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LA MENTIRA •. *࿐ SUNDAY NSFW

“Se te olvida, Que me quieres a pesar de lo que dices, Pues llevamos en el alma cicatrices, Imposibles de borrar.” “You’re forgetting That you love me despite your words, For we carry scars in our souls— Impossible to erase.” •. *࿐ finished writing and proofreading on sunday (and sunday finished) so I consider this piece blessed by the irony gods. best viewed in dark mode art byㅤ@ssanagi00ㅤon X pairing: sunday + male reader, very mildly suggestive with blade, argenti and gepard but interest can be interpreted as platonic as well, whatever tickles your pickle warnings: amab! top male reader, reader and sunday are very much not friendly in this, sexual tension, violence and injury, demons being representative of base desires (lust), corruption, overstimulation, sub character, virgin sunday, slowburn, horrible communication and I mean that vehemently wc: 18.8k, and over 5k of those words are freaky

HONKAI STAR RAIL MASTERLIST

MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION

This is how the world was created.

On the first day, grant Truth.

From the primordial chaos that rages in the depths of the universe sprouts a seedling called Paradise, cast from the scales to sow Order throughout the furor in the absence of Ena. Known to all as the beginning, each poor soul will return to their dream at the End of All Things: a merciful slumber to ease them from their miseries.

On the second day, grant the Calendar.

The time must be marked. To regulate the cacophonous path leading to the inevitable sleep, one sequences the days—carefully filling them, such that when a soul submits itself on the great scales, it will not be found lacking.

On the third day, grant Language.

The record of human history and geography is created through sound, shaped through every word and phrase that is passed on from ancestor to descendant, from merchant to merchant: changes that ripple, as majestic and all-consuming as a tidal wave is to a pond.

On the fourth day, grant Value.

Value. Your pen halts at the word: ink bleeding into the thoughts on fragile vellum, alongside the even more precious transcript in a separate tome. It is not quite valuable yet. Only when the translation is complete shall it be assigned a fingerprint of its own to determine the use it will have in the world—a task he has deigned to personally preside over.

On the fifth day, grant Rules.

He’s rather fond of them. Rules, that is—rigid commandments dictating that you must obey him as a temporary vassal, formalities that set clear boundaries between the two of you.

On the sixth day, grant Meaning.

Rules that you don’t necessarily assign meaning to. Your fingers drum against the table as you complete the passage. His gaze, almost mechanically, snaps up at the very imprint of that meaningless action—for he has assigned ire and disgust to the moments you don’t conform to the chalk outline you’re meant to stay in. Obedient, like the rest of his people are. On a tight leash, as a crazed dog of the battlefield should be. The senses you’ve sharpened whisper of a quill creaking as gloved fingers grasp it tighter than they should: like he’s holding the supple leather, ready to pull should he need to.

On the seventh day, grant Dignity.

He would argue you have none. You would retort that you have all of it. Not as a noble, nor as a transient subordinate of the Argonian pope, but as a human—a concept that has remained unfaltering between death and rebirth. There is enough self-respect contained within you to abate his lack of it for you.

And on the eighth day, grant us the Paradise where this all started.

The treatises you’ve thumbed through these past few weeks have alluded to the same conclusion: the Order will bring everything back to the beginning. You’ve heard him speak, when his lips utter sermons you’ve quickly grown tired of, echoing sharply within the cold heaven of this temple: on cycles within each soul’s lifetime; on the universal chance of equilibrium; and other apocalyptic drivel that you pay attention to with only a minute fragment of your brain.

Like all things, this will trickle back into the beginning, too.

•. *࿐

“Is Brother doing alright? I noticed he’s become too busy to visit often…”

Small cracks. The perfunctory civil gestures—more like jests—performed between lord and aide begin to crumble.

“Have I done something?”

Her worry illuminates the amorphous mass of problems that spills and churns, tucked far away in the crashing waves of your mind: like a lighthouse, each word is a beacon that reels in the creature lurking in the deep. It’s far too vile to call a relationship. Too pathetic to be mutual enmity.

Yet, those same words only catch the very shadow lurking beneath the tumultuous surface. She sees the tension within his set mouth when he comes to visit: the quiet, fragile vestiges of amiability—if one can even call it that. It’s all for her sake, and you don’t mind playing along with his little farce.

A literal and metaphorical veil separates her from her brother and her friend. Hazy fabric creates impurities in the glacial relationship: futile hopes that this, too, will be restored to what it once was.

Unfortunately, for her, it has always been like this.

Her teacup chimes as she sets it in the saucer—far unlike the clumsy handling of your own. It is a stark reminder that you do not belong. The sandwich you so carefully sliced up just a candle earlier is untouched, and you can tell that something’s brewing in her mind.

(The most pathetic fallacy. His oppressive scent lingers on your clothes: brushing past you as he collected the manuscripts you’d had half a mind to scribble all over. It twists over your body—a cage made from faint soap and clean linen.)

He invades your thoughts: as a straw man to set ablaze in this uncanny chill.

Maybe she knows. Some things cannot be fixed, for they were never whole.

“He’s alone,” she confesses. It’s a point in time you don’t quite remember: a memory that stands out from the rest of its counterparts, unfit to be in the same chronology.

No wonder, you might’ve said in response, had this been a different life. You bite on the words so hard your lip tears: blood welling into your mouth and coating the lingering saccharine taste of sweets with metal. You hope she doesn’t see your wince.

“I’m glad you’re with him. It does my brother good to have someone he can trust.”

It has to be a horrible comedy at this point. Words so pathetically ironic, that you would laugh if they weren’t so sad, come out of the Saint’s mouth. All you can do is offer a sympathetic look: as though your existence doesn’t make him a worse person, as though the two of you aren’t entwined in a relationship of reciprocal harm.

Bile rises in your throat. Maybe it would have been better to break it to her—over the gentle amber tea that ripples in your teacup, amidst the hushed patter of rain that would wash away the needless cruelty in your words as you explain to her, tired therapist style, that perhaps this friendship isn’t working out between you and her unfortunate brother. Trust. It is a concept suited to you and the Saint: something easy and deep that exists as a placid lake, tranquil and ever-present. Even as an antonym, it shouldn’t approach the relationship between you and the Pope at all, lest it be tarnished by association.

You open your mouth: white lies beginning to coalesce on your tongue, so sweet in the throes of the acerbic truth.

Yet, there is no need to speak—no need to sully the calm waters between the two of you with an untruth coaxed out in a moment of panic—for the soft leather of boots caresses the stone floors in a rhythm that only belongs to one person.

“Ah,” she mumbles self-consciously, picking at the delicate lace of her veil. Ah, indeed. “Please don’t tell him I said anything.”

“Of course,” you reply smoothly. Too smoothly. It is the only thing you will be honest about today: as he quietly steps into the room; as his face barely hides the mild irritation upon sight of you; as you mask your own distaste with a small, strained smile.

Both of you are filthy liars.

When the End of All Things comes, both of you will be found wanting, and you are not quite sure who will tumble to hell first.

•. *࿐

One would typically think that the only Pope in the Argonian lands wouldn’t be swayed by petty, mortal emotions. Certainly, in the novel you read, he was more like a carved jade statue rather than human—seemingly distant, neutral, and even quite benevolent if one hadn’t read the later chapters and saw his angelic figure embossed into a neat little corner on the cover of the novel.

Looking at him now, it isn’t difficult to reach the inevitable conclusion that the villain you knew, and the man you thought you could predict, are two wholly different beings.

One may ask, why?

Why, indeed.

Your foul mood trails behind you like a grave shroud on a funeral pyre, ignited in the low heat of the day. It smokes and sputters—overpowering, despite the neutral expression on your face and your relaxed body language.

“Would you like to sit down and join us, my lord? It wouldn’t do, to have us be the only two enjoying ourselves while you stand in this humid weather.”

They look a picture. Her, clad in a pearlescent-grey dress that complements his hair and his robes that you’re sure he picked out himself for this appointment. You mar the landscape; a carmine coat like bloodstains in this view, a bitter reminder of exactly where your nobility was forged.

“I am here to guard you and His Holiness, my lady. I’m afraid I cannot,” you reply, prompt and curt—as you tend to be towards those in the main cast.

You stand behind Sunday: stone-like, immovable. It would be easy to unsheathe your sword—fast enough to blur time and space and sever his head from his neck, like you’ve done a countless number of times. It would be easy to flee to the Southern continents with the wind on your heels and a new face recast with the mana that flows through the circles bound around your heart. It would be easy to leave this life behind—to step into the waves that lap on the shores and cast your sorrows into the deep.

Why has he placed you here, you wonder?

His achromatic hair flutters in the wind, and the soft flesh of his nape is exposed. He doesn’t trust you, at all, yet he’s showing his weakness so easily.

Their conversation falls on deaf ears as you observe them both: her animated chatter and his quiet responses.

He smells of tea leaves and the faint oils that come with peeling a fruit, all layered beneath the incense lit daily in the temple. The breeze conveys it to you in whispers, rippling against your body mercilessly.

You feel glad that the story is slipping back into its unsightly rhythm, after being so ruthlessly upturned by you, if only for the sake of your freedom.

He’s gazing softly at her, you’d imagine—with about as much pressure as the brush of snow on ground. You wouldn’t know what that looks like, though (considering a) he’s never looked at you kindly, and b) his back is facing you, as well as that neck of his that you can’t help but bore holes into as petty vengeance). Within the past week, she’s visited him twice. The hound (you), naturally, must follow—teeth bared—ready to put yourself in harm’s way for a contract.

It’s not pride that’s reared its head within him. It would’ve demanded you leave him be with her, as he is capable enough to protect both of them. You’d be inclined to agree. She herself could match most elite monsters blow for blow with the spirit sword she tucks deep within her soul—not that he’d know yet, for that is a secret between only her (and of course, the reader who’s watched over her world, omniscient).

No, it doesn’t seem to be pride. He knows you know his strength; you’ve fought him, sturdy vines that ensnare their prey, versus a Harpe that, despite its initial misgivings about you, has begrudgingly melded into your hand, ready to reap viscera and blood alongside you.

Perhaps it’s a concentrated form of wrath. Honed to the finest, sharpest point, it now grazes against your throat—a sign that at the end of the day, no matter how much you writhe and twist against the binds that tie you to Argo, you are still under his thumb. Or maybe, it’s a poisonous sort of envy: a warning that try as you might, you’ll never be able to reach her in a way he has.

You maintain your neutral expression.

But, for the first time, something about the happy sight begins to rankle.

•. *࿐

The only witnesses to your midnight flight from the temple are the small lights that flicker perpetually in the long night. Swift-footed as you may be, the ties that weigh you down aren’t merely contractual, but emotional. Thus, you currently aren’t running away from obligation, but simply maximising your time off—wandering the streets where your face is less known, your presence less well-regarded.

Except—

The air tears apart under the pressure of a singular blade, resplendent in the dying glow of the streetlamps.

—something cold settles by the flesh of your neck, half-malicious, half-not. Without turning, you know who it is—which is why Harpe remains snugly in its sheath at your hip.

“Your Grace,” you greet: laconic, unwavering. “Is there a reason for this ambush?”

“An ambush?” he scoffs, but the sword moves crisply through space, and you hear the click of it against his sheath. “Hardly. If it were an ambush, your head would be lying at your feet right now.”

Your thumb traces the ornate carvings of Harpe, but you still don’t turn to face him. There’s a limit to the respect you show him, much like the rest of the insipid characters in this universe. “If you wanted a fight, Your Grace, you could’ve asked and I would have been happy to oblige.”

