#cruel decaying flesh

[alphie-in-the-sky]

[s0dium]

𝐒𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐑!!!

𝐒𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐫!𝐆𝐞𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐮𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐮 𝐱 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐊𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫!𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

𝐒𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬: Never in your wildest dreams did you think you’d find out that your crush, Geto Suguru, was just like you: a murderer. Not only that but you share the same passion; killing criminals and pedophiles! (Happy Kinktober) 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: DARK CONTENT, gore, mutilation, murder, mentions of pedophiles (y/n kills them), serial killing, unprotected sex, breeding, choking, teasing, knife play, whipped Suguru 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 10.3k 𝐀/𝐧: This is based HEAVILY on the novel Butcher and Blackbird by Brynne Weaver. The original idea is credited to Brynne Weaver ONLY. This work is fan fiction and is not intended for commercial purposes or to infringe on the intellectual property rights of the original author.

Being a serial killer who kills other killers, pedophiles, and rapists is a great hobby.

Until you find yourself locked in a cage.

For three days.

No AC.

With a body you carved up.

You glare at the fly-riddled corpse whose legs are kneeling opposite of you in the locked cage you were both trapped in. The air is thick with the putrid stench of decay, a relentless assault on your senses. The body's skin is pallid, marred by the writhing mass of white maggots that feast mercilessly. Where eyes once held gaze, now only hollow sockets remain, tediously scooped out and vacant. The ears too have been sheared off, leaving clean edges that blend into the mottled, blood-stained flesh. Its chest has been cracked open; ribs pried apart in a macabre mimicry of an unhinged broken cocoon, revealing the dark, empty cavity where a heart once beat.

Then, of course, the piste de resistance of your work, the removed eyes, ears, and heart rest in the corpse's upturned palms—placed with ceremonial care amidst the chaos of mutilation.

So now, if anyone were to walk down the steps of Gary Green House's basement, they would not only find his mutilated body, but the person who did it, trapped in a cage together.

"Fuck." You curse at yourself for the millionth time since you've been trapped here for the last three days. The cold realization that you've fallen into Gary’s final trap gnaws at your mind as relentlessly as the maggots at the corpse across from you. The cage, a cruel relic of Gary’s twisted pleasures, had seemed the perfect place for your ritual—turning the hunter into the hunted in his own den of horrors. But in your fervor to see him pay, you overlooked one crucial detail: the cage's sinister design, which sealed shut the moment its door swung closed.

The remote control, now a mocking symbol of freedom, lies just beyond the bars, on a small, grimy table. You remember the sickening click of the lock, the finality of it echoing in the cramped space as you turned back from the grisly task of dismembering Gary—his last, silent victory.

Even the idiot police could deduce that this was all your doing, seeing as all your bloody tools were still with you in your backpack. With fingerprints. It was just a matter of time before they opened the basement door.

You could practically hear Gary’s voice from beyond the grave: "Hah! Serves you right, you stupid bitch! That's what you get for killing me!" The taunt echoes in your head like a song over and over again and you're seriously contemplating banging your head against the iron bars.

"FUCK FINE!" You yell into the darkness. "I renounce my wicked ways!"

"That's a shame. I bet I would like your wicked ways."

You jump at the sound of a man's deep, smooth voice, the cadence of slight raspiness warming every note. Your curses cut the humid air from the startlement of the man's presence. How the hell did he even get in here? You didn't hear the basement door open. You scurry out of reach of the man who saunters into the thin thread of light from the narrow window, the glass opaque with fly shit.

"You seem to be in a predicament." He says stepping into view. The thin light from the window partially illuminates him, allowing you to make out his face. Oh rather, what is on his face.

Holy shit.

A ghost mask stares back at you, its hollow eyes and elongated mouth frozen in a chilling scream. The stark white of the mask contrasts sharply with the surrounding shadows, and you watch with wide eyes as he tilts his head.

Holy shit holy shit holy shit.

In any other situation, you might be fan-girling. You know exactly who you're staring at: the infamous Crucifer, a killer, like you, but notorious for his crucifixion of criminals in rather, flamboyant displays. The few eyewitness accounts of the Crucifer all mention the ghost mask, leaving no doubt in your mind about his identity.

While your hunting grounds have been Osaka, his have typically been Tokyo, but despite the geographical difference, his reputation precedes him. In all honesty, you shouldn’t be surprised he’s here. Your victim, Gary Greenwich, is notorious even among the authorities. Despite his crimes, the lack of solid evidence has always allowed him to slip through the cracks of the justice system, leaving him free to continue his heinous activities. He was high on your kill list, and it’s no surprise he was high on Crucifers as well.

He takes a few steps closer toward the cage to stare down at the corpse, bending to take a closer look.

"Well what happened here?" He chuckles.

You are on day three of no food. No water. The gnawing hunger in your stomach feels like a relentless beast, clawing at your insides with increasing ferocity. You wonder if your body has started to eat its own organs at this point.

You can't deal with this shit.

"Self defense." You say.

The man chuckles. "I doubt that, you're not his type." Despite his mask you can feel his eyes shift from the corpse to linger on you.

"And how would you know that?"

"Well disregarding the state in which you "self defense" left him, you're not a 6 year old boy. And," he steps closer so now he is inches away from the bars and his whole body is illuminated. "I make it my business to know."

You don't answer. Instead you watch as he crouches down to meet your gaze. You try to hide behind your tangled hair and folded limbs, giving him only your eyes.

And of course, just your luck, he is stunning

Black hair flows behind his mask and down his shoulder. He's wearing a black compression shirt that hugs every muscle of his biceps and forearms, accentuating his athletic build. His broad shoulders enhance his imposing presence, giving him the aura of a seasoned athlete. Black cargo pants complete his ensemble, practical and intimidating, with a hunting knife sticking out of his pocket, probably what he would've used on Gary if you hadn't got to him first.

Something about him looks familiar, something you can't put your finger on.

"I guess you made it your business to know too." He pauses before moving even closer so his mask is practically pressed against the iron bars. "Hey, you look pretty familiar."

You shift uncomfortably, feeling the prickle of anxiety creeping up your spine. Instinctively, you brush a tangled lock of hair from your face, wincing as it catches on your dry lips. The man's shoulders tense as if he has been electrocuted.

"Y/n?" His voice cuts through the thick silence like a knife.

Oh, what the hell.

You jerk your head up from your hunched posture, eyes wide in shock, meeting the unsettling, hollow eyes of the ghost mask. Your heart races, pounding loudly in your chest.

"Wha-"

"Oh my god, it is you!" He exclaims, his loud deep voice echoing through the basement.

"I'm sorry, I don't-" you stammer, confusion and fear knotting in your stomach.

"It's me," he interrupts, and with a swift motion, he takes off his mask. The sight of his familiar face makes your breath catch in your throat. "Suguru Geto."

Suguru Geto. The name alone sent ripples through your thoughts, dragging along memories and emotions you had long buried. Suguru wasn’t just any ordinary guy; he was a micro-celebrity in Tokyo, renowned for his breathtaking tattoo artistry. His ink adorned the bodies of celebrities, flaunted in TikToks and Instagram posts that garnered thousands of likes. His reputation was impeccable, his designs sought after by the elite.

You had crossed paths with Suguru a few times at various parties, your social circles occasionally overlapping due to mutual friends. Each encounter left an indelible mark on you. His presence was magnetic, drawing you in like a moth to a flame. It wasn’t just his talent that made him irresistible; it was everything about him. Those hawk-like eyes that seemed to pierce through to your very soul, the perfect curve of his lips that could shift from a smirk to a genuine smile in an instant, and those dimples that appeared whenever he graced you with that smile—each feature was a weapon, effortlessly disarming.

You, like many other girls, harbored a secret crush on Suguru Geto. It was impossible not to. That face alone could kill, and his charisma was the final blow.

And now, here he was, standing right in front of you, unmasked and undeniably real. The reality of it all hit you like a tidal wave, leaving you breathless and a little overwhelmed.

Suguru clears his throat, a small smirk playing on his lips from how obviously you are gawking at him.

"Shot in the dark here but are you the Mute Collector?"

You part your lips to say something but you can't seem to form the right words.

"I-"

Suguru's grin widens and a sharp laugh escapes his perfect mouth. "Oh my god. I knew it. I fucking knew they had it wrong about you with that bull shit profile they built. What was it, they said you were a 30 year old white man?" Suguru throws his head back and smiles at the ceiling. "And the Mute Collector? You? That's just awesome. I'm such a huge fan."

"Yeah..." You clear your throat and push your hair completely out of your face. He grins at you, as though awe struck, and if you weren't wearing 100 layers of grime on your skin you are sure he'd be able to see the blush flaming in your cheeks for a second.

"And you?" You nod toward the mask. "You are?" You don't know why you are feigning ignorance but something about humbling him seems tastier than actual food right now.

"Oh come on." Suguru's tone flattens and he brings the mask up next to his face.

"The Crucifer?"

You shake your head.

"The cross maker?"

You shake your head again. Lying through your teeth is fun.

"The Tokyo Butcher?" When you shake your head he sighs and stands up. "Well," he glances to Gary whose maggots have made their way to the empty eye sockets. "What do you say? We ditch this lousy scene and get something to eat. Maybe when you get food in your stomach you will remember some of my little nicknames."

Your eyes widen and your stomach growls loudly, reminding you of how long it's been since you last ate. You glance up at your Suguru, a mix of hope and suspicion in your gaze.

"Are you serious?" you ask, your voice hoarse from dehydration.

"Yeah, after we get you a shower, some clothes and burn the house down."

You gulp and stand to your feet. "Could we get burgers?"

Suguru grins before grabbing the remote and pointing it at the cage.

"Fine by me."

~

The Mute Collector.

Geto Suguru is sitting across from the fucking Mute Collector.

And god you are beautiful.

Not that he just realized it now. Like many others, he has always known how attractive you are; he just pushed it to the back of his mind. But now, knowing who you really are and what you do in your free time, your body has practically been encompassed in bright warm light and your head adorned with a halo. He watches as you down your 6th cup of water with a sigh and wipe your mouth with your sleeve.

The two of you sit in a cozy booth at a restaurant, the warm, smoky aroma filling the air. Suguru leans back with a beer in hand, watching you with a mix of amusement and caution. The waitress approaches, placing a large plate with a double cheeseburger and fries in front of you. Your eyes light up, and without wasting a second, you pick up the cheeseburger with your fingers and take a big bite, savoring the flavors.

Suguru chuckles, raising his beer in a mock toast. "You look like you've just found the Holy Grail."

He doesn't miss the way you stifle back a laugh, trying to speak through a mouthful of burger. "If the Holy Grail were covered in cheese and ketchup, then yeah, maybe."

He takes a sip of his beer, grinning. "I’ve never seen someone so excited about food. Maybe you should give up your little hobby and do food reviews."

"Well, that's what being trapped in a cage with the rotting corpse of a pedophile does to you I guess." You grumble, setting down the burger and taking another drink of water.

Suguru's eyes stay on you, and he takes the opportunity to really assess you. Your hair is damp, and the wetness seeps into the white Mickey Mouse shirt you're wearing, causing it to cling slightly to your skin and reveal the elegant lines of your collarbone. He bought that shirt and the shorts for you at a thrift store, and despite the fact that such clothes should look bad on anyone, you are rocking them effortlessly.

He can't help but notice that you didn't buy a bra, a fact that makes him smile to himself.

No bra.

"So tell me." Suguru sets his beer back on the table and leans in.

"The whole ears, eyes and heart thing." He waves his left hand in the air. "The police say it's satanic ritual stuff but I don't buy it."

You pause, a hint of a smile playing at your lips as you meet his gaze. "It's simple, really. Hear no evil, see no evil, fear no evil."

Suguru raises an eyebrow. "You have a way of making the macabre sound poetic."

You're about to reach for a fry, but he snatches it before your fingers could reach it.

"Why not the tongue?" He says. "You know, speak no evil."

You roll your eyes and snatch the fry out of his fingers. "Tongues are hard to cut, too slippery and make a mess."

He nods thoughtfully, leaning back in his seat. "You know, most people would be horrified to hear you talk like that."

"Good thing you’re not most people," you reply with a smirk.

"Touché."

He watches as your lips wrap around the thick fry and your teeth rip off half of it into your mouth.

No bra.

"What about you Suguru?" You lock eyes with him. "Why are you here?"

"Why am I here?"

"You heard me. You swoop in all superman-like, save me from the dipshit’s pedo dungeon and take me out for a double cheeseburger. Why are you here?"

Suguru shrugs and averts his gaze from your unyielding stare. Shit, your piercing eyes are almost making him sweat.

"Same thing you already did. I was going to skin him alive and and display the fucking monkey Jesus style infront of his house. At least, something like that."

"Yeah but why him? I thought your hunting grounds were in Tokyo?"

Your eyes widen slightly as the words hang in the air, the weight of your mistake sinking in immediately. You feel a rush of heat to your cheeks, a telltale sign of your embarrassment. Your lips part as if to take back the words, but it's too late; they've already been spoken.

A sly smile spreads across Sugurus face as he watches your face fall.

"Oh you totally know who I am Y/n."

"Fucking hell."

"You do! You know that I like to hunt near my home, how long have you been a part of my fan club?"

You roll your eyes and fall back into your seat. You blink rapidly, trying to maintain your composure, but the subtle tension in your jaw and the furrowing of your brow betray your embarrassment.

"So which one was your favorite? The monkey I strung up next to the police station? Or the one I flayed inside the Tokyo Union Church?"

"Oh my god I can already tell you are going to be insufferable." You grumble, the heat of embarrassment slowly dissipating as you take a deep breath. Suguru leans back, a mischievous glint in his eyes as he swirls the beer in his hand, watching you with an almost predatory curiosity. As seconds pass, Suguru assesses your face, following how your eyes dart around the room, searching for an escape route, and Suguru’s playful expression falters for a split second. He realizes with a sudden jolt that you're trying to leave. He can't have that. He needs to see you again.

"Hey speaking of suffering," Suguru clears his throat. "Have you heard about the women killings in Kyoto?"

Your eyebrows raise, curiosity piqued. "Yeah, I've heard. Pretty gruesome stuff. Why do you ask?"

A playful smile tugs at his lips. "How about a friendly competition? The killer's already taken six lives so far."

You tilt your head, your eyes narrowing slightly as you try to decipher his intentions. "What do you mean by a competition?"

Suguru leans in closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "That's exactly what it sounds like. Who can hunt him down first?"

For a moment, you're taken aback, your eyes widening as you process his proposal. A mix of surprise and intrigue flickers across your face. "Are you serious?"

He chuckles, clearly enjoying your reaction. "As sin."

"And what do we get if we win?"

Suguru's eyes gleam with amusement and something else—admiration. "Bragging rights, of course. And maybe... another dinner like this one."

You throw your head back and let out a laugh. "Oh yeah? Who says I'll need you to get me another dinner?"

"Can't let you go hungry again. What do you say?”

~

You sit at your desk, the dim light of your laptop casting a pale glow on your face as you scroll through articles about the woman killer from Kyoto. The room is quiet, save for the occasional click of your mouse and the hum of the laptop. Your phone buzzes, and you glance at the screen to see Shoko’s name. With a smile, you answer the call.

"Hey Shoko, how’s your night shift?" you greet her with a teasing tone.

Shoko’s laugh crackles through the speaker. "Busy as always. Just patched up a guy who thought he could outsmart a bulletproof vest with sheer willpower. Spoiler: he couldn’t."

You chuckle, shaking your head. "Sounds like my type of guy."

By day, Shoko is your best friend and a dedicated med student, excelling in her studies with a, albeit, half hearted, passion for helping others. But when the sun sets, she transforms into the notorious Dr. Reverse, the underground doctor every criminal and lowlife turns to in their time of need. Using her medical expertise, she serves those who cannot seek help through legal means, operating in the shadows and patching up criminals who live by a different set of rules. In addition to her medical skills, she also deals in poisons, further cementing her reputation in the underworld.

You first met Shoko in a moment of desperation. After cornering a serial rapist, you were attacked with a machete, almost severing your arm. With nowhere else to turn, you sought out Dr. Reverse. Shoko skillfully sewed you up and, in the process, deduced that you were the infamous Mute Collector. To your surprise, she didn't seem to care about your identity, and you, in turn, didn't question her underground business or her dealings with poison. This mutual understanding and acceptance laid the foundation for a strong bond, and you've been best friends ever since. 

Shoko laughed, a sound that always manages to lift your spirits. "Right? Anyway, what's up? I saw your SOS text."

You hesitate, glancing at the photo of Geto Suguru on your screen on a separate tab. His annoyingly white teeth glare back at you, and you try to resist staring at his six pack in an instagram photo someone took of him at a pool party.  His dark eyes seemed to stare right through you, as if mocking your indecision. "It's about Geto."

There was a brief pause before Shoko's voice came back, tinged with curiosity. "Geto? What about him?"

You take a deep breath, your fingers drumming nervously on the desk. "He's the Crucifier."

Shoko's reaction was immediate and loud. "Geto is what?" she practically yelled through the phone, causing you to wince.

"The Crucifier. I know." You scoffed, rolling your eyes at the absurdity of it all. "Can you believe it?"

Shoko let out a low whistle. "Wow. I mean, he always seemed like a guy with secrets, but I never pegged him for a serial killer, I mean, someone like you."

"Yeah, well, here we are," You mutter, rubbing your temples. You focus your attention back on your computer screen. Suguru is squeaky clean, not even a bad review on his website. There was only his questionable taste in best friends: Gojo Satoru—the biggest playboy and the infamous heir to the Gojo Company, Japan's largest and most influential corporation. Gojo's notoriety was legendary, his exploits plastered across tabloids and whispered in gossip circles. You’ve met, and been hit on by the man a few times, and not once did you fall for any of his slimy cheap antics. No, Geto Suguru is who your eyes fell on. 

 "And now he’s proposed some sort of competition."

"A competition?" Shoko's voice was practically dripping with amusement. "Like a hunting competition?”

You let out a snort of air through your nose. “Basically.”

Are you gonna do it?"

"I don't know," You admit, leaning forward and resting your chin on your hand. "I said I would, but I don't know. I barely know the guy. Well, I thought I did."

"Well, you should," Shoko said, her tone shifting to one of gentle teasing. "Besides, isn't this your chance to get closer to your crush?"

You feel your cheeks flush. "Shoko, seriously? Come on, that was ages ago."

"Hey, I'm just saying," she replies, laughter bubbling up again. "This could be your big break."

"You're impossible," you grumble, though you can't help but smile. "How's the side business, by the way?"

"Thriving," she says and you can practically see her small smile through the phone.. "You'd be amazed at how many people need a little untraceable something for their enemies."

"I don't doubt it," you say, shaking your head. "Just stay safe, okay?"

"You too, Mute Collector," Shoko says, her voice softening slightly. "And remember, if you ever need anything, you know where to find me."

"Always," you reply, your smile growing wider. "Thanks, Shoko. Talk to you soon."

"Later," she says, and the line goes dead.

You lean back in your chair again, your thoughts drifting back to Geto Suguru and the strange, dangerous world you both inhabit. As much as you hate to admit it, Shoko is right. This is your chance, not just to catch some sick killer, but to uncover the secrets that lie hidden beneath Suguru’s enigmatic exterior.

With a sigh, you close your laptop and stand up, determination settling in your chest. The competition awaits, and you have a feeling it's going to be a game changer.

~

“What’s got your panties in a twist?”

Suguru rolls his eyes at the white hair man’s mocking tone and continues to stare at his phone. It's been 10 minutes. How long does it take for someone to respond to a text. Suguru lay sprawled on the couch, his eyes fixed on his phone. Across the room, Gojo was bustling about in the kitchen, the sound of utensils clinking and food sizzling filling the air.

"Is this about Y/n? The Mute Collector or whatever?" Gojo asked, glancing over his shoulder with a mischievous grin.

Suguru didn't respond, his gaze unwavering from the screen. He could feel Gojo's eyes on him, the scrutiny almost tangible.

"I don't think I've seen you put this much effort into a woman since, like... ever," Gojo continued, his tone teasing. He turned back to his cooking, the corners of his mouth twitching with amusement.

Suguru's jaw tightened, but he kept his silence. Gojo, undeterred, pressed on. "Besides the fact that she's the Mute Collector, what do you even see in Y/n? Well, I guess she does have other assets," he chuckled.

"Keep her name out of your fucking mouth, you prick," Suguru snapped, his voice low and menacing.

Gojo raised his hands in mock surrender, a laugh escaping his lips. "Alright, alright, no need to get all territorial."

Suguru continued to stare at his phone, his fingers hovering over the keys. "How long does it take for someone to respond to a fucking text" he mutters under his breath.

Gojo leaned against the counter, arms crossed. "Maybe she's busy. Or maybe she's just messing with you. You know, playing hard to get."

Suguru finally looks up, his eyes narrowing. "She doesn't play games. And she's not hard to get—she's hard to keep."

Gojo raises an eyebrow, clearly amused by Suguru's reaction. “Touchy, touchy,” he mutters, returning to his culinary task.

Just then, Suguru's phone pings. His heart skips a beat as he sees your name flash on the screen. He quickly opens the message, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he reads your response.

Y/n: Fine, I'll do it. But what are the details?

Suguru: Oh, I'm thrilled

Y/n: Shut up.

Suguru: The rules are simple: whoever deduces the monkey’s identity first and guts the bastard wins.

Y/n: And how do I know you don’t already have a head start?

Suguru: I guess you'll just have to trust me. 

Y/n: Trust you? That’s rich coming from someone who literally stabs people in the back.

Suguru lets out a snort of air from your comment catching Gojo’s attention. “Ah, there it is. The smile of a man who's finally gotten what he wants.”

Suguru doesn't dignify that with a response. Instead, he focuses on your message, feeling a grin grow on his lips.

Suguru: You wound me, truly. But where’s the fun without a little challenge? Besides, I wouldn’t want to make it too easy for you

Y/n: Easy, huh? I suppose you think you’re quite the genius, then?

Suguru: Only compared to the average monkey. You, on the other hand, might actually make this interesting.

Y/n: Is that a compliment or are you just trying to butter me up?

Suguru: Can’t it be both? 

Y/n: Oh, don't worry. You’re not the only one who enjoys a good chase. But don’t cry when I beat you at your own game.

Suguru: Cry? Please. I’ll be too busy admiring you in action. It’s a win-win for me.

Y/n: Flattery will get you nowhere, Suguru.

Suguru: Really?

Suguru: Not even a little bit princess 🥺?

Y/n: *One attachment*

You send an image of your hand flipping him off. Your middle finger nail is painted black and he assumes so are all your other fingers. His heart thuds against his chest. God, how he would love to have those nails dragging down his back. His dick twitches just thinking about it. 

Gojo snickers as if he can read Suguru’s thoughts and Suguru considers throwing his phone at the smug white hair man when Gojo’s phone rings. Any humor falls off Gojo’s features like snow from a shaken tree branch. He glances at the caller ID, his eyes narrowing, and picks up the phone with a serious tone.

“This is Gojo.” He says. His voice is gruff as he responds to the caller with clipped “yes” and “no” answers, his timbre low. “I'll be there in 30 minutes.” 

When he sets down the phone, Suguru meets his blue eyes, Gojo’s brief smile is grim.

“Trouble?” Suguru asks.

“Trouble.” Gojo repeats.

On the exterior Gojo is Japan's most infamous playboy and philanthropist. But by night he is the devil's tool, the country's most lethal assassin for anyone from politicians to presidents.  What Suguru and you do for a hobby, Gojo Satoru does for his job.

Gojo dumps his hot food in a container, grabs his hunting knife coat and bag and heads for the door. Before he exits, he turns around to lock eyes with Suguru.

“Be safe. A woman killer is a deadly combo.” He says.

Suguru chuckles, and for a second he doesn't know if Gojo’s talking about you or the guy in Kyoto. “You to ass hat.”  

~

You can't believe you are doing this. 

You can't believe that you took up Suguru’s competition, spent 120 dollars on a train and hotel room at Kyoto and an extra 20 on room service. Moreover you can't believe that you are here, hiding in a forest of bamboo shoots at the dead of night, watching some man who may or may not be the Kyoto women killer.

It’s a warm summer night, and every time the wind blows, the bamboo shoots rustle against each other, creating a haunting melody that sets your nerves on edge. The air is thick with the scent of earth and foliage, and the occasional hoot of an owl punctuates the silence. You’re crouched low, your body tense, watching a man named Noaya Zenin who you followed out here. He seems to be wandering aimlessly, but you know better than to underestimate him. The Zenin clan's reach is long and shadowy, and their involvement in the Kyoto women killings is a tangled web you’ve been unraveling. All key witnesses were either paid off by the Zenin clan or had lawyers representing them from the Zenin clan. The pattern was too precise to be a coincidence.

Your heart thuds in your chest, adrenaline coursing through your veins. The thrill of the chase, the hunt, makes your senses sharper, every movement and sound more pronounced. You can feel the need creeping up on you, slowly reaching your brain until your skin itches with anticipation. 

Each minute feels like an eternity as you scrutinize Noaya’s every move. He stops occasionally, looking around as if sensing he’s being watched, and you hold your breath, pressing yourself closer to the ground. The moonlight filters through the dense bamboo, casting eerie shadows that dance with the wind. Your mind races, piecing together fragments of evidence and suspicion. If Noaya Zenin is indeed the killer, catching him here could be the breakthrough you need.

“Hiya.”

A scream almost rips through you when you feel someone's breath against your ear, but you quickly cover your mouth and whip around. Of course, you’re met face to face with the man you least wanted to see right now. Familiar hazel eyes gaze back at you, glinting with mischief and amusement. Suguru is crouched right next to you, his nose mere inches from yours, a sly smirk on his face. You didn’t even hear him approach.

“Suguru, what the fuck?” you hiss, keeping your voice low. Your first instinct is to grab your knife out of your pocket and press it against his throat but he holds both his hands up as if surrendering, stopping you.

“Woah woah princess, let's cool our engines.” He chuckles softly, clearly enjoying your reaction.

Your pulse is still racing, but you force yourself to calm down. “You could have given me a heart attack. How did you even find me?” You seethe.

“I have my ways,” he replies cryptically, his smirk widening. “Besides, I couldn’t let you have all the fun, now could I? So,” his eyes flicker to Noaya, who still seems to be staring at his phone. “Who are we looking at?”

“We?” You scoff and roll your eyes. “Are you kidding me? There is no we. This is a competition, remember? Go do your own research.”

Suguru raises an eyebrow, clearly amused. “Oh, come on. You know you love my company.”

Before you can retort, Noaya picks up his phone. You both strain to listen, and you catch his words clearly.

“Yeah, I’m at the bamboo forest. See you soon, babe.” He then hangs up the phone with a click and puts it back in his backpack. But just when you're about to turn back to Suguru and rip into the man, Noaya pulls something else out too. A hunting knife. A large one at that with serrated ends and a pointed tip that glints in the moon light. Just like the one used on the victims. And as if things couldn't get any more apparent, you watch as a wicked grin spreads across his face when he draws the blade diagonally through the air.

“Oh shit,” you whisper, eyes wide. “That’s definitely him. That’s like some comically evil villain shit right there.”

“Dibs,” Suguru whispers back, a glint of excitement in his eyes as he puts on his ghost mask. “I call fucking dibs.” He stands up, the crunch of leaves making Noaya whip around and stare right at the area you both hid in.

For a solid 5 seconds your two flabbergasted to even form words, you can only watch as Suguru steps out from the bamboo shoots and onto the trail, slowly walking toward Noaya like a lion cornering a gazelle. 

Or course, Noaya turns, screams like a little girl, and makes a hard right straight into the forest of bamboos.

“Oh hell no,” you mutter, leaping up and chasing after him. You sprint through the forest, the warm summer air thick and humid around you. Each footfall is muffled by the dense undergrowth, but the occasional snap of a twig or crunch of leaves marks your frenzied pace. Moonlight filters through the dense canopy, casting ghostly shadows that dance along the forest floor, creating an ever-shifting maze of light and dark.

Your breath comes in quick, controlled bursts, each inhale filling your lungs with the earthy scent of the forest. Adrenaline surges through your veins, sharpening your senses. The rhythmic pounding of your heart in your chest matches the rapid beat of your footsteps. Ahead, you can just make out the faint silhouette of Noaya, his panicked movements betraying his desperation.

Branches claw at your clothes and face, but you push through, eyes locked on your target. The thrill of the chase ignites every nerve, propelling you forward with a singular focus. Suguru’s presence is a constant just behind you, his footsteps a steady reminder of the competition driving you both. You can hear his breaths, steady and calculated, mirroring your own.

The path twists and turns, the bamboo growing thicker, creating a claustrophobic tunnel. You duck and weave, dodging low-hanging branches and vaulting over fallen logs. The forest floor is uneven, riddled with roots and hidden pitfalls, but your reflexes are sharp, your movements instinctual.

The thrill, the excitement, the danger—it all converges in this moment. You are a predator in your element, and your prey is within reach. The bamboo forest seems to blur around you, time stretching and contracting with each heartbeat. This is what you live for, the ultimate test of skill and nerve, the ultimate game of life and death.

Just as you’re about to close the distance, your fingertips brushing the fabric of Noaya’s shirt, he whirls around with surprising speed. The moonlight catches the gleam of his hunting knife as it arcs through the air. Instinct takes over, and you try to dodge, but the blade slices across your palm, leaving a hot, stinging line of red in its wake.

For a split second, time seems to slow. You see the wild desperation in Noaya’s eyes, the way his chest heaves with exertion and fear. But there’s no pain, only a white-hot fury that floods your veins, fueling your next move.

Your grip tightens around the hilt of your own knife, slick with blood but steady. The cut on your palm feels like a mere scratch compared to the surge of adrenaline that courses through you. With a fierce snarl, you lunge forward, using the momentum to drive Noaya back a step.

He stumbles, his confidence faltering as he realizes the severity of his mistake. You don’t give him a chance to recover. You move with a predatory grace, every muscle coiled and ready to strike. The forest around you fades into a blur of green and shadow, all your focus locked on the man in front of you.

Noaya swings wildly, his movements frantic and uncoordinated. You sidestep his attacks with practiced ease, your fury giving you a sharp, clear edge. The scent of blood mingles with the earthy aroma of the forest, and your pulse pounds in your ears like a war drum.

You close the distance again, this time with a calculated precision. Your free hand shoots out, grabbing his wrist and twisting it until the knife clatters to the ground. Noaya yelps in pain, his eyes widening in terror. The tables have turned, and he knows it.

Your injured hand, still bleeding, clamps down on his shoulder with a vice-like grip. You lean in close, your breath hot against his ear. “Nice try,” you hiss, the fury in your voice making him shudder. “But it’s over.”

With a swift, brutal motion, you plunge your knife into his chest. The blade sinks into flesh with a sickening thud, and Noaya's eyes widen in shock and agony. Blood spurts from the wound, hot and sticky, spraying across your face in a macabre mist. The initial strike is met with a gasp, a desperate, choking sound that fuels the savage fire within you.

A wicked grin spreads across your face, the thrill of dominance electrifying your senses. You pull the knife out, feeling the resistance of tissue and bone, and then plunge it in again, and again. Each thrust is accompanied by a wet, squelching sound, a symphony of carnage that drowns out the world around you. Blood flows freely, pooling at your feet and soaking into the earth.

Noaya’s body jerks and spasms with each stab, his strength fading with every violent assault. His once panicked eyes grow dull, the life draining from them as you continue your relentless attack. The coppery tang of blood fills the air, mingling with the scent of the forest, creating a heady mixture that makes your pulse race even faster.

You lose yourself in the rhythm of the violence, the way your muscles strain and flex with each plunge of the knife. Blood splatters across your face and clothes, warm and viscous, painting you in the evidence of your victory. Your grin widens, a feral expression of triumph and fury.

Amidst your frenzied stabbings, Suguru places a hand on your shoulder. "I think—" he begins, but when you turn around to face him he immediately shuts up.

Your eyes are wide, pupils contracted like a deranged predator. Your hair flows wildly in the wind as you grab Suguru's throat with your bloody hand, smearing the crimson on his skin and pressing him against a tree. 

