#sharpen without halos

[sixeyesonathiel]

satoru with a correction kink <3

you’re just an intern.

at least, that’s what you keep telling yourself each time you’re summoned—again—to satoru gojo’s office. third time this week. fourth if you count that humiliating run-in by the printer, where he leaned in just to correct your grammar mid-sentence. he even laughed—low and warm in your ear—when you said “further” instead of “farther.” like he’d been lying in wait all day, just to pounce.

he doesn’t look up when you enter. fluorescent lights buzz faintly above, casting sterile halos on the ceiling. the air smells like bergamot, printer toner, and something deeper—woodsy, masculine, sharp. he’s reclined in his chair like a man with nothing but time—sleeves rolled to the elbow, wristwatch catching the light as he lazily spins a pen between his fingers. his shirt’s unbuttoned just enough to show a sliver of collarbone, pale and smooth. a vein pulses faintly along his forearm. black-rimmed glasses frame half-lidded eyes, unreadable as they skim the report in his lap.

it’s bleeding red.

circles. slashes. smug little arrows dissecting your sentences like they’re cadavers.

“close the door,” he says, without looking up.

you do. the click sounds too loud in the hush of his private office. a wilted ficus slouches in the corner. a coffee mug on the desk reads “grammar daddy” in fading blue marker.

“you used ‘effect’ instead of ‘affect.’ again.”

his tone is light. amused. bordering on cruel.

“it’s a common mistake,” you mutter, setting your bag by the coat rack, heart thudding too fast.

he finally looks up. something sharp flashes behind his lenses—a glint that twists in your gut. his mouth twitches. not a smirk. the prelude to one.

“sure,” he murmurs, nudging his glasses higher with one long finger. “but you’re not common, are you?”

he crooks his finger, beckoning. wrist limp, pen still spinning. he doesn't blink.

you walk over before you can stop yourself, heels muted against the polished floor.

“come here. i’ll walk you through it.”

you hesitate.

his head tilts. that almost-smile widens. but it doesn’t soften.

“don’t worry,” he says, voice dipping lower. “i like correcting you.”

he flips to the next page. red ink streaks through your argument like blood in water.

“this paragraph meanders. no clarity. cute, though.” his eyes lift to yours, then trail—slowly—from your mouth to your neck. “watching you try so hard.”

“i’m not cute,” you snap, too fast.

he hums. not disagreeing. just watching. one finger taps the desk like a metronome.

“sure you are. especially when you’re wrong.”

you stiffen. his hand catches your wrist before you can retreat. his grip is light. firm. he guides you around the desk like you’re a slide under his lens. your hips nudge the edge. he shifts forward slightly—knees brushing yours—as he settles you between his legs.

he smells like cedar and clean linen and something darker underneath—like heat. he’s still holding the pen, and now it traces a slow, teasing line up the inside of your thigh. right over your skirt.

“do you know why i keep correcting you?”

your voice catches. “because i make mistakes.”

his grin sharpens. “no,” he says. “because you want to learn. because you’re mine to improve.”

his free hand slips beneath your skirt—knuckles brushing hot against your thigh—finding the edge of your underwear. then past it, peeling the soaked lace aside. like he owns you. slow. deliberate. dragging fingers down your dripping slit, slick with your arousal, before sliding in with a wet squelch.

you gasp—your knees buckling as he steadies you with his other hand on your lower back. his fingers are long, thick, moving with lazy confidence as they breach your tight cunt, stretching you open.

“don’t look so surprised,” he whispers, breath brushing your cheek. “good girls get rewards.”

his fingers curl inside you, coaxing, exploring your pulsing walls. his thumb brushes your perspective, finding your swollen clit in slow, insistent circles—rhythmic and unrelenting, making you clench around him.

“god, you’re already wet. soaking.” he chuckles, low and rough. “what’d i say? you like being corrected.”

your head drops back, hips twitching into his hand. your breathing’s ragged, lashes fluttering as you try to keep quiet. one of his hands slides up your spine, fingers splaying between your shoulder blades to pin you in place. firm but possessive.

he watches you—pupils blown wide behind his glasses, jaw tensing slightly as he adjusts the angle of his wrist. his knuckles press deeper, grinding against your sensitive walls. his fingers scissor, spreading your slick folds with a lewd, wet sound. and when your thighs start to shake, he grins like he’s just won something.

“look at me,” he says.

you try. your vision’s a blur, but you meet his gaze, only to find him watching you with that precise, clinical hunger. his tongue traces the inside of his cheek. he tilts his head slightly, almost as if studying the way your lip trembles.

“see?” he murmurs, fucking you open with steady thrusts, his fingers drenched in your juices. “you fall apart so pretty. i haven’t even gotten serious yet.”

you whimper. the sound makes his eyes darken.

“say ‘please,’” he says. “beg for your next mistake.”

your pride sours in your throat, but you’re too close—too far gone.

“please,” you breathe. “satoru…”

his name sounds ruined in your mouth. broken. desperate.

he presses a kiss to your temple. too gentle. a contrast to the vicious curl of his fingers inside your throbbing pussy.

“good girl,” he says, lips brushing your skin. “you learn fast.”

and then he adds a third finger, forcing your tight walls to stretch around the thick intrusion with a slick, burning stretch.

it burns. stretches. your hips jerk and he groans, deep in his chest, like he’s feeling it too.

you clutch the desk. your breath comes in sobs now—hot, unsteady.

“you want to cum?” he asks. “you want to drip all over my hand like the dumb little slut you are when i correct you?”

his words shouldn’t make your cunt clench this hard. but they do.

“you’re lucky i like you messy,” he growls. “you’ll thank me when i fuck that attitude out of you for good.”

your orgasm hits like a storm—fast, loud, humiliating. your body locks up, thighs trembling around his wrist as your juices gush, coating his fingers in sticky, wet spurts. he keeps pumping through it, relentless.

“shhh,” he murmurs, kissing the corner of your mouth. “still got one more draft to go.”

he doesn’t pull out. not yet. just slows. dragging his fingers against your pulsing, cum-slick walls like he’s etching you into memory.

and then you hear it.

the click of his pen again.

this time, he caps it with one hand, fingers still buried inside you, and writes in neat red ink across your inner thigh.

mine.

not just an intern anymore. you’re his unfinished draft. and he’ll spend all night perfecting you.

a/n: i had way too much fun writing this for someone who will absolutely throw hands if you try to correct my grammar. it’s called range. thank you for reading and remember—only hot men with red pens are allowed to bully you 😛

[itsgivingmami]

A Long Search Ended

Part One- Real And Dangerous

Rhea Ripley x Reader

You almost didn’t go.

Not because you were nervous—but because you’ve learned to trust your instincts, and this had every opportunity to go wrong.

Anonymous messages. Confident, clipped texts signed “Mami.” Lavish coffee tips sent to your link every morning—5x the price of what you actually ordered. Then, the invite: an upscale rooftop bar downtown, no profile picture, no name, just “Wear black. I’ll know you.”

You’d Googled the bar three times. Glass railings. Skyline views. Cocktails named after ancient gods. You weren’t scared. You were just strategic.

You wore your sharpest heels. Vintage. Black satin. They hurt a little, but that was part of the look. You didn’t come here to play small.

You told yourself you’d leave after one drink. Just long enough to prove you weren’t afraid of your own power, your own choices.

And then you saw her.

Rhea Ripley.

Nothing like you imagined—and somehow exactly what you’d hoped for.

She’s already at the corner table, silhouette haloed in citylight, like the universe remembered how to draw desire in human form. Tall, inked, dressed in black. Button-down half open, chains catching the glow, jawline so clean it could cut glass. One arm slung over the chair. The other holding a drink like it owes her something.

She isn’t scrolling. Isn’t looking around.

She’s already watching you.

And she smiles.

You walk toward her like you own the place.

“You came,” she says, voice smooth and grounded in velvet. “Good girl.”

Your spine straightens, but you don’t flinch. If anything, your smirk answers hers.

“I almost didn’t,” you admit, sliding into the chair she just pulled out for you with one hand. “You know how this can be,” Rhea hums in agreement, “But something told me you’d be real. That or dangerous.”

She shrugs, amused. “Can’t promise I’m not both.”

She gestures toward the bar without breaking eye contact. “What’ll you have, pretty girl?”

You give your order with a nod—unapologetic but polite. She watches you like she’s impressed already.

You know how to hold her attention. And you like the weight of it and have no intention of handing it over to someone else.

The drinks come fast. She tips without looking. The man behind the bar practically trips over himself to say thank you.

Rhea doesn't blink. Her attention is on you.

“So,” she says, swirling the rim of her glass with one ringed finger, “let’s get the formalities out of the way.”

You cross your legs slowly– controlled. “Sure.”

“What are you looking for?” she asks, tone low. Curious, not calculating.

You don’t blink. “Someone who gets it. Who spoils because they want to, not because it’s earned by fake sweetness. I’m not an actress. If I flirt, it’s because I feel like it. If I don’t, I won’t fake it for a handbag.”

Her expression doesn’t change, but something behind her eyes sharpens. Like she’s just made a decision.

“I don’t like girls who fake it either,” she says. “Good. Keep going.”

You take a slow sip. “I’m not naive. I know what this is. But I don’t want to be bought. I want to be chosen. And I want the same right in return.”

Rhea nods, thoughtful. “So you want power. Just not a leash.”

“I want someone who sees me as a luxury. Not a receipt.”

That earns you a grin. “Fuck. You’re better than I thought.”

You lift a brow. “What did you think I’d be?”

She leans in, resting her forearms on the table. “ Too timid. Or greedy. Either way, forgettable.”

You let the compliment sit. You don’t need to downplay it. You don’t blush. You just smile and take another sip.

“And you?” you ask. “What are you looking for?”

Rhea’s gaze doesn’t waver.

“Someone who lets me take care of them,” she says simply. “Without guilt. Without games. I want to come home from a week of throwing chairs and fists and find a reason to breathe out. I want soft moments. Eye contact. Quiet trust. And I want to give you everything that makes your life easier.”

She tilts her glass. “That’s the deal.”

You study her. “That sounds dangerously good.”

She smirks. “Baby, most people agree I am.”

There’s a silence that crackles between you. Not awkward. Heavy. Bright. Something dangerous and golden and electric.

“So,” she adds, voice silkier now, “what’s your allowance minimum?”

You don’t squirm. You don’t hedge.

“A thousand a week,” you say easily. “At baseline.”

She tilts her head like she’s watching a spark she’d only hoped to see.

“Add a zero,” she replies, lifting her drink. “And don’t insult yourself like that again.”

You blink, momentarily stunned but you don’t flinch. “You don’t know if I’m worth that.” and factually, you’re right. But the two of you are old hands at this game and from what she's seen so far, she wants you as her playmate.

She grins, slow and devilish. “I’ll enjoy finding out.”

You sip your drink like it doesn’t matter. Like the idea of her isn't causing you excitement. Like the ice doesn’t burn down your throat and the way she’s looking at you doesn’t stir heat low in your stomach.Like she hasn’t even paid for anything yet and you feel spoiled. You hum thoughtfully, setting the glass down.

“I’m not cheap,” you murmur. “In case that’s unclear.”

Rhea’s gaze narrows—pleased. “Good.”

She leans forward, resting her forearms on the table, her rings catching the glow from the candle between you. “Cheap doesn’t suit you. You wear value too well.”

You let your lip curve up slightly, just enough to show her you heard the compliment. Just enough to let her know she’s earned another.

“You always this smooth?” you ask, tilting your head.

“No,” she says simply. “Only when I want something.”

That makes your brow lift—just a little. “And what exactly do you want, Mami?”

The nickname rolls off your tongue like you’ve always said it. Like it belongs there. And Rhea, for a fraction of a second, loses her rhythm. Her brain forgets that she’s heard a thousand people call her that, but she's never heard you do it and she's not sure she cares to hear it from anyone else again. Her jaw flexes. Her thumb taps once against her glass.

Then she recovers.

“I want late-night drives with someone who knows how to sit in silence and still be heard,” she replies. “I want to spoil a woman who doesn’t apologize when she asks for more. I want to be the one she texts when she’s bored, or hungry, or just needs to feel expensive for no reason. I don't want someone who thinks they're bothering me for something when i've told them a thousand times I want to give it”

She leans in just enough for the scent of her cologne to wrap around you—clean and rich and a little dangerous.

“I want to give you the world,” she says. “If you’re smart enough to let me.”

The words settle between you like silk sheets—cool at first, but warming fast.

Your fingers trace the rim of your glass pink lip pulled between your teeth and you listen. “And what do you get?”

Her smile doesn’t falter. “The pleasure of watching you take it.”

It’s almost too much. Her confidence, the way she seems to genuinely crave this, the way no woman you could’ve met on the site compares to this. Almost.

But you’re better at holding your own than most and she's clearly looking for experience, or at least the illusion of it. You sit back, letting the silence drag for a beat—let her feel you assess the offer like it’s one of many. Even though you already know no one else could hold a candle to her.

“I don’t fake things,” you reiterate one last time, the honesty she brings to the table prompts your own, “Not pleasure. Not conversation. Not interest.”

“I don’t want to pretend I do enough of it at work, paid for too many fake girls to last me lifetimes,” she replies instantly. “I want you.”

The way she says it—low and unapologetic—catches something behind your ribs.

Your voice softens, but it doesn’t tremble. “You’re sure?”

Rhea tilts her head. “I’m never not.”

Another beat. The tension shifts, subtle but seismic.

You feel it in your spine.

In the air between your knees under the table.

In the way she watches you like she’s ready to spend ten grand and not even ask for your name in return—just to see you smile like this again.

“So,” she murmurs, her voice a velvet blade, “are you ready to let me take care of you?”

Your heart doesn’t race.

It prowls.

You lean forward slightly, letting your knee brush hers beneath the table.

“Yes,”

—

The night ends before you’re ready.

Not because you’ve run out of things to say—if anything, your words are starting to blur, pulled close by candlelight and that low drawl of hers that always lands somewhere just behind your navel. You’ve kept her entertained—despite the fact she’d be happy staring at you in that dress.. You’ve kept control.

But she’s still holding the power.

And you like it that way.

You’ve spent the past two hours with her —drink in hand, gaze heavy on your lips, never once pretending to look away. She asked questions with the kind of focus that made your pulse jump, voice low and unhurried. She never pushed. Never pressed. Just… let the silence stretch where it needed to, like she trusted you’d fill it with something worth hearing.

And you did.

The bartender dims the lights slightly. The crowd thins. Rhea finishes her drink, slow, and stands.

Her hand extends toward you—rings catching light, wrist inked, knuckles slightly bruised. You take her hand, gentle around the wounds, your fingers sliding against hers in a soft grip that still makes your stomach twist. She helps you from the booth like it's a habit. Like it’s instinct. Like you already belong where her hand goes first.

You don’t speak.

Not yet.

The walk out is quiet. Her body close to yours, not crowding but anchoring. Every few steps, her hand grazes your back—just enough to remind you she’s there. That she’s watching. That this isn’t some exit on autopilot. She’s walking you out. You get the attention. Not the others still sipping expensive cocktails or leaning too hard at the bar.

Outside, the air is cooler. Wind brushes your legs. You don’t shiver, but she notices.

Without a word, she shrugs off her jacket and drapes it around your shoulders. It’s warm. Smells like leather and cologne and her skin. You close your fingers over the lapel on instinct, holding it there.

Then she holds out a small, folded square of paper. The kind you only get when someone wants to make sure you don’t forget the moment.

Your name is written on it in her handwriting. Strong. Slanted. Clean.

You glance from the paper to her face. She’s unreadable beneath the soft glow of the streetlamp.

“I want to know when you’re home safe,” she says simply. “That’s my real number.”

You blink.

because you’re surprised— “You don’t want to use the app messenger?” —because she’s cutting straight through the act. No games. No waiting.

“You’re giving this to me after one night?” you ask, brows lifting.

“Sweetheart,” Rhea murmurs, stepping closer, “I was going to give it to you before you even sat down.”

The words make something inside you pull tight.

She lifts a hand and gently tucks a strand of hair behind your ear where the wind’s loosened it. Her knuckles drag down the edge of your cheek—slow, reverent, like she’s memorizing the curve of your skin with her hands instead of her eyes.

It’s not a move. It’s a choice.

A final act of care before you part.

“Im done with maybes,” she says. “You’ve said yes, I don’t keep my options open”

You stare up at her, heart steady now but beating hard. There’s no hesitation in her gaze. No uncertainty in her voice. Just the weight of a choice already made.

“…Thank you,” you say quietly. Not shy. Just honest.

She leans in—not for a kiss, not yet. Just close enough that you feel her breath against your lips when she speaks.

“Text me when you get home,” she says. “Or I won’t sleep.”

You nod.

She opens the door for you, waiting until you slide inside before shutting it gently behind you. She doesn’t wave. Doesn’t smile again. She just stands there—tall, steady, unmoving—watching you like a promise.

And when you finally unfold the note in your lap, the number is written in thick black ink. At the bottom, in the corner, there’s a small sketch—

A heart. Simple. Inked in the same bold hand.

Claiming you without asking permission. For the first time since the sun began to set, you allow yourself to feel excited.

And all the way home, the paper sits in your lap like it’s worth more than every hundred-dollar bill you’ve ever touched.

—

The city hums around her, alive, neon and windy—but Rhea walks like she’s underwater. She barely takes in the scenery as she reflects on the past 3 hours, the front of her brain still flashing with memories she’d like to keep for later. She could’ve called for another car but there's something about you that brings a nostalgia she doesn't recognize, but drags her along the busy street anyway.

Boots heavy. Hands in her pockets. Shoulders tight beneath the weight of her own thoughts. She cuts down a quieter street off the main drag, where the headlights can’t reach and the echo of your heels still rings in her ears.

She’s never liked goodbyes.

Even temporary ones.

And this one—it felt like more than a goodbye.

But tonight feels different.

Because you were different.

And Rhea is trying—failing—not to admit how much she noticed that.

You left with her jacket, her number, the scent of her skin on your shoulders. But what you left behind was the feeling of something new.

Rhea’s always been good at this.

She’s done this.

Sugar dynamics. Affection as an offering. Spoiling as a skill.

Something quieter than loneliness but sharper than peace. A need to give. To own. To make someone��s life prettier by touching it. And maybe, selfishly, to be seen as more than fists and titles and bruised knuckles in gold rings.

She’s had her share of maybe-babies. Girls who called her Mommy before they even asked her real name. Girls who wanted bags, not boundaries. Girls who loved the idea of her—until they met the steel beneath the silk.

It used to be a way to feel in control.

A way to give without the mess of commitment because she didn’t have time for it.

To feel wanted. Powerful.

To watch someone light up when she gave them something—jewelry, rent, plane tickets—without the tangle of actual feelings in return.

It was easier that way.

Until it wasn’t.

Until she started noticing how many of them flinched when she got quiet.

How many pulled out the baby voice when asking for money.

How many called her “Mommy” after half a drink—without meaning it.

Just because they thought it would work.

It did, for a while.

But it always left her colder.

And worse than the sugar babies?

The friends.

The ones who only called when they wanted to borrow something.

The ones who used her name for clout and ghosted when she got injured.

The ones who swore they saw her but never looked close enough to notice when she was drowning.

She started building walls before she even realized she was doing it.

Started answering less texts.

Stopped letting anyone follow her to work.

Stopped giving her real number.

And tonight?

Tonight she’d expected to feel nothing.

Maybe you’d be hot.

Maybe you’d be funny.

Maybe it would be another quiet, forgettable evening that left her wallet lighter and no more fulfilled.

But then you showed up—heels clicking, chin lifted, eyes sharp.

You sat across from her tonight like you already understood what you were walking into. Like you knew she’d be different from women you’ve met.

You flirted when you wanted to. Didn’t when you didn’t. You talked like you’d never been anyones before—not because no one had tried, but because no one had made it feel safe. You said Mami like you were testing the weight of it in your mouth and then smiling at the taste.

She ponders if that's the reason, or if it's something else that makes you so dangerous. The type that causes manic decisions and desire filled ideas. The type of danger that makes her delete her sugar profile despite waiting weeks for verification the first time.

You make her feel like the first time she bought herself something expensive, the first time she splurged on a fancy car, the first time she ever flew first class.

Rhea exhales hard through her nose. Her breath fogs under the glow of a flickering streetlamp. She pauses beneath it, the kind of place where deals are made and confessions slip out when the night’s too quiet.

She pulls her phone from her pocket.

You haven’t texted yet.

She looks up. The sky’s the color of velvet dipped in ash. Her reflection swims faintly in the shop window beside her—black shirt rumpled at the collar, neck flushed, jaw tight.

She still smells like you.

The thought alone makes her shift her stance, fists clenching once, jaw flexing again.

And then—

A vibration.

She closes her eyes and smiles, she barely needs to look to know who it is but she does anyway.

home safe.

Thank you again for tonight.

She stares at it for a beat.

Not because she doesn’t know what to say.

But because suddenly, everything she could say feels too small for the moment. Too small to signal the beginning of something new. Too simple, too practiced, too many times she’s played this game.

You don't need a reassuring nudge,

You're not of the maybe babies, trusted that she didn’t need you crawling and falling over her for her to spoil you,

You dont need to be persuaded into feeling comfortable with her.

You already did and that was worth more than anything she could’ve paid for tonight.

So she types one word.

Good.

Then she adds another, something out of her normal wheel house— like you.

Sweet dreams, baby.

She pockets her phone and starts walking again, slower now.

The street curves ahead. The night still stretches wide.

And for the first time in months—maybe years—Rhea doesn’t feel like she needs to guard what she gives.

She wants to give it.

Wants to watch you take it.

Wants to see if you’ll surprise her again.

She’s still not sure what this is.

But she knows it’s not fake.

And for her?

That’s enough to make her want the next night before this one’s even over.

