#ste oc

[stephanus-rattus]

Fanart inspired by @permo2003 's art

I wanted to draw a simple Shadow in a wedding dress but my intrusive thoughts won and I included other characters 😭

Fanart inspirado na arte de @permo2003

Eu estava querendo desenhar um simples Shadow com vestido de noiva mas meus pensamentos intrusivos venceram e eu incluí outros personagens 😭

[stephsinaya]

I DON'T HAVE ANY OF MY CAT REACTIONS ON MY COMPUTER......

Anyways, hi, wsg, how you doin?

current-ly doing AWESOMESAUCE 🫰🫰 HII

[skullharvester]

I had to make one after writing a shortfic, and I tried to keep the vibes moooostly consistent. My impulse control is miserable.

SteCasse listening to his romance music and yearning.

(I'll probably update the cover when I draw some related fanart, like I was supposed to do before I wrote a fic and compiled this instead.)

[slovo-ljubve]

I made this for a OC prompt on Bluesky but completely forgor to post it The prompt reminded me of this little scene I wrote but couldn't fit in the main story

The Exarch of Death and Fawn-eating butterflies

“Fawn, wait!”

Arno strode out to a glade, disregarding the cries that the thick trees behind him had already muffled. The glade stretched endlessly, mirroring the boundless sky, its sweeping green expanse encircled by the forest, which from the horizon could easily be mistaken for dense shrubbery. Fighting the stiff grass, he slowed to a stop. Wide eyes took in the scenery taken aback by the waves of green dancing under the wind’s caress. For a moment, he stood completely still, breathless, mesmerized by the silent beauty and the world completely unknown to the human touch that unfolded under his feet. He took few tentative steps, sharp grass catching the ends of his long skirt, when suddenly a burst of color dispersed around him. A dozen butterflies erupted from the ground beneath, fluttering their colorful wings in a playful dance. Arno spun slowly as butterflies encircled him, following their lead as if thanking them for a warm welcome. The butterflies dipped and soared, brushing past his hands and hair, and Arno allowed to be swayed by the delicate wings, to be part of this joyful, fleeting world.

“Stay just like that.” The voice, soft yet authoritative, was much closer now.

Arno hadn't noticed when Orfeo has settled into the grass by the forest’s edge. He was back in his human form, red locks brushing teasingly against his bare collarbones.

“Do you even know what those creatures are?” he asked, his sharp white fangs visible.

Confusion painted Arno’s face. “They are butterflies, right? I’ve seen them in the village,” he said in uncertain tone, knitting his brows. Few butterflies had by then landed softly on his clothes and in his hair.

“Wrong!” Orfeo roared. “They are the spawn of the Exarch of Death, a creature lurking in the shadows of these woods, with a taste for human flesh. Why do you think this place is so devoid of human presence?” His expression was deadly serious, a finger raised toward the sky in emphasis. “Much like their creator, they hunger for blood. Their shimmering wings lure in prey, only to devour them completely, leaving not even the bones behind. A slow and painful death one can’t escape.” Orfeo retrieved a booklet, thumbing through it until he found a blank page. With a piece of graphite, he began sketching the outline of a figure - long hair and a skirt swirling in the wind, just like the person standing before him.

Arno bristled, standing frozen in place - a futile attempt at dissuading the flesh-eating creatures. Cold sweat trickled down his back as he watched the demon’s casual demeanor, unnerved by the calmness. He remained motionless, helpless under the weight of Orfeo’s piercing blue gaze, which silently demanded him to stay still. He bit his lip, his eyes darting frantically in search of an answer . “But what should I... How do I...” he stammered, his voice breaking between sobs. A single butterfly, nestled in the raven hair, crawled slowly toward his face. Black eyes, brimming with tears, desperately sought the demon’s unwavering gaze . “Please, help me,” he cried out his voice trembling with fear and helplessness. In that moment, Orfeo rose and approached the frightened Fawn. He towered over Arno, a gentle smile softening his features, tenderness pooling from his eyes. Arno blushed as the demon cupped his cheek, wiping away the tear that had slipped down. With his other hand, he grabbed the Fawn-eating butterfly from Arno’s hair. In an instant, it burst into flames, its wings never to flutter again. Arno stared, dazed, his breath slowly calming .

“There’s no need for those tears, Fawn,” Orfeo murmured with a smile. “They’re just ordinary butterflies.”

[strangerficsxx]

Chapter Five: The Flea and The Acrobat

wc: 2.4k jennifer, jonathan and nancy confront the force that took will.

[a/n: all characters, plot, etc. are not mine. The only thing I own is my original character. credit to gif owner.]

{ November 10, 1983 }

That morning sucked because Jennifer wasn’t sure if she should tell Nancy that she had a dream where she and Steve had sex or not. Jennifer decided to keep it a secret from her, but had to tell someone. Dressed, Jennifer grabs her bag from the chair in her room and throws her sneakers on before rushing out of the house. She arrives at the school and searches for Phoebe. Finally finding her, Jennifer drags her into the girls bathroom and in an empty stall. 

“I need to tell you something.” 

"What?"

"I had a dream about Steve."

“Harrington?" She asks.

"Yes, who else would I be talking about."

"I don't know." Phoebe utters. "What kind of dream? I need details. The nitty gritty details.”

“Well, for starters, Steve took me in his BMW to Lover’s Lake. There, He kissed me. Our first kiss. Then we got into his backseat and had… sex.” 

“What?”

“Yeah. Should I tell Nancy?”

“No, bad idea. I would tell her sometime later when she’s not in the mood currently. Maybe wait till you both are out of high school and married, and have separate lives.”

“Phoebe." Jennifer says sternly before continuing. "Things could change then. I’ll just keep it to myself and tell her when I’m ready."

"Okay, good luck with that."

Jennifer nods, rising before exiting the bathroom and heading home soon after first period began, so she's ready for Will's funeral. Besides the boy's funeral, the kiss between her and Steve lingers in Jennifer's mind. She was on the fence about telling Nancy, even though Phoebe stated it was a bad idea to tell her about it. Jennifer listened to her best friend, and went with that instinct. 

——

The funeral arrives quickly as Jennifer rides to the cemetery with her parents and brother before stepping out onto the grass. She walks over to the closed casket, flowers sit on top as she sees the three boys meet. Jennifer greets them along with Nancy and her parents. Stepping aside, she steps up to greet Jonathan and his mother. 

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Jennifer says.

“Thank you.” Joyce thanks, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Come here.” She says, saddened.

Jennifer offers a hug as she brings a frail Joyce into her arms. She hears the woman sniffle as it breaks her heart not being able to imagine herself as a mother and losing her own child. After a few seconds she pulls away from the hug before hugging Jonathan next. Jennifer knew Joyce lost her son and Jonathan lost his younger brother. It broke her. Once everyone was seated, Jennifer blocked out most of the beginning of the funeral due to other things such as other things clouded her mind until Dustin nudges his older sister with his elbow as she jumps back into reality and listened to the male carefully. 

“‘ ...Will strengthen you. Yes, I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.’ It’s times like these that our faith is challenged. How, if he truly benevolent… could God take from someone so young, so innocent? It would be easy to turn away from God… but we must remember that nothing, not even tragedy, can separate us from his love.” The pastor reads.

Jennifer stood there as everyone looks at one another until Dustin nudges Mike and Lucas as they, including Jennifer to look at a young girl sniffling as tears rolled down her cheeks. 

“Just wait till we tell Will that Jennifer Hayes was crying at his funeral."

Karen shushes Dustin and the other's as Jennifer lowered her head, knowing that something isn't right. Once the funeral was over, she watched as they sent their condolences to the grieving family. White roses are dropped on the boy’s casket as she walks away. Jennifer didn’t know what to do now since she's never attended a funeral, so she walks somewhere. Jennifer glances to the side and sees Jonathan and Nancy sitting side by side in front of a gate that surrounds the headstone of the deceased. She approaches them and stood above them shadowing the two teenagers from the sunshine peeking through the gloomy clouds. 

“Hey, you okay?” He asks.

“Kinda.” Jennifer responds.

They turn back to the paper of a layout of the small town of Hawkin, Indiana. Jennifer sits down next to Jonathan as she looks over the paper too. 

"This is where we know for sure it's been, right?" 

"So, that's..." 

"Steve's house," Jennifer says.

"That's the woods where they found Will's bike, and that's my house."

"It's all so close." 

"Yeah, exactly. It's all within a mile or something. Whatever this thing is, it's-- it's not traveling far."

"You want to go out there," 

"We might not find anything," 

"I found something," 

Jonathan and Jennifer nod at Nancy.

"And if we do see it, then what?"

"We kill it." Jennifer sternly says.

——

Following Nancy and Jonathan, they lead Jennifer to Lonnie’s car. Nancy looks around nervously. Jennifer stood there too, calmly keeping an eye on the surrounding participants at the funeral. Deep down, she felt wrong by stealing something from someone.

"What are you doing?" Nancy asks. 

"Just give me a second." 

Jonathan, who has a pocket knife, breaks open the glove compartment. He then proceeds to pull out a handgun as he looks at the bullets on the inside , grabbing three boxes of what Jennifer's guessing are bullets -- the male shoves it in his pocket as well as the caliber gun. 

"Are you serious?" Nancy asks again, afraid of getting in trouble.  

Jonathan closese the passenger door behind him and approaches Jennifer and Nancy. Jennifer's hands are in her pockets as Nancy has folded her arms to her chest. 

"This is a bad idea," Jennifer says, worried. "What if he sees that his caliber is gone?"

"He won't notice." Jonathan continues. "It's the best we've got. What? You can tell someone, but they won't believe either one of you. You know that."

"Your mom would." Nancy suggests. 

"She's been through enough." 

"She deserves to know, Jonathan." 

"Yeah, and I'll tell her when that thing is dead."

——

Later that day, Jennifer decides to take a walk to clear her mind and to figure out her feelings once more since she failed the last time. She starts and somehow manage to end up on Maple Street where she begins walking by Nancy's house, seeing her and Steve together talking. Jennifer stops in her tracks and watch them as they are clueless of her standing on the sidewalk. A feeling erupts in Jennifer's heart, something burning. She watches as he jokingly sings to her as the faint sound of singing makes the female grin. Steve walks away and continues singing a tune as Jennifer acts like she saw nothing before walking across to the house and watch the brunette swing the bat. She swings at Jennifer's head as she ducks just in time. Nancy notices and puts the bat and her guard down. 

"Jesus, I could have taken your head off." 

"Sorry about that. Maybe I should’ve announced my presence. What are you doing anyway?"

"Practicing for when you, me and Jonathan take down that thing." 

"Okay. I... was going to tell you something, but I don't think you want to hear my bullshit."

"Not at the moment. I'm gonna head to an empty field to practice shooting with Jonathan. You could join, since you believe me in what I saw."

"We. What we saw that day." Jennifer corrects.

"Yeah. Right."

Nancy holds the bat as they walk away from the two story house, making way towards the field as Nancy leads the way as Jennifer follows behind. When they arrive, she sees Jonathan shooting cans -- well, at least he thinks he is. 

"You're supposed to hit the cans, right?" Jennifer asks.

Jonathan looks toward her. He smiles when he sees Jennifer and Nancy.

"No, actually, you see the spaces in between the cans? I'm aiming for those." He jokes. 

"Ah," 

Nancy sets down a duffle bag and the bat as Jennifer stands there, glancing down at the partially unzipped bag, and seeing weaponry sitting inside. She then proceeds to listen in on the conversation. Jonathan cocks the gun and hands it to Nancy. She takes her place and aims for the cans. She pulls the trigger as it hits the can dead on before craning her neck up at Jonathan and smiles. 

"Alright, Jen. Let's see what you've got." 

Jennifer walks over and grabs the gun from Nancy, taking her place like Nancy did. She cocks the gun before aiming at the can. Jennifer closes one eye and focuses, exhaling slowly. 

"Growing up, my mom taught me how to use a gun out of protection as well as putting one together. It's all about memory. And let me say, that shit sticks with you. We had a gun out of protection since me and my biological mother lived in her 1971 Range Rover. After a few years, I was taken by CPS, and held in a dark and dingy room before being placed in a foster care system. To this day, I still have no idea where my mom ended up, or if she's even dead. All I know is that I have a purpose, and I'm gonna continue on."

Jennifer pulls the trigger and shoots the three other cans before lowering the weapon, feeling proud of herself. She sets the gun in Jonathan's hand.

"Wow. Ok." Jonathan says, amazed.

She looks at the two other teenagers. "Thank you."

"Jennifer, I didn't know that."

"Yeah, well, there's a lot of things most people don't know about. Including my past."

——

Jennifer, Nancy, and Jonathan walk through the wooded area, conversating as Nancy then asks her a question that makes her panic.

"Earlier, you mentioned that you wanted to tell me something, but you didn't want me to hear your bullshit. What do you mean by that, if you don't mind me asking?”

"That," Jennifer fumbles over her words. "What I was saying is that I had a bad dream about that creature, nothing else."

"Okay..."

"I am just saying if I did have any other type of dream I would tell you, especially if it was about Steve -- which it wasn't. Thank God."

Nancy raised a brow at Jennifer. She knew something was up but couldn’t focus on that at the moment as she is getting ready to hunt down the creature in the photo. As they all continue to walk, things get heated as Nancy and Jonathan begin to argue. Soon the argument ends as Jonathan stalks off as Nancy follows after him, and Jennifer follows after Nancy.

Once home, Jennifer decides to change since she were in a dress earlier and it's getting cold out. She steps in and close the door behind her. Jennifer makes her way towards her room and change into a long sleeve shirt with t-shirt on top and some comfortable jeans and a hoodie and sneakers. Jennifer smoothes her hair as she check yourself in the mirror one more time before exiting her bedroom and into the kitchen to fetch a snack for the road.

Jennifer exits the house, closing the door behind her as the wind blows through, catching in her jacket as a shiver runs down her spine, but she continues on and rushes toward Jonathan's car. Jennifer hops in the backseat as they all head to the same place they were at prior -- the woods where Will's bike was found. Night time approaches quickly as the three teenagers walk through the woods with flashlights and weaponry. Jennifer was also quiet, and she could see her breath every time she exhaled. Nancy stops abruptly when something catches her attention.

Jennifer and Jonathan stop too. 

"What, are you tired?” She asks. 

"Shut up." Nancy demands.

"What?" Jonathan questions. 

"I heard something," 

Soon Jennifer and Jonathan hear the indistinct whimpering too as the three of them follow it. The whining continues as Jennifer shines her flashlight on the uneven ground. They come up on a dying dear as it whimpers from the pain. Nancy kneels as Jonathan sighs. 

"It's been hit by a car." She says. "We can't just leave it."

Jonathan stares before looking down at the gun motioning Jennifer and Nancy to look down as well. The older Wheeler sibling holds the gun in her hand, not wanting to go through with killing the deer. It whimpers as Nancy begins sniffling. 

"Let me," Jennifer chimes in as Nancy hands the gun over.

Jennifer cocks the gun and takes aim, ready to shoot as she hesitates. Resting her finger on the trigger, she begins to pull it right when the deer gets pulled away causing her, Nancy and Jonathan to gasp and step away. Fear washes over Jennifer's body as she almost drops the loaded weapon. 

"What was that?" Jonathan asks, looking at Nancy.

Staring at the blood trail left by the deer, Nancy begins to follow it. Jennifer holds the gun before raising it, in case something comes after them. Jennifer as well as Nancy and Jonathan look around trying to find the deer when Nancy follows little puddles of blood. 

"Where'd it go?" 

"Don't know," 

"Do you see any more blood?" 

"No," 

Jennifer stands closer to the two other teens, and continue to search for more evidence. Nancy steps further away from her and Jonathan who are searching for something, anything that seems out of the ordinary. Jennifer stops to look over at Nancy, seeing her stepping forward to a tree, shining her light on the open trunk. A strange substance drips from the top of the inside as Nancy gets closer to look at what it is. Jonathan continues trudging through the woods as Jennifer stays rigid. They look at the slimy substance. She turns away for a split second before turning back as the other brunette is nowhere in sight.

"Uh, Jonathan?" 

"What?" 

Realizing that she's gone, the two teenagers hear a twig snap as Jonathan calls out for Nancy and rushes up to Jennifer who finds her backpack and bat lying in front of the tree, but Nancy is nowhere in sight

"Nancy?" Jennifer calls. 

"Nancy!"

"Where'd she go?" 

"She crawled through a tree."

"She crawled through a tree?!" He asks, confused. His brows knit together. "No, she has to be here somewhere, we just need to find her, OK?"

“Okay,”

And that is what they both did. They continue to look for Nancy Wheeler.

[tossawary]

I have about 10k of fic that's about as far from SVSSS as I've ever written, taking greater inspiration from fics I've written before, which I've been using as writing warm-up. It's a pre-canon third transmigrator AU from the outsider's perspective of Linguang-Jun. (Linguang-Jun having a great reputation as a hunter is something that I originally came up with for the Stardust AU.)

Like SVSSS Mobei-Jun, Linguang-Jun is fun to write because he sucks pretty bad; it's a LOT of fun to try and write a setup for him that's going to explode eventually (not yet, but eventually, inevitably) and in a specific way. How many parallels can I draw? I think it's amusing to think about how the cringefail ballad of Moshang and all the rest of SVSSS is taking place in the crater where Linguang-Jun's dreams used to be. (That happened to my buddy Tianlang-Jun, too, now that I'm thinking about it, and he decided to make that everyone else's problem.) Such is the life of a mere background character!

I don't know when I'll be posting this to AO3. I don't like to post WIP there unless I can fully focus on them. If I don't continue this story, I'll post it eventually to AO3 as an open-ended one-shot or something. But for now... Enjoy!

Warning for minor character death and graphic violence (and vomiting) in the first part, and also unpleasant demonic attitudes to things. Everyone but Linguang-Jun is an OC.

Chapter One: A God's Spear

There is no greater feeling in the world than the long thrill of the hunt. 

Chasing their prey, they become the laughing winds rushing across the yellow steppes, howling at the heels of the thundering herds, even felling centuries-old pines that have bent for every natural storm but never broken before. They send corpse after corpse of scavengers squawking and flailing for their lives. 

Mobei Yang cannot wait to sink his teeth into the monster wrecking its way across the northern kingdoms. They are chasing a Giant Sea Heron... or rather: the creature that used to be one before it met a hole in the world. Did it breathe the poisonous gases too deeply? Did it feed on the vent's escapees too hungrily? Did it become mesmerized by the shimmering chaotic energy and allow itself to dream where reality itself is torn apart? 

Who knows? Who cares? Mobei Yang's lordly brother doubtlessly hadn't cared to ask the babbling messenger either, before waving the lesser demon on to younger men who can truly appreciate the unique challenges of what an unstable Abyssal gateway can create. 

Already two times the height of a large man, the creature has swelled in size to become twice as large as that. Its brown neck has thickened, its dark head has grown a sharp and lopsided crest, and its unnaturally elongated beak is now the same size as the rest of its body, perhaps, a god's spear capable of swallowing grown demons whole. The giant creature needs its folded, white wings to walk along the ground now, almost like a large monkey or a small bat, but it struts slowly along not unlike a long-necked antelope. 

All the Giant Sea Heron does now is eat: struggling to grow, struggling to sustain its growth, struggling to fill the endless hole that's crawled inside of its core. It has left a bloody, dissatisfied trail behind it. Which the breathless messenger claimed had started with its own former mate and eggs, the messy remains found abandoned in a nest on a high sea cliff. 

The giant creature looks so heavy, lumbering awkwardly around the corpse of a Black-Moon Rhinoceros - the crescent of the horn is unmistakable - to jab its long spear back into the dark guts and yank it apart. Ah, it's picking one of those parasitic snake demons out of the body. 

Its eyes have become enormous, bulbous; they have a sickly pale color and are rimmed with mucus. Abyss-touched creatures are often sick, like Abyssal creatures themselves are often blinded by sunlight. The giant creature doesn't seem to notice anything as a brown fox darts out of the tall grass and steals a piece of the kill that had been tossed aside, nor does it care anything for the circling black vultures that aren't yet nearly so brave. 

Just looking at it, one wouldn't think that the elephantine creature is still hollow-boned enough to fly! Yet when their hunting party ambushes it, the giant creature somehow vaults itself into the sky, folding hideously in on itself and then launching upwards in an ascension even more unnatural than a human's. 

Mobei Yang watches its heavy wingbeats take it high up into the heavenly clouds, beyond the easy reach of most demons. All of their hunting prowess, all of the joy they have spilled on their skill, leaves them with nothing today. But this is nothing! When his faithful followers look anxiously towards him for direction, Mobei Yang is the first to laugh at their failure, at the renewed challenge, and they soon echo him. 

"Any excuse to extend a hunt is a cause for celebration!" Mobei Yang shouts, receiving a gleeful roar in response. "If you want a meal that doesn't fight back, then go back to the Ice Palace, cowards!" 

They don't find it again that day, but the mood is still good when they make camp, freed from the dullness of the courts. At home, Mobei Yang is a prince, sought after and respected, but also one among many formidable clan members working to keep his elder brother's favor. On the hunt like this, he might as well be the Lord of the Northern Desert already. 

The wind picks up as the sun sinks. The clouds darken and writhe against a beautiful, burning sky. Shuang Tao, his right-hand, a frost wind demon, loudly and laughingly recalls some of their best kills, their most daring and reckless feats, over the years. A blur of memories now. 