It would be a different matter if he monopolised your time during work hours, but these little slivers of freedom that you grasp with your two hands are so much more precious that you feel a wave of annoyance at the Northern Duke Yingxing’s interruption of your break. You pivot on your heel, finally deigning to show him the frigid expression painting your face—and oh, he’s a bit too close for your liking.

Something creaks in the distance, like muscles straining against bone when a hand clenches into a neat little fist.

His face is poisoned with his displeasure, while his black locks ripple like tar in the boreal wind—indistinguishible from the hue of blood when night falls on it.

“Unfortunately, you falling to my blade will have to be postponed.” His eyes settle on where the hilt of Harpe glimmers beneath the warm swathes of fabric you hastily donned: studying her make, what little details he can glean from the glint. He vivisects both the sword and her wielder—one charged moment it takes for him to penetrate through your bearing and the way your body tenses in a non-combat environment (or at least, you hope), in a way he couldn’t afford to when the ancient jian he held clashed so fearsomely with Harpe.

One moment. You can’t read the expression that crosses his face—half-contemplative. No. Perhaps a third. Maybe you’d wallow a bit more in the irony of it all—that the pixelated ink has been inhibited with an incomprehensible life of its own—but he’s sliding a thick, expensive envelope out of his long coat, and the moment is gone.

“An invitation.”

The two words are laden with about as much emotion as a nondescript plate tucked into the back of a cupboard—so absent as to be completely overlooked and forgotten, just like the implication in these syllables. Is it a threat? A formal request for a duel? A romantic dinner for two that’s been grossly mishandled?

You don’t take it. In fact, you stare at the cream-hued parchment so long that the deep grey clouds that whorl the night split and spill cautious raindrops. Even beneath the eaves of the closed shops, you can feel the warm water brush the hem of your coat and speckle the ground with petrichor: a most pathetic fallacy.

“For…” you finally prompt. It scorns etiquette—the instructor the King haphazardly sent your way, oh, how his face would’ve curdled at your manner.

He leans in, like he’s telling you some great big secret: all the while, his gloved hands sheathe the paper between the layers of fabric that bind heat to your body.

“It’s confidential,” he replies, and you can hear the faint mockery in his voice as he moves past you without another word—without even a look back.

•. *࿐

The letter rests heavy in your pocket.

You wouldn’t notice it normally, but the cheap ale you buy tastes warm, while the potato fritters you order stick in your throat. Despite all your misgivings about the delivery, you unfold the gilded vellum—not with tremulous hands, but with a frown.

It’s simple. You take care to not disturb its contents (heavens forbid you find anthrax in this fantastical setting), and are hit with a subtly cold scent and neat writing you ever-so-aptly attribute to her. She’s polite. She doesn’t beat around the bush. There will be an expedition to retrieve item so-and-so… Even with her succinct style of writing, you still skim the lines exasperatedly—keeping Yingxing’s words in your mind like a blaring alarm.

An invitation.

Ah. There it is. She’s dedicated a whole line to the question, corralling it from the rest.

If you would be so inclined, there is and always will be a space for you, should you wish to take it.

It’s a big deal, perhaps. You vaguely remember the mythical shield being emblematic of the ending—the protection of the kingdom for the next few centuries or something. One of the cornerstones to victory. Even your colleague had agreed on the ending being unremarkable. Who had she ended up with, again?

You swill the alcohol in the tankard, too focused on thinking about the now-folded letter to notice the hooded figure sliding onto the chair near yours. It’s crowded, you get it, you pay them no mind. Plain features—so plain that you forget them as soon as you’re done with your cursory glance—which ironically, is the very thing that your brain latches onto.

It’s not hard to figure out that it’s a carefully curated disguise, but it would be far harder to unravel it. Something otherworldly blocks the probing attempts you make, all the while you drink casually without a care in the world.

As far as anyone knows, your contributions to the kingdom are purely militaristic. Fight a few demons that have crawled up from the underworld, get some gimmicky medals, maybe a title if you really stood out. It’s the only thing you’ve advertised about yourself, while the circles that chain you to life are hidden in a nondescript box behind published details.

How long has it been since they sat down? Five minutes? Three? The time stretches into a neat year, and despite your scrutiny, the stranger sips their drink with impeccable neutrality—so perfectly that you don’t notice what goes wrong until a split second later than you normally would’ve. The server, normally cat-like with grace on her feet, stumbles, while the lights, normally so unwavering with their light, flicker. Normal is replaced by abnormal.

A drink spills. A shout echoes. A fist meets a face, and in the instant you focus too long on the stranger, the cacophony diffuses into the quiet corner you occupy; like an alarm clock to a dream, peace shatters and a lone piece of paper flutters to the floor. You’re busy dabbing the foamy flecks of beer off your arm to notice gloves tainted the softest of greys carefully picking the discarded sheet up, briefly passing a cold hand filled with warm light over the folded vellum, before the paper returns to its place on the table.

You return, none the wiser.

The stranger leaves, with a mission fulfilled.

•. *࿐

A body collides with the ground, gutting from the man a wheezed, gasping sound. It’s not a gurgling death rattle, and neither does the thick stench of metal accompany him. Rather, he is merely tired, with the less invasive sheen of sweat coating his body and dissipating into the air—faintly sweet, far more forgiving.

“You overcompensate through heavy defence, which inhibits your offensive capacity.” His neck cranes to gaze at you: blond hair sticking like straw to his forehead.

You sheathe Harpe and extend a hand to the Southern Duke’s heir. He takes it, gracefully scrambling up from the Templar training grounds.

“It works,” Gepard asserts. “You are simply stronger than me.”

“It works—” you counter. “—if you’re in a team and the first line of defense, which you predominantly are. Alone, you will succumb to a war of attrition.”

Out of all of them, he listens the best. Those serious blue eyes seem to digest each word: envisioning the future of which you speak, various stratagems that could leave him isolated from his little group. A man separated from his comrades. A shield separated from its swords.

A moment later, he readies himself, bending his knees and holding his sword in front of him as though he is inviting you to play.

“Again,” he utters. You scoff, hands hanging loosely by your sides with no intention of grasping Harpe again today.

“Get some medical attention for the muscles you pulled first, and I’ll consider it.” You’re about to turn to the barracks to grab a towel when he pulls at your sleeve. There is hesitation—something you rarely see in him—as he opens his mouth, and curiosity gets the better of you.

“The recommendations you gave for those plants—thank you for them.” He was grateful for advice on fertilisers and small-scale irrigation methods? Any child who grew up in a village in the stacks could’ve told him the same.

“Sure,” you reply. You’ve a feeling that’s not what he meant to say, but you have no intention of asking about it yourself.

“And…” he prevaricates. “Will I be fighting alongside you in the future?”

Ah. There it is: an allusion to what can only be the invitation. Somewhere, deep inside your wardrobe, the vellum lies between a pair of old boots and your mentor’s jacket. The words, too, lie buried deep in your larynx; your mouth opens and closes like some fish out of water, not only deciding on what to say, but your general decision on the matter you’ve been pushing back for the past week.

You are ransomed from this situation with the payment of three words.

The crystal looped haphazardly around your neck like a collar vibrates with a human voice—a new technology some of your anonymous formulae for waveforms helped develop—and you probably look momentarily relieved, before you actually hear the person contacting you.

[My office, now.]

Gepard looks at you in curiosity, but you’re already honing in on that large window that overlooks all: on the figure that momentarily stands within sight, before his grey robes flutter gently behind him, and he vanishes.

[Yes, sir,] you reply drily, flecked with one part relief and three parts resignation.

“So…” he prompts as you let the stone nestle back onto your chest.

“I have duties to tend to currently,” you excuse yourself with a perfunctory bow. It’s no promise to discuss this later, nor is it any real answer. Though, if he had a shrewd mind, he might’ve pieced together an answer based on the excuse you gave.

“When can we—” the heir flounders, reaching after you once more, but you are already gone: as fleet-footed as the summer wind.

•. *࿐

It’s another stack of papers that was allegedly overdue, despite you not seeing hair nor hide of it for this past week.

You eye this incriminating new piece of evidence, and sit down.

•. *࿐

It’s hot. The sweat running down your face and neck and sliding in between skin and sun-warmed armour makes you feel overly sticky, while the deep metallic aroma, seasoned gently with notes of linseed oil, add to your very own hell.

What circle would this be? It’s unbearably arid, the position you’re stuck in is beginning to wear on your nerves, and the sun hasn’t even reached its peak. The… sixth… you fumble in the terrible summer haze, feeling about as desiccated as dust. For… heresy? Against… who? Your mind whirls furiously, circling back to a moment where you knelt before Ena’s statue in the temple and prayed for things to change.

You start laughing. Hard. Metal chimes against metal, and the sudden shattering of your previous impassivity startles the man who sits facing you—though, his surprise doesn’t last long before he carefully sets down the wooden palette and paintbrush, drinking in the abstract change in your expression. It is only when you quiet down, head ringing, that Argenti speaks.

“I think I’ve got everything I need to complete your portrait,” he remarks thoughtfully, calmly—as though he hadn’t begged you yesterday, publicly, on his knees, without an ounce of shame, to be his model. With feline grace, he slides off his chair and walks up to you, pressing the back of his hand to your forehead. You focus on the faint scent of oil paints that cling to his body, rather than his mildly unnerving proximity. “I’ll finish within the week.”

He lets go, and you begin unbuckling the ceremonial armour he specially polished up for this occasion. You’re half-gone, half-focused on how your damp body adheres the thin tunic and trousers to your body—but not cognisant at all of how it appears. Argenti wisely keeps his lips shut as he examines you for any more details he’d like to add.

You’re towelling off the sheen on your face when he asks the question. Well, it’s not exactly a question, as one would expect from one so straightforward as he.

“Oh, I can’t wait to fight alongside you,” he hums, picking up a soft brush once more. You freeze in surprise.

“I—”

Like clockwork, your reply is cut off by the voice that resonates from the crystal. You cannot tell whether it is coincidence or magic, though for once in your life, you are grateful for the man whom you’ve been contracted to.

[Office.]

One word. Just one, and you reply reflexively: [Yes, Your Holiness].

“I need to go.” In lieu of acknowledgement, you leave with those parting words still echoing in that arid room.

•. *࿐

There’s…no papers. Suspicious, you surveil the desk and behind the curtain—no Sunday means a bit of leeway to snoop, after all—but there’s nothing that hasn’t already been neatly marked and processed. You’re in the middle of riffling through the stack of your translations on his desk that you just know he spent hours lining up exactly, when a voice breaks you out of your confusion.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

You’re only partially sluggish after having part of your soul sucked into the sixth circle of hell, so you only drop, what, one-sixth of the papers he probably used a ruler and set square to align.

His glare intensifies.

“Exploring our joint office, Your Holiness,” you answer briskly. Lying scattered around you, they look rather like little angels who have joined you in falling to the sixth circle. The moment of cold silence stretches as you pick up the forsaken sheets and haphazardly pop them back on their precarious Babel.

You’re not quite sure, but you think the temperature of the office drops by at least a few kelvin.

“So,” you begin, and you notice that he’s not crucifying you for the informal language. “I assume there’s some secret wing in the library, which is why you remembered I exist.”

He takes his time walking over, slowly enough that the timid fragrance of soap and tea leaves and linen has time to coalesce into a filigree cage that imprisons you where you are. You stand, frozen, in front of the heavy desk as he sits: crossing his legs and resting a pristine glove against his leg.

