung on him like one of his tailored jackets, shoulders sagging, his chaotic day etched into every line of his body.

"Rough day?" Your voice cut through the stillness, a blade wrapped in velvet.

He grunted, a non-committal sound that vibrated against the peeling walls. He faced away from you, hands reaching up to smear away the clownish facade with a stained cloth, movements slow and deliberate. The smeared white gave way to tired skin beneath, the green paint-streaked water darkening the basin.

"Chaos reigns," he murmured, the words almost lost as he wiped the last vestige of makeup from around those sleep-deprived eyes, revealing the man beneath the monster.

You stepped closer, the space between you charged with an electric current. The air felt thicker as your gaze traced the contours of his face – yellow teeth, the sallow skin, the embodiment of neglect. No wonder he had never dared to show you his face before, how he kept himself hidden from both you and the rest of the world.

A shame, really. The rest of the world was missing out.

Seeing his unmasked visage, there was something painfully human about him that took your breath away.

"Joker..." It wasn't just a name; it was a revelation, whispered with a reverence that surprised even yourself. "You're beautiful."

The word clung to the damp air, a truth laid bare. You saw him, truly saw him beyond the chaos. Not just the demon that the world portrayed him as, but someone who touched upon the divine. There was beauty in his darkness, a captivating allure in the raw edges of his insanity.

And for a moment, just a fleeting moment, the agent of chaos stood still under your gaze, the world outside the decrepit walls of the hide-out fading into nothingness.

Your hand reached out, tentative as a whisper. Fingertips grazed the jagged landscape of his scars, grotesque and tender all at once. The touch was featherlight, tracing the history written in his flesh, the story of a smile carved by brutality.

He softened.

“Why hide this from me?” The words came out in a breathless whisper.

The wordless exhale of breath, a silent surrender. There, in the dim light, the Joker's eyes flickered with something unnamable. Not joy, not peace. A flicker of humanity amidst the turmoil.

"Liar,” he breathed, the sound a caress against the stillness.

"Beautiful," came the echo of your own voice from moments before, now reflected at you in his voice. His hand lifted, the gesture slow, purposeful. Cold fingertips danced across your cheek, a stark contrast to the warmth blooming within you.

Laughter bubbled up, nervous, shy. Your heart a staccato against ribs. You let him draw you nearer, his grip ghostly on your hand.

He was touching your face with such reverence, studying you with his darkening gaze. It made you feel like jelly under his touch. He had called you beautiful before, but this time, to hear it as an echo of your own words, felt wrong. You were no liar. You’d spoken the truth.

Joker was, without anything to hide behind, beautiful. The most beautiful man you ever saw.

His lips met your palm. Scar tissue, rough and uneven, pressed into your skin. A delicious shiver coiled down your spine, your core pulsing with desire.

"Beautiful," he murmured again, his gaze holding yours captive. And in that look, the world tilted, madness and sanity blurring into a heady mix.

"Joker..." Your voice faltered, drowned in the intensity of his eyes.

"Shh," he silenced you, the sound soft as the brush of moth wings. "Just feel."

And you did. You felt everything.

You trembled, the room's chill a stark contrast to the fever in your veins. "Make love to me," you whispered, the words a loaded gun.

He didn't speak, actions speaking volumes as he moved with a predator's grace. Clothes discarded, whispers of fabric falling to the floor. A hush before the storm.

Your bodies collided, a crash of thunder in the silence. His hands, commanding, insistent, mapped every inch of you, claiming territory. You arched into him, a willing conquest, the world reduced to the space where skin met skin.

Passion flared, raw, and unbridled. Each movement was a sentence in the story you wrote together, punctuated by gasps and moans. The Joker – no longer a specter of chaos but a man ablaze with desire - moved with a singular purpose.

You clawed at the sheets, each breath a plea, each touch a promise. He complied, a give and take that danced on the knife-edge of madness and euphoria.

And then, stillness.

Afterward, you lay entwined, a tangle of limbs and labored breaths. The silence was delicate, a gossamer thread weaving through the aftermath.

"Did you ever imagine..." your voice drifted, a feather on the wind.

"Imagine?" he echoed, his chest rumbling with a low chuckle.

"Us. Like this." Your fingers traced idle patterns on his chest, daring to explore the man beneath the monster.

"Never," he admitted, the word almost lost between you. "Chaos doesn't plan."

"Yet here we are," you mused, the irony not lost on you.

"Here we are," he agreed, his eyes searching yours for a truth you hadn't spoken.

"Will you show me your face more often?" you asked tentatively, seeking his eyes.

"Why would you want that?" The question hung in the air, a thin veneer over deeper inquiries.

"Like I said,"  you whispered. “Beautiful.”

A grin curled his lips, the scars uncurling like the petals of a flower. Gorgeous, your mind provided.

“If your reaction will always be as intense as this, I just might.”

"Good." A simple affirmation, yet it carried the weight of worlds colliding.

"Good," he repeated, tucking you closer to him.

The kiss he placed on top of your head felt like heaven. ~ AN: I haven't been well enough, but once I am, I definitely want to write more for this man. I love his little insane ticks, the licking of his lips, all his mannerisms. Definitely would love to write more about him. But to everyone who didn't get the memo, I am ill (it isn't a flu or a broken leg or something that will go away on its own, it won't go away in a few days, it needs treatment and possibly surgery and time, so keep your fingers crossed that everything will end well so I can write more for all of you lovelies out there.) ♡

[alyrasturnz]

Can you pleaseee do The Bolter with Matt!

Maybe reader and Matt had a fast love and then she left him heartbroken because she was afraid.

Can be happy ending or not, you decide!

LOVEEE your writing

 ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎THE BOLTER

❐ summary » when matt unveils to y/n the profound truth that fear holds no dominion in his presence, he gently dismantles the walls of trepidation, revealing a sanctuary where vulnerability is met with unwavering strength and compassion.

❐ pairings » bf!matt x fem!reader

❐ warnings » toxic relationship, slut shaming, arguments

❐ a/n && w/c » when the writers block is so bad you discontinue two fics 😭 this was a cm away from getting discontinued • 1.75k

the air in the room is thick with unspoken words, a tangible tension that seems to press down on your chest. liam stands by the window, his silhouette framed by the dim light filtering through the curtains, his back rigid, fists tightly clenched. you draw in a deep breath, feeling the weight of the moment, and attempt to steady your wavering voice.

"why won't you just talk to me, liam? what's going on?" you inquire, your voice tinged with a growing frustration that simmers just beneath the surface.

he whirls around, his eyes glacial and unyielding. "you really want to know? fine. let's talk about how you always run away when things get tough."

a heavy weight descends upon your chest, pulling your heart into a chasm of despair. "what are you talking about?"

"don't play dumb, y/n. every time we hit a rough patch, you bolt. you can't handle anything that isn't perfect." he forces the words out through clenched teeth, each syllable laden with barely restrained fury.

a tumultuous blend of guilt and anger churns within you, each emotion vying for dominance in the labyrinth of your heart. "that's not true. i just need space sometimes."

liam's visage transforms into a mask of unyielding resolve, his features set in an unforgiving rigidity. "space? is that what you call disappearing for days without a word? leaving me wondering if you're ever coming back?"

you advance with deliberate steps, your voice crescendoing with each word. "i need time to think! you never give me that. you suffocate me."

he retreats a step, his voice laced with a biting sarcasm that cuts through the air like a sharpened blade. "oh, so now it's my fault? you're the one who can't stick around and work things out."

your eyes narrow to slits, the glistening threat of tears teetering on the brink of falling. "i try, liam. but you make it so hard. you push and push until i can't take it anymore."

liam's face contorts with a fury that seems to burn from within. "you know what your problem is, y/n? you're a bolter. the minute something goes wrong, you run. you're nothing but a coward."

the words slice through you like a dagger, and you feel your heart fracture into a thousand irreparable pieces. "how dare you say that? i care about us, but i can't keep fighting if you don't believe in me."

he fixes you with a piercing glare, his jaw clenched so tightly that it seems to be carved from stone. "believe in you? how can i, when you keep running away?"

with that, he storms out of the room, the door slamming shut with a thunderous crash that seems to shake the very walls. his final words, dripping with venom, reverberate in your mind, leaving a lingering, painful sting that burrows deep into your soul and refuses to fade, casting a shadow over your thoughts and emotions.

"whore."

the silence that follows is almost tangible, an oppressive force that presses down upon you, amplifying the weight of his words that hang heavy in the air like a storm cloud. you sink to the floor, your legs giving way beneath the burden of your emotions, tears streaming down your face in a torrent as you grapple with the overwhelming sense of loss and confusion, wondering how everything unraveled so disastrously.

»--•--«

you squeeze your eyes shut at the memory, your back pressed firmly against the headboard, as if seeking solace from its solid presence. the recollection floods your mind, each detail sharp and vivid, causing a shiver to run down your spine as you try to ward off the haunting images.

you and matt had engaged in a similarly heated argument just the other day, the crux of it revolving around your tendency to shut him out. the words exchanged were sharp and biting, each one a dagger that deepened the chasm between you, leaving an echo of unresolved tension in its wake.

but you had immediately bolted, your feet carrying you away in a desperate flight before he could utter another word, leaving his unfinished sentences hanging in the air like ghosts, haunting the space where you once stood.

and you won't deny it, whenever you catch even the slightest hint of vulnerability, the smallest leak in your emotional armor, you feel an overwhelming urge to bolt. it's as if an invisible force propels you to flee, to escape before the floodgates open and drown you in a deluge of emotions you fear you cannot control.

the mere thought of facing such raw, unfiltered feelings sends a shiver down your spine, compelling you to seek refuge in the safety of solitude, where the walls you’ve built around your heart remain unbreached.

you have always been a runner. people would often hurl insults, calling you a whore for it, but their words never penetrated the fortress you built around your heart. it didn't matter to you because, in the grand tapestry of your existence, you needed to prioritize your own happiness, to shield yourself from the ever-present fear of getting hurt. the prospect of emotional pain loomed like a dark cloud, and so you ran, seeking the clear skies of self-preservation.

all your fucking lives flashed before your eyes with every word matt uttered that day. each syllable seemed to unravel a tapestry of memories, yet it wasn't as harrowing as the venomous words that your previous boyfriends had once wielded like weapons. their cruelty had carved deep scars, but matt's words, though piercing, were but a shadow of the pain you had endured before.

you were terrified. the mere thought of it sent chills down your spine. you didn't want to relive the harrowing sensation of the first time you fell through the ice, when the cold gripped you like a vice and the world above seemed to vanish into a blur of panic and desperation.

the memory of that piercing cold and the suffocating fear was enough to make you shudder, a reminder of the vulnerability you never wished to feel again.

your thoughts were abruptly interrupted by the resonant chime of the doorbell, its sound slicing through the silence and scattering your contemplations like leaves in the wind.

you rose from your seat, each step echoing softly as you made your way out of your room and down the hallway. with a deep breath, you reached the front door, the anticipation building as you turned the handle. as the door swung open, there stood matt, his presence filling the threshold with an air of familiarity and unspoken emotions.

"matt?" you whisper, your voice barely audible, as though the mere utterance of his name might shatter the delicate tension hanging in the air.

matt stood a few feet away, his expression a turbulent blend of concern and frustration, his eyes searching yours for answers unspoken.

"why do you always shut me out?" he asked softly, his voice tinged with a mix of vulnerability and desperation, as he attempted to bridge the chasm that had grown between you.

you sighed, the weight of your past relationships pressing down on you like an invisible burden. "i just... i can't help it," you murmured, your voice tinged with a trace of sorrow. "you're the best thing i've ever had. every time things get tough, i feel this overwhelming urge to run. it's like i'm constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, bracing myself for the inevitable disappointment."

matt took a step closer, his presence a comforting anchor amidst your swirling doubts. "i'm not like them, you know," he said, his voice gentle yet resolute. "i'm not going to abandon you just because we hit a rough patch. i'm here to weather the storms with you."

you looked up, your eyes a storm of doubt and uncertainty, searching his for a glimmer of reassurance. "but what if things get really bad? what if i mess everything up?"

he smiled softly, his touch gentle yet grounding as he took your hands in his, offering a silent promise of unwavering support. "then we work through it together. no matter how bad things get, i'm not going anywhere. you're stuck with me, remember?"

you bit your lip, the memories of past heartbreaks flashing through your mind like ghostly apparitions, each one a reminder of the pain you've endured. "it's just... every time i start to feel safe, something happens. it's like i'm always on edge, waiting for things to fall apart."

matt's grip on your hands tightened, his eyes steadfastly locked onto yours, a silent vow of his unwavering commitment. "i get it. you've been hurt before, and it's left scars. but i'm not them. i'm here, and i'm not going to let a few bumps in the road scare me away."

a solitary tear traced a path down your cheek, a fleeting testament to your vulnerability, before you hastily brushed it away. "i don't want to push you away, but sometimes it feels like the only way to protect myself."

he gently cupped your face, his thumb tenderly sweeping away the lingering tear, as if erasing the sorrow etched upon your skin. "you don't have to protect yourself from me. i'm not here to hurt you. i'm here to love you, flaws and all. even if we argue, even if things get tough, i'm not leaving."

you took a deep breath, the remnants of fear still clinging to your heart, yet gradually being eclipsed by the burgeoning light of hope. "promise?"

matt nodded, the sincerity in his eyes speaking volumes, conveying a depth of understanding beyond mere words. "promise. we're in this together, for better or worse."

you felt a warmth radiate through your chest, the tendrils of fear gradually dissolving. perhaps, just perhaps, you could entrust him with the fragile treasure of your heart. "okay," you whispered, leaning into his touch. "i'll try."

matt smiled, his lips bestowing a tender kiss upon your forehead, a silent promise woven into the delicate touch. "that's all i ask. we'll figure it out together."

as you rested your head against his shoulder, a glimmer of hope began to flicker within you. the warmth of his presence seemed to chase away the shadows of doubt, and in that quiet moment, you dared to believe that perhaps this time, the tides of fate would shift.

maybe, just maybe, you had discovered someone truly worth holding onto, someone who could mend the fractures of your heart and walk beside you on the journey ahead.