"This woman-killer fucker is mine." You seethe.

His dick strains against his cargo pants waistband. You look divine.

“ Of course, All yours baby.” He coos.

~

Geto Suguru would be lying if he said that watching you tear apart that woman-killer wasn't the hottest thing he had ever seen. 

To Suguru, you looked divine. The moonlight accentuated the sharp angles of your face, casting shadows that danced across your blood-splattered skin. Your eyes, wild with the remnants of fury, glowed with an unearthly intensity. The contrast of crimson against your complexion made you seem otherworldly, a dark goddess of vengeance. Suguru couldn’t tear his eyes away, mesmerized by the raw, primal beauty you exuded in that moment.

The walk back to your hotel was silent, but not because you were soaked in blood or because he felt awkward. More like it was because the only think he could think to say is “You are so fucking hot.”

Now here he is, twiddling his thumbs as he stands outside of your hotel door, trying to think of the right thing to say to you because god he needs to see your face one last time before he goes to bed.

He raises his hand to knock, but before he can, the door swings open. You stand there, your hair wet and smelling faintly of vanilla. You’ve clearly just come out of the shower. A tank top clings to your damp skin, and sports shorts hug your thighs. His eyes widen slightly, and he gulps, struggling to keep his composure. 

No bra.

The sight makes his mouth go dry.

"Just checking to see if everything is good," he says, nodding toward your bandaged hand.

You feel yourself fidget in your place and you try to flash a small smile but your emotions betray you. What if you freaked him out? What he saw back there, what you did back there, that was you, the raw you. Behind all the layers of kind smiles and pleasantries, in many ways, you were no different than an animal, consumed by your predatory instincts. You wouldn't blame him if he never contacted you again after this. Shit, did you just fuck up everything?

 His presence fills the doorway, and you’re acutely aware of the tension between you two.

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” you reply, shifting your weight from one foot to the other. “Thanks for asking.”

His eyes flicker down to your hand, then back up to meet yours. “How’s the hand?” he asks, genuine concern in his voice.

You hold it up and wiggle your fingers slightly. “It’ll heal. No big deal.”

Silence fills the void between you two and you clear your throat, searching for something to say to break the awkward silence, but he beats you to it.

“Mind if I come in?” he asks, a smirk playing on his lips as he leans against the doorframe. “Or are you planning to keep all the fun out here in the hallway?”

You roll your eyes, though you can’t help the small smile tugging at your lips. “Sure, come in. But I warn you, it’s a mess.”

“I’m sure I can handle it,” he quips, stepping inside. His eyes scan the room, taking in the organized chaos. Bandages and clothes are scattered around the floor and he doesn't miss the splatter of blood on the white sheets of the hotel bed. After a moment, Suguru turns around and takes a step closer to you, like he’s examining you. 

You tilt your head slightly, letting a smirk play on your lips. "So, now that I’ve won the bet, what do I get?"

He chuckles, the sound low and smooth, as he takes another step closer, closing the distance between you. "I was wondering when you’d bring that up." 

You arch an eyebrow, trying to keep your composure despite the way he’s looking at you, like you’re the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. "Well? I’m waiting. What’s my prize?"

Suguru stops just inches from you. "I don’t know," he quips, "What do you want?"

You let out a short laugh, though it’s clear you’re testing him now. "That’s a big question."

Suguru's eyes darken slightly, his playful demeanor shifting into something more serious, more intense. He leans in just a fraction, his breath warm against your skin. "Try me."

The tension between you two is palpable, electric. You’re the first to break the silence, your voice quieter now, almost hesitant. "I want," you pause, averting your gaze from Suguru’s hawkish one. “I want to know if I scared you.” The question slips out before you can stop it, your bravado faltering as doubt creeps in.

Suguru blinks, then a slow smile spreads across his face. "Scare me?" He repeats, as if the idea itself is laughable. He steps even closer, forcing you to take a step back until the backs of your knees hit the edge of the bed. "Scare me?” He repeats again. “You didn’t scare me," he continues, his voice low and sincere. "You… captivated me. I have never, and I mean never, seen something so magnificent as what you did. And that's saying a lot because I've done a shit ton of magnificent things.”

You sit down on the bed, more out of necessity than choice, as he looms over you. Your heart is pounding in your chest, and you feel a mix of emotions—relief, curiosity, and something much more dangerous.

"What are you doing?" you ask, your voice barely above a whisper as he leans in, his hands resting on either side of you, trapping you in place.

He smiles, a slow, almost wicked grin that sends shivers down your spine. "Well, I thought I might kiss you now, you know, after telling you how magnificent you are.” He tilts his head. “Is that a bad idea?"

Your breath catches in your throat as the weight of his words sinks in. You forget to breathe.

You finally find your voice, though it’s a bit shakier than you’d like. "That depends…"

"On?" He asks, his face inching closer to yours, his gaze locked onto your lips.

"On how good you are at it," you murmur.

He doesn’t need any more encouragement. Suguru closes the remaining distance, his lips capturing yours in a kiss that’s as intense as it is tender. It’s a slow, deliberate connection, his hands moving to cradle your face as if you’re something precious, something worth savoring.

The kiss deepens, and all the tension that had been building between you two finally snaps, leaving nothing but raw desire in its wake. You respond in kind, your hands gripping the front of his shirt, pulling him closer as if you can’t get enough.

When you finally pull apart, both of you are breathless, and the world seems to have shrunk down to just the two of you in this moment. Suguru’s forehead rests against yours, and he smiles, a real, genuine smile that you can feel in your bones.

"So," he says, his voice husky and low. "How was that?"

You laugh softly, still trying to catch your breath. "Not bad," you admit, your fingers running through his black hair. "Not bad at all."

"Good," he replies, his lips brushing against yours in a whisper of a kiss. "Because I plan on doing it again."

Suguru’s lips are on yours again before you can even catch your breath, this time more insistent, more demanding. He’s not asking for permission anymore; he’s claiming what he wants, and it makes your head spin. The kiss deepens as his tongue slips past your lips, exploring your mouth with a slow, deliberate intensity that sends a shiver down your spine. You can taste him—warm, intoxicating—and you find yourself leaning into his lips, craving more.

His hand, warm and firm, slides down your side, tracing the curve of your waist before coming to rest between your thighs. The touch is electrifying, sending a jolt of sensation through you, and you gasp against his mouth, your heart pounding in your chest.

But it’s too much, too fast. Your mind races, and you instinctively pull back, breaking the kiss. “Wait,” you murmur, your voice breathless, “I dont know if we should….” You avert your gaze and turn your head toward the wall but Suguru grabs your chin, forcing you to look right into his hazel eyes. Then, he dips his head to whisper in your ear.

“Aw come one Y/n” He grazes your earlobe with his teeth. “I’ve been on my best behavior, a good boy,” Suguru pauses to deliver a soft kiss to your temple. “I've been waiting, waiting ever since I met you in that cage to do this. Don't I deserve a reward for my patience?” 

You thickly gulp as he rubs the sides of your neck with his lips.

“I’ve been-” He kisses your jaw. “Such a-” he kisses his way up to your mouth. “Good boy.”

You cave. 

As his words sink in, you feel your resolve crumbling, the weight of his desire pressing down on you in the most intoxicating way. Before you can even process what’s happening, Suguru's strong arms wrap around you, lifting you off the bed with effortless ease. His grip is firm but gentle, as if he's afraid of breaking you, and you can't help but let out a soft gasp as he lifts you off the bed and up so your head rests on the plush hotel pillow. His eyes lock onto yours, dark with intent, and you feel your breath hitch as the world narrows down to just the two of you. The room is filled with the sound of your breathing, heavy and uneven, mingling with the quiet rustle of sheets as he leans over you.

“I know you have been thinking about this too.” He coos. Suguru’s hands move with a deliberate slowness, as if savoring the moment. His fingers curl around the hem of your tank top, and with a slow, deliberate motion, he begins to lift it. The cool air hits your skin as he pulls the fabric up and over your head, exposing you to his hungry gaze. But before you can feel self-conscious, his lips are on your newly exposed skin, pressing gentle kisses along your collarbone, his warm breath fanning over your skin.

“Gorgeous,” he murmurs between kisses, his voice filled with awe and reverence. “Just so gorgeous.”

His hands are on your shorts next, tugging them down your hips with the same careful slowness, as if he’s unwrapping the most precious gift. As the fabric slips down your legs, he trails kisses along the newly exposed skin, his lips brushing against your thighs, your knees, your calves, until the shorts are discarded on the floor.

Now you’re lying before him in just your underwear, and the way he looks at you makes your heart pound. His eyes are dark and intense, filled with a hunger that makes your entire body flush with heat. “You’re gorgeous,” he repeats, his voice thick with emotion. “Just so damn gorgeous.”

Suguru straightens up slightly, his hands moving to the hem of his own shirt. In one fluid motion, he pulls it over his head and tosses it aside, revealing his bare chest. The sight of him makes your breath catch—his body is lean and athletic, muscles defined and sculpted from years of discipline and training. Tattoos cover his skin in an elaborate tapestry. He’s handsome, impossibly so, and the sight of him like this, just inches away, makes your pulse quicken.

He doesn’t stop there. His fingers move to the waistband of his sweatpants, and he slides them down, revealing more of his skin, his strong legs, until he’s kneeling before you in just his boxers. The fabric clings to him in a way that leaves little to the imagination, and you can’t help but stare, mesmerized by the sheer physicality of him.

Suguru catches your gaze, a small, knowing smile tugging at his lips. “Something catches your eye princess?”

You nod, “Yes. You. All of you.” Your eyes tracing every line and curve of his body. He’s more than just handsome—he’s breathtaking, a perfect combination of strength and beauty that leaves you feeling weak in the best way possible.

He leans down again, his body hovering over yours, his lips brushing against your ear as he whispers, “Good, wouldn't want you to be disappointed.”

With that, he captures your lips in a heated kiss, his hands trailing down your sides, touching, feeling, exploring. 

You are too lost in the kiss not to notice his hands slipping under your underwear and making their way to your dripping cunt, and when they do, you jump at the feeling of his index finger tracing your slit.

"Gotta get you ready baby.?" Suguru hums and you shake you head vigorously.

"No please Sugu~, I can take it."

You don't have to tell him twice.

In one fluid motion Suguru tears off your underwear, lays you on your back and positions himself between your legs.

"Been waiting to do this for so long," he murmurs as he pulls down his boxers and whips out his dick. You thickly gulp at the sight, you could've guessed he was big not this big, could he even fit in you? A white bead of precum dribbled from his pretty pink tip and down his length and he uses the liquid to stroke himself in a few fluid motions.

You could hear your heart in your ears and adrenaline coursed through your veins at rocket fire speed. The need in between your legs was too much, it was clouding your head and twisting your stomach so tight you almost felt sick. You jolt when his fat tip bumps into your clit; collecting your juices before pressing against your quivering hole.

"Suguru please~" You whine and nearly miss the way his ears go bright red at your words

"I know baby, I know. Don't worry, lift your hips for me love?”

You oblige and immediately when you do so you're struck with the feeling of his length spreading you so helplessly wide and his tip smashing against something which must be your cervix you think. It’s painful, but in the pain is so much pleasure. He presses his forehead against yours as he slides into you, gripping the sheets with his supporting hand as your hot, wet entrance swallows his cock. Instinctively, you're cunt squeezed around the foreign intrusion, trying to push it out, making Suguru let out a low groan of his own and pushing even deeper into you. 

“F-fuck I can feel you doing it to me,” he said hoarsely.

His fingers gently press into the skin of your hip, guiding and steadying you as he pulls back and thrusts into you. The sudden friction and collision with your G-spot knocks the wind out of your lungs. Ticklish pleasure courses through your veins and you immediately throw your head back against the wall as Suguru thrusts into you.

"Hnghh, s-so good~~" You whine. It was dizzying, the curvature of his dick digging itself against your g-spot, scraping against your vaginal walls every time he backed his hips up.

Simultaneously, his other hand sought yours, finding it with a purposeful tenderness. His fingers intertwined with yours, locking them together in a grip that was both a clasp and a caress.

You dont even realize that your eyes are closed until Suguru whispers into your ear.

“Come on baby, open those pretty eyes, look at me.”

You do as he says and when you do you feel your heart thud in your chest. Suguru’s eyes were fixated completely on you, how you were reacting, as his hips were continuously slamming into your body as if it were clockwork. The sight alone had your walls clamping down on him, earning a groan from the base of his chest. 

Suddenly, the hand that had been intertwined with yours released its grip and began to rummage through Suguru’s discarded pants. Your breath hitched, eyes glazed over as you watched him retrieve a knife from his pocket, unsheathing it effortlessly with a flick of his finger. The sharp glint of the blade caught your attention from beneath Suguru’s body, even as he continued thrusting into you, not missing a beat.

Your body reacted instinctively, clenching at the sight, drawing a low, dark chuckle from Suguru.

“Hah, I knew it,” he said, his voice laced with a teasing edge as he brought the cold steel to the base of your throat. “You’re just a slut for knives, aren’t you?”

A moan escaped your lips, the sound betraying any chance of denial. Suguru took it as an admission, pressing the blade firmly against the skin of your throat as he angled his hips to hit even deeper inside you. The cool metal at your throat was electrifying, but it was his other hand, strong and unyielding, that sent a euphoric thrill coursing through you. His fingers flexed, tightening around your neck, the pressure intensifying.

It wasn’t just the air being cut off—it was the dizzying, intoxicating pleasure that came with it. The way his grip constricted, pushing you to the edge of control, ignited something raw inside. Every squeeze of his hand made your body burn hotter, a perfect balance between pain and pleasure, leaving you gasping for more.

What a primal dirty sight you where, being choked with a blade against your throat while fucked brutaly. Even the devil would clutch his rosaries.  

"Were we doing it like this in your head baby?" Suguru grunts, his Adam apple bobs as he groans from the pleasure of how fucking heavenly your pussy feels. “Because we were doing it like this in mine.” Good? Try euphoric, how could he ever think his fist could substitute the wet squeeze of your cunt?

You can't even open your mouth to respond. The friction of his dick against your walls and the adrenaline from the knife is just too good and as his pace intensified, a dizzying warmth spread through you, filling every corner of your being with a euphoric haze. The sensation of being completely enveloped, utterly connected, sent electric flesh arrows of pleasure through your body, making your eyes flutter and roll back slightly in sheer bliss. Every motion Suguru makes, every time his fat tip collides with your cervix, leaves behind a trail of sparkling heat that seems to light you from within.

"Come on eyes on me when I fuck you baby~" Suguru releases his hold from your neck and snakes his fingers between your body , finding your clit and pressing down on the pearl back and forth with the pad of index finger. "Tell me how good you feel, tell me how badly you want to cum.

He doesn’t slow the ministrations on your clit for a second as he snaps his hips into you with primal vigor, your breasts bouncing from the brutality.

"So good Sugu!" You sob. You cant even open your eyes from the colors you're seeing behind your lids. Every time your pussy squeezes around him not only do bolts of pleasure shoot up your body but a ring of milky white cum forms around the base of his cock.

Suguru’s eyes are locked on how good you're taking him - the fat of his head has a hard time popping out with how greedy your cunny is being. He lets out a sharp moan at how wet you are on the inside.

"S-shit baby wanna feel you cum on me, been waiting so long." Suguru is not a whining man but here he is practically stumbling over his words. Fuck, he wants to keep himself inside you forever. He wants your kisses, your skin, your touch, your blood, your lips, to be his to claim until you die together. No one has seen, truly seen him, before you. You are what he thinks about when he wakes up, when he is eating, when he is plunging his knife into some worthless monkey. You are his goddess. 

The world beyond this intimate cocoon of warmth and breath seemed distant, irrelevant. His gaze was locked with yours, deep and unwavering, a silent communication that tethered you through the mind numbing ecstasy.

Then, he reels his hips back and slams into you in a new angle that has your body jerking.

“Found it didn't I?” He breathes through a smile and pummels into you with vigor. And your about to disagree with him, insist that the feeling is too new and foreign to feel good when all of a sudden your body begins to shake and your head starts to feel fuzzy

And suddenly—you feel it. What you’ve been craving for and what you have seen in porn.

Its like all your body's energy centers are activating at once and your left utterly helpless to the feeling of tingling ecstasy wrapping your brain and stomach.

You dont know how to tell him that something is happening, not when the pleasure is too immense your barely breathing full breaths. But he understands once again the words you tried desperately to communicate.

“Do it baby. Cum. I’ll fill you up, and if it spills I'll fuck it back into you"

So you do.

Release washed over you in an all-encompassing wave, radiating out from your core to the very tips of your fingers and toes. It swept through you like a storm, leaving a trail of starbursts in its wake. Your body arched instinctively, clinging to Suguru as the wave crested, then gently, slowly, began to ebb.

“Ah, princess, please,” he moaned. “Be a good girl and take it all, yeah?” 

Your fingers trailed up his shoulder, only to drag them back down his spine, nails biting into his skin as he buried himself deep inside you, releasing with a powerful shudder. His movements grew erratic, hips pressing yours firmly into the mattress as his hot breath skimmed across your neck, ragged and heavy.

The world outside fades away, leaving just the two of you in this moment, lost in each other, with nothing but the sound of your breathing and the feel of his touch to guide you.

The warmth of his cum spreads through your body with a shiver, and you can feel the liquid expanding against your walls while he kept you plugged and full of him. As you both floated back down from the heights of bliss, your breaths came easier, softer, the lingering aftershocks of pleasure pulsing gently through you.

"You're mine ok?" Suguru coos, and all you can do is dumbly nod.

"I'll die for you, I'll kill a thousand monkeys for you, i'll hold them down so you can cut our their eyes. Just stay by my side."

[dogbites-puppylove]

Devil Sins

The Batfam and the deadly sin that colors their life, and the virtue of their darling

TW:  Yandere behavior (obsession, possessive behavior and unhealthy ideations), mention of suicide ideation and s/h as well as gore

Tags: Yandere! Batfam x reader

Bruce Wayne: Pride    

Within Gotham, it's common knowledge that when crimes wretched hands come down to slit your neck you do not clasp your hands and pray to God, no - you whisper your tears into a puddle of blood and give your reverence to hold out for Batman. It is under no exaggeration that divinity in the cursed city leaves justice to crumbled bones and puddles of teeth and tongue, and its cruel master in the form of a man with no face. It's fitting, for a city of corruption and bile. Gotham’s god is its dark knight with steel for bones and scripture of flesh, man made Godhood with flawed creation in its wake. But man has never been meant to hold godhood, the pathway of immortals too cruel and demanding, even with those who have wielded its deadly blade of eons it rips into them. Tearing at seams and breaking into them until their pieces can be glorified in the stained windows of churches.     

Batman is divinity within mortal confines. There have been prayers and hymns in his name, retribution in his name and the painful dependency of creator and creation waged on him. Batman is an entity that is nothing but iron and brimstone, unbending and unfeeling, but Bruce Wayne, the man who created this creature whose only split from being a monster is a bloodied and beaten code, is painfully human. He feels each failure weigh on him, aging him past his own casket and decaying him even as he still breathes, it cradles his head during the night and whispers the screams of those he has watched fall.

Every time Batman stands tall, Bruce can feel something small and young turn decrepit and vile in his stomach until it erupts from him like bile from the back of his throat. He thinks it must be the humanity of a son who in truth, died with his parents in that alley. It slices his open, cutting his flesh to ribbons, and gorges itself on his organs only to fill him up with something inhuman. It's with bated breath with lungs that have been clouded with smog, that he waits for Batman to finally rule Bruce Wayne unfit and strangle him entirely.   

Darling: Humility

The Darling acts as the humility to his pride, dragging him to his knees so archaically Batman shrivels in your presence. You are his humanity given form, the antithesis to his claim of being the perfect hero. You lead him by the nose, walking him on a leash so flawlessly he thinks you might have been born just to keep him grounded. Every scrape or bruise seems to repel the mission Batman strives for and replaces it with nothing, but a man stricken that he hadn’t done better. Each burn or scrape, even a paper cut drives guilt into him and brings a physical ache to his body like you had beaten him with a bat. Each mark burns the shame of a failed hero and leaves only the pathetic begs and whines of a man that can only be human. 

If he could, he would spend his days by your side, affected by the intrinsic need to provide for you, leaving you physically and mentally unable and robbed of the ability to want. It's a desire that burns molten in his chest and drips down his limbs, it burns and aches at him as if trying to rip out of his chest and lick at your hand like a depraved dog. He would do anything for you, would render the world silent, bring you a heart on a platter, violate himself so terribly he could not know anything but his adoration of your presence and yet it still feels inadequate. A simple compliment from you leaves him bereft of ambition and scorn, leaving him on his hands clasped in prayer. 

Batman may have been his creation, but Bruce Wayne is your own tool, use him to get what you want, change him for your own needs just keep him at hand. He'll be loyally and wholly (obsessively and blindly, almost rabid) yours. God bends to nobody's will, but Bruce Wayne knows down to the electrons snapping in his synapse that his place in this world is by your side, whether you point, whenever you deem fit. You’re his god, and himself nothing but a faithful follower. 

Richard Grayson: Lust

Perhaps born from watching his parents, who should have been a constant, die in front of him a painful death filled with tourists' eyes and misplaced faith, right outside of his fingers grasps Dick has an inherent need to feel. For him, want runs in his skin like a conscious, whispering what he craves, giving voice to a voracity so impossible that it turns physical. He has known denial from the start, whether it be the blood of the man who stole his parents, a want that made his tongue ache and crawled at his ribs until his bones crackled, or the sweeter craving of a relationship, something that watered at his mouth. Want is something that has haunted him, growing obsessively until it reached lust.

Though sexual desire, of course, is something that is often attributed to it, it's not the only way lust presents itself. For Dick, it appears when he closes enough to reach out and feel flesh on his own, something tangible and it shocks him like a bad dog until he reaches out to soothe his skin. It appears in the dead of night when he can feel no other warmth than his blankets, even as he arches out and reaches pathetically into the air. It is a call of pathetic loneliness, so strong that when his younger brothers are cuddled drowning within him it is to try and get rid of the sudden echo, to try and merge them into one, until he is no longer Dick Grayson, and somehow a part of them. Somewhere in between the heat of a lover and the loyalty of a son, he realizes that being a part of a couple isn’t enough.

He wants like a man starved, all instinct and need, like a child who has been ripped out of his mother’s grasp before she has fed him fully, there is always something he’s not quite satisfied with. What he truly craves is a constant, a union, melting himself, and another so they can be poured into the same mold and make something new, indistinguishable from the other. And despite the carnal behavior of his want, he knows how to get it. He smiles full of charisma, grins with the sun and serenades with the moon to get his fixes, but each one leaves him starved, stricken for more. Like a bad addiction.

Darling: Chastity    

The darling brings a chastity in his life, though not to say he wants less, but in the way a husband will fully devote himself to their wife. It’s the deceptive nature of a couple announcing a pregnancy and accidentally alluding to nights spent in bed. The darling hits a spot for him that leaves him mind numbingly euphoric, like a high that is reached after weeks and weeks of suspension. Every kiss has him feral, no better than an animal and chasing after you, every negligence has him whining by your feet, clinging to you. He grows incredibly dependent on your presence, on your touch and everything beneath. 

With you his sharp mind bleeds into instinct, and the charisma he wields to pry himself into others good graces is left uselessly at the door. It’s a delusional dreamy trance, every hug sends him tumbling down further and further until his panting against your neck and thinking of nothing but you, you, you. He can feel himself slipping into your existence, swearing he can taste the coffee you drank in the morning, and can feel every cut or bruise you get without him present. His want for you is wet, sticky and binding, threatening to pull you over until you lose your mind along with him. 

It’s almost laughable how pliant he is with you, a touch to his arm can have him following you over a cliff, a peck to the cheek and suddenly his on your lap whining for more. For all he is hard and angry, full of vigilante fights and bruised skin you wouldn’t even have to hurt him to kill him. With you, he can indulge himself fully, so much so that he wants no other. In fact any other touch leaves him lacking, so utterly entranced by you that he can no longer feel another’s skin unless it’s yours.  To him, his darling and himself cannot be separated, they won’t go down in history but their names, but by the title for lovers. Nothing to define themselves but their own love. 

Jason Todd: Wrath

Anger, to Jason, is an old friend that lives in his bones and whispers in his ears with every movement. He has used it well his entire life, a melting anger of forged iron against his father to keep him defiant, a indigent anger filled with a son's tears for his mother, the roar of inequality and social class that steals from the batmobile and the blinding and rash rush that leaves him as robin. It’s at first a soft motivation that keeps him alive, any good street rat knows, or any street rat still breathing that to stop means you’re as good as dead. He covets his rage, it's youthful and idealistic and keeps his heart beating.

Of course, after the pit (after being beaten to death in a warehouse of gasoline and gunpowder, watching his own blood relax as he’s robbed of his own, coming back ripping from his own skin and drowned in green only to find out his father-father-had left him unavenged. Left him replaced and gone) his anger has grown into something primordial. Too old to be Jason’s but so familiar he leans into it. It grows from his bones like ivy and twigs, poking out against his flesh and sewing itself under his skin so that the slightest breach sends it out to take root.  Jason’s wrath is something that threatens to leave him choking blood, and yet it keeps him alive with the threat of keeping him running forever. It is the anger of a child on the poster who has never been found, and their stomach full of worms that burrows into his own. The tears of a case under the corrupt policeman’s file, and the ghosts scream in a house empty of their future. It’s all those who have ever been a statistic (as he has been) boiling over under his skin. Because Jason knows the wrath of the dead and unavenged intimately, it burns his memories in green and leaves his chest heaving with permanent mourning of mothers whose children were robbed and never found. It threatens to scratch away from the inside of his ribs until its nails finally rip him open in a mocking autopsy and wail into Gotham’s plugged ears.

Jason's violence, his actions and words, the bullets in his guns and glare under the hood are all reactions to this. As long as the world spins, as long as humans turn a blind eye to victims, and allow the injustice of the world to mold them, he will move. All his actions are an answer, a bullet through a man's cranium, the vengeance of a young girl with a ripped dress, a severed head, the relief of a child who watches their family bleed out for powdered death. Each and every shout of Red Hood, every puddle of blood he coats the ground on proof that he is still moving. Because Jason’s wrath is old and an answer, to the boy in the warehouse, to the boy in the ground and mounted not as a son but a soldier. It’s a solution to the fear that manipulates his chest that should he stop moving he’d be buried again. 

Darling: Patience

Jason is a man of action and violence, fear turned into anger because above all he is a man cursed with empathy. With his darling the fear that curdles his insides soothes, like a mother rubbing her child’s stomach and singing a special song to keep the pain away. The world will keep moving regardless of him taking a break, and he has the blinding panic of staying in time, and yet his darling is a perfect encapsulation of time. Something preserved beautifully, a painting stuck in motion, the words on his books that are remembered through words and tongue. The tint of red becomes a pastel pink, and suddenly he’s so, so weak.

With his darling he closes his eyes without fear of waking up decaying. A sweep of your hand against his cheek will pull a sigh of pleasure from his throat suddenly free of phlegm and blood, even a harsh hit will feel divine. His darling functions as a sort of “moment” , something trapped in time and solely for Jason. Much like opening a book, the story is forever clashing but the words stay all the same, waiting for the reader. It’s with you the anger that has kept him moving for so long, washed away, like the dirt clinging to his skin under water. It's freeing and leaves him shakily bare, with you he weeps, with you he grows and stays forever yours. You are life itself, something ancient and timeless at the same time. The nostalgia of losing a tooth and excitement of a birthday party wrapped into tender song and softer skin.  

It’s a common sight to see him cry when with you, prayer in the form of tears that are just for you. He spends his days in a lovestruck haze, almost as if he’s been drugged. For Jason there is no constant, no surety but you. He would do anything to keep you perfect, safe and just as you always are. He'll care for you much like a beloved heirloom, of course he loves you with a severance that would scare most, but you are something he seeks to preserve. Nothing can hurt you, will hurt you, you’ll remain untouched until you reach out yourself. Your presence alone is enough for him to intoxicate himself with, bask in forever. But should you give I’m a sliver of your attention, allow him to enter your perfect little world? He’ll be lost forever.

Tim Drake: Gluttony

The most intimate feeling Tim knows is hunger, perhaps not for food but for anything and everything else. Obsession is his most familiar form of companionship, stuffing picture after picture of his object of affection until he can drown in them. In his house of echoing walls and emptiness he comes to emulate it. He feels hollowness in his soul, some nights he wonders if he took a knife to his own side what he would find. Would it be organs? Perhaps a heart? Or would it be the void that has eaten all that made him and left him with a constant hunger to fill himself with? For a time, he manages to satiate himself with Batman and Robin, stalking and drinking them in over and over until one day it's stolen and left him with nausea so terrible. (And Tim still remembers the rawness of his skin as he is thrashing in his room, his throat bleeding from his wails of a boy he never met)

The more he gets the more he hungers, it’s something horrific and apathetic that leads him to chasing after his own fill. Case after case solved, fact after fact filtered and sorted through, Tim is insatiable. Like a well oiled machine, the fuel that keeps him going only works to find more fuel, it's a never-ending cycle of something that can no longer be deemed as human. Half of this can be attributed to the fact that it’s all the same to him, an angelic charity to a garish murder eh takes them and feasts on them all the sometime efficiency is more of a hook then anything, pulling others in so he can feast on them, devouring their mannerisms and habits, licking up and chewing on their thoughts until there nothing left of them. 

One could blame this on the fact that the identity of “Tim Drake'' has never really been sought out, so there’s no substance to him. Something useless will obviously stay shiny, clean and unused, it's logical in all the ways it makes Tim want to throw a tantrum. It drives his mouth to salivate until he’s drooling over another function he can consume, another person he can mirror, another morsel to disappear within himself. And yet with each new meal he can only feel the void echo back louder, as if he had never eaten at all. Like a fire consuming too much wood that it withers out in anger, as if the trees that had been cut never existed in the first place. It threatens to force Tim to disappear forever.

Darling: Temperance

The temperance his darling offers is in the form of a craving rather than actual fulfillment. After just his first taste of you, Tim has been enraptured for you, nothing comes close to your unique temperament, your reactions, everything that makes you, you. You leave his mouth watering for more, nothing else can settle against his tongue the way you can, nothing can mimic the way you fill his head with static and leave him filled to the brim. He takes whatever kindness you give him and uses it as an invitation to learn more about you, an invitation to bear himself fully. Any preference you have, a favorite color or show, even general food preference will settle into Tim as if it had been his all along. Where he used to drink black coffee, has grown a taste for your favorite creamer, your playlist will be playing in the back of his head as he switches through W.E. work, it’s all you, you, you. Like a puzzle finally coming together,

Tim’s brain finally quiets down and is forced to digest. Any sort of attention you give him is a five course meal, any scorn is just as quickly devoured. You don’t quite stop the habit of obsession, but you give it direction. Tim has never known such direct want until you, a den he has no plans to stop his indulgent habits. He is ravenous for anything you toss to him, your voice, a text, an opinion, even just a little note, whatever you do stays, It’s a blessing and a curse. Because while the hunger pangs back in your presence, now nothing else can even come close to keeping him occupied.

He’ll obsess over you, crafting himself to be your perfect companion just so he can stay by your side and continue feeding. Everything in your life has a shade of him, your job, your house, your hobbies, even your electronics, each one a special situation he created to have you just a bit closer. Nothing else can come close to you, he’ll make sure you're well taken care of, all he asks in return is you.

Damian Wayne: Envy

Damian’s life is a unique contradiction. He was born the sole inheritor of a Thorne he is meant to fight for, something only he can own and yet is so unworthy he is kept from it. It forces him into a sense of jealousy, inadequacy and egregious entitlement. He could have anything he needs, but only as long as he earns it, it gives him a longing sense of feeling everything is out of his reach. That even should he hold the sword in his hands it cannot be called his. Not in the way a dog can call its food their own, and not in the way a writer can crow over their own creation. It leaves him painfully envious of others, of their right to their own possession, it leaves him vicious and poisonous. Part of the reason he squirrels away animals with so much intent, is because they’d be “His.” He’s their sole owner, and as beings with a conscience they can prove their loyalty. 