His shoes are an understated black leather.

“Don’t push it,” he says, stone-cold. His eyes rake over you caustically: the dampened-turned-sheer fabric, the practical glow the sun has coaxed out of you through a faint smattering of sweat, and the tiredness that forces your lids to push down slightly. “And I expect my bodyguard to adhere to a stricter presentation. Don’t let anyone see you like this.”

He utters the words with such finality that you can’t even bring yourself to argue for your innocence.

“Yes, Your Holiness,” you murmur.

Gloved fingers languidly push a folded piece of paper your way.

“So… there is a paper involved in this?” You raise a brow. “A list of books to translate? My termination letter?”

The room becomes even more frigid.

“Open it,” he says quietly, and somehow, it’s more chilling than if he’d snapped it.

You do, skimming the words perfunctorily, then thoughtfully. You read it again, absorbing each piece of script.

“Day of Auspicion,” you contemplate. “I’m assigned to guard the King at this illustrious event.”

There’s one thing you don’t quite get. Maybe you’re just stupid, maybe there’s some higher plan you’re not exactly part of.

“That’s correct,” Sunday affirms, almost looking surprised that he agrees with you.

No, you still don’t get it. Fuck, do you really have to ask?

“Why?” you ask, flipping the ceremony schedule. It looks at you blankly, as though mocking you.

“Enlighten me on what you don’t understand,” he answers just as blankly, as though he, too, is mocking you. You glance disbelievingly at the clock on the wall as if it could tell you, before you turn back, bracing your palms against the desk as you lean over the polished mahogany.

“I’m under your command right now,” you utter, low and slow just so he understands. For once, His Holiness isn’t sure where to look—into the resolute set of your eyes, on the way the tunic unpeels itself from your body, or the droplet of sweat that’s decided to make an appearance before hiding itself behind fabric once more.

He settles for looking at the communication crystal that hangs from your neck, its matching pair sitting hotly in his pocket like a pulsing heart.

He’s not one to stay in shock. By the time one period of the pendulum passes, he’s recovered his composure, gazing at the paper crumpled in your fist.

“You’re not the only one under my command,” he counters easily, folding his hands neatly on the table.

“But while my contract stands, you’re mine to guard,” you argue, and his eyes flicker back up to yours. “The Knights that reside here aren’t equipped properly to deal with demons, not like I can.”

He scoffs, and in a flash, one of those hands that had been folded so neatly have reached up to yank the crystal around your neck, pulling you to be eye-level with him. You clam up, feeling that familiar scent of him.

“You said it yourself,” he hisses, and his grasp twists around the thin chain, biting into your nape. It hurts. Yet, all your nerves are honed into the look in his yellow eyes: the strange intensity you’ve never quite observed in them before. “You’re mine to command. So obey my command, and get a grip.”

He lets go, one hand rubbing his palm as though smudging off the blood and bodies you inevitably leave behind in your shadow.

You’ve been reminded of your place.

You don’t belong next to him, though it should’ve been apparent from the moment you trailed crimson smears behind you in his unspoiled dove-grey landscape, poisoning it.

The words settle strangely in your sternum.

“Yes, Your Holiness,” you acknowledge with all the tonelessness you can muster. He almost nods in approval, tilting his face slightly down at your once-again obedience, as though he was waiting for it.

“If that’s all, you may leave.” He turns casually to the small table on his side, selecting a thick manilla folder to review.

He can’t even look you in the eyes.

You nod, looking around the room one final time as if staving off the plummeting sensation you’re experiencing.

“Right. Yes, Your Holiness.”

The door closes firmly behind you, and for a moment, his eyes linger.

•. *࿐

“I mean, is having such a piss-poor—pardon my language—security detail even allowed?” You step in concentric circles around the tower, hoping the induced nausea will cause ceased thoughts, at least momentarily. You don’t think it’s working.

“What, it’s piss-poor because of personnel shuffling?” Robin asks curiously, methodically dismantling the strawberry tart in front of her like she’s watching a fascinating play.

“No, it’s piss-poor— it’s bad— because of the personnel.” You stop, massaging your temples as you feel the incoming migraine. “How important’s this Day of Auspicion?”

“It’s a huge annual celebration in the Capital,” she answers promptly, and you appreciate how she never seems to look down on you for being from some no-name village. “One of the only times I make a public appearance. Does wonders for morale, but it’s also a time where Ena answers the most prayers, presides over the most serious cases, and—”

“Presides over the most serious cases? How does that—” you wonder out loud, before you begin your pacing once more. “So you’d think, with all this pomp and circumstance, there’d be tighter security. This ceremony is a perfect chance to dampen that exact morale with a large scale demon attack. Their target won’t be the king, but rather the backbone, the representative of their antithesis.”

“You think my brother will be attacked?”

Robin sets down the fork, folding her hands together on the table in front of her. You blink as you take in the sight, noting the habit is strangely similar to her brother’s. A nervous response? No, it can’t be.

“Targeted? Definitely. He’s the one performing the blessings, not His Majesty,” you agree casually, leaning on the stone window and drumming your fingers against the parapet. Her eyes meet yours, worried. “But attacked? Not if I can help it.”

“You’d abandon the King?” she queries, as any loyal subject is bound to do, but there’s a small smile behind the fork as she takes a bite.

“Nooo—” you drag out the syllable with a matching smile of your own. “—I wouldn’t say that. He’s hoarded all the really shiny gems like his Northern Duke and the Cheetah of the South. I’m sure if one of those really shiny gems goes missing, he wouldn’t mind.”

“Oh, yes, I’m sure he wouldn’t,” she agrees, but both of you know that this conversation will stay within the circular cage of the tower and die with the stones.

And as you leave, the only words that follow you out are a small, quiet, “Thank you.”

•. *࿐

Thank you. For what? Doing the duties stipulated in the contract, which explicitly state protect His Holiness, rather than following his command? For preparing to betray a King who’s rewarded you by focusing on protecting a man you hate with every fibre of your being?

You mull over her words as you slide the cufflinks into their button holes, as you carefully, imperfectly fold your tie, as you slip on the ceremonial jacket and as you make sure Harpe is securely strapped onto your belt.

The small crystal—the only sign that you and him are connected—sits heavy at your heart, and your own heart is heavy as you adjust the woollen hat on your head.

You’re tired, and you don’t doubt that you’ll be recalled to the gristly frontline after this. Your grey-haired Pope, after all, has drawn a clear line that you will indubitably cross today if the capital is unlucky enough today.

And it most definitely will be.

The last few moments of freedom are savoured. You hated your boss, but it was oddly freeing to be here: gossiping with other workers around the Temple, laying on the sun-warmed roofs of the town, and drinking nights away. Soon, the heavy stench of blood will return to being your normal, until the main cast find their mythical shield artifact and end it all.

You study your reflection and steel yourself.

The door opens.

•. *࿐

“Your Holiness.” You brush past the servants filtering in and out of his private chambers. It’s the first time you’ve entered this place, and it’s pretty much what you expected—plain bed, basic decoration, a pristine, clinical atmosphere.

Sunday’s gaze flits to yours, and for a moment, you catch uncertainty flickering in those aureate irises. No, perhaps it’s unease. Or maybe trepidation.

“Leave us,” he instructs those attending him coolly, and they comply with a crisp closing of the heavy oak doors. You wait for the footsteps to cease, and so does he; approximately two of your heartbeats pass before he speaks. “What do you want?”

“I am your escort to the ceremony, am I not?”

He stares at you warily, still half-dressed.

“Your duties are elsewhere today, are they not?” He mimics your matter-of-fact tone, and you almost groan in exasperation.

“Not before the ceremony,” you insist, and he squints at you, appearing to decide why it is that today of all days you cling to your futile obstinacy.

The silence stretches out—

“Humour me.”

—and in the end, no real reason is disclosed. He purses his lips, looking away, and the matter is decided.

“Where are you going?”

You pivot on your heel.

“Aid me in dressing—you’ve forced me to turn my attendants away,” he commands imperiously, and that cold tone of his curls around your ear. One victory for you, and now it is his turn.

Carefully, you turn to where the wardrobe staff have laid out each garment and select the achromatic underrobe, holding it like you would a babe. You wouldn’t want it to be stained with blood, now, would you?

You wish you wore gloves today—which would render you less capable of feeling the tremors of his skin as you gently slide the fabric onto his body.

“I apologise,” you murmur as you deftly do up each button. “I am not as good as them at this.”

“Continue,” he remarks, firmly locking his gaze on the wall.

As though he were some sentient mannequin, he calls out various nouns. Mantle. Stole. Mitre. You drape each piece around his body as required, hands trembling slightly with each second you spend in that ever-present, soapy scent of his.

Finally, he surveys himself in the mirror.

“Adequate,” he comments, and you breathe a sigh of relief. “But—”

You straighten as he takes a cursory glance along your own ceremonial garb, tugging easily at your tie to bring you to his height.

“—your standards for your own clothing seem to always be flagrantly lacking,” he breathes, undoing the tie you spent approximately two minutes knotting with nimble fingers. Those hands that far better suit a quill fold the war dog’s collar upwards, easing and moving around your neck to meticulously create a perfect knot. You cannot tell what he is doing. For all you know, he could be studying your jugular and tapping a knife against it, but your focus is firmly stuck on the wall sconce behind him, and that godforsaken scent that lingers in all your senses.

His hands travel from your neck to your collar, straightening it out. Those same gloved fingers loiter for far too long, smoothing out the wrinkles in your jacket, adjusting a cap you already adjusted, and brushing off invisible lint.

“Adequate,” he murmurs again, and you think it’s the first time you’ve ever heard him sound like this—less like a rock, and more like a human. It’s completely foreign on him, and you flounder as he checks the time with a small “it’s time.”

You hold out your arm cautiously, calloused palm held upwards with slight hesitation. Perhaps you should’ve worn gloves, perhaps—

His cold hand slides into your own, and your thoughts turn into a lovely shade of static.

“Do I need to teach you this too?”

You wrack your brains, before something clicks and you gently curl your fingers around his, bringing his knuckles towards you. It’s a formal gesture that was drilled into you by your etiquette instructor—the basic greeting kiss—which you now put into practice, brushing your warm lips against his first knuckle. You can feel him tense, and wonder whether it is in disgust or horror. Perhaps both.

Something creaks within you.

“An honour to escort you, Your Holiness,” you greet formally, civil for once.

“It is an honour for you,” he replies stonily, and the brief moment of appearances is over.

The door opens.

•. *࿐

You glare at the dais, where the Pope is flanked by two (far less competent than you) Templar commanders, and wonder who it was again that signed off on this detail, since it certainly wasn’t you.

The King arrives with Landau and His Grace in tow, and you bow, say Your Majesty a few times, exchange meaningless formalities before you assume your position behind His Esteemed Self. You ignore both the glances sent by Gepard, and the outright staring from Yingxing, and return to glaring at where the Pope is giving the first of many sermons.

It’s standard procedure, much like it is in the regular services. You tune out the pious voice of the Pope and scan the surroundings. And scan again.

“...on the first day, grant Truth…”

His voice is pretty relaxing, quite like white noise. It’s why you ignore it so easily.

“...on the second day, grant the Calendar…”

There’s nobody suspicious you can see in the masses gathered here—only civilians, peppered with both Imperial and Templar soldiers. When you send out low pulses of energy to double-check, you’re met with a confirmation of this status. It’s far too quiet.

“...on the third day, grant Language…”

Were you… wrong?

