#and it made me look like I have way less knowledge than I should and do. I know what a n'tilat yada'im cup is!

[nightlark100]

Consequences (Pt 7)

Peter wasn't exactly sure what sequence of events had led him here. Here being the Chasity's kitchen, where Karen Chasity had served then milk and cookies. He vaguely remembered them discussing telling Grace's parents about her situation, especially since Grace had gone nearly catatonic following their encounter with the Lords in Black. Even now she was hunched in her seat, twitching at any sudden sound or movement.

Grace had killed someone. That thought was hard to deal with. Yes, she'd been involved with Max's death but that had been an accident. And yes, her eagerness and knowledge when disposing of the body was unsettling but this was something else. Peter wondered how many of his classmates had died because of her. Was it just Jason? She hadn't mentioned anyone else... but then again she hadn't really been talking much.

"It is so nice to meet some of Grace's school friends. She's told us so much about you, Stephanie," Karen said with a bright smile. It faltered a little when she looked at Peter, he wasn't sure if that was because Grace hadn't said anything about him, had said something bad or just because she didn't like the idea of her daughter having a male friend.

Stephanie gave her an uncertain smile, obviously wondering exactly what had been said, but was spared from replying by the sound of the front door.

"I'm home!"

"We're in the kitchen Mark! We have guests!"

Mark Chasity entered, greeting his wife with a kiss on the cheek before pausing to look over the teens at his table.

"And who might you be?"

"This is Stephanie and Peter. They're some of Grace's friends."

"Stephanie Lauter?"

"That's me."

"It is so wonderful to finally meet our little Grace's best friend"

"Umm..."

"And... Peter? Is that right?"

"Yes sir. Peter Spankoffski"

Mark's eyes widened slightly.

"You're Theodore's little brother?"

"You know Ted?" Oh dear. That could be very bad.

"We went to camp together when we were younger. I must say, I hope you're less of a deviant than he is."

"I... erm, I try to be? I'm more focused on my studies than anything... deviant-ish." Mark made a thoughtful noise and Peter gave Steph a 'help me' look across the table. She cleared her throat, drawing the attention back to her. If the Lords in Black wanted her to be their prophet and use her experience watching her father play politics, she might as well start now.

"We actually wanted to talk to you both about something rather important. Isn't that right Grace?"

Grace's head jerked up from where she'd been in deep contemplation of a cookie she was steadily reducing to crumbs between her fingers.

"Yes... Momma, Daddy, can you sit down for a minute?"

The Chasitys took a seat, Karen's expression concerned while Mark's was more closed off.

Under the table Stephanie reached over and took Grace's hand, squeezing it gently.

"A few months ago, when all the murders were happening... umm... things got really strange and scary for me. And I found myself being tested... there were forces that used that fear to test my faith... and I... I failed."

"What happened sweetheart?" Karen asked.

"I sinned. I gave into my unclean thoughts. I let myself be defiled."

"Grace, please tell me you didn't..."

"I had sex. With a man. And... I'm pregnant..."

Karen let out a wail and clapped a hand to her mouth, tears shining in her eyes. Mark got to his feet and rounded on Peter.

"Did you do this?! I should have known, your family are all alike! Filthy deviants! Corrupting the innocent with your lustful ways!"

"I'm not the father!" Peter squeaked out. "No matter what you think of Ted, believe me I know what he's like and I'm sure it's justified, I am not like him. I'm Grace's friend. Only her friend! And I'm a virgin!"

"Then who is it? Do you know? Or have you sunk so low into sin there are multiple options?" He demanded of Grace, who had wrapped her arms around herself and was visibly fighting tears.

"No daddy. There was just one. Just one time. It was Max Jaegerman. I'm sorry, I know it was wrong!"

"I knew book carrying would lead to nothing good..." Karen said softly. "I should have spoken up... I'm a terrible mother..."

"Mom, no..." Grace reached over to touch her mom's arm but Karen pulled away.

"What do we do Mark?"

"Don't worry Mother, I can handle this. Grace will go to stay with her aunt and uncle, where she can repent for her sins."

"Mark, isn't there any other way?" Both Karen and Grace were crying now. Stephanie was gnawing at her bottom lip anxiously, while Peter's hands were balled into fists beneath the table. He felt a strange unfamiliar fury surging through him.

"We can't let people know about this, imagine what our church circle would say. It's what's best, Mother."

"Best for who?" Peter snapped, unable to keep quiet any longer. Mark blinked, taken aback.

"Excuse me?"

"Best for who, Mr Chasity? Cause it certainly doesn't seem like you're thinking about what's best for Grace"

"I beg your pardon! You have no right to speak to me that way! This is a private family matter, I would like you to leave!"

Peter got to his feet. He suddenly seemed taller than usual and Stephanie could have sworn there was a faint green sheen to his eyes.

"Grace asked us to come because she was scared. She hates herself for what happened because you've made her believe that any kind of mistake makes her worthless. She reached out to you because you are her parents and you're supposed to love and support her, no matter what! Instead you berate her and all you can think about is how it reflects on you. I may not be part of your church but I was raised Christian and I know that God is supposed to be about love and forgiveness. Honestly, I think he would be ashamed of you right now Mr Chasity." Mark spluttered in rage, his face turning an unpleasant shade of puce. "But it doesn't matter what you think. If you won't support her, we will."

"I am her father!"

"And she's eighteen and a legal adult. You have no authority to send her anywhere," Steph cut in, moving to stand beside Peter so the two of them were bracketing Grace. "Maybe you should try asking her what she wants to do. What she needs."

"I don't want to leave..." Grace said quietly. "I'm happy in Hatchetfield."

"You live under my roof-" Mark began but was cut off by Steph.

"She can stay with me. Come on Grace, lets go get your things."

Wiping her eyes, Grace got to her feet and followed Stephanie upstairs. Peter moved to stand at the foot of the stairs, wary that Mark might try something. Neither of the parents followed, but he could hear Karen Chasity sobbing in the kitchen.

It only took a few minutes for the two girls to return with a gym bag stuffed with clothes. Peter guided them towards the front door. As he opened it, Mark and Karen emerged from the kitchen.

"Grace stop this foolishness right now!" Mark demanded. Steph wrapped her arm around Grace's shoulder more firmly.

"Grace, please..." Karen begged softly. Grace paused, meeting her mother's eye.

"I'm sorry Momma."

Consequences (pt1)

In which the Lords in Black aren't fully satisfied with Grace's sacrifice (or, the pitfalls of an abstinence only sex education)

---------------------------------

She hadn't wanted to kill them, Grace thought numbly as she stared down at her dirt streaked hands, unable to shake the image of her latest victims from her mind. Yes, she believed that the behaviour she'd witnessed from the young couple, drunk and making out in the park, was dirty and perverse but she didn't want to kill them. And yet when she had gotten near, it was as though she was seized by a terrible hunger and she just couldn't stop herself.

She slipped to the ground, resting her head against the side of her bed and felt tears burning her eyes. It had been a few months since everything with Max... since she had given in to the primal temptations and sacrificed her chastity to send him to hell. She should feel... something. Relief? But her insides felt like they were rotting. She'd done so many terrible things and she didn't even have her unwavering faith to fall back on anymore, not after what she'd seen in the school gym. She didn't know if the colourful figures had been demons or if they truly were gods but it felt like jagged claws had slashed apart the fabric of her soul, leaving jagged doubts behind. Doubts and hunger.

At first she'd been able to ignore it but it had gotten stronger. It would rise in waves, crescendoing down onto her when they peaked and leaving her scrabbling for purchase as her mind crumbled.

Even the brief moments of peace she usually got between the waves had been lost to her now as she found herself battling daily with nausea, sometimes barely making it from her bed to the bathroom in time. She had tried to hide it as best she could but she knew her parents were concerned, had heard them whispering while she lingered in doorways. If it continued much longer they'd want to take her to the doctor, but she knew medicine couldn't help her. Her soul was sick, that was the cause. She would just have to pray harder. Maybe she could ask Stephie and Petey for help? Surely her friends would agree to pray with her when they saw how bad things had gotten.

Struggling to her feet, feeling her stomach twist painfully as she did so, she retrieved her phone from her bedside and sent Steph a text asking to meet up.

Her friends would help. They had to.

[erin-gilberts]

The niche support group I need is one for people who became long COVID-damaged during or shortly after their conversion process because it truly fucks everything when newfound memory issues start pulling the bricks out of the foundation you had to lay by hand yourself

[mcmansionhell]

the motel room, or: on datedness

I.

Often I find myself nostalgic for things that haven't disappeared yet. This feeling is enhanced by the strange conviction that once I stop looking at these things, I will never see them again, that I am living in the last moment of looking. This is sense is strongest for me in the interiors of buildings perhaps because, like items of clothing, they are of a fashionable nature, in other words, more impermanent than they probably should be.

As I get older, to stumble on something truly dated, once a drag, is now a gift. After over a decade of real estate aggregation and the havoc it's wreaked on how we as a society perceive and decorate houses, if you're going to Zillow to search for the dated (which used to be like shooting fish in a barrel), you'll be searching aimlessly, for hours, to increasingly no avail, even with all the filters engaged. (The only way to get around this is locational knowledge of datedness gleaned from the real world.) If you try to find images of the dated elsewhere on the internet, you will find that the search is not intuitive. In this day and age, you cannot simply Google "80s hotel room" anymore, what with the disintegration of the search engine ecosystem and the AI generated nonsense and the algorithmic preference for something popular (the same specific images collected over and over again on social media), recent, and usually a derivative of the original search query (in this case, finding material along the lines of r/nostalgia or the Backrooms.)

To find what one is looking for online, one must game the search engine with filters that only show content predating 2021, or, even better, use existing resources (or those previously discovered) both online and in print. In the physical world of interiors, to find what one is looking for one must also now lurk around obscure places, and often outside the realm of the domestic which is so beholden to and cursed by the churn of fashion and the logic of speculation. Our open world is rapidly closing, while, paradoxically, remaining ostensibly open. It's true, I can open Zillow. I can still search. In the curated, aggregated realm, it is becoming harder and harder to find, and ultimately, to look.

But what if, despite all these changes, datedness was never really searchable? This is a strange symmetry, one could say an obscurity, between interiors and online. It is perhaps unintentional, and it lurks in the places where searching doesn't work, one because no one is searching there, or two, because an aesthetic, for all our cataloguing, curation, aggregation, hoarding, is not inherently indexable and even if it was, there are vasts swaths of the internet and the world that are not categorized via certain - or any - parameters. The internet curator's job is to find them and aggregate them, but it becomes harder and harder to do. They can only be stumbled upon or known in an outside, offline, historical or situational way. If to index, to aggregate, is, or at least was for the last 30 years, to profit (whether monetarily or in likes), then to be dated, in many respects, is the aesthetic manifestation of barely breaking even. Of not starting, preserving, or reinventing but just doing a job.

We see this online as well. While the old-web Geocities look and later Blingee MySpace-era swag have become aestheticized and fetishized, a kind of naive art for a naive time, a great many old websites have not received the same treatment. These are no less naive but they are harder to repackage or commodify because they are simple and boring. They are not "core" enough.

As with interiors, web datedness can be found in part or as a whole. For example, sites like Imgur or Reddit are not in and of themselves dated but they are full of remnants, of 15-year old posts and their "you, sir, have won the internet" vernacular that certainly are. Other websites are dated because they were made a long time ago by and for a clientele that doesn't have a need or the skill to update (we see this often with Web 2.0 e-commerce sites that figured out how to do a basic mobile page and reckoned it was enough). The next language of datedness, like the all-white landlord-special interior, is the default, clean Squarespace restaurant page, a landing space that's the digital equivalent of a flyer, rarely gleaned unless someone needs a menu, has a food allergy or if information about the place is not available immediately from Google Maps. I say this only to maintain that there is a continuity in practices between the on- and off-line world beyond what we would immediately assume, and that we cannot blame everything on algorithms.

But now you may ask, what is, exactly, datedness? Having spent two days in a distinctly dated hotel room, I've decided to sit in utter boredom with the numinous past and try and pin it down.

II.

I am in an obscure place. I am in Saint-Georges, Quebec, Canada, on assignment. I am staying at a specific motel, the Voyageur. By my estimation the hotel was originally built in the late seventies and I'd be shocked if it was older than 1989. The hotel exterior was remodeled sometime in the 2000s with EIFS cladding and beige paint. Above is a picture of my room, which, forgive me, is in the process of being inhabited. American (and to a lesser extent Canadian) hotel rooms are some of the most churned through, renovated spaces in the world, and it's pretty rare, unless you're staying in either very small towns or are forced by economic necessity to stay at real holes in the wall, to find ones from this era. The last real hitter for me was a 90s Day's Inn in the meme-famous Breezewood, PA during the pandemic.

At first my reaction to seeing the room was cautionary. It was the last room in town, and certainly compared to other options, probably not the world's first choice. However, after staying in real, genuine European shitholes covering professional cycling I've become a class-A connoisseur of bad rooms. This one was definitively three stars. A mutter of "okay time to do a quick look through." But upon further inspection (post-bedbug paranoia) I came to the realization that maybe the always-new brainrot I'd been so critical of had seeped a teeny bit into my own subconscious and here I was snubbing my nose at a blessing in disguise. The room is not a bad room, nor is it unclean. It's just old. It's dated. We are sentimental about interiors like this now because they are disappearing, but they are for my parents what 2005 beige-core is for me and what 2010s greige will become for the generation after. When I'm writing about datedness, I'm writing in general using a previous era's examples because datedness, by its very nature, is a transitional status. Its end state is the mixed emotion of seeing things for what they are yet still appreciating them, expressed here.

Datedness is the period between vintage and contemporary. It is the sentiment between quotidian and subpar. It is uncurated and preserved only by way of inertia, not initiative. It gives us a specific feeling we don't necessarily like, one that is deliberately evoked in the media subcultures surrounding so-called "liminal" spaces: the fuguelike feeling of being spatially trapped in a time while our real time is passing. Datedness in the real world is not a curated experience, it is only what was. It is different from nostalgia because it is not deliberately remembered, yearned for or attached to sweetness. Instead, it is somehow annoying. It is like stumbling into the world of adults as a child, but now you're the adult and the child in you is disappointed. (The real child-you forgot a dull hotel room the moment something more interesting came along.) An image of my father puts his car keys on the table, looks around and says, "It'll do." We have an intolerance for datedness because it is the realization of what sufficed. Sufficiency in many ways implies lack.

However, for all its datedness, many, if not all, of the things in this room will never be seen again if the room is renovated. They will become unpurchaseable and extinct. Things like the bizarrely-patterned linoleum tile in the shower, the hose connecting to the specific faucet of the once-luxurious (or at least middling) jacuzzi tub whose jets haven't been exercised since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The wide berth of the tank on the toilet. There is nothing, really, worth saving about these things. Even the most sentimental among us wouldn't dare argue that the items and finishes in this room are particularly important from a design or historical standpoint. Not everything old has a patina. They're too cheaply made to salvage. Plastic tile. Bowed plywood. The image-artifacts of these rooms, gussied up for Booking dot com, will also, inevitably disappear, relegated to the dustheap of web caches and comments that say "it was ok kinda expensive but close to twon (sic)." You wouldn't be able to find them anyway unless you were looking for a room.

One does, of course, recognize a little bit of design in what's here. Signifiers of an era. The wood-veneer of the late 70s giving way to the pastel overtones of the 80s. Perhaps even a slow 90s. The all-in-one vanity floating above the floor, a modernist basement bathroom hallmark. White walls as a sign of cleanliness. Gestures, in the curved lines of the nightstands, towards postmodernity. Metallic lamp bases with wide-brimmed shades, a whisper of glamor. A kind of scalloped aura to the club chairs. The color teal mediated through hundreds if not thousands of shoes. Yellowing plastic, including the strips of "molding" that visually tie floor to wall. These are remnants (or are they intuitions?) of so many movements and micromovements, none of them definite enough to point to the influence of a single designer, hell, even of a single decade, just strands of past-ness accumulated into one thread, which is cheapness. Continuity exists in the materials only because everything was purchased as a set from a wholesale catalog.

In some way a hotel is supposed to be placeless. Anonymous. Everything tries to be that way now, even houses. Perhaps because we don't like the way we spy on ourselves and lease our images out to the world so we crave the specificity of hotel anonymity, of someplace we move through on our way to bigger, better or at least different things. The hotel was designed to be frictionless but because it is in a little town, it sees little use and because it sees little use, there are elements that can last far longer than they were intended and which inadvertently cause friction. (The janky door unlocks with a key. The shower hose keeps coming out of the faucet. It's deeply annoying.)

Lack of wear and lack of funds only keep them that way. Not even the paper goods of the eighties have been exhausted yet. Datedness is not a choice but an inevitability. Because it is not a choice, it is not advertised except in a utilitarian sense. It is kept subtle on the hotel websites, out of shame. Because it does not subscribe to an advertiser's economy of the now, of the curated type rather than the "here is my service" type, it disappears into the folds of the earth and cannot be searched for in the way "design" can. It can only be discovered by accident.

When I look at all of these objects and things, I do so knowing I will never see them again, at least not all here together like this, as a cohesive whole assembled for a specific purpose. I don't think I'll ever have reason to come back to this town or this place, which has given me an unexpected experience of being peevish in my father's time. Whenever I end up in a place like this, where all is as it was, I get the sense that it will take a very long time for others to experience this sensation again with the things my generation has made. The machinations of fashion work rapaciously to make sure that nothing is ever old, not people, not rooms, not items, not furniture, not fabrics, not even design, that old matron who loves to wax poetic about futurity and timelessness. The plastic-veneered particleboard used here is now the bedrock of countless landfills. Eventually it will become the chemical-laced soil upon which we build our condos. It is possible that we are standing now at the very last frontier of our prior datedness. The next one has not yet elided. It's a special place. Spend a night. Take pictures.

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[gojos-thot-patrol]

a let my demons get a little silly with it here

Now Loading, Kinktober Week Two...

Synopsis: Ryomen always got what he wanted, it was a simple rule of life. And ever since he caught your scent, you were all that he wanted- your previous bond mark be damned. And you must have wanted him too. Why else would your window be open in the middle of your heat? Kinks: Omegaverse, Breeding, Marking, Knotting, Scent, Dub-Con, Non/Con, Somnophilia, and Infidelity. Reader Discretion is Advised.

Sukuna was going to fuck you. He was going to have you on your back, legs spread as he filled you to the brim, breeding you like a bitch while covering you in his bite marks and scent. Sukuna was sure of this fact from the first time he caught your smell in the air, light and warm and made for him. You were made for him. It was only a matter of time until he took what was rightfully his.

The only problem was you were marked, and sadly, it wasn’t by him. Worse yet, it was by some weak asshole who barely even had the ability to mark someone. Some feeble excuse of a man who probably didn't know what to do once he got your panties around your ankles, much less what to do when you were in your heat. The only thing worse than you being bonded to that douche canoe, was knowing it only happened so you wouldn’t be bonded to him. 

Okay, so “bonded” wasn’t really the right word there. “Sacrifice” was closer to the actuality of the situation, but still! You were literally destined to be his, and one asshole wants to play hero and fuck it all up? It drove him fucking mad, what right did that limp dick think he had to interfere? He caught himself clenching his fist and jaw. He needed to calm down before he hurt someone, especially since the only person nearby was you. 

Sukuna watched from a distance as you lounged under your tree, finding comfort in the forest instead of the inherent danger you should feel. He had suppressed his scent enough he was sure you hadn’t noticed, your calm demeanor conveying that fact. He could have you right now, release his scent and take you where you sat. But, that wouldn’t have done anything about your bond mark. No, to take care of that Sukuna had to be patient. Which, was a real fucking drag because if there was anything Ryomen Sukuna wasn’t it was a patient man.

🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘

He remembered the first time he encountered you. Almost a month ago now, while he was taking his regular walk through the woods. He could still feel the full body reset that happened when he caught your aroma, the smell of apple and clove working its way through his nervous system and grabbing his cock his heart in a chokehold. Suddenly, his lazy stroll through the woods was a hunt to find out what decadent creature had made such a perfume. 

And that’s where he found you. Sitting contently in a floral field, making a fucking flower crown of all things, and surly waiting for him. He saw your hands falter and your eyes widen as he approached, no doubt because you finally picked up on his pheromones. He could feel the smirk forming on his lips. 

“Well, what a nice surprise,” He hummed as he approached you, “I wasn’t expecting to find anyone else out here.” You immediately fell into a low bow before him. Good, you knew your place. 

“I’m sorry my lord,” You apologize, though you weren’t sure why. You knew of the warlord Ryomen Sukuna. You knew he owned your village, as well as the villages surrounding it. But to your knowledge he didn’t police who was allowed in the woods. Still, you’d rather not risk upsetting him. 

“What’s a pretty girl like you doing out here, all alone?” He asked, eyes tracing the way your back curved into the bow.

“My mate and I moved closer to the forest recently, I was exp-”

“Your mate?” The vitriol in his tone made your stomach revolt and ignited your fight or flight system. You didn’t even know what you had done wrong. 

“Y-yes?”

“Stand up, look at me.” He demanded. You did so without hesitation, your omega body naturally inclined to follow the alphas commands. When you did, you were hit with a fresh wave of his aura, the smell of whiskey and cinnamon filling your senses and making your joints feel weak. You were caught between your need to honor your bond mark, and the need to fall to your knees for the man in front of you. You whimpered softly as he grabbed your chin and shoved your head to the side.

Sure enough, right there on your scent gland were faint teeth shaped scars. If he wasn’t specifically looking for them, he wouldn’t have seen them at all. Still, the fact it hadn't been refreshed didn’t negate the fact that it was there. You were unequivocally spoken for. 

“You don’t smell marked.” He scoffed as he released your head, taking a step back.

“It’s new…” You muttered. He may not have been able to smell your mate, but the stench of a lie was familiar to him. Especially one as piss poor as that.

“If it’s new then you should reek of him, Wench, don’t lie to me.” He growled. You looked down as your shame rolled over you.

“He’s a beta.” HE’S A BETA?! Sukuna had felt rage a lot in his life. Some may even say it was his default setting. But the rage he felt at being cucked by a beta was unlike anything that he had felt before. He felt his fingers twitch with the need to wrap around someone's neck, and the urge to burn down this entire forest was a hard one to fight. He choked back his molting hot fury with a simple reminder: Beta bond marks don’t mean shit. He could easily still have you. He just had to wait for your next heat cycle to do it, when your hormones were high and looking for something more…substantial, then a betas nub. 

“How cute, being mated to a beta. I’m sure you’re crazy for each other.” He sneered. You wished. Leaving every heat cycle woefully unsatisfied and frustrated might have been worth it if you had actually loved the man. If your union to him wasn’t purely survival. 

“He provides.” You settled on a half truth to keep from lying, one Sukuna definitely picked up on. 

“What’s your name Omega?” He demanded.

You told him your name in a soft whisper. Cute name. He’d be sure to have his servants look into you and your records. 

“Well Omega,” He said, making a point not to use the title given to him. To remind you what you were. “You should probably get back to your beta. It’s not safe for a pretty little thing like you to be out in these woods alone.” It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that was a warning and a threat, the edge in his words making that much clear. You nodded to the warlord, before making your way home. You fought the urge to sprint with everything you had in you, knowing better than to activate his prey drive. 

He watched as you did, noting your refusal to run. Smart girl. He could feel his mouth watering as he watched your hips sway, and his body buzzed with the need to have you under him. He took a deep breath to recollect himself before making the walk home. He’d have you soon enough.

🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘

He kept a close eye on you in the weeks that followed. Learning about how your marriage was arranged through his servants, and how your marriage was failing from watching you. To your credit, you did try in earnest to make it work. You were the perfect mate. You kept a tidy home, always had dinner ready, and were always happy to get on your back for your husband. 

And yet it did nothing. That asshole still acted as if he was gods fucking gift for “saving” your life, and as if you didn’t do enough. Dinner was never right, there was always an issue with the house, and every morning Sukuna could smell your dissatisfaction from the night before- still rolling off you in waves.  It was pathetic that a creature as divine as you was wasted on swine like him. The good news was that your scent was evolving. As the leaves changed colors your fragrance got thicker, and sweeter in some aspects. You clung to your beta even if he was woefully unequipped. Your heat was coming.

A fact you were all too aware of. You could feel it pooling in your stomach and feverish on your skin. The effects were already starting, and you knew this one was going to be hell. Your mate thrashed in between your legs, chasing his high in you. You felt close, so close. Your body was trembling with anticipation, electricity buzzing under your skin. All you needed was his knot and-

He pulled out of your quivering cunt, cumming on your stomach with a guttural moan. Oh, right. He didn’t have a knot. You whined as he painted you white, wanting to snap at him for wasting his load. You held back though, knowing that, in reality, the last thing you wanted was his pups. You watched as he rolled off the bed and grabbed his pants.

“W-wait, but Naoya-” You panted, “I’m so close, please-”

“You’re gonna have to finish yourself, I’m gonna be late for my train.” Your “mate” groaned as if you were an inconvenience. 

“But…” You whimpered, then let it go. You knew better than to argue, and besides. Your climax was already fleeting. “Do you have to go?” You asked softly. You understood that, as a beta, Naoya couldn’t sense when your heat was coming like an alpha could. You accepted that. What you found hard to accept was that he still planned a business trip during your heat cycle, despite you explicitly telling him that you would need him. 

“Yes, Sweetie,” He said it with so much ire and hate, you would have rather he called you a bitch. “This is my job. It doesn’t stop because you’re horny.” He snapped, tired of having this conversation again. His venom shut you up. You watched as he quickly got dressed, then grabbed his bags and rushed for the train station. You fought tears as you went to clean yourself up. Were you really so unloveable?

You often wondered what the worse fate was, being sacrificed to Ryomen Sukuna or being trapped in a loveless pair bond. For years you knew without doubt it was being sacrificed to the warlord. You were always grateful to your father for selling you to the beta, saving you from what would no doubt have been a cruel and untimely death. Naoya may have been cold at times, but surely he wasn’t as bad as Sukuna.

Or at least, that’s what you used to think. Before you had actually met the man, and felt the way your body reacted to his presence alone. Suddenly, the so-called king of curses invaded your every thought, and life trapped in a passionless marriage felt like a prison sentence. You thought about Sukuna constantly, especially in the days leading up to your heat. You chased his faint scent on the wind, traced his markings in your dreams, and envisioned him to endure your husband's advances. 

It left you a wreck. Especially now, as night fell and your body temperature rose. Your fingers were doing absolutely nothing for you, and wouldn’t for at least the next week. Which, was rather conveniently when your husband was due to return home. You knew your heat bothered him, but you never knew it bothered him this much. Resentment grew in you the more you thought about it. If he didn’t want a fucking omega, then why the fuck did he pay for one? 