His envy leaves him with harsh words and even deadlier scars, it forces him into a fine weapon and while it’s an ideal state for an heir it’s a broken state for a child. It leaves the boy wanting, fearful and anxious. His envy is young and childish, something not allowed, and it’s something weaponized. It’s part of the reason he defends the title of robin so freckly, not only because he believes himself right, but because it’s his in way the throne cannot be. Because it’s not a legacy he’s supposed to take, it's one he steals from himself. It’s his, in a way nothing has been since he first cried from the pit.

But even then, the title of partner that so many others have worn, cannot soothe the constant ire, the lashing out that comes with fear of being replaceable, of being nothing but a role, comes with. Because Damian has been born as his mother’s son, as his father's legacy, but not as his own person. It makes Damian feel unfit, unusable in the way he has seen his mother discard students who cannot kill. It burns him, kills him and with time he thinks he might just be a husk. Damian is nothing but competency and a perfect successor, a successor will never be their own.

Darling: Kindness

Ironically the kindness that tempers his own envy is not his own but instead, actions of his own darlings. He fully gives himself to you, gives you his very purpose to do what you want with. Should you order him to kill, order him to die, or to live he would do it without complaint. Tell him you want his heart and he will pry himself open and hand it over with a smile, tell him you want his laugh, and he will laugh himself manic until you tire of it. He is a fine blade, a weapon that has seen battle far too much already, and it’s your own kindness that stops it from going to battle. In essence Damian has made himself a role right by you, but has given up his autonomy of your manipulation. You’ve become his master, his owner and his loyal weapon.

Every action is your doing, every remark is for your benefit, and by giving himself to you, he can have you in a way nobody else can claim. Every smile, every hug, every word that you speak to him is something unique from a dynamic he has hand crafted, and therefore uniquely his own. He will store you away from others, wary of letting them stain you, and even more wary of letting them steal you. You’re his, his love, his heart, his blood, his purpose on this earth, and he cannot let another’s touch deter you from this. His darling is a salve to his aches, a bandage that wraps tight enough to manage to hold him together, and his actions are that with the purpose of binding you to him. Your purpose will be each other.

Author's Note: Another reupload! Previously known as lovesick-laboratories.

[kneelingshadowsalome]

I know we're all focused on Satyr/Faun König but that bull comment... I'm quite partial to minotaur's and whats better than a darling who isn't from the area. Oh yes she's innocent of the crimes against König because she was not raised there.

Some foreign little creature just running blind in a maze trying to see where there might be a way out. It's been days after all and the screaming has gotten quieter and she wonders if she's the last one left alive. He takes his time eating his meals... this can be stretched out for such a long time as she hides herself in a dead end just a short rest... the darling is so tired unaware of the horrifyingly silent steps moving closer to her little haven. It's just her left now.

@kit-williams I've wanted to write for Minotaur!König for ages!

Minotaur!König x Ariadne!Reader Word count: 5 k oneshot Tags/warnings: Sexual tension, threats of violence and rape, implied cannibalism, power imbalance, moral ambiguity. Predator/prey dynamic, Beauty and the Beast elements, Ancient Greek religion & lore. 18+ MDNI A/N: The Minotaur in this story is not an actual hybrid. Reader is Hecate’s initiate. Merry Christmas y'all! <3

EDIT: PART 2 HERE

The screams are the worst part.

They echo through the Labyrinth while you wait and wait and wait.

Even the very stones seem to cry and wail as you place your hope on Theseus who descended to this hell along with you and the human cattle. Seven young men and seven unwed women, meant to satisfy a beast...

And judging by the screams alone, it sounds like the monster is satisfied. It sounds like it's having a ball.

Fourteen lives have been lost, their blood swallowed by the earth as if Hades himself is drinking the crimson of Athenian youth in His feast. The flesh is the beast’s to devour: an underworld demon born of tainted lust.

Half bull, half man, you always thought the stories were only tales told by the fire to scare children. Turns out that the stories, for once, are true. There's something even worse in this maze, something cursed and foul... Hecate herself would shiver if She were here, in the womb of the earth, witnessing what you’re witnessing now.

You don’t actually see the Bull of Crete cut or hack or slash anyone, and you can only imagine what the monster does to the bloody, gutted corpses of the young. The only thing you see are the hollow, dark walls carved out of soil, sand, and clay, the intestine-like route dug deep into the earth. And you don't have to see the massacre: the screams tell you enough. The silence that follows betrays even more.

Your only light is flickering, waning: the candle will hardly last an hour. If the hero from Athens won’t arrive soon, you will have to leave this place. 

And oh, how you want to leave… You were a fool to follow him here. Blinded by love and hope, you thought Theseus of Athens would be your way out of Crete, but it’s clear that the only thing the young hero is capable of loving is fame. The only time his eyes turned to yours was when you said you might be able to help him with a small bundle of yarn.

Red as the setting sun or spilling blood, the thin woollen string is your only way out now. It’s ironic how a heap of twine is the only thing that can help you out of this hellhole, but the Fates always did possess a cruel sense of humour. Your silly daydreams might’ve cost your life, and even if you’re sworn to the dark goddess, you would rather die anywhere but here. In the darkness, all alone, with nothing but eyeless worms to keep company to your decaying bones.

The sudden draft from the outside world is warm but threatens to blow out your candle. It’s a sign from Apollo: if you don’t leave now, you’re dead. Theseus has to manage without you because you’re not dying in this underworld prison because of some man’s stupid lust for fame.

There's only deafening silence in the maze as you scurry up, taking support from the wall as your sight darkens for a moment. You rose too soon: you can’t even remember the last time you ate. And it appears that even the sun god has abandoned you because there's a faint echo of steps in the tunnel, and they don’t belong to a man. They’re too thick, unduly heavy, and it’s not a pair of sandals that are thumping against the soil.

So, Theseus is dead...

So much for the legend, the myth, the demigod.

Heart thumping in your chest and in the hollow of your throat, it threatens to drown the sound of approaching footsteps. They’re all dead, the people who descended here with you. The only thing you are right now is prey. You're being hunted; whether the Minotaur knows you're here or not, you know you're being hunted. You can feel it in your gut.

You cover the candle with one hand, hoping that the flickering light doesn’t reach around the bend. The falling thump of the footsteps stops, and you still your breath, hoping that the beast would turn around and search the other way.

You hear it sniffing behind the wall. It's trying to catch your scent in the air, the smell of dread and terror, sweat so thick it must reach his nostrils and make them flare with lust. Your heart is thundering in your chest, and the tunnel is so quiet that that you’re certain the creature will hear that, too. (Your heart always betrays you.)

And your luck is cursed.

The beast shifts. 

You can’t see him yet, but you can hear it: the scraping sound underneath his feet as he aligns himself anew, choosing the path that leads straight down to you.

“Hecate save me,” you whisper into the air that seems to grow denser as he approaches, loud thumps of feet now accompanied by metal grating against clay. 

“Hear me, flame-bearing guide... Darkness, protect me…”

He’s dragging bronze against the wall, announcing that he’s carrying a weapon with him, the strength of a bull apparently not satisfying enough if he wants to break your bones with metal.

Don’t blow out the candle... 

If you blow it out, you’ll die.

It’s a clear message, a knowing voice in your head that says it. It’s not young, it’s not old: just knowing. Alert. Wise beyond ages. 

So you still your breath and wait.

Shadows fill the curve of the tunnel just before he emerges: thick like thunder, a darkness so deep that even the name of the twilight goddess escapes your tongue. 

And he’s big. Bigger than the bulls you used to dance with, bigger than kings, or heroes, bigger than even Theseus, the man you thought was a myth walking. His head is enormous, bigger than the rest of him, awkward and rough like it’s not quite part of him even though he’s supposed to be half ox. 

The gigantic, horned figure stops when it sees you. Vast shoulders tense; the fat, double-edged sword falls to his side when he settles to loom between you and your only way to escape this place. You’re oddly thankful that the horrible screeching stopped, but then you notice that his blade is drenched in blood: actually, his torso, thighs, even the buckskin loincloth – the only garment this monster has chosen to wear – is spattered with red dots. 

The bronze tip drips with crimson, and the earth drinks it all. Hades is never satisfied: this beast is never full. Everyone who was sent down here is dead: everyone else has met their doom except you. You wonder if your mother would cry if she heard her only daughter died because she fell in love with a fool.

“I killed your hero,” the walls of hell boom. 

His voice is thick like tar, dark and foul like it’s the God of Earth himself speaking.

The flame in your hand quivers from fear, and you slowly remove your palm, the tiny candle illuminating the beast with warm homely yellow, making the prominent muscles of his chest even bigger. 

He’s carved like the statues in Athens, only, this giant is far hairier than the painted marble heroes of the city. The hair on his chest is thick and wild; it shoots down his abdomen and disappears underneath the loincloth, spreads over his inner thighs, even covers his shins in dark mats. He looks like a wild man, a beast indeed: sweaty, filthy and thick. But you never knew a beast like him could talk…

“A coward, that one,” he snarls, the voice reverberating oddly like it’s a human man speaking from under a wooden mask or inside a clay jug.

And you believe every word he says.

Theseus was strong and able-bodied, but he had built his strength just to show it off. This man’s body speaks of pure, ripe survival.

A hulking shadow with shoulders that barely fit the tunnels of the Labyrinth, with palms nearly twice the size of yours, he’s the myth walking instead of the hero whose blood now adorns that dull bronze blade. The Minotaur who survived his father’s wrath, his mother’s absence, these bleak surroundings, and all the heroes sent down to get his head… His weapon isn’t even sharp anymore, and still, he managed to cut through the sacrificial humans like butter. And what a horrific death it must’ve been to be hacked to pieces by a dull blade.

Is it evil of you to hope that the death of your “hero” wasn’t a quick one…?

Theseus was a fool and a coward, rotten to the core, but you saw all of that too late. He never cared about the human sacrifices or the king’s wrath; he never cared about digging into Pasiphae’s sorrow. He only cared about getting his face depicted on a pot or having his deeds played out in amphitheatres, his name uttered in song, accompanied by harp and flute.

“I know.”  

Your voice gets sucked into the earth: it doesn’t echo from the walls like his. It’s thin, damp, and frail, just like everything else meant to walk under the sun instead of stand buried under the earth.

But the beast before you tilts its head a little. It’s curious. 

Why would you say that? 

Why don’t you cry from hearing the news...? Why don’t you howl out your hero’s name and beg the gods to heed your grief? Why don’t you run away from a monster?

The candlelight is puny and weak, but it’s bright enough to bring out the eyes of an animal. You draw breath in the dampness of the earth when you finally see it: the bull’s head is devoid of eyes, and yet, the beast still has them. Blue as the summer sky, stern as the death grip of winter just before spring.

There’s nothing but ripped shreds of skin where the eyes should be, and instead of looking at you from the sides, they’re greeting you from the front. The horns are sturdy, but otherwise, the colossal head is a bit skewed... Thick patches of fur sticking out as if it was years and years old, and then – you realize it’s not his head; it’s only an illusion. 

There’s a man under there. A full, grown man who’s made himself a terrible helmet out of a bull’s carcass. 

“You’re a man,” you say out loud, earning yourself another shift of the colossal head.

“...What?”

The muffled echo confirms it: he’s speaking from inside the bull, moving only slightly to get a better look at you. 

“You’re not a monster. You’re just a man.”

His eyes are wild but intelligent; they pierce you from inside the inanimate shield. The large chest heaves, his ribs flare like sails as he draws air through what must be the foul stench of a long-dead animal.

He takes a step, and you shrink, almost dropping your candle and the roll of red yarn.

“You think talking will save you, female?”

He speaks like a man, walks like a man, but his moves are an animal’s. Shoulders slightly hunched like he’s a bull about to attack, you recognize the way his muscles quiver from the times when you used to do bull leaping. You don’t dance with Rhea’s oxen anymore: your tasks at Hecate’s temple are more suitable and less wild for a maiden your age. Back when you were younger and more agile, you used to jump from the back of one bull to the next, clouds of dust swirling around you as you showed your prowess to the priests.

But you can’t charm this ox by dancing. This one can’t be tricked or fooled: he will pierce you with those horns or his brazen sword if you take even a step.

“I can get you out of here,” you wet your lips, noticing that the blue eyes shoot straight to your mouth when you do that. “I know the way out.”

“What makes you think I want out,” he says, so tight and tense that you fear he’s either about to leap at your throat or plunge his sword into your chest.

And you should be concerned about your own safety, not about his sensibilities – if he even has such things – but hearing this beast man’s reply is like drinking bile. 

Why would anyone want to stay here?

You don’t know if he eats human flesh; you don’t know if he had to in order to survive. Everyone knows why his father threw him down here, but no one knows he’s not half the things the people above say he is. And if half of it isn’t true, what other lies have been told about the Minotaur? 

Even most prisoners see the sun, yet this man has been deprived of that, too. He’s been robbed of mother’s love, of father’s mercy, of friends and foes, of mentors and guides. He’s been robbed of life, of stars, of fires and summer skies, of women’s giggles, of fistfights with fellow men. Of songs and plays, of festivals and games, of bull dances, and maidens that leap…

“Have you ever been up there…? On the surface?”

You turn your voice into soft water on pebbles, a soothing pour of persuasion and goodwill. His pecs contract, strong abs under thin hair and body fat bunch like you’re about to hit him there. You take a step, and now it’s his turn to shun away. It’s only half an inch, but he actually moves away from you. 

“I can take you there,” you offer gently. “Have you ever seen the sun…?”

It’s like talking to a starved predator, trying to entice them to follow you with a fresh steak in hand, hoping that the fanged mouth won’t take more than was promised if it decides to accept the offering.

And the beast accepts. 

“As a boy,” he grunts, a tad more softly. 

Those eyes are fixed on you, reminding you of horses when they’re slightly afraid. The glint of white and blue behind the carcass is fiercely alive, quite unlike the hollow, disinterested stare of the Athenian hero who was only interested in himself.

But this beast is interested. Oh, the Bull Man of Crete is wildly, fiercely curious about you. 

“You’ll take me to the sun,” he repeats, an affirmation rather than a question.

“Yes. To the surface. I promise.”

He moves. Like an animal who learned long ago to drive others into the corner so that he wouldn’t get forced there himself, he’s primal, sensual in the way that oracles in a trance are sensual.

Approaching you in silence that’s almost eerie, the hairs at the nape of your neck stand on end by the time he’s only an arm’s length away. Why announce his coming earlier if he can move so quietly?

“You’ll lead me to my father.” 

His gaze bores into you, and not even the warm draft from the tunnels can prevent you from shivering. He’s distrustful, and it’s no wonder. It must be odd that some girl with a candle and a bundle of yarn is suddenly waiting for him around the bend, and doesn’t even flee. He’s a behemoth, but he’s not stupid. A stupid man would not have been able to survive, let alone thrive in this place.

And why should he trust you? Who is he supposed to trust in this maze when every person he has seen has either run away from him or tried to kill him? His father will slaughter him if he ever escapes the Labyrinth, so what else is a priestess in his kingdom but a squealing mouse, trying to feed him lies and then guide him to the surface and into a forest of spears? 

“No,” you shake your head slowly. “No, I promise I know the way. There will be no soldiers–”

You shut your mouth just before a huge palm closes around your throat. 

Gods, but he moves fast when he wants to… 

The candle and the yarn drop the instant his hand seizes your neck, strong fingers nearly meeting at the back as he squeezes your windpipe ever so slowly.

And he’s so close now. The carcass reeks of death, but the man underneath stinks of plain human sweat. His musk is a peculiar mix of blood, earth and soil, something both stale and invigorating, the thin sheen of sweat and dirt covering his muscles making him look like a common builder. It’s strange that the bull’s head hasn’t yet decayed in this place, that the man doesn’t reek of bodies and bones that must be scattered around like debris further down the tunnels. 

Another thing that’s strange is that he doesn’t seem to want to simply silence you.

He also wants to touch you.

A wide thumb strokes the underside of your jaw as he studies you. It slides down the column of your throat, the blue eyes gleaming with fascination when you swallow against him.

He drinks in the sight of you: the lips that part with fear, the frail collarbones that breathe against the side of his palm. The promising crevice between your breasts, the enticing softness of your teats. 

You can hear his breath grow heavy under ox skin and bone, the rugged, vicious helmet he has chosen to wear. What lies under, you can only imagine, wherein he has little left to the imagination when taking in the curve of your breasts, your nipples rising to peaks under the thin white linen only temple virgins use. 

Seeing your reaction to his touch makes him growl -- he actually growls like an animal, a deep, low rumble of approval rising up his throat when he sees how different your body is from his. How supple and cushy it is, soft and plump like a peach, covered only barely as if to tease a best like him. You wonder if he ever took pleasure in the maidens sent here by the king… If he ever thrust the sword between his legs into their weak bodies before giving them the mercy of his actual blade. Would he even know what to do with a woman, having lived here for so long?

“Please,” you whisper, bringing his eyes back to yours, the ice in them now liquid sapphire of pure want. 

Gods… You need to bring his attention back to your offer of help before he sees it more compelling to just stay here and play with his new, plump little mouse. Virgin or not, you wouldn’t survive a mating with this man. 

“I swear on Hecate’s torch that it’s not a trap. You have my word: I’m a priestess soon to be.”

He’s entranced. Hypnotized by your lips. You lick them to confirm your fears true: the man grunts with pleasure, out of instinct, absentmindedly like an animal who reacts to the sight of a fat, meaty bone. 

Oh, he might not know what to do with a woman… But he would try his best to find out. 

“Priestess…?” He rasps.

“It’s a holy woman,” you explain. “I serve the Goddess of the Crossroads.”

He snorts, either because he’s not impressed or because he’s downright amused by your vocation. The eyes, warmer, more demanding now, are far from the eyes of a bewildered beast.

“Little female of the crossroads... You will take me to the king. And then, I will kill him.”

He puts weight into his words, tries to make you understand. 

He wants you to guide him to his father. 

To the King who claims his son is half bull, to the husband who claims his wife was adulterous with an ox. To the King who demands tribute as virgins so that he can send them down to hell. The dark goddess screams justice, but you're at a horrible stalemate.

The gods will curse you for this… They will smite you with a bolt of lightning or drown you next time you cross the great sea if they see you’ve helped this half-beast escape. If you guide him to Minos, you’re a participant in kingslaying, and the gods never forget things like that.

“He’s your father and the king of Crete,” you whisper in fear. “The gods will strike you down–”

“Gods?” He spits. “I piss on the gods. I fuck their corpses and leave them to rot.”

You almost choke on the blasphemy levelled at you. The shadows creep closer, the stare behind the black fur is dark and amused, burning with the crooked wrath of a thousand years. 

“Perhaps I’ll fuck you too.”

It’s unnerving that you don’t find the threat wholly unappealing.

If anything, your eyes drift down to the hairs of his chest, to the two big muscles that resemble the work of the best sculptors in Athens. 

“Are you a virgin, female of the crossroads?”

His eyes search for your response: they want to see your fear and disgust. You swallow again, arduously against his hand, both caressing and testing you. 

The beast leans forward, as if weighing if he could somehow insult the gods by pillaging you. The rough hair of his chest meets the white cloth, it brushes against your nipples as he bends down to have a good sniff of you.

“You smell like a virgin,” he growls.

The hand leaves your throat, only to travel down your sternum. He grabs your breast nonchalantly, a little too roughly, the hot palm closing around the teat and squeezing it like it’s a toy. When you don’t react, he squeezes it again, this time hard enough to coax a whimper out of you.

“Sound like a virgin…”

Without warning, the hand dives straight between your legs next, palm forcing its way through your thighs and curving to cup your sex, moulding around it with barbaric thirst.

“Feel like a virgin, too.”

It’s thick, hot, and heavy, how he simply tries you through your dress. Fingers testing your folds, he’s clearly enjoying the subtle wetness he finds down there. You can hear another hitched grunt pushing up his throat, rugged and whiny this time, a broken groan that dissipates because of how dry his throat is. 

No man has ever dared to lay his hands on you... Many have wanted, but none have tried. Even drunkards and fools respect women who belong to the dark goddess.

But he doesn’t care about the wrath of Hecate. He doesn’t give a shit about the gods. He simply takes what he wants, what falls into his lap. The fifteenth offering, but he doesn’t seem to be interested in devouring your flesh. 

How easily he could simply yank that loincloth aside and drag your dress up. Force his cock into your tight, wet heat without uttering a word. You doubt that he would even take the trouble of laying you down on the ground for taking... Beasts rut when they want to: this man could fuck you against this wall if his loins demanded so, guttural groans being the last thing you hear before the candle goes out. 

You don’t know if you have to spread your legs for him before this is over, but you reckon you will do even that if it means you’ll see the sun again. You’ll endure every thick thrust, and gods be cursed, you wouldn’t even be solely disgusted if this half-animal chose to breed you... As shameful as it is, you would somewhat enjoy having him rut you like an animal in heat.

And you’ve gone mad, surely. 

You want to touch him too, just to test another theory. 

Deciding that it's a good idea to stick your hand into the maw of hell, your fingers lift. They meet his bicep, and the lewd panting stops.

He’s not even breathing… He’s just drowsy and drunk, looking at you with a mixture of soft sleepiness and awe in his stare. Like a dog who has never been petted, even his eyes drift half closed when he forgets to threaten you, now focusing solely on your hand. 

And you start to caress him, slowly, so slowly… Tracing the muscle all the way up where it meets the shoulder, you stroke even the thick cord that leads to his neck. The rest of him disappears under the bull, but the man behind it already shivers under your touch. He even bends his head a little in hopes that you would go under the mask and touch him there, and the gesture reminds you of an animal exposing its vulnerable areas, baring its very throat in submission. 

Braving a quick peek down, you notice that the buckskin cloth is stretched high and wide. His whole body is tense and immobile: you could cup him through the soft animal skin and he would probably shoot his seed from a single stroke of your palm. 

If this is not a virgin, you don’t know what is...

In a way, it would perhaps be wise to shove your hand down and disarm this man. That way, you would be safe for a few more minutes. Instead, you lay your palm over his chest, right over where his heart should be. 

“So do you, Bull of Crete...”

His gaze flickers.

The darkness hesitates, widens, nearly swallows the azure pools whole. But he doesn’t look irate or wild... Only shocked.

It’s an impasse. A thicket. His hand on you, your hand on him.

He surrenders first: the underworld budges before the utterly pure. You bless him with grace the instant he withdraws his hand from between your legs – slowly, reluctantly, like leaving a place that belongs to him. Or to which he belongs…

“I promise I’ll help you, Minos Tauros. But I need you to give me something in return.”

You remove your hand too. Softly, slowly, like a horse master who trains and tames wild things. All words seem to have escaped his tongue: he only grunts, unsure of what a beast like him could give you in return for your help.

“You must promise to be kind to me.”

“Kind...?”

“I need you to behave,” you explain. “No bad things on the way up... No fucking.”

Everything else, he seems to accept, but during the last sentence the Minotaur blinks at you, utterly confused.

“But... You smell like you want to fuck.” 

Your jaw drops open a tiny bit. Then you remember that a priestess of Hecate doesn’t gawk.

“I don’t–How would you know that…?”

The beast only shrugs. Then he leans forward and takes another sniff as if to prove it’s true that you want his cock inside you.

“You smell good,” he grunts. “Different... Female, not afraid.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to…”

He even raises his hand to inspect the slight wetness there. Fascinated by the thin film on his fingers, he rubs his thumb in it, probably thinking about bringing it under his mask to get a good sniff of your juices too.

You grab his wrist without thinking, mortified to your core by the prospect of him getting high on your slick. 

“Look. We need to leave before the candle burns out.”

The obsessive stare threatens to swallow you once more, so you let go of his wrist and steel your resolve. Scooting down to grab your things, you try to ignore the violent erection still pointing straight at you.

Hecate keep you from offering yourself to this man out of your own free will...

And you don’t have a torch, only a candle and a skein of blood-red yarn, but you know the way out, so there’s hope. There’s always hope.

“I need you to promise me,” you turn at the mouth of the tunnel, seeing that he’s still standing there, in the place where he almost took you like his first whore. As if waking up from a thrall, he straightens to his full height, picks up his sword and looks like a half-human, half-bull once more.

“I promise,” comes a booming voice from under the animal skull. “No fucking… I’ll behave.” 

You nod. There's a sense of trust in the air. A promise of hope... It's mutual, invigorating -- life-giving, like the sun and blood in your hands.

You don't know if the son of Minos has ever smiled in here, but from the quick glint in his eyes, you suspect that he's smiling right now, the man under that animal mask. Somehow, it reminds you of the stars in the sky.

“Lead the way, maiden.”

[flowerandblood]

The Temple of the God

[ Ares • Ettore x Aphrodite • female ]

[ warnings: incest obviously, sex content, fingering, smut, angst, violence, swearing, marital infidelity ]

[ description: Many men look at her with lust, however, no one's gaze is as terrifying as that of her brother, the god of war, cruel and cold, reminding her more of a barbarian than one of the kings of Olympus. He is known to care little about pleasing women in his brutal rapprochements with them, however, he surprises her with his attitude when he visits her one night. ]

This oneshot is my Valentine's Day gift to all of you. I love you, thank you for being here! I plan to come back to this couple in the future, let me know what you think! 💕

Part 2 − The Temple of War

* English is not my first language. Please, do not repost. Enjoy! *

My other works: Masterlist

_____

She could see it in the way he looked at her. She saw it in the light movement of his head, his raised chin, his slightly parted lips, his gait lazy, confident, careless, like that of a bear or a lion. He circled around her, angry and frustrated, unable to get what he wanted.

There was something animalistic in his nature, in his posture, in his aura, his gaze seemed to her empty, yet at the same time endlessly deep and dark; he could not concentrate on calm deliberation, there was a perpetual, irrepressible storm in his mind.

He would exert himself on the battlefields, at the head of armies of his heroes, with whom he would train and duel for days, their muscular, broad bodies often completely naked, glistening with sweat and oil.

She watched them sometimes from the windows of her chambers on Olympus. Their great wars and pointless exercises aimed at making them tear their opponents to shreds, with one sword cut depriving them of their members, wallowing in their blood.

Her brother did not abhor carcasses, decay, murder, cruelty, she thought he fed on it, his enemies knew no mercy from him, their pleas clashing with the cold stone that was his heart.

Her nature was the complete opposite of his and they both knew that they had nothing to offer each other. However, whenever he caught sight of her silhouette, walking in the company of her servants, river and mountain nymphs, entertaining her with conversation, he did not take his piercing, hot gaze off her, his lips pressed into a thin line; he turned the hilt of his sword as if in a trance then, drifting away with his thoughts.

He did not desire her, he wanted to devour her.

She knew that he had cohabited with many women, including her maidservants, who later lamented to her that he was brutal and cruel, that he did not know or understand what female fulfilment and joy were, did not know the women's bodies and their secrets, because he was only interested in his own fulfilment.

One day she visited him while he was practising with his warriors; they were wrestling and throwing each other to the ground, the one who gave up had to pat the other on the shoulder.

They were completely naked.

Seeing her, several of them covered themselves, knowing full well who she was, ashamed that she might judge them or their bodies, mock them and expose them to the ridicule.

She, however, approached her brother, looking straight into his eyes beaming with utter black emptiness, his broad chest adorned with drops of sweat rising and falling in heavy breathing.

He stood before her without any sign of embarrassment, his eyes roaming all over her body, judging apparently how her flesh presented itself in her soft velvet-like translucent white robe, pearls braided into the curls of her hair. They stared at each other for a moment in silence, as if testing each other, her face, like his, expressing nothing.

"Stay away from my servants, brother. They have complained to me that you are hurting them." She said at last, his jaw clenched at her words, his nostrils quivering in impatience.

He didn't answer.

He never answered.

She turned away, heading back towards the cloisters, feeling the thirsty gazes of the men turning behind her, disappearing at last into the halls of the gigantic ancient palace.

Men craved her for many reasons, one of which was the urge to prove to themselves that they could be desired by the goddess of love herself.

It was a great oversimplification, however, because of her experience this is what she came to be called, people, men and women, began to offer prayers to her begging her blessing in their marriages, asking for her intervention in matters others would have been afraid to whisper about.

She blessed ardent loves, burning to the core.

Yet she herself, though she was ashamed to admit it, had not experienced one herself.

Every time she thought it was the one, the man she believed to be her beloved died, or betrayed her by following another goddess, bored. Her heart was broken so many times that she allowed herself to be approached by men only to give her physical pleasure.

Her husband, Hephaestus, was a good and warm-hearted man. He spent his days in his great forge located in the heart of the volcano, in which the fire flowed constantly. She visited him there rarely, the dust and noise there was unbearable for her.

Although they both had respect for each other and a kind of cordiality, he preferred to devote himself to his work. He did not understand her needs, just as she did not understand his, for which she did not blame him.

Their marriage, unlike that of Zeus and Hera, was more peaceful, both of them resigned to their roles and didn't get in each other's way.

She knew, however, that before her father, ruler of the thunderbolts and all of Olympus, had decided to marry her to Hephaestus, it had been the God of War himself who had furiously demanded her hand, believing that she was his to claim.

Their father did not share his decision, apparently fearing his violent nature and what kind of husband he would turn out to be.

Her brother then disappeared for years, sinking into great wars and battles, the earth trembled from his rage, from the peaks of their heavenly mountain she heard the cries and moans of his enemies.

That day, after what she had told him, he came to her at night.

Completely naked, without a trace of embarrassment on his face, he walked slowly across the cold stone floor towards her bed, draped with a canopy and translucent curtains, which he pushed aside with an impatient flick of his hand, passing between them.

He stopped when he caught sight of her bare figure, looking at him with furrowed brows she raised on one elbow, feeling no shame whatsoever, yet unable to stop the squeeze between her thighs and the heat in her lower abdomen noticing that at the sight of her body his manhood twitched and swelled.

"Get out." She said coolly, but he only hummed as if he was considering something. She turned on her back, ready to scream if necessary, knowing her servants would come to her aid and her brothers would drag him away from her.

She was curious, however, to see what he would do.

She looked vigilantly at his silhouette walking slowly towards her, with his big cold black eyes and tense body he reminded her of a wild animal preparing to attack.

She thought he was about to throw himself at her and try to take her against her will.

He, however, sat down beside her; his large, wide hand raised and, in an uncertain, calm movement, ran down her thigh, his fingers digging into her skin as if he wanted to see what it felt like.

"− like velvet −" He murmured low, breathing through his mouth as if he was trying to calm himself; she seemed to notice on his face something of childish curiosity, as if she and her body was something unremarkable and completely incomprehensible to him.

His hand went higher, to her breast and began to rub and play with it, as if he liked the shape of it and how pleasant it was to the touch. She sighed quietly, realising with disbelief that what he was doing and how he was behaving was making her wet, her fleshy insides pulsing with tension.

Finally his fingers ran over her neck and face, his thumb stopped and parted her plump, glistening lips; he leaned over her as if he wanted to get a proper look at her, his warm breath enveloped her skin, the smell of his sweat seemed primal, masculine to her, her body involuntarily quivered at the thought.

He kissed her, kissed her as if he wanted to devour her, his caress full of chaos and impatience, of his hot, sticky lips, of his wet tongue, of his saliva and teeth. She gasped into his mouth, surprised to feel what he was doing between her thighs, her heart pounding like mad.

He groaned low into her mouth in surprise and tightened his fingers on her cheeks, panting hard as her hand gripped firmly his hard, swollen manhood.

She gasped for air when she felt how generously he had been bestowed by the heavens; she gave him a few slow, encouraging squeezes sliding her hand from the fat, pink head of his cock to it's very base, his hips involuntarily began to respond to her movements.

"− harder −" He commanded, closing his eyes, his hand involuntarily squeezed her breasts, too hard and without sensitivity. She hissed quietly, clamping her hand tighter on his length, wanting to cause him pain; he growled feeling it, digging his fingers into the skin of her cheek, looking at her with rage.

"− not like that − more gently −" She explained, clamping her hand over his, showing him with the strokes of her fingers how he should caress her, directing his thumb to her nipple.

