#also available on ao3

[hellshire-harlot]

Father of Serpents | Albert Wesker x Reader Halloween Special

Taglist: @gothghostiie @weskie @destinationtrekk @nomansgunssmoke

The stone altar beneath you is cold, bitterly so, sapping the warmth from your bare skin.

Despite your best efforts, you can’t escape the cruel fetters keeping you bound. Spread-eagle, chained to the slab of granite, you can’t help but writhe, desperate to evade your inevitable fate. It seems like so long ago that you were snatched from the dim street, dragged to this unknown place of shadows and ominous reliefs carved into the stone walls, thrown in a cell to wait. But it hasn’t even been a day; you’d wager the sun hasn’t even risen yet. After all, what better time to perform a ritual sacrifice than on All Hallow’s Eve?

You know you’re being sacrificed, of course. For what other reason would a cabal of silent, hooded men abduct you, strip you naked, and bathe you in rose-water & honey milk? For what other reason would they drag you sobbing and pleading to a stone altar in the center of a spacious sanctum and tie you to it?

Your chest heaves, your lungs unable to get a full breath between your terrified sobbing. You’ve long since given up pleading for your life. You’d done all you could think of- promised not to tell, offered them your money, and when they ripped off your clothes you did your best to play along, thinking your kidnappers were going to simply fuck you and move on. Nothing so far has worked. None of them has even whispered a word. As they washed you in their ceremonial bath, their hands pouring the water all over you and carding through your hair, they never pulled or groped, only touched to clean you. In the beginning, when you had more energy, you struggled and kicked and hit all you could, and one of them evidently had had enough. He’d struck you, a vicious backhand that left your ears ringing and a cruel mark on your cheek.

For whatever reason, the others seemed angry that he had hit you. They led him away, and one turned your face side to side as if to check the damage. Now that you lay on the frigid stone that grows warmer only because your flesh is bound to it, you understand why they cared at all, and it only makes you weep harder.

They didn’t want their lamb to be bruised before the slaughter. It would ruin the meat, wouldn’t it?

Tears stream down your temples as a handful of the cultists circle you. You rest your head against the small cushion beneath it and bite your lip. You don’t want to give them the satisfaction of your terror, but you can only do so much. Your heart pounds as you scan them for weapons. You expected a sacrificial dagger or ceremonial blade, one designed to rip your heart from your chest or cleave your head from your shoulders. But none of them carry any weapons that you can see. Poison, then? Drowning? Smothering? There are many ways they could kill you that don’t involve marring your skin. Your stomach fills with dread as the visions of yourself vomiting blood, writhing beneath a pillow over your face, thrashing against arms that hold your head underwater, parade before your mind. You can only desperately pray for your death to be swift and painless.

As the cultists form a ring around your prone form, you ball your hands into fists and brace yourself. Throat hoarse from screaming and crying, you nonetheless summon your voice once more, a last, desperate plea for salvation. “Please, don’t hurt me,” you beseech, “I- I don’t want to die. Please.”

None of them respond, or even indicate that they’ve heard you. You close your eyes tight, another despairing sob tearing from your chest. I’m going to die here.

You only open your teary eyes when a voice that is not your own echoes throughout the sanctum. “Hac nocte noctes,” a deep-voiced man intones, the words unknown to you but their meaning ominous all the same. You haven’t heard someone speak other than yourself since this ordeal began, and it startles you. Your eyes snap open and you watch as the cultist who spoke raises his arms in prayer, and you glance to the side, heart stopping as you look upon the tens of cultists who now fill the chamber. All of them bow before the altar, heads lowered in prayer, and echo the mantra started by the man near you. Hac nocte noctes.

Another continues, and you can’t differentiate the voices in your terrified state. “Ad te vocamus” and the acolytes follow as your eyes dart around frightfully. You can’t stifle a nervous whimper. You wish you understood what they’re saying.

Vocate nos Patrem Serpentium

Something about snakes, you think? Are they trying to summon some snake-demon out of myth to swallow you whole?

Sicut serpans caudam suam devorat

Bare, spread open like a flower on the altar, you wish you could cover yourself. You try as best you can, grunting as you struggle against the chains around your ankles, but you can’t hide your flushed crotch from view. You hate the way the attention makes you involuntarily heat up.

Tibi hanc oblationem damus

The air around you feels colder than ever. The meager wetness gathering in your core chills, further sapping your body’s warmth. You can feel eyes all over your bare flesh, but with each cultist’s face hidden, you can’t tell if they’re actually looking at you or not. Do they gaze upon your helpless form with unadulterated lust? Do they long to sink their teeth into you and fuck you until you haven’t the strength to say no any longer? Or do they simply size you up like the butcher does his sow? You wish you could say for sure.

In reditu nihil petimus

Half-heartedly, you wonder what god you’re being offered to. Satan? Baphomet? Leviathan? Cthulhu? Kali? Some nameless, formless entity known only to these gathered men? As you were brought here, you took notice of the carved reliefs on the walls. Even now, they surround you, decorating the stone womb you are trapped within. All of them depict snakes, writhing and coiling in on themselves, devouring their own tails and lashing out at unseen enemies. One relief in the far corner depicts a rat in the process of being swallowed whole by a cobra, only for the cobra to be bitten and mauled by a great bear. Another relief, this one continuing the tale, shows the injured serpent biting its own tail and taking new form as a halo behind a humanoid figure, body undefined, unknowable. Then, the halo-snake rides along the arm of the figure, coiling and constricting the throat of a fox. The final relief you can see from your position shows the fox standing at the figure’s side as the same bear from the first relief, accompanied by a jackal, lunges for them. Behind the silhouettes you can make out etchings of roiling flames.

Such evocative, ominous imagery. You can only assume these people mean to sacrifice you to the serpent in their carvings. Do they believe him to be dead, and your blood will revive him? Is he slumbering, and you’re merely bait to awaken him? So many questions, and with not one of the cultists willing to even acknowledge you, each one will die on your leaden tongue and with your terrified heart.

Serva benedictionem intuitus tui

Somehow, you can sense their mantra is nearing its end. Your breathing speeds up. You still can’t see any of them carrying weapons, or anything at all. Each cultist has his hands raised in the air as if offering something to the sky, empty. You pull against your fetters again, to no avail. Do your family and friends even know you’re gone? Are they looking for you? What will they say when you never come home? Your heart aches to think of it. You hope that these cultists at least let your body be found. You don’t want your loved ones to spend the rest of their lives listening for a heartbeat that no longer exists.

You steel yourself. You will face death with gritted teeth, pursed lips, and stony eyes. You will not grant these lunatics the pleasure of turning you into a damsel.

Vivat Uroboros

Now, that phrase you can understand somewhat. Long live Uroboros. Is that the name of their god? Uroboros? Judging by the imagery of snakes all around you, and the mentions of serpents in the chant, you anticipate being swallowed whole by a leviathan summoned from below, or maybe tossed into a pit of vipers.

What you don’t expect is for a suffocating silence to fall over the sanctum.

It feels wholly unnatural, unearthly. Like there’s a bubble that encases you, preventing you from hearing anything save your own frantic heartbeat. None of the cultists are moving. Your breaths become shallow as you try to understand what’s happening, why the shadows in the corners seem to undulate.

And then you look up.

The eyes, unblinking, burn away your bones, leaving only your soul behind. They’re made of hellfire, with only slivers of onyx to act as pupils. They bore right into your own, and you suddenly find yourself even more paralyzed than you already were.

The silence is broken by something new- a low, droning hum, like the gastric functions of some titanic monster. You watch as the void above you shifts, shimmers like oil, distorts into something new. Tendrils- writhing, black, wet, vile, foreboding -emerge from the infinite pitch and encircle you and the altar you lay on, blocking out the rest of the world with moving, living walls. You can barely breathe as those brimstone eyes continue to appraise you, pupils dilating and shrinking as the seconds pass. They come closer, closer, until you can feel them hovering in the air just above your face. You can’t blink. If you do, you’ll die, you’re sure of it.

A nightmare. That’s what this is. All you need to do is wait it out and you’ll wake up at home, hungover from the party, tangled in your sheets and pillows. All you need to do is wake up.

But then, why does everything feel too real? Why does the oily tentacle that prods under your chin, tilting you up to face the unfathomable being it belongs to, feel so utterly visceral?

The appendage retracts, leaving a faint, sticky residue on your skin. Your head falls back against the cushion, your eyes still trained on the nightmare above you. A voice comes to you, a voice that echoes from the depths of your psyche like the death rattle of a vanquished god. It feels invasive, and yet completely native. It feels unearthly, and yet natural.

Hello.

The voice, deep and cold, is overpowering. You finally capitulate, squeezing your eyes shut against the pounding echo of the single word. Bursts of color flash behind your eyelids as the word reverberates, fades in and out, as if your mind is trying to consume it. It’s horrifying, making your skin crawl and your bones itch, but bound as you are, there is nothing you can do. You feel as though you’re being lobotomized from the inside out, the forbidden knowledge somehow contained within those two benign syllables putting a trepanning tool to the inside of your skull and pounding pounding pounding. The pressure builds, your heart running in circles, thrashing against your screaming ribcage, and stars die in your eyes as the pain crescendos and you feel your skull shattering-

And then you open your eyes. Half-blind with tears, you still recognize the form above you, standing astride your hips on the altar.

A man.

The most beautiful man you’ve ever seen.

The shock blasts away all the agony in your mind like a bomb at ground zero. Suddenly you see with perfect clarity, cold calmness draped over you like a paper-thin blanket of hoarfrost. All that is allowed to exist in your newly-cleared mind is the image of him. Tall, with blonde hair slicked back perfectly, not one strand out of place. Pale skin, like bone china, and thin lips, an angular face that simultaneously warns you away, lest you cut yourself on its edge, and beckons you to throw your body into the blade. His eyes, the color of magma, are the only indication that this is the same being that hovered over you moments ago. The same being, now in a new, impossibly-beautiful form. He looks down upon you, eyes harsh and stern but curious. Interested. The midnight leather that covers his body drapes around you, the ends of his long coat transforming into the same tendrils that encased you before. He tilts his head, appraising your naked form.

The same voice that scorched your sanity returns, though its razor edge is dulled. Be calm. It’s a command, one you physically cannot refuse. At the very least, this time it doesn’t crack open your skull and drain from it the fluid within. Like a computer given an executive command, your body instantly obeys. Your heart rate slows, your breathing evens out. You watch as his gaze leaves you, looking out over the prostrate assemblage before him.

It’s the same voice as in your head, but now audible to everyone else, that shatters the silence. “I have yet to be disappointed with your offerings,” he speaks, and he would sound like any other man if not for the way the bones of the earth tremble at his words, “it would be a shame to jeopardize our… relationship now.

“Which is why I can’t help but ask- who among you thought to touch what is mine?” Suddenly the detached cadence of his voice breaks away, revealing the cold, calculated anger beneath. For some reason, be it your exhausted heart or the command he gave you, you don’t feel uncomfortable the way you usually do when so close to such rage. You know it isn’t directed at you, but that hasn’t stopped your anxiety from rearing its ugly head in the past. Somehow, you are utterly calm in the face of the wrath of a god.

There is a pause, long and heavy, that clamps down on the room. For a painful moment, no one moves. Not him, not you, not the cultists around the altar or the assemblage before you. And then, a single figure rises from kneeling to stand tall and stiff among the crowd. Somehow, you know- this is the man who struck you. The bruise on your cheek stings with the echo of his attack.

The deity above you, nameless, hums in unknowable emotion as the perpetrator reveals himself. Like a bolt of black lightning, he thrusts his arm forward, gloved hand splayed out as if reaching for the man. In response, the man convulses, body twitching, doubling over and clutching at his stomach. He remains silent save for a few faint gurgling sounds, pained and sickening. Slowly, the summoned god draws his fingers into a fist.

“I haven’t felt the need to demonstrate what will happen to anyone who thinks they know better than I,” he says conversationally, as though a man isn’t dying in the middle of the room. Some of the cultists surrounding him turn to watch the spectacle, while others remain kneeling, albeit shaking. “But I suppose now is as good a time as ever, hm?” The tendrils that make up his coattails are writhing, charged with vitriolic power, hovering just over you. The sight of the man being tormented makes you sick, and you close your eyes to bite back the bile in your throat.

The voice returns, still gentle in comparison to his introduction, but stern. No, little one. Watch.

You already know you have no choice. Your eyelids open of their own volition, against the signals your brain sends. Now that you’re looking, you can’t tear your eyes away, like a car accident of eldritch proportions. It is nightmarish, and yet, you stand transfixed.

“Let this serve as a lesson to the rest of you,” the unholy being continues, watching with bored eyes as his victim falls to his knees, “this isn’t the most painful way I can kill. Lay hands on what belongs to me, and you will suffer. Am I understood?” In response, the cultists assembled nod their heads vigorously, or else give a terse cry of yes, Serpent-Father. Both reactions serve the same end, and their recipient seems satisfied. “Good,” he concludes with a pleasant tone.

His hand clenches into a fist, and the man’s head explodes into a mass of ravenous black tendrils.

Some of the devotees gasp, others flinch, and some remain still, though clearly at great personal cost. You can’t stop the horrified cry that escapes you, but the command of the voice evidently can. Hush. And your mouth closes.

As the body falls, twitching, to the stone floor, you watch the grotesque spectacle continue, more ebon tendrils eating their way out of the torso and abdomen. They detach from the body, slithering across the floor in unison towards the altar, and you realize they’re not tendrils at all, but snakes. They slide up the altar, over your trembling flesh, and up the legs of the man above you, who welcomes his servants with no issue. They obey their master unerringly, coiling in a braid around his outstretched arm, before becoming one with the shimmering leather itself. They are an extension of him, and so they merge seamlessly. One blink, and they’re gone, leaving behind only their master.

To their credit, the cultists surrounding the altar haven’t strayed from their positions, as much as you imagine they wish to. You look up at him, their patron, this Serpent-Father they’ve served you up to. You wonder if that is his name, or merely a moniker. He glances about the room, surveying the mass of devotees in attendance, and nods.

In response, one of the cultists at the altar begins another chant. The words remain unknown to you, but they set a strange rhythm, one that seems to put your soul into motion. Elsewhere, someone rings out a ceremonial bell, a sepulchral beat to accompany the tuneless song. You can’t help but wonder if this is where you die. If the beautiful, terrifying man above you will be the one to spill your blood, in his own name, and devour your beating heart.

But then, he isn’t above you anymore. He stands at the side of the altar you’re bound to, the other cultists having backed up against the wall with heads lowered in respect. He has free reign to run his gloved fingertips across the stone surface, and across your vulnerable skin. The slow, sensual touch makes you tense, expecting pain where there is none. At the frightened gasp you let out, he tilts his head in amusement.

His voice echoes in your mind again, a baritone murmur that curls against your innermost thoughts. He coils across your deepest self, probing, plucking the synapses of your brain like harpstrings. Each gentle tug coaxes your body into a pliant, heated state. Privately, he speaks to you. My pets gave you quite the scare, didn’t they? He hums, his corporeal hands gliding across the length of your leg, your arm, your side. He touches you with obvious intent, though what that intention is somewhat eludes you still. Are you not a sacrifice? Are you not meant to be killed in his name? Don’t mind all that, dearheart. Set dressing, really. You’re here to give me a different kind of offering.

Slowly, deliberately, he climbs atop the altar and sits astride your hips. He continues his exploration of your body until one gloved hand finds its way to cradle your cheek, an unexpectedly-comforting touch that you can’t help but lean into with a quiet whine. The other trails down, down, until his fingertips caress the sensitive flesh of your cunt. It makes you jolt, which consequently gives him better access to you, and his fingers greedily explore the velvety skin, nerves firing off with sparks of pleasure. As one finger dips inside, coating itself in the slick of your inner walls, you suddenly find yourself understanding the true nature of your predicament. “Oh,” you breathe, any and all confusion draining from you to the beat of the chanting.

You’re not here to give your life. You’re here to give your body. You’re here to fuck a god.

Both inwardly and outwardly, said god chuckles, amused by your wide eyes and heated cheeks. Whatever did you think was going to happen, hm? He asks, despite knowing full well what you expected. Your body responds eagerly to his ministrations, skin heating up, hips bucking against the restraints keeping you prone. You summon your higher brain functions to glare halfheartedly up at him for teasing you, to which he only coos condescendingly. “Did you think I’d eat you or something, little one?” He speaks aloud, voice soft but still cool and dark, “Oh no, nothing so gauche. The only screams that will fill the halls tonight will be of pleasure.”

The line is so cheesy; if an ordinary man used it on you, you’d roll your eyes. But in this place, surrounded by devoted onlookers and helpless before a god, it only makes you keen for more. You arch your back against the stone, meeting the languid thrusts of his fingers with the bucking of your hips. He looks down at you with such unbridled desire that your head spins. Speaking of screaming- he whispers into your head -My name is Wesker. You’re among my acolytes now, you may speak it freely. Don’t be shy.

A second finger, just as deft as the first, finds its way inside of you. It’s so good and yet not nearly enough. You can’t help but writhe beneath the god- Wesker -as he teases you. Your restraints hold fast, chafing against your wrists and ankles, denying you from taking more than what is offered. It’s agonizing, but the pain sears you from the inside out so deliciously. Any modesty lingering within you is burnt away in the wake of his fiery eyes and the horrible pleasure he brings. Your own eyes blown out, misty with tears, you can’t help but stare out at the procession of chanting cultists.

They treat your debauchment as though it’s a sermon. They offer prayers over your escalating moans, and you may be delirious enough to hallucinate but surely you aren’t simply making up the visible tents in some of their robes. The knowledge that they’re aroused simply by watching their god unravel you on his fingers, that they have the discipline to continue their worship regardless, sends a piercing bolt of arousal straight to your pulsing clit.

You can feel your climax sneaking up on you, choking you from behind. “Please,” you gasp, suddenly breathless as you look back to your tormentor, “pl- ah- please, make me cum, ‘m almost- almost there…” it’s as much a prayer as the ones being offered by your voyeurs. You wriggle your torso invitingly, begging him with your body to give you the building ecstasy.

Wesker smiles in satisfaction at the mess he’s made of you. The hand not burying three of its deliciously-long, slender fingers in your sopping cunt comes up, grabs your chin between thumb and forefinger. He drinks in your wrecked expression like the finest liquor. “You can have it, pet,” he coos, lowering his face to hover just over yours, and you’ve never wanted to kiss someone more in your fucking life, “go on. Scream my name while I ruin you.”

And you do. By every strange deity in this cult’s perverted pantheon, you do. Your downright pornographic cry of Wesker echoes through the halls of the sanctum, and the way you can see him shudder at the sound of his own name is what finally tips you over the edge. It’s sinful, the flush that comes to his pale cheeks, but it’s delicious. His being pulses with a surge of power at having his name invoked, especially during such passion as yours. The cultists chant a devoted hymn in unison, voices raised in victory, seemingly empowered by your climax. Your better judgment leaks out of you alongside the juices of your orgasm, pooling in a clear puddle of slick on the granite. Of any fluid from your body to give to Wesker, this is the one you would gleefully offer again.

As you come down from the ravenous high, your wonderfully-foggy mind registers something else prodding at your fluttering hole in replacement of his fingers. It feels hot and hard, and though you can’t crane your head enough to look down and see what it is, you can hedge a bet. The thought of having him fill you, claim you from the inside out, is enough to have you writhing desperately again. You keen pathetically as your chains keep you steadfastly held down, wishing more than ever that they were gone and you could simply wrap your arms and legs around this god and cling to him while he gives you all he has to give. You strain your wrists, your ankles, against the fetters, praying for them to just snap out of existence.

As though sensing your frustration, Wesker leans down, pressing his lips against the side of your head in a strange pantomime of a kiss that leaves your chest feeling unexpectedly fluttery and light. His voice swims in your head. Feeling trapped, are we? He asks rhetorically, the hand not guiding his cock to rest against your winking cunt wrapping around the chain on your right wrist. You nod frantically, babbling out quiet, incomprehensible pleas to be freed. Oh, alright. I know you’ll behave for me. After all, I’m sure you remember what I do to pets I find unsatisfactory.

The small ripple of dread in the pool of hot lust makes you whimper. It’s an unwelcome reminder that though you may be enjoying yourself, you’re not here by choice, and you even have the cold corpse of the man who slapped you to act as visual aid. But you’ll be good. You’ve been good thus far, been sweet and obedient under his ministrations, and you have every intention of continuing that. You’ll be good for him. For Wesker.

With a subtle squeeze, the god in mortal flesh releases your shackled wrist. The chain turns warm, scaly, as do the ones on the rest of your limbs. The newly-transformed snakes, just as vantablack as the ones he summoned to kill the errant cultist, slither away from your wrists and ankles, leaving you blessedly free. They return to their master, merging with his writhing coat, but you don’t care, only concerned with satiating the bottomless lust eating through your core. You take hold of the gloved hand cradling the apple of your cheek, entwining your fingers with his. “Please,” you whisper, summoning your headiest, lustiest voice, “I’m ready. Take me, Serpent-Father.”