Mobei Yang knows a great deal about the habits of hunted creatures, but this one is new, even before it became the only thing in the world like it. Weak-minded creatures and demons touched by the Endless Abyss tend to go uselessly mad: short memories and shorter tempers and a thin grasp on reality if any. He's hunted Emperors of the Abyss before, those malformed masses of demonic energy that die with every step they take out of their pits, and White Sea Whales, their clever and vindictive cousins that never took man-shaped forms. 

"I'm preparing myself for disappointment, really," Mobei Yang drawls, accepting a new cup of wine. "But ahhh, that skull will look beautiful in the West Wind Palace... hanging over the hall, I think." 

As they were watching the ruined creature, it must have seen them. It must have been watching them as well. In one moment, Shuang Tao is toasting the evening and tomorrow and every hunt after. In the next moment, the setting sun vanishes all at once, as the Giant Sea Heron falls on them like the wrath of the heavens. 

Its enormous beak spears through a demon before it lands with a heavy thump, before any of them know it's there, and a second demon rolls away from the continuing jab. Not fast enough to escape the sharp drawing of blood. 

The Giant Sea Heron's massive wings crash through the camp as it lands. Mobei Yang is knocked head over heels into the grass and dust. His wine spills everywhere. 

Mobei Yang rolls with the blow and recovers quickly, unharmed, of course. And he is the first to summon his weapon and strike back, hastily followed by his hunters, but the creature is well-fed, unflinching, faster than something of its size should be, lunging like a snake. 

Its spiritual energy is unleashed with its battering wings: it's foul, rotting, almost overwhelming. Ice spears and arrows don't seem to pierce its feathers at all. Hastily formed spells break easily against the burn of its spiritual strength.

Shuang Tao throws an ordinary spear, whistling with the wind behind it, and manages to draw blood from its featherless  leg. But the wound is glancing, a shallow cut in surprisingly thick skin. 

"Mire it!" Mobei Yang shouts, summoning ice around its feet. The ice is too weak, too slow, cracking open immediately. 

He dodges its long beak, its heavy wings, its beak again. It seems fixated on him more than the others - not uncommon when dealing with spiritually starving creatures, it wants the most meal - but it still gets distracted when another hunter tries to rope its wing. It pulls on the wing up sharply, pulls the unready hunter into the air, and then spears the weak demon through with its long beak. 

It's much cleverer than Mobei Yang thought that it was. Much stronger. Not clever enough to live, but still annoying, still thrilling, still enough to bare one's teeth. 

Mobei Yang dances towards Shuang Tao's fallen spear, flips it up with his foot, catches, and then launches it towards the creature's swirling eye. 

His aim is true! Of course! The Giant Sea Heron screeches and thrashes like a dying thing, but the spear clearly doesn't punch deeply enough to hit its brain. The spear falls out in the thrashing. Messily. 

The remaining ten hunters have formed a circle around the Giant Sea Heron, ready just out of easy reach, making it more difficult to kill them all quickly. One of the other hunters makes a second spear-throw for the other eye, not nearly so beautifully. The creature ducks blindness easily and screeches. Its raised feathers crackle with resentful energy. 

Mobei Yang can see it decide to flee. Maybe they're much stronger and cleverer than the creature thought they were too. 

The Giant Sea Heron goes down and tries to launch itself upwards, only to go nowhere, to stumble, to barely keep itself upright. The summoned ice they've been throwing at its feet has easily been cracked and crushed, but the water remains, and it has been skillfully manipulated by the likes of Heng Leyang and Xi Mingzhu. 

The water demons have made a mud pit and the Giant Sea Heron's thrashing has only sunk it deeper into the trap. The half-frozen mud is harder to break. 

The creature's rotten energy rises, bubbles, and then it screeches again, disorienting in its sheer loudness, its hatred and desperation rippling through the air. Most of the hunters cover their ears and it helps very little. The unnatural sound shakes through one's entire body. The first terrible screech is still rippling through the world when the next begins. 

Such venting of power can't be sustainable, but the unnatural screeching makes the battle wretched while it lasts. 

Mobei Yang becomes the black wind around the spearing beak, then twists away to attack this ruined creature, repeatedly. But shifting forms burns under the onslaught of spiritual energy. The hatefulness of it even disrupts him once, forcing him to become solid flesh again, and dodge as an ordinary demon might to avoid a raking of freed talons. 

It's hard work keeping the creature down, baiting it this way and that, keeping out of its deadly reach. They pick and they peck, but none of them are certain how to put this Giant Sea Heron down. The Endless Abyss has made a remarkable ruin here. 

Shuang Tao's young nephew, Shuang Qiang, keeps looking towards Mobei Yang with wide, expectant eyes. This is the young frost wind demon's first hunt with this royal party. Does he expect a retreat to be called here? Does he think that the spoiled, weaker, younger prince will go running back to his lordly brother now, swallowing his pride, begging for help? Mobei Yang has never surrendered in such a way and never will while he lives. 

If a creature can bleed, it can die. Through the ruined eye again might do it... 

Mobei Yang isn't certain how long it's been when a new hunting party appears, but the dying sun hasn't fully drowned yet. They must be local demons, summoned by the screeching or the spiritual rot. 

"They'll get in our way! Keep them back!" Mobei Yang snarls at Shuang Tao, who nods and turns to his nephew. 

He doesn't need assistance. Ordinarily, he might appreciate an audience, but this battle is slipping from fascinating to frustrating. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Mobei Yang tracks young Shuang Qiang's progress. The leader of the newcomers, a rock demon by the look of him, greets their messenger with an ally's gesture. Rather than charge in recklessly, they keep their distance atop the hill. 

Most of them. 

While trying to keep the Giant Sea Heron's feet frozen down, Mobei Yang sees a smaller figure break forward from the new hunting party. Shuang Qiang lunges to catch them and... misses? He shouldn't have missed. The figure running forward obviously isn't as fast or as nimble as Shuang Tao's nephew. 

One of the Hao brothers notices and also tries to grab the intruder, his hand should easily wrap around their spear, and yet... he also somehow fails. An illusion wind demon is fast and not easily fooled, but the Hao brother stumbles as though his hand didn't touch anything at all. 

Shuang Tao lurches to intervene and Mobei Yang whips an ice spear in front of his second's middle. "Wait," he orders, "I want to see this." 

The Giant Sea Heron fixes the approaching figure in its one eye and then spears its enormous beak forward. It should split the intruder, crush them. The enormous creature is faster than this fool. 

The intruder disappears. Mobei Yang isn't sure what happens. The figure's own shadow seemed to leap up to swallow them, or they fell down into it, and the blood-stained beak spears down on nothing. There was no noticeable burst of new spiritual energy. Nothing that could be sensed above the Giant Sea Heron's rotting wrath, at least. 

The Giant Sea Heron tilts its head in obvious confusion. It screeches its unhappiness again, much to everyone else's misery, before... the ruined creature jolts and abruptly cuts itself off. 

"How...?" Shuang Tao says. "On its back?" 

"What terrible posture," Mobei Yang remarks, too surprised to put the proper dryness into it. 

The disappearing intruder has somehow reappeared on the giant creature's back, struggling for balance. Despite their slowness, despite their obvious lack of strength, the shadowy figure somehow manages to drive their spear through the creature's long, feathered neck in a single thrust. Mobei Yang sees the spear tip come out the other side. 

The Giant Sea Heron thrashes wildly to dislodge its attacker. When it tries to screech again, the high shriek quickly dies off into a gurgle of dark blood. 

At first, the disappearing intruder clings to their spear like a tied rag, but they fall off within seconds and then vanish again. 

Where they go, Mobei Yang doesn't care. While the giant creature is distracted, he becomes the black wind again and rushes forward to take their place, to put solid hands on the embedded spear, then to push all of the wrath of a noble ice demon into this critical weak point. 

The ruined creature's neck explodes in a shower of ice, spiritual energy, blood, and no small amount of feathers. The severed head hits the ground with a heavy thump before the body finally topples over in an ungainly heap of wings. 

Mobei Yang rides the collapse down easily. Then he jumps off the body, still holding half of the broken spear in his hand, and looks the weapon over. The shaft is ordinary wood. As he felt when he pushed his spiritual energy into it, the spearhead at his foot appears to be without spell or even decoration. This spear should not have been able to pierce such a creature's throat with such singular ease. 

Some of his hunters are whooping with victory, with relief, but Mobei Yang is distracted away from their celebration of him by a stranger stepping audaciously in front of him. A... teenage boy? 

This demon is a full head shorter than Mobei Yang, which puts them at a taller than average height among most other demons, and their pale face seems young. They're plump like a seal, with large, dark eyes. They have no painted marks or tattoos. Their dark hair is cut shockingly short, close to their head, just long enough to flop over furrowed brows. 

Instead of paying the rightful attention and respect to a prince, the boy is frowning at the broken spear, and first crouches down to pick up the spearhead. Like Mobei Yang, the boy is wearing a fair amount of spilled blood. He must have been close. 

The boy stands up again and looks up with those big, seal-dark eyes. "Hurt?" 

Mobei Yang doesn't understand the word at first, so poorly pronounced, so heavily accented. The boy squints at him, looks him up and down. 

"H-help?" 

As though Mobei Yang didn't just kill the creature that this boy failed to finish. The boy's eyes are already drifting disrespectfully away to one of the dead hunters, partially crushed in the battle, a gruesome but unsurprising sight. Such is life, as they say, such is death. 

One would think so, at least, except that this boy's face turns sickly and he looks hastily away. His body jerks, a hand goes over his mouth, he jerks again, pauses, and then turns away from Mobei Yang completely to vomit on the ground. 

It's not often that Mobei Yang finds himself at a loss for words. The overwhelmed awe that he often inspires in lesser demons usually doesn't realize itself so unintelligibly or pathetically as this. 

"Please, do contain your excitement," Mobei Yang says. 

The boy squints up at him, teary-eyed, only to immediately start gagging again. He holds out a hand, apparently trying to cover up the offending sights. 

"How dare you behave so disrespectfully before a prince!" says one of the nearby hunters, Junjun, a mountain wind demon. "Don't you know who this is?!" 

The boy flinches away from this looming defense, staring warily up at Junjun without any sign of understanding. 

"I don't think he does," Mobei Yang says dryly. 

Unfortunately, Junjun takes this as introductions being in order. "This is the greatest hunter in the Demon Realm! A prince of the ancient rulers of the northern kingdoms, the Northern Desert Clan! The only living brother of the great Mobei-Jun! Linguang-Jun!" 

"Yes, yes, thank you." 

The boy looks between them, turning the spearhead over in his hands again and again, hunching his shoulders. "Sorry," he says, bowing slightly, once to Mobei Yang and twice to Junjun, all equally shallow. "Sorry. Sorry." 

And then, further proving his lack of understanding, the boy turns on his heel and runs away. It's so shamelessly cowardly that Mobei Yang laughs. 

"Stop him!" Mobei Yang calls out to the hunter ahead. "If you can." 

It's one of the Hao brothers, his expression immediately determined. Expecting slippery prey, the hunter should have little trouble; they're all used to disrupting disappearing tricks with their own spiritual energy, all of them practiced at wrestling opponents back into solid forms. 

Mobei Yang is surprised again when the flinching boy slips into his own shadow and then appears on the hunter's other side. 

The Hao brother is enraged, of course, which is at least amusing. The hunter roars and chases after the slow boy, who stumbles, looking over his shoulder with wide eyes, and then vanishes again. The boy reappears and disappears a few times on his way back up the hill. The Hao brother catches him once, only for the boy to apparently melt away in the hunter's hands, despite an obvious attempt to use spiritual energy to disrupt the escape. 

"Enough of that!" Mobei Yang decides, when the comedic pair are too close to the other hunting party. "Stop playing with your prey and come back here!" 

The Hao brother stomps back to join the other surviving hunters, gathering behind Mobei Yang. The newcomers whom Shuang Tao is escorting forward hardly seem fearsome, but appearances do matter. Mobei Yang looks best when he looks better than someone else. 

The boy skirts wide around Shuang Tao and dives back into the party of newcomers, which... doesn't seem to welcome him back with any enthusiasm. Like larger beasts dutifully making way for some tiny but venomous creature. The boy lurks behind the rock demon leader, peeking out warily, like a plump little seal sticking its snout of the ice. 

The rock demon leader is a large fellow, a little taller than Mobei Yang himself, fat and strong. Far more grim than handsome. A stone that ice could crack open without much difficulty, Mobei Yang is sure. 

"Greetings and welcome, Linguang-Jun," rumbles the rock demon. 

"This is Bocheng, the next clan leader of the Flying Mountain Clan," Shuang Tao offers. "Sworn to the Northern Desert Clan, of course, and at our service." 

Bocheng the rock demon appears less than pleased by his required obeisance, but Mobei Yang doesn't care much if some backwater warrior hates the fact that he has a king. So long as all due respect is shown to the future Mobei-Jun. 

"And who is that?" Mobei Yang gestures vaguely behind the rock demon. 

Shan Bocheng the rock demon's frown deepens. Some of the others step plainly away from their leader and the coward, so unwilling to shelter the boy from their superiors, even though demon children are supposedly all precious creatures. Sighing, the rock demon pulls the boy up beside him. His massive hand spreads across the mulish boy's back and touches those hunched shoulders with no trouble. 

"You introduced yourself to my hunting party so audaciously before," Mobei Yang observes. "You truly do have trouble finishing a job, hm?" 

The boy looks around miserably. It's like watching some pitiful sea creature try to crawl back inside its shell. 

"He wants to know your name," Bocheng says to the boy, with the slowness that one might offer to a particularly stupid baby. "Name. Naaaaame." 

Mobei Yang can see the way that the boy's eyes light up, before he bows again, deeper this time, and stays there. 

"Beida Wan," he says. "Sorry. I... sorry. Sorry." 

"That's a rather long name. So unique. Not very lucky, though," Mobei Yang says. Shuang Tao laughs, while some of the other hunters chuckle. 

"Sorry," the boy says again. "I... help." 

Bocheng the rock demon sighs again. The mauling of each word suggests another language, but none of these other clan members are stepping forward to offer their translation services. 

"Does he not speak Tongyu or Beiyu?" Mobei Yang can also follow the whispered conversation between two of the newly come wind demons, but there's no need to enlighten them of that yet. 

"No, we don't know what language he speaks," the rock demon says. "We don't know where he's from." 

"He just appeared one day and now he won't leave," complains a young water demon. "Because he saved Bocheng's life somehow, more or less, we can't just-" 

"Yubo, shut up," says the rock demon. 

"He really didn't know who he was interrupting," the young water demon insists. "Still doesn't. Stupid." 

"Let's hear this mysterious mother tongue," Mobei Yang decides. "Perhaps I or one of my faithful followers, worldly warriors that we are, will recognize a few words of it. Say something, boy." 

When everyone turns their eyes onto him again, the boy once more tries to shrink into a shell that isn't there. It takes some more prodding from the rock demon to get the confused, then annoyed boy to produce more than one word at a time. 

"Whadda fuckayou wan' fro'me?" 

Mobei Yang looks at Shuang Tao, who shrugs unhelpfully, and none of his other hunters step forward. There are many isolated languages and wretched dialects across the Demon Realm alone, but Mobei Yang doesn't even recognize the general sound of this one. It's very flat. 

"You must be a very long way from home," Mobei Yang says finally. 

The boy doesn't answer. He doesn't seem to understand the statement at all, squinting helplessly before taking shelter again behind the rock demon. 

Mobei Yang is distracted then by more conventional affairs. The locals had apparently been watching this destructive creature and had been preparing to kill it themselves, and so now must at least pretend to be grateful that their superiors arrived to defend them. Tradition and respect also demand that these lowly demons make an offer of hospitality. 

Some of his hunters are injured, two are dead, so arrangements must be made. Mobei Yang graciously accepts the hospitality outwardly, while inwardly accepting that there will be some trouble from his mother's family for even briefly associating with one of their many rivals, which is exactly what he'd wished to avoid when they set up their now-ruined camp instead of seeking shelter. Perhaps if he does his hosts sufficient damage during his stay, subtly of course, the familial moaning and groaning will be minimal. 

While Shuang Tao negotiates with the locals regarding the Giant Sea Heron's curse, Mobei Yang studies the intruder again. The Beida boy is staring at the sky, occasionally swallowing retching. He's been staying close to the rock demon like a little fly. How does someone with such obviously poor cultivation have such remarkable abilities? 

In his mysterious language, the boy mumbles to no one: "Didwe jus' killa fuckin' pterosaur...?" Utterly unintelligible. 

Beida Wan is cultivated enough that he eventually notices Mobei Yang watching him. He stares back, at first, his brow furrowed, and then shuffles to hide behind their shared host again. 

Chapter Two: The Wind Demoness 

That night, under the silver moonlight, Mobei Yang has his heart suddenly and ruthlessly stolen from him. 

The Flying Mountain Clan's fortress is built on and into a tall hill, the foundational stonework not unimpressive, presumably the work of several generations of rock demons. Of the many villagers still awake to greet them, Mobei Yang takes note of the mixture of rock and wind, with some noticeable brides of ice or water, some less distinguishable types, and some here and there of the animal kinds. It's all very rustic and quaint. Very homely. 

Mobei Yang is being led to the crown of the fortress in the hill, where rests the clan leader's home and his temporary accommodations. Most of his other hunters will be scattered around the other better residences in this place. 

"Oh, when we heard that monstrous screeching, I didn't dare to dream that your hunting would bring back such a handsome trophy. You are most welcome to our humble home, Linguang-Jun!" 

Mobei Yang looks away from a weathered stone carving of rampaging Red River Horses and up to the speaker standing on a stone ledge. His breath abandons him, as though plucked out of his lungs by fine and clever fingers, as though beaten from his chest in a single, mighty blow, and his unguarded heart is carried out along with it. Looking down upon him, veiled in moonlight, is perhaps the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. Peerless. 

He is not, let it be said clearly, a stranger to beautiful women. This demoness is tall, broad-shouldered, and her pale skin glows like untouched snow under the moonlight. Her finely beaded dress glitters faintly as she moves and bares most of her stunningly long legs, which have all the hardness and thickness of a powerful runner, the pride of any wind demon. She's wearing long, complicated braids in richly black hair. With a smile of such pretty fangs, she should be wearing pearls and jewels, instead of merely metal bells and ivory. Her pale gray eyes glow nearly as bright as the moon behind her. 

"We have not had a noble demon lord grace us with his presence in too long! If only I had been given time to prepare for you, Linguang-Jun... Days! A month! A year! We can only hope to meet some of your princely expectations..." 

"All of my expectations when it comes to enjoying my stay have already been effortlessly succeeded," Mobei Yang promises.  

This demoness's indulgent laugh is like the sweetest of songs. He desperately wishes that he wasn't covered in both dust and dried blood for such a fortuitous meeting. Fate can be so cruel. 

"My only disappointment is that we haven't met before," Mobei Yang continues. "Oh calamity, have you been busy battling the heavens for daring to outshine them?" 

"No, for they must be arguing over who among them has to face you in battle, Linguang-Jun, for such a wicked tongue," the laughing demoness answers, her smile wolfish in its wideness. "But the little human gods are welcome to come when they are ready." 

"What handsome trophies that hunt would make," Mobei Yang agrees. "Far more worthy of such a wonderful hostess... whose generosity may also, I hope, extend to her name...?" 

"Xiang Ningyue, the only child of Clan Leader Xiang Peng." 

Before Mobei Yang can remark that her mother must have been the moon itself, that grim-faced rock demon steps forward, pulling that strange, stumbling boy ahead of him again. It's understandable that the local demons wouldn't enjoy seeing their greatest beauty be so appreciated, but the interruption is nevertheless annoying. 

"Wife," says Shan Bocheng the rock demon. "Beida Wan needs to be washed. I'll see you it that our honored guests are given baths as well." 

Mobei Yang closes his mouth. 

Wife? Wife?! 

Xiang Ningyue, the most beautiful woman in the world, lets out a soft moan when she sees the boy covered in blood. "Oh, what did you do to yourself now?" 

Beida Wan frowns up at her and predictably says nothing, still trying to fold himself away into the protective shell that he doesn't have. When Xiang Ningyue sighs and gestures for him to come closer, he shuffles forward without any apparent appreciation for the privilege. 

"You're not coming back into our home looking like this! How am I supposed to-? Oh, fine! Fine!" 

Xiang Ningyue apologizes sweetly to them for this, before throwing out an impressive array of orders towards her husband, their servants, her clansmen, and her clansmen's own servants, as confident and as impatient as a whirlwind. Mobei Yang is still mildly stunned and nauseated when she drags the strange boy off. 

"...If I had such a wife, I wouldn't dare introduce her to any higher demon," Mobei Yang murmurs to Shuang Tao, who snorts in agreement. 

"She seems very willing to be stolen." 

"Mmm, clearly this pile of rocks is a little more interesting than previously known." 

A cold bath is most refreshing, even if the following meals are hasty and unbefitting of their stations: some lamb and vegetable stew, which is at least well-spiced. The accompanying wine is tolerable. 

While eating, Mobei Yang and his attending hunters suffer through a long and dull conversation with the elderly wind demon clan leader, the beautiful Xiang Ningyue's father, and Shan Bocheng, who is apparently the clan leader's most fortunate son-in-law. Mobei Yang wants the Giant Sea Heron's head for himself, that marvelously misshapen skull with its god's spear of a beak will look good mounted somewhere, but he doesn't much care what the locals do with the rest of the monster's awkward corpse. 