You tried not to think about it as you opened your window, hoping the cool night air would do something to help cool down your feverish skin. You lived far enough away from the other villagers you didn’t really have to worry about a wayward alpha finding you. And at this point, you weren’t sure you would care if one of them did. 

You settled into your nest, albeit a bit reluctantly. The faint smell of your mate clung to it, and despite your bond mark it brought you little comfort. More just frustration. It didn’t smell right anymore. You quickly took off your sleep pants, finding them unbearably hot, leaving you in just a tank top and soaked panties as you drifted off to sleep.

Sukuna could try and say that he was just out on a stroll to enjoy the moonlight. That he enjoyed the peace that the dark brought with it, and was only out to clear his mind. He would be lying. The truth of the matter was Sukuna had been keeping tabs on you. And while your bitch of a mate may have been inflicted with brain worms, Sukuna was not. He knew you were alone, and in heat. And he fully planned to take care of you, in ways your beta couldn’t dream of doing.

Walking to your little shack at the edge of the woods felt like wading into a warm lake, your trail becoming thicker and thicker in the air as he made his way to you. It was intoxicating, and he couldn’t stop the visions of you whimpering underneath him from entering his mind. Needy and alone, fuck. He could feel his blood rushing in his veins as your scent laced into his senses and his psyche, and his cock ached for you.

He wasn’t shocked to find your window open. Of course your window was open. You were waiting for him, your true mate. That fucking beta be damned, you wanted him, why else would the window be open? He crawled into your room on instinct more than much else, your body calling to him like a siren's song. The reality of your heat hit him like a train as he took in your visage. Sleeping not-so-peacefully in your marital bed, mindlessly rutting into a pillow drenched with your slick. He fucking hated that you were reduced to fucking pillows.

He was right here, you just needed to let your proper alpha take care of you. Let him protect you, let him fuck you until you can’t walk, let him fill you to the brim- until you’re overflowing, let him fix the fucking stench of your nest. He was on your bed and spreading your legs before he even fully realized what he was doing, ripping your slick drenched panties off of you. On a normal night, he would have touched you and known you were burning alive with a fever. But tonight? He was molting lava with his own forced rut, and he didn’t even notice yet. 

Mates don’t need to ask before taking care of their mate in heat, so he doesn't even bother waking you up before shoving two fingers into your weeping pussy to get you ready for him. You whine out softly, back curling off of the bed as he thrusts his fingers in and out of you sharply. He smirked as he curled his fingers up, listening to your breath catch in your throat.

“Fuck, Sukuna..” You whimpered in your sleep. Of course you called out his name, you were his omega. You chose him, you were meant to be with him. Soon, there would be no doubt about that. After he covered you with his scent, after he marked you as his and only his, and when your stomach was swollen with his pups- pink haired, four eyed and undeniably his.

He shrugged off his robe, his rock hard cock burning with need and dripping pre-cum. He ran his dick up your slit, gathering your divine slick on his angry red tip. He felt the tension in his shoulders finally dissolve as he pushed into you, finally at home where he was supposed to be. He growled as he sunk in to his base in one swoop. 

You jolt awake with the sudden intrusion, your cunt torn between pushing the intruder out and sucking him in deeper. “Wh-wha…?” You were given no time to try and catch up to the situation before the assault on your g-spot started, leaving you a moaning mess. Sukuna lifted your hips, holding your body with just his forearms as he changed the angle he fucked you in to fuck you deeper, harder. He needed it to take.

You looked up and saw a shock of pink hair and sharp tattoos through bleary eyes. On the surface your body revolted, knowing this wasn’t your mate and he was not meant to be touching you. But something deeper, more primal rejoiced at feeling the alphas fat cock. “Fuck, fuck, more..” You whimpered, bucking your hips in time with his thrusts. You could feel his knot swelling inside you and all you wanted was him. Nothing had ever felt more right. 

Sukuna had fucked a lot of omegas during his ruts. He ran through whores like they were nothing. But none of them had ever felt like this. Your pussy was made for him, so perfect as it milked his cock. Your body reacted to him perfectly. You were made to be his. You were his. Every inch of your skin, every breath you took, every smile you gave you were his. He’d prove it. He grabbed you in a bruising grip as he bent over you, capturing you in a demanding kiss and taking what little breath you had away in a clash of teeth and tongues. You belonged to him.

He growled lowly, as he pulled back, throwing your ankles over his shoulders as he pressed his body weight into you, folding you in half. “Fuck, you’re so good,” He groaned, “So fucking tight for me Baby Girl. Gonna knot you, fill you with my pups,” You didn’t know if he was talking to you or himself but it didn’t matter. A thought that should have been deeply revolting to you as a marked woman had never sounded more euphoric.

“Yes, please,” You begged into his ear, “Fuck me, it’s s’ good. Fill me, I- I need you.” you slurred together whatever words you could grapple with. You felt drunk on the feeling of euphoria, you almost forgot sex could feel so good. Your words, albeit a bit jumbled, electrified the part of Sukuna’s brain that had already decided he was your mate. You didn’t just want him, you needed him. You needed him. Of course you needed him, you belonged to him. You were his and his alone. 

His his his his-

Then he smelled it. In the sea of apple, clove and cinnamon whiskey a sharp mildew scent hit his nose. The fucking mold of your “bond mark.” Sukuna saw fucking red, his body seething with rage as he remembered you weren’t truly his. No matter how deep he fucked his seed into you, or how much of his skin touched yours, you weren’t his. 

Not yet anyway. 

He plunged his teeth into your scent glands, right over your previous bond mark. You howled as he did, a wave of ecstasy rocking its way through your heated body and decimating your shocked nervous system as you came all over him. Aftershocks of your orgasm pulsed through your cunt in time with his thrusts, sending static electricity through your needy body. You instinctively dug your fangs into Sukunas scent glands, an act you were never able to perform on your (former) beta mate.

The relief that washed over him as you completed the bond mark was unlike anything he had ever felt before, and it left him in ruins. Cumming deep inside you, painting your womb white. The warm feeling he filled you with actually worked to (somehow) cool the raging inferno in your bloodstream, and you finally found relief from the hell you had been in. 

You stayed connected, him holding you close while he waited for his knot to deflate. You thought about Naoya. You had never been able to properly mark him because he didn’t have scent glands for you to mark. It met you were never really bonded, not like how you were bonded to Sukuna now. But, he was technically still your husband. This was his house and his bed you were getting fucked by a perfect stranger in. How would he react when he found you here with the warlord that owned the land? Would he find you here?

Would you regret it? 

You didn’t have time to really consider the ramifications of your actions before Ryomen was moving inside you again, and the last thing you wanted to think about was the boy that abandoned you. You whined underneath him, bringing your hands to tangle in his hair. He pressed his forehead to yours in response.

“Still with me Omega?” He asked as he started to pick up the pace, making you whine underneath him.

“I’m here my lord,” You mumbled softly.

“Good,” He punctuated the word with a sharp kiss before straightening up, “Cause it’s gonna take more than just that to knock you up.” He chuckled as his hips started to piston into yours, setting a punishing pace. The natural curve of his cock was seemingly designed to bully your hypersensitive g-spot, stimulating your body back to life as you gripped the sheets under you.

“Aww, look at my pretty little omega,” Sukuna cooed mockingly as he fucked his cum back into you, “All fucked out and full. Feels good to actually cum after spending so much time with a limp dick, doesn’t it slut?” Apparently, all it took was him getting to cum once for him to find his voice.

“So good, so fucking good.” You whimpered, “So big, so full…” And you had no problem feeding into it. His claws dug into your hips, leaving bruises defined enough you could take his fingerprints off of them. He watched the way your tits bounced as you tried to feebly hold onto the sheet, attempting to ground yourself however you could. He watched his bulge appear and reappear in your stomach with every thrust. He watched the way your skin glistened in the moonlight, begging him to mark it. He watched the way your eyes fluttered and glazed over with dazed pleasure. 

But the real show was happening where the two of you were connected. Where your slick coated his cock, creating a foamy ring around the base. Where your natural lube mixed with his load, making the most vulgar sounds as he fucked your quivering cunt. God, he couldn’t have asked for a better mate.

Your warm pussy hugged him perfectly, begging him for more and pulling him even deeper into you with every thrust. Every movement of your hips sent a wave of euphoria through him, and he desperately chased both of your highs. He wanted to see you cum. He didn’t get to the first time.

 He wouldn’t make that mistake again. You were finally finally his after months of coveting you. Of watching you, of needing you wanting you, of imagining you, you finally belonged to him. He was going to see what you looked like when you came for him god damn it!

“You gonna cream for me again Sweetheart?” He growled, “Squirt all over my dick like a good girl? I know you are, I can feel it, fuck-” His words fell apart on his tongue as you clenched around him. Stars blotted out your vision as your second climax started to creep up on you, slowly tingling up your spine and taking over your body. You bucked your hips into his erratically, chasing the high only he could give you. Sparks of bliss exploded under your skin as you felt him start to swell again.

And suddenly he felt way too far away. You needed him closer. You needed his scent, his skin, him. You ripped one of your hands away from the bedsheets and reached out, trying to communicate what you wanted. His head tilted to the side and he scoffed as he looked at your outstretched hand.

“Words slut, what do you want?” He growled.

“My mate.” You whimpered. He was immediately leaning down to you, pressing his chest to yours and letting your fingers intertwine with his. How could he deny you your mate? Your body exploded into a thousand sparks of ecstasy where his skin ment yours. His scent wrapped around your senses like an old blanket, cozy and familiar and safe. You whined softly and closed your eyes to embrace for impact.

“No.” He growled, using his free hand to pull your hair and force your eyes open, “Look at me.” He demanded. Your watery eyes held his fiery ones as you moaned pathetically under him.

“I’m so close..”

“Then cum for me.” The floodgates opened and you were suddenly drowning in a sea of ecstasy and dopamine. Your hips thrashed against your will and your legs shook like the last leaves on autumn trees. You swore you saw entire galaxies be born before your eyes as you were hit with one of the hardest climaxes of your life. Your eyes watered as they looked into his, your skin felt flushed against his touch, and your grip on his hand tightened.

“Fuck, Ryomen…” He hadn’t heard his first name spoken in years. His body slammed into yours as his own climax hit him with a brick. He fucked you as best as he could through his knot, riding out both of your highs as he filled you to the point of overflowing and then some. His entire body was racked with euphoria as he came harder than he even thought possible. 

He collapsed on top of you, rolling you both to the side so he didn’t crush you with his body weight. For a while, the only sound was of the two of you trying to catch your breath. You felt his arms wrap around you and calloused hands rub your back gently to sooth you. He kissed your neck almost sweetly.

“You’re doing so good sweetheart,” He praised in a whisper, one soft enough the wind threatened to take it away, “So good for me.” It made your stomach flutter. His presence was instantly calming, much more so than your ex’s. You might have even fallen asleep, if you didn’t feel him start to move again, still rock solid inside of you. 

🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘

Your body was sore the next morning when you woke up, but the fever had subsided for now, finally giving you room to breathe and think about literally anything other than lust. The first thing you noticed was that you were not at home. You jolted up in bed, a soft whimper leaving your throat. 

“Silence, woman.” That was when you registered the body next to you in the bed. You looked over to see Ryomen, fully annoyed at being woken up. “You’re safe. I’m here.” He grumbled as he pulled you back into his side. You weren’t sure what was more impressive, that he managed to return to (what you assumed was) his home after last night, or that he managed to carry you with him. 

“Sukuna-”

“Ryomen.” He corrected you with a dangerous growl. You paused, a bit taken back.

“Ryomen,” You accepted the correction, “what happens now?”

“Hopefully you go back to sleep.” He sighed, irritated to have been woken up at the ungodly hour of 12 pm. While he was still in rut no less! He didn’t get a lot of chances to sleep during this time, and neither did you. You needed the rest.

“No, I mean with…with,” You didn’t know how to put it.

“What, you mean your cuck ex? Don’t worry about it.” He didn’t hide that he was irritated with you for bringing him up first thing in the morning. 

“....Is he going to be hurt?” You asked softly. Sukuna felt his lip twitch.

“If I have it my way, yes.” He didn’t mince words. Why the fuck did you care so much about that loser anyway? You thought about your mates words, then nodded. 

“Good.” You said, finally settling back into Ryomens arms and relaxing into him. He didn’t hide the smile that tugged on his lips. He knew he loved you. 

・┆✦ʚ♡ɞ✦ ┆・ Taglist ・┆✦ʚ♡ɞ✦ ┆・

thank you lovlies, for supporting my work! @sk8ttles, @blkkizzat,@littyasatittyyy,@ketchupsush1 and @risuola

If you wanna get on the tag list, comment: here!

And if you wanna read week One, you can find it: Here!

[p0orbaby]

Little fic where is alexia dating an English player who finds it difficult how affectionate Spanish people are with each other. Alexia having to reassure her that it’s a Spanish thing and she’ll try to be less touchy etc.

-

You’re not sure when exactly it starts to get on your nerves, but by the time you notice, you’re on a sun-bleached terrace in Barcelona, watching Alexia kiss three people hello in under five minutes. It's an odd thing to obsess over, and yet here you are, eyes narrowed as you sip on an overpriced cortado that tastes like dust and regret. You’re not jealous. Of course not. That would be absurd. You’re simply... perplexed by the excessive touching, the relentless stream of hugs, kisses, and arm squeezes that seem to form the bedrock of Spanish existence. Everyone’s always touching someone.

In England, a handshake is intimate enough, and in London, where you’re from, if anyone dared speak before your tea even cooled, you’d probably alert the authorities. But here? It's practically a greeting card in motion. You’ve seen grown men embrace in the street like they’ve just survived a shipwreck. It's baffling.

Alexia sits down across from you, smiling in that way that makes you feel foolish for being annoyed by anything. She’s impossibly beautiful, and the knowledge of that fact gnaws at you constantly. She’s all golden skin and nonchalance, legs casually crossed, one hand fiddling with her sunglasses as if she’s in some sort of commercial for ‘cool.’

“Are you okay?” she asks, her accent making every word sound softer than it should be, like it's wrapped in velvet. She’s genuinely concerned, or she’s pretending really well. You can’t tell which.

“Yeah,” you say. “Fine”

And then, because you’re not actually fine: “Do you have to kiss everyone?”

She looks at you like you’ve just asked if the sky is blue. “It’s how we greet people here”

“I know that,” you say, setting your cup down with more force than necessary. “But does it have to be every time? You’ve kissed three strangers today already, and it’s not even noon”

Alexia blinks at you, then laughs. “It’s just being polite”

Polite? You're thinking. In England, you say "hi" and move on with your day. No one has to swap saliva to prove they like you. But this? This is something else.

“Well, it’s... it’s excessive.” You try to explain, gesturing vaguely in the air like you can catch the sheer madness of it all. “People just... touch all the time. And I’m not used to it”

Alexia’s mouth twitches, trying to suppress a smile. “We’re just more affectionate”

“Affectionate?” you say. “It’s like a plague of hand-holding and cheek-kissing”

She finally lets out a laugh, full-bodied, the kind that makes her eyes crinkle. “You sound like an old lady”

“Maybe I am,” you mutter, trying to keep a straight face. “Maybe England has made me emotionally unavailable”

Alexia reaches out to touch your arm, then stops, hesitating, her hand hovering mid-air like she’s not sure if it’ll set you off again. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No, no,” you sigh, waving her hand toward you, now feeling like the crazy one. “It’s fine. Just... give me a heads-up before the next 12-person cuddle fest”

She grins, leaning back. “I can try”

You shake your head, biting back a smile. “You’re so annoying”

“And you love it

You do. And you hate that you do, which is probably the worst part of all this. She knows you’re wound too tight for your own good, and she’s infinitely more relaxed about everything, like the world bends to her will instead of the other way around.

You finish your cortado, now cold. “You realise you kissed the barista on the way in, right?”

Alexia nods, grinning wickedly. “She made my coffee right”

You groan, but you’re laughing, which only encourages her. “I’m never letting you set foot in the UK again”

“That’s fine,” she says, leaning in, all confidence. “Spain suits you better anyway. You just don’t know it yet”

[lecsainz]

Can u do any kind of luke imagine with maybe a daughter of hades:p

˒ ⌕ DID YOU EAT, TODAY?

parings: luke castellan x hades!reader

an: this was my first piece that my sister liked? I'm sooo happy because she's picky, and I usually have to beg her to read anything I write. yes, I know it's pathetic, but I usually don't think my writing is good, and I don't think you guys will like it. I have a bit of a validation-seeking complex (mirroball girl here 😭

summary: where, after 18 years of surviving alone, you finally arrive at camp half-blood, discovering you're a child of hades. adimist it all, a hermes' boy might find himself perhaps falling for you.

( my last work || my last work for riodanverse || go to main masterlist )

The camp was bustling with activity, but for you, the chaos of your newfound identity as a demigod and a daughter of Hades was still settling in. The moment you were claimed upon entering the camp, it felt like your entire world had shifted. As the campers dispersed for their activities, you sought solace by the lake, needing a moment to process the overwhelming revelations.

Luke, having noticed your absence from the group, made his way to the lake with a small cupcake in hand. Blueberry, your favorite. He approached cautiously, recognizing the turmoil on your face. The daughter of Hades, a complex puzzle of emotions and powers.

"Hey there," Luke greeted, sitting down beside you. "Did you eat today?"

You looked up, your eyes still reflecting the confusion and vulnerability that came with the newfound knowledge of your divine parentage. The mere question, though simple, struck a chord within you, resonating with a sense of care that you hadn't expected.

"I... I didn't really feel like it." you admitted, your voice betraying the uncertainty.

Without another word, Luke handed you the cupcake, and the corners of his lips lifted into a reassuring smile. "Well, you should. It's blueberry – your favorite, right?"

Surprised, you glanced at the cupcake, realizing that somehow, amidst all the chaos, Luke had remembered your preference. A small, genuine smile formed on your face as you took the cupcake. "Thank you."

Taking the cupcake, you managed a small smile. The gesture was simple, yet it carried an unspoken understanding. You hesitated for a moment before taking a bite, savoring the sweetness that contrasted with the bitter reality you were grappling with.

Luke watched you quietly, and when you finally met his gaze, he reached over to wipe away a stray tear that had escaped your eye. It was a gentle touch, one that conveyed more comfort than words ever could.

"You know, being a demigod is tough, especially in the beginning," he began, his tone gentle. "But you're not alone in this. We're a family here, weird as it may be."

You chuckled, feeling a hint of warmth amidst the emotional storm. "Yeah, a family of demigods with divine parent issues."

Luke chuckled with you. "Exactly. And you've got powers from the Underworld, which is pretty cool if you ask me."

Your laughter echoed by the lake, and Luke couldn't help but feel a warmth spreading within him. He looked at you, your smile contagious, and a goofy grin formed on his face. In less than 48 hours, everything you did seemed to become his favorite thing.

"See? I knew blueberry cupcakes were the way to go," Luke teased, nudging you playfully.

As you enjoyed the cupcake, the night air became a canvas for the unspoken. Luke's gaze lingered on you, studying your features. The flicker of vulnerability in your eyes and the subtle playfulness of your smile sparked something in him. His mind wrestled with conflicting thoughts. The prophecy and his allegiance to Kronos felt like a weight on his shoulders, yet the simple act of being there for you seemed to defy the inevitable.

Luke couldn't help but think he was treading on dangerous ground. The more he got to know you, the more he realized that maybe, just maybe, there were things worth fighting for beyond the plans of gods and Titans.

Caught in his own internal struggle, he locked eyes with you. His expression shifted between uncertainty and an undeniable connection that was forming against all odds.

And then, as if a realization hit him, you blushed, looking away. The daughter of Hades, powerful and enchanting, now bashful under his gaze. A small smile played on Luke's lips, acknowledging the unexpected turn of emotions.

"Stop," you said, your voice a blend of amusement and a blush that colored your cheeks.

"I can't help it," Luke responded, a mischievous glint in his eyes. He made no effort to hide his amusement, which only intensified your embarrassment.

A playful slap on his arm was your immediate response. "Seriously, cut it out."

Luke chuckled, the sound resonating in the tranquil night. "Alright, alright. I'll behave... for now."

"Hey, Castellan! We're heading out. You coming?" The moment was interrupted by a group of Hermes cabin members calling for Luke. As he got up to join them, he glanced back at you. "You coming?"

He extended his hand towards you, a gesture so simple yet filled with unspoken invitation. With a slight hesitance, you placed your hand in his, and together you walked away, fingers intertwined.

The children of Hermes exchanged smirks, whispering amongst themselves as they watched Luke and you leave the lakeside. One of them winked at Luke, teasingly remarking, "Looks like someone's got a soft spot."

Luke shot back with a grin, "I don't know what you're talking about."

He glanced at you, a sly smile playing on your lips radiating a warmth that ignited a turmoil within him. In that moment, a realization struck Luke like a lightning bolt – perhaps you were the unforeseen obstacle in Kronos' grand plan. As he stared at you, the idea that his growing feelings for you could complicate the titan's scheme loomed over him, and for the first time, Luke Castellan felt the weight of a dilemma he hadn't anticipated.

[justagalwhowrites]

Oral Fixation - A TLOU One Shot

It's your boyfriend Joel's birthday but what do you give the man who has given you so much? AKA You learn how to give Joel a blow job. A one-shot set in the Lavender universe.

Pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader from Lavender

CW: Oral sex, mild age gap (Joel is turning 33, reader is 21 almost 22), mild description of past sexual encounter involving oral sex that wasn't the best, Joel is almost disturbingly happy because he hasn't been traumatized yet RIP trauma-free Joel, unprotected P in V sex, no use of Y/N, 18+ only minors DNI

Length: 4.5k

A/N: The final part of the Joel Miller Birthday Celebration! Can be read as a stand alone fic with the understanding that reader is Sarah's nanny and has been seeing Joel for about six months.

Masterlist | Lavender Masterlist | AO3

September, 2000

“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” you said, all but clinging to Cassie’s arm as the two of you made your way through the adult store. You weren’t sure what you’d been expecting but it wasn’t this, neon colored silicone penises and intimidatingly tiny scraps of lace everywhere you looked. 

“And I can’t believe you don’t own a vibrator,” Cassie said, rolling her eyes. “Don’t be such a prude, with the way you and the DILF go at it I’m pretty sure you’ve had more sex than I have at this point.” 

Your cheeks got hot but… she was probably right. You and Joel had sex a LOT. So much that it was hard to believe that, just six months earlier, you’d still been a virgin. Sure, you doubted that sex with anyone else was even half as good as it was with Joel but it felt like you’d been denying yourself a whole world of good things because you’d been reluctant to make that leap for so long. Now, you wanted to make up for lost time, something that Joel was happy to oblige. 

But, because you were so new to it, you didn’t really know much and, what’s worse, you didn’t know what you didn’t know. 

Which is why you’d turned to Cassie in the first place. Joel’s birthday was coming up and you’d drawn a complete blank on what to get the man. You’d never gotten anyone a birthday gift who wasn’t your grandmother or your friend. What the hell did you get a boyfriend? What the hell did you get a man? 

“You, naked, ready to recreate the filthiest porn the guy’s got,” Cassie said, not even looking up from the latest issue of Cosmo as she did. “And, because it’s you, bake him a cake or something. He’ll be thrilled.” 

“I don’t know that Joel watches porn,” you crinkled your nose. That made her look up. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” She asked, incredulous. “Babes. He’s a man. Of course he watches porn.” 

“I’m sure he would if things were different,” you said. “But he has a kid at home, we have to fight for privacy, I don’t think he’s exactly sitting down and putting on some…” 

“He is,” she said, closing the magazine now. “I promise you, he is. Maybe less now that you’re in the picture but he definitely is. Stashed under his bed or in some shoebox at the back of his closet is a pile of all his dirtiest fantasies and all you have to do is gift wrap yourself, ready to fulfill them.” 

So you might have done some snooping the next time you were at Joel’s before he got home from work. 

Maybe. 

Just a little. 

And yeah, Cassie might have been right. There might have been a box - one a bit bigger than a shoebox but not much bigger - that had tapes and magazines inside. You took a quick inventory, looking at the covers of the videos and flipping through the pages of the more well-worn magazines. 

It seemed both invasive and oddly impersonal, rifling through something that was mass produced and clearly not intended for you to see but was something that it seemed like you should know. The women in the magazines and on the covers of the tapes were so much more… everything than you were. More sexy, more confident, more knowledgable. It made your stomach twist. 

Was this what Joel really wanted? He was older than you and you’d been a late bloomer in the romance department. Of course he had more experience but he’d never made it sound like anything was missing from your sex life. But maybe he was just being nice. Maybe what he really wanted was something more like whatever someone named Candy was doing on the back of this VHS sleeve. 

It seemed like the least you could do for Joel was find a way to give him what he wanted.

So Cassie had convinced you to come to this store to figure out something to do for him for his birthday. Not that you had much idea what that would be. 

“What’s his favorite color?” She asked, examining the tiny scraps of lace. 

“Forest green?” You asked more than answered, examining something that you were pretty sure was a bra but seemed to be missing some key components. You were about to move on to something else when one of the movies playing on the opposite wall caught your eye. It was one of the actresses from the tapes at Joel’s, you recognized her. She was looking hungrily at a cock before taking it into her mouth, eyes closed in bliss with a satisfied groan. 

Cassie noticed where you were staring and joined you, smirking a little. 

“Like watching someone get their dick sucked, eh?” She teased, elbowing you lightly. 

You glared at her. 

“I just…” You looked back at the screen. “I think Joel has that video.” 

“Really?” She said, brows raised, looking back at the screen as the woman started to slide up and down the thick cock. “Well, that’s simple enough. Just blow him, wham bam thank you ma’am, you’re set.” 

“I don’t…” 

“Oh don’t tell me you suck him off too much as it is,” she said. “Your sex life is already insufferably perfect.” 

“No,” you said, defensive, your cheeks getting hot. “I just…” 

“Just what?” She asked when you stayed quiet a bit too long. 

“I’ve never… done that,” you said, looking back at the screen as the woman there hollowed out her cheeks and moaned. 

“What!” Cassie yelped and you shushed her as the other people in the store turned to stare. “You’ve never…” 

“Not with Joel,” you said quickly. “I did once with a guy but it didn’t go great and I really didn’t like it and honestly I think Joel might be too big to…” 

“Too big?” She grabbed your arm, her eyes wide. “Babes, you said he was big but like… what do you mean too big? Gimme a ballpark, like…” she tugged you over to a wall of remarkably life-like dildos and pointed to one on the larger end. “That big?” 

“No,” you said and she looked relieved for a moment before you pointed to one that was even bigger. “More like that one.” 