The deep, lustful growl Wesker lets out at your usage of the honorific you picked up on from the cultists lets you know you made the right call. You brace your feet against the stone just as he finally enters you, hot cockhead breaching your cunt and stretching you around him. Connected to the divine in a way more literal than most could ever hope for, you moan, utterly lost in the heavy liquid pleasure that fills you. Like molten gold, it keeps you pressed down, prone and pliant for your god, unable to even fathom saying no. A new chant begins, some cultists diverging from the herd in their own hymns and calls of prayer, all to the constant call of the ceremonial bell. It’s overwhelming, and you can’t help but feel the devotion of the assemblage is directed to you as much as it is to Wesker. This feeling, being watched with hungry, obsessive eyes, would normally frighten you. But safe within the solid embrace of your god, spread out for him and him only, it only makes you shudder and clench around him.

Another deep, baritone groan rumbles into you from his chest as he pushes inward, filling you thoroughly and making a pleasant weight in your core. Chancing a look down, you see he’s only about halfway, and your stomach drops out as you realize just how much you have left to take. A firm hand grips your cheeks and forces your head back up to his, though not painfully. “Look at me while I fuck you, little mortal. There is nothing else. Only me.” He orders, and you have no choice but to obey him. The hand not clasped in his and pressed down to the stone slab comes up to press at his back, forcing him closer to you. He chuckles at your insistence, but obliges, leaning in closer until you can feel his hot breath against your face.

The first thrust, once he finally sheathes himself in your cunt, makes you white out in sensation. It isn’t pain, nor pleasure, merely the feeling of being filled so profoundly. But it’s strong enough to leave you gasping for air while your mouth hangs open in a silent scream. The second plants a blooming seed of euphoria deep within you, and the third sees that seed take root and sprout. Wesker lets go of your face, assured of your obedience, and presses the hand instead to your abdomen, where you realize his cock leaves a bulge in your belly. The full-body tremor that shakes you and him both as he presses down, constricting your cunt and his cock in unison, is soul-shattering. The part of your brain not melting out of your ears right now is determined to join this cult after the ritual concludes, if only to experience such glorious sex again. You already know no mortal, man, woman, or otherwise, will ever be able to satisfy you now that you’ve tasted the forbidden fruit. Maybe Eve’s garden was tainted by the serpent, but yours is left bursting with new life by his touch. Your Eden is here, with him and him alone.

The rest of the world fades away, leaving behind only the faint chiming of the bell and the singing of your devotees behind the lewd sounds of leather against flesh. You float in a void of ecstasy in which exists only you and Wesker, you and your god. You cling to his hand like the lifeline it is, being fucked half to death as you are, his inhuman thrusts bullying his cockhead cruelly against your cervix. Never before has anything (or anyone) reached so deep inside you, and you’ve heard it said that having your cervix touched is horrifyingly painful. But all you feel is a profound sense of fullness, near bursting, as he rams against your innermost walls. You half expect him to breach even that and make his home directly in your womb, but thankfully, he doesn’t. Your soul sings out, and Wesker hears it, his presence already entrenched in your mind forever. He pulls the strings of your psyche as though you’re the most beautiful marionette, and he the most perfect puppetmaster. Your body, and all that comes with it, is stripped away, and you feel as if he’s fucking your very soul instead, making his home in the space between your astral projection and the back of your eyes. It’s unreal, unlike anything you’ve felt before, like the protective skin around your clit has been stripped leaving only the bare nerves to be stimulated directly. Without the hindrance of flesh, he drags you upwards to a climax more intense than you could have imagined before.

He holds you there, at the edge of the beautiful abyss, taking his pleasure from you first. Your ecstasy builds, peaks-

And when he brings your entwined hands to his mouth and buries his fangs in the delicate meat of your inner wrist, it crests. Instead of being thrown to the wave, the wave throws itself over you, dwarfing you even as you stand on the mountain of built-up pleasure, washing you away. You hear a high-pitched scream, and barely, you register it as your own. You open your teary eyes, seeing double for a moment as you fall back into your body, and watch as Wesker hungrily sinks his teeth into your wrist. It hurts, yes, and your body jolts at the pain, but it’s quickly washed away by the aftershocks of your orgasm. His eyes never leave yours as he laps at your blood, consuming your life essence while you tremble beneath him in a broken mess of cum and slick. He continues thrusting into you, and you feel his cock twitch, and your own arousal stirs again somehow at the thought of him breeding you, filling you with his seed and making you bear his divine children. All at once, he releases from your wrist, letting out a monumental growl of pleasure as he cums deep within you.

Your body simultaneously feels like it’s completely numb, void of any tactile sensation at all, and also oversensitive to the point of pain. A foreign presence makes itself known in your bloodstream, flowing from your bitten wrist to the rest of you. Somehow, you understand that this is his way of claiming you- marking you. No rival gods, much less mortals, will dare lay their hands on you now.

The exhaustion has caught up to you finally. The room splits into four, your eyes barely able to stay open and your body going completely limp. It’s a little frightening, and you look up at Wesker with fearful eyes, asking for guidance. His hand returns to hold yours, squeezing as if to reassure you. You are mine, he murmurs from within you, there is no turning back now.

His. You are his. Mortal plaything of the Serpent-Father, of Wesker. It should horrify you.

But the thought is comforting enough to make you relax. He brushes gloved fingertips across your eyelids, closing them for you. His voice is the last thing you hear. Sleep, pet.

When you wake, the cold stone beneath you has been replaced by sleek, soft sheets, warmed by your body.

Slowly, delicately, you sit up, taking stock of your body’s condition. You feel fine, well-rested, even. But then the previous night’s events flash before your eyes.

Being tied to a stone altar. A god of unfathomable power taking shape over you. Giving you his name, taking the most beautiful form. Fucking you until you passed out. His teeth in your flesh.

A phantom ache makes itself known in your sex, protesting the rigorous activity of the night. But that’s the least of your concern as you look at your wrist. In place of what should be a healing bite mark, there is a rune.

At least, you think it’s a rune. It’s the color of midnight, pure black, in the shape of a striped 8-sided star, with a snake coiling around it. The mark of Wesker. As you think of his name, an echo of the unrelenting euphoria he showed you last night washes over you. Your face heats up, and you subconsciously rub your thighs together.

There are worse gods to belong to, I guess.

You already know you’re not at home. Your bed isn’t nearly this comfy, nor is it covered in sleek silk sheets. You assume you’re somewhere else in the cultists’ hideout, somewhere offerings such as yourself are left to recuperate from their endeavor. You’re also no longer naked- looking down at yourself, sliding off the smooth fabric, you watch the sheer gown you’re wearing billow out around your legs. Like the bed, it’s black, and you can only assume it’s made of chiffon or gossamer given the weightlessness of the fabric. It hugs your body absolutely perfectly, draping over your skin and leaving your back & shoulders bare. It feels like a dream.

A pair of gloved hands suddenly takes hold of your hips. Gasping, you attempt to turn, only for the grip to tighten, keeping you in place. “Hush,” Wesker speaks, allaying your surprise somewhat, “it’s only me, dearheart.”

His body, hot and firm, presses against your back, possessively looming over you. He kneads your hips idly as you recover from the minor scare. His presence is soothing, reassuring. With his claim on you thoroughly set, you know he will keep you safe, even if it is only to protect his investment. “Where are we?” You ask softly, unsure of how to carry yourself around the god who fucked you so well you converted to his religion.

He hums quietly, hands trailing down to your thighs. “We are in my domain. After the ritual concluded, I brought you back with me. And here you will stay.”

“…what?” You breathe. His domain? As in, his realm of reality? A place outside of the mortal plane as you know it? You’re not meant to be here. You should be home, with your friends and family. You belong back on earth, not as a caged pet to an ancient god. As alluring, as magnetic, as he is, you cannot stay with him.

Wesker laughs, a touch of cruelty entering his voice as he takes in your slight panic. “What, pet, did you think that was a one-and-done affair? That I’d be satisfied with breeding you only once? Think again.” One hand comes up to grasp your face, forcing you to turn towards a large mirror you hadn’t noticed. Your reflection greets you, as does his, looming behind you.

The first thing you notice is the band around your neck. Made of black silver, it circles your neck perfectly, staying in place without being uncomfortably tight or even chafing. A collar, shaped like a snake devouring its own tail. Your collar.

Wesker’s calm voice breaks you from your investigation. “I do hope you like your collar, little one. You won’t be parting with it any time soon.

“It’s as I said- there is no turning back now, my dear. There is nothing else for you. Only me.”

And the rest of existence fades away, leaving only you. Only him.

Only pleasure.

[nothinggathers]

Impatient

https://archiveofourown.org/works/47657341

Wet brick scraped against Connor's cheek. He screwed his eyes shut against the assault. Hot, dry, rough hands smoothed over his body, gripped the back of his head, forced him forwards. They hurried to the button of his shorts and tore at his shirt.

Connor's hands flew to the fastenings, undoing them as quickly as he could. He shoved them down, as well as the miniscule thong he wore beneath them, exposing the skin of his ass to the damp night air. A beard scratched at the skin, followed by the nip of teeth at the outer swell of his buttock. “God, I could eat you.”

Connor swallowed heavily. “I thought you were going to,” he pointed out, breathlessly. The hand at the back of his head pushed harder in response.

Lieutenant Hank Anderson was a regular at the wings joint. Connor had been eyeing him up for weeks. A flirty smile here, a tip there. It had been a cute little game of cat and mouse as Connor had swayed his ass and flashed his legs before the Lieutenant, daring him to pounce.

Connor had hidden his number in the receipt slip three days ago. Hank had messaged him a day later.

Now his enormous hand covered the back of Connor's head as he held him down and ripped the obscenely small shorts down his thighs like he was tearing at the wrapping of a long-anticipated Christmas present.

His breath brushed over the delicate flesh of Connor's bared backside.

 I get off at 11

 I can get you off at 10 past

“All those weeks you've been teasing me,” Hank growled, “and now you're impatient?”

Connor inhaled sharply. His heart hammered in his ribs. The wall scratched uncomfortably at his cheek. “It's already ten past. Tick tock, Lieutenant.”

He felt the beard first, pressing in between his thighs and rubbing against the delicate skin. Hank's thumb moved up, over his flesh, pulling his cheek aside. “Fuck,” Hank groaned, so quietly that Connor doubted it was intended for his ears, “where don't you have freckles?”

Soft lips pressed to the dark freckle at the apex of Connor's thighs that Connor had never seen for himself. He tried to spread his legs a little wider, but they were restrained by the limited give of his shorts. The lips progressed up the intimate crease of Connor's thigh, and then Hank's beard and lips and tongue and chin delved between his cheeks with a satisfied groan.

Connor groaned, too, swinging his arm behind his back to find Hank's hair and grip, holding him in place. Hank worked his tongue and lips over Connor's rim in quick, firm movements. Connor barely noticed that the hand pressing his face to the wall had gone until it curled into the front of his thigh, tugging his ass back towards Hank's tongue.

“Shit,” Connor hissed. He brought his free arm up, bracing it against the wall and pressing his forehead to it. It was a little more comfortable than the bare brick.

Hank's tongue worked at him with all the promise of a thorough fucking. The teasing pressure and wet friction swept through Connor's hips and into the head of his cock. Hank groaned with the same lascivious pleasure that he did when he had his first bite of hot wings at the end of a long day.

Hank's fingers dug in to Connor's thigh, pulling him further away from the wall. Connor pushed his hips back in response, urging Hank's tongue to work its magic a little harder. Every exhale came with a gasp. His cock throbbed with each luxurious swipe of Hank's tongue.

He tightened his grip on Hank's hair and tugged. A part of him could let Hank do this to him all night. The scratch of his beard was heavenly, but his tongue was sinful. Hank was right, however, when he'd called Connor impatient.

For weeks Hank had been so busy letting his eyes saunter down Connor's long legs that he'd completely missed the way Connor devoted the same attention to Hank's hands, and the bulge in his jeans. He leaned further forward, bracing his weight against the wall and gave a small cry as Hank's tongue pressed to his rim, probing and insistent. His grip on Connor's thigh was tight enough to leave marks. Connor hoped it did, and that Hank would be unable to take his eyes off them, remembering how Connor had tasted when he'd left them.

“Oh god, fuck,” Connor hissed, as Hank began to fuck him shallowly with his tongue. It wasn't enough. It wasn't the hard, deep, brutal fucking he wanted. This was release, a relief of tension, a hard and fast dirty tryst in the alley behind the diner. It was to get it out of their system before they screwed in a more civilised way, and place. Right now Hank's tongue was just teasing.

Hank dragged his tongue through the cleft of Connor's ass and up his back. “You taste as good as you sound,” he growled. His voice was low, deep and throaty, rumbling with arousal. Connor imagined Hank guiding him to touch himself over the phone, telling him to finger himself while Hank listened. Just the thought sent a shiver of want through Connor's hips. His cock stood, hard as a rock and utterly neglected in the cold night air.

“Ready for your entrée?” Connor asked. He wished he didn't sound as fucked out and breathless as he knew he must. Hank's tongue had made him ache for something deeper and harder.

“You bet,” Hank answered. His weight shifted, and Connor felt Hank's expansive bulk lean against him as he fought his way back to his feet. He was older. Kneeling on the floor in the dirt and detritus was probably not something he should make a habit of.

Next time they'd just have to do it on a bed. It'd be softer on Hank's knees, and Connor's hands.

He released Hank's hair in favour of bracing himself against the wall. The hurried sound of a belt being unfastened, a condom being unwrapped, and a packet of lubricant tearing open punctuated the background noise of Connor's unsteady breaths.

Two fingers dug into the cleft of his ass, blunt and firm, and every bit as impatient as Connor felt. His toes curled in his shoes as they pressed against his rim and then breached him. Hank wasn't being gentle, which was exactly what Connor needed. He bit his lip and bore down, easing Hank's way inside himself.

“Good boy,” Hank murmured, burying his fingers inside Connor. The praise dripped down Connor's spine and he bit his lip to choke back the groan. Those two simple words sounded amazing in Hank's lust-soaked voice.

His fingers dragged back and forth, thrusting into Connor and out again. It was a deeper fuck than Hank's tongue had been, and some other day Connor would like to see if Hank could get him off with his fingers alone. Right now it was a prelude. Hank's fingers stretched him out, making sure he was relaxed and ready. Connor had been ready since the moment Hank's tongue had swept into his mouth and his hands had pinned him to the wall.

“I'm good,” Connor promised, rocking his hips with the movement of Hank's fingers. The drag dulled to a slide as the lubricant spread, and Connor's toes curled in his stupid heeled shoes. He only wore them for work. They made his calves stand out and his ass more prominent. They made Hank trip over his own tongue, and for that reason alone Connor was going to have to get another pair, one that he didn't think of as work shoes.

“Yeah, you are honey,” Hank agreed. He thrust his fingers deep into Connor a few more times and then withdrew. They were replaced with a large, hot, blunt pressure at his ass.

One hand settled on Connor's shoulder, effectively pinning him in place. The pressure increased but didn't breach him yet. Shit, how big was Hank? Connor spread both of his palms against the wall and pushed his hips back.

It burned. It burned and it stretched and it dragged a weak, long cry from Connor as Hank's amazingly thick cock entered him. Connor's knees trembled. He fought for breath. Hank's fingers tightened on his shoulder. “You're doing good, sweetheart,” Hank groaned, “just relax for me, you're doing so good.”

It didn't end. Hank's cock reached for depths inside Connor he'd only dreamed of. He felt full, and stretched, and incredible. All this time he'd been teasing and flirting, trying to picture what Hank was really packing, and it had been this. “I should have jumped you the first day I saw you,” he breathed.

Hank laughed. The movement shivered through his cock and into Connor. “Got a size kink?” he asked. His hips pressed against Connor's ass, reaching as deep inside Connor as it was possible to go. Connor felt like one good thrust would split him open.

“I have now,” Connor answered.

Hank laughed again. He kept one hand tight on Connor's shoulder, but his other smoothed across Connor's hip and somehow found enough flesh that he thought it was worth delivering an affectionate smack. “Sweet talker,” Hank accused.

Connor had a retort lined up, he swore he did, but then Hank pulled back and the words fled. Connor's head dropped between his outstretched arms as the sensation of Hank starting to fuck him, slow but deep, flooded through him. Connor couldn't keep a thought in his head to do more than groan.

Hank built his pace up slowly. The leisurely drag of his cock in and out became a steady thrust. Each drive inwards punched a choked, “Ah,” from Connor's chest. All his concentration went on keeping himself braced against the wall, letting Hank fuck him.

“Fuck, you sound as good as you feel,” Hank praised, dragging Connor back onto his cock with hands at his hip and shoulder. Connor cried out wordlessly, reaching back with one hand to find Hank's hip and follow his rhythm. His cock leaked, neglected, and Connor didn't care. Each deep thrust Hank made into him sent a spike of pleasure along his dick. He wondered if he could come just from Hank fucking into him like this.

The force of Hank's thrusts made his skin slap against Connor's. It was noisy, dirty, frenzied. Connor followed the pace of Hank's thrusts, rocking back on his toes to meet him each time.

Hank gave a snarl. His hand moved to grip the back of Connor's neck. The span of his fingers spread and squeezed until Connor thought he might get bruises there too, like fingertip sized hickeys. He squeezed the back of Connor's neck and dragged him onto his cock hard as his rhythm fell apart. Connor felt Hank's cock bury deep inside him as his hips snapped forward one final time and then held there, pinning Connor in place like a debauched butterfly.

Connor released Hank's hip and grasped his own cock, stroking hurriedly. He wanted to come while Hank was still inside him. Hank moved again, giving another, lazier thrust deep inside Connor.

The tightness in Connor's hips unwound sharply, scything through him and making his thighs tremble. He came hard, splattering onto the ground and over his own fingers as Hank thrust into him again, drawing out the ebbs of his own orgasm. It intensified Connor's, until the wave and clench matched Hank's slowing thrusts.

Then Hank pulled out. “Jesus christ,” he hissed in awe. His arm scooped around Connor's midsection, pulling him upright. Connor wobbled and swayed, his legs suddenly unreliable. “I got you,” he promised, as Connor staggered back against Hank's chest. Hank's arm was solid and sure, holding him up as Connor struggled against the sudden onset of Bambi legs. He hadn't got off that hard in years.

Hank's lips pressed to the side of his throat, and his other arm hooked around Connor's middle, hugging him tight like Connor was something precious Hank had almost lost. “You were amazing,” he purred, directly against Connor's ear.

Connor fought to get his breath under control. He folded one arm over Hank's across his stomach, and reached up clumsily with his other to find the back of Hank's head. “So were you,” he replied.

Hank's lips found Connor's cheek, pressing a firm kiss to the skin. “Wanna come back to mine?” he asked. “Give me chance to find all your freckles?”

Connor heaved a breath. His brain was full of cotton wool and warmth and he ached inside and out, but in the best possible way. He was going to be sore tomorrow, and he couldn't wait. “How am I supposed to say no to an offer like that?”

Hank murmured happily and pressed another, softer kiss to Connor's cheek. This one was affectionate, an echo of the teasing one Connor had planted on him last week when Hank had tipped him. “Behave yourself and I might make you breakfast,” Hank added.

Connor eyebrow lifted, and he met Hank's gaze out of the corner of his eye. Hank was smirking. It was a good look on him. “For me, or make me into it?”

Hank's grin was bright, and amused. “Depends how good you are for me.”

[butmakeitgayblog]

"—has worry growing among residents as the body count continues to rise. Titus Monk of Polis, now identified as the latest victim in a string of killings that has rocked the community over the last year, was found brutally murdered outside a rest area along I-95. Local authorities are urging any citizen with information—"

"You do that," she mumbles to herself and gives up hope of finding something to distract her with a click of her radio.

She wipes at the hazy patch of fog that muddles the bottom edge of her windshield and scans the road for any sign of movement. 

It's like an itch.

One that crinkles and crackles across the grey matter of her brain, tickling the inside arch of her skull like a rogue piece of hair on a breezy day.

She'd never understood the notion of hearing voices. The claims of some unseen force compelling someone forward; a ‘greater being within’ guiding the hand. Claims like that always sounded ridiculous to her. As if they were trying to cleanse themselves of responsibility instead of owning their shit in the form of very poor impulse control.

Not that she thinks the trivial details make her any less of a hypocrite.

But she feels like it should matter.

She adjusts her mirror and sighs at the empty stretch of highway in her rearview.

For her, there are no voices. No dark forces leaving her powerless under its sickly sweet influence. For her, it all comes down to a feeling. Something close to a needle that pinpricks in steadily growing waves. It's a leaded aching that pools hot in her limbs and a restless bouncing of her foot against the floorboard. 

It's another empty promise of just this one more… and then the one more that inevitably comes after that. A twitchy crescendo that sinks down the length of her spine and lights up mundane nights such as this: the kind that wring themselves out in the tight grip of her fingers wrapped around some sweet stranger's throat.

But she never plans it. Always lets the waves carry her wherever they need to instead. An evening stroll, a late night bus ride, a simple trip to grab food turned to hunting without a single ounce of forethought, and in her idle moments, she thinks maybe that's why she's been lucky thus far. 

Less lucky for whoever ends up on the business end of scratching that itch.

The silly thought makes her grin to herself - half of her mind on keeping an eye out, the other half on what she'll have for dinner - and she knows she should probably hate that about herself. 

But she doesn't. 