—

It’s been just over an hour since you got home.

Your dress is folded across the back of your chair. Your heels are off. Your skin still smells faintly like her cologne—rich, smooth, and unsettling in the best way. A three wick candle burns on your desk, the scent of clean laundry floating around.

The note she gave you sits on your nightstand, unfolded, the logo of the bar sitting in the corner.

You haven’t texted again.

You don’t need to. She said text when you’re home. And you did.

But still, you keep hearing her words:

Text me when you’re home. Or I won’t sleep.

There’s something about it—soft but possessive, quiet but firm. Like she didn’t just say it. She meant it.

You want to tell her that despite having your comfy clothes on, the feeling of riding her high makes you feel wrapped in luxury. Like adding her into your phone adds thousands to your networth. Like being hers suddenly feels like being a necklace in a glass case that everyone else wants.

You lean back against your bed, breathing steady. Still processing the way she looked at you—like you were something precious she deserved, planned to claim. Like she knew the gifts did partly for you, and partly for her getting to see you in them. It was rare to meet a sugar parent concerned more with spoiling than the affection that came with it. It's a nice change of pace you finally feel like you can keep up with. And then—your doorbell rings.

You pause.

It’s nearly 11PM.

You’re not expecting anyone.

Cautious, you approach the door and peek through the window. Sitting neatly on your doorstep is a tall white box. Elegant. Weighted. Tied with a wide black satin ribbon. There’s a card tucked into the bow. Handwritten.

For you.

No logo. No return address.

But you already know who it’s from.

You bring it inside, heart pounding with something warmer than surprise. You place it on your bed, fingers slow and deliberate as you untie the ribbon—like the act deserves patience.

The scent hits you first.

Vanilla. Lavender. Rose. Something headier and darker underneath. It smells like a boutique where everything costs too much and nothing feels cheap. It smells like her.

Inside is a bouquet—lush and decadent. Pale petals layered with deep, moody blooms. You can see the thought behind it. A study in contrast. Soft meeting sharp.

And nestled beneath the flowers—an envelope.

Your name. Her handwriting.

You open it.

Inside, a small black card. Thick paper. Gold print. Simple.

You read.

You were even better than I imagined.

I said I don’t have a spending limit.

That wasn’t just about clothes.

I meant time.

Attention.

Energy.

www.elysianthread.com — it’s one of my favorites.

I want to see you in every damn thing they make.

Pick out whatever you want.

Make a cart.

Send it to me.

There’s nothing I wouldn’t want to see you in.

— R

Your breath catches.

Not from shock.

But you weren't expecting it within an hour of leaving her.

You set the card down next to her Humber on your nightstand, bite your bottom lip, and open your laptop. The website pulls up in seconds. It’s stunning—sleek black background, gold lettering, photography shot like fashion editorials and forbidden dreams.

Silk slips. Structured corsets. Soft lounge sets. Delicate chokers.

Luxury lingerie that feels like armor and worship in the same breath.

And you’re not blushing— well maybe a little.

You’re smiling.

You lean into the screen, scrolling slowly. Imagining the weight of the gaze you'd spent hours across for earlier and what would change it, make it lighter, heavier, needier. You find yourself more excited adding pieces in dark tones than your usual pastel palette, pieces feeling closer to the woman buying them for you. You select pieces like statements. Like spells.

Slips in oxblood silk.

Loungewear that looks soft enough to drown in.

A gold anklet with a black charm you swear could pass for her energy in accessory form.

When the cart’s sizable, you copy the link. Open her message thread.

included a lot to pick from

you don’t have to—

You pause. Delete the second line.

You don’t need to soften it.

You don’t need to ask for less.

She invited this.

She wanted you.

You send the link.

Two minutes later, her reply hits.

Rhea:

Sweetheart.

You really think I’m picking one?

—

To be continued— likes, comments and reblogs always appreciated💜

—

Taglist- let me know if you’d like to be added

@starrycherie

@oldmanluvr13

[yukkiji]

struck without a warning

she had a quiet high school crush on suna rintarou — the calm, unreadable middle blocker from inarizaki. years later, a university group project throws them together, and old feelings stir. he’s still quiet, still hard to read… but she starts to notice the little things. the way he saves her a seat. how he remembers her coffee order. and how he looks at her — like maybe, just maybe, he’s been holding onto something too.

haikyuu masterlist. leave a little stardust on my ko-fi

starring. suna rintaro x fem!reader

genre: fluff, romance, timeskip!suna, mutual pining, a bit of a slow burn (?)

wc: 1.3k

you spot him the second he walks in — hoodie half-zipped, earbuds in, hands shoved in his pockets like he has no intention of contributing to society or this group project. he moves like he has all the time in the world and none of the motivation to use it.

typical.

suna rintarou drops into the seat next to yours with a slow exhale, tossing his bag to the floor without so much as a glance in your direction.

“you’re late,” you mutter, not bothering to hide your irritation.

“two minutes,” he replies, sliding his laptop out. “calm down.”

“some of us actually care about our grades,” you snap.

“and yet,” he says without missing a beat, “you’re still stuck with me. tragic.”

you resist the urge to throw your pen at his face.

you knew of suna back in high school. not personally. he went to inarizaki, you went to karasuno. but if you were into volleyball — and you were — you knew him. he was the quiet, sharp-eyed middle blocker who played like a shadow. subtle, strategic. infuriatingly consistent.

you remembered him from the stands. leaning against the gym wall, arms crossed, jaw tight with focus. he didn’t smile much. didn’t celebrate like his teammates. but you noticed how his eyes followed every play, how he seemed to be thinking ten steps ahead. he wasn’t flashy, but he was dangerous.

you had a crush, once. a distant, ridiculous thing. a little awe, a little curiosity. you swore it was a phase. it faded. mostly.

and now, in university, you were reintroduced to him in the worst way possible: a group project. the professor paired you together by alphabetical order, like fate wanted to test your patience.

suna was everything he used to be, and more. smug. aloof. too good at everything while acting like he didn’t care.

also: a university athlete. varsity volleyball. still playing at a high level. practices at 6 a.m., late-night matches, endless travel. and somehow, still managing to ace most of his classes. you’d catch glimpses of him on campus — half-asleep with an energy drink in hand, scribbling in a notebook between reps, stretching out sore limbs before a lecture. you wondered how he kept up with it all. he made it look effortless.

you wanted to hate him. you tried to. but there was something in the way he’d glance over your notes and make one perfect, cutting observation that solved everything. or how he’d catch you staring at your laptop for too long and wordlessly push a coffee toward you, no comment, no smugness.

he’d never admit it, but he noticed things. about you.

that was the problem.

it’s a rainy thursday night when it finally snaps.

the two of you are camped out in the empty campus café, laptops glowing, fingers tapping. the windows fog up with condensation, outside lights blurred into amber halos. your outline is half-finished. your patience is not.

“you didn’t send me the draft last night,” you say, tone clipped.

suna stretches like a cat, lazy and unbothered. “had practice. got home late.”

“and?”

he shrugs. “figured we’d just do it now.”

“you figured wrong,” you snap, slamming your pen down. “you don’t get to just float through this like it doesn’t matter. some of us have schedules, too.”

suna sits up, brows raised. “is this about the project or are you just mad i don’t grovel when i talk to you?”

the air sharpens. the café is quiet, save for the hum of the espresso machine and the low drum of rain against the windows.

“you think i wait around for you to maybe care about anything besides volleyball and your stupid little side gigs?” you hiss. “i’m not here to be your academic babysitter, suna.”

his jaw tightens. there’s a shift in his posture — not defensive, not angry. just… still.

“i never asked you to be.”

“then stop treating me like i’m just another thing on your list to get through.”

a pause. one heartbeat. then another.

he stands up slowly, and suddenly, the café feels much smaller. he’s close. close enough that you have to tilt your chin to meet his eyes, and god, they’re darker than you remember. sharper.

“you always this dramatic,” he says quietly, “or just with me?”

“just with you,” you snap. “because you make it so easy.”

his gaze drops to your lips for half a second — blink and you’d miss it. but you don’t. you feel it like a lightning strike under your skin.

“you noticed me back then, didn’t you?” he says, voice almost soft. “at nationals.”

you blink. “what?”

“karasuno was there. i remember.”

“so?”

he smirks — but there’s no bite in it this time. just something edged with memory. “you stared.”

“i did not.”

“you did. eyes wide. like you couldn’t decide if you hated me or wanted something else.”

your heart stutters. he’s too close. too present. the scent of rain clings to his hoodie, earthy and clean. you swear you feel the warmth of his breath as he says—

“what do you want now?”

your breath catches. “i don’t know.”

he leans in. close enough that your knees brush. his voice drops, a whisper against the storm outside.

“i do.”

and then his mouth is on yours.

it’s not gentle. it’s heat and teeth and tension dragged to a breaking point. his hand finds your jaw, tilts your face just right, and you gasp into him — surprised at the weight of it, the sudden, staggering want that blooms in your chest. you kiss him like you’re furious. he kisses you like he’s been waiting for permission.

your chair scrapes against the floor as you pull him closer, your hands fisting in the front of his hoodie. he groans softly — a sound that coils low in your stomach — and deepens the kiss.

the café is still empty. but the room feels full. cracked open. like something has shifted, and neither of you can pretend it didn’t happen.

you pull back first, lips swollen, chest heaving.

“we’re still behind on the project,” you whisper.

suna looks dazed. then he grins. it’s lazy. bright. a little smug. “let’s finish it. at my place.”

you roll your eyes, trying to tamp down the wildfire under your skin. “professional.”

“not even a little.”

later, while the rain turns the sidewalks into silver ribbons, you’re curled next to him on his narrow dorm bed. laptops open. knees bumping. the quiet hum of his playlist drifts through the air.

suna’s different like this. focused. thoughtful. he reads everything twice, asks smart questions, makes you laugh without trying.

at some point, his hand brushes yours. and stays.

you don’t pull away.

he exhales, long and slow. “i suck at balance,” he says quietly. “between volleyball, school, the media stuff… it gets loud. and i forget things. important things.”

you glance at him. he’s not looking at you, but his thumb brushes the back of your hand — once, then again, like a habit he doesn’t realize he’s forming.

“then i won’t ask you to be perfect,” you say. “just… don’t half-ass this.”

he finally meets your gaze.

there’s something open in his eyes. something unguarded.

“deal,” he murmurs.

and when he kisses you again, it’s slower. sweeter. like he’s savoring it. like he’s choosing this — choosing you — on purpose.

like lightning, yes. but the kind that lingers.

you still argue.

still fight about fonts and due dates and whether the cat in the café actually likes him (it does not).

but now, he texts you good luck before quizzes. leaves energy drinks in your locker when you pull all-nighters. kisses you after matches, sweaty and breathless, like you’re the best win of the day.

he still calls you dramatic.

you still call him infuriating.

and somehow, between the sparks and the storms, you find your rhythm.

he was impossible to ignore then.

he’s impossible to forget now.

[aventurineswife]

"I loved you like the sun, yet you loved me like the eclipse," he whispered, his voice as soft and fleeting as a memory. Sunday stood before you, his eyes dimmed, the navy blue pupils lost in a sea of unshed tears. His halo flickered faintly, its once vibrant glow now a trembling reminder of his fractured divinity.

You couldn't look at him—not fully. To meet his gaze was to confront the truth you had both tried to outrun. So, instead, you focused on his trembling hands, gloved in black, clenched tightly at his sides. You remembered those hands as a refuge, their warmth steady even when his words faltered. Now, they were trembling barriers, guarding the chasm that had grown between you.

"I gave you my light, my constancy, my everything," he continued, his voice breaking as he took a tentative step closer. "And yet...you only came to me in the moments when your world was in shadow."

His wings fluttered, the feathers catching faint light as though they, too, were straining to hold him upright. You wanted to reach out, to say something—anything—but the words tangled in your throat like a knot you couldn’t untie.

"I never asked for more," he said, his tone sharpening with an edge of bitterness. "I knew what I was to you—a fleeting comfort, an illusion of peace. But even illusions have limits."

You flinched at his words, the truth of them cutting deeper than you’d thought possible. He wasn’t wrong. He had always been there, unyielding, while you drifted in and out, carried by tides of your own fear and longing. You had loved him, hadn’t you? Or was it simply the light he offered, the way it burned away the shadows you couldn’t face alone?

Sunday turned away, his shoulders taut with restrained emotion. His scarf fluttered, the golden underside catching the light like a thread of hope unraveling. "I loved you like the sun," he murmured again, the words more to himself now, "steady, unyielding, radiant. But you—"

He faltered, his voice cracking as the weight of his emotions bore down. When he spoke again, it was quieter, a whisper trembling with sorrow. "You loved me like the eclipse—beautiful, fleeting, only when it was convenient to forget the rest of the world."

His words crushed you, their truth unbearable. You had basked in his warmth, his constancy, without realizing how deeply you had wounded him by taking it for granted. And now, faced with the fragility of what you had shared, you could see the fractures you’d ignored all along.

"I didn’t mean to—" you began, but your voice broke under the weight of your guilt.

He turned to face you again, his eyes glistening, filled with a sadness so profound it stole the air from your lungs. "I know," he said softly, a faint, weary smile gracing his lips. "You never meant to. But intention doesn’t erase the pain, does it?"

For a moment, silence stretched between you, vast and aching. The tension in his wings softened, and his halo steadied, though its glow was dim. He reached out, his hand hovering just inches from yours. It trembled, caught between yearning and restraint, before finally retreating.

"I need to let go," he whispered. "For both of us. Maybe, one day, we’ll find the balance we never could before. But not like this. Not now."

And with that, he turned away, his steps light but unyielding. You watched as he disappeared into the distance, his presence fading like the final rays of a setting sun. All that remained was the echo of his voice and the crushing realization that you had loved him too late.

Inspired by me generating random quotes in my head while I brush my teeth in the morning 😇🫶

Expect more angst in the future lol

[mxigo]

i remember everything (wish i didn't, but i do) | part 2

SERIES SYNOPSIS: logan saved the timeline, but the consequence is that he doesn't remember anything after 1973. now back in 2023, he has missed 50 years of history. including any history of your relationship with him.

WARNINGS: 18+, angst, swearing

WORD COUNT: 2.02k

MINORS & AGE-LESS BLOGS DO NOT INTERACT. YOU WILL BE BLOCKED. YOUR AGE MUST BE SOMEWHERE IN YOUR BIO OR YOUR BYF.

SERIES MASTERLIST | NEXT CHAPTER

The next few hours were a blur. After falling apart on the bathroom floor, you somehow were able to get yourself into the shower, albeit the water was scorching hot, and you once again ended up on the floor. It was only when the room became so hot that you couldn’t breathe did you finally shut the water off and uncurl from around yourself.

You still didn’t feel the same after changing into some lounge clothes, lying on his side of the bed and staring out into nothingness. The room felt too dark, too empty, too hollow. Even though all of his belongings were still here, it was now just your room.

Another stuttering breath left you as you realize that it felt like he died instead of just forgetting you, but he might as well have.

How were you going to explain this to anyone? Oh yeah, this Logan wasn’t the Logan that you’d come to love wholly and completely with every fiber of your being. He wasn’t the Logan that you’ve just spent the past four years with. He wasn’t the one that held you during your darkest moments, or let you shine during your brightest. He wasn’t the one that still managed to make every day a surprise.

And he won’t be ever again.

A gentle knock on your door pulled you out of your stupor. You don’t answer, but the door opened anyways. A soft shadow blurred out the hallway lights, but you didn’t have to turn around to be able to guess who it was.

You still didn’t say anything as she entered your room and shut the door behind her. Even though your back was to her, you could still see the look of pity on her face as she slowly approached you, settling at the edge of the mattress by your feet.

A hand came up and rested itself on your calf. “I’m sorry about what’s happened to Logan. I can’t even begin to imagine the kind of pain that you’re going through right now, Halo.”

“Please, Jean, I just wanna be alone,” you begged, pulling the sheets tighter around yourself.

A beat passed before she spoke again.

“I know, but friends don’t let friends wallow in misery. Besides, there’s a frozen strawberry margarita and queso from Louie’s with your name on it in the kitchen.”

A watery laugh left you, some tears making their escape as you finally sat up, wiping them away. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Jean.”

“Probably rot away in here until the end of time.”

“Probably,” you sighed, peeling away the sheets.

It was late, so you didn’t bother changing out of your lounge clothes just to go the kitchen. The two of you didn’t run into anyone on the way down thankfully. The lights were on, and sure enough, a to-go back from Louie’s sat on the kitchen counter with your name sharpened on the side of it.

You wasted no time settling into a stool and diving into the bag, pulling out the margarita and the still hot styrofoam cup of queso, along with a brown bag of tortilla chips. Despite not actually being there with Logan, you guess this would have to suffice as your after-mission treat.

Jean had chosen the stool next to you, occasionally picking a chip out of the bag to snack on. It was quiet for a few moments while you slurped down your frozen drink before you broke the silence.

“So…Did you see him yet?”

Jean’s eyes snapped over to you, surprised that you brought him up.

“I did. He had just woken up and came into the professor’s office. He was looking around like everything was new, like he was surprised to be where he was. He still looks the same, obviously, but it’s like he holds himself completely differently now. It’s hard to explain without seeing him.”

You hummed in acknowledgement, bringing a cheesy chip to your mouth. Jean looked at you for a moment, a look passing over her face before it disappeared, deciding to redirect her focus to the outside. You were about to ask another question before you heard heavy footsteps coming down the hallway, and like a cruel joke, Logan walked past the doorway.

Speak of the devil.

He stopped dead in his tracks once he realized the kitchen wasn’t empty, back tracking just a couple steps to stand in the doorway. He was dressed in his signature leather jacket and t-shirt, holding the keys to his bike in one hand. You assumed that he just came back from a bike ride.

You brave yourself to meet his eyes, but instead of them looking back, they’re looking just next to you. Confused, you look to your right and realize that Jean’s looking right back, unblinking with a look on her face.

“Jean.”

“Logan.”

It had completely escaped you how this Logan’s Jean had been dead for years, and since he had never met you, of course his feelings for Jean had never waned after all this time. He was looking at her like he used to look at you.

Your margarita suddenly soured in your mouth, and the rest of your meal became completely unappetizing. Instantly your stomach began to roil, and all your once hidden feelings of inferiority began to rear their ugly heads. It’s only once you pushed the cup away and abandoned it to leave did Logan turn his attention towards you, meeting your eyes. It’s almost comical how fast you turned breathless and mindless, unable to think about a damn thing to say to him, but what could you say?

You mumbled a thanks to Jean before high tailing it towards the only entrance in and out of the kitchen where Logan was still standing. You kept your eyes trained on the floor while you walked, but in a moment of weakness, you let your eyes flick up to him. You expected him to still be staring at Jean, but it startled you to find that he was looking down at you with an indiscernible look on his face as you all but pushed past him.

If Jean called out to you, you didn’t hear it, focusing only on getting back up to your room to wallow in grief again. You were so stupid to think that this Logan would look passed Jean as he had in the past. She died before he ever could. So now that she was here, and he had her, of course he would overlook you and look towards her.

You never had a chance.

~

Logan watched as you fled all the way down the hall before disappearing around a corner, and he still listened as you flew up the stairs before letting your bedroom door snick shut. He let his eyes drop to the floor as he thought about your face just then in the kitchen, completely frozen at the sight of him. Your wide eyes were frozen on him like you saw a ghost, and he guessed that you sort of did.

He's brought back to reality as he heard Jean sigh, getting up from her seat in the kitchen. She picked up the leftover food before throwing them into the bag and throwing all of it away, brushing her hands on her pants. He still stood in the doorway as she approached and had no choice but to stop in front of him.

“Do you really have no memory of who she is?” she asked, letting her eyes drift up to his.

Wordlessly, Logan shook his head, dropping his eyeline to the ground. “No, but I know that I should.”

“Yeah. Listen, Logan, I know that things are drastically different for you now, and that you probably feel like you’re just floating with nowhere to go, but Halo was probably the one person that you let yourself truly attach to. And there’s a reason for that.”

Then she left, leaving Logan speechless alone in the kitchen.  He shook his head and sighed, rubbing his face as he continued his way up to his room. This was a mess. Everything was a mess. This entire day was spent trying to figure out what his place was in this new present, and he had been left with little to no answers. Sure, he still had mostly the same relationships with people with just small variances in them, but two of the biggest were completely different to him. It was still a punch to the gut every time he saw Jean, completely taken away by seeing her in the flesh when he had only seen her in his dreams. And you…he had no clue how to navigate.

While he made no outright effort to find you, he still kept an open eye wherever he went in case he did see you. He was curious to the kind of person that could have made him forget about pursuing Jean, especially since she was still alive here. You were much different than Jean, at least from what it looked like, and damn it he wanted to know more.

He had just made it to the stairwell when he heard one of the back doors slammed shut, rattling the walls. It was late and a school night, so there was really only one guess to who was going outside at this time. It took only a single look up the stairs before Logan decided to follow, dropping his keys into his pocket.

As soon as he took his first step outside, he already picked up your scent, leading out into the forest that lined the back part of the school’s property. It wasn’t hard to follow where you had been, and it didn’t take long before he came to the other edge of the forest. When he broke through the tree line, he was taken aback by the sight of a large lake spanning at least a couple of miles. The rocky shore was stunning, and the surface of the lake was so still it was almost eerie.

His head snapped to his right when a sniffle broke the serenity, finding you with your arms wrapped around your legs, staring out at the lake, but not really seeing. In the moonlight, he could see twin tear tracks on your splotchy red cheeks.

Taking a quick breath, he searched for the words that he could say to you as he approached, but you beat him to it.

“She was right,” you mumbled when he was near enough. Your eyes were still staring into nothing across the water.

He stopped just ten feet from you, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

“Who was right about what?”