Cassie’s jaw dropped, looking between you and the silicone dick in awe. 

“That’s what the DILF is packing?” 

“Can you please not call him that?” 

“You big slut!” She was practically beaming. “Taking that for your first time? You deserve a medal!”

“Can we just…” 

“That’s it, you’re sucking his dick for his birthday,” she said, grabbing flavored lube, throat numbing spray and a copy of the tape that was playing overhead. “As often as he apparently goes down on you? Seems like the least you can do is return the favor as he turns… what, 47?” 

You glared at her and she smirked at you. 

“33,” you said. 

“And you don’t want me to call him a DILF,” she said, grabbing a surprisingly conservative set of lingerie and a small vibrator on her way to the counter. “Come on, we’ll turn you into an oral champ before you know it!”

You watched the video with Cassie that night after you had half a bottle of cheap wine in your system. The woman on screen seemed so… into it. The one time you’d gone down on someone was the summer before you left for college, going out with a boy you met at the movie theater when you took the kids you were babysitting there to see Hercules. He was cute, nice, didn’t carry the baggage a lot of the boys you’d gone to high school with did. On your fourth date, you were making out in his car and he’d nudged your head down lower and lower until it was in his lap. He pulled his cock out and you cautiously, hesitantly, took him in your mouth and you did try to do what you thought he wanted while taking it slow. But it didn’t take long before he was moaning and thrusting up into your mouth and you gagged as he pushed your head down further on his dick. You’d all but ripped yourself away, coughing and sputtering, and he half heartedly apologized before trying to push your head to his lap again. You didn’t go for it that time and he took you home. You didn’t go out with him again, deciding to write off men until you were away at college and hopefully meeting one who was fine with you doing things like not sucking their dick. 

Which, Joel was. Or seemed to be, anyway. But if he enjoyed it - if it felt like it was something that was missing from your sex life - you wanted to give it to him. He’d given you so much, you wanted to give him everything. You just needed to figure out how to do it. 

After you giggled your way through the video the first time, you started it again as Cassie gave you some tips: How to breathe through your nose, how to swallow around your gag reflex, how to use your tongue, how guys liked when you choked on it a little. It felt almost like you were in class, taking notes on a piece of scratch paper you mentally vowed to set on fire after you practiced a little with a cucumber so no one had to know that you needed someone to teach you this stuff, stuff that seemed like it should come naturally to you. 

“Just use the throat spray, use the lube and breathe through your nose,” she said when she left to go home the next morning. “You’ll have him eating out of your hand.” 

“Right,” you said, trying to ignore the tight knot of nerves that had settled in your stomach. “I can do it.” 

You carefully selected a Joel-sized cucumber at the grocery store and tried to not feel like an idiot as you followed Cassie’s advice as you practiced leading into Joel’s birthday. It wasn’t as bad when there wasn’t someone shoving your head down on their lap though it still wasn’t your favorite thing. But for Joel? You’d deal. 

The day you were going to celebrate his birthday, the reality of it set in. If there was one thing you were an expert in by now, it was your boyfriend’s cock and your boyfriend’s cock was… big. What if the throat spray didn’t work as well when you weren’t the one in control of what was going in your mouth? Worse, what if you were just bad at it? What if he had an ex who was as good at sucking him off as that porn star would be and you’d be struggling to measure up the whole time? 

You were rarely nervous with Joel anymore but you were weirdly nervous as you made him dinner - chicken fried steak - and tried to not let it show as the two of you ate together and had drinks and cake while watching Alien in his living room after. 

“You spoil me way too damn much, baby,” Joel said as your head was nestled against his chest, his lips in your hair. You could feel him smile against you as he kissed you there. “Best birthday I’ve had in years, thank you.” 

“Well, I might have one more thing for you,” you said, sitting up from him and smiling a little, your heart pounding in your chest. 

“Really?” He cocked a smile at you, his cheek dimpling. “Does it involve you naked?” 

“It might,” you teased, relaxing a little as you looked at him. This was Joel, the safest man you knew, the person you loved more than any other. It would be OK. “Want to go to your room and find out?” 

“Good luck stoppin’ me,” he winked, getting up and helping you off the couch. Once you were up stairs, the two of you kissed your way down the hall but he moaned as you pulled away from him and nudged him back toward the bed. 

“Just stay put,” you said. “I’ll be right back.” 

“Not goin’ anywhere,” he called as you disappeared into his bathroom. You looked at yourself in the mirror, forcing yourself to take a deep, calming breath before going to his linen cupboard and pulling out the throat spray, lube and lingerie you’d stashed away earlier. You used the spray first, wincing at the antiseptic-like taste of it, before you quickly stripped, balling up your sundress and bra and pulling on the deep green lacy babydoll set Cassie had picked for you. As you examined yourself in the mirror - fluffing your hair and adjusting your breasts in the sheer cups - you gave your best friend this much: she knew how to help make you comfortable. The set wasn’t too revealing or over the top but still highlighted your curves and put all the parts of you Joel seemed to like best on display. 

“Thank you, Cassie,” you muttered before taking a deep breath and steeling yourself, the strawberry flavored lube clutched tight in your hand. You looked your reflection in the eye and tried to get lost in the almost-porn star version of yourself in the mirror. 

“You got this,” you said almost silently, giving yourself a single, resolute nod before going for Joel’s room again. 

He was sitting obediently where you’d left him, watching the bathroom door. You draped yourself against the frame, popping a hip out to accentuate your curves, one arm stretched high over your head against the wood. Joel’s mouth dropped open, his eyes going wide. 

“Like what you see?” You asked more confidently then you felt. 

“Goddamn, baby,” he said reverently. “Gonna gimme a heart attack, looking that damn good.” 

“Well don’t go dropping dead on me now,” you teased, walking toward him in what you hoped was a sexy way and not something that made you look like an idiot. “You haven’t even gotten your present yet.” 

He put his hands on your waist when you reached him but, instead of straddling him, you reached down and spread his legs so you could step between them. You knelt in front of him, holding his gaze as you did, reaching for his jeans to open them. 

“What…” he frowned, looking down as you freed his cock, thick and long and hard. 

“Told you,” you said, trying to make yourself sound sultry and not nervous. “I had something for you.” 

You didn’t give him a chance to respond before you licked his shaft from root to tip, his skin velvet smooth and salty on your tongue. He groaned as you did and you took a deep breath as you took his tip into your mouth, sucking him gently as you did. 

Even just that was a lot and, as your tongue teased him, you squeezed some of the flavored lube into your hand before you spread it over his shaft, working him with your hand, your heart racing. 

“Fuck, baby,” he groaned as you started taking more of him into your mouth, licking and sucking and trying to focus on breathing through your nose as you did. It took more time than you really wanted to get all of him in your mouth, swallowing past your numbed gag reflex as best you could to take his length into your throat. You moaned as you did, sucking him hard, hollowing your cheeks like the girl in the video had done and he moaned, too, his fingers tightening on the edge of the bed. “Goddamn, your mouth…” 

You would have smiled at that if your mouth wasn’t open so wide. Instead, you started trying to work his cock the same way you did the cucumber in practice, hopefully the same way the girl did in the video he had. 

Joel’s breaths started coming quicker, needy little pants dripping from his lips as his cock dripped in your mouth and you took the encouragement, trying to move faster as you did, trying to take him as deep as you could every time. 

But Joel was big and you were almost positive he was getting bigger as you worked him, his cock swelling even further, his precome salty at the back of your throat, and the faster you moved the harder he was to take. Eventually, even with the spray, it was too much and you choked, coughing and gagging enough that you had to pull back from him, tears stinging the corners of your eyes. 

“Woah, you alright?” He asked, leaning forward and frowning at you, still a little breathless as he did. 

“Mhmm,” you hummed as you nodded, trying to keep yourself from coughing, massaging your throat as you did. “Sorry, I just…” 

“Don’t apologize, baby, goddamn,” he laughed once. “Not after doin’ all that for me…” 

You smiled a little sheepishly, feeling like you could breathe again. But the numb feeling at the back of your throat was gone. 

“I can do it again,” you said, sitting back on your heels. “I just… I got some throat spray and I just need to…” 

Joel’s eyebrows knitted together, frowning deeper this time. 

“Throat spray?”

You nodded. 

“It’s numbing?” You said, almost like it was a question. “I hadn’t really done this much before and I really wanted to do it like…” 

“Like what?” He asked and your eyes went wide. Shit. You hadn’t meant to say that part. “Like what, baby?” 

“Like the woman in one of the videos in your closet?” You said sheepishly, your heart pounding, everything else coming out in a rush. “I’m really sorry, I just couldn’t figure out what to get you for your birthday and Cassie suggested finding out what porn you liked and trying to recreate it so I might have looked through some of your things, I promise it was just to surprise you and give you what you wanted and…” 

“Baby,” he cut you off gently, tucking his cock back into his jeans. “Hey, it’s OK, c’mere.” He tugged you up on the bed beside him and you kept your eyes determinedly on your hands. “Think you can look at me?” 

You took a deep breath but listened, gnawing on your lower lip as you did. 

“There are those pretty eyes of yours,” he smiled a little, cupping your cheek. “Now, I ain’t sayin’ I don’t appreciate the thought - don’t think any woman’s ever done something like that for me - but honey, I don’t want to do something you don’t want to do. I really don’t want to do something that’s rough enough on your body that you gotta numb yourself to get through it.” 

You frowned. 

“But you go down on me…” 

“Yeah, because I like to,” he said. “Like seein’ what I can do to you but that doesn’t mean you have to do it back to me, not unless you want to. And if you do want to, you don’t need to do it so hard that you hurt yourself. It’s not good for me if it’s not good for you, too.” 

You took a deep, steadying breath, and nodded. 

“Besides,” he smiled a little. “Haven’t needed those videos in a while. Honestly, I kinda forgot I even still had ‘em.” 

You scoffed. 

“Hey, I’m being serious,” he said. “Haven’t used ‘em since you and I got together, that’s for damn sure. And for a few months before that I may or may not have had better luck thinkin’ about this sexy nanny I had working for me…” 

“Oh really?” You teased lightly, heat taking the place of the nerves in your stomach. 

“Really,” he said, almost unsettlingly earnest. “I’ve been yours for a while, baby. And that’s because I love you, don’t have a damn thing to do with what you do in bed.” 

You smiled softly and kissed him, his lips gentle on yours for a moment before it deepened, turning hot and needy. 

Joel tugged you back on the bed with him, one hand splaying wide over your back, the other slipping into the soft lace of your lingerie to cup your breast. But, before you got too distracted, you pulled back from him, making him frown a little. 

“But what if I want to,” you said, biting your lip again. 

His frown deepened. 

“Want to what?” 

“Suck your cock,” you said, trying to ignore how hot your cheeks got. 

“Fuck, baby,” he said, his eyes darkening. 

“Because I do want to,” you said. “I want to make you feel the way you make me feel.” 

“You sure?” He asked. “Because I know I can be… a lot to take.” 

You smiled a little. 

“Think I know how big your cock is, Joel. And I know what I want.” 

“You’re gonna be the death of me,” he groaned, lying on his back, freeing his cock and stroking it as he did. “Gotta take it easy and let me help.” 

You nodded eagerly before settling near his hips, taking his length in your hand and stroking him up and down, running your thumb over his leaking tip. When you looked at him now, you weren’t intimidated. Instead, you were hungry for him, wanting to feel him deep inside you in a different way, your mouth watering with it. 

You lowered yourself over him, licking his head, your tongue wide and flat against him and Joel groaned, his fingers tightening in the blankets on the bed. You took a moment to really experience him, the taste of him, the heady concentration of the scent of him in the thatch of coarse hair at his base, the tender softness of his skin. It shouldn’t have been surprising but you wanted more, more of all of it. 

So you took more, his tip disappearing into your mouth slow and easy. 

“Fuck, there you go baby,” he was damn near panting with need and you smiled a little around his intrusion, at what you were doing to him. “Nice and slow.” 

You moaned as you sank lower, easing more and more of him into your mouth before rising up and then taking a little more of him, your tongue pressed tight to his shaft as you did again and again. 

And then he was at the back of your throat, no longer numbed, and you tried to do what Cassie had told you to do: Swallow him past your gag reflex to get all of him inside. 

It worked, at first, your lips making it almost to the base of his shaft as he groaned. But it didn’t last, your body quickly trying to reject the thick heft of him in your throat, making you gag. This time, though you didn’t try and force it, pulling back quickly but leaving his head in your mouth. 

“You OK?” He asked, his voice strained, one large hand coming to cradle the back of your head. You just nodded, his tip still in your mouth. “Here, gimme your hand.” 

You obeyed and Joel guided your fingers to the base of his shaft. 

“Just…” you could hear the desperation in his voice. “Hold on like that, don’t gotta take it all. Feel the most at the tip, anyway.” 

You nodded and worked your way lower again, a little faster this time, adjusting your grip so you were still taking most of him into your mouth but not quite hitting your gag reflex. Joel’s breaths grew sharper, more desperate and you could feel him straining to hold back from fucking up into you and you couldn’t help but feel a sense of power at that, the way you could make him almost lose himself to pleasure. 

You started to work him faster, your tongue pressing and curling around him, your mouth working in tandem with your hand. It wasn’t long before you found your rhythm over him, rising and falling, sucking and licking, savoring every inch of him you could take. And even though you were focused on making Joel feel good, it was making you tight and needy, too, the hand not around his cock finding your slit, fingers trailing through the wetness that had grown there. 

“Fuck,” he groaned. “Takin’ me so well, baby, doin’ so damn good.” 

You moaned, working him harder, faster as your fingers grew firmer on your clit and you suddenly, desperately, needed all of him in your mouth, gag reflex be damned. 

So you took all of him, moaning as his head slipped into your throat, sucking him hard and fast and you felt him twitch in your mouth before he all but ripped you away from him, leaving you stunned for a moment. 

But then he damn near jumped between your thighs, shoving your panties to the side and pushing into you. You gasped at the stretch of him, your pussy already tightening around him. Joel’s hips snapped into yours just as fast as you’d been sucking him before. 

“Ain’t gonna last,” he said, burying his face in your neck and kissing the delicate skin there. “Too fuckin’ good at that, Jesus…” 

You could only moan in response, your own orgasm building quickly, your fingers tugging at his shirt as you tried to pull him impossibly closer, your pussy drawing tight around him for a second before you fell apart. Your orgasm was so powerful you couldn’t move, crying out with the force of it as Joel fucked into you twice more before he came, too, pressing himself deep inside as he spilled into you.

Joel collapsed, spent, on top of you after, still fully clothed and panting for breath as you held him close. 

“Holy shit baby,” he said eventually, still a little breathless. 

You laughed quietly. 

“Did I measure up to the video?” You teased. 

He pulled back from you, looking you over for a moment, like he was trying to tell if you were joking or not. 

“Think you know the answer to that,” he said, kissing you gently as he slid himself from you and lay beside you. He tugged you against him as he settled, tucking your head against his chest. “But in case it wasn’t clear, yeah. You beat ever damn porno I ever watched, ain’t even close.” 

You smiled, proud. 

“Good,” you said. “Because… I liked doing that.” 

You felt him lift his head to look at you before dropping back down to the bed. 

“Really?” 

“Yup,” you said, tracing your fingers over the outline of his pecs through his shirt. “Think I’ll want to do it again.”

“Sure as hell won’t get any arguments from me.” 

“There is a downside, though,” you said, sitting up just enough to look at him. 

“What’s that?” He frowned and you smiled. 

“Now I’m going to have to figure out what the hell to get you for your birthday next year.” 

He laughed and tucked you back against his chest. 

“Just keep givin’ me you, baby,” he said. “Doesn’t get any better than that.” 

A/N: I missed Joel and Doc so I wrote this. Thanks for reading them even more than a year after Lavender ended.

Happy birthday, Joel!

Love you all!

[marimoscorner]

Consumerism & Witchcraft

Written by Marimo (he/they)🌿

I’ve seen a turn for the better in some witchy spaces regarding consumerism in the past few years, but overall it still tends to be an issue for us as a community. I’ve decided to try and breakdown the pitfalls I’ve noticed in my own journey, in the hopes that it will inspire and assist others. I’ve also provided alternatives and ideas on how to make small changes in our practice to help us better protect the Earth, stick it to the failing system and still acquire our bits and bobs we love so dearly.

As always, I am no authority on any subject nor am I perfect—but we’re all learning as we go, so let’s dive right in 🌿

A Preface

There are some things that should be made entirely clear before we begin:

You are not a bad person for wanting an aesthetic

You are not a bad person for unknowingly falling into pitfalls. Only if you continue to purposefully do so after knowing better

You are not a bad person for consuming content/objects or for not always making the most sustainable decisions. At the end of the day, we can only control our small part of environmental impact, while the rest is left up to the major corporations that make more pollution than any of us ever will

You are only human. Show yourself some grace and understanding that the internet so lacks.

My Experience in Consumerist Hell

I have fallen victim many times to consumerism in witchcraft. Starting my journey at the ripe age of about ten years old and heavily in the broom closet, I was quickly drawn in by the shiny rocks, the brand new candles and scents, the promise of new tarot decks and pendulums and other fancy, shiny new equipment. I was consuming an online aesthetic along with my ideals, and it distracted me from starting my journey by learning well.

I began to spend my birthday and holiday money on the aesthetic of things. While, granted, I still did buy a few literary resources now and again from my local secondhand bookstore—I was stubbornly ignoring the sage advice to learn and understand first before diving in headfirst.

I purchased statues, crystals, too many tarot decks to use. I purchased osteomancy bones I later returned to the earth, for I had not done enough research to know that that animal was mine to practice with. I had a tankard full of incense sticks, and even a growing pile of books that would not be read. While I liked to consider myself crafty with my homemade Maypole and various hand-bound Grimoires, something was becoming apparent: this was all a distraction.

The aesthetic I was partaking in was providing me with a false sense of progress and practicality.

When I’d go to do a tarot reading, I’d become far too overwhelmed with choosing a deck to read in the first place. When making an offering to a deity, I’d feel pressured to also bolster the altars of all the other deities I’d set up, and with my wide pool, the connections felt muddy. Often times I’d be off-put on a project or spell because I knew I needed to film it and it needed to look nice.

In the long term, I don’t have many of these items today. I’ve sold and donated a vast breadth of them. Feeling overwhelmed costed me a few years retreat from my craft to recuperate. However, what has stuck with me is the knowledge I picked up along the way.

So, What’s the Issue? TL;DR

I’ve noticed a few issues here in making these mistakes myself.

Consumerism absolutely distracts you from learning and your craft

Overconsumption leads to environmental damage. If everyone hoarded supplies, there would not be enough to go around. And with what gets thrown away every year…it paints an ugly wound on the Earth

We damage our learning abilities by not allowing ourselves to be anything less than perfect

The need for aesthetic creates barriers to entry within the community and creates a divide of haves and have-nots

You won’t be able to truly follow your individual path if you are only consuming and not creating for yourself

Consumerist culture promotes appropriation. Metaphysical stores carry items from closed practices (such as white sage and palo santo, or coyote bones) because someone is buying them. Don’t be that person, and find alternatives relating to your own culture instead

Consumerism can influence your spiritual decisions based upon monetary inclinations (where some may sacrifice a quality ingredient over a higher quantity of a lower quality ingredient)

So, what can we do?

Firstly, I want to clarify that I am not against collecting, nor am I against maximalism or the beautiful visual aesthetic we carry as a community.

I am an artist a very visual person and understand the longing for a beautiful home and workspace. However, this aesthetic shouldn’t come at the cost of irresponsibly harming the Earth or another community.

Thus, I’ve compiled a list of small things that I will be incorporating into my practice to make it more mindful and sustainable. I hope that you’ll join me in a few of them.

Minimize Supplies. While I used to have a huge selection of stationary for my Grimoire, I now limit myself to a simple pencil and watercolor set if I’m feeling artistic. This helps me actually use my Grimoire for study, rather than to keep perfect. It’s also friendlier on my wallet!

Thrift Supplies. There are plenty of perfectly good items that get donated daily. You can get high-quality candles and holders, old crystal bowls for altar offerings, spare crafting supplies, fabric for alter cloths and even clothing if you so wish—all for a fraction of the cost new and while saving the planet just a little bit more. Hell, you can sometimes even find good silver!

Share Supplies with your Community. You can create a sort of barter system with other witches in your area. Perhaps you create a sigil for them, and they provide you with a candle spell. Play to your strengths and grow together!

Look for Creative Outlets. Do you really need to go buy an altar statue that’s been mass-produced? Or can you give your deity the personal gift of a drawing, painting or even hand-modeled or hand-carved rendition? This will also deepen your connection to your craft and your magic, and make it more meaningful and stronger. If you really like something, though, go for it!

If you aren’t the artistic sort, consider supporting an artist before going to a large company. While I haven’t purchased from them myself, Blagowood on Etsy has beautiful deity statues carved from wood by their small team in Ukraine for a comparable cost to the standard mass produced metal statues. I consider this extra labor of love going into these pieces and those of similar small companies to be much better energy for my practice. I myself may put out some art prints and other handmade supplies in the future, but I will likely spread them around my community first.

Try Secondhand Books. While not available in every area and further still not as available for witchcraft and occult books, you may strike luck! Not only are secondhand books less expensive, but you’ll be supporting a local business. That’s not to say you can’t buy firsthand books, but some searching around may be beneficial to the earth and to your wallet in the long run.

Be mindful of where you source supplies and decor. If you are a fan of taxidermy decor, make sure that you source cruelty free. Bats can practically never be sourced without cruelty, so if a shop carries them, I’d be mindful of their other specimens. The same goes for if a shop decides to forgo a culture’s wishes and carry supplies sacred to them, such as white sage or dreamcatchers. Supporting folks who turn a profit off of others’ suffering is not something many would wish to include energetically in their craft.

Search the Wild for Tools. Find sticks, flowers and other plants out in the forest. Learn how to rockhound in your area for crystals. Your craft will be more powerful the more connected it is to the land you are surrounded by. Be sure to reference guides for safety and legality!

Get Creative with Purposes. If you are having difficulty finding exactly what you need by thrifting or searching, make another tool multipurpose if it would do the job good enough. Find supplies that are easy to source and work as substitutes for other ingredients (ex. Quartz as a stand in for other stones)

Spend more time Doing. Go out into the woods (safely) and advance your connection to the earth instead of worrying over the perfect item for your collection. Your craft will benefit

At the end of the day, all of this is your decision. Take what you like, and leave what you don’t. Even if we don’t agree, I thank you for your time and open mind. I will continue updating about how I incorporate these steps, and I will also hopefully post more on witchy crafting in the future.

I wish you well, and hope you’ll decide to follow along on our journey!

[messiahzzz]

i have seen several posts around that addressed how discouraging gale from taking the crown of karsus is “keeping him from realizing his true potential.” that tara is merely upset at his choice, instead of being utterly devastated at the loss of her little love. that it’s not a bad ending per se because to get there he didn’t need to sacrifice 7000 innocent souls in the process. gale isn’t continuing the cycle of abuse either, he still appears to love tav and does come back for them to offer them ascension. he wants them to be equal, so it can’t possibly be an unhealthy dynamic, right?

but what of gale himself, his own convictions, values, and everything he holds dear? everything flawed and human that shaped him into the person he is?

player: are you saying you want to ascend? claim godhood?

gale: no, not like that. i don't want to join them. i want to better them. a god's powers, paired with a mortal conscience, a mortal heart.

gale’s motivation for acquiring godhood is that he will able to aid mortals in a way no other god has ever done before. he won’t hide behind pretense nor require blind devotion of his followers. he will understand and be able to empathize. he wholeheartedly believes that he will be different - he will act.

gale: [..] the gods could aid us if they wished, but instead they cower behind ao. so let us act ourselves.

gale believes that by becoming a god he will kill two birds with one stone: aid mortals and acquire enough power to quash any of his insecurities and enemies in the process. that by ridding himself of every perceived flaw he'll finally feel like he will have enough to offer - maybe, just maybe he'll even be content. his flaws are merely holding him back from becoming the best version of himself, and by ridding himself of everything fallible, he will be whole. maybe this is what all of his suffering has led up to. maybe the orb chose him. maybe the reason he had to endure all the pain, isolation, and excruciating loneliness was so that he could realize that he was meant for something even greater. after all, power feeds ambition. and what is more powerful than a god? his convictions were certainly naive, he possesses enough knowledge to know better. don't get me wrong, part of him definitely wants to spite mystra a lil. but his intentions at that time were mostly pure. a reflection of his self-hatred and feelings of inadequacy.

player: this is wrong, gale. that power will corrupt you, even if you can seize it.

gale: it won't, i swear to you. it's merely a tool - a means to an end.

once we meet gale at the party in his new godlike form, it is apparent that even with all the power at his fingertips, he has reached no greater knowledge about himself. his insecurities are still as present as before, he merely is less subtle in his compensation - repeatedly highlighting his grandeur and how dull life on faerun is compared to the wonders of elysium. it is also genuinely crushing to see how little he thinks of himself even now.

gale: i was nothing. a drifting dust mote of a wizard, abandoned by my goddess, my powers lost, my reputation destroyed. and look at me now. i'm their proof.

any perceived dismissal of his Greatness™ is met with immediate disdain.

gale: a bold decision to treat a divine being with such cold indifference.

nodecontext: aloof, annoyed you weren't impressed with him

gale: you mortals do love to live dangerously, don't you?

nodecontext: the slightest hint of a threat - you've probably made an enemy here today. or at least, you've lost a friend.

he is still desperate to impress. emphasizing what an honor it is that a new-born god chose to bless their little soiree with his presence. gaze upon all his divine glory! gale has now become the embodiment of everything he criticized about the gods. his original intentions and plans are discarded and long forgotten. he assuages his erstwhile companions by telling them to simply pray to him, in case they should ever require aid. if they're lucky and their ambition pleases him, he might even deliver.

player: what does the 'god of ambition' offer to his followers?

gale: i 'offer' them nothing. i inspire them to seize their destinies for themselves.

player: interesting, so you help mortals help themselves?

gale: precisely. though that isn't to say i'm averse to the odd bit of direct encouragement.

gale: [..] my aims are set a little higher than offering cursory blessings to just any half-decent spellcaster.

gale: regardless, ethical quandaries are more the remit of my mortal devotees. they do love to talk, and faerun is starting to listen.

aiding "any half-decent spellcaster" is unbefitting of his status. he isn't concerned with questions of ethics and morality either. deeming such matters beneath his divine capabilities.

once gale has ascended and established his domain, what remains of the gale we knew? what of his mortal heart?

minthara: your ambition is not cruel, but you fear that if you indulge it, you will lose yourself in the mysteries of the weave and unravel the world.