She doesn't hate it, and she doesn't plan any of it, and she doesn't feel any kind of need to stop herself. 

Least of all, tonight.

Which is exactly why she doesn't bother feigning a single drop of hesitation when she spots the exact thing that makes the itch tear across her skull. 

She slows her car to a creep on this desolate stretch of highway.

"Need a ride?"

Lexa has to half-yell over the flash flood of rain when she rolls down her window and works to stop the drumming of her thumb on the steering wheel.

She can barely hear the sound of any of it over the thunder of her heart anyway.

It flutters with that familiar thrill when a sodden mass pulls even with the cracked open slice of her window. Beneath the dripping hood of a bright red poncho, all she can make out is the pale illusion of a face cloaked in shadow.

"I, uh," this stranger calls around chatting teeth, "I don't want to be a bother."

"Not a bother, I offered," Lexa says, just as any good samaritan would. "C'mon. You're soaking wet."

"What are you talking about? It's just a sprinkle."

Lexa forces out an amused chuckle and tightens her grip on the wheel.

"I'm scared to find out what you'd consider a downpour then," she yells through another thrash of wind. "Listen, it's getting really bad. I don't even want to be out in this right now, so I don't think my conscience would let me live it down if I just left you out here… I can drop you off anywhere you want..."

The shadow beneath the bright red poncho just stares. A few seconds stretching past the boundaries of a breath Lexa's lungs refuses to take.

"You sure it's not a bother? I only live a little ways down," the stranger finally relents with a point down the darkened stretch of road.

Lexa's cardiac system restarts with a jump.

On the outside she looks cool as a cucumber. 

"Of course," she smiles just as sweet as can be and reaches across to pop the door that won't open for the shadow tugging uselessly at the handle. "Sorry, I have to do it. Thing only wants to work for me."

Funny that. 

The door swings shut behind the stranger with a satisfying clunk that makes Lexa blood run hot, dulling the torrent of rain to a steady beating drum. A sigh lets loose in the safety of her car as hands pull back the hood to smooth down dripping, rain curled blonde hair. 

Lexa watches the lights of her dashboard shine against water speckled skin. Making it glow in spattered shades of blue and neon yellows.

"Oh my God," the not-shadow anymore breathes with a shake of her hands that sends droplets flying everywhere. "I feel like a drowned rat."

Lexa hums a single understanding laugh. "No offense, but you kind of look like one too."

Her dark passenger turns and, oh.

Oh...

Bright blue eyes and a smile to match levels her with a cheery laugh. "Ha! Yeah, I bet! But, hopefully still good enough for a damsel in distress?"

Lexa can't help the breathless smile that escapes her at that face. The playful pull of lips and the umber notes of her voice. She licks her lips at the way the crude glint of her dashboard gleams against this stranger's eyes with every flash, crack, and rumble of thunder overhead.

She's beautiful.

Breathtaking, actually.

The kind of woman who deserves to be doted on and pampered, to be kissed until she's weak. The kind of woman Lexa dreams about meeting on any other night but this.

But the itch…

The itch scuttles along her skull.

"Ready?" Lexa asks, already kicking the engine back into drive without even waiting for a reply.

Only the swish-squeak of the wipers breaks up the heavy veil of silence, counting out the seconds in steady intervals as Lexa sets the gas pedal to an unrushed speed. The onslaught of rain mixes with the black cloaked veil of just-past-midnight air, shutting the world out around them as they drive further into the night.

"So... What's your name?"

Lexa glances at the empty stretch of highway in her rearview mirror to help steady her heartbeat. "What's yours?"

"Ah that's how it's gonna be," her stranger hums. "Alright then. You can call me... Goldi."

"Goldie?” Lexa chances another look at the woman lounged in her passenger seat. “As in… Hawn?”

"No," she says on the heels of a bark of laughter. "As in Goldilocks. Obviously."

The stranger twirls a rain-soaked curl of blonde around her finger for emphasis.

Lexa tries not to think of how attractive that hair would look in morning sunlight, mussed up and gorgeously wild after a night spent splayed across her pillow.

The itch roars louder in the cage of her skull and oh, now she can see how much lovelier it'd be stained in splatters of deep, crimson red...

Lexa shifts in her seat. 

"Ah, I get it. Cute. That's cute."

"What, you don't like it?"

"No. I just figured what with all that," Lexa says with a vague point to the woman's attire, "Little Red Riding Hood feels like a missed opportunity."

The woman clicks her tongue in a sound of sage disappointment. She smooths her hands over the rain-beaded front of the poncho and fans it out across her lap as though to admire its fiery, shapeless design.

"That does make sense, doesn't it." Her sigh is wistful and just the perfect amount of amused. "So, what then? Would that make you... the big bad wolf?"

Lexa's head snaps to the side and meets electric blues that pin her right to the driver's seat. It's hard to distinguish the shocked trip of her heart from the adrenaline already pumping through her veins.

A single gasped laugh jumps out of her throat.

Amused.

Off kilter.

Annoyingly fucking riled.

"Is that right?" she breathes, sounding entirely too giddy this early in the game.

"I don't know. You tell me. Cutiepie."

Leather squeaks as Lexa's fingers wring the wheel like the cinched end of a noose.

She turns her attention back to the road that sits fuzzy just along her periphery, gently correcting how far she's let them drift over the painted middle line in the dizzying thrill of the moment.

"Do I... Do I look like a big bad to you?" she murmurs, not sure which answer she's hungrier for more.

The woman beside her makes a thoughtful kind of sound and slips her hands neatly beneath her poncho. "Lesson number one: looks can be very deceiving."

"Lesson?"

"Oh, you know. The lessons. Life lessons. The whole How-To guide for trying to survive this terrible, awful world or whatever."

The stranger somehow doesn't sound entirely impressed with her own words.

Blankly nodding along with the stranger's reasoning that could be in a different language for how much she's truly taking it in, Lexa clicks the wipers pace down a notch to match the slowing patter of rain. "Right, of course."

"What? Didn't your daddy teach a nice girl like you the lessons of life?"

"I'm not that ni—" Lexa starts in a choked out laugh as heat races along her neck. She cuts her eyes over to see the pink tip of a tongue poking through the bite of her stranger's teeth. "Mockery is not the product of a strong mind, Goldi."

"Not mocking," her passenger purrs with an innocent bat of lashes. "Just asking."

Lexa shrugs at the teasing, and tries to ignore the squirming delight that springs to life low in her belly. "... I guess he never got around to that lesson."

Her limbs feel twitchy and her eyes restless as she follows the bend of the road, forcing herself to stare at the infinite black pool of darkness just beyond her headlights.

"What others?"

"Hm?"

"Lessons," Lexa prompts through chewed-raw lips and a tongue that suddenly feels too big for her mouth. "You said, 'lesson one'. Logically that would mean there's more. What are they, oh wise traveler?"

Her golden haired passenger merely snorts. "Couldn't tell you. I barely paid attention to the first one, so that's all I got. Well, that, and... never take rides from strangers."

Lexa looks over and can't help but flush at the stranger's sly little wink.

Something in those lips and lashes makes her feel terribly, terribly afraid. 

"It is rather dangerous these days though, don't you think," Lexa finds herself saying despite herself. Because it just feels too good not to. "Never know what kind of person you might meet."

"But that's the fun of life isn't it," the stranger chirps, smile suddenly so wide the white of her teeth glint blue in the castoff light from the car's dash. "Exciting new adventures. Never knowing who or what will cross your path."

Lexa nearly jumps out of her skin when a hand reaches over the console and skates fingernails across the dip of her wrist.

Her passenger lowers her voice to something entirely more intoxicating. "Even now. Look at us. I bet you didn't start the night out thinking you'd have the pleasure of my company."

Energy zips across Lexa's skin like lightning bolts as delicate fingertips stroke the fine hairs that stand on end. Her eyes flit between the road and the stranger at her side, looking so beautiful and rapturously innocent when the touch falls away.

Her nervous system sizzles like white static. Hints of longing and aches to touch right back landing in syrupy puddles in the recess of her belly. The itch is still there. Still alive and well and screaming in its silent fury for her to focus past the flutter at her stranger's touch.

But the beauty mark on that mouth that tilts in such a disarmingly charming smile. The warmth in her skin on Lexa's skin. The sunshine soaked in her hair....

It's making this all very confusing.

"You're the strong silent type, aren't you?"

Lexa's gaze snaps up to the road as she swallows and follows the road along another bend.

"I don't—I don't know if that's something one can even say about themselves," she rasps, suddenly too hot for such a cool autumn midnight.

The stranger makes an amused little sound as those fingers begin tracing infinities on the top of her gearshift. Lexa cannot begin to stop staring. 

"I bet you're just full of fun little secrets... Aren't you, cutie—"

"Lexa."

"Pardon?"

She releases a shaky exhale and grinds her teeth hard enough to feel them squeak because she doesn't even know why she let that slip out.

This is not how this is supposed to go.

This is not the fucking blueprint of her survival in this game.

'Get it the together,' she chides in the heavy silence that washes over the car. ‘She's just a girl.... Well. A woman. A gorgeous woman. Probably the most gorgeous woman you've ever seen in real life… Probably someone you'd have stupidly had a crush on if you'd met her during the day… Someone you'd maybe love to have clinging to you on the quieter nights—.'

"You okay there, Lexa?"

"I'm fine," she says from what feels like miles away, her voice a distant echo that barely registers in her ears as her mind races on with growing urgency.

'You could always just... No,' she snaps at herself with a defiant tick of her jaw. 'If you don't do it tonight… You remember what happened last time. Do you want to do that again?'

The road hazes over in a flutter of lashes at the memory.

Seven months of telling herself no more. Seven months of convincing herself she could absolutely live without it.

Five bodies in two days on barely three hours of sleep combined. 

Four hours spent digging and burying her mess to lay peacefully six feet deep.

The rest passed in fuzzy pockets of time as she slowly came down, trying to calm her heart from pounding right out of her chest as she scrubbed at blood stains so soaked in she couldn't go to work for two more days.

The itch scratches like a needle across her brain.

No.

She doesn't want to lose control like that again.

As if the universe was reading her mind, Lexa's eyes light up at the familiar overhang of brush marking the mudded out trail to nowhere, taking the curve fast enough to feel her tires sliding on the sludgy mix of grit and wet pavement.

She watches her passenger curl tighter into the safety of the poncho covering her lap. "Um, hey. I didn't tell you to tur—"

"Shortcut," Lexa murmurs, heart beating so fast she blissfully can't even hear herself think anymore.

She likes it better this way.

Her eyes burn with how hard she stares at the road, unblinking, her leg aching to bounce violently enough to make her whole body judder along with it. Her hands grip the wheel so tight it sends shocks of pain through her knuckles as she presses firmer on the gas; excited and terrified and blissfully anxious to get to the washed out bottom of the dead end road that's practically calling her name.

She reminds herself that it takes as long as it takes.

Reminds herself not to rush this. To make it last.

Counts her breath in syncopated intervals of 1, 2, 3 in through the nose.

Pause.

Soothing release out through the mouth.

It all helps to keep her steady. Steady enough to drop a hand from the wheel and feel the cold bite of steel wedged safely under her thigh. It's her best friend and worst enemy, and she loves every moment they get to hold each other as she takes the worn leather handle and grips it firmly in her palm.

"Do you uh, do you know this area well?"

"Well enough," Lexa whispers, seven bodies laid to rest and one near escape springing fresh to mind. 

"Okay, then… you know there isn't anything back here?"

She hums. Resists another urge to giddily bounce her leg.

"Look, I think maybe you should turn around."

"Almost there."

"Listen to me, Lexa. It'll be best if you turn back—"

The excitement bubbles over as her car crests through the final break in the brush and spills moonlight on the rain drenched clearing littered with old, forgotten headstones. She slams the car to a quick stop, blood thundering like fire in her veins, and the itch searing unbearably when she pops the buckle and throws the engine in park.

It's such a well choreographed dance.

One she's perfected to a T.

Every step feeling like crescendoing notes in a masterfully executed scale.

Because she can feel it. She can feel the promise of red warmth spilling over her palms to chase away the rainy evening chill. She can almost feel the give of flesh under her knife, and the splintering crack of bone.

It's a dance she's done enough times by now she could do it in her sleep.

Grip the blade.

Drop her shoulder.

Slash to the right.

Feel it sink in.

Sink into the ecstasy of relief.

And she moves, and it's perfect, and she's almost right there...

And cold, rain spattered metal pressing sharp at her throat puts a quick end to all of it.

Lexa's arms shake with the force it takes to hold herself steady, one hand holding her knife an inch from the stranger's belly, the other gripping the steering wheel like a lifeline just to keep still.

She slowly lifts her gaze.

Taking her passenger in, one inch at a time.

Lexa's stomach drops as a sickly realization creeps over her.

The eyes staring at her are dead of emotion. All the glint and stardusted laughter of before washed away in shadows of the starless night.

"Like I said," the stranger whispers with a delicately sinister smile, "looks can be very deceiving."

Lexa's heart slams against her ribs as her jaw churns in a furious grind of molars. She swallows back the bile of terror and humiliation, feeling the drag of the knife against her skin with each breath.

In all of her preparing and training and practice… Never, not once, had she ever prepared for this.

For being on the wrong end of the snare.

"Who are you?"

"Who the fuck are you?" the stranger fires right back, her voice colder than the metal pressed to Lexa's throat, seemingly completely unconcerned with the knife at her own stomach.

"I told you my name," Lexa growls in barely controlled fury, "Goldi."

Her passenger shakes her head and chuckles in a throaty mix of smoke and broken glass. "You know, I actually am pissed about that? Red Riding Hood was right there. I can't believe I didn't think of it."

"I could always turn around and drop you off so you can try again if you'd lik—"

Lexa swallows a hiss as the blade digs deeper into her throat.

"You're adorable." The stranger titters in a slow drawl, calm and emotionless, before letting the smile slip right back off her face. "Now tell me the truth, who the fuck are you, and what were your plans for this evening?"

"You first," Lexa seethes with ice in her voice, never breaking her stare from the stranger. "The sweet act was cute, I'll give you that, but," she flits a glance down toward the knife resting at her jugular with surgical precision, “I know hunting when I see it—"

"I'm sure you do," her passenger sneers.

Lexa's jaw tightens in a gnash of teeth as her brain struggles to catch up to everything that's happening. She feels like she could throw up as the obvious truth settles like a stone. 

"You were looking for this."

"Oh? Oh you caught that, did you?” Her passenger bats her lashes in a show of feigned surprise. “And you just picked me up to, what? Stop me? You had that knife all ready to go so you could valiantly rid the world of my wicked ways? Should we hold a ceremony in your honor? Should we alert The Scouts for your big-brave-girl badge?" the woman titters with mock innocence. Her lips curl into another cruel smile a second later. "Spare me, Lexa. Or whatever the hell your name is."

"It is Lexa. I didn't lie," she says before she can stop herself.

The stranger's eyes narrow as she seems to consider that. "...Well that was stupid. Why not?"

Lexa grits her jaw as she leans into the blade, not bothering to smother her grin when the knife falters and jerks a few centimeters away.

"Why did you want me to turn around?"

The strangers balks.

"...What?"

"If you're so smart, Goldi," she needles and thrills at the sour twist of the stranger's mouth, "then I assume you must have had me figured out from the start? So tell me. Why did you want me to turn around?"

Her stranger's sigh is so deep it presses her stomach hard against the edge of Lexa's blade.

"Truthfully?" she says with a rueful shake of her head. Her gaze continues wandering over every inch of Lexa's face as she speaks, "For a second there? I thought maybe I read this wrong. I thought maybe you were harmless… Thought maybe we'd have some fun. But—"

"Looks can be deceiving?"

She lets out a single humorless laugh. "And here I thought mockery wasn't the product of a strong mind."

Lexa clenches her jaw and continues to stare her down.

"What I was going to say was: but then I thought you were kind of weird. But then also kind of meek. And then after that, I thought maybe," Clarke says, her voice dropping low as she wets her lips and lets her eyes take another sweeping loop of Lexa's face, "... maybe kind of hot."

And Lexa...

God Lexa kind of fucking hates herself sometimes.

Or… hates just how uselessly fucking gay she is, at least.

Because something shifts in that moment as her heart restarts with a decidedly more pleasant kind of a thump, her lungs stuttering back to life with a hiccup of intrigue. Because there’s a challenge in her decidedly beautiful stranger's eyes. A taunt that whispers in the shadow of her words; a glint of rebellion that sounds deliciously like a dare. 

And heaven help her, it works. It works as Lexa's belly twists with excitement and her hand tightens around the leather binding of her knife. It works as her eyes drop to the stranger's lips and get stuck there, feeling a needy little wriggle just under her skin when she can't seem to look away from the beauty mark that caps them so deliciously. 

Lexa tips her head and studies her, letting her lips curl into a smirk.

“You think I'm hot?”

The stranger bristles. “I said ‘thought’.”

Her smirk only stretches wider as her voice smooths into a deep chested purr. “So you don't anymore?”

The cleft that splits her stranger's chin so prettily flattens out as her jaw twitches in annoyance. 

Or amusement. 

In that moment, Lexa can't really be bothered to care. 

Defiant and excited by the challenge that sits heavily between them, Lexa presses into the sting of the knife and doesn't fight the renewed pull of her smirk when the blade jerks back an inch. She follows it. The leather seat whines as she leans across the console and feels a cool exhale fan over her face. 

Her eyes drop to the parted pink of her stranger's mouth.

"What are you—"

Lexa presses in and muffles the question with a deep press of her lips. Swallows the gasp that sinks into a moan and the sound makes her smile in a bump of teeth.

Because she didn't know.

She didn't know she could still feel this tingling kind of high without a spray of blood splattered across her cheeks. 

Lexa teases her tongue past her stranger's lips and groans when the blade slips in a careless movement against her skin, her hiss and the thrill at the burn of it enough to have her break the momentum, but not the moment. Not her unwavering conviction that if today is that her luck has run out, she'd rather face her judgment with the taste of this stranger burned onto her lips.

The woman looks at Lexa like she's a puzzle. As though she's never seen something so intriguing before in her life. The dash's like glints off her eyes as she lifts the blade until the point catches just under Lexa's chin, tilting her head to the side in blood-rushing increments to expose the length of Lexa's neck. The scent of rain invades Lexa's already foggy senses when her passenger leans over and drags her tongue slowly along the cut. A lewd moa blooms from deep in Lexa's chest at the sting, the sound turning strangled and needy when warm lips fasten there and suck greedily; marking her in kiss shaped bruises and canines.

Her hips feel restless and her hands ache to touch, and when Lexa nuzzles in to recapture her lips, she really can’t stand how separated they are. 

There’s just something about this stranger that Lexa needs to get her hands on.

To feel pressed against her, alive and warm and thrumming.

She pulls back in a huff of panted breath and stares at her passenger's startled face, unspoken questions ricocheting between them and the burn of arousal demanding more. 

And Lexa knows she'll probably regret this moment for whatever remains of her days when she steadily withdrawals her own blade. But there's something in the thrill of this; this intoxicating vulnerability, that leaves her feeling raw and shaky and so deliciously unhinged. 

It reminds her of her first kill in a way. That virginal rush and excitement of not knowing what the hell she was doing. All fire in her veins and running on instinct and desire alone. ‘The lack of control over her desire’, she thinks as she clicks her seatbelt loose and flings it over her shoulder. It's that taste of freedom from back in the days when she didn't take the time to plan every single one of her moves. When the high of taking a life was built off finding her favorite way to do it, and death didn't feel quite so orchestrated. 

She lifts herself over the console and straddles her passenger in one fluid motion, practice making perfect in how she doesn't even bump her head. Her hands pull and tug at the rain spotted poncho until the woman beneath catches on and helps tear it up and over her head. 

Blonde hair falls in a cascade over her stranger's shoulders in a way that makes Lexa just want to fist her hands in it. Wants to bury her nose there in the thick of its softness, and breathe in the faint notes of shampoo mingled with fresh autumn rain until her lungs burn. 

The mere thought of smothering herself in this woman has her smiling as the knife presses back to the thump of her jugular. 

She doesn't know when she got this turned on. When the itch across her brain had turned into this throbbing ache between her thighs. All she knows is when she glances down at the fingers still wrapped around the hilt of that switchblade pressed to her neck, she wants nothing more than to feel them stretch her.

The thought makes her whimper, careless and needy in her own stupidity, as she reaches for the stranger's wrist and trails the blade down. The cold tip of the knife drags over her chest, the exposed strip of belly where her shirt has ridden up. Lexa drapes herself back against the dash, exposing the soft bit of skin just below her bellybutton and flexing her abdominals for good measure, smiling wickedly when the woman takes the length of her in with little more than a hum and a bite to her lip. 

Sharp steel ghosts along Lexa's skin in a tickling caress, sending a shiver racing up her spine when it snags at the hem of her pants, tracing the edges of her V line before nudging the material down further. Another hiss slips through her teeth when a nick to the jut of her hip bone elicits shocks of white-hot pain. 

She feels lightheaded at the red that stipples and beads to the surface. Clinging as it swells into droplets, only to be licked clean again.

Lexa slips her fingers back through blonde hair and pulls this beautiful stranger up, stopping only when their lips are barely a hair's breadth apart.