"− rub this place − ah, yes, just like that −" She mumbled, tilting her head back, feeling his impatient breath on her, watching her and her reactions with interest, surprised apparently at how she was able to change in a matter of moments.

She felt his length tremble in her grasp when he heard her first, quiet moans.

"− that's enough −" He said impatiently, laying down on top of her, his large hands, rough from holding the sword, gripped her thighs, wanting to spread them apart and finally possess her, her fingers tightening on his sweaty, muscular shoulders.

"− no − not yet − touch me there −" She mumbled.

He looked at her with a gaze from which her whole body froze, it seemed to her that his irises were completely black, menacing, burning with a desire that destroyed and devoured.

For a moment he didn't move, breathing heavily as if he was considering her words; she licked her lips realising that he had never done this before.

He had never touched a woman down there with his fingers or his lips, never caressed her before he owned her.

She swallowed loudly, sliding her hand down to his, in a gentle motion encouraging him to sink his fingers into her hot, leaking womanhood.

She heard him draw in a loud breath at the sensation, foreign and unfamiliar, tense, he rested the weight of his body on his elbow, leaning to the side, watching from the corner of his eye what he was doing to her.

"− here, brother − touching me here will give me pleasure −" She whispered, guiding his fingertips to the bud hidden between her folds, showing him how to tease her clit with circular, slow movements.

She parted her lips, feeling the pleasant tingling in her lower abdomen, her hips involuntarily began to respond to his strokes.

"− only here? −" He asked lowly, furrowing his eyebrows, his stony face expressing concern at her words knowing that the place she was showing him was outside and not deep inside her. She sighed quietly, guiding his middle finger to her slit; he looked at her face, gasping out loud, feeling the way her fleshy walls resisted him, hot and sticky.

"− not only − can you feel it? − right here −" She whispered, directing him to the spot inside her just above her opening, between her muscles. He shuddered all over, licking his lips, dried apparently from emotion, his erection hard and swollen, twitching involuntarily, betraying how aroused he was.

"− yes −" He exclaimed, digging his middle finger into the spot she showed him, his thumb teasing her pearl, clearly wanting to see what would happen when he started touching both places at once. She moaned loudly, tilting her head back, delighted at how unexpectedly pleasurable the sensation was.

"− gods − put it inside me −" She mewled, feeling that she no longer cared about retaining any remnants of her dignity, her free hand sank into his hair, pulling him close. He grunted loudly into her mouth like an animal throwing himself at her body, her fingers dug into the bare skin of his back, a moan of exertion escaped her throat when immediately the thick tip of his cock began to push against her tight walls.

"− wider −" He exhaled with a grin that was disturbing to say the least as with an impatient, confident thrust he forced her to let him in deeper. She breathed loudly, unable to believe how hard he was stretching her and threw her head back, a drop of sweat running down her long neck.

"− brother −" She whispered, something in the way she said the word made him lose his patience, his length began to slam into her in a fast, brutal rhythm, each time rubbing the spot inside her from where she could see the stars; it seemed to her that everything around her was spinning, the fingers of his hand cupped her cheeks, forcing her to look at him.

"− no, fucking look at me − look at me and listen to what my cock is doing to this weeping cunt − pathetic −" He hissed out through clenched teeth, as if he was both furious and proud at the same time. She whimpered helplessly, a loud smack echoed around them each time his thighs hit the bare skin of her buttocks, there was something lewd and definitive about the sound, proof of how wrong she was.

"− mghm −" She babbled, feeling like he was going to pierce her, the movements of his hips quick and aggressive, full of desperation and desire, their breaths embarrassingly loud and raptured. They stared at each other with their mouths wide open, as if they couldn't believe in what was happening.

"− what does it feel like, brother? − what does it feel like to fuck your own sister? −" She gasped, heard his surprised sigh at her question, his cock quivered hard inside her, his fingers dug harder into the soft skin of her cheeks, causing her pain.

He was moving so fast inside her that he was hardly slipping out of her, her fleshy walls, all leaking from her moisture, were no longer resisting him.

It seemed to her that he wanted to reply something, but the pleasure took his speech away; he leaned over suddenly and pressed his forehead against hers, panting loudly, his hot breath enveloping her face.

She could smell the masculine scent of his sweat, from which her cunt began to throb around him, her fingers traveled down from his back to his buttocks, stroking them with movements that could be called tender.

"− it feels good −" He whispered, looking at her with a gaze that sent shivers through her, at the same time animalistic, empty and full of something she couldn't name, desire as dark and disturbing as the night around them. The sure, loud, deep thrusts of his hips made her breath get stuck in her throat, she thought with horror, feeling a pleasant tickle in her lower abdomen, that she was about to come.

"− it feels right −" He muttered and ran his tongue over her lips, something in the way he said those words, in this shameless, lewd gesture, in the way the tip of his fat cock rubbed her again and again at the spot of her greatest pleasure made her melt in front of him.

She involuntarily tilted her head back and closed her eyes, a soft, helpless moan of delight broke from her throat as a wave of wonderful heat and relief shook her body, her walls began to squeeze him, sucking him inside.

"− fuck − fuck-fuck-fuck −" He merely muttered before sighing loudly.

She felt his hot seed spill inside her, filling her, and although she rarely allowed anyone such an honour, she was unable to deny him.

She stroked his naked buttocks with calm movements full of affection, in some subconscious, natural reflex, he continued to thrust into her for a moment longer, looking down at her with his mouth open wide in pleasure.

They stared at each other, breathing loudly, and she raised her hand, letting her fingers run over his temple, his cheek and his clearly defined long jaw. She saw him close his eyes for a moment, as if he wanted to remember this moment and this feeling.

"− there is no place for me to rest − no haven where I can take refuge − here is my only true temple −" He gasped in half whisper, as if he were revealing to her some shameful secret that was tormenting him. She swallowed quietly, feeling his body cling to hers, her breasts pressed against his bare, broad chest, his face snuggled into her hot cheek, his soft manhood still throbbed deep inside her.

"− my home −"

_____

General Taglist:

(bold means I couldn't tag you)

@triscy @re-per @diiickbrainn @queenofshinigamis @eponaartemisa @zaldritzosrose @writerloversjm @lauzy87 @targaryenrealnessdarling @briefcollectivepersona @ginarely-blog @lcecgg @an0ther-us3r @blackswxnn

[s-lverwing]

01. SIN

pairing. aegon targaryen x velaryon (targaryen)!reader x maelor targaryen (aegon’s twin).

summary. thoughts weight heavier than ever as you realize what’s expected from you; having a secret relationship with the king’s heir isn’t one. destiny can be defied, but duty must be followed.

word count. 4.8k (sorry). ao3 link

warnings. angst, targcest (niece and uncle), manipulation, toxic relationships. heavy pinning. kind of infidelity? english isn’t my first language and i haven’t read the books.

a/n. i got this idea from watching domina hehe and i thought it would be fun to explore this little idea i had of aegon having a twin brother that looks like a hightower. i stretched a bit what happens from driftmark until viserys dies, since i was missing more years . so this is aegon being 18-19 me and the reader is one or two years younger than him . and helaena and aegon aren’t paired yet because i don’t have the heart to make her bear children at 14 yo .

The night was still, as if the very walls of the Red Keep were holding their breath. Not even the usual footfalls of the royal guards echoed through the dim lighted corridors, nor did the familiar murmur of chambermaids’ gossip snake its way to your ears. The rat catchers had already done their work in the lower floors, leaving behind a silence that felt as suffocating as it was unusual.

Yet it wasn’t the silence that weighed so heavily on your heart—it was something deeper, something that clawed at your insides and left an acrid taste in your mouth. The Red Keep, once a place of grandeur and life, now seemed to pulse with a strange, ominous energy. You could feel it in the air, thick and oppressive, and you couldn’t help but link it to King Viserys’ worsening condition. He was a shadow of his former self, a walking corpse whose very presence seemed to taint the air with decay. The stench of his rotting flesh clung to him like a shroud, especially when mixed with the smell of milk of the poppy. He was nothing but a walking dead, a man who no longer belonged among the living. It almost served as a reminder of the state of the Kingdom.

The court was no longer the vibrant place of your childhood memories. It was a place of whispers and shadows, of secrets buried so deep they festered in the dark. You could feel the weight of those secrets pressing down on you, a burden you were not ready to carry but could no longer ignore. The responsibilities you had once tried to deny now loomed over you like a dark cloud.

And then there was Aegon. The mere thought of him brought a new kind of tension to your chest, one that was equal parts longing and dread. What you shared with him was a dangerous game, one that could end badly only for you. The risk was immense, but so too was the pull you felt towards him—a pull you could not resist, no matter how much you knew you should. You knew all too well what would happen if the rumors spread, if someone caught the two of you in a compromising position. There was no place for such reckless passion in the Red Keep, no room for fleeting romances or secret rendezvous. Not when you weren’t cunning enough to know how to hide away from their prying eyes. You were being watched, judged, and weighed against the expectations of a world that would crush you if you strayed too far from the path laid out before you.

Ser Otto Hightower’s words echoed in your mind, a constant reminder of the duty and honor that were supposed to guide you. He had been the only Hightower to show you any semblance of kindness after Lucerys had taken Aemond’s eye. It was a kindness that clung to your memory like a fragile, half-forgotten dream, overshadowed by the cruel realities that had since unfolded. Like a small mercy.

You couldn’t help but feel trapped, suffocating under the weight of expectations you had never wanted. And yet, you could not bring yourself to let go of Aegon, no matter how much you knew you should. The risk, the danger, the sheer madness of it all only seemed to draw you closer to him, even as you felt the noose tightening around your neck.

And as you stood there, alone in the drowning darkness of your chamber, you couldn’t help but wonder how much longer you could keep this up—how much longer you could pretend that everything was fine when, deep down, you knew that everything was about to fall apart.

The quiet creak of the wooden doors took you away from your thoughts, but you didn’t turn from the window. The night outside was as dark and impenetrable as your own thoughts. You didn’t need to look to know who had entered; Aegon’s footsteps were as familiar to you as the beating of your own heart, an echo of years spent together in a world that seemed increasingly distant now. His scent, a heady mix of wine and something uniquely him, filled the room, bringing with it an uneasy comfort that had long since become part of you since this started.

He approached with a lazy grace, as if the world and all its troubles were mere trifles to him. His arms snaked around your waist, drawing you back against him, his head finding its place on your bare shoulder. The cool night air from the window kissed your skin, but his warmth was a balm you hadn’t realized you’d been seeking. He pressed a soft kiss to your cheek, a fleeting gesture that could be mistaken for affection, followed by a soft chuckle that was as intoxicating as it was disarming.

Aegon was in good spirits tonight, or so it seemed. His presence was magnetic, his charm an irresistible force that pulled you into his orbit despite the undercurrent of dread that always lurked beneath the surface. You knew this tenderness, however sweet, was a precarious thing—a mask that could slip at any moment to reveal the tempest underneath. Yet you leaned into him, seeking solace in the closeness even as it threatened to unravel everything you held together so carefully.

But then, like a gust of wind extinguishing a flame, his smile faded, replaced by a frown that marred his angelic features. You didn’t need to see his face to feel the change, to sense the tension coiling in his body as if he were holding onto something fragile, something that could slip through his fingers and shatter beyond repair.

It was as though he was clutching at a dream, trying to hold onto a world that was slipping away from him. And you, too, were caught in that current, powerless to change the course of the storm that was surely coming. The weight of unspoken words, of a future that neither of you could control.

“You’re far away,” Aegon whispered, his voice barely breaking the stillness that had settled over the room like a heavy shroud.

Before he could say more, you gently took one of his hands, bringing it to your lips and pressing a tender kiss to his knuckles. His skin was warm, soft, since he strayed away from sword training. It felt weird, as though the chasm that had opened between you was something that could not be bridged by mere touch. “I’m tired,” you murmured, the exhaustion lacing your voice with a fragility that felt almost foreign to you. “It’s been a long day.”

Aegon’s eyes narrowed slightly, his gaze probing as he turned you around with an effortless grace that belied the tension simmering beneath his calm exterior. “What’s on your mind?” he asked, his tone soft yet edged with something darker, an undercurrent of fear, perhaps. His hands lingered on your waist, grounding you, but also anchoring you to him and the chaos that comes with it.

A sad smile tugged at your lips. You searched for the right words, the right way to explain the gnawing dread that had taken root in your heart. It wasn’t your intention to hurt him, but how could you speak the truth without doing so? “I worry,” you confessed, each word heavy with the weight of unspoken fears. “I worry about everything. In fact, I think I often worry enough for the both of us.”

Your words hung in the air, a fragile admission that seemed to echo in the stillness of the chamber. The night was your sanctuary, the time when you could be together without the prying eyes of the Red Keep, even from the Gods, yet even this sacred space was not immune to the growing tension that lay between you. You felt the strain of it, pulling at the threads of your bond, threatening to unravel the delicate balance you had managed to maintain for so long.

Aegon’s expression darkened, his eyes searching yours for something he couldn’t quite grasp. His brow furrowed, as if he were trying to understand a riddle that had no answer, his grip on your waist tightening imperceptibly. “You worry too much,” he said finally, his voice barely masking the frustration that simmered just beneath the surface. “You worry about things that don’t matter, that will never matter”

But the conviction in his voice, once so reassuring, now felt hollow. You could hear the echo of doubts in your mind. How could you tell him that his recklessness, his disregard for the very things that weighed so heavily on your heart, was tearing you apart? How could you make him see that while he was content to drift through life, you were being dragged under by the currents of responsibility, duty, and the looming shadows of what was to come?

Aegon pulled you closer, his hands tight on your waist, but the embrace felt more like a cage than a comfort. “You’re living in a fantasy,” he murmured, his breath warm against your ear. “A fantasy of duty and responsibility that was never meant for us. We’re meant to live, to enjoy what we have, not to worry about what others expect… because we’re never going to be enough”

His words cut deeper than any blade could. Aegon’s indifference to his own fate, his refusal to see the consequences of his actions, was a stark reminder of how different the two of you truly were. He lived for the moment, for the fleeting pleasures that numbed the pain he refused to acknowledge. But you couldn’t escape the weight of the future, the crushing burden of knowing what was expected of you, of him.

“You can’t escape it,” you whispered, your voice breaking. “No matter how hard you try to pretend otherwise, it’s coming for us, Aegon”

“You’re always worrying,” Aegon muttered. “You’re starting to sound like my mother—always telling me what we should be, what we should do, as if we’re some perfect vision of duty.” He sighed deeply, rubbing a hand over his face. “Can you stop making everything so complicated?”

“I’m sorry—” you began, your voice trembling with the weight of your fears. “But I’m afraid, Aegon. It’s terrifying, this situation. Everything… don’t you realize?” You tilted your head, searching his face for any sign that he understood the turmoil that gnawed at your insides.

“We’re alright,” he scoffed, rolling his eyes in exasperation. “It’s you who’s making it difficult. You’re the one living in this fantasy—this fantasy of duty and faith, and everything being just— so we don’t repeat the mistakes of those before us. But it’s suffocating.”

You felt the tension coil tighter in your chest, the pressure building as if you were on the edge of a precipice. “Aegon, this isn’t just a fantasy. It’s our reality—our future. The mistakes of the past haunt us because they were real, because they had consequences. We can’t just ignore that.”

"Aegon—" you began, but before you could say another word, he silenced you with a sudden, fevered kiss. His lips crashed against yours with a force that spoke of desperation, the unmistakable taste of wine lingering on his breath. It was typical of him—this reckless need, this hunger that never seemed to be sated. His kiss was all-consuming, a fire that threatened to burn you from the inside out, and though you knew you should resist, his touch was woven so deeply into the fabric of your being that it felt impossible to pull away.

For a moment, you let yourself drown in him, in the way his hands moved up your waist to your back, seeking the laces of your sleep gown with a familiar urgency. But just as quickly, the sole thought of him lost in the arms of strangers, drowning in wine just the night before, flashed through your mind. The memory hit you like a cold wave, pulling you back to the surface of reality, and with a wrenching effort, you pushed him away.

Aegon stared at you, a frown creasing his brow, confusion mingling with the remnants of his frustration.

"Alicent—" you stammered, grasping for anything to say, your voice faltering under the weight of the lie. "She’ll be here early in the morrow," you continued, the words sounding hollow even to your own ears.

He knew it was a lie. You could see it in the way his eyes narrowed, a flicker of anger passing through them, but he said nothing. The silence between you stretched thin, taut with unspoken truths and the ever-widening distance that neither of you could bridge. His frustration, his anger—it wasn’t just at you. It was at everything, at the life he was trapped in, at the expectations that crushed him. But that anger, that resentment, was now directed squarely at you, the one person who had always been his refuge, and yet now felt like just another weight dragging him down.

And you felt your own heart ache with a sorrow that words couldn’t express. You loved him—Gods, how you loved him—but that love was starting to feel like a chain.

Aegon let out a chuckle, the sound tinged with a bitterness that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “That never worried you before,” he said, his tone almost mocking.

You held his gaze, your own resolve faltering under the weight of the truth you were about to speak. “Can you imagine what they’ll do to me if they ever find out about us?” you whispered, your voice trembling as you pressed a finger to your chest. “How shame and rage will rain upon me, Aegon?”

“That’s not going to happen,” he replied, his voice firm, dismissive, as if sheer will could bend the world to his desires.

But you shook your head. “There are bigger things than us, Aegon,” you said, your voice soft yet heavy with the burden of inevitability.

He rolled his eyes. “What could happen? My mother asking me to marry you?”

“That’s the best-case scenario,” you admitted, a fleeting hope lingering in your words. “But if she doesn’t want to marry my brother to Helaena, what makes you think she’ll marry me to you, the King’s firstborn son?”

“They’re bastards,” he spat out, a familiar venom in his words.

“—As much as I am,” you whispered back, the words cutting through the air like a blade. “This is going nowhere, Aegon,” you continued before he could respond, your voice filled with resignation.

And yet, despite everything, despite the certainty that this was all leading to ruin, you couldn’t let go. Not of him, not of the love that, for all its flaws and dangers, had become the very blood in your veins. But now, you couldn’t help but wonder if that love was worth the price you were bound to pay; since this affair was doomed from its beginnings.

Aegon’s expression morphed into something indecipherable, a mask of internal conflict as though he was waging a silent war with himself between the urge to remain and the compulsion to escape. His hesitation was palpable, yet ultimately he opted for departure, unwilling to incite another confrontation that would only drive a deeper wedge between you.

“Where are you going?” you demanded, your voice a cold lance piercing through the darkness, laced with fears.

“You clearly need to reconsider things,” he said, his voice firm and filled with resignation. “You’re entangled in this ideal of the perfect daughter, the flawless princess. We’re not going to get what we desire regardless”

“So you’ll leave me alone?” you asked, the weight of the words feeling like a burden on your tongue. And you couldn’t get angry at him for choosing to leave. It almost feels like you pushed him away.

Aegon’s silence was deafening, his only reply a weary exhale. He cast one final, fleeting glance over his shoulder, a look that seemed to carry an entire world of unresolved emotions and discontent. Then, without another word, he turned and slipped out of your chamber with the same quiet stealth as his arrival, leaving you alone with the heavy stillness of your room. The silence that followed was deafening.

You couldn’t imagine a life without him but the day will come — you’ll be betrothed and taken to some place you hate. And he will be betrothed too. That’s how destiny works for all of you.

The same destiny it’s the reason he opted to numb his running mind with wine and prostitutes… once more.

“Rūklun skoriot se bantis rāpa vūjigon tolvie rūklon,” Helaena voice echoes through the small garden. Her tone always dreamy and soft, like a haunting beautiful dream.

You can’t remember when was the first time you both laid on the soft grass; when was the first time she sang for you; when was the first time she entertained you with her bugs. Now her head is laid on your stomach, as she holds a small creature in her hand. Just admiring them, and you’re glad she’s your friend. She does have that capacity of looking beyond, of truly admiring other beings.

She leaves the small bug on the grass, as she continues her soft singing; “Pōnta ȳdragon isse rāpa tolīmorghon, gūrēñagon gīda isse se zōbrie,”

Helaena is equally glad for your friendship, as you understood her. As she felt cared for; she doesn’t feel like she’s the weird girl everyone claims her to be. For her own family doesn’t seem to care so much about her. You both hear tales and stories… whispers, rumors.

When Viserys and Alicent had welcomed their first son, a healthy, silver-haired heir, they had not anticipated the arrival of a second child so soon after Aegon. Though young and aware of her duty to provide the King with heirs to secure the bloodline, Alicent was overwhelmed. Yet, when her weary and anxious eyes met those of her newborn son, a profound sense of tranquility enveloped her. Aegon would grow to be the King’s heir to the throne but Maelor shall be hers. Forever.

Then came the only girl, and the rest… All but one raised in the most hostile ambient a child can grow.

But she had endured, alway pushed aside. Just a princess, whose fate was to get married to some Lord and be exiled away from home. “Jēda, iā lyka dīnagon, pālegīon pōja jaedos ezīmagon iōrves,” She continued with her soft and haunting voice.

Unease began to creep from the pit of your stomach. Helaena’s singing, usually a balm for worries and terrors, now seemed powerless against this overwhelming dread; this was something you feared nothing could shake away.

Strange days were merely the beginning. They would haunt your sleep, echoing in the dark with the lullabies of Targaryens ghosts.

“You’re such a fool—“ A hushed and forced through teeth phrase came out of Helaena’s grandsire; Otto Hightower.

In an instant, your head whipped around, and Helaena sat up. You didn’t need to see to know what the commotion was about—Otto was dragging Aegon toward his chambers, his grip firm and unforgiving. The sight made your stomach churn with fear, casting a shadow over your thoughts. The King’s alleged heir had a way of making your skin crawl. You haven’t seen him in a couple of days after your fight.

She gazed at you, her lips parting only to release the haunting melody: “Pōja istin jehikagrī ēnka sir rāpūltan, isse iā rāpa, lyka nārhēdegon” (Their once bright hues now softened, in a tender, quiet loss).

Soon, the groans and heavy footsteps melded with the birds’ chirping and the distant murmur of voices from the hallways. Yet, the garden remained an isolated enclave, housing only Helaena’s ethereal song and your tumultuous thoughts. A palpable silence descended, compelling you to whip your head toward her.

Alicent’s only daughter was already regarding you with eyes brimming with worry and regret. It was uncommon for her to look at you this way, and the intensity of her gaze sent a shiver down your spine.

“Sealing the bond,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “One will drift away, the other will be chasing phantoms for an eternity” The innocence of her phrase was a dagger to your gut, making you want to retch, as you tasted bile on your tongue. Desperation clawed at you, and you fled, seeking refuge in the only place that could never offer you peace.

The room reeked of stale alcohol and sweat; a reminder of the first and last time you visited an inn. The once repugnant scent was now a grim familiarity. Each morning you arrived early, loyal as a hound and pristine as a dove. But not this morning; delicate petals from the garden were still tangled in your hair. You smell like fresh cut grass. And you’re late.

Aegon lay sprawled on his bed, utterly naked and feigning sleep. He was waiting, because even if he played the role of an idiot, a part of him still cared.

You swallowed hard, “Aegon?” Your voice trembled, a fragile thread of hesitation woven through it. Fear of him was not the issue; it was the looming dread, the haunting sense of something profoundly wrong, lurking just beyond the edges of your understanding.

The mere sight of him being humiliated by any member of his family or by himself was something you’ve become to accept, to make peace with. Aegon hasn’t been on a leash since he was a kid; since his father proclaimed Rhaenyra as his legitimate heir. And so he decided to indulge in the pleasure of the flesh… and alcohol — a sweet but ultimately lethal form of enjoyment. And the fact that he has harbored feelings for you doesn’t even move him into change. Not because of you, but for him. He deserves to be respected and the honor of a house such as the Targaryen. Though, he’s not even respected by his own kin. By his own parents. Viserys was old, probably had an ounce of love for him which burned when he had realized he didn’t need more children to secure the bloodline. His firstborn was still very much alive; even if he was a woman. And Alicent only cherished his twin brother.

Aegon often wondered what it would be like to be the one born looking like a Hightower—instead of being a living reminder to his mother of the sacrifices she had to make, of her stolen childhood, and of every unavenged wound. Would he then be wanted as much as Maelor is? Deep down, he knew it was a futile dream. He tried not to care, but the fear of being crushed under the weight of everyone’s expectations gnawed at him incessantly.

After all, Maelor, has much more of a tender temperament and Aemond’s intellect and wit, which seemed to embody everything Aegon was not. His eyes were a warm, inviting brown, complementing his auburn hair—a perfect reflection of Alicent. He looked human, soft, approachable, and kind. In Aegon’s eyes, Maelor was the epitome of what Alicent desired, a role Aegon could never fulfill.

You dusted off your pale dress, swallowing down your rising frustration and anger. It wasn’t in your nature to be quick to anger, to point the finger, to blame others for their mistakes. But today, his actions felt unbearable. “Do—Do you even care?” Your voice sounded pathetic, a desperate plea for recognition, affection — just to be seen by yout lover.

He didn’t bother opening his eyes. Everything was too bright, too loud for his liking, especially after Otto Hightower’s sermonizing. “Uhm—? Ah, oh,” He yawned, shifting to make himself more comfortable in bed. “Yes, sure.”

His indifference sparked a surge of anger within you, the bile rising to tinge your throat with its bitter taste. “I’m being serious.”

“Don’t speak so loud…” He groaned, dismissive. But he was the one who sought comfort in your arms the last time you saw each other. “You should go, I don’t want any of your services”

It makes your blood seethe, each word from him striking like arrows piercing through your heart. The indignity of being called a whore stings with a venomous edge.

It was always a struggle to engage in conversation with him when he was saturated with the remnants of last night’s excesses. But today felt especially grueling; your patience is unraveling, eroded by the relentless tide of his cruelty.

You approached his bed, standing close enough to block the sunlight that accentuated his handsome features. You wanted to scream, to hit him, hoping that maybe then he would love you, maybe then he would strive to be better and meet your expectations. But Aegon wasn’t a fool; he knew you were the only one who forgave him every single time, without him even trying. Gathering all your courage, you spoke the words that had been festering within you: “You’re pathetic.”

So you think that too? He knew everything couldn’t be perfect. Aegon understood he was doomed, marked by fate’s cruel design. He knows this truth intimately… yet, despite everything, he clings to hope with a desperation that borders on madness. Because you’re the only one seeing him with different and softer eyes.

He can’t think because his mind is flooded with guilt, of everything that happened last night… Of everything he’s ever done to you, whether good or bad. “Go pester Maelor, he looks just like me. I’m sure he can entertain you… Maybe he won’t pleasure you as well as I do. But after all, all whores are the same, I’m sure he won’t mind”

Tears gathered at the corner of your eyes. His cruelty cuts deep, making you question if any of it is worth it—the sacrifices, the hurt, the strange looks, and your bleeding heart. Are they worth the fleeting moments of bliss? He’s capable of loving, and being kind — he has shown you that. Sometimes you like to fool yourself thinking that he actually cares about you, that maybe he thinks you’re more than just a pawn following everything he says… More than just a girl staring at him with wide, hopeful eyes. Thinking maybe, just maybe… he actually sees you.

But it’s the indifference, and his insolent words that creates a wall. One you’re too tired to try and bring it down.

You snort, deciding to play his game, ethough you know it will keep destroying everything. “Maybe I will, Aegon. Maelor has more honor in his little finger than you’ll ever have. You just wallow in your own filth.”

You speak with distaste, the words hurting you as much as they hurt him, because they come from a place of anger, a vengeful side you despise. It makes you want to throw up; the mere idea to succumb into your rage.

You turned around, unable to bear looking at him. If you meet his eyes, you’ll collapse under the weight of your own emotions and beg for forgiveness, even though it’s not your fault. You just wanted to make amends. “Do you know you’re throwing everything away, Aegon?” you ask, your voice trembling with the weight of despair. You don’t expect an answer. He already knows.

“I’ve been on my knees, begging for some kind of forgiveness from the Gods, for even the slightest hint of their consideration,” you whispered, your voice trembling under the weight of raw, unrestrained anguish. “Yet you persist in pushing me away. I’m on the brink, exhausted, uncertain if I have anything left to offer. I’ve sacrificed so much, endured countless trials for you, and now you cast me aside as if I were nothing.”

Each word was a dagger, cutting through the fragile silence with a bitter clarity. The raw pain in your voice seemed to resonate through the cold stone walls, echoing the deep fissures in your heart.

Unable to sustain the crushing burden of your sorrow, you turned abruptly and fled the room, covering your face and red rimmed eyes with your hands. The guards who opened the gates offered no solace, their stony expressions betraying no empathy. The heavy silence of the Red Keep was a stark contrast to the turmoil within you. You knew Aegon’s chambers were a sanctuary at this hour, shielded from the prying eyes of the court, save for the ever-watchful presence of Alicent.

“Princess,” a voice cut through your despair. You halted abruptly, your heart sinking as you recognized the only Hightower-looking son of Alicent. His eyes were filled with a mixture of curiosity and pity — not like he cared about you.

“Alicent is looking for you,” he said, his tone imbued with a sense of quiet urgency.

You lowered your hands, exposing your tear-stained face. The pain was a palpable force, constricting your throat and making it difficult to speak.

“Did Aegon do something to you?” he asked, his concern etched into every word, but the shy smirk betrayed him — not that you would catch it.

“No—no,” you choked out, shaking your head as if to dispel the crushing weight of your emotions. “I’m just—” The words faltered, it was not only pointless but dangerous to explain. “Where’s Alicent?”

— next chapter

[krysalla]

rack of his / pound of flesh

thomas hewitt x f!reader

word count: 5.1k

read on ao3

warnings: 18+ MDNI, cannibalism mention, blood, pregnancy mention, baby trapping (?), bad sex :(

It’s one of those insufferable days. The clouds are brewing in the sky with the sun still blazing behind them, creeping its heat into the moisture in the air. Even with the clouds, nothing stops the temperature from rising. What is it that they say about the frog in the pot? If you slowly turn the heat up, the frog won’t notice that it’s being boiled to death until it’s too late and its muscles are cooked away until they are of no use to him anymore. You wouldn’t be surprised if one day, you would share that same fate thanks to the Texas summers. Though, maybe it would be your own fault, you choose to be outside, rain or shine, to work the laundry. It’s easier for you, even if your hair and clothing are soaked in sweat and your whole body burns from exhaustion. You get to be on your own with only Luda Mae’s eyes glaring out the kitchen window, trying to drill a hole in the back of your head. 

Out here on the back porch, there is no bickering, no staticky TV to set your head ablaze, no one to answer to and no one to make cruel, lecherous comments about you. Sitting on the porch swing, a bucket of water between your feet, the chirping of the birds and your own singing is as close to paradise as you can get in the Hewitt farm. They all sequester themselves inside, hiding themselves away from the rest of the world in this decaying house. Out here, you think of your life before. You wonder how long it took for your mother to report you missing when you didn’t show up on her doorstep like you had planned with her. Has your sister noticed a gap in between her ribs, like you do, where you always kept a piece of her? You can’t remember what color your kitchen cabinets were or if your bedroom window faced east or west. You can’t remember the title of your thesis paper. Maybe you didn’t decide on one before you took off for the holidays. Did your advisor like your last submission?

It’s easier not to think of before and focus on the now.

You have a garden that you keep and a perpetual workload of laundry to do.

You’ve been working on one of Tommy’s shirts for the last five minutes, trying to rub the blood out of the cream fabric, but no matter how much you scrub or how much soap you use, the stain just won’t come out. You’d been hoping to save this one, it’s his best shirt. You sigh and drop it into the tub with clean water. It’s hopeless to even try and make anyone in this family look presentable. A sheepskin does little to make a wolf look friendly.

“Baby, come ‘ere!” Luda Mae shouts from the kitchen.

“Coming, mama.” You wring out the water in Tommy’s shirt and lay it flat on the seat next to you. 

You heft yourself off the swing and make your way inside. 