“Jean. She was right about how even though you’re physically still our Logan, it’s like there’s a stranger wearing your skin.”

You picked up a rock next to you, taking a cursory glance at it before skipping it across the lake, breaking the glass surface.

“I feel like I’m wearing someone else,” he answered, keeping his eye on the last of the ripples.

Your head turned slightly to let your eyes look up at him.

“Even though I’m technically still the same person, everyone is slightly different. Their pasts are different, so they’re not the same from the people that I knew. It’s difficult gauging people because I already expect one thing, but then a curveball is thrown at me, and I don’t know what to do with it. But you, on the other hand,” he paused, letting his eyes drop to meet yours, “are someone completely new.”

You broke contact first, dropping your eyes back to the stony shore.

“God’s greatest joke,” is all you said before pushing yourself up.

You shoved your hands in your pockets and started the walk back to the mansion wordlessly, but Logan was just a handful of feet behind you the entire time. He didn’t bother making conversation, thank God, you thought, only keeping his distance as your shadow until you were safely in your room for the night.

taglist: @facelessfionna (if I didn't tag you, it's because you are either underage, or there is no age posted on your profile)

[solspina]

Halos are for Angels

mephiston ⋆˙⟡

solspina is mephiposting as a little treat what a surprise

attacked by a mutant and pinned down somewhere she doesn't want to be, reader is hesitantly rescued by a black-winged angel many dread meeting.

word count: 1.9k

warnings: blood, mentions of injury, general 40k stuff

The cheers from the people of Baal were always deafening, and they always screamed the golden one’s praises.

They sung his name as if he were a divine savior, a messiah, beautiful and glorious. Perfect and untainted and everything in between.

“O’ Sanguinor, O’ Sanguinor!”

The Sanguinor was perfect. The eulogy was beyond deserved.

And so was the contempt, the incrimination of its counterpart. The black angel was everything the Sanguinor wasn’t, everything he couldn’t be. While the Sanguinor was golden and pristine, the black angel was made of ivory skin and breakable bones. One was faultless and one was flawed. One was revered and the other was shunned.

And this was the truth of what he would always b-

A muffled scream tore the lord of death away from his thoughts in an instant.

He’d assumed for a moment that he’d accidentally trampled or stepped on some poor baseline in his absentminded walking through a tribe, but a quick assessment of the area and the clear view of sand underneath his armored boots said otherwise.

His concern grew rather quickly as he searched the surrounding area with his enhanced sight, only to eventually find an incredibly small baseline thrashing and panicking as she remained caged underneath one of baal’s many mutants. It loomed over her, its acidic breath quite clearly blinding her - helping it weaken her struggle - and its mandibles sharpening against themselves as it threatened to pierce a vital organ. One of its sharp appendages had already found a home in the flesh of her shoulder.

He watched her eyes dart around Baal's barren landscape until her gaze locked onto his frame in the near distance, and her tiny baseline hand reached out toward Mephiston. As she stared at him with panicked eyes, he broke free from his confusion and sighed, lifting his boot and stomping it into the ground as to attract the mutant’s attention.

Psychic black wings sprouted from his back, and he ascended into the air with a single thunderous beat before he closed the distance between himself and the altercation faster than the eyes of both inferior beings could fathom. Vitarus rather quickly plunged itself into mutant flesh, ripping and tearing vitae away from its host as it penetrated a sad excuse for mutant skin over and over until the creature's pained noises were just as hoarse as the baseline's screams had become.

The human let out a second, much raspier scream as the mutant fell to the ground. it's mandible ripped from the gaping wound in her shoulder, and the stench of burning dead mutant filled the air as Vitarus exalted itself from its filthy corpse one last time. Both the sight and scent were putrid even to the Lord of Death, but better a dead mutant than a living one.

She sobbed as he approached and her tears mixed in streaks with the dust of Baal on her cheeks. With desperate effort she attempted to scramble away but could not move her arm without immense, searing pain. Regardless of whether or not she wanted to flee the savior she had prayed for, the agony was too great to bear and she winced with every slight contraction of muscle.

“I- I’m sorry my lord, please don’t-“ She stammered, eyes wide with fear and voice filled with choked desperation as Mephiston's much larger body cast a shadow over her.

He placed a single one of his fingers over his lips in a silencing yet deliberate gesture before crouching down and igniting his hand with warp energy. His gaze never left her eyes as he brought his hand closer to her bleeding shoulder, and her breath hitched at the idea of the oncoming pain soon to flood her wound.

The agonizing pain she had expected, though, was instead a feeling of soothing warmth accompanied by a soft hum emitting from the hand that touched almost delicately where she had been hurt. She watched in horror, or perhaps awe, as her flesh began to mend itself underneath the touch of her savior.

He said not a word as her sobs of pain faded into soft hiccups and the searing sensation upon her skin became nothing more than light tingling. When he finally withdrew his hand from her shoulder, she hesitated for a moment before testing her repaired limb - shocked to find that she could move without pain. The only evidence that remained was the blood staining her shirt and skin, both of which dried rather quickly under Baal's red sunlight.

"Thank you..." She blinked up at him, her tears still glistening in the corners of her eyes, but her gaze held nothing more than gratitude.

“You need not thank me.” Mephiston replied, taking note of her absence of fear. “Let us get you home. I have no more time to stall.”

His expressionless face and monotone replies came in great contrast to her newfound bubbly and vibrant demeanor. Despite this, she followed him without hesitation the moment he turned from her and began the short walk back to the village in which she resided.

She dug through her bag as the two of them walked. Mephiston took long and purposeful strides in front as she trailed hurriedly behind in order to keep his pace. In her fingers, she worked hastily with a small bundle of flowers she had retrieved from a small compartment in a bag she carried with her. Occasionally, she gazed up at the lord of death to make sure he had not turned to question her or view the object in her minuscule baseline hands.

Oblivious to the mortal behind him, Mephiston contemplated for a moment how a baseline had managed to get this far without anyone noticing her disappearance. Tribes on Baal were typically exceptional at keeping track of their members, especially considering the loss of one could mean a complete shift in the way of life for many. There would be a new role to fill, a family without a mother or daughter, a meal that could be distributed to those left hungry or sick. Her survival was a mystery almost as much as her unnoticed disappearance was, and a piece of him felt incredibly fortunate that his absentminded stroll had led him directly to her before something more catastrophic could have occurred. One thing he knew for certain, though, was the feint scent of the flowers she carried. He hoped she had not been so foolish as to come into the wilderness seeking them and them alone.

It hadn’t been long before the village came into view again. It stood safe and close enough for the baseline following behind Mephiston to return home without his immediate assistance, but far enough that the two of them were not yet visible amongst the irradiated desert haze.

“Not far now.” Mephiston spoke before turning to face the tiny mortal behind him. “Should be close enough for you to go on your own-“

In her hands she held a large ring of flowers, all carefully tied together in elaborate knots at their stems until they had formed a perfect circle. Her arms were extended, as if she were offering him her creation. The flowers did not have terribly much variety - none of Baal's flora did - but the Lord of Death still stood quite stunned at how many of them this baseline had managed to safely gather and keep in good condition.

“What’s this?” He asked, as he raised a curious eyebrow to convey interest in the item.

“A flower crown! You wear it on your head!” She exclaimed, her eyes lit with innocence and excitement at the opportunity to present him with a gift.

Mephiston reached out to take the circlet of flowers from the baseline’s hand, but hesitated for a moment before he pulled his hand back inward and rested it at his side. “I am no royalty, baseline.” He claimed, stern but not unkind.

“Hmm,” She hummed and dropped her head in disappointment. Her expression fell for only a moment before her eyes lighting up near immediately “A flower halo, then, since you’re one of the emperor’s angels!”

“More fitting, I suppose.” He replied before extending his hands again to grab the halo that she quickly snatched away. A playful grin teased at her lips as she looked him in his deep and sunken eyes.

“Can I…?" She began.

“You are asking me to kneel?” He asked, and earned a small nod from her. His eyebrows arched in mild surprise at both the implication and the audacity. “I cannot-“

“I won’t tell a soul, my lord.” She promised, eyes still sparkling with genuine excitement and something akin to honor.

He sighed and shook his head as a slight hint of embarrassment flashed briefly across his usually stoic features. With a deep breath, he dropped to one knee and then onto the other. His armor purred underneath his robe as his knees moved to touch the sands of Baal. He bowed his head to a height that was within reach of the baseline in front of him, and the humility he felt clawed at his very soul.

She took only one tentative step forward before he heard her nervous hummingbird heart start pounding with nervousness, and he felt the delicate flowers make contact with his scalp. The halo was a perfect fit, as was the tenderness he felt in her gaze as he raised his head to resume eye contact with her. Without a word or warning, she gently cupped both sides of his gaunt face and pressed her lips delicately against his own.

She backed away near immediately, a mischievous smile covering her face as she bowed deeply to him before giggling at his stunned state, With a sudden burst of energy, she turned and began to sprint back to the village before he regained awareness of what had occurred.

Mephiston still sat kneeling in the sand, but his jaw had fallen slack, and his lips slightly parted to reveal the tips of fangs that hid behind them. He had not felt this many uncontrolled thoughts race through his mind since he had crossed the rubicon primaris.

He had been kissed?

The moment his thoughts finally settled, it had become his turn to allow a rare smile at something. For a moment, the Lord of Death swore he had felt his heart become a little softer, and though he hated feeling surprised he did not feel that this in particular was unwelcome. He wondered if Sanguinius had heard his mind's silent pleas for a taste of what the Sanguinor experienced from baselines. Perhaps even the angel knew that it would not be unfair to allow him this one small kindness.

She turned her head over her shoulder to face him one last time as she walked away, and he allowed his eyes to emit their powder blue light as he spoke into the warp, a silently whispered "I hope we meet again" that he prayed she too could hear.

Solspina's Scribellum✎ (❁ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈) ༉‧ ♡*.✧

@astrohymn @moodymisty @undeaddream

@kit-williams @lemon-russ @egrets-not-regrets

(please comment to be added/removed from my taglist !!)

[mermaidgirl30]

✨On My Knees for You✨

Dbf! Joel Miller x fem! reader

A/N: I’ve been wanting to do a fic for a while that was all about making Joel Miller feel good. So thank you to @lotusbxtch and @mountainsandmayhem for feeding me ideas and letting me scream with you about this one 🩵 I wrote this one for my Halloween writing event!

This is a one-shot for my series Daddy’s Best Friend, Mr. Miller. It takes place a little over a year into their relationship. I hope you enjoy these two love birds! Thank you to @mountainsandmayhem for beta reading 🩵

Summary: You’re supposed to be getting ready for a Halloween party, but maybe you’ll just have to be late because all you can think about is getting on your knees and making Joel Miller feel so good.

Rating: Explicit 18+ only MDNI

Word Count: 3.6k

Tags: Porn with plot, getting ready for a Halloween party, angel and devil couples costumes, cock/ball worshipping, deepthroating, dirty talking, pet names, use of daddy, no use y/n, age gap (reader late 20’s, Joel late 40’s), teasing

Dividers by @saradika-graphics

Sparkles shimmer across your light pink eyeshadow, sprinkling down your glowing cheeks. Dark red lipstick stains your lips a cherry-coated color. The black eyeliner that’s sharpened into pointy cat eyes makes your eyes pop under the fluorescent lights of the bathroom. Your hair spirals into perfect waves as you adjust the halo that sits atop the crown of your head. With one more spritz of cotton candy perfume, you’re ready for the Halloween party.

   When you exit the bathroom, you linger in the full-length mirror, adjusting the feathery wings that lay flat against your back. You circle slowly, examining your lacey angel costume for the Halloween party. One that Joel was taking you to, even if he wasn’t normally one to get excited to dress up or participate in Halloween parties. He was doing it for you. Plus, you might’ve got Tommy and Maria to convince him to go. 

   He eventually gave in after a few times of pressing, but he’d never say no to you. He was always going to go, if that’s what you wanted. Because he loves you and would do just about anything for you, even wear matching couples costumes. One an angel, the other a devil.

   You giggle as you think of the events that unraveled over the past few months. Joel Miller, your father’s best friend, the man who was off-limits to you for so long was now your boyfriend. It was all a silly little flirting game until it wasn’t. All that changed when he gave in and kissed you under his living room lights a little over a year ago. Back when he gave you that handsy guitar lesson that turned into crowding your body and fucking you relentlessly into the leather of his couch. 

   You still remember it so clearly. Just like it was yesterday. His plush lips nipping at your delicate neck, licking flames into your sweat-coated skin. His meaty hands teasing up your thighs, enticing words making you give in, his smoldering eyes lighting you on fire as he slipped two fingers beneath your drenched lace. And then, you were gone. 

   And now? The two of you were unstoppable, unbreakable. Two flames that couldn’t burn without the other. He was your favorite part of every day. Your infinite. Even if your father wasn’t thrilled when he found out, he eventually came around. And now, Joel Miller was all yours.

   The almost sheer mini skirt barely grazes the tops of your thighs, your thigh-high shimmering tights teasing your tanned skin. The white satin corset hugs your curves tightly, silk ribbon spilling underneath your pushed-up breasts, sparkly heels flashing diamonds under the dim lights of Joel’s room.

   He’s going to absolutely lose it when he sees you in this sexy getup. Especially when he gets a peek at your new lacey white panties. The ones you’re hoping he’ll rip off later tonight. 

   You hear him shuffling around downstairs, truck keys jangling by the front door, leather boots making their way toward the staircase. Suddenly, you have the best idea. A little Halloween treat to satisfy his hunger. The kind of surprise that’ll leave him tongue tied and speechless.

   You perch yourself on the edge of the bed, letting the navy comforter pull up your mini skirt higher, almost exposing your brand new lingerie. You arch your back, lean against your hands and wait with bated breath for him to find you all splayed out just for him. Like a present he’ll get to savor over and unwrap slowly.

   You can’t wait to see his reaction. 

   His heavy footsteps shake beneath the wooden steps, voice deep and booming as he shouts up to the bedroom. “Baby, you almost ready? Think Tommy’s gonna beat us there.”

   “Mhm. Can you come here for a second? Need a little help with something,” you call out, pushing your breasts together so he gets the best view of your sexy Halloween costume. 

   It was your idea to go as an angel this year, and Joel chose to be a handsome devil. And God, he was handsome alright. Even if he chose to wear his favorite green flannel and dark blue jeans. He pulled it off just fine with red devil horns and a glowing pitchfork.

   Two more steps and he’s turning right into the room, his broad body filling the expanse of the doorframe. “Okay, sweetheart. But we gotta… go.” He freezes in the doorway, wide brown eyes gawking at you as his mouth drops to the floor. 

   And… jackpot. 

   “Surprise,” you say in a lilty voice, biting your bottom lip to tease him even more. Get the blood pumping in just the right places.

   “Baby, you’re—you’re…” He drops the plastic pitchfork to the floor with a bang, his mouth hanging open like a thirsty hound dog. 

   “What? Cat got your tongue?” you tease, sliding your heels along the grey carpet, eyefucking him while you lick your bottom lip enticingly slow. 

   That does it right there. You can see it in his glassy brown irises. He’s done for.

   “Jesus Christ, sweetheart. That outfit. It’s—fuck,” he replies, voice husky and shaky from your relentless teasing.

   “You like it?” You cock your head and give him a sexy smirk, eyelashes fluttering his way.

   He takes a step inside the room and drags a palm over his patchy beard slowly, his eyes gliding down your body like he’s memorizing every single inch of you. “Baby, I don’t like it. I love it. Never seen such a pretty angel look so sexy before. You’re fuckin’ gorgeous, you beautiful girl.”

   “Bought it just for you. And these…” You slowly spread your legs, exposing the lacy panties that are now slick and wet from anticipation of him seeing you.

   He audibly groans, curses under his breath as he takes a few steps forward, mouth dropped as his eyes slide over your core.

   “Don’t you dare start that. Don’t you fuckin’ dare,” he growls, his towering body hovering over yours like he’s about to pin you down on the bed. “‘Cause if you do, we ain’t leavin’ this house for another hour.”

   You lift your leg and push him back with your bedazzled heel, making him back up a few steps so you can slide down to the floor. He looks at you with questions swirling in his caramel pools, one eyebrow arching as he watches you get on all fours. He mutters a curse under his breath when he realizes what you’re doing.

   You’re teasing the hell out of him.

   “I just want to do one thing first,” you whisper, voice low as you start to crawl toward him, dragging your hands and knees unhurriedly, clawing the soft carpet until you’re right beneath his looming form.

   Your hands languidly snake up his legs, fingernails digging into the denim of his jeans, leisurely making your way to the jagged zipper.

   “Baby…” he mutters, choking out when you start palming him through his jeans. 

   “Joel,” you smirk, working his hard length through the material of his blue jeans. You’re basically drooling at the feel of his thick bulge against the palm of your hand. Can already tell how badly he wants you. 

   God, it makes more slick run down the gusset of your white lace. 

   “We’re gonna be late,” he breathes heavily as you pop his top button open and lazily drag the zipper down.

   “So, we’ll be late,” you whisper, smiling up at him while you bite your bottom lip seductively. Your hands pull his leather belt through the belt loops, and then you start to shimmy his jeans and black boxers down to the ground.

   He places a hand swiftly on yours and halts you before you go any further. “You’re gonna ruin your pretty red lipstick, sweetheart,” he tries to warn, his chocolate eyes growing darker by the second. 

   “Then let me ruin it.” You push him down into the light brown lounge chair and tug his jeans and boxers down, his cock springing free of the confines of the tight material. You gasp when you see how hard and swollen and thick he is. He looks like a fucking work of art. Art that you want to devour.

   “Goddamn it,” he groans as you work his length up and down, hand wrapped around the base of his cock. Sliding the precum that bubbles over his swollen red tip up and down his shaft. Just the way he likes it. 

   “Let me make you feel good, daddy,” you beg, teasing your tongue over the head of his cock and running it slowly over the slit. He groans as you taste his salty precum. “Wanna taste you, swallow you, choke on you.”

   “Yeah?” he croaks, one hand pushing a strand of hair behind the shell of your ear. “My pretty girl wants to choke on me?”

   “Mhm,” you hum, licking up the underside of his cock, tongue gliding over the large vein that wraps around his thick length. “Choke me, handsome devil. Wanna gag on your fat cock.”

   He grips the back of your hair roughly and pulls hard, forcing your eyes up to meet his deep black pits. But the way he’s smiling at you, a playful smirk curling over his plush mouth, tells you he’s letting you take control just as much as he is. “C’mere then. Be a good girl and wrap those pretty lips around daddy’s cock,” he chuckles darkly. You happily oblige with a smirk.

   Taking your time, you kiss up the length of him, languidly flicking and swirling your tongue in circles against his angry tip. You giggle when he curses under his breath and audibly gasps when you take him deep in your mouth. Bobbing your head up and down, you take him deeper and deeper. Until your nose is hitting his coarse, wiry hairs at the base of him, sputtering and choking as his tip kisses the back of your throat.

   “Fuckkk, baby,” he whimpers while his hand holds your curls back from getting in the way.

   You love to tease him, love to savor his salty flavor all over your tastebuds, let his seed run down the back of your throat when his orgasm bubbles over. You could do this all day. Get down on your knees while he takes you to church with his thick cock thrusting deep inside your throat. Being choked never felt or tasted so good. Not until Joel Miller showed up. Not until you got that first taste of him over a year ago. 

   You’re addicted, obsessed with making him feel good after he gets home from work. He always makes you feel good, so there’s nothing you love better than making him feel twice as good. He’s a good man, the best you’ve ever had. Now it’s your turn to show him just how much he means to you. 

   You gag around his hard cock, sputtering as you pull your mouth away, leaving behind a bead of drool that connects from your puffy lower lip and ends at his swollen tip. Your eyes are watery, mascara clumped on your wet eyelashes, and you feel how smeared your red lipstick is. But never mind that because Joel’s looking down at you like you’re the shiniest diamond in the world, pupils blown out and a cheeky grin plastered on his mouth.  

   “Feel good, daddy?” you ask, hand sliding in smooth motions over his massive cock, tongue licking at the bottom of one of his balls while you continue to fist him up and down, smearing more precum and drool in the process. 

   He hisses when you begin to suck, drool caking his skin while you start giving the other one attention with your other hand, squeezing and licking back and forth. “Yeah. Feels real good, babygirl. Makin’ daddy feel so good,” he moans while you massage his balls and work your tongue back up his shaft, leaving red lipstick marks all down his ballsack.

   You fucking love worshipping his cock, his balls, his everything. And you love the way he moans, bucks his hips when you deepthroat him, mutters out curses when he’s so close to coming undone. You savor his salty taste, memorize his guttural groans, praise the way he moans your name when he’s thrusting deep inside your throat. 

   You just love him. And you love making the man cum.

   Deciding to tease him more, you flick your tongue in tantalizing circles, right over his most sensitive spot where his slit pumps more precum out. 

   “Babygirl,” he warns in a husky voice, a deep growl biting at the edge of his throat. 

   “Yes, daddy?” you ask innocently, batting your long eyelashes up at the love of your life. 

   “I’m gonna need ya to stop teasin’ me, darlin’,” he murmurs, eyes slightly narrowed. 

   You giggle, popping him out of your mouth for just a second to catch your breath. “Or what?” you challenge, hoping he’ll catch on or give you what you both want. 

   “You know what,” he smirks, his fingers tangling around your loose curls tightly and drawing you closer. 

   You tick your head to the side and smirk while he matches your fiery stare. He wants it just as badly as you do because you fucking love to swallow him. “Is the big bad devil going to choke me?”

   “Mhm. That’s right, angel. The devil’s gonna choke you alright.” He pushes your head down until your lips are molded to his cock, driving you down down down until you’re gasping for breath. When he brings you back up for air, he has the biggest shit-eating grin on his mouth you’ve ever seen.