Xiang Ningyue rejoins them at this point, with the Beida boy slinking in behind her. The Beida boy's new clothes are less plain than before, but still oversized, now obviously borrowed, beaded and embroidered with the vibrant greens, yellows, and blues that this clan seems to favor. Very modest. The short, wet hair ruins any chance of dignity, sticking out at odd angles like an overgrown tuft of grass, partially covering the boy's eyes. 

Beida Wan is sat in the corner of the room with a bowl of stew, which he eats silently and slowly. Mobei Yang has relatives who have been poisoned who regard their meals with less disgruntled suspicion, and he says as much to the beautiful Xiang Ningyue, who laughs in her delightful manner once more. 

Xiang Ningyue's rock demon husband's glaring misery is quite delightful too, while his guests strive to make his beautiful wife cackle and preen, and so Mobei Yang doesn't call for the strange boy to be brought over to sit with them. He forgets Beida Wan almost entirely, until the boy becomes relevant in his retelling of their Giant Sea Heron hunt. 

"Trying to steal a kill from Linguang-Jun!" Xiang Ningyue laughs. "If I didn't already know that our dear guest Beida Wan is stupid, that would make it clear! How insulting! To think that you would need any help from someone like them..." 

"I can generously forgive our glorious battle being cut short if it brought me to such wonderful company all the sooner," Mobei Yang promises. 

When he looks over one or Xiang Ningyue's fine, broad shoulders, he sees that the strange demon in question is watching everyone very intently. Perhaps Beida Wan heard his name, obviously listening, head tilted shamelessly. 

"Perhaps a little more strength behind that killing blow next time, hm?!" Mobei Yang calls across the room. 

Beside him, Shuang Tao cackles drunkenly, and his other present hunters laugh and toast the stupidity and audacity of youth. The present locals join in. Except for Bocheng the rock demon, of course, though he doesn't move to defend the little fly that was clinging to him earlier. 

Beida Wan looks around at all of them, black-faced, even though there is an embarassing red flush crawling up his face. When he finally comes back to meet Mobei Yang's gaze, he bobs his head, neither quite a nod or a bow, and then stares determinedly at the floor, picking clawlessly at the beads of his trousers.

Xiang Ningyue sighs dramatically. "We've been trying to teach Beida to speak some Tongyu these past few weeks, but it's hard work! The only thing that's flatter and more useless than this demon's ears is their tongue..."  

"Does anyone in your clan have a map that this stranger can at least point at?" Shuang Tao leans forward to ask. "Or does he not know his homeland's geography?" 

Xiang Ningyue sighs even more dramatically. "He just stares at it for far, far too long and says, 'No.' Sometimes, he even shrugs!" 

"Does he perhaps... not want to go home, do you think?" Mobei Yang asks. "A remarkably slow runaway? A rather unfortunate fortune-seeker?" 

"Can he read Tongyu?" Shuang Tao asks. 

"I don't know why Beida would have run away from home, because this demon was clearly spoiled!" Xiang Ningyue complains. "No, they can't read any Tongyu either. They just scribble ugly nonsense characters into the dirt. They claim to be twenty-five years old, if you can believe it! But they're even more useless than a child when it comes to most things!" 

"Claims to be twenty-five?" Shuang Tao presses. "Does he know numbers or is he just counting tallies in the dirt?" 

"Beida can count up to ten using real numbers now," Xiang Ningyue explains, with a nod towards the latter option. "But laundry? Spinning, weaving, building, carving, braiding, cooking... They're such a picky eater, you wouldn't believe it! All useless! So useless! " 

Mobei Yang doesn't do many of those things either, but he can at least feed himself. "You're as generous as you are lovely to have taken such a useless demon into your household," he promises. 

"I know!" 

"Truly magnanimous." 

"At least they're an obedient learner," Xiang Ningyue says, finishing her second cup of wine. "Beida can count on their fingers and make stupid gestures in a way that's almost clever... but it's hard to believe that they're supposed to be older than I am! This demon really should be dead!" 

"Wife," her husband says reproachfully. 

"Where did you find him?" Shuang Tao asks, ignoring the rock demon. 

Xiang Ningyue either can't keep a secret or there isn't one to be kept. "We think that they fell out of the Endless Abyss." 

"Beida can't explain anything yet," says Shan Bocheng the rock demon, as if trying to remind his loose-lipped wife of something. "We don't know anything." 

"The Endless Abyss," Mobei Yang repeats, rubbing his chin. "Well, he's not like any Emperor of the Abyss that I've ever seen spawned in those depths before. He's much too small." 

Xiang Ningyue cackles again, as does Shuang Tao, and Mobei Yang smiles and studies the stranger again. 

A powerful warrior might go into the Endless Abyss to test their own strength, to prove themselves, but Beida Wan is much too cowardly to be an adventurer. 

Weaker demons will seek out the more stable gates into that hellish realm, the openings the least likely to tear them apart, and seek treasure or rare ingredients. One does have to be clever and slippery to survive such expeditions. 

Abyssal openings, natural or summoned, often take victims who stray too close. Some are taken when the hole in the world reacts somehow to the spiritual energy of a living creature. Others get snagged and dragged through by lurking creatures, which often can't live long outside of the Endless Abyss, but are eager for easy prey. The Giant Sea Heron killed today is the least of what the Endless Abyss can do to the things that it swallows. 

Some who are taken by the Endless Abyss manage to break free again. But most weaker demons don't survive such places physically or mentally whole. Especially not picky eaters. 

Even Mobei Yang doesn't hunt often in the Endless Abyss. His expeditions there last no longer than a few days, typically, and only through the most stable guards, better armed and armored than he is now. The lack of sunlight may be reminiscent of northern winters, but the sheer heat of some areas can be atrocious. 

"I think that Beida used to be-" 

"Wife," the rock demon says again. 

"I think," Xiang Ningyue repeats louder than before, "that little Beida used to be human." 

"Human!" shouts Shuang Qiang, the nephew of Shuang Tao, now looking at Beida Wan as though the demon might be diseased. "That's a human?!" 

"Well, not anymore, clearly," Shuang Tao says dryly. His nephew looks alarmed by the prospect of transformation. 

"Calm down, it's not catching," Mobei Yang reminds the other demons. "I hope." He sets his drink down, as the flavor seems to have gone off. "...That thing isn't one of those dream demon puppets is it? One of those artificial demons?" 

"Wife," the rock demon groans. 

"Dream demons tend to sign their work," Shuang Tao muses. 

"Well, yes, they're all narcissistic, everyone knows that," Mobei Yang agrees. "The boy is covering quite a lot of skin..." 

"But what would be the point of pretending not to speak Tongyu? Any grandmother knows how to check for possession! At least most types of possession..." 

"Beida is not possessed," says the rock demon. "We checked. We don't know that Beida was ever human." 

"I do," Xiang Ningyue says loftily. "You just don't like that a human saved your life! She saved my husband, so I spend more time with Beida than anyone, and I'm telling you: no killing instinct! None!" 

"That seems against their efforts to interrupt our hunt," Mobei Yang says mildly. 

"Oh, Beida will kill if you make them, just like they'll help with the butchering, but they're not any good at it," Xiang Ningyue says, nodding. "They'll run in to help, but they don't fight." 

"What does that mean?" young Shuang Qiang asks. 

"Won't scratch at anyone!" Xiang Ningyue says, listing offenses off on her claws. "Won't even snarl! Won't hit! Won't even willingly take a hit!  Not for fun, not for position, not for pride. Beida will run away from any fight, every time, and it makes all the boys and girls so badly behaved." 

"I've never known any demon youth to be able to resist a soft target," Mobei Yang agrees. "Our storytelling hostess, do indulge us, how exactly did your clan find this strange demon?" 

Xiang Ningyue lights up. The story isn't complicated, but it is enthusiastically told by the wind demoness: their hunting party was attacked by an Abyss-touched Sword-Toothed Tiger and her husband was injured in the ambush. Their hunting party had been, for nearly a full day by that point, followed by a stranger who had eluded all attempts to catch them, Beida Wan. Shan Bocheng insists that this distraction was the only reason that the Sword-Toothed Tiger managed to surprise him. 

To everyone's surprise, the cowardly stranger had rushed in at the last moment to assist Shan Bocheng. "Beida somehow put a stick up through the creature's jaw and into its brain," Xiang Ningyue says with an illustrative jab. 

"Without injury?" Mobei Yang asks. Sword-Toothed Tigers generally didn't simply let one approach. 

"Without injury! Owing such a debt, we of course had to take in this poor thing in, especially because Beida followed us home anyway." Xiang Ningyue sighs and says begrudgingly, "Beida does try. A real servant's heart, this demon has." 

As the wind demoness describes nursing her husband back to full strength, her vivaciousness does... falter. Briefly. Her lip wobbles as she mentions how worried she was. She and the rock demon are, according to her, childhood sweethearts, born in the same month only twenty years ago, and there may be genuine fondness between the young couple. 

How annoying. Sunk in a comfortably pool of drunkenness, Mobei Yang falls asleep that night wondering how one might lure such a beautiful demoness away from her marriage and her clan. 

One cannot simply kidnap a woman on a whim. One has to plan these things. 

He's more powerful than some backwater rock demon, of course, far more handsome, and far richer. His lordly brother even gifted him the Northern Desert's magnificent West Wind Palace as soon as he came of age! He can cover Xiang Ningyue in as many real jewels and rare bones as she likes! And when his childless, elderly brother finally passes, Mobei Yang will inevitably inherit all of his ancestral strength and become Mobei-Jun himself, and his lucky wife will have all of the Northern Desert at her whims. 

He certainly wouldn't make his peerless queen share her home with some strange, lost creature who can't speak and won't even fight for themself, neither a servant nor a second spouse... Though, what else does one do when a life debt is owed to such a wretched demon? Too publically to honorably ignore? Mobei Yang falls asleep still wondering. 

Chapter Three: A Clever Trick

The land upon which the Flying Mountain Clan lives belongs to the Northern Desert Clan by conquest, so upon them, Mobei Yang and his hunters cannot impose. Mobei Yang takes advantage of this obligatory hospitality by declaring that they will linger in this fortress for several days, until all injuries are mended and all corpses are tended to. 

"We'll have a real feast tonight!" Xiang Ningyue declares, swirling in excitement, looking out over her little queendom. "With singing and playing for the great hunters! And dancing! There are no more beautiful dancers in all the world than wind demons!" 

"Oh? You know, I've seen many wind demon dances before," Mobei Yang replies. 

The blood of the Northern Desert Clan dominates, but his mother was from the Black Wind Clan and they play on that connecting string often, trying to get Mobei Yang to dance for them where they can. 

"It seems like every dancer of skill has been summoned to the Ice Palace over the years," Mobei Yang continues. His elder brother is very, very fond of dancers. "I think I've seen everything by now." 

Xiang Ningyue smiles with all of her teeth. "You haven't yet seen me," she promises shamelessly. 

Mobei Yang laughs. "I haven't seen anyone like you before," he agrees. "You're a calamity." 

Before he can decide whether or not to get closer, to risk being scratched, a familiar figure plants itself beside them. 

"Mistress Ningyue," Beida Wan says. 

Mobei Yang sighs. "I thought you said that this demon didn't enjoy tasks such as butchering prey? He makes such a mess of your lovely name." 

Xiang Ningyue cackles, her initial annoyance melting away. "I did say that Beida was bad at everything!" 

Beida Wan looks back and forth between them warily. Away from their hosts, Shuang Tao has suggested that the strange boy may be some kind of ridiculous spy, but even Mobei Yang's second can't seem to believe his own suggestion. 

With great effort, the boy says, "Cook... say... help. Mistress Ningyue help?" 

Mobei Yang wonders if the rock demon sent the boy as interference, given that the boy clearly doesn't know better than to get between his betters and their prey. 

"That nasty old cook did not say, 'Help,'" Xiang Ningyue says, but she seems amused. 

"Help," Beida Wan repeats firmly. "Help! Help!" The boy waves his hands back and forth slightly, a mockery of flailing panic. "Help, Mistress Ningyue, help!" 

Xiang Ningyue laughs again and Beida Wan understandably looks pleased with himself for provoking it. Mobei Yang feels surprised that the strange boy is capable of humor despite his handful of Tongyu words. His smile reveals slightly crooked front teeth and small canines. 

The smile fades as Beida Wan looks at Mobei Yang again. "Ahhh..." 

"Ah, something to say to me as well?" 

"Master Bocheng say..." 

"Even repeating things is apparently too difficult," Xiang Ningyue complains. "So useless! A parrot would be a better messenger. And prettier."  

"Tr-trainer-ing," Beida Wan slurs out eventually. "Training. Lingu-Linguang-Jun." 

Mobei Yang bemusedly watches as the strange boy raises his fists, circling them slightly, in a poor fighting stance. It's vaguely reminiscent of a small child play-acting. Then Beida Wan shrugs, with those round cheeks flushed red again, and points down the hill. 

Mobei Yang follows the gesture to see a wide, dirt ring, where some of the local warriors are enthusiastically doing drills and eagerly beckoning some of his watching hunters forward. Such challenges to visitors are extremely common. And likely the only entertainment that Mobei Yang will be offered here until the promised feasting begins later. 

"Oh, we would be honored!" Xiang Ningyue exclaims, more elegantly. "Nothing interesting ever happens here! Some of our youths could stand to be made a little more worldly, Linguang-Jun, if your men would be willing to show us their strength." 

"I am your most gracious guest." 

If nothing else, Mobei Yang can show off for this peerless wind demoness, and perhaps even directly against her inadequate young husband. 

His hostess must excuse herself to the feast preparations, so Mobei Yang is escorted to the training ring by Beida Wan. Or so he assumes that is the strange demon's intention, as the boy steps back and makes a presumptuous beckoning gesture, repeating it often along the stairs and sloping roads downwards. 

It is the closest Mobei Yang has been to this stranger since the bloody death of that ruined creature. He cannot quite resist the urge to reach out and grab an arm. 

Beida Wan startles wildly, but as weakly as a child, before the boy then slips out between the fingers easily. Even with Mobei Yang making a mild spiritual effort to hold onto his prey. The boy simply dissolved like an illusion, with a faint shimmer in the air, before reforming a few skittering steps away. 

There is spiritual energy being used here, Mobei Yang confirms now that he can focus upon it. It's... slippery. Subtle. An insect landing in water: one would perhaps only notice it in a small, still pool. 

Beida Wan is looking at him with wide eyes and no teeth. "No," he says, flatly. 

Then the boy turns and runs ahead to the training ring, as though a wind demoness's son couldn't easily, immediately, close the short distance between them, if he so chose. Where does this Beida Wan come from that that wouldn't be taken as an invitation to chase? 

Mobei Yang follows sedately, ignoring the whispers and curious looks from the local villagers, and also from Shuang Tao, who has come to greet him. His hosts have set up a modestly comfortable and shaded lounging area for him and his hunters to observe the training and challenges, waited upon with drinks and cool cloths by some of the clan leader's servants again. 

Shan Bocheng the rock demon is acting as their master of ceremonies for this impromptu tournament, with Beida Wan lurking behind the young future clan leader again like a little fly that doesn't even bite. 

Predictably, there are several scowling warriors who evidently won't believe in their own inferiority without a demonstration. Just as predictably, there are several eager youths, at least half of whom are likely hoping that they might impress enough to be taken away from this place. 

"I do have some empty space in my hunting party at the moment," Mobei Yang remarks casually to Shuang Tao, just to fan the flames. 

The locals are determined to mark their territory. Some of the older warriors, canny and cultivated, even manage to put Mobei Yang's hunters on their backs several times, albeit inconsistently. Many of the villagers gather eagerly to watch. A group of younger children are squealing and shouting from a rooftop. 

Shan Bocheng is highly skilled for his young age, but not significantly powerful, and he intelligently doesn't dare to challenge Mobei Yang directly. While Mobei Yang is contemplating proposing a "friendly spar" between them, he is challenged directly by a young water demon, with more awe than arrogance, an appetite sharper than his cute teeth. 

"Yubo!" Shan Bocheng snaps. 

"Can't I have ambitions?" complains young Xiang Yubo, a cousin of Xiang Ningyue apparently, only seventeen years old. "Is it so bad to dream of losing a battle to the great Linguang-Jun?" 

Mobei Yang laughs. "I'll consider it," he tells the water demon. 

"I want to fight the boy who tried to take the killing blow from us!" declare one of the Hao brothers. "From the great hunter, Linguang-Jun!" 

Sitting behind Shan Bocheng, Beida Wan is drawing in the dirt with a stick. Unsurprisingly, he seems to be completely unaware that he's been challenged. 

"No," Shan Bocheng says. "Beida can't fight." 

At his name, the boy looks up and then around, squinting for some understanding. He scoots back, a little more behind the rock demon, like a small child. 

"He nearly killed an Abyss-touched Giant Sea Heron," says Xi Mingzhu, another of Mobei Yang's hunters. 

"That's... different." 

"How so?" Mobei Yang calls. 

The rock demon looks amusingly disgruntled, struggling to explain it. "Beida doesn't know how to fight like this." 

"Beida can stab things badly with a spear until they're dead and that's it," says young Xiang Yubo, the water demon. "And that's only if running away doesn't work!" 

"Yubo!" 

"What? It's true!" 

"Just for that... come fight Beida for us." 

"In front of-?! I'm not doing that!" 

Shan Bocheng the rock drmon ignores the whining and looks down at Beida Wan, who is still squinting at everyone. The rock demon picks the boy up by the back of his clothes and puts him on his feet. 

"Go train with Xiang Yubo," Bocheng orders. "Practice fight." 

Beida Wan's face twists up. "No," he says. He looks around at her waiting audience, then back at Shan Bocheng. "No." 

"Yes," Shan Bocheng insists. 

"No." 

"Yes." 

"No! No, no, no!" 

The rock demon has to physically push Beida Wan into the training ring and hand the boy a... staff? It nearly gets dropped. Shan Bocheng throws another staff at Xiang Yubo, who catches it easily and executes a skillful series of twirls, familiarizing himself with the weapon. 

"No... hurt?" Beida Wan says. 

"No hurt," the rock demon confirms. "No kill. Training. Practice. Go." 

Even before the young water demon can lunge forward, Beida vanishes. There one moment, gone the next, in a flicker of shadow and twisting air. He reappears on the other side of the ring without any attempt at counterattack. 

It's clearly frustrating for the young water demon, but it gives Mobei Yang the opportunity to study such remarkable abilities. Most elemental creatures can still be caught, can be followed, can be disrupted, can be forced between forms, unfortunately including Mobei Yang himself. It happened often when he used to spar against his lordly brother and all the overwhelming power of their ancestors. 

Beida Wan is... unrecognizable. Even when watching closely, there's often no clear thread of spiritual energy to follow from one point to the next. A broken trail. 

Shuang Tao is snickering at Beida Wan's clumsy form, the childish slowness, the obvious uncertainty, the unwillingness to strike back. It's distracting. It's understandable. Such remarkable abilities from such pathetic overall cultivation! 

But Mobei Yang wants to know how the boy is slipping away from a superior opponent, another warrior who is clearly experienced in fighting elemental creatures. He focuses on those subtle twists of demonic energy. 

And he finds himself thinking of... the iridescent shimmer in the air above a hungry Abyssal vent. 

Of the twisting flash of an otherworldly spiritual weapon being summoned to a waiting hand. 

Of the whisper when opening a small pouch hiding a deep stomach. 

Of a dream demon's illusions, spun by a creature hidden in another realm entirely. 

Of a monstrous creature disguised as something small, suddenly unfolding itself, ripping a giant's body out of a spiritual web to reveal its spider's trap. 

Of the way the air shakes when a Black Moon Rhinoceros Python screams. 

"...Ah," Mobei Yang says. 

Shuang Tao and the Hao brothers look at him with interest, but Mobei Yang ignores them to lean farther forward. If they can't figure it out, he's not telling them. 

The fight ends when the young water demon manages to trip Beida Wan, not for the first time, and Beida Wan is too dazed to get up before Xiang Yubo swings the tip of the staff up against his throat. The water demon taps for emphasis. 

Mobei Yang can see the boy's nervous swallow, but also the way that Beida Wan is watching the crowd more than his opponent. It's the boy's choice to release his weapon and indicate surrender. The only thing preventing his escape here should be spiritual exhaustion.  

"Well done," Mobei Yang calls out to the young water demon, who was persistent, if ineffective. 

Xiang Yubo pulls the staff back and demonstrates relieved gratitude, after such a frustrating duel. It must have been like trying to pin down a ghostly butterfly. 

Beida Wan rolls himself up and limps back to hide behind Bocheng again, sitting against the wall in a tired heap. 

"Strike back more," the rock demon says to his little fly. 

Beida Wan raises his hand sharply, an inward fist with the middle finger pointed upwards, though he drops it quickly. 

Mobei Yang wonders what that's supposed to mean. A salute? An agreement? An apology? Hard to say when Beida Wan's sweaty, red face is between his knees. 

He understands better now why this young water demon said that Beida Wan only knows how to run and kill. The boy doesn't have the strength or the speed to strike back ordinarily, to wrestle an opponent to the ground, to spar in a skillful way. All Beida Wan can do is sneak close and put a spear through an opponent's critical weak points, using an apparently natural ability to warp space itself around him. 