The air is just as thick, heavy and miserable and dank as it is outside. At least outside, there was a breeze. The air in the house is stagnant and reeks of sweat and blood and the scum of years worth of build up when Luda Mae had felt too hopeless to clean, before the Hewitt’s had come into their own. Now, it seems as though there is no way to get rid of the filth. No matter how hard you scrub the walls or how much bleach you use, the yellow tint won’t wipe away.

Luda Mae stands with her back to the counter, a large knife in hand. Behind her, you can just make out a cutting board and vegetables pillaged from your small garden. So much for a bountiful harvest. She pulled the potatoes and carrots from the ground too soon.

“Almost done with the laundry?”

You wipe your hands down the apron wrapped around your waist. A nail snags on a loose thread. Your hands are all dried and eaten up from the detergent. “Yes, mama. Just gotta finish wringing out the water and put ‘em out to dry.”

“Don’t bother putting them out on the line. A storm’s coming in. You’ll have to string them up in the family room.”

You tighten your jaw and quickly glance out the doorway leading to the room. Monty and Hoyt are out there watching TV. They make it so much harder to get anything done, especially Hoyt. Monty for the most part leaves you alone unless you block his view of the television or upset that pitiful dog that he keeps on his lap, but you can feel his eyes on you nonetheless. Hoyt will get in your face for no reason at all, just to scare you for his own kicks. 

You don’t school your twisted expression fast enough. She catches the contempt curling on your lip.

“What’s the matter, baby?” Luda Mae smiles with that wolf grin, laying out her trap for you.

“Nothing, mama.”

She comes close to you, knife still in hand, and even though you’re taller than her, she still has the presence to have you shrinking in on yourself. This little, old lady has just as much of a proclivity to violence as the men. She’s mean and cruel and you can’t help but wonder if she’s always been this way.

“You think you too good for this family, girl? Don’t insult me with ‘em lies of yours. All I gotta do is snap my fingers and my boys will fall right in line. You think you’re here because of my boy? I am the be all and end all of this house. Just one word and you’ll be next on the serving platter. No matter how much my boy thinks he loves you, you ain’t family.”

You hang your head like a scolded child, “‘M sorry, mama.” 

She coos and sets down her carving knife on the counter. It’s a complete one-eighty that leaves your head spinning and stomach knotting. Luda Mae holds your face in her hands and tilts your head back to face her. Gone is that terrifying look in her eyes. Now, she treats you with the tenderness of a mother with her child.

“I know you’re sorry, baby, but you gotta know the way it works. Don’t want to lose the only daughter I ever had.” Luda Mae runs her hands down your shoulders, over your arms, squeezes your hands. She can be very affectionate with you when the mood strikes her. Your skin crawls as she clicks her tongue. She chucks you chin. “Now, give mama a hug.”

You wrap your arms around her back and push your face into her shoulder. You can feel the sting of tears, hot and angry, in your eyes and you will them to go away. You hold onto her tighter and she rocks you from side to side on your feet, cooing and shushing you with a spindly hand stroking over your hair.

“I love you, baby,” she says when she breaks the hug.  

“I love you too, mama.”

She kisses your cheek. “Now, go bring Tommy in from the barn. I’ll have dinner done soon.”

“Yes, mama.”

---

Anxiety is coiling deep in your stomach and you’ve only got until you reach the barn to shake it off. No matter how much he might worry and fuss over you, you know Luda Mae is right, at the end of the day if she wanted you dead, Tommy would follow her orders. He is a dutiful son after all and family–blood– comes first. Tommy is dangerous, but not to you, not without Luda Mae pulling his strings. There’s no way you make it out of this alive without her complete and total confidence or until she is rotting six feet deep.

What bond can compare with a parent and their child?

You look up at the sky. Luda Mae is right, there is a storm coming. The clouds are darker now and the breeze has started to pick up. 

The barn doors are wide open. It’s dark in the barn, cluttered with rusted over farm tools intermingled with suitcases and mountains of car parts and an engine that someone in the family had the intention to put back together again. It looks better than the last time you were in here– though it was much darker then. There aren’t so many hiding places. You wonder if Tommy has found your suitcase yet.

“Tommy?” you call out. 

You hear a rustling from the back of the barn followed only after a few short moments by Tommy and his heavy footfalls. He looks subdued, as close to looking happy as he gets, his shoulders are relaxed and his pace lazy as he makes his way to you. You watch him carefully. As much as you might hate it, you care about the man that has taken you captive. It’s wrong and you know that deep down, once you break free from this family, you will no longer have any tenderness for him. He’s treated you well enough since you stopped fighting every second you could. He keeps an eye out for you, always keeping you out of trouble, and when he has no work to do, trails after you like a lost puppy imprinting on the first kind soul to reach out to him.

There’s one other way to make it out alive.

You know what your saving grace will be, what will solidify you as a Hewitt and give you the reins to control Tommy, to end the ever present danger he presents to you. A child. You will give him a family of his own, one of his making and one that will come willingly. You will give him everything he has been denied. You will become mother and wife, madonna and whore, prey and predator. Luda Mae will have her reckoning.

“Hi, sweetheart.” You reach up on your toes to press a kiss to the leather covering his cheek. “Look how much work you got done. Very impressive.”

He huffs, quick and short, and bows his head in an almost bashful manner. You hem and haw and lay it thick with compliments as you walk around the mostly cleared out area. You really play it up for him and maybe just a little bit for yourself just so you can glean a smile out of him, no matter how small, and make blood flow to his cheeks. It will serve as an opening.

There’s a smudge of dirt on his forehead and that just won’t do. You lick your thumb. He gently swats at your hand, grunting low in displeasure, but you pay it no mind— he’s only pretending not to like your gentle fretting. 

“Oh, quit that bellyachin’ of yours. I wanna be able to see that handsome face of yours.” That earns you a small victory. You catch the crinkles at the outer corners of his eyes, right above the cut of his mask. His guard is down.

The wind picks up outside. You can hear the drops of light rainfall. 

“Do you love me, Tommy?” you ask quietly. You brush his hair out of his face, clearing up his eyes so you can see his answer. 

Your question takes him off guard, shoulders stiff and eyes wide. He looks around the barn, looking for something, someone. The Hewitts don’t talk much about before when you’re around, something you will never be privy to, but you can guess why he’s looking around for someone to come out from the thick, wooden beams to laugh and point and mock at him. Big, stupid, ugly animal. He’s not the average man and in a small town, you can only imagine not fitting into the norm can only have meant one thing for him: cruelty.

“It’s just you and me, Tommy.” You look conspiratorially around the barn with a sly smile. “I love you. Don’t you love me too?”

His eyes go wide, and you’re sure he believes you when he nuzzles his cheek into the palm of your hand. Maybe one day it will be true. For now you’re playing a game of survival. He pushes your hands away from his face and pulls you by your wrists until your chest touches his. Large hands pet over your back, your shoulders, down to the wide breadth of your hips and back up over your face. He creeps over you like a spider. He must be craving this, he’s never been particularly touchy with you, no thanks to Luda Mae who watches you like a hawk when the two of you are together. I won’t have any hussies in my home, she said to you when she stripped you bare of the clothing you arrived in. She threw your denim shorts and tank top and anything else in your suitcase she deemed inappropriate into the fire. 

You take a deep breath and slide your hands down to his chest and push him away from you. There is no force on earth that could get Thomas to move unless he allows it. He takes a small step back and whines, brow drawing down in hurt betrayal. You ignore his whining and make your way over to the cluttered workbench. The table top surface is a little too high for you to be able to push yourself up on, but you’re sure Tommy will be able to help you out here. 

You pick up the edge of your dress and pull it up, giving him a view of your leg, and crook the index finger of your free hand to him. “Why don’t you show me how much?”

His nostrils flare and his eyes widen as he follows the curve of your calf. The display you make of yourself makes him look hungry. You catch his tongue peek out from his lips and lick over them, there’s a sharp glint of teeth in there too. His steps are heavy as he approaches you and your stomach turns over. There’s no going back after this. You are making a permanent home in the belly of the beast. He won’t let you go after this, not when he will have everything he has been denied– love, affection, a warm, wet cunt to stick his cock in. You may not escape, but it will guarantee survival, especially if the fruits of your labor begin to show.

His hands fall on your hips and he lifts you clear off the ground. You shriek, holding tight to his shoulders. You’d been expecting it and yet it still surprised you. The strength of his arms give you something no man has been able to do for you. Even after he sets you on the table, you still cling to him, heart pattering in your chest from the anxiety of being dropped. He heaves you up as if you weigh nothing to him. 

He seems pleased with himself. 

It’s gotten so warm, it’s crept under your skin, crawling throughout your body.

You grab the wrist of his left hand and bring his fingers to your mouth. He tastes like sweat and grime. You lap your tongue around his index and middle finger, gazing up at him through your eyelashes. You suck and and suck, and you can feel saliva falling from the corner of your mouth as you work his fingers. It slides down his fingers, into the creases of his palm and to his wrist where your hand wraps around him.

“C’mon, big boy.” You suck in a breath and wipe your mouth with the back of your hand. “Show me how bad you need it.”

He grabs your thighs, his short nails bite into the fat of your thighs and he pries them apart, pushes himself further into your space, crowding you until you’re overwhelmed with him, hips aching as you accommodate his sheer size. Anything you were going to say, even if you could work out a word, is snatched from you when you catch his heady gaze, eyes dark and unwavering, waiting for any slight movement or any tell of yours.

You force his hand between your legs, fixing his fingers beneath your panties and rock against him. You moan loud and exaggerated, just to break him out of whatever spell you’ve got him under and get him to make a move.

He curls his fingers into the crotch of your panties and yanks at them. He tugs your underwear off, the cotton stretched out and the elastic useless. It gets caught around the tops of your thighs and Tommy manhandles you, moving your body like a doll to pull the offending garment down your legs and flip your skirt up for his own viewing pleasure.

You don’t have time to scold him. Underwear is invaluable around here, especially pairs that fit. Tommy drops down onto his knees and lands with a loud thud. It’s the last thing you expected of Tommy– you had a suspicion he really wouldn’t know what to do except to ram himself into you from behind like animals do. He must have seen this on one of the many gutter trash pornos Hoyt has on video, the fucking pervert.

There is no technique or finesse to what he’s doing. He just tears into you with teeth and tongue. He’s making a sloppy mess of you. 

You take the reins, knotting your hand in his hair and pulling him back from your cunt. “Fuck, just a little less teeth, Tommy.”

You push his head back into you. He listens. He drools against you, the only source of wetness that you’re sure you will need in time. You’re too stiff, too on edge to feel anything. There’s no grace in his movements, his tongue completely misses your clit and his lips are too rough against you. 

You grip his hair as hard as possible and yank him away. “That’s enough. I need you.”

With one hand, he does his belt and tugs his pants down enough to free his cock, and the other to pull your neckline down to expose your breasts. You look down at him. Your heart skips a beat and your lungs struggle for air. It’s a fucking beast, a lead pipe that will split you in two. You’ll die before you even get a chance to see your plan through. 

There’s no consideration on his end or he simply doesn’t know. He pushes into you with no warning and you cry out. The wind washes out the sound. 

You feel like you’re on fire, burning from the inside out with how he stretches you open. The pace he sets is brutal beyond belief. You lean forward, one arm draped loosely around his shoulder and push your face into his neck. It hurts with the minimal lubrication you’ve got, just his messy display of eating you out. You try to smother your grunts of pain against the thick column of his neck, you close your eyes and clench your jaw, trying to find anything pleasurable in this act. There’s nothing you can do now.

He doesn’t sense your discomfort, just continues pushing through it. He pulls you closer, big hands pawing at your back, fingers catching in the fabric of your dress, before he remembers your chest is exposed. His hands come circling around and even his hands are not big enough to hold your breasts in full. You look down at the flesh spilling out between his fingers and you moan. The sight turns you on more than it should.

The way he looks, hungry and wanting more, makes you act. You tear the leather mask from his face, your nails scratch his cheeks from the force of you fitting your fingers under the mask. He grunts. His face is ruddy and pockmarked from both his skin condition and his own self mutilation, his nose rotting away. His brow is heavy and thick and his eyes the darkest shade of brown you’ve ever seen. He’s beautiful and your heart lurches in your chest when the thought comes tumbling through you. It’s sick and you lash out against him, this is all his fault and you will make him pay.

You lay into him and bite down on his shoulder. Hard. Warmth overflows in your mouth, the tang of iron on your tongue and a bit of flesh stuck between your teeth. You smile into the wound you inflicted on him and lap at the blood pouring out of him. You’ve gotten your pound of flesh from him. 

He fumes, glaring down at you with a deep frown set into what is left of his lips and snarls, showing off the glint of yellowed, sharp teeth. You push your fingers into the bite you gifted him with, collecting the blood and smear his over his mouth, fearing no repercussions as he nibbles on the finger that breeches his mouth. He could very well bite it off, but he won’t. He won’t bite because to Tommy you’re family now and family ain’t meat. Meat is mean and angry. Meat is filth and stink and lesser than. Meat is a corpse wasted on a walking, talking sack of shit. He loves you and being loved makes you family. You are family, so you are better than meat.

He picks up his pace. The sound of flesh smacking is almost too much. You can feel yourself grow wetter and feel the ease he thrusts with. You choke out a moan. He pushes you down by your shoulder onto the messy workbench. Something digs into the middle of your back. You squirm against it, but he pays you no mind. He is busy positioning you exactly how he wants— your ass close to the edge of the bench, your legs wrapped around his waist, his weight resting on his forearms, leaving no room for you to escape. As if you could. 

Outside, the rain begins to pour with fervor. 

It’s all starting to become too much. His weight, the heat, the thick of him splitting you open. You clench down, hoping to encourage him to finish. You can’t take it any longer. There’s no room to breathe beneath him, what little air you can manage is punched back out of you with each thrust of his cock. The guilt and fear rearing its ugly head again. It’s been too long, you need him out of you, off of you. You dig your nails into the flesh of his back, scratching as hard as you can, leaving red welting lines down the planes of his shoulders. He grunts louder. He likes it, you think. 

This is sick, this shouldn’t be happening. You should be at home bickering with your roommates about who’s turn it is to do the dishes or tucked away in the library, scouring through the library catalog to find just the right book for your thesis. You would have already graduated if Tommy hadn’t yanked you by the back of your shirt out of your car. Your future was bright and full of potential and now you’re here, crushed under the weight of a man who kills without remorse, trapped by a woman who wants a daughter but will not value you the same as a son, and planning a pregnancy that will inexplicable tie you to this family, to this chapter in your life until death. You cry out.

He comes soon after and you feel disgusting.

He pulls out and his spend leaks out of you onto the dirt. You wipe your tears away and piece yourself back together into the character of hopelessly in love with the man who has taken your life from you. There’s no time to feel sorry for yourself. 

You grab your ruined panties from beside you and clean yourself up as well as you can. 

His blood has started to coagulate around your bite. He gingerly puts his button up over it, careful not to disturb the bite mark and start the bleeding over again. The last thing you need is Luda Mae questioning why he’s bleeding and what exactly you two got up to in this rundown barn.

Thomas offers you his hand, ready to help you down off the workbench, but you press your dirty underwear into his palm instead. He takes them eagerly, stuffing them into his back pocket. He’ll sniff at them later, keep them under his pillow and when he finally can’t smell you on the fabric, he’ll finally give it back to you for washing. It’s not the first time he’s hidden a pair of your used panties around for his own private pleasure. You’d found your blue panties mixed in with his clothing. The fabric was stiff and coated in white.

You brace your hands against the edge of the bench but before you can push off, his hands encircle your hips, gently lifting you up from the bench to avoid scraping the back of your thighs or your ass along the wood, and sets you down on the ground. His hands pet over you again, mussing up your hair in an attempt to smooth it, his fingers too big and gentle touch unpracticed. His fingers get caught in your hair and he frowns. You pull him apart from the nest he’s made in your hair with delicacy.

Are you supposed to hate him or love him? He’s the reason you’re here, why you are under the constant threat of butchery, but he treats you with such care even after he destroys you.

“C’mon, your mama will be wondering where we went off to,” you murmur.

The sky has turned dark blue, almost black, with heavy storm clouds. Hail the size of nickels and rain pelts down from above you—it takes only a moment before your dress is completely soaked. Lightning splits open the sky. The storm rages, wind blowing so hard it sends the rain horizontally. 

Tommy looks down at you, the skin around his eyes crinkling, and he presses his forehead against yours. You close your eyes. It’s so nice to be treated like glass after such rough handling. He takes your hand in his and your heart shatters. Why are you letting a few gentle touches turn you upside down? 

You are guided back to the Hewitt residence but the light flooding out of the kitchen window.

Luda Mae is full of accusations when you come back through the door, her eyes narrowed at you–always the first to be blamed. “What took you so long?” 

Under the weight of her stare, you feel like she knows exactly what happened, like she can see it on your face. You feel something trickle down your legs. You’re not sure if it’s rain water or cum. You hope the rain has washed away the scent of sex and sweat on your skin. 

You let go of Tommy’s hand and duck your head in supplication to Luda Mae. “Sorry, mama. Tommy was showing me all the hard work he did today.” 

“That so?” Luda Mae turns to Tommy and her whole demeanor changes. She smiles so wide and reaches up to cup his face. “You’re such a good boy, Tommy.”

“Go on and set the table, baby,” she directs you. “Let Monty and Hoyt know it’s time to eat. After that you can finish hanging the laundry. You gotta finish your chores if you wanna eat.”

You breathe deeply before giving her your best smile, “Yes, mama.”

“Now you go and sit down, Tommy. It’ll only be a minute.”

---

You’ve long stopped thinking about the implications of this child’s conception, it’s less than moral reasoning. They will not be born out of want, but of need for your own survival and assurance of your status as a Hewitt. You will have a leg up for giving Thomas a child and Luda Mae a grandchild. While it might not provide you with the status of matriarch, you will hold more sway over Thomas. Besides, Luda Mae can’t live forever. Once they are all gone, it will be easier. You will take the child with you and hope that they are young enough to forget about the Texas heat and the stench of blood.

Tommy presented you with a ring not long after that day in the barn. It didn’t fit right, nothing here does. It hangs around your neck on a delicate gold chain. Hoyt had hooted and hollered and went out, drunk as a skunk, with his shotgun and shot off two rounds. Luda Mae had been as happy as a clam–her boy was finally getting everything he deserved.

You wear the ring, biding your time. 

Luda Mae has let you move into the same room together. Privacy has given you more chances to try for this hypothetical child.

You wash out the blood in your underwear in the sink. It will catch one day and when that day comes, you will no longer be at the bottom of the food chain. You will be a prized bitch for breeding. What an honor to carry on the Hewitt name! 

You will suffer the sickness, the distortion of your body both temporary and permanent. You will endure hours of labor, blood and mucus membranes spilling out from you by the buckets, the shifting of bones and tearing of skin for a child that will come out too big for your body. You will put yourself through the wringer for just a taste of the power that will come from it.

Tommy has no idea about your intentions. It’s sweet almost how he doesn’t sense what you're doing and you almost feel guilty for using him this way, letting him soak up all the physical attention he’d been denied by other women, but he will be overjoyed at the results. Tommy will be a good father. He will teach them how to pluck a chicken clean, how to suck the marrow out of a bone, the proper way to cut an artery to drain an animal of blood, how to use every piece of livestock so nothing goes to waste–all the same things he taught you. He will love them fiercely as he loves his mother. He will be a protector. You’d never planned for children yourself and you have no warm or soft feelings at the prospect of your future child. This child is just a means to an end. Maybe one day you will grow to love it. Until then, you have other things to worry about. 

There is food to grow and laundry to do.

[bzurk]

DARK-FIC, MDNI:

Graves puts on a show for the 141, with your begrudging help.

CW: non-con, abduction, gags, restraints, threats, noncon filming, choking, asphyxiation, spanking, non-con oral, non-con PIV

buckle up shit gets rough 💅

Your consciousness flickers back to life like a candle flame in the dark, fragile and tenuous. The first sensation that creeps into your awareness is the cold—an unforgiving, biting chill that seeps into your bones, rendering your flesh numb and unyielding. It feels as though you have been submerged in a frozen lake, the icy tendrils of the water wrapping around your limbs and squeezing out every last drop of warmth.

As your senses slowly begin to sharpen, you realise that you are seated, your back against the unyielding hardness of a metal chair. The bindings around your wrists and ankles are rough and unyielding, cutting into your skin with every slight movement. They hold you in place with ruthless efficiency, like iron serpents coiled around your limbs, their grip inescapable. Your head throbs with a dull, insistent pain, a reminder of the brutal blow that brought you to this desolate place. It is as if a cruel giant has hammered a stake into your skull, each heartbeat echoing with agony.

The gag in your mouth is a vile intrusion, forcing your jaws apart and filling your mouth with the taste of sweat-soaked cloth. Your tongue presses against it reflexively, but there is no relief to be found. The fabric is soaked with your own sweat and saliva, a bitter reminder of your helplessness. It stifles your breath, making each inhale a laborious task, and you can feel the edges of panic nibbling at the corners of your mind, like rats gnawing on the last threads of your resolve.

The cell around you is a study in desolation. The walls are stark and bare, their surfaces pocked and scarred by years of neglect and violence. The dim light that flickers from a lone bulb casts long shadows across the floor, turning the room into a grim tableau of light and darkness. The air is thick with the stench of mildew and decay, mingling with the coppery tang of your blood. It fills your nostrils, making you want to retch, but the gag stifles even that. Your muscles scream in protest as you shift slightly in the chair, trying to alleviate the pressure on your bound limbs. Every movement sends ripples of pain through your body, like shockwaves from a distant explosion.

Your skin feels like a canvas of bruises and abrasions. You try to focus, to gather your scattered thoughts, but it is like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands. The memory of the struggle is a fragmented mosaic in your mind – Graves, Alejandro throwing the first punch, getting slammed against the SUVs, Soap dropped by a bullet, flashes of fists and boots, your neck held in the crook of an elbow, the sensation of being dragged, sinking your teeth into flesh, the world spinning in a nauseating blur after a blow to your head.

In the silence of the cell, you can hear the faintest echoes of distant footsteps, the murmur of voices, the sound of a lock turned and a door opened. The wall to your left creaks.

“See? Yer’ colonel’s fine,” Graves’ southern drawl leaked through the gap below your door.

“¡Te mataré, traidor! No eres más que un patético perro faldero. te mataré-” Alejandro’s voice carried, full of indignation and unadulterated rage, silenced by the slam of a steel door, an echoing boom that rumbled over your skin. You couldn’t help the way that it had you flinching against your restraints.

The sound of heavy boots approaches, each step resonating through the cold concrete like a drumbeat of impending doom. Your heart hammers in your chest, a wild, caged thing desperate for escape. The door creaks open, the rusted hinges protesting as light spills into your cell, harsh and unrelenting.

Graves steps into view, a sinister silhouette framed by the doorway. His icy eyes glitter with malevolent satisfaction as he holds up a phone, the camera lens gleaming like the eye of some predatory beast. He points it at you, capturing your dishevelled, battered state for all to see. The light from the screen casts an eerie glow on his face, accentuating the cruel twist of his lips.

"Can’t say the same for your corporal, though," he drawls, the smirk never leaving his face. He turns the phone so you can hear the voices on the other end of the call, though it's muffled by Graves’ hand over the speakers. “Two hits to the head and she was still kicking. Real fighter, aren’t ya, doll?”

He approaches closer, still recording with his phone. You grind your teeth against the gag in protest as he invades your personal space, your body arching against the chair in a futile attempt to escape. But Graves remains unfazed, reaching out to ruffle your tangled hair with his free hand.

"Stitches! Stitches, can you hear me?" Soap's voice crackles through the speaker, laced with urgency and concern.

The sound of your callsign, spoken with such desperation, cuts through the haze of pain and fear. It’s a lifeline. Your team knows you’re alive.

"Get your hands off of her,” Captain Price's voice follows, steady and resolute, deep and gravelled enough to rumble the strongest of foundations.

Graves laughs, a chilling sound that sends shivers down your spine. "You gonna make me, Captain?" He leans closer, brushing the matted hair from your face as the camera captures every detail of your bruised and broken features. You glare at him fiercely, defiance burning in your eyes despite the gag and restraints.

"Graves, you son of a bitch!" Soap shouts, the fury in his voice palpable even through the phone. "If you hurt her—"

“Hurt her? Why would I do that?” Graves continued stroking down your hair, purposefully antagonizing your captain. “I’ve got her right where I want her. Ain’t she a pretty sight like this?”

His fingers stopped and gripped, twisting the length of your hair around his palm before tugging, forcing a whimper from your throat as your head was wrenched back. The pain shoots through your scalp, sharp and searing, pulling a reluctant tear from your eye. The camera hovers, unblinking, capturing every moment of your torment, every flicker of pain.

“You piece of shit!” Soap’s voice is raw with anger. “You touch one more hair on her head, and I swear—”

Graves’ smile widens, a predator’s grin. “Oh, I’m touching more than just her hair, Sergeant. But don’t worry, I won’t break her. Just bend her a little.”

The pressure on your scalp increases as Graves tugs harder, your neck straining painfully against the force. The room seems to close in around you, the walls pressing in with their cold, unfeeling silence. But through the pain, you latch onto the sound of your team’s voices, their fury and concern a lifeline in the storm.

“Graves, you coward,” Price’s voice is like a growl, low and threatening. “You won’t get away with this. We’re coming for her, and when we find you—”

Graves interrupts with another laugh, releasing your hair and stepping back. “I’m counting on it, Price. But until then, enjoy the show.” He lowers the phone slightly, giving you a moment to see the faces of your team on the screen. Their expressions are a mix of rage and helplessness, a mirror of your own emotions. Price and Gaz stand shoulder to shoulder on one half of the screen, while Ghost stands behind a fuming Johnny on the other half.

You lock eyes with Soap, seeing the anguish and determination there. His jaw is set, his fists clenched, a promise of retribution burning in his gaze. Price’s eyes are cold, calculating, already forming a plan.

Graves puts the phone in a pocket on his vest so that the camera can still see, and he grabs the back of your chair and drags it to a wall, the legs scraping against the floor with a grating screech. The chair rocks back on the two hind legs until you're forced to bend your neck, the chair tilted awkwardly against the wall. Graves steps between your knees, looming over you like a vulture ready to pick at a carcass.

The tilt of the chair strains your neck and shoulders, a burning ache spreading through your muscles. Graves' presence is a looming shadow, his eyes glinting with sadistic pleasure as he looks down at you. The phone camera captures every angle of your discomfort, every twitch of pain and defiance.

He leans in closer, his face inches from yours. The stench of his breath, a mix of stale tobacco and cheap coffee, assaults your senses. "You know, you’ve caused me a lot of trouble," he murmurs, his voice a low, menacing drawl.

The pressure of his presence is suffocating, his body a wall of menace between your knees. You struggle against your bindings, but they hold firm, digging into your flesh. The cold of the wall behind you seeps through the thin fabric of your clothes, adding to the pervasive chill that has settled into your bones.

Graves' hand moves to your chin, tilting your face up to meet his gaze. His grip is firm, fingers digging into your jaw. "Look at you, all tied up and nowhere to go," he sneers, his eyes scanning your face with cruel amusement. "They’re gonna come get you, aren’t they?”

The sound of your team’s muffled voices reaches your ears, a background murmur of anger and frustration. They are watching, helpless and furious.

Graves’ other hand traces a path down your neck, his touch a vile mockery of gentleness. "Pretty as a peach," he says, his voice a twisted parody of admiration, your cheeks squished together under his fingers and digging into your teeth painfully. “Bet you’re as sweet as one, too. You gonna be sweet?”

He patted his hand over the thigh holster on his leg, holding a deadly, mean-looking bowie knife. A clear warning. You nodded so frantically that your head kept smacking against the wall, exacerbating your spinning head.

The sound of metal teeth unzipping fills the room with an eery, cold silence.

“Enjoy the show,” he had said. He wasn’t going to- to do what you thought, right? Surely, he can’t be that cruel.

Your thrashing resumed, now more frantic and feral, your wrists and ankles scraped raw and bloody by the zip-ties holding them in place and your muscles screaming in agony at every move. His hands held your head still.

Behind your closed eyes, you could sense the ominous presence of his shadow expanding, feel the way it engulfed your hunched, curled-up form like an oppressive storm cloud. Your skin, cold and clammy, was peppered with goosebumps and quivering with involuntary shivers. Yet, paradoxically, sweat beaded at your pores, and your breaths came in shallow, ragged gasps. His hands slid from your cheeks, dragging the fabric gag down with them, and you inhaled deeply, desperate for air, urging your eyes to open again. You had to see what was coming, had to remain vigilant.

But your gaze was transfixed on the small, glossy blackhole of the phone camera, no matter how much you willed yourself to look away. It was closer now, nestled in Graves’ vest. He had swung his legs over the sides of the chair, his thighs framing yours, his unzipped fly at eye level. From this vantage point, the commander loomed like a monolith, a dark titan eclipsing the single overhead light. You had never felt so diminutive - a mouse ensnared in the paws of a lion, trapped with no escape, its sharp canines bared in a sinister, malevolent smirk. You were about to be devoured, and he would enjoy every second of your suffering.

In that moment, you felt more like prey than ever before, ensnared in a game where the rules were set by a merciless predator. Your mind raced, searching for any possible escape, but the options were bleak, and the weight of your predicament settled over you like a shroud. The world had narrowed to this claustrophobic bubble of fear and anticipation, where every second stretched into an eternity.

His proximity was suffocating, a tangible force that pressed against your very being. Every inch of your skin crawled with the awareness of his presence, the heat of his body seeping into yours, the faint, almost imperceptible scent of his sweat mingling with the stale air. You were acutely aware of every detail: the coarse texture of his vest, the roughness of his stubble, the faint flicker of amusement in his eyes as he toyed with you.

One of his hands reached over you, stopping so close to your neck that you could feel its warmth radiating. His forearm tensed in your peripheral vision, gripping the back of the chair that was pressed against the wall. His other hand seized the phone, and your heart seemed to freeze.

“Turn it off,” you rasped, your voice barely more than a desperate whisper. His hand inched closer to your throat, the side of his thumb grazing your fragile skin.

“You gonna tell me where they are?” he hummed, his tone casual, almost amused, as he watched you clench your teeth in defiance.

“Never,” you spat, finally tearing your gaze from the camera to the commander, delivering your most scathing glare. Graves merely chuckled, a low, chilling sound, turning the phone around before tucking it back into his vest.

This was infinitely worse than the back camera.

The fabric of his pocket obscured the bottom half of the screen. You wished it covered it all, wished it would disappear into the darkness that surrounded you.

You could just make out the upper portion of Johnny and Ghost’s feed, the gloom of the unknown house they had bunkered down in shrouding their surroundings. The recordings were severed horizontally, the top half belonging to your captain’s feed. Every pixel of his and Kyle’s figures was sharp and distinct, bathed in the cold glow of the screen. They were situated in what appeared to be an office, standing rigidly behind a wooden desk stripped of any belongings. The room was plunged in darkness, the only illumination emanating from the screen’s spectral light.

Kyle was teetering on the edge of panic; his brows were knit together in a tight, anxious furrow, and his eyes darted back and forth between Price and the screen, unable to settle. His body language betrayed a barely contained fear, a coiled spring ready to snap.

In stark contrast, the captain was a statue, eerily still, his face a mask of unyielding stoicism. If not for Kyle's visible distress, you might have thought their feed had frozen. The captain’s eyes were locked onto the screen with an intensity that seemed to cut through the darkness, a sentinel unwavering in the face of an impending storm. The silence was heavy, oppressive, as if the very air in the room had thickened, pressing down on them with the weight of the unknown.

Graves’ hand tensed around your throat, his thumb digging into the hollow of your windpipe, “Last chance to speak, peach.” He palmed himself through his pants with his other hand, the movement visible in your peripherals but you refused to look, refused to acknowledge it. This wasn’t happening.

“I don’t know anything,” you wheezed out, the awkward angle of your neck impeding coherent speech. It wasn’t a lie. You really didn’t know anything.

“I know you don’t. But your captain sure does.” The commander pressed against your neck again before rubbing his thumb in short strokes up and down the thin skin.