[strong-with-the-sarcasm]

Part 20: I speak in tongues

"I'm not like you, I speak in tongues. It's a different language to those of us, who’ve faced the storm against all odds and found the truth inside." -can u see me in the dark? by Halestorm, I Prevail

Regent Masterlist Part 19 AO3 Mundane Macabre (Main)

When Ellie first began traveling, she’d (rightfully) assumed that she would never stop being surprised by humankind. Humans are curious creatures, capable of both kindness and cruelty in equal measure. 

(The Fentons were prime examples of cruelty)

(Cruel towards the living, dead and those who lie in between.) 

(Their children suffered, maybe even more than the ghosts they tried to hunt) 

With time, Ellie had decided to create her alter ego of Wraith, the quiet being of shadows that was just eerie enough to pass as something other regardless of what form she was in. Wraith was Ellie’s favorite mask to slip on, to hide from the living world as she tried to help where she could. 

Ellie Nightingale was a nomadic medium with a preference for punk rock, bleached hair and her leather jacket. 

Wraith was the opposite in ways that mattered, was created to help with the violence the halfa was witness to, fists bruised and weapons bloody. 

Ellie was not. 

Perhaps she’d broken herself into too many pieces, too many identities, for a solid visage to form. Cracked like a mirror, dirty and covered in old marker messages from friends long gone. Messages she’d carry with her no matter what name she went by, or style of hair, leather jacket or denim- halfa or not. 

That’s what made her unique. 

(Clone.) 

(Failure.)

(Danielle.)

(Ellie.) 

(Wraith.) 

Vlad had been her origin story, her beginning, but he was no longer her master. Slave to no one, daughter of nobody. 

But she was a sister to good people. 

Sometimes Ellie caught herself thinking ‘what would Danny do?’ when confronted with an extraordinary problem, trying to channel his brilliance despite their distance. He might not consider himself very intelligent, but Danny was the cleverest (and kindest) person she’d ever met. He loved her, his clone made as a violation of his bodily autonomy and by his fruitloop of a godfather. 

(Superman had not treated his clone the same.) 

(She understood his feelings of violation) 

(Kon was a living being and needed support too.) 

However, Jazz was her idol. 

Many people would’ve written off the woman as a know-it-all golden child, but those in the inner circle knew the truth. Jazz was the first child of the Fentons, who had nobody but herself to teach or to guide her. When Danny was born, Jasmine devoted everything to caring for him, to raising him as their parents should’ve. 

(His first words, his first steps)

Jasmine Fenton was a woman who loved fiercely and so, so very deeply that she’s willing to sacrifice her own wellbeing to ensure the happiness of the ones lucky enough to be given her love. 

With the rise to Regency and the subsequent downfall of her progenitors, Jasmine Fenton was left to rot in the basement with Danny’s grave, just like the yellow flowers she so fondly left in memorial. 

(Ellie would forever grieve the loss of Jasmine Fenton, the mother she so desperately wanted.) 

Yet, the Lady Nightingale arose from the grave, ash and blood staining her name, a ghost in an inhuman shell, ready to remake the world should she have to burn it down. 

(Jazz carried so few regrets, but they weighed her down like anchors.) 

(One day they might drown her in the dark depths.) 

(Her template’s younger visage admist the spectral mist spoke volumes.) 

(Maybe one day the faces of the elder Fentons would fade away.)

(Ellie could only hope.) 

The Regent, despite having staked her territory in the Ridge alongside Phantom, was unofficially claimed as one of the Crime Alley’s own. Defending the working girls, helping kids with homework or getting them away from ner-do-wells, the Regent had not hesitated to reach out a helping hand even after being targeted by those who would break her will. 

Black Mask, for instance, had put a bounty on the woman’s head with an eagerness that disgusted many others. People knew what a man like him would do with powerful woman, what enjoyment he’d receive breaking her. 

It was also no secret how much the Mask wanted to get his hands on the Red Hood. 

The helmeted vigilante had been a frequent pain in the ass ever since his debut some years ago, destroying his black market operations and getting the Big Bat involved. Sionis wanted little more than to rip off the fucker’s head- helmet and all. 

However, Sionis had tried his hand at subtly for once- he’d hired freelance to take out Hood’s second-in-command while the guy had his guard down with his girlfriend, a pretty red-haired civilian Sionis wouldn’t mind a turn with. The idea was to throw Hood’s gang leadership into chaos so Black Mask’s men could sweep in. Jason Todd was high in the ranks that his death would do just that. 

Figures the guy would survive. 

Jason had been seen with his girlfriend in the Ridge only days after the failed assassination attempt, no worse for the wear. Red Hood had come sniffing around his operations, with Regent stalking his men and the Phantom destroying his latest shipment of merchandise. Though, with the under-the-table job he’d hired out for, Hood found nothing linking him to the attempt on his second-in-command. 

It was time to change tactics. 

The Regent was confirmed to be in a romantic relationship with Hood, if the various Gothamite twitter posts and the sub-reddit r/RedHoodRegent dedicated to commemorating their obvious status, was to be believed. 

There wasn’t many problems with targeting the older sword-wielding vigilante; unlike Robin, Regent didn’t have the Big Bat for backup, but did have the Phantom. The ghost-like meta (or actual ghost, Sionis wasn’t sure how much he believed the rumors) was the biggest obstacle between him and Regent. If Mask could distract (or get rid of) Phantom, then his men could sweep in and eliminate Regent when the vigilante inevitably falls to his numbers. Sure, Sionis was sure he would  lose quite a few men, but it's Gotham. The numbers can always be recouped later. 

Perhaps when Red Hood tries to save his girlfriend, Mask could finally get his hands on him. 

Two birds, one stone. 

Oh yes, Sionis liked this plan. 

He had some calls to make.

A/N: I'm back! This was supposed to be posted on my birthday back in August, but I wasn't in the best headspace for writing or even being on any social media. I have several pieces waiting in the wings to be finished and edited, but I'm back and ready to write again! (Famous last words.)

(To those who guessed Black Mask had something to do with the bomb, kudos.)

Also, for those who might be uncomforable with Sionis' thoughts about Jazz, just remember- he's a bad guy, deranged and over all not the kind of morally upstanding person you want in charge of anything. Things get really dark where it concerns Sionis and what he plans for the future. Just a warning, because those who've read my other works know my penchant for angst.

[yesihaveaobsession]

The Healers Touch

Alastor x female reader

Summary: Alastor gets hurt and comes to you, one who he trusts most to not tell anyone about what damage he has and done. Your little girl decides she wants to help the deer demon herself.

As Alastor was now all beat up, his shadow seemed to take over him, and he soon appeared in your house. He saw that you were doing dishes and humming a soft tune. He looked around and wondered if you lived alone. You did have a little girl, but you hadn't told him about her yet. Due to the running faucet and your humming, you didn't hear or see Alastor's shadow form into the demon himself. His usual form was hunched over.

"Sweetheart," Alastor said, strained slightly, startling you. You jumped out of your skin, your heart pounding in your chest as you clutched your heart and gasped for breath. Slowly, you turned around, expecting to find an intruder or perhaps a figment of your imagination, but instead, you were met with the grinning visage of the Radio Demon himself.

Your eyes shot open, and you threw the dishcloth on the counter, rushing over to his side. "Oh my God, Al, what the hell happened?" You asked as you helped him to the couch. "Just got in a little scuffle, dear, nothing I can't handle," he replied. You shook your head; you should've known that he wasn't going to tell the truth. But you decided to just drop it. "Got in a fight with someone, I'm fine," he said, and you just looked at him. "Alastor, you're—" You started, but he let out a radio-static to let you know he didn't want to talk about it yet. You nodded.

He let out a little radio-static as you helped him sit on the couch. "But if you don't mind, I find myself in need of your expertise, my dear. There's a matter that requires a delicate touch, and I trust no one more than you to assist." You only nodded and were going to continue, but that was shortly stopped; the sound of playful footsteps echoed through the hallway. Your daughter, a bundle of energy and innocence, bounded into the room.

"Mama, who's here?" she asked, her curious eyes falling on Alastor. She was clutching a little stuffed animal that had a children's bandage on its head. You only let out a warm smile and looked over at Alastor, then back to your daughter. "Sweetheart, this is Alastor. He's a friend of Mama's."

Your daughter continued to stare at Alastor, taking in his unique presence, then darted towards him, a colorful children's bandage clutched in her delicate hands. You watched as Alastor leaned forward slightly, so the little girl was able to reach his face.

"Mr. Alastor, you have a boo-boo," she announced, her voice filled with concern. Alastor's surprised expression turned into an amused one as the little girl placed the colorful bandage on one of his cuts on his face. The radio demon's eyes looked over at you, your arms crossed, watching the sweet scene unfold in front of you. Then, Alastor's gaze turned soft as he looked at your daughter, and a small smile appeared on his hurt face.

"Thank you, my dear," Alastor said, his smile genuine as he looked down at the little girl. "You have a healer's touch." Your little girl's expression turned into pride as she stepped back to look at her work.

"My name is [daughter's name]," Alastor just smiled at her and gave her a small nod. You had knelt down next to your daughter and placed a hand on the back of her head. "Why don't you go play in your room, sweetheart? Mama and Mr. Alastor have some grown-up talk to attend to."

With a nod, the girl skipped off, leaving Alastor and you are alone once more. As you began to discuss the matter at hand, a sense of comfort settled over Alastor, grateful for the support of both you and your compassionate daughter. The atmosphere in the room shifted, becoming more intimate as you delved into the intricacies of the situation. Alastor's trust in you was evident as he divulged details, he wouldn't share with just anyone. And as you worked together to unravel the complexities before you, a bond between you strengthened, cemented by mutual respect and understanding. Despite the chaos and danger that often-surrounded Alastor, here in your home, there was a sense of peace and solace, a sanctuary from the tumultuous world outside.

[pastshadows]

Shadows of the Past

Chapter 10: Eclipsing Shadows

Summary: After a year of blissful cohabitation, Astarion disappears without a trace, leaving behind a heartfelt letter explaining his departure. Determined to find him, you traverse Faerûn in search of your lost love, only to realize that some absences are meant to be permanent.

Returning to Waterdeep, you find solace in the company of Gale as you come to terms with Astarion's absence. But just as you begin to heal, Astarion reappears, begging for a second chance at love.

The question looms: can you forgive his abandonment and trust him once more? As you grapple with your emotions and trauma, a sinister force lurks in the shadows, targeting you for unknown reasons.

With danger closing in, you must navigate the treacherous waters of trust, love, and betrayal to uncover the truth behind the mysterious entity's motives. Will you be able to reunite with Astarion while facing the demons of your past? Can you unravel the secrets that threaten your very existence?

Setting: Post End-Game. Mostly canon compliant.

Word Count: 6.6K

Content: Explicit 18+ - intended for mature audiences.

Warnings: [Additional tags will be added, but expect mature content / read at your own risk.]

Spoilers. Mentions of in-game missable content. Violence. Sexual Assault [Implied/attempted sexual assault: Chapter 7]. Past Trauma. Murder. Death. Longing. Sexual themes. Smut. Blood drinking. Angst. Innuendos. High use of sarcasm. Completely fabricated camp interactions. Panic attacks. Anxiety.

64.media.tumblr.com

Please note:

There are mentions of Astarion's trauma in this chapter.

Mr. Blackwell’s green eyes look like murky poison puddles that drip with corrosive contempt. His burgundy garb is wrinkled, creased and stained, clearly unchanged for some time. Whatever remains of his sparse, dingy-grey hair is slick with grease, dishevelled, and unkempt. He’s in a plight of disrepair not often seen in the noble class, eliciting wide-eyed stares and snickers from the crowd in the ballroom.

Guards are warily observing the onset of the altercation with avid attention. Their hands instinctively drift and sit precariously on the hilts of their weapons. You can hear the clinking of metal amour as they inch closer, ready to spring into action. From what you know of Mr. Blackwell, he is well-connected and an influential figure in Waterdeep. If you allow the quarrel to escalate, the guards will likely take heed of his requests and pay little attention to yours. You must tread carefully, a daunting prospect as your palms heat and your temper bubbles under your skin like an overboiling cauldron.

Your eyes scan the mob roving through the ballroom, subtly looking for Astarion. Aldous spoke to his father about the pale Elf with red eyes. You cannot allow Mr. Blackwell to gleam a view of Astarion. Quick and practiced, you take inventory of all possible exits and escapes while you count the guards.

Your neglect to answer him only irritates Mr. Blackwell further, and he crams himself into your line of sight. He is not a small man and towers over you. “Did you hear me, girl?” He squalls, gruff and strident. His hands slam into the wall beside your head with an ear-splitting boom as he barricades you in. “What have you done with my son, you fucking miscreant!”

Girl? Miscreant?! Why did I tell Astarion that murder was off the table?

His fetid breath feathers over your face. An inhuman, snake-like grin splits your lips as your adrenaline spikes. You’ve rivalled devils in the Hells, eradicated a vampire lord, euthanized countless fiends, and rained death down on hordes of shadow-cursed creatures. You will not be intimidated by the likes of this cretin.

“Mr. Blackwell,” you purr unenthusiastically, straightening your back, squaring your shoulders, and bedecking your face with a saintly visage. “Welcome home. It’s good to see you. What’s this about your son? Is Aldous missing?”

“Don’t play stupid, sorceress.” Mr. Blackwell roars. His face reddens further as he descends deeper into his fit of rage. Blue-hued veins pop from his forehead and neck as he snarls in your face with bared teeth. Your palms heat until blisteringly hot, and you resist the urge to shove him. “I know it was you. Where is he? Where is my boy?!”

Dead, and rightfully so.

The guards are getting antsy, shuffling from foot to foot, and the other patrons gape at the dispute before them. A crowd of onlookers is starting to form behind Mr. Blackwell. They stare and laugh with gleeful tittering as the show plays out. Your heart crashes against your sternum, playing your ribs like a drum. Your blood is broiling in your veins, and your fingers twitch with the urge to incinerate the threat.