minthara: you are afraid of so many things, and it is that fear that keeps you true to yourself.

gale did lose himself and ultimately became one of his biggest fears. considering that his existence as a being of pure ambition leads him to constantly seek out greater heights, it isn't farfetched to believe that raphael's prediction will indeed come true.

player[astarion]: ambition? finally, a god i can get behind...

gale: i assure you, this is merely the prelude to a far grander vision. elysium's in for something of a shake-up.

all that remains of gale is a thin veneer of the person he used to be. what he presents is a hollow echo of the old gale. he does retain some of his mannerisms and quirks, but he is definitely a lot colder and more condescending. if his personality already changed that drastically after a duration of only 6 months, what will he inevitability turn into when he has eternity at his disposal?

essentially, you are aiding gale in the eradication of himself. eradicating everything about him that made him into the loveable, charismatic, awkward, kind, buoyant person he was. everything about him that he perceived as defective, flawed, and lesser-than. before, his hubris was merely an expression of his own discontentment and low self-worth, but now he is hubris incarnate. all of his worst qualities have been amplified.

gale: i am ambition incarnate. as indistinguishable from that most potent sensation as mystra herself is from the weave. and word is spreading.

nodecontext: palpable, almost unsettling excitement from him - hint of megalomania

he put his trust in tav, trusting their judgment and relying on them to nudge him in the right direction. after all, they had plenty of opportunities to show him that they are an ally worth following and confiding in. but in the end, the prospect of what he could be, the things he could give them, the enemies he could yet conquer, won over the desire to simply accept him and help him rebuild a life on solid ground. tav denied him the unconditional love he craves most out of their own selfish desires.

tara: you were looking out for him. i expected better of you.

as i've already mentioned, gale desires nothing more than to be seen, accepted, loved, and valued. having a partner who wholeheartedly supports and believes in him is enough to make him feel content. most importantly - he just wants to live. to enjoy life with everything it has to offer. his ambition can’t be quenched because he hungers still. believing that only by acquiring more power will he finally be enough and reach said acceptance.

we see in his good ending that his own contentment was even able to influence and (temporarily) sate the orb's ever-present hunger:

gale: [..] or perhaps the orb's hunger was fuelled by my own, and my contentment influences it in much the same way.

gale: that's how i feel with you - content. it's a rather unfamiliar feeling, i must say. not something gale of waterdeep ever craved.

it is devastating that he doesn't reach the same feeling of fulfillment if he chooses to pursue godhood, and is instead compelled to continuously surpass his own accomplishments. not being granted rest or reprieve.

gale: i achieved everything we hoped i would, and still i'm not good enough for you?

gale pursuing godhood isn't evidence that he "has been evil all along" or that he "just waited to be unleashed" either. we can't diminish tav's influence in this outcome, they are after all an extension of the player. able to steer every companion toward a path of redemption or to enable them in their worst traits. fandom has already established that by letting astarion ascend you are actively supporting him in becoming the very thing he despises most, putting your own ambitions and idea of what you want him to be above his healing, this is no different.

tara: the gale i knew wasn't like this. he recognised his mistakes. he was contrite. all he wanted to do was live.

tara: unfortunately, he fell into company that turned his gaze towards foolishness. yes, i mean you.

player: gale is his own man, tara.

tara: false. he was mine. though now he belongs only to his own pride.

yes, the epilogue cutscene is beautiful and there is something bittersweet and romantic about his love for tav being one of the few emotions that remained a constant throughout the past 6 months. he didn't need to come back for them, but he did cause he loves them still. no matter how warped his definition of love may be now. while it is abundantly clear that tav ranks lower on his priority list than they did before, his commitment remains.

gale fears isolation, hoping to never return to the time when he was hopeless and alone, stuck inside his tower. by heading in this direction he is once again creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

tara: [..] if i pretended you hadn't turned tail on every lesson you set out to learn, i'd have no right to call myself your friend.

morena may as well have already resigned herself to her son’s death. elminster partly blames himself. for his lapse in judgment, as well as being the one who plucked him from obscurity in the first place. mourning the kind, bright-eyed boy who cried at the scorched roses in his neighbor's garden. tara won't be here anymore to care and look out for him either. he has lost his oldest and dearest friend, the one who witnessed his downfall from grace and never left his side. who believed him to be the finest mind AND the finest wizard she's ever had the pleasure to know. who was certain that he’d find a way out of any crisis no matter the circumstances. ...and if tav declines his offer to ascend with him? what does he have left?

gale: yes, i am rather radiant, aren't i?

tara: don't flatter yourself, gale. you've debased yourself in ways i could never have fathomed.

tara: goodbye gale, i hope the heavens are worth it.

gale’s godhood ending deals with the loss of humanity, the loss of oneself, and everything one holds dear. it is a devastating and bone-chilling narrative. it is a tragedy.

gale: i hope you don't think less of me. great ambition should not come at the expense of what you already hold dear. i see that now.

if gale could see himself, he would be horrified at the losses he deemed necessary to get here. he would be horrified at what he’s become.

[osamucide]

⊹ SEMI-CHARMED LIFE

SHE COMES 'ROUND AND SHE GOES DOWN ON ME AND I MAKE HER SMILE LIKE A DRUG FOR YOU . . . ft. Sigma and Osamu Dazai

wc: 6.4k

cw: sigma x dazai x gn(they/them)+afab!reader, post-canon/canon divergent, language, some plot, explicit sexual content—MINORS DO NOT INTERACT, threesome, coaching/guiding, fingering, handjobs, cunnilingus, nipple play, penetration, double penetration, double creampie, spit, teasing, dirty talk, so much kissing, praise, communication, squirting, soft sex, rough sex, hints of fluff and angst, soft dazai, a little bit of mean dazai, switch leaning soft dom!dazai, switch leaning sub!+virgin!sigma, switch!reader, pet names (baby, sweetheart, slut, whore—last two used very affectionately), use of cunt/pussy referring to reader’s anatomy, gambling/strip poker, alcohol+slight dubcon on account of that but otherwise all parties are happily consenting prior, references to pm!reader (and ada!sigma if you squint) but it’s not super relevant, some spoilers for vampire infection outbreak arc/prison break, god will judge me when i’m dead

reid: i have limited knowledge of texas holdem and a huge boner for sigzai. that’s all enjoy

⊹ ⊹ ⊹

“Son of a bitch.”

You sigh and lift your martini to your lips again. It should be too late for a martini, but Sigma's living quarters in the casino is outfitted with a less-than-modest liquor cabinet and while he didn't strike you as much of a drinker himself at first—not while he was on the job, anyway—he could bartend like you wouldn’t have believed had you never seen him do it. Vodka martini, no olive, please.

He had transferred it from his hand to yours with a soft smile that echoed his customer service face; however, he was significantly and refreshingly off the clock, so he addressed you playfully, “007,” as he did and laughed a little as he settled back onto the bed, cross-legged in a triangle made up of you, him, and Dazai.

But that was hours ago. The martini you sip now is your third, and Dazai had graciously made himself at home enough to messily pour up shots between poker games, so it’s safe to say you’re at least a little drunk. Sigma had been looking on in quiet irritation at him spilling remnants of expensive alcohol all over the expensive snakewood. The casino manager couldn’t seem to help but be disarmed by the detective every time he turned around, though, face beneath his messy brown hair alight with intoxication and beaming as he distributed yet another over-poured ounce of sake to both of you still on the duvet. You all drank, poker commenced, money was won and lost.

But that was just the first game. There’s higher stakes this time around.

“I have to fold.” You curse at your shitty hand once more and glance to Dazai, who’s flicking all of his little plastic chips toward the pot.

Of course it was Dazai who’d suggested the stipulations for this game, and of course it’s Dazai who is now letting the words “I’m all in” roll off his tongue while he looks charmingly bored and tipsy.

A few games would not be enough to figure out Dazai’s tells. In fact, a few hundred games would probably not be enough to learn to read him. If it wasn’t evident enough already from his excitement about the idea that he was unconcerned about his chances of being the one with the most clothing left on, it’s certainly evident in the way he’s relaxed now, his fist propping him up by his cheekbone. He peeks at his cards again from where he lounges on his side before he looks up to Sigma with bright eyes and a grin, quiet with mischief.

Sigma could go either way, it seems, from the way his tongue pokes out the corner of his mouth as he idles with an unruly stack of chips. He’s far more expressive, but this is his livelihood; it showed when he faked Dazai out of a 30,000 yen pot last game. Still, this time, this showdown, he pushes the rest of his pile into the center. All in.

The detective flips his cards, pinched between his middle and index finger. Straight flush.

Sigma clicks his tongue and whips his cards down onto the duvet. Straight.

“Hah!” Dazai kicks his feet like a child before sitting up to hoard the large pile. “You both know the rules,” he sings, copying Sigma’s posture as he grabs handfuls of his newly-won chips and lets them rain down over his head. A couple fall into his empty whisky glass.

You and Sigma look briefly at one other before both holding your drinks out for the conniving bastard in front of you to hold, which he does. There’s no agreed-upon piece with which you would begin to undress, so, like any sane person, you reach for your socks.

“Mh-mm,” Dazai hums his dissent through a sip of your martini. “I wanna change one rule. Losers have to undress each other.”

You roll your eyes. “It’s socks, Osamu.”

“Precedent,” he claims with a shrug, switching to take a sip of Sigma’s French 75.

So you and Sigma commence removing each other’s socks in a way that particularly lacks even a little sexiness, but when Dazai starts giggling, you both do, too. You ball Sigma’s socks up and toss them at Dazai’s head, which he dodges and swats back at Sigma. Sigma chucks your own socks at you in return for the indirect fire.

“Hey!” you bite jokingly through your teeth, discarding your socks off the little island of a bed that you exist on right now with these two men, and a moment of reflection strikes you as Dazai buries his face in his hands and Sigma almost tips backwards as they both laugh.

It started months ago in Meursault when you tumbled into the block where Gogol was challenging Dazai and Fyodor to his game after freeing them from the Infinite Dice Room. You, as a low-profile, high-priority Port Mafia affiliate aligned closely with the gravity user Chuuya Nakahara, had followed him into the prison as reinforcement; how Gogol and Dostoevsky were even aware of your existence then, you still aren’t sure. But you ended up there, watching Dazai and Fyodor shoot up lethal poison before dispersing to make their escape. You originally stayed with Nikolai to watch it unfold, but scampered off at some point when Chuuya appeared in danger of drowning. Your ultimate goal had been to help the Detective Agency and by proxy Dazai, but you’d be damned if you stood by while your executive was in a dire situation. It all turned out well, except for Sigma’s prolonged comatose state immediately after the prison break and everything that followed. But all that wasn’t important—not to right now, anyway.

What sticks in your mind and resurfaces now was the way you had watched on the monitor as Dazai—a former associate of yours, to say the least—paraded Sigma through the halls of the prison, teasing him, poking at him, dancing with him. It would’ve been borderline-adorable behavior from anyone sane in a normal situation, but Dazai had a way of driving people to the edge with the timing of his antics, and Sigma was quick to crumble under the pressure of the circumstance. What sticks more is how quickly the casino manager surrendered his trust to the quirky brunette inmate along their journey out of the building that day.

And what sticks most is how Dazai looked at him.

You remember observing a hint of something in his gaze that was usually only reserved for people who held important information, nurses in hospitals who’d taken his phone, occasionally you and Chuuya back in the day if he was feeling especially unhinged—the like.

And you remember looking at Sigma the same way over the screen—all sharp features, milky skin, elegant locks, and a hot trigger finger. His conviction over his purpose was alluring to you, who always understood your purpose to be pure survival. To Dazai, whose purpose seemed to be dying. Sigma was something entirely different from either of you, and when you all reconnected by the chance of business after the chaos, it was difficult to ignore the feelings dredged up from such a stressful time. It wasn’t like you’d always had your eye on Dazai or anything—no, surely not—but anyway, the click between the three of you back in Yokohama was inevitably pursued outside of work. A former DOA associate, an Armed Detective, and a Port Mafia subexecutive meeting up in the Sky Casino for drinks and Texas hold ‘em was certainly unprofessional in one capacity or another, sure, but you can hardly find it in yourself to care as Dazai hands you your martini back, face pink from cracking up.

It’s funny to you, how you never feel out of place between them. Sigma is leaning over onto your shoulder to stifle his dying laughter. You just shake your head as Dazai picks up the cards to deal.

The next game whirls by. You are the first to end up without a shirt, where Dazai and Sigma, both with their seemingly endless respective streams of luck, split the winnings over an evenly-matched two pair. You sit sheepishly after it’s your turn to deal, trying desperately, now that you’re losing in a tangible way (the three of you never use real money), to conjure up ways to gain back some ground and maybe not finish out the night as the only one naked.

“Sigma, deal,” Dazai purrs as if this isn’t Sigma’s show. You have your arms crossed over your chest as two cards flutter down in front of you, and you look at them, thinking, hoping—yes, maybe if Sigma would put a Jack down you could—

But any strategy you’re beginning to formulate is effectively zapped off, like a power button on a remote extinguishing a television’s display, as Dazai takes your wrists in his hands and guides them down to your lap.

“Why are you sitting like that?” he asks so innocently. “You’re hot. Stop hiding.”

You’d be blushing if it wasn’t for the alcohol making an appearance on your cheeks already. You giggle a little again, his touch making you feel more lightheaded than anything you’ve drank thus far. Sigma turns to you for your action, but your eyes are locked onto Dazai’s, so he does the only thing that makes the most sense in his own intoxicated mind—he grips your chin, not too harshly, and turns your head toward himself, in all his pastel, angelic beauty.

“Your turn,” Sigma says gently. While he doesn’t comment on what Dazai has said, and although his hand doesn’t hold the same menace that Dazai’s seems to, the tilt of his lips speaks a silent agreement.

Just as both of their fingers are beginning to overwhelm you, they retreat.

And you look down at your cards again, and your train of thought is as good as gone.

“Um—sorry, uh…”

You push 6000 yen into the pot, and Dazai follows.

And soon enough, like clockwork, you’re removing your pants—no, Dazai is removing your pants as Sigma gathers his winnings, and you’re unbuttoning Dazai’s shirt, and this has to be some sort of plot against you, you think, because the room is suddenly hotter, nevermind the alcohol, and you swear Dazai and Sigma are exchanging looks the way you and Dazai had months ago before leaving Meursault.

But you keep your composure. If there’s one thing you were used to dealing with, it’s sexy, scheming men, and it’s rare you ever let them get the best of you. Poker aside, you won’t crack. You can’t. Your drunkenness, now subsiding into hazy exhaustion and a twinge of need you won’t admit to yourself just yet, bolsters your pride, if anything. These two will not break you. You’ll make sure it’s the other way around first.

Another two games pass, and you finally have the mind and hand to win, which is what leads you to the scene of Sigma inching Dazai’s underwear down his thighs.

The casino manager’s face is broken out madly. He’d lost his own shirt but in all remains the most clothed out of all three of you; your dignity is preserved in your undergarments, and Dazai only ‘tsks as he steps out of his boxers just to lay back down on his side, propped up on his hand, in his spot on the bed.

“Well,” the detective laments, his practiced dramatics coming out to play. “I’ve officially lost. What to do now…?”

You look as unfazed as you can by Dazai’s nudity; Sigma’s eyes, however, are everywhere but the brunette.

You hum thoughtfully, considering your nails. You have your little heatstroke from before under control, it seems, but you’re biting your bottom lip raw at the shift in the energy of the room.

You crawl to sit against the headboard of the bed, shooing Dazai out of your way as you do so—it’s the same luxurious snakewood that the liquor cabinet is made from, and it doesn’t budge when you lean back against it. Dazai sits beside you, one leg curled beneath him and the other hanging off the edge of the bed as you kick the duvet down at Sigma, adjusting yourself so your bare legs are extended and crossed at the ankle. You smirk, only softly. Dazai scoots closer to you when your pinkie wraps around one of his fingers.

Sigma, hunched in on himself at the end of the bed, breathes deeply as you turn your gaze to him and pat the spot on the other side of you. He’s willed up by the expectant look on Dazai’s face, and he takes his seat at your side; he looks to the brunette across your side profile, and you hook each of your legs over one of theirs.

“What else is there to do?”

The question comes from you as you look between them, stroking both their knuckles; Dazai’s expression grows more sinister by the second, and he looks past you too, to Sigma, whose eyes are wide. You follow Dazai’s vision.

Sigma gulps and finds himself nodding. He knows what at, but he can’t bring himself to say it as you flick your gaze down to his parted lips.

You lean in.

“This okay?”

He’s still nodding. His head only stills when your hand leaves Dazai’s and reaches up to cup his face.

And you kiss Sigma with an open mouth. He shivers and leans into you. Your hand falls back to blindly search for Dazai’s cock.

Dazai is half-hard just watching you slip your tongue past Sigma’s lips; you thumb his tip teasingly, giving him a few squeezes and drawing soft breaths from him as the pastel-haired man reaches up for your neck. It’s obvious Sigma’s never kissed anyone like this before, but he follows your lead like a first-time ballroom partner, letting you nip the beginnings of moans out of him as Dazai watches, watches.

When you pull back, Sigma is in awe. His eyes don’t open for a few seconds, and you smile, endeared.

“You’re a good kisser, Sigma.”

His eyes snap open. “R-really?”

You nod. “But I think Osamu could train you even better.”

Something flashes across Sigma’s face—not discontent or anxiety but pure surprise, and you turn back to Dazai for his appraisal. He’s biting the inside of his cheek as your fingers work him up and down, torturously slow. Before anything else can happen, you lean into Dazai; he’s eager to receive your lips, force the gasps that belong to you into your mouth. You think you’ll play them like a pair of cymbals, if they let you. If Dazai lets you. It’s looking like he might.

You tilt your head back as Dazai works his way down your throat, leaving bruising bite marks as you touch him. You find Sigma glazed over in awe—the next thing you do is encourage his face toward yours again, so you can kiss him while Dazai marks you. You don’t hold back the sighs that come from your diaphragm. Sigma swallows your breath with greed. You cup his jaw, your noses bump; he grows more confident by the second, and as Dazai traverses back up your neck, you leave him whining, removing your hand from his cock to push the two men’s faces together.

Soft hums reverberate between their kiss. You look proudly upon your work as their hands find one another, frantically, on jaws, on shoulders, on chests. Sigma reaches to pick up where you left off, but second guesses himself.

“It’s okay,” you whisper to him. “Right, Osamu?”

“Mmhm.” Dazai bites into the other man’s bottom lip. Sigma yelps into the lack of air between them. You guide his hand, which finds Dazai at his base and sends him moaning into the kiss.

With your hand wrapped around Sigma’s wrapped around Dazai, you latch onto Dazai’s neck to return his bites. Your head buzzes with anticipation; it’s so hot to watch them, low-lidded and on two different levels of experience, talking to each other without speaking. You move Sigma’s hand up, down, up, down. Dazai breaks away to let a full-bodied moan into the air; he makes up for contact by resting his forehead against Sigma’s, peering down at where the two of you are working him into a mess.

“That’s it,” Dazai pants, but he looks smug. “Unh—feels good.”

“Hear that?” With your free hand you tuck a thick lock of Sigma’s silvery hair behind his ear as you mumble into it. “You’re doing so good.”

“Tell me what to do,” Sigma breathes, and he sounds so desperate that it makes you throb. “Don’t know what ‘m doing, please, tell me what to do.”

“Exactly what you’re already doing.” You let go of his hand and let him stroke Dazai by himself. Dazai nods weakly, needily, cock twitching as Sigma explores; the pale-haired man’s thumb circles his tip the same way yours did, but faster. When you lean over to spit on his cock over Sigma’s hand, the brunette’s jaw falls slack and the two melt into another kiss; you don’t even have to enlist Dazai’s hands as, through his pleasure, he fumbles for you. You uncross your ankles, and he rubs you impatiently over the final bit of cloth that remains on your body. Your lips find Sigma's throat next.

All heaving breath against each other, you move like this for a bit, learning one another. Dazai reaches to pop the button on Sigma’s pants as he’s tugging at your underwear at the same time.

You both turn your focus to Sigma as you kick your last layer off; he stumbles upward, back onto his feet, and you and Dazai pursue him as he’s helping you both push his pants and boxers off in one collaborative swipe. He’s never been hard like this before—sure, Sigma’s not a stranger to sexual arousal, but he’s only ever touched himself. Call it a side effect of the imposter syndrome or throwing himself into his casino or the fact that this is his first time being alive, but as Dazai sits on the edge of the bed looking like a hungry animal and you toss his pants away, he can’t imagine why any two people as physically gorgeous, intellectually dominant, and purpose-driven as the two of you would want to engage with him like this. He’s excited, he can’t deny it—his cock is straining almost painfully as it bobs in the air now—but there’s a line of tears forming on his lash line, and you’re fast to catch him.

“Sigma,” you call him back from inside his head. Dazai’s fingers have found his hip; they rest there tenderly. “Sigma. We can stop. It’s okay.”

“No,” Sigma all but cries. He aches to be touched the same way you and himself were both touching Dazai. “No, no, don’t stop, I just—I’m—”

A single tear splits down his pretty pale skin. He looks back and forth between you both.

“Sigma,” you say firmly. “Talk to us. It’s important.”

“I—” He gathers himself, voice cracking only once. “I want this. I want it so bad. I can’t believe I deserve it. You’re both… I just don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t want to... not be good.”

You look to Dazai, who looks uncharacteristically tired for a moment; it’s an understatement to say he understands exactly what Sigma is trying to articulate, but he’s not a man of sentiment, so you pick up the slack. Collaborative. You wind your fingers between Sigma’s and lead him to sit next to Dazai.

You stand, bare, in front of the two of them, also bare; they’re both so beautiful in their own ways. Dazai, with his dark features, cutting cheekbones, flexing jaw, bandages outlining the contours of all his lean muscle. Sigma, all heavenly light, awkward hands, unmarked skin, thin sheen of glistening sweat.

“You don't need to worry,” you reassure him. “We just want you. Right, Osamu?”

“Mmhm,” Dazai hums again. Not a man of sentiment, but he presses a series of kisses to Sigma’s cheek before smiling devilishly. “We’ll take care of you. How about that? Teach you how to fuck.”

Sigma shudders at his words; his eyes still flit nervously, but fall at rest when you sit opposite Dazai and run your fingertips across his thigh.

“Yes,” he responds just above a whisper. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Dazai echoes.

“Okay.” And you. “Can we touch you? Or d’you wanna watch us?”

Sigma contemplates. His cock jumps at the mere mental image of watching Dazai fuck you; he could get off like that and be totally content, but his mind drifts back to your hands, Dazai’s hands, and how selfishly he was campaigning for you both to touch him just minutes ago. “Touch me, please.”

Now it’s you looking across Sigma’s side profile at Dazai. He mirrors the look in your eye, and you lean over to press a kiss to the brunette's lips before you traverse the plane of Sigma’s chest. Dazai reaches for his cock.

And just like that, Sigma is in heaven. His hands fall behind him on the bed to steady himself as Dazai goes through a motion Sigma’s performed so many times on himself, but it feels so much better now—he doesn’t know if it’s Dazai’s calloused fingertips or the curling heat you both create in his pelvis by just kissing him, talking to him, loving on him—and he’s throwing his head back, embarrassed to make noise but in such ecstasy that he can’t help it, won’t help it. You giggle lightheartedly against the shell of his ear when he does, and he loves it. Loves it. Wants it to last forever. Dazai sucks on his collarbone and you tweak his nipples and he’s twitching, twitching, building up so quickly he’s afraid he’ll be spent soon.

"'M gonna... oh—gonna cum if you don't s-stop—"

But it isn't a request to, so when you and Dazai's hands both leave him, he's sent reeling just like you were during the last game. Sigma's chin meets his chest as he recovers from what feels like Dazai's revenge for the bluff that worked on him earlier, and he looks at you both, glazed over with lust.

Your eyes are so warm when they slide from Dazai back to him.

“So handsome. You’re gorgeous, Sigma.” It hardly matters who says it—the other agrees.

“Tell us what you want.”

"Well, um," he asserts, pulling his shaky legs up into himself and leading you by the arms to pull you back to the headboard. "This part seems pretty self-explanatory. Dazai, I think you should show me how to..."

You perch at the head of the bed again as he trails off, and Dazai looks like he's ready to have fun with what's coming next.

"Show you how to...?" he prompts Sigma to finish his sentence, and Sigma's nudging his way between your legs; your lips turn upward at his burst of enthusiasm, and the words get stuck a bit as he settles on his stomach in front of you.

"Touch them. I've really never done this before." He blinks up at Dazai. Weaponized incompetence has never been so sensual.

And Dazai takes the bait and crawls next to him, gripping your thigh a little too hard as he presses his shoulder to Sigma's. "Certainly. Give it your best shot, I wanna see what I'm working with here." It's so natural for Dazai to take on the mentorship position, even in this situation. You can't help the way you giggle at them; their eyes linger on each other a second too long to imply nothing before Sigma turns his attention to you.

You think he'll start with fingering you, but he dips his head down and goes right for your cunt—you're unable to suppress the oh! that leaves you as he licks a sensual and slow stripe from your hole to your clit. Knowing Sigma, you understand that his mind is probably still swimming with self-doubt as he rolls his eyes up to yours, but you can't find any of it. It's all too hot. His pretty pink lips undulate as he tastes you, delicately, and Dazai lets out a surprised noise of his own.

"Seems like you’re alright." Dazai's grinning. "But I'll help you out. Stay there."

So Sigma latches onto your clit, drawing another series of gasps out of you, and Dazai plunges his middle finger into you. You’re so slick, so ready for them that there's no resistance; Sigma's experimenting with his tongue, then his lips, then alternating, and Dazai keeps digging his fingertips into your thigh, your hip, as he works you open on his hand.

"God, with how wet you are, I think we could get you to take both of us."

Your eyes—which you hadn't realized had fallen shut as you wound each of your hands in either of their heads of soft hair—fly open at that. Sigma pulls away too. Tortorous.

"At the same time?" You're unsure if it comes out of your mouth, too, but Sigma asks it—with a sense of wonder that, had you said it, would've been overshadowed with a little apprehension. Dazai looks up to you for approval.

And while it's daunting—neither of them are small, that's for sure—you can't help the way your hips roll at the thought of being stuffed with them both. At the same time. How intimate it would inevitably be, their cocks pressed together as they fuck you. So you nod, vigorously.

"Gotta get 'em ready, though," he lectures to Sigma, snapping back to his instructorly tone as his hand falls on top of yours in his two-toned hair, pushing his face back into your cunt. "Put that mouth to work. You got it, baby."

Sigma hums against you at the nickname and the vibration sends your head lolling back again; Dazai looks wicked as he straddles your leg, still reaching down to split you open, now on three fingers instead of one or two. He kisses you hard.