“You’re fuckin’ sick-” You heard Soap growl, the speakers muffled by the commander’s vest.

Your eyes scrunched shut impossibly tight when you saw the first glimpse of flesh, pressing your lips tightly together and trying to angle your head away. You focused on the sound of blood rushing through your ears, the throbbing of your heart too fast, thudding loudly in your skull.

“Open up, corporal,” Graves commanded, prodding at your cheek with something hot, smudging your skin with a bead of liquid.

Your stomach roiled, threatening to expel whatever it held. He dragged the smooth heat over your lips, and you held your breath to avoid breathing him in. You’d surely be sick if you did.

Your team would have a front-row seat to you throwing up. They’d think you weak. They’d worry, do something hasty. Like giving up the bombs’ positions.

You swallowed it back down. Graves could feel your throat bob beneath his hand and laughed.

His fingers clamped down over your nose, cutting off your airflow with an iron grip. You thrashed in a panic, eyes snapping open to stare into the cold, unfeeling lens of the phone camera. Each second without breath built a relentless pressure inside your skull, an unbearable vice squeezing your temples and pressing against the backs of your eyes. Refusing to surrender, you clamped your lips shut, a silent vow to suffocate yourself rather than give in to his sadistic whims.

But defiance has its limits. Your lungs quickly ignited with searing pain, a primal agony that clawed at your chest and sent your nerves ablaze. Tears welled up, blurring your vision, and your eyes throbbed with each pulse of your racing heart. The world around you faded, your senses dulled to nothing but the thunderous drumbeat of your life force hammering against your eardrums. Every cell in your body screamed for air, a desperate chorus of survival that you could no longer ignore.

Involuntary spasms wracked your frame as your body's betrayal became inevitable. Despite your ironclad resolve, your lips parted in a frantic, gasping surrender, drawing in the sweet, cursed oxygen with a ragged, shuddering breath.

You hardly got more than a couple of lungfuls of air before his heat landed on your tongue, prising your jaw open.

You gagged, fighting the intrusion, but it was no use. The commander was impossible to budge. The salty tang of the man on your tongue made bile rise up your throat again, burning the back of your nose with its pungent foulness. Swallowing it back down took all your willpower, and you felt tainted, soiled in a way that not even a thousand showers could wash away.

“That’s a good girl,” Graves crooned, his voice disgustingly condescending. His grip on your jaw and throat loosened, content to just rest it against your windpipe. A warning.

Your breaths came in short huffs through your nose as you tried to regain control over your raging emotions, desperate to not give him the satisfaction of seeing you break. Tears left shining trails down your cheeks as you glared at him defiantly. The smell of his aftershave lingered, coating your senses with a sickening film that made your throat spasm more.

He was unforgiving as he shoved himself further into your mouth, making your gums flood with saliva. Graves starts pumping in and out, his cock embroidering a burn in the hinges of your jaw.

His wiry hair meets your nose, and you realize - an idea buzzing in the very back of your brain, a stupid, stupid idea - there’s one thing you can do. He takes up your whole throat, and it threatens to suffocate you once more, to deprive you of oxygen for his own selfish gain. Between the throbbing in your skull, the burning in your lungs and the ringing in your ears, you managed to sink your teeth down, just fast enough to dent flesh before Graves squeezed at your throat with both hands and pulled himself out.

You could hardly make out his yelling and swearing over the pounding in your head. A dark vignette was creeping into your vision, blocking out the corners of the room. There was so much pain and pressure in your head you swore both your eardrums had ruptured - why else couldn’t you hear anything but static? His fingers press and press and press, but you can���t feel it, just the phantom pressure your brain thinks it should be feeling.

Suddenly, the world flashed back to life like an explosion of confetti, a burst of lights and colours shimmering around you. The room snapped into sharp focus, every detail hyper-real and jarring. The harsh overhead light cast long, stark shadows that danced erratically with every movement. Graves’ face, twisted in anger, loomed over you, his mouth moving furiously, though the sound still reached you as a muffled, distant echo.

The pain in your head ebbed slightly, enough for you to register the rough texture of the floor beneath you, the cold, unyielding surface grounding you in this nightmare. The oppressive heat of Graves’ presence was a tangible force, his fury radiating off him in waves. You could feel his breath, hot and heavy against your skin, mingling with the metallic tang of blood and sweat in the air.

The room seemed to pulsate with a sickening rhythm, each heartbeat pounding in your ears, syncing with the residual throbbing in your head. Your vision wavered, the edges blurring as you struggled to maintain focus. Every nerve in your body was alight with a dull, throbbing pain, an all-consuming ache that left you breathless and disoriented. You fought to hold onto consciousness, to keep the encroaching darkness at bay. The world around you was a chaotic symphony of sensations, each one more overwhelming than the last. The cold bite of the floor, the harsh glare of the light, the oppressive weight of Graves' anger - it all crashed over you like a relentless tide, threatening to pull you under.

When the world finally stopped spinning, you took stock of your body. The cold, unyielding floor pressed against your chest, your tied hands resting in the dip of your spine, the uneven surface underneath your stomach and hips. The chill of the air gnawed at the bare skin of your ass, an added cruelty to your already tortured state.

You turned your head, wincing against the sharp protests of your muscles, the cold floor a shock against your damp cheek. Every movement felt laborious, each breath a reminder of your vulnerability and the agony coursing through your body.

Then came the crack of skin on skin, a sharp clap that sliced clean through the air and echoed off the four walls. The sound reverberated, stark and unforgiving. You couldn't hold back the sob it wrenched from your chest, the sting against your rear smarting and burning with a fierce, unrelenting intensity. Your body tensed, muscles tightening involuntarily as pain surged through you. A forearm weighed down your back, forcing you to remain in place.

With a whistle and a clap, his hand came down again. The second blow was even more brutal, the impact radiating through your body, leaving a fiery trail in its wake. The sting deepened into a throbbing burn, and your cries filled the room, a testament to your suffering. Each strike, each sound, each breath became a stark reminder of your powerlessness, the brutal domination exerted over you. The room seemed to close in, the walls pressing tighter as if to contain your torment.

“M’ sorry!” You blubbered, your cheek smushed against the floor, your body jolting forward with each slap. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

“That’s what we like to hear, doll.” Graves drawled from your side, smoothing his warm hand over the burning skin.

“Stop,” you hissed out between clenched teeth, resting your forehead against the cold concrete. Your chest was resting against the floor, but your hips were resting over his thighs, his stomach pressing into your arm.

“I didn’t mean to get so angry with you,” he cooed, placating, demeaning. His hands slid from your bottom down to your knees, running up and down the sweaty skin of your thighs. “Let me make it up to you.”

You gasped and struggled anew when his fingers grazed the apex of your thighs. You clenched your lips, trying to hold back a whimper that threatened to spill past. He chuckled, low and menacing, purposefully pressing his erection into your arm.

“No,” you spat between clenched teeth, but there was no venom in your voice. His touch sent a shiver down your spine that you couldn’t control. You clenched your fists at the twinge of arousal and humiliation surging through you. Graves chuckled darkly, his fingers continuing to tease lightly, sliding between your slit, touching your entrance with the tip of his middle finger. Without warning, he sinks a finger into you, easily following your hips when you try to squirm away.

The noise you make sounds wounded, and you only become more distressed when you see the way Graves’ eyes are trained are yours, his desire palpable.

It’s harder than you’d admit to keep from moaning. He’s skilled with his fingers, the three of them - because he’s shoved another, then another inside of you, ignoring your squirming. His wrist is bent at an awkward angle but it doesn’t seem to bother him as you squeeze your thighs around his hand.

“Feel good, hmm?”

“No,” you say on a moan, your hips working against your will as your peak rises in you, your heart stuttering in your chest.

“Pretty girl,” you hear him coo, a big and warm hand smoothing unruly hair behind your ear. Your eyes fly open as you pant, nearly cross-eyed with pleasure. “Oh, you’re right there aren’t you? C’mere,” he huffs, and you hold back a whine when he removes his fingers, pushing at your shoulder and side until you roll onto your back, crushing your arms. The cold floor stings your sore ass, but the pain doesn’t matter when his fingers dip into you again, straight back into his brutal pace and bringing you right back to the edge.

“Look at them when you cum, baby,” Graves urges, leaning over you fully, pulling the phone from his vest to angle it right over your face. Your eyes burst open, your mouth prepared to protest, but it’s too late.

It rocks through your body, sending shocks from your toes to your scalp. Your eyes roll back in your head as your entire body goes tense, Graves not giving you a moment of rest as he finger fucks you through your orgasm. A moment later, he pulls his fingers from you. You can’t help but wince, at both the loss and the way he pats the meat of your cunt before pulling his hand away completely, replacing it with the head of his cock.

When you try to kick out at him, the room is buzzing, still spinning. “Don’t,” you whimper, weakly pushing your boot against his shoulder. “Please, stop.”

“You didn’t enjoy it?” He mocks, reaching down to spread the lips of your pussy, showing the camera how they glisten. “Sure looks like you did.”

You’re openly sobbing now, your cheeks slick with both sweat and tears, hips bucking against the floor as he pushes inside of you. He’s slow at first, almost languid, then pistons in a slow, hard thrust that makes you wail from both the sting of the stretch and the raw overstimulation. It hurt so much, it felt like he was splitting you apart at the seams.

“That’s it, good girl,” Graves moans into the air as he slides in and out faster, harder, and you can do nothing but scrape your nails along the floor beneath you as a second wave of pleasure washes over you. You can see them now, through blurred vision and tears - they’re watching.

“Goddamn, doll,” Graves groans, his motions becoming more erratic as he grinds against you, “you feel so fucking good.” His hips smacked against your abused ass, and you could only whine uselessly, biting back a moan that threatened to escape your lips as he hit just the right spot. You buck up into him involuntarily and his grip on your hip tightens.

“Stop it, stop it- hah-” you panted wildly, struggling weakly against the hand pressing on your stomach, inching closer and closer to your clit.

“Squeezing me so fuckin’ tight,” he punctuates his point with a hard thrust, shoving your body upwards along the concrete. “You don’t want me to stop, do ya? If you did, you’d tell your boys to give me what I want.”

Your boys.

You barely managed to crack open one eye, face-to-face with the back camera again. A small mercy.

Why hadn’t they stopped this?

Your legs were shaking uncontrollably as Graves rested them against his shoulders, rising up on his knees and folding you in on yourself. He watches you squirm as you adjust to the new angle, spread impossibly wide around him, his cock bludgeoning a new space inside of you.

“C’mon, baby,” he grunts, hips rolling into you in a slow, sensual rhythm that makes your toes curl. “Show them how good it feels. You know you want to cum again.” The hand resting against your pelvis dips further, his fingers brushing against your clit torturously.

“No-” you begin to whimper, but it catches in your throat as he presses down on a sensitive spot, once, twice, thrice sending pleasure up your spine and stealing your breath away.

“That’s it,” he coos, as if he’s praising a well-behaved pet instead of fucking the very life out of you. “You can do it, come on, show me what I know you can do.”

The humiliation of it all makes you see stars, and you use whatever willpower you have left to keep yourself from cumming again.

“Look at you,” he scoffs, angling the phone with one hand so the camera could get a better look at your stretched pussy as he slammed into you from above, “You’re gonna cum for me again, aren’t you?” The shame that seared through your veins burned hotter than any bullet ever could. You shake your head no, but the motion is weak, half-hearted. “I know you are,” Graves growls, panting right in your ear, hot and heavy. “Tell them how good it feels. Go on, tell them.” He pistoned into you with renewed vigour, his balls slapping against your ass as he picked up speed, his breathing harsh in your ear.

“It- it feels- haah,” you panted, “Graves, it feels-”

“Say it.”

“So good, so good!” You moan, the walls of your pussy clenching around his cock as another orgasm tears through you, and the last semblance of pride you had left vanished. “Feels so good, fuck, so good.”

Graves’s grunts became louder, more aggressive in your ear, his pace relentless as he drove into you like a pile driver, his cock wringing every last drop of pleasure you had left to offer while you spewed a litany of cock-drunk praises.

You’re vaguely aware of Graves groaning his own pleasure as he came, collapsing on top of you like a dead weight. His cock twitched inside you, and you could feel the warmth of his spend filling you up. You lay there, catching your breath as best as you could, hiccuping and completely fucked-out.

When it was over, Graves pulled out of you with a wet sound, leaving you feeling empty and wrecked. Exhausted. You collapsed onto the cold concrete, tears staining your cheeks as your eyes wandered to the camera again.

You couldn’t bring yourself to feel ashamed, too exhausted. Your brain was a puddle of mush in your skull, sloshing around uselessly.

“Fuck, look at that…” Graves groaned from above you, spreading your pussy with his fingers. You could feel him leak out of you. “Maybe I’ll keep her after all. Didn’t care enough to stop me from ruinin’ her.” He sloppily scooped up whatever escaped before shoving it back into your cunt.

You knew what you signed up for when you enlisted.

The greater good above all, putting your life on the line for the sake of the mission.

So then why did it hurt so bad?

Why had none of them stopped Graves?

He turned the phone around for you one more time.

“What d’ya say, doll?”

Your eyes flickered over the screen, passing over the four boy’s faces. All stoic, still and stern. Kyle and Johnny looked significantly paler, ill, but neither had given in for you.

You nodded dumbly at Graves, fresh tears spilling down your cheeks.

[moondirti]

7. PROPOSITION

CHAPTER SEVEN OF ANIMALIC | MIGUEL O'HARA X F!READER

↼ chapter six / chapter eight ⇀

summary: a proposition is made in hope for new beginnings

mature | 4.7k words warnings: enemies to lovers, forced proximity, apocalypses, death, decay, blood, injury, sexual tension, angst, no use of y/n notes: I ACCIDENTALLY DELETED THE ORIGINAL. anyway repost lol

During the liminal period between detonation and your understanding of it, you’d been convinced of your own fatality. Dead girl walking; the shell-shocked mantra playing in an unremitting loop as you navigated the flattened planes of your once-home.

New York was a ghost town. Or – town isn’t exactly the proper verbiage, not when it comes to describing the hollowed locale. It’d been flushed of all its previous pomp; skeletal buildings with their windows blown to bits, light posts bent at the root, central park a glorified bonfire pit for skyscraping flames. In truth, when you’d awoken, you couldn’t recognise your whereabouts. 

That was the basis for which you told yourself it was a dream. Everything existed as a distorted reflection of what you were familiar with, a fucked plane capable only of occuring in feverish delirium. The bite, you’d accepted – nodding to yourself grimly. You must’ve gotten sick again and passed out before the speech, transported to some stuffy hospital that pinned you with needles full of hallucinogens. How else could you have explained your occult ability to phase through walls, or the complete absence of people?

(In hindsight, it was denial more than anything.)

Yet time progressed on a tortoise’s shell, marching with all the leisure of reality. It didn’t jump like it would’ve had your consciousness been in charge, with its aversion to the mundane and grotesque. No; you’d started to see the faults in your logic when the substance that perpetually fell from the sky proved to be human ash, or when – the further down you travelled – maturating flesh increasingly marked your path. You’ve never known your mind to be so cruel. 

So, dead.

If so, then you’d settled on purgatory. A state where souls atone for their unforgiven sins and are purified. It was an interim solution; you weren’t the religious type, anyway. But maybe that'd been it. Maybe you’d been given a last hope at redemption, thrust in a distinctive nightmare to comprehend how much worse hell could be. At least you lacked pain, at least you were dressed – clad in the silk of your gala gown. But the sky had been red, covered in a sheet of dismal smoke, and you couldn’t see the stars at night.

It was a sign; you’d failed at reaching them. 

The notion had paralysed you for days, tearing at the false comfort you’d wrapped yourself in up to that point. You’d weeped, and tested the limits to your intangibility with lacking enthusiasm. Blotchy faced, snotty nosed – passing your arm through rubble, succeeding, then trying the same with your feet, which abraded against the rough surface instead. The inconsistency was hard to keep up with, but the task at least distracted you from a profuse existentialism.

You’d heeded no patterns; some days, you were completely nonphysical. Or, parts of you remained that way, while others shifted back to palpability. It’d been a tug of war, dependent entirely on your mood and a greater scheme you had no part of. With your limited comprehension, it’d only guaranteed the purgatory hypothesis. Not mortal, nor spirit. Stuck in a great between. 

(What heaven was worth this? Who deemed it so?) 

The guessing game got old. You’d needed something else – more than water, or a fresh change of clothes; good, honest science. Truth. You couldn’t move on until you’d had reason to believe the outcome could justify this. 

You turned to the cosmos then, impartial as ever, despite their discernible absence. They were still there, you knew. Just beyond the firestorms, the sun burnt bright enough to penetrate smog. Its hazy glow provided an alternate reminder of something for you to still pursue – wherever it was, wherever you were. You couldn’t be sure that an afterlife meant nirvana or elysian fields, yet fulfilment looked to be the common denominator. An underscore.

To you, that would only ever be one thing. 

Deep space, your stars – your Sol. 

(It was hope in the one way you could define it.) 

The threads started to converge in an instant of poetic cognizance. The Phoenicians had done it, and so too had ancient sailors. Stars for navigation, for reasoning. Of course. All that entailed for you was to certify you were worth it. 

You’d started by cleaning. Little things, far from where you’d originated. A neighbourhood of collapsing houses, nested in beds of fine porcelain and dust. The times where you could use your hands, you’d sweep the debris onto them and deposit it in a hole, harrowed from a singed lawn at the end of the row. When you were immaterial – a state that had begun gaining rarity the better you were able to cope – you’d focus on mentally tallying inventory. Some to set aside, for whatever poor individual would visit next, and the rest for you. A diet of canned beans and bottled water was better than nothing. 

Then, you’d dealt with the bodies. 

There were none within the city, nor the suburbs. It was only when you’d ventured outwards did they start to crop up; thin corpses with leathery skin still stretched over their frames, starved or burnt or both. The smell had been putrid, reeking of pure rot, and you’d surmised that perhaps they’d taken too long to find salvation. It’d motivated you to keep working, burying them in marked graves with a plug fastened over your nose. You didn’t want to end up like them, as a chore for the next. 

It was near impossible to keep a timeline of it all. Now, you estimate it as months, though it had felt longer. You’d gone through it with no milestones, or any inclination as to whether you were finally getting close. Cleaning the entire expanse of purgatory seemed too big a task to ask of anyone, immortal or not. Yet as the weeks crawled by, you’d started to reckon that was exactly it. You’d felt nothing special, no sweeping message from God alerting you of your success. Just more devastation, more labour. 

(Were you wrong?)

You’d started to get sick again. Irritated sinuses, a scratchy throat. Every breath you took was more useless than the last, oxygen unable to circumvent your system. Smoke inhalation, likely. You’d searched for ventilators to help treat the symptoms, alongside pain relief for the sores spotting along your palms. There’d been nothing, and that wasn’t to say it had always been that way. Empty, orange bottles decorated every barren street, purged by apocalyptic gluttons.

(You couldn’t trick yourself – the dead had no use for medicine.) 

Some fate must have willed it, though. It was there, in the seventh hospital you’d scavenged, that it’d happened. 

A… being, no taller than five foot four, decked in a bright yellow suit and a hazmat mask. Loitering the entryway with a trash bag full of salvaged goodies. It hadn’t noticed you, preoccupied with routing the way back home – so you rushed into a nearby room to change into your gown. It was wrinkled and torn in places, having been the outfit you’d initially spent weeks in, but it was far better off than the grimy cargoes you’d adopted in its place. 

You’d kept it for this; your day of judgement. 

It – he, as it turns out – lived in a bunker, deep beneath the catastrophic surface of the state. You’d followed him there. A perfectly normal thing to do, candidly, for someone who’d forgone social interaction since death. It couldn’t dawn on you that he was surely in the same boat; isolated, cornered like an animal on its haunches. If it had, you would've made an effort to approach him with caution. 

So, it certainly shouldn’t have come as a surprise when your ecstatic hello was met with an axe to the face. Naturally, it’d phased right through you, a feat which only furthered the old being’s terror. 

God had turned out to be more skittish than you’d expected. 

(“Blimey, whit the hell are ye supposit tae be.”

“I’ve been waiting so long–” 

“Ye're gonnae get yourself killed wearin tha’ flimsy thing, lass.”

You’d felt so stupid. You should have surmised that the occasion called for modesty.

“Forgive me,” 

“Whit is it ye want? I don’ have any food for sharin’.”

“Redemption, if you please. I promise I’ve been good, I just want to see the stars.” But of course he’d know that. “Sir. Lord, sir.”

“Is somethin wrong wi yer head?” He’d huffed. “It's tha’ radiation, I'm tellin’ ye. Or maybe I'm dead an’ seein’ things.”

Dead? Another lost soul? 

“Are you not God?”

“God? Ha!” The human scoffed. “Trust that I wouldn’ be livin’ in this rat’s ass if I was.”)

It turned out that he did have food, and plenty – stuffed cans stacked in rows atop rows of nourishment. Medicine too, an age old ventilator that he’d tapped with a knuckle to spur into function. He’d agreed to let you replenish if you’d take a gander at his malfunctioning radio, of which you had limited knowledge on but were willing to give a try. You’d no idea what he needed a radio for in the afterlife, anyway. 

(“The battery contacts are corroded, I think.” You had spit through a mouthful of corn. It’d tasted like pure sugar to your neglected tongue. “If it matters to you this much: baking soda to neutralise the acid, then a bit of vinegar over it to help wipe off the gunk.” 

“Smart one ye are,” He’d pulled a cigarette from one of his various pockets, lip curling at your inquisitive gaze. “Don’ give me tha’ look, I ain' got none for ye.” 

“I’m okay, thanks.” After a bit of deliberation, you’d added, “I’m afraid I don’t understand something.” 

“Whit is it this time?” 

“Why’d you set up permanent camp here? Don’t you want to leave?” 

“An’ where wad I go?” His lighter had taken several starts to sputter a flame. 

“Heaven. Hell – if that’s your thing. The cosmos?” 

He’d barked another one of those sturdy laughs. “Ye one o’ them fanatics? That say wha’ happened wis for good cause?”

“Huh?” Tentatively, you’d placed the radio back on its rickety stool. “What happened?” 

And all humour had drained from his face, his pupils hardening to flat beads. If it hadn’t been for the sudden shift in mood, you’d have gone forever traipsing on a fantasy. No; it was the tremor, the breaks in his once haughty inflection – idiosyncrasies that could’ve only been described as sympathy-triggered. It’d built upon your doubt, your already wavering faith, to strike you out of your mental regression. 

“The Alchemax bomb, lassie.”)

He had a bucket for you to throw up in, slick with panicked sweat, unable to hold on to anything as your body oscillated between materialities. He’d made no comment on how your hands fell through the floor, or the knees that started to sink alongside them. Your fault, your fault. Any thought besides blame hadn’t time to develop, recycled for fuel to keep the cognition running. Your fault. Your fault. All this time. 

(Who could you have turned to? You’d been praying to deities who’ve long since left.)

Night bled, and the man had retired. You’d stayed plastered to the ground, crouched over a slosh of your purged innards. The foulness hardly moved you; it’d felt good to punish yourself in that way. You’d taken to being your own arbiter, and such was one of the many reparations to come. 

(You’d shunned the voice that insisted you deserve none of it. If you hadn’t been so ambitious, so blind to the flaws–) 

You’d wanted to leave. So desperately that the wish had seized every cell in you, shaking them with a vigour unparallel to even celestial fury. You’d wanted to leave. There’d been nothing for you to divert your efforts to after learning the truth. Nothing you could have done to fix it. You’d wanted to leave. To anywhere but there.

Please. Please. Please. 

Just this one thing. 

The air warped.

You hadn’t noticed it immediately, still wrapped in your own misery. Scratchy skin accredited to grief, you kept rocking in place, bathing in muggy sobs. But it’d only grown worse, like a fraying fabric chafing along every appendage. Your dirty nails dug into your palms.

The friction peaked, rubbing you raw. You’d heaved in large gulps of oxygen, pulling at your flesh like it could’ve stopped it. Your jaw had unhinged, teeth clamping down on your thumb to muffle the overstimulated scream that’d threatened to break. Tears sealed your lash lines shut. 

Almost a second later, it stopped, interrupted by the blare of car horns. 

And, when you’d opened your eyes, you found that you were someplace else entirely.

Your fingers graze along something rough. At first, it’s easy to mistake as your jeans, the denim hardened in places with lack of care. 

The space seems to have shrunk since Miguel fell asleep, slumping inwards, its rock walls poking your elbows and curved spine with a clinical brutality. It’s difficult to imagine how he feels; twice your size, unused to fitting those muscles through tight squeezes. Disastrous still, the low creak of the steel arch above puts a timer on your misfortune. The topic of your demise is of increasing relevance. 

Perhaps he drifted off for that exact reason. To hinge on ignorance; an avoidance of this waiting game. Or, more credibly, to force you into a figurative detention. Think about what you’ve done, and what I’m asking of you. 

In any case, it’s working. The trauma you’ve tried repressing thus far rushes through your conscience, carving gaping canals of remorse, lapping at its banks to keep it fresh. You’re convinced your heart could give out, wrenched in innumerable directions, the only respite afforded being the glitches that rip through you. You deserve to stay here, but he doesn’t. He’s always only sought what was right. 

(You can fix it, do this one thing.

Though you can’t grasp where to begin.)

You pinch the fabric, tugging at it in a nervous tick. You don’t feel the tension across your calf, an observation that grows stranger the harder you pull. Reaching over with your free hand, you smooth over your pants. They’re still level with your shin bone, unmoved. 

Huh. 

There’s a mortifying moment where you fear that it’s Miguel’s suit you’re fiddling with, before taking into account that it’s impossible to twist the nanotechnology. 

And it’s too close in to be a wall.

You delicately trace the surface with your pinky, searching for any discernible edge, intent on mapping out the overall shape to deduce its origins. Your arms wave about in a frantic fashion, but to your bewilderment, you find no real boundary. Weirder yet, it appears to slice through your shoe and a portion of Miguel's thigh. 

Feels like–

Your stomach lurches, broiling in a bold concoction of thrill and trepidation. It throws you off guard, your brain lagging behind the reality your body already accepts. You know what it could be, having undergone the phenomena in several situations similar. An answered prayer during your lowest points – back at the man’s bunker, a few times since then.

Nerves humming with electric fervency, you tamp your hope into something more manageable, unable to handle another blow should this turn out poorly. Or – comparably – should you succeed; if this is, indeed, a portal. Your resolve trembles with the strength of a baby bird's wing, missing the survival instincts that once bolstered it. 

(What would it mean for you?)

Biting your lip, you plunge your fist through to the other side. 

It comes in contact with something cold, unlike anything in your little cave. Cold, glossy and… crinkly. A plastic bag of sorts, packed full of a pulpy filling. You’re tempted to draw away, disgusted, but redirect that intensity into inspecting instead.

The bag rests upon an uneven floor, marred by pebbles that lend a sense of ruggedness to the place. Outdoors. Downright filthy, too; judging by the clammy residue that sticks to your knuckles. Bile nudges up your oesophagus, inspired by the unidentified refuse you’re granted access to. Squalid; a dumpster, probably. Decorated in bursting trash bags.

But then–

Mooring yourself upon Miguel’s abdomen, you dip your forearm further in. The static off the portal’s perimeter sings with discordant vibrations, its intensity bordering on painful. It prickles the fine hairs along your limb, scouring any goosebumps raised with a grating ferocity. You stifle the whimper that arises as a consequence.

Your fingers dip under the trash, grazing something that makes you pause. Rubber. Ring-like. 

The day pass? 

Swallowing, you jerk it towards you. It doesn’t budge, stuck under the refuse. 

(It occurs to you to give up. The moral dilemma its purpose poses is abundantly clear.)

Hooking all four digits around its circumference, you pull harder. The portal eats at you, hostile to the foreign intrusion. Any longer and you’re afraid it’ll cut your arm clean off, right under where that gutter almost did the same. Your adrenaline had been enough to numb the torturous incident then, both physically and in memory – and though you lack that direct threat to your life now, the setup is much the same. A situation where you’re finally in control, a reclamation to the morality you’ve long since lost. It’s personal – the scolding he’d given you like a knife to old wounds. 

The prospect fuels the surge you need, distending through your biceps, reinforcing their efforts as you finally yank the bracelet out. The portal makes no noise when it zips back shut, but you feel the lull, its energy abandoning you to wallow, alone again. Or, not alone; you gently settle between Miguel’s legs, careful not to disturb him. 

There’s a stark silence that passes afterward, a line of astonishment keeping it intact. You allow it, needing time to process the staunch implications of the day pass sagging upon your lap. Its lilac hue gives a faint light to your surroundings, illuminating the cranny you’ve only been able to picture so far. It’s about what you expected – save for the resting face of your companion. 

He looks good. Which isn’t to say he doesn’t usually, but the peace that graces his features compliments him, rounding out any harsher edges. You trail your gaze up his neck, to the jaw that points to a pronounced chin. Lips that pout even over retracted fangs. An aquiline, masculine nose. It fits him, you think. Lends itself to the fluffy hair that frames his sharp cheekbones. You linger on it probably longer than you should. 

That is, until you catch sight of the blooming discolouration marring his temple. 

It’s partially obscured in shadow, yellowing along the ends and purple in places you don’t have the advantage of properly observing. Yet, the bruise communicates all it needs to, loud and explicit. You’re not in a position to procrastinate any longer; you’ve already spent a year running from fate. It might make you sick, your organs tying together in a nauseating knot – and every impulse in you might scream against it. To run away; to leave him here for dead. Live the rest of your life in peace – it’s only right, it’s only right.

Then, you remember what he’d said to you. 

(“Explain this to me, O’Hara – what just providence made me spider-woman to a barren land?” 

“It’s not fair.” He didn’t skip a beat, tone laced with a hard understanding. “But it’s fact.”) 

You really hate him sometimes. 

Bracing yourself, you shake his shoulder. He’s up in an instant, snatching your wrist in one warm palm. You wait for the tired mist over his awareness to melt, a stone lodged in your throat.

“¿Qué es?” He whisper-shouts. “What?”

“I–” Your voice warbles. Pathetic. “I have something for you.” 

He squints. 

(Rightfully so.) 

Breathing through the hesitation that strikes the rungs of your ribcage, you hold up the day pass. 

He doesn’t realise what you mean immediately, flicking back and forth between the bracelet and your furrowed brows. Realistically, his doubt can’t have lasted longer than a few seconds, yet you’re eternally paralysed within the anticipatory dread – a fossilised mosquito captured in amber. Even when he does eventually catch up, you stay still, letting him pilfer the key to your freedom and watching as his drowsiness sharpens into a pointed resolve. 

And you don’t stray, not for the entire stretch during which he tinkers with its components. It’s not his aforementioned allure that encourages it, nor the sudden flashbacks to your earlier breakdown. Ridiculously enough, it’s satisfaction – a contentment at having finally defied your self-interests. You look to him like you had the sun back home. For validation on the path you’re headed towards, a small hint of a job well done. You’re too cautious of your own pride, betrayed by it more often than anyone else, but he–

He knows what it means to be a true spider-hero. 

You hope that one day, you will too. 

“Lyla?” Miguel demands into his watch, testing to see whether the spare parts of your contribution resolved its issues. 

“You’re alive! Huh,” A miniscule projection of his LYrate lifeform approximation blinks into existence, tilting her heart-shaped glasses down as if to punctuate her disbelief. 

“I came across a few obstacles, but I’ve got the Wr-” He catches your wince. “Our target. Set coordinates for 928. I’m coming home.” 

“Gotcha. Can you wait until Reilly coughs up a twenty, though?” 

“You bet on my survival?” 

“Silver linings!” 

“Lyra.” 

“Okay! Alright. Home it is, boss.” 

“And tell Jess to be on stand-by with an empty cell,” He adds, lowering his pitch to one more understated. You can’t lie and imply your appreciation – no matter what he does to soften your circumstance, it retains its somberness. You’re going back to that desolate wasteland, and this time, you have no will in ever leaving. 

“Figured you’d want to get her in the go-home machine as soon as possible. No?” 