“I want you,” Lexa rasps, staring helplessly in a daze of crimson arousal, chest heaving and blood pumping with more adrenaline than she's felt in years.

The woman smiles with a wolfish grin. 

“I knew you'd be fun.”

Lexa surges forward and recaptures her mouth because fuck yes this is fun. A completely different kind of fun than she'd ever bargained for when hears the muffled thunk of the knife being buried into the leather covering of her middle console and arms wrapping tight around her waist.

She steals the cold from her stranger's skin and replaces it with the heat from her own, all humid breaths and insistent lips and hands caressing wherever they can reach. Along her ribs and cupping her breast, palms at her jaw as she tilts her head and licks deeper. Over the curve of her ass to pull her flush and encourage the rock of her hips. 

A hand shoves past her waistband and slips into her underwear, and suddenly Lexa thinks she needs to start redefining what it means to feel truly alive. Because no high or rush of bloodlust has ever spurred her on like this. 

Cool fingers slip between her legs and slide through her heat. They trace the length of her, massing the sensitive folds and spreading her open just to brush a testing fingertip against her clit. Flicking back and forth and stroking circles over the delicate hood. 

Thighs shaking and fingernails carving halfmoons into the skin of her stranger's biceps, Lexa tilts her hips forward, jogging encouragingly until she takes the hint and sinks inside. 

The woman cups the back of Lexa's neck and grips her hair. Forces Lexa to look at her and only her. Lexa never stops moving, rising and falling on the fingers moving in doggedly slow thrusts inside of her. Her breath catches as a third slips in, the ring finger and pointer curling in front making her feel so much fuller than she’s used to. 

“Fuck, you're so wet. All for me?” Her passenger groans when Lexa squeezes tight around her, sounding surprised and delightedly thrilled all at once.  

It's as if this woman, this stranger, can read every inch of Lexa's body. Can decipher every groan and clench of her muscles. Lexa's hand flies to the roof above her for a bit of much needed leverage as she rocks harder, fucks harder, snapping her hips in such a unforgiving rhythm the car sways in protest.

“Please, I need—… Please…” 

The word falls from Lexa's lips in a gasp, pitched high in her throat and lovingly weak.

She wants to feel every lingering ache of this moment long into tomorrow. 

Should she make it that far.

She stares and she stares and she never looks away from the blue eyes devouring her even as they drop to her lips, to the cut on her throat, just wind their way back up. The hand splayed low on Lexa's back jolts her forward and onto her lips, smearing messy kisses along her jawline, down her collarbones, across the modest dip of her breasts. 

Lexa gulps down lungfuls of the air that sit humid and thick with the scent of her own arousal, practically tasting herself with each breath that glides over her too-dry tongue. The fingers working inside of her twist and flutter and pump so roughly they nearly lift her off the stranger's lap. 

Slick sounds fill the car and her mouth falls slack as the pressure builds and breaks, her entire body going rigid when fingertips find the spot on her front wall and curl into it, massaging in unforgiving strokes.

She comes in a half strangled shout, her hips shooting forward and rutting desperately against the fingers still curling inside her. She clenches and shudders and lets the pleasure roll through her in waves, arms thrown around the woman's neck, clinging to her.

Lexa's still panting out the remnants of her orgasm as lips drop soothing kisses down the column of her throat. The slice of a warm tongue brands obscene threats on her life and wellbeing, teeth skating along the rise and fall of her collarbones just to sink into the muscle of her shoulder and hold her. 

She plants kisses in blonde hair and nibbles the shell of a delicate ear. Fumbles and wedges her arm between their bodies, searching and tugging at so many obstacles in her path. She gets her fingers past the woman's waistline, and she's trying her damn best, despite the fact that her wrist burns and twists and is… utterly fucking useless in this position. 

Lexa lets out a strangled grunt and wrenches away. Freezes only long enough to send her passenger a devious smile.

Thunder cracks overhead as she flings the door open and yanks the woman out right along with her. They meet in a stumbling clash of lips and grabbing hands, kissing feverishly as Lexa guides them toward the front of the car. She drops her hands to the woman's thighs and scoops her up, swallowing the surprised yelp and balancing her weight in her palms just long enough to deposit her on the hood. The new angle lets them kiss deeper, lets their hands roam freer as Lexa lifts her chin and licks into every impatient stroke of tongue. 

She wrenches the woman's shirt out of her jeans, shoving it up out of the way and pushing her bra right along with it. Her hands map the contours of her waist and ribs and cup the warm fleshy weight of her breasts. She groans and drags her teeth along the swell of a kiss bruised bottom lips, squeezing in time with every rock of her hips, feeling nipples pebbles and harden against her palms.

They're the kind of breasts you commit to memory, she thinks, as she mouths her way down the line of her stranger's neck and noses past the shirt rucked up over her sternum. The kind of palmable tits that spill over your hands in ways you write sonnets over. That you lay down your sword over. 

The kind you that think about on lonely nights when there's a very different kind of itch you need to scratch. 

She takes her time with her beautiful passenger, wrapping her lips around one straining nipple and then the other. Switches between them with teasing sucks and flicks of an overeager tint, always messaging and doting on the neglected breast not being worshipped by her mouth. 

Lexa's hand wraps around the stranger's throat and squeezes, guiding her to lay back. She trips her lips down the soft plain of her belly and kisses the trimmed thatch of hair when she tugs at her pants. Hips lift and don't rebel at the rain or the cold that clings to the hood when Lexa hooks her fingers into the waist of a pair of well-loved jeans and drags them down. They tangle just below the knees with feet kicked up on the bumper. Lexa spreads the woman wide to lay open, flushed. Swollen. 

Her passenger is a masterpiece of curved angles and endless stretches of creamy pale skin. All bathed in a shower of lightly hued freckles, and the scent of her excitement mixes with rain in a way that makes Lexa's mouth water. 

Lexa nips at delicate kneecaps and mouths kisses along thighs she thinks would look so much prettier slung over her shoulders. 

Another time.

Right now all she can focus on is the way her stranger's hips twitch. The impatient sighs and hitches of breath that come with every graze of teeth. She licks a path down one thigh and kisses a sloppy trail up the other, sucking reminders of herself into the giving flesh for the wayward traveler to take with her.

The heat rising from the flushed pink lips dusted in darked soaked through curls makes Lexa swallow, makes her suddenly out of breath. And when she finally licks a thick stripe through that dripping wetness with the flat of her tongue, it's the first time all night Lexa's felt in control of any of this.

Because there's just something about this woman. This stranger writhing under Lexa's fingertips. Something in the way she kisses Lexa like she owns her, like she knows her; the way she grabs at Lexa like she has no intention of letting go until she says so. There's a possessiveness in her touch that Lexa can't remember ever feeling before, and every cell of her body screams to fall into it, and return the sentiment in kind.

Lexa laps up every drop and moans in a heady sense of victory when more trickles out in its place. She tastes like honey and salted earth and not for the first time in her life, Lexa is grateful for her arm length when she slips two fingers inside the source of her madness, feeling spongy walls tighten and pull her in deeper. 

The throat still clasped in her palm pulls taught in a porn-worthy groan at her first thrust, blood thumping wildly beneath the pulse point pinned under her thumb and fuck, Lexa wants the chance to feel it trapped between her teeth. 

She's close. So close can Lexa taste it in the way she sweetens and suckles at her fingertips. The thought of tasting her as she spills over has Lexa wrapping her lips around the swollen tip of her clit and pressing her tongue in tight to give her something to come against. 

Her stranger lets out a scream in nothing more than a thrashed flex of vocal chords as she locks up, making feral little sounds in the back of her throat that meld together and settle heavy between Lexa's legs. Powerful hips raise and quiver, practically riding Lexa's face and fingers as she spills over in a hot pulse of slick.

The woman moans and clenches around the fingers still gently curling into her. All glassy eyes and loose limbs that shudder in dying spasms of pleasure. Lexa keeps her fingers buried to the top knuckle, as deep as they will go and stills, just to bask in the feeling of that snug softness rippling around her.

She nearly comes again at the sound of a whimper when she thrusts one final time and slips out. Hands thread through her hair as Lexa laps kitten licks along the swollen mess of her, cleaning her up and only half-apologizing for her roughness.

The truth is, she wants to keep going. To take this gorgeous stranger, again and again and never stop. At least not until she had to. It's that addictive part of her, she realizes. The piece of her that always hungers for ‘just one more’, and the ache between her thighs has her convinced that if she'd just found this girl sooner then maybe, just maybe, her life would look very different. 

Because as she takes her time putting the woman's back together enough to be at least semi-comfortable on the rain-dotted hood of her car, Lexa worries at how easily this girl could become an addiction. 

Lexa climbs up alongside the blissed out woman on shaky arms and shakier legs. She hovers just for a moment, a slice of doubt creeping past the lust and sex haze of her mind as she stares down at the flaked out stretch of her. But blue eyes flicker open and catch her staring before she can decide for herself. 

Her stranger's lips tip up into an easy smile as she reaches out a hand. Fingers trace the line of Lexa's jaw like it's something precious and entirely too breakable, before they sink into the cascade of her hair. 

A softly whispered, “C'mere,” is all Lexa needs to clear any remaining doubt.

She has no idea how much time passes as they lay there absorbed in each other. Kissing without any urgency, existing in nothing but a jumble of hooked ankles and tangled limbs. Hands on hips and thighs slotted between thighs.

She'd forgotten how wonderful a still beating heart could feel tucked safely under her palm.

Still high on endorphins and the memory of warmth clinging to her fingers, Lexa comes up for air and sinks back against the hood. Stares unseeing at the starless sky. She trails her fingertips along the cut on her hip bone and smiles at the sting of it. Mixes the sticky remnants of her passengers' come that still coats her fingers with the sluggishly bleeding.

Just the thought of it makes her clench around nothing. 

“For the record,” the woman beside her starts in gradually slowing breaths, “if you try anything, I'll—"

Lexa snorts in amusement as her gaze lolls to the side. "I dare you to finish that thought, Goldi. But know that if you do, your insides will end up a decoration on my car floor."

The stranger stares back at her for a suspended moment... before tipping her head back with a loud bark of laughter.

"Oh you actually, really are fun," she chuckles, all cheeks and that voice that sounds like honey-smoke. 

She settles back in a sigh of content and adds—

"It's Clarke, by the way."

Lexa's eyes snap back up from where she'd been mapping every line and twist of her smile.

"I—... What?"

"Clarke," her stranger repeats with a wave of fingers before pushing her hand carelessly through her hair. "If you keep calling me Goldi, I swear to God, I might be forced to kill myself."

Lexa sits with that for a moment. Lets the name slip over her brain and settle on her tongue. She likes the way it tastes when she repeats it out loud. Loves the way it clicks off the roof of her mouth. And in the quiet moment as it ricochets around her brain, she wants more excuses to say it again and again. 

Out loud, she settles on, “Well I certainly like that better than Goldi.”

The stranger—Clarke— tisks. “I really should've gone with Red. But I was trying to be too cute for my own good—”

“You are too cute for your own good,” Lexa says with a teasing smile.

“That's what they all say…”

Lexa shakes her head at the wistful tone that saturates her words, because nothing about any of this makes one bit of sense. Because she thinks it's true, just looking at her so blissed out and splayed across her hood, that nothing about this woman seems like she should be—

"How are you—Why are you—," Lexa struggles to complete her thought, "How did you even get started doing this?"

"Fucking women like a champ?"

Lexa blindly slaps a hand out to the side and laughs at the answering 'ow' when she hits her mark. "I meant... this. Obviously."

"Ah," Clarke says as though finally clueing into a great mystery. "Just kind of stumbled into it, I guess."

"Stumbled."

"Well I didn't take classes in it if that's what you mean."

"Clarke—"

"It was in college," Clarke cuts in, light and airy as she scoops up the very hand that landed the earlier blow. "A friend of mine's boyfriend used to be... not great. He uh, he liked to get drunk and slap her around. Never quite learned to keep his hands to himself. And one night? He went a little too far."

Lexa twists her head around to look at her better. "What happened?"

Clarke shrugs and continues drawing tickling shapes across Lexa's palm.

"He just tested my patience one too many times…” she hums. “So I slit his throat."

She brings their hands up and brushes her lips across Lexa's knuckles, burying her dreamy smile there.

"That was a good day."

Lexa's heart knocks pleasantly against her ribs at the pure joy radiating off of her, the feeling making her pull their intertwined hands over to leave an answering kiss on Clarke's fingers. "I like that... It doesn't really explain you being out here though."

"Sure it does. Something something, 'people who pick up hitchhikers are suspect'. Something something... uhh, vigilante."

"What the hell does that mean?" Lexa snorts.

Clarke sighs and flops the hand resting on her stomach lazily in the air. "Basically that after that night, I realized sometimes we have to do bad things to worse people, to stop even worse things from happening to sort-of okay people."

"Oh, I see,” Lexa hums in drips of sarcasm. “So you pretend to be a hitchhiker… so you can murder people who pick up hitchhikers. Like a moral crusade."

Clarke frowns in concentration. "Ehhhhyyye—sure." She finally settles on a nod when she seems to work that answer out. "The long and short answer, yes. We will go with that."

"Because everyone who picks up hitchhikers are obviously murders?"

Lexa can't help her grin when Clarke's head tilts to the side and pins her with a pointed stare.

"Case in point."

Lexa shrugs, thoroughly amused and without an ounce of regret. "I still think you're full of shit."

"Okay, so then what made you start? Smartass."

Lexa feels herself laugh at the defensive scoff that lightly paints her words. 

Not the usual fake kind of laugh she's perfected in the mirror since she was five years old - the one that's served her well with family and colleagues for years.

This laugh is... real.

Throaty, and rippling outward like a skipped stone from deep in her chest.

Its ringing notes sound foreign to her ears.

"Well… Unfortunately I don't have some benevolent excuse to hide behind—"

Clarke grunts a half-laugh and pinches Lexa's wrist. "Fuck you."

"You did. Like a champ."

Clarke's sigh is wistful as she just waits, sounding far too fond for such an unexpected night. 

She's not trying to be cagey. It's just that Lexa hasn't really thought about this in awhile. 

"Nothing,” she finally breathes in a puff of white condensed air. “Nothing made me start… Nothing at all."

Clarke brow furrows. “Nothing? Just, 'nothing'?"

"No." Lexa shrugs without letting her grin fade. "I'd thought about it for years. Pictured what it'd be like. Wondered if I'd feel any guilt, maybe? Or if I'd feel anything at all. And then... I don't know. One day I just decided that I really, really... needed to know what it felt like to watch someone die." She dreamily sighs and feels her smile widen under Clarke's intense gaze. "So I did."

The memory of that first jolt of adrenaline and fear has her heart thudding in uneven jumps. The euphoric tingling she'd been chasing ever since she'd stood over her first body and stared into cloudy, glazed over eyes. 

She'd been messy back then. Even more reckless than she was tonight, but that heady rush of power had lit up her heart like the fourth of July. 

It feels like a lifetime ago, now. 

The madness before the method. 

Back when she was a mere fledgling of her craft, still discovering the finer points of her passion. 

Killing so many people, in so many different ways…

Clarke looks at her for a long moment, eyes searching, yet unreadable. She silently turns and stares at the sky without a word.

It makes Lexa's veins feel like they're crawling with ants.

"Does that... disappoint you?"

"Wha'?" Clarke's profile asks as she suddenly frowns up at the angry clouds above them. "Does what disappointment me?"

"I don't know. That I don't have some tragic backstory that turned me into this? That I'm not on some crusade for justice."

Clarke's eyes burn so bright when he head snaps toward Lexa; her smile lopsided and so beautifully alive. "Not at all, are you kidding? I'm kind of in love with that answer."

"Yeah?" Lexa asks, feeling her chest swell with something light and bubbly.

Clarke laughs as though in disbelief of Lexa's doubt. "That might be the hottest thing I've ever heard in my life actually."

"I don't know about that."

"Uh, yes it is. A woman killing for the fun of it? And not giving a fuck? And you don't even—You're not even—... Fuck."

Clarke slumps back against the hood, making the rain droplets that cling to the paint squeak i  protest as she shakes her head.

"How often do you..."

"Depends on how bad the itch is," Lexa almost whispers. Her heart calms a few more decibels when Clarke nods in understanding and restarts those lazy patterns across her palm.

It feels nice. Talking about it.

"Do you get that too?"

"No," Clarke says with another easy smile.

"No?"

"No, no itch.” She pulls a face. “Which sounds kind of gross, by the way."

“Hey.”

“Well it does! It sounds like a venereal disease or something.”

"Well then. Then why?" Lexa stammers while Clarke laughs at her own wittiness, already making a mental note to come up with a drastically different description first thing in the morning. “Why do you do it? If you're not—If you don't have…”

Clarke traces a nail along the length of Lexa's palm and shrugs. "I don't know. Killing’fun? And I'm good at it. But there's no, like... compulsion or anything."

"The way you say that makes it sound like I'm insane or something."

Clarke snorts and suddenly shuffles closer, lifting up only long enough to press a lingering kiss to Lexa's lips before settling back down and resting her head on Lexa's shoulder. "To be fair, cutiepie? Considering the hobby at hand, I think most people would insist that we're both at least a few cards short of a full deck.”

Lexa presses a kiss to Clarke's temple and takes a moment to breathe her in. 

“I'm not insane,” she murmurs against her skin, the words rattling against her teeth and sounding like the confession that it is. 

She can hear Clarke's smile when she answers, “I never thought you were, I was only saying. And besides. At least you have the excuse of feeling an actual need to do it, right?" She pauses until Lexa nods. "I just do it for fun."

"I have fun," Lexa pipes in, sounding oddly defensive to her own ears.

"I could tell." The roll of her eyes when Lexa looks down at her is adorable, but entirely unnecessary. "You were wound so tight after you picked me up, I thought you might pop before we even got to where we were going."

"I have a method," Lexa snips with a low, hardened cut painting the edges of her words. "It's not the same as just wandering along and seeing who picks you up. Not all of us fling ourselves out there and worry about the consequences later—"

"Hey, no," Clarke eases.

Her hand reaches up and tangles in the sex mussed curls around Lexa's ear, her thumb brushing soothing circles on her cheek. She pins Lexa with her gaze and holds her in the soft waters of understanding blue. Waits until the fire of Lexa's defenses dampen to a softer flicker that doesn't threaten to burn the moment to ashes.

"I like it. I like your intensity," Clarke whispers. "I wasn't judging. Okay?"

Lexa nuzzles further into her touch, never looking away.

"All I meant is that I can tell you take this seriously."

"Of course I do. The second I don't..."

Clarke nods in understanding yet again.

"So, you have a method… I take it you have a type then?" 

"No. I mean not really. Not beyond… hitchhikers. Wanderers, I suppose. People who generally won't be missed.”

“Rude,” Clarke teases, twisting a strand around her finger and tugging just to laugh at Lexa's flinch. 

“I said generally." To her credit, Lexa does think for a moment before adding on as an afterthought, "Probably the only arena of my life where I prefer men though."

The now familiar bark of laughter Clarke lets out is beginning to feel like heroin and blood sweetened sunshine.

"Ah, okay. I can get with that. I like that too," she says, smile still firmly in place. "Although, since we're apparently spilling our guts out here - er, metaphorically - I do like men in all arenas. For what it's worth."

That statement sends Lexa's brain into a swirling barrage of images.

She grimaces. 

"Ew."

"Excuse you?" Clarke slowly asks, brows raising to her hairline as her grin slants into frown.

"I'm sorry, I didn't—That didn't come out right."

"Hah. Right. So, is this what you do then? Is this little miss priss serial killer judging me for my sexuality?"

"No," Lexa firmly cuts back in. She rolls over and up onto her side, not even caring anymore about how badly she's denting her damn hood. "That wasn't what I was doing. I'm not a— I'm not biphobic, Clarke. It was just that when you said that, it made me... picture you with men."

Clarke's face lights up with another wave of anger. "Oh! Well then how about instead? You picture me with my knife shoved right up your—"

"I'm sorry that I don't care for envisioning the woman I just made come having sex with other people," Lexa snaps. "I like you, Clarke. I liked fucking you. I don't want to think about you with anybody else, man or woman. I only want to think about you with me."

Blue eyes cloaked in shadow and lightning narrow as they stare at her through the darkness.

"In a very bizarre and misguided way," Clarke says, slow and halting, "that was, maybe... kind of sweet."

Lexa huffs and flops back down onto the hood.

“I should've killed you when I had the chance.”

The woman beside laughs. “Oh, cutiepie. You never even had the chance.”

When Lexa turns her head and grins at the deep notes of her ego, Clarke is already smiling at her around the kiss-bitten swell of her lip, looking at her like somehow in the last few hours Lexa's already become her favorite thing in the world.

“So then,” Lexa breathes, unable to look away either. She fidgets and folds her hands together, just to unwind them and let them fall to her sides. “If I can't kill you… And assuming you aren't still planning to kill me…” She waits for Clarke's amused nod. “Then what—What do we do now?”

“Pancakes.”

Lexa blinks at the immediate answer.

“Wh—... What?”

Blue eyes gleam in the slivers of moonlight that have broken through the clouds as Clarke slides off the hood and pops up onto her feet. 