   “Look at you. Fuckin’ droolin’ and makin’ a mess on my cock, babygirl,” he smirks, pupils blown wide as he takes in your tear-soaked face. 

   “Mhm. Your mess,” you breathe out with a gasp. 

   He chuckles and nods his head, his tousled curls now messy and disheveled against his sweat-drenched forehead. “That’s right, love. My mess,” he smiles, his light brown irises glistening under his blown-out pupils. “Wanna deepthroat me, sweetheart?”

   You nod up at him with tired eyes, wanting nothing more than to make him cum. “Yes, daddy,” you mewl. 

   “That’s my good girl,” he praises. 

   You settle your palms on his strong thighs, hovering just above his swollen tip. He repositions his hand and fists your hair gently, slowly pulling you back down until you’re sliding your pursed lips over his thick length, taking in his deep musk that masks the stifling air. 

   Taking a deep breath, you get in position and let him work you up and down his length, his hips starting to rut up until he’s fucking your mouth at a rapid pace. You hollow your cheeks, suck him deeper as he thrusts his cock in and out, making you gurgle and gag around his thick width.

   “Jesus Christ, takin’ me like such a good girl. Feels—fuck. Feels good, baby. You still okay?” he chokes out, sweat beading down his tanned forehead as you squeeze his thigh and look up at him through watery eyes. The signal you give him to show him you’re just fine.

   “I’m so… goddamn it. Need to feel you,” he groans, fucking his cock deeper down your throat. As deep as he can go without suffocating you. You just take it, let him pull your hair forcefully, let him hear just how full of him you are, let him use you to get the release he deserves.

   “I’m ’bout to… ‘bout to cum. Ahhhh fuck. Right there. I’m right fuckin’ there,” he moans, throwing his head back as he fucks your throat relentlessly.

   The room starts to spin like a tornado as he shoves you down, deepthroating you as much as you can take. Drool coats your chin. Sputtering, obscene noises fill the room as your throat constricts around his fat cock. You have to breathe through your nose to get any airflow because you’re suffocating.

   Your vision blackens, throat so full of drool and his cock that you think you’ll pass out. Think you might just see heaven’s gates before Joel orgasms. 

   Just when you think you’re done for, Joel’s guttural groans pull you out of the fog. Your nose nudges against his coarse hair, lips molded around his huge width, throat open and squeezing around him as tears stream down your ruined face. 

   “That’s it. Good girl. Good fuckin’ girl. Want you—want you to swallow,” he moans, fingers locked tight in your hair, pulling your head down until you feel him start to spill.

   “Right there. Right—ahhhh fuck.” He’s coming undone, hot ropes of cum leaking down your throat. That salty taste that makes you cross your eyes and suck him down.

   You can’t feel anything but his seed coating your throat,  cum spilling over your smeared red lips, drool caking your chin and sliding down his balls. He’s fucking wrecked. Just like you are. 

   You stay right there, hands firmly on his thighs, lapping up the delicious salt of him until he’s slowly coming back down from his high. And then you’re slowly getting pulled off his long length, drool coating his softening cock.

   You sputter out, coughing violently from being choked by Joel’s thick cock. His large hand glides between your shoulder blades, trying to help you swallow it all down, get ahold of yourself once more. And when you finally feel like you can breathe the stifling air, you collapse against his thigh, cheek pressed against tanned skin as you focus on deep breaths.

   You feel his hand gently massage the back of your scalp, rubbing light circles on the crown of your head as he whispers for you to relax. It feels good. Feels relaxing when he’s caressing you like this. Like you’re his best girl. 

   You are his best girl.

   “Easy now, baby. Jus’ breathe. Did so good for me,” he coos, fingers lacing through your now messy curls. You know you’re a fucking mess, but you just don’t care. 

   “Did I make you feel good, daddy?” you ask, speech a little slurred and voice hoarse from deepthroating Joel.

   He lifts your chin up, index finger and thumb stroking your skin, starting a warm flame kindling in your body. When you lift your eyes, you’re met with warm, syrupy eyes. Eyes that you fell in love with the moment you saw them that first day at the lake.

   His smile is so warm, so big. He looks like he has stars in his brown eyes the way he’s looking at you. All in love while his thumb caresses lovingly against your cheek. “Mhm. Made daddy feel real good, pretty girl,” he grins, eyes shimmering like onyx under the dim lights. 

   God, you love this man.

   “Yeah?” you ask, giggling when he leans down and gets right at eye level with you, a huge smile curling over his plush mouth.

   “Yeah,” he confirms, pushing a loose curl behind your ear before he pulls you into his broad body. His lips crash against yours. His whiskey taste serenading your tongue, woodsy scent making you heated and dizzy from the smell of him. He’s like a drug you can’t get enough of. Addicting and dangerous but yet bottled up with love and care. 

   When he pulls away from you, he smirks, hand trailing down your breasts, going south until he’s trying to slide between your thighs. “Now, let me take care of this—”

   You stop him right there, shoving his hand away with a tsk. “We need to go, baby. We’ll be late.”

   “But I…”

   “Later,” you whisper into the shell of his ear, brushing your lips against warm skin and leaving a red lipstick mark on his cheek.

   He chuckles and nods, teasing his calloused fingers along the nape of your neck. “Alright, sweetheart. Jus’ know that when we get home tonight, I’m takin’ real good care of that pussy. Understand?” He gives you that look. The one that makes your skin tingle and clit pulse with need. You’re going to suffer through this entire Halloween party if he keeps teasing you like that. 

   “Understood, handsome. You going to do that one thing? You know, that special trick with your tongue. What do you call it? Tongue twister,” you giggle while he throws back his head and lets out a belly-aching chuckle. One that makes warmth bubble up inside you. You could listen to him laugh for hours. That melodic, carefree sound. You love to see him happy.

   He wipes off some of the drool and red lipstick on the sleeve of his flannel, laughing as he cleans you off. “You’re such a mess. You know that?”

   You give him a big toothy smile and nod. “Mhm. You love it, though.”

   He sighs and shakes his head, chuckling while he strokes his thumb under the bottom of your lip. “Mmm, yeah. I love you, pretty girl.”

   “I love you too, Joel,” you murmur, eyes glossy. You’re so in love. You give him a quick peck to the cheek and smile up at him, like he’s your entire world.

   He scoops you up off the floor and leads you to the bathroom, littering kisses up and down your jawline. “C’mon. Let’s get your cleaned up before we go. Don’t need ‘em knowin’ what we’ve been doin’ tonight,” he laughs. 

   After he cleans you off with a warm washcloth, you fix your costume and hair. Red lips glossy again, halo straight, wings flat against your back, corset back in place, miniskirt grazing your thighs. And then he takes your hand and leads you down the stairs, into his truck, and to the party.

   Halloween parties were always something you loved, but what you loved more was making Joel Miller, the love of your life, feel good. And that’s exactly what you did tonight. 

   You made his entire Halloween once again.

Tagging a few moots 🩵 @almostfoxglove @almostempty @magpiepills @sanarsi @ace-turned-confused

@aurorawritestoescape @milla-frenchy @mrs-hardy-hunnam-butler @sawymredfox @littlevenicebitch69 @alltheirdamn @burntheedges

[mariasont]

PART II: PORPHYRIA'S LOVER

this is what it means to love in verse and violence

part I -> part II -> part III -> part IV -> part V

pairings: spencer reid x fem!reader warnings: situationship, canon-type cm violence and case work, allusions to sex and intimacy, self-destructive behaviors, unhealthy relationship dynamics, angsty tone, mental health struggles, intense imagery, isolation and loneliness, dark themes wc: 2k

His coffee’s lukewarm again. Third cup this morning, though labeling it as coffee feels overly generous. At this point, it’s more sugar than substance, a thin attempt at stimulation that never quite lands. You’d scrunch your nose at the taste, make some comment about the sugar neutralizing the caffeine and rendering the whole thing pointless. He’d probably argue, lightly, just to keep you talking.

He drinks anyway, savoring the mild film it leaves on his tongue that expects nothing in return.

You’re not so different. You dissolve into him without protest, smoothing over the rough patches, sweetening the harsher aspects of himself. 

Too much of you, though, and the careful balance he’s cultivated tilts into oversaturation, saccharine overpowering. Too little, and he’s left choking on his own bitterness.

There was a time when Spencer shared your perspective. Your sweetness. Glass half-full, always leaning into the idea that cracks only existed to welcome in the light. Back when he still believed that love, if real enough, was self-correcting. But optimism has a shelf life. Eventually, even Spencer had to reconcile the math — that some men speak tenderly of love even when their own fingers pull it apart ruthlessly.

He’s made peace with the withholding. With absence. He’d rather starve quietly than risk feeding something that might sour and decay.

Spencer arranges the photos again, this time chronologically, even though he already knows the sequence. 

Strangulation, by nature, is a frenzied act, all instinct and survival reflected in torn skin, bruised wrists, evidence of a fight. But the first victim is almost pristine. Just a clean line marking her neck. She’s positioned by a fireplace, hands arranged on her lap, hair smoothed down one shoulder. 

The second victim was found in an office building — drowned, of all things. No signs of forced entry. Water everywhere but no source. Just a shallow tide spilled across the linoleum like the room itself had been weeping. Her shoes were placed beside her, toes pointed in. No one removes their shoes unless they’re prepared, perhaps resigned, to stay.

Different weapons. Same result. Same… message, maybe. Not a signature, not yet. But he’s beginning to resent the word posed. It’s misleading, making the victims seem complicit, like they participated willingly in their fates.

He pressed a finger to his temple. Maybe the pressure might shape his thoughts into something useful. By now, he should have been able to fortify his mind, sharpen it into a blade capable of slicing through ambiguity. Three crime scenes should be enough to construct a profile, at least a skeletal frame.

Instead, that same mind slips sideways, spiraling off into peripheral shadows. Fluid, slippery, resistant. 

Water, again — not from the ominous puddles beneath the victim, but from your shower, beading down your legs. 

You might have been laughing then, or something close, lips parted, eyes still half-lidded and misted with a post-coital softness that made everything feel slowed as if submerged in dreamlike currents he can’t quite surface from.

He had smelled like you. Still does, most days, though he pretends not to notice. Your shampoo permeated his skin, settling insistently into the dips and hollows around his collarbone, the shallow depression at the base of his throat, soaked into the towel strung low on his hips. His hair had responded to the humidity of your bathroom, small wet coils clinging to his forehead, collecting in shapeless halos at the edge of cotton.

He remembers you standing at the mirror, brushing your hair, towel sliding carelessly off one shoulder, bare skin blinking in and out of visibility like candlelight flickering through a crack in a door. He felt an odd impulse surge through him, an urge to take the brush from your fingers, to draw it through your hair himself. 

Not because it was romantic or tender, not really. Curiosity is what he had told himself. He wanted to see whether you’d permit it. 

You had paused just once when the comb snagged on a tangle at the base of your neck. One he’d unintentionally created. At the time, he thought that’s what stopped you. Now he’s not sure. Maybe you were just gathering nerve for the question that followed.

“Do you think people can love too much?”

It wasn’t the kind of question he wanted to hear, not while the water was still spinning down the drain, slow and reluctant, refusing to take the evidence of your bodies with it.

But it was early then, early enough that your question felt more whimsical than anything, a coin carelessly flicked into the murky depths of some emotional wishing well. You weren’t declaring love, he reminded himself, you were just inquisitive, endlessly prying, as though your very existence depended on the answers you coaxed from him. 

Spencer remembers feeling compelled to offer an answer. Said yes, of course. There’s clear precedent. Love can become pathological. It happens when boundaries dissolve, when the self erodes. When affection quietly turns corrosive, eating away at identity until you’re nothing but reflections and reactions, indistinct edges bleeding into one another. When you no longer know where you end and they begin, and the very essence of who you are seeps quietly, insidiously, into the cracks of someone else.

You took it as calmly as if he’d explained weather patterns or historical trivia. Filed it under things he knows. 

And maybe, just maybe, he had let himself believe, just for a moment, that the scenario wasn’t self-referential, that you didn’t see him reflected in his own explanation.

The question hadn’t mattered then. It shouldn’t matter now.

He folds the recollection methodically into quarters, presses down the corners, and files it deep in the cluttered mental drawer where dangerous ideas sit silently, gathering dust, too risky to revisit.

Focus.

Eventually, every theory and hypothesis the team offered became a messy swirl of symbolism, murder methodology, and microexpressions blending into confusion. Spencer jotted down most of it, cramping his writing smaller and smaller, margins overflowing on the yellow legal pad until the page felt claustrophobic. What didn’t land on paper lodged he remembered anyway. 

The others slowly filtered away. Spencer moved toward the break room though guided by some invisible force — coffee, always coffee — no thought required. You hovered close enough behind to stay in his peripheral awareness but far enough back to let him pretend it wasn’t intentional.

Settling into your customary places, you take a distracted bite of your sandwich.

“Do you ever randomly crave food you hate?” You glance sideways at him. Spencer arches an eyebrow just enough to let you know you have his attention. “I mean, I hate tuna. It’s objectively evil. Fishy and suspiciously moist. But today, I stood in line actually considering a tuna melt. Why would I do that?”

Spencer sees your words for what they are. An attempt to untangle his thoughts from themselves, and maybe untangle your own in the process.

He shrugs, coffee number four precariously balanced in his grip. “Neurological misfire, probably. Or you’re subconsciously punishing yourself. Guilt manifesting in questionable lunch choices.”

You stare at him. “Jesus, Spencer. Would it kill you to eat a fruit snack or something? Maybe your blood sugar is low.”

He takes a slow sip, looking at you pointedly over the rim. “You asked the question.”

You smile at this deadpan, biting off another piece of your sandwich. Automatically, stupidly, he smiles too. 

“Okay,” you say, wiping your fingers on a napkin, “if you had to eat one thing you hate every day for the rest of your life, what would it be?”

He blinks. “That’s grim.”

Hypocrite. You see it, he sees it. You generously keep quiet.

“I didn’t say you could also hate me for asking.” You poke his arm. He doesn’t feel it. 

He knows you’re joking. He understands that much. But paradoxes never sat well in his mind, especially when you were the variable causing contradictions. It would be impossible to hate you. He tries to engage in some detached intellectual exercise, constructing scenarios in which he might. A thought experiment. Replace your face. Alter your behavior. Force the conditions until dislike becomes plausible. 

But each attempt crumbles before completion, breaking apart as easily as wet paper.

Even in the iterations where your fingers don’t tap nervously along your collarbone when you’re uncertain. Even when he pictures your hip without that faint scar he’s mesmerized — traced with his fingertips, lips, tongue — or when your voice doesn’t lower just a little when you’re sleeping, murmuring things into your pillow. Worlds where you don’t absentmindedly draw constellations on the back of his hand with your fingertip, tracing patterns he knows from old astronomy texts.

Every imagined version of you remains stubbornly beyond his capacity to reject.

“Oatmeal.” 

He recognizes how inadequate it sounds, evasive and superficial. He was, after all, accustomed to cowardice, skilled at sidestepping sincerity. But sincerity wasn’t what you needed now. You needed something simple, an innocent distraction from a case filled with victims who carried a resemblance to everything you saw in the mirror.

Oatmeal, then. Bland, devoid of flavor, with a texture he quietly loathed despite its obvious nutritional value.

Survival was like that, rarely compatible with real desire, something he didn’t want to share aloud. 

So you both pushed through the drudgery of evidence and paperwork until reality became abstract and numbness set it. Routine anesthetic for minds that couldn’t afford anything else.

He checked his watch when the final file was closed, 11:47 PM. Late, but not unusual. You fell into step beside him, something comfortably habitual.

In the parking lot, he asked you to come over. You nodded. No reason to explain. Not at this hour.

It had been a few months earlier when you first stepped into his apartment, an impulse decision born entirely from anxiety the second your feet hit the tarmac after a long case.

He remembers deep puddles pooling unevenly over the cracked pavement suggesting sustained rainfall, likely three or four hours’ worth, judging by the water accumulation near the storm drains. Branches twisted in the wind, illuminated for seconds at a time under jaundiced streetlights, gusts easily over thirty miles per hour, perhaps more.

It’s ridiculous, really, how quickly his mind could picture your car hydroplaning, slick pavement robbing you of traction in seconds. 

His place was closer, less time navigating through storm-soaked roads, less opportunity for the worst-case scenarios he couldn’t stop picturing. 

So he’d blurted it out, awkwardly offering for you to come to his without fully processing it. Now, in hindsight, it’s strange how one unfiltered sentence had reshaped the trajectory of everything between you.

His apartment had always been intentionally solitary, crowded with details he preferred to keep private. A haven filled with half-read novels dog-eared in places he didn’t want to explain, a chess set he usually only played alone, coffee mugs accumulated from various cities.

Inviting you in was like handing over a map marked with all his hidden spots, giving you access to parts that felt vulnerable. If whatever you shared was supposed to stay purely physical, then he’d made a reckless miscalculation.

And it was instantaneous, the shift that occurred when your body met his mattress, an internal fracture that made your familiar contours feel foreign. How that night, the sex had felt different, colored by an intensity he couldn’t quite parse, emotions unfolding beneath the physical sensations in a way he hadn’t anticipated, still didn’t entirely grasp.

He still feels the rush of your breath blending onto his, can picture shadows spreading across naked skin in restless waves of ink-black darkness, but he obscures the small details — how long he held you afterward, or exactly what color your eyes became beneath the lamp light. 

But what Spencer remembers in almost startling clarity, is how perfectly the storm ended, thunder quieting as if timed to the exact moment your bodies fell apart, undone and intertwined in synchronicity.

And later, when you slipped out around one, he absorbed the deafening silence, baffled by how something so intangible could feel louder than the storm had ever been. 

Tonight, you didn’t leave. Shoes discarded by the door.

Again, Spencer lay awake while you slept, suspended uncomfortably between vigilance and awe. He couldn’t bring himself to look away from you, anxious that if he blinked, you might vanish, evaporate like a delicate mirage from the safety of his sheets.

This wasn’t part of the plan. You weren’t supposed to be here. He’d promised himself boundaries, a clear line where your bodies met without emotional entanglement.

At exactly 3:02 AM, he swallowed two advils, bitter on his tongue, washed down by tepid water that tasted of stale resignation.

And all night long we have not stirred, / And yet God has not said a word / Porphyria's Lover.

part III

[hoosurdaddy]

Freedom.

Pairing: Love Quinn x reader, Joe Goldberg x reader.

Trigger warnings: manipulation, emotional cheating, power imbalance.

The bookstore smelled like old paper and rain when you met her —

A flash of sunlight in the doorframe, a halo of blonde hair, eyes like sharpened knives.

Love.

Joe introduced her stiffly, almost reluctantly, like someone presenting a loaded gun to a room full of candles.

“This is… an old friend,” he said.

But Love’s smile was wicked, a secret stitched behind her teeth.

You knew — deep down — she was anything but just a friend.

Later, when Joe disappeared into the back, Love stayed.

Leaning close across the counter, close enough you could smell her — vanilla, peaches, something electric and wrong.

“You don’t know him like I do,” she murmured, fingertips tracing lazy, invisible patterns over your wrist.

Her touch was featherlight but burned like a brand.

You opened your mouth to object — to defend Joe, to say he’s good to me, he’s different now — but Love only laughed, low and dangerous.

She leaned in until her breath kissed the shell of your ear.

“He’ll cage you,” she whispered.

“I’ll set you free.”

You shivered, instinct screaming, blood roaring in your ears — but you didn’t move away.

Instead, you tilted toward her without meaning to, like a flower leaning into the sun.

When Joe returned, a tight frown on his face, you were already lost.

Love’s hand brushed yours under the counter, her fingers entwining with yours — bold, possessive, like a promise.

Joe watched, helpless.

And you just smiled sweetly up at Love, heart hammering in your chest, knowing you would follow her anywhere.

Even if it destroyed you.

Especially if it destroyed you.

[leafydory]

Why Must You Fallen?

(Fallen Angel Sylus AU x Mysterious Reader)

(This is Part 1 of Many)

(Sylus Focused, but Caleb is part of the story, soon the others will be too :3 )

(2.9k words in length)

This is good, he had enough of it anyway, the judgement of eyes holy enough to sentence is fall. None even look back and question why him? Why not the others who snickered and chuckled under their obvious deceit. Framed and now meeting his end? No… His feathers may blacken… his eyes may darken like the damned but he was the one taking the control of his life. Gods are foolish to let their children have this control, now he will get his vengeance once and for all.

“Oh? Finally, I have found you—” a voice… of a woman, soft and concerned, trying to lift up his limp body. What a fool indeed… does this woman even understood whom she is helping? Yes, No, maybe so… His eyes closed to slumber, oddly enough he feels that this mortal woman may not bring him danger

Or so he thought.

“Tara are you sure this man is a fallen angel?” Your Nun Best friend Tara around to identify the man you lifted out in the middle of the hot dessert earlier, even if she’s a nun never was, she to snitch her best friend on her obvious illegal shenanigans, right?

“Isn’t it obvious already? The halo on top of his head despite shattered and darkened, without a mistake the structure of it, heaven born yet fallen” she confirmed glancing at you with a narrowed gaze “What are you planning this time? You came all away back here just to confirm if this man is actually a fallen angel… to me? I’m breaking the church rules here you know” Tara can only sigh in disbelief, what’s next? She doesn’t want to imagine… if you can hold a fallen angel, surely you can hold more creatures far worse.

“Oh, you know me, aren’t you curious what will happen if I do something with his blood? You’re going to see different forbidden liquor made by yours truly” you smirked, smug, huffing in pride, Tara can only raise an eyebrow in sudden amusement “Better show me. I wouldn’t be snitching the church for nothing after all” she chuckled, nudging your arm with a grin, both of you stare at the evident unconscious fallen angel on the ground

“Are you sure about this though? You know that they are dangerous…” you cut off Tara, holding her shoulder, It meant to reassure any of her worries “I’ll be fine, I’ve already anticipated everything” grinning, you messed her habit with a laugh “Anyways get out—I’ll take care of this one, get out before anyone knows you talk with a shady woman in a shady tent” you held her shoulders pushing her towards the exit of the tent snickering under your breath “Out OUT!”