“...on the fourth day, grant Value…”

Above the dais, you can make out Robin, and behind her, the protagonist herself. Those two are fine. She is capable enough to protect both of them.

“...on the fifth day, grant Rules…”

From here, you pinpoint with razor precision the moment the so-called guard on the right-hand of Sunday dares to stifle a yawn—eyes wandering aimlessly around the crowds as though any danger would be a glaring red and waving banners. You sneer.

“...on the sixth day, grant Meaning…”

Something tells you to test out the waveforms with a different variable, and you focus solely on the fluctuations resonating with the magic circle created through the absorption of what was supposed to be Duke Yingxing’s demonic power-up crystal.

“...on the seventh day, grant Dignity…”

There. Right on time. Something stirs in the crowd, like the last sigh rising up from a cadaver: an apparent, heaving groan now that the useless noise created by interference has been accounted for. There. They may as well be waving winking crimson banners—an ode for what is to come. Your eyes lock on His Grace’s glare, and you make the universal motion for retreat and evacuation. He looks at you with fascinated disgust, before his jaw twitches—he has felt it too.

“...and on the eighth day, grant us the Paradise where it all started…”

You’re not quite sure when it began: the precise millisecond when His Holiness’ controlled, measured breathing through the crystal at your heart began to grow just every slightly more laboured—more panicked. It appears he does not know why, judging how his eyes dart across the crowd; it is only natural that one descended from the archangels that pass judgement have this instinct towards their antithesis.

“Go,” you tell Gepard lowly, ushering the King out of his little gilt box.

“Where are you going?” Yingxing interjects with cold precision, eyeing the hand cradling Harpe’s hilt.

“To my duty,” you reply shortly. “Their target is on that dais.”

Yingxing follows your gaze, and scoffs. “You’re saving someone whom you hate, and who hates you in return?”

It’s ridiculous, and it sounds even more ridiculous when His Bluntness says it.

“Well, yes,” you answer tonelessly, wondering exactly why you’re doing this too. You could let him be protected by those two ceremonial grunts who are more used to practising their fancy swordsmanship than fighting. You’ve dedicated part of your time to helping the knights improve their skills, but they’re not ready for this, not like you have been, not like you are.

You could let him die.

It would solve a lot of things.

Each breath is slowly beginning to coalesce into something urgent against your chest as Sunday starts to feel the gravity of the situation: that something isn’t quite right, that his golden castle is about to come tumbling down.

You survey the still-calm dais: the tension coming to a maximum before the surface breaks. The man at the eye of the storm looks pitifully small.

“Have the soldiers on-standby to evacuate civilians,” you comment, flexing your wrist. It’ll take, what, maybe a second or two to get to him if you use the step you learnt at war.

“I’m not your subordinate,” he replies, boreal, and you contemplate why exactly it is that he’s still entertaining this conversation, especially with your back turned to him.

“You’ll do it regardless,” you inform him laconically.

The door to the glided cage shuts firmly behind you.

Almost. The illusion that Yingxing hastily conjured is enough to fool everyone that all is still well. Almost. The blessing is complete, and the ceremony only needs a few more minutes to be over. Almost.

There’s some stirring—some ripples in the water that hint at what is to come.

For a brief second, Sunday glances into the cage, and perhaps you imagine it, but it feels as though he’s made eye contact. You can’t tell what his expression looks like, because in the next moment, everything goes to shit.

The surface tension has been ripped to shreds, and you can hear what this bastardised microphone doesn’t pick up—the trembling fear in his gasp that comes with facing something that fundamentally opposes your existence.

You don’t think. A grim expression paints your face as you vault over the high balustrade, as droves of them begin crawling over each other, as the civilians stir themselves. Screams coat the air as they scramble away from their neighbours who are honed in, razor-sharp, on their on-stage target. The King will be fine, the civilians will be fine if the knights do their job for once, and Robin will be fine since she’s with the embodiment of plot armour.

Who won’t be fine?

The man whose breathing quickly becomes more shallow as something stalks towards him with gristly, blood-speckled claws—as his so-called knights face off the demonic beast with trembling legs.

In his heart of hearts, you know that he knows that his thorns won’t be effective against hordes like these, but you commend his spirit in summoning them.

The creature lunges towards him, and you can hear the sharp intake of air reverberating beneath your shirt as he throws up an arm—but he is too late.

Metal chimes against a particularly insidious form of keratin.

Harpe is as reliable as ever as you throw the beast to the side with its own precious momentum, barking out orders to the two commanders that seem like they’re going to piss their pants. Which would, ironically, prove your conjecture of a piss-poor defence correct.

“I’m not too late, I hope?”

“Shut up,” he rasps, strangling a smaller demon who’s nipped past the two quivering guards. “Stop gloating.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you hum, cleanly decapitating the beast in front of you. Harpe hums in tandem, buzzing through the air like a current alive with each masterful slash.

You stab, you cut, you parry. This is what you’re used to as bodies pile up around you, coating you in the filth you’ve been baptised in. A clean arc builds around you and Sunday as the waves keep coming, a few stray monsters veering off to attack the dwindling number of civilians—slowly being taken down by other knights.

Behind you, Sunday’s breathing becomes ragged. He’s a Pope, with no experience in prolonged battles, and hardly any experience with getting his own hands dirty, with all the plot you’ve derailed.

In fact, when you glance back momentarily to check on your charge, he doesn’t belong here at all—a lone white smudge in the sea of blood and viscera, so absurdly different you let out a small chuckle. You’ve been in his world, and now he’s visiting yours in all his sepulchral glory: pale ghost observing the living battlefield.

The dead relax. Those left behind keep fighting.

“Why are you laughing? Have you lost your mind?” he hisses, and normally you wouldn’t have heard him. Normally you’d be succumbing to the bloodlust and Harpe’s soothing influence, but you hear his whispers as though he were breathing them right into your ear, even though he’s several feet away.

You don’t quite know why.

“Perfectly sane, Your Holiness,” you bare your teeth as you unseam a demon beast from belly to shoulder: drenched in sticky, oily blood that never does wash out.

It’s going well. Too well. The civilians have evacuated, Robin and her have disappeared, and the troublesome knights taking their first toddling steps in this big bad world are managing pretty well against the stragglers. Of course, it means you’re stuck with the heavyweights, yet it’s a simple battle.

Just like all things, when it’s going too easily, Ena shows up to restore Order.

One of the first things you learn on the Big Bad Battlefield is this: don’t think about tomorrow, only today. Never the long game, just the very, very next step you’ll take.

The second thing you learn very quickly is that demons are irregular, irrational, incomprehensible beings—capable of bringing down the Order and everything it stands for.

Something whistles by your ear, and embeds itself into the wooden platform. An arrow. A surging, demonic arrow, capable of reaching speeds approximate to a bullet’s—yet only few demons unlock the attribute that manifests these devastating arrows.

“Shit,” you spit, glancing quickly at the man who’s got his back to the wall. “Stay right there.”

Scanning the perimeter, you spot it on the edge of the coliseum, aiming—

You freeze momentarily. Those sights are pointed directly at the exhausted man a few feet away—who’s staying in place because you told him to, who’s got no time to spot what you’re seeing, who won’t hear and react to your words in time to get out of the way.

There’s less than a second now: far too late to reach the demon pointing straight at him with that corrupted taint coating every fibre at precisely what it’s meant to destroy.

It’s not too late to interfere with the target. Less than a second to make a decision—before you instinctively lunge towards your left with a hasty use of the fleet-footed step, before you hear that now-familiar whistle—

You can’t catch the arrow with your teeth. That’d be stupid, go against physics, and would probably be rejected by dental insurance. You do the next best thing. You intercept it with your arm.

And no, you don’t catch it. It pierces into your flesh before you have a chance to react, flaring instantaneously with white-hot pain.

It hurts. The effects are immediate: vision swimming with a red tint so deep it appears purple; veins vasodilating with a heat so intense it feels like you’re melting into a furnace; head pounding so rapidly you can taste each panicked thought on your tongue.

He’s looking at you in horror, but you don’t react, though you are agonisingly aware of each and every move of his. No, you’re already moving like a puppet on its strings, lit ablaze by hellfire as you approach the remnants of the dead.

It’s clean, in a place death probably shouldn’t be. You’re luminal, far faster than an arrow.

Harpe swings through the air so swiftly that she forms a parabolic afterimage long after the head of the beast falls to the ground, and you’ve never felt better—practically flying past the cadaver as you aid the stricken-looking knights who scramble out of your way.

Less than a minute. It takes less than a minute before the arena is filled with only the living—plus one ghost, naturally. Less than a minute before you’re stumbling up those wooden steps once more, honing right in on the main target of tonight.

The man stands carefully, and you wish you could be as coordinated, with your head spinning as it is. You vaguely remember that he’s under your care, and your hand shoots out to grab his face: turning him this way and that to examine for any injuries.

“...what do you think you’re doing in that state? You need urgent medical attention…”

Hazily, you take note that you probably shouldn’t call him the pale ghost. Not when fresh, arterial carmine stains his garments, baptising him as One of the Battlefield. He belongs here now—a part of the living like you are.

You smear oily sanguine on his cheek.

“...you’re burning up. You there—send a messenger to the Temple—I need—”

You may be imagining it, but you think he looks rather worried.

•. *࿐

“...of all times you arrive now. Typical. Has your subordinate sent word to the Temple, or will you do that yourself?”

“...I’ll just take him to my estate in the capital, Sunday. My sister is a healer, she can—”

“Don’t you dare touch him. It’s demonic taint—he stays with me.”

“All the more reason he shouldn’t go with you. The North has ample knowledge on demons, while the Church of Order cannot risk exposure to high-concentrations of demonic poison. I’ll take him.”

“Duke Yingxing, the Temple is just as, if not more, equipped to deal with demonic poison. Expurgating it will be far easier with copious amounts of holy water.”

“I thought you hated him, Your Holiness. Let me take him off your hands.”

“It appears you’re forgetting your place, Yingxing. He is under my command—he is mine.”

“And if he leaves?”

“...he won’t.”

“...do… know….”

“...”

•. *࿐

Tepid warmth crawls sluggishly through your body, coated in a faint, omnipresent ache that refuses to cease. White-hot iron seeps through your cracked lips, and you feel like you’re drowning, drowning, drowning—

It’s too hot. Too cold. There’s something washing over you: almost as gentle as someone bathing their babe for the first time. Carefully, as though you are about to shatter.

You are here. You are nowhere, floating aimlessly in something that feels like the first circle of hell, while looking like a fleshy, amorphous mass.

Limbo.

It is then you realise your eyelids are practically pasted shut.

Something taps once—no, twice—against your cheek and runs down your face, just about brushing your mouth. It’s lukewarm—and doesn’t taste like copper. No, it almost tastes like the salt that comes with tears.

A… cloth drags along your face, or at least you think it is. It’s cold and damp and seems to be grating across your raw nerves, but you can tell it’s trying to be nice and keep you cool rather than torture you.

You can feel your skin, pulled perfectly to cover every muscle, every fibre of sinew—except, of course, where you can feel the throbbing wound on your arm, covered in tight bandages and the glacial, ever-present rippling.

Your arm twitches, and the cloth pauses its quiet, deafening ministrations, before resuming, as though not wanting to let you know that it knows you’ve ruined everything by waking up. You pretend you’re unconscious, while trying to figure out why the undershirt and trousers plastered to your body don’t smell like blood, why your arm feels less painful with each passing minute, why you feel like you’re floating.