Where in the Hells is Astarion? He would have heard this as soon as it started. You’re surprised and infinitely relieved that a dagger has not skewered Mr. Blackwell yet, but his absence is starting to make you uneasy. Have the guards already apprehended him? Did Mr. Blackwell recognize and have him arrested? Astarion would not go quietly, and you haven’t heard or seen any evidence of a struggle elsewhere. Astarion is far from stupid. He may know that his presence will only magnify the issue, but it’s unlikely to stop him from stepping in. You grumble under your breath at the thought. No matter what he’s seen you do or how powerful you are, Astarion protects you as if you’re a fragile wildflower, but you are not fragile like a flower; you’re fragile like an unstable explosive.

I protect him with the same ferocity, and I will never stop. Perhaps we are even.

You lean close to Mr. Blackwell, almost nose to nose, and growl under your breath, “You would do well to get out of my face lest I introduce you to the fire of my ancestors.”

Mr. Blackwell gnashes his teeth, narrowing his eyes as his forehead pinches, “You dare to threaten me?!”

Oh, yes. I dare.

Your temper is getting away with you. A hand clasps Mr. Blackwell’s shoulder, and you almost lurch forward, preparing for the fight that is sure to ensue, until you see Gale, wearing an elegant and regal mauve suit with one arm behind his back. You’ve never been so damn relieved not to see Astarion.

Gale’s face is composed with a cordial smile, and he laughs kindly as if nothing is amiss. You see the pink current of the Weave wash over Mr. Blackwell and recognize Charm Person as Gale casts imperceptibly with naught but a murmur.

“Of course not, Mr. Blackwell,” Gale assures in a charitable tenor. “Such a thing would be crass. Isn’t that right, my friend?” Gale prompts you. Gale is skilled, but his charisma is not nearly as honed as yours, and you recognize the petition for assistance charming the man.

Cloaking your voice in an alluring baritone, you put your silver tongue to work, “Quite right, Gale. I would never dare utter such ill-portent to our very good friend here.”

Mr. Blackwell’s eyes glass over as the spell and your charm ensnare him, dousing his rage like water to flame. Mr. Blackwell leans back, tottering on his legs, and mumbles through numb lips, “Of course not. I must have been mistaken. Please, forgive the outburst.”

“All is forgiven,” you shrug while revelling in the influence you have over feeble minds and continue your coercion. “Mr. Blackwell was just telling me he was on his way home. He is ever so weary from his travels. We should not retain him, Gale.”

“Yes.” Mr. Blackwell stammers, blinking hard as your suggestion plants and grows roots. “Yes, I was just about to retire for the night.”

Gale nods curtly to Mr. Blackwell while offering you his arm, “Get some rest. We should be going as well. It’s getting quite late. Dawn is almost upon us, after all.”

Taking Gale’s offered arm, he leads you away from the onlookers ogling you. The guards have relaxed as tensions decrease, but they still watch you with a keen eye. Gale’s warning starts to sink in.

Dawn? Fuck! Where is Astarion? He must get home.

Your grip slips from Gale, but he catches it and pats your arm, “Keep calm. Your panic will only further alarm the guards, and I fear they will not be as easily swayed as Mr. Blackwell. We are quite a team, but we cannot charm them all without someone taking notice. Astarion is waiting for us outside, just beyond the grounds.”

“Astarion is outside?” You query with an arched brow.

Gale nods, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with people who take notice of him. Once he’s managed to excuse himself from the tedious small talk, he leans close. “I sought him out as soon as I arrived. He is ever so antagonistic and easily provoked when it comes to you. The man would brave the sun if he thought you were in danger. It was considerably difficult to convince him it was best to leave it to me. I apologize I did not come to your aid first. I know you have more sense than he and would a keep cool-head. When I found him, the idiot had already drawn his damn weapons. Always violence first with him, isn’t it?”

You swallow hard and keep your mouth firmly shut. Gale knows you, but perhaps not as well as he thinks. You would have incinerated that man as soon as he stuck his face in yours, guards and onlookers be damned. You do not take life unnecessarily, but you take it without guilt when there is a threat to your friends. Mr. Blackwell is a danger to Astarion, and you can be impetuous when it comes to him.

“Thank you, Gale.” You breathe a long sigh as relief sates your nerves. “How did you know?”

“Mr. Blackwell came to the manor looking for you. I tried to appease him, but I am neither as intimidating nor convincing as you are, and he stormed off before I could get more than a word or two in. I knew he would go scouring the parties for Aldous and more than likely come across you.” Gale chuckles, “I’ve been through several of these celebrations tonight. I should have known to go to the most extravagant one first.”

“Mr. Blackwell will be back.” You point out, mouth twisting into a grimace as your mind tries to piece together some semblance of a plan. “We have not heard the last of this.”

“No,” Gale murmurs. “We most definitely have not. It is my hope that he doesn’t realize I charmed him tonight. If he does, it will only compound his fervour. We will have to tread these waters carefully. If this reaches the Masked Lords of Waterdeep…” Gale trails off with a sullen shake of his head, “May the dice roll in our favour.”

Your eyes bulge. You don’t know much about the government of Waterdeep, but everyone has heard of the masked lords. A ruling council whose identities were well hidden and carefully guarded.

“Could he really do that? Take it to that height?” You wheeze breathlessly as an invisible hand grips your lungs and clenches, “The Lords of Waterdeep surely wouldn’t concern themselves with such a trivial matter of a missing boy. Would they?”

Gale shrugs, “I wish I could say. Mr. Blackwell is exceptionally renowned. It’s plausible that he will go to great lengths, and I’m unsure how far his reach extends. I will do what I can to protect you and Astarion, but even my influence has limits.”

The brisk air bristles against your skin, giving you goosebumps or perhaps that’s due to Gale’s mention of the lords, as you and Gale continue your hastened retreat. Gale takes long strides, making you trot beside him to keep pace since you are considerably shorter than he. What is with men and walking as fast as they can? You would ask Gale to slow down, but you’re in a hurry to get away. The rapid click, click, click of your heels on the stone makes you uneasy, as it sounds like a clock counting down your final moments.

There’s an eerie reticence in the courtyard this evening, as silent as the sheeted dead, as if the city beyond these stone walls has ceased to exist. A ghostly wind causes your modest steel-silver dress to flutter around your knees. The scent of incoming rain hangs thick in the air while drab clouds swarm the sky as a storm coming off the ocean makes landfall, and the weather fronts interact.

Magic glows in your eyes and fingertips as you practice the various spells in your repertoire. Your fingers are a spectacular florid ballet, the Weave tiptoeing over the pads as you rehearse the movements for Sunbeam, Chain Lightning, Cloudkill, and Blight and recite the incantations in your mind like a sermon without ultimately casting as you drill yourself. Weaving the intricate web of the Weave is ingrained in your soul, and this is not an exercise you need to practice, but the recent events and Gale’s mention of the Masked Lords have caused anxiety to breed in your muscles. You need to make sure you’re ready for war. You’re an incredibly gifted sorceress with the ferocity of your draconic ancestors dwelling in your blood. You can be death incarnate, and you will be if it comes to it. You will raze this damn city to the ground if it means to harm Astarion. No one will hurt him again if your lungs still draw breath.

You’re glowing so brightly, the Weave shimmering around you like an aurora, that you don’t notice that day has fallen victim to night when Astarion breezes into the courtyard. He looks at you, brandishes his dagger with a finesse that never fails to impress and descends into a defensive stance. He observes the surroundings with an acute eye and gives you a questioning look after he’s assessed there’s no danger.

With a quick step you learned from him, you pivot and toss a very weak Fire Bolt straight toward him. Astarion whirls, his propensity for dexterity evident in his movement, avoiding the spell.

“Impressive agility. I’m glad I taught you something at least, but what in the Hells was that for?” He smirks with a tsk and clicks his tongue. “At least, I ask before I bite. I am civil - unlike you.”

“Just making sure you’re not getting sloppy,” you giggle with a virtuous shrug.

“If that would have hit me, I would have deserved it,” he chuckles and glowers at you with an amused grin. “That was far too slow and weak. I did not even feel the heat from it. You can do infinitely better than that. Even I can cast that cantrip. Come on, darling. If you’re going to spar with me, you could at least give me the decency of a challenge.”

“A challenge, hm?” You smirk wickedly. Sparring with him isn’t a new activity. When you lived with him, you two would often spar long into the night until you were both sweating and tired. He craves thrill and danger as much as you, and you keep each other on your toes. “As you wish.”

Astarion’s rapscallion smile and the way he bends lightly at the knees indicate that he welcomes this exchange. The Weave brightens around you, and you cast Fire Bolt repeatedly in quick succession with a little more power and speed behind it with lithe steps. Astarion swings his body, nimbly ducking, dodging and avoiding everything you throw at him as he advances toward your position until he’s in front of you and takes you into his arms while he laughs.

“You caught me once. It tickled.” He glances toward a small burn mark on his shirt, “If anyone has gotten sloppy, it’s you.”

“What you call sloppy, I call careful casting,” you giggle.

“Sloppy,” he corrects, narrowing those scarlet eyes glinting vibrantly with excitement and adrenaline. “You’re already a veritable sovereign when it comes to magic. How about we work on expanding your skillset?” He twirls a dagger at his side without so much as looking at it, catches the blade between his fingers, and settles the hilt in your hand with a devious grin. Astarion takes a few steps backward and motions you forward, “Come on. Attack me.”

You stare at the dagger, your fingers sliding over the metal hilt, “You want me to come at you with a knife? Have you gone completely mad? There are training dummies right there.”

“Oh yes, those will surely help you.” Astarion rolls his eyes and clicks his tongue with audible disapproval of your reluctance. “I am positive your attacker will stand stationary for you so you can stab them - if you ask nicely enough. You will learn nothing from those.”

It’s unlikely that you’ll hurt him. Hells, if you did somehow manage to so much as nick him, Astarion would probably be proud of you, but you stare at the shiny steel with trepidation, “What if I cut you?”

Astarion’s head tilts back, and he laughs loudly, “Oh, you are adorable. Thank you for your concern, but I assure you, I will be fine. You’re more likely to hurt yourself, and if you somehow do cut me, what does it matter? It’s not like you can kill me further.” He giggles, “Now, remember your footwork and keep the sharp pointy end directed toward me and not yourself, love.”

Well, multiclassing never hurts.

Slipping off your sandals, you recall everything he’s ever taught you or tried to, at least. Bending your knees and rolling your weight into your heels for balance, you lunge toward him. You and he spar while he deflects your attacks with an ease that vexes you, and he barks various instructions - straighten your back, keep your weight centred, don’t lean forward, and use your momentum until your heart beats hard, a prisoner in a cage constructed of bone. Exhausted, you sit on the ground, gulping down ragged breaths.

Astarion crosses his arms with a chuckle, “Done, are you? Well, I’ve certainly seen worse - from a babe. Do not go getting into any knife fights without me. You will surely get yourself run through.”

“Astarion,” you throw your head backward exaggeratedly with the back of your hand against your forehead, “you wound me. I think I could rival you with one or two more lessons.”

He scoffs and rolls his eyes, “One or two centuries of lessons, perhaps. You stick to magic. I will happily do any required stabbing.”

The man doesn’t need to breathe, and you know it, but he’s not even sweating. You frown at him while wiping your brow, “Could you please pretend to be winded at least?”

“Apologies. Where are my manners?” Astarion drops to his knees and gives you a gentle shove, sending you sprawling to your back. Crawling over you, he mimics your heavy breathing with a smug smirk, “Better?”

Rolling your eyes, you stick your tongue out at him frivolously, “Kiss me, you fool.”

“Blood running a little hot, sweetheart?” He purrs sensuously, pressing his body into you, grabbing your thigh and guiding it around his waist, “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

Astarion’s lips mould to yours, cool silk against your heated pout and as delightful to the senses as plunging into cool water on an arid day. His tongue traces your lower lip, enticing your mouth to part. His taste is rich and hypnotic, a firewater of desire and good Gods, it’s intoxicating. His fingers trail up the delicate skin of your upper thigh with firm pressure, leaving blazing trails of icy fire, coalescing between your legs and making you throb. Bolts of electricity amble up your spine in a slow progression, making your body shiver awkwardly as bumps rise over your skin.

Astarion wraps an arm around your waist and hauls you to your feet, tugging your dress back into place, and you give him a quizzical look.

“Gale has returned,” Astarion says, smoothing your hair down. “That man has the worst timing. Also, a bath. You smell.”

Heat rises to your cheeks, and you groan at his candidness. With a gentle shove, you grumble under your breath and stalk away from him to your room.

There’s a chill in the air that sinks its teeth into even his already frosty skin. Winter is drawing near. The trees have shed their leaves, preparing for dormancy, and the ground is stiff beneath his boots. He’s tired and filthy, spending much of his days lately in caves or held up in shabby barns or abandoned shacks during the day as he continues to run from the only love he has ever known. He has been lucky so far. He can often make it to the next godforsaken hovel to find shelter if he travels fast enough through the night, but as he progresses, the little towns are growing further apart. One of these days, he may not be able to find shelter before dawn, and the sun will consume him - a rather painful demise for a vampire.

Before Astarion enters the ramshackle tavern in this puny rural town in the middle of nowhere, he casts his eyes skyward and looks at the silvery moon as he does every night. If nothing else, he can take comfort in the fact that she is somewhere, under the same stars, and maybe, just maybe, she is looking at the moon, too.

The tavern is as destitute as the rest of this town, with low ceilings and lit by only a few oil lamps, giving it a gloomy atmosphere. It’s quiet. No minstrel or bard plays music here, and the only sounds that can be heard are the dragging of flagons across the rough tabletops and the grotesque gulps and burps of the few downtrodden labourers and drunks. It smells of mildew, fetid spirits and vomit. He crinkles his nose. He usually mimics breathing out of habit in public, but for this place, he will make an exception.