“You heard me,” she says as she rebuttons her pants. “I'm famished. So, feed me.” 

Lexa accepts the hands being held out for her, letting herself be pulled and slid to the edge of the hood until she's upright. “Are you serious? You're hungry right now?”

Clarke steps close, invading every millimeter of Lexa's space as she slings her arms over Lexa's shoulders and begins playing with her hair.

“I don't know about you, killer,” she whispers, pressing one, two, languid kisses to Lexa's lips and oh she likes that nickname infinitely better, “but I worked up a pretty big appetite.”

Suddenly the image of blonde hair splayed messy and gorgeous across her pillow flashes through Lexa's mind. Stained in speckles of red along her cheeks, her eyes glinting at Lexa with delighted intent. It's all the thoughts she'd tamped down before melding together into new configurations, filling up the loud and quiet spaces of Lexa's life and feeling dangerously real in that moment. Images of Clarke clinging to her in the early morning vestiges of a peaceful, kiss-drunk sleep. Of breakfasts in bed and strolls through the park. Of anniversaries marked in freshly dug graves, and washing the dried blood beneath their fingernails down the same bathroom sink.

It feels like a loss letting go of her just long enough to climb into the driver's seat. So caught up in the fantasies of what will become of all this, Lexa startles at the sharp rap of knuckles against the passenger side window.  

Clarke's bent low enough to scowl at her through the glass as she tugs uselessly at the handle. “Alright. What the fuck is up with your door?”

Huffing at herself, Lexa reaches over and pops it open.

Clarke continues to frown at her expectantly as she climbs in.

Eyeing her warily despite the insane thought that she just might have been made exactly for her, Lexa eventually grabs Clarke's hand and leans across to the passenger side door, running her fingertips along the hidden release mechanism of Lexa's own design. 

“You have to push in and slide this toggle until it clicks. Otherwise… it won't open…”

Clarke stares at the door handle for a long, breathless moment. 

When she turns, her eyes are dark. Hooded and sparkling with a murderous gleam of lust. She just smiles and shakes her head, somehow looking more besotted by the second, until a hungry little sound explodes from low in her chest as she surges forward, smashing their lips together in a fiery kiss.

“That is so fucking hot,” Clarke practically growls when she yanks back with a pop. She grabs the knife embedded in Lexa's console and yanks it free. With a teasing flash of teeth, she tosses it over her shoulder into the backseat and recaptures Lexa's hand, threading their fingers together and squeezing tight. “Now take me to go eat pancakes, you sexy, brilliant maniac.”

Lexa can't help her toothy smile because, clearly, this woman is the one who is out of her mind. 

Her sated muscles ache and her leg bounces in a cheerier rhythm than before. She feels delirious and drunk on happiness and blonde hair with blue eyes, and she just… 

She decides she could really go for some pancakes right now.

Unwilling to break their connection, she awkwardly fumbles with her free hand and feels the engine roar back to life. She drops the car into reverse and leans over to kiss her beautiful passenger one more time before guiding them back down the muddy lane. 

The itch can wait just one more day.

Or… at least until morning…

Lexa is a serial killer who kills people who she picks up as hitchhikers. Clarke is a serial killer who kills people who pick up hitchhikers.

[f0rgetf0rgetting]

my first time doing a ship chart dont throw tomatoes at me guysh. im elaborating on the tags because im embarrassed. user f0rgetf0rgetting extreme yap session

i also got too passionate on the madoka magica one and ended up doodling this

[charmingradiobelle]

I DID IT!!

It took several weeks but I finally finished up the prologue of my new Charlastor fic! I’ve been dying to share this idea with you guys for a while!

I’ve seen some AUs of Alastor becoming Charlie’s guardian, and so this is kind of my own personal take on that premise. Feel free to check it out and make sure to give some feedback, as this is my first HH fanfic and I’m a little nervous about sharing it lol😅

[syb-la-tortue]

Hi there! Ik you're not into homestuck anymore, but I was wondering if all your old piratestuck art is posted anywhere else, since your original blog got deleted? I used to spend so long just going through that tag, cause I love your art so much. It rly sucks that Tumblr is so hellbent on censoring everything to the point of just trashing a decade or more of someone's hard work :(

sadly at the moment no, tumblr was the only place where the great majority of my Homestuck art was (along with some One Piece art and a good chunk of my early bnha art) and even though I don't think much about Homestuck and Piratestuck these days, I wanted to share these art back then and the sentiment is still true today, I really want all my old arts to still be accessible for everyone to find, even if looking at them today myself might make me cringe due to it being old and seeing all the flaws in them lmao

anon asked: Hope you’ll be able to reupload your art! Everything you make is gorgeous!

I know I won't reupload them on tumblr (wouldn't be able to post the sexy here anyway and I refuse to skip it), or twitter or wherever, one by one like they were posted in the past, because we're talking about hundreds, possibly close to a thousand pieces of art and doodles

what I intend to do is to sort them into a few .PDFs (by fandom? by year?) and make those available for download

it's just that. the task right now is a bit daunting, that's a lot of art to sort through! and I would also like to write some level of commentary, you know like captions to give some context, maybe some of the lore and headcanons for Piratestuck, that kinda thing! but yeah, lot of work that I'm currently a bit afraid to start on so that might be a while...

[ilexdiapason]

#oh this entire saga is so fun so far (via @redstonedust)

i'm deleting the response that was herw because it was a little mean because i assumed i had every part linked up and i DIDN'T SORRY GLAD YOU ENJOYED

It's not every day you almost hit somebody with your car - but then again, it's not every day that the somebody in question falls directly out of the sky and into the road in front of you.

Oli slams the brakes as fast as he can physically manage, parks the car, hops out. (If traffic comes up behind him on a little road like this, only a couple of streets from his house, then they can wait for him to check on the body before he lets them past, alright?) Lying in front of him, tensed but not appearing to be grievously injured, is a man.

"Hello?"

The man's eyes flick open, his gaze wild and alert at once, and he scrambles back across the tarmac. "Who are you?"

"No - no, I'm not - you just fell in front of my car, that's all, I'm not a cop or anything."

"Don't need to be a cop to be dangerous," the stranger insists, fists balling against the road as though he'd rather be reaching for a weapon. "Where is this?"

"You're - we're in Sheffield," he hazards, "like, north Sheffield, not in the middle of town or anything. How did you fall out of the sky like that?"

"Sheffield?" the man repeats.

"Yeah?"

"What's your name?"

"Er - I'm Oli. Oliver."

The stranger stares at Oli like he's trying to bore a hole through to the other side of his skull. "OrionSound?"

Oli pauses. How in the everliving fuck does this random stranger know his gamertag, of all things? "What? Yes. What?"

"Right," the stranger mutters, "not over yet, I guess." He hops up, offers a hand, which Oli, bewildered, shakes. "My name is Martyn."

Ah - that would explain it. If, albeit, it is still a fucking insane coincidence. "You've been in some of our lobbies before. How did you work that out from name and location?"

Martyn stops short. "Hold on. Lobbies?"

"Yeah - on Pirates, right? And Rats. I always just sort of assumed you must be mates with Owen or something."

"Lobbies like - like in-game?"

"... Yes?"

Martyn looks around, as though he's processing this quiet side street for the very first time. He flexes his fingers on either side, half-concealed under fingerless gloves. Then he makes eye contact with Oli again. "Let me just get this straight. You've met me in-game, and this is not that. This is real."

"Yeah," Oli frowns, "what? Of course this is real. I'm sorry, am I missing something?"

And Martyn laughs, mirthless, like Oli's not privy to the greatest cosmic joke he can imagine. "Little bit, yeah. Right. I did get out. And I'm in Sheffield, and OrionSound of all people found me. And… I need to call my mum."

"You want my phone?"

"Oh, god, not now, I need a minute."

Against his better judgement, Oli makes a choice. "Well, if you need somewhere to go, just for a bit, we're not far from my house?"

Martyn laughs again. "Right! Sure. Let's do that. Fuck. Fucking hell, you've got a car, been a hot minute since I've seen one of those. Let's go."

So that's how Oli ends up letting Martyn, a man he's never met before but also knows quite well, into his car and into his home. It's not even one o'clock yet.

(part two here)

[sheliesshattered]

Sylki fic: When She Sings She Sings Come Home

Loki/Sylvie, 3200 words. Post s02e06 fix-it, angst with a happy ending. Also available on AO3 under the same title and username.

--

When She Sings She Sings Come Home

Sylvie wakes with Loki’s voice in her ears.

It’s been months since she last saw him, striding out to the Loom to save the timelines. Winter has come and gone, here in this little corner of a branch that she’s made her home. Every day that’s passed, she’s half expected to turn around and see him standing there, like that night he appeared in the parking lot next to her truck. But for months, there’s been nothing but the absence of him, growing larger and more crystalline every day.

She wakes with his voice in her ears, singing that ridiculous song from the train on Lamentis.

To Sylvie, everybody! he’d said, grinning at her, not drunk only too full. She would give anything to see him smile like that again. She would give anything to see him again.

And it isn’t that she hasn’t looked. Of course she had. She’d barely gotten through a single shift at McDonald’s after leaving Mobius standing outside his variant’s house before she’d used He Who Remain’s TemPad to try to find Loki.

He wasn’t dead. She knows he isn’t dead. But he also isn’t anywhere. There are an infinite number of branches now, layers of reality twisting around each other into something larger, a shape she can almost see, almost recognize. But Loki isn’t on any of them. No matter where she searches, he remains just outside her grasp.

Sylvie goes to work, she drives her truck home, she listens to music at the record store, she checks in on Mobius, she tries to sleep. But everywhere is marked by Loki’s absence, and every moment is overlaid with the sound of him singing.

She can’t find Loki, but that song is a thread she can pull at. Where did he learn it? The words were almost Asgardian, but not quite. Something similar, a branch of the original. A variant. Because of course it was.

It’s not until she thinks to quietly spy on the New Asgard settlement in Norway, forty years on from her quiet life in Oklahoma, that she hears the language again. Norwegian.

Remember this place, she hears Odin say, in a memory that is not hers, rippling through the interwoven timelines because it is what she needs in this moment. Home.

She turns her back on New Asgard, on the man who is almost but not quite her brother, on the Valkyrie who will come to lead their people like the hero out of a saga that Sylvie had once wished she could become. She turns her back, and walks into this strange, beautiful land. Norway. One tiny place on one tiny planet in one insignificant branch of the ever-growing tree of time, where the syllables are shaped into words that resonate with Loki’s voice from so long ago.

Sylvie wanders into pubs, into taverns, into bars, into concerts. She hums the few notes that never leave her head, and hopes to find someone who knows the song.

Until, miraculously, one day, she does.

“It’s an old drinking song,” the bearded man at the bar tells her, gesturing with his beer. “It’s about taking the long way home, but knowing you’ll get there in the end.”

“Can you teach it to me?” Sylvie asks, unblinking, gaze trained on the stranger’s face.

“For that, I will need a lot more beer.”

So she buys him beers. She coaxes the song out of him. She buys rounds for the whole bar, until they are all singing it. They teach her the words in Norwegian, teach her to shape the vowels as carefully as any incantation, and then teach her the meaning behind the words.

In storm-black mountains, I wander alone

Over the glacier I make my way

In the apple garden stands the maiden fair

and sings, “When will you come home?”

“You, I think,” her drunk bearded acquaintance says to her, “you are the maiden fair.”

“And what if I am?” Sylvie asks, raising her chin, still dead-sober despite the bourbon clutched in her hand.

“Then you must sing for him to come home!”

“From an apple orchard, if you can manage it,” leers his friend next to him.

“Will it work?” she hears herself say.

“Of course it will work! Music is magic. Galdr, they used to call it, in the old religion. The power of your voice to shape reality.” The man is drunk, but his words tug at something in Sylvie’s memory, long buried. “Sing, and he will come home.”

“As simple as that?”

The bearded man laughs uproariously. “When has love ever been simple?” he demands jovially. “When has magic ever been easy? But that does not mean it is not worth trying. There is beauty in the trying. There is love in the longing.” He’s slurring his words, barely managing to stay atop his barstool.

But he’s not wrong.

I know what kind of god I need to be, Loki had said, tears shining in his eyes. For you. For all of us.

But Sylvie is a god, too, she reminds herself, as she tosses back her bourbon and turns her back on the little Norwegian town, with the northern lights rippling over head. She’s not the goddess of chaos anymore, and she hasn’t felt mischievous since she was a child.

But the goddess of galdr, yes, that perhaps is something she could be.

She returns to her little Oklahoma town, cloud cover obliterating the stars, and drives her truck to the record store. There’s only one song she wants to hear, only one voice to sing it, but music has been her comfort since she came to this place, and she cannot simply become the goddess of music-turned-into-magic because she wishes it to be so. Music has been her shield, her cocoon, her comfort these long lonely months. Now she must learn to form it into other shapes, into weapons and tools. Into a lighthouse, shining out into the vast dark of the multiverse.

She taught herself enchantment, while running for her life from one apocalypse to the next. She can teach herself galdr in this quiet little record shop in this quiet little town.

Sylvie slides the headphones into place, and lets the music move through her.

Oh, sweet nothin'

She ain't got nothin' at all

Oh, sweet nothin'

She ain't got nothin' at all

But what if she had something? What if she had the one person who would make all of this worth it?

I know what kind of god I need to be, she tells herself. For you, Loki.

She murmurs the words along with the music, infusing them with intent, with magic.

And for one fraction of an instant, she can see him.

He’s alone, on the throne he never wanted, surrounded by the threads of the multiverse, pulsing green as they grow and twist. There is nothing, nothing else, only Loki alone in that vast emptiness, in that expanse of everything that ever was or ever could be.

His eyes are dull, unfocused, far away. And then— a flicker of recognition, a spark of life—

Sylvie loses the connection.

She’s alone on the sofa in the back of the record shop, with Lou Reed singing in her ears.

He ain’t got nothing at all

She drives home. She tries to sleep. She keeps hearing Loki’s voice, keeps seeing him alone in that emptiness. She murmurs into the darkness— not quite a song, not quite a spell—

But trees dance and waterfalls stop

When she sings, she sings “come home”

There is a shape to the enormity of what Loki has done. There is an order to the way the branches of the multiverse wrap around each other. It is just outside her grasp, but Sylvie feels that if she could just see the shape of it, she might understand.

She might be able to reach him.

In storm-black mountains, I wander alone she whispers to the emptiness of her tiny apartment, in this tiny town, in this little branch of a timeline, one miniscule part of a greater whole, and falls asleep dreaming of trees dancing, of waterfalls stopping, of Loki taking her outside the flow of time to tell her that there was no other way to keep her safe.

Sylvie wakes with her own voice in her ears.

The song is coursing through her, jeg saler min ganger, and she can feel the magic at her fingertips, on the tip of her tongue, pushing at the insides of her ribs, swelling her lungs and begging to be released.

I know what kind of god I need to be.

She gets into her truck and drives. North and east, away from everything she knows, vaguely towards those northern lights dancing over the fjords, too far away to reach on roads such as these.

But once upon a time, when she was very young, there was another road. A rainbow road, the Bifrost, that could take her anywhere just like magic.

Every bit of magic she has now she has taught herself. And this, too, this song swelling in her chest, is magic of her own making.

There is beauty in the trying. There is love in the longing.

She drives past fields of wheat and fields of corn, through days and nights, with the glare of the sun or the pattering of the rain against the windshield. Sylvie drives and drives and drives, and keeps the song tucked away inside her, growing in fury like a hurricane in a bottle, like the storm that had raged outside the night they met.

She drives until the scent of apples wafts through the open windows of the truck, and then she pulls over, knowing this was her destination all along.

Iðunn, a childhood memory whispers, too long ago now to have any meaning at all. The apples of eternity.

Home she thinks, and then hears, from a memory not her own:

Asgard’s not a place, it’s a people.

This could be Asgard. Asgard is where our people stand.

Her brother’s voice. The voice of the man who had once raised her as his daughter. The family she lost and can never regain, no matter what shape the multiverse twists itself into. Words reaching across time, across branching timelines, to reach her here and now, because it is what she needs to hear.

Sylvie climbs out of her truck and walks into the apple orchard and doesn’t look back.

She walks until she can no longer see the road from between the trunks and branches. She walks until there is nothing but the smell of apples, the soil under foot, and the sky over head. She walks until the song finally bursts out of her, all of her desperation and loneliness flooding out of her lungs to shake the very air around her, in the shape of words that are his but also hers, now.

But trees dance and waterfalls stop

When she sings, she sings “come home”

In storm-black mountains, I wander alone

Over the glacier I make my way

In the apple garden stands the maiden fair

and sings, “When will you come home?”

But trees dance and waterfalls stop

When she sings, she sings “come home”

When she sings, she sings “come home”

When she sings, she sings “come home”

When she sings, she sings “come home!”

And then he is there, standing beside her in the sunshine and the scent of the apple orchard. Loki glances around at the trees dancing in the wind, his eyes bright, before his gaze snaps to hers.

“You’re here,” Sylvie croaks, her voice burned through with the force of the magic that poured out of her, the magic that’s brought Loki to her.

“No, not really,” he says, his eyes never still as they trace over her face. “I’m still there too. I’m sort of everywhere, really. It’s hard to explain.”

“Help me to understand,” she says before the words even have the chance to fade away. “You said you knew what kind of god you needed to be. You saved us, you saved everything, and then you disappeared. Make me understand.”

“I can’t, Sylvie,” Loki says gently, and there is a sorrow in his eyes deeper than oceans, more boundless than the vastness of space. “It’s been centuries for me. Lifetimes. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

Enchant me, he had begged her once, standing in the McDonald’s parking lot in his ridiculous TVA uniform. You can see what I saw.

“You don’t have to say anything,” she tells him, raising her hands slowly towards his face, green magic flickering between her fingers. “Just let me see what you saw.”

“Sylvie,” he starts, and there are tears in his eyes again, like there were in that last moment before he turned his back on her to destroy the Loom.

“We’re the same, remember?” she says, and if her voice cracks it is only because of the abuse it’s suffered, only because of the magic that poured out through her vocal chords to shape reality to her desires. “You shouldn’t have to bear this burden alone, Loki,” she tells him, with as much tenderness as she can force into her ruined voice. “Let me understand.”

“It was the only way,” he says, as if in warning, but Sylvie cups his face in her hands before the tears can fall from his eyes.

Centuries. Lifetimes. The same day, over and over again. Reality unspooling, starting with Victor Timely and ending with her, again and again. Their fight in the Citadel at the end of time, relived hundreds of times, always with the same ending. Always the death of He Who Remains, and the unraveling of everything, failure after failure after failure.

And yet in all of them, she does not kiss him. And he cannot bring himself to kill her. Until only one choice remains.

I know what kind of god I need to be. For you.

Sylvie watches in Loki’s memory as the temporal radiation burns away his TVA uniform, as his magic replaces it with something older, something primal, something true. She watches as he grasps the decaying branches of the multiverse and breathes life into them, wills them to live, to be whole and part of a whole.

She watches as the branches twist around each other, each variation of the timeline finding support in its neighbors, building into something greater than the sum of every moment of every timeline that has ever existed.

She sees the shape of what Loki has done, the enormous, infinite tree dancing in the nothingness outside of time. Yggdrasil, the worldstree, green and glowing, alive and growing, all because Loki willed it so. To restore freewill and safeguard it forever. For all of us.

His hands cover hers and Loki gently pries her fingers away from his face. “Enough, Sylvie. Enough. I know what I’ve done.”

There are tears on her face, the apple-scented wind plucking at the wetness as she stands there, staring at Loki. Even without the enchantment, she can see him sitting on his throne, alone but for the infinite tree he tends.

“It was the only way?” she asks in the ruins of her voice. It is only when he folds his hands around hers that she realizes she is shaking, trembling like a leaf in the wind. Not like dancing. Like shattering, collapsing in on herself with the weight of what he’s done.

“No,” Loki admits. “There was one other way. I could have left He Who Remains in charge. I could have let the TVA go back to pruning the timelines. But I would have had to kill you. I would have had to kill you with my own hands, and watch as you died, and then betray everything you ever believed in. I lived every variation of every action I could possibly change, but not that one. Not that.”

“You don’t even know me,” Sylvie blurts out before the words have fully formed in her mind. All of this, to save her? She cannot, she cannot—

Loki’s expressive face twists, stung by her words, hurt in this moment even beyond the deep sorrow that he wears like a cloak. “Of course I know you,” he says, wounded, his gaze searching her face. “Like I’ve never known anyone. Sylvie, I lov—”

She surges up onto her toes and kisses him, there among the apple trees. She kisses him for what he’s done, for what he refused to do. She kisses him for the loneliness they have both known far too much of, she kisses him for coming when she sang for him to come home. She kisses him because there is nothing else she can do, because there was never any other way for her, either.

And Loki kisses her in return, with a desperation borne of years, centuries, lifetimes of facing this alone. He kisses her in the apple garden, as the trees dance and the waterfalls stand still. He is there, kissing her, but also somewhere else, far away and outside time, tending to the tree that he gave his life to save.

“I can’t stay,” he says when they finally part, pressing his forehead to hers, his hands cupping her jaw in an echo of how she had enchanted him moments before. “I want to stay, more than anything, Sylvie, but I can’t, I can’t.”