Something shifts in the water, folding it neatly around like origami—and you sense it, that familiar tea-leaf-linen-soap scent entrapping you as a hunter does to its prey.

It’s a hazy reminder of something. Something that flutters grey against the fleshy red of your eyelids—something… you were meant to… protect?

You think your brow furrows, crinkling like the water around you—and once more, the movements of the cloth stop. It’s like the fabric is anticipating your conscious advent on this plane, but doesn’t want to get too hopeful, so it resumes its heady torture once more.

“What’s going on?” you murmur groggily, and the water folds even more as someone startles. You can feel them now, against your back: preventing you from succumbing to the chill of the stone lip of this pool.

A cavernous space sprawls out before your squinted eyes—something close to a lake, in fact, beneath crystalline stalactites that reflect the strange light coming from the abyssal depths.

“What is this place?”

You half-expect the cloth to simply continue its path along your face as an answer non-answer, but in its lieu a soft voice replies.

“It’s ceremonial. All filth that enters is purified.”

The cloth is dipped, before returning to your brow. He’s exceedingly gentle now—as though you’ll crumble into dust, now that you are aware. Of what exactly, you do not yet know.

“Are you referring to me?” you ask dubiously, looking up at the fuzzy man. You can’t quite place his face, like he’s a fleeting halcyon sensation lost alongside your childhood. You think you’ll get there, though. It’s on the very tip of your tongue.

“I, too, am filth. Every wanderer of this mortal realm is ridden with sin.”

Filth. Sanguine trickles into your mind, and you suppress a groan as your head throbs. “Fuck.”

“You’re back.” He sounds almost relieved as he examines your pupils, and you don’t know whether to laugh or be concerned with his disgustingly stark change in demeanour.

“Your… Holiness,” you mutter. Looking around with renewed clarity, you realise his body sitting on the edge of the pool is what’s preventing the cold stone from leeching off any more of your body heat as the poison is expurged, though his legs are equally as boreal: ridden in drenched robes that chafe at your back alongside your undershirt.

He doesn’t reply, and you affix your gaze to a stalactite that glimmers in the distance. You can’t imagine it was easy for him to swallow his nausea and take care of you.

“The blood’s gone,” you marvel quietly, pulling at the familiar wet undershirt that should’ve, by all means, been coated with demonic viscera.

“The demon blood has been purified,” he answers testily, as though he’s grasping at what he knows: the frigid petulance that permeates this doomed relationship.

You can feel his diaphragm creak and groan against the back of your head as he heaves a shuddering breath.

Once. Twice. Then—

“Why did you save me?”

—there it is. Why? You’d like to know too.

“You would have died had this hit you,” you respond tonelessly, staring at the waters as if they could possibly help you. “Your guards certainly weren’t going to help.”

He can probably tell you’re irritated: tasting it in the air, mulling it over.

“What—so this was some final self-sacrificing gesture—some last fuck-you to rub it in that you were right?” he scoffs, and you hear the cloth being discarded onto the lip of the pool. The jig is up, the pretense has been discovered—he no longer cares.

“What?” you fumble. Had you known the exact details of what would have happened, then yes, maybe you would have gloated in his wrongness: the oh-so-revolting blemish on the so-called perfect man.

He’s silent, but his shallow, rapid breaths break through all his efforts—like he knows he messed up, and regrets saying it. It pains you to admit it, but he spoke one part truth (though the other three parts are a lie by omission).

“Hey—” you try, if only to alleviate the oppressive atmosphere. You’re saved by his interruption, since you really don’t know what you would have said had he kept his mouth shut.

“Are you going to leave?”

This time you’re silent while you riffle through your mind to attempt to even guess why he’s asking this.

“Are you?” he presses, and you can feel his abdomen tense in trepidation.

The water unfolds, surges and undulates as you twist: less of a paper dream and far more tangible.

“Keep— keep sitting. You’ll slow your healing if you move too much, since this water can only purify,” he stammers, but you ignore his protest.

“Who said that?”

You’re standing now, risen from the waters like some bastardised Botticelli piece—except that you are far from divinity.

“I’m being serious.” He’s looking up with that look that comes with being annoyed at you—which is most of the time. “You’ll hurt yourself—you’ve still got the wound on your arm.”

You lift the aforementioned arm briefly to gaze at the wound—or at least, what covers it—but it doesn’t ache sharply like it should, by all rights. If anything, you think the demonic stone you swallowed a few years back has had an unprecedented effect on healing a wound caused by demonic weapons.

“I’ve never felt better,” you grit out. Leaning down causes the crystal around your neck to desorb from your drenched body, and his eyes flick between the glinting stone and your blood-tinted eyes. “Who the hell said I was leaving?”

He swallows.

“Why wouldn’t you leave? You’re not happy here. You won’t find anything you want here. I’ll write to—” He’s rambling now, and you’d think he was the fever-addled one.

“Sunday,” you mumble, word foreign on your tongue—heavy as lead and awkward as fuck.

“Don’t call me that,” he mutters back, but it’s strange. He’s never sounded less convinced.

“Since we both decided to assume things, I’ll take it we’re even—”

Sunday, the voice in your mind taunts. You sway on your feet, suddenly intoxicated by that distinct scent: as though you’re burying your nose in it, mouth open to take a bite—

“Sunday,” you repeat, and your wrist is puppeteered to allow your fingers to grace the side of his neck: right where his pulse decides to begin its vivace.

He does not move.

His porcelain robes are stained a milky red, distorting in and out of view as you tilt your head to properly assess him. Right there—concentrated behind his head like some damned halo, some strange essence seeps into the filthy air. The odd flavour stains your tongue, and you flinch.

Angel, your instincts scream—you could press a clawed thumb right there into his vein, you could—

[Your pupils. Shit,] he swears, and for a brief moment, your mind clears as you focus on the Old Language and you let go as though burnt.

[You need to hold me under,] you demand. Those golden eyes of his search your face and his mouth twitches in a faint smile, before he processes your words.

[You’ll drown,] he argues, and it is clear that he thinks you’re foolish—as though you’re not perfectly lucid. Or at least, you think you are.

[Drink.]

You blink. [The water?]

[Yes, what else?] he frowns, and you shrug—too quickly. There’s a lot of things to drink from, like that goblet filled with pungent-smelling herbs just a few feet away, or—

His neck, the hungry, irrational part of you wails: razor-focused on the soft flesh that lays on the junction between shoulder and nape, just ready for your teeth to—

[Alright.] you blurt, eager to escape the oppressive heat of your thoughts. They’ve begun to distinctly taper off into two camps: the human side, tempered through two lives, and the inhuman side, set ablaze by one death, and one close encounter.

You don’t know how long you can hold out, so you do the sensible thing: you listen; you reach out for the icy water; you drink.

Except, you don’t. The holy water reaches about as far as your esophagus before you fold in half neatly, hacking out the red-tinged liquid not-so-neatly. You watch it as it joins its kin and glows faintly before turning into that homogenous shade of clear once more.

“I can’t,” you choke out, clutching at the wet undershirt for support as you look wildly around. “I—”

[Focus,] he says cruelly, but his fingers find your shoulder and press slightly—in some misguided attempt at comfort.

“Direct blood absorption might be better. Where’s Harpe?” you mutter, moving to stand, but Sunday splays his palm flat against your back. “Sunday.”

It’s the trigger. The gun is cocked, the chamber is fully loaded, and it is aimed directly at you, the human.

Sunday.

One shot. The legs are busted, and the human buckles—but it’s still living, still fighting.

“Sunday?” you try again, and this time, the human isn’t so lucky. Your nails dig into flesh as you press them into your thighs, but the cold water no longer feels cold—and the fresh raw pain from the half-moons your nails leave behind is no longer pain. “Sunday—”

The frigid barrel presses into your forehead, and the trigger is pulled at point-blank range.

[I’m sorry,] the angel says quietly, but you don’t know what he’s apologising for, only that your body is straining to escape the—

Thorns?

Your neck cranes downward, gazing harshly at the golden light that binds your body: small spikes piercing through flesh and immobilising you, constricting impossibly tighter as though it were a noose.

“Sunday,” you coo. “You think you can restrain me with—these—puny—things?”

[They’re doing pretty well to tame you,] he pants, scrambling away to grasp the goblet and tip the medicinal herbs out of the vessel. He fills it with holy water, and holds it with a trembling hand. A toast.

“What, you’re going to force this down my throat?” you taunt, marvelling at the theatricality. “That didn’t work out last time, remember?”

[I do remember,] he murmurs thoughtfully, staring into the depths of the goblet. [I know how this will go, and I will pay the price for it.]

“What?” you laugh incredulously, but he’s approaching you slowly. Curiosity gets the better of you. What’s the angel going to do?

He steps delicately into the pool, as if he weren’t already drenched.

[Demons represent the base desires that pollute the beauty of Order.] The angel uses the voice that works best for sermons—distant and unreachable, just like Order itself. You frown at the language shift. [For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.]

“Give up, Sunday—”

He doesn’t respond. Those golden thorns of his twine up—up—until they stop, forcing your head to gaze up at he who came from the heavens.

His thumb presses against your lower lip, and you startle as you feel his icy, bare skin against it. He’s not wearing gloves, you briefly note, before you sneer in disappointment.

“Really? I tried that already. I won’t swallow.” Your words vibrate against his hand, and his body gives off a minute shudder.

[Won’t you?] he murmurs. That deft hand of his raises the goblet. [I’m even paying the price for it.]

“What price?” you frown, perhaps for the first time since the gun fired.

The goblet touches his lips, and you realise, far too late.

The price. The static noise of your mind goes pristinely blank: the landscape this unsuspecting angel has always envisioned, without any bloodied hounds marring the landscape. Like war drums, your pulse beats: heavy and fast and hammering right out of your chest.

You close your eyes, just as his soft mouth covers yours.

He’s warm, you note drowsily—despite his cold hands carefully cradling your face, despite the boreal chill emanating from his soaked body. Those fingers of his brush hesitantly against your feverish skin; he doesn’t know what to do. That much is evident by how docile his body is in comparison to the harsh burr of thorns incapacitating you: how clumsily his lips move against yours.

There’s some big grand plan that he’s barely committed to: lips clamped shut in a last-ditch effort to preserve his dignity, despite them being the main actor on this isolated stage.

He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.

He’s afraid of the price.

Against your own, his chest rises and falls rapidly as he tilts his head: mechanically, like he’s copying some diagram or novel or even worse—his imagination. Some morsel of pity drips into your contaminated blood and you make the final leap for him. Your mouth opens and he jolts, hands curling desperately into your face. He shivers when your tongue eases the seam of his lips, yet his fingers hold you far more firmly than before.

No, he’s not afraid of the price—he’s afraid of what it means.

The now-warmed holy water trickles into your mouth, and your throat moves on instinct to reverse its course—but it’s predetermined. He’s holding you like he’s got the upper hand, molding his mouth to minimise any of those precious drops that may escape.

You let him.

You let the water wash through, osmose, purify. In turn, your body gives you its next command—far greater, far bolder than remaining as this reanimated thing. Another angel, destined to plummet once it dares to soar too high.

Corrupt him.

His hand runs across your neck, circling the larynx as he makes sure to coax down each and every mouthful. So thorough, you note, before he pulls back with a deep gasp, looking every bit the mess you expect his mind to be: lips slicked; pupils blown out so wide his eyes look a murky amber; a light sheen on his flushed cheeks.

He looks a picture.