The floor is absurdly tacky, and even he can’t help the sound his boots make as they peel off it. He orders a pint and sits in a rickety chair that wobbles underneath him. Calling the ale rotten would be an understatement. He’s never tasted anything quite so vile in all his two centuries, and his diet once consisted of dead, putrid rats. It’s hard to say which is worse.

A pair of ne’er-do-wells attempted to extort some coin out of him by betting they could juggle more daggers than he. Fools. Even if blind drunk, his dexterity would be vastly superior to theirs. They could scarcely juggle two - child’s play for him. They left quickly with superficial lacerations to their fingers and hands. He wishes she had been here to witness this. They would have had a good laugh. She always loved watching him.

Even though the ale is terrible, the little table is starting to fill with emptied flagons. Tonight, every iota of him aches loudly in the silence of her absence. He does not need to trance, not since the tadpole no longer wriggles in his skull, but he will, if only so he can fall into a memory where they are sure to meet.

His vision is blurred, and his mind thinks of nothing but her. What would she be doing right now? Reading by the fire and sipping wine? Trying to mend her clothes and doing a terrible job now that he is no longer there to do it for her? Sleeping in their bed? Would she be alone, or would Halsin or Gale have come to console her? With him out of the picture, perhaps she could find happiness with one of them. The thought makes his very bones throb, and his fingers wrack through his hair, unsettled by the notion of any but him with her in their bed.

Astarion empties the next flagon and frowns while he grinds it across the table, clinking it against its fallen brethren.

Gale would be the most likely. Gale was a powerful wizard, but he had always been fascinated by her innate authority over the Weave. Where Gale had to read books, scrolls, practice and study spells, she could simply cast them reflexively with little effort. Early in their adventure, Gale had tried to beguile her, boasting his control of the Weave with a demonstration. Astarion watched with curiosity to see if she would reciprocate the obvious flirtation. She kept a straight face, smiling politely and copying as instructed until the foray was completed. She walked away with her arms crossed and a hard roll of her eyes in exasperation while Gale watched her all dew-eyed. It made him snicker at the time.

Despite his prowess, wealth and renown, Gale would probably bore her into an early grave. She craved excitement, risk, Hells, even danger. She needed someone not afraid to get into a little, or a lot, of trouble. She would not be satisfied sitting idle in a library for the rest of her days. She loves fiercely and deserves to be loved fiercely in return with untamed, unbridled passion.

Hot baths. Animals. Fresh fruit. Red roses. Long walks through moonlight forests at night. All the things she loves flit through his mind.

Her face appears in his blurry vision, laughing as she runs through the forest with him hot on her heels. Her modest pastel green dress waves in the wind. She casts Misty Step and disappears from his view. She is not quiet in the forest and knows it, but she pops out from behind the large trunk of a tree and yells, “Boo!” He pretends to be startled, but she doesn’t believe his facade and dissolves into adorable giggles.

She strolls up to him, smiling brightly, still laughing, and the stars themselves descend from the heavens and twinkle in her eyes. Her voice, majestic like a siren’s song, fills his ears as she says, “You’re an adorable idiot. I love you, Astarion.”

He smiles, blinks, and the memory dissipates. He tries to hold onto it, but it withdraws despite his efforts to keep her with him.

A woman’s voice catches his attention, “Stop, please. I said no.”

In Astarion’s drunken daze, he almost hears her voice, but it’s a hint too breathy and modulated. He narrows his eyes and tries to peer past the film of inebriation, mucking up his vision and making him see double. A young woman sits at the bar, and a man much older and ragged-looking pets her hair with clumsy fingers, muttering slurred, vulgar innuendos. She tries to push him away from her, but it’s futile. The man stumbles and chortles, taking another noisy sip of his ale, missing his mouth and washing his beard with it.

He cringes with a roll of his eyes. This is not his business. He does not fancy himself a hero, and he is not foolish enough to get caught up in such a quandary. He peers into his empty flagon. A deep, dark well of sorrow gazes back at him from the bottom. He should leave and return to the inn, where he can slip into his trance and be with her until the sun dips below the horizon.

“I said stop!” The woman’s voice rings out higher, making his ears twitch and grating on his nerves. It’s so close to hers that he has trouble reminding himself it’s not. It can’t possibly be because he... he left her.

He looks around the tavern, hoping someone else will step in, but no one even lifts their sagged heads to assess the situation. He leans back in his unsteady chair, and his fingers rap against the table with hard, rhythmic thumps portraying his increasing frustration.

He is no hero.

“No! I said no!” 

Is no one going to do anything? Really? He growls, clenching his jaw and grating his teeth. The woman’s voice is just too close to hers. It’s making his fingers twitch over the hilt of his dagger, and his muscles tense.

“No! Please, stop. Help!”

The woman’s shoes drag across the floor, and he’s already out of his chair, stalking toward the commotion with a haunting scowl. He ignores the itch to draw his blade. If she taught him anything, it’s that talking is often all that is necessary, but if all else fails, he has no issue with killing.

He is a little peckish.

He stands beside the woman with his practiced liar’s smile, “My friend, how lovely to see you again. Funny we should meet here of all places.”

The man glowers at him through droopy, glassy eyes, releasing the woman’s arm. The woman simply stares at him, her cheeks tear-streaked and ruddy, unsure of what to do.

Gods, these people are dull. All she must do is play along. He attempts to make his intentions plain, “Allow me to walk you home. We can catch up on the way.”

“That lady is coming home with me.” The man snarls, poking his shoulder with a finger that he can’t even keep straight.

This man would be easy pickings indeed if it came to it.

“No.” Astarion stands tall, squaring his shoulders and layering on his most intimidating intonation, “I will be taking her home. If you try to stop me, I know a thousand ways to gut you before you can so much as blink. Do not tempt me.”

“Ah Hells,” the man snickers after sizing him up and stumbles back, “She’s not worth the trouble. She’s all yours.”

He hoped the man would force his hand, but this is probably for the best. He is looking forward to resting indoors today. It has been many days since he was able to wait out the day in a room with a bed that did not smell like some form of livestock.

The woman turns to him with big, round eyes full of adoration and grabs his arm, “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Astarion doesn’t quite know how to react, and he does not like the way she is eyeing him. He pulls his arm out of her grasp, “I’ll walk you home. Let’s go.”

The night feels too silent and still around him as he walks the dim streets. The woman follows on his heels, blabbering and stuttering her praises and gratitude. He doesn’t speak another word to her as he fights his mind. Emotions are stirring in his head. He's unsettled, angry even, and he doesn’t understand why. At least the walk isn’t long in a small place like this.

As soon as the woman opens her door, he turns to walk away.

“Won’t you come in?” Her eyes slink over him, and he feels revulsion. No one but her should be looking at him like that, and it only increases his discomfort further, “I didn’t catch your name.”

“I didn’t give it,” he snaps back gruffly.

He keeps walking until he feels the woman’s hand clutch the back of his shirt, her fingernails grazing over his scars. Those old emotions flood him - fear, loathing, disgust, and he whirls with a fanged snarl.

“Don’t fucking touch me.”

“Oh! I-I’m sorry, Astarion.” Her hand recoils from his back, and she jumps away, pressing herself to the headboard with eyes rounded in confusion. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Do you want me to go?”

Shit.

He let his mind wander off with him, and the memory bled into reality. Blinking hard, he reorients himself. He’s safe in Gale’s manor. He is with her. It was her touching his back - at his request, of course.

He jumps off the bed, flexing his hands as he paces the room. He needs time to get his head straight, but the raw anguish in her eyes is gnawing at him. This is why he left in the first place. He keeps hurting her when the storm sweeps him away in a flash flood, and he’s lost in it.

“I’ll go and give you some time.” She slips into her housecoat, cinching it at her waist and opens the door. Before she closes it, she turns to him, “I’m so sorry, Astarion. If you need space for the night, I understand. I will rest in my room tonight.”

He can’t get his godsdamned mouth to move or his tongue to form words. He stands idly as she closes the door behind her. He listens to her bare feet pad down the hallway at a quick trot and then the click of her door closing. His hands wrack through his hair, fingers curling into it. He knows better than to let his mind drift aimlessly, although the fact that it did roam is an interesting development. He’s used to being able to think of nothing but withstanding the sensation of her hands on his back. He’s improving, albeit slowly.

He laces his hands behind his head, arches his back and stretches his tight chest, inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly. Astarion closes his eyes and shakes out his arms.  He feels panicked and tense. His skin squirms as if snakes are writhing below the surface. Patrolling his bedroom, he tries to mollify his unease, taking deep breaths of air he doesn’t need. The memory has agitated him for some reason that he can’t quite put his finger on.

His ears twitch as they catch suppressed weeping from her room. Fuck, he’s upset her. This was not her fault. It’s been a while since he went and fucked things up like he always does. He leans on the wall and closes his eyes. Did he make a mistake returning? For months, his singular goal was to find her, but now he wonders if this was selfish. He could not stand living without her, but she may have been better without him.

Astarion is sliding down an icy hill made of doubt, and he can’t stop his descent. Has he doomed her to a life sharing his pain? What does he have to offer her other than his unconditional love? The shadows have claimed him once more.

No.

He can’t let himself fall back into old patterns. She can handle his darkness.

The silence of this room without her heartbeat is dark and heavy. She should be here with him. A chill like an electric bolt runs down his spine at the sight of the empty room when he opens his eyes. It reminds him of when he left, a year as nightmarish as the one he spent in that tome, alone and hungry. He aches to hold her.

He takes long strides and taps on her door lightly.

“Are you okay, Astarion?” She sniffles, trying hard to confine the tears, making her eyes shine.

“I’m fine. Come here.” He wraps his arms around her, kissing her forehead and pressing his cheek against her. She hugs him awkwardly, more awkwardly than he hugged her the first time they did this. She keeps her hands off him, arms stiff at her sides. “It’s okay. You can touch me.”

She hesitates before placing her hands on his waist. He kisses her temple, gently grabs her arms and guides them around him, “A proper hug, yes? You can touch my back, love. It’s alright.”

He can feel the warmth of her hands hovering over his back, unsure, but slowly press into him, and she hugs him tightly. He’s surprised to find that it soothes the agitation. The spring coiled around his chest, constricting it, dissipates in her arms. He takes a deep breath to test how good the looseness feels.

“Come back to our room, hm? I will explain what happened.”

“You don’t have to explain,” she murmurs against him.

“I know,” he rubs her back, “but I want to - if you’re willing to hear it, of course.”

“Always.”

They sit on the bed as he describes the memory in as much detail as possible. She stays quiet as she always did, waiting patiently when he must take a moment to collect himself, offering him her hand. When something he recalls upsets him further, she squeezes his fingers, grounding him and encouraging him to take a break - when and if he needs to.

“I don’t know why it agitated me so much. It made me afraid,” he rasps faintly with a shaky breath as his brows pinch together, perplexed. It’s still troubling him. “Her touching my back was not the only reason, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

She nods with a contemplative gaze. Her beautiful doe-eyes blink as she ponders, and the candlelight scintillates in them. She grabs a blanket and pats her lap, “Do you want to put your head in my lap?”

He smiles. She always knows exactly what he needs. Astarion rests his head on her legs, and she covers him with the blanket, making sure his back and scars are entirely cloaked. Tucking it around him, like he tucks her in at night to ensure it doesn’t slip.

Rubbing his arm, she keeps her voice to a solacing whisper, “Do you want to know what I think, or would you rather I just listen?”

She has always been keenly observant and deeply perceptive. Often able to gleam the tiniest subtleties in inflection, tone or body language. It is what makes her a master at persuasion and intimidation. Her insight is as boundless as the cosmos. If anyone can help him shed light on this, it’s her. If he is to heal, he needs to know what provokes these feelings.

“I have gone over it in my mind time and time again,” he sighs. “I cannot figure it out myself. Tell me what you think.”

“Stop me at any point if you no longer wish to hear it,” she urges. “May I hug you closer?”

With the blanket covering his back and scars, he feels protected and secure. He nods, “Yes.”

She curls around him. Her warmth seeps into him, forcing back the gloom. “You said you did not like the way she looked at you. You mentioned it twice. What look did she give you, and what did it remind you of?”

Flashes of the woman’s greedy eyes play out in his mind. She stared at him as if she wanted to devour and lose herself in him. She stared at him like he was her saviour. She stared at him like they used to stare at him before he brought them to Cazador.

Hells.

Will he ever stop being astounded with how clever she is? She’s not telling him what she thinks. She’s bringing his attention to details he skimmed over so he can work it out himself.

“It… it reminded me of the way my victims used to look at me,” his voice quivers and cracks, tears spring to his eyes, rivulets rolling out the corners. Good Gods, his body is trembling as he fights to keep his emotions from giving way. “The bloody dingy tavern, the way she simply trusted me to walk her home, the quiet, dark streets and the ardent lust in her eyes… It all felt like I was back to doing his bidding as if I was the fucking rake again.”

She rescinds her pressure on him slightly. He used to hate being touched when he felt like this, but not anymore, as long as it’s her touching him. He pulls her back around him. His body shakes more violently now as he continues to fight the overwhelming emotions.

“You don’t have to fight, Astarion. Don’t be afraid to break. We all fall.” She soothes him with an almost ethereal voice like an angel whispering, “I’ve got you. For as long as you need. I’ve always got you.”

Sobs wrack his body, tears streaming down his face, and he falls to pieces in her arms. She’s not close enough like this. His body is painfully bare without her skin on his. She is the light that drives the shadows back. She is sunshine. She is his. He shrugs off the blanket with haste. She gasps at his quick movement, and his fingers find the hem of her nightdress.

She stops him with a confused look, “Astarion, what-”

“I don’t need it,” he chokes out, hoarse and urgent. “Not with you. Not anymore. I want to feel you. Will you let me?”

She removes her nightdress and opens her arms with a smile, tears streaming down her face. She wraps her arms around him, limbs cocooning his body, and pulls him securely to her, his bare back against her warm chest, choking away the fear.

