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sun-snatcher · 4 months ago

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( all credits to @bankaizen from this phenomenal gifset ! )

✠ | LIGHT HATH NO TONGUE ; SHAY CORMAC

summ. A lethal injury blurs the line between friend & foe. pairing. Shay Cormac / Assassin!f!reader w.count. 12.7k (WHEW.) tags. no y/n , porn-with-prose , fluff & smut galore , whump, pre-established lovers-to-enemies , & enemies-to- …something? , forbidden lovers trope , religious references , catholic guilt if you squint a lil a/n. More suitable on AO3! Regardless, I hope you enjoy Shay Cormac doing the nasty by yours truly. Hugs & kisses to the lovely @amariyad for beta-reading!

Light hath no tongue, but is all eye; If it could speak as well as spy, This were the worst that it could say - That being well, I fain would stay, And that I loved my heart and honour so, That I would not from her, that had them, go.

— John Donne, “Break of Day”

“SO YOU MEAN to tell me,” Connor says, in the aftermath of a lengthy silence, “That he saved your life, and delivered you back to the Colonies himself?”

“Yes. Gave Faulkner quite the fright seeing his flag flown in the waters,” you add, finding yourself perturbed at how Connor hasn’t yet turned to face you. The Assassin has one ear tuned to you and another to the stag he’s been tracking in the snow. Only his insular, hard-set profile can be seen underneath his beaked hood as he nocks an arrow, and it makes you wonder what it is exactly he’s thinking between the knot of his brows.

Connor inhales. Draws his bow. Relea—

His usual perch creaks in uncharacteristic protest. In a flash, the stag startles, and leaps into the underbrush, vanishing beyond the thicket.

He huffs.

You never thought you’d imagine yourself saying, “Speak your mind, Connor,” to the bluntest, most forthright man alive you’ve ever had the grace of knowing (and, in a way, raising), but alas, here he is answering you with that usual impassive look that rattles you to the core. He always looked so much like his father whenever he pulls that face.

“I’m glad you are well,” he allows, truthfully, once both of you had descended the treetops. Though Achilles had done most of his training, you’d also been enough of a presence in his life to be a second mentor when you came by, and grew to be an even closer friend. “I was beginning to think the worst when you didn’t write back. Come. Let us check the snares.”

You both lead yourselves further out the forest, back towards the border of the Homestead. Connor tells you what he’s done so far while you’d been away; recruitments, marshaling intelligence with Aveline in Louisiana, and restrengthening the foundations of the Colonial Brotherhood again.

Achilles would be proud, you’d told, and after he’d gathered and skinned his game, and quietly made headway back home, finally caved.

“Shay Cormac,” Connor begins curiously. “What is he to you?”

“He’s an--”

“Idiot,” you murmur, in an undertone that buries into the Captain’s very marrows. “…You should’ve left me behind.”

Never, is the instinctive thought. Then, bitterly: Aye, I should’ve left you a long time ago— In the bloody past; as I had done with the Brotherhood.

“That so?” Shay says instead, between the battledrum of alarum in his ears. His words are surely wavering from the crippling panic, but he has to keep you conscious for as long as he can. A buck-shot in the gut is too dangerous to let you fall asleep on. “An’ why’s that?”

You still feel the warmth of his palm around your nape, holding you close and safe and secure to his chest; where you can hear the rampant thundering of his heart. He’d done this before, once upon a time, neath the tangle of sweat-soaked sheets, when you two were everything but—

“Enemies,” you shiver. The bloodloss has you feeling cold. “We’re enemies, Shay.”

And yet.

Here you are. In the arms of a Templar; the sworn enemy.

For weeks during the hunt you’d teased him on the irony; how God must’ve been playing a cruel joke on him to have to chase turncoats of his own Order. You can hardly piece together how or when this truce even came to be. Something about both of you going after Templar-turned-mercenaries, except his intent had been borne out of duty, and yours out of vengeance for a late friend.

“Aye,” he laments. “That we are, dove.” Then, chidingly, “An’ still y’took the bloody shot for me.”

Your laugh is sudden. Weak.

Wet with blood and barely a whisper, really. And if Shay hadn’t known you as intimately, then he might not have heard it at all— but he does, and so he did. “Well, I must surely be dying, then.” Your winsome smile is damningly red, and so, so tired. “I haven’t heard you call me that in…”

Ages, you mean to continue, beginning to slip from him. When we were on the same side.

Shay calls your name. It’s distant. Underwater. Vibrating from the hollow of his high-collared throat you’re tucked firmly against, and travelling like a soothing frisson into your aching bones. You’re drifting, unmoored, somewhere between a sea of blinding pain and of numbness; of the waking world and the dreaming.

“No, no, none’a that, c’mon. Y’can’t go to sleep yet, dove,” he hurries. “Eyes on me, now, aye? Attagirl.”

Had they been closed? You didn’t realise. The world’s tilted and swaying at an angle, and you can’t recall just how long you’ve been fighting to stay awake the moment Shay had whisked you away in his arms after the firefight you’d both encountered. It’d been an ambush. You’d caught the silver glint of a flintlock in the starlit night, and a blink later, you’re lying in a puddle of red where Shay should have been instead.

(Instinct. It’d been instinct to take the hit. You’d have done it ten times over, because you’re a fool like that. Somewhere in the blurry haze, you think you can hear Liam grumbling defiantly over your shoulder like he always used to do when you came to Shay’s defense.)

Y’bloody amadán, Shay had scrambled, looking the most terrified you’d ever seen him. Why’d you fuckin’ do that?!

“Why not?” you answer him now, delirious from the bloodloss. You’ve carefully been deposited onto a cot, it seems. A silhouette shifts quickly about the room. The air clots thick with the disgusting tang of metal and the sharp salt-winds of the sea. It makes you want to heave.

“Because if y’do, then I won’t see those pretty eyes’a yours, dove,” Shay replies, smart as ever. “Come now, keep talkin’ t’me, aye? Y’know I like hearing your beautiful voice.”

Liar, you hiss. At least, you think you do. Every sense in your body is guttering wildly between nothingness and white-hot pain. You want to tell him everything hurts. That your stomach feels flayed and you want the pain to stop. You want to tell him that you’re fucking terrified; that you don’t want to die. You want to tell him everything. Anything. I missed you. I hate you. I’m sorry. I love— I don’t love you. Why did it have to be this way? Why did you go? Please, don’t go. Not again.

“Thought y’wanted me to leave y’behind, dove?” comes his answer. Had you spoken aloud? There’s a thread of dry amusement in the low timbre of his words. You recognise the raw fear in them, regardless. It’s crept to the hazel-brown of his eyes.

“Hey, look at me. Doctor’s gonna keep your body an’ soul together, aye?” He must have pulled a chair to your side sometime earlier, wherever it is you are now, because he’s come to meet your half-lidded gaze in a doting hush. “S’alright, m’not goin’ anywhere. Y’have my word. Just stay awake, dove. Stay with me.”

Stay with me. You try to recall why that sounds so familiar.

“Hey, hey. Eyes open,” he reminds you, voice faint as the Doctor makes quick work with removing every musket ball embedded in your flesh. The shot had been poor; a desperate attempt at a final, killing blow. It’d fortunately only clipped through your side as you shoved Shay from the crossfire.

When you writhe at the surgical digging, let out a whine that’s caught between a pitiful cry and a howl— “I know, I know,” Shay breathes, all teeth and grit and grief as he muscles you back down. He couldn’t flat out say, you’re gonna be alright, you’ll pull through, because he couldn’t lie to save his own life— much less yours.

It’s inadequate, but it’s all he can offer you as he cradles your face and pets your hair, “Lord above, it should’a been me. I’m sorry, dove. I’m so sorry.”

Your eyes go dazed and faraway as your head lulls. You think you hear the Doctor saying something about your strength failing, beneath the gossamer cloud of the void. “Shay?”

“M’right here, dove.”

I’m glad it wasn’t you.

His hands are trembling from adrenaline. When had he removed his gloves? You suppose it doesn’t matter. You like it when he touches you. You like the feel of him swiping at the strands across your forehead, of him thumbing away the tear running down your cheek. There’s something about seeing the tender side of him again that makes you feel safe, underneath all the split knuckles and the rough around his edges. It reminds you of—

“—Home.” You choke back your tears, but they well anyway when you abruptly plead, blindly reaching for him between the marbling spots in your vision, “I want— I want to go home.”

Something splinters in Shay’s heart. You’re reduced to a dizzy, disoriented mess of homesickness, mumbled between sharp, staccato breaths: Nostalgia for the docks. Back in New York. Days of youth, with Liam. When the three of you were young and dumb and free, and neither the Brotherhood nor the Order had stood between you all. When war and bloodshed and being torn asunder sounded like the makings of a bad dream.

“Aye, love, we’ll go. We’ll go, then,” he soothes. There’s a burn licking up the back of his eyes as your grip in his hands begin to loosen. His voice rasps like stone. Liam is long gone. Home is gone. Now it seems you might be taken from him, too. Surely this lie, great as it is, wouldn’t count against him; not when it’s meant to give you a measure of peace?

“We’ll take the Morrigan, an’ we’ll set sail. Might even let you steer ‘er yourself, how about that? We’ll spot a whale or two. Y’ever seen one’a those? You just— Just stay with me, aye? Stay with me, love, please. Just a little longer.”

Stay with me, he’d said, that time you’d first crossed paths with him following his apparent death. You remember now. It’d been like meeting a phantom. Please. We can save the world together.

“I can’t, Shay,” you reply, then; Now. “I can’t.”

The world dips into dark.

Shay doesn’t pray, but it’s a very close thing.

He isn’t exactly the type. He thinks he ought to, though, for someone as warforged and broken as him. But repentance had been more his Ma’s thing, as far as he remembers being told of her Catholicism. The gold cross he inherited is just that. Memorabilia. A vestigial haunt of the past. A slow, tightening noose around his neck—

A lot like you.

“If she breaks the fever, she may just make it,” the Doctor had said. “You’re lucky you got her down to me quick enough.”

I make my own luck, comes the lightning reflex. But he catches himself. Glances at you in the cot. Your pulse is as delicate as a butterfly’s wing, chest rising and falling so minutely he had to keep making sure you’re still breathing to calm himself.

You’ve been balancing the tightrope for days; Threading the needle. This is far from lucky.