No wind demon, no matter how quick or powerful, can reach something that has slipped away into another realm entirely. 

Mobei Yang fights the young water demon, because it makes him look generous more than out of any personal interest. He wants to show Shan Bocheng the difference between them, especially with the beautiful Xiang Ningyue now watching from an overlook with some other local wind demonesses, their colorful scarves and skirts flowing like flags in the breeze.

And he wants to see Beida Wan's face seeing a true demon warrior demonstrate some of his strength. The boy alternates freely between very wide eyes and a frowning squint, apparently. 

Mobei Yang indulges a few challengers after that, out of boredom more than curiosity, and likely embarrasses some of them more than originally intended. The Ice Palace attracts countless challengers, fighting for countless reasons, and his lordly brother has become less and less willing to indulge any of them as the years go by; it's a responsibility on top of the countless cousins whose ambitions need to be treated like summer greenery: killed off before they become overgrown. 

The cheering and compliments are appreciated. The naked envy even moreso. "I did apparently have to prove to this clan that I have no need of help during any of my hunts," Mobei Yang says dryly, provoking laughter again. 

The rush of battle, however inglorious, makes impulses more difficult to resist. While lesser demons debate who has to follow such a performance, Mobei Yang looks towards the elusive little fly. 

"Beida Wan!" he calls. 

The boy's head snaps up. Several strings of surrounding conversation are cut off, but Mobei Yang isn't afraid of an audience. He echoes that condescending little beckoning gesture. By the way that Beida Wan's reddened nose wrinkles, Mobei Yang's demand is immediately understood. 

Shan Bocheng hauls the boy up by his collar again and Beida Wan begrudgingly slinks over to stand in front of Mobei Yang. His expression is wary. He remembers to bow in greeting quite belatedly. 

Mobei Yang doesn't give any warning before grabbing the boy's arm again. Again, Beida Wan is too slow to dodge, startling without dignity. 

"Whadda fuck?!" 

It would have been trivial to break this limb, to do far worse, but Mobei Yang waits patiently. He can feel the shift of the boy's elusive spiritual energy even better this way; he can shift his own weighty spiritual energy to counter the forces hastily moving to work here. 

He owes thanks to the depths his ancestors have given him. Perhaps also to the clan priestess who first taught him how to fortify himself against unstable Abyssal gates, so that his body and mind wouldn't be torn to pieces. And to those others who passed down onto him the ancestral knowledge of stabilizing such gates... of destroying them. Though Mobei Yang doesn't think one can discount his own impressive experience, learning how to disrupt summoned weapons and untie folded spaces and all those annoying tricks with just... a little... push. 

Beida Wan grunts, flinches, as the shadows twist and writhe and fail to whisk him away into whatever halfway realm he's been using. He pulls uselessly. He keeps trying, again and again, a panicking animal with a paw stuck fast. 

Mobei Yang keeps denying the boy an escape. It takes continuous effort, a fair amount of spiritual energy, and really, the boy should be grateful that Mobei Yang hasn't accidentally broken this arm. 

"No," Mobei Yang says dryly. 

Beida Wan stops struggling and stares up at him. Really, it reminds Mobei Yang so much of snagging a surfacing seal as a bored youth, all big eyes and flopping rage. 

Whatever this boy was before, human or not, he's just a weak demon now with a single clever trick. Remarkable abilities left raw and uncultivated. Mobei Yang laughs as he releases his unique prey, at yet another successful hunt, however short and simple it turned out to be. 

"You caught Beida," the young water demon, Xiang Yubo, says. "And he actually stayed caught!" 

"Oh, you just have to find the trick of it," Mobei Yang says airily. "Shan Bocheng, tell your clan leader that I've found some new demons for my hunting party!" 

It's like kicking over a wasp nest, with the buzzing that goes through the watching crowd. The rock demon remains grim. 

"Who?" Shan Bocheng says. 

"Such an honor!" Xiang Ningyue calls from her makeshift pavilion of ladies, far more civilized, all of her beauty on display as she leans forward. "The Flying Mountain Clan is honored to run with Linguang-Jun! But which of us are you stealing?" 

"Your young cousin, generous hostess," Mobei Yang falls back. "Xiang Yubo may have the potential to impress!" 

More importantly, the young water demon will give an excuse to return to the Flying Mountain Clan and speak with his relatives. Mobei Yang will simply have to tell his late mother's family, the Black Wind Clan, that he has a complicated plot to destabilize the leadership of their rival clan. 

"It's- Thank you! Thank you, Linguang-Jun! I won't disappoint you- I won't- I'll prove myself worthy-" Xiang Yubo stammers. 

Mobei Yang nods vaguely at the appropriate gratitude. "And I'll have this thing," he adds, pointing. "If you can bear to let this guest leave your hands." 

Xiang Ningyue cackles, as does Shuang Tao. The other laughter around them is more nervous. Beida Wan looks at Mobei Yang's finger like he doesn't know why it's pointing at him; presumably, he doesn't. He shuffles backwards... into the rock demon. 

"I... owe Beida," Shan Bocheng says. 

"And what better reward could you give than a placement with a superior clan?" Mobei Yang says, even though he really doesn't need to ask anyone's permission here. "If there's anything worthwhile to be learned from Beida Wan, the Northern Desert Clan will uncover it." 

"Yes, take them!" Xiang Ningyue calls. "If anyone can make a hunter of Beida, it's you, Linguang-Jun!" 

It's more likely that such a useless warrior will die sooner than later, but Mobei Yang doubts that the Flying Mountain Clan will truly cry over the loss. Perhaps something will be made of these remarkable abilities before that, but perhaps not. 

Shan Bocheng's shoulders sag slightly. The rock demon won't fight over this. 

Mobei Yang smiles down at Beida Wan, who remains wary and confused at first, and then hesitantly smiles back. Weakly. Not threateningly. Obviously false. Quite odd. The humanness is hard to unsee after Xiang Ningyue suggested it. 

"What an opportunity to bring our two clans closer together," Mobei Yang remarks, almost entirely to see Shan Bocheng struggle to remain polite again. "Let's look forward to the new future, hm?" 

[fourth-wing-stories]

Mirrorball - Part 4

Warnings: Fluff

Pairing: Ridoc x OC

Words: 1747

Summary: Tensions run high as Iris and Ridoc find themselves caught in a storm of emotions. After weeks of unspoken feelings and jealous glances, a heated argument brings everything to the surface.

Masterlist

A/N: Hope you like it xoxo

Part 3 || Part 5

Tags: @sweetsugarcoffee

Requests are OPEN, check bio

When the group went to the bar that night, the atmosphere was light and familiar—like countless evenings before, filled with laughter, drinks, and banter among the riders. They had a table in the corner, slightly removed from the loudest part of the crowd, but still surrounded by the hum of conversation and clinking mugs.

Iris sat with Rhiannon and Violet, casually sipping her drink as Ridoc sat across the table, surrounded by Sawyer, Aaric, and a few others. As usual, Ridoc was his charming, easygoing self, laughing loudly at something Sawyer said, but Iris could feel his gaze flick toward her more often than usual.

Rhiannon nudged Iris with a smirk. “He’s been glancing your way all night. Care to explain?”

Iris rolled her eyes, trying to hide the warmth creeping up her neck. “Nothing to explain. We’re just... friends.”

“Uh-huh, sure,” Violet chimed in, clearly not buying it. She leaned in, her tone teasing. “Is that what all that tension was about earlier? Because it feels like more than just friends.”

Iris didn’t respond, instead taking another sip of her drink and avoiding their knowing looks. She could feel the tension between herself and Ridoc building all evening, just like it always did when they were near each other. But Iris was not gonna be someone's second choice, someone he goes to when the thing with the guy from third year ends or Ridoc gets bored. She´s not gonna be the one pining for a guy that might not even be interested her beyond a good fuck.

The third year, Jason was his name, came up to our table and sat down next to Ridoc. Iris could feel her chest tighten at the sight. Enough was enough, she needed a distraction. She spotted Kellan at the bar, he´d try to flirt with her before but she had shut it down. He wasn´t really her type but he'd do.

She stood up and told Vi and Ri she was gonna get another drink. She was gonna get another drink, just hopefully it be Kellen buying. As she came up to him, she brushed her hand over his arm and she already knew she had him. He lost all interested inn his buddies and turned all his attention on her.

At their table Ridoc was now fuming. Iris laughed at something Kellen said, though she barely registered his words—her attention was divided, fully aware of Ridoc watching her from across the table.

She met his eyes and for a moment they just looked at each other then he looked back to Jason next to him. but. She'd been so stupid to think he was actually interested inn her. The third year leaned in close to him, laughing at something he said, his hand resting lightly on his arm.

She caught Ridoc’s eye across the table, and there it was: his signature smirk. He raised his glass in a silent challenge, as if to say, jealous?

Kellan leaned in closer, his hand brushing her arm as he asked her something, but she didn’t quite catch what it was. She was too focused on Ridoc—how his eyes kept flicking toward her, how he seemed to be deliberately ignoring her, as if that wasn’t exactly what she was doing too.

“Hey, are you listening?” Kellan’s voice snapped her back to the moment.

“Something on your mind?” Kellan asked, a playful smirk on his lips, he put his han around her waist pulling her in a bit closer, obviously trying to keep her attention.

Iris opened her mouth to reply, but just then, she saw Ridoc push his chair back and stand up. Jason reached for him, asking something, but Ridoc waved him off, his eyes locking on Iris again. That smirk was gone, replaced by something darker, something more intense.

She turned back to Kellan, knowing full well what she was doing. “Actually, I think I’m going to step outside for some air. Too much noise in here.”

Kellan blinked, surprised. “Uh, want some company?”

Before Iris could answer, Ridoc was suddenly beside her. “She’s good,” he said, his voice smooth but with an edge, not even bothering to look at Kellan. He was focused entirely on Iris, and she could feel the tension radiating off him in waves.

Kellan frowned, looking between them. “Everything okay?”

“Iris and I need to talk,” Ridoc said firmly, giving Kellan a look that brooked no argument.

Iris shot Kellan an apologetic look before following Ridoc as he led her out of the bar. The cool night air hit her as they stepped outside, the sky overcast, heavy with the promise of rain. They were just outside the bar’s entrance, far enough from the noise but close enough that she could still hear the muffled laughter and clinking glasses from inside.

She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling defensive, and turned to face Ridoc. “What the hell, Ridoc? I was in the middle of a conversation.”

“A conversation?” he repeated, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “With Kellan?”

“What does it matter to you?” she shot back, her frustration bubbling up. “You seemed pretty busy with Jason.”

Ridoc let out a sharp laugh, running a hand through his hair. “Oh, so this is what this is about? You’re jealous?”

“Jealous?!” Iris’ voice rose. “Of course not! Why would I be jealous of you and him?”

“I don’t know, you tell me,” Ridoc retorted, stepping closer to her. “You were practically throwing yourself at Kellan in there.”

“I was talking to him, Ridoc. You have no right to—”

“To what?” he cut her off, his voice rising with frustration. “To care? To be pissed off when I see you flirting with some guy?”

“Oh, so it’s okay when you’re flirting with Jason, but when I talk to someone, it’s a problem?” Iris shot back, her anger flaring. She could feel the tension between them crackling like the air before a storm, and she was done pretending it didn’t affect her.

“I wasn’t flirting with Jason,” Ridoc growled, his eyes flashing. He was telling the truth, she could feel it. But that didn´t make her any less angry. “And don’t act like you don’t know what this is about, Iris.” he continued.

“I don’t, Ridoc! I don’t understand you at all!” she snapped. “One minute, you’re distant, you’re pushing me away, and the next you’re acting like I’m the only person in the room. What do you want from me?!”

Ridoc stepped even closer, his face inches from hers, the intensity in his gaze making her heart race. “I don’t want to push you away,” he said, his voice low and rough. “But damn it, Iris, you drive me crazy.”

Before she could finish, the sky opened up and rain began to pour down, drenching them in seconds. But neither of them moved, too caught up in the storm of emotions raging between them.

“What the hell do you want, Ridoc?” Iris snapped, trying to mask the vulnerability she felt creeping up her spine. She wasn’t going to stand there and let him pretend like nothing had been happening between them, like it wasn’t affecting her.

Ridoc walked closer, shaking his head in frustration, his voice firm but not angry. “We should go inside, you’ll get sick.”

“That’s what you’re worried about?” Iris let out a short, bitter laugh, her heart pounding in her chest. “You think I care about the rain right now? Really?”

He stepped even closer, close enough now that she could see the tension in his jaw, the way his chest rose and fell as though he was holding back something. His voice was low, the words almost lost in the sound of the rain. “No but I care about you, so stop yelling at me and get back inside" Iris didn´t move.

She shook her head, her voice trembling despite her best efforts to keep it steady. “You have a funny way of showing it. One minute you’re all smiles and smirks, the next you’re off with Jason or flirting with whoever catches your eye. What am I supposed to think, Ridoc? That I’m just some... temporary amusement for you?”

Ridoc’s eyes darkened, his hands clenching at his sides. “That’s not what this is.”

“Then what is it?” Iris shot back, the rawness in her voice making her throat tighten. “Because I’m not going to keep pretending that it doesn’t hurt every time I see you with someone else.”

She turned to walk away, her heart aching in a way she hadn’t expected, but before she could take more than a step, Ridoc reached out, grabbing her arm—not forcefully, but enough to stop her.

“Iris, wait,” he said, his voice rough now, desperate. “It’s not like that.”

She stopped, looking back at him, rainwater dripping from her chin. “Then what is it like? Because I don’t understand you, Ridoc. One minute you’re all over me, the next, you’re acting like nothing matters. I’m not playing this game with you.”

"I´m not playing games with you!" he yells back stepping closer.

"Fuck this" Iris yells back then turns to walk back to Basgiath when Ridoc grabs her hand and pulls her back, making her turn to face him. "What-" She starts but is silenced by Ridoc pulling her close and kissing her. For a brief moment, she let herself get lost in it—the feeling of his lips on hers, the way he pulled her close. But then the frustration, the confusion, the hurt bubbled back up, and she pushed him away, her breath shaky.

Their eyes meet and they just stay quiet.

Before Iris can speak Ridoc breaks the silence “See you tomorrow, Draven.” Then walks back towards Basgiath leaving Iris alone in the rain. As Ridoc walks away, his heart races, the taste of her still on his lips. He wanted to say more, to explain everything, but the words got caught in his throat. Damn it, Draven. He wasn’t sure what scared him more—how much he wanted her or how much he had to lose.

Iris stood there, frozen in place, watching him walk away. The rain soaking through her clothes, but all she could feel was the heat of his lips on hers. Her mind raced, torn between the anger still simmering in her chest and the undeniable pull she felt toward him. She wanted to hate him for how easily he messed with her heart, but the truth was, she wasn’t sure if she could.

[inquisitornocturn]

◇ Inter Stellas Inveniam Te ◇

◇◇◇ Chapter III - Dum Modo In Domum Suam

⚜ 𝖕𝖆𝖎𝖗𝖎𝖓𝖌: Xavier Calcazar/Volenta Calcazar (OC)/Heinrix van Calox

⚜ 𝖙𝖆𝖌𝖘: Overall story rating - E. Overall tags - romance, disaster polycule, more tba. This chapter - lovingly rough smut, PiV, creampie, fluff.

⚜ 𝖘𝖙𝖔𝖗𝖞 𝖘𝖚𝖒𝖒𝖆𝖗𝖞: Even the most powerful have their weaknesses. Volenta has more than a few of her own. One such weakness being her husband. Another - her love for toying with others. Her station permits it, but it doesn't come without consequences, because Lady Inquisitor soon finds herself entangled with another man. And she doesn't know just what events will unfold when the man she's married to gets assigned to look over the Koronus Expanse.

In the 41st millennium, there's only war. Be it on surfaces of planets, on the decks of spaceships or… in personal lives. And those battles are not easily won.

⚜ 𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝖘𝖚𝖒𝖒𝖆𝖗𝖞: The encounter with Heinrix and the drunken high in emotions gets easily forgotten when Volenta heads home, to the one she loves. Even news delivered by a man in her retinue does not sour her mood. Their reunion is passionate and sweet, because no matter how much time they are forced to spend apart, it doesn't dull their feelings for one another. Not even one bit.

⚜ 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉 𝖈𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖙: 6,661 | AO3 | Chapter navigation

⚜ 𝖆/𝖓: When I say Xavier has big dick energy it's not a metaphor

Getting out her car, Volenta gets a strange feeling for just a second and knows immediately what is coming. The moment her vehicle door shuts and automatically moves itself to the parking area, there’s a gust of wind and it’s there only because she was allowed to sense it.

“Volenta…” A voice by her ear and she rises an eyebrow, waiting for the man to appear before her.

He played these tricks with her before, when she was looking to recruit someone from Officio Assassinorum. He didn’t take her seriously, toying around, not letting her see him, waiting for the revulsion that overtakes almost everyone when a Blank like him is around. Yet Volenta didn’t show revulsion or disgust and that made him interested.

“Good evening, Seth. Aren’t you supposed to be on Illustris, tracking Inquisitor Lilly Zantz?” There’s no displeasure in Volenta’s voice, she knows how not to betray her emotions and if Seth is here, she is absolutely sure he has a good reason for it.

Another gentle gust, like it’s stroking her loose white hair, and as if appearing from the Immaterium itself, Seth steps from behind her shoulder. He doesn’t look much different than usual. Black synskin bodyglove tightly stretched over his lean, muscular body. A sniper’s rifle, his favorite, strapped to the back by a leather braided cord. And his helmet, shaped like a skull with variety of mechanisms upon it, is tightly held under Seth’s arm.

When Volenta looks at the familiar face, she sees the paleness of his skin, like Seth has never seen the sun, but that’s farthest thing from truth. His long, black hair is loose like hers, glossy and smooth, with thick strands so heavy they barely move when an actual gust of wind reaches them both. But that smile, sharp and merciless, doesn’t reach Seth’s dark brown eyes. In them Volenta sees a degree of affection. Or rather - appreciation. She’s one of the few who can ignore the aura that Omega-Minus omit just by sheer existence. Her training negates the effects and thus allows the two a more cordial relationship than most would be able to achieve with someone like him.

“Well?” She urges the man and he scoffs, bowing deeply before her.

“Apologies, Lady Inquisitor Prime. I’m here bearing the news.”

Seth never appears without a summon or a reason and the fact that Volenta has not received any news through her usual channels makes her jaw clench slightly. Either it’s something really good, or something really, really bad. And most often than not - it’s the latter.

The smile is gone from Seth’s face when he stands upright again and steps closer to Volenta, letting her smell the soaps and blood on his person. She doesn’t mind, letting him lean to her ear. “Lords of Terra want to set up a direct holo-projection communication with you. Tomorrow morning.”

“Tsk.” Volenta pauses, then without moving asks in a same whisper that Seth delivered the news. “Any indication what they want?”

“No. But, Volenta, there have been murmurings about the Koronus Expanse lately. If you will allow me to speculate, they might order you, or order you to order someone else, to go and deal with it.”

Looking into the distance over Seth’s shoulder, where the gate of her palace disappears into the evening fog, she exhales slowly. “What about Raphael.”

“He’s not involved.”

“And Kleopatra?”

“Not involved.”

“Direct communication with whom?”

“Luther got an Astropathic message while on Illustris and sent me here to inform you.”

Volenta doesn’t know how to take this. Usually Lords of Terra contact her directly but the fact that they went through the psyker in her retinue, especially when that psyker has been sent with Seth on a mission, means they want to delay her knowledge. Why is that?

“Go back to Illustris, I’ll establish communication tomorrow, Nesex will assist.” She watches Seth step back once sensitive information is done exchanging and he nods. But there’s a serious look on the assassin’s face.

“What about Decimeline?” He asks, knowing full well that the palatine of Adepta Sororitas has been missing for two Terran months now.

“I don’t think it’s about Dec. They wouldn’t bother making an early call just to tell me something about her. No, it’s something else.” Volenta thinks for a moment longer, then nods to Seth. “Follow my orders.” Yet when he lifts his helmet to place it back upon his head, Volenta rises her hand, pausing the man. “Tell Luther to keep himself open for a direct communication from me. He knows what I’m talking about.”

“Very well, Lady Inquisitor Prime.” With a respectful and low bow, Seth finally affixes the helmet where it should be, but then pauses. “Volenta, whatever it is, know that the Emperor’s light guides you.” Seth’s voice comes out jagged through the vox not unlike those used by Adeptus Mechanicus and she curtly nods in response, then offers a placating smile. He learned long ago that even when things look the worst, Volenta’s undying love for the Emperor will see her through. It has many times in the past, some of them near miraculous.

“I know. Go.” She commands in a harsher tone and it’s like the assassin disappears without a trace. His teleporter as quiet as death itself.

Without a pause, Volenta turns on her heel and approaches the steps to the main door. Two guards are standing there, stiff like poles stuck in rockrete, and they salute when she approaches. The massive double door slowly opens up and stepping inside the Inquisitor looks around her own home. It’s lavish, gilded, and much like her office – representing her love for the Emperor and her loyalty to the Most Holy Ordos. It’s a home she built with Xavier, even if neither of them get to use it as often as they would like.