With her, he is seen. He is understood. He is safe.

“I love you, Kamena. Ai armiel telere maenen hir.” He speaks to her through sobs in Elven, their mother tongue, meaning “You hold my heart forever.”

“I love you too, Astarion. Ai armiel telere maenen hir,” she chimes with a featherlight kiss to his shoulder.

Safe in her arms, he shatters and breaks.  

Thank you to all those who read/like/comment/follow/reblog/etc. I'm forever thankful for the support. I've loved writing since I was a child but have never been confident enough to post anything for others to read. The encouragement I've received has been positively incredible, and it's been helping me through some hard times in my life - sincerely thank you so much! :)

Chapters Master List - Shadows of the Past

AO3: Crossposted

If you're interested, I also write fanfic for Ascended Astarion x Spawn Tav - Fangs and Fractured Hearts

Small Notes:

We did name Tav in this chapter. I apologize if it's not well received but I think it will make senes going forward. I did try to do it in a natural-ish way.

[icarusignite]

These Violent Delights (1)

Chapter 1: Marigolds and Mayhem

Pairing: Coriolanus Snow x OC

Word Count: 4k

Summary: Academic rivals, Coriolanus Snow and Artemis Highbottom must compete for the Plinth prize. Shenanigans ensue.

A/N: Check out the masterlist for a better synopsis lol. As usual, don't be a ghost reader. I live for yalls comments/questions/concerns/reactions, even a keyboard smash is highly appreciated and encouraged ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡

Masterlist

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

It was the third nosebleed of the night and Artemis was just about tired of it. She didn't even bother stemming the flow, allowing the carmine rivulets to trace an unhurried path from her nostrils to the marble below.

The hush of running water met the heavy rhythm of a beating heart, and there she stood—a lone figure, framed by the harsh edges of the sink, her grip upon it almost desperate. She could feel the sharpness imprinting into her skin, and yet still she clung, her skin stretched across her knuckles almost comically grotesque.

She watched the blood, in an almost detached sort of way. It could be art, she mused, the juxtaposition of sanguine against sterile white. A whispered revelation danced at the edge of her consciousness—anything could be art if you framed it the right way. Even the bloodiest of carnages. A spectacle, a thing to be enjoyed.

Artemis looked up, and her reflection stared back, menacingly. The mirror, an unforgiving oracle, revealed a distorted visage, one she both did and did not recognize. Her dark hair, cascaded in disarray, entangled in the aftermath of sleep's elusivity and her eyes harbored shadows akin to a painter's bruised palette. The reflection mocked, a cruel mimicry of the composed persona she so ardently sought to maintain.

Out of control.

Unbidden judgment pierced through her thoughts, a verdict she loathed to acknowledge.

No that could not be right.

Artemis Highbottom was always in control.

She despised this discordance, this disruption to her meticulously curated world. To her, it was anathema, but nature could not be controlled, and what was more natural than blood? Perhaps it was fitting, that this fundamental of humanity could not be dominated.

Blood could never be dishonest, and it had the power to reveal one's innermost truths.

With unyielding determination, Artemis scrubbed at the remnants of the crimson tide that painted her face, an act of restitution against the chaos that dared to invade her pristine sanctuary. Each abrasive stroke was an attempt to erase not just the physical residue but a deeper discord. She worked quietly, although there was no one else to hear. There was never anyone to hear her, her gilded halls always vacant, but Artemis spoke silence like a second language and old habits die hard. She spared her father a brief thought, wondering where he could possibly be at such a late hour but it didn't really matter. He just wasn't here. He never was.

Raw skin met her touch, and the blood, now vanquished, left in its wake a battlefield—a canvas of sacrifice for the sake of semblance.

The mess was an unwelcome intrusion there were far worse ways to be awoken. If she was busy cleaning up after her nosebleeds, then she wasn't sleeping, and if she wasn't sleeping, then she wasn't dreaming.

The walk to the Academy's Heavensbee Hall was a brisk one, although, in the sweltering heat, Artemis found herself increasingly short-tempered. She was going to be late, but she kept her pace measured. She would not arrive a panting sweaty mess like some savage. It had been a foolish idea, she knew that, but she had given her own driver the day off anyway, waiting instead for her father. His presence was expected, and she imagined it would have been a pleasant change of routine to accompany him. He was probably running late, she told herself. After all, she hadn't seen him return, and she would know, she was awake half the night.

The grand staircase up to the Academy could hold the entire student body, so it easily accommodated the stream of officials, professors, and students headed for the reaping day festivities. Artemis sped up, taking three steps at a time, while still attempting a casual dignity. Every other person she passed stopped to wave her down and exchange pleasantries, and although her impatience was rising, she kept a placid smile stretched across her lips as she greeted them all in turn. She nodded when they asked after her, and then nodded some more, albeit less enthusiastically when they asked about her father.

She made her way through an entry draped in black banners, then sprinted down a vaulted passage, and into cavernous Heavensbee Hall, where they would watch the broadcast of the reaping ceremony. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that she wasn't quite as late as she believed, and the official ceremony hadn't yet started. The hall was humming with faculty and students and a number of Games officials. 

Avoxes wove through the crowd with trays of posca, a concoction of watery wine laced with honey and herbs. One passed by Artemis, and despite her parched throat, she waved him away. On principle, she avoided any and all intoxicants. It was stronger than most people thought, and in previous years she had seen many make complete fools of themselves by imbibing too deeply. Artemis would be damned if she allowed herself to lose control like that. That and given her father's dependence on morphling, she imagined she must be genetically predisposed to addiction. 

In the great hall, she was once again forced to make her rounds, as faculty and students alike beckoned to introduce her to their circles. She eventually travelled past the hundreds of cushioned chairs set up for the occasion and onto the dais, where the communications professor, Satyria Click was regaling a mix of Academy professors and Games officials with some wild story. Amongst the gathered crowd was the biology instructor, Alfred Stanton, who stood off to the side, eyes deliberately wandering the area as if to make a show of his boredom. When his eyes caught sight of Artemis, he brightened, his face lifting in a smile as he waved her over. 

Oh great, more greetings. If Artemis had to utter another false pleasantry, she'd lose her breakfast. 

No, she wouldn't. She knew better than that. Besides, she was Professor Stanton's teaching aide, and it was quite literally in her job description to be at his beck and call. 

When she arrived, she scowled internally. It was inevitable, she knew that, but she was hoping that at least today of all days, she'd be delayed in setting eyes upon the one person who held the power of ruining her mornings. 

"Oh, Coriolanus!" Satyria drawled, as the blonde boy gave her the customary kiss on the cheek. "Here’s my star pupil.”

Artemis held no qualms against Satyria, not really. She was amusing and not overly uptight, one of the few professors who allowed students to call them by their first names. It was her teaching aide against whom she held a grudge. 

Professor Stanton, not to be outdone, clapped his meaty hand on Artemis's shoulder, making her stagger. Maybe the man needed to lay off the weightlifting for a bit. He announced her presence to the circle enthusiastically, earning a scowl from Satyria. 

"And Artemis, my star pupil. We were afraid we'd miss you this morning."

Artemis ducked her head bashfully, mumbling something about running late, but Professor Stanton only laughed boisterously, as he continued to speak. 

Coriolanus Snow was seething. Well, no that was perhaps a little extreme. Artemis Highbottom did not deserve such a reaction from him. She didn't deserve the energy. When he hadn't seen her earlier today, he had deluded himself into thinking that she simply wouldn't come. She was never late after all, so the fact of the matter must be that she simply wasn't coming. With her gone, he could be the sole beneficiary of the crowd's attention, networking his way into their hearts. 

Then he had seen her arrive, panting and slightly out of breath and he had to admit he marveled at the sight. Her coffee skin flushed and her hair thrown over her shoulder haphazardly as if she'd been running. Coriolanus had been amused, to say the least. He had hoped that she wouldn't wander over to his little corner, that he would be able to have Satyria's circle all to himself, but it was wishful thinking. People knew of him of course, being the son of Crassus Snow and all, but he realized that they tended to forget about him in her presence. After all, it was far easier to garner the good graces of one's father if he was still alive. Even if said father was Casca High-as-a-Kite-Bottom. Snow sniggered at the nickname, a creation of his own genius. 

Almost as if she could read his mind, Artemis shot him a withering glare, and Coriolanus stiffened, standing straighter to shoot her one back. The circle had shifted, placing him right next to her and if he stretched his fingers, they'd brush against hers. Not that he'd want to of course. How utterly repulsive. 

“Beautiful shirt. Where did you get such a thing?” Satyria was addressing Snow now, surveying him carefully. 

He looked at the shirt as if surprised by its existence and gave the shrug of a young man of limitless options. They didn't have to know that all that was left to him was his name. The world still needed to think of Coriolanus as rich. 

“The Snows have deep closets,” he said airily. “I was trying for respectful yet celebratory.”

Artemis held back a snort. 

Celebratory, my ass. 

The Snows' closets were as deep as their pockets, which was to say, containing all the depth of a bottlecap. Standing this close to him, she could almost smell the faint scent of dead marigolds and potato starch his shirt was emitting. 

"Is something funny, Miss Highbottom?" Coriolanus turned to him with a raised eyebrow. 

Just your pathetic fibbing skills, she wanted to say. Perhaps she had not been as discreet with her expressions as she thought she'd been because he was still waiting for an answer. 

"Not at all, Mr. Snow," Artemis gave him one of her very best saccharine smiles. "I just agree with Satyria. That is indeed a lovely shirt."

Their professor beamed, happy to be validated.

“And so it is. What are these cunning buttons?” Satyria asked, fingering one of the cubes on his cuff. “Tesserae?” 

“Are they? Well, that explains why they remind me of the maid’s bathroom,” Coriolanus responded, drawing a chuckle from her friends. 

This was the impression he fought to sustain. A reminder that he was the rare person who had a maid’s bathroom — let alone one tiled with tesserae — tempered with a self-deprecating joke about his shirt. 

He nodded at Satyria. “Lovely gown. It’s new, isn’t it?” He could tell at a glance that it was the same dress she always wore to the reaping ceremony, refurbished with tufts of black feathers. But she had validated his shirt, and he needed to return the favour.

As he did so, his eyes couldn't help but return to the figure at his side. While Satyria's renovated dress made him feel better about his own attire, brought to life only through his cousin Tigris's efforts, Artemis's had the exact opposite effect. It was new, almost obscenely so. Wasteful extravagance, he thought to himself bitterly. What a vain and shallow creature, but such was the case with all the Capitol women he supposed. 

"What a wonderful ensemble, Artemis!" Satyria crowed once again. "You absolutely must give me the details of your dressmaker. Doesn't she look lovely, Coriolanus?"

Snow blinked. The question was directed at him, clearly, but he couldn't force the words out, even as his professor looked at him expectantly. 

“Elegant,” he finally stated blandly.

Liar. 

Artemis's eyes flashed at him triumphantly, almost as if calling him out. 

The adults wandered off, and their company was replaced by that of their classmates. Arachne Crane slipped her arm into Artemis's as soon she was within range, and Artemis sent her a smile that was only slightly less false than the one she had been wearing all morning. 

"Finally, and here I thought our star pupils would be too busy to give us humble folk time of day," she complained. 

"Don't ever use the word humble, Arachne," the boy to her right, Festus Creed, scoffed. "It does not suit you."

Arachne rolled her eyes and sipped her drink petulantly. 

"Have you tried this lamb, it's scandalous!"

The only thing scandalous is the president's son eating with his hands, Artemis thought to herself, but she knew better than to say it out loud. 

Lucky for her, Festus didn't. 

"Only the vulgar eat with their fingers, Felix," he chastised. "What, daddy not teach you table manners?"

"Maybe he would have if he wasn't so busy running the country!" Felix retorted. 

The conversation veered off in the direction of the Plinth Prize, and their eyes were drawn to the family standing off to a corner, speaking amongst themselves. 

"Who would have thought that you could buy yourself into the capitol?" Felix muttered derisively. 

"You can buy god himself, provided you have the resources," Artemis finally commented. 

"You can't buy class though. Did you see Sejanus's mother's outfit," Festus paused for dramatic effect before sniggering. "Sorry, his ma's."

At least he had a mother who cared for him, which is more than Artemis could say for the imbeciles around her exhibiting motherless behaviour. 

"Dress a turnip in a ballgown and it'll still beg to be mashed," Snow jeered. 

Artemis scoffed. And here was the biggest motherless moron of them all. 

"Interesting that you of all people should say that, Coriolanus," she eyed him carefully. Gone were the honorifics she had addressed him by earlier in front of the professors. This was a battlefield and there were no pleasantries in war. 

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

The two stared at each other, neither wanting to be the one to look away first and their classmates glanced between them uneasily. 

Eventually, Coriolanus blinked, his ears burning, and Artemis flashed him a grin. If he wasn't thinking about carving the smile from her face, he might have thought it suited her. 

If it was a battle of wills, Artemis was a born victor. 

Their conversation about Sejanus came to a halt when he approached them. He didn't bother greeting any of them but he smiled at Artemis, which she heartily returned. Arachne shot her a questioning glance, but if the Capitol was a hierarchy, Artemis outranked her, and therefore did not have to answer to her. 

Coriolanus eyed their interaction sullenly. He was a charmer, it was the only currency he had access to after all, and over the years he had made his best efforts to charm the Dean's enigmatic daughter. Perhaps he thought it'd make Dean Highbottom detest him a little less, if he had Artemis's favour, but although it appeared that she shared nothing else with her father, she shared in his disdain for Coriolanus. There was nothing he could do to endear himself to her, and he had long since stopped trying. 

It especially irritated him, that it was Sejanus of all people who had managed to make friends with her. He did not even need the networking opportunity it provided. Snow observed the brunette boy now, his soft charcoal gray suit that reeked of money. 