He shifts his collar, unclasps the cross from his neck, and closes it gently into your palm. It isn’t him who needs a miracle, after all, and repentance does not fit the likes of Shay Cormac.

Revenge does.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so; For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

— John Donne, “Death Be Not Proud”

You wake, and sleep, and wake, and sleep.

Between it all, Shay’s voice croons like an interlude. Shifting in the peripherals of your diaphanous, muslin-thin haze somewhat like an angel, incandescent with righteous fury smouldering in his eyes. He promises home. He promises justice. He promises divine retribution. Fallen, you correct yourself. A fallen angel.

You glean the Morrigan’s been anchored at Port La Joye for nearly a week, after you’re able to reconcile your left from right and your dreams from reality.

The crew are good, honest, working men. Fathers who have daughters; brothers who’ve sisters; sons of mothers. Shay runs a tight ship, but he’s made sure to not involve and tie them into Templar-Brotherhood shadow business, you gather, because they rejoice once they see you back on your feet (“Glad to see ye right as rain, lass! So will the Cap’n. Never seen his face lookin’ white as a ghost before.” “More like Hell on earth! Ach, I pity th’ poor souls he’s after, truly.”), and more than willingly help you with filling in the blanks of the timeline from when you’d been shot back in Halifax and untethered from existence.

Then it takes another 3 days before the Captain returns to his ship—

And only a mere second to cross the distance between you two once he sees you, idle in his quarters.

“You’re awake,” Shay breathes, as if he’d just breached a terrible tidal wave; as if seeing you is like daybreak after a seastorm. “You’re—”

“Please tell me that’s not your blood, Cormac.”

He blinks. Takes in the dread reflected in your eyes. Right. He’d hunted down the scents of the remaining Templar turncoats that’d slipped from him back in Yarmouth and, like a starving hound to fresh meat, had slaughtered them as a farmer would a voluntary culling. “Aye,” he agrees, grimly. “None’a it’s mine.”

His face is practically drenched with dark splatters, and his usual calm temperament has gone withdrawn. In the dim, swinging lantern light, he looks like the slow-crawl beginning of a ghost story. “I take it they’ve all been… handled.”

Shay doesn’t skip the bitterness in your tone. “I would’ve saved y’one,” he replies, “For y’to avenge your friend yourself. But it’s not like y’were in any condition.”

A seemingly endless moment passes.

“Thank you, Shay.”

He winces.

“Don’t— thank me, for murder.” Shay knows enough about himself to still find the act of killing repulsive, however much he had an affinity for it, or so Haytham constantly liked to claim. (He hasn’t yet managed to shake out the way the turncoats begged and bayed for mercy; hasn’t yet silenced Adéwalé’s final words those years ago—)

“I mean for saving me,” you correct, pointedly. “I’m not the type to appreciate people killing in my name.”

Shay drops his shoulders at that. Hadn’t realised just how tense he’d been. The long weeks of voyage, fretting over you, and the blind pursuit for reve— justice— suddenly seemed to weigh on him. There are old aches he’s been ignoring that sting now, like angry, insistent contusions.

“I’ve set course back to New York,” he says, stiffly, unsure how else to inhabit the silence. “With the winds an’ a little bit’a luck, we’ll be there before winter.”

A beat.

You finally look at him. Truly look at him. Beyond the blood stains and the prickly defensive walls he’s put up since you’d first dealt the truce with him. Beyond the donned Templar uniform and the Captainship.

He’d been afraid, you realise. Has been. You try to imagine what it might’ve been like from his perspective; that it must have been terrifying to have been in his shoes, watching the last of his childhood friendships die out (and for him, no less); watching a piece of his heart d—

Shay is still. Glacially so.

There’s that post-adrenaline jitter in his eyes that you’re familiar with yourself; caught somewhere between fight-flight-freeze. Paralysed in survival mode. The ugly type that lingers after gruesome violence, and you’re left scorched with little else of your humanity but the animalistic remnants of raw, buzzing energy that leads you spiraling downwind if you don’t steady yourself quick enough.

(Sometimes, it’s so easy to forget Shay Cormac is just a man doing what he believes is right.)

“Christ,” you sigh, before reaching out to grab his lapels. You tug him to you, ignore the confusion in his eyes as you set him on his bed with a stubborn Sit down, Cormac, and draw a chair (the very same, you later note, that he’d sat in to watch over you through the restless nights when you’d been recovering) beside him.

“A little bit of luck?” you parrot, unimpressed. You toe the pail of fresh water prepared by the bedside closer to your feet, and reach in to wring the frayed cloth damp. “Don’t you make your own luck, Cormac?”

“You—” He elects to protest, but when your hand sets on his cheek demandingly, and you begin to clean away the blood splatters and cruor on his face, he finds the words fail to take shape.

Shay should stop this. It’s the right thing to do. Neither of you owe each other anything now. He had saved your life as you did his; the scales are balanced. Scores even. Debts repaid. With this distance, this proximity— knees bumping against knees, face inches apart— all it would take to cut down another crucial pillar of the Brotherhood is a swift blade to the jugular.

He could be done with it. He could be done with you. He—

—wants to kiss your palm.

When had been the last time the both of you had trusted each other enough to be this vulnerable? Unarmed. Armours off. Skin against skin. Nothing but the hope, the blind faith, that the other wouldn’t strike at the open opportunity?

Shay finds himself leaning into your touch near imperceptibly, instead.

You press your palm to his jaw, thumb at the scar below his eye. His gloved hand circles your wrist, relishing in the pulse, the warmth—

“You’re alive,” he finally manages. Chants it in his head, practically, like Church prayer and hymn, along with the rest of his rioting thoughts that’s unspooling like yarn: of doldrums, how still the sea gets, how his Da used to tell him the calm is the most dangerous kind of waters to sail. He thinks of how still you had been, boneless in his arms and slack on the cot with nothing but blood on your face and stomach and hands.

Then he thinks of his Ma, too; (She must’ve been like that after he’d been born. Motionless. Still.) And is reminded of the gospel his Aunt once read to him on a lown Sunday: of the tale of Lazarus, who’d been raised from the dead with nothing but words. Shay thinks of you here, now, resurrected; has half the mind to properly worship God again like you’d been a miracle come to life.

But calling it a miracle would’ve been generous. You fought to live.

“I must sound crazy,” Shay swallows, awkwardly.

Your eyes dart between the bob of his Adam’s apple and the seam of his lips so quickly he could’ve been imagining it.

“No, not really.” You tear your gaze away, soak and wring the cloth from the tinges of dull crimson. “I know a little bit of what it’s like to see a ghost too, remember?”

1756. When Shay had all but abandoned the Brotherhood, and you’d gasped out a plea while you tried to intervene Chevalier from firing right at him— and then, reappearing the year afterwards like an apparition, except this time you had called out for him in a whisper of nervous recognition. You’re alive.

Shay Cormac is your ghost just as much as you’re his.

You move to take his hand, carefully remove his gloves to clean the split knuckles, the old scabs. The dried blood sitting in the cracks and crevices of his palms, his fingernails. (Pontius Pilate, Shay shudders. Are you absolving him, he wonders? Or had he lost your forgiveness the day he decided to turn his back to the Brotherhood?)

“Y’don’t have to do this,” he rasps, and very nearly tags dove at the end of it. “Not for me.”

“You’re right,” you hum. “I don’t.”

You don’t stop. Shay just sits and stares at you. The lantern illuminates above you like a proverbial halo, and Shay takes the opportunity to admire; to carve into memory every divot and slope of your face lest he never gets the chance again.

“You’re—”

“Don’t,” you say, teeth set at the familiar tone.

—Beautiful, he doesn’t get to say. Angelic. “Alive.”

“Yes,” you patiently say. “I am.”

He’s bruised and scratched and sweating from the exertion of his manhunt, now looking at you in that deep, soulful way you’ve always known him for— but his expression, you notice, is open and unbearably, unrepentantly soft.

“Before I forget.” The cloth is returned into the bucket, and you lean back to your seat to reach your collar. His Ma’s gold cross finds its way back to him.

“Y’needed it more than I,” he says.

You huff. It’s a far cry of your trademark smile. Shay hangs onto the rare sight of it regardless. “Well, not anymore. Besides, isn’t it the faithless who need it most?”

Shay isn’t quite sure how to answer.

But he settles on just saying “Aye,” because declaring It’s you who makes me believe in God would’ve been too candid.

Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run, And do run still, though still I do deplore? When thou hast done, thou hast not done, For I have more.

�� John Donne “A Hymn to God the Father”

“--old friend of mine.”

“He wanted to kill the old man.”

“No,” you scold, in the most motherly way you can summon. “Haytham wanted to kill Achilles. It was Shay who convinced him otherwise.”

“It changes nothing. He is still a Templar, and a traitor.”

You wince at that. Connor notices. “Yes, as so everyone often likes to remind me. But Shay Cormac was my friend first. We grew up together in New York.”

Now that. That he hadn’t known. He hadn’t gathered your relationship with the Captain may have predated even your allegiance with the Brotherhood.

Unbidden, Connor couldn’t help but think of Kanen’tó:kon. Of what and how much he would give to go back to simpler times. “I understand,” he says, at last.

“Yes. It’s hard not to care,” you admit, as the Homestead came into view. Your hand settles on your stomach, where the healing pockmark wound of the killshot still marrs your flesh in taut, pale scar-tissue. Connor eyes the movement. “Quit looking at me like that,” you say, put out by his scrutiny.

“Like what?”

Like Haytham; like Achilles. Like I’m a turncoat. “Like I’m pregnant,” you blurt, offended. “I was shot in the stomach, Connor. Are you touched in the head?”

“I’m not,” he retorts childishly, wrinkling his nose. (It makes you wonder if it’s a trait of one, or an elision of both his parents.) “If we cross paths with Shay Cormac again—” he begins to deflect, and oh, now he truly is sounding like the Haytham Kenway and Achilles Davenport you knew—

“I came to that realisation long before you have, Connor,” you cut, in a manner which meant for him to tread lightly. But he’s a Kenway through and through, and states, boldly: “Yet here you stand, by his mercy.”

You frown. Land softly from off a bough and into the glittering snowbank beside him. In hindsight, it isn’t unfair for Connor to question your loyalty. You hadn’t yet confessed to him you’d been the first one to act out of turn and warrant Shay’s indebtedness, after all.