“I know,” she assures him, even as she clutches at his robes for fear he will disappear at any moment. “I know you can’t stay here with me,” she says, then takes a deep breath to steady her ragged voice, her thundering heart. “But you don’t have to be alone.”

Loki pulls away abruptly, only far enough to see her face, confusion pinching his features.

“We’re gods, you said,” Sylvie explains, tripping over her words, her voice trembling with the weight of what she has already done, the weight of what she plans to do. “We have a responsibility. That’s what you told me, in that ridiculous room full of pie. We can’t just give everyone freewill and then walk away.” She offers him a small smile, the best she can summon at the current moment. “You have to sustain Yggdrasil. But you don’t have to do it alone.”

“I did this for you,” he says, holding on to her as desperately as she is clutching at him. “So you could have a life. That’s what you said you wanted, to live.”

“It’s freewill, Loki,” she says, shaking her head. “You can’t just give it to everyone and then be surprised when I use it to choose to be with you. I know what kind of god I need to be. You taught me that. I won’t let you bear this burden alone. That’s the kind of god I choose to be.”

“I can’t let you sacrifice yourself for me—”

“The only sacrifice would be giving you up.”

He gazes at her for a long moment, his uncertainty slowly transforming, then sings softly, “I stormsvarte fjell, jeg vandrer alene,” and this time Sylvie understands the words. “Over isbreen tar jeg meg frem. I eplehagen står møyen den vene, og synger: ‘når kommer du hjem?’”

The apple orchard dissolves around them, replaced by the rippling greens and blues and purples of Yggdrasil, shimmering in the darkness outside of time.

“Home,” Sylvie says, and kisses him again.

[yurozo]

a study in silence (fenhawke)

(e) fenris is selfish for loving hawke the way he does, but can't help but forever remain in her orbit. circling in her presence, but never getting close enough to taste it. he's simply accepted that hawke is something that will always remain out of his reach, until she reaches for him first. fem!hawke and fenris romance, in the moments between.

1. Fenris lingers in the Hawke mansion for far longer than usual, lounging near the fireplace in relative silence. Marian and him were never ones for rushing through a good bottle of wine; it was always an unspoken rule between them, even when they could rarely agree on anything. He nurses the wine glass with an uncharacteristic languidness while he pretends not to notice the way Hawke is watching him out of the corner of her eye. He watches her just as sneakily in turn, at how her legs stretch out on the couch opposite him and how her arm flexes when she lifts her glass.

He feels a sort of shaky relief that he’s performing in the act of indulging something after all the years of having nothing. They have that in common, he supposes. Hawke tries to break the silence, chattering on about some recent adventure of theirs that Fenris had definitely been on. Regardless, Fenris lets her go on, watching her with a keen eye and a curled lip that looks suspiciously fond. Despite the fact he’s a man usually prone to quiet, his demeanor always stone and sly, Fenris finds a particular calmness in her endless discussions of whatever comes to her head. Ultimately, Fenris is a weak man only for her, in the way she provides a form of relief for him– Fenris can simply sit and enjoy her endless meandering and take sips out of her glass when she pretends she’s not looking.

“Are you staying the night?” Hawke breaks the lull in her story, looking over at him with an expression Fenris can’t decipher.

“I suppose.” Fenris answers, still staring down at his glass. “The walk is far too long to make at this time of night.”

Hawke snorts at that. “Ah, yes. Walking to the other end of the street too much of a labor?”

“Exactly.” There’s a bit of a sly grin on his face. “Not after this much wine.”

Fenris doesn’t want to think about how much of a habit he’s made of staying the night at her place, sleeping stiffly in her armchair and trying desperately not to think about what she looks like in her bed. That every single time he will lie and tell her that sleeping there was comfortable, and the smile that she gives him will ultimately ease the ache in his muscles. The knowledge of Hawke in clothes other than her armor is enough to keep him out of the bedroom, because Fenris knows deep down he does not have enough self-control to be a gentleman about it. And knowing Hawke, she’s most likely sprawled out under her sheets, her dog curled up at her feet. The thought makes him smile anyways.

“You can sleep up in my room if you like.” Hawke’s voice lowers, and she looks away from him to stare down at her hands. “I do hate to see you sleeping on the chair like that.”

There’s a long silence that stretches between them, one that feels different than the others. It’s like a thick fog that settles on Fenris’ shoulders, clouding his better judgment. It’s a line that they’ve never dared to cross, despite their budding friendship over the years. Sure, Fenris has dragged her back home after a particularly tough venture outside of the city, or more often than not back from The Hanged Man. Despite this, he had never dared to cross the threshold into her bedroom. It felt private, like a barrier that always kept their friendship from developing into something more.

But then again, Fenris is a weak, weak man.

“Alright.” He answers, taking another sip of his wine. “I don’t believe the dog will fit on the bed with us.”

Hawke laughs. “He can survive sleeping on the ground for one night.”

They head up to the bedroom minutes later, once the bottle of wine has been thoroughly indulged. Fenris follows at her heels like a puppy, his fingertips lightly tapping against his thigh. Hawke pays no mind to it, opening the door for the both of them and gesturing to him to walk in first. Fenris takes a deep breath, and passes the threshold.

The first thing he notices is that the room is more sparse than he expected. There’s very little personal belongings in her room, save for a journal and scattered pieces of armor. Hawke had never been one for keeping things for herself, often being annoyingly generous with her gift-giving. He had been at the receiving end of it far too many times for him to count.

He lets Hawke climb into bed first while he takes off the remaining pieces of his armor. Fenris takes his time carefully placing it into the corner of the room, waiting for Hawke to change her mind. She doesn’t, and instead watches him undress with a sly grin on her face. He gives her a slightly scolding look, and she dramatically turns her head with a smile.

“Enjoying the view?” He climbs into bed, rolling his eyes playfully.

“Just admiring the Maker-given gifts.” She smiles back, settling under the covers.

Fenris lets out a light scoff, turning to face her. “I didn’t take you for an Andrastian.”

“I’m not.” Hawke answers simply, facing him as well. “But some sights almost make you believe.”

Fenris knows that part is true, at least. The sight of her once again, of Hawke lounging in her bed in something other than the armor he normally sees her in is enough to make even the most sadistic man believe in something more. Something pure and unbidden that Fenris is just self-hating enough to believe he will never deserve. Hawke had always been something that felt just outside of his grasp– humble enough to humor him with their friendship, but always too good for him to have. He’s thought about running away, about leaving Kirkwall and Hawke behind for good, but Fenris is selfish. There is no better fitting punishment for a man like him; to want something so badly, to hold it and feel it in his arms, and know that he is never going to be worthy of it. It’s a constant push and pull, a tease of something more without ever crossing the boundary.

There’s that silence again. That forgiving, comfortable silence between them that Fenris is too familiar with.

Hawke reaches over, unthinking, and presses a soft fingertip to Fenris’ face. He doesn’t move, too frightened to move, as her hand slowly cups the edge of his jaw. Another moment passes, his gaze crooked, before he wraps his hand around her wrist. His movements are slow– careful, like approaching an animal you wouldn’t want to scare away. Fenris is many things, cold and cruel and heartless; but here, in this moment, he’s vulnerable. He’s gentle.

It should stop being a surprise at this point, Fenris thinks, that she can so easily convince anyone to bend to her whims.

It still doesn’t prevent how his heartbeats trips and doubles over itself as she shuffles closer to him, the warmth of her thigh sinking into his skin. Ordinarily, he would move away. He’s too familiar with affection being used as a form of control, too familiar with the cold sting of a lash against his back. But this feels different, her hands are soft and warm and everything that Fenris is not.

There are certain things in the catch of a breath, in the flex of a muscle that had always entranced him. An unspoken language, one that says so much with so little sound. For all the talking Hawke does, she can appreciate Fenris’ silence in a way few can. In the moments before, Hawke looks down at Fenris’ wrist and studies the skin there– tanned and thin, his lilac veins too close to the surface. Nothing about Fenris had ever seemed fragile until now, when he’s peering at her with too large eyes and a strange sort of vulnerability.

Hawke leans forward and presses her lips to his. There’s no spark, no fireworks, no final piece fitting into the puzzle. It’s peaceful, and it’s gentle, and it’s silent. There’s no sound in the room except for the light puff of air that escapes Fenris’ nostrils, and the soft sigh that leaves Hawke’s mouth.

Perhaps the silence isn’t so bad.

In a moment, it changes. What was once gentle turns into something more. Flurried hands pull at his chest, greedy and wanting. Because her every whim is his purpose, and because his purpose is somewhat clouded and inhibited– Fenris complies. Under the endless staccato refrain of you should not be doing this and Hawke deserves better, Fenris' heart feels like it’s alive for the first time. Everything about this feels good, and he is selfish to the core.

“Curse you, Hawke.” He finally grumbles, their lips just inches from each other. She looks at him curiously, but the glimmer in her eyes gives her intentions away.

“That’s not the common reaction I get from people after kissing them.” Hawke laughs; bright and cheerful and happy. “What brought that on?”

“You made me need you.” He whispers, looking into her eyes with that look of vulnerability again. Hawke’s hand wanders to the back of his neck, and she pulls him in for another kiss.

“The feeling is mutual.” She smiles against his lips, and this time it’s Fenris that moves in first.

When he walks out the door that night, he leaves his heart behind the threshold, and tries not to cry at his first unselfish deed.

2. The silence is different after that. It’s stilted and awkward, and everyone else has begun to notice. Even Hawke is uncharacteristically silent, in a way that only Fenris can hear. They’re walking through Darktown, trying to find another damned sewer to crawl through when Varric finally says something.

“So, are you going to spill the details?” He asks, looking up at Fenris with a wry smile. Fenris only looks back at him with what can only be described as an expression of scathing anger, and Varric holds his hands up in surrender. “Just need some details for the novel, you know how much my readers love the tragic romance.”

“There is no romance to speak of.” He answers quickly, perhaps a little too quickly for his liking. Varric glances over at Hawke, then at Fenris, and his expression turns thoughtful. Fenris scowls. “Whatever you are writing in your head, stop it.”

Varric simply laughs, and re-adjusts his crossbow. “Alright, broody. I’ll drop it. But I care about Hawke. Try not to let her suffer for too much longer, yeah?”

Fenris looks ahead, and pretends he didn’t hear him.

3. He can tell Hawke is suffering. He can see it in the tears building in her eyes, her sluggish movements. The walk back from Foundry is silent again, and none of the other party members have the courage to speak. Fenris watches Hawke walk into her mansion with a conflicted look on her face, before Varric pats him firmly on the back.

“Go talk to her.” Varric’s voice is firmer than usual. “It’s best if it’s you.”

Fenris nods at Varric in thanks, and opens the front door. The moment it shuts, the first thing he notices is the lack of silence. He can hear Hawke crashing about her room, dropping her armor on the floor with a loud clang.

He heaves a deep sigh, and walks up the stairs. The banging stops.

Fenris is starting to have second thoughts once he reaches her bedroom. Thoughts that he shouldn’t entertain when he sees her sitting at the foot of the bed, the very same bed that they had shared one night months ago. These thoughts were dangerous and impossible, and Fenris tries to suppress the feelings lingering in his chest. It’s not what Hawke needs, and above all, Hawke is what matters. Especially now, when she needs someone so desperately.

He lingers by the doorway. “I don’t know what to say, but I’m here.”

Hawke continues to look down at her hands, at the blood that still stains her fingertips. She hasn’t bothered to wash it off, and Fenris has the sinking feeling that she’s not going to for a while yet.

“It was all my fault. If I had been faster-” Fenris cuts her off before she can continue.

“You are looking for a forgiveness that I cannot give to you.” He sits down next to her, just close enough that their thighs brush against each others. Any more contact would cause Fenris to crumble, so he limits it to only what he can handle. Only to what Hawke needs, and nothing more. A line in the sand, drawn by Fenris in a desperate attempt to keep himself from giving into his selfish desire once more.

“There is no forgiveness for people like me.” She answers sadly, and Hawke’s face carries that same vulnerability that Fenris once showed her. People like us, Fenris wants to say, before he stops himself. If anyone deserves forgiveness, it’s her. The people’s champion, pushing the same boulder up the same hill countless times and hoping for a different result. Once again, they’re the same in that regard.

“There is nothing you could have done.” While his answer is blunt, both of them know it's true. This is the way Kirkwall works, circling the same tragedy and suffering like water entering a drain. The city lets it sink into itself, before spitting it back out with more tremendous amounts of force. It’s unfair that it has to be her, the person who has given everything to this terrible city, only to receive nothing but tragedy in return. The city does not pick and choose which ones are worthy of something better, no matter how much Fenris wishes it could be so.

“Perhaps.” She replies, so soft that it hurts. Fenris sighs, and like he’s done it a hundred times before, covers her hand with his. Her touch is warm, just as she is, and Fenris pointedly does not comment on the tears that splatter on his hand.

It’s Hawke that turns her palm up, lacing their fingers together. When Fenris casts a sidelong glance at her, she’s staring ahead at the wall like nothing is happening. Before he can do something incredibly stupid and out of character for him, he squeezes her hand once and lets go. He stumbles towards the door, ignoring the way he can feel her eyes on him.

“I’m here if you need me, Hawke.” He says, right before he closes the door. “I always am.”

When he finally shuts himself away, Fenris stands in the hallway for a moment too long and tries to force air into his lungs. Hawke’s expression is branded into his mind, the way that she cried and crumpled before him. In all the years that he’s known her, he’s never seen her so weak.

Everything ever written, all the books that Fenris forced himself to read after Hawke’s appalled shock at his lack of education cannot describe this feeling in words. Fenris was not someone made to love, he was made to hurt and follow orders, and this type of tenderness is entirely unbecoming to someone like him. But Hawke is someone made of love– it pours over her every word, laced in every tender affection she so freely gives.

He wants to give that to her, help fill the chalice that Hawke empties so easily.

But that was before– before Hawke had crawled her way into his heart in that fussy and incongruent way of hers that Fenris loathes so much. Before he kissed her, before he broke her heart, and before he left his heart in that damned bedroom.

4. Isabela is staring at him again. An unsettling and calculating gaze that’s sending shivers up his back. He can tell Hawke is pretending not to notice, keeping her gaze forward and towards their destination.

“What are you staring at?” He finally says, glaring at Isabela with all the

“Trying to see something.” She smiles, and Fenris can just barely see the glimmer of amusement in her eye. Isabela’s up to something, and after years of knowing her, he knows when she’s about to stir up trouble for nothing other than her own amusement. “Anders and her have been getting close, don’t you think?”

Fenris says nothing, but the slight twitch in his eyebrow gives him away. Isabela chuckles to herself, and turns her gaze forward. When he finally responds, his voice is tinged with the slightest hint of jealousy. “What Hawke does is none of our business.”

Isabela largely ignores him, continuing her train of thoughts much to his chagrin. “I see him lurking out of her house at all hours of the night. Always with that sly look on his face.”

His eyes flicker over to Anders in pure unadulterated anger, and Isabela nearly doubles over in laughter at the cross look on his face. Over the years, Fenris had become increasingly obvious with his affections, and Varric had made it a regular habit to mention the ‘puppy dog eyes’ that always breaks through his stoic exterior at the mere mention of her name. He can feel the energy humming through his veins at the thought of Hawke with anyone else but him, because Fenris is selfish and terrible and wicked.

Out of the corner of his eye, breaking his unrelenting scowl in Ander’s direction, he can see Hawke look back at him with a concerned look on her face. He softens at that, and his markings fade to a dull hum. It only makes Isabela smile wider, at the way Fenris becomes so uncharacteristically weak from only a glance in her direction. The very thought of her with Anders, of him touching her the way he once did, is enough to bellow the pit of jealousy flaming in his stomach. This spirited pursuit of inactivity ends here, he decides, and follows Hawke a bit closer.

5. Driven by a morbid curiosity, and perhaps the lingering feeling of jealousy seeded and nurtured by Isabela’s comments, Fenris begins to drop hints. Increasingly expensive bottles of wine that happen to show up on Hawke’s kitchen table with no warning, lingering touches on her back after an arduous battle. He rubs a droplet of blood of her cheek with his thumb, his expression filled with an aching tenderness reserved only for her. He lets their legs press together in the cramped seats of The Hanged Man, shallowly excused to his friends by having a glass too many of whatever swill he drank this time.

Hawke had also drank too much this time, it seems, by the way she leans her shoulder into him with a casualness that Fenris envies. Every move, every dance of affection was always carefully calculated by him, and yet Hawke touches him like they had known each other for millenia. They eventually get shooed out of the bar, with Hawke hanging off his shoulder and reeking of still blood and ale.

She rambles on once again about something Fenris is only half-listening to, his mind preoccupied by thoughts that are once again impossible and dangerous. The curve of her lips, the arch of her back. The white-hot contact of her arm around his shoulder that sears into his skin like a brand.

“My point is-” Hawke speaks a little too loudly for his taste, especially considering that her lips are right next to his ear. “My point is– they obviously love each other. I don’t understand why they don’t just buck up and say it.”

“It is seldom ever that easy.” He answers simply, holding her waist a little tighter. Love had never been Fenris’ particular forte, no matter the amount of terribly cheesy novels Varric makes him read now. It is something that will remain locked inside of his chest, dampened by his terrible and unselfish desire to see her happy. Happier than anything a broken former slave could ever give her. “And Isabela’s not particularly the sentimental type.”

Hawke rolls her eyes, and sighs deeply. “I know. I know, and yet I want them to be happy. Love is so… stupidly complicated.”

Fenris can understand that, at least. The ardent and unrelenting desire to see someone they care for truly content. “Love often ruins people. She is right to be cautious.”

“All I’ve ever wanted is to love someone.” Hawke answers, her voice softer, less slurred. “Like that, I mean. I never thought I would be one of those sappy romantics, and yet-”

Fenris looks at her out of the corner of his eye, trying to ignore the way his heart is nearly pounding out of his chest. Hawke’s silent for a long moment as they stumble through the streets of Hightown at a leisurely pace.

Hawke looks at him, hiccups once, and smiles crookedly. “I like the new sword. It suits you.”

“Thanks.” He shakes his head, fighting the grin rising to his face.

They make it to her front door, and the moment between them vanishes into the night air. He leads her into her house, where they play cards and he lets Hawke believe she won fairly. All he can do is try to shove down the image of her smiling at him so openly to the back of his mind.

6. Fenris is pacing around her mansion, muttering half-impassioned Tevene curses into the open air. Hawke simply watches him stalk around the room, sitting in the armchair with a half-empty bottle of wine.

“Festei bei uno canavarum.” He mutters angrily, the markings tainting his skin casting the room in an eerie glow.

“No need to go overboard with the thanks.” She teases half-heartedly, tilting her head curiously at him. Fenris was particularly known for these random bouts of anger, but this was different. He was mourning, broken by a life lost. Fenris only looks at her scoldingly, but says nothing in return.

“Hadriana is dead. I should be free.” He finally says, his tone still laced with anger. The energy thrumming through his veins is running too hot to dampen, and Fenris lets that anger simmer off him in waves. Hawke doesn’t seem particularly perturbed by this, sipping at her wine while he storms about the room. Suddenly he stops, his gaze fixed on the fireplace with a withering expression. “I should be happy.”

“You still can be. This is not the end of everything.” Hawke answers, leaning forward slightly in her chair. “Danarius is not all that you are.”

Fenris still doesn’t move, his eyes still lingering on the ashes flickering out of the fireplace. “It feels like it.”

“I know. But this is a chance for you to start over.” She stands up, walking over to him to lean against the wall. He only looks at her briefly before the flames feel like they’re licking up his ankles, and he forces his gaze back to the dying fire. “To have a new life.”

The phrase ‘You could leave this all behind’ is left noticeably unsaid. Fenris doesn’t want to leave Kirkwall, the thought only ever crosses his mind for brief moments before being quickly stamped by his aching fondness for this place. Particularly for one person within it.

“I don’t want a new life.” I don’t want to leave you, is what he doesn’t say. She understands it anyway. “I thought I would be free.”

“You are free, Fenris.” He also notices the way she doesn’t use his old name, the one whispered to him in Hadriana’s dying breath. Hawke is looking at him with that expression that he once again cannot describe. “You always have been.”

Fenris watches as the flames flicker out, leaving behind only flaring embers. “This freedom tastes like ashes.”

“I know.” Hawke answers, reaching her hand out to gently interlace her fingers with his. “But this time it’s going to be different.”

7. It’s another night that he’s lingering about in her presence, nursing another expensive bottle of wine that he not-so-secretly dropped at her place. He had been ecstatic at her invitation to drink it together, using the wine as an excuse to ensure Anders will not be making any more night-time visits to her mansion. Hawke is tittering about the kitchen, complaining once again that he doesn’t eat properly, that his mansion is a mess, that he really ought to stay with her while they at least clean the corpses off the floor.

Fenris watches her with a keen interest, fingers tapping on the wine bottle in an uneven rhythm. “I think it adds character.”

“Character.” She scoffs, turning to face him. “The smell alone– I truly have no idea how you can even bear to step foot within it..”

“Because it’s mine.” He answers, his brows slightly raised. There’s a slight pride in taking something from his former master, in desecrating it to the point of abandonment. A property of Danarius’ that Fenris can completely destroy with very little consequences.