Sejanus’s father was a District 2 manufacturer who had sided with the president. He had made such a fortune off munitions that he’d been able to buy his family’s way into a life in the Capitol. The Plinths now enjoyed privileges that the oldest, most powerful families had earned over generations. It was unprecedented that Sejanus, a district-born boy, was a student at the Academy, but his father’s lavish donation had allowed for much of the school’s postwar reconstruction. A Capitol-born citizen would have expected a building to be renamed for them. Sejanus’s father had only requested an education for his son. 

For Coriolanus, the Plinths and their kind were a threat to all he held dear. The newly rich climbers in the Capitol were chipping away at the old order simply by virtue of their presence. It was particularly vexing because the bulk of the Snow family fortune had also been invested in munitions — but in District 13. Their sprawling complex, blocks and blocks of factories and research facilities, had been bombed to dust. District 13 had been nuked, and the entire area still emitted unlivable levels of radiation. The center of the Capitol’s military manufacturing had shifted to District 2 and fallen right into the Plinths’ laps. When news of District 13’s demise had reached the Capitol, Coriolanus’s grandmother had publicly brushed it off, saying it was fortunate that they had plenty of other assets. But they didn’t. 

Sejanus had arrived on the school playground ten years ago, a shy, sensitive boy cautiously surveying the other children with a pair of soulful brown eyes much too large for his strained face. When word had gotten out that he’d come from the districts, Coriolanus’s first impulse had been to join his classmates’ campaign to make the new kid’s life a living hell. He was glad he didn't because when Casca Highbottom's daughter befriended him, it put an end to all public acts of cruelty. They still mocked him in private, but that couldn't be helped. His district blood simply invited the scorn. Coriolanus's decision to simply ignore the boy had only reinforced his image. The other Capitol children took it to mean that baiting the district brat was beneath him, and Sejanus took it as decency. Neither take was quite accurate, but both worked in his favour. 

"Sejanus," Festus grimaced. "You made it to the reaping for once."

"And you made it to graduation Festus, we're both shocked," the brunette boy responded. 

"Spill it, who won the prize?" Arachne inquired. 

Sejanus scoffed. Like any of these rich Capitol children even needed it. 

"Oh no, I'm not going to ruin my father's big day. No one here actually likes him, but they all love his money. You know what that's like, don't you Arachne?"

Arachne scowled, leaning up to whisper in Artemis's ear about what a stuck-up thing he was. Artemis did not grace her with a response, but when the bell rang, and the students began to assemble in front of the dais, she took the opportunity to slip her arm out of Arachne's. Sejanus fell into step beside her then, taking the opportunity to slip a bottle of water into her hands. 

"And this is for?" she raised an eyebrow. 

"I know you can't stand the posca. Thought you might need something to drink, given all the talking they have you doing around here."

"And you thought I couldn't get myself some water?"

"I thought you shouldn't have to," he rubbed his neck ruefully. "Although I realize I might be a little late."

"I appreciate the gesture anyway. Thank you, Sejanus."

Artemis granted him her only real smile of the day. His sheepish smile reminded her of the day they first met, when this district boy with the cloddish accent first wandered up to her, offering her his bag of gumdrops.

She followed him to where a special section of chairs, six rows by four, had been set up for the mentors. To her chagrin, he took a seat to the right, leaving the only vacant seat next to one Coriolanus Snow. She felt the childish desire to kick his chair out from under him as he went to sit down, but shook away the traitorous thought. It was beneath her. 

When her father began to speak, Artemis suppressed a sigh of exasperation. Dean Casca Highbottom, the man credited with the creation of the Hunger Games, presented himself to the students with all the verve of a sleepwalker, dreamy-eyed and, as usual, doped up on morphling. Artemis zoned out as he went on his usual spiel of how the Hunger Games, his displeasure at the whole event evident in his tone, although perhaps that was just the drugs talking. 

"There has been a change this year. One final assignment to prove your worth, because the esteemed citizens of the Capitol have grown bored of the Games and simply aren't watching anymore. And if the Games are to continue at all, there must be an audience," he continued rambling. "Head Gamemaker Dr. Gaul has stepped in to incentivize patriotic values with her own unique flair. Starting with you. The Plinth Prize will no longer be determined by who has the best grades...but by who is the best mentor in the Hunger Games."

Nervous whispers fluttered among the students, as they exchanged uneasy glances. A subtle unease threaded its way through the crowd as they leaned in, both captivated and unsettled by the Dean's cryptic words. 

Artemis had been aware of this turn of events, and so did Sejanus, as it was his family's money involved, but she took great satisfaction at the dumbfounded expression on Coriolanus's face when he heard the news. It made the dourness of the entire situation as a whole much more bearable. 

"Your goal is to turn these children into spectacles, not survivors," Dean Highbottom announced. 

Artemis was right. Anything could be art. Anything could be turned into a spectacle, even the most depraved of carnages, and what greater carnage was there than the Hunger Games? 

Artemis did not need the Plinth Prize. She imagined her father would finance her higher education as he did all her other luxuries, but perhaps he might look at her differently if she won it. Perhaps it might gain his admiration. Perhaps he might respect her if she earned something of her own for once. Perhaps he might finally return home sometimes. 

She did not care much for the Games, in the sense that they held no significance for her, so far removed were they from her daily life. Her classmates were a varied spectrum on where they stood, ones like Sejanus speaking out firmly against the ritual, and others enjoyed the butchery, the slaughtering of district lives. Artemis simply did not care. They were irrelevant, but if it meant gaining her father's approval, Artemis would make herself care. 

As the large screens in front of them came to life with life footage from the reapings, Dean Highbottom began to recite the mentor assignments. 

"District One, boy, goes to . . .” he squinted at the paper, trying hard to focus. “Glasses,” he mumbled. “Forgot them.” Everyone stared at his glasses, already perched on his nose, and waited while his fingers found them. “Ah, here we go. Livia Cardew.” 

Livia’s pointed little face broke into a grin and she punched the air in victory, shouting “Yes!” in her shrill voice. She had always been prone to gloating. As if the plum assignment was solely a reflection on her, and not on her mother running the largest bank in the Capitol. Purely by chance, Artemis exchanged a cursory glance with Coriolanus just then, secretive like a private joke, which left her feeling quite unsettled. 

Coriolanus felt increasing desperation as Dean Highbottom stumbled through the list, assigning each district’s boy and girl a mentor. After ten years, a pattern had emerged. The better-fed, more Capitol-friendly districts of 1 and 2 produced more victors, with the fishing and farming tributes from 4 and 11 also being contenders. Coriolanus had hoped for either a 1 or a 2, but neither was assigned to him, which was made more insulting when Sejanus scored the District 2 boy, and Artemis the girl. 

Unlike Livia, Artemis received news of her good fortune with tact, pushing her sheet of raven hair over her shoulder as she studiously made note of her tribute in her binder. Their brief moment of camaraderie during Livia's outburst was forgotten as she shot him a smug smirk and he seethed. 

District 4 passed without mention of his name, and his last real chance for a victor — the District 11 boy — was assigned to Clemensia Dovecote, daughter of the energies secretary. Something was amiss when a Snow, who also happened to be one of the Academy’s high-honour students, had gone unrecognized. Coriolanus was beginning to think they had forgotten him — perhaps they were giving him some special position? — when, to his horror, he heard Dean Highbottom mumble, “And last but not least, District Twelve girl . . . she belongs to Coriolanus Snow.”

[aimfor-theheart]

|| zhongli x afab!reader || E/18+ || smut/a touch of angst/comfort || wc: 7k || ao3 ||

minors and ageless blogs do not interact, 18+ only

You have never been patient enough for worship. Sometimes, he thinks you always expect to be scorned or feared or hated. As a god of hunger, you are not beloved or worshiped by many, if any at all.

You’ve never known the sort of worship that he gives you. 

✧ meet fruit collab masterlist ✧

a/n: this is apart of @willowser 's house server summer collab, meet fruit!! i took plums as my prompt!! this really got away from me and i had a lot of fun with this dynamic and i WILL be writing more of godly wife!reader and zhongli. i have a whole backstory. a huge massive fic i shouldn't work on but will fjdkslfdk i also need to give a special thanks to @itoshisoup , @lorelune , and @petrichorium for helping me with brainstorming and riffing earlier! also finding some godly names for the reader! in particular, mao came up with the name Tanai Zhenjun, which i will leave a note at the end about!! i hope you enjoy this sweet taste!! thank you for reading and let me know your thoughts <333

tags: afab!reader referred to as wife, and has several godly titles that mortals have called her, etc., a complicated relationship between zhongli and reader, mentions of past fights/canon typical violence, erotic fruit eating and feeding, finger sucking, biting, oral sex (f!recieving), some over stimulation, praise, maybe a little sex pollen because the reader causes feelings of hunger/lust/etc. but its consensual and zhongli can withstand it if he wanted, scratching, unhealthy godly dynamics, let me know if i missed anything!

In the shadows of his home, he would know you anywhere. 

(He would know you even if you didn’t appear to him like this, fully formed, and in the visage of mortals. He’d know you in the thunder and the wolves’ howl. He’d know you in autumn’s bitter wind and the fox’s cry. Across all of time, he’d know you.) 

You slip, serpentine, slow and with the easy grace of a predator into the last falling light of the sun; bronzed, honeyed, and appearing before him like you did decades ago, perhaps a hundred of years ago. 

Has it been so long already? 

The sight of you–perhaps simply you, yourself, spark an ache in his chest. Fierce. Hunger pains. 

And after all these years, he welcomes it, savors the pit in his stomach like a sweet fruit. 

You, his god of hunger. 

You, his divine wife. 

He tips his head back, leaning further into the chair at his deep, mahogany desk, as if he could fix his eyes to better see you. As if he could take in more of you, somehow, greedily, hungirly. 

“Hello, my Morax.” You hum and the sun catches in your eye as you step into his life again, after so long without. 

“Hello, my love.” He responds, as if it could’ve just been yesterday.

As if you are his wife and you’ve come home to greet him. As if he is your husband and he’s been working all day without you. 

“It’s been a long time,” he says then, “you’ve been away a long time.” 

You meander closer, on the other side of his desk, peering at the scrolls and papers there. His hands are stained in ink. He catches the downturn of your lips, the small quirking of them in displeasure. Such mortal things, he can hear your voice, the little hiss you get when you dislike something. 

But then your eyes roam to the bowl of fruit, now untouched, that had been brought to him in hopes of eating;

Slices of plum, gold and orange and tender on the inside, their moon-dark skins still curved to them. One still has the pit attached to it, carefully nestled within its flesh. 

Plums always remind him of you. 

(In truth, anything with pits, with bones, with something that can be picked clean and left behind reminds him of you.) 

In an instant, your fingers, nimble–adorned with his jewels, the jewels of his earth, snag a slice.

He watches as you sink your teeth into it, juice bursting, caught on your lip. 

You chew only a moment, swallow slowly as you watch him. 

“I thought I wasn’t allowed around Liyue Harbor,” you begin, “I thought I wasn’t allowed around your precious mortals.” 

His voice, low and soft, rumbles in affirmation. “Yes, that is true.” 

“And yet you speak to me like I’m welcome.” You hold the last bite of your slice to your lips, speaking against it, “like I should’ve visited sooner.” 

You bear down into the fruit again. 

“You’ve come to pick a fight?” He asks, “I can feel you’re trying to stir trouble.” 

And it's true; your ability as a god of hunger, to spark it in others. To sharpen and change it from starvation to bloodlust to desire to despair to greed–to any form of hunger. 

You caused whole towns to be decimated, driven mad with just the residuals of you, the feeling of you too near, like a wraith haunting their doorway. You turned tides in the Archon war for him and against him. You have always been one of the biggest threats to Liyue’s peace—to the world. Perhaps even beyond.

You perch on the corner of his desk prettily. 

“I can’t visit my husband?” You purr.

He quirks a brow, “you only ever call me husband when you’re trying to kill me.”

Your grin is a wild slip of excitement, a fissure of heat in the clash of your gazes.

“I am trying to kill you,” you agree, but perhaps you have always been trying to kill him. The battles between you two carved the very land of Liyue and at the end of them, no matter what had transpired, he was still your husband. And you, his wife. “But I don’t feel like fighting tonight.” 

You pluck another slice of plum from the bowl and bring it to your mouth. He watches your lips part to take the fruit in again. 

He thinks of replacing your hand with his own. He thinks of the sticky sweet taste he would find if he licked into your mouth, he thinks of being between your teeth again like the little piece of plum.  

Something inside of him yawns open. 

You’re toying with him. 

“You’re in rare form, then.” he hums and does not deny your draw. He has long since stopped trying not to be swept up in you–he realized it was inevitable at some point. You would always pull at parts of him none of the world had, and like a puppeteer did you play with those strings. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” 

You gaze down at him, almost lovingly, if he didn’t know better. 

Then you shift slightly, adjust yourself. 

And the first touch he has of you in decades, perhaps a century, is just a brushing of your calf against his forearm from where you sit atop his desk. Your bare skin beneath the pooling silks of your skirts. 

Heat rips through him like a tearing wound. 

His gaze flicks up to yours. 

“Did you know I was in Liyue?” You ask. 

“I always know the moment you enter my land again.” 

I always know the moment you come home. 

You shift your leg again, this time, a steadier press to his arm. 

He can’t help himself–he shifts his arm, opens his palm up against the curve of your bare calf to fully feel you, to hold you, in any minute way you might let him. Rough calluses scrape up  against the soft skin of your leg, the silk of your dress pooling around his arm, cool and like spun moonlight. 

You let him hold you like this, curl against the contour of you. His hand moves, dips down almost to your ankle, and back up to the bend of your knee. 

“You missed me,” you accuse, your voice a teasing lilt. 

Perhaps it’s you and the heady rush you cast on a room, on him, “yes,” he agrees honestly, “I always do.” 

“So sentimental in your old age. You’ve spent too long around these mortals.” You tell him, looking away so all you give him is the profile of your lovely face. The upward tilt of your chin, the haughty way you look down your nose. 

“Did you miss me?” He asks and he isn’t looking for you to placate him, but his hand is broad and inching up the back of your thigh. He pulls at you, urges you to the edge of the desk, where his other hand fits around the curve of your waist. 