The attention from both of them is unbelievable—you see now what had them both falling apart so quickly. Something about two sets of hands wandering your body sets lights off behind your eyes. Sigma’s reaching up to paw at your chest, flicking and pinching your nipples the same way you had his; before you know it you’re panting like a dog into Dazai’s mouth and soaking the bed below you.

“Fuck—you two.” You’ve got one hand still twined in Sigma’s hair. You’re almost grinding onto his nose, and he’s lapping up everything you’re giving him like a good boy. Your other arm winds around Dazai’s neck as you pull him closer and bend your knee to nudge his balls. He humps against what you give him. Lewd, wet sounds fill your ears.

“That’s the plan,” Dazai singsongs, pretty teeth visible. Amidst your frantic hips, he shuffles behind you, never breaking the heated kiss you share more than he has to. Those teeth find your lips and you gasp, you moan, you’re so impressed at how quickly Sigma is picking up on this new art, and with so little instruction, really—he watches you and Dazai make out from his place between your thighs and thrusts his hips against the bed at the sight. You notice.

“Sigma, come up here.”

His lips leave your cunt hesitantly; truth be told, your taste is more inebriating than all the alcohol he’s had. He’s rock hard, and you split your attention between him and Dazai as you lift your hips up, arch, and angle Dazai’s cock against your pussy.

His lips catch Sigma’s as he sinks into you; a whine falls from you at the stretch, and you can feel Dazai shake as he waits to move. When he parts from the kiss, he wraps his hands beneath either of your thighs, spreading you open wide.

Sigma all but gawks at the way Dazai’s dick is buried in you from below. You reach behind you, give his brown hair a tug that has Dazai thrusting up roughly, and Sigma would let your moan shatter his eardrums, his entire being, if he could. He sees the whites of your eyes, the white of Dazai’s fingertips as he grips you hard, the white of Dazai’s precum and your slick dripping down onto the sheets, and his hips lunge forward at nothing. Your cunt looks delicious. Dazai looks delicious, all furrowed brows and bitten lips and groans that bubble up from his chest. He fucks you fast.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck—Osamu! Unh, uh-huh—”

Dazai echoes your own name back to you. “Yeah, fuck—you feel so good.”

All the combined sounds are like a symphony to Sigma. He palms his own cock; no way he can cum just watching now, he decides. He needs to be in you. He doesn’t want to be an observer. Sigma catches Dazai’s eyes as if to say can I? But Dazai’s already smirking and breathlessly slipping out of you, holding you up and open still as you reach for Sigma with one hand and will him into you. You suck him in, god—thank god you’re already so wet and fucked open, because he’s not an inch inside of you before he loses himself and thrusts forward wildly.

“There you go,” Dazai encourages, grinning as the pale-haired man’s composure crumbles. “Isn’t that pussy heaven? Just like that, Sigma. They’re fuckin’ creamin’ all over you, look.”

Look, as if his rosé eyes could possibly leave the place where you’re swallowing him in. Sigma’s grunting—he’s never known himself to be noisy during pleasure, but this is another level, your cunt so warm and milky and squeezing him like you’ll never let him go.

The curtain of Dazai’s bangs falls across your shoulder as he kisses you there, mutters filthy musings into your ear while he watches Sigma sink into you over, over, over.

“How’d’they feel?”

Sigma’s unprepared for the way his own voice sounds, wound tight and concentrated while he tries and fails miserably not to whine. All that voice turns into babbling. “So—so, so fucking good, I’m—ah, I’m gonna fucking cum—”

"Woah, woah, alright. Not yet. Give 'em a breather. They're gonna need it, after all." Dazai's still laughing as he puts the brakes on Sigma with his feet—that's especially funny to him, but the way Sigma almost chokes at the way Dazai stops him is even better. Sigma, all sweat and arousal, sinks back onto his knees. You, too, squirm at the loss of stimulation, pushing soft lavender and silver off his forehead where it sticks; when Sigma’s hips don’t quite quit, even with nothing around his cock, Dazai chuckles out a “Looks like you need it, too.”

You trace Sigma’s tangling fingers as you catch your breath, interlocking both your hands with his. Dazai lets up on your legs—your hips will thank him later—letting the flex back into a more comfortable position. Your back rests against his chest, and he plays with your clit lazily.

“This is gonna take some patience, okay?” Dazai is addressing Sigma more than you; you’re guiding Sigma’s hands down to your cunt where he and Dazai move in a figure eight that keeps you occupied.

They're gonna need it, after all is what's registering in your mind. "Osamu—" you start, but he's shushing you.

Once again, Sigma's watching Dazai ride you up by your thighs so he can buck up into you, much more tactfully than the pale-haired man was just seconds ago. Perhaps more neglected than either of you at this point, Dazai's voice is gruff as you squelch around him.

“Oh, fuck, sweetheart. Hah." His teeth sink into your shoulder as you croon.

"Dazai—" Sigma starts this time, but the other man answers all his questions with a single look.

"You’re gonna go back to what you were doing,” Dazai breathes, his gaze trained on Sigma as you writhe.

“Please, both of you—”

“Be patient,” Dazai means to snap at you but it’s too melted, too lovey. Anyway, he’s egging you on with his next words. “C’mon, Sigma, you’re gonna give ‘em what they want, right?”

And Sigma nods like he’s in a trance—your cunt already looks full around Dazai, but he needs urgently to be in you next to him. He thinks he’ll explode in all the wrong ways if you don’t let him in. He needs it, so he lines himself up below your clit, above Dazai, looking for anywhere he can slip in; it takes some of Dazai’s fingers, some of yours, but soon enough he feels the veins of Dazai’s cock on his underside and your pulsing walls to the top of him. He’s in. He’s actually in, and his head falls onto your shoulder, and it takes everything in him not to let his full weight slump directly onto you and Dazai. You’re bleating, sobbing, laughing through the stretch, and when Sigma’s tip nestles next to Dazai’s deep inside you, you feel full. Whole.

“I’m gonna stay still.” Dazai sounds just as affected as both of you, but he keeps his facade up a few seconds longer to guide you both to the beginning of the end. “Want you to fuck them, Sigma. Hard.”

And he doesn’t need to be told twice. It’s difficult to pull back and push in at first—you’re so fucking tight and Dazai’s so fucking big, and even though you’re spread apart, Sigma feels like he can’t get close enough to you. Your cunt weeps around both of them, protesting the stretch that your brain adores, but you let up. And he fucks you, soft at first, and then hard.

All three of you are jumbled noise; skin on skin, teeth on lips, moans on shoulders, wet smacking and sliding and sobbing as you take both of them. Your gut heats up with each push, each pull, each frantic grasp, each broken sound the two men let out as they frot inside of you; Dazai’s biting your shoulder again, letting his sweet little protégé do the work. Sigma digs his nails into you wherever he can find purchase.

“Oh—fuckin’ harder, Sigma, baby, please—” you beg.

“Our pretty boy fuckin’ you good?” Dazai doesn’t wait for you to answer. “You gonna go stupid on his cock, huh?”

Sigma couldn’t answer the question even if it wasn’t rhetorical; all of his coherence is gone, and you took it. His thrusts grow erratic, remarkably unpracticed and blatantly virgin, but the repeated pounding of the head of his cock against the entrance to your cervix makes your eyes impossible to keep open, then impossible to keep closed, so you teeter between hyperalert and falling apart. Dazai rubs your clit as Sigma pushes your knees further back with sudden aggression, pins your thighs closer to your shoulders as he fucks you and creates an otherworldly friction against Dazai. He’s gone, he’s lost, and he looks so gorgeous whimpering and whining, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he screws his eyes shut and his mouth falls open over and over again. If anyone’s going stupid, it’s Sigma.

But the longer he fucks you, the more limp you fall; your head falls to rest on Dazai's shoulder as Sigma puts everything into you, and the brunette laughs like the asshole he is, even through this. He’s hardly doing better than either of you, though, and his words fly.

“My two beautiful little fuckin’ sluts, so—unh, so hot. So hot. Look at what I turned you into.”

Neither of you have any hope of answering. His voice just throttles you forward, and Sigma’s grunts ante up—he’s almost yelling, shouting as he exerts himself, as he does everything his body will let him to get himself there, and bring you with him, too.

“Ah! Angh—anh—ah, ah, ugh!”

And you reply with, “Ah! Unh—oh, oh, oh, please, please, please!”

And Dazai drinks it all up, finally letting his eyes roll back as he pulls Sigma down for one more messy kiss—one that sends Sigma headfirst into his orgasm, and he cums, rutting into you while your cunt spasms, squirts, begs for Dazai to follow. It’s like white heat rolling off of him in waves; Sigma’s brows lift as if finding a sort of clarity, and your eyes are wide as you clutch the two men, and Dazai follows shortly after—the mixture of their cum inside you sings the most disgusting and yet most satisfying sounds of the evening. Your legs snap shut around Sigma’s waist as he rides all three of you out, all sweat and tears and incredulous moans that die as he slows to a stop, still stuffed inside of you.

Three pairs of lips are dry, bitten raw—chapstick’s the first thing on Sigma’s mind as his head clears, but he feels himself and Dazai spill out of you, and you and he both reach for him, pulling him down into the pillows as whatever dream the three of you just exited settles around you like dust. He’s sticky, too, but he doesn’t hate it—how can he when you’re between them, throwing one leg over Sigma’s waist and tangling the other with Dazai’s behind you? You head falls into the crook of Sigma’s elbow, and his other arm drapes over Dazai’s, which holds you close by your waist as Dazai’s chin settles on top of your head—not unlike a three-piece puzzle, snapped together and in your right place.

“Oh, fuck.” You’re still leaking. “That was wonderful. Both of you.”

Dazai chuckles again. Unnervingly charming, even after cumming so damn hard. Sigma doesn’t want to know what he looks like himself.

“Who knew there was a whore in the casino man?”

You smack Dazai’s arm, but now you’re all laughing again, even Sigma. He feels… proud. You look so satisfied, so tired. The way your eyes slide shut after pressing such affection into his own prompts him to do the same.

Tired as he may be, though, he can’t lie and say that he’s not still incredibly turned on—you wiggle a little to get comfortable between them, and Sigma feels his cock spring back to life when you brush him, when your fingertips skate over the small of his back. He can’t reflect on what just happened—it’ll have him hard again in seconds.

“Excited again already, huh?” Dazai pokes. Sigma’s face burns.

“Ugh,” you groan out of sheer exhaustion, “if we go again, you’re both taking turns.”

Dazai looks thoughtful. “Hmm. Perhaps we could reprise rock, paper, scissors.”

And Sigma, having begun to nod, stops. “Absolutely not.”

[mysteria157]

Pairing: Demon! Nanami Kento x Angel Black!Fem Reader

Rating/CW: grey morality, religious undertones, corruption kink, worship, power dynamics (subtle fem submission), monsterfucking, smut, tongue fingering, pronged tongue, vaginal sex, oral (f! receiving), mild blood/biting. MDNI!

Summary: The thick muscle of your wings press against cold ancient stone as he circles you with wicked, stone-faced intent. Glimmering obsidian fingers trace along your feathers until they quiver--fluttering with touch-starved bliss no angel should ever feel. It's forbidden--this sensation in your belly, this humiliating slick between your legs that be can smell, this overwhelming desire that you've spent eons trying to quell.

But now, trapped before a demon so captivating that you can't help but feel equally terrified and dreadfully aroused, reality burns your skin like the holy water that bubbles whenever it's within your reach.

You're not here to serve a divine purpose--you're an offering. And only Heaven knows if you'll fall to your knees before him, begging for corruption.

Author Notes: Here it is! My submission for @tsukimefuku 's Spookinky event! I had so much fun writing this. Thank you, Fuku, for hosting such an awesome event, and I truly apologize for the filth (I do not apologize). Thank you all for your support, and thank you, @aliasnnmknt, for letting me use your art for my banner and helping me create it. Your art really inspired most of this fic!

Header: art by @aliasnnmknt | Divider: @arcielee @enchanthings | network tag: @pixelcafe-network

JJK Masterlist | Twitter | Ao3

©mysteria157, all rights reserved. DO NOT copy, plagiarize, reupload, modify, or translate (without permission) my work to other accounts and platforms.

You’ve never set foot in a demon’s realm.

You’ve heard the stories—flames that burn flesh from bone, screams that echo for eternity, demons that feast on corrupted souls. For the many eons that you have been in existence, the pristine light you thrive in tells enough horrid stories to keep you away.

You do what you can to show you are pure in your thoughts and heart and that you will walk the line given to make the one above you proud in His selection of you. You’ve done well. It’s why you’ve been given this task—a pilgrimage to a sacred altar within this dark realm, to find the relic it holds and be promised enlightenment and a deeper connection to your spiritual life. For once, you feel special. You are special.

The relic you search for holds ancient divine text that the Heavens would like to make sure does not fall into the wrong hands. Your ability to decipher that text and other old tongues made you the perfect choice—though you try not to question why that ability exists at all. This mission feels important and they insisted you were the perfect choice. Your gifts would serve the greater good. Serve Him.

Maybe that’s why they sent you alone. A single angel, moving quietly through dark territory, would draw less attention than an entire group.

Finally, after so many years of wary glances and hushed concerns. Your many ‘gifts’ that have set you apart—the way ancient texts rearrange themselves under your touch, how you see patterns in chaos that other angels cringe from, your thirst for knowledge that shouldn’t be explored. Finally, it’s all paid off.

Or…at least that’s what they told you. Even as something in your grace whispers warnings you choose to ignore.

Angels bask in absolutes, in the pure warmth of divine light and the straightforward clarity of purpose. There is certainty in right and wrong, never a grey in between. Your wings should bask in holy breeze, not in this thick air that tastes of dreadful sin.

You expected the realm to smell of death and destruction, to look as if every natural disaster had run through the land so the shadows could roam freely to commit sin. It’s what you’ve been taught at least. This Realm specifically is forbidden and faith has been used as a boundary to keep other angels in line.

The outskirts of this realm is covered in a haze, a thick russet fog that smells of ozone and decaying flowers. It settles on your skin like an uncomfortable garment, scratching the surface and burning your dermis. Your wings curdle in pain, burning to ash and regrowing through your bleeding muscles. Gnarled, skeletal trees reach up like claws, the birds that sit on their branches malnourished and dying. Distantly, you hear the constant drip of water from a faucet, yet there is no water in sight. Whispers of sin and moans of agony carry on the wind.

Your white dress flows like liquid moonlight, now stained with ash and ember burns. The neckline dips lower than most angels would prefer.

“To be comfortable in the vessel He gave you is to honor His creation.”

Is what they had said, their justification now seems like a cruel irony as the fog caresses your exposed cleavage with burning fingers. The bottom of your dress trails on the ground as you walk, the dirt burning with red soil that seeps through the toes of your bare feet. It feels as if you’re walking on hot coals, the heat burning the fabric of your hem in tendrils of smoke.

You knew to expect this pain, but it’s different. There is a calculated precision to it, intentional in how it burns you as if testing if your form is solid, if your soul is worthy of corruption. The bell sleeves of your gown flutter in a nonexistent wind, ash and soot collecting in the folds of fabric that they once praised as divine elegance.

Your eyes burn, tears streaking melanin-soaked skin that cannot absorb the shrouded sun up above. As you navigate blindly through the oppressive haze, the shadows around you morph with the darkness and skitter past you on multiple hands and contorted feet.

An infinitesimal part of your grace shivers in fear. It’s small yes, pushed away and ignored like you have been taught, but it’s there in the quickening of your pulse and the break of sweat on your neck, it’s there as you walk further through the vicious landscape of horror and pain, as you try to ignore the gurgling of what you do not know from all around you.

Your wings curl around your body, a small gesture of protection that you fall into when the fog gets thicker. It slides languidly up your nostrils and down your throat, catching along the corners. You cough, sputtering wildly through ash and decay, your eyes bubbling with more burning tears. That fear flickers again in your chest and wiggles like a worm in search of moist dirt in your rib cage.

You can do this. You have been chosen. Your lips curl and part as you recite your prayer in silence, asking for strength even as your fear climbs higher to the surface of divine worship.

Then—through burning tears, you see it. A path of pure obsidian that cuts through the horror, its surface covered in a thin layer of water that reflects starlight not in the skies above. Your feet pick up in pace, moving before conscious thought, drawn to its dark beauty and vast difference of the world around. The moment your toes dip into the water-slicked stone, the moisture sliding off your skin without wetting it, everything changes.

The burning on your skin and feathers stops. The pungent fog parts like a curtain and dissipates into the air. You pull in a deep breath, savoring the thickness that is no longer there, your throat coated in clean oxygen. Your dress, moments ago stained with ash and fiery burns, returns to its pristine white. Once the tears in your eyes clear, you take in the changed landscape.

Perhaps the realm only transforms if one gets this far, because now there is no destruction but a defiance of what you see. The sky is tinged a permanent grey, overcast even though there’s a warmth to the low hang of the clouds. There are no lakes of fire, and the ground beneath your feet is no longer hot with clay-colored dirt that seeps between your toes. The obsidian path winds before you through tall garden walls of pearly white flowers, the leaves pitch black instead of earthly green.

Above the dark canopy of the garden walls, a monolith looms tall, piercing the grey sky as if demanding to be let into the heavens. It’s built to resemble a vast tree, its surface rippling with starlight, the bright core pulsing like a heartbeat, beckoning you deeper into this realm of misconstrued beauty. The garden path must lead to it. Even the pearly white flowers weaved into the walls all point forward, ushering you on.

Your wings furl closer to your spine as you shuffle to one of the garden walls, hesitantly reaching for the flowers twined in the vines and leaves. It’s a beautiful white, with small petals that curl toward a sage core. They’re littered along the walls, a beautiful landscape against darkness but the closer you get, the more you realize—

Hemlock

A poisonous flower, the symbol of death, betrayal, and sacrifice. It sits in it’s refined beauty, enhancing the black leaves around you, but they are just as dangerous.

You snatch your hands away as if stung, clutching the fabric of your dress like a lifeline. You try not to think about how the hemlock watches you with pale eyes. You try not to think about what they represent. You try not to question why these flowers would point and line a path to the divine relic you seek.

With every step you take, the pulsing from the monolith in the distance vibrates through the ground, the water rippling currents with each beat. The obsidian path narrows, forcing your wings closer to your body, your arms so close to the deadly blooms. The garden walls rise higher, leaves trembling in that same empty breeze.

While the air no longer feels thick, it is heavy with a taste both nonexistent and flavorful. Flavored with the knowledge you seek when others do not look and secrets that make your eyes linger even as your grace warns you against it. The questioning urges of your nature that Heaven always tries to quell stir awake like a beast being poked after centuries of rest.

You should ignore it. You should ask for forgiveness and count the blessings you have been given in this long existence. But your heart leaps at the chance you have also been given, right now.

The monolith’s base reveals itself slowly, the garden walls parting gradually with dark promise. Your breath catches at the sight—this is no crude demon architecture. The structure rises before you like an otherworldly giant, jet black vines weaving within its bright innards.

You’re struck by the beauty of it all, a resplendent sight that you never imagined would bless your eyes. And as you draw closer, the glass obsidian floors open up before you. From the open floor, a column of marble rises, its surface bleached bone and covered in aging vines and greenery.

On that altar, rests the relic you seek. It is no crystal that contains energy to create vasts universes. It is no seed that once planted will wreak destruction with its pollination. It is no amulet capable of manipulating time.

It is a book.

A single book that is thick with words of forbidden knowledge, its cover worn and weathered from eons of hiding in the shadows, its pages yellowing along the edges.

Such a simple relic, but you feel it’s dark power from your spot at the altar.

You’ve been tasked to tuck it away and sneak back to Heaven, to deliver it to your superiors and be given your eternal reward. While simple in theory, your hands hover over it, hesitating with shaky fingers.

Do not open it.

Do not look at it for longer than necessary.

Do not look inside.

These are your rules—your absolutes. And yet…

Your fingers twitch, reaching and pulling back at the elusive call of the tome, your feathers trembling with a desire you shouldn’t feel. Your eyes burn with tears of veneration as the symbols on the worn leather illuminate and rearrange before your eyes like dancing embers, the translated text reading in your mind like an endless scroll.

Do not look at it for longer than necessary.

You snatch it up, pressing it to your chest as a means to stop your racing heart. Your soul palpitates with want, a baseless need to curl your fingers under the lips of the book and tilt it open.

It’s temptation, that festering desire that always seems to coil in your belly when the explanations you are given never feel right, when the world around you seems too pristine and you want to know more, when you linger in the mortal realm, watching the humans with a curious eye that is more than what is required of you.

It’s quick and on a whim, you pulling the book from your chest to look down at it, as if by looking it will answer the questions you seek. You trail your fingers along it’s ancient skin, soft and unmarred fingertips feeling along ridges and scars along the cover. It looks as if the relic has gone through it’s own personal Hell, no doubt jerked around from realm to realm over the centuries, pried open and its secrets stolen. There’s a faint beat of sadness that you feel in your chest at the thought of what it must have gone through.

But your fingers still finger beneath the lid, the worn pages jagged on your tips as you worry it up with a slow movement.

Do not open it.

You squeeze the tome, pressing the pages inside more into each other in a silent attempt to seal it and your temptation away forever. Your toes curl into the water beneath you, cold on your skin but still passing over you dry and without moisture.

But once again you catch yourself loosening your grip, your fingers adventurous, your mind begging for more and it’s right here.

In times like these, you find yourself turning to the one manifestation that has never answered you, but exists in your very being.

“Father,” you whisper, voice shaking. “Give me the strength against temptation.” Your wings draw tight, your spine aching from the sudden action, before they expand in a glorious span, feathers opening like extended fingers before they curl around you to shield you from your own curiosity. “Guide me from this darkness, keep my thoughts pure…”

But even as you pray, your body rebels—your fingers part a page and slide along the rough texture of papyrus. There’s a power to the book now, a deep pulse that seems to be in rhythm with the monolith, beckoning you further. The ancient text burns brighter, the translated words whispering in your ears to give in just this once—look inside, soak in your knowledge, seek what others deny.

Your lips quiver, eyes burning with unshed tears at the way your body betrays you. You’re no better than a fallen angel, than a demon or a human who walks the path of darkness—easily tempted and consumed.

You’re not damned, you’re not, you’re not—

“What do we have here?”

The voice slides through your tumultuous thoughts like silk, rich with bored amusement and something darker. Your prayers die in your throat, catching along the edges of your esophagus, your body icing over with a chill of what you try to rebuke as fear.

You’re not alone and you knew the dangers of wandering this realm so freely. You call upon your grace, manifesting a celestial dagger of light and purity, before you whirl around to face the demon who pursues you.

But you’re met with nothing—just the empty garden path you came from.

When you turn back to the altar, your scream catches in your throat.

He stands with casual power and predatory grace. His skin is a pitch lighter than the obsidian paths, but still scattered with constellations. His hair falls in golden-blonde waves, the ends touched with flame that frames sharp features and elegant black horns that curl from the top of his head. His eyes are a burning yellow, studying you with a calculating hunger that makes you shiver.

He stands tall, an inhuman height that makes you feel incredibly small, his wings the color of dark flames spread lazily behind him, their edges flickering with crimson light.

The armor that adorns his upper body is otherworldly and crafted not by divine or mortal hands—navy as dark as night, trimmed with gold that wraps around his shoulders and sides, his chest bare. His hip rests against the altar as if he owns it, expectant like he’s been waiting for you.

He’s beautiful, a manifestation of dark and light, a being that walks his own line not predetermined. As you study him, something tugs at your memory—flashes of encounters that have grown fuzzy over time. In the mortal realm, when you linger in the shadows to observe the humans, a tall figure in navy and tan, warm eyes hidden behind glasses with no arms, hair not tipped with flame but parted clean and tucked behind his ears.

He lingers in the darkness, in damp alleys and abandoned buildings where misery and pain give birth to grotesque figures that terrorize the mortals. You’ve seen him—or you think you have—convinced it was a coincidence and ignored the way your wings would shiver at his distant presence, tilting toward him as if searching for someone lost.

And in your dreams too—dreams of large hands filled with experiences of the world, of whispers in your ear of eternal knowledge. You’d wake with your grace trembling, convinced it was just your mind playing tricks even as the apex of your thighs trembled with the sheen of your sweat and forbidden essence.

Perhaps that’s why your superiors ask for you after these dreams. Perhaps that’s why they press their fingers to your temples and bury the memories deep. So you do not have to worry. So that you can resist temptation. Right?

Yes. All of it is a temptation to test your faith.

But now he stands before you, solid and real, and those ‘coincidences’ suddenly feel intentional. Had he been watching? Waiting for this very moment?

You adjust your grip on your dagger, forcing away those thoughts that never seem to go away. You stagger backwards, your celestial dagger shaking in your hands, your prayer wielded before you like a shield.

“Our Father who art in Heaven,” you whisper, desperate words that feel as if they fall on closed ears, your fear radiating from your bare toes, through the strong muscles of your white wings, and up to the top of your skull. “Hallowed be thy—”

The demon moves towards you now, each step gobbling the distance between your retreating form until your back hits the garden wall, a gasp dying in your throat.

“That name,” he murmurs, sultry low as he cages you with muscular arms, “holds no power here.” His eyes drag down your form, cataloging you bit by bit, lingering on the sight of a shaking chest that is pressed to the tome you clutch.

He leans in close, too close, until you feel the burning heat from his skin. You press your back harder against the garden wall, dark leaves and hemlock brushing along your cheeks and neck as he inhales deeply along the column of your throat.

He smells like the archives you lose yourself in, like the green tea you love to drink in the mortal realm, like a dark concoction of burning honey that would make the noses of other angels crinkle but your nostrils open to inhale more. Your divine senses blur.

This is temptation, you tell yourself as your wings putter against the wall behind you. You’ve practiced for this, you know what you should do. But your body betrays you, your head tilting slightly before you can think about it, offering more of your neck for his inspection.

Horror at your sin, ice cold as it washes over you, makes you act. You press your celestial dagger upward, against his bare chest where one particular constellation burns brighter than the rest.

But the blade dissolves like sugar in the rain the moment it touches him, holy light scattering for a home as it shimmers across his skin to form new constellations.

“How interesting…” The deep voice inquires, hot as it puffs on your neck. “An angel, stealing what does not belong to them. Surely there’s a rule about that, is there not?”

You clutch the tome tighter to your chest, your mouth opening to snap that this is your mission, your divine purpose. But the book vanishes from your grip in black tendrils of smoke, your hand smacking into your breasts from the gap created.

“Give it back!” Panic rises in your throat as you try to meld with the leaves behind you, your fingers wrapping around vines and leaves like a vice.