“At least clean it a little.” Hawke sighs, leaning back against the counter. “Just the entrance, so I don’t have to smell rotting corpses when I need to come get you.”

“For you, I will.” He grins slightly, taking another sip of wine. For her, he would clean the whole damn place. Get on his knees and scrub every inch if it makes her happy. But he doesn’t say that, just looks up at her with that slight grin he knows she loves to see so much.

“Good. Maybe one day I’ll actually be able to spend the night there.” This time, her tone is lighter, more teasing. The comment gives him pause, his fingers resuming that endless tapping on the wine bottle. The silence grows heavy between them.

“We never did talk about it.”

“About what?” She takes a step forward and seats herself across from him. Their knees slightly touch against each other under the table, but Fenris doesn’t move away this time.

“That night.” He finally says, looking up at her. Her expression crumbles, and he can see the exact moment that she recalls the heartbreak he caused her. The very same expression she wore the night he left, the night he took what he needed from her and left her broken under the covers. The silence closes his mouth and twists at his heart. He loves her in such a vain and terrible way, an ember desperately trying to keep the fire burning no matter how much he tries to be altruistic.

“You never wanted to talk about it.” Hawke looks down at the table, one finger carefully caressing the edge of the wood. She follows the grains delicately, and Fenris tries not to remember the way she had touched him like that once, like something fragile. But he does, and it kills him. “And I never wanted to push.”

“I thought it would be better if you hated me. If I could forget about everything that happened between us, if I could forget-” Fenris pauses, “I don’t deserve your forgiveness. But I ask for it anyway.”

Hawke is still staring down at the table, her brows furrowed. “Remembering isn’t all so bad.”

He knows. Maker, he knows. Despite everything that’s happened, not only between him and Hawke, but with Varania and Danarius and everything else. Memory has brought him a terrible sense of tranquility that makes him uneasy. It’s painful, feels like being burned alive from the inside out, but the pain makes it real. Makes the memory real. “The worst thing is that I remember it.”

“I know.” She answers, finally looking up at him. Fenris looks at her eyes, at the way the light glimmers in them, and feels a part of him come to life. She remembers too, he knows in the way her eyes gaze through him.

“I cannot give you what you deserve. You deserve a lot better than me.” Fenris feels like he’s pleading, coming back to that line in the sand with a damned fortress, armed with cannons and soldiers. “A lot better than this.”

“I love you anyways.” She smiles at him. Stupid, caring, giving Hawke, emptying out what’s left of her just to see him smile. Her hand, once again, reaches out to lay on top of his. “But I need to know why.”

“I thought about what I would say to you. About the answer I would give.” Fenris can’t say the reason why he was so painfully and pathetically in love with someone who showed him a tender kindness when he was never deserving of it. That after seeing the past that made him, molded him into a lyrium-infused cold-blooded killer, he knew letting Hawke go would be the only chance he ever got to warrant her. That he made a stupid decision to try and be a better man, and it hurts her anyways.“I am a coward. The memories it brought up– I am not a man that could show you the love you deserved.”

“And yet?” She questions, her eyes peering up at him curiously. He loathes those eyes, the way it sees through every crack in his barrier so carefully put together by tattooed hands. “There must be a reason you’re bringing this up.”

“And yet I love you anyways.” He answers. “Because I need you in ways that I shouldn’t.”

Fenris lets himself be selfish, for this one long painful moment that sits between them. Love really is a complicated, all-encompassing thing. Fenris hates it, but cherishes the feeling anyways. He swallows the apprehension clawing its way up his stomach, and continues. “Nothing could be worse than the thought of living without you.”

“Perhaps -” Hawks smiles, her expression going soft. Her fingers lightly curl over his wrist, the same way Fenris had once held her. “Perhaps I’ll hold this over you a little while longer.”

He lightly chuckles at that, and pulls her closer. “Don’t you dare.”

8. They’re laying in bed hours later, his arms wrapped around her waist. This time, he has no thoughts about leaving, no doubts about his place here. It feels right, and Fenris can comfortably sit in the silence with her.

“Do you remember what you said to me? About needing me?” Hawke is the first to speak, as she usually is. Her finger traces light patterns into his chest, nails pressing right at the edges of his markings. They hum lightly at her contact, a pleasant dull sound that reverberates in his chest. It doesn’t hurt this time, nor will it hurt anytime after.

Fenris remembers. He lets the silence speak for him.

“I’ve been thinking about it.” She continues on, trailing down towards his abdomen. “I think we’ve always needed each other.”

He thinks about it, about the ways that they had always sought the other’s presence in their darkest moments. How Hawke held his hand after Leandra, how Fenris paced about her mansion after Varania. Two stars forever in orbit, refusing to keep the distance between them. A blurred line in the sand, washed away and moved inch-by-inch until there was no longer anything standing between them.

“You’re not selfish, Fenris.” Hawke turns to him. “There is nothing about you that my heart won’t accept. I will love you to any end, against all the pain.”

“The feeling is mutual.” Fenris laughs., kissing her once more.

[thevampiremarie]

treehouse 🔞 (also available on ao3)

tags: smut, pregnancy, 🔞, mental illness, trauma, eventual happy ending

Dream of the Endless | Lord Morpheus x reader

It's a common story; you meet a tall, dark, and handsome man outside of a club and take him home that night. When he leaves, you don't think you'll ever see him again.

Now, what's less common is what happens a couple of weeks later, when you realize you're pregnant. But you only know his name, if that even is his real name: "Dream".

What exactly are you going to do now?

(title from the song Treehouse by Alex G) (originally posted on AO3)

You don’t usually do this kind of thing.

‘Thing’ here refers to venturing out of your apartment, alone, dressed to the nines and in search of trouble. The kind of thing that every other twenty-something you know does on a regular basis.

But it’s always been too hard for you to gather up the energy for such an effort. Depression can do that.

Tonight, though, you’re trying, even though you’re definitely the only person in this club without anyone else to accompany them.

The party feels like something out of that new Batman movie; bass reverberating through the soles of your sneakers and smoke curling through the air, heavy-fingered and tinged blood red from the colored lights.

You had choked down a panic attack on the walk from the train to the club, only making it down those few blocks of sidewalk by reminding yourself that you can leave whenever it stops being fun, over and over.

The ice in your drink is fully melted and in the whole hour you’ve wandered around, you’ve really only spoken to the very pretty bartender. She complimented your dress, and you would’ve complimented her eyes in return, but you’re aware that she was only being polite and doing her job.

Without much fanfare, you abandon your glass filled halfway with water and halfway with vodka sour next to all the other discarded glasses. This has officially stopped being fun, though whether or not it was ever fun to begin with is up for debate, and you take that as your cue to dip.

Once you’re outside, the cool air a pleasant balm on your sweat-sticky cheeks, you quickly snag a cigarette out of the carton in your purse. A raven watches you struggle to light it.

He’s a curious bird, calm as any human, and you win the staring contest between the two of you. When he cocks his head at the sound of your laughter, you swear he can practically understand you. You keep giggling as you crouch down and offer your shitty lighter to the raven. “Well? Are you gonna help me or just stand there making fun?”

“Matthew has always had a sense of humor.” At the sound of someone’s accented voice, as rich and deep as whiskey, you stand and turn to see a man looking at you and your new corvus buddy.

Oh fuck, he’s beautiful.

You go with beautiful as handsome is definitely the wrong word. The stranger is beautiful in a way that doesn’t quite seem humanly possible, like it breaks your brain a little bit to look at his brilliant eyes, to take in his high, sweeping cheekbones and plush mouth.

“The raven’s name is Matthew?”

“Yes.” You’re tempted to ask him if he, like, has a podcast or maybe records audiobooks. If he doesn’t, he should. He’d do super well.

Seriously. It’s catnip to you. The sound unfurls from his throat with a touch of rasp, but still purer and more resonant than any other voice you can recall.

You’re reminded of what priests say the voice of God sounds like. This is a very weird thing to come to mind when a random guy talks, especially as you aren’t really religious like that. He definitely could get a whole lot of people to do as he wished just by asking, you think. A God needs to have that quality. Or a cult leader.

You swallow down the heat inside that stokes hotter with every moment his bright gaze clings to your face, to the curve of your lips. His structured black coat fits across his proud shoulders well; it looks expensive and he appears to have an awfully good tailor.

You decide to go along with the bit. Bits are fun and talking to this man is exactly the kind of shenanigan you were hoping to stumble across. “That’s a good name. Did you give him that?”

He smiles knowingly. “He named himself.”

That’s funny. It makes sense; ravens are as clever as any person, the Internet says, so someone looking at one of those birds and feeling as though it named itself isn’t totally out of left field.

You hope he elaborates on that, but the stranger doesn’t seem inclined to help you out there. But you don’t want the silence to settle much longer. It might drive him away, and you’d like him to stick around longer. Maybe get his number. “Well, I hope he knows it suits him. Hey. You think you could light this for me? You saw me try it with Matthew, but I don’t think he has enough claws to make it work.” You hold out the lighter with shaky fingers, nervousness fighting desire in your veins.

When he takes it from you, his skin brushes yours. It’s almost electric. “…of course.”

You’ve never felt attracted to someone so fast. The wanting hits you like an avalanche; a dream of his palms on your hips and red marks on your skin from his teeth pours through your mind.

The man cups his other hand over the flame as you lean in, at last lighting your neglected smoke. Your lungs fill with him, not tobacco smoke. His scent, sharp and comforting all at once, makes you just as woozy, just as lightheaded as the nicotine does. “Thank you, I, um, appreciate it. Do you have a name, too?”

“You may call me Dream.”

Your best friend would appreciate his excellent grammar. Clever of him to use ‘might’; if you were a Fae trying to get his real name, he’s answered in exactly the way someone trying to not get fairy abducted should. These are the kinds of tidbits that amuse you, even if you won’t ever use them. So you’ve spent your life hoarding random information like this, just for funsies.

“Your choice of words there is noted, ‘Dream’.” Your smile warms your voice and he steps in a little closer, close enough that you have to tilt your head up a bit to maintain eye contact. Like staring at an eclipse. That’s bad for your eyesight, you tell yourself. But you can’t look away.

His lashes are as black as his thick, undone hair, framing a lidded and darkening gaze.“Were you just leaving?”

Oh fuck yeah. “Um, yeah, not really my scene. Kinda boring, at least for me. It’s a shame; I was hoping to actually make getting out of the house tonight worth it, but. No dice.” You haven’t done this game in quite awhile, but you still remember the rules. A bit of a tease at the end, just to imply that you’re interested. What can you do? He makes you bold, bolder than normal. You want him to want you.

“Pity.” A pause stretches between you and you feel your heart sink into your stomach, your anxiety revving up again. What if he just walks away and leaves you here, embarrassed and in your head for believing someone like you could attract someone like him?

“Do you still wish to make getting out of the house tonight worth it?” Your words sound out of place in his mouth, too modern.

What’s that joke about how some actors in period dramas clearly look like they know what an iPhone is? Dream is apparently the opposite of that. He seems entirely above petty concerns like lamenting the lack of decent hookups.

The discordance has you stifling a giggle.

You dream some more about his hand tangling in your hair and his body covering yours, his knee between your thighs. And the fire, deep in your belly, burns brighter and brighter. “Depends on what we’re doing.”

When Dream smiles, it’s beautiful and uncanny. He looks like a predator, and you’ve stumbled right where he wants you. It’s hot. You’re good with that. “You know what.”

“…yes.”

You can’t really remember how you got back to your apartment - Dream has been far too busy pressing his mouth to yours, devouring the heady, saliva-slick kisses you’re freely offering up, for you to pay attention to something like that.

As soon as you’ve made it inside the front door, he pins you against the wall to wrap an elegant, long-fingered hand in your hair, tipping your face towards him so he can nip at your bottom lip with sharp teeth. “You are… exquisite,” He murmurs against your lips, pupils blown so large that his eyes look like galaxies with an endless black hole in the center, pulling you towards his gravity.

You grow wetter at the sound of the lust roughening up the edges of his polished voice, at the awe in his words. “Please,” you moan as he bites aching marks into the column of your throat that are sure to bruise purple and red tomorrow. You want them to bruise, you want to have something left behind after this hookup ends, proof he was there.

You’re not even sure how to articulate what exactly you’re begging for. That’s beyond what your mind is capable of right now, as his hand fists in your hair and tightens until it’s the perfect amount of slightly painful and you’re gasping, desperate for more. Your hands have twisted into the collar of his coat this whole time and you don’t let go. The feeling of the cloth rounds you and more than anything, you don’t want him to back away.

Dream seems to understand your pleading - he lathes the bruises with his tongue and you would do anything he wanted, as long as he would do that between your thighs. His other hand trails against the swell of your breast, gently caressing them through your thin dress. You arch into his touch, his fingers rolling over your nipple, plucking at it before palming your chest once more.

You’re greedy - you want even more. With a frustrated groan, you shove your dress off about as fast as you’re capable of doing so, getting tangled in the sleeves in your enthusiasm. A whine escapes your chest - seriously?

You’re so horny at this point that any fumbling delay like this might cause a meltdown, especially in front of someone as hot as Dream, but he simply smiles affectionately and untangles you, soothing your ruffled feathers with his calm, steady touch. The dress flutters to the ground in a heap. “Be still,” He admonishes you, before sucking in a sharp breath at the sight of your body bared to him. “Fuck.”

Your underwear is soaked through and it clings to your thighs as you shift, desperately trying to relieve the yearning need inside.

Dream seems transfixed by you, utterly enraptured by your full breasts and the dip of your waist, the soft curves of your hips. Those pretty, blinding eyes almost glow in the dim light of your living room lamp and as his fingers leave your hair to trail down your neck, a line down your clavicle, his touch relishing in the softness of your skin, you’ve never felt more desired.

Then, he meets your round, hungry eyes. “Do you want this?”

“Yes. Yes. Of course,” You pant. He’s moving too slow for you; you yank him towards you again, your mouth vicious as you kiss him. Dream’s still fully clothed, which seems a bit unfair, but there’s something about the intentional vulnerability of standing before him mostly-naked that you secretly enjoy. He has the upper hand at the moment, and you’re actually pretty okay with that.

Impatience and a bratty touch of mischief briefly win out over the urge to please him, to revel in his affections, so you quickly slip away from his grasp and flee towards your bedroom, with Dream hot on your trail.

Before you make it all the way to your bed, still unmade from earlier today, he catches you by your waist, wrapping his hand around your jaw tight enough to leave fingerprints so he can expose the side of your neck to the burn of his lips.

You fully expect him to toss you down on the bed and have his way with you, but Dream lowers you down carefully with one hand cradling the back of your head and his eyes fixed on your face, possession and lust blossoming in his terrifyingly beautiful smile

You need him.

He peels off his clothes quickly. Underneath all those dark, rich fabrics, his lean, muscle-bound torso gleams in the moonlight like a marble statue of some old god. You’ve always loved Ancient Greece and their perfectly-sculpted effigies.

Then Dream is on you again. He sinks to his knees before you and his position doesn’t feel like submission, not when you’ve fully surrendered to him. His mouth trails down your body and his hands can’t stop touching you; you gasp as you writhe in his steady embrace holding you still.

Your underwear gets discarded in some corner of your room - you’ll look for it later, when your hookup leaves.

He hooks one of your legs on his shoulder and buries his head between your thighs. He’s like, really good at eating you out. You’re sort of shocked, because you haven’t had great experiences with this, but his tongue traces your clit and the overwhelming pleasure from Dream’s touch forces a desperate cry out of you.

He chuckles against your pussy, now teasing intentionally as he traces around your clit, around your dripping core, before returning to his task. Dream carefully sinks two fingers inside of you and his groan at how your cunt flutters around his fingers vibrates through you. You’re so full already, the pressure pinching a little, and he’s careful, so careful when he starts to move in and out of you, sucking at your clit to soothe the ache from the stretch.

You’re moaning, and you can’t even breathe, can’t catch your breath; it’s so fucking good, and you feel the beginning of an orgasm coiling inside you already.

Any pain completely dissipates as Dream’s mouth indulges you, tastes you like he wants nothing more than to eat you out for the rest of time. Your body instinctively twitches away, hips trying to escape his touch. The pleasure burns through your body like a wildfire, and the intensity is almost too much, especially when the pads of his fingers find a sensitive spot inside your trembling, hypersensitive cunt. “Fuck, Dream, fuck-“

When he pulls away from you, his mouth is slick with your arousal, and you watch him lick it from his lips. “Did I not say to be still?” He speaks quietly, evenly, a contrast to the needy whines you make at the loss of contact.

But his fingers don’t let up. Dream keeps moving them inside of you, and it’s hard to find the capacity to answer him when he intentionally brushes against that delicate, tender place.

You’d do anything for him to keep going. Anything. “No, you did, I’m sorry, please, I’m sorry.”

He does nothing for a moment; even his fingers pause as you spasm around him. And just when you think he’s going to completely withdraw and punish you for not following his instructions, he absolves you. “Good girl.”

Dream braces his other arm against your hips so you can’t escape how he pleasures you, and even as your body jerks when he enters you again, picking up the pace and fucking you open, you can’t move away. He replaces his tongue on your clit with his thumb, pressing even circles into your sensitive flesh so he can watch your face twisted in ecstasy and the brilliant flush crawling up your tits towards your throat with hungry, star-bright eyes.

Dream needs you undone before him just much as you want him to take you apart.

You’re so wet that it’s obscene, his fingers dripping with you, and the sound your pussy makes with every movement is embarrassingly loud, almost as loud as your moans.

Your impending orgasm sparks back to life as he patiently builds you back up, your thighs trembling and eyes rolling at a particularly forceful thrust. When he fits another finger inside your soaked core, your eyes roll back in your head as you cry out in surprise. It’s too good, the pain and pleasure bringing you closer and closer to the edge.

Fuck, you can feel it, right there, feel it threatening to pull you under like a riptide, and each movement pushes the breath out of your lungs. It takes a minute to realize Dream is matching his thumb teasing your clit with his careful, gentle pushes against that spot inside your pussy. He knows your body so well for someone you’ve never met before, and in his capable, clever hands, you’re so close to coming apart.

He’s still looking at you, completely enraptured by your back arching off the end and your eyes hazy with lust. Dream takes your clit into his mouth once more, tongue flicking against you as he chases your orgasm.

“Thank you, oh my god, I’m gonna come,” You beg helplessly, writhing and squirming against him, your body wound up so tight that it hurts.

“That’s it. Give it to me.”

He commands, and you obey, coming around his fingers with a drawn-out cry. You’re coming, and it eats you alive, the fall flooding through you like lightning. Dream helps you through it, bearing down, so your pussy trembles through your orgasm on his firm, clever hands. You feel yourself gush around him, and he groans at the feeling of it, slowing his fingers pumping in and out of you without stopping altogether, eking out every last bit of your pleasure that he can.

And Dream instinctively knows when you’re done, when you can’t give him any more, so he finally withdraws and licks his fingers clean of your cum.

You can’t totally feel your legs, and you need to finally catch your breath, but you look at him, pleased and benevolent and still desirous of you, and you know you can go another round.

You prop yourself up on shaky arms to meet his filthy, messy kiss; the taste of your salty musk blooms on your tongue, and he wraps his arms around your sweaty, heated body. “Will you fuck me? Please? I want it,” You ask when you break the kiss. You’re a quick study, and Dream seems to like it when you tell him that you want him.

His eyes are almost completely black when he answers you. “Yes.” Dream’s tone is menacing and dark, and fuck, if you don’t drip on your blankets at the promise in his voice.

You like submitting to him, like how he handles your body like it’s his, and before he can push you down, you flip over and sink down on your knees, back arched and face pressed into the bed. “Like this?” You realize you’re asking for permission, which is something maybe you should’ve negotiated beforehand.

But you shouldn’t have worried; he’s very much on the same page. “Yes.”

You wait for him to shift behind you. You can’t see Dream, and the anticipation sends a thrill down your spine. You’re exposed and vulnerable in this position, and he could do anything.

His hands caress your ass, your thighs, your curves, lingering indulgently. It’s as if you’re precious, as if you’re the most holy thing he’s ever touched.

After pressing a single, sweet kiss on the base of your spine, Dream kneels behind you, and you can feel his hips against your ass. He seems intent on soothing the tension out of you, patiently stroking your heated skin until you melt at his touch.

And when you’re soft and pliant, he pushes in.

He’s pretty big, big enough that even after three fingers and an orgasm, you still feel a pinch as he thrusts deeper. You involuntarily make a soft noise of discomfort; you don’t want him to think you’re not enjoying this, to draw away from you. But Dream takes his time, gently opening you up on his dick as you start to relax.

When he finally seats himself inside you, that slight noise of discomfort turns into a deep, contented sigh. You’re so full, your pussy stretched comfortably to its limits, and you go slack against the sheets. Your cum from your last orgasm is soon matched by a new well of arousal from the feeling of his dick in you, heavy and hard and incredible.

And when he starts moving, your pillow muffles your loud moans. He fucks you slowly at first, mindful of how tight you are. It’s so caring, and it works; you enjoy the leisurely build-up much more. Before long, you’re aching for everything else he can give you.