[Again,] he murmurs hazily, picking up the vessel that he dropped and refilling it. You watch every small shift in his expression, but you’re distracted by the loosening binds that have thus far sequestered you in the water successfully.

Each spike embedded in your body no longer throbs with a sharp pain, but a duller ache.

The human lives for the third time.

You don’t tell him about the slight change.

He kisses you again—except, he’s likely rationalising why it isn’t one. For someone so previously reluctant, he shows no hesitation this time: tilting his head just so, cradling your face, and opening his mouth so pliantly.

The price has clearly become more tolerable.

He’s kissing you, and by any god or Ena or Idrila, you’re kissing him back; poison be damned. The angel doesn’t notice your hands freeing themselves from his vines, but he sure notices them tugging him closer: eliciting a sharp inhale when his body collides flush with yours.

No, it’s no longer just a kiss; now, you’ve involved him in something far out of his depth.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he hisses when he pulls back for air, searching your face for something—anything—that could give him a clue as to what caused the sudden change.

See? The angel has fallen. There are two humans standing in the water: one whose shock is clearly written on his face, and the other, whose grin coats his expression with a profound delirium.

“Gonna hold me under now?” you ask, and you don’t know who speaks. Is it you, or is it you? “Vines aren’t really working.”

He’s silent for a few heartbeats; you can sense every one of them hammer against your own sternum as he considers you. You, everything about you: your words, the easy smile on your face, the feverish heat emanating from your body that he can acutely feel.

“I hate you,” he utters finally, eyes skimming over the blank look in your own.

“That should make things easy then,” you remark with a faint smile, but you think you’re just as unsure as he is.

“Don’t— just don’t,” he mutters. His eyes follow your body as you sink into the water, and you understand why people call it contact: for it feels like he’s parsing through your skin the longer he stares at it.

The vines have all but disappeared—pale yellow mirages of an exorcism—and you miss the ties that once bound you to him.

Lying down like this, it’s enough to rob you of your buoyancy: enough to guarantee your baptism and absolution of sin. Either a miracle or another grave will meet you, and you’ve had plenty of both.

Once more, you make his decision for him, by finally submerging your head beneath the frigid waters, allowing your thoughts to be quenched through the slow ebb and flow of the tide. It’s impossible to hear him—impossible to make out the exact shape of words leaving his lips—and you merely wait, even though your lungs ache and your eyes burn and the mana circles around your heart speed up in order to counteract drowning by about two or three extra minutes. It’s not a lot of time, but it’s enough to allow for Sunday’s deliberation and internal monologue to come to the executive decision of—

“Don’t die,” he says, but it could also have been you’re a liar. You’ll never really know.

The answer is unexpected, or maybe perfectly expected.

He does want you dead. It’s evident in how he kneels with your body between his legs, how carefully and meticulously his hands first find your shoulders—then hesitantly, your throat—as though your body will accept the water as the lesser of two evils.

The liquid fills your mouth, forcing its way into each cell of your body as the contaminants are purged.

You are drowning.

He’s saying words you don’t understand and never will.

You smile, before you see it: tears faintly streaking his face as he sits in defeat, and you shudder at the sudden weight. Like vices, your hands clamp around his thighs on instinct: desperate to live.

Don’t die.

You can tell he’s given up on the conviction you instilled in him when his hands run across your face, lifting you from the font: clean, purged from the sin you’ve been poisoned with.

“I hate that you saved me,” he’s whispering, and your heart speeds up: whether from his words or hypoxia, you’ll never know. Your nails dig into his skin, and he jolts; a deep flush slowly begins to coat his face as he, too, realises exactly how he’s messed up.

“Sunday—” You struggle to sit up, and he makes a sort of strangled noise at the sudden movement, shifting on your lap. You’re too close now: so much so that you can taste the faint dregs of the tea he drank that you couldn’t focus on before; so much so that you can hear his pulse beat heavy in his chest; so much so that his damp wings are long enough to brush against your face like a veil. Or even a shroud.

Something presses into your lower abdomen, and you freeze, not daring to move even a single muscle.

“I hate you. I hate how even though I hate you, I need— I rely on you,” he breathes, and his hands move from the back of your head to your chest: gripping the wet undershirt as though it can save him, thumbing at the crystal as though it contains his sanity.

At least while you were reading, you could predict where his madness would lead him; it followed the same clichéd tropes, the religious guilt, the shallow intensity.

He stopped being predictable a long time ago.

“Sunday,” you shiver, thumbing circles into the fabric clinging to his thigh. His breath hitches.

“I hate you,” he mumbles through the tears rolling down his cheeks.

“I know,” you say just as quietly, and your fingers carefully brush away each small drop, cautiously holding his face. His own hands curl uselessly on your chest, and you’re beginning to feel him affect you too: every shuddering inhale he takes, each minute shift of his hips as he leeches off your preternatural warmth, that dilated look in his eyes.

An incandescent sort of heat alights each of your veins, and your heartbeat dances an allegro.

“I hate myself— I hate how—” he chokes out, and you don’t think.

Your lips are on his, and you swallow each strangulated sob: taste each salty tear.

Almost instantly, his clenched fists relax: splaying loosely against the wet flesh, tension practically oozing—seeping—out of each pore. He melts into you, pliable, and you, too, hate him for how it makes you feel.

Slowly, your fingers tilt his jaw, and that small movement is enough to coax a breathy whine from his throat: one that’s quickly devoured by your esurient mouth. It’s clear the noise elicited also makes him acutely aware of the circumstances, for he pulls back for air as though scalded: chest heaving, expression tinged with something inscrutable.

“Don’t worry,” you say with a certain sort of finality, and he jolts as your fingertips graze past the base of his wings. “I hate you too.”

Your chest rises and falls heavily, running after the heart that pulses, electrified, against your sternum, and you know he can feel it in his hands: every little half-truth, every complex emotion that you’re drenched in, and each sin that taints you.

Each sin that taints him, too. The two of you are ensnared in the oh-so-human carnal sin, treading far too dangerously on the line between temptation and outright apostasy.

He doesn’t answer, tracing a glacial path to where your bandage lies covering a faint wound—contemplating your words and the entire situation.

“I can’t be doing this— I’m a servant of the Order— I can’t break my vows—” he mutters like he’s coming to a realisation, touching on the border between crazed and frantic as he processes his own thoughts. You stay silent, letting his ramblings fizzle out into the abyssal cavern before you finally speak.

“Then don’t.”

His eyes snap to yours, then to where your hands have descended to trail in the water: rendered obsolete through his words.

“Leave the water, and this will all be erased,” you murmur, waiting. Indistinct relief blurs and fades through your mind at the thought that he will make the final decision—that he’ll likely and carefully stand, brush himself off, and the two of you won’t have entangled yourselves deeply enough that you’d run far away, to where Argo is just a passing thought rather than reality.

You think you know him well enough.

“You believe that?” he breathes, like his decision hinges on your response. You frown.

“You said it yourself. All filth that enters is purified,” you rattle off listlessly, wondering exactly why he’s delaying the inevitable. Soon, all this will be a bad dream for him: a timid stain on his relationship with the protagonist, perhaps an embarrassment that’ll take years to fade from memory.

“Yes,” he says quietly, and his eyes run over your face as you look away: but you can feel the contact trailing over the raw nerves just under skin, much like you can feel every shift of his body as he tentatively draws closer. “That’s right.”

You suppress a groan as the subtle movements prompt his hips to roll ever so slightly over you, but it fades into nothingness as you see his face: cheeks painted in a crimson flush; half-lidded eyes containing the profound desire to devour you; and lips half-open as if to realise that desire.

You fucked up. You fucked up, but—

His arms snake around your neck, and his wings flutter to shield you and him from the outside world: from the prying eyes of Judgement, from your conscience, and from his guilt.

—so has Sunday.

He’s kissing you. Not because he’s saving your mind, not because you kissed him, but because the price is no longer unbearable—hell, you’d say he even likes it.

Temptation has won. Apostasy has won.

He has been corrupted beyond repair.

You have won, and you’re taking your prize.

The flowery echoes of tea bloom on your tongue when you probe into his mouth, satiating yourself with the familiarisation. Each fine note hidden away beneath his morning drink, every metallic dreg lingering from someone’s blood, each viscous remnant of sweat—the olfactory fingerprint of a fallen angel.

The sin makes him a quick learner: he tilts his head neatly to the side when you tilt yours; slots himself meticulously against your body, chest flush to your chest; and shivers on cue when your hands trail across his waist, leaving feverish heat behind on sepulchral skin.

He falls apart like gossamer as you leave open-mouthed bruise after bruise on his neck: searing the clear mark of lust on his body. For now, they are invisible, but the seeds have been planted. Tomorrow, when he wakes up, he will dress alone.

Or he will call for your help.

His head snaps upwards as you nip at his clavicle. If you could glimpse where his eyes are tracing, you’d confirm your suspicions that he’s gazing at the heavens (there are none in this tomb). The Order is not looking his way, not now—not tonight. Or maybe it never will again.

Its precious enforcer has fallen, after all.

“What do you want me to do?” You press the words like a brand into his skin, drenching him in a fragrance of your making: the preliminary, yearning notes of sweat and sex, with an elusive redolence of holy water.

In the end, the war hound will await orders like he always has.

This is the fundamental law behind your flawed existence.

“Act like you love me.” It’s barely a breath, let alone a whisper. He does not meet your eyes. “Just for tonight.”

Love and war. You can do that: act out the epic of a lifetime, especially when you’ve lived through half of it. You decide not to think about what comes after the curtain comes down and the actors step off this grand stage.

His upper robes unseam like wet paper as you tug on them: threads giving out under a lover’s covetous fingers. You regard his torso as a sculptor does to his creation, running your hands over his marble-cold body with the reverence of a pilgrim coming to worship his idol.

“You’re beautiful,” you murmur, and beneath your obsequious fingers, the sculpture comes to life: sanguine delicately painting his features; goosebumps dotting over stone; sluggish pulse becoming frantic.

You think the worst part is that it sounds too sincere.

“Take— take yours off too,” he mutters, and you crack no jokes as you slowly drag the wet undershirt off your body and discard it somewhere where the empty cup lays.

You think you’ve missed the memo for where he’s supposed to be acting like your lover.

Wonderingly, his gaze first traverses the scarred expanse of your chest, followed by his gelid fingers. You shiver as they trace each slash, every place you were stabbed, each jagged mark that denotes you as an alien to his peaceful world.

“Where’d you get this one?” he asks quietly, brushing softly against the one that cradles the communication crystal on your sternum: some burn you got from accidentally causing your food to explode when you attempted to use your mana circuits like a microwave. You grimace, chagrined.

“I’ll tell you the story of each one next time,” you promise, kissing his forehead before you ease him onto the stone. You kneel before him, allowing you to observe his flush spreading to his shoulders as he whines from the loss of contact and your words that imply there will be a next time (before, of course, his wings flutter over his face to conceal his embarrassment).

He does not refute it. Perhaps he already knows this is an act limited to this lonely stage: a lie crafted to draw in his immersion.

You don’t quite know yourself, and you ignore the murmur in your soul telling you.

There are many lies that have festered between the two of you. You wonder if he’s ever truly believed in the Order. You wonder at the limits of his adoration for her. You wonder what’s wrong with you.