“Speak plainly, Kenway.” You needn’t tell him twice. Connor is not one to skirt the edge or beat around the bush.

“I think--”

“Any closer, an’ you’ll fall overboard,” warns Shay. “Won’t save y’a next time around.”

But he figures you might not care at all, and he couldn’t blame you: Beyond the stern a lovely gam of whales have been breaching the white-capped waves, playfully trailing after the Morrigan’s wake in delightful song, where you listen, enthralled; captivated.

“I might just,” he hears you lament to yourself. “Oh, I wish I could take one home.”

There’s a small, sincere smile on your face that you’re not completely letting him see, but—

Jesus, Mary an’ all the Saints, Shay admires. You’re heaven-sent.

All of the Morrigan thinks so too. Not even a week into the voyage, the crew had taken to their new lady-guest with welcoming arms, and Shay’s never had the pleasure of witnessing his merry band of seamen trip over their own heels trying to make your sail back home as comfortable and hospitable as can be until now. You recover, and acclimate well and swiftly, so it’s no surprise they like you;

The easygoing angel-face who could not only take a joke but could also give one, who isn’t soft to fierce thunderstorms nor spoiled rotten to turn your nose up at hardtack; who offers sage advice on their womanly woes and whispers embarrassing tales of their rough-around-the-edges Captain every now and then when the sun beat too hard.

Shay allows the tongue-in-cheek jabs, ofcourse. He claims so on the pretense of boosting good morale— really, he just likes listening to your voice; especially when it meant you spoke of him in that wistful manner he hadn’t heard in years: fond, and so charged with… something.

“Childhood friends with Cap’n, eh?” Someone had mused, one sluggish, warm sunrise. “Nothin’ else beyond that, m’lady? What? Oh, come off it, Hoskins— I may not be her type, but she’d surely never give your sorry face a chance!”

“We’re—” you’d caught Shay’s wandering eye from the helm. “—friends,” you allowed, between the crew’s jostling. “Until New York, that is.”

Shay had held your gaze until you turned away.

It isn’t as if the atmosphere between you two is cold, though neither is it exactly pleasant. It’s been cordial, and amicable, and perfectly courteous, yes— but there’s something high-strung in the air even the salt-winds couldn’t cut through, and any man aboard with sense and a working pair of eyes could see it.

(“Ach, friends?!” Came a whisper that late night. It was the Morrigan’s Navigator, their most keen-eyed; it seems, even in people. “I been tellin’ yous since we left port, mates: No man comes back bleedin’ like the Devil ‘imself and suffers like the Cap’n did for their own glory. To him, she’s worth the pain, and twice more.”)

Howbeit, he’ll take what he can get, Shay supposes. An unspoken agreement seemed to have solidified that the usual back-and-forth arguing from when you’d both first started the truce would be pointless now, and most of all useless on your trip back. That means conversations are brief and civil, but it’s far better than animosity or being completely ignored.

“Fancy havin’ a go of the Morrigan?” Shay offers out of the blue, amid an uneventful afternoon. It’s more a measured, wary gesture of banter. Then, before you can decline; “C’mere,” he reaches for your hand, guides you to stand between him and the steer. “Go on, she doesn’t bite.”

“Shay, this is a terrible idea.”

“Y’survived a gunshot, lass,” he snorts as he settles you at the helm. “You’ll be alright. I’m here.”

(A flash of memory. Hands caressing your cheek. M’right here, dove.)

It takes little to notice his nebulous presence step up close behind you. “Heavier than it looks, aye?” Shay hums, gently ghosting the edge of your wrists. The heat of him stirs something deep in your chest. “But be easy, still. She isn’t a horse y’can yank. Go with the currents; there shouldn’t be too much give.”

A tentative, studious moment passes. When he’s satisfied—

“Attagirl.”

—he pulls away. Shifts to lean casually against the guardrail facing you. All that fills the sea air now is the creak of the Morrigan, the flap of canvas, and the echo of his saccharine praise in your ears, drowned out by the droll of the crew singing Leave Her Johnny.

You try not to feel the way his eyes unabashedly linger on your face.

“I always wondered how you ever knew which direction you’re going. It’s just a horizon to me.”

He cocks his head to the sun. “Rises east to west. See where it’s setting? That means west is dead ahead. Y’keep the sun just off your left shoulder— or portside— an’ you’ll stay on course.”

“And when night falls?”

“Compass. Constellations guide our way too. I’d show y’tonight, but,” he turns over his shoulder, where a smatter of clouds in the distance have begun to look like trouble. “Storm might be brewin’.”

You’ve seen the celestial maps that Faulker had gifted Connor once upon a time, when he’d gotten the Aquila repaired. “Polaris? The North Star.”

He raises his brows, impressed. “That’s one of ‘em, aye.”

“Aye, Captain,” you narrow.

“Oh, you’re learnin’, y’are,” he twits, unruffled. He strides over to set his tricorn on your head, and you roll your eyes when he crosses his arms with a satisfied look. “There. Don’t y’look a right gentle-woman, Captain?”

“It’s loose. Your head must be abnormally huge, Cormac.”

“I fancy that’s just ‘cause I’m smarter than you, Captain.”

You turn your nose up playfully. “Fishes live in the sea,” you begin to recite in challenge. “As men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.”

And had Shay been in a sour mood he might’ve taken the passing jab at the Order more personally— but how could he? The dusk light has broken through, painting you saffron and ethereal, limning you in saint-like radiance.

For a treacherous moment, he allows himself to imagine he isn’t harboring an Assassin of the Brotherhood; that Shay Cormac is just a Captain, and you are just his— friend? His lady? His passenger? (Whatever it is; anything but an enemy.)

“Let me guess,” he says instead. “John Donne? No? Plato, then.”

“William Shakespeare, actually,” you smile, triumphant, and it’s a sun-bright sight: warm and beautiful and soft. “Though, I must say, I’m impressed.”

“Impressed?” he exclaims, although he couldn’t hold heat to it— you’re happy, after all, and he can’t help but smile too. “An’ what’s that supposed to mean, then?”

You shrug in faux-nonchalance. “Didn’t take Shay Cormac to be such a learned poet, is all.”

“Aye? You’re the one who’s all high-society—”

“Oh? Enlighten me, please, when have I ev—?”

Your musical laugh is cut short.

You yelp.

The Morrigan had lurched, sails having caught rogue wind, and before you register it—

A hand over yours on the helm; chest firmly behind your back.

(Heart against heart.)

Shay has steadied you.

(…That lightning reflex has always been such a frustratingly attractive feat of his.)

“S’alright,” he soothes, voice going a low, fetching timbre. His words ghost above your shoulder, eagle eyes trained on the luffing sails. “Rogue wind, is all.”

Shay stays, this time. Steadfast as a plinth. Rooted behind you like a Cypress tree. His other hand tentatively slides a lick of fire from your elbow and up your forearm, until it finds its rest on yours. It’s rough, firm. As expansive as the broad of his solid chest fitting like a perfect puzzle against your spine, where he’s dipped his head just a little to accommodate the height difference as he speaks:

“Easy, now… Jus’ a few degrees.”

He’s a looming tower. A formidable force. Shay Cormac has always been able to inhabit and command an entire room with nothing but his sheer presence, and here you are—

Caged, yet again, between the space of his unyielding arms.

A pleased hum— mmh— rumbles from the hollow of his throat and travels through you. It’s dizzying. Fogs all rational thought in your mind. Makes it wander, elsewhere, to a distant time you heard him groan it when you’d touched his bare flesh—

“Attagirl,” he praises.

Something zips through your nerves.

Christ. He must be doing that deliberately, you think (or hope?), because it’d be far more eliciting otherwise. That gravel-deep undertone that seeps into your skin and makes your blood run rampant. Surely— surely, he could feel the thunderdrum of your heart beating into his own ribcage too, from how he’s sidled— pressed— stood— his weight securely against you.

“You talking to me, or your Morrigan?” you try to deflect, and you hope to God he hadn’t heard the tremble of your voice. The yen.

“You, dove. Ofcourse.”

Later, amid a friendly round of Liar’s Dice with the crew, you think (or rather, come to a conclusion) that that may have been the tipping point. In him calling you dove; that sanguine lilt in his tone, blanketed by the air of casual off-handedness: Shay hadn’t noticed at all that the petname had even slipped out his tongue— it was second nature.

Who is so safe as we? where none can do Treason to us, except one of us two.

- John Donne, "The Anniversary"

The thunderstorm had passed without too-destructing an effect. The crew escapes waterlogged, but it’s hardly the worst; they’ve faced fiercer weathers and conditions than a bad lashing. You’d gone out of your way yourself, much to Shay’s disproval, disappearing below deck to help with the wounded and with fastening any loose cargo from tipping over. In the aftermath, the crew had managed to cajole their Captain into allowing them reprieve in rum stored from the hold.

“Go on, lass, sing a song for us!” someone suggests to you, when the last of the pour had passed, and the sky cleared into a cloudy, starlit night. There’s a chorus of excited agreement: “A lullaby, perhaps?” ; “Bet you’ve a lovely voice, m’lady!” ; “Aye! Don’t shirk repayment, miss.”

“Boys,” Shay says, by way of warning.

They shrink quickly.

And you couldn’t stop but colour warmly at that; the hair-trigger instinct of his when it comes to— well, you. He hadn’t said a word until now. Shay meets your gaze then; knows you aren’t the performative type, not even when you were children.

But you let him see your quiet smile. It’s sincere.

“I suppose I do owe you good folks a song or two for your labours,” you say, peaceably, and make way to the mainmast to bow theatrically as they rejoice. “And to the Captain, for doing good on his promises to me throughout the voyage so far, despite my… being trouble.”

Shay laughs. It’s a small sound of assent as he nods his head to you from where he’s leant starboard.

You’re not in your usual mufti of assassin robes in favor of the wet weather: you’d forsook your leather boots after they’d overflowed with rain, and you’d turned to layering the cotton raiments of a usual sailors outfit so you wouldn’t be weighed down too heavily as you busied in the belly of the Morrigan.

Regardless, the crew take to you as they always do, hanging onto every word you sing like dazzled sailors to a siren song— rapt with attention as they clap and stamp and cheer along to your coltish, barefeet song and dance: To Téir abhaile ‘riú, to The Jolly Beggars, to Spanish Ladies, and a number of other unheard shanties or cantatas you’ve picked up from your worldly travels.