He doesn’t have you entirely out of your mind yet, so you slot your hips back against his to meet his thrusts. And when you clench particularly hard around his cock, Dream also groans. “Alright,” he says with a hint of amusement. “You can have it.”

He fucks you in earnest now, one hand fisted in your hair and holding you down as he moves in you faster and faster, tears forming in your eyes from how ridiculously good it feels. With each push, he takes pieces of your higher functioning abilities with him, so all that’s left is your body responding to his touches, your mind drunk on his dick. Dream is addictive and so completely good at this; he hits just the right angle that torments you with pleasure.

“Holy shit, fuck, that feels-“ you cut yourself off with a long moan as his dick presses against your most sensitive places. But Dream is fed up with the pillow muffling your sounds. He wants to hear them, wants you to scream and moan and cry out as much as you want, and he draws you up off the bed by your hair as he keeps pounding into you.

Your shaky arms barely support you, but you manage.

Dream keeps moving as he hisses into your ear. You can barely focus on what he’s saying, not when he’s stretching you out with each furious push and forcing you closer to your second orgasm of the night. “I need to hear you. You’ll let me hear you,” He promises before biting at your throat, sucking in another mark on your skin where you’ll struggle to conceal it.

“Yes, yes, yes,” You chant. Anything. Anything he wants.

Dream keeps hold of your hair to arch your spine in such a way that every time he enters you, his cock thrusts against that tender bit inside, and your cunt spasms around him.

He wants to hear you. And you let him. Wailing with every brutal thrust, eyes rolling back in your head. God, you don’t want this to end, but you’re not sure you can take much more; he’s already maxed you to your limits with how good Dream can make you feel at once. You can hear his deep grunts as you start fucking yourself back on his dick.

Your clit aches at the lack of contact, and he gently lets you slump against the bed once more so he can slip his hand around your hips and gently play with the sensitive nub.

Your orgasm is back with a vengeance. You edge towards it so quickly that it takes you by surprise, encouraged and beckoned by his fingers moving on your clit in tandem with his cock ruining you. You keep waiting and waiting to go over the edge before realizing that Dream is gatekeeping you from it, cleverly changing up how he fucks you to stave off your orgasm. To torture you. If you were capable of thought, you’d tell Dream he’s being cruel and beg him to let you come.

But you’re cock-drunk and boneless under him, so you take what he gives you with a pained, longing moan. No more pushing back against him, no more pleading. You just lie there and take it, and there’s maybe some saliva dripping out of the corner of your slack mouth. Yikes -  hopefully, he doesn’t notice.

Dream can tell you’ve just about hit your limit. “Can I come inside you, sweet girl? Do you want me to?” You probably should’ve asked him about that before you started throwing down; maybe gotten out a condom or checked to see if he was clean.

But you’re on birth control, and really if he pulls out of you now, you think you might start crying for real. You want him to come inside you, to fill up your twitching cunt until he spills out of your spent body. Like. That’s hot as fuck. Suddenly, you need it as badly as you need to come.

“Yes, fuck, please.”

Dream begins fucking you in earnest again, and his fingers never let up between your legs. “Then I need you to come one more time. Do it for me.”

“I- I can’t-“

It’s just out of reach. Even though his cock feels incredible in you, even though your legs are quivering and tears run down your face from the pleasure he forces through your body, you can’t quite come. It’s driving you insane.

You get to the point where you stop making any noise at all, so twisted up in the sensations rushing through you that you don’t have the strength to do anything else besides tremble around him.

And then Dream tips you right over into it with a single, soft sentence, murmured into your ear. “I know you can.”

You come with a choked sound, blood rushing in your ears as you spill over around his dick. He rides you through it, fucking you through this orgasm that’s brutally wrecking you, that’s washed you clean of anything other than feeling Dream deep inside your quaking pussy.

He pounds into you once, then twice, before coming from the sensation of you fluttering around him. You feel his warmth fill you up inside, slick and silky. His cum spills a bit from your spent core when Dream finally pulls out.

He’s shaking, too, as he draws you into a tender embrace. You curl up into him on your side, body aching after it all. “You’re good at that. Like, really good.”

Dream smiles into your shoulder, where he has started pressing fond butterfly kisses into your sweaty, flushed skin. “And you are very good. You were very, very good for me, my dear.” You like being good for him. You have a praise kink in general, but being good for Dream somehow feels better, more meaningful, more special.

Just when you open your mouth to ask if he has any plans for the rest of the evening, he cuts you off with a voice undercut by regret and longing. “I cannot stay, unfortunately. My apologies; I don’t wish to leave you here so suddenly. But I have… to go.”

Oh.

You swallow down the quick flash of sadness.

You’re always a bit emotional after sex, and you like cuddling, but Dream doesn’t owe you any of that. He’s been nothing but polite and considerate, and you’ve just met him tonight. Even if you want him to stay, there’s no reason he should.

You know that the sadness and accompanying feelings of loss and inadequacy will soon build into something more substantial, messed up, and all-encompassing. And you’d rather not have Dream around when the dam breaks. He doesn’t have to do anything, and you have no right to make demands on his time.

You should get his phone number or something. But your phone is somewhere in the living room where you dropped your purse, and you really don’t feel like getting up.

Already your body is starting to crash now that the endorphins are gone, and you realize just how exhausted you are. A stroke of genius comes to mind. “It’s all good, don’t worry about it. You’ll leave your number for me? On the notepad by the door?”

“I- yes, I‘ll do that.” He looks at you for a long moment as if he wishes he could stay longer. Dream’s genuine remorse softens your heart. He’s a good guy, and it’s unfortunate that your time together had to be so short.

“I’ll see you around then,” You murmur quietly, asleep before you get to see him out.

[shsl-box-worshipper]

A Grave Mistake

Hi, @vexfulfolly! I'm your gifter for @code-swap 2024! I honestly had a lot of fun with making this gift and coming up with ideas. The story I went with was 'What if XANA came back and Jeremie was the last LW after a horrible XANA attack and this is the start of his comeback?' and I ran with it lol.

I decided to go for an art-fic mini combo, starting with the art and building a story based on that and finishing them both simultaneously. Named after a song by Ice Nine Kills (Which is based on the film The Crow (1994)). Hope you enjoy!

Three months.

That's how long it took. Just three terrible months of hell.

It started two years after they were sure XANA was dead. They had all thoroughly moved on from those two years fighting XANA in that time. They all stayed together of course, in one way or another. Odd was still Ulrich's roommate and Kiwi's owner, Yumi and Ulrich were actively dating, William had slowly been accepted back into their friend group to the point where he often shared the big sibling role with Yumi, and Aelita and Jeremie were both the best of their class and smitten lovebirds.

Everything was perfect. Everything was great. They weren't paranoid. They weren't scared for every second they were awake.

Then it happened. It was quite innocuous and almost unnoticeable at first.

Power fluctuations, news about blackouts in areas around former Replikas, phone lines going dead for hours and hours at a time. Two weeks in, multiple regional governments around the globe suddenly shut off all communication with the outside world, shut off access to their areas, and became communication-less zones.

Jeremie jumped at the idea that XANA could be causing all this. But the others calmed him down, reminding him that the multi-agent was dead. Jeremie himself sowed its destruction.

He wished, for once in his pathetic life, he didn't listen to his friends and that he booted up his old laptop. But he didn't, so he did nothing.

Then it began.

Disasters of all sorts struck. Floods, hurricanes, tornados, power plant failures. Infrastructure was failing all across the board and no one could figure out why.

Then they came.

Robots, cyborgs-whatever you want to call them, they stormed into every capital conceivable. Monsters of flesh and metal, attacking what Jeremie could only assume was their former friends and family.

It was at that moment that they all scrambled back to action. But they were unprepared for such a threat.

Odd was first, shot down while they were still at Kadic by the robots while saving Ulrich. He went out as he always did: Smiling and making jokes.

Yumi, Aelita, Ulrich, and himself made it to the factory, but they were hot on their tail. Ulrich stayed behind and tried to hold them off, like he used to. Jeremie knew he didn't make it.

William, meanwhile, stayed behind to keep Kadic safe. Jeremie hoped he was still alive. But even he knew that hope was fleeting.

Jeremie immediately virtualized Yumi and Aelita, but before he could give them instruction, they were onset by a new monster they hadn't seen before.

When Yumi lost all her lifepoints, Jeremie was expecting her to come out of the scanners.

But she didn't. She was nowhere on Lyoko and nowhere in the real world.

Yumi was dead.

Jeremie desperately tried to guide Aelita out of danger and toward the tower, but he lost contact with her.

And whatever Ulrich did to distract the robots failed. One was above him.

Pain filled his entire being as that one robot landed a blow to his gut, causing him to bleed profusely. And he could hear the elevator going down, carrying more of those things. Knowing his time was limited, he did the only thing he could.

He set up a delayed virtualization and crawled his way to the scanners.

That's where he found himself now.

Jeremie knew all for certain that he was the last Lyoko Warrior. The others were either dead or last seen in situations that could only logically conclude with their deaths.

He groaned as he tried to stanch the gaping wound in his abdomen. He nearly swore as his nerves once again screamed at the pain.

So, this was it, huh? Jeremie chuckled at how fate had led to where he was now.

Four years ago, he came to this factory for such an innocuous reason. He was an ignorant 11-year old who simply wanted to win a robotics contest.

He was alone. He was friendless. And he treated technology like his lifeline.

Then he found and turned on the supercomputer, met Aelita, and his whole world was flipped upside down. Friends, love, and a reason to live beyond the technology that was defining his life.

Now, he was back where he was four years ago. Friendless, alone, and with technology acting as his literal lifeline.

01:00:00

It's ironic. The last time he was like that, he was innocent, scared 11-year-old boy. He had done nothing interesting in particular, and was just continuing the status quo he had built for himself.

Writing programs, making robots, hiding from his bullies.

Now he was 15. Nearly 16.

Now he had experienced what he had missed out on. What he never got to taste because of his introvertedness.

And it was amazing. Never before had he had friends who actually cared about him. Never before had he have a reason to keep on living, to keep on fighting.

Never before had he ever fallen in love. Have a girlfriend. KISSED.

He had faced trials and tribulations no child ever should...and he grew from them. He had turned from a cowardly, innocent, lost boy into a wise man, intelligent beyond his years and surrounded by everything he could have ever wanted or needed.

00:30:00

But he had to throw that away. He should've trust his instincts. He should've jumped at the opportunity and stopped it before it got worse.

But he didn't. He trusted his friends too much. He fell victim to his own logic and reasoning.

And now, they were dead.

Everyone Jeremie had ever known or loved...was dead.

*CLANK!*

?

Its the robots, Jeremie realized. They had found the hatch, whether by following his blood trail or using deductive reasoning, and they were coming down now.

00:20:00

At the same time, he could hear the scanner he was in start to whir. It was drawing power, something these things always did. Especially when he was beginning the transferring step of his process.

*CLANK-CLANK!*

They were getting closer now. Jeremie from the distance of the sound that they were climbing the ladder now.

0:10:00

They were down the ladder now. All it would take was one shot and he would be dead. The scanners would not register his brain activity and would virtualize his corpse as a catatonic dummy.

"Heh..."

All it took was one mistake...and his world had ended.

00:09:00

They were scanning the area now, Jeremie deduced. Probably to figure out which scanner he went into.

He purposely chose one that wasn't facing the ladder. Buy himself a few more seconds before they would inevitably find him. Maybe then, he would be safe.

00:08:00

He could hear their metal feet pounding outside the scanner, shaking the entire room and maybe the entire complex.

Knowing he would practically be a sitting duck if he stayed sitting, he tried to push himself up onto his feet.

00:07:00

His body was protesting his every move, his nerves practically begging him to stop. But he needed to stand. He needed to be prepared.

He had to. He made the mistake of not being prepared once.

00:06:00

It took some effort but he was on his feet now, gritting his teeth and trying to keep as quiet as possible.

He could see some of them now. His glasses were in absolute ruins, but he could still see out of one lense.

00:05:00

Metallic feet crushed against the otherwise hard metal of the scanner room, horrific visages of metal and flesh entering his view. He nearly vomitted when he saw his first one only a couple of hours ago. He didn't even know XANA was capable of such inhumane things, but then again, what has this AI not done up to this point?

One in front of him was male, in his 30s, and overweight. Other than that, Jeremie couldn't figure out much about it. Whatever person made up that mechanical monstrosity had their facial features practically rotting off.

00:04:00

The first one didn't spot him, thankfully. It was too busy heading toward the other scanner to realize Jeremie was there.

He left out a sigh of relief as it went. If his calculations were right, the delayed virtualization would be enacted in a few seconds. He just needed just a little more time-

A second nightmare stepped forward, one much more sloppier than the first one. Bits and pieces of it's tech were practically falling out of it.

00:03:00

The second one was smaller than the first one. Looked to be male...and around Jeremie's age.

It set off such uncomfortable feelings in Jeremie's stomach once he realized that. The fact that someone his own age was turned into one of these things...

He couldn't bear the thought.

00:02:00

!

This one was turning around. SHIT!

The sound of crunching motors and gears filled the air as the cyborg monster turned it's head to look into the scanner.

And at that moment, a loud, piercing alarm sound filled the air, the thing's eyes flashing the Eye Of XANA as it's allies gathered around Jeremie's scanner.

00:01:00

...But they didn't do anything. They all stared at him, eye to Eye as he held himself against the scanner.

It was at that moment that Jeremie realized what was going on, and with it, his remaining vestiges of sanity faded.

It was...toying with him. Gloating at its own success.

It had Jeremie surrounded, it was ready to kill him. And it was gloating. Four years of constantly fighting and it came out on top.

But Jeremie didn't break down into tears. He didn't submit himself to defeat.

In fact, he smiled.

Not a cheery one, no no. Not any that would be seen worn on Odd's face.

It was a look of madness. Insanity.

00:00:30

If XANA thought it had won, it was sorely mistaken. As long as Jeremie was still living and breathing, it would never win. As long as there was something against XANA, it would never be assured victory.

00:00:20

He may be bleeding, he may be alone, he may be even throwing himself to his own death...but in actuality, he wasn't alone.

They may not be among the land of the living now, but he could feel them. His friends. His true family and companions.

00:00:10

Odd's smile, Yumi's protection, Ulrich's comradery, William's devotion...

And Aelita's love. The girl who started it all. And who he shall avenge.

00:00:05

As he heard the scanners begin to rev, knowing that the virtualization process he had so carefully set up was about to begin, he stared directly at the enemy. At XANA's eye.

00:00:04

The eye of a monster, created a decade ago by a desperate man fueled by love and revenge.

00:00:03

Now it will be killed by a desperate man. Fueled similarly by love...and revenge.

00:00:02

Knowing the virtualization was imminent and stanching his wound as much as possible, Jeremie said one, last thing...to this monster.

"Buildings burn and people die...but real love is forever. And I'll say this, XANA...you've made a grave mistake letting me live."

XANA didn't have time to react before the doors closed.

Its minions panicked and shot endlessly at the scanner, trying to destroy before the process had finished.

They succeeded in destroying it after 30 seconds of constant firing.

...But when they checked the resulting debris...there were no remains.

Nothing was left of Jeremie Belpois in the real world.

Now they were even.

For both, man and machine, good and cruel...had committed grave mistakes. And paid the ultimate price.

[cmyksky]

soulless creatures

Summary:

Today, emptiness, and a child in the mist. And yet, Daleth cannot bring themself to look away until the vision departs on its own. They suppose that has always been their weakness.

Isle Elder oneshot. Rated G. 925 words.

Read on AO3 here!

The brilliant flare of Eden feels eons apart from the Isle of Dawn’s shores.

It is a simple truth, but a bitter one nonetheless. There is beauty in being a place of beginnings, Daleth tells themself, despite the erosion of their stone mask. Despite the quiet murmurs of departing souls growing further away, and despite that untouchable, ever-looming peak.

To think their kingdom’s prosperity would bring such profound sorrow.

Each time the ocean fog rolls in, Daleth sees the ghost of curious eyes amidst dawn. Young and ambitious, almost profound in their childlike nature. The pair of eyes blinks inquisitively, and the Dawn Elder gazes back. A shiver from the sea breeze—

—and they’re gone, just like that.

Daleth doesn’t dare sleep unless necessary, but their dreams seem to catch up with them in the waking hours regardless. Yesterday, visions of the now-departed prophets gathered in celebration of their new ruler, boats and mantas alike dotting the sky’s tapestry. Days of festivities, adept hands carrying and weaving light, divine shades of orange, white, and gold bathing the masses.

Today, emptiness, and a child in the mist. And yet, Daleth cannot bring themself to look away until the vision departs on its own. They suppose that has always been their weakness.

Long gone are the days where Lamed would spend hours in Isle’s temple to discuss magical teachings and the kingdom’s history. Teth and Tsadi no longer linger in the doorway, poised in that way where they wish to say more but bite their tongues. Daleth is lucky if they hear anything of Samekh at all; Ayin, always a generous neighbor, shares what they hear of their fellow Elders, but there’s always a touch of something that leaks into their expression when it comes to the twins. Pity, perhaps. For Samekh or Daleth, one cannot quite tell. Daleth is not sure they want to think about being the object of pity of the gentlest Elder.

Of course. Daleth thinks the Elders have made it rather clear whose allegiance takes priority, and thus, the injury is laid bare. Sore, wound, ache, crack. No matter which name, the pain always lingers. Wind stirs the seas all the same, chilling Daleth to the core with its whispers of storm. A promise of destruction brought about by none other than the prince they once took under their noble wing.

Still, the days pass with little care for such sentiments. Newcomers arrive on the Isle’s shores periodically, albeit more sparsely than in the past. They always speak with a barely-contained anticipation for realms ahead, singing words of praise for the Elders and the kingdom. Daleth has heard it all one too many times. A wish for a quiet, relaxed life among the rippling Prairie grasslands. Words of contemplation among scholars and magic-wielders of the Vault’s vast halls. Hopes for prosperity amongst the Valley’s bustling roads.

And indeed, they treat the Isle with no small amount of wonder. Daleth has stood at the temple doors and gazed far below at the rising boats, newcomers’ faces morphed in quiet awe as dawn breaks over the clouds, streams of birds beckoning them onward. Reverence spills from their mouths as they seek blessings, recounting the telltale swathes of flame-colored tents and emerald grasses with excitement. A new beginning. A new life.

Daleth cannot even bring themself to loathe such sentiments. Not after this many centuries of living. There is only the quiet voice in their soul, wondering if the newcomers will ever know that this realm was once greener, warmer, softer, that the sand once did not pull so far inland.

Perhaps the birds will be the only life left in this place one day. The Isle Elder has always shepherded people and light creatures alike over the centuries, first and foremost. They do not dare to crowd the grass with anything more than travelers’ tents and simple stone structures. Above all, the temple’s bell will continue to ring, and the birds will heed its call.

No, Daleth does not yearn for the looming spires of Eden nor the gilded gates of Valley. At the very least, they know Alef will respect this request in the end, if nothing else. Daleth has spent far too many days searching the prince—or rather, king’s face for even a sliver of sentimentality. And too many times, the king has risen from their seat, discomfort and frustration radiating from their posture, quietly asking Daleth to leave.

“Is this the sort of king you wish to be, Alef?”

Alef’s eyes are carefully blank. “I am the king the people need. And I am certainly not someone who will be forgotten.”

Daleth suppresses a flinch.

“I promised this kingdom a life in the stars. We are not simple creatures like the jellyfish dwelling in our caves or the mantas in our skies. We have built these beautiful temples that touch the clouds, not I alone. We are a people, and I will do what is necessary to keep my word. And you, Daleth… I fear you have not done the same.”

And cold stone slams shut in Daleth’s face.

They breathe.

Standing at the foot of their temple, the beating of white wings and echoing birdsong bring Daleth back to the present. There has always been a different promise sealed within Daleth’s heart, a promise only spoken in whispers to creatures, stars, and waves, to the Light herself. One predating the King’s arrival.

A bird lands on Daleth’s staff, and just for a moment, it burns brighter than the sun.

[tennessoui]

sorry if this is a dumb question but for ur Kofi do these fics stay forever or do they get like refreshed like a story and is removed after a few weeks? sorry idk how this works 😭😅

no worries at all and not a dumb question!!! everything i put up there should be accessible forever while a person is a monthly supporter - any active subscriptions can access the gallery posts and view the descriptions of those posts where the links to the documents are. i have not and do not plan to take them down or rotate them out.

and honestly, like. if you want. become a monthly supporter and then cancel the subscription and you'll have a full month before you lose access to all the posts. and then while you have access, like. bookmark the links on your browser. you'll lose access to the post where the links are, but you won't literally lose access to the link itself if you save it, so do that and then if you ever want to read the fics in the future you can do it

[livesbetweenpages]

Love spending 30 minutes checking how to disable AI from my stupid phone so that I can do the stupid update which I have to do because my battery keeps overheating!

And then find out that this stupid phone has been sending images to Apple because the enhanced visual search has been on since the last update! Beloathes, I did not sign up for that thanks!!!

[shiniestcrow]

I bought a used kindle paperwhite and spent all day crocheting a little bag for it

[nectarine-neuroticism]

none of my other irl friends have my tumblr, but my roomie does and i have his. i can even see his gore side blog if i wanted to lmao. and i think that is a testament to our friendship.