Tara rolls her gaze away, even if she warns you so many times about the dangers and costs of this endeavors of yours, she knows you never give up in any opportunity you take, simply she let’s herself be kicked out of your shady tent, pretending to be offended “I’ll definitely tell the church of this blasphemous display!”

You smiled, closing shut the exit of your tent, grasping on a cutting blade and staring down warily on the fallen angel near your feet, steeling yourself, ready to take blood enough to fill a chalice “Now that Tara is out of the picture—”

“Not only do you sharpen that blade of yours… Now you stare at me like you will skin alive a chicken… How barbaric little lamb.”  Sylus chuckles under his breath despite his circumstances, turning to face you, glancing at the said blade, using darken red mist to lift it out from the woman’s grasp. Your gasp says it all, taken off guard that this pale broken angel can still use his magic.

“That’s impossible… fallen angels shouldn’t be able to—” your words? Cut off with a dark cloth wrapped on your mouth, dark red mist keeping it in place, Sylus wasn’t done speaking, he takes charge now. “I decide my own predicament… starting with taking everything you have on this poorly made tent you call home” He stares around with a raised eyebrow, definitely judging the huge tent you established on the dessert town’s edge, filled with many vials and books. Yet that plan seems to be impossible for now… his hands, neck and feet are expectedly chained. “Seems like I was about to be skinned alive by a witch…”

You glare at him, hate your stuffs touched by anyone, even a creature like him, immediately choking out the cloth off your mouth, spitting it out hands clenched by the sides, you spoke strained “I am not a witch, and I only need your blood. You have no idea how much you cost in the black market” you huffed, explaining and correcting him “and stop calling me little lamb, do I look like a little lamb to you… flightless bird???”

Sylus can’t help but laugh, low and smooth, enough to send shivers down your spine “You look like someone who easily get sacrificed.” He trailed off with a smirk, wielding your blade, the sharpness cutting his own wrist blood pouring to a chalice and gave it you, so assured that it made you confused, why would he suddenly give his blood now willingly? “And a blade doesn’t suit you. Wield your books instead little lamb”

You scoffed, staring at the chalice filled with his holy blood on your hands, unsure if it would wither tomorrow or will it stay long enough for you to brew that liquor that you need, Years after now you obtained the last ingredient that can start change, based on what was written on the forbidden text you uncovered years back from a worn down church you scavenged, proving to everyone that traversing the unknown, knowing what needs to be known, adventure from different lands, isn’t foolish. It’s been your purpose, if no one dares to uncover, then you’ll be the one. No way where you a little lamb of anyone, especially when you hold the life of this fallen angel in front you.

“I wield both if I wish to get what I desire” determined, you held the hidden chains that keeps him on his feet, he sure doesn’t look helpless despite his fate wielded on your hands “You? What do you desire? Surely you wouldn’t give me your blood so willingly without a bargain with the same weight as that” skeptical, you tightened your hold on the chain near his neck earning a rough cough from Sylus.

“Not easily sacrificial after all.” The fallen angel hums in amusement, chains suddenly broken, dark red mist emerges from his palms, suddenly he holds control of the bargain “My desires are none of your concern, though I’ll join your quests… surely you wouldn’t mind a powerful ally around?” smug, so sure, that it grates to your nerves, definitely along your pride too “You would only bring misfortune and—”

Jinxed. Suddenly the voice of holy knights calls forth outside, a presence of a man dignified and fiercely loyal. “My Dove, I have been informed that you have returned?” Caleb, removing his helmet his sword on his side, a holy knight general on his knees by the door of your poor tent, smiling and happy for your sudden return, surely it reassures you? But now really? — Not now that you literally hold a fallen angel in your tent

“Haha—You can’t be serious Holy Knight General Caleb enough with the formalities…” You pointed out opening the firm cloth of your tent only your head peaks out to see him, he can’t know a fallen angel is by your grasp, he would only end your chance with keeping angel’s blood, and your only chance to know more about the peculiar creature you now control… somehow.

Your sudden awkwardness, Caleb can catch up any unobvious changes about you, this man? Understands you like no one else, you’re an open book to him, easily readable and he knows when you hide something, someone, that can endanger you somehow “Dove… Is there anything wrong? Are you hurt? Or…” he paused, thinking of any situation, suddenly his eyes glinted a dangerous edge “Did someone hurt you? Is that why you returned to see me? Returned back to our home town? Do you need me to finish them?”

His words made you face palm yourself, shook your head “No? what the heck?” he’s so quick to think of any situation that you might need his help, so eager to be at use to you, so like him. A deep long sigh escapes you instead “It’s just…” you think through, any excuse, any reason that can make the concern and worry on his face be gone immediately “It’s bloody around here because—I killed a chicken—Yes yes, indeed chicken, and I’m cooking you a comfort meal for you” Jesus- what was that lazy excuse-

“Such a comedian…” You heard Sylus chuckle, even an angel can’t be convinced with your poorly made excuse, trying to hold his laugh over your stupidity or obnoxiousness certainly it was enough to entertain him for a whole day, you back kicked him silently in response “So wait, okay? Surely you don’t want a carefully constructed surprise be ruined now…” Lying like this to Caleb, karma will surely hit you soon, he’s been nothing but honest with you, at least that’s what you understood from how he acted.

The holy knight general can only nod and sigh long in relief “So it’s a surprise then? I’ll look forward to that my dove” he’s elated, just like that a man in bliss, happy in smiling, the feared holy knight general? Getting all giddy by a shady woman in a tent? It made the other holy knights blink in confusion but they can’t question him. No one questions him, none if they want to stay alive more. "Simply call me when you are done, I'll be waiting..."

When Caleb eventually left, you glared darts at Sylus, striding towards him and smacked his head with your fists “We almost got caught, did no one tell you Holy knights doesn’t do mercy on fallen angels like you?” You pointed out with a frustrated sigh, reigning control with your emotions before you ‘accidentally’ kill him “If Caleb knew you were around—he would have ended your life in a second”

Sylus scoffs arms crossed and sitting down there unfazed “You were the one who had taken me, and now blame me if you ever get caught? You reason like an imp human” Sylus corrected so, eyes glinting into a dangerous edge “and mortals who thinks they are above heaven or hell are simply pompous fools who take pleasure on control.”

“Speak for yourself”

“I’m not a mortal little lamb, nor do I see myself above others.”

Strange, he acts like he’s powerful, dark and so full of himself, contradicting his own words, or maybe… he’s very confident to turn the fate to his favor or he’s lying on his very teeth, you can’t really read this man “Is that why you want to travel with me?”

“Not necessarily, but I am not familiar with this world, so you’re going to be my map, or you can entertain me like earlier” He lazily pulled you close with his dark mists, looking up and down over your small frame

“None of that conversation was for your entertainment.” You corrected, cheeks flushed in embarrassment, trying to back walk away from him to distance, yet it was effortless, you eventually gave up and grunted “And if you want to stick around with me, better be useful. Many say fallen angels like you bring misfortune, so don’t bring bad luck on my business and quests” Such saying was said to be true, whispers of the elders and warnings of the church, you just can’t help but be cautious now when your so close to achieving your goals.

“If I was a misfortune, shouldn’t you be in your brink of death by now?”

“That doesn’t correct the rumors at all.”

A laugh, deep and amused “Ahh… so you’re a merchant? A shady one?”

“Don’t change the subject!” humiliated, yet you can’t escape the snarky mouth of this damned angel. “It’s a disguise, if I want to uncover many secrets, many unknowns, then I must know how to blend in” You clarified, grabbing the chalice filled with his blood and encased it securely where you may start your rituals and liquor making, then threw a cloak at his direction “Besides you need to also, you can’t be running around with a broken halo on your head, many will surely capture you in exchange for a hefty amount of gold”

“And I’m certain you wouldn’t do the same little lamb?”

“Because I’m also the one of the people who would buy you for a hefty amount of gold” You corrected with an irritated flinch of your eyelids, one more… one more line and you swore to yourself that he’s dead

“So would I consider myself lucky then?”

“Not in the slightest” You held the blade again, this time so sure to throw it that it would hit his sarcastic big brain, if he dodges? You still have a whole stock of it “Look, can I at least know your name before I end you with these blades?”

“A game? That sounds amusing” he smirks, leaning closer, face inches closer, your sure you smelled his scent, like dying lilies under the harsh heat of the sun, exquisite and unique, halo flickering broken and lost like he was, tall physique, bare and open under torn cloth that his shadow covers your whole frame, making your grip by the blades falter, falling down the ground with a resounding clink “None of this is a game. You will be with me until I am done and I am far from done with you”

“Why should I give my name to you then?”

A challenge, yet you know what he’s after for

“Because I’m setting you free after all of this. Anyone deserves that, even you”

His smirk falters, turning to an impressed smile, seems like he stumbled upon a very interesting mortal

“Sylus” his name lingers to your thoughts, locking so

“What a peculiar name…” indeed it was, one of a kind, first time hearing it, gazes locked as he spoke his name, a sudden thread of connection over many you already made, yet this one float so close to your thoughts, through many people you have met, many creatures you have made a uncuttable thread with yet his now steadies itself weaving himself deep into your soul.

“And yours?”

“Well call me…”

“The thread maker” Caleb’s words lingered throughout the corridors of the church, it’s been long since he’s been investigating the mysterious figure, one who makes threads of connections all over across many nations, he can’t seem to capture such individual, at this point the name lingers like a legend, a daredevil of the norm, the defiant being with a greed for knowledge of the untouchable unknown.

“We can’t let this individual roam around any longer, if they are around here, then we must—” his words were cut off, the wooden doors of the church slam open, a sight of a holy knight holding a blackened feather, Caleb’s eyes glinted dangerously staring at the sight of such in front of him “Sir—A feather of a fallen angel, we found in the middle of Geisza dessert northwest from where we are right now—”

“Prepare the other knights.” He instructed firmly, the other knights kneel down over his words, it was justice, it was law “Enter every home, every corner where they could hide, We will track them down once and for all. For sure that fallen angel lingers to that deviant… we can’t let the safety of the people be in danger anymore” the holy knights saluted, instruction clear and they hastily left fulfilling the words of their general, the fallen feather stayed on his palms, eventually it flew to the ground with the wind.

Caleb stood still… clutching on a pendant you gave him, your name and existence kept tight like how his fist clenched in determination, eyes staring devotedly “I’ll keep you safe no matter what, my dove” a promise, he was loyal to you, never to the church, never to the people, and definitely never to the divine, but you. He strides forward; the feather crumpled on beneath the soles of his boots thumping the quiet space. The Thread maker and the Fallen Angel. They will meet their end, with his very own blade.

(woah, a cliffhanger, bear with me I'm still writing the rest-)

(Stay tuned for the other 3 to appear hehe)

[kathlare]

safety net

Lando Norris x Amelie Dayman

Summary: On a restless night, Lando seeks comfort in a familiar presence, finding solace in warmth and quiet companionship.

Wordcount: 1.4 k

Warnings: none

full masterlist // request over here!

July 11th, 2021 - London, United Kingdom

Lando couldn't sleep.

He’d been tossing and turning for hours, eyes fixed on the ceiling of his apartment, shadows dancing across the walls with every flicker of the city lights outside. No matter how many times he flipped his pillow or shifted his position, the knot of anxiety in his chest wouldn’t go away. Every time he closed his eyes, the memory crept back—the cold air outside Wembley, the sudden grip on his wrist, the flash of panic when his watch was torn from him. It was over in seconds, but the feeling lingered like a bruise beneath his skin.

With a frustrated sigh, Lando sat up, running his hands through his curls. His pulse was still too fast, his mind racing. Sleep wasn’t going to come tonight. Not here. Not alone.

The thought hit him before he could stop it. Amelie.

His body moved before his brain could argue, bare feet hitting the cold floor as he pulled on a hoodie and quietly slipped out of his apartment. The hallway was silent as he padded down to her door, hesitating for only a moment before knocking softly.

A shuffle of movement inside. Then the faint click of the lock.

When Amelie opened the door, her eyes were heavy with sleep, hair a messy halo around her face. Lando’s heart clenched at the sight of her wearing one of his shirts—the faded McLaren one she’d stolen months ago, sleeves too long for her arms. It hung loose on her frame, brushing her bare thighs.

—Lando?— Her voice was soft with confusion. Then her gaze sharpened, concern slipping through the sleepiness. —You okay?—

—I...— He swallowed hard, the words tangling in his throat. He didn’t know how to explain the restless weight in his chest, the way his thoughts wouldn’t quiet down. —I couldn’t sleep.—

Her eyes softened instantly.

—Come here.—

Lando stepped inside without a word, the warmth of her apartment easing the tension in his shoulders. Benny peeked out from the couch, glaring at him with obvious disdain, while Björn watched from the kitchen counter, tail flicking with mild curiosity. Lando ignored them both.

Amelie closed the door, then reached for his hand, her fingers warm against his cold skin as she led him toward her room. The faint glow of the bedside lamp cast a golden hue over the space, the rumpled sheets still warm from where she’d been sleeping. Without hesitation, Lando stripped down to his boxers and climbed into bed beside her, exhaling shakily as the mattress dipped beneath their weight.

She slid in next to him, tucking herself against his side without needing to ask. His arm curled around her waist instinctively, pulling her closer until her warmth seeped into his skin. Amelie rested her head against his chest, the soft tickle of her hair against his chin as her fingers began to trace slow, soothing patterns along his shoulder.

—It’s okay.— Her voice was a whisper against his skin. —You’re safe now.—

Lando closed his eyes, focusing on the steady rhythm of her breathing, the faint hum of the city outside. But the tension still clung to him, nerves too frayed to settle.

As if sensing it, Amelie shifted slightly, her hand moving up to stroke his curls with gentle fingers. Then, without warning, she began to hum—a soft, low melody that vibrated against his chest. She didn’t sing with words, just the faint, soothing sound of her voice resonating through the air.

Lando’s breath hitched, his chest tightening with something he couldn’t name. Her voice had always done something to him—left him breathless in a way nothing else could. But this... this was different. The melody wrapped around him like a safety net, weaving through the cracks in his mind until the restless noise began to quiet.

His fingers curled slightly against her waist, holding her like an anchor as her humming filled the space between them. Each note seemed to melt the tension from his muscles, unraveling the knot in his chest thread by thread. The steady rise and fall of her breath grounded him, a rhythm that slowly pulled him back from the edge of his thoughts.

His eyes drifted open briefly, gaze settling on the curve of her cheek pressed against his chest. The dim light caught the faint freckles scattered across her skin, the soft curve of her lips slightly parted as she hummed. His throat tightened.

He shouldn’t be here.

He knew that.

Yet, as her fingers combed through his curls with that familiar tenderness, Lando couldn’t bring himself to care. Not tonight. Not when sleep felt like an impossible dream unless she was beside him.

Her thumb grazed the edge of his temple, and a shuddering breath escaped his lips. She shifted, her leg brushing against his beneath the sheets. The warmth of her skin against his bare thigh sent a wave of heat through him, but it wasn’t the usual spark of desire that tangled his thoughts—it was something softer, something that settled deep in his chest and refused to leave.

—Lando...— Her whisper barely broke the air.

—Mhm?— His voice was rough with exhaustion.

She didn’t say anything else, just pressed a gentle kiss to his collarbone. It wasn’t the teasing, playful kiss she sometimes left behind after stealing his hoodies or sneaking out of his room—it was different. Softer. Slower. Like she knew exactly what he needed tonight.

Something cracked inside his chest.

He squeezed his eyes shut as she continued humming, her breath warm against his skin. The sound wove through his thoughts, chasing away the shadows that had clung to him since Wembley. His pulse slowed, heart syncing with the steady rhythm of hers.

God, he was so fucked.

Lando pressed his lips to the top of her head, a silent thank you he couldn’t bring himself to say out loud. He should’ve pulled away, should’ve created space between them before the feelings he kept shoving down clawed their way back to the surface.

But instead, he buried his face in her hair, breathing her in like she was the only thing tethering him to solid ground. His fingers traced slow, lazy circles against her spine, and her humming faltered for just a moment before picking up again, quieter this time.

The tension in his chest loosened bit by bit until the weight of exhaustion began to drag him under. He clung to the warmth of her body, to the sound of her voice, as sleep finally pulled him into the dark.

Lando woke to the faint glow of morning slipping through the curtains, warm and hazy against his skin. For a moment, he didn’t move, afraid to shatter the fragile peace wrapped around him.

Amelie was still curled against his chest, her hand resting just above his heart. The soft rise and fall of her breath brushed against his ribs, each exhale in sync with his own. One of her legs was tangled with his beneath the sheets, bare skin brushing against his with every slight shift.

He should’ve left. He should’ve untangled himself from her warmth before the sun had a chance to expose the mess they kept falling into. But the thought of slipping out of her arms—of leaving the only place that had felt safe in weeks—made his chest ache in a way he didn’t want to name.

Instead, Lando pressed his lips to the crown of her head and whispered against her hair.

—Thank you.—

Amelie stirred slightly, a soft murmur escaping her lips as she shifted closer, her fingers curling against his chest.

—Always.—

And just like that, he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. Not yet.

[cravingcoconutredbull]

I let the brainworms get to me so I wrote a lil something about a young Caterina Dellamorte

(TW - Death)

The gurgling sound was uglier than she thought it would be.

Caterina stood still as a knife blade, arms at her sides, her silhouette haloed by the thin, sickly light bleeding in from the narrow windows behind her. Dust motes hung in the air, gilded like insects caught mid-flight. The chamber, once grand, felt small now. Smaller still as the old man spasmed against the polished marble floor, clawing weakly at his throat.

He had always worn too much gold. Rings slipped from his fingers as he flailed—clattering against the stone like teeth torn loose from a dying beast.

Caterina tilted her head slightly, watching the slow, jerking dance of death unfold.

No anger burned in her chest.

No grief.

Only something colder. Something necessary.

Her uncle had been so certain. So comfortable. Laziness softening his once-quick reflexes, contentment rotting the sharp edge the Dellamortes were supposed to wield without mercy. He had not seen the poison in his wine, had not questioned her rare, smiling toast. Had not looked at her properly in years, except to murmur, with that patronizing fondness:

“Take your time, little one. The sun will rise for you, yet.”

How many contracts had he let slip away? How many alliances had he allowed to rot on the vine, fattening himself on memories of past glories while their rivals sharpened their blades?

A stain on their name.

A liability she could no longer afford.

His eyes found her then, bloodshot and bulging. Begging, perhaps, or cursing — she could not tell and did not care. His mouth worked around a word that would never come.

She stepped forward, her boots whispering across the stone.

Knelt.

Watched him try to reach her — a pathetic, trembling hand smearing desperate fingerprints across the hem of her dark tunic. She let him. Let him see her, clear and calm, the last face he would ever look upon.

The body twitched once more. Shuddered.

Stilled.

Only the faint, wet rattle of a last breath clung to the edges of the silence.

Caterina exhaled through her nose. Smoothed the wrinkles from her sleeves with slow, meticulous fingers. Straightened.

The sun broke over the city outside, casting the chamber in a sudden spill of molten gold — stark and blinding behind her. She stood backlit, a black silhouette carved out of light and smoke and death.

Her shadow stretched long across the floor, touching the crumpled body without hesitation. Without pity.

Caterina turned her head, just enough to glance down at the ruin she had made. Her voice, when it came, was quiet. Certain. Almost tender.

“Sun’s up,” she said.

And left him there.

[darkdemeter]

Strife x Fem reader nsfw! Eld AU, S/O is a talented hunter, using her sniper skills to hunt down food and enemies. It’s not long until the Nephilim tribe heard of a master sniper taking down foes and always running without a trace. It’s by sheer luck that Strife discovers S/O and easily takes her down once he’s in close range. Instead of killing her, he wants to take her as his mate, seeing how cool she looks when sniping and how impressive she is.

VENGEANCE IS A HUNTER

◤✘DARKSIDERS REQUESTS | CATALOGUE Pre-Horsemen!Strife x Eld'hyunen!Female Reader

NOTES ↳ Who's ready for some pre-horseman! Strife in his younger, Nephilim prime? Hey! I see you ogling. Here, have a golden sticker. Welcome to the Strife simp club 😂 WARNINGS❕ ↳ Mature rating, 18+ — some profanity — mention of mass murder — depiction of violence and killing — lore building — SMUT mdni — unprotected sex — implied non/con or dubious consent — neck biting/marking — mate claiming, virginity loss (hymen breakage) — I think that’s it?

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The moon had been bright and full, a milky pour that couldn’t penetrate the dense forest beneath. Only allowed through were the silky, pale silhouettes that danced and warped disturbingly, the covering fog lit with an eerie glow. 

Stalking the grounds below, invading this coveted land, the horde of Nephilim march through, some bearing torches that burn viciously and provide an aura to follow. A target. 

“Keep up,” barks the group’s leader with hastened gruffness, “we must rejoin the warband before next moondown! Else Absalom will have our heads.” His tone betrays his unease as they walk through this unholy place. The trees feel dead yet they flourish and thrive, the air is thick and makes it hard to see further ahead with the swarming mist. His glowing eyes dart from left to right, sweeping from ground level to the higher treeline.

Something stalks them in the darkness around them. 

The ground crunches loud beneath the stampeding rhythm of their feet. Each one a resounding crack and bending snap. To the elicited horror that disturbs them, their eyes are cast wide and teeth gnashing hard with growls and started yells. 