“No.” He asserts, the decision rumbling from deep within his chest. You steel yourself against the shiver that wobbles through you. “I’m not done with her, yet.” 

“Explain something to me, would you?” 

You smell of lemon antiseptic and dirt, arms wrapped in fresh bandages from shoulder to wrist. It’s an unpleasant combination, exacerbating the headache that gnashes on your skull under these fluorescent lights – darkness having been an ally to your concussion. The acetaminophen they’d given you at the med-bay has done nothing to aid your pain, and you’re convinced that the only thing that would work is a long, hot bath. 

That is to say, you’re not ready to have this conversation. 

When you don’t respond, Miguel stands from his seat, exercising the prominent muscles in his legs. His sweats do their best to conceal them, but you’d been in close quarters with him for far too long to have forgotten the way they bulge and shift with every move. If you focus, you can sense them now, pressing against your ass, pinning you in place. 

He huffs. You doubt your glassy-eyed ogle is doing you any favours. 

“Can’t make any promises.” You murmur, before deciding against it. It probably isn’t the best time to test him. “I’ll try my best.”

It’s the first time you see him in casual clothing, which changes him – much like sleep does. Outside of his suit, he looks younger, on a pedestal closer to common man. A white t-shirt stretched taut across his chest, loose pants. Lighter colours, in complement to his bronzed complexion. 

Get a hold of yourself. 

“For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve managed to weasel your way out of responsibility.” He starts. Wrong, you want to say, because your breakouts have always been based on pure luck. “You threaten falling into floors, to phase through walls. Except, when we were trapped back on 15. You silently accepted our fate, despite having every means to prevent it. It’s telling, in my opinion.” 

You nod, already aware of what he’s getting at. “Sounds like you don’t need me to explain, so–” 

“You can’t control your powers, can you?” 

“Bit late in figuring that one out.”

“Then how’d you come about the day pass?” He presses, not so much questioning anymore.

As it stands, you have two options: 

To lie. It’s easy, natural after a full year of it. Your interrogator doesn’t need to know the truth if all he’s going to do is send you back, and with his newfound revelation about the nature of your abilities, it could prove advantageous to keep their full scope from his knowledge. You don’t owe him shit. 

That’s Wraith talking, of course.

The you you want to be, however, beckons for candour. There pervades the confessional once more, a box drawn around you, prompting you to relieve yourself of all your secrets so you can be cleansed. Religion – a fickle thing, but it feels right, here. 

Besides, who knows when you’ll be able to talk to anyone again. 

“I’m not… entirely sure.” Your frown tucks underneath your teeth, and you suck on your lip while trying to formulate a coherent answer. “It’s happened previously. It’s like a portal, except it’s invisible and appears on the irregular occasion. I was thinking of ho– my earth when it materialised by my hand.” 

His forehead creases, drawing in incredulously. 

“You can create gateways into other dimensions?” 

“Not quite. My working theory is that, somehow, the boundaries between worlds are thinning. I think I mentioned how my intangibility works?” He gives an affirming blink. “My atoms find the quickest way through something, so maybe they’re able to do the same through, ya know, the literal fabric of space-time.” 

It really does sound idiotic to put out loud. 

Miguel cups his face, rubbing away the weariness gathered in his wrinkles. There’s a plaster over the contusion on his forehead, overcast by rowdy tresses of wet hair. You do your best to suppress the image of him in the shower, steeling your expression into one of indifference. 

“That holds up. This started a year ago?”

“Yeah,” 

“There was a thing with a super-collider.” 

“A… thing.” The scientist in you cringes. Though, you have no room to talk. 

“All I’m getting from this is that, if I were to send you home, you could just high-tail out of there whenever the opportunity arises.” 

His distrust shouldn’t shock you as much as it does. You ponder the best way to go about this, yet your tongue betrays you, speaking before you can lasso it back under command. 

“In theory, yes.” You pause, waiting for it to sink in. “But I won’t.” 

Some grand gesture of faith that was, you imbecile. 

“Sure.” He stresses, unconvinced. 

Taking a step forward, you crane your neck to meet his eye. Patchouli catches the office draft, clouding your head until all that comes from you is unintelligible nonsense. 

“I’m sick of this game of cat and mouse. I don’t want to be the bad guy any more.” Your thunderous heartbeat drowns the effect of your proclamation. It’s hard to tell whether you come across as genuine or not. “All my life, I’ve only ever done what was wrong, what was selfish.” You rephrase his earlier reproach. “Let me be right, just this once.” 

Your conviction sways when he tenses. No; this doesn’t feel honest, not even to you. 

You want to be good. With all the fire of every star in this goddamn universe, blazing hot and colliding to expel devastation upon its neighbours. It shrinks up in your core, skyrocketing in temperature. It verges on explosion; a supernovae, life-giving. You want. You want. You want.

But, you’re afraid you don’t know how. 

“We can make a deal?” You offer, plummeting to new depths of uncertainty. A deal requires mutual credence; for every skipped vow, you’ll lose out on something too. “Let me stay, just until I learn how to be the hero you need me to be. After that, I’ll go home – I swear it. And you’ll never have to worry about me again.” 

He gives no blatant indication as to whether he’s seriously considering it. His head dips, and he turns his back to you, likely calculating collective factors to form the best solution. The way you perceive it, though – this elongated reticence:

He sees no other choice. 

chapter eight

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[runninriot]

Say My Name (I Need Reminding)

written for @steddiesongfics

song: say my name by cassyette | wc: 2.333 | rated: M | cw: blood, injuries, near death | tags: post vecna, everybody lives, pre steddie, friends to lovers | also on ao3

His head hurts, pounding relentlessly like something’s trying to crack his skull open.

    Eddie! the voice inside calls again, ringing in his ears, broken and desperate.

He doesn't know who that name belongs to. Doesn't know the one whose voice he keeps hearing like the echo of a ghost of the past, as if it's trying to remind him of something he forgot, something he should remember.

He wishes he would, wishes he knew how to unlock those memories that seem to be trapped somewhere in the bottomless abyss that is his mind. Memories hidden behind flickers of red light and glistening flashes of white - the blurred faces that refuse to come into focus, names that sit on the tip of his tongue, hands he can almost feel but are too far out of reach.

Everything is lost in dreamlike sequences that feel like before never really existed at all. But he knows it must have, can’t shake the feeling that there's someone out there that knows what happened to him. Someone who could answer all these questions that have been gnawing at him since the moment he opened his eyes - scared and alone, lost in a place he didn't recognise, with his clothes torn to shreds, overcome with agonising pain in every part of his body.

All he remembers is the sight of the bloodstained, mangled mess that was his body. The gaping wounds at his sides, the dark red on his hands, the white bone sticking out from the ripped apart flesh on his leg. He remembers the nauseating smell of death and decay surrounding him, clinging to him as if he himself was the one slowly rotting away.

He should’ve died then and there, succumbing to the pain and the loss of blood, to the way his insides had spilled to the outside – but to some cruel twist of fate, he didn’t.

Instead, as if blessed by the hand of God herself, granting him a second chance he hadn’t asked for, his body decided to stitch itself back together. Undoing what had happened to him – whatever it was. He’s not sure what he is, if he’s really alive or something else. Something he can’t name because he doesn’t have the words, lost them somewhere along the way of falling and rising again.

He knows nothing much at all.

Only that he needs to find whatever it is that pulls him, drives him to walk and wander, on and on, moving like a shadow through this wasteland he’s trapped in. Unoriented, lost, his inner compass broken.

    Eddie.

A name and a voice he doesn’t recognise the only guidance through this dark, empty space.

-----

Somewhere in the distance a light appears in his view, faint and red, drawing him in like a moth to the flame, glowing brighter the closer he gets. And maybe he should stay away from it, maybe it’s a trap – but it’s the only glimmer of hope he has.

There’s a crack in the ground, glowing bright like flickering flames. Hellfire, his mind randomly offers, a word that shouldn’t bring him comfort, should make him shudder but soothes his nerves nonetheless.

    Eddie, the voice calls again, and this time he’s sure it’s coming from somewhere down there, below, calling for him out of the depths of whatever lies beneath his feet.

He steps forward, closer to the fleshy wound in the ground that’s pulsing like a beating heart, and he falls, flies?, tumbles like Alice through the rabbit hole, caught in a freefall – maybe for seconds, maybe for hours – until he lands ungracefully on his back.

The impact is harsh but instead of sending sparks of pain through his body, he feels like he can finally breathe again, like he’s been shaken awake from a state of half-consciousness. It’s still dark, but the air is fresh here, not stale and death-soaked like before. And when his eyes refocus, he finds the sky above him full of stars and the moon shining down on him, greeting him like an old friend.

    Eddie, come on!

He can hear the voice even clearer now, demanding his full attention, commanding him to follow its call. So, he scrambles off the ground to stand, not wasting much time to take in his surroundings, feet moving on autopilot as he wanders through barely lit streets, empty apart from a few stray cats that hiss when he passes before they run and hide in the shadows like they’re afraid of him, of what he is. A nameless shadow of a man resurrected from the death. A ghost, maybe?

There’s no time to dwell on it, to stop and think, to wonder – he has to keep moving, doesn’t know where to or why, just knows, feels, like it’s his only choice.

His movements are swift and fast, restless feet carrying him around corners and through alleys like they’re familiar with the place, like he’s been here before.

    Eddie, please.

The voice is desperate, pleading, thick with sorrow – it hurts, physically, as if someone’s cutting him with a knife, slicing him open to bleed him dry.

Like these things he suddenly remembers. Those flying critters with their tiny, sharp teeth that ripped him apart.

He remembers the noise, remembers their tails and wings and gaping mouths, their images morphing with blood, red, lightning, pain.

So much pain.

A name, a face, eyes glistening with tears – it’s all there, right in front of him but the image is blurred, still out of reach. He tries and runs, follows the voice, the call, the pull-

    EDDIE!

The world around him crumbles, fading away like a dream, darkness dissipating into white, glistening light as he feels like falling again. Weightlessly floating, like a leaf carried by a storm from one place to another. He can’t see, only feels the world shifting. Feels the cool night air change into something else, warmth encasing him like a blanket that feels too tight around his body, robbing him of his ability to move in almost suffocating manner. Squeezing tighter with every passing second, until no air is left in his lungs and silent darkness takes a hold of him again.

-----

When he comes to, his eyes are closed, lids suddenly feeling too heavy to open, brain sluggish and slow, too slow to realise what’s going on around him.

    I wish you could hear me.

A beeping sound mixes with the voice, faint but steady, like a high-pitched heartbeat that matches his own.

    Wish you could give me a sign, anything at all.

He tries. Wants to move or to speak but his arms and legs feel like their stuck, fingers and toes too stiff to even twitch, and the words he’s trying to say get stuck in his throat, forming a lump so big it’s hard to swallow around it.

Someone takes his hand, gentle fingers sliding into the gaps between his own, squeezing tightly. He can feel it, wishes he could squeeze back, wishes he could talk, wishes he could say ‘I am here.’

    I miss you, the voice whispers and he wonders if the words are truly meant for him. Because how can he be missed when he’s nothing but a nameless thing, unable to move or talk or breathe- why can’t he breathe?

His lids flutter open in shock, eyes wide and searching, trying to see through the foggy swirls and twinkling stars contorting his vision.

Slowly, so slowly, his vision clears, revealing a face, and two gentle eyes looking down at him.

   “Eddie! Oh my god, you’re awake!”

The words wash over him, settle somewhere in the back of his mind, slotting into place like a long-lost puzzle piece – he knows that name, that voice, that face-

    Steve?

Eddie remembers it all now, remembers the horrors, the chase, the fight. Remembers running, not away this time but towards his downfall. Remembers the tears and the cries, the delusional promises.

We’ll get you out. We’ll get you fixed. I won’t let you die!

If I survive this, I’m going to kiss you.

He remembers broad hands trying to hold his torn body together, strong arms wrapped around him as the world slowly blurred, lost shape and substance. He remembers Steve’s tear streaked face, dirty and bruised and sweaty, beautiful as ever – it was the last thing he saw before he closed his eyes, ready to face the consequences of his reckless behaviour.

Death didn’t seem like such a bad choice back then. To find relief from the agonising pain that made it nearly impossible to breathe. To just let his mind slip into blissful emptiness and leave his feeble remains behind just like his regrets, the meaningless hopes and unfulfilled dreams, the apologies yet outstanding and the love yet to find.

But apparently, Steve made true to his words. Because Eddie knows this isn’t a dream. He can feel the warmth of Steve’s hands on his own. Can see the tears collecting in the corner of his eyes. Can hear the deep breaths Steve takes. This is real.

   “I’m- I’m going to get a nurse.”

Steve loosens his grip, or he tries to, but it’s then Eddie’s muscles finally obey. He squeezes his hand, as tight as he can, a silent plea not to leave him. Not now. Not when he just found him again. Found himself in the other boy’s voice that gave him back his name.

   “S-stay.”

His own voice sounds wrong, hoarse from disuse, and it hurts to speak but it’s worth it because Steve listens and stays, settles back down on the chair next to the hospital bed.

   “What do you need?” He asks, a mix of concern and relief written on his features, a stray tear making its way down his cheek.

Eddie thinks for a moment; a glass of water would be nice, or someone to release him from the tubes in his nose and the needle in his hand. Something against the ache in his body he’s slowly becoming aware of. A hug, maybe?

   “You,” is what he says instead.

It’s all he needs right now. Just Steve’s presence and the weight of his hand on his own to ground him, to keep him here in the real world.

Steve smiles, tentatively but honest, and he huffs out a wet laugh, wiping his eyes with his free hand.

   “You got me. I’m right here.”

Eddie tries to mirror the smile but his lips are too dry and there’s something stuck to his cheek, pulling at his skin, causing him to hiss at the sting.

Steve’s up in seconds, hovering over him, his free hand now gently cupping his face.

   “Take it easy. You’ve been out for a few days and your wounds are- well, it’ll take some time to heal. But it’s going to be okay.”

   “Th-the others?” Eddie presses out, needs to know if they’re okay. Needs Steve to tell him they all made it out.

   “They’re fine. Or they will be. We all will.”

Eddie believes him, knows Steve wouldn’t lie to him, not about this. And for a while, they just look at each other, two sets of eyes searching for something in each other’s faces. Maybe for comfort or reassurance, maybe for something they both can’t name.

It’s quiet apart from the rhythmic beeping that’s trying to lull him to sleep. Eddie’s fighting it, trying hard to keep his eyes open; he’s been asleep for long enough.

   “You need to rest, Eddie,” Steve says, his voice warm and gentle, “I’ll be here when you wake up, I promise.”

And as if those words were all he needed, Eddie let himself drift, slowly giving into exhaustion and fatigue, sinking deeper into the mattress.

-----

   “Say it again.”

   “Eddie.”

   “Again, pleaaase?”

   “Eddie. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.”

Steve laughs and it’s the second best sound in the world, right after him saying his name. Doesn’t matter the context, although he does have a favourite version – when his voice is all soft and husky, dripping with lust and love when it’s just the two of them together, whispered like a secret only they know.

It’s been months since Eddie had made his way back from the dead. Months of medical treatments and therapy, of fighting to clear his name and reclaiming the life he had before it all went to shit.

Steve didn’t leave his side, helped him through the worst days and celebrated every little victory with him. Always there to catch him when Eddie thought of giving up. Always ready to offer comfort whenever he needed a shoulder to cry on. Always kicking his ass when he needed encouragement to keep going.

It wasn’t easy but Eddie pushed through, always with his own words in mind, waiting as a reward at the end of the line.

Eddie remembers the look in Steve’s eyes when he took his first steps without his crutches, still wobbly on his feet but determined to walk without help. How they both cried happy tears when Eddie stumbled into Steve’s open arms, hugging and laughing. And how, not for the first time, Eddie’s heart made a flip when Steve was so close, their faces mere inches apart, arms wrapped tight around each other’s waist – too close but still not close enough.

   “You’ve kept all your promises, so it’s only fair I keep mine.”

Steve’s eyes grew wide at those words, even wider when Eddie slowly leaned in.

   “Finally. I’ve been waiting forever.”

A smug smile tugged at his lips right before they clashed with Eddie’s, sharing breath and spit and confessions of the heart.

It’s been months and sometimes, Eddie still can’t believe that it’s real. That he’s alive and in love and loved in return. But just like before, when he was trapped in that dark state of mind, there’s a name as his compass, calling him home whenever he feels lost.

    Steve.

A voice, a face, and two hazel eyes he’ll always find his way back to.

[hypothermic-dream]

The city stretched before him, a labyrinth of honking horns and flickering neon signs, each light a malignant tumor in the decaying flesh of urban sprawl. This wasn't a city; it was a festering wound, an obscene monument to humanity's insatiable greed and relentless decay. Every face he saw, every laugh that scraped against his ears, felt like a personal insult, a cruel reminder of his insignificance in this world—a rigged casino, a den of inequity where he was the sucker, lured by the false promise of fortune, pockets empty and soul sucked dry.

The air hung thick with the stench of exhaust fumes, rancid sweat, and desperation, a putrid miasma that mirrored the churning pit in his stomach. This place wasn't built for people like him, just another expendable cog in their infernal machine, destined to be ground to dust and discarded when they found a shinier replacement. The skyscrapers loomed like tombstones, casting long shadows over streets slick with rain and regret, a sprawling necropolis where dreams came to die.

Each morning, he woke to the taste of ash in his mouth, a bitter reminder of the countless battles he'd already lost. His body was a roadmap of past mistakes, every scar a self-inflicted punishment etched in angry red. He was a barely contained explosion, a walking disaster on the brink of implosion. Looking in the mirror was an exercise in futility. The reflection that stared back held the same contempt he felt for the world, a bitter cycle of self-loathing reflected in hollow, dead eyes.

"Hope?" He spat the word out like a rotten piece of fruit. "Hope is for suckers who haven't learned the game is rigged. They dangle that carrot in front of you, just to keep you chasing until you drop dead." His voice was a low growl, a barely controlled snarl of disdain. "This world can keep its happy endings. I'll take mine served on a bed of nails, with a side of betrayal." A surge of dark energy coursed through him, a twisted desire to burn it all down—this city, this world, everything that had brought him to this point. Maybe from the ashes, something new could rise, something forged in the fires of his rage and despair.

The streets were lined with the broken, the forgotten, those who had been chewed up and spit out by the merciless gears of Capitalism. Their eyes were vacant, their faces gaunt, shadows of the people they once were. He walked among them, a kindred spirit in this gallery of the damned. The buildings around them crumbled, their facades cracked and peeling, as if the very city itself was giving up, succumbing to the relentless march of entropy.

Every corner held a new atrocity: a man begging for scraps beneath a billboard promising luxury, a child sifting through garbage for something to eat, the distant wail of sirens a constant reminder of the ever-present chaos. The rain fell in sheets, a relentless deluge that did nothing to cleanse the filth but only seemed to smear it around, creating rivers of sludge that flowed through the gutters.

Then there were the aristocrats, the parasitic elite who strutted around in their tailor-made suits and designer dresses, their fake smiles and hollow laughs echoing through the corridors of power. They pretended it was all good, their every word a lie, their every gesture a mockery. Their laughter was a cacophony of hypocrisy, a parody of joy. They drove their luxury cars past the homeless, their tinted windows hiding their disdain, as if the suffering outside was just another piece of scenery to be ignored. They dined on gourmet meals while children rummaged through garbage for scraps. They wore their wealth like a shield, oblivious or indifferent to the agony their privilege inflicted on the rest of humanity.

Yet he pitied them, too, these aristocrats. Their wealth was a prison, their lives as hollow as those of the destitute. They, too, were victims of the same merciless system, trapped in a cycle of meaningless excess, unable to see the futility of their pursuits. Their luxury was but a thin veneer over a chasm of despair, their laughter masking the same existential dread that gnawed at his own soul.

There was no escape from this urban hellscape, no respite from the crushing weight of existence. The world outside was no better; nature itself had turned against humanity, withering and dying under the toxic assault of progress. Forests burned, oceans choked with plastic, the air thick with the poison of industry. Humans were parasites, sucking the life from the planet and each other, too blinded by their own hubris to see the precipice they were hurtling toward. And in this grand theater of misery, he saw the futility of it all, the shared suffering of both the poor and the rich, each bound by their own chains, each marching toward the same inevitable end.

[s1llydr3amscape]

Day 5 : Canon Divergence @vanweek2024

Finally talking abt one of my fnaf AU's !!! I try to keep it brief but I cannot simplify for the life off me so yeah have some yapping!! Lots of major stuff and in-between events are not in here but that's what asks are for :] This one is pretty long so buckle up cuz here we go!!!

This au is basically just me taking the fnaf characters and putting them in my oc world!! It started ever since the first FNAF game came out but this story plot started out with Glitchtrap and a few other characters working at an office and shenanigans ensue. When in reality it's a setup because they actually end up killing people and selling off their flesh and pretending that it's organic meat in the market (Like mlp cupcakes + rainbow factory because those were pivotal to my development)

Vanny and all the other workers in a way where technically revived by Glitchtrap as rabbits (Or was already rabbits) making them indebted to Glitchtrap. They can't leave, they have to obey him. Reasons for Glitchtrap needing and starting this business venture is because he needs blood to keep this body I mean his new body alive (Me explaining why they'd have stitching) Because originally Glitchtrap was an entity who took the body of a deceased yellow rabbit and fixed it up enough (like in fnaf sl but this time he just found a fresh corpse) It's rotting the body is failing at this rate, he's going to decay way too fast and he wants to live. (Turning into the black goop like in princess quest)

He paraded as this joyful figure but that's far from the truth obviously. Originally before fnaf sb the body he stole was the father of my own blonde rabbit oc who was dead set on stopping Glitchtrap to let his father's body lay to rest. Even though his father was cruel and left him and his brothers alone, that's the least he can do. He chose to free his body from being mangled worse than it already is because he's a good person I mean better than his father ever was. He doesn’t know if he’s doing it more for himself sometimes.

However, since fnaf sb came out and the movie. I feel like Vanny fits this role better. So yeah to recap Vanny's dad died and Glitchtrap stole his body and made it his own. Vanny knows this later on but she too died in the same vain. Hence, why she ends up having her soul indebted to Glitch as well being the first few workers under him.

At first, she thought she was in hell she's supposed to be dead but she's not and her dad is still here? And he's still the same as ever yet something's not right. He just seems to be acting strange yet it's all too familiar for her.

Vanny ended up posing as a security guard for this residential area. She was tasked to basically infiltrate and blend in so that Glitchtrap had a new source of produce you could say Yet, even after all this Vanny still ended up befriending the Glamrocks. They cared and comforted her even after she wouldn't tell them her sorrows. They were real friends in a way. 

They're nice. In a way.

It felt nice to have friends after moving from area to area to avoid suspicion and ended up making friends. Yet Glitchtrap took this as a sign that she did this for him. Everything she did for herself is for him after all right. Lowering their suspicion on her by being friendly and outgoing, she’s thinking ahead for him. What a good daughter. Making them easier targets if someone were to ever happen to one of these lovely residents. They wouldn't question Vanny now would they! She's just their friendly neighborhood bunny

Her first target was Glamrock Bonnie. It was swift and quick but he put up a fight. Managing to damage one of Vanny’s eyes. The others don't know what happened as the camera feed was seemingly coincidentally cut. Vanny almost didn't make it out and had to leave the body there dead, managing to hide the evidence that she even laid a hand on him. Making it seem like he had fallen down the stairs after a robber tried to mug him. During his funeral, Vanny couldn't even be bothered to look down as he was getting buried. She stood there staring.

She did this.

She was being used as a trojan horse by Glitchtrap to get his supply. She still befriended the others. She shared moments of joy and laughter with them and yet she couldn't help but stare as he was lowered. Glamrock Freddy came to her and cried. This bustling hunk of sunshine weeped at her mercy. She tried comforting him but it left her bittersweet knowing she did this to someone who was nice to her. You’d think she’d be numb at this point but she’s not. 

She never was.

She ended up trying to push them away as the months began to pass. No longer making rounds when she knew they were at home. Deliberately avoiding going to social events and basically just trying to get this job done with. Even when she was doing her rounds and caught sight of the others she answered them rudely or just told them that she was too busy for dilly-dallying.

Roxy tried offering to give her a ride on her bike when she did her rounds but Vanny declined. Chica tried inviting her for lunch but Vanny declined. Freddy tried inviting her over for karaoke but Vanny. Even Monty tried inviting her over to play golf but Vanny declined. 

She's trying to make them hate her. She can't let her dad take them away from her too. She can't. Never again. So she's trying desperately to get them off of his scope so that they wouldn't end up as one of her victims packaged for eating. 

As long as they hate her as long as they don't want anything to do with her they'd be safe. They have to. They don’t need her.

It ended up working for a bit. But Glitchtrap is never satisfied. He never is. Suddenly neighbor after neighbor ended up mysteriously disappearing from this apartment complex. It was more common to see people move in than out and it was happening rapidly.

The residents have asked their landlord for higher security or that they'd move out as even families started going missing. Yet nothing changed. Not a peep gets out here. 

Until one day, Vanny was tasked to kill Freddy. A test by Glitchtrap and she couldn't do it. She tried begging for it to be someone else, anyone but her friend but he didn't like that his worker was testing his patience and took over.

There in the dead of night Vanny broke into Freddy's home. It was a sloppy job. Yet she strutted along. Holding onto the knife with such vigor. Just when she opened the door to his bedroom and tried to take the plunge. She slashed at a child's cheek.

What?

And in that brief moment Vanny regained control and had to face her bearings getting a migraine by the possession by Glitchtrap. She didn't know what was happening until it was too late and the kid fled outside. 

Great.

Basically fnaf sb happened but Freddy was at the pharmacy buying meds leaving Gregory (rabbit) home alone for a few minutes. Vanny, being puppeteered at the time by Glitchtrap, broke in intent on killing Freddy but ended up getting Gregory. Vanny and Glitchtrap didn't and doesn't know Gregory was there or who he was. This was because when Vanny tried to cut off the glamrocks Freddy ended up adopting this kid he found. Hence, why neither party seemed to know about the other because it was quite literally very recent. 

But yeah gist off the AU for now!!! Some parts are being rewritten and whatnot with the ruin DLC and book stuff but yeah!!! Short intro of the AU!!!

Headcanons / Lore :

-Vanny was blonde but ever since her resurrection her furs been turning white unknown if it's because she's technically undead or from stress (I like to think like from blonde bunny with green eyes into those white rabbits with red eyes)

-The workers are some canon fnaf characters and ocs

-Glitchtrap can't mind control Vanny all the time cuz he has other workers he needs to monitor and control, basically spanning a wide network. So he uses fear mongering tactics to get her to obey while he's away.

-Glitchtrap needs the flesh because his body is rotting and he needs pieces constantly to replace it. He only went after rabbits at first but due to his rapid decaying (turning into Burntrap as the story progresses) he went after anything that breathed and lived. I can’t decide if at the end of the story he should turn into Mimic where he’s just a walking skeleton or if he should just permanently die like in the Burntrap ending

-Vanny when she came back had many bald patches on her body after being stitched apart. She's trying to grow out her fur to hide what happened. Just to regain her sense of self. Yet things never change and so she ends up shaving it all off becoming bald like in security breach :[

-She knows that's not her dad but she's still scared of him even though he's much more different than how he was before. Maybe it's the unconditional love of a daughter for her father. Or she doesn’t know what a good parental figure is.

-Glitchtrap originally looked like the black goop version from princess quest, always ever changing, never the same as a being born of malice and hatred. He wanted to be a person like everyone else instead of a blob to be free of it all to start anew but he can't. Unless he acquired a body.

-His workers are only alive after he modified them, giving them life again by giving a part of himself inside off them kinda like a soul contract. Permanent scars literally. (How the enemies in Princess Quest look like rabbit people)

-Workers get sent around areas with dense populations and well acquires inventory from there. Glitchtrap gets money selling the flesh claiming it to be from regular animals. With the money he uses it to keep his body intact and alive. This is to explain how he turns into Burntrap becoming green and nasty.

-Each worker is associated with a smell. Vanny is onion. Glitchtrap is lemongrass. If you look at the sketch Scraptrap’s is garlic. If you’re asking why I did this it is because I just think it’s funny.

-There's more but I feel like I've talked enough!! Currently doing more writing to add ruin into this and trying to do a 2024 redesign for this AU!!! Including Vanny I need to make her more nasty and rotten <33333 

-Also be warned I love bittersweet endings if you fancy this AU

Her stitching and pupils keep switching sides because I couldn't decide 😭 Too embarrassed to show everyone elses design because the start off the story is goofy and the tonal whiplash is killing me. Scraptrap and Glitchtrap cameo tho!!. never realised how squished I made the heads.

I removed the blood due to the fact because being grabbed at the back off your head by an abusive family member still just as scary I should know

[laughable-umbrella]

here’s a detailed description of each of the 14 fears from the magnus archives, most of the descriptions are straight from gerry keay (my beloved) in episode 111 (so ofc spoilers for up to ep 111 of tma) ALSO ALSO ALSO the last one has spoilers for up to ep 134

the eye

the ceaseless watcher, fear of being watched, being followed, deepest secrets exposed, needing to know even if the discovery might destroy you, feeling that something somewhere is letting you suffer just so it can watch

the vast

agoraphobia, fear of falling, fear of deep water, of our own insignificance before the vast universe

the lonely

isolation, the fear that you’re just alone, maybe there’s no one else there at all and maybe you just can’t connect

the desolation

burning, the lightless flame, fear of pain and loss, fear of unthinking and cruel destruction

the corruption

disease, infection, disgust, rot, decay, infection, the feeling of your skin crawling or itching, being touched by something that might burrow in you, swarming and hollowing you out, leaving you full of holes

the flesh

this fear is mainly from animals, animalistic fear of the slaughter house, gets weird in humans, gore, the nagging feeling that deep down we’re all just electrified meat squeezing air at each other, body horror, new fear, began when labeled by smirk

the stranger

the fear of the unknown, the uncanny, the creeping sense that something isn’t right, the guy you saw that might be following you and might mean you harm

the dark

old and deep fear, what might be in the dark that you can’t see

the buried

opposite of the vast, small spaces, claustrophobia, crushing, can’t breath, you’re at the center of everything and it all pushes down on you, where the vast is loosing yourself in too much space, the buried is being trapped with out enough

the spiral

fear of madness, worry that your world isn’t right, that your mind is lying to you

the slaughter

war, not cruel like the desolation, or unstoppable like the end, just pure violence, not targeted or premeditated, you don’t know when or why, sometimes frenzied, sometimes calm, just violence for the sake of violence

the end

clean cut and simply fear of death, never tried to set itself up for a ritual because it would because that would mean a world with no people and no death, it’s knows it’s going to get everything eventually so why bother

the hunt

animalistic/ derived from animals like the flesh but it’s older, jon brought up that hunting and killing each other is just the way they work and it’s natural, but gerry reminded him that so is death

the web

spiders, control, your will not being your own, manipulation, being puppeted, the worry you’re caught in a trap you can’t see, never had followers set them up for a ritual

SPOILERS UP TO MAG 134 —>

the extinction: the terrible change, the future with out us, different from the end because it’s active, it’s seeks to create a lightless world that none of the other powers ever would, some think it would replace people with something new that can then fear annihilation in turn

[sylusjinwoon]

{ 89 }

OK overture.

denji x fem.reader

10 stages of love

{ but i'm not dead yet, so i guess i'll be alright. }

1. first sight

you weren't expecting your life as a university student to be so damn difficult or boring. barely twenty years old, you had high hopes of experiencing the exciting kind of life, filled with parties and study dates with friends, maybe even meet a cute guy or two.

yet sadly for you, you experienced none of those things. instead, your university days were filled with stressful deadlines, abhorrent exams, and late nights spent studying while consuming unhealthy amounts of caffeine pills just to get by.

there was an emptiness felt within the depths of your heart, one that you weren't sure what you could even do to fill it. you truly weren't expecting your life to be so bland, and that more than anything else was what put such a damper on your mood.

unable to take the sight of your plain apartment much longer, you dress in your favorite pair of sweatpants and don a hoodie for warmth, deciding that a trip to the café would cheer you up. perhaps you could buy something warm while filling your stomach with all the pastries you can afford?

just thinking about it all was enough to make your stomach begin to growl, prompting you to quicken your pace. however, there was one tiny little detail you forgot, a devastating trait to have while living in a time where cellphones hadn't become quite as advanced as they were today-

you were hopeless when it came to directions, more often than not, you spent your days getting lost in the midst of the city. hell, if it wasn't for the fact that you took the same train every morning to get to your classes, you'd probably never make it to school, either.

when you thought you recalled where the café was located, you ended up being completely wrong. the constant twists and turns you took leads you to so many dead ends. you were now questioning yourself, really wondering if you could find this damn café after all.

as your wandering takes you to yet another dead-end, this time within the depths of a dark alley, fate seemed cruel enough to play a joke on you. before you could leave, there was a strange sound heard coming from behind you. the sound was wet, being reminiscent of a snail or a slug trailing its slime against the wet pavement while in the rain.

but...no snail or slug could be that big, right? the lighting in the alleyway was dim, with the single overhead light constantly blinking on and off. as you strained your eyes to see what that figure was, you tricked your mind into thinking that it was a dripping wet dog, whimpering because it had accidentally fallen into a river or some puddle.

filled with both a curiosity and a desire to help the mutt, you step closer to the hulking figure. "hey buddy, it's going to be okay. are you-"

you trail off, becoming frozen on the spot when the sudden stench hits you, like rotting flesh and decay. instinctively, you cover your mouth with both hands, but the memory of such a powerful stench was enough to make you gag. it was at that exact moment the figure reveals itself, finally coming into the light as you could merely see a blob the color of mud. its eyes and mouth kept sliding off its face, further fueling your anxieties as you were positive witnessing something so horrifying would forever taint your very memories.

you had come into contact with a devil-

and truly, what shitty luck did you have to warrant such a meeting?

completely frozen on the spot, you felt your body take slow steps away from the nightmarish creature. but unfortunately for you, your flight or fight response was delayed. the moment you took back control of your body, ready to run away when the creature reaches out to you, engulfing you within its foul scent as you struggled to breathe.