Then, when you’d grown tired—

“Very well, then,” you yield, “But the Captain shall pick the last song. So, what shall it be; happy or sad?”

A beat.

“Sad,” Shay decides.

You hum. “Alright. But I’ll warn you; it’ll break your heart.”

And perhaps it’s the alcohol rendering him loose-lipped— but Shay had huffed out a weak laugh, and with a defeated shake of his head, muttered: “Already broken.”

You don’t know what to say. You never have— not when faced with Shay and his frustrating habit to wear nothing but naked truth upon that weary, scarred face of his.

You don’t know what to say; so you stand on the crate leant against the spar instead, and begin the slow croon of The Parting Glass as a drizzle begins to fall. A lament; a bid farewell to sailors and friends and comrades and enemies.

Shay watches you throughout it all. Basks in you, practically. Of too-old times and bygones and things he can’t take back.

God must be cruel, he reflects, To punish me with a woman so beautiful upon my ship, an’ have her want nothing to do with me.

“Should be 2 days before we port to New York, with the winds carryin’ us,” he informs you, after applauding your stellar performance. He had moved towards the eddying crowd sometime during your song. “Get some rest, aye?”

He offers a hand to help you down your stand.

(Ever the gentleman.)

It’s an excuse to touch you; And a greedy part of him wants to hold on forever— but he watches you go in the end. It feels like wherever you touch him glows.

(Shay can’t help but flex and unflex his hand.)

In Gist’s absence, his Quartermaster claps him on the back instead. “Looks to me another lashin’ll be comin’ down. Lay your head to rest, Cap’n, why don’t you? We got it from ‘ere,” he says, “An’ spare yourself the grief, brother. Go talk to her.”

“There’s nothin’ to talk about,” Shay brushes off.

“Well then, don’t talk.”

“What?”

“Y’heard me.”

“Shut your gob,” Shay says flatly, in the way he’s learned from Haytham how not to allow anyone to get a rise out of him. But he finds himself trailing after you, anyway.

“Hello, Captain,” you greet, when he’d stepped into his cabin he’d given up to you for privacy. “Or shall I say broken-hearted man?”

“I prefer Shay,” he says, only barely managing to reign in: When it comes to you.

You hum. Run your fingers through your half-damp hair to untangle the snarls. Shay idles by the Mercator globe, lit under sull moonlight shining through the sea-weathered bay windows. For all his repertoire of being a ruthless hunter, and for all the way he seems to be able to cut a mean, menacing figure under that damning scar of his and his Captain’s gear—

He looks out of place in his own cabin. Perhaps because you haven’t exactly seen him inside of it since he’d lent it to you, but even then, he looks almost slightly… out of place. The quarters is a charming, comfortable nook under the helm; sparse yet graciously spacious in a way all Sloop-of-Wars tended to be. Pieces of Shay catch and cling in its corners:

Anthologies, novels and an old hardback bible collecting dust on a bookshelf by the red chaise; A navigation desk with tools and notes in his handwritten-scrawl of bearings, strewn over fading nautical charts— all carefully arranged in a way it didn’t scatter over to the simple bed by its side.

(Not that it matters, you’d thought, the first time he let you in here. The bed had kept its firmness because it’s hardly been slept on. Shay must have preferred the canvas hammock he’d strung up in the other corner of the room, the true seaman he is.)

All this to say: Sleeping in here alone throughout your voyage these countless nights, with nothing but the lap of ocean waves and the droll of the Morrigan— it feels alot like a glimpse into the barebones of Shay Cormac’s soul.

A manifestation of his sea-pelagic loneliness.

“Hope you’re not looking for a private song,” you say, carefully, unravelling the long sleeves of your sailor’s shirt-turned-chemise. The size is comically large on you, but it’s comfortable.

Shay starts. Blinks. He hadn’t calculated trailing in after you would’ve immediately been taken as a come-on, but he wasn’t about to risk stumbling through an awful explanation over himself. “I… wanted to talk.”

“Well,” you uncross your hands, lean back at his desk. “I owe you as much.”

“Y’don’t owe me anything,” he replies, quickly. It’s honest. “We evened the scales back in Halifax. I…”

“Yes?” you say, after the silence had stretched a moment.

“I think I just wanted to see you,” Shay admits, on an exhale. “Before y’go.”

Go. How final it sounds, in spite of the 2 days that remain. “Funny,” you say, tracing the gridlines of a discarded map to distract yourself from just how… raw this conversation is; where it seems to be heading. “I imagined you had your fill of me long before I even ended up— broken on your ship.”

“We were allies, once,” Shay says dutifully, as measured as he could. He hadn’t said friends, nor lovers, but you find, for some reason, that it stings more that way.

“Once,” you repeat, keenly, blinking long enough to picture the Homestead in its prime: of Liam, Hope, Kesegowaase, Chevalier, Achilles, Adéwalé. “And then again, at Halifax, in a way.” He watches you hesitate before continuing. “What does that make us now?”

You don’t ask Or in two days? Because you don’t think you’re ready to hear an answer for that yet. (Shay is glad you hadn’t. He wouldn’t have been ready either.)

“A Captain, an’ a passenger,” he says, pragmatically. But there’s nothing rational about the rattle in his bones from the sight of the cotton blouse you still haven’t had the chance to change out of, damp still from the rain, and sticking to your dimly-lit silhouette at the seams.

He tramples the thought. It’s natural to confuse nerves for— yen. “And to you?” he asks.

“A broken woman,” you begin, light and humorous when you lift your shirt to show the bandages around your abdomen. He wonders, privately, if you’d caught him staring earlier. “On the ship that belongs to a broken-hearted man, apparently.”

“We were both broken a long time ago,” Shay says, resolute.

“Is that what you think?” you ask, something genuinely surprised and pensive in your eyes. “Is that why we… never actually happened?”

Something in his chest lurches.

(Happened, by way of meaning: Something that could’ve been serious; could’ve been true. Something that went beyond clandestine trysts and touchy dalliances under everyone’s nose in the Brotherhood before—)

“I…” Shay inhales. It’s strained. “…How much have y’had to drink, dove?

Dove. You purse your lips, a dry laugh bubbling from you. “What a darling you are,” you say, bemused. (You're glad the lantern light is dim enough to hide your shy fiddling.) “Making sure I’m not going to say anything I regret, hm?”

“Or do. Aye.”

“I had one bottle, Shay. And I’ve had plenty of time recently to realise that rarely do I ever regret alot of things when it involves you.”

“Liar,” he snipes, if only to curb that tide of dangerous affection in his stomach, and the unbidden memories where both of you would fold against each others arms in countless, restless nights from before.

“Which part?” You raise your brows, and when he’d tilted your head to give you a look that roughly translated to All of it, obviously, you snort critically. “I don’t regret you ever coming into my life since we were children. Nor taking this bullet—”

He seems to bite his tongue in a flinch.

“—But I do regret not being drunk enough now to forget my own terrible performance just then.”

“I told y’the first time y’were here,” he reminds: “Y’have a beautiful voice.”

Reflexive, again. As if he always teeters the water’s edge; Could never hold back from the truth�� could never hold back from you. It makes something hot stick in your throat. “And how much have you had to drink, Captain?”

“Not nearly enough.”

Something charged passes in the air.

Shay shifts to move towards you. It’s hesitant. Tentative. The Morrigan creaks underneath his slow stride, until he stands a foot from you. His eyes are trained on the bindings beneath your threadbare blouse, hand hovering where the old blood had blotted through like a bastardised version of the Ursa Major constellation. “Y’put the heart crossways in me, y’know?”

You don’t say anything. (There’s nothing you can answer to that other than an apology, after all, and you aren’t in the habit of apologising for something you don’t regret.)

“Y’were so still,” Shay describes, going somewhere far away in his mind. It’s the softest you’ve ever heard him speak. An’ the waters were still, an’ so were the winds, an’ the world, an’ my heart. All of it. All but my mind. “I thought, for sure…”

He finds himself brushing his fingers against yours.

For a terrifying minute, the idea makes itself known.

“…We shouldn’t,” you say.

But you interlock your hands with his. Meet his gaze.

“We shouldn’t,” he agrees.

It would be a terrible, terrible thing. A betrayal to the Brotherhood and the Order each. It’d be a fork in the road; a turning point; a watershed moment. The same way his eyes opened to the truth after Lisbon: Tectonic plates coming together to herald nothing but destruction, when the world gave way beneath his feet into a— a divide. Between you and him. The Assassin-Templar shadow war, this gaping maw; the uncrossable—

“Dove,” Shay wavers, thumb smoothing behind your palm by way of quiet permission. “Are you… cold?”

Goosebumps line your skin. “Yes.”

—Crossed.

Kissing Shay Cormac feels like coming home.

Nostalgia comes in the slow, satisfied hum that carves out of his throat and into your parting lips; Homesickness in the way your nose fits like a slot perfectly against his, in the familiar sea-brine and bitter-rum taste of his tongue.

It’s deep and delicate and perfect. Akin to anchoring at your true port of call; your true North.

His free hand slips to cover the thin of your cheek curtained under your hair, honey-slow and shaking, as if he’s afraid you— he— would shatter at any moment.

“Tell me to go,” he shudders, between another breathless kiss that threatens what remains of his resolve. “Please, dove,” he rasps, voice as rough as stone from sheer restraint. “If y’don’t, if y’don’t want this—”

“Christ, no. I want you,” you pant, and press your face closer into his open hand. “Please.” Shay watches your long lashes flutter shut, watches you turn to kiss his palm with the kind of pious reverence you’d only see between candle-lit pews at Sunday Mass. “I’ve always wanted you, Shay.”

You’re looking up at him now with radiant hope: Doe-eyed, like a wicked siren calling him to a watery grave— to damnation.

Fuck.

He yields. (His emotions are never far from the surface these days— and when it comes to you? Always. Always.)

His lungs deflate. Shay dips his head back down to kiss you, purely fervid with the only longing to hold you. To shelter you. To protect you. “You’ll be the death of me, d’y’know?” he says. Confesses. Mouths the words against your jaw as he breathes in the rainy scent of you like it’s something sacrilegious.