A sigh, long and drawn out as if mentally exhausted, as if this isn’t the first this has happened, leaves his giant form and travels over your body.

“No, I don’t think I will,” he drawls, pushing off the wall and walking away as if your presence means nothing. He turns to face you at the altar, eyes half-lidded as he rests his forearms on the marble surface and opens the tome that is now manifested in his hands. He’s giving off every impression that the relic you seek will not be going home with you, and he is more than prepared to read it all until you go away.

“W-well, you…” you trail off, your eyes flickering to the open book in his hands. You can’t see the words inside, but you can practically smell the papyrus, a smell that warms you when you trail your fingers along the archives in Heaven. You tighten your grip on the leaves, flexing your wings to extend in a display of dominance, even though it feels as if this demon has read you the moment you stepped into this realm.

The tome sits like an infant in his hands, small and precious as he turns a page, long galaxy shimmered fingers gliding along the text as he reads. That curiosity beckons, a familiar pulse of sin that fires along the nerves in your legs to take a step toward him, to peak over the edge of the book and look inside.

“Demon,” you press, swallowing a lump of your frayed nerves.

His eyes flicker up at you, burning gold irises mildly offended.

“That is not my name.” He turns another page, pulling his gaze away from you, dismissive. “Though, I suspect you already know what it is.”

Why would you know his name? While the sight of him invokes some distant memories, you both have never spoken. The confusion mixes with your flood of panic, your eyes locked on the ancient text in his hands.

“I don’t—I’m here on divine purpose. The Heavens sent me to deliver this relic.”

“They sent you to steal this relic,” he corrects. He slams the tome closed, the sound making you flinch before he walks back to you in casual strides, his form almost gliding on the obsidian floors.

“I would not steal.”

“Coming to a place without invitation and taking the items inside is, indeed, stealing.”

You sink back into the flowers as he draws closer, your heart pumping erratically in your chest, your limbs filling with shame at the logic he draws. But still, you resist.

“I was invited.”

You’ve always been around to see the return of angels from long missions where they are surrounded by darkness and pain. They seem so strong, their chests puffed in pride, their wings shining brighter as a badge of honor. There’s a bravery that you wish you could have right now. But you’re afraid—whether that fear is pure or mixed with something sensual and dangerous—you still don’t know.

“I-I was chosen,” you insist, despite what you feel.

“Oh, I’m sure you were.” His head tilts as he regards you.

The book disappears from his hands before materializing in your own, warm smoke wrapping around your wrists before dissipating. “Take it. Return to your divine purpose.”

You clutch the tome, hoping for relief to fill your wings, but you can only feel disappointment instead. You hesitate, flickering your gaze up to the demon who stands expectantly with arms crossed, like he knows what the outcome will be. Like he knows you will be back.

You turn around and flea down the obsidian path. The garden walls adorned with pearl flowers blur past you until—

The walls part again, the altar and demon coming into view.

“That’s not—” you spin, turning back toward the path and running faster this time, your relic pressed to your body, your lungs burning with the truth that you’re trying to deny.

The hemlock flowers seem to laugh as you pass, their white petals pointing the way with mocking fingers until—

The altar. The demon, an eyebrow raised. Again.

“Stop this!” Your voice breaks as you turn around to try again, sprinting so hard that your wings flap against the wind, your toes touching the top of the thin layer of water below you. You come to the altar a third time, then a fourth, each leading back to his knowing and patient form.

“I’m not doing anything.” His voice holds a gentle pity that pricks at your skin. “But why? Why would they send their most curious angel into a demon’s realm? Why alone? Why you?”

Something in his tone, in the endearment wrapped around seduction makes your grace shiver. You long to have an answer ready on your tongue, and you do, but it’s more practiced, copied, and spit out and resonates in your bones incorrectly.

“The relic requires eyes that can transcribe so I select the right one. My abilities—”

“Your abilities,” he interrupts softly, materializing behind you, “the ones that they’ve tried to suppress. The ones that they’ve feared. Yet suddenly, all of it is for naught, and you’ve been given this divine purpose?”

The towering demon circles you slowly, analyzing you like a predator waiting for his wounded prey to finally submit. You swallow hard, fingers digging into the leather of the book, eyes downcast.

“They finally saw my worth,” you insist, but the words sound hollow even to your ears. “I am pure. Free of sin. I do not stray.”

Warmth by the shell of your ear, the rich smell of him forbidden, an erotic melody that makes your blood long to sing.

“Lies.”

Your wings slash through the air in deep powerful strokes, twitching in their plumage. “I would not lie!”

“Neither would I, little angel. But it seems you have been led here under false pretenses.”

“No.”

“There is no relic.” The tome in your hands disappears, it’s solid form no longer tethered to existence.

“Give it—”

“There is no mission,” he presses on. “There is no divine purpose. There is only you. Cast down here and given to me.”

“To you…”

“An offering, little angel.”

The word makes you chill over in disgust, the very thought of being a sacrificial lamb enough to make you sick to your stomach. You shake your head vehemently, insistently denying as best as you can even though your grace radiates with the truth.

“No. They would never sacrifice someone. They—they wouldn’t—they wouldn’t do that to me.”

The demon clicks his tongue, pity filling his otherworldly features with a slight pout of his lips as he studies you. Before you can take another breath, the realm shifts, reality bending in a plume of smoke. The monolith and altar disappear, the darkness of the garden walls fading to give way to the eternal light you recognize as your home.

The tall pearly gates that surround your kingdom smile down at you, pearlescent clouds that seeps beneath the doors kissing your bare toes. Your wings waft in the air with ease, pumping euphoria through your veins as you smile up at your home. The tome is back now, cradled safely in your arms, reminding you of your mission. With a hope bright in your chest, you rapt your fingers on the doors.

“Father! I’ve retrieved the relic! I’m home!”

But the doors do not open. There is no sound of movement on the other side, no shift in the white clouds around you. It doesn’t even feel as if someone is not home. You can feel your siblings, you’ve always been able to sense them in your grace, but this sensation is reluctant. As if they peak through closed curtains on the other side, watching through a window with their hand on the door to prevent you from coming in.

“H-hello?” you try again, voice shaking as you knock with more fervor, denial warring with growing dread. “I-I said I’ve brought the relic.” Silence. “Hello?!” You smack on the doors now, the holy wood splitting at your skin and healing over again. Surely someone must be home. Maybe they are away? Maybe they are busy and do not hear?

You press your forehead against the door, wings drooping. Through your grace, you feel them there, still watching. Waiting for you to leave. But not to welcome you home.

“Please,” you whisper, eyes stinging. “Will someone—”

“They will not open the doors, little angel,” the demon speaks from behind you.

You jump from his sudden appearance, your body drained of all blood at the sordid thought of what is happening right now. Reality shifts again, the divine light of your home sucking back into darkness, the monolith and marble altar and obsidian floors coming back into view.

Your legs threaten to give as realization washes over you. You shake your head, lip quivering as tears blur the edges of your vision, your fingers curling on the altar. How could they do this to you? You have always struggled in this life, always been so ashamed that you do not think like the others. But to cast you out? To give you these wings and then make you feel as if you are beyond saving?

“Perhaps it is a mistake,” you whisper, your hope crumbling with every word. You feel his large form next to you before you hear any steps. “Why would they do this to me?”

You have no choice but to look up at him, to seek some form of answer in his burning yellow eyes. There’s a flicker of something that crosses his face—amusement? Maybe pity?

“They have offered you to me. A sacrifice to take the darkness from their pristine walls and feed it to the realm it belongs to.”

The words hang in the air, the horrifying truth once again presented to you. Your heart lurches in your chest. You recoil, your wings drooping to brush along the water covered floor.

“They fear you, little angel,” he continues, voice softening. “Your potential, your curiosity, your unwillingness to follow their absolutes.”

You slap your hands on the altar, the sound reverberating through the emptiness around you. “I will not.”

The demon chuckles, a low, sardonic noise that crawls up your dress and wraps around your throat. “Such defiance,” he purrs. “It’s quite…alluring.”

You can’t help the noise of shock and anger that crawls up your throat, shooting him a dark look. “I will not be corrupted by the likes of a demon like you.”

“Like me? So you imply that another demon may have a chance?” His jests fall on rageful ears, your wings flapping in defiance as you gape at him. He leans in close, his breath warm against your lips as he whispers. “You deny it all little angel. But you already are corrupt.”

You try to pull away from him, but a large hand falls to the small of your back, his fingers weaving through your wings in a caress that makes you choke on a whine.

“Come now, my dear.” The tip of his nose trails along your cheek, the touch sending flames of desire down your neck. You curl your fingers into a fist on the altar, your body ramrod straight.

“I can smell it on you,” he continues, his voice a silken caress. “The insatiable curiosity, the yearning for more, the essence that pools between your thighs every night before you sleep.”

The fingers in your plumage massage your skin, your shoulders relaxing into a traitorous sigh before with a swift motion, he plucks a feather from its root. You wince, your hand flying back to bat him away before he holds the feather in front of you, its tip stained a deep, inky black.

“Do you not try to hide it? You sneak to the archives. You let them smother your dreams. You do not tell them that you sneak away to the mortal realm to watch them eat, and bathe, and sin.”

He turns your wing to expose the underside where the feather was plucked, your eyes widening as if you’ve been caught. The skin is marred with a dark scar, the muscle underneath dried with blood and presenting as damning evidence of you plucking those feathers over and over, your cheeks covered in tears as you did your best to hide them away.

“You pluck your true self,” he whispers, voice laced with dry amusement. “But they only grow back stronger, don’t they?”

A breath catches in your throat, his words piercing through your defenses that you have built with weak mortar and brick for eons. Your eyes catch his, your desire reflected in burning gold.

“Even so…I cannot leave?”

He hums in reverence, a pointy finger trailing along your collarbone to brush a lock of hair from your shoulders, exposing more of your scent for him to breathe in.

“You have tried to leave already and you cannot. There is nowhere for you to go. I can let you roam to any realm you choose, but the doors of Heaven will be locked for you forever.”

Your eyes bubble with tears. It’s an unfortunate hand that you have been dealt. A hand always opened to you in promise even as the other held a dagger behind the back of divinity. There’s a deep part of you that would try to find some sort of silver lining in moments of darkness, a silver lining that only benefits you.

“If I stay…what will you give me?” you ask, your voice small and defeated.

The demon sinks to one knee in front of you, his eye level now only a little taller than you, but still more humane than his hovering from before. He offers a slow, predatory smile, his lips parting to reveal sharp pearly white fangs.

“You already think in ways that will benefit yourself, don’t you? Whatever you desire, little angel, I will give it.” The sharp point of his nail trails down your cheek, casting a wave of arousal down your body, your stomach tightening. “Anything at all.”

You cannot deny the promise of whatever you want does not make you perk mildly with curiosity, the same curiosity that was always quelled.

You lick your lips in thought, a nervous habit that your siblings have always discouraged. It’s unbecoming of an angel, they’d say, a physical manifestation of want. But you’ve always like the way your tongue feels against the plump flesh of your lips.

“Anything?”

He inclines his head to you, eyes answering without having to say. You hesitate, your mind racing with possibilities, unleashed with nothing to hold them back.

“I want…” you begin, stopping short at the coil of desire that burns in your body. You’ve never given it a true voice, and now that you’ve been presented with the opportunity, you are unsure of how to proceed.

The demon’s eyes roam over your form before they brighten with understanding. “You wish to read the tome.”

You nod, unable to speak past the dry lump in your throat. He summons it quickly, the worn leather materializing in his enormous hands as he hands it to you like an offering of forbidden fruit.

“Take it,” he urges in a seductive whisper. “It is yours.”

You reach out with trembling fingers, your grace pulsing with desire, it’s feel growing bolder as you snatch it up into your hands and let it flow through you. The leather is cool beneath your fingertips, worn with the promise of centuries of words you’ve always wanted.

When you open the book and let your eyes fall on the faded script, they rearrange themselves like before, translating to you in a seductive dance that makes your toes curl. The knowledge overwhelms you, flooding your senses in a wave of information about this realm—its history and inhabitants and magic. You feel a thrill of excitement, a suppressed sense of liberation as you turn page after page.

From your peripheral, you see the demon offer that same predatory smile. With a snap of his fingers, the world shifts around you again. You are further from the monolith but instead of the altar, you are surrounded by looming bookshelves, all filled to the brim. Ancient tomes and scrolls, dusty relics that have been neglected over the years but kept in condition by this demon who rules this realm.

“This is a taste of what I can offer you. All of it is yours.” He steps closer, the energy that he radiates filling your space with darkness and seduction that terrifies and excites you. “There is so much more I can show you,” he whispers in your ear again. “Would you like that?”

Even though your body and soul buzz with satisfaction from the books around you, the shame is still there, still bubbling beneath the surface next to your dejection.

Sensing your unease, he places tucks a strand of your hair behind your ear, a gesture that you long to fall into before the world morphs again.

He takes you back to where you began, the realm’s outskirts. However there is no russet fog that is thick and smells of decay and misery, this time your vision is clear. The shadows that once hovered around you in your quest to the monolith now reveal themselves as souls—humans that you recognize from your years of observation.

“Do you remember her?” the demon asks, pointing to a small woman tending to a bush of flowers. “The woman from years ago who stole medicine for her dying child because she had no money.”

You do remember watching with tear filled eyes. It was an ancient time where death was a sentence given freely, and this mother had been called to the land of the dead for stealing bread.

“You watched her pray for forgiveness even as she did what was necessary.” His hand rests on your lower back, reassuring in its pressure. “Heaven would have condemned her. I gave her purpose.”

“How do you give purpose if you are a demon?”

The demon huffs, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly. “It is true that I gain my strength through corruption. But it is corruption through intellectual rebellion and questioning minds. I am strong because no matter how many years may pass, there will always be a soul that questions.”

Each soul that you pass triggers a memory—struggles you watched but could never reach out and help. And in each memory, you gain more clarity—he was always there in the mortal realm, appearing in navy and tan just like you thought.

“You’ve been watching me then,” you inquire, tucking your tome closer to your chest as you cast a sidelong glance to him.

“It is my nature,” he rumbles from next to you. “You understand the beauty in grey areas. The necessity of balance.” His fingers glide along the empty space where you plucked your blackened wings. “Here, you could judge with mercy and justice. Rule in the knowledge they feared.”

Power.

A destructive thing that has elevated so many and torn them down. But the call of it has always been sweet, and now you are the subject of it. The very thought of it makes your knees weaken, your grace fluttering like a leave in the wind. This could be something more honest, not Heaven’s sterile authority.

The soil that is no longer red vibrates beneath you, pulsing up your ankles and calves, around your waist and torso in thick vines that pull you to the monolith miles away.

“Easy, my dear,” he murmurs, a muscular arm sliding around your waist to prevent you from swaying further. “The first taste of true power always overwhelms.” Your grace flickers between divine light and seductive shadow, somehow grounded by his hold.

Every soul’s story calls to you now, complex choices and grey morality making your divine nature pulse with stomped out recognition. You lean into him, falling more into his scent, your wings brushing his back to seek balance.

“I…” you trail off, clutching the relic in your arms, using it to ground you through your thoughts that fight between light and dark.

“What else would you like?” he purrs in your ear, his hand reaching out to the realm beyond that begins to shift again. A vast kitchen filled with warmth and enticing scents. “Earthly pleasures are denied amongst angels.” The pristine counter tops are soon overflown with rich goods and goblets of wine. “Even something as simple as this.”

You’ve never had wine—it’s forbidden—at least for you. But the way it catches the warm fireplace behind it, deep and rich…your mouth waters.

“Freedom to roam where you wish.”

Glimpses of different realms flash by—clouds of different shapes and sizes, landscapes of mountains and water as clear as crystal, beings that take on their own forms as they wander the lands—places you’ve only dreamt of exploring, of asking to see and always been denied.

His voice drops lower, more intimate and hot on your cheek. “Or perhaps…” Another shift. A dark room you remember faintly—through gauzy curtains, you see two figures entwined in candlelight. The brown skin of limbs and curves wrapped around tan that shimmers faintly. You recognize the hips of the woman, the collarbone and hair, and you realize it’s you. You wrapped around this very demon next to you who appears in the mortal realm as a human with carefully parted locks and a height fit for yourself.

Your blood boils beneath your skin as you try to look away. But like every forbidden thing that’s ever called to you, your eyes are drawn back to the scene—to the way your dream-self arches into his touch, the way your neck cranes, the sight of his tongue sliding along the sweat of your brown breast.

He hums from behind you, his demonic form pressing closer as you watch his human glamour worship your other self. That familiar wave of shame wars with the desire in your body, trying its best to smother the arousal that tightens your nipples beneath your white dress. All of it you suffer night after night—your grace singing, skin hot and sweaty—essence coating your thighs.

“I—” you stutter for words, eyes locked on the human form that rolls his hips and swallows a moan that shakes from your other-self. “This is wrong…”

His starlight fingers trace your collarbone, mimicking the tongue of his human form. “Your body remembers what they tried to smother away. How many nights did you wake burning for this? For me?”

“No.”

“Yes.”

The realm shifts one final time, the familiar garden walls and monolith appearing before you, the altar pressing into your back. The demon circles you, giving you no time to recover as his prying eyes pick you apart feather by feather.

“Even your grace recognizes where you truly belong.” He reaches out, trailing pointy nails down your spine, your body arching of its own volition. “Here. With me.”

His hands engulf your entire waist, his touch making you gasp as he lifts you up to sit on the altar before him.

“Every dream they tried to bury,” his hands trail up your thighs, “every desire they made you forget…” he steps closer, taking the oxygen from your lungs that you expel, his naked chest a hairsbreadth from your searching fingers. “All of it has lead to this moment. To me.”

“I—” you try to protest, but it dies in your throat as he tilts your chin to face him.

“You were meant for this realm,” he leans in, trailing his nose along your shaking lips. “I will make you mine. As my queen, my consort, my equal.” You press the tome further into your chest like a lifeline as his hand rests on the side of your neck, his nails grazing the lobe of your ear. “You’ve always known it. Even in those dreams where you surrendered to me so sweetly.”

His lips are close enough to kiss you, but they brush your jaw instead, trailing electricity down your throat. “Anything you want,” he breathes against your pulse, smiling at the sight of it’s rapid flutter, “you will have, little angel.” His mouth moves to that sensitive spot behind your ear that you discovered one night centuries ago. “But you must surrender to me. You have been offered and now you must be consumed.”

You clutch the tome tighter, using it as a tether even as your head tilts to give him better access. “I should not…”

“Surrender,” he whispers, lips ghosting your shoulder now, each kiss punctuated with promises that you should deny. “Let me worship you.” A kiss to your collarbone. “You will never be denied again.” His mouth traces back to hover over your lips. “Submit to what you have always wanted.”

The burn in your body makes your skin tingle, your core pulse with forbidden need, your nipples tighten in pleasure. Everything you’ve always wanted, could be given to you right now.

All of your dedication to faith has only led to tears and shame and disappointment. But here, you could be rewarded for your curiosity, exalted for your power to see what others do not, consumed in pleasure without the eyes of disdain looking down on you.

Here, with this beautiful demon, you can have it all.

For as powerful and as dark as he is, despite the patient hunger in his golden eyes, you realize he’s waiting. You must give the final say. A final say to do away with eons of denying, of plucking dark feathers, of letting them bury your dreams…

“Please,” the words shake from your lips before you can stop it, the tome slipping from your defeated grasp.

His eyes flash with satisfaction, mouth twitching with the urge to smile, but he relents. “Say it properly, little angel.” His mouth brushes the corner of your lips in not quite a kiss. “Tell me.”

Your wings spread wider of their own accord, trembling and stretching past invisible threads that have always held them down. “I want…I will to surrender.”

You hardly finish your words before you feel the press of his lips against yours, gentle and almost reverent. It’s the first time you’ve ever kissed, and it’s as euphoric as you’ve always thought. Your toes curl in satisfaction, your body hums with arousal, low and beneath the surface but quickly growing.

The hand on your neck tilts you up so he can feast further, a wet tongue sliding along the seam of your lips in a quiet ask for permission. You let your body guide you, opening your mouth to welcome him with a groan.

He tastes like he smells—green tea and honey, a hint of rich bread that you occasionally try in the mortal realm. It’s intoxicating, dark mingled with your fading sweetness. One that speaks of corruption and surrender.

What started as gentle quickly turns hungry and consuming. Your grace shivers as you catalogue every shift in your body, learning from the lessons of his tongue. Each stroke of him feels like corruption, like freedom, like finally coming home and you arch into him for more.

Your white dress slowly disappears before you, your body revealing to him naked and shivering. You try to cover yourself, an urge ingrained in you since your coming of existence, but the demon’s large hand stops you, gathering both hands in his strong grip and placing them at your sides.

He does not wait a second longer, his mouth trailing in worship down your neck and across your collarbone to pepper the swell of your breasts, your core pounding incessantly as he gets closer to one nipple before he wraps it in his hot mouth.

A moan shakes from your mouth, unexpected and loud into the quiet air of this monolith room. Your hands reach up to card in his golden locks, they’re warm and impossibly silky, the flame colored ends burning more than the rest. You let the pain of it singe your fingertips, basking in the euphoric pleasure pain of your skin growing back and burning all over again.

His hand envelops your other breasts, his sharp nails teasing your nipple before he drags it slowly across your areola. Your fingers tighten in his hair from the pain, your core dripping on the marble altar you sit on.

“You taste wonderful, little angel,” he purrs into the wet skin of your breast, pulling away before he gently nudges you onto your back. Your wings stretch languidly to make you more comfortable against the flat surface. The urge to cover yourself is not as insistent as before, the desire eating you up without reservation. “But I must taste more.”

He leans over the altar you lay on, kissing your lips gently before his tongue slides along the skin of your neck and down your body. It’s longer than a mortal tongue, and when they circle your nipples again, you shake at the pronged tip that flicks your bud.

He worships down your torso to dip in your navel, over the dip in your hips before his hands push your legs up onto his shoulders and he licks your sopping core from bottom to top.

You arch sharply, teeth digging into your bottom lip in a futile attempt to stop the moan from shooting from your throat.

You’ve watched the humans many times in the shadows, transfixed when their mouths worship these parts of their partner, but to experience it yourself? To feel the demons tongue part your folds and circle the bud at the top that makes you cry into your pillows at night. Heaven has hidden away beautiful pleasure.

“Look at how much you give me,” he whispers, kissing the inside of your thigh before you feel his tongue on you again, prodding your entrance that you’ve sunken your fingers into at night.

You bite down on your lip, shivering in pleasure as he prods further and further, your legs widening with each current of pleasure until he sinks his wide tongue inside of you. You taste copper from your bleeding lip that heals over quickly, your bare feet digging into the demon’s broad shoulders as he feasts on your essence.

With every gasp, your wings quiver in anticipation, curling into your body to protect yourself from a euphoria that is growing so quickly in your stomach.

“Please,” you whisper in disbelief, hands twisting his hair with your divine strength. He hums in satisfaction, satisfied with what you give and digging for more.

His tongue strokes inside of you with purpose, caressing something along the roof of your hot walls, his nose brushing your bundle of nerves once, twice, the pleasure enough to make your jaw drop, to make you pant feverishly into the air, to make your back arch until the base of your spine hurts as you come apart by the seams.

Your release makes you cry out into the air, the sound brushing along the monolith, the constant pulsing stopping to take in your pleasure before it resumes its steady pulse.

He rises slowly as you struggle to catch your breath, his golden eyes tracing over your shivering form from head to toe. His grey obsidian hands slide up your trembling thighs as he leans over you.

“Beautiful,” he purrs before he kisses your lips. You swallow your taste—tangy and rich like the divinity that courses through your veins. “But I must have all of you to make this complete.”

All of you?

You look down to find that his pants are gone, starlight shining bright on his hips that seem to point down to the member that hangs between his thighs. Your eyes widen—he’s definitely bigger than mortals, purplish veins that trail along the sides, a tip that is darker than his grey, the skin flickering with those shimmering stars you are growing to love.

He’s beautiful, and without thinking you reach out to touch. He’s impossibly hard but also incredibly soft, and you watch in fascination as his dark flame-colored wings expand and shake in supplication.

He leans his head back to the grey skies, swallowing deeply at your touch and there’s a sense of power you feel. To know that with a single touch you can make this powerful demon fracture just a little.

He wraps his hand around yours to stop you, pulling you up so that he can sit on the altar instead. Even though he’s tall, you’re able to reach up and wrap your arms around his neck.

Your wings stretch and flap behind you, sparse feathers wafting in their air to fall around you both in white, grey, and black. Even though you feel loose from your first release, there is a subtle power that thrums with every flap of your wings.

You look at the monolith again. The pulse has picked up steadily, seeming to match your own heartbeat. Maybe there is a connection to the power inside of it and what might be coursing through you now.

As you tail up the length of it until it disappears into the grey clouds, you think faintly of those who cast you out. The pleasure fractures a little with pain, your eyebrows furrowing in disappointment.

“My angel,” he calls to you, softly, turning your gaze back to him. His golden and flame locks are messy, his horns pulsing with shimmering light, the navy and gold armor gone so that he is as naked as you are. “That pain that you feel will go away with time. I will make sure you will never know it again.”

The promise fills you with hope, and the press of his lips to yours makes the sordid thoughts fall to the wayside, your pleasure humming to life at the base of your spine.

The touch of his fingers to your core makes you whine into his mouth, pulling away with only a gossamer of saliva connecting you both. He strokes your bud, drinking your sighs and moans as your thighs and stomach tighten, your fingers digging into his soft shoulders.

He pulls you up onto your knees, your wet entrance brushing the thick tip of him before he guides you onto him slowly. It’s a stretch, far thicker than your fingers and foreign inside of you.

The initial pain makes you gasp, tears pricking your eyes. It feels as if you’re being split in two from your hips, torn apart with a strength that only makes you shiver and moan.

One hand slides along one wing to soothe you, his lips pressing to your neck. Eventually, the pain gradually melts into pleasure, his hands possessive on your hips as he guides you with careful restraint. You quake at the feel of him inside of you, stretching and molding your muscles in each euphoric stroke.

“Perfect,” he breathes against your shoulder. “Look how well you take me.” His voice resonates deep in your core, a sound that both terrifies and entices you, a forbidden melody that you are slowly learning the notes to.

You whimper in response, relishing in his praise as you begin to move faster on top of him, bouncing with a newfound sense of purpose. Your wings flap with more insistence, stretching and bending with the power that begins to seep out of your skin, white feathers less in abundance with each flap.

The demon’s nails dig into your waist and you sigh into the pain, picking up the pace until you’re not sure where he stops and you begin.