"devour, need to devour such a sweet morsel." its voice was guttural, sending shivers down your spine as your body slowly sunk inside a beast, like a body sinking in quicksand.

your scream reverberates across the alleyway, with tears dotting your vision as you reached out your hand as far as you could manage, begging for something, anything to come and save you. the thick and toxic mud ends up overtaking your senses, and before you could lose consciousness while ceasing your breaths-

you felt a hand forcefully pull you out from the devil's grip, its disgusting mud staining at your clothes as you felt globs of it sliding down your body. the slick sensation of the disgusting slime surrounding you makes you feel nauseous as you gag almost immediately, unable to get rid of the scent since it had now completely drenched you.

struggling to get to your feet, you pinch your nose shut to see the sight of your savior standing in front of you. immediately, you felt panicked. this guy was just too lanky, and you could only see his bare back as it faced you. unruly strands of blond hair decorate his head, and you were concerned with how his lanky form stood without fear in front of the poisonous devil. despite how the beast roared at him in anger, the strange man retained his almost nonchalant stance-

that is, until he turns back to face you with a wink and a smirk, "wanna watch me do something cool?"

you weren't given the chance to answer him. all you could see was how he pulled at an odd string settled on the middle of his chest before a chainsaw rips his head in half. letting out a blood curdling scream, you swore you felt as though you were going to faint, your heart caught within the confines of your throat when the man finally reveals himself.

gone were his messy blond locks. all that covered his face was a metal mask with a deadly chainsaw sticking out of it. not only had his head turned into a chainsaw, but the entirety of his arms as well, the deadly blades acting as a shield as he shredded the devil into tiny bits and pieces.

you weren't sure how you were supposed to feel. the more rational part of you knew that you had to feel afraid of this man who clearly had a devil half-

but the stronger part felt more intrigue for him than anything else.

in just mere seconds, the chainsaw man comes out victorious, with his dirty converses standing in the puddle left over from the devil's destruction. once he was sure it was over, the chainsaw man steps closer to you. unsure of why you didn't want to move or run away, you end up standing completely still, allowing him to reach out and touch at your cheek gently with the tip of his chainsaw.

"you're lucky you're so damn cute."

that was all he said in that strange voice of his before jumping away from you, disappearing against one of the rooftops as you felt your legs give away, unable to hold your weight any longer.

with your heart pounding within your chest, not with fear but with excitement, you knew that your first meeting ever with the chainsaw man would forever be imprinted within your memories.

2. introduction

ever since that fateful night when you were saved by chainsaw man himself, you became a tad bit obsessed with him. he was just so cool, so powerful and fearless when he had saved your life. that strange half devil hybrid was the spark you needed in your life, and it was thanks to him that you finally felt so alive- hell, it was because of him that you were still alive.

unfortunately, such a cool meeting came with a heavy price, mainly in the form of how the stench of the toxic devil still remained attached to your body regardless of the sheer number of showers you took whilst lathering copious amounts of body wash on your form. during those first few weeks, you had to cover your scent with a variety of perfumes in hopes of masking the stench of decay left over from that night.

despite the number of complaints your peers told you, telling you that your perfume was overwhelming and headache inducing, you knew that it was better to give them a migraine than make them feel nauseous whenever you were around.

but you digress-

roughly two months had passed, and you were still searching for any signs of the chainsaw man. when you asked around your university questions pertaining to who it might be, no one had a clue what you were talking about. and all the books you read within your university's library spoke little of a human/devil hybrid.

with a sigh, you figured that it was completely hopeless to try and find out anything about your savior. you were quickly becoming dejected now, with no signs of the man with the dirty blond hair anywhere in sight.

not wanting to wallow in your despair for too long, you decide to visit the udon stand settled within close proximity of your university. the owner and cook, recognizing you almost immediately, welcomes you with open arms as he let out a hearty laugh whilst saying your name. "the usual for you?"

"absolutely." taking your spot on the stand, you wait eagerly for your favorite bowl of udon. you kick your legs back and forth with your hands clasped against the table.

you paid no attention to the person that suddenly sat next to you, their proximity completely noticeable when you could feel the right side of your arm touching them. with your faced scrunched up in dismay, you were about to move seats had it not been for the fact that your beef udon had already arrived.

"here ya go, miss! and as always, enjoy!"

"wah! that looks amazing! 'scuse me, sir, but i will definitely have what she's having!"

cue a rich chuckle coming from the owner himself. "absolutely, young man. one beef udon comin' right up!"

you couldn't help but feel slighly annoyed at this man's childish behavior, ready to scold him as the words hung heavy against the tip of your tongue-

but upon seeing him for the first time, you felt them die against your throat. with messy locks of blond hair and eyes the color of smooth, hot chocolate. he was dressed in a jacket and a pair of jeans, but those worn converses were undeniable.

he was the chainsaw man; the same man you had dedicated your time trying to find.

the young man appears nervous from being scrutinized with your wide-eyed gaze, letting out a cough before saying, "uhm, long time no see?"

yet all you could manage was a shaky whisper of this single phrase: "chainsaw-"

but that was all you could say when he immediately places a hand over your mouth, looking panicked while darting his eyes around the area, "please, just call me denji."

3. interaction

"denji?" you test the sound of his name against your lips, repeating it a few times as the boy settled next to you slowly begins to turn pink in response.

"i like it." returning your attention back to the steaming bowl of udon, you grab your chopsticks and clasp your hands together, "thank you for this meal!"

you dig into your bowl of noodles, suddenly not minding denji's close proximity when he receives his own bowl of noodles just minutes later. he repeats your actions before slurping up his own noodles.

you ate in a comfortable silence, neither one of you speaking as you each simply enjoyed the bowl of udon. "you know, you're being kind of rude." denji wasn't facing you when he said that strange phrase.

"oh? and what makes me so rude?" you take casual sips of the broth, looking at the blond expectantly as a sheepish expression paints his features.

"well, you didn't tell me your name yet, and that's kinda what i wanted to know."

"hmm." you lick your lips, the sight of your actions not going unnoticed by denji as his eyes suddenly hones in on your lips. thinking that it was only fair that he know your name as well, you tell it to him and listen when he does the same thing you did with his name.

he repeats the syllables that make up your name a few times before grinning widely at you, "i think i like the sound of it."

you cheeks felt heated, and you continue to eat your bowl of udon, but this time, you could barely taste the deliciousness of the broth and how well it tied the noodles and the beef together. instead, your stomach kept twisting each time you felt denji purposely lean into you whilst enjoying his bowl.

within seconds, he finishes his meal entirely, leaving behind an empty bowl. digging into the pocket of his jeans, he places a few bills against the table, paying for your portion of the meal as well before beckoning you to follow him.

"come on, let's take a walk."

it was as though he put a spell on you, for that was all the urging from denji you needed to follow him wherever he went.

4. attraction

denji was by no means the cute and handsome boy of your dreams. he appeared disheveled, as if that were his fashion statement as he walked with a natural slumped posture. he keeps his hands hidden, buried deep within the confines of his jeans while keeping his gaze focused on the pavement in front of him.

"so you gonna ask me 'bout that night or what?"

his blunt words make you wince in response. "do you actually remember me?"

denji takes a look at you from the corner of his eyes. "hell yeah i do. can't ever forget a cute face like yours." he seems smug then, rubbing at the tip of his nose with the back of his hand all while smirking.

"heh, okay smartass." you purposely run your hip against his, making the smug expression falter as you continued to walk closely beside him.

"how long have you had such powers?"

"uh, since i was seventeen?"

"and how old are you now?"

"twenty."

you giggle, facing him with a smile on your face. "cool, so the chainsaw man is my age."

you continue to walk in silence, and from your periphery, you could see the way denji was turning red with a blush. even the tip of his ears was pink now, and it was truly such an adorable sight.

"so do you go around saving people from devils like a vigilante or something?"

"heh, nope! i only go around saving cute girls like yourself." he gives you another toothy grin, showing you its sharpness while running a hand through his unruly locks of hair. "the goal of it is to have the girl become so in love with me that she takes me back to her place, where she can show her thanks for me by spreading her legs as i lose myself in her."

you could feel your cheeks burn with the audacity of his wishes, trying to hold back your laughter as a snort ends up escaping from your lips. "and how's that working out for you?"

"ugh, terribly. here i am, in my twenties, and i'm still not getting any."

now, you couldn't hold back your laughter any longer as ugly snorts and giggles came out of you. denji was so refreshing to you, with his honesty and bluntness that delighted you in so many ways. you kept on laughing, with your stomach twisting in pain as denji simply stood there, watching you with an unreadable expression on his face.

you didn't know how long you just stood there, laughing like an idiot while in front of denji. finally calming down, you wipe the stray tears from your eyes and give him an apologetic smile. "sorry about that, denji. you're just so funny, so honest with your desires that i couldn't help but laugh at what a total guy you are."

but instead of joining you in your laughter, denji gently reaches out to you, allowing the back of his hand to brush against your cheek when he tells you in a breathless whisper,

"you're so fucking adorable. please, go on a date with me."

5. date

denji is so not your type.

he's definitely not your dream come true.

and to top it all off, he seems so shameless-

so what the hell prompted you to accept his invitation to a date saturday night?

was it due to the fact that he was the chainsaw man you had been searching for? was your intrigue with him due to the fact that he had literally saved your life?

you couldn't say for sure why denji fascinated you, but all you knew was that you were eager to get to know him better. something about him just drew you into him, and more than anything else, denji seemed to be drowning in his own loneliness.

something must have happened in his past, but you didn't dare bring up anything so personal when you've only met him a handful of times.

but you were willing to stick around and try.

with you dressed comfortably for your date with denji, you stand outside of your train station, waiting for him to appear. your eyes kept looking around for any signs of him, and the moment you had your gaze off of the streets was when you felt someone press themselves against your back.

you stiffen, about to scream had it not been for the teasing whisper of your name against your ear, "hey cutie, were you waiting for me?"

"d-denji!" he lets go of you then with a teasing smile on his face. dressed in a shirt and another pair of jeans along with his converses (his signature style, you suppose), he holds up his hands in mock surrender. "my bad my bad, didn't mean to scare ya. let's just get going, okay?"

placing a hand behind your back, he leads you inside the station, finally starting your date you had been anticipating.

6. holding hands

your date with denji ends up being the most fun you've had. he takes you to one of his favorite arcades located in the city, where you spent hours beating each other with the various games. whilst in the arcade, you shared an extra-large pepperoni pizza, laughing at all the funny faces he made and terrible jokes he tells you.

when you had your fill of the arcade, denji takes a hold of all the tickets you had won in combination with his, going up to the gift counter to exchange the tickets for a cute little teddy bear. he shows you the adorable plush, holding on to what looked like a sunflower within its brown paws. your smile couldn't be any wider, accepting the cute plush while giving it several kisses.

meanwhile, denji kept looking at you embracing the teddy bear tightly against your chest. he tries to convince himself that no, he was not getting jealous of some stupid teddy bear-

but ends up failing miserably.

"come on, it looks really nice out tonight. let's go out and admire the stars or something."

taking a hold of one of your hands, he interlocks them together with his fingertips. unconsciously, denji ends up shivering at the contact, swearing that he's never felt a hand so soft before while taking you away from the arcade.

7. first kiss

the teddy bear that denji had gotten for you was still settled safely on your lap as you sat with denji on the water fountain. the gentle gurgle of water was all that was heard as denji kept his gaze at the stars scattered above him.

you were feeling awkward now, pulling at your teddy bear's ears as you tried to find the right words to say to him. with your legs drawn up close to your chest, you sigh and decided that it was best to be honest with him.

"denji?"

"yeah?"

"i ah...i really had a great time with our date. it's been so long since i've been to an arcade, and i loved it."

"hm, that's good."

you shift uncomfortably beside him. "why are you acting like i'm such a nuisance now? didn't you have a good time as well?"

"you bet your cute ass i did."

you ignore his use of profanity at that moment, feeling your frustrations about to reach a boiling point. "then why aren't you acting like you're having a good time?!"

"because i'm consumed with thoughts of wanting to kiss you. but i don't wanna scare you off on our first date."

finally hearing his confession, you look at him to see him glaring at the sky, refusing to meet your gaze. his rough admission causes a surge of warmth to course through your veins, and you could feel yourself swallowing thickly as you tried to find the right words to say.

should i...? or should i not...?

with a sigh, you purposely slide closer to him, allowing your shoulders to meet with his as you rest your head against him. "then why don't you?"

your words causes denji to do a double take, whipping his head around so quickly that you were afraid he was going to break his neck. "w-what?"

"you heard me. i said why don't you kiss me already."

you figured denji would be filled with hot air now, puffing up his chest as he kissed you with confidence-

yet instead, you watch as denji becomes even redder in response. he hides his mouth from your curious gaze with his hand, eyes looking at anything but you.

"denji...?"

"j-just give me a damn minute, okay?! i-i never had a girl i wanted to kiss so badly actually let me kiss her before...!"

ah, so this boy was all bark and no bite after all.

with a smile on your face, you gently place a hand on his chin, forcing him to face you. his eyes appeared so hopeful, so needy for even an ounce of your affections. letting out a sigh of his name, you allow your lips to perfectly slant against his, giving him a kiss denji was sure to cherish for the rest of his life.

8. relationship

you couldn't quite put a label on whatever was going on between you and denji.

all you knew was that he made you happy. his presence measured up to that of the sun itself. despite his gruff language and perverted nature he tries to display, you found that he was so warm and kind. there were different aspects to denji's personality, and little by little, you were certain that you were slowly breaking down his walls.

tonight, denji had suddenly appeared at your apartment during the middle of the night. he looked half-asleep, with the way the dark circles seemed to darken beneath his eyes as his arms hung limply by his sides.

yet the moment he sees you, denji perks up immediately, taking you in his arms as he makes his way to your bedroom. when he lays down, settling you on top of him with your cheek pressed against his chest, you could feel the gentle beatings of his heart.

you felt so soft then, your affections for the man you had quickly grown so attached to-

but did he feel the same way?

you sigh, burying your face within his chest, tracing at the chainsaw cord that served as his means of turning into chainsaw man. denji immediately stops your hands from exploring any further, "no, don't. i don't want you to get hurt."

"what am i to you?" you whisper to him, feeling your insecurities take over as you played with the front of his shirt.

"hah?"

"have you been saving any other cute girls lately?" was the question you end up asking, refusing to meet his confused gaze as you kept the fabric of his shirt clutched tightly in your hand.

denji then takes a hold of your hands, freeing his shirt from their tight grip. you half expected him to leave you right then and there, feeling the tears begin to dot your vision as you fought to keep your breathing even.

you refused to cry, even when denji decides to leave you.

yet he blows all of your expectations out of the water when he clasps your hands together to press a kiss against the back of them. "nah, you're the only cute girl i wanna save."

taking your silence as proof that you had finally calmed down, he adjusts his hold on you so that you now lay within his arms, with his chest pressed against your back. you felt the way his body heat seemed to engulf you, trapping you in a safe cocoon as you smile in response.

"what am i to you?" you ask once more, this time with your voice ringing loud and clear from the confines of your room.

"isn't it obvious?" you feel the way denji lets out an exasperated breath against your hair. "you're my girlfriend, and i couldn't ask for anyone better than you."

9. love

life truly had a sense of humor.

never would you have ever expected to fall in love with someone like denji. when you first met him, he seemed so far away from what you considered your ideal type-

the one that was prim and proper, with an education that matches yours plus having great ambitions.

well, you suppose you could take back that last bit, since denji has shown you that he has plenty of ambition, even if they were a bit misplaced before he met you.

"i used to want to take over the world with my powers, you know? make all of japan bend to my will and get all the women and riches i desired."

he tells you of his dreams one night when you were both cuddling on the couch, watching some boring sitcom that you didn't bother to try and recall the title of. all of your focus was on denji and the way he softly smiled down at you.

"but now, that shit doesn't matter anymore. now that i got you in my arms, i feel as though every single one of my dreams have come true."

with a kiss filled with passion that you didn't even think denji was capable of, he holds you tightly within his arms while conveying all the emotions he held for you. the kiss was successful in taking your very breath away, eyes turning almost hazy with the sheer amount of love you had for the man that held you.

letting out a hoarse whisper of your name, denji rests his forehead against yours before confessing, "i fucking love you. you're everything a sad and pathetic man like me could ever ask for.

that's why, i'm gonna spend the rest of my fucking life protecting you and makin' you happy."

10. commitment

there was no way denji could sleep peacefully, not when he could spend the next hours watching you rest instead.

with a yawn, he carefully sits up from bed, allowing the blankets to slide off his body as he takes this chance to truly admire you. was his behavior a little strange? maybe, but truly, he didn't give a damn.

he finally found what he has always desired; the one thing he has craved for his entire life:

an unconditional love that he knew he would fight and die for. what started as him wanting to save a total babe from distress ends up leading him down the path he has always wanted- a dream come true.

with his right hand, he presses down against his chest where his heart still beat. he was comforted by the fact pochita would always be a part of him, protecting his heart while feeling each ounce of happiness whenever he was by your side.

"we finally did it, pochita. i finally reached my dreams."

when he finally decides to fall back asleep, he ends up bringing your body closer to him. with you now pressed against his bare chest, he could feel you smile in your sleep as you curled yourself even closer to him.

perhaps he should surprise you with that little, black velvet box currently hiding within his drawer in the morning after all.

a.n. - i have been listening to ajr's -ok overture- on repeat for days now, and the entirety of the song fits denji so well that i had to make this story for him 🥹 this is unedited, but i had such a blast writing it, and i hope you readers enjoyed it, too ♡

all stories are written by rei; reposts, translations, and plagiarism are not allowed.

[prinzessinreila]

Dark before dawn.

Chapter 1. Fake Divine.

"Destroying my faith No I won't fight in your games Destroying my faith And I don't wanna play it again"

Summary: Cast away from an eden of light, an angel with crooked wings crawls out from his own blood, fallen and broken in this new world.

Characters: Ruki Mukami, gn! reader.

Tags/warnings: fallen angel AU, blood, first meetings, series.

Author's note: This is an AU in which Ruki is a fallen angel. I've been thinking about this idea since his More Blood route and I wanted to write it. I intend to make it a series, I hope you enjoy <3 I made a playlist for this specific AU as well. You can listen to it here.

An unfamiliar sensation shoots through the being’s body.

In fact, man would be a more correct word to describe him, now that he’s been stripped of all divinity.

Decaying wings scrape against the concrete as he tries to move.

Is this what they call pain?

Is this feeling akin to flesh and bone being ripped apart what they call ache?

He tries to flap his wings, or what remains of them; once, pristine white feathers cascaded, soaring above clouds of light.

Now, ashen branches seem to span from his scarred back, a cruel reminder of an eternity denied.

Glazed steely eyes direct skyward.

His sight is met with a vast nothingness.

How long has it passed since he fell?

It certainly does feel like an eternity, yet it can’t have been more than a couple days, at most.

He should get moving. In his current state, it is not wise to linger in the same place for too long.

Dirt scratches against his palms when he tries to stand.

For someone of seraphic blood to have to crawl through the ground… This is ridiculous.

The fallen angel clenches his teeth, an expression befitting more of a demon contorting his face.

Then,

“Hey, are you okay?”

Dark icy eyes focus on a figure standing a few feet away from him.

Tsk, to have to look at someone when he is the one standing below them… Outrageous.

At first he doesn’t reply, giving the stranger a nasty look.

He despises hypocrisy, and especially those who pity him, after all.

So how dare a mere human ask if he is okay?

How dare such a lowly being have the nerve to even fathom the idea that he needs help.

The broken angel finally stands up, crooked wings sprouting from his back, his energy too low to even hide them.

“Wait!” They call after him. Rushed footsteps follow. “You’re bleeding!” 

The dark haired man barks a laugh. He’s got wings on his back in plain sight and this person is worried about him bleeding.

He notices the concern etched on the human’s eyes, their serious expression unwavering.

“Are you sure you can go on like that?” They ask.

’Yes.’ The halo-less angel thinks. That is what he’s always done after all. Take everything for granted, never walking side by side with others and never acknowledging their help.

He takes another step forward. Or tries to, at least.

The next thing he knows, the world is tilting sideways and disappearing before the absolute darkness of his sight.

—

Coppery light floods the back of his eyelids as he tries to open his eyes.

Sluggishly, he takes in his surroundings.

He doesn’t recognize them as the street he was wandering a while earlier.

“You’ve awoken, I see.”

Now, that voice he’s heard before.

That annoying human is sitting in front of him, an enigmatic smile on their face.

What’s with them and that look of… kindness? in their eyes? He can’t stand it.

The angel quickly sits up, before pain in sharp waves shoots through his back.

“Easy there, you don’t want to reopen them.” The human gives a slight nod, eyes meaningfully glancing in his back’s direction.

Fresh bandages cover the fallen’s back, loose enough that his crooked wings can still move freely.

The irony of it, when he knows he’ll never fly again.

“What gave you the right to bring me here or tend to my wounds?” The dark angel juts his chin upwards, tone haughty.

You raise a brow, crossing your legs from your perch in the chair opposite from the couch he lies in.

The man’s lofty tone surely is in contradiction with his bruised body. But when you notice his movements, and the way he carries himself… They do certainly hold an elegance you can’t quite place.

“Would you have rather bled yourself out to death?”

“I don’t need your pity or you trying to get in my good graces.”

“So, is it just a normal occurrence for you to see someone suffering in front of you and doing nothing?”

’Suffering?’ The angel snorts.

What do you even know about what that feels like?

“You are so pretentious.” He remarks.

“Says the one who insisted he was fine when he literally collapsed on the street.” You cross your arms, leaning forward with a knowing smirk.

He really can’t stand you.

“What’s your name, by the way?” You ask.

He hesitates for a moment, then he supposes it’s fine to tell you, since you are so insistent, maybe you’ll leave him in peace if he answers.

“Ruki.” 

You offer him a softer smile, introducing yourself too.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Ruki.”

However, the only pleasing interaction you’ve had since he woke up is short lived.

“Well, if you'll excuse me, i have places to be now.” The man who introduced himself as Ruki states, pushing the blanket covering him away.

“Places to be?” You echo, a skeptical smile curving your lips. “Where exactly? The ground of some back alley?” You retort, snorting. “Listen, you literally collapsed from blood loss. Do you honestly expect me to believe you are in any condition to be safe out there in your current state?”

Arguably, no.

If Ruki were to be honest with himself and come to terms with all the feelings he keeps locked inside his iron encased heart, he definitely won’t be okay at all out there.

“And how, pray tell, is that any of your business?” But perhaps being dishonest with himself was one of his very few flaws.

“Well, aren't you stubborn?” You sigh. Your expression softens, gentleness returning to your tone. “Stay the night. Give time for your wounds to at least stop bleeding, have a proper meal and stuff.”

Those stormy eyes of his hold your gaze.

Maybe you hadn’t realized how deep and beautiful they were up until now.

“Fine. One night.” The angel grumbles.

A satisfied grin tugs at your lips as you get up to prepare some snacks.

: ̗̀➛ posted to my ao3 too: PrinzessinReila.

[simplytheromanticistdoris]

Achilles And Patroclus: Love Between Ashes and Bones; Gods Folly and Quirks (a ballad)

Achilles to Patroclus

I could never be without you, my love, for you are the river I follow, afloat my body venture to you. The black silk of your hair under the doting of mine, your lips amiable to meet mine, and your eyes that see through the depths of my soul, it frets not but outshines.

I, a demi-god am bound to bask in the golden banquet of the gods, but I turn away and decline, for heaven is at dawn at hell, oh, you shall squirm at my touch as I sip the sweet nectar of your dew drop tears, from my folly unashamed tricks.

Let us be lost in the greeny valley of trees, and sit upon its shaded seat, secrecy it shall be, as we talk love and our future dreams, draped in dirt your tunic will be, drenched in life we smell of it, oh, dear, you’re a soul meek and the sweet scent of simplicity;

I find upon you the strength of a measly bird, but within you; the will to change it all. How does it feel to be my soul? To have my heart taken into the depths of the earth? How does it feel to steal my future and all?

I love you, I say, but my pride begs that I stay, it was a mistake, and now, you lay there pierced by the adversary of my fate, oh, the river flowed no more and life tasted like salt, the underworld claimed your soul and I shall follow.

Demise meets the man who claimed your life, his head touring around our great walls, and lamenting upon is all I could do as you smelled like the night of deathly sorts, and, oh, how does it feel to kill me, my love?

My life meets its due and I smelled you; will you greet me with a smile under the ash of this fight? Blood trickles down and my breath pulls out, oh, may my body be burned and reunite with you.

Erebus receives me as the swift-footed fool, for I am no different from the flesh of my kind, just a man, in love. My gaze wonders to find your soul but to no avail, I’m met with void, in between the borders you must be there;

Even death cannot possibly dare, to deprive me of the utmost source why my life is spared. The seasons passed and sang bitter-sweet songs, I waited like a rock devoid of soul, why must fate be so cruel?

Deep is my blue a feeling struck, before me the kindest man stood, silly he looked and confused at most, ah, you fatuous man you made me wait, now come lavish at my embrace!

“What more do I need but for the sole reason that I live and die, oh, my dear Patroclus, my Patroclus.”

Patroclus to Achilles

Golden locks of silk rests on my thighs, as he the fair youth plays on his lyre, his battle-carved fingers strum not the lyre, but my stringed life, for now, I am a piece, a symphony from his musical pile.

He is divine, his radiant hair golden amongst the light, and, oh, his lips lush and plump like life, and across his eyes the kind blue ocean opposed to his mother’s icy guile eyes, that dares choke me with vile.

You're a being dipped from Styx, the strength of hundredths of men but in one shell that represents all fiery admirable might to fend, but what of you my love, when your fate weighs too much upon your life to go on?

You are half of my soul as the poets say, your star dipped next to mine and I shall stay, oh, the onerous fate you weigh I will bear, for you are everything to me and I fear to see you in dismay, I love you wouldn’t you say?

The god they presume you to be, but all I see is a man I can’t let be, under the cosmos we gaze, draped in love we kissed ablaze, no sole rock will break us away, you tasted like everything but the future that has no place.

Wreath my heart to decay, split me in half to see blood spray, but none you get for he is the vitality in my veins, a kind fool lacking wits and trusts guile prompts, but I am half what he is not and I protect our love.

May he bask in the triumph he deserves, and when he tires, we spare some time, and he cuddles in my wing like two peas in a pod as we drift to sleep and dream, and there is a ponder within me that cannot bear to lose this golden-haired man.

I had pleaded with him not to go, but he begged that my life is on the line; a promise to save the dainty fair beauty, oh, we cannot escape our fate, and we march to the relentless eating time, to the Underworld we will bid our time, oh, Achilles, I wished we’ll be fine.

Swift-footed he is in battle and I watch awe in afar, I fear he’ll meet the man that’ll splat blood on his golden locks, please hurry under my touch and assure me sweet love along this bloody path of war.

Across this ghastly war and ruffian rule of men, there lies you dancing among the wolves and hooded sheep we called friends, they wait for you to die but like a god you prevailed, the wind uttered favor, oh, you couldn’t possibly look more graceful the hero of this battle.

But alas akin to you a thing named pride, it rivaled my full pledged love and I lost to its qualms, and you bade war alone to suffer whose won, but the tide had turned and we pace aback, oh, we’re shunned, many have died under the roots of your pride, but we shall settle this to save our might.

I implore authority from your side, let me wear your scent and go about to fight, I’ll save your pride and the souls that are deprived, enemies wait no more and I shall take flight; you bid me good luck and a good kiss goodbye;

I promise my love I will come back, and we shall run with our heels and talk about life, I shall watch you spar and admire; your bodily move like the ocean tide, your voice is like a coir that replenishes me anew to a queer kind of guy.

I wear your pride soon a cascade of a fallen might, I aim your spear and a swain dies, and another kind, momentarily, I thought I was the preordained man with his swift-footed pride, I miss you then like I was to die.

To be the worthy facsimile of my man, I have uttered his sprightly livened trance and led the homely stricken souls; I say we go home and make about our humble abode.

I revel at the thought of dragging Helen out from the hen of our foes, she, that is the beauty, the root of all these woes will bring about peace and we go home, my Achilles and I snuggled in heavenly prose.

Serendipity reeled within my thoughts, unbeknownst a spear pierced my heart, what of the love we’re bound to make? What of Achilles the one man I’m willing to risk it all? Is he not to die too, by the hands that doomed my soul?

In between the borders I stay afloat, I have mingled with the winds and drifted from face to face to see delight and faze, but what prevailed was my man fallen out of grace, wherefore the Achilles with brimming pride? Oh, but how you cared more when I was dead.

Achilles, oh, Achilles he wails over a shell of no soul but a fractured man, I lament with him for he has died too, haughtily I dare not but I fear his life is almost due, slowly he drifts to a path divulge from the kind in himself.

I left you not in your grieving soul, I smothered you with love in your midnight woes, and I have bore witness to the wreath in your soul and how you bend to break it all, and apathy I have come to hate in your eyes as the head of Hector rolls like dice.

Soon enough you meet demise, and our ashes reunite but strangely naught I feel but your distant soul away from mine, impediment howls, and how your son is vile, now our roads diverge ever to reunite.

Upon your tomb there carved your name, besides I sit like a widow bae and I await, then your mother came, oh, she longed for you but she remembers little to faint, but this I say your son is great, I am the memory to deliver the beauty we have come to make, with the vicissitudes of our fate.

The song of Achilles sang to pave the way.

‘It is done’ your mother says, becoming kind so to say, besides your name a carve that says; Patroclus, and my mouth is agape, this means one thing and I’ll see your face; under the roots of the mead of green I’m new to this dreary scene;

Two arms reach a radiant light to grab me tight and reunite.

“Achilles, oh, Achilles my one and only life, the love I have for you triumphs over those who dare to ruin the heavenly love, we spare against the march of our fate and the relentless time, for you are the four seasons I have come to love but like the pristine calm of the sea, we come adrift and die, for we have now bade life goodbye.”