“And the cold will be the death of me,” you jest, when he slides his hands up to peel the shirt off your wet skin, rivulets running from your hair down your navel, to where you’ve tugged your breeches off.

Shay loops a single, steady arm around you and lifts you onto the desk edge, all solid muscle and terrifying ease— it’s paralysingly attractive. A reminder of just how much that pristine, lean build of him belies the pure strength and utter brawn he possesses.

It’s that which does it for you. Zips arousal down your spine and kindles something primal in you.

(The Assassin Hunter, they call him. The Brotherhood’s Bane. No wonder.)

It shouldn’t have been a thrill to feel so subdued, pinned beneath him and his tenebrous gaze like a helpless animal waiting for a slaughter, and yet—

And yet.

(Ever the gentleman:)

“Let me, then,” Shay asks, ghosting his lips gently to your brow. So how could you not let him? When a Man of God sins for you? When a Templar Knight bends his creed just to kiss you; who cradles and covets you like you’re a very piece of Eden itself?

“Lemme take care’a you,” he repeats, brogue accent gone deliciously, sinfully thick from fervor. “Aye. I’ll warm y’up, dove, hm?”

Please do, you’d meant to answer, but you surged forward instead to meet him halfway. He is warm. Infernally so. Shay Cormac has always run hot as a blaze since you’d first met. A pillar of effervescent sunlight that had drawn you to him; the burn of his noble righteousness pouring out the cracks of his soul and through his skin, lighting him aflame and scalding those who never understood him the way you have.

(It makes you all the more desperate to disrobe him and cling onto him; to tuck yourself impossibly at the spaces between his ribs, burrow yourself into his beating heart. You want every iota and inch of him. You want him in a way that no word can possibly describe.)

“Shay,” you keen, seeking his mouth again. And to hear his name whispered like this— like a prayer coming from you; like saying my beloved, my heart, my God— Shay thinks he might just truly offer pieces of himself up to you on a silver platter. “Touch me.”

The plea is a strike of a match.

The tenderness melts away into something more ardent.

God, he shouldn’t be doing this. He truly shouldn’t—

You can feel the molten heat of him sinking into your very marrows when he presses against you, hard and eager; all while laving his tongue over your naked body, skin still wet and cooling from the storm’s wake. Shay’s ungloved hands are broad, smouldering— calloused from years spent climbing ashlar and knotting sails— abrasive enough to roughen you up, to curl at the base of your throat and to knead the flesh of your breasts.

Then they wander. Lower and lower; deliberately careful. While his mouth canvasses every dip and divot of your neck, his fingertips trace the margins of your tremulous body in tandem, skating over your hips and tugging off your thin underlinen, where he can feel, finally, the warmth of you— the soft, wet, seam of you.

“Jesus, fuck.” His voice is coarse. Laden with desire. Your noses bump when he leans his forehead to yours. All it takes to have you slick and needy is nothing but his blistering touches and open-mouthed kisses, it seems. “Already, dove?”

“I missed you,” you whine, tinny and saccharine. The concession has him groaning. Your left hand rakes up his nape and cards through his hair in anticipation; right hand a plinth to support your weight from the inevitable bliss he’s going to bring you to. “Please, Shay, please—”

He sinks one, gingerly, to the knuckle.

The gasp that escapes you is choked. Shay swallows it with a heady kiss. “Easy, now,” he grunts, ragged and humid, when you sidle your hips closer to the edge. “S’alright, dove. M’not goin’ anywhere. We got all night.”

We’ve got 2 days, you want to retort, but a pinched moan wrenches out of you instead. He’s pushed in another thick finger. The stretch makes your toes curl when he moves; makes him curse at the way he can feel you pulsing and pulling him in. If you’re this plush, this tight from his fingers alone—?

Shay feeds a third not long after. Works it in with effort. Mutters praises at your ear as he does so, teasing and rubbing your sensitive clit with his palm. Attagirl. Aye, y’doin’ so good for me, dove.

He watches, transfixed, at the glisten of his fingers as they noisily glide in and out of you, mouth watering at the lewd sight and sound he can draw out your body; mewling and writhing right infront of him, barely able to keep your eyes open or string your words coherently from sheer dizzying pleasure. Yes, Shay— Hah, yes— s’good. So good, please—

Ofcourse, it’s good. Shay’s touched you like this before. Hurried or unhurried; he’s memorised, intimately, how to pet and play and punish you. He knows where you’re weak: that lovely spot deep in your cunt he brushes with a perfect hook of his fingers— “Ah— fuck. Shay. Right there, yesyesyes—”, or the bare spot right below your jaw he enjoys marking up with a biting bruise— “You’re mine, dove. Mine alone. Y’hear?”

The hoarse sound of him makes you shiver. It’s brassy. Matches the malevolence he carries in presence even when he looks wrecked just from watching you be taken apart by his hands: broad chest rising and falling in deep breaths of your scent in the stifling air, underneath all the uniform layers of dark leather and glinting buckles.

(He looks like a hawk, a villain; raking his scarred eyes over fresh kill. The thought makes you stir. Sparks an old memory in your head from when he’d gone territorial over you in an old mission long ago, and he fucked you so hard you swore you’d be branded by every inch of him on the inside for the rest of your life.)

“You’re close,” Shay says. States. He knows. He always does. Recognises it in the feather-tremble of your body and the way you arch your back, clutching at his wrist (your hand is so small compared to his. Drives him fucking crazy—) as if you couldn’t tell whether you wanted him to stop or continue fingering you. “Aye, y’are, aren’t you?”

You nod mutely. Vision crossing. There’s nowhere for you to go, so you burrow your face against his throat like you want to hide from the world as you come undone.

Shay lets you. It’s an endearing moment, and he’s sweet like that. Even if he wants to study your face as you get off on grinding against his palm, even if he wants to swallow your tongue and every susurrus moan that he ekes out of you. He slides his hand up your spine and settles it there instead, holds you up when your own arm fails you and curls over his neck for support.

“So good, dove. So beautiful,” he whispers, at the scant space below your ear. Shay damn near smiles at the way the words involuntarily opens you further, allows his fingers to smooth and stroke and scissor— until your legs abruptly snap shut around his wrist like a vice, astrolade clattering to the floor from your blinding, seizing orgasm.

You’re gasping. Moaning. Twitching like a fragile fawn in his arms. “Shay— I— ah, ah—”

“Easy now, love,” he soothes, nuzzling at your temple.

The sight of you melting from your hot, silken climax prompts something primal— something instinctive in him. (Wolves, he imagines. Perhaps hounds. One’s already been satiated with having you fall apart because of him, the other still longs to shield you; to fold you into his arms and shelter you with whatever goodness is still left in his damned soul.)

He slides his soaking fingers out. A puff of a sigh escapes you. Relieved. Sated. “C’mere,” you mumble, blearily nosing forward for another kiss—

“S’alright,” he says, dodging you by resting his thumb on the dent beneath your lip. “Tell me to go, dove, an’ I will. I will. We don’t… we don’t have to.”

(There it is again. Taking care of you and leaving himself out to dry. Ever the gentleman. It makes your heart jump.)

“I want to,” you promise. Your voice dips into something dulcet; dangerous. “I’ve been wanting to.”

Something flickers in his eyes.

He swallows so hard you can hear the click in his throat.

“I’ve been wanting…” You trail off, grasp his hand holding your chin. He watches, rapt, as you splay his fingers apart, your slick still sticky between them, and then—

Press them into your mouth.

His ring finger. His middle.

It breaches past your bitten-red lips, slow and sinful, smarting against the wet glide of your curling tongue, coated in saliva as you suckle at the ichorous taste of them.

“Fuck, dove,” he says, and more inwardly: You’re a minx. Shay knows you. Knows you’re teasing him with his guilty pleasures; his oral fixations. The perverse texture and sound and feel of you: your tongue laving hungrily and sucking at your own slick, choking from his fingertips catching and going beyond your molars because of how far you insist on taking him.

It makes his cock twitch from the depravity; makes his skin simmer like a low-grade fever under his clothes. He wants to slip something else into that glorious, tight mouth of yours—

“Still cold, aye?” he rasps. Slides his fingers out the tight seal of your lips with an obscene pop. “Need somethin’ else to warm y’up, hm?”

He kisses you before you can reply. Brain-melting. Desperate. A low, amorous groan into you that roils your insides. Then you’re picked up— once more, by those delicious sailor arms of his— and deposited onto his bed like you weigh nothing.

Good God. “Christ, Shay, you’re…”

You falter, suddenly shy of all things. Here you are, naked and exposed with nothing save bandages around your stomach, supine and heaving on the untidy linen of his sheets— and you’re curiously, girlishly, timid over complimenting him.

It makes him laugh. Quiet. Airy. “Use your words, dove.”

But you’re too busy staring— ogling him where he stands at the foot of the bed. Shay’s undressing himself, patient and meticulous, and enjoying is an understatement for how you feel watching him divest and strip himself for you. (There’s something incredibly intimate about being allowed this, to witness him dismantle the precious armour— the defenses and image— he presents to the world.)

“Go on, then,” he croons, “What did y’want to tell me?”

Shay tugs his shirt over his head from the neckline. Swift. Smooth. When he crawls over you, unclothed, you think you finally understand the true, biblical epitome of temptation.

The sturdy contours of him, lean muscle cording across his torso and his vast arms; body smattered with forgotten scars and wounds both old and new that make him all the more roguishly handsome; the happy trail from his navel leading down to the heavy, leaking, length of him—

“Strong,” you concede, breath skittering when his shadow descends over you like doom itself, and he slowly settles some of his weight on your body. Your hands have wasted no time in pawing eagerly against his chest, gripping at his firm biceps when he smothers you with an indulgent kiss. “You’re so strong. I’ve always— mh— admired that about you.”

“Admired, aye?” It’s a teasing sound. A huff of sincere laughter ducked into your shoulder. He’s preening at the rare stroke of his ego, the bastard. “S’my hands all it takes to have y’this sweet on me?”

“Shut up,” you bite your grin, feel the blood rush to your cheeks again. “You’re insufferable.”

“You’re perfect.”

Your heart stutters. Skips. Stumbles. Then Shay kisses you, sweet and brimming with loving affection— and kisses and kisses and kisses. Hand cupping your cheek, and the other stroking at your nape. The type that’s full of utter devotion: like you’re salvation; the only person capable of ever delivering him utter Absolution.