Empty pits of blackened sockets stare up at them, spinal cords numbered by hundreds are split and shattered, ribs cracked and broken, barren of any flesh to cling to the remnant bones littering the forest floor. 

A once enchanting home now turned into a mass graveyard that welcomes only the fall of their invaders. The disembodied whispers and howls on the wind are avenged with each splatter of blood that waters the ground, the haunt of the Nephilims’ screams replace the restless and slaughtered people. 

It is their turn to become the prey. It is their turn to become the hunted, the bloodied spoils of this war. 

An arrow whines on the pulled draw of your bow, your lungs ease a silent and practised breath… and you release. 

Fated, your arrow hits its mark without falter. The laggers behind stumble and scatter, some dropping their torches to blend in with the darkness. But the bright shine of your eyes allows you insightful vision, they cannot hide in the same veil of your home; not as you can. Adept in the arts of survival and camouflage, this is your hunting ground. Your prison that you ward and it shall be their final resting place. 

“Ambush!” one roars and they prime their weapons. Massive blades and sharpened polearms, the Nephilim band scours what terrain they dare try, wary to go further beyond the forgotten trail. 

Your arrows fly in fast repetition. Your prey cannot comprehend the direction of the attack, unable to detect what is simply not there. You traverse with swift agility, comfortable to leap, climb and fall from the many interloping branches and rocky formations. Their numbers are tamed until only the leader remains. He sheathes his axe, the gamble of his odds not in his favour. 

His brothers and sisters lay dead with an embedded garden of arrows, the dim halo of the perving moon shines on the brightened hue of red, feathered sails. A warning that stakes your claim over this territory. 

It’s a claim he will not challenge. He turns hard on his heavy heels and sprints, madly dashing through the underbrush and you give chase from above. His breath is hitched deep as the whizz of your arrows pounce at his heel like a hound that gnashes the ankles of the galloping hunted.

Your mark gets closer to him with each venomous strike. He knows you toy with him, that you inflict this terror with purpose. 

His runs and crashes through low hanging branches that claw tiny scratches into his skin, usually barely feeling but with you on the hunt, each one feels like the tipped poise of your next shot. 

His foot is snagged by a tree’s lifted root and sends him barrelling forward into a cloud of dirt. He growls and sputters, saliva spills in thick streams down his chin, his chest heaving with a wild beat of his heart. Nephilim aren’t meant to fear anything, no demon or angel, nothing in the cosmos possesses enough of a threat to invoke such fear. 

So why did you? 

His ears suddenly go dumb, a whirring sound that rings sharply in his hearing as he listens to your weight dropping to the forest floor behind him. He turns his head, huffing and puffing his last rites. His eyes grow wide. Your reflection moves upon the surface of his golden orbs that tremble, your face shrouded in the blackness of your cowl. The overgrowth of a cloak hangs over your shoulders and down low to your feet, tied to your wrists and ankles with corded thread; a haunting sight inspired by the ghost stories of your own people that became intertwined with your once traditions. Your eyes beam something ferocious, a predatory glare, down on him. 

He flinches as you hover above, his burly fist raised to either lash out at you or plead for you to take his hand in mercy. His voice shortly whines, a hiccup of a sound he chokes on as you pace yourself. You want to enjoy this kill. Leisurely, you knock the final arrow from your quiver and pull back. 

“Don’t! Sp-spare me!”

“She is a feral Eld’hyunen hunter, cast out by her own clan before we came to this realm. A wraith of vengeance that rose from the dead with eyes tempered with fire from Hell’s oasis.”

The younger Nephilim gathered around lean in closer, faces etched and lined with their entertainment in the orange light of the fire. Strife sits more so off to the side, though intrigued by the mythical tales, he tries to center his focus on his weapons instead. Yet the golden flicker of his eyes dance this way and that every now and then. 

“I barely escaped with my own life, her arrow pointed right to my eye.” 

The storyteller had arrived at the warband’s gate only a night ago, the burden of his torment still fresh in his mind. His voice quivers with each recollected detail he tells. He’d the look of one who’d seen a ghost. Out of the troops that were to arrive back he had been the only one. Those posted at the gate had to pull his shaking body inside, his muscles rippled so much that Absalom thought his flesh would begin to peel and fall apart as the commander panted and heaved his retelling of what happened.

Now here he was, still shaken as he had been and filling the younger generations of their legion with mythical tellings. Folklore to haunt their slumberless dreams and instill in them a false sense of fear. 

“And then… she whispered to me with words scarred by her ire…”

“Tell them to leave,” you snarl, voice coiling in the back of your throat as a venomous growl. “Leave this world and never set your claim upon it again. Or else my vengeance shall devour you whole.”

“As if one Eld’hyunen could do such a thing,” snickers Strife under his breath. The Nephilim survivor scrunches his face, overhearing such demeaning ignorance.

“You watch that tone of yours. What I say is true and you’d be damn near lucky to even escape as I had.”

Strife lulls his head, shoulders falling lax with uncharismatic care. He blinks twice, finger playing against the trigger of one of his guns.

“She would have been better off killing you instead.”

“Is that a threat, Nephiling?—”

A nerve is struck at the belittling term and Strife’s body tenses as she slightly shifts his weight to stand at his full height. His eyes dangerously thin with a warning glare. 

The younger ones around the fire watch in silence, their faces agape in their startled awe of the two. It wasn’t uncommon for Nephilim to get into heated scraps with one another. Their tempers easy to flare, provoking the other to break first. 

But with a thunderous roll of feet approaching, both are torn from the inciting conflict that threatened to break out into a brawl. Absalom growls out with a warning tone, “Telling the young ones of your scrape with death again, Saak?” 

Saak snorts, lips pulled askew before spitting a glop onto the ground. “I’m warning them of what awaits outside those gates. You haven’t see her, Absalom, she is—”

“Not yet, I haven’t. But that will change. At dawn we move out on the forest.” Absalom ignores the pale complexion of Saak, even as he buckles, weight lost to fall to his knees with a heavy thmph. His meek argument silenced. “I will not have this conquest stamped out by a lone female who believes she can take on a legion by herself.” The eldest of their kind laughs, boisterous. “It’s madness!”

Saak shakes his head and Absalom scoffs, large fingers scruffing the Nephilim’s neck as if he were a measly pup in need of discipline. “Cower in the camp, then. I will not accept cowards during this territory skirmish. I need only my finest.”

Releasing Saak and turning his eyes from the Nephilings who watch, eyes wide at the behemoth that is the first of their race, he chuffs a cold noise and rolls his eyes to Strife.

“And you’ll be joining us.”

Strife shrugs with a complying nod as he holsters his guns to his hips. 

“Very well,” Strife hums, obviously making his tone chipper to flaunt as a mockery. This would be one of the very few times he would be joining a troop assault so large, oftentimes he would either be appointed with a smaller group or better yet, strike out on his own.

But not this time. And perhaps he would catch a glimpse of the mysterious ghost that has the entire camp in a throng of rumour; that of the vengeful hunter. Beginning to walk away from the campfire, he hears Saak’s voice wheeze out with a hoarse rasp and his steps slow slightly. 

“You’ll see her yourself… and when you do… it’ll be too late.”

The swallow of the cave is clouded, smothered by wisps of smoke that come from the many lit flames around. Laments, shrines dedicated to the burials of your tribe. You can almost catch their spirits weave and dash through the twisting haze around you, as if to dance like they did around the fires, nights filled with laughter and conversation. Of bonds made newly and ones grown fonder. 

You hum a tune solemn in your grief. A proud song of your people that used to uplift and give praise to the forest’s divine sanctity, a home respected and loved. But now it is a melody that serves as a hollow reminder of all that you have lost. The songs of your people sung in the night to be carried on the wind with your weeping cries; shrieks that even the most fearsome of wraiths and beasts would grimace with sympathy for. 

The palette of your face had been cleaned of its prior mask that covered the higher portion of your face, marking the veil of your painted vow. The darkened smudge would never be cleaned off your hands completely, nor your face that streaks it into watered lines down your cheeks. Not until your enemies were undone. 

When this war was over and the invaders obeyed your command and left or were slain.

You sit before the burning incense of your tribe mother — your birth mother — and listen to the call of the warhorn. It thrums to life, bringing with it its ominous roar and its final deliverance. They would not leave and thus, you would make due on your promise. 

Bow and arrows balanced in your lap, you ask that your people imbue you with their strength. To help you overpower your foes and finally bring their souls to rest in the ethereal realm. The White Cosm. A place so beautiful and tranquil, spoken to be at its closest with the Creator’s heart. 

Your hands move forward towards the wooden bowl sat at the bottom of the shrine. You smear the dark ashes onto your face, its charred skin caresses yours and your brows furrow deeply between. You will show them what it means to provoke that wrath of the Eld’hyunen. 

They will come to know that vengeance is a hunter; and it has marked them all for death. 

The dawning fares no better in trying to puncture through the overgrowth above. The leaves and treeline are too heavy in concealing the ground level. A faded sheen of bathing sunlight comes through, a gloomy hue of yellow and vibrancy of greens all shrouded by the morning fog. 

Just as he said, Absalom leads his band of brothers and sisters into the forest’s barriers. They arrive in large numbers you have seen come through here but only once: when they butchered your tribe and raided your homes. 

You watch them from above. Steadily you move, the hooded cloak on your back tethered to your limbs, allowing you to glide silently from branch to branch with your prey none the wiser. 

As much as it angers you, you have always obeyed your masters when they taught you that to succeed in the hunt, you must be well versed in patience. You have to lie in wait for the perfect opportunity to present itself and you have your sights set on Absalom being your first target. 

Though powerfully formidable, he will be guarded closely by his most elite siblings, the first-bloods. Trying to get him alone will be nothing short of impossible, but you must allow yourself to wait for that single moment and when it's there, you will strike him down. 

Strife had veered off and away from the group not too far into the breach of the forest. He was always better off moving by himself, he attracted less attention that way. Most of his brethren lacked the level of subtlety to remain hidden like he did. He uses the higher peaks to his advantage, climbing higher and higher where no other of his brothers and sisters dared to. 

They climb mountains for sport but trees and forest terrain are where they draw the line? Strife finds it somewhat amusing and he chuckles to himself while shaking his head. He balances dangerously in the higher space of the canopy, intruding upon another world entirely it feels. He takes a moment to observe his surroundings and there — it’s barely noticeable with the foggy glare that bleeds together — but something crossed his vision. A shadow. 

His eyes squint, the sight of his visor aimed accurately to see what it was that fluttered through the treeline and down onto a nest of branches. 

You perch yourself onto the next entanglement of limbs, cloak settling once it loses its gusto of breath that carried you. Your belly is pressed against the mossy thicket, the sensation soft and ticklish against your naked skin. Your chin just grazes the oaken surface as you peer downward, watchful of the Nephilim who stalk the ground slowly, methodical and wary. 

Your eyes grow wide and a near sadistic grin twists across your lips, fangs glinting with poised delight that clench together. You see it! Your moment to disband their ranks, to flush them into a frenzy of fear as their leader becomes another pile of bones to add to your imprisoning graveyard. 

You rise slightly, back arched to sit up and you align your arrow onto your bow and draw. You calm your breathing despite the rapid climb of your excitement. Finally, this quest will be seen through, you can live out your lonely days in peace until you reunite with your loved ones. You do this or you die trying. 

Absalom has his back turned to you but if you aim just right, if you wait… the art of patience is key yet you find it hard to steady yourself, eager to release. You must wait. The window of that moment is happening upon you and so you draw that last final bit. 

You release your breath, rushing it from your lungs. The murky light from behind you is smothered out and you freeze. Face shrouded by the overlap of your hood and ashy paint becomes contorted in your frowning confusion. Your aim lowers, unfocused as you come to realise you sit beneath a shadow. A tall, looming shadow. 

Your cowl shifts in tandem with the motion of your head turning and tilting upwards. Your eyes widen and your jaw falls, bottom lip quivering with a shuddering gasp. After all this time, you believed yourself numbed of the feeling of fear, of bone-shaking terror that has the chasm of your chest diving with your heartbeat. You thought yourself hollow to that feeling you had all that time ago when you first witnessed the slaughter, the carnage and the screams that echoed.

Had you been so consumed in your fire of vengeance that you neglected your surroundings, you didn’t heed to the teachings of your masters? To always be aware, always be intune with your senses. Never allow your arrow to be knocked blind; in which you did. 

That feeling resurfaces again and now you have become the prey for it. 

What few seconds pass feels like an eternity that drags on. You move swiftly but sloppily, your draw and aim not on target as you fire your knocked arrow only for him to deflect it with the iron plating of his gauntlet. The arrow snaps in two under such force and he lunges at you, pinning you. You hiss sharply and your hands claw at him, your sharp nails scratch and rip at whatever you can to fight him off. The struggle turns you both off the branch and you go crashing to the forest floor, whenever you attempt to pry him away and fill your cloak with wind, he stops you by wrapping his arms around you; caging you. 

Each pained yelp you make echoes louder through the canopy in your rapid descent. The troops below peer upwards at the commotion until it lands on ground. They rush towards it as they watch, awestruck that the hunter that stalked them is no more. Instead, Strife’s knees trap you between him and the forest floor, his hands easily captured around each of your wrists, keeping you from escaping. 

His throaty chuckles grow into a small fit of laughter, grinning a fanged grin behind his mask. “I got her!” he chants, a hollering of cheerful howls and spirited yells applaud him in his apprehension. 

The coarse patch of dirt rubs against your stomach in your continued writhing, only to feel the force of his weight push you further against the ground and you whine, seething like a feral animal at him. 

“Let go of me! Let— go!”

Moving aside to make room for Absalom’s arrival, he gives a gruff hum, mouth pulling into a grin. 

“Well done, Strife,” he rumbles, planting the pommel of his axe into the ground. His elbow probs up to rest against its higher end. “I knew it was a matter of time before these rumours would be snuffed out. A vengeful wraith, unkillable and unseen.” Snickering, Absalom lowers himself to you and his large fingers snatch hold of your face. 

You bare your fangs at him with a snarl but he only chuckles in turn, not an ounce of fear etched in his eyes that you can see. 

“She was about to kill you.”

“Was she now?” asks Absalom, his voice inflecting with peaked interest before turning to leave. 

“It’d be a waste to kill her.” Strife hums thoughtfully before his own hand catches your jaw, pinching your cheeks and lowering his helmed face next to yours. 

“How about it, Absalom? Can I keep this one?”

Absalom shrugs his shoulders with a dismissive hum. “Do what you will with her. Fuck her, kill her, it matters little to me.”

Such news never sounded like music to his ears until now. He’d seen quite a few of his brethren take Eld’hyunen survivors as prisoners to provide them lustful satisfaction alongside their bloodthirst. He’d wondered himself once or twice… 

His hips push forward to rest in the curve of your lower back and you gasp. His grip ahold of you tightens when you make to shuffle out from under him.

“You hear that, little hunter?” he taunts with a husky chuckle, “you’re all mine.”

High upon an overlooking cliffside, you’re able to see the march of the Nephilim return to their camp, their numbers swarming back inside its walls and rejoining those who had remained behind. Many more were still to come, you were sure of it, it was only a matter of time. 

Strife had brought you up here, somewhere reclusive for his claiming. Tomorrow he would return with you to show you off to his brethren, to rub it into Saak’s face that his threats meant nothing and that he now had you, the vengeful hunter, to satiate his pent up aggressions and lustful drive. 

You’re clawing into the dirt with each thrust that brushes that spot deep inside of you. Each forceful drive of his widely built hips shoves the hastily collected air from your lungs in exerted pants, your whines and pitiful cries are swallowed up into the night’s breeze, the harshened clap of skin against skin makes your body ache and each stroke of his cock invading your silky, warm walls has you clenching around him. 

Strife groans with every motion of bucking his hips, speeding up and arching his body a bit more so that his hands can drag you further back onto his length, almost splitting you open. It sounds messy but your skin is riddled with a hot flush that covers you entirely, your screams turned into whiny moans and your voice shredded raw into a terrible, wordless dialect. 

“You’re so tight, little mate,” he grunts between a few hard thrusts that pull a string of mewls from you. You grip him like a vice, coating him in the slick of your arousal you tried so hard to deny him; deny both of you. 

He could smell you through the dampened fabric of your loincloth, the need buried between your thighs. 

His grip is bruising, it hurts the way he holds you and ruthlessly fucks into you like an animal in heat. Your walls continue to squeeze around him tightly, your breathing becoming shorter before it turns into high pitched gasps. His cock pistons in and out, sensing the rise of your release and he chases it with reckless abandon, wanting to finally feel the sensational pleasure he’s heard so much about but has never gotten to experience himself. 

His mask had been stripped off with the rest of his armor, his breath beating against the back of your neck in hot gushes that sweep over you like the hot summer winds. You can identify the ghostly presence of his bared teeth kissing your flesh, longing to marr the precious bed where your neck and shoulder meet. 

He whines lowly into your ear as you cry out with a moan that chokes you, your nails scratching deeper indents into the dirt with ragged markings as you cum. Your watery eyes blurry, tears muse and smear the ashy paint down your cheeks. He howls, ravenous and huffing like a satisfied beast when your snug walls clamp around him, barely able to withdraw himself from you without hearing those pained yelps you make. 

But he’s not done with you. He continues to brutally fuck your cunt that is forced to take very inch of him, leaving none of him to be left unsheathed. His fangs graze along the crook of your neck and the muscles there twitch, your eyes widening and your voice gone. 

Your body is ragged, used and abused under his power that has you submitted to him as his mate. Your breeding rights forfeit, the once virginal seal gone and claimed the moment he sunk himself deep inside of you. 

He’ll never forget the long, drawn out sigh you made when he did. He’ll forever savour the scream that tore out from your throat as he broke through your hymen. 

He was not a gentle lover. He was fast and unspeakably ruthless, possessively aggressive by the way he growled, inhaling the sweet aroma of your hair or tasting the scent of your skin on his tongue. 

He groans again, louder and his teeth snap shut. You scream again under the strain of your muscle that spasms from his bite, you feel the wet trickle of blood flowing down your collarbone and breast, revealed after he had torn your cloak and chest wrapping away. 

You cannot help but moan softly when his cock buries itself deeper inside, painting your insides with his seed that comes in thick, warm spurts. 

He continues to drill his spent inside of you until it forms a heavy bulge that fills your lower abdomen and a slickened ring around the base of his cock and drool from your swollen, abused pussy. However, the moment you begin to pull from him, having to ignore the sore spot he’s made your pussy to be, one of his hands seizes hold of the tendril of your smooth tail, caressing it with a firm, palming grip that yanks you back and spears you down on his cock again. 

“I’m not done with you yet, mate,” he huskily drawls. 

His mouth lingers against the cringing curl of your ear, and from the corner of your eye, the pain in your neck making it impossible to turn and look, you catch the crimson line that runs from the corner of his smirking lips. 

His chest and stomach slide into the curved bevel of your spine, fitting against you perfectly so much so that this match had to be a cursed union. For the women of your tribe long since believed that those meant to be mated could easily line their front to their partner’s spine to come into alignment perfectly. Meant to be fitted. You don’t want to believe it, but it becomes harder to deny his prowess as he begins to roll his hips up against the risen curve of your arse again.

Your desire for vengeance is a fire that begins to wane, ebbing into the fade of your new reality as a Nephilim’s mate.

[d-z20]

The Ballad Of Agatha Harkness Chapter 14

Summary: Agatha and Rio settle into a rather domestic way of life. Agatha asks about Death and Rio obliges and answers all her questions.

Warnings: fluff and lots of it

Words: 2.4k

A/N: Just some cute little Agathario moments in time (and maybe a slight plot twist at the end)

AO3 link | Master List

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Love in the Darkness

1697

The early summer sun poured over the countryside, bathing the world in a golden haze. Outside the small cottage, the air was alive with the hum of bees and the gentle rustle of leaves in the breeze. The tranquillity seemed almost otherworldly, a stark contrast to the storms both literal and emotional that Rio and Agatha had weathered together.

Agatha sat on the cottage step, her needle moving deftly as she worked on embroidering a delicate handkerchief. The sunlight played tricks in her hair, catching the coppery undertones and turning her curls into a halo. Rio leaned against the doorframe, her gaze fixed on the woman before her, a smirk tugging at her lips.

“You’re staring,” Agatha said without looking up, her voice laced with quiet amusement.

Rio didn’t bother denying it. She crossed her arms, her smirk widening. “It’s a privilege.”

Agatha glanced up then, her eyes glinting with playful mischief. “A privilege, is it?”

Rio shrugged, stepping closer until the soft scent of lavender and freshly turned earth wrapped around her. “Absolutely. Not everyone gets to watch a witch at work. Especially one as gorgeous as you.”

Agatha rolled her eyes, but a faint blush crept up her cheeks, betraying her.

The past few months had been a gift neither of them had dared to imagine before. Since Rio’s confession, their lives had settled into a peaceful rhythm. Days passed quietly, filled with small, shared moments that felt larger than life: mornings spent in companionable silence as Agatha read her books and Rio sharpened her daggers, afternoons filled with laughter over small, silly arguments, and evenings wrapped in each other’s arms as the firelight danced against the walls of their cottage.

For Rio, this newfound peace was nothing short of miraculous. She still attended to her duties as Death, but the work felt less isolating now. Knowing that Agatha waited for her to return, her sharp tongue ready to tease and her arms ready to comfort, filled Rio with a sense of belonging she had never known.

As the sun began its slow descent, turning the sky into a canvas of pink and gold, Agatha set aside her embroidery and leaned back on her hands. “Rio,” she said casually, though her voice carried the weight of her curiosity. “Tell me more about what you do.”

Rio, who had been lounging in the grass a few paces away, raised an eyebrow. "What I do?”

“Yes, your... role,” Agatha clarified, her tone unbothered by the gravity of the question. “You never really talk about it. I’d like to know.”