“Don’t get greedy,” you chastise gently, but you still go with the pull of his hold. 

You slip into his lap like you were always meant to be there, fitting to him the way the moon fits into the sky, or the land against the sea. It’s an ancient feeling, bone deep, soul-cut. 

You let your arms fall around his neck loosely and to have you again in his embrace, after so long, does in fact, make him feel greedy. 

“I can feel it,” he says instead, perhaps just to spite you a little–to move another piece in this eternal chess game with you. “I can feel how you ache. I can feel the way you missed me.” 

“I always feel like that,” you snip, deft fingers slipping the band in his hair out so that it all falls free, loose and flowing over his shoulders in a wave of inky black. “I am always hungry like that.” 

“No,” he says and his voice is low like a wolf’s growling, a tiger’s purr, “I know your hunger. And I know this hunger of yours. You missed me.” 

“If you’re looking for a heartfelt confession, you won’t find it in me.” You tell him, proud little god that you’ve always been, “perhaps you’ll find it in your precious mortals.” 

Your voice takes on an edge, just shy of a sneer.

He laughs, a low rumble from his chest, amused, and pleased.

“Oh, that jealousy of yours. I missed that, too.” 

“Don’t get full of yourself,” you hiss like an asp and now, he worries you’ll bring your claws out. Your eyes glint in the last rays of light, like a bolt of lightning, like a spark of flame in a cold night.

He reaches up to touch your face, thumb sweeping over the arc of your jaw bone in a possessive hold. He forces you to look at him. “Come now, I thought you said you weren’t in the mood for a fight.”

“Then don’t test me.” You snap.

He fights back another fond smile in order to not test you further than he already has. 

He leans closer, his nose almost nudging against yours, “if you’re not here to fight. What are you here for?” 

“To eat through all your land until it is barren again.” You murmur and he knows it is just to pester him. Your fingers are winding in his long, silky hair and your eyes have gone half-lidded, so he knows you are not nearly as waspish as you’re pretending to be.

“If I could satiate your hunger, I would.” He murmurs darkly, lips brushing against yours as you carefully hold yourself back, a dog on a strained leash. At your best, you have always been a caged beast, pacing and desperate for escape. At your worst, you have been nothing short of desolation, teeth upon the earth in a vicious grasp, shaking hard, tearing it to shreds. Your bite never compared to your bark. You’d threaten destruction and deliver devastation; even you, surprised with your own vitriol, your own capability for demolition. 

He threatened to muzzle you once, long ago. 

You rear back slightly to look at him, “no, you wouldn’t. What would you have me be? Content?” 

He laughs softly again, low and warm, terribly fond of you despite it all, “yes,” he says very frankly, and then, “soothed, for once in your life.” 

“I won’t ever be soothed while you walk this earth.” You tell him and he cannot tell if you mean it with vengeance or with love. Are you being romantic? Or threatening him? Sometimes, he felt that your violence was supposed to be more like a kiss, and your kiss the type of violence that leaves him ruined for decades after. 

“And you would be after?” He asks, “I don’t think you’d know what to do if you finally managed to kill me in a meaningful capacity. You’d be bored.” 

You move to pull away from him with a snarl but he fastens his hold onto you tighter to get you to stay, he touches your face again, coaxing. “I only tease you.” 

“I said don’t test me.” You respond, but again, there is nothing nearly so vicious in you tonight. 

No, he knows the hunger in you tonight is a soft creature, a warbling, tender one. He’ll be kind to it, he will feed it and tend to it, even if he knows it will only grow larger still. Like caring for a tiger cub, only for it to grow into all those teeth and muscles, to bite the hand that fed it. 

“Forgive me,” he rumbles, and this time, he angles your head so that he can skim the strong line of his nose against your jaw, “let me make it up to you.” 

“You will not be able to,” you say indignantly and his own smile now feels sharper with the challenge, with your throat so near. He settles himself into a burning kiss against your pulse. Inside of him, something catches and sparks. Your hands curl around the muscles of his shoulders. 

“I know,” he coos, low and soft, almost sympathetic. “Then at least indulge the hunger you’ve caused in me.” 

This, in the least, you settle into. 

He pulls away barely to sit back, to look at you fully in all of your glory a moment. 

You look back at him, perhaps taking him in as well. 

The smoldering turns into a flame. 

The decades of years unspool inside of him and give way to a racing mind, images of what he wants, how he wants you. 

It is always like this, he thinks, eternally, desiring you, and never getting enough.

He thinks he must know how you feel. 

And then he gives into one of several of his desires that are rearing their large, horned heads inside of him. The beasts of his desire are all chained to you, he thinks. He reaches for the bowl of fruit. 

Perhaps it's your turn to be amused as he brings a slice of plum to your lips. You must know how he was looking at you earlier, you must know his desires if you are the one to stoke them. 

Still, you accept the fruit easily, minding your teeth as his finger slips against your lips. Sticky and soft and warm. You draw his finger into your mouth briefly, closing around it. He can feel the edges of your teeth as he pulls it out. 

The moment you swallow around the piece, he surges up to kiss you. 

To finally kiss you. 

He wishes he could call it something of a greeting or reunion, but it is too desperate and too vicious for that. Your teeth click together, coming up against one another, like an old key coming up against a lock. 

He tastes the plum in your mouth, sweet and a little tart, and can’t help the groan that rumbles out of him. 

Your hands disappear into his hair, tangle in the strands so that he can feel the press of your nails against his scalp. He feels the way you arch into the slide of his hands along your torso, bending to them, as if he is a sculptor. It pulls you closer, opens your hips wider in his lap in a way that makes heat rip through him.

When he pulls away, you’re already hazy-eyed, heady with the quick-burn of this sort of hunger, this lust. 

It pulls at him like the tide on the shore to drag him under. 

This time, when he places his lips to your throat, he sinks into a bite at the tender flesh there. 

Sometimes, he wishes he’d treat you more tenderly. As if that might be all you ever needed; more gentleness, and less teeth at your throat. 

But you arch and from your mouth spills your own moan finally, fingers tightening in his hair as if to hold him there. He feels your hips twitch forward, into him, an aborted rock of them, perhaps unknowingly or subconscious.

He wishes you inspired patience in him. 

(Usually, he claims to have a great deal. Unfortunately, he cannot claim the same with you in his arms again. Forgive me, he thinks again, but I haven’t seen you in nearly a century.) 

He stands suddenly with you still wrapped around his waist, hands fit beneath your thighs to lift you and place you on the broad expanse of his desk. Papers get pushed aside, some topple onto the floor in a fluttering mess. You laugh when the bowl of plums rattle precariously, but his mouth covers yours again, and he swallows the sound eagerly. 

He kisses you hard again, hitching your hips up to fit snugly to his, fitting his broad hands over the curves of your waist. You respond in kind, though, and twine your leg around his waist to pull him closer, arch your back to press your chest up to his.

When he pulls away this time, he takes you in, splayed out beneath him. 

“I did miss you,” he gets out roughly.

“Then show me,” you respond, stretching out beneath him, as if to tempt him. 

His hands move over the silk of your dress, bunching parts of it, tangling it. He decides in an instant that he doesn’t actually wish to deal with it, so he sets his hands on the bust and simply pulls. It tears like paper beneath him. And again, you laugh, amused with him now, with what you do to him.

“So impatient.” 

“It’s been a long time, my love.” 

And this time when he kisses you, perhaps you give into him more, feed what he wants. You mewl into his mouth, arch against him, drag your nails down his covered back. 

“Touch me,” you get out, demanding, a little fussy. 

“So impatient.” He mocks dryly. 

For his trouble, you pull harshly on the hair at the nape of his neck, baring his throat to you. 

His broad palm roams up the expanse of your side, your bare stomach, and to your chest. He cups your breast, thumb brushing against the peak in a way that makes you hum and squirm beneath him eagerly. 

You bury your face in his now exposed neck, nudge your nose there, which turns into your warm, open mouth. 

For a moment, surprisingly gentle, until he feels the quick flash of pain from your teeth. He rolls your nipple between thumb and forefinger with a little more pressure than necessary, just to hear the little noise of pain you make. 

He drops his face to the crux of your chest, lips dragging along the skin there, above your beating heart. And for all your bite and bark, you still offer yourself up to him for the taking. You still draw your hands over his shoulders, pushing at the clothes still on him. He doesn’t indulge you, but draws lower, hair spilling over your chest as his mouth opens against your breast. 

He nips and marks, sets his teeth against the tender flesh and sucks a bruise into you. 

“I miss your sharp teeth,” you admit.

He huffs, breath fanning against your skin. He raises his eyes, molten gold, to meet your own, “there’s no pleasing you.” 

And then he captures the bud of your breast in his mouth and at least manages to pull another sound from you, meandering, growing in your own desire. You squirm beneath him again but something inside of him (old and draconic) blinks its eyes open and he seizes your waist to still you the way a predator subdues their prey, sharply, and with a slow rolling of muscle, a flex of their strength. A serpent squeezing down around a mouse. A tiger bearing down on the deer. 

You don’t go easily, though. 

And the moment you feel his resistance, you squirm and push harder, straining. Arching and impatient. 

He nips, he fights back the more base urge to growl, and readjusts his hold on you.

“Stop squirming,” he commands.

“Stop teasing,” you reply, stubborn, and disobedient. 

“Let me enjoy you.” Zhongli responds, watching his own hand sweep over your breast, cover it, and toy with you. 

“Enjoy me later.” You snip, fastening your legs tighter to his waist, hitching him closer. 

And he feels a head rush of your ability pour through him, the tightening of your desire and lust, of your hunger spilling from you. It’s purposeful. He feels the dull thud of his heart kick upwards, the warmth that simmers beneath his skin. He blinks hard with it, but does not succumb. 

“You’re so insolent.” He finally gets out, just shy of a growl, “now hold still for me.” 

His lips skim the top of your stomach as he lowers himself to his knees in front of you. 

You sit up onto your elbows, eyeing him, inching your hips to the edge of the desk eagerly. 

“I’ve always liked you best on your knees, Morax.” 

He sinks his teeth into your inner thigh in a more ruthless bite, forcing your legs open even as they threaten to close with the sudden jolt of pain. Hard enough that you hiss through your teeth, twitching towards or away from him, he can’t tell. 

(Images of days long past flash hotly in his mind, in another form, with those sharper teeth you’d said you missed.) 

He feels your hunger burst open like a ripe fruit, like the plum between your teeth. 

He soothes the bite with a slow, lingering pass of his tongue. 

His eyes flick upwards towards you. 

You look a little shaken finally, eyes glassy, teeth stuck in your bottom lip. 

He drags you closer, pulls you flush so that your hips are almost off the edge. You fall back with the movement and he doesn’t give you a moment. He isn’t feeling generous or very kind anymore. 

His mouth opens against you in a crush of heat, eager, perhaps impatient himself. 

A groan, low, from the back of his throat, works out of him at the first taste of you. 

Again, you try to squirm, and something ancient and vicious in him squeezes hard enough on your waist that if you were a mortal, he might sincerely hurt you. He doesn’t care if you’re trying to squirm closer or away, he realizes, he doesn’t care if it hurts a little, as long as he can have you like this. Open. His. 

Ah, he realizes, perhaps he isn’t ignoring your sway as well as he thought he was. 

He delves between soft folds, already slick, but he’ll make it worse still. 

(Perhaps, at one point, he had ideas of being a gentleman of some kind with you. Perhaps, at some point, he thought he would carefully work you open with mouth and soft tongue. He’d be loving and gentle with you. But you’ve always done something horrible to him, something he can’t tame, something he wishes he feared more.) 

You whine a little and the sound pools straight into his own desire for you. 

He fits himself closer, keeps your legs wider apart with his shoulders. 

“Morax,” you gasp and it’s with more heat and desperation than he is anticipating.

His eyes, heavy and gold, flick up towards your face, looking up at you beneath the dark fan of his lashes. 

Oh, you’re closer than he thought, he realizes. 

He doesn’t slow or stop or lessen himself, groans a little, and fits himself tighter to you. He digs his fingers into your skin and keeps you close. 

To his surprise, that is all it takes. 

Your gasp is strangled, perhaps a little surprised, as you arch off the desk in a bow-curve, poised to snap.

You fall to pieces as a cry loosens from your throat. 

He feels you pulse against his tongue and without thinking, he growls a little, a pleased rumble, and doesn’t stop.

He tastes you, savors it, and doesn’t let you hide or pull away from him.

Your hips twist and he follows the movement, wrestling you still, so that he can still enjoy you. 

You’re out of breath, hiccuping a little, trying to squirm away from him but there’s nowhere to go.

He won’t let you go.

He pulls away to rest his head on your inner thigh a moment, “so quick.” He teases, “you must’ve been pent up for it to be that easy.” 

He thinks, I wasn’t even doing that for you yet—I was still enjoying myself. I was being greedy. Hungry in my own way, in the way that you inspire.

“I should leave you now.” You huff, picking yourself up on your elbows to gaze down at him, but your eyes are simmering.

He squeezes at your thighs, “you’re not going anywhere tonight.”

And before he can hear your protests, he dips forward again and flattens his tongue against your folds. Slow, broad licks that make you twist and twitch. 

“Morax—“ 

“I’m not finished with you yet, my love.” He says lowly, somewhere against where you’re most tender and sensitive. 

He takes his time teasing now. 

Enjoy me later, you’d said, and he doesn’t think this is what you meant. 

You have never been patient enough for teasing–for worship. Sometimes he thinks you always expect to be scorned or feared. You were always Deus Inanis, Tanai Zhenjun, and later, Rapax Regina to the people. You have many names from them, none particularly kind or cherished. You were always the ghoulish god, the bad omen, the drooling maw of a starved predator. Your myth is not a beloved one by most. 

And some dare not even speak your name at all, for fear of inviting you. 

You are not a welcome god in the home and hearth, you are not for protection or courage. You are feared and warded off. You are, at best, used as a condemnation. 