Shay digs his fingers into the meat of your thighs, sangfroid, and begins to pry them apart.

You can feel the hard length of him throb, tip spitting prespend against your navel.

“Shay,” you call out, tugging at his hair when he tongues the swell of your breast and latches to your nipple, gropes at the other with a rumbling groan he couldn’t seem to bite back.

“Aye?” he says, before pulling away entirely in a worried blink, “Your stitches. Did I—?”

“No, it’s not that,” you say, meeting his concerned gaze and his touch running over your bandages. “I just, I’m not— It’s been awhile since—”

Oh. Oh. “S’alright,” he reassures, taken aback by the way his own lungs unwillingly expand from the new knowledge; the sudden rush of appetite flooding him. “Been some time for me too, dove.” He tucks a strand of your hair behind your ear, and gives you the thousandth kiss of the night. “Jus’ tell me if I’m hurtin’ you, aye?”

(Ever the—)

“Gentleman,” you smile, petal-soft. You press a chaste, delicate kiss on his cheek, at the crooked scar splitting it.

Something basal rattles in him at the tenderness. Startles a flutter of sparrows in his chest.

And then—

You curl your fingers around the base of him.

Shay jerks with a start. Hisses something guttural in Gaelic. “Fuck, dove—” He ruts forward, face digging to the crown of your head, where you’ve taken to licking at his jugular: tasting the masculine, heady sweat of him as you squeeze his cock.

Shay can feel the molten heat of your folds splitting at the nudge of his weeping head.

He might ruin you.

(He wants to. Greedily. To fuck you until you see the stars of Cassiopeia beneath your eyelids; until everytime you swore loyalty to that damned, wretched Creed of yours, all you would ever remember— ever feel— is how full you were when you were taking Templar cock.)

But he’s a restrained, merciful man for all his notoriety of pitiless bloodshed. A distinct dissonance; a paragon of irony. It’s hardly a surprise, really, if you think about it.

Shay Cormac is a Man of God, and men of God are raised to deliver only two extremes: grace and retribution.

So he’ll be gracious. Generous.

His hand falls to your right knee, thumbing the flesh beneath it; And pushes once more to spread yourself to him, to accommodate the thick of him as you guide him up into your soaking, eager cunt—

You whine at the fit.

The wrecked, immodest sound alone unmoors him.

Makes him all the more desperate to take you apart. “I know, dove,” he coos, emblazoning into memory the way your face twists in half-pleasure, half-pain; eyes misty at the edges and brows furrowed into a pinch. “Missed y’too.”

When Shay buries to the root, he distracts you from the scathing ache with another nip at your jaw and lip; gropes and moulds his hands over your thrumming skin and flesh. The pull of you inside— the nigh-virginal tightness of you (how long has it been again?)— has his vision swimming from the scorching decadence.

Then you’re pleading his name. For him to move. To satisfy. A murmuration of Shay, m’so full. S’good. Please. Pleasepleaseplease—

It tears a depraved moan out of him once he shifts to ease in, and out. Yeah? Feel good, dove?

From where you’re eclipsed, pinned underneath him, his gold Cross swings above you with every bated breath and every forceful thrust; A twisted reminder of your heresies. (The both of you will reason this truce out, someway, somehow. Chalk it off as filling the boredom of your recovery and voyage— but either of you know better. Know the truth.)

A sacrilege of the Penitential Act: For what I have done (“I love you.”), and have failed to do (“You shouldn’t.”); Forgive me.

(…But forgiveness is in neither of yours’ hands.)

Clawing down his back, legs greedily bracketed around his hips to siphon every inch of him in, the ferric sheath of him in you has liquid pleasure crackling through his veins. Between all your wanton purrs and his crude growls the room drowns in impurity under the pelting rain outside;

It’s breath mingling with breath, heart thundering to heart, skin sliding against skin. He white-knuckles your hip when he hikes you up harder into the bed, each urgent rut of him reaching further inside your pulsing cunt as you grip into the sheets.

“Oh, hah— fuck—” you choke. “Yes, Shay. God—”

“No Gods here, dove,” he grunts, devilish, and you swear you can hear him smirking that canine-sharp smile of his. “Jus’ you an’ me.”

You shiver. Whimper into his devouring mouth when he seals you into another kiss, and he grinds into you so hard you’re sure the curve of him would poke at your navel. The thought alone— of being full of him, of him breeding you with every drop of his seed that it might just take— has Shay shuddering against you.

He shouldn’t. Heavens above, he shouldn’t.

Even here, right now, he shouldn’t even be this demanding with how he’s fucking you. Gorging at the searing feel of your sex giving in and stretching to his girth— he ought to be a little more gentle, given your quivering state.

(He likes brutal. He wouldn’t have made a brilliant soldier for either the Brotherhood or the Order at all if he couldn’t handle being a brute; If he hadn’t indulged— or at the very least, been a little bit familiar with that dark skeleton in his closet.)

Shay’s trying to be gentle, ofcourse, which is already everything to you. He’s restraining every fibre of himself, and you know this. Can feel it in the deliberate brace of his hard cock inside you; in the way he stifles his animalistic noises to your ear, outmatched only by the noise of your flush cunt. Can see it in the pretty furrow of his brows, as if laid with proverbial thorn; the hitch of his lungs at each inhale of you.

He sets a perfect pace. Keeps to it until you can feel your nerves fraying at its edges. The knot formed where his hips are meeting yours in circadian rhythm tightens, has you gasping his name in anticipation when he palms down your arched spine and cants you closer to the fierce nudge of him.

Aye, doin’ so good, Shay hums, knowingly. He sneaks his hand to your slit, petting and teasing at your swollen clit until you’re clamping around him. Y’gonna give me what I want, love? Y’close?

The answer is stolen from you.

It’s an engulfing crescendo of all-too-much. Your orgasm splits you from the lower belly up, synapses firing wildly from the all-encompassing feel of him still battering into you, overwhelming every single sense you possess. Your eyes roll. Your mind whites out into pure pleasure. Aching muscles aren’t your own, inner walls and legs spasming and quivering around his throbbing length; And throughout it all: Attagirl. Attagirl, love. A chuisle mo chroí. Mo ghrá.

His release stutters close after.

It takes more coaxing, grinding; More time before the growing tension in his groin snaps like a wire. He’d fucked you through your climax, but now you’re egging him on, velvet-voiced and seductive, despite the sweltering edge of overstimulation creeping on you. “I wanna— ah— feel you. Please, Shay. Harder. I wanna feel you inside me— mh— for weeks—”

It sparks him closer to his edge. Inside? he’d ground out, sparing a glance between your sticky thighs, where his cock slots into you like you belonged here. Fuck. Y’know I can’t do that, dove.

But he entertains the thought anyway. Chases the thrill. Tells you how good you feel around him and spreads you just a little bit more. Imagines notching and seating so deep into your aching cunt until you couldn’t possibly spill a single drop of him; until you’d taste him from the inside out.

Shay rucks you up higher into the bed, allows a sliver of his viciousness to slip through in the unbridled way he carves himself into you with every thrust. (“Please, I can take it. Harder, Shay— hah, C—Captain—!”) The feeling of you leaving crescent-indents on his biceps and shoulders as you clumsily clutch onto him, surging helplessly as he groans and grunts into your balmy skin, and takes and takes and takes what he selfishly wants—

“F–Fuckin’ hell—” It’s a jagged rasp. Your name tumbles from his wet lips, husky and corrosive and dangerous. The growling sound alone makes you keen, reminds you of who exactly it is that’s just fucked you raw and is now painting your body with his cum:

Shay Patrick Cormac. The Templar’s very own Assassin Hunter.

Your natural predator.

Sex and sweat and Shay’s scent clots the very air. Ropes of his molten hot spend spurts over your torso as he pulls out to fist his jerking, fluttering cock into satisfying completion (“Been so long, dove. S’all for you. Saved it all— Fuck, ah— Just for you—”); the white, pearlescent threads of him shooting even up to your chin and bottom lip, still glossy and shiny from drool after your sloppy kisses.

Not even a moment later, Shay watches your red tongue dart out to lick it up.

Bloody hell—

“Oh,” you purr, breathless. (He tastes salty. Masculine. It’s intoxicating.) “So you do prefer being called Captain, hm?”

“Don’t,” he pants, half-laughing as he drops his head on your shoulder, trying to navigate through the cloying fog of his mind-melting orgasm.

There’s something grimly satisfying about seeing and having you— a Grandmaster Assassin of the Brotherhood— like this. Ravaged. Conquered and sprawled beneath him like a puppet with its strings cut. An unfurled flower. Bruises mottling your flesh like blossoms. Activates something carnally possessive in his hindbrain.

(And to think he’d been holding back all this time—?)

Eyes flitting shut, Shay presses another series of delicate butterfly-kisses: shoulder, cheek, nose, forehead. Non-sexual spots. It’s, ironically enough, infinitely more intimate than the fact you just coupled exhaustively on his own bed.

Then, after he’d gone to clear the debris and remnants of him off you: “Still cold?” he humors, melting into rest underneath the scratchy covers beside you.

You huff a soft, tired laugh. Tangle your sore legs with his and scoot closer to his bonfire warmth after he lets you doze in his embrace. The vestigial high has both of you drifting back to earth slowly. “Mh. Warmest I’ll ever be for a long while,” comes your content, nuzzled reply, feeling him comb through your hair as you intertwine your fingers with his again.

It feels like old times, tucked into him. It feels like the day you’d taken the shot and he scooped you up into his arms— like everything has changed, and nothing at all.

Still, we’ve changed, you think, thoughts piecing back from the sex in a way you hadn’t noticed before. There’s a new scar slicing across the hairs of his chest, and another unfamiliar pockmark wound on his collar that looks to have come from a ricocheting bullet. Testaments of time and battles that’s passed between you both.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he ensures.

A beat.

“You could never hurt me.”

Yes, he very nearly agrees. I could never.

“Shay,” you whisper, before the bravery escapes you.

“Dove,” he acknowledges.

His voice rumbles from his sternum and into your ears. It’s a painstakingly mellow sound. It’s home.

“What did we just do?”

His hand stills. You can only hear the hum-drum of his heartbeat echoing in his chest.

“I think,” he says, faintly, “We’ve just said our goodbyes.”