Only one actor here displays model piety in this current scene—you. Your fingertips wander his taut abdomen: handling him like he’s something sacrosanct, except a worshipper wouldn’t do this. Your head dips, and you pay homage to the dips and valleys of his chest, before you latch onto the stiffened peaks that beg for attention—

“Shit,” he gasps at the slick warmth soaking onto his cold nipple, while the rough pads of your fingers coax the other one to the same temperature. You note with satisfaction his reaction—most poignantly, the no-doubt aching stiffness pressed against your stomach as you kneel between his legs, but in second place is definitely the uncharacteristic imprecation spilling from his swollen lips.

You pause, and watch him come down pitifully from a pleasure he doesn’t yet know: breathing heavy, irises bordering on almost entirely black, and light whines of complaint seeping from his throat.

“What— what did you do that for?” he protests: frustrated in the exact same manner he displays whenever you circumvent his commands (but of course, he looks far better like this).

You ignore his question, and posit one of your own:

“You’ve never done this before?”

This. Hands trail down his body, slow and sweet as molasses: punctuating the question with an allusion. An inquisitive finger taps on the remaining fabric wrapped loosely around his hips, and his breath hitches.

You think his heartbeat wobbles.

“Never experimented, never wavered—” your finger probes just past the small gap between skin and the material. He briefly squeezes his eyes shut. “—never touched yourself?”

“No— no,” he says, clearing his throat. “I haven’t. My vows—”

You hum contemplatively. “Yes, you’re a cut above the rest, Your Holiness.”

“Don’t mock me,” he mutters (but you felt him tremble slightly when you reminded him exactly of his position).

He is not infallible.

“Plenty of your peers fall prey to temptation,” you muse. “Because—”

“They are weak,” he scoffs.

“—it feels good,” you finish, languidly pushing down the water-logged fabric covering his legs. The achromatic robe sinks into the waters: the symbol of purity rendered functionally and metaphorically useless.

He hisses as the cold air grazes his aching cock, and you can feel your own trousers growing painfully tight by the second.

“Fuck,” he grits out, as you wrap your hand around the base. He’s trying to stay composed: nails darting to dig into your shoulders, clenching his jaw to refrain from making any sounds he deems shameful, eyes stubbornly fixed at some point in the distance (perhaps one of the stalactites you so keenly stared at).

“You alright?” you murmur, languorously moving your calloused hand. He furiously bites his lip, and his eyes squeeze shut.

“Shut up. I’m fine.”

You smile faintly, while your hand picks up the torturously slow pace—lubricated by the thick beads of pre-cum leaking from his tip. It’s far too evident that he’s unused to his fundamental rules being bent like this: for despite the shuddering inhales he allows himself, he refuses to unravel any further (even at the cost of biting through his swollen lips).

It is the mask he puts on daily: the untouchable, the divine. Someone far above humanity—above mortal pain and pleasure. It is an integral part of him, one that cannot be forced off.

His soul, however, knows it is a lie.

It’s why the act begins to crumble.

Your thumb circles the head, waiting, waiting—

“Ah—” he moans as you tighten your grip, allowing the friction to coax out the actor from beneath the character. Then, inexplicably, your lazy movements halt completely, and you let go.

“What are you doing? Why’d you— why’d you stop?” he stammers, eyes fluttering open in disbelief. You glance down, watching his furiously red tip weep out a few more pearly globules.

“Figured you’d be less shy if we were both getting off,” you reason, wiping the translucent liquid on your trousers as you slide the soaked fabric down. You suppress a groan as it drags down your far-too-sensitive cock, and the fluid motion of discarding the pants somewhere in the pile allows you a few precious seconds of watching his reaction in your periphery.

He parts his lips, almost subconsciously. Those thin brows of his furrow in contemplation, before you turn your head back to him, and he averts his gaze with a new layer of carmine blooming across his face.

“You’re so crude—” His mumbled assessment is punctuated by a sharp gasp as you manoeuvre him back onto your lap where he belongs.

Your lips press briefly to his brow. “Only for you, love.”

He squints at you, clearly trying to decide just how far you’re going to take it. That pondering only lasts a brief second, though, because—before he opens his mouth to tell you to shut up—you take both his hands and curl them around the two of you, and your mind goes blank.

“Fuck,” you groan, moving his hands like a puppeteer to tighten his pleasure-lax grip, and you feel his pulse ricochet. “Keep going.”

He’s clumsy: blinded by the sensation of having something hot and pulsing constantly pressed to him, so much so that he falters and trembles with each movement. You make it worse with your strained imprecations brushing past his wings as you kiss below his ear, leaving teethmarks anywhere you haven’t already.

One hand finds his nipple, sore from neglect and arousal, while the other anchors his body flush against yours by pressing against his lower back.

He can no longer hold it in: each filthy noise suppressed in the prison of his lips, barred to preserve his dwindling dignity.

“Ngh—more—” he whines shamelessly, each plea more wanton than the next—as though he has forgotten that his god is watching, judging him for his descent into lust.

You can’t judge him, though, as your own abdomen tenses with every song you draw from his mouth. A slow, satisfied smile stretches across your face when you roll the sensitive bud between your fingers and his throat bobs uselessly.

He’s close.

“Feels weird—” he whimpers, choking on the thrill that is beginning to take over his mind.

“You’re doing great,” you coo, and your words dissipate over his vulnerable jugular. His rapidly spiralling state forces the preliminary stages of euphoria to wash over your mind, but you suppress the sensation as much as you can. It wouldn’t do if you felt that all-consuming peak before him.

The hand that was supporting his back now covers one of his, maintaining the pace that his pleasure-addled hands can’t keep up with.

Just a bit more.

Stray moans dribble from his lips, and you swallow each of them—including the sound of surprise he makes as he spills onto his hands and your body. The sudden heat leaking onto your dick is enough to force your own climax, coating his body with thick ropes of white.

You rock into his body, prolonging his high for as long as possible (and yours), and only slow down when his rapid breathing becomes ragged.

“Well done,” you whisper, pulling back—and just like that, the curtains close as his wings flutter over his face: clarity finally hitting, salient in the wake of mind-numbing ecstasy.

“Fuck, fuck,” he mutters in half-shock, but as you take his hands and lick off the filth coating them, his spent cock twitches, betraying his body. That’s nothing, though, since yours is still at full-mast: edacious for whatever he’ll give you.

“Do you want to keep going?” you ask, noticing the doubt flickering in his eyes as he gazes through the feathers of his wings at your blood-engorged dick. He swallows thickly, then gazes at the holy waters like they’ll tattle on him to their god.

“Yes.” He barely mouths the words, filled with embarrassment once more as desire floods into his veins.

Your grin is shark-like.

“Got it,” you breathe. You devour his gasp like a lover would, as your hands find the firm globes of his ass, kneading the flesh in preparation for the next scene.

He pulls away just as your index finger slips into his hole, burying his face into the flesh connecting neck and shoulder.

“Hurts—” he mewls, and his arms loop around your neck to support his shivering body. “Is it s’posed to?”

“It usually does,” you murmur regretfully into the soft down of his feathers, and he startles at the additional stimulation. “I’ll go slow.”

He hums, mollified, but then you feel a dull ache at the juncture of flesh, and you realise very quickly that he’s biting down on you to keep himself composed.

“Mmph—” he moans against your feverish skin as you inch deeper into his slick hole, finger far warmer than the water lapping around it.

“So tight,” you mutter wonderingly, and his pulse becomes electric at the filth spewing from your mouth. “Relax for me, doll.”

“Trying to,” he slurs between mouthfuls of flesh, and you make a small sound of appreciation as your finger eases in deeper, gently circling the muscle and soft flesh inside—probing, searching for the spongy organ that will make your job far easier.

Where is it?

You get your answer when you curve your fingers slightly to the side and immediately feel a sharp, stinging pain as his teeth pierce dermis.

Found it.

The quiet restraint leaves you: focus honed purely on each reaction of his sensitive body. Each muffled whine is documented. Each flutter of fervid insides is noted. Each emotion painting his body language is analysed.

“It feels—” his whispered statement is shattered with a small whimper at your finger rocking faster into him, chasing after the frenetic tempo of his pulse. With each pump of your index, you make sure it curls to the side with pinpoint precision.

He’s close. You savour each broken groan drawn out of his throat: playing in syncopation to his allegro heartbeat. The symphony just needs a little more time to complete.

You will complete it.

“Ah— please,” he begs, and his teeth clamp back onto sore skin with the more purposeful force you’re ratcheting up. “Feels weird—”

“You said that last time, baby, and look how you enjoyed it,” you murmur, rubbing small circles into the plush flesh of his ass in small comfort. His heaving abdomen presses flush against yours at your words, and you smile a smile for yourself. Got him.

“Sunday,” you breathe against the feathers shielding him from your satisfied expression. That’s what pushes him past the brink, causing him to freeze in your arms.

For the first time, you think you can hear your name threaded through the incoherent moans as he tilts his head back: arching into you, and allowing you to press soft kiss after kiss to his fragile throat.

Shit.

The actor’s facade is beginning to crack.

You observe the sopping wet mess freshly coating both your bodies, and a strange heat flickers into existence within your stomach. You ignore it.

The man sitting on top of you is still rocking against you, frantically riding out his high, and you can’t help but be intoxicated by him. He’s getting sloppy. The rhythm you were so enjoying has dwindled, and he slumps against you, cock twitching pathetically against his taut stomach.

You wish you could see his expression right now, as you slip in another finger and he lets out a hoarse whine at the burning stretch. It’s not enough. Concentrated, you slowly scissor the digits without heeding the dull pain of his nails tearing through the already-scarred canvas of your back.

Your body has already been painted by war. You don’t mind if these brushstrokes are from love instead.

“Faster— ah—”

His tamed cadence sears itself into your memory. He doesn’t quite know it yet, but try as he might, he’ll never feel as pure as he once was. As he paints you, he too is molded—marked—by your heated touch.

You don’t want him to forget how he feels right now.

He can’t.

Enraptured, you insert a third finger into his slick hole, coaxing those drunken mewls out of his body through your other hand playing with his tender chest. More. You tug roughly on his swollen nipples, catching the raw flesh against the callouses on your fingers: dull pain to distract him from the stretch you’re impatiently forcing.

“You’re so cute, love,” you murmur with quiet reverence, breathing in the fragrance of tea and soap: now mingling with the scent of sweat and sex. The bitter taste of corruption is precisely what allows the timid notes to bloom—now characters in their own right. You drown in the heady redolence, drunk on the very man you claim to hate.

His face presses deeper into your shoulder at the soft-spoken words, and you feel his skin burn: set ablaze by sweet nothings. Nothings, for they should be considered a farce—empty platitudes designed to lull him into a stupor.

It’s working. You wonder what he thinks of your words: whether he can sense the lies in his soul. You don’t feel the once-familiar intrusion poking into your head.

Perhaps he doesn’t want to know.

The actor’s facade continues to shatter.

Your fingers languorously carve out a space for you within him, while your other hand works its way around the supple dips and contours of his body: stroking, caressing, marking him as yours for tonight with damson shades.

A handprint will bloom tomorrow on his thigh: forgotten until he brushes past it and feels the dull ache of a bruise. It’s a reminder that he can never forget: cannot merely lock away his shame, for while the amaranth hue may fade, the space you’ve created inside him is irreversible.

In turn, you’ll sleep on your side for the next few weeks: slowing the circles around your heart enough that the wounds he inflicts remain tender and raw. He’ll catch a glimpse over your collar—covered haphazardly by the thin material—and it, too, will serve as a reminder of what exactly transpired tonight.

His god may forget once he steps out of this pool, but he will not. He cannot.

You won’t let him.