A serf approaches in quick steps when Volenta enters, her long crimson robe delicately embroidered with aquilas, and she bows deeply before her mistress. “Welcome back, My Lady.”

“Is Xavier home?” She asks and pulls off her gloves, handing them to the maid who takes this simple item like it’s a holy relic, her palms upturned in reverence.

“Yes, My Lady. Arrived an hour ago.”

“Anything else?” Volenta asks when another maid appears from a side door and quietly unfastens her cloak, then removes the pauldrons with stealthy efficiency.

“Magos Prime Hermeticon Psykana Etus 80/3 B9C Nes4-1B Ex has just left a message that he wishes to meet you in the office first thing tomorrow.”

So he knows. No wonder. Volenta already assumed that Seth would attempt to make her life easier and contact Nesex on her behalf. “Very well. If there’s nothing else-“

“My Lady, there has been an issue with two servitors in your employ. They malfunctioned earlier today.” The serf bows low again. Volenta doesn’t fly into undeserved wraths, but still the young woman is terrified to give her bad news.

“Any damage?” Without looking at the servant, Volenta simply unbuckles her belt and hands it to the quiet one who takes the heavy item without a fuss, even though she is laboring with the weight of items attached to it.

“Nothing that can’t be easily replaced, My Lady. Two barrels of wine, one crate of canned goods-“

“Merava.” Volenta stops the verbal report and when the woman rises her face to her mistress, she sees a calm expression and a piercing gaze, nailing her down where she stands on the black marble floor. “I took you to serve me and this household under a very convincing recommendation. I would have assumed that you would know not to bother me with trivial things such as units of damaged goods. Unless it’s actually worth my attention, I recommend you don’t bring up things like this to my attention from this point onwards. I have entrusted entire fleet of servants to you, I require that you solve everything you can solve without needing my intervention. Monthly reports are enough to let me know any possible extra expenses. Is that understood?”

“Yes, My Lady.” Merava drops her head in a low bow, still holding Volenta’s gloves like they have been blessed by the Emperor himself.

Without looking at Merava again, Volenta passes her while unbuttoning her longcoat. Maybe it was a mistake to force Isobella to retire. The woman was old but knew how to do her job and Inquisitor took Merava under her recommendation. Before coming here, she served Grandmaster Raphael who released the servant to work for Volenta with ease, not bothering to care who is bringing his morning recaf as long as it’s not cold or spilled along the way. But the woman appears to be scared to perform her duties and that’s one of the trivial things that Volenta herself does not see the reason to bother with.

Still, Isobella was sure that Merava can serve well, just like she did, and so Volenta is willing to be patient. From what she can understand, Raphael wanted everything reported to him and his right-hand man, or lover, depending on how one looks at their relationship. So Merava can be excused for being overzealous when it comes to informing masters of the house about every minutiae detail. Hopefully she will stop doing that now, taking on responsibility as an appointed head of household servants.

Climbing the grand stair, Volenta hooks a finger over the collar of her undershirt and tugs at it, then pulls the zipper lower. Her heart is pounding in her chest the closer she’s getting to the study where she expects her husband to be. She forgets troubles of the Imperium, forgets Heinrix and Seth, and most likely a very unpleasant call she’s bound to have tomorrow morning. All that matters right now is to be in the arms of the one for whom her heart aches so much that it feels like it’s being squeezed in an unforgiving fist.

Her footsteps increase, adamantine heels sounding loud on marble tiles where they are not covered by luxurious carpets and she takes a turn, another one, then climbs stairs again. She’s passing paintings of saints and depictions of the Emperor, passing vases filled with dark flowers and cabinets full of books or displays of every kind of light weaponry that exists, both human and of xenos make.

Finally, after what feels like eternity despite it being no more than fifteen minutes, Volenta stops before an ornate wooden door and sweeps back a palm over her hair, trying to tame any possible strands that might be out of place. She exhales and briefly chews on her bottom lip then opens the door, entering and inspecting her surroundings with same vigilance as if she’s on a battlefield.

The room looks the same as always. Vaulted ceilings, candles and shelves upon shelves crammed with tomes and scrolls. A massive desk in a middle of the room, placed upon a large Inquisitorial symbol under the armorcrys, all assembled from skulls of heretics. Besides the soft candlelight, the hololith lights up briefly, displaying the entirety of the galaxy with Holy Terra at its center. Then it flickers out again for a briefest of moments as it updates with an ongoing stream of information of planets lost, claimed or destroyed. When Volenta glances to the area where the drinks are stacked, she sees it mostly untouched, besides a glass of an amber liquid resting upon the smaller table, accompanied by a bottle of a seventy year old amesac.

Briefly exhaling through her nose, Volenta frowns. More in disappointment than disapproval that she misjudged where Xavier could be. Yet when she’s about to turn the door behind her shuts close and cold, metal fingers wrap around her exposed throat. With a soft gasp, the Inquisitor stiffens and rises her chin before, by her neck, Volenta is pushed backwards, against a body that is taller and stronger than hers.

“Xavier…” She breathes out and the grip on her neck tightens, then another arm snakes around and finds the zipper of Volenta’s shirt, pulling it down and liberating her chest in one easy tug. Cold rosette falls between her breaths, feeling familiar and comforting.

“Yes, my dear?” He croons right against her ear, a warm palm pressing against her stomach and slipping higher, cupping a heavy breast that spills over Xavier’s fingers even if contained by a bra. He fondles it gently, brushing a thumb over where the nipple hides and feels it perk up with eager need.

“I missed you.” Volenta exhales again and closes her eyes briefly, not moving a finger to interrupt her husband’s touches. In turn the grip on her throat tightens, threatening to cut off oxygen, but she only smiles and feels Xavier plant a chaste kiss to her cheek.

“I missed you too.” He whispers and gives her breast a squeeze that borders on painful, with satisfaction hearing his wife inhale sharply despite the struggle to breathe. “It’s been far too long, don’t you think.”

It’s not a question, they both know it’s the truth. Yet when Volenta tries to turn her face, tries to look at Xavier and those features that only become more dear as decades pass, he instead marches her forward, making the woman stumble slightly at the hurried pressure against her back. And despite her initial surprise, she obeys and does not fight. She knows what’s next. They both do.

Just before Volenta’s thighs run into the edge of the desk, Xavier’s augmetic hand swiftly slips from the front of her throat to the back of it and she gets slammed chest first onto the tabletop. The impact makes her huff but she still doesn’t struggle. She smiles instead and moves her arms when Xavier first unceremoniously peels away her coat, throwing it behind himself, then does the same with her shirt. Edges of the rosette are cutting sharply into her chest and both breasts between which it got lodged when she got pinned down, but Volenta barely notices the pain. Instead, she patiently waits for Xavier to cut off her bra, knowing her husband’s impatience with her delicates and only smiles when the blunt but cold edge of an Inquisitorial dagger presses against her back. The tension around her upper body snaps and releases. Two more cuts for the bra straps and the dagger clatters onto the desk next by her head, shining gold glittering in the myriad of lit candles.

There’s a hiss behind Volenta and she bites her bottom lip before Xavier’s fingers press below his bionic ones, still gripping the back of her neck. Warm digits trace down her spine sending a shudder down her body and then between the shoulder blades, outlining the Inquisition tattoo that Volenta has had there since her early days as an acolyte. It covers her entire back, from neck down to lumbar, inked in black and with the skull in great detail at the center. But Xavier doesn’t only touch the tattoo. His fingers move around it, gently sweeping over the scars surrounding the symbol. Scars that he himself has inflicted upon her.

It happened when she was still his acolyte, when she made reckless mistakes and needed to be reminded of her devotion. Through the years, the need to punish her diminished greatly as Volenta perfected herself under his guidance and those of others. It’s been over a decade since he had to absolve his wife of her sins and Xavier doesn’t miss it. It broke him to do it as much as it did her and yet it was a ritual for them both. Sometimes most memorable lessons are those that one learns through pain delivered by a loving hand.

She still is Xavier’s biggest achievement and his most agonizing struggle. Duty versus love, Imperium versus a man. He’s proud, but that didn’t come without a cost. Volenta’s body bears marks of her mistakes, a canvas that are his to paint in crimson. Not with a brush, but with an edge of a blade.

It takes Xavier a moment to remember that this is not one of such moments and he leans down, pressing his lips to Volenta’s naked shoulder. “Beautiful, as always.” Breathing hotly against his wife’s skin, Xavier moves his hand from the tattoo and around her, finding the belt of her pants and handling the buckle with practiced ease. “Have you been behaving?”

Volenta chuckles with amusement, although it is a subdued sound due to her being pressed so harshly upon the table. The hololith flickers in and out, casting a greenish blue hue upon them both at even intervals. “Am I just a feral cat to you?”

“I haven’t forgotten your behavior when you were exactly that.” Xavier smiles and she can feel it against her shoulder, then lower, when he kisses her shoulder blade.

“That was almost sixty years ago.” Volenta protests with a smile but her eyelids grow heavy with desire when her husband swiftly undoes her pants and with a grip over the waistband pulls them down her hips, not sparing even the underwear.

“And memory of those days is as strong as if it has happened just a year ago.” There’s a hint of a smile in Xavier’s on voice and reaching around his wife he gently traces his fingertips against her already soaking sex. She has always been so easy for him and that’s one of many things that he loves dearly about her.

With a tiny gasp Volenta moves her hips as much as she can in her position, grinding against Xavier’s fingers in an unspoken plea that he knows well. And because of his own throbbing need pressing almost painfully against the front of his pants, Xavier doesn’t give Volenta what she needs. He needs her, now and urgently, he’s not willing to waste seconds playing with her.

Only when Xavier removes his hand from between Volenta’s legs is when she finally has enough sense of mind to respond, patiently listening to the sounds of a belt buckle being managed and a zipper drawn down. “I inspected Heinrix, by the way. He’s in the clear.”

“Of that I had no doubt.” Xavier responds absentmindedly. Duty is the farthest thing from his mind right now, especially when he pulls out his cock, the tip already slick with precum. Damn her, he thinks to himself with a loving ache in his heart, she always makes him feel like a teen back in schola, overeager and impatient.

“Did you send him my way to be tortured then?” Volenta tries to turn her head to look at Xavier but it’s impossible, and at her movement the metallic grip on her neck tightens.

“Did you torture him, my dear?”

“Not in a conventional way, no.” She smiles and with a satisfied gasp feels Xavier’s cock rest heavy between her buttocks, but only until he shifts his pants a little lower and out of the way.

“As long as he has all the limbs, I do not care what you do with him.” It sounds like a sentence rather than a playful response and Volenta knows that he couldn’t care less for Heinrix or anyone else.

Except for her. She knows that some think them foolish for indulging themselves like this, with feelings and relations, with marriage. Most agents forsake such things, they usually do not end well for anyone. But she’s willing to risk it all, and Xavier is too, because what they have is so much more precious, because of how fragile it is.

For a second Volenta wonders if she should tell her husband that Heinrix kissed her. And that she responded. That she was willing to do more than just kiss him, too. But that thought gets wiped away from the forefront of her thoughts when Xavier moves, gripping the thick base of his cock in preparation to stake his claim in her once again. “Xavier…”

“One thing I want you to do, Volenta.” He begins speaking and aims the tip right at her entrance, rubbing it there and slicking himself with her arousal.

“Yes?” She breathes heavy, already choking on her desire and then feels her hip being gripped tightly, holding her in place.

“Always perform your duty. No matter what.” And with those words, Xavier thrusts right to the hilt into her, making Volenta cry out both with pleasure and discomfort at his size that even after all these years catches her unprepared. Especially when the two of them spend significant time apart. “Emperor’s Blood…” He sighs with relief when her wet heat envelopes him and Xavier begins thrusting, not wasting even a second more to experience the friction that he has been dreaming about for days.

“Yes, Inquisitor.” Volenta gasps in response and that earns her a soft chuckle from Xavier, at which she smiles too. “I see you really missed me.” She says with a tense voice between her moans at his every pump that fills her near painfully. It’s a sweet kind of pain, the one that she craves for consistently.

“Did you doubt me, my dear?” Leaning over her, Xavier kisses her back in between the thrusts and watches Volenta’s fingers trying to grip upon the smooth surface of the table as he pounds into her. The scent, her scent, makes the Inquisitor finally feel at home.

“No, it’s just-“ She gets cut off by another deep thrust and whines in response so sweetly that it only urges Xavier to fuck into her harder, faster. Screw it, he finds himself thinking, they can take it slow later. But right now he just wants and needs Volenta like a breath of air.

“Later.” Curtly ordering his wife to stop talking, Xavier digs his fingers into her flesh, bruising Volenta’s hip and the back of her neck. He knows this and he doesn’t care. Watching himself thrust into the woman that is more important to him than the Emperor or the Inquisition is all that matters. He knows she would call it blasphemy if he told her, so he won’t. Maybe ever. But he knows this as firmly as he knows tenets of the Inquisition, with truth that is unshakable.

There are only sounds of skin against skin and Volenta’s moans that drown out Xavier’s groans in the room for a few moments, but he senses her tightening around his length. “Xavier, I-“ Another deep thrust cuts his wife off but she doesn’t need to say anything else, he knows. She’s close.

Straightening his back just to see himself better as his cock, slick and dripping with Volenta’s arousal, keeps plundering the body of a woman he loves, Xavier huffs a heavy breath. “I know.” He’s close too and he can feel it, accelerated by mere knowledge that Volenta is going to come for him so fast. His ocular device says it has been barely eight minutes, ticking to nine when Xavier pays the briefest of attention to the clock in the micro display.

She says something again, calls to him, but not even Volenta is sure what she’s saying anymore. Calling Xavier’s name or praying to the Emperor, both can be true or neither. All she knows is how she feels, her body trembling with tension and upcoming pleasure, her thighs shaking every time she’s filled so deeply it makes her head spin. With nails scraping upon the ancient wooden desk, Volenta closes her eyes and lets herself go, giving into the sensations that overwhelm her immediately.

Crying out and moaning with choked breaths, Volenta unravels as Xavier gives her his all for the last few thrusts. Her feet slip on the floor, losing the ground beneath them, and with one last deep shove, the Inquisitor bends over his wife’s prone body. Pressing his forehead against her back, he moans with the pleasure of releasing himself deeply inside of her, claiming Volenta as his in the only way that truly matters.

Xavier’s hips jerk couple times as he empties himself to the last drop and Volenta finally relaxes, her body’s grip upon her husband finally relenting. He was only a handful of seconds late, but that doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, he’s finally home, finally with her.

Panting heavily, Xavier remains as he is for a long moment and so does Volenta, trying to catch her breath. She feels his weight upon her and the fullness inside, at which she smiles a tired, lazy smile. Her hair is sticking to her damp face and her insides ache from the pounding she just has received, but it’s a wonderful kind of feeling. Familiar, welcome and endearing.

“I love you.” Hearing a whisper against her back Volenta smiles, after long months apart finally feeling content again.

“I love you too. Now, can you get off? My rosette will slice me open soon if you don’t.”

“My apologies.” Xavier at last snaps back to the present and with a heavy huff, he pushes himself off his wife and carefully pulls out.

When Volenta rises her upper body by her hands, she glances over the shoulder at Xavier, feeling his fingers spread her folds and observe the mess he has made out of her. With a smile, she lets him look because the moment she rises the rosette dislodges itself from between her breasts, dangling lazily from around her neck.

“Proud of your handiwork?” Teasing, Volenta smiles and Xavier’s eye snaps to her. Then his features soften and the man smiles back, letting out a breath.

“Shouldn’t I be?” With his left hand, Xavier again grips Volenta’s throat and pulls her backwards, turning her body and face just enough to kiss her before she speaks again.

With a chuckle she doesn’t kiss back but pretends to keep talking despite his passionate kiss, and with a playfully annoyed grumble Xavier shoves his tongue in her mouth, finally shutting Volenta up. Two ways work when she’s like this: a deep kiss or a cock in her throat. This time he chose the kiss.

For a long moment they kiss and during it Volenta turns in his arms, pressing herself against Xavier’s firm and broad frame, running her hands under his shirt and feeling scars, muscle and body hair. “You’ve been away for too long.” Whispering against his lips, Volenta slides one hand down and cups his genitals, still damp with sweat and her own slickness, and Xavier in turn holds her by the waist, pulling back slightly.

“Do you think I had a choice? The damned Koronus Expanse has been pain in the backseat of a Golden Throne itself.” He sighs and closes his eyes for a brief moment. “Something has to be done. There are ten other inquisitors there that I left operating, but I have a feeling we need an appropriate conclave to begin tackling the backwater that the sector is. Heresy and chaos abound. Maybe it would be better to just blast it all away and be done with it. Surely-“

“Xavier.” Volenta interrupts and smiles, making him look at her again. “I’m dripping and it’s your fault. You can grumble about the Koronus Expanse in the bathroom.” Rising her hand and caressing the side of his face, she easily makes Xavier calm down and he sighs, leaning into her touch.

“If there’s peace in this universe, then you’re mine.” He says softly, takes Volenta’s hand from his face and kisses her palm. “But fine, we can wash up.”

With a gentle smile, Volenta pulls back. After collecting her clothes and the cut bra, they both exit the study. While chatting about the current events on Terra, they walk to the bedroom and discard the clothes onto the nearest armchair. Xavier then leads his wife to the bathroom while retelling her how his journey through the Warp went. Afterwards, as they both wash off under the shower, he also tells Volenta of the Koronus Expanse. About the Explorator fleet that seems to be deadlocked in an argument over tech-heresy, the pirates and the drukhari plundering Imperial worlds as if they belong to the xenos, and of course the tendrils of a Chaos cult, maybe even more than one, beginning to show signs of corruption throughout the system.

“And what are the rogue traders doing?” Volenta asks. After that brief cleansing shower, they decided to take a bath together. A serf brought them a plate of finger foods and a whole bottle of best amesac from the cellars, placing all atop a movable tray nearby then disappearing.

“Not much as far as I’m aware. There’s three.” Xavier explains and leans against the edge of a tub once it has filled and they get in it, pulling Volenta against him, chest to chest. No more cutting rosettes are present, both his and hers hanging over a small statue of a God-Emperor at the small shrine nearby.

“Three? Not many for a sector like this, no?” She asks and gets comfortable between his legs, brushing wet strands of hair behind his ears. Xavier grips a handful of Volenta’s rear, both to prevent her from slipping away and just because he can.

“Would be enough if they were doing their duty to the Golden Throne.” Xavier sighs and watches Volenta reach to the glasses already filled with rich amesac and take one, then bring it to his lips. The liquor is rich and smooth as it goes down, then explodes in fire in his stomach. “Incendia Bastaal-Chorda seems to be the only one still following the Emperor’s tenets.” Inquisitor continues while Volenta pulls the glass to her and shares the drink, swallowing it slowly. He then reaches to the plate and takes a handful of sweet and sour fruit, home planet of which he can’t even be sure of, but it appears round, deep purple and smooth. “Calligos Winterscale is suspected of murdering previous Winterscale but there’s more than that. Through the several years I’ve had my comings and goings to the Koronus Expanse, I have paid attention to Calligos but recently he appears to swiftly lose interest in his planets and holdings. It’s either worrying or suspicious, depending on what the answer might be for this kind of behavior.

“Winterscale? Isn’t it the dynasty that discovered Koronus in the first place?” Volenta asks and allows Xavier feed her one fruit, then another and begins chewing.

“The story goes as you say, but as always there are rumors that speak different.”

“Mm. And the third one?” Swallowing the fruit, Volenta takes another sip from the glass while watching Xavier partake in the delicacy himself and waits for his response.

“Theodora von Valancius. A fierce woman, but misguided. I suspect she’s hiding something. I have implanted my spies upon her ship and retinue, but none of them have reported back to me in over two weeks.” Guiding Volenta’s hand to himself, Xavier drinks from the glass. The water in the tub is warm, steaming around them and worries of the Koronus Expanse seem to be so far away now, not even counting the actual distance from Terra.

“Shrewd, if she managed to sniff out your agents.” Putting the glass back onto the tray, Volenta plucks another fruit from Xavier’s palm and chews on it for a moment. She wants to tell him about the call she’s having tomorrow but reconsiders. Maybe it’s related.

“There’s another thing.” Xavier says and pauses, looking into those pale grey eyes of his wife. Eyes that make others uneasy when they turn to them.

“Oh? Pray tell.” Getting even more comfortable, Volenta drapes both arms over Xavier’s shoulders and smiles, letting him brush away a strand of hair from her cheek, the rest floating around them like snowy streaks in the water.

“Theodora is looking for heirs. It’s not that alarming, many Rogue Traders like to prepare their heirs in advance as they age and Von Valancius has no heirs of her own, for whatever reason that may be.”

“Looking for heirs? A dwindling dynasty then?” Stealing a brief kiss, Volenta begins toying with Xavier’s wet hair as she lays upon his chest.

“Maybe dwindling in blood, but not riches. Theodora has worked hard to keep Von Valancius as influential as the other two rogue trader houses. However, I have read reports that she has not been extremely successful in finding the heirs. Two so far. A sanctioned psyker by the name of Edelthrad and another one, already in her employ, by the name of Kunrad.”

“Well, here we go, guess she does have heirs.”