Against all odds, however—

You laugh. It’s sudden. As bright as tide breaking on shore. “What?” Shay says, unable to stop his smile against the crown of your head.

“Told you you were a learned poet.”

“Lord, I ought to throw y’overboard, woman,” he sighs.

Another laugh. The banter is a glimpse into the domesticity you’d once shared so often, and he couldn’t help it. He’d nudged a kiss to your forehead and went, “I’ve missed you,” and met your lips before he could confess: I miss you already.

“We’ve voyaged weeks,” you point out.

“You know what I mean, dove.”

“Ah, the sex, then?”

“Being close to you,” he corrects, unimpressed yet amused. “Having you in my arms.”

You do know what he’s trying to say. The loving; the freedom of being just you and just him. Of loving with neither guilt nor shame from the fact you both construe the world in different light.

“Have I told you how much I hate it?” you say craning to meet his half-lidded gaze.

“The sex?” he volleys easily, smiling like a serpent as he sneaks his hand between your thighs again. “I think I remember y’enjoyin’ yourself plenty, dove.”

“Bastard,” you swat playfully, pinching at his forearm as he laughs out. “I was going to say how safe you make me feel.”

Shay doesn’t say a word, but his expression rings louder than any reply: he’s glowing; a spark of sincere and profound fondness in his eyes, that has to be the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. He hadn’t even seemed to mind at all that you’d mentioned you hated it.

“What an inconvenience that must be,” he finally says, and as much as he’s tempted to tease you further for it, settles on giving it a rest for now. “We’re all guilty of something, whether we admit it or not.”

“Original sin,” you hum. “I forget you’re a Man of God, Shay Cormac.”

A beat. For a moment, you wonder if you’d said something you shouldn’t have.

“Well… You make me believe,” he says, softly. The quiet concession matches the tentative unfurling of affection in you.

“In what?”

Everything. “In God. In goodness. In love.”

Shay tugs you into a doting kiss. The deep and fiercely kind that translates everything he can’t put into words; the kind that rattles the very foundations of your soul and every mighty defense you’ve ever built around your heart.

“I love you,” he exhales; like he’d been holding it back for centuries. “Please remember that. Please remember that’s never changed.”

“Oh, Shay,” you begin, and kiss him once more for good measure, instead of telling him:

I--

“--think you do not have it in you to kill Shay Cormac, when it comes down to it.”

A narrow look. You don’t even bother starting with the surety of Connor’s choice of words: when, over if.

“Just because I trust him onc—”

“No,” he overrides, suddenly, inexplicably fierce. “You love him. There is a difference.”

He’s learned this dilemma for himself the hard way. He had faced a ghost of his past, forged a truce, and naïvely dreamt of an impossible unity. In the end, all he received was the black blood of his own father on his hands, and a terrible guilt that would last his entire lifetime and the next.

But, he had, by the grace of whatever watches over him, not learned what it is to be at the very brink of death in the same way you had been after you were shot— To walk the precipice and return home with only a scar to show for it; and he prays he will never understand what that’s like for a long time. Perhaps it’s because he is his mother’s son (and yours by charge), too, that makes him lower his hackles.

“Se:nikónrarak,” Connor re-attempts, determined, though less hostile this time. “If you are not careful with your heart, it may prove to be your demise, again.”

You stop short. “Again?”

“I am no fool,” Connor says knowingly over his shoulder, where you’ve rooted yourself at the frost-pathed foothills leading up the Homestead. “You are the quickest Assassin I know. You would not have been shot, unless you wanted to be in the crossfire.”

“I don’t—” you hesitate, dismayed. “I don’t love him.”

Connor disappears from your view.

In the far distance, a lone rooster crows.

What sea soever swallow me, that flood Shall be to me an emblem of thy blood; Though thou with clouds of anger do disguise Thy face, yet through that mask I know those eyes, Which, though they turn away sometimes, They never will despise.

— John Donne, “A Hymn to Christ”

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kopivie · 2 years ago

Text

trick-or-treat.

# — pairing: spidey!kazuha x gn!reader

# — characters: gender neutral reader, spider-man!kazuha

# — warnings: a little suggestive.

# — tags: fluff, kisses (bc who am i if not a madman for kisses), mild hurt/comfort, BANTER YIPPEE!!, this is zuzu's way of making up for the fact that he all but forgot kazuha's birthday, apology fic

# — notes: (PLEASE READ!!) this is... not at all what i intended to do. it's 1:30 am and i just came down from a much needed high. as my head cleared, i noticed that this fic was like, riddled with flaws, but i feel too good about this to second guess it and feel bad. anyways, this is heavily inspired by this fic that 🎻 anon sent in my asks, as well as a follow-up to this fic i wrote on @awlumii last year on kazuha's birthday. i hope you enjoy and please do let me know what you think! i could really use some feedback.

✦ — 🎃 — ✦

There's a knock on your door. You stare at the entry to your apartment and think: "How mean would it be if I ignored them right now?"

In your defense, you've been giving out candy all day. All. Day. You figured that there would at least have been a lull in the early afternoon since children had school to attend, but no — you've been giving out candy to all ages from as early as 10:30 this morning. It's a good thing you stocked up on candy late last month, otherwise you would've had to ruin the days of some very enthusiastic trick-or-treaters. So after setting aside a bucket full of your favorites and giving out the leftovers until about 10 at night, you finally thought yourself ready to curl up on your bed with your softest blanket. You were halfway to dreamland when some monster started pounding on your door.

(So maybe you're exaggerating a little. But who could blame you? You're tired and you want to sleep.)

And so, here you sit, your legs half-tangled in your weighted fleece blanket as you glare at your door and hope that your unwanted visitor is telepathic and gets the message that you want them to leave. Scram! you think. You raise your voice in your head. Get out of here. Shoo! Begone!

…They knock again. (Kind of a dick move if they can read minds.)

The groan you let out is obnoxiously loud and is most definitely heard by whoever is on the other side of the door. You hoist yourself to your feet and trudge to the door, but you don't open it quite yet. Judging by the fact that this person has yet to say anything, you figure that they're old enough to know when their presence is not welcome and left.

Wrong. You're too optimistic. They knock again.

You sigh and once again, hope that the sound carries through the door. "Who is it?" You try to make yourself sound as unfriendly as possible. Considering how cranky you are, you don't have to try very hard.

"Trick-or-treat..?" The voice on the other side is muffled by the door, but also by something else. Fabric, probably. All you know is that their voice is deep enough to be an adult's.

You click your tongue. "Trick." You almost snicker. It's a little refreshing not doling out treats for once. "Go home."

"Can I at least give you a treat?" The person asks.

You blink. They didn't leave? "Pretty sure that's not how it works," you reply. "I give you treats and you… I dunno, TP my house or something."

"Yeah, well," the person at the door chuckles, "I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to say 'trick', either. Since you're breaking the rules, it's only fair that it's my turn, right?"

Well… Shit. They have a point.

Impressed by the stranger's reasoning, you hum. "Fine. Let me find my costume." You turn to gather your costume and notice that you can't find the full thing. You were so eager to get to bed that you didn't hesitate to drop the thing in the wash. Not wanting to make the stranger wait too long, you improvise. You blindly grab the mask and the blue throw blanket you have folded up on your couch and tie it around your shoulder like a cape. It's a shitty excuse for a costume, but you reason that your exhaustion is a good excuse. You swing open the door and cross your arms over your chest. "Alright, what do you got for-- Oh."

Standing on the other side of your door is none other than Spider-Man himself. The two of you stand in silence as you take in each other's appearances. Then, after what feels like forever, he speaks. "So… a cape, huh?"

You don't hesitate — you grab your door and swing the thing shut as fast as you can, but Spider-Man is faster, catching the door in his gloved hand. You turn your back to him. The mask is obscuring his face, but you already know what expression he has underneath. "Don't say a word." You warn him.

Spider-Man pays you no mind. You can feel him lifting your 'cape' as he inspects it. "Hmm… capes are kinda aerodynamic, but considering how dirty my enemies fight, I don't think that's a very good design choice." You can hear the shit-eating grin in his voice. "I'll give it a five out of ten."

"I said shut it!" You snatch your blanket out of his hands and march further into your apartment with Spider-Man's laughter following at your back. He walks inside and the door shuts behind the two of you. "Get the fuck out, webhead," you seethe. Your voice trembles with shame. "I didn't invite you in."

Spider-Man just walks around you to look you in the eye. "Come now, lovebug," he tilts your chin up with a finger, "you look cute wearing my mask."

You grumble and push his hand away as you struggle for words. You want to say something like, "this isn't what it looks like!" to try and save face, but there's no point in trying. This is exactly what it looks like.

Because the mask you'd been wearing for Halloween -- and the mask you haphazardly thrown on moments ago -- was none other than Spider-Man's mask.

To be fair, these things were a dime a dozen. The people of this city adore the vigilante. It was only natural that kids and adults alike would want to pretend to be him for a day, even if they had no powers like him. You're not exactly one of those people — you've seen firsthand just how brutal Spider-Man's job can be. You wouldn't trade your life for his even if you were offered money. But as you stared at the costume while shopping, you couldn't help yourself. There were obviously cooler, much more interesting costumes to choose from but this one just… called to you.

Hindsight is 20/20, after all. You should've ignored that calling.

Spider-Man takes your chin in his fingers and shakes your head side to side. "I never knew you liked me so much, lovebug. I'm touched."

You scoff. "Don't be."

"Y'know, if you wanted to wear my mask so badly, you could've just asked." Spider-Man leans in and presses a clothed kiss to your cheek. You consider yourself lucky; he can't possibly feel the burn of your cheeks through all that fabric.

You stammer. "Ha-ha. Very funny."

"What? I'm sure I have a back up somewhere." He eyes you for a moment. "You'd look good in it."

Against your will, you wonder if he's saying that he wants you to wear his clothes. Would he ever actually loan you clothes that he's worn? The thought makes your face burn hotter. "Why are you here?" You ask. Anything to change the topic.

Spider-Man chuckles, but plays along. "I haven't swung by in a few days," he says, "so I figured I'd try and surprise you as a trick-or-treater." He shrugs. "I wanted to do some reverse psychology thing where I could trick you into thinking I was just some guy in a costume so you would give me candy."

You process his words for a second. "Okay, first of all, you already are a guy in a costume."