The power takes you higher and higher, your skin breaking into a sheen of sweat, your gasps dying in the air as you pant and moan above him. The pleasure at the base of your spine heats quickly, bubbling with sticky satisfaction as it slides down your vertebrae and into your core.

“That’s it,” he growls, nails digging into the flesh of your cheeks, canting your hips toward him so the tip of his member brushes that spot on your upper walls once again.

You choke on a moan, head thrown back in bliss, nails dragging down the solid muscle of his chest. Your wings curl around you, dark feathers replacing white with each thrust.

“Transform for me completely. Embrace what you truly are.”

“Yes,” you hiss, your mouth falling open as you struggle for breath. Your core tightens around him, the bundle of nerves shaking even untouched, and you’re falling, you’re falling, you’re—

The demon shifts again, his member leaving your hot core and denying you of release, your hands now pressed to the altar as you’re bent over. You whine in annoyance, looking over your darkening wings at his large form as he heaves with breath.

He regards you with a dark look, one that shows just how capable he is of picking you apart, and your mouth fills with saliva at the thought.

He draws one leg up onto the altar before sliding into you once more without pretense. You groan around the stretch of him, marveling at the pinch of pain that bleeds into overwhelming pleasure as he picks up his pace inside of you.

What starts out as reverent and gentle soon turns feverish. His strokes are deeper, his hips snapping against your open legs, a haze of pleasure clouding every crevice of your mind as he kisses spots inside of you that makes you groan, hiss, and whine.

The monolith picks up in speed, pulse matching your heartbeat as you climb higher and higher up a ladder of darkness that has always been denied.

You don’t know why, you don’t know where it comes from, but the last slivers of your salvation slide to the surface, tickling your throat one last time before they leave your soul forever.

“Please, please, Father,” you moan, eyes filling with tears of satisfaction as your body jerks with every harsh thrust of the demon behind you. One of his hands weaves into your locks, curling tight before yanking you back to him, arching until our stomach presses into the altar. “Forgive me.”

“We will have none of that,” he warns, out of breath. “You seek forgiveness to someone who is not listening. You pray to someone who has cast you out. And here you are. Under me. Calling for him as you weep on my cock in pleasure.”

His sharp fingers slide down your hip to circle over your bud of nerves and you cry out, tears streaming down your face, power radiating up your limbs. “Keep moaning, little angel. Keep begging.” He leans over you, pressing his hot chest into your wings, his breath hot on your ear as the tips of his pronged tongue slide along your lobe. “In your eyes you are soiled. Filthy. And my sweet goddess loves it, doesn’t she?”

You shake your head to deny, deny, deny. But a hard thrust, a stroke of his thick cock that kisses your cervix, and you sob in the pain that molds into pleasure. Your nipples brush against the cold marble, each icy touch shockwaves down your spine.

“I’ve watched you, my dove. When you study the humans in their pleasure. I’ve seen the way your pupils dilate. I’ve smelt the essence between your thighs. You dream of this don’t you?”

You try to whisper your Father’s name one last time, to show with your last breath of divinity that you were an angel who worked hard.

“You won’t say his name here anymore. Not in my realm—in our realm. Not in my arms while you cum on my cock. The only name you will moan and beg and plead is mine.”

Your wings flap in reverence, responding to his demands as they stretch around you. No longer are your feathers white, now they are inky black, as dark as midnight, as mysterious as the darkness you peer into.

The monolith quickens, a hummingbird’s wings, the bright core sliding up and down the tree-like structure and bleeding with vibration through the ground and up the altar.

Even as your mind tries to deny what you are becoming, your soul speaks otherwise, your core clenches around him unwilling to let go. The demon behind you grunts with each thrust, low and seductive on the back of your neck, his nose smelling the skin.

“I can’t—” you choke, fingers sliding on the altar from your sweat. “Please.”

“Please what?” he groans.

“More, please more, more, more,” you beg, words and resolve splintering in your throat as he rewards you with deeper thrusts, each one making you see the stars that shimmer along his skin.

“Say my name,” he demands, one hand sliding up your throat. You gasp at the subtle pressure on each side, not enough to do anything, but enough to make a dark current of pleasure pulse inside of you. “Let the skies above hear who you belong to now.”

You don’t know where the name comes from. He’s never given it to you. You’ve never asked. But somewhere, deep down in some ancient place in your soul, you’ve always known all along. Known him.

“Nanami,” it falls from your lips like a broken prayer. “Nanami, please—”

His teeth graze your pulse, sharp fangs dragging along your skin as pleasure builds in your body beyond reason. Your wings spread impossibly wide, your skin hums in arousal, hot and stinging.

The monolith’s pulse quickens with you, its light growing brighter as the power in your body travels through your veins to complete a transformation you can feel in your fallen grace. Even with every harsh pump of his hips, you feel worshiped. Worshipped by his hands. Worshipped on this altar in front of a monolith that watches over you both.

“You were an offering—a gift to me. Molded by the heavens. And now you’re mine. And your Father sent you to me,” he growls against your throat. “My dark goddess.”

His thrusts grow harder, more desperate, each one a brand searing its mark into your very soul. A mix of your essence and his precum pools on the altar where you are joined. The last embers of your angelic resistance crumble completely, replaced by an insatiable hunger that mirrors his own.

“Let go. Surrender to me completely.”

“Yes, yes, yes!”

That hot lava at the base of your spine explodes like a volcano of unholy fire as his teeth sink into your neck, marking you as his. Your release bursts from you, your core squeezing his thick member, your muscles seizing as your mouth falls open and your cries echo through the realm as divine light fractures into starry darkness.

All of your abilities that have been repressed swirl within the darkness and mix with the forbidden powers awakening within you. It feels like the very essence of your being is changing, transforming into something wild, a reflection of the demon who guided you with a sultry voice down this path.

You feel a rivulet of your blood trail down the side of your neck from his puncture, blazing with the essence of darkness that now pumps through your veins. He releases his teeth from your neck and turns your head to him with more force than necessary, sliding his tongue into your mouth as he kisses you senseless.

You can’t breathe, your body is loose, your grip on the edge of the altar slipping with each relentless thrust but you love it. Every smack of heavy balls against your clit, every slide of sweaty muscles of his chest against your wings and back, every pulse of your cunt around his cock.

Nanami pulls away breathless, the hand around your throat tightening imperceptibly, the sharp tips of his fingernails breaking skin. His pronged tongue slides along your cheeks to collect your fallen tears.

Every noise that leaves your mouth is against everything you hold dear, a sound of sin, debauchery and lust.

“I’m yours,” you whisper against his lips, your breath punching out of you with each desperate thrust. Nanami’s eyebrows furrow and his nose crinkles with a snarl, his wings pulsing with flame as his release climbs up his body as well. “I’m yours, Nanami.”

“Take my essence, little angel,” he demands, biting your lip until you draw blood. You lick up the coppery tang, falling into the prickly grip on your neck as he takes what he needs from you. “One day, when you have ruled with me for centuries to come, when you are one in your skin, perhaps my essence will take root.”

Your eyes widen at the implication, your soul no longer quivering in blasphemy but in satisfaction. How you would love that. One day. With him.

“Yes, Nanami,” you whisper into him, accepting one more kiss as he strokes once, twice, and a final time before he shivers from head to toe and groans with deep pleasure into your mouth.

His darkness seeps into the remnants of your light, a forbidden dance of shadow and flame now made true. He pumps hot semen into you, far too much for comfort and your essence combines with his demonic energy, feeding the power that still ebbs in your veins.

He falls into you, his hold on your throat vanishing to slide down to your naked stomach, pressing to the spot where he is still lodged inside. You reach back, carding your hands through his burning hair, reveling in the shiver he gives you.

He pulls out of you slowly and your cunt clenches around nothing, legs shaking at the feel of his semen dripping from you. He does not entertain the mess but gathers you in his arms, carrying you past the defiled altar and monolith that has fallen into a gentle ebb once more. The obsidian floors open up again, the thin layer of water rising within a large tub of water that steams with inviting heat.

He sinks you both into the steaming water, your new darkened wings flapping at the moisture that touches your plumage. When he dips your head beneath the surface, it feels like baptism in reverse—washing away heaven’s hold rather than blessing you with it. When you emerge, you feel reborn, your shame and disappointment for your former family now washed away.

You sigh at the effect hot water on your muscles, melting into the large expanse of his chest. He does not speak and you do not ask questions, content to watch him manifest a tray of oils and soaps that smell of green tea and burning honey.

He plucks a marble comb from the tray and drags it gently through your curls, each stroke bending with the texture of your hair to guide without tangle, each pass worship and calming.

Once your hair is untangled and silky, he washes your skin with the soap and oils that smell of him. You study him openly now—the way constellations shift across his skin, how his golden eyes hold both demonic power and intelligent precision, the careful way he maintains order even in darkness.

He dresses you in black fabric that flows like liquid shadow, clinging to your curves like his possessive touch. Instead of the starry sky, the black material is adorned by golden accents that match his eyes and armor.

The altar recedes into the floor and in its place, two large thrones emerge. Carved from pure white marble shot through with veins of gold, they’re identical in height and grandeur—a statement of what he promised you—equal rule.

Dark vines curl around their bases, blooming with black roses, while plush velvet cushions in deep navy make them as comfortable as they are magnificent.

He throws you an inquisitive rise of his brow, what was once used to pick you apart upon first meeting him, now make your lips curl in a smile. You pretend to ponder which you will choose, humming noncommittally before you sink into one chair, sighing into the softness around your body and wings.

Nanami bends down, taking a hand in both of his before he kisses your palm. “You look magnificent,” he purrs, your hand still in his while he sits on his throne.

With a snap of his fingers, the garden walls disappear, revealing the vast landscape that was once shrouded in horror and fear when you first arrived.

Now it appears without malice, without misery or shame, but of exotic greenery and souls who have been neglected for only choosing a path that feels wrong even though it is right.

The heavens is but a distant memory now, infinitesimal in the many years you will continue to exist. Now, you bask in the new power in your bones, in the brush of Nanami’s lips to your palm once more.

As the stars on his skin ebb and fade with light, you take in the muscles of his torso, the strength in his movements as he worships you without speaking.

It has taken eons to get to this moment, but some part of you preens with the satisfaction that Nanami has always been watching, waiting for you to come to him.

Thanks for reading and Happy Halloween!

[ivesambrose]

ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴛʀᴜᴇ ᴘᴀꜱꜱɪᴏɴꜱ ᴀɴᴅ ʜɪᴅᴅᴇɴ ᴛᴀʟᴇɴᴛꜱ

1. 2. 3.

╚══ ≪ °❈° ≫ ══╝°❈°╚══ ≪ °❈° ≫ ══╝

If you feel lost, aimless, overwhelmed or unsure in regards to yourself this has found it's way to you at the right time.

Personal Readings

Masterpost

Thank you for the tip! 🌹

Picture 1

A lot of you are burnt by your own ambitions and a need to prove something. You quietly wonder if you're even passionate about anything anymore or you are but do not what to do, where to start so you end up spacing out and procrastinating. Likely you were made to believe that if what gets you excited and happy doesn't automatically put you on the map and bring you money in traditional ways then it's practically useless.

You have in a way put yourself down consistently due to these external projections.

Of what I'm picking up on some of you are passionate about the following :

- Dancing

- Fitness

- Makeup

- Music

- The occult

- crafting something intricate such as designing jewellery or curating them

- A select few might be into taxidermy, herbology and even archeology

- A combination of the above, some of you have your own allure and might want to get into modelling, styling, dancing and design. You want to express yourself freely including your sensual as well as spiritual and esoteric side.

You want to be known but you want to stand out, with your accumulated power you want to guide others too, make them feel less alone and more understood and yet you want to be an enigma and mystery. You do have a strong potential to be a muse to many.

Your hidden talents:

- Something that is coming through significantly that it is something from your past/childhood/early teens that you had to sacrifice/were made to sacrifice even if you cared for it deeply and wanted to nurture it. It makes you bitter to this day because you were naturally good at it.

- Some of you should definitely consider working for animals especially birds. You have a gift to heal and develop empathy with them.

- Some of you can end up being excellent bakers and decorators.

A lot you can find success in the entertainment industry, media, running your own business and being your own boss, you have excellent leadership skills and determination it's just that you haven't gotten the chance to explore that side of yourself yet.

The advice here is to only look back at the past to pick up what you had left and walk ahead. Become your friend and ask your own subconscious to show the way, trust me you will be shown when you least expect it.

Picture 2

You simply love to learn and acquire knowledge. You could have specific subject(s) you're drawn to or you don't even like limiting yourself to that. You'd rather be an eternal student. I wouldn't be surprised if you were drawn to picture 1 or 3 as well. You have a thrist that sometimes almost feels insatiable.

You are rather intellectual and often give very sound advice. Mainly cuz you are highly self aware and very intuitive.

Regardless of anything else, you seek inspiration and adventure above all. You do tend to get bored with just one thing easily.

Of what I'm picking up on, some of you are passionate about the following:

- Learning, experimenting, teaching and innovating. Again this could be any topic or multiple. Could be something as literature and academics or physics or could even be cooking or carving wood. You could even be here educating people about Gothic architecture or the human anatomy. Or all of this. You're not meant to confine yourself.

- A lot of you seek travel and adventure. Even be passionate about extreme sports.

- Languages and culture.

- Some of you want to try and do everything, experience different things and don't want to niche yourself down. Your passion can simply be experiencing your life to the fullest so you have wisdom to give and stories to narrate and memories to look back on and trust me, that is more than enough.

Which quickly brings me to your hidden talents because you're supressing quite a few:

- Some of you can be excellent astrologers or even astronomers.

- A lot of you can read into symbolisms real. You can be a gifted psychic too if you aren't aware already.

- You can be really good at sports like archery, fencing, MMA etc

- Creative direction, photography is also coming through.

- You're very good with your words, whether it be in writing or speaking.

You are rather mutable and a very poised individual too, you can easily influence the people you come in touch with. Some of you can be good speakers, representatives or the face of a brand. Whatever you do, you end up being very good at it whether you like it or not.

The advice is to simply continue what you're doing, you're not as lost as you think you are. Keep making connections and continue being yourself instead of trying to make yourself small and fit in or follow trends or the algorithm.

Picture 3

You feel like a misfit and an outsider so much so that being passionate about anything worries you because you may end up looking a fool, not being good enough or not being disciplined enough.

You carry a lot of anguish in you mainly because you had to focus on things that were expected of you or because you had to survive so you might feel like you're good at many things but not great or could be great at something but you don't necessarily love it.

You're an interesting group here because you haven't even allowed yourself to feel excited about things.

What are you truly passionate about? I see nature, authenticism, a slower, softer life. The word passion itself feels too intense and deliberate for you.

You simply want to experience a life that doesn't feel like you running on a treadmill till your knees give out.

I do see there's an innate desire in you to help others, be it people or animals or even a dying plant. You want to find your peace and bring some of that peace in others lives too. Your energy feels like a walking into a warm cabin in the woods during winter with freshly made dinner waiting.

Hidden talents you have ample, a lot of them are based on learning and perfecting with practice :

- Cooking, experimenting with different herbs. I do see some of you have the potential to start a small business that involves food.

- Gardening and farming

- Painting

- Tattooing (this is coming through because it can be very therapeutic for a lot of you)

- Perfume making is also coming through as well as skincare.

- pottery and sculpting, crocheting etc

- reiki, medicine, physical therapy etc

- divination

Think of a life that's a bit more laid back a career that makes you feel less on the edge.

You've already been running on the validation of people who think you're dispensable or your worth is tied to something outside of you that you can't even find meaning in.

The world needs more souls like you.

The only advice is to be more compassionate with yourself, you're not running a race even if people have constantly been reminding you of it, there's no finish line. The only truth that matters is the story you tell yourself, over and over again. It will come to pass. Continue being. Continue creating instead of wondering about the how. You've figured out many things in your life, let life sort this out for you.

[fairycrackhead]

𝒃𝒂𝒅 𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒆 | toxic fuck boy Gojo x toxic reader

pairing: toxic fuck boy.ᐟGojo x toxic.ᐟreader

summary: Halloween night is now engraved in your memory which you can only assume it will be for the rest of your lives. When you two should have been trick or treating as normal 14 year olds would do, you instead opt to take each others virginity’s. Now you two are stuck in an endless cycle of toxic bad romance.

warnings: mention of abuse, drunk people, porn, minors watching porn, minors having sexual Intercourse, slight degradation, having unprotected sex, mentions of pregnancy, hair pulling, mentions of murder, toxic relationship.

word count: 3.5k

a/n: this was a random idea i thought up of when i heard the song ‘bad romance’ by lady gaga on the bus the other day! anyways this is my first fic i hope you sluts enjoy :)

⎜ 11:32 pm My Bitch (y/n) : your seriously a dick yk that?

⎜ 11:37 pm My bitch (y/n): i fuckin despise u

⎜ 11:45 pm Mr. Cock (Gojo): and your telling me again, y?

⎜ 11:47 pm My bitch (y/n): bc your w/ another girl like it’s clockwork, do you not see the problem here, Gojo? i asked you to stop the bullshit.

⎜ 11:49 pm Mr. Cock (Gojo): ur not my gf. im in for pussy that’s it. yk im not a relationship guy

⎜ 11:52 pm Mr. Cock (Gojo): and yet you continue to come back to me. pathetic honestly

⎜ 11:56 pm My bitch (y/n): fuck you

⎜ 12:00 am Mr. Cock (Gojo): already needy? 😂

You should’ve known what kind of man Satoru Gojo was when you lost your virginity to him on Halloween night, 2011. It’s not like it was forced upon you, besides the occasional talk in the middle school hallway that ‘girls who were virgins were prudes’ or ‘how pathetic is it that there’s still virgins in the 8th grade’. Looking back at it now, it sounds really stupid…like really fucking stupid. All those supposed ‘women’ they would call themselves, ‘women’ who just now learned how to correctly put a tampon into the pussy that they just mercilessly shaved, (more like butchered), were all still scrawny, pathetic little girls inside. Of course hearing all the chatter about everyone’s virginity losses, the stories that were so horrific it made you wanna vomit and change schools, made you insecure on the inside. It’s not like you hadn’t thought of sex before, it just wasn’t your current desire to have some undeveloped boy’s dick in one of those…holes down there. Which also brought up another concern for you: how to even do the act. You assumed that the other person would lead (which was a bad guess because Gojo was a fumbling inexperienced idiot as well).

And it was almost nothing like the old pornos your dad had playing on repeat on the old box tv. He’d spend all his off days (which were more than days he actually got his ass up and went to work), drinking, belching, an occasional scratch of his ass, and watching naked women dance around on the grainy tv. You guys never got the money to buy a new one, maybe if he went to his job down the street at the local corner store he could afford more than the crappy ten dollar pizza down the block.

But who knows, you’ve seen those disgusting scenes, at an age way too young to even comprehend, so did you really have any knowledge? You were a curious kid, not a dumb one, you could easily depict whether or not the porn on the screen was realistic or not. Most the time it was the latter. The overdramatized moans and screams made you wince, on more than a few occasions, but it’s not like the paper thin walls separating the living room and yours did much to help. From having no mother figure to really correct your behavior, and a father that couldn’t give a fuck less, it started your one of many issues. Discovering sex at a really young age, not the act itself but any form of porn an eight year old could get their sticky, grubby hands on. The noises from the tv haunted your mind in a chilling way, making you want to stay as far away from it as possible, yet were still so fucking intrigued.

Until it was the start of the 9th grade, and surprisingly the comments the ‘women’ made in the locker rooms were still present in your mind, not surrounding your every thought, but still there deep down in the back of your mind. ‘Girls who are virgins are lame prudes’. If only you knew that those girls were bluffing about the whole virginity loss thing, but it seemed convincing enough at the time. The way they described how their ‘mans’ bent them over countless times over their granite countertops, or on the elementary school playground. It sounds absurd now, but they had big boobs, and horny teenage boys liked big boobs, so it must of been true, right?

And now here you are, at an headache inducing party, or rave, whatever you wanna call it, watching Gojo talk to yet another girl, more like plain on flirting. She seemed like one of those girls that wouldn’t know if a forty pound dumbbell hit her right in the forehead, so just Gojo’s usual fuck of the night. All he did was stare at her boobs which were spilling out the corset of her trashy costume, and make very poor conversation. What a man whore. You could see Gojo’s shit eating smirk on his lips even from far away and in the almost completely pitch black room, only flashing lights that could cause seizures giving you any sort of seeing ability.

His eyes move from her lips to her tits. Lips—tits—lips—tits. You just wanted to knock the red solo cup out of his overly large fingers and put them somewhere useful. (Such as your aching cunt just dripping in anticipation.) You wanted to go to the nearest open bedroom, drag him by is weirdly hot silver chain, and let him have at you. But you hold back your desires, trying not to let into another spiral of emotions with this man, the same cycle that’s been happening forever now.

You practically crush your phone with your bare hand after receiving that last text, but you refrain and shove it back into your bra since your day to day purse didn’t match your outfit. You take a long deep breath, one you often had to take due to Gojo’s infuriating cocky persona. Walking over to the kitchen, a mini bar was set up in this random kids house, which wasn’t even his you assumed by the family pictures propped up on basically every flat surface.

You hated the parties your friends dragged you to, you felt too old to be in the scene of just barely legal adults blacking out and throwing up so much to the point of you having to look around before walking to avoid stepping in someone’s chunky puke. But to your surprise you actually enjoyed the noise, not making it, but watching others create it. It gave you some sort of distraction from your thoughts which seemed to consume and take over your life since the 9th grade. You wouldn’t call it trauma necessarily, it’s not like you knew you had a fucked up home life until you were fresh out of high school. People on the outside saw your drunken father, crappy rundown home, and the rotational three outfits you wore each week to school and saw it has straight abuse. On some level, the lack of care you were given could be seen as abuse by default, but you were a happy kid. Sure, you were exposed to porn by the time you were eight, but it was just normal to you…in some kinda depressing fashion.

Gojo came from a completely different background, whenever you stepped into his gated community it felt like you were in some other world, an insanely futuristic environment. He was rich, but he wasn’t cocky like those spoiled brats you see on those UK television shows like Super Nanny. At least not when you two had met. It wasn’t a close friendship necessarily, but you two enjoyed each other’s company’s to the point of having sex with each other, so maybe you were closer than you originally thought.

⎜12:08 am Mr. Cock (Gojo): don’t forget you made me like this. don’t get pissy abt what u created.

You dig your phone back out of your lace bra and scoff when you see the message, your hand threatening to go find this piece of shit and chuck your phone at his big head instead. You don’t answer, stuffing your phone back where it came from. You gently push other drunks out your way, reaching for a beer from the ice chest. Using your mouth (one Gojo would call very useful and efficacious), popping it open with your canines.

One thing you loathed about Gojo (not to mention the other 52 things written in your notes) was he thought you were the reason for his ‘fuck boy’ qualities. Yes, you both took each other’s virginity’s, it’s not like he didn’t want it, in fact he wanted it more than you, judging the throbbing of his cock when he first showed it to you. It always comes flooding into your mind every night, more so each Halloween. You came to resent the holiday since it only reminded you of that night 13 years ago. Despite it being over a decade ago, you still recall the nervousness and excitement that you felt when he finally came inside you. It makes you laugh when you remember how totally freaked you were, how you thought you’d get pregnant with his baby.

At that moment you repeated over and over again how ‘this was a terrible idea’ and ‘i hate that you let us do this’. It was an all around shit show for a good twenty minutes before Gojo finally snapped and yelled at you to get over it. Besides it not being the most calm way to handle your panic, it worked. Who could blame him, he was scared shitless too. You both ended the night by trick or treating, it was a kinda dud of a night considering typical trick or treating hours ended two hours ago during your private fun. Luckily Gojo spotted a house on your near midnight walk, a load of halloween candy left in a bowl on some old lady’s porch.

“We shouldn’t-“ but of course, he didn’t let you finish, pressing a shy brief kiss on your lips instead. He had a subtle blush on his pale cheeks, a blush you would only see now during your angry make up sex sessions. Grabbing your hand, and practically dragging you to the house. “Just grab the fuckin’ candy, ya scaredy cat.” He laughs, looking around the dark streets before snagging the candy bowl with a big orange pumpkin face plastered on the front, running off.

“Gojo! YOU FUCKIN’ THEIF!” you giggle, suddenly the porch lights flicker on like some horror movie, and your heart drops into your ass. The door swung open to have your neighbor, Mrs. Miller standing there seething, her mini chihuahua perched in her arms like it was her newborn child. Gojo stopped in his tracks, still heavily breathing like some out of shape forty year old.

“Why you little!” Mrs. Miller reached out to grab you, only for you to duck her failed attempt of dragging you back. Gojo jumped up and down with an amused smile on his face, calling out for you to run faster, which you try to comply as best as possible. You run over to Gojo as fast as your legs would carry you, locking arms and running to who knows where, you can’t quite remember each detail. After that point the rest of the night was a blur to you, still thirteen years later. The sound of Mrs. Miller’s feisty chihuahua, later identified as ‘FeFee’ chasing after you being the most exciting part of the whole ordeal. Gojo and you laughing your way home, still heaving from running so fast from the tiny animal, a ‘disgrace’ to the dog community as he called it.

You both promised that after the scare of possibly having to raise a baby at the ripe age of 14, (and almost having bloody ankles due to FeFee) that fucking each other would be a one time thing.

But it wasn’t.

“F-fuck..! mhmph—God!” He continuously rammed into you from the back, his hands gripping your waist so hard it felt like you had broken bones. Your halloween costume was now thrown somewhere in the corner of this bedroom, who’s bedroom? You had no idea, but at the moment you couldn’t give two shits.

“Yeah? You like that baby?” Gojo thrusted harder, making a broken cry fall from your lips like water. “Knew you c-couldnt…resist my cock any longer, bitch.” Possessed grunts come from him at each thrust and movement he makes. Vibrations from the music of the party travel through the walls, Gojo going deeper and faster to the sound of the horrible rave music downstairs.

If it wasn’t a party, people might of thought a murder was going on by the sounds of your wails of pleasure, but it was normal to fuck at a party, no matter the location.

Tears seep into the pillow that the side of your face was squished down onto, mascara running down your face as you sob from a mixture of pain and pleasure. “Gojo!” you sob, the pleasure becoming too much to bare, yet you couldn’t get the established safe word (which you two only made in 10th grade because you overstimulated him by riding his cock to the point of him passing out) to come out. His dick was that fucking good.

The sound of his heavy, cum filled balls coming in contact with your plush ass make you clench around his length, causing an animalistic moan from Gojo. A room echoing SMACK comes in contact with your ass, making you thrust your back into him, fucking him right back. The burning of the stinging sensation leaves you wanting more, the feeling of his hand still lingering on your left cheek.