“I looked into her bloodline myself. Naturally, I prefer to keep an eye on such affluent people, just in case.” Xavier slows, not sure how to proceed. How does he tell Volenta something like this? And what if, what if she wants to-

“And? Any more discoveries?” Feeling her back beginning to ache from her current position, Volenta moves and straddles Xavier’s lap, making waves slosh over the sides of the tub. When she’s done positioning her body, the Inquisitor strokes her naked thighs under the water and gazes up at her.

“Look at me.” He softly commands and she lowers her eyes onto his, fingers gripping his slick shoulders, hair stuck to her exposed skin, pebbled with bath water. “You are one of her heirs.”

Volenta just stares and him and suddenly breaks into a smile. “Really?”

“Do you judge my methods to be faulty when acquiring information?” Xavier gives her a slightly tense smile and Volenta chuckles.

“No, absolutely not. I’m just a little surprised.”

“I was at first as well but then it didn’t strike me as surprising. A child lost onto a Hive world with no recollection of her parents who crashed onto said planet. No relatives trying to find their family. Until you ended up in Astra Millitarum. And then in the Inquisition.” As he speaks, Xavier’s left hand moves to her back and strokes it in gentle sweeps.

“Still, how did you find out about it?” Cocking her head to the side, Volenta looks almost innocently curious if he didn’t know any better. That cutting, calculating look in her eyes speaks of wisdom far beyond her years and she’s not even that young anymore.

“The spies I sent managed to sneak a sample of Von Valancius DNA to me and I did my own investigation. Considering I have access to data that Theodora doesn’t, it was easy to trace that lineage to you.”

“I see.”

Silence falls as Volenta considers what she has been told just now. In the quiet of the bathroom, she traces her fingertips over the augmetic plate on Xavier’s head, ghosting over the tubes that sneak around his skull and sink into his spine. She remembers how he got this one. She remembers all of them, except for the eye. That he lost before he traversed the filthy tunnels of the regiment she has been attached to as a young woman.

This plate, however, he received some fifty years ago. They were fighting Nurgle’s forces on a planet that doesn’t exist anymore. Side by side, they were the only ones left and a handful of other acolytes that Xavier brought with him to ‘observe a simple cleansing mission’. Things went wrong. Horrendously wrong. Local PDF was wiped out by the time they arrived, civilians scattered in the streets, all in pieces. And those who weren’t killed were infected, going through rapt mutation even when they looked upon poor souls that didn’t deserve the Emperor’s light anymore. It was a site of carnage and disease. The forces with which Xavier arrived quickly engaged in battle, but he brought too few. A mistake anyone could’ve made and it cost lives of many loyal soldiers.

The dropship that Xavier took to the planet has been immediately overrun and so Volenta had to help him organize the terrified acolytes, or what was left of them, and try to find any shuttle that would take them back to the main ship. It was a trek through land so corrupted that the very air stung their lungs.

And then one shot rang out.

One simple shot that nobody saw coming, caught Xavier in the head, taking with it hair, skin and part of the skull, exposing the brain beneath. Volenta took leadership then. Barking orders that she never had to give before, threatening a terrified psyker that she will pluck his eyes out with bare fingers if he doesn’t do anything. A biomancer, the man that was twice older than her and just fresh out of Scholastica Psykana, begged for mercy while she rained verbal abuse upon him. Volenta doesn’t even remember his name anymore, another one lost to the histories of galaxy, but he saved Xavier that day. And ever since then Volenta insisted that he has a biomancer by his side, to which he agreed.

“My love.” Xavier’s voice, present in here and now, cuts through the memories and Volenta blinks couple times, then looks at him.

“I’m not going to serve some sort of rogue trader, Xavier. Heir or not, this is way beneath me and I am already serving the Imperium in a way only I can serve it. So Theodora can go ahead and shove it up her-“

Xavier laughs. He can’t help it. The tirade that was beginning to get angrier with each word is quite endearing and he cups his wife’s face with both his palms. “I didn’t say that you have to claim your lineage.”

“Good, because I won’t.”

“Volenta, I would never threaten to take away what you worked so hard for. You need to understand this.” He says this patiently, every word slow, and Xavier watches Volenta’s expression soften. Then she deflates but still pouts at him.

“I’ll call in some favors and find someone to take my place. Just in case Theodora sniffs out there’s someone else. I couldn’t care less to be a rogue trader, I have my hands full as is.” She mumbles and Xavier chuckles, bringing her face close and kissing her. In some ways she hasn’t changed at all. Even after decades of seeing horrors that the Imperium has to fight against, even after countless losses and failures, some of them etched in her skin by his own hand.

“You’re a handful yourself sometimes, my dear.” Xavier murmurs against her lips and feels Volenta smile widely at that. She takes his right arm by the wrist and leads it to her breast which he gladly encases in his augmetic fingers.

“A handful like that?” She teases and he laughs again.

“Something like that.”

And then he kisses her again, desire stirring in Xavier’s loins in that familiar fashion that Volenta provokes with such ease it could be studied for its effectiveness. But for a moment there, just for a moment, Xavier finds doubt in his heart. And worry.

What if she did want to become a rogue trader. That would’ve put Volenta in closer proximity to him since Lords of Terra have been sending the Inquisitor to the Koronus Expanse quite often as of past few years. But that would’ve been the only benefit. She is where she belongs, he knows. Ever since he made her join Ordo Hereticus and saw her rapidly climb the promotion ladder, he knew that Volenta is where she has to be. And maybe their time together is not constant, it’s worth it. So, so worth it.

“Love me.” Volenta gasps into Xavier’s lips and takes his other hand, intertwining their fingers together when she starts grinding herself against his cock that has grown hard even if his mind was briefly elsewhere.

And he does love her, with both body and soul. Xavier shows it to her again and holds Volenta tight against himself as she rides him, bringing moans both out of his own throat and hers.

It’s so good to be back home.

[sasaleletrebol]

How many of you would let me ste- I mean, borrow your sans ocs for a lil thing I want to do?

[stephanus-rattus]

Happy birthday my emo boy, his age is multiple but his charm will be unique 😭🦔

[acknowledge-reigns]

Rivals With Benefits | Jey x Black!fem OC (18+)

Description: Jey and Jax disagree on plans for Roman and Iris engagemennt party.

Chapter: 1/5

Face Claim: Ariana Debose.

Warnings: Arguing, Mild Angst, Strong language.

This is set in an AU in which the og bloodline reunited before wrestlemania 40 and Roman retained. This is the Jey x Jax sequel to Swipe Right. As always my stories are NOT about real people and does not reflect their character. While there is not smut in Chapter 1, there will be in others. This is very much an 18+ BDSM based romance with some comedy thrown in there. This particular story features Jey as a Daddy Dom (Not Mysterio, you fucking nerds 😂) google if necessary and if this isn't for you, please scroll. You have been warned.

Word count: 1,867

My masterlist can be found here

Iris and Roman sat down with Jax and Jey to discuss the details of their engagement party. They'd decided against the stereotypical Bachlorette and bachelor party and just wanted to have one big gathering. After some discussion, they decided to leave the planning to the two of them, knowing that they could handle it.

However, as soon as they started planning, it became clear that Jax and Jey were not on the same page. They argued about everything from the venue to the guest list to the menu. Just like their first date.

Jax was frustrated with Jey's need to control everything. "Why do you always have to be in charge?" she snapped. "Can't you just trust me to make some decisions for once?"

Jey rolled his eyes, clearly irritated by Jax's accusation. "I'm not trying to control anything," he retorted. "I just want things to be perfect, and that includes every little detail."

Jax scoffed, not believing him for a second. "You always have to have everything your way," she retorted. "It's not about perfection, it's about finding a balance and making decisions together."

"Roman will have my head if we fuck this up and upset Iris. You're not bloodline. You don't get it." Jey snapped.

Jax was taken aback by Jey's harsh words, but she refused to back down. "You think I don't care about Iris's happiness? she's my big sister!" she retorted, her voice shaking slightly. "And just because I'm not part of your 'bloodline' doesn't mean I don't understand what it means to be family. you are so full of yourself!"

Jey's face darkened at Jax's comment, his eyes narrowing. "I am full of myself?" he said through gritted teeth. "You're the one who can't seem to get past our first date, even a full year later. You still hold it against me."

Jax clenched her fists, feeling the familiar anger and hurt bubbling up inside her. "Of course I do," she snapped. "You were arrogant and dismissive. You didn't even try to make me feel comfortable."

"I was trying to be a gentleman!" Jey argued back.

Jax let out a derisive laugh. "Oh please," she said sarcastically. "A gentleman doesn't ignore his date's feelings and make her feel like a fool."

Jey's jaw clenched tighter, his anger rising. "You're impossible," he said, his voice filled with frustration. "You never give me a chance to explain myself or make things right. You just assume the worst of me."

"And you never take responsibility for your actions," Jax shot back, her eyes flashing with anger. "You always blame everyone else for everything. I'm sick of it. You want to control everything because you lack control in your professional and family life because you let Roman push you around like a little bitch!"

Jey's face twisted into a snarl at Jax's harsh words. He was used to being pushed around by Roman, but hearing it from Jax felt like a personal attack. "You don't know what you're talking about," he said through gritted teeth, his fists clenched at his sides.

Jax crossed her arms, her expression hardening. "Oh, I think I do," she retorted. "You're a yes man, always doing what your lil tribal chief tells you to do. It's like you have no spine or thoughts of your own."

Jey's anger reached its peak. He took a step forward, his body tensed like a coiled spring. "You think you know everything, don't you?" he said, his voice dripping with venom. "But you're just as controlling as I am. You always have to have your way, and when things don't go according to plan, you throw a tantrum like a damn child."

Jax's eyes narrowed, and she met his gaze head-on. "At least I admit it when I'm wrong," she shot back. "You just wallow in your own stubbornness and blame everyone else for your mistakes."

Jax took a deep breath, realizing that they were both getting nowhere with this argument. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to calm herself down. When she opened them again, she looked directly at Jey, her expression softening slightly.

"Look. I'm sorry," she said, her voice firm but gentle. "I know we have our differences, but we need to work together for this engagement party. Can we just try to put our differences aside and make this work?"

Jey was taken aback by Jax's apology. He wasn't expecting her to back down so easily, but he could see the sincerity in her eyes.

He took a deep breath, letting go of some of his own anger. "I'm sorry too," he said, his voice softer now. "I shouldn't have let our past get in the way of our planning. Let's try to focus on making this engagement party a success."

Jax nodded, relieved that they had managed to reach a truce. "Good," she said, a small smile playing at the corners of her lips. "Now, let's go over our ideas again, without all the yelling this time."

They sat down again, this time in a more relaxed atmosphere. Jey took out his notes and went over his ideas for the engagement party. He explained his vision for the decorations, the food, and the entertainment, with Jax listening intently.

To her surprise, Jey had put a lot of thought into the details and had even taken into account her preferences. She was touched by his effort to make the party special for Iris and Roman. But she damn sure wasn't going to admit it.

As Jey continued to share his ideas, Jax found herself nodding along, agreeing with many of his suggestions. She had to admit that he had a good eye for detail and had a great sense of what would make Iris and Roman happy.

She started to feel a sense of gratitude towards him, realizing that they could work well together when they put their minds to it.

"I have to say," Jax said after Jey finished speaking, "your plan is actually.. alright I guess. I think it will make for a wonderful engagement party."

Jey's face lit up with a mix of surprise and relief. "Really?" he asked, a hint of excitement in his voice. "You're okay with it?"

Jax smiled at him. "Yes, I am," she said firmly. "You've put a lot of thought into it, and it's clear that you want to make this day special for my sister and Roman. I trust your judgment on this one."

"But we are NOT serving waffle house" Jax added

Jey chuckled, remembering the heated argument they had about food earlier. "Aight, fine." he said with a nod. "We can skip the waffle house and find something else that's more upscale and appropriate for an engagement party."

"Look at you growing up." Jax teased in response.

Jey rolled his eyes, but he couldn't help but smirk at her teasing. "I've always been mature," he retorted playfully. "You just refuse to acknowledge it."

"Yeah yeah yeah. As if, Yeet-man." Jax couldn't hold back her chuckle.

Jey shook his head, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "You're literally insufferable."

Jax suddenly remembered the harsh words she had said earlier about Roman and how they had affected Jey. She knew she had crossed a line, and it was time to apologize again.

"Jey," she said, her voice sincere. "I want to apologize again for what I said earlier about Roman. It was uncalled for and I know it hurt you. I shouldn't have said it, and I'm sorry."

Jey's expression softened at Jax's apology. He had been hurt by her words, but he could tell that she was genuinely sorry.

"It's okay," he said quietly, his voice filled with a hint of vulnerability. "I know you didn't mean it. But you're right, Roman does push me around sometimes, and it can be frustrating."

Jax could see the frustration and pain in Jey's eyes as he spoke about Roman. She realized that there was a lot more going on beneath the surface than she had initially thought.

"You know," she said softly, "you deserve better than being treated like a puppet. You have your own strengths and talents, and you should be able to stand up for yourself more."

Jey nodded, his expression contemplative. "I know," he said, his voice laced with resignation. "But it's hard to break away from Roman's control. He's been in charge for so long, and it's just... easier to let him take the lead. Besides, it used to be much worse."

"I can't believe Iris is marrying into this soap opera" Jax said.

Jey chuckled wryly at her comment. "I know, right?" he said, shaking his head. "It's a real mess. But at the end of the day, I'm just happy that Roman has found love and happiness with Iris."

Jax nodded in agreement. "Yeah, I'm happy for them too," she said. "And even though Roman can be a bit... intense, I have to admit that he's been good for her. She's never been happier than when she's with him."

Jey leaned back in his chair, his eyes growing distant as he thought about Roman and Iris's relationship.

"Roman is... different with Iris," he said quietly. "He's more patient, more affectionate, more open. He treats her like a queen and dotes on her every need. It's almost as if he's a completely different person when he's with her. She makes him better."

Jax could see the affection in Jey's eyes as he spoke about Roman's relationship with Iris. It was clear that despite their differences, he cared deeply for his cousin.

"I've never seen him like this before," Jey continued, a hint of a smile on his lips.

Jax took a moment to think about what Jey had said before asking, "You know, you said that Roman's different with Iris. Do you think you'll ever have someone who brings out that side of you too?"

Jey looked down at his hands, a mix of emotions crossing his face. "I don't know," he admitted quietly. "I hope so. But I've never really been lucky in love."

Jax's heart ached at Jey's words. She had never seen him so vulnerable before. She wanted to reach out and comfort him, but she wasn't sure if he would welcome the gesture.

Jey could feel the silence growing heavier, and he looked up at Jax, a hint of sadness in his eyes. He was grateful that she hadn't offered any platitudes or empty reassurances, but at the same time, he was feeling more vulnerable than he had in a long time.

Jax could see the vulnerability in Jey's eyes and knew that he needed some space to process his emotions. She didn't want to make him feel more uncomfortable, so she decided to change the subject.

"So, we've got a lot of planning to do," she said, trying to lighten the mood. "Let's get back to it."

Jey nodded gratefully, glad for the change of subject. He quickly returned to the conversation about the engagement party, grateful to have something to focus on besides his own personal feelings.

"Right," he said, taking out his notes.

Prologue ●◉◎◈◎◉● Next Chapter

[fandom-imperials]

Ego Iustus Volo Te (Part IV)

Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V

Free from Macrinus's clutches Alexandra is reeling after his assault and only wants this seemingly endless nightmare to end. She returns to the emperors to seek their support. But as Geta attempts to comfort her, she only runs into a new chapter of this night of torture.

Pairing: Emperor Caracalla x OC x Emperor Geta

SPOILER ALERT

(Alternative ending after General Acacius's execution)

Content Warning: Toxic Relationship, Panic Attack, Mentions of Abuse, Possessive Behavior, Jealousy

(Please let me know if I missed anything)

WC: 4.5k

It was clear that they’d been informed of her encounter with Macrinus and were waiting for her return. She entered the room slowly noticing that the men inside fell silent. The emperors’ eyes were immediately drawn to her, their expressions ranging from concern to relief as they waited for her to speak.

Noticing her hesitation, Caracalla broke the silence, his voice tight with worry. “What happened? We heard there was trouble.”

Alexandra was still attempting to hold herself together. She didn’t feel like herself after her encounter with Macrinus and even though he was under the custody of the Praetorian guards she still couldn’t allow herself to relax. To attempt to distract herself from the ongoing riots outside and the anxious thoughts in her head, she grabbed a pitcher of wine and poured some into a goblet before taking a sip. “Macrinus sees you both as weak. He attempted to seduce me to his side,” she said quietly before taking another sip and looking seriously at the emperors. Her voice began to shake as she continued,”He intends to stage a coup and have me as his empress. I gave him trouble to allow you two enough time to talk. It ended with him holding a blade to my throat and claiming I was a weak minded woman who didn’t understand power and how to earn her rank. I kicked him away and summoned the guards who now have him in a secure, isolated part of the palace under my orders.” 

Noticing her hand shaking as well she quickly set her wine down taking a few deep breaths to calm her nerves as she subconsciously touched where the blade had been held against her neck as she meekly looked between the emperors.

They both listened intently, their voices growing more grim as she relayed the details of her encounter with Macrinus. Noticing her touch her neck, Caracalla glared, his expression dark and protective. “He tried to harm you,” he growled as his voice rose and he looked like a wild cat about to pounce. “He dared lay a blade to the Empress’s throat?”

Seeing his emotions quickly rising again sighed,”Yes, but we cannot act rashly.” She proceeded to walk past Caracalla to Geta unsure of what he had been through after his outburst towards his brother.

Caracalla gritted his teeth, attempting to resist the urge to gut Macrinus himself. Geta carefully watched Alexandra as she approached, his eyes full of concern. “Are you alright?” he asked, his voice gentle.

She stopped looking out at the roaring flames outside. “I will be,” she sighed before returning Geta’s gaze. “What did Caracalla tell you?”

Geta watched his brother grimly before turning back to her. “He told me that Macrinus is more dangerous than we realized. That he’s been planning a coup for a while now and that he wants you by his side. And that he tried to…seduce you to his side and manipulate you.”

“Not simply that,” Alexandra scoffed. “He tried to seduce me in general claiming he could pleasure me in more ways than you or your brother could ever attempt.”

Geta’s expression darkened and his jaw clenched tightly. He shot a glare at Caracalla, clearly irritated by this new information. Across the room Caracalla bristled, his hands clenched into fists. “That damn bastard,” he snarled. “How dare he speak to you like that, let alone try to touch you!”

Attempting to reason with him as much as she could while ensuring they both knew the full story she looked at Caracalla sternly,”You must promise me that you won’t storm out of here with a blade if I continue.”

Caracalla’s head snapped back to her, his expression fierce. “I will not let Macrinus take you from me,” he growled, his voice low and dangerous. “I will destroy him if he even looks at you the wrong way!”

Alexandra sighed as she determined that she wasn’t comfortable risking an entire breakdown from Caracalla. She leaned close to Geta and whispered in his ear,”He didn’t just think about touching me.”

Geta’s expression darkened as he heard her whispered confession. His jaw clenched tightly and his eyes filled with anger and betrayal. “Bastard,” he snarled, voice barely above a whisper. “I’ll kill him myself if he laid one finger on you.”

“He laid more than one,” Alexandra quietly confessed before turning to both emperors. “But he has an army and supporters in the Senate. His death must not be in private.”

They both listened intently as their anger and disgust grew with each new revelation. Caracalla slammed his fist on the table, eyes blazing with rage. “Then we will take him down publicly, in front of all of Rome,” he roared. “We’ll expose him for the snake he is and destroy him for daring to touch you.”

Feeling her willpower start to drain, Alexandra collapsed on a couch sighing,”I’ll let you two arrange it.”

The emperors shared a look, their minds already racing with plans. Geta nodded and approached her, sitting down beside her on the couch. “You should rest,” he said gently. “It’s been a long day.”

Alexandra smiled softly at him, appreciating her husband’s softer side. “Only if you join me. I don’t want to be alone.”

Geta smiled back, his expression softening. “Of course I’ll stay with you.” He pulled her close and wrapped an arm around her protectively. She tiredly smiled at Caracalla attempting to ensure that he knew that he wasn’t forgotten as she leaned into Geta’s chest.

Caracalla watched the couple with a mix of jealousy and protectiveness. The idea of Geta being so close to Alexandre, the way he touched her, made his skin crawl. But he swallowed his jealousy and gave Geta a small nod, his expression reluctant but conceding. Noticing Caracalla’s typical jealous Alexandra softly declared,”I love you both and I hope you know that.”

Caracalla’s expression softened slightly by her words, his jealousy temporarily tempered by her reassurances. “I know,” he replied gruffly. “I just…I don’t like seeing you with him.”

“I know you don’t, but he is my husband and it was arranged years ago when your father was still emperor.”

Caracalla let out a frustrated grunt, clearly struggling with his internal battle. “I know my father arranged it,” he grumbled. “But I don’t have to like it. I don’t have to like seeing you with him, seeing him touch you and hold you like I want to.”

Alexandra sighed as she readjusted herself against Geta, still too exhausted to remove herself from him. “Then how can we help,” she muttered, her frustration beginning to grow.

Caracalla crossed his arms, his expression still brooding. “I don’t know,” he muttered back, clearly still struggling with his jealousy. “Part of me wants to pull you away from him and keep you all to myself. The other part of me knows that I mustn’t.”