(To him you were always softened with affection, even at your worst; little god, my curse, my love, keeper of my heart.) 

You’ve never known the sort of worship he gives you. 

You struggle with it, keen sharp and broken when he gives it to you. 

Sometimes you have all-out tried to refuse him or hasten him, poured your lust and impatience into him to get your way, to sway him to your own will. He can feel it again now but it never manifests in him the way you’d like it to. You assume his desire is one of his own pleasure. But it has always been this; 

You, belly-up and vulnerable, only for him, delicate in a way the rest of the world will never know. Pleasure-drunk and hazy. Lost to what he can give you–he wants to gorge you. He wishes he could fill the empty place inside of you. 

He’s spent an eternity trying. He’ll spend an eternity more. 

He focuses his intentions, strengthens the pass of his tongue with what he wants. He wants your pleasure. He wants it again and again. 

You curse a little, an ancient word, from when the land was Archon-less and free. 

He lifts his mouth from you briefly, “you are already cursing like that? This will be a long night for you then.” 

He opens his mouth again to taste you, to suck gently, your legs twitching over his shoulders as your breath hitches. 

This time you curse him, hissing through clenched teeth.  

He laughs against you in amusement, low and dark, and smooths a broad hand over the soft plain of your tensing stomach. As if he might soothe you, or perhaps because he wants to feel all of you, have you in his palms, in his arms. Against his mouth.

The next time you fall apart, he doesn’t let up once. His eyes have gone half-lidded and burning, a flint-strike of amber. You try to fight him again, wrestle out of his hold, but he strengthens himself. He steels himself, even, to your pulling of his hair, to your fussing and snapping–all of that melts to whining, to near-crying, as he continues. 

You’re too stubborn to cry for him now–there have been only a handful of times he’s broken you down that much. 

Perhaps if he were feeling crueler, he would try. 

(These instances have always come in the wake of something worse; your largest fights, or worst transgressions where he felt the need to punish. To strip you bare. These are saved, not for his desires, but for your catharsis after all your grief.) 

But your voice has gone higher with desperation, more broken, and he is pleased with that. 

Pleased enough that when you burst on his tongue again, your nails digging into the back of his hand as he holds you, he finally rises. 

Instantly, you twine yourself around him, legs around his waist, arms pulling at the front of his clothes to drag him down into your arms. You are always more desperate for affection like this, softened by pleasure, hungry for more. 

He goes down easily for you.

 Kisses you hard and open, so that you’ll taste yourself from his mouth, the way he tasted the plum from yours. 

You groan weakly and manage to gasp when he pulls away, “please–more. I need more. Need–” 

Always need, you say, when you get like this. Never want. 

“Need you.” 

He hums, the noise lumbering from his chest in a pleased, dark sound. 

“You have me,” he soothes, even as he feels dizzy with your own desire, a headrush of desperation–of need that rushes from you to him. 

Feed me, need me, fill me, possess me, take, take, take me. Fill. Aching–so empty, I’m so empty. Please, please, it hurts– please, I need more, need, need, need–

He lets out a harsh breath. It aches, almost sharply, almost on the wrong side of pain and pleasure. 

He does not torment you any longer. He does not torment himself, either. 

With fingers far more nimble than he feels, he loosens his slacks, he pushes his clothes out of the way just enough, enough to take himself in hand and hiss through his teeth as the head of his cock touches your slick folds. 

Molten. Fluttering still with sensitivity, with desperation. 

Your hips roll, eager, trying to urge him closer, inside–

“Morax–” you cry and the sound twists something in his chest, blooms like a bruise being pressed on. 

 He presses inside you and fills you in one, deep thrust. 

You gasp sharply, you pull at him, force him to collapse over you nearly, cover you completely. You cling to him, you wrap yourself around him like a serpent, now constricting him–

(He’s never been able to tell who is the serpent and who is the mouse, anyways. Who is the tiger or the deer? Was he capturing you? Or were you always capturing him?)

You hold him so tightly, calves flexing around his back, that he can hardly pull out from you to thrust.

He groans, almost in frustration, or maybe some form of defeat. 

“Darling,” he gets out roughly, “my love. My little god.”

The old, affectionate nickname burns through you and he can feel the desire like a knife’s blade in his own stomach. You moan– a soft, warbling sound. 

He manages to move his hips, barely leaving the hot clutch of you, to push back in deeper, harder. 

“Please–” you gasp, “more–kiss me. Touch me.”

“So demanding,” he scolds, but he kisses you hard, with too much teeth and roughness, and fits his palms over the sides of your body. He takes handfuls of curves, of your waist and your breasts, rough hands bending over the lines of you the way the light of the moon bends over the hills and valleys of his land. 

His next thrust is harder, a little rougher. You turn your face into his throat after you break the kiss and your teeth sink down into him hard. 

You always draw blood. You always have to leave your mark on him, on all that you’ve touched. 

But then you draw your tongue over the wound, licking softly, perhaps in apology. Perhaps to satiate another need that winds around inside you. 

Your hand tangles in his hair again and he bites back another raw groan as he thrusts, in and out, on a slow, rough drag. You’re clinging to him, tight and so wet that it’s making his thoughts bleary and clouded. Your lust shadows any rationality; your hunger possesses him. 

“Harder,” you gasp, you beg, you plead. 

And he thinks who am I to deny you? Who am I to deny the god of my hunger? 

His hand slips over your arm, your free one clawing at his clothed back still. He knows you will mourn not getting your nails into his skin after, but he will let you satiate the need all you like later. He’ll savor the way you try to tear him apart, like he always does. 

(And sometimes, he swears, you’re just trying to tear down his skin to be closer. Deeper in him. Scratching at his ribs and his sides like you want in, in, in. A bad dog at his door. A wraith that claws at his soul.)      

As he pulls at your forearm, flattening it out against the desk beneath you to pin you beneath him, he knocks into the bowl of fruit. 

The last of the plum slices tip out onto the desk and the remaining juice at the bottom of the bowl pools in a sticky mess over the wood, some over your forearm and wrist, over his own, too. 

He thinks you move without thinking, bringing his wrist up to your lips where you lick up a stripe up into his palm, against his thumb. 

You take his thumb into your mouth with ease and he cups your cheek in a possessive hold as he lets you suckle, tongue soft and warm and gentle against the pad of it. You groan, lashes fluttering, and this seems to please some part of you. 

His thumb in your mouth, cock lodged deep inside you. 

He pushes himself deeper on his next thrust, enough that you whine a little, eyes going glassy, cheeks hollowing around his thumb. 

He can feel the spit pooling in your mouth, wet and slick, can feel the way your walls squeeze and flutter around him desperately. 

He presses on your tongue, thrust growing a little faster, but still hard, deep–a little ruthless. 

But it’s what you need–so it’s what he gives you. 

You hold his wrist, little nails digging into his skin, desperate to keep his thumb between your lips. He can feel the press of your teeth in the meat of his hand. 

He readjusts, tries to draw his thumb out barely, only for you to latch down tighter on his wrist, and slide it back into your mouth with a noise of protest. Saliva spills a little, slick and messy against your bottom lip, against his hand. 

He coos, but it’s too dark to sound reassuring, and sounds more like a rough purr, just shy of a pleased growl. 

“I won’t go anywhere,” he soothes lowly, but it sounds like less of a comfort from a husband, and more of a promise from the beast you shouldn’t have let in in the first place. It’s loving in the same way a possession is. “My little god, I have you now.” 

Your peak this time makes something inside of him roar open. He feels your inner muscles bear down on him, fluttering desperately. 

Your eyes tip behind your eyelids, hiccuped breath against his hand as it twists into a guttural sound that he feels against his palm. 

“That’s it,” he murmurs, turning your face so that he can press open mouthed kisses against your throat, suck a bruise there, turn the flesh tender, “I’ve got you. Good girl–that’s it.” 

Perhaps he draws blood when he bites you this time, too. Tastes it sharp on his tongue, the blood of a god. He lifts his head from your neck and finally draws his thumb from your mouth, spit slick as he traces your bottom lip. He pulls himself up from you to gaze down at you, slack jawed and messy, near feverish with your lust. 

His hips quicken, harder, and you reach out to splay your hand out against his tensing stomach, to push at him a little. 

But he doesn’t stop, feels you nip at his thumb, still making a mess of your lips and chin. 

Your legs are still hitched tight around him, drawing him in, keeping him close. 

He squeezes your hip with his free hand, he loses his rhythm when you draw his thumb back into your mouth, suckling softly on it. 

He groans, feels his own pleasure in a rush down his spine, a burst of heat that unfurls like a supernova. Collapses inward. Expands outwards. He buries himself inside of you, as deep as he can manage, deep enough that you make a little noise of pain maybe, but you hold him tight to you. Again, you constrict around him, dragging him back down by his clothes to slot your mouth against his as he fills you. 

It’s your turn to hum, pleased, almost purring, tightening your hold around him, locking him against you.

The kiss this time is slower, but dirtier, all tongue, open and messy. He groans into it, holding your jaw, feeling himself twitch inside of you, his own eyes fluttering with pleasure, lashes against your cheek. 

When you both pull away, you’re out of breath. Chests rising and falling against each other. 

You seem subdued now, heavy-lidded, but your lips drag to his cheek, down to the curve of his jaw. 

You roll your hips a little.

“More–” You murmur, “I want more.” 

His laugh tapers into a moan. He flexes his hips a little, heat simmering beneath his own skin. 

Your hands pull at his clothes finally, tugging at them, pulling at buttons until they snap and burst beneath your fingers, until you reveal bare skin. Instantly, your hands are on him, nails scratching into his chest gently, over his shoulders. 

(He’s going to take you to bed after this and he’ll rid you of the scraps of your clothes and the rest of his. He'll get rid of anything between you.) 

The ache in him builds again and suddenly he’s rocking into you again, deep and slow, watching the way he disappears inside of you. The mess he’s already made of you, the way he wants to make it all worse. He feels feverish himself now, a little lost to the sight– his desire suddenly feels inhuman. Monstrous. Too big for his own skin. 

You always seem to remind him of his divinity. 

“Hold me,” you demand now and as if commanded, he goes to you. 

He gets his arms around you and he tucks his face into the crook of your neck. His desire unwinds. Time unspools from him. He loses himself in the pull of you, in the undertow of desire and hunger. He tries to satiate the ache you have carved in him. The ache you always have nestled inside of you. 

You beg him of more–more pain and more pleasure and more of him–until he feels near mindless with it. Gone with it. 

Shuddering with sensitivity and feeling you tremble with it, too. 

He doesn’t regain himself until another peak has been reached and fallen from, until he realizes the hour; the moon hanging in the window of his study like a copper penny. He forces himself to slow. To lodge himself deep and go still inside of you and let his head fall to your chest.

You cradle his skull, fingers slipping into his hair, catching your breath as the haze fades for a moment. 

He picks his head up barely, shifts only so he can catch your gaze. 

“Stay for a while.” He demands now. 

 You let go of a sigh, deep, perhaps tired. 

“I thought I wasn’t allowed.” You hum softly. 

“Will you behave?” He asks and you lean down to kiss him–sweeter now. Perhaps apologizing. He accepts your affection with warmth, though. 

“You know how I get restless.” You respond, fingers tracing along the nape of his neck, one of them trailing down the bend of his jaw. 

You are softest now, like this. It’s a rare sight; one he savors, one he will stay hungry for his whole life, he thinks. 

“Yes,” he agrees, perhaps fondly, perhaps sadly. “If you could keep mortals out of it, I wouldn’t mind.” 

“Even if I tried to kill you again?” You ask, finger tracing the bow of his upper lip. 

He smiles faintly and you touch the corner of his mouth, “yes,” he agrees, “even then.” 

“Or tried to steal your Gnosis again?” 

He snorts softly, picking himself up further to hover over you, to gaze down at you with more love than you have ever known what to do with. “You can certainly try again.” 

“Perhaps I should try harder this time.” The threat is fangless this time and you are at least soothed somewhat for now. He knows it won’t last long. 

But for now, he takes advantage of it. He cups your cheek, brushes his thumb along your jaw affectionately, and for once, you nuzzle into the touch. You rub your cheek into his palm like a cat. 

A flash of your teeth. You bite down into his hand. 

He laughs softly, but pulls his hand from you, dislodges your teeth from his flesh. 

Slowly, he tries to detangle himself from you. You are reluctant, but he appeases you with promises of more, of his bedroom. Of a bath and whatever you want. 

“More plums,” you say, letting him carry you to his bedroom like a young bride, cradled in his arms. “I’ve always loved plums.” 

He smiles, “I know. They remind me of you.” 

The admittance is a tender one, one that he has held for centuries that has finally loosened from his mouth like a bird taking to flight. 

In the morning, when you have slipped from him and his bed and his life once more, all that’s left are the marks you left on him, the deep scratches and latches of your teeth on tan skin–

And the pits of plums you devoured before you left. Not one is spared and he thinks his heart never has been, either. 

Not from you, his wife, his curse, his love–not from his god of hunger. 

***

a/n part ii: thank you for reading!! here are those notes on the reader's godly names:

There are three titles the reader is referred to. Two of them are latin, similar to Rex Lapis, and the third is from @itoshisoup, and is Tanai Zhenjun, which mao explained as such: "贪爱 (tanai) is a Buddhist term that is often translated as "craving", and refers to desire for both physical and mental things. From my understanding, tanai is sometimes considered a cause of suffering (苦 or ku), but is sometimes considered closely related to suffering in other ways. Given the motif of hunger, I would name the god Tanai, and additionally give them the honorific "Zhenjun" (a title associated with Taoist gods - much like "Dijun", which is the honorific in Zhongli's Chinese title, Yanwang Dijun; however, it is a lesser title than Dijun). Tanai Zhenjun is therefore what I'd call them."

The other two are Deus Inanis and Rapax Regina, which mean "empty god" and "rapacious/ravenous queen" in Latin.

i plan to write more of this reader and use these godly names again soon &lt;3