Gojo begins going at an alarmingly hasty pace, his whole body aching for more of you, all of you, every single cell. The sound of your sloppy pussy squelching each time he pulls in and out, makes the heat in the pit of his stomach rise. By now you can’t see clearly, eyes welled up with tears and the remains of gooey eyelash glue. One of his hands leave your sore hip, grasping into your messy locks, giving it a good tug “MHMP! ….F-f—fuck!” This only causes him to yank your whole head back, you look up through your lashes, which are stuck together with a mixture of glue and sweat.

“Y-yeah,” he huffs, gripping your roots to a point of it being just downright painful. “keep looking at me….yeah mhmph—j-just like that.” The intense eye contact makes his thrusts even quicker and more efficient, his fat, squishy balls hitting your puffy clit over and over. “So fuckin’ tight for me.” Another hard spank wipes itself across both of your cheeks, the jiggle of them causing yet another guttural moan from Gojo’s throat.

Your soppy wet cunt drips all down his cock, his balls picking up the reminisce of your warm, flowing juices. Gojo’s fingers unravel themselves from your now frizzy hair, the thought of having to wash it later tonight makes you internally groan. His fingers make a slow, tantalizing path up and down your back, the contrast evident between his soft, gentle touch and his monstrous rock hard cock going in and out of your folds. Your face plants back down in the tear-drenched pillow case, the bed creaking from the force of your two bodies going at it.

His slow paced, soft finger touches come to an abrupt end when it meets your soft breasts. An aching cry sounding from your lips as his pointer and thumb mesh together around your now hard nipple. “Mhm…look at you…all whiny for m-me.“ He thrusts harder, your cervix feeling almost numb and incredibly bruised. At this point, your slobbering at the mouth like a dog with rabies, eyes rolling to the back of your brain each time his cock hits every delicious spot.

Gojo’s movements start to get sloppy, as well does the kisses he starts to place on your neck, back, and shoulders. The quick erratic pace starts to slow, forearms trembling from the strength he’s used to hold them on the side of your head all night. His thrusts are slow, long, almost like he’s grinding in slow motion, yet it’s not any less effective. Your thighs begin to shake with overwhelming pleasure, the pressure your body is holding in making you wanna scream it all out. “Mhmph g-gonna cum!” You practically scream a moan out, making Gojo’s lips turn upwards in a smug grin. His lips make their way from the left side of your neck to the middle, and then to the right, leaving a trail of hot, open-mouthed kisses in their wake. Dark red and purple bruised hickeys are now spread all down your body, surely to be left there for weeks to come.

“Nuh uh…not yet,” Gojo grunts as he feels your warm cunt clench around his throbbing cock for the millionth time that night. “This is my pussy…I g-get to tell you when to cum.” You almost wanna roll your eyes at his statement but your too drunk off his cock to care. You attempt to protest, the knot in your stomach becoming too hot to handle, but you get shut up right away when his fingers twist around your sensitive nipple once more, letting out a deep moan from your soul. Your hands grip the silk sheets in desperation, needing to grab something in order to keep you stable. “Mhm, tell me baby…who’s pussy is this?”

You cry into the pillow, pain, pleasure, and the feeling of being absolutely turned on in your whines. After not answering right away, Gojo grabs you by the hair again, yanking your head back, causing your neck to stretch to lengths you didn’t even know you had the flexibility to do so. “I asked, who does…this pussy belong to?” He says through gritted teeth. You feel every 8 inches of his cock in your stretched out pussy, every inch filling you up to as much as you could take. Each vein, the pounding pulse that acts as a second heartbeat, every thick, gurthy inch. When you don’t respond for the second time, too delirious to even understand what’s going on, he throws your head roughly back into the pillow, picking up his pace again.

Everything able to clench on your body does, gripping the pillow with such force that your knuckles turn white. Drops of sweat patter onto your back from Gojo’s forehead, the warm salty liquid making you squirm. Another sudden spank lands on your fat ass cheeks, and you couldn’t help but let loose. “FUCK—GOJO!” Strings of loud breaking moans and screams escape your mouth, sounding like a real murder now.

Gojo throws his head back once he feels your warm, sticky cum surround his palpitating cock. He pumps his dick back into you, pushing your cum back into your dripping wet cunt as far as his cock would let it. He himself finally let’s go, the thin string in his body snaps as his warm liquids mix with yours, in all too familiar feeling. His deep moans rush right to your core, the thrusts becoming inconsistent and sloppy once more. You hear the big analog clock from the entry way downstairs, giving you a slight reminder where the hell you were. Some random persons house, where his parents would probably be any second, and maybe you were even fucking in their bed. You bite your lip, slightly turned on by the fact of possibly getting caught, like you were a teenager back home, sucking Gojo’s cock before his father returned from work.

You whisper moan Gojo’s name over and over like a mantra, in other words, thanking him for finally giving you what your aching pussy had needed. You can tell he’s grateful too, being more gentle as if he had not just fucked your lights out. Caressing your back, like he did the first time this toxic relationship began back in 9th grade. Any memory loss from him talking to that girl just an hour ago was completely thrown out the window, even though you knew deep down you were just like her. One of his play things, the only difference was you weren’t oblivious to his motives. In fact you played into them, driving the toxicity just as much as he did. It made it fun that way. No matter how many guys you fucked, the number of cocks you sucked, the lips you kissed, none of them compared to his, and it made you feel sick in the most pleasurable way possible.

Gojo eventually pulls out, after speaking strange sweet nothings into your ear, which you haven’t heard since he was fifteen. You hated how it made your heart feel so warm, unlike the feeling of the cool air hitting your cunt. The cold air makes you wince, missing his cock already despite still feeling it’s outline in your folds. Fingers leave your hard, tender nipples, bringing them down to your dripping cunt, wiping the access off your thighs.

You start to come back to reality from the moment, the room still filled with humid sticky air caused by the amount of hot breaths and touches made throughout. The only sounds now being your heavy breathing, reminding you of the night you two ran away from FeFee, and slurping from Gojo, licking away at his fingers coated with your sweet salty release. Your folds still leaking with a mixture of your cum, trickling down your painfully sore thighs.

Gojo looks at the syrupy goodness leaking onto the silk sheets, a liquid you would only expect to see on waffles at the local cafe down the street. He finally collapses on top of you, softly massaging your right side, face pressed into the crook of your sweating neck. Placing gentle kisses on your sticky skin, bodies molded into one by your muggy bodies. You savor the moment, knowing deep down in your heart that things would go back to how they were in just a couple hours, fighting, screwing other girls and guys, and all together, a toxic romance.

You sit on the curb, voices from the party still able to be heard as you wait for your cab. You sit there like you’ve been through hell and back, you were if it meant having the best sex you’ve had in a good long while. Sitting on one cheek, the other still too sore to have pressure applied to it, you hear a ding from your phone. You wait a minute, trying to calm your pounding headache from both the alcohol and the amazing sex you just endured. The cool fall air blowing past you as you open the text you received, a small smirk tugged up your chapped lips.

⎜1:34 am Mr. Cock (Gojo): had fun. see u next halloween baby 🫴🏻🍑

[meanbossart]

Oh boy, VaM is kind of a trial and error experience LOL I couldn't really show you how to use the interface and stuff without a whole video or something, but it's not THAT difficult to get a hang of if you just give yourself a day or two to play around, not to mention the number of tutorials you find out there. Luckily, if you only want to use it as a reference software that makes the process far easier (to this day I have no idea how to animate on that thing, since that's not what I use it for)

As for how I use it, it's pretty self explanatory - if there's a complicated pose I want to draw but I'm either having trouble with it, or just want to double-check angles/anatomy, I will use it as a resource! I use for most of my "proper" pieces (y'know, the nicer looking ones) and every once in a while for my silly comics if I'm having trouble with a pose.

Lets use this drawing for example (the character on top of DU drow belongs to @namespara )

I don't draw a lot of mud-wrestling (shocking, I know) but I had an idea of the kind of pose I wanted them to be in. So the very first thing I did was make a rough sketch of what I was envisioning:

I often do a rough sketch first, even If I know I'm going to be pulling the program up because A) It's less tedious than adjusting the models over and over again until I pick a pose and B) because sometimes I'll decide I don't need the reference, after all, and so that's 30 minutes I'll have spared myself of playing around on the software.

Now, this is a pretty complicated pose! It's in a weird angle and the bodies are making contact in ways I'm not used to depicting, so I did choose to whip out VaM for this one. I went into the program and after some messing around, I flopped my little dolls together like this:

Now something really cool about VaM is that you can completely customize your models, and if you have the patience, I would definitely encourage you to do so! Obviously, you don't have to make picture perfect replicas of every single character you have, but as you can see here I have made a DU drow "decoy" to help me better understand some of his features when I draw him: he has a strong brow, a short nose, a square jawline - these are all going to look a very specific way from certain angles, and I might not always be sure of how to draw it right! So it's useful to have models that bear SOME semblance to the character so you can better understand how different viewpoints will affect their bone structure and mass.

Also thank fucking god for the elf-ear slider. Figuring out how to draw those shits from certain angles was a huge pain in the ass when I started drawing DnD races.

So, with the reference in hand, I go over the sketch again:

Now you may notice that I don't stick to the reference 100%. There's three reasons for this:

posing on VaM is tedious as hell. You can get something incredibly natural looking and picture-perfect to reference from if you wish, but it's going to take you hours to do. So, for the most part I just slap guys together until the results are "close enough" and use that.

In my opinion, you should always aim to ENHANCE your reference material, not replicate it exactly!

While VaM is a PRETTY DANG GOOD source of anatomical reference, it isn't perfect, I often supplement it with further reference from real life resources or make tweaks based on my own knowledge where I catch it falling short (and, antithetical to what I just said, I sometimes fuck the anatomy up further on purpose if I think it looks better that way LOL it's all jazz baby).

Then lines, color, yada yada. I don't have a tutorial on that and I don't think I could make one, because my process is chaotic as hell, but I do at times use Virt-a-mate as loose reference for lighting too when coloring - waaaaayyyy less so however, because that process is even more tedious and I feel like I often get better results by just winging it. It is a feature of the program though, and I'm sure it would be helpful for someone who has a difficult time visualizing lights and shadows. I only started using this program a few months ago, so I happened to already have a pretty good understanding of that kind of thing and just don't personally feel like I get much out of that particular mechanic.

Here's a few other examples of pieces that I made reference for (WARNING: Suggestive)

Now, for the question many of you may want to ask:

"Can I trace this junk?"

And to that, I say: Buddy, you can do whatever the hell you want with the reference material you created.

However,

If your goal is to learn and improve your art, and to recreate realistic proportions and anatomy from memory, tracing won't help you.

Developing your own style, your muscle memory, and personal technique will all be hindered by choosing to trace instead of drawing from observation, so I would encourage against it. Hell - even when tracing is employed as a technique, it's usually by high-skill realism & concept artists who are looking to either cut some corners, save time, or just double-check their own proportions in order to improve further - if you try tracing as a beginner, you will most definitely find the result to still look stiff and "off".

So trust me, there is so much more to be gained from drawing from observation. Make note of tangents, compare proportions, use all the elements of the picture to dictate where and how things should go - it will be a far more rewarding experience.

Hopefully this has been helpful! VaM is a really cheap program (you get it on the guys' patreon for I think 8 dollars, just google it!) and it's definitely been worth my money as an artist since I found it. Learning to use it can be a little intimidating at first glance, but as I said above you only really need a day plus one or two tutorials to get a hang of the interface.

A fair warning though, IT IS A SOFTWARE MADE FOR VIRTUAL SEX/ADULT ANIMATION So when looking it up expect to see a some spicy content.

[brownskinlemon]

can you write aaaa… dominic fike x reader/gf surprises him after a show overseas and they have sum great ‘i mmissed u’ sex ? 💋✨

pairings: dom/fem!reader gf

word count: 2,047

warnings: smut, multiple 0rg@sms, fluff, swearing

authors not: this was super fun to write! ty for the requests <3

Bass boosted through the venue, an electric guitar riffing in the distance as you watched your boyfriend through a small tv in the green room. You were sitting on the couch, excitedly toying your fingers against the worn leather as you waited for Reed to give you the okay to head to Dominic’s hotel. It was 9pm already, you had been here for an hour, all without Dom’s knowledge. You had to see him perform before heading there to surprise him.

It started with the expected loneliness that filled your apartment when  he left for tour, and then a not-so-silly idea as he joked on the phone.

“I wish you could come see me in New Zealand.” He chuckled, you two talked for a bit more until you decided to pretend to head to bed. As he headed to sound check somewhere in Europe, you stayed up late, searching for the nearest ticket to meet him in New Zealand. It had taken some sneaky conversations with Reed and some planning but you had formulated a plan to surprise him in NZ.

Now, here you were, pulled out of your trance by Reed poking his head into the green room.

“He’ll be off in about 25. Driver’s outside and it’s about a 15 minute drive away.” He smiled softly.

You hopped up, following him down a dark hallway and exiting out through a side door, swiveling your head around as you headed to a blacked out SUV, surprised to find no fans waiting outside the venue.

“They’re on the other side.” Reed chuckled, reading your mind. “Here’s the hotel key. Now shoo!” He joked, urging you into the car.

The ride to the hotel was calm and beautiful, the sights of Auckland keeping you in awe. You arrived at the Sofitel hotel, trying to maintain your composure at how grand and pristine the building was. The lifestyle that Dom had created for you was still too much to take in at times.

After checking in, you headed to the bar to pass time, wanting to give Dominic time to shower. You knew how hard we went at shows, and you figured he’d want to be clean and refreshed to be surprised. The sexual tension that had been laced in you two’s recent texts hinted to you what tonight could look like.

While waiting, you got a text from Reed:

“He headed up to the room about 15 ago, you should be all good to go. Good luck xx.” You were suddenly overcome with nervousness as you made your way to the elevator. You two had been together for about 2 years and you still couldn’t help the nervousness that overcame you when you were reunited with him. You chewed gently on your bottom lip, tapping your foot as the elevator made its way to the penthouse suite. After tapping your key, you gently opened the door, closing it behind you and crossing your fingers in hope that he was still in the shower. As you made your way through the suite, you were met with ever growing sounds of music echoing in the bathroom, paired with the steady pour of the shower. You tiptoed past the bathroom door, making your way to the bedroom, gently closing the door behind you. 

You kicked off your shoes, eyes catching yourself in the mirror, eyes scanning over the tight sundress you had decided on for today. Your eyes scanned over the room, suddenly met with a view that couldn’t be described as anything less than stunning. It was a top floor view, overlooking the whole city, the colorful lights gently illuminating the dim room.

You were taken out of your trance by a sudden deep voice behind you.

“What the fuck��� 

You turned on your heels, eyes caught onto Dom in the doorway, clad only in pajama pants and his jaw agape as he tried to register that you were here, right in front of him.

“Surprise…” You said breathlessly with a shy smile, heart racing in your chest as if you were seeing him for the first time.

He strided over to you silently, lifting you up into his large arms, engulfing you in his scent. He dug his face into your neck as you wrapped your legs around his waist, squeezing each other tighter than ever. After a few moments, he placed you on your feet gently, hands laced behind the small of your back as he ogled down at you like a schoolboy with a crush.

“You are fucking insane! How did you pull this off?” His voice slightly raspy from his concert earlier in the night.

“Blame Reed. He’s sneaky and an enabler. I came to him as a joke and he helped me figure it out.” You chuckled, smiling up at him. 

“I missed you so much today you have no idea.” He sighed contently. He leaned forward, kissing you slowly, leaning back a moment later to leave his forehead on yours.

“Is that so? Wanna show me how much?” You slyly remarked, suddenly hyper aware of the desire pooling your insides and raising your temperature.

His eyes shifted between yours, a darkness began to circle them as he realized what you meant. He nodded silently, grabbing your face with his hands and kissing you fervently, almost making your knees buckle. Your tongues danced together and he pulled you up into his arms again, finding the desk near the window to sit you on.

He pulled himself to stand between your legs, grabbing your neck gently and tilting it back for easy access to mark you. He switched between lightly ghosting over your most sensitive spots to littering marks all over your neck, driven on by the whines that left your throat.

He pulled back to scan over your body, hands running up and down your inner thighs..

“This dress looks, really fucking good on you. And it's…” His hand ghosted lightly over your clothed clit, making you gasp. “Easy access.” He smirked innocently at your reaction.

You whined at the loss of contact, hands gripping onto his biceps and eyes pleading up at him. He understood what those whines meant, cueing you to lift up as he gently pulled your panties off, throwing them somewhere in the large room. Your breath stalled in your chest at how he lowered himself onto his knees, keeping eye contact with you as he teased between your inner thighs, extremely close to where you needed him most. 

“Dom please I-” You were suddenly cut off by his pink lips wrapping around your clit, making you let out a high pitched sound at the sudden surge of pleasure, arching up into arms and leaning your head back onto the window behind you.  

You couldn’t help the way your hips grinded up into his tongue that circled you so skillfully, one hand laced in his curls, the other dug into the edges of the desk, desperate to find anything to hold onto. He hummed into you from contentment, enjoying the sounds spilling from your mouth, as you became a babbling mess of moans and echoes of his name. Your eyes rolled back as he slowly and gently worked one, and then two of his long fingers into you, pressing deeply at your g-spot not losing his rhythm between your legs.

Your legs tensed as a coil in your abdomen began twisting and alerting you and him to the way you were about to become undone. 

“Cmon baby...look at me..” He cooed gently, not stalling his pace. You forcefully looked down at him through squinted eyes that were threatening to close at any moment. “Give it to me, pretty girl.” Your breath ran ragged, the way the lights danced across him, the innocent look in his eyes despite what he was currently doing sent you over the edge. Your eyes squeezed together as you thrashed in his arms, coming undone with a series of ragged moans, riding out your high as he began to draw back on his torture between your legs. 

Your head stayed laid back and eyes stayed closed as you attempted to catch your breath. You heard Dominic shuffle to stand up. Your head snapped up and eyes caught onto his as the tip of his length gently rubbed the entrance of the ache between your legs. One hand held the small of your back up while the other held the base of his length. He groaned quietly at the sight of your wetness that had pooled between your legs. He gently let you adjust to his size, working into you inch by inch, eyes trained onto your face to watch for your reactions. You both moaned in unison as his hips met yours, his hands leaning over to the window behind you, hiking your leg up. 

“You feel so amazing my god “ he groaned. His thrusts began gently, rocking into you at a steady pace. You looked up at him, mouth agape, as he coaxed you through it gently. “So p-pretty. Good girl.” 

“Harder Dom- please baby, please.” You begged. He didn’t stall, picking up his pace, the sound of his hips colliding with yours and your increasingly loud moans filled the room. You clung to him, hands around his back as he pounded into you. His lips collided with yours suddenly, the kiss filled with passion.

“I love you..i love you..i love you..” He mumbled desperately against your lips, moving deeper than before.

“I l-love you” You managed to get out through your moans.

He kissed you deeply again, leaning back to gently pull out and flip you to stand on your feet facing the window. You felt his breath ghost over your ear as he whispered gently.

“The view is almost as pretty as you. Wanted you to see it too..” He said, gently smirking at the way your body shivered from the kisses he traced down your neck and  back, gently teasing the tip at your entrance again before sliding back into you, leaving your mouth agape. He gently pressed down on your back, queuing you to relax over the desk. He resumed his earlier pace into you, kneading at your ass that was positioned up to him. One hand made its way around you to grip the sides on your neck, the other finding its way between your legs.

The combination of the delicious pressure on your neck coupled with the circling of your clit left you feeling dizzy and your knees buckling.

“Holy shittt” You whined, tears pooling in the corners of your eyes. If he kept going the way he was, you weren’t going to last for long. Your hand went up to cup his hand around your throat gently.

“Can you give me one more baby? I know you can..c'mon..” He cooed in your ear,relishing in the way that his words made you clench down on him.One particular thrust made you finally come undone for the second time, forcing you up on your tippy toes, eyes rolling back as you cried out Dominic’s name like a mantra.

He finished soon after, pulling out with a gasp, and finishing on the curve of your ass. He leaned over you, placing his head on your shoulder as you stood shivering, trying to come back to reality.

“Good job baby.” He smiled as he kissed your cheek.

You smiled gently as you came to, opening your eyes to fully take in the view in front of you.

“What happened to your fear of heights?” You toyed, turning in his arms. 

“Fear of heights can’t beat the orgasm I just had not gonna lie.” He deadpanned, making you weakly laugh. He scooped you up, forcing you to pee while he ran you two a bath, shortly making both of your ways to relax in the water with your back against his chest.

“I feel lucky, so many girls wish they could have.. that but only got an autograph.” You smiled lazily

“Oh trust me you got a few signatures of your own” He smirked, pointing at your neck “Seven to be exact.”

You jokingly rolled your eyes. Relaxing against him, you were just grateful to be back in his arms again.

[moosesarecute]

Part 4: The Shadows Sing

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

Azriel had spent the last week trying to figure out the most he could about living in The Middle.

He did research about different kinds of species, but he could not find anything about yellow bugs that made you pass out.

He also spent some time just observing the life of the female.

He learned her routine and the faces of the people she worked with.

What annoyed him, was the fact that he still didn’t know for sure if he actually had seen her surrounded by shadows.

Shadowsingers were rare, he knew that, but he still had a small hope that the female would be like him. They would have something to connect over. Because he really wanted to get to know her.

It took a week before he had time and enough knowledge to make a move.

He used his shadows to shadow walked directly into the cabin the female lived in.

“Friends!” His shadows cheered, but he couldn’t see anything. But he knew that either the female, or the shadows themselves, could have hidden the shadows in plain sight.

He knew she had started on the walk towards the cabin. He also knew that if she walked, it would take 15 minutes, maybe 10 if she was really fast.

So when the female opened the door to the cabin after only two minutes, Azriel knew for sure she had more magic in her than what she let out.

“You won’t believe it,” she sang as she danced through the door. “I won three fights! I have food for like 4 days!”

Azriel didn’t want to admit it, but he found her quite adorable. And so did his shadows.

“Pretty eyes! Cute!” They said as they tried to get out of Azriel’s grip and move towards the female.

He almost wanted to just stay still and observe her, with her cute dance moves and singing, but he knew he had to get the upper hand.

“Who are you talking to?” He asked with a raised brow.

Talking to an empty room seems like a sign that she had someone in her home she usually would speak to. Shadows for example.

The female dropped the bread and oatmeal she was holding. She started to back out of the cabin.

Azriel used his shadows to block the door. There was no way out, unless she decided to use her powers.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she answered. She straightened her back and pushed back her shoulders. She tried to be seen as strong and not scared, but Azriel could basically smell her fear.

Her sent, Azriel had decided, was a mix of pines and night air, but now it had a sour tinge.

An other obvious sign of her fear, was the fact that she was shaking from top to toe.

“You come into your cabin, obviously talking to someone, but there isn’t anyone here,” Azriel started to speak. He walked from one side of the small room to the other. “You also traveled a distance that would take 10 minutes to run, in less than 5 minutes.”

“What’s your point?” She asked. She tried to act unfazed, but Azriel saw straight through it. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I think you’re powerful,” he answered. “I think you’re like me.”

He then let loose his shadows.

They surrounded the female and tried to play with her hair.

She waved her hands and tried to get them to stop.

But Azriel didn’t miss the way her eyes almost doubled in size and how she tightened her jaw, fighting hard for it to not open.

He also didn’t miss how she started to fickle with her fingers to prevent his seeing her hands shake much worse than before.

What was going on?

Azriel pulled his shadows away from the female and waited for her to answer.

“I don’t know you who think I am, but you’re obviously mistaken.” She said and tried to look annoyed. But her voice was now shaking too.

“I saw you use them last time we met,” he argued.

He tried his best not to look too intimidating, while still being a little scary. He couldn’t just trust her, even though his every instinct told him that he should.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she answered. Her fear started to turn into anger. “And I don’t appreciate that you have been spying on me like an obsessed stalker.”

“I’m not obsessed,” he answered. “I’m curious.”

She didn’t answer for quite some time. She stood still and looked directly at him. Azriel raised his eyebrow once more. He would have loved to know what was going through her head.

“If I give you five minutes,” she started. “Five minutes to ask me the questions you have. And then you’ll leave me alone. Deal?”

Azriel felt his stomach twist. He had scared the female so much that she’d be willing to make a bargain with him to get him away.

Usually, that would be an ideal situation for him. He wouldn’t need to use any time consuming or dangerous tools to get the information.

However, with this female it felt so wrong. Her scared gaze made him want to throw up. He saw her shake and he wanted her to hold her until it stopped.

What was going on? He didn’t even know her name for cauldron’s sake!

“I have five minutes to ask you questions and you will respond truthfully. Then I’ll leave you alone if you want me to,” he told her.

“It’s a deal,” she answered.

The second they agreed, they both got a matching bargain tattoo on their forearm. It was abstract, but definitely looked like a shadow.

“What’s your name?” Azriel started.

They had taken seats with the table. Azriel sat on the tree stump acting like a chair and the female sat on the table.

“Y/N,” she answered.

Azriel felt shivers going through his spine. The name fit her.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Azriel.”

When he first heard the two twins talk about her name, he had felt a connection to it.

If was perfect.

“How old are you?” He continued.

“It’s that a little mean to ask a lady?” She asked back. Now it was her time to raise an eyebrow.

Azriel just sat and waited for an answer.

“I’ll be 70 soon,” she answered.

That surprised Azriel a little. She looked older, felt wiser. It was like she already had centuries of experience, even though she wasn’t even a century old.

“What was that bug that bit me?”

She gave out a small laugh.

“You actually don’t know?” Y/N asked. Azriel shook his head. She let out a sigh. “It was a Gelbbug. They live around here in the winter. Their bites usually only give people an itch, but around 1% of the time, the female bugs bites are lethal. It’s around the earlier stages of their pregnancies. One bite and you’d be dead within minutes.”

“So you saved my life?” He asked. He felt confused. Why would a female he’s never met before, safe his life? Especially after he had lot her a naga and apparently some money.

“Yeah,” she answered. “I suppose I did.”

Her eyes met his. Azriel felt time stop. It was just like it had been in all his dreams. Her sparkling bright eyes looked directly into his. Everything felt alright in the world for just that moment.

“I’ll ask the rest another day,” Azriel then said with a smug smile.

“What are you talking about?” She asked. “We just made a bargain. Five minutes and then you’d be gone!”

Azriel just shook his head.

“I have five minutes to ask questions, that was the deal,” he explained. “I one spent one minute asking questions. It’s not my fault you spent so long time answering them.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“See you later,” he said and disappeared.

He was sure he heard the words “fucking prick” before he left.

@i-have-a-thing-for-the-dark @saltedcoffeescotch