Your grin looks more like a snarl as he shudders. You’ve learnt to read the signs of his descent into pleasure: the way he digs his nails in to anchor himself, the way his body trembles with shockwaves that spiral out from his taut stomach, the way his breathing becomes ragged and so unlike his normal dignified self.

“Sunday,” you coo once more, and as Pavlov foretold, his abdomen heaves and tenses against you—though, this time, the larger intrusion forces his back to arch, and he practically wails as shivers wrack his body. Something warm and far less viscous soaks your lower torso, and you know he’s close to completely unravelling.

Saliva coats your chest, and you briefly wince as you realise just how much he’s bitten you in order to keep his sanity—enough that any marks will be faintly visible through your uniform shirt, enough that you’ll be a walking reminder for weeks on end.

You swallow.

“Can you keep going?”

It’s a question that unintentionally reads as a challenge: a gauntlet thrown at a man who, even in the most primal of acts, hates losing to you.

He trembles against your body, but when he looks up, that blown-out gaze of his is steely as it locks on to you.

Your breath hitches.

He’s exquisite.

Of course, you’ve known this since you first saw him on the illustrated cover: character captured in painstaking detail by the illustrator. But in turn, those details are painfully lacking when you look at the man in front of you.

His sooty lashes flutter as he blinks away the tears that have welled up in his eyes, and you find your mouth to be terribly dry. His statuesque face, normally so composed, has been made into an utter mess: flushed cheeks coated in a clammy sheen; silvery hair plastered to his damp face; expression scrunched with overstimulation. The soft rouge of his mouth parts: swollen with kisses, hoarse with moans, and slick with the saliva that betrays his hunger.

“Yes,” he mutters, exasperated. “I’m—”

You’ll never find out what he meant to say, for your lips capture his swiftly—adoringly. He makes a muffled sound of surprised protest, but his arms pull you by your nape so he can be closer to you as you passionately devour the small noises that escape from his mouth.

“I didn’t— I didn’t finish. What was that for?” As he pulls back with a gasp for air, his question is punctuated by the slow press of your lips to his cheek, his ear—anywhere you’ve neglected, anywhere you haven’t shown the appreciation he so rightfully deserves.

He sounds perplexed.

“You’re beautiful,” you admit between stolen kisses.

It sounds honest.

Maybe it even is.

You look at him like he’s hung the stars up in the sky, and he looks away. Heavy is your gaze, and even heavier is the emotion plaguing your heart.

It’s easy to manoeuvre him when he clings to you like this: detaching his pliant body from yours through placing him back on the stone bank once more. You can feel his heart palpitate at the sudden lack of your febrile limbs cradling his frigid being; small murmurs of protest echo in the ripples of water, but you let them wash over you.

The sensation of your dense cock pressing down on him is enough for his eyes to snap back onto you with a strange sort of intensity in his eyes: one part hunger, the other three something you can’t quite name.

You drive me to madness.

You run a hand caustically over his abdomen where you estimate the soft projection to be, and you can feel each tremble as the fireworks blast over his neurons: sensitivity heightened to an almost agonising degree. You almost smile when his spent cock dribbles out a few more pearls of translucent liquid at your idle touch.

“Need— need you,” he heaves, but underneath the slurred words is the iron undercurrent of a command: imperious, so utterly like the Sunday you know.

Your almost-smile becomes an irreverent, shit-eating grin, and he frowns. “Just do— ah—”

He whines brokenly as you line yourself up with his swollen hole, just barely pressing the head into the sticky mess. It hurts, no doubt, so you inch forward at a torturously slow pace: breathing now as ragged as his as you fight the urge to slam your hips into his, viscous desire catalysed by the slick sound gushing salaciously against your dick.

You swallow, gazing at his arched body deliriously.

“So tight, doll, shit” you swear, and your words cause him to squeeze, vice-like, around you. Your smile becomes wider, but inexplicably freezes as he cants his hips upwards to wrap his legs around your waist—coaxing a shaky moan from you, lips parted in surprise. It’s his turn to smirk faintly, taunting you for being so slow with it.

You indulge him, losing yourself in the fervescent heat of his insides momentarily, and losing a bit of your mind in the process.

The adagio quickens.

“What’s wrong?” he goads hoarsely, satisfied with the brief upper-hand he’s gained. You don’t reply, concentrating on his expression as he opens his mouth once more. “You feel— ngh—”

He writhes as you slam your hips into him, bullying yourself into the space you weren’t quite able to reach with your fingers. His incomprehensible sobs are the only sort of warning you get, before he makes an even bigger mess of himself: thin ropes of almost-clear liquid spurting from his half-limp cock, running into the dips of his heaving stomach.

You know he’s seeing the same stars he hung up for you so prettily, and you continue rolling your hips in tandem with his wailing moans—sweet talking that obscene sloshing sound straight from the source.

You’re going crazy.

Fascinated, your fingertips trace the prominent bulge shifting his guts, and he whimpers: fat tears rolling from his cheeks as you force his body to clamp down even harder around you.

“That’s it, love,” you relish, rocking into him to watch the mound on his tummy shift inwards and outwards. “See that?”

Despite himself, he exhaustedly cranes his neck to see where you’re looking—shivering with every drag of your hips—and you watch him take it all in. His spent cock still squirting thin rivulets so pathetically across himself, the protuberance that clearly indicates just how well you’ve carved a space into him, all the marks that are beginning to seep into his unblemished skin, all the marks he’s left on you—he takes it all in, turning an exquisite shade of pink.

The mess is such a repulsive contrast to the cheery smile on your face.

“You take me so well,” you mumble: words turning into blather as you begin to move once more. Your mind turns into endless mush as you unthinkingly lift his leg up onto your shoulder so he can take you even deeper, unheeding of the pitiful mewls that he chokes out.

You’re only chasing your own high as you establish a brutal pace. You lose yourself—tension coiling in your abdomen—with each overstimulated flutter of his gummy insides, with each keen plaint wrenched from his drooling mouth, with each roll of his eyes to the back of his head.

“So good,” you slur, tears rolling down your own cheeks at the divine sensation taking control of all your senses: the heavenly sight of his spent body splayed in front of you; the thick odour of lovemaking dripping over the trepid scent of his tea; the lewd sound of skin slicking against skin; the taste of salt and sweat still lingering on your tongue; and finally, the feeling of his body against yours—a dream to rival all dreams.

“Sunday,” you babble: his name a mantra as he shudders under you. His ankle perforates as your kiss turns to a bite, and your tight grip around him will leave yet another plum-hued bruise by tomorrow.

A frothy ring of white begins to form around your cock as it slams into him at a punishing tempo, but you are not quite done yet. You’re so stupidly deep that he’s wailing out something that sounds a lot like your name.

It sounds so desperate you can’t help but tense: can’t help but spill deep inside him. Hot spurts of white coat his insides, swelling each tender ridge within—enough that the new stretch forces another orgasm from him, milking the last drops of cum from his useless cock.

“Fuck, doll,” you moan loudly, bending down to kiss him as you ride out the euphoric wave blissfully controlling your body.

You swallow each sob, every tear as you fuck the pearly globules into his body, enough that he’ll find the remnants dripping onto his leg for days no matter how well he purifies himself in these waters.

“Don’t leave me,” he murmurs into your mouth, drifting in and out of clarity as you rob him of his breath. Some rational part in the mind buzzing with white noise idly wonders if he’ll remember his words tomorrow—if they’ll be overshadowed by his act of tasting the forbidden fruit.

“I won’t,” you promise, pressing a chaste kiss to his clammy brow. Slowly, you pull out, watching the thick rivulets of pearly white gush from his spread legs onto the pure stone.

You consider the mess you made of His Holiness from your knelt position.

Then, like the hound you are, you bow your head, and eat.

•. *࿐

“I’m just… worried about him.” Robin’s voice filters through your ears, subject to your distracted, capricious thoughts. Your eyes flick to her hands, stiffly curled around a now-cold teacup: an ode to the hours spent catching up after the disastrous celebration and the long days spent in your respective roles.

You were wondering when the conversation would shift to him.

“He’s been terribly guarded recently, even with me.” Her hand props her chin up, half exasperated, half concerned for the idiot she calls brother. “I mean, not that he’s got great communication usually, but it got so much worse after you didn’t wake up—I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so angry.”

You turn this new information over in your mind: a new snippet to pin with red thread against the rest. Thoughtfully, you sip your own chilled tea.

“I’m glad you’re here with him. It’s good he has a friend to rely on—especially since he cares about you so much.”

You smile into the porcelain.

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” you murmur, and your teacup chimes against its saucer as if agreeing. “He’s loosened up a bit. Doing a lot better.”

Before she can respond, her mouth shuts as footsteps echo: methodical in the way only one person is.

You lean forward, changing the subject of discussion smoothly, just as a gloved hand roots itself on the top rail of your seat.

“So, I hope you didn’t get too scared at the ceremony itself,” you continue, bowing your head politely with a lulled Your Holiness in greeting to the man behind you.

“Robin, Viscount.” He lingers just a touch longer on your title, as though desperately holding on to the practised civility the two of you have demonstrated longer than time itself. You suppress a smile.

Her eyes flit briefly between you and her brother, contemplating the slight shift in atmosphere. You ignore it, like you ignore his fingertips grazing your shoulder as he takes a seat right next to you.

“No,” Robin regains her cheerful smile, as if her pensive gaze never existed. “Her Grace was very accommodating.”

You half-expect His Holiness’ body to tense slightly at any mentions of her, but his eyes focus intensely on you instead—as though gauging your reaction instead. The visitor in your head leaves satisfied at your emotional indifference, but what you aren’t indifferent to is the faint blush spreading across Robin’s face as she discusses her bodyguard’s battle prowess.

Interesting.

You take another sip of your stone-cold tea (the leaves have an awfully familiar taste).

•. *࿐

“...there’s a lot of misconceptions about what we must do to enter the paradise promised to humanity…”

Sunday’s voice really is relaxing. It’s the perfect white noise to polish Harpe to, since you evidently aren’t paying attention to his sermon. The laity are enraptured by his words, and you are safe to continue your blasphemous actions—sequestered up high on an alcove behind them, a vantage point to rival all vantage points.

Your posture is awful, you note with mild amusement. You’ve grown soft: slouched, legs spread carelessly with Harpe slung across them, a cloth loosely clasped in your hand. It should probably be classed as a sin within itself; everyone else is standing respectfully, or kneeling. You brim with irreverence.

“…strive to uphold Order in what you do…”

His eyes briefly meet yours. You can tell, even from this far way—much like you can tell that despite his placid expression, he’s seething with irritation as he takes in your borderline pornographic position hidden away from everyone’s eyes but his own.

“...lambs— lambs of Ena, our god will shepherd us to the End—”

Against the backdrop of his perfection, the brief fumble in his words are startlingly obvious as his gaze stumbles once more across the congregation, though his faint flush is visible to nobody but you.

“...even when all seems lost…”

You wait. You watch. You hope the viscous liquid that drips down his leg isn’t too uncomfortable. Against your chest, his breath hitches through the crystal.

Like clockwork, he raises his gaze to the alcove once more. Languidly, your thumb rises to your mouth and swipes across your lips, as if you’re reminiscing over the taste of breakfast.

You can’t fault him for averting his gaze from your intense scrutiny.

He’s got a lie to uphold, after all.

•. *࿐

tags:

@fantasymen @naraven @almostoriginalartisan @etherneus @crxwned-mxnarch @carnalcrows @just-4-pl3bbl3

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