He visibly deflates and places a hand over his chest. "Ouch, lovebug. What if you hurt my feelings?"

"Second of all," you continue, "do you have any idea how many Spider-Men I've seen today?"

"...Is that a serious question?"

"Don't be a smart ass."

"I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess twelve."

You pause. You actually aren't even sure if that's the right number or not. You lost count after three hours of giving out candy to cute kids.

"Am I right?" He asks.

"Who knows?"

Spider-Man huffs. "If there's that many of us around, then what am I even here for?" You giggle at his petulant behavior, and he makes another breathy sound, reminiscent of a stifled laugh. "Did you treat them the same way you treat me?"

"What?" His question takes you off-guard for a moment. You chortle. "Oh, definitely."

"You gave them band-aids and kicked them out, too?"

"Mhm." You cross your arms. "Just slapped a few on some pretend wounds and told them to get the fuck off my property."

The two of you laugh together for a moment. Once the laughter dies down, Spider-Man tugs at your cheek for a brief second. You let him get away with it for now. "You're so cute." He sighs and you can hear something somber enter his tone. "I was worried about you. It's been a week since I've seen you."

It has been a week, hasn't it? You may have been swamped with work at the hospital, but there was never a night that you didn't find yourself waiting on your balcony like an idiot in this chilly weather. You had faith that he was okay — the Daily Bugle printed something new about the "masked menace" every day this past week — but that didn't stop you from longing for his presence. Stories can't compare to the real thing, after all. You're far more taken with the masked vigilante than you'd care to admit to yourself.

You hum. "About time someone else did the worrying for once," you mumble jokingly. "It gets tiring worrying all by myself."

Spider-Man stays quiet. "I've been okay. A little worse for the wear for the past two days, but okay otherwise."

You reach for him instinctively. "Lingering pain isn't like you," you say, already in doctor-mode, "did something happen?"

"No, not like that. I've just been… sad. I guess." His confession is soft as he takes your outstretched hands in his own. He's been more vulnerable around you lately and you're not sure if that's good or bad. "It's been a rough couple of days, that's all."

You rack your brain. What could possibly be paining him that you don't know of? He's already told you that he tells you everything (within reason), so maybe it's something that you already know of? You furrow your brows as you dive deeper into your memory. Deeper, deeper… until you happen across a memory from just about a year ago.

The kiss you shared on your balcony close to midnight.

"Oh my God." You voice your incredulity aloud. "Oh my God! I missed your birthday!"

Spider-Man straightens his posture as he inhales sharply.

How could you have forgotten? He confessed to you on his birthday last year that you were the only person he had left in his life since he hated his birthday so much. October 29th was such a painful day for him — to think that you didn't stop for a second to wonder if he was okay that day. It's not like you would've been able to contact him of course, but what if he swung by after you'd fallen asleep? You should've at least left him a note or something.

"Don't beat yourself up over it, lovebug." The confidence is starting to bleed out of him, you notice. Spider-Man walks over to your couch and sits on the floor in front of it. "I'll be okay. It's not like I was going to celebrate or anything."

You move to the couch and adjust yourself so that the vigilante is between your legs. You two often assume this position when you're finished patching him up and too tired to goof around until he leaves. You would place your hands on his head and press your fingers into the fabric of his mask. Spider-Man told you once that the action was soothing, but you have yet to admit to him that it's your way of trying to conjure up an image of what his hair must look like underneath.

Like always, he gets himself into position, draping his arms across your legs. This time, however, he's looking up at you. You're not sure what expression he might be wearing.

"I wasn't saying that we should've celebrated," you say softly. "I'm just upset that you had to be alone. Are you sure you're okay?" You ask as you massage your fingers across the crown of his head.

He hums. "I am now. I promise."

"If you're ever feeling down, you know you can come and see me." Your words surprise the both of you, but you don't regret them at all. He always seems to be around when you need his company the most, so why shouldn't you do the same for him? Who else would? your mind unhelpfully supplies. "I may not be the best company in the world, but at least you won't be alone, right?"

Spider-Man moves so that he's on his knees facing you. He's so close to your face like this; you inch backwards to preserve your sanity. "You're the only company I need." He says it with so much conviction that you shiver. "But does this mean I'm getting special treatment?"

"What--? You mean from the other Spider-Men?" When he nods, you snort. "Yeah, I guess you do get V.I.P privileges. You get extra treats unlike everyone else."

"Extra?" He tilts his head. "But you haven't given me any candy at all."

You raise a brow. "All that's left is the candy I'm hoarding for myself. And before you ask, no, I'm not sharing any. Why don't you try actually trick-or-treating? People would probably give the city hero the best of the best."

He sinks a little lower, seeming defeated. "...Would you believe me if I said I tried that already?"

"Did it work?"

He's silent.

"...It didn't work, did it?"

"...No. They thought I was just some superfan."

Peals of laughter burst out of you at his admission. "So this is how they repay you, huh?" You say between giggles. "No faith and no candy? That's rough, buddy." You get the distinct impression that he's glaring at you, but that only makes you laugh harder.

Fed up with your insistence on laughing at his misfortune, Spider-Man taps your leg. "Since I get special treatment from you, can I ask for a few wishes?"

You wipe a stray tear from your eye. "I'm dressed as a superhero, not a magic genie."

"Please?"

"Fine, fine." You finally catch your breath. "You get two wishes.

"Not three?"

"I'm not a genie. Don't push it."

Spider-Man puts his hands up in defense. "Alright, two it is. The first is… let me stay with you for the rest of the night."

You shrug. Wouldn't be the first time. He's usually gone by the time you wake up, anyhow. "Granted. Next one's your last — make it count, bug boy."

Spider-Man doesn't react to your nickname. Instead, he just stares at you. A familiar sensation tickles up your spine. He's watching you; you know that stare all too well. "I think you know what I'm going to ask for next." His voice is deeper, smoother than it was mere moments ago.

You nod and he eases himself closer to you. You feel your heart pick up an unsteady rhythm and rather than kiss him normally, you lean in close and press your masked lips to his. He makes a surprised noise before he laughs and melts into the "kiss" all the same. When you pull away, he's still laughing. A very welcome change from the bitter smile you're sure he was wearing when talking about his birthday. "Consider that a freebie," you mutter.

"You're too kind," he chuckles.

Soon, your fingers come to the base of his mask to raise it just above his lips when he suddenly stops you. He reaches for your face and you feel something tug at the base of your neck. Somehow, you completely forgot you were wearing that stupid mask. "It's kinda funny," he half-laughs, "having to unmask you for once."

"You... You can't tell anyone about my identity, okay?" You tease.

Spider-Man rolls your mask up just enough to expose your lips and you do the same to him. Neither of you are sure who leaned in first, but you meet in the middle in a kiss that has fireworks bursting behind your lids. The two of you are greedy, pouring a week's worth of longing into the kiss. The mutual yearning is palpable, so much so that you can hear his breath hitch when you sigh. He rises to the couch slowly and without breaking the kiss, doing his best not to part from you for even a second.

You missed him. Oh, how you missed him — you missed how he would wrap a strong arm around your waist and pull you closer like it was nothing; how he would whisper his adoration for you between breaths; how he would chase after your lips whenever you would tease him with barely-there kisses. You missed the exhilaration, the thrill of knowing that you were the only one Spider-Man would ever treat this way. That you were his and he was yours.

He moves from your lips to your jaw, trailing kisses up to your ear and down to your neck. His pace is unhurried, though he seems eager to pull a reaction out of you. You give him what he wants whether you intend to or not. You press yourself closer to him in a silent request for more and he indulges you; his kisses become little nips, and the nips turn to bites as he starts to leave marks on your neck. He eases you back so that you're laying on your couch and he's hovering over you. The two of you stare at each other for a moment.

"Can I use my next wish?" His voice is rough. When you nod, he leans in once more. His uncovered lips brush against your ear as he whispers. "Let me give you a treat."

Something foreign yet familiar makes you shudder as you nod.

Spider-Man attacks your neck once again. Clearly he was holding himself back earlier, because every mark he leaves stings. He makes them dark and obvious, completely disregarding any warnings you may have given him on other days. You normally would tell him to ease up, to hide the marks that he so desperately wanted to leave on you. But now you let him do as he pleases. You gave him an inch and as expected, he took the mile. He soothes each one with a kiss and muffles your whimpers with his lips.

It takes a while before he's satisfied with his handiwork. Kazuha raises himself up with a shaky breath. Your wrists are in his hands and pinned against the couch. Looking down at you now, all flushed absolutely covered in his marks, he feels something uncontrollable stir within him. He has half a mind to tell you to close your eyes so he can take his mask off, but he refrains.

That's all he ever does when it comes to you. You, the greatest test of his endurance that he will ever encounter in his lifetime. No supervillain with any amount of underground connections or otherworldly technology will ever test his patience and restraint quite like you. For years, Kazuha has weighed the pros and cons of telling you who he is. He always wonders if you would still allow this, if you would still treat him like a lover if you knew who he was — if you knew that he's been lying to you. Though your reaction may not be guaranteed, it's a risk he's more than willing to take.

But he doesn't. Not tonight. Maybe another day when the time is right.

For now, Kazuha releases your wrists and sits himself up. He fixes his mask while you take yours off. You sit up and he watches as you ghost your fingers over each of your fresh hickies. You wince a little when you brush the one on the left side of your collarbone, above your heart. The silence that hangs in the air is evident, but not uncomfortable.

Then, you mutter. "I was supposed to give you a treat."

Kazuha reaches out and touches a hickey left on your pulse point. A sensitive spot for you – you shudder in response. He admires the lingering haze in your eyss. "You did. Thank you, lovebug."

✧ my goodness. @perpetualcynicism look at what you've done. you've reawakened a monster in me.

✧ edit: btw, the dividers belong to @cafekitsune!! thanks so much for making such beautiful dividers!

#genshin impact #genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #kaedehara kazuha #kaedehara kazuha x reader #kazuha x reader #spidey!kazuha #spidey!kazuha x reader #WHEW.#tagging is a fucking nightmare i cant believe i did this all the time #but uh.. ta-da...#i feel so much better though #i had a horrible day at work so i got super high and then i read thing in my asks and then i cried and wanted to write about kazuha #i literally checked off every box #get high? ✅️ cry? ✅️ write about kazuha? ✅️✅️✅️#I FEEL SO FREE

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