No longer able to decide how to handle the jealous twin she looked up at Geta, her eyes questioning his thoughts on the situation. Geta appeared to be struggling with his own complex emotions. He looked down at Alexandra with a mixture of tenderness and guilt. “I don’t want to come between you two,” he said quietly. “I know your connection runs deeper than ours.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. My connection is equal to you both. The only difference is that I’ve given birth to your children, Geta.”

Geta’s expression softened at her words, his eyes meeting hers with a mixture of sadness and resignation. “I know,” he sighed. “And I’m grateful for that, I truly am. But sometimes…” He trailed off, his voice thick with emotion, unable to finish the sentence.

Alexandra straightened as she placed a hand on Geta’s thigh to support herself, her face concerned for her husband and his twin. She hated seeing them this way; she just wanted to be able to please them both, but she understood that they all had experienced a stressful few days and they were all tired.

Caracalla let out a low growl as he watched the interaction between them. His jealousy became more and more blunt as it rose to the surface, but he held his tongue attempting to keep it in check. Geta, on the other hand, gazed down at Alexandra, his expression conflicted. He reached out and gently took her hand in his, intertwining their fingers.

“I understand tensions are high. All I want is to be able to have you both at least be content.” She turned to Caracalla, still keeping her hand in Geta’s. “I need the support of my husband as well as ensuring that I’m not weakening your bond with him by doing so.”

Caracalla’s expression softened a little. “I know,” he muttered gruffly. “I just… I hate seeing you with him. Hate him touching you or holding you. It’s like a knife in my gut each time.”

Recognizing the repetitive nature of his illness she turned back to Geta whispering,”How can help him?” She laid her head on his shoulder waiting for his response.

Geta wrapped his arm around her again, holding her close as she rested her head on his shoulder. He gazed down at her for a moment before replying in a quiet voice. “I don’t know,” he signed. “His jealousy is intense and I don’t know how to soothe it. I’ve tried to be as respectful and distant as possible, but it only seems to make him more resentful.”

“I don’t want to send him away for fear of him doing something rash but it pains me to see him like this. I don’t want to torture him.”

Geta glanced over at Caracalla who was still staring at them with a mix of jealousy and frustration. He let out a weary sigh and nodded. “Neither do I. But I don’t know what else to do. His jealousy is strong and if we don’t find a way to soothe it I fear he might do something that would cause more harm than good.”

“If he simply watches us his jealousy will only grow stronger.”

Geta nodded in agreement, his expression growing firm. “You’re right. But what else can we do? If Caracalla is in the same room he will inevitably grow more jealous. He won’t be able to help himself.”

“But what will he do if we leave him alone?” Alexandra’s brow scrunched in concern.

Geta shrugged helplessly, struggling with the situation. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But he has a temper and is unpredictable when he's jealous. I worry about him doing something drastic to try and separate us."

“Perhaps we try moving to our chambers and if he follows we decide from there?”

Geta nodded slowly, clearly reluctant but seeing no other option. “Very well. We can try that. But I’ll keep a close eye on him to ensure he doesn’t try anything rash.”

“Thank you, I’m tired and want this situation to end.”

Geta nodded in understanding, squeezing her hand gently. “Of course,” he said reassuringly. “You’ve been through a lot today. Let’s get you to our chambers and see how Caracalla reacts.”

“Ok,” Alexandra simply nodded.

Geta rose from the couch still holding onto her hand. He shot a quick glance at Caracalla, who was still watching them intently, before turning back to Alexandra. “Are you ready?” he asked quietly.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she smiled nervously standing from the couch.

Geta nodded, his expression grim but resolute. He started to lead her out of the room, her hand in his own. As they passed Caracalla, whose gaze never left them, he spoke up. “Where are you going?” he asked, his voice low and dangerous.

Alexandra abruptly stopped and looked between Geta and Caracalla, unsure if she could handle another emotional confrontation between them. Caracalla’s eyes locked on them both, his expression stormy. He stepped forward, blocking their path. “I asked you a question,” he growled, voice harsh. “Where are you going?”

Carefully Alexandra asked,”What do you want from us?”

Caracalla’s eyes flashed with jealousy as he stared at them both. “I want you to stay here,” he said fiercely. “With me. I don’t want you to go off to your chambers with him.”

Alexandra’s gaze jerked to Geta desperate for him to handle the situation after everything she had just gone through. Geta held her hand protectively, his expression firm. He looked at Caracalla with a mixture of pity and irritation. “Caracalla,” he started calmly. “We’re only going to our own chambers. She’s tired and needs rest.”

Alexandra cautiously looked back to Caracalla, afraid that he might snap. His expression darkened as he looked at Geta, his eyes filling with anger. He stepped closer to them, his face inches away from Geta’s. “She doesn’t need rest,” he growled. “She needs me.”

She quickly released Geta’s hand and backed away analyzing the situation so she could determine if she needed to step between the brothers. Geta glared at Caracalla, his jaw clenched with irritation and protectiveness. “Caracalla, you need to control your jealousy,” he said through gritted teeth. “She is my wife and we are going to our own chambers. You cannot try to keep us here just because you’re envious of my relationship with her.”

Alexandra cautiously looked at Caracalla. Caracalla’s eyes flashed with anger at Geta’s words, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “I don’t care if she’s your wife, he snapped. “She should be with me, not you. I should be the one she’s going to bed with, not you!”

Finally reaching her breaking point, Alexandra gasped softly and turned to walk into the room where she had followed Caracalla earlier that evening. She felt her breath quickening and her chest tightened as she braced herself against the table. She closed her eyes and tried to control her panic but felt a wave of nausea and dizziness. Quickly she sat down leaning against one of the legs of the table and laid her head against it with her eyes shut, her legs tucked against her chest.

Geta watched her in concern as she walked away, his expression clearly distressed. He turned to Caracalla who was still seething with jealousy and anger. “Look what you’ve done,” he snaps. “She’s terrified now. Can’t you see how your jealousy is affecting her?”

Alexandra could hear their conversation but her head was too fuzzy to comprehend everything. It’s not just his jealousy. It’s everything, Alexandra thought exasperatedly.

Geta’s gaze flickered between Caracalla and Alexandra, torn between his loyalty to his wife and his concern for his brother. “Caracalla, you need to rein in your jealousy,” he said firmly. “You’re not only upsetting Alexandra but you’re also disturbing me. I don’t want to be pitted against you. We’re supposed to be united as brothers.”

Alexandra laid her cheek against the leg of the table groggily opening her eyes as she turned to observe the emperors. Caracalla glared at Geta, his eyes narrowed. “What do you expect me to do?” he retorted angrily. “You have everything that I want. You have her love, you have her attention, you have her in your bed. I can’t just forget my feelings because you say so.”

A single tear fell as a result of her stress, fatigue, and love for the two emperors. Why couldn't it have been acceptable to marry them both.

Geta caught sight of her tear and his heart twinged with guilt. He looked back at Caracalla, his expression of frustration and concern. “You’re not thinking rationally,” he told his brother. “I know you have feelings for her, but acting out like this is only going to cause more harm than good. You need to control yourself and learn to accept things as they are.”

She glanced towards Caracalla, hoping he would calm himself. Her main fear was that he would hurt someone whether it was Geta, a servant, or Macrinus in his state of rage. Caracalla’s expression darkened as Geta spoke, his jealousy still bubbling beneath the surface. He clenched his fists at his sides, struggling to control the emotions raging within him. “It’s easy for you to say that,” he said through clenched teeth, his eyes still fixed on Alexandra. “You have her. You have everything that I want. How am I supposed to accept that?”

Geta looked back at him, his expression somber and weary. “It’s not my fault that she chose me,” he said in a soft, patient voice. “I can’t help who she fell in love with and I can’t control how she feels about me any more than I can control how she feels about you. All I can do is love her and treat her with the respect and care that she deserves.”

Alexandra sighed, growing tired of it all. Her mother and Lucilla had arranged her marriage believing it would protect her more than potentially being bargained off to a patrician seeking to increase his status. She didn’t have much of a choice about which brother she would be betrothed to and it was simply decided between her guardians, Septimus Severus, and his wife Julia that she would marry the eldest of the twins. But that didn’t stop her from growing to love the future emperors equally. Geta glanced over at Alexandra, concerned for her state of mind. He turned back to Caracalla with a sigh, his expression now pleading. “Caracalla, loot at her. She’s exhausted and stressed out. Can’t you see how much you’re hurting her with this jealousy?”

Alexandra blinked, trying to quiet her mind and refocus on the brothers. Caracalla’s gaze followed Geta’s to her, his expression briefly softened at the sight of her exhausted and frazzled state. But then the jealousy flared up again and he scowled. “She’s only like that because you’re taking her away from me,” he retorted, his tone bitter. “If I had her all to myself, she’d be fine.”

She groaned, becoming increasingly frustrated by Caracalla’s stubbornness as she turned to face forward to stare at the wall across from her. Geta shook his head, his frustration evident. “You’re being ridiculous, Caracalla,” he snapped. “You can’t have her all to yourself. She’s my wife and she loves us both. You need to accept that and stop letting your jealousy get the best of you.

Thank the Gods for Geta’s rational state of mind.

Caracalla glared at Geta, his eyes blazing with anger. “How can you ask me to accept sharing her with you? You have everything I want. You have her love, her attention, her body. I can’t just ignore my feelings and accept that she belongs to you.”

Her patience boiling over and just wanting this night to be over, Alexandra exasperatedly yelled,”Then summon a concubine! You can’t stand to see us together and you can’t stand for us to leave yet you won’t tell us how to help you!”

Geta flinched at her outburst, taken aback by her sudden passion. Caracalla’s expression became even more venomous, the veins in his neck standing out as his anger spiked. “I don’t want a concubine,” he snapped. “I want you. And I can’t stand the thought of you two together knowing that you’re his and not mine.”

Alexandra smacked the ground with the palms of her hand getting up from the floor as she stormed back into the other room. “I didn’t just experience the hands and blade of Macrinus on my body while he insulted me and my family in the name of protecting you both just for you to act like an insolent child!”

Geta positioned himself closely behind Alexandra, his expression concerned and slightly frightened by her outburst, unsure of what she might do next. Caracalla, meanwhile, was left rooted to the spot, stunned by Alexandra’s words. His expression deepened as he processed what she said, his jealousy and anger warring with his guilty conscience.

Attempting to regain her composure, Alexandra sighed and declared,”It’s your move now Caracalla. Just tell me what you want from us and don’t say that you can’t stand the sight of me touching my own husband when I showed and did many things with you earlier because I’m quite frankly exhausted.”

Caracalla’s face twisted with jealousy and resentment, his gaze flickered between Alexandra and Geta. He clenched and unclenched his fists, struggling to find the words to express his desires. “I…I want you,” he muttered grudgingly. “I want to hold you, to feel your body against mine. I want to be the one you come to for comfort and pleasure, not Geta.”

Alexandra sighed,”You know I can’t entirely leave Geta for you. He needs my support just as much as you do, Caracalla.”

Caracalla’s expression darkened with irritation, his jealousy bubbling back up to the surface. “But why does he get to have your support and comfort and not me?” he snapped, his voice laced with bitterness. “Why does he get to have your love and attention while I’m left to watch from the sidelines, jealous and alone?”

“What was I doing before when I followed you and left Geta alone with Macrinus?!”

Caracalla faltered at her words, his jealousy momentarily subdued by the reminder of the night’s events. He looked away, struggling to find an argument to refute her point. “That’s…that’s different,” he muttered, his voice lacking conviction.

“Different? Different how?” Alexandra was growing exasperated as she briefly turned away from Caracalla rubbing her head in frustration.

Caracalla scowled, his jealousy continuing to war with his guilt. He turned away, unable to look Alexandra directly in the eye. “It’s different because…because…” he started, struggling to find his words. “Because I can’t stand the thought of you…with him. Of you…being intimate with him, giving him the love and attention that I crave.”

“Oh my Gods, I was intimate with you too. I could have simply left after letting you become vulnerable to me but I didn’t!”

Caracalla’s face flushed with a mix of shame and frustration at her words. He turned back to her, conflicted. “But it’s not enough,” he muttered, his voice tinged with desperation. “I want more than just a few minutes of your time. I want all of you, all the time. I want you to love me and desire me and only me.”

Alexandra fumbled over her thoughts before finally saying,”Geta doesn’t even have me all the time.” She briefly glanced over at her husband hoping that she didn’t hurt his feelings too and hoping that he might lend a hand.

Geta, who had been quietly observing the exchange, looked up at hearing Alexandra’s words. His expression betrayed a hint of guilt and embarrassment, as if he was partially to blame for the current situation. “She’s right,” he muttered, looking at Caracalla. “I don’t have her all the time. She’s shared between us with her time and affection.”

“Exactly. At parties I’m wedged between you. Even though I sit closer to and lean on Geta, that’s because he is my husband but he still allows you to touch me during them Caracalla.”

Caracalla’s expression faltered as she spoke, his feelings conflicted. He looked at her, his eyes reflecting that conflict. “But it’s not enough,” he repeats, his voice softening. “I want more than just a few touches at parties. I want all of your attention, all the time. I want to be the one you turn to for comfort and pleasure, not just at parties but always.”

Alexandra couldn’t help but put her face as she grew more frustrated and tired. Geta stepped forward, his expression concerned as he saw her exhaustion. He placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, trying to offer support. “Caracalla,” he said firmly. “Can’t you see how exhausted and stressed she is? Can’t you see how your jealousy is tearing her apart?”

She tensed briefly at the new touch but relaxed as she realized it was Geta coming to her aid. She brought her hands up in front of her beginning to fidget with them as looked off in the distance avoiding both of the brothers’ eyes not wanting to escalate the severity of the already tense situation. Geta continued to comfort his wife, his hand rubbing soothing circles on her shoulder. He looked over at Caracalla beginning to plead. “Caracalla, you need to listen to her. You need to understand how your jealousy is affecting her. She’s tired and stressed, and all because you’re letting your jealousy and insecurities get the best of you.”

Alexandra took a deep breath waiting for Caracalla to hopefully see reason. Caracalla’s expression gradually softened as he watched Geta comforting Alexandra, his jealousy slowly giving way to guilt and remorse. He looked at the two of them, the love and care between them clear. “I…I know I’m being unreasonable,” he mutters, his voice low and shameful. “I just…I can’t help how I feel. It’s like a fire inside me, burning and burning and burning until-” He cut himself off, clenching his fists in frustration.

Alexandra reached out and took one of his fists in her hand glancing up softly at him. He looked down at her as she did so. His eyes flickered with a mixture of guilt, desire, and regret as he gazed at her. “I…I don’t know what to do,” he muttered, his voice growing heavy with emotion. “I can’t control how I feel, no matter how much I try. It’s like a never-ending battle inside me, and I don’t know how to make it stop.”

“We know,” she quietly responded.

Caracalla’s expression softened further, a hint of vulnerability entering his eyes. He looked at Alexandra, his expression torn between guilt and desperate need. “I..I just want you to love me,” his voice almost a whisper. “I want you to desire me and need me, just like you do for Geta.”

“What makes you think I don’t?”

His expression wavered, his jealousy and insecurity flaring up once again. “Because…because you always turn to him. You lean on him, you touch him, you love him. You never turn to me like that. It’s like I’m always the afterthought, the second choice.”

“Then let me lean on you now. Perhaps we could sleep together tonight?” Alexandra looked over at Geta trying to gauge his opinion on her proposal.

Geta looked at Alexandra thoughtfully as he considered. His eyes lingered on her for a moment, taking in her exhaustion and distress, before shifting to Caracalla. “That might not be a bad idea,” he said quietly, his voice laced with concern for her. “She needs rest, and perhaps some extra comfort would be good for her.”

Alexandra smiled at Geta before giving Caracalla a hopeful glance. Caracalla softened as he looked at both Geta and Alexandra, his emotions still lingering but partially quelled by their words. “Very well,” he muttered, his voice a mixture of reluctance and desire. “You can…you can sleep with me tonight.”

“Then please let’s go because I’m exhausted and just need comfort.” Alexandra paused before adding,” from both of you.”

Caracalla nodded silently, his expression a mixture of relief and guilt. Geta stepped forward, a small smile on his face, and took her hand leading the way towards their bedroom. She was grateful for Geta taking the lead. She released Caracalla so that he could move freely. He followed close behind them, his eyes following the sway of Alexandra’s hips as she moved in front of him. 

[lovingwanda]

𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐄𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓

➽ 𝑷𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈: Heart Eyes Killer!Jaemin Ha (OC) x Male Victim!Reader

➽ 𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒅 𝑪𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕: 1,510 words

➽ 𝑪𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝑾𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈: Violence, blood, psychological manipulation, death threats, explicit language, captivity, dark themes, physical assault, drugging, kidnapping.

➽ 𝑺𝒚𝒏𝒐𝒑𝒔𝒊𝒔: Jaemin never believed in love—not in any form that didn’t end in blood. But now, with you, she’s questioning everything. Her need for violence clashes with her undeniable desire to keep you alive. She doesn’t know how to fight this feeling... but one thing is clear—love in her world is always a dangerous game.

Jaemin stood in the shadows, her breath heavy, her heart beating erratically beneath the tight black leather of her outfit. The mask she wore was lifted slightly, just enough for her to watch you through the glowing red heart eyes. Every inch of you made her ache—made her want to scream, to lash out, to destroy you.

She hated that she even felt this way. This wasn't supposed to happen. You were supposed to be just another victim. Another heart to carve up. Another pretty little face to smear with blood.

But God, you...

Her hands trembled, fingers twitching, the knife gripped so tight in her palm it almost hurt. Her long pink hair fell around her face, framing her plump lips, now twisted into a snarl. Everything about you made her sick, fucking sick—yet she couldn't bring herself to end you.

The drug was still in your system, leaving you sluggish, disoriented, your hands and feet bound tightly to the chair she’d placed you in. The hard hit she'd given you earlier had left a bruise on your temple, and a trickle of blood stained your face as it dripped down your cheek. The faint taste of iron lingered on your lips, but you were too weak to do anything about it. The restraints around your wrists and ankles held you securely in place, but the real fight? The real battle? It was in Jaemin’s eyes.

She paced back and forth, each step coming with a quiet, dangerous rhythm. She couldn’t help herself, the hunger building with every passing second. She wanted to hurt you—wanted to carve you up, make you scream, make you beg. But her hand kept shaking. Every time she went to make her move, every time her knife gleamed in the dim light of the room, she hesitated.

FUCK.

"Why the hell do you make me feel like this?" Jaemin hissed under her breath, frustration bubbling up, the gleam of her knife flickering with every erratic step. Her eyes glowed a dangerous red, a mix of madness and confusion. She could feel her pulse pounding, her hands shaking, but none of it mattered.

It shouldn’t matter. She shouldn’t give a damn about anything other than ending you—ending this... weakness.

"God, I should have fucking killed you already." Jaemin’s voice was strained, the words slipping through clenched teeth. Her tongue ran over her pink lips as she stared at you. You were still so calm, so composed, sitting there in that chair, helpless and at her mercy. The blood on your face only seemed to heighten your beauty, making her insides twist with both rage and... desire.

You couldn’t move, couldn’t escape. But your eyes—those eyes—never left her. You stared back at her, defiant, even when the drugs still clouded your senses.

"You think you can just sit there, looking all innocent, all perfect?" Jaemin’s voice turned cold as ice, sharp as the blade she gripped so tightly in her hand. "You don't even know what you're doing to me, do you?"

You swallowed, your throat dry, but the words came out anyway, your voice hoarse. "What... do you want from me?"

The silence that followed stretched between the two of you, thick with tension. Jaemin’s chest rose and fell with each jagged breath. The sick pull inside her gut grew worse with every passing second. She hated you, she wanted to destroy you, but—fuck—she wanted you too. The ache inside her chest was unbearable, and yet, she couldn’t make herself pull away from you.

Jaemin stepped closer, her knife now dangling loosely in her hand. She reached forward and roughly cupped your face, her fingers grazing your bloodied skin. The touch was too tender—soft in comparison to the hatred she felt building inside her. She could feel the heat of your skin beneath her cold fingers, and for a split second, the desire to hurt you faded. Instead, a strange, unfamiliar impulse arose—one that confused her. But she would not let it win. Not now.

She wanted to rip you apart. She wanted to destroy the perfection in front of her.

Her knife glinted in the dim light as she threw it aside, frustration bubbling up inside of her. The anger, the confusion, the madness—it all built, clawing at her mind.

It was so wrong, everything about this was so fucked up. She couldn’t keep doing this to herself, to you. But she would. She always did.

"You think you're better than me, huh?" Jaemin spat, pacing again, her hair swishing violently behind her as she moved, the pink strands catching the faint light. "Well, maybe you are. Maybe you don’t deserve to die tonight. Maybe you deserve worse."

She closed the distance between you again, her hand finding its way to your throat. She grabbed you with a grip so tight, it was as though she wanted to crush the life out of you right there, to feel your pulse stop beneath her fingertips.

"Do you feel that? Do you feel me taking control of your life, your breath?" Jaemin's voice was low, her breath a whisper against your ear. She was shaking with the effort to restrain herself, her body vibrating with the intensity of her emotions.

Her grip tightened, your pulse racing beneath her fingers. You gasped for air, but the pressure on your throat only increased, making it harder to breathe.

"Stop," you managed to croak out, the words barely audible, but desperate. "Please, just stop."

Jaemin paused, her eyes wild now, pupils blown wide with an unsettling mix of desire and fury. Her chest heaved with every breath, and for a brief moment, she considered what you said.