Rio hesitated, her usual bravado faltering. “You don’t want to hear about that, my love. It’s not exactly bedtime story material.”

Agatha didn’t let her off so easily. She turned to face Rio, her gaze steady. “If I’m going to spend my life with you, I want to know all of you. Even the shadowy bits. Especially the shadowy bits.”

The sincerity in her voice left Rio with little choice. With a resigned sigh, she pushed herself up and sat cross-legged across from Agatha. She took a moment to collect her thoughts, her fingers fidgeting with a stray blade of grass.

“I don’t kill, Agatha,” she began, her voice quieter than usual, laced with an unexpected vulnerability. “I’m not a monster with a scythe or some vengeful spirit. I’m a guide, a witness. Death isn’t about violence—it’s about endings. And those endings are supposed to happen on their own.”

Agatha tilted her head, her expression thoughtful. “Supposed to?”

Rio’s jaw tightened, her gaze dropping to the ground. “Sometimes people try to... cheat it,” she admitted, her voice tinged with regret. “If I try to extend life or interfere with what’s meant to happen, it all goes wrong. The balance is delicate. Too delicate.” She looked up then, meeting Agatha’s eyes. “It’s not something I take lightly.”

Agatha reached for her hand, her touch grounding. “Thank you,” she said softly. “For trusting me with this.”

Rio managed a small smile, the tension in her shoulders easing. “You make it easier than I expected.”

—

Later that evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon, Rio stepped outside, her hands hidden behind her back. Agatha was busy tidying up the small garden, humming softly to herself.

“Agatha,” Rio called, her voice uncharacteristically tentative.

Agatha turned, brushing dirt off her hands. “What is it?”

With a flick of her wrist, Rio conjured a bouquet of vibrant pink azaleas. The blooms seemed to glow in the dim twilight, their colour rich and full of life.

Agatha gasped softly, her eyes widening. “Azaleas?” she murmured, stepping closer to take the flowers. Her fingers brushed the delicate petals, reverent and careful. “How did you know?”

Rio shrugged, attempting to mask her nervousness with nonchalance. “I notice things about you.”

Agatha’s smile was slow, her gaze warm as she looked at Rio. “Well, next time, notice that I don’t have a vase.”

Rio laughed, the sound rich and full of affection. “Noted,” she said, watching as Agatha carefully placed the flowers on the cottage table, handling them as though they were precious jewels.

As they stood together in the fading light, the world seemed to shrink to just the two of them. For once, Rio allowed herself to believe that maybe, just maybe, she could keep this. That she could deserve it.

1710

The fire crackled softly, filling the quiet of the cottage with a warm glow that softened the sharp edges of winter. Outside, frost clung to the windows, painting intricate patterns on the glass, but inside, the world was a cocoon of heat and golden light. Agatha sat curled in her favourite chair, a book open in her lap, though her eyes were fixed on Rio, who was lounging on the rug, leaning against the hearth.

Rio’s boots were kicked off, her dark hair falling loose over her shoulders, and she was idly tracing patterns in the rug with a finger. She looked, Agatha thought with a fond smile, almost human in these moments—unguarded, soft around the edges.

“You know,” Agatha began, her voice breaking the comfortable silence, “I’ve always wondered something about your work.”

Rio quirked an eyebrow, her lips twitching into a smirk. “Oh, this should be good. What could the great scholar possibly not know?”

Agatha threw a stray piece of wool at her, which Rio caught easily, her smirk widening. “Don’t tease, or I won’t tell you,” Agatha warned, though there was no real threat in her tone.

“Go on, then.” Rio propped her chin on her hand, her gaze steady. “What’s this great mystery you’re trying to solve?”

Agatha leaned forward, her expression intent. “Who have you encountered the most in your work? Kings? Emperors? Tyrants? Surely the ones who command the most power must keep you busiest.”

Rio’s amusement faded, replaced by a contemplative stillness. She stared into the fire for a moment, the flames casting flickering shadows across her face. “It’s not them,” she said finally, her voice quieter than before.

Agatha tilted her head, surprised. “No? Then who?”

Rio looked up, her dark eyes meeting Agatha’s. “The soldiers,” she said simply. “The ones who march into battle, who swing the sword or pull the trigger. They’re the ones who hold death in their hands, not the ones sitting on thrones. The king orders it, yes, but the soldier feels it. And that’s what brings me to them.”

Agatha sat back, her brow furrowing as she absorbed this. “The soldiers...” she repeated softly. Her fingers toyed with the edge of the book in her lap as she thought. “I never considered that. I suppose I always imagined death as... distant. Sweeping over battlefields, faceless and impersonal.”

Rio snorted softly, though her expression remained serious. “Death might be a force, but soldiers? They’re the ones who make it personal. Every time they lift their sword or steady their aim, they’re calling me closer. Not for themselves, usually, but for someone else. That’s why it’s them I meet the most.”

Agatha’s gaze lingered on her, a mixture of fascination and sadness in her eyes. “And what do they say to you? When they see you?”

Rio shrugged, her fingers resuming their absent tracing of the rug. “Depends. Some beg. Some curse. Some just… stare. The ones who accept it, though? They’re the easiest to guide on.”

The weight of her words hung in the air, and for a moment, neither of them spoke. Then, in typical Agatha fashion, she broke the silence with a wry smile. “Well, you’ve thoroughly ruined my romantic notions of tyrants clutching their pearls at the sight of you.”

Rio laughed, the sound breaking through the heavy atmosphere like sunlight piercing through clouds. “Romantic notions? Of tyrants? My love, I think you might need a new hobby.”

Agatha grinned, setting her book aside and moving to sit beside Rio on the rug. “It’s not every day you get to hear Death talk about her least favourite clientele,” she said, her tone teasing. “You can’t blame me for finding it fascinating.”

Rio wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. “You’re incorrigible, you know that?”

“And yet, here you are,” Agatha quipped, leaning her head against Rio’s.

“Here I am,” Rio echoed, her voice softer now. She pressed a kiss to Agatha’s hair, her eyes drifting back to the fire. The warmth of the moment didn’t erase the shadows, but it made them easier to bear.

1725

The night was unusually still; the stars scattered across the sky like a sea of diamonds. The two of them sat outside the cottage, wrapped in the quiet hum of the world. The fire crackled softly, its warm glow a sharp contrast to the cool darkness that pressed in from the forest. Agatha leaned against Rio, her head resting lightly on her shoulder, the weight both comforting and grounding.

“You know, my love,” Agatha said suddenly, her voice breaking the silence, “there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask.”

Rio turned her head, glancing down at her. “Oh? What is it this time, sweetheart?”

Agatha hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “I’ve seen you, Rio. I mean, the version of you that you let me see. But I know there’s more. I’ve read enough; I’ve learnt enough to know you’re not just... this.” She gestured faintly at Rio, her tone soft but insistent. “I want to see the real you.”

Rio stiffened, her breath catching. “Agatha…”

“I mean it,” Agatha pressed, sitting up to face her. “I don’t want just the part of you you think I can handle. I want all of you. Let me see you as you truly are.”

Rio looked away, her jaw tightening. “It’s not something people are meant to see, Agatha. It's not human. It’s not beautiful.”

“You’re wrong,” Agatha said firmly, her voice unwavering. “I’m not just anyone, Rio. I’m yours. You’re never going to lose me. Let me see you.”

For a long moment, Rio said nothing, her gaze fixed on the fire. Then, with a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of her soul, she rose to her feet. “You asked for this,” she murmured, her voice heavy with a mix of reluctance and resolve.

The transformation began slowly, like shadows peeling away from her form. Her human features dissolved, replaced by something otherworldly and ancient. Her face took on the appearance of a skull, dark and hollow yet alive with an eerie glow. Her body shimmered with ethereal energy, her black veil flowing like smoke in an unfelt wind. In one hand, she held her dagger, sharp as the void itself, and in the other, a fragile flower that seemed to hum with the weight of countless souls.

When she finally stood before Agatha in her true form, the air seemed to grow colder, heavier. The night around them grew darker, the stars dimming as if they, too, dared not shine in her presence.

Rio looked at Agatha, expecting fear, revulsion—anything but what she saw.

Agatha’s eyes softened, her lips curving into the faintest of smiles. Slowly, deliberately, she stood and stepped closer. “You’re beautiful,” she whispered, her voice steady, her hand reaching out to gently touch Rio’s face.

The gesture was so unexpected, so tender, that it broke something deep inside Rio. Her shoulders sagged, her veil flickering as if unsure whether to stay or fade away. “You’re the only one who’s ever said that,” she murmured, her voice almost breaking.

Agatha cupped Rio’s skeletal cheek, her touch gentle but firm. “Then everyone else was blind.”

They stood like that for a moment, the world around them holding its breath. Finally, Rio let herself relax, allowing the vulnerability to wash over her. She let Agatha guide her back to the ground, where they sat together under the stars.

Agatha leaned against her again, her head resting on Rio’s shoulder. This time, the weight felt even more grounding, more comforting.

“I told you I could handle it,” Agatha murmured, her eyes drifting closed.

Rio chuckled softly, her voice still laced with awe. “You always prove me wrong.”

And so they stayed there, wrapped in the intimacy of the moment, the night’s stillness wrapping around them like a promise that nothing else mattered.

— 

The night became unusually silent, as if the world itself had stilled in reverence—or dread. Agatha leaned against Rio, the weight of their earlier exchange still hanging in the air. The fire had dwindled to embers, but neither woman moved to rekindle it. The sky, studded with stars, seemed too fragile a beauty to disturb. Yet something about the quiet, unsettled Rio. Her senses—sharpened by centuries of walking the edge of existence—prickled with unease.

Agatha stirred, her head tilting slightly. "Do you feel that?" she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper.

Rio nodded, straightening. The air had changed. It carried a weight now, dense and suffocating. A faint chill crept into the clearing, not from the cool night but something deeper, more insidious. The woods surrounding the cottage seemed to lean closer, the shadows stretching unnaturally, their forms warping at the edges.

Rio stood, her movements slow but deliberate. Agatha followed, her expression tense. “This isn’t normal,” she muttered, her fingers already crackling with a faint shimmer of purple magic.

And then they heard it—a sound that didn’t belong. A low rustle, like dry leaves scraping together, though no wind moved. It came from the woods, from all directions at once, a whispering cacophony that set Rio’s teeth on edge.

Agatha took a step closer to Rio. “Someone’s here,” she said, her voice steady but tight.

The mist began to creep in, curling along the ground like spectral tendrils. Rio’s eyes narrowed, her posture shifting subtly into one of readiness. “The Salem Seven,” she murmured, her voice low but carrying the weight of her understanding.

-----

You didn't think I had forgotten about them did you?

Next Chapter >

[raisoramizu]

Chapter 11: Lilith's Wrath

This is the eleventh chapter of my Hazbin Hotel fan fiction, "Heaven is Not Forever" Radioapple and Guitarspear. You can find the other chapters on my blog.

During Lute's recent visit, she hadn't realized just how immense it was. Maybe it felt bigger now because it was empty? Her heels echoed against the pale walls, adorned with divine paintings and large, watchful eyes. Those eyes were part of her creation, her guide, her protection... and yet, the apprehension gnawing at her chest remained. How could one live in Heaven with this constant fear? Perhaps it was because she was an angel, not a Winner—she was created to serve this place, not to enjoy its beauty. She was meant to protect it, to ensure that no written or moral laws were broken. She was the divine sword, the judge... or the accused?

She shuddered at the sound of wings behind her and stopped in the center of the grand hall, with its towering circular ceiling. Around her were the currently empty balconies, and in front of her—backed by the large golden double doors—was the one reserved for the Seraphim. There was no artificial light, nor any windows to let in natural light, and yet everything shone, including the figure of the High Seraphim, who landed softly before her.

Sera was tall, imposing. Her form was feminine but unnatural, with six large wings and chestnut-colored skin. She wore a flowing gown in shades of white, sky blue, and gray, and her halo resembled a crown. Lute's, on the other hand, was black and simple, like the standard uniform she wore. Her bobbed hair framed a tense face, her expression tightening into a nervous frown that deepened when Sera regarded her curiously with large blue eyes.

< Emily...? > the commander asked, glancing around. < She's not here. You'll have to make do with me, Lute, > Sera replied with soft assertiveness. < You want to talk about Adam again...? > A faint tension crept into her voice. < With all due respect, don't you care how he's doing? Aren't you going to do anything? > < And what would you have me do? > Sera's tone shifted as she placed one hand over the other at her waist. Raising her chin, she leveled a stern gaze at Lute, who was barely half her height. < Let's talk instead about how you learned he's in Hell. A tip-off from whom...? >

Lute flinched. < Do you have contacts with demons? > Sera pressed, but was met with silence. < Or do you think you can use the portal without me noticing? >

A wave of terror froze the exorcist in place. She staggered back, stunned, her mouth open as if trying to put some distance between herself and Sera, who hadn't moved but whose cold, severe gaze pierced her. < Yes... yes, I did! > Lute blurted out, finding a burst of courage, furrowing her brow and pointing to herself with her remaining hand. < But because I'm truly worried about him! Because... > She paused, pressing her lips together in a mix of anger and fear. < Because I care about him. > < Don't you care, Sera? How can you— > < Silence! > Sera's voice thundered, cutting her off. < Of course, I care, > she softened her tone to something gentle and comforting. < I care for all my children, my brothers, and sisters. I care for all of you. > She waved her long arm as if gesturing to everyone, though the room was empty. < And that is why I cannot be lenient when it comes to Divine Judgment. Adam wasn't judged by us; he died and was reborn directly into Hell. He's a demon. >

Lute took a step forward to confront her. < Emily told me about the guest at the hotel, the serpent who was reborn here as a Blessed! There's a chance Adam could be redeemed too! > At this revelation, Sera's gaze sharpened with disapproval, but she sighed and continued. < Apparently, that sinner earned Heaven just as Adam earned Hell. >

< You can't say that, Sera... I mean, with all due respect, High Seraphim, > Lute replied with the same frustration but quickly composed herself, standing at attention, her back rigid as she tried to find a tone more appropriate for the situation and her superior. < This is Adam. You know him. We can help him... maybe reevaluate our decisions. Perhaps... they weren't as correct as we thought. >

The angel turned, giving Lute her profile as she began to pace—or rather, float—around the room, her gown's hem fluttering just above the floor. < Not correct, you say? I know more... > She paused, bowing her head—her long gray curls cascading—and resting a hand on her forehead as if suddenly struck by a headache. < I know he harbored a demon in Heaven for years... >

Lute went pale. Did she know it was Lilith, or were her insights incomplete? Fear took hold of her again, as if all the apprehension she had felt for months was about to boil over. Was this the moment everything would come crashing down? Ever since the Extermination... had she been waiting for this moment all along? < How long...? > Lute swallowed hard. < I've known for some time, and... > Sera froze, shooting her a piercing glance. < I know that you knew too. >

< Why didn't you do anything? Why didn't you stop it...? > The angel didn't answer immediately. She turned toward Lute, her cold gaze softening into an intense sorrow—a regret so vivid that Lute herself felt it weigh down on her. < Because I cared about Adam too, > Sera admitted, gently spreading her arms. < We all did. >

At that exact moment, to Lute's astonishment, the room began to fill with angels of the highest hierarchy: Thrones, Powers, Dominions. Born from beams of light, they flew toward the many balconies, each taking their place. The High Seraphim flapped her wings vigorously, ascending above the others to her rightful place as chief judge. She left Lute standing in the center of the hall, a small figure on the floor decorated with the enormous image of a ghostly eye.

Lute felt tiny, overwhelmed by a sense of loneliness and guilt. Had she made a mistake? Of course she had. Was this to be her day of judgment? Along with the guilt came anger—the frustration of knowing they wouldn't listen. She knew how trials worked: they had already made up their minds. That's why Sera had granted her request for this meeting.

With that last thought, all her tension drained away. She felt empty, devoid of any emotion except helplessness. < ...Lute, > Sera's voice brought her back to reality. Her hands still clasped at her waist, the angel stood motionless like an inhuman statue, staring down from the high court. Below her, the numerous balconies were filled with other angels. < This trial accuses you of being complicit in Adam's conspiracy against Heaven, > she announced. < What do you have to say in your defense? >

Lute looked around. Every angel's eyes were on her—some curious, some puzzled—but Sera's gaze... it was heavy. Why didn't you call Emily? Are you afraid of being contradicted? You bastard. Damn you.

She clenched her fist. < I'm guilty, > she declared, standing tall and lifting her chin, shocking the entire court. < Guilty of wanting to protect someone I care about, even at the cost of my duties... > She paused, her voice steady with the same passion that had always driven her. < ...of the good of Heaven, of the established order. > Her words rang with pride—pride she wouldn't let falter. It was all over. Adam was lost. She was lost.

Sera's gaze grew even colder, more distant, as if a wall of light had risen around her—light that swirled, opening countless blue eyes across her hair, forehead, chest, and robes. At that moment, it seemed every part of her was connected to the divine, as though she herself were made of pure mystical energy. < Based on this confession, with my authority as High Seraphim, I hereby sentence you to be cast out of Heaven. The Golden Gates will be closed to you forever, Lute. >

At these final words, terror exploded within Lute, shattering like the metallic clink of something falling to the ground. She looked down. Her black halo had fallen. She shuddered and raised her golden eyes once more to seek out Sera, only to find herself surrounded by a dozen sisters, hovering in the air, masked and with spears aimed at her.

I'm scared.

" < If you get yourself killed again, I'll drag you out of the Primordial Evil by the neck. > "

Lute's voice echoed in Adam's head just as Lilith's eyes flared with dark, black energy. All the exhaustion, pain, and the damn effects of her voice surged into a burst of fiery rage and strength. Tensing every muscle in his left arm, he tore through the enchanted ropes binding his wrist, bringing it up as a shield over his head just in time to block the spear.

The spear and part of its shaft pierced through the flesh and bone of his forearm, the tip stopping just shy of his forehead, right between his wide, blackened eyes. He stared in horror as a thin stream of blood trickled from a small scratch and then began dripping heavily from the spear.

Lilith's face had twisted into a demonic mask, radiating suffocating, cursed energy. Adam heard her growl, baring her sharp canines, and he channeled all that adrenaline—numbing his body to the pain—into the spear.

He pushed against it, forcing the weapon, and with it, Lilith, backward, slamming her into the wardrobe with such force that the doors shattered, sending her crashing noisily inside.

Panting heavily, Adam clenched his jaw, his face a mask of blood, sticky enough to glue his hair to his ram-like horns. He rolled onto his hands and knees, bracing himself with his right hand. < Fuck, I came way too close that time... > he muttered as he glanced at the door. The exit. He had to get out. He needed to get out of there.

Grimacing, he conjured his leathery wings, the sudden rush of air causing the TV to wobble dangerously. He dashed toward the door, ready to ram through it if he had to. But just as he was a mere foot away, Lilith's form reassembled amid swirling shadows, an amused, aggressive grin on her face as she raised the spear once again, aiming it at him.

< Where do you think you're going, little bug? ♫ > Her voice was singsong.

< !! > Adam felt the searing pain of all his wounds hitting him at once, just as the tip of the spear impaled his left shoulder, piercing straight throug

...

Meanwhile, Lucifer and Alastor were on their way back.

The Seraph was grinning from ear to ear, radiating joy as he chatted with the demon, who listened silently, his own ever-present grin plastered on his face. Though his mouth was closed, there was something genuine in the half-deer demon's smile, as his mismatched red eyes were focused on Lucifer's lively gestures, the angel even waving his apple-topped cane in the air.

< Ahh, I'm stuffed with all those sweets Rosie gave me... > Lucifer sighed, patting his vest over his stomach with a comically exaggerated exhaustion. < Delicious, I must say! >

< ...? > Alastor's smile faltered briefly. < Sweets? > he asked, his ears twitching slightly as a lightbulb seemed to go off in his head. < Ohhh! The sweets... of course~ > he teased, his voice laced with a playful radio static. < I hate to burst your bubble, Your Majesty, but I've got some bad news for you... > His smile stretched wider, but just as Lucifer stepped onto the first step leading to the hotel, his expression froze, eyes wide as if struck by a sudden jolt of electricity.

< What's wrong...? > Alastor barely got the question out when Lucifer shot him a glance, filled with palpable apprehension, before quickly conjuring a golden portal and stepping through it, sealing it shut behind him.

Alastor was left standing there, his smile frozen on his lips, eyes wide as he glanced up at the towering structure of the hotel in front of him. As his gaze reached the sign perched at the top, a strange, familiar fear crept over him, so thick it made him let out a distorted radio hiss.

Just as he began to melt into the shadows with his staff in hand, Charlie flung open the door. < You're back—! > She squealed with excitement, but her voice trailed off as the sinner vanished right in front of her eyes.

Adam was literally crawling toward the window—it was his only shot. One arm was completely useless, and he was dragging himself across the floor with the other, scraping his knees against the ground, smearing it with the blood still pouring from his two wounds. The pain was excruciating, and Lilith's voice behind him—humming a twisted lullaby—was tearing apart any last shred of sanity he had left. She followed him step by step with the calm of someone who knew her prey could never escape.

< How pathetic you are. >

< Go to... hell, you blonde... bitch. > Adam spat, his words coming out in ragged breaths.

With a single long stride, Lilith positioned herself between his legs, raised her right arm, and pointed the blood-soaked spearhead directly at his back. She licked her violet lips with a wicked smile.

< Goodbye, First Man. >

...

< LILITH! >

Lucifer's voice froze the spear mid-air—literally. A thin layer of ice crackled over the weapon, burning Lilith's fingers until she dropped it to the ground.

Lilith took a few steps back, locking eyes with the Seraphim as he appeared in a flash of light. He stood tall, framed by the window, just inches from Adam's bloodied hands. Lucifer's wide, crimson eyes, void of pupils, dimmed and shifted to a stunned gold. He blinked several times before lowering his gaze in disbelief toward Adam, sprawled on the floor.