"Stop?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "You think I should stop? After everything? After what you've done to me? You think you deserve to breathe?"

She leaned in closer, her lips brushing against your ear as she spoke again, her voice dangerously soft. "I could kill you right now. I could slit your throat, watch you bleed out and choke on your own blood, and I wouldn't feel a goddamn thing."

Your breath came in sharp gasps, the blood on your face and neck making your skin feel colder, your body feeling weaker. The pain in your throat intensified, but you held her gaze, refusing to look away. You knew she was toying with you.

"Then do it," you whispered, your voice trembling, but determined. "Do it, and stop pretending this is some game. You don’t want to kill me, Jaemin. Not really."

Jaemin froze, her fingers twitching as she held her grip tighter, squeezing harder in response to your challenge. Her eyes narrowed as she looked down at you, seeing through your defiance. Your words—they struck something deep inside her. Something she didn't want to face, something she couldn’t bear to look at.

"Fuck," Jaemin breathed, pulling back as if burned by the touch, as though your defiance had scorched her very soul. Her hand trembled, her grip slipping. The sudden shift in her emotions was so violent that it left her reeling.

She looked at you, eyes filled with madness, with confusion, with longing. She wanted to hurt you, but she couldn’t.

Her voice cracked as she pulled her hand away from your throat. "Why do you make me feel like this? Why the fuck am I even thinking about keeping you alive?"

You didn’t answer. You just stared at her, your breath shallow but your eyes locked onto hers, refusing to look away. You knew what this was. You knew she was breaking, and you weren’t sure whether to be afraid or relieved.

Her hands were shaking, trembling, almost unable to hold her mask in place. She reached up, the motion erratic, almost violent. But she couldn’t put it back on. Not yet. She needed to feel this.

"Do you get it now?" Jaemin's voice was soft, dangerous. "You’re not just some pretty face to kill. You’re my fucking problem." She laughed, but it was hollow, broken. "And I hate you for it."

But she didn’t kill you.

Not yet.

But her grip on your life—on your breath—was slipping. The game was no longer in her hands. The desire, the rage, the love, all tangled together, leaving Jaemin to question: What would she do with you now?

Would she destroy you? Or would she keep you, twisted and helpless, like the problem you had become in her mind?

It was no longer clear.

[ark-inkweaving]

OC Kiss Week '25 - Day 6

Forbidden

WIP ⛧ In Destiny We Trust (Not)

Trigger Warnings ⛧ Dissociation, Murder (mentioned), Near Death Experiences (?), Panic Attack

Rating ⛧ Teen & Up

Zeno will never understand how the De la Rosa-Marchesi are so… comfortable with his presence. How their surprise at finding him out of their door slowly still gives way to warm smiles and gentle welcomes. How they look at his shaking frame and clenched fists and still pull him into their home. How they know and they don’t care that they’re supposed to hate him.

He can’t find it in himself to care either. Not when Ike’s dad ruffles his hair whenever he walks by and his mum never fails to pull him onto the couch with a soft hug. Not when Misa and Sefi run over each other to try and show off their school projects to him and Arilai presses card games into his hands. Not when nobody ever cares for those moments when he can’t push words past his mouth, when scalding anger presses against his chest, barely restrained.

Not when Ike holds him oh so gently. Not like he’s scared of Zeno, the way mother does, or like Zeno is fragile, the way his father does. No. Ike holds him like he’s worthy of affection. Like he wants to.

On most days it hardly matters. Zeno can tamp down the spark of longing that threatens to rise.

Today, with his grandfather’s voice still ringing in his ears and Elia’s sharp doubts haunting him, it makes him want to curl up against his best friend and stop existing. At least then his hands wouldn’t shake. Ike’s siblings wouldn’t be bringing toys and plushies to cheer him up when he can’t even tell them they don’t have to. His parents wouldn’t be sharing concerned looks from the kitchen when they think he won’t notice.

He notices. He should stop them. They’ve already put on hot chocolate, just because it’s late and cold and he just came from outside. He should just tell them that it’s okay, that he’s fine. He… can’t make himself do it. Can’t bring the words past his lips. The house itself is kind to its core, even the spirits that inhabit it are gentle. And Zeno is a selfish selfish person.

They’re too good to him and his rotting soul. He knows this in the way Ike’s mum presses a mug into his hands and Ike’s dad shoos the other kids to their rooms with soft words. He knows this in the way Ike holds him against his side and runs a hand through his too long hair. He knows this in the way they just… exist with him while they wait for Zeno to start feeling his body again. For the warmth of the hot chocolate to seep into his fingers and the sounds to stick out through the fog in his head.

Zeno lists to the side, laying fully on Ike’s shoulder. Ike whose wrist is still bandaged from earlier. Ike who had been talking down the angry spirit when the others had arrived. Ike who had been slammed into a balcony railing before running from Zeno’s team. Ike who had nearly been hit by Ste’s attack. Ike who would have–

Zeno breathes in sharply and clutches at the mug in his hands. His fingers burn. He twists his head and buries it in Ike’s neck. He wishes he could hear Ike’s heartbeat from here. The breaths on the side of his neck though are… enough.

“He wants me to kill you,” he finds himself whispering. Ike stiffens beside him, but his hands don’t stop running through Zeno’s hair.

Someone sits down beside him on the couch and taps his mug. He takes a sip on autopilot. It’s sweet, and rich. Zeno’s eyes burn. He glances to the side and accidentally meets the brown and golden gaze of Ike’s mum. A frown tugs at her mouth, but it doesn’t stop her from laying a hand on his cheek. “Who said that, darling?”

“Grandpa.” Zeno’s voice shakes. His arms do too. “He’s– He… You know. And he’s mad that I let you run with the spirit.”

“You couldn’t have stopped her. She was too angry. You would have just gotten hurt,” Ike’s dad says, sitting down on the armrest next to Ike. He has an arm on his son, like he too is reassuring himself that Ike is okay. and alive, and fine.

Zeno takes another sip of the chocolate at the prompting from Ike’s mum, trying to stop his throat from closing up again. “I know that but I– They don’t– We’re not meant to… let spirits go. Or let you go.” He chokes a sob, not quite as successful as he wants to. “Ad now if I don’t, I’m compromised. And if I’m compromised, I’m a liability. And they don’t– We don’t– do liabilities.”

“They’d kick you out of your own home?” Ike asks, a deep furrow in his brow. His hands are warm on Zeno’s sides. A gentle steady comfort.

Zeno lays down the mug on the coffee table before his trembling hands can make it fall. He shakes his head. His voice does too. “We don’t… leave… threads hanging.”

Ike’s hold on him grows tighter, and his dad sucks in a sharp breath. His mom’s eyes are wide, an icy glint creeping into them. None of them say anything though. In fact, none of them even move. And then, Ike’s mum reaches out again. Zeno flinches, but she does nothing more than lay another hand on his cheek. He pushes himself further into Ike’s side. “Why aren’t you angry?”

“We are angry. We’re pretty fucking pissed,” Ike’s dad says, standing up sharply from his perch on the armrest.

Zeno flinches and shuts his eyes, ready for… he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what he’s ready for. He doesn’t know if he’s ready for anything. But the hands on his cheeks recede, and instead there is one behind his head pulling him forward, into a strong chest that smells of incense and leather. “We’re not angry at you though.”

Zeno stills for a second. His shoulders start to shake, and he can’t stop them no matter how he wants them to. Behind him Ike shifts, still not letting him go for a second. “Ma, can we set up the cot in my room?”

“You don’t have to,” Zeno says before Ike’s mum can answer, though his words cone through wet and choked up.

A hand rubs lightly up and down his back, almost cradling him. “We want to,” comes the voice of Ike’s mum. “Stay. At the very least for tonight.”

“I don’t want to impose.”

“Goddamnit, Ze, you’re not imposing, you’re staying safe,” Ike not-quite-yells, yanking him back into his arms. His dad starts to scold him, but Zeno doesn’t hear it. Ike is shaking just as much as him, and Zeno’s ear is right on top of Ike’s heart, beating a loud unsteady rhythm. Ike’s lips are pressed right above his brow.

It means nothing. Zeno wishes it meant something, but here and now, so terrified that he’s scared even Ike, it means nothing. And God, he’s shaking so badly. He wants to do nothing more than stay here, in Ike’s tight and gentle hold, and hide. Let someone else do the saving and protecting.

He’s so selfish. “I’ll stay,” he whispers, so low and muffled by Ike’s shoulder that he thinks it’s a miracle Ike’s dad catches that.

Even so, the sofa shifts as Ike’s mum gets up, and a warm hand cards through his hair. “You’re a good kid,” she says, before pressing a kiss to the crown of his head. Zeno doesn’t cry. The damp spot on Ike’s hoodie stays a secret between them.

[v1nuswrites]

Chapter One: The Dare ...

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Summary: https://www.tumblr.com/v1nuswrites/749849029310021632/all-my-unconditional-love-carina-x?source=share

Please read the summary and warnings in the linked post before continuing on with the fic! ^^

Chris Sturniolo x female! OC

Chapters: Two

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"Once you’ve felt the power of unconditional love, you begin to realise that nothing else can compare. It’s a love that transcends past and self, exceeding grudges, word and insecurities. Unconditional love will always ultimately overpower all, no matter how much you may not desire it to."

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One thing that’s always stayed constant in Carina’s life? Her very much reciprocated hatred for Chris Sturniolo. No one really understood why, but they had had it out for each other since they first met – when they were six.

Ever since they had met, Chris had made fun of Carina, particularly her auburn hair. He was always tugging it, always talking about what an ugly colour it was. It had been her biggest insecurity ever since, and she never forgave him for it. Ever since then they had hated each other. It was no secret, and to their friends it was as natural as breathing. Chris and Carina hated each other, and that was just a fact of life.

Carina had always loved art. All kinds of art, whether that be painting, sketching, even writing. It was the only way she could express herself and let go of her admittedly irritable and abrasive personality.

Although it pained Carina to say that they had anything in common, Chris’ personality was similar in that way. Maybe that’s why they never got along. Hatred does tend to stick, after all.

The thing is, when Carina was six, she befriended Matt and Nick two of the triplets Chris of course had to be part of, so no matter how much they hated each other, they’d done everything together. With other people of course, but he was still always there.

God she wished Nick and Matt had been born twins so they could have been saved from sharing the womb with that idiot. Her friendship with two of the brothers made it more than awkward at times, and Carina and Chris were often yelled at by both of them to stop arguing.

When they started high school, rumours spread quickly, everyone wondering if they were 'secretly crushing on each other'. Chris was quick to put an end to that.

The sound of scraping on canvas broke Carina’s track of thought.

The idea of Chris irked Carina so much her paintbrush had scraped across the canvas she was currently painting, ruining the bristles of the paintbrush and the painting in one foul swoop. Gritting her teeth and silently blaming Chris for the mishap, Carina washed her supplies and tried her best to fix the brush, not bothering with the painting. She could worry about that later. Senior year was about to start and she was having their group over to celebrate; this of course included Nick, Matt, unfortunately Chris, and their two other friends Maya and Luca, who they had all collectively known since middle school. As she left her studio within the house, she made sure to lock it. No one had ever been in there, and no one ever would.

As she finished setting the snacks down in the living room, the doorbell rang. “Its for you Carina!” A deep voice, which she distantly recognised as her stepfather, called out. Her stepfather, Joseph, was a genuinely great guy. Carina and her mother had known him for a long time before they finally got married, and Carina was so happy for her mom, even if it meant she sometimes wondered how her father could be forgotten so easily after his death. She knew it had been years ago, but she couldn’t help but feel as though she were backstabbing him every time she treated Joseph like a father. Ignoring this though, everything was amazing, her mother was finally truly happy.

Well, everything was great … apart from her stepbrother, Soren. Nothing was wrong with Soren himself, it was more Carina’s past feelings for him. Yes, it was Carina that was the problem. Not Soren. They had known each other for years, before her mother and Joseph had began to date. They had been together all the time as kids and they always had the best time together. It was no wonder Carina had liked him since she was just a little girl, but when she discovered her mother and Joseph were starting to date, she knew her feelings had to end. It was easy enough and eventually, she got over it. However, that didn't erase her confession to Soren. She wished she had known about their parents, but she was told the day after, permanently ruining her and Sorens friendship. Even with it clear those feelings were long gone and buried, Soren just couldn’t seem to look at her the same as he used to.

“You’re just in time!” Carina smiled, ignoring her previous thoughts as she opened the door allowing the bright sound of laughter and the salty scent of the beach just a few meters from her house overwhelm her senses. “Of course” Matt laughed as he walked in already making himself comfortable, looking as though he lived in the house, which he practically did.

Maya bounded in just after him with a bright smile on her face, hugging Carina tightly. “I missed you” She practically wailed. “We saw each other two days ago!” Carina laughed, hugging Maya back even tighter. “Exactly!” She replied as she moved, allowing Luca and Nick to walk In. Her and Nick hugged, Nick complimenting her outfit and Carina reciprocating.

Luca and Carina smiled at each other with smiles and a small hi considering Luca’s highly introverted personality. As he and Nick walked further into her house, Carina couldn’t help but notice how close the two had gotten over the summer holidays.

She already knew who the last presence at the door was, and it took all of her willpower to not shut the door right in his face. “Chris” She gritted her teeth as she greeted him, trying her best to keep all hostility out of her voice. Chris only made a disgusted face as he walked into the house. “I’m doing great, thanks so much for asking!” Carina said sarcastically. “What a shame” Chris replied, smirking as he walked into her house. Carina could feel her eye twitch as she closed the front door.

As the night went on, the group started sprawling across the living room out of boredom. Maya suddenly shot up from her place on the couch. “Guys I’ve literally just had the best idea” “Oh god” Matt groaned, already knowing it was going to be the worst idea. It was clear the rest of the group agreed about his assumption as they each collectively groaned with him.

“Extreme truth or dare!” She exclaimed proudly. “That’s so fifth grade Maya … Lets do it” Nick added, always a sucker for any kinds of games that could bring harmless drama. Carina could see Maya practically vibrating in her seat.

“What makes it extreme?” Carina asked, never having played before. “Basically, once you get a dare, you can’t say no or ask to do something else, and once you get a truth, you have to answer“ Matt shivered at the idea, remembering the last time they played this and he ended up being dragged into one of Maya’s experienced dancers only lessons, in which he had no experience.

Eventually, they all sat in a circle, Carina and Chris on opposite sides for obvious reasons, and they began giving each other various truths and dares. Once it reached Chris, he just smirked, cocky as ever. The ones giving him the dare, Luca and Nick, turned to each other, whispering.

Finally, after a few of minutes of whispers and shared giggles, which Carina couldn’t help but smile at, they turned to Chris. “We dare you to fake date Carina for the first week of senior year” Chris’ face went through a million emotions within the span of seconds, finally landing on one of complete disgust. Carina, just as shocked and angry, blurted out “what?!” Even Matt’s face was etched with horror at the idea. “Come on guys! Can you imagine? It’ll be the first big drama of senior year; I’ll have so much material for the Instagram account! It’s been so slow lately” Nick sighed, referring to the Instagram account he had been the owner of ever since freshman year. Practically everyone at the school followed it. No one else knew it was Nick behind it, apart from their small group of course.

“You’re joking right? You must be insane to believe I’d ever entertain the thought of pretending to date that thing” Chris spit out. “That thing? You literally look like you’ve snuck onto earth with that ginormous forehead of yours-“ Carina started to retort, yet another argument between the two bubbling. But before it could go any further, Maya cut in.

“Sorry guys, but you knew the rules when you played this game. You have to, and its only a week don’t be so dramatic” Knowing she was right, Chris and Carina could only glare at each other. It was clear to everyone that the game had come to its end… Or had it?

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Tysm for reading! This is defo going to be more of a cringey fic, but I'm sure you can already tell just by this chapter ^^ I hope you enjoyed, thanks so much for supporting! x

[deadghosy]

FTM! OC x DEMON! READER

WARNING: MICHEAL LORE, BODY/GENDER DYSMORPHIA , SWEET FLUFF

𝐍𝐎 𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒 𝐏𝐎𝐕

MICHEAL SIGHED, he hated this month. He hated it with all his heart. Waking up to see blood on his boxers, it made him sick as he realized why he kept getting headaches lately. Every time it's that time of the month, it makes him feel as if he wasn't who he is now. "Miya Chi..." someone who he doesn't know anymore, he only knows Micheal Chi. Of course his mom was and is supportive..but he hated the feeling of looking into the mirror shirtless and seeing those light scars under his chest. He hated it. He hated the feeling of being disgusted by his own body. He hated looking at himself sometimes, sometimes his body reminds him of 'her'.

The person he was before anything else, he didn't know why. He felt so weird. Micheal looked in the cabinet of the bathroom to find no pads, with a scoff he slammed them close. God, those cramps were rising in the boy's lower body. The poor male gripped his guy as tears prick his eyes, threatening to spill as he groans softly. His menstruation cramps were always the worst, he hadn't even noticed a simple demon smelling the smell of blood from afar. [Y/N] knocked on the bathroom door worried. "Hey, you okay Mimi?" Asked the demon who stood crossing their arms, worried for the male behind the door.

"No...I need...pads." Micheal said, slightly embarrassed as he flushed the toilet. "Pads?? Need pads for what??" [Y/N] thought before nodding outside of the door and going to get Ms.Chi on the house phone. After explaining the "symptoms" to the elder lady, Ms. Chi delivered groceries through DoorDash to the house. Not even saying a word. Micheal had a robe over his body when he heard the door bell rang in the house. His mom had texted him about  the supplies that got sent to the house.

Micheal rushed out the bathroom with a flushed face, embarrassed for what the demon might see. The robe covering every inch of his body and pushing [Y/N] away from the Walmart bag. [Y/N] stood there shocked before the male entered the bathroom, a ripping noise was made as the light in the bathroom turned off. Micheal stood there without his bloodied underwear, having a new pair one with a new shirt as well that was comfortable. Micheal stood there, wearing one of [Y/N]'s shirts. It was clearly big on the male's body as it was to his thighs, the demon smiled at how cute the human looked to them.

"Aww Mimi is so cu—"

"Don't call me that."

[Y/N] froze, the pure darkness and seriousness in the voice of the male in front of them made them look shocked. "Huh...?" Micheal turned away from the demon, the cramps weren't really the best along with the moods he was feeling. "....dont call me Mimi. I need some alone time, call me when dinner is ready." Micheal says walking away from the demon who frowned. Clearly the male didn't want to be talked to, going to his room and closing it. Practically locking himself in his room.

"What's wrong with him?..."

THE DEMON CALLED MILES, [Y/N] called him because they felt like the friend of the male in the house will know what's wrong with him. Micheal would come out the room being affectionate, and then being cold. Literally the male was on the demon's lap a few minutes ago before they smelt blood again. It emitted from the embarrassed male who got up quickly and walked with his thighs pushed together tightly. Shuffling like a penguin. That made suspicion rise in the gluttonous demon.

So the demon was on the phone with their best friend.

"..listen okay? Micheal is trans, he was a female but transferred to a male. Does that make sense.." the other side was silent, miles sighed before continuing. "Okay so basically he felt like he was not in the right body. He didn't feel comfortable in his own skin I guess? But soon he found out who he wanted to be, so he became it. He felt normal and not trapped in that body. Becoming someone who he knows and is." After the explanation, [Y/N] nodded with a stern look. The demon also asked the brown haired male about what Micheal was going through as well, smelling blood always brought back memories from hell.

"He's on his period, he'll be fine on like day 3 or 4 I assume. It happens once a month, either at the beginning, middle or end. Cramps, mood swings ,and all that shit. I heard from him and other girls that cramps are the absolute fuckin worse man."

[Y/N] hummed, miles stayed quiet before asking the demon something.

"You gonna help him?"

The demon bit their lower lip, the thought of the Korean male in pain hurts their own demonic soul.

"I'll help him..I always will."

MICHEAL STAYED IN HIS ROOM, whimpering as he held a heating pad to where it hurts. [Y/N] walked in with a serious and concerned look, holding midol and some snacks. "...You're hurting baby." Micheal blushed at the pet name as he withers away from the presence  of the giant demon in his room. "Blood smells bad, have you taken a shower?" [Y/N] asked before kneeling on the bed side so he can face micheal. Micheal shook his head no, the cramps were getting to him as he cringed feeling it again. Holding the heating pad close to his lower abdomen, [Y/N] sighed holding out the midol pills and the water bottle beside the bed.

"Please..take these. It hurts me to see you in pain micheal." Micheal froze, he never heard his real name being used by the demon who always called him nicknames. Micheal was sure that the demon would've slipped up and called him "Mimi...". The red haired male looked up to see those orange glowing eyes, they screamed protectiveness and concern. The Korean male sat up a bit, cringing at feeling weak. "Here." [Y/N] places the pills on the male's mouth and held the water bottle so Micheal could drink the pills along with the water.

After the Korean male finally took his medicine, [Y/N] picked him up. Not even caring if blood gets on their arm while they walked to the bathroom to run a shower for the poor male in slight pain now. "Taking a bath might seem weird..so please try to stand up to shower mich—" "Mimi..." Micheal says interrupting the demon. "Call me Mimi damnit..." [Y/N]'s eyes widen before softening.

"Okay Mimi..."

And the rest of the day was full of care as the demon took care of their human companion.