< What—what's going on here? > he asked, uncertainty in his voice.

Adam let out a weak, bitter laugh. < Guess the plot armor finally showed up, > he muttered.

Lucifer shot him a sharp glare. < Okay, shutting up, > Adam grumbled, gripping the floor in an attempt to push himself up.

< I'm just cleaning up our mess, like I said I would, > Lilith replied smoothly, though her eyes blazed with the same fury that made her long blonde hair sway in a non-existent wind.

< In the hotel? You were going to kill him here, with... with... > Lucifer glanced at the spear on the ground in disgust and fear. < ...that? > < You're putting everyone at risk. >

< There's no risk, > she countered coolly, < he's just a demon now, and he's almost dead. Look for yourself. >

Lilith took an exaggerated step forward, pressing her bare foot into Adam's gaping shoulder wound. He collapsed back to the ground with a groan.

< Fucking hell! > Adam spat out blood. < Talk about marital bliss, huh? > He clawed at the floor with his good hand.

< Lilith, > Lucifer called again, circling Adam's limp form with hesitant steps. < It's... it's not necessary anymore. >

He forced a strained smile, one meant to calm her down, waving his hands, even the one holding his staff. But her eyes were as cold as the ice that had coated the spear.

< Not necessary? > Lilith raised an eyebrow, her voice sharp with disapproval. < He canceled the Extermination, blackmailed you, and tried to kill Charlie! >

< ...but Charlie has... uh, forgiven him? She let him stay here, even though I... didn't want to... >

At those words, Adam felt a pang—something like loneliness, or gratitude? God, he never thought he'd find himself thanking the heavens—or maybe hell—for Lucifer being there... and actually on his side? Was this for real?

Meanwhile, Alastor had been sneaking through the shadows of the hallways, trying to avoid the others who were all in a panic after his sudden disappearance. Charlie, especially, was likely impossible to calm down at this point.

The hotel had so many rooms, far too many floors, most of them still vacant with no guests to fill them yet. But then, Alastor found himself there, in the long red-and-black corridor leading to Adam's room. His grip tightened around his cane, his smile anything but serene. He perked up his ears at the sounds and voices from inside the room—they were in there.

He continued toward the door until he stood just a few feet away, recognizing the muffled voices of Lucifer and... Lilith? A crackle of static echoed from his radio-like interference.

< Things have changed, yes, but we'll find another solution... can we talk about it? > Lucifer's smile was sharp but sweet, a plea as he looked up at his wife from his shorter height.

< Talk about it?! > Lilith hissed, suddenly snapping her wide, furious eyes toward the closed door. Alastor, standing on the other side, froze. < We'll talk, my little angel, ♫ > she sang, masking Alastor's presence. She pulled her blood-soaked foot off Adam's wounded shoulder, allowing him to let out a shaky gasp.

At that exact moment, Alastor heard the metallic clang of something falling at his feet. He barely had time to glance down and see that it was the lower part of his staff—split in two just as the ex-commander had severed it during the last extermination—when the upper half, microphone included, crumbled between his fingers into dust.

He froze—not just from the sudden, terrible realization stabbing through his mind, but because... he was trapped! The violet collar of his pact lit up around his neck, cutting off his breath...

...and Adam, with a monstrous snarl that twisted his face into something bestial, lunged forward. In a blur of speed and fury he hadn't displayed before—at least not in his Sinner form—he grabbed the spear from the ground. Black matter streamed from his eyes as he shot toward the room's entrance, aiming the blood-stained blade at the door. With a violent thrust, he drove it straight through the wood, sending the spear's tip bursting out the other side.

Everything happened in an instant, right under Lucifer's wide-eyed gaze.

< ..what the— >

The spear smashed through the door, completely ripping it off its hinges and slamming into Alastor, driven by Adam's massive frame.

Alastor barely had time to lift his ash-covered hands before he registered the door crashing toward him. His pupils shrank to tiny dots, eyes wide as the spear tore through his chest, emerging from his back and pinning him against the corridor wall.

From inside the room, Lucifer stood frozen, watching in shock as Alastor coughed up blood, the door disintegrating on impact. Adam, entirely consumed by his rage, bled the same black viscous matter from his jaws. He growled again, shoving the demon harder against the wall, driving the spear deeper, until the ice burning his hand snapped the blade in two.

By now, the commotion had spread throughout the entire hotel. Charlie, Vaggie, Husk, Angel Dust, and Niffty were desperately searching for Alastor. Charlie had become convinced he was somewhere inside the building, and something told her he was in Adam's room. She wasn't as naïve as they thought; all these oddities, these secrets, had started the moment Adam arrived. Was it her fault all of this was happening? Should she not have forced her father to take him in?

As Charlie, followed closely by Vaggie armed with her angelic spear, raced down the stairs, she suddenly heard her father's voice.

< ALASTOR! >

His shout echoed from the end of the hallway, just as a fiery explosion erupted, sending Adam flying down the corridor at terrifying speed, the force shaking the walls.

The towering figure of the First Man shot past Charlie, narrowly missing her as Vaggie tackled her out of the way. Husk and Angel Dust pressed themselves against the wall to avoid him, while Niffty looked up with wide eyes.

< Whoooa, what a ride! > she giggled, spinning her cyclopean head in the direction Adam flew, crashing into a door several feet away from where Lucifer stood, his small figure at a distance as he darted toward Alastor.

< Dad! > Charlie cried in alarm, scrambling to her feet and running toward the two of them. From the now-doorless room, Lilith vanished in a wisp of ghostly fire.

A violet shimmer flickered in Charlie's eyes for a brief moment, but she was forced to refocus on her father, who was now hunched over Alastor, lying still on the ground. The Radio Demon wasn't moving. His body had left a long, bloody smear on the wall, and that same blood was pooling on the floor beneath him.

Charlie sprinted forward, but she and Vaggie were forced to stop abruptly as the intense heat radiating from Lucifer became unbearable. Both girls shielded their eyes from the scorching wave that burned their skin.

< What's happening... Dad! > Charlie cried out, squinting through the searing light to see the spear lying on the floor. < Alastor! Oh my God, Alastor! > she panicked, stamping her feet in desperation. < He's hurt, he's hurt! Dad, let me get to him!! >

Charlie was frantic, stomping her feet in place as the heat melted the wallpaper and dimmed the lights along the walls, plunging that specific part of the hallway into a deep, eerie darkness.

A darkness that also filled the screen, which moments before had been broadcasting the corridor's scene. Vox, sitting in his swivel chair, stared wide-eyed at the flickering static as the signal cut out in his Control Room.

Lucifer, now fully transformed, seemed oblivious to everything. Flames blazed between his curved horns, and his eyes were devoid of pupils. Every part of him, even his clothes, was covered in spectral yellow eyes that writhed like his tail, which ended in a sharp black spear.

The sudden appearance of his six feathered wings sent out a shockwave that knocked Husk and Angel Dust backward as they tried to reach him. Niffty, on the other hand, had already darted over to where an unconscious Adam lay, far down the hall.

< Dad, please! I'm begging you! I care about Alastor too, we all do! > Charlie cried out, collapsing to the floor where she had fallen. But Lucifer only leaned over Alastor, wrapping him protectively in his wings, hiding them both from view in a soft embrace.

A cone of darkness surrounded them, then lit up with a vibrant, laser-like golden light that hummed with a strange sound. That same sound cut through the sky outside the hotel, bright enough to be seen from the windows overlooking the courtyard.

The explosion that followed shook the building violently, sending dust tumbling down onto Charlie's head. She curled up, wrapping her arms around her skull, gasping in desperation.

< What the fuck is happening now!? >

[mirkwdmstrss]

returned to darkness

summary: adar meets his end on the battlefield, but not before a millennia of trauma, betrayal, and lost love are unleashed between the two in a torrent of bloodshed, manipulation, and final farewells.

genre: angst, hurt no comfort

pairing: adar x sauron (as annatar)

word count: 2.9k

tags: blood and injury, adar death

His line of sight narrowed to that of the tunnels he’d borne under the Southlands, the din of battle falling away in a rapid decrescendo until all he could hear was all that remained of his heart hammering in his ears.

Though he wore a new face, there was only one who could simultaneously carry that much condemnation and determination in his eyes; eyes that once bore him favor.

There was only one who could decimate swathes of soldiers without so much as a scratch to deface the marble of his flesh.

There was only Him.

And Adar had betrayed him beyond reproach; and he would again to save his children, knowing it would likely be his own undoing.

He watched on despite the chaos raging all around, transfixed by the gleam of His sword arcing through the air to fell one of Eregion’s soldiers while His golden hair, once red, fanned around Him in a halo, hallowed though it wasn’t; and hating himself for how easy the revelry he once held for him clawed its way up from a place so deep inside himself, he’d been certain it’d never see the light of day ever again.

But then again, He’d always held the key to his black heart in the palm of His hand.

The whir of an arrow slicing through the air drew Adar from his trance. His arm shot out, slashing his sword through the wooden shaft. The remains of the Elven weapon clattered to the ground and he spat on them before lifting his eyes once more; horror filling them as he watched Him slash the throat of one of his beloved Uruk; cutting through them with the same ease at which he’d hewn the elves.

Adar saw red; anger and pain the likes of which he’d felt so potently only once before in his lifetimes exploded from a place deep within himself. The raw agony burned through his core, racing through blood at such an accelerated speed that all he could do to keep from burning from the inside out was to let loose a scream so dark and terrible that all those fighting in his vicinity cowered in fear.

But his pain was not geared towards them. It was not for them. This was a pain born of ages, vengeance born of cruelty and malice, of torture and ruin.

His heels dug into the earth, tearing up the ground as he took off towards Sauron, slaughtering any elf that dared cross his path or blades with any of his Uruk while shouting out commands in Black Speech to his beloved children to fall back out of harm’s way as he raced towards the very thing that would be the ruin of them all.

Do not make war in anger.

He’d said those very words to the young Commander, yet he could not himself heed them.

The world could rise and fall and it would not be time enough for this pain to pass.

As Sauron’s blade passed through yet another one of his children and Adar watched helplessly as the darkness chased away the light in their eyes, his hand swiped at his belt where Mairon’s crown of sharpened iron hung, waiting centuries to taste its master’s flesh once more.

Tightening his grip beneath the guard of his sword, Adar swung it in a wide arc, point angled right at his heart; at least where the shell of one once beat.

The shriek of metal pierced the air as Sauron’s blade whipped behind his back to block what should’ve been a fatal blow. Adar pushed back against the strength of his block, but Sauron was stronger. He twirled in place, disarming the strike completely, his deft footwork placing him out range of Adar’s initial attack.

Adar’s black eyes flashed dangerously as he stalked his prey in a slow circle. Strands of sweat drenched hair stuck plastered to his face as his wide chest rose and fell, his heart a wild animal clawing at the cage of his ribs to get out and sink its teeth into Sauron.

“Did you really believe you could stab me in the back twice, Adar?” A hollow smile painted his delicate lips and Adar growled low in his throat.

Adar shifted his hand to fall atop Mairon’s crown hanging at his side and watched as Sauron’s eyes fell on it like a moth to a flame, both fear and desire flickering in the depths of his gray irises.

“All these years and you’ve never been satisfied in your quest for power,” Adar cried over the wind which had begun to howl.

“No,” Sauron attested, taking a step towards him. In turn, Adar took one back. Sauron’s brow twitched as a devious and calculated look entered his gaze. “But with these Rings of Power, I will Lord over all the races of Middle Earth all shall bow before us.”

Us.

Adar felt the weight of that word like that of a mountain collapsing in on itself. And still for a moment, he felt his resolve weaken. Until he remembered the ways in which Sauron used and abused his children, enslaving them to His cause for world domination, never minding how many died in His quest for might above all others.

“There is no us!” Adar snarled, lips curling back. “There never was. I was a pawn in your grand chess game, a means to end, just like my children.”

Sauron scoffed, features fixed in a state of cool indifference. “Children!” he called, a derisive laugh tumbling from his wicked mouth. “You never learn, do you Adar? These orcs are not yours to raise, they are yours to weaponize. With them under your first, we could lay waste to thousands and create a final and lasting peace.”

“Not for them!” Adar seethed, pointing towards his fleeing uruk. “To you they are collateral! You care not for their names nor their desires, only that which you seek to claim for yourself.”

“Is that not what you’ve done here?” Sauron challenged, his brow arching as he gestured to the battle waging on around them, his sword hanging limply in hand.

“Enough!” Adar boomed as thunder rumbled in the distance. “I am not like you! I have spent centuries undoing the damage you’ve done.”

“Yes,” Sauron answered, taking a measured step towards Adar. “But as soon as you heard wind of me in Eregion, high in Celebrimbor’s tower cavorting with the elves…you abandoned the safe haven you promised to your orcs in Mordor to seek me out. You mobilized legions upon legions of orcs, emptying the safety of the city of shadows, risking life and limb of your pets to bring me down by any means necessary.” He paused to point a finger at him, a quizzical look in his eye. “Tell me, Adar, how many of these orcs have you lost your pursuit of me? Do you know?” His eyes glistened in the gray light of day. “Do you know all of their names? If they had families?”

Adar paused. Surely he did. He had made it his mission in life to nurture each of his Uruk, but lately he’d been so focused on strategizing and remaining one step ahead of the army of Lindon to divide his attention elsewhere. Surely the Uruk he’d burned he’d known the names of. Surely he’d collected all that were slain…except after a while, he’d been kept by maintaining plans for the Siege, hostage negotiations, devising ways to get to Sauron…when had he stopped going to collect his fallen children?

Adar’s irises flickered back and forth across the trampled earth at his feet as if the answer would somehow be spelled out in the soil. As a drop of rain fell hard and fast against the skin of his scarred cheeks, he snarled before ripping a dagger from the belt at his waist and launching it with all his might towards Sauron.

“Get out of my head!” he roared.

The short blade whirled through the air, spinning end over end as it sought out its mark between his ribs.

A wicked smile hooked at the corners of Sauron’s face, though his eyes remained empty of any emotion. “I’m afraid, I never left, Adar.” With only a slight twitch of his hand, the dagger deviated from its course, soaring into the throat of an Uruk that had yet to flee.

Adar’s heart skipped a beat as his eyes widened in horror. “No,” he breathed, faltering a step as his heart yearned to go and comfort his fallen child.

“Yes,” Sauron responded, voice eerily calm.

Tears brimmed along Adar’s lash line as the sound of the Uruk choking on his own blood filled his ears.

“I am here!” Adar called to him in Black Speech though he dared not venture any closer for the snake that Sauron was. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“All of their pain and suffering is by your hand,” ventured Sauron, voice laden with accusation.

Adar’s eyes cut to him, pupils sharp as arrows. “Lies,” he growled. “If it weren’t for me, you’d have enslaved them all; using them to fulfill your egregious desires for tyranny.”

“Again, have you not used them to fulfill your own selfish desires?” pushed Sauron, advancing another step towards Adar. “Instead of fighting me, join me. Go ahead, remain their father and raise them to know that their sacrifice will only create a better future for new generations of orcs.”

Dipping into the well of strength within himself, Adar lifted his chin and advanced towards his former master. “You would promise me this?”

Sauron’s eyes softened, the wicked gleam in his gray eyes dimming, but remaining all the same. “I give you my word,” his irises flicker across his face. “Adar.”

Adar clenched his jaw so tightly hearing his name on his lips. He was sure if he bit down any harder, his teeth would shatter. He was nearly toe to toe with him now, hundreds of years having passed since he last stood so near to him. He kept his sword angled between his body and Sauron’s.

Sauron inclined his head towards Adar, lips curving into a soft pout and for the briefest moment, Adar swore he saw a flicker of the love he once knew behind the mask of this most recent form of His.

“A pity your tongue is dipped in poison,” Adar whispered, evading the saccharine sweetness of the honey trap he’d laid out for him.

Sauron’s eyes flared wide and blazed with fire as Adar’s features twisted with rage. With one powerful tug, he tore the iron crown from his belt and thrust it forward to pierce Sauron’s side.

The blow never landed, the scrape of metal on metal shrieking as Sauron’s vambrace collided with the circlet, his arm threaded between the lethal points.

Betrayal flashed in Sauron’s eyes as he pushed back against the weight of Adar’s fist. He grasped Adar’s shoulder in an attempt to force him back, but Adar could only see his end by his hand; and this time, there would be no coming back for the Dark Lord.

“I gave you everything!” Sauron bellowed, any trace of sympathy he held for the Uruk vanishing in that moment.

“You would’ve stolen everything!” Adar cried over the storm, rain now falling sideways as lightning flashed overhead. The corded muscles of his neck bulged with the effort of pushing back against Sauron’s might. A scream tore from his scarred lips as he summoned all of his strength into his attack; and when the sharpened tips of Mairon’s crown slowly punctured through the weakest part of his chest plate, Adar could taste the sweetness of victory knowing his children would prevail.

Just as Adar was sure he would see the light fade from Sauron’s impenetrable gaze forevermore, Sauron threw him back with a cry so terrible it shook the earth beneath their feet. Blood gushed from the two puncture wounds at his side, black as tar.

He pressed his hand against the injury, eyebrows downturned with a look of hurt in his eyes that almost seemed genuine. Adar wasn’t sure if he was capable of expressing genuine emotion, perhaps once, but now, in this form there was no way of knowing.

As Adar regained his footing, he adjusted the grip on his broadsword. With Sauron distracted, this was his one chance. He swung his sword in two wide circles at his side before launching his attack; the tip of his sword angled to strike a fatal blow.

Sauron’s head whipped towards him, his square jaw clenched and eyes wild with fury. He cast out his bloodstained hand, summoning the crown that once belonged to him from where it had fallen in the struggle, and drove it up and under Adar’s breast plate, puncturing the space between his ribs to stab into his lungs.

A choked gasp escaped Adar’s lips as pain overwhelmed him and his breathing became labored. His brow twitched as black spots dotted his field of vision, though Sauron’s face remained clear, his unfazed expression wounding him more than the blow that had been struck against him.

Adar’s grip on his sword faltered and it fell from his grasp, clattering to the ground at his feet. As his knees buckled, he fell forward and released an agonized groan as Sauron thrust the iron deeper into his chest cavity. His lips parted in a silent scream as Sauron caught him around his waist, leaving the crown embedded in his body as he cradled his head in his opposite hand.

Sauron dropped to his knees to gently lay Adar upon the ground where he struggled to take in enough air to his collapsed and punctured lung.

Adar blinked hard to clear the rain from his eyes, unable to speak as his breathing became short and labored. Sauron cupped his cheek in his palm, the warmth of the gesture surprising Adar in what he knew were now to be his final moments. He felt the wetness of Sauron’s blackened blood smear across his skin as he struggled to keep his eyes open.

“All of this bloodshed could’ve been avoided,” Sauron murmured, his eyes soft and filled with pity.

The rain had died down to a soft pitter-patter, droplets plinking against their armor and diluting the blood that poured from both of their wounds, black and red braiding together like liquid ribbon.

He stroked his cheek with the back of His hand and Adar coughed, blood staining his lips. “One day,” he wheezed. “You will fall.”

Sauron’s eyes cleared, the corners of them wrinkling as his lips pressed together in a tight smile. “Such a pity,” he lamented, smoothing the hair away from Adar’s face. “To have fallen so far from grace.”

Adar squeezed his eyes shut, fighting against the pain it caused him to summon what strength remained in his limbs to raise his arm to hold Sauron’s face in the palm of his gauntlet-covered hand. “I worshiped you,” he whispered, voice breaking as a tear leaked from his eye.

For a moment, time seemed to slow, the Earth no longer spinning on its axis; and in that brief stillness where they held one another, an entire lifetime that could have been passed before Adar’s fading vision.

Sauron withdrew his hand from Adar’s cheek to cradle the gloved one he held against his own, unblemished skin. Curling his fingers around the palm of Adar’s hand, he lowered it, and with his other unbuckled the leather straps holding the gauntlet in place.

Adar whimpered as Sauron pulled the gauntlet free from his hand and felt the cool kiss of rain touch the only flesh he’d kept hidden from the light of day; the only part of himself that He’d never wounded.

“Shh,” coaxed Sauron as returned Adar’s palm to his cheek, turning his face into his hand and nuzzling the smooth skin of his palm.

Adar couldn’t help but stroke his thumb across the cut of his jaw, even now marveling at the power of his beauty over him. He wheezed as his lung failed to inflate with air, the warmth of his blood pooling all around him feeling distant as an unfamiliar cold began to settle in his bones. He shivered and swallowed as he struggled to take a breath. “Did you ever love me?” he asked weakly, the plea of man with nothing left to lose.

Sauron shifted to look upon him, his eyes glimmering with some far off nostalgia. “Once,” he answered softly. He lowered his lips to Adar’s palm and pressed a gentle kiss to the unmarred flesh there before laying it upon his chest to rest against his heart, which beat less and less with each passing second. In an instant, His gaze hardened and His lip curled back, “But you got in my way.”

He yanked hard on the iron wrought crown, eliciting a roar of pain from Adar as he pulled it free of his flesh; blood and viscera spilling off the sharpened ends of it as Sauron rose to his full height to loom over him.

“May you return to darkness, Adar,” Sauron said in dismissal as he turned on his heel, not even sparing him one final glance as he parted from him. “Pray we never find one another there.”

Tears slipped from Adar’s eyes as Sauron disappeared from view and the world blurred in and out of focus. He blinked slowly, trying to scan his surroundings and know his children had fled to safety.

“Flee,” he whispered between shallow breaths to the open air, a final prayer to the gods old and new. “Seek shelter in the shadows where He cannot find you.”

As blackness curtained his vision and the Void curled in around him, Adar exhaled one slow, final breath knowing that in the everlasting darkness, he